Charles Robert Darwin must have good karma. People still celebrate his birthday today. He’s the man who brought us, “On The Origin of Species” in 1859, the theory of evolution by natural selection. It’s hard to believe that in 1859 the ‘modern’ theory of atoms was only 6 years old, and the world was thought to be a mere 6000 years old.

I mention Darwin because in learning Feng Shui, it’s nice to understand how things evolve. (Although it’s been said that knowing the theory is not necessary if you’ve been taught the proper FS application.) And energy, according to Taoism, had a role in creating our world.

It’s believed that the I-Ching arose from Taoism, and Feng Shui is the material application of the I-Ching principles of energy to our physical environment. Taoism shares some similarities to Darwinism but it doesn’t compliment it. Yet Taoism doesn’t offer any straightforward answers. It is more like a puzzle.

In Taoism we believed in a heaven and earth, and from Nature there came the beings. Thus the earth and it’s life forms are not created from divinity. According to Taoism, everything is constantly moving………It’s the Natural Law. In the beginning everything was homogenous. Then over time they separated and formed different energies. The heavier ones produced Yin and sank to create our earth. The lighter ones produced Yang and floated to heaven. When they mixed, they created beings.

In addition, there are different categories of Yin and Yang. They can be divided further. Some are lighter Yin or Yang, and some are heavier Yin or Yang. Yin and Yang are mutually attracting and opposing forces. By their fundamental natures, they are equal in all respects but forever separate entities. It is like Ci-Xiong, the concept of Male and Female. Without this differentiation it would mean no living things.

Taoism agrees with Darwinism to some extent, but not all of it. Depending on where these different types of Yin and Yang energies met and mixed, different forms were created. The modern evolutionary theorists tries to trace human life back to “Lucy” from Africa. Taoist beliefs don’t fit with that assumption. Ask yourself, “Why do we find so many different human-type skeletons that only share some similarities?”

Where Taoism is concerned, different types of humans could have been in existence almost simultaneously. They could have been in today’s China, Africa, America, India, or anywhere, all at the same time, if the conditions were right. In Taoism, the reason we have so many creatures in this world, such a variety, (including humans), is because these energies met and mixed in different environmental conditions.

Taoism believes that the world is a mirror to the sky. Whatever energies appear in the universe will be materialized on earth, as an emanation. This is also a Feng Shui concept.

Originated in India or China. The lion is featured in Buddhist lore, being the mount of Manjusri

Once upon a time in Batu Pahat, Malaysia, there sat facing each other a Chinese Society building and a Hindu temple. For many years they had peacefully co-existed.

For those of you who don’t know, the country of Malaysia sustains a diverse culture, with a mixture of religious heritages. The most influential ones there being Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus.

Now, one day the Hindu committee in charge of taking care of the temple there decided it was time to rebuild the temple’s old dome. Only, when they made their plans, they decided they would make their Hindu temple’s dome larger, and taller, than it had previously been.

Whether it was intended to show force or not, when this monumental structure was completed, it was higher than the Chinese Society building. In fact, the new Hindu temple dome towered over it, and put a tremendous pressure on the Chinese Society building.

Not long after it was built, one by one, the Chinese Society committee members began to fall sick. They had no choice. Something had to be done. They called a Tibetan Buddhist who was also a Feng Shui master for help.

The Feng Shui master surveyed the site and took note. He examined the landscape and other buildings surrounding the Chinese Society building.

He had a solution. He asked the Chinese Society committee to close all the windows and doors of their building that faced the Hindu temple. They were also instructed, they should hang a black Lion’s Head used in the Chinese Lion Dance on the second floor balcony, facing the Hindu temple. The Feng Shui master also wrote a Buddhist mantra on a yellow piece of paper, asked them to frame it, and hang it above the Lion’s Head.

When the heavy wooden doors of the Chinese Society building were permanently sealed shut, the Luan Tou effect of the high Hindu temple dome, (with hundreds of statues on it), was reduced. The people in the Chinese Society building are now not exposed directly to the pressure of the dome.

In addition, the fierce looking black Lion Head creates a LT (Luan Tou) effect towards the Hindu temple. The Black Lion Head is seldom used in the Lion Dance. Furthermore, the mantra used is of the ‘White Umbrella’ – Dugkar (Tibetan). This wrathful mantra, placed above the Lion’s Head, creates a spiritual uneasiness. This particular mantra is seldom used because it is only for attacking or defending.

Not long after the Chinese Society committee members made the corrections, one-by-one the committee members of the Hindu temple fell sick. One of them even went crazy.

With the power of Feng Shui, and the power of the mantra, the negative Qi sent towards the Chinese Society building had been reversed.

Moral of the story: “Love thy neighbor.”

(This is key advice to all who practice real Feng Shui)

There is such a thing as the three types of luck. Bad luck and good luck is a combination of these three:

1. Heaven Luck: This is the luck you were born with. It tells us about the qualities that lie within you, that you brought to this planet with you.
2. Man Luck: This is the luck you create for yourself.
3. Earth Luck: This is Feng Shui.

To begin, Heaven Luck, will tell you the path that you are on and what is most likely to happen in your life, as an ordinary person. We can learn a lot about you by using the date and moment of your birth as a reference point when we study the Chinese 4 Pillars astrology chart. Although it is difficult to change your destiny, your Heaven Luck can be changed, through your own positive actions.

No other astrology is as accurate in predicting life events as 4 Pillars astrology. Why do I say this? Because 4 Pillars astrology is the only astrology that says we humans are an aggregate of 4 elements. 4 Pillars astrology will show your weaknesses and strengths, your entire composition. No other astrology on earth takes into account our entire being.

Second, Man Luck is your own mental thoughts, feelings, emotions, as they turn into actions, thus creating your own karma on earth.

A person with a Bi-Polar “DIS- order” of the body, is actually experiencing a chemical imbalance in their brain. The thoughts they think, the way they treat themselves, and the way they behave towards others, all of this falls into the category, “Man Luck.” By doing good deeds for others they could develop GOOD merit. When a person accumulates enough good merit, heaven smiles on them and they can change the course of their life by reducing negative Karma that happens to them.

Earth Luck is Feng Shui. The electromagnetic energy of the earth, in combination with the waves coming from outer-space, affects not only our brain patterns, but also the cells in our body. Because of DNA, the treatment of the bodies of the dead affects the lives of their living descendants.

In the beginning, Feng Shui was originally reserved for use by only the kings. The correct burial location ensured that king’s descendants continued to acquire their ancestor’s good luck. Of course, those same concepts could be applied to their living surrounds, and they were again used by the ancient kings to enhance their own luck.

Way back then, the average Joe did not have a chance of using, or learning the REAL Feng Shui. In fact, today’s average Joe still does not have a chance of learning it, or using it, today.

I’m sorry that I left you hanging in November with the question: What is negative energy? Well, if you didn’t experience it after the Christmas shopping crowds, crazy traffic or travel, or with your own family and dear friends around the holiday dinner table, consider yourself blessed.

Thoughts of aggression, hatred, worry, anxiety, fear, and anger, drain you of your personal strength and positive vitality. Most of you have experienced an ‘energy vampire,’ someone who makes you feel lethargic, listless, and heavy. These feelings are the effects of negative energy and if you’re experiencing any of these your body has more than likely been ‘contaminated’ with it. It may appear that even the plants in your house droop while a person with high -ve enters your place.

You absorb energy into your body through your aura. In tantra, the aura is thought to be the manifestation of the Chakras, the Nadi, Prana and the Bhindu. The brightness and colors of a person’s aura are the indication of their strength. Prana literally means WIND. Prana travels in certain routes called Nadi. Bhindu (sometimes typed as Bindu) is the essence of Life Force, also called your soul.

The human body is like a capacitor. It receives the energy and radiates it back out. If you’ve been receiving -ve in your environment you will send it back out. If you receive negative energy from others it’s likely that you are projecting negative thoughts onto them from within yourself. If you are projecting a negative image of yourself to the world then normal people will “stay away” from you. You can even experience an “attack” coming from someone at a distance. It’s a form of energy something like electronic jamming, a type of psychic warfare.

If it’s a high enough -ve that you’ve been exposed to for a greater amount of Time then you’ve put yourself at risk of the negative energy penetrating into your Life Force. If your soul becomes contaminated with negative energy it will cause you extreme mental problems and/or a severe illness that can even kill you.

Energy itself is neutral. It’s how you use it that makes it negative or positive. (In feng shui it is Time that determines whether energy is negative or positive.) My dear friend Hermit once told me-

MIND is ENERGY.
MIND is an ocean.
Thoughts are merely waves on the ocean.

When you soften your heart by virtuous thoughts the goodness radiates from within to the people in your environment. In Tibetan Buddhism it’s believed when a person changes their mindset to the good, the knots in the channels in your body will be slightly un-tightened. Since the flow of wind gets smoother while moving throughout your body it’s believed that you will have fewer obstacles and the impact of the negative things you do experience will become lesser.

We have to accept imperfection in people as well as in feng shui. But negative thinking people give off negative energy and there are things you can do to lessen it’s impact on yourself. One way is to stay out of large crowds, especially keep out of bars. Another thing is to avoid people in your life who you feel lower your vibration.

A great way to decontaminate yourself after exposure to negative energy in the form of other people’s thoughts and actions is to take a sea salt bath or by using a sea salt scrub. It absorbs the negative energy from your aura.

In my next post I’ll share with you the ‘Life Giving Flower Bath’.

There is no specific hard and fast rule that says a person will be reborn in the ghost realm. (If you’re reborn in the ghost realm then you are a ghost!) When you die and are in the transition state between life and death your habitual tendency will be guiding throughout the journey, the mind will decide. You carry along with you memories and habits. Most knowledge you learned doesn’t come with you. In short, whatever is in your heart will most probably accompany you. Whatever is in your brain will be left behind. It will be your refusal to let go of attachments, a stinginess, that is the main thing that will cause you to knowingly enter the ghost realm. Therefore, in order to meet higher spirits you need to have a noble heart.

Sometimes, a ghost does not mean to hurt anyone it is just that the ghost’s energy is at such a low frequency it can harm a human’s physical body. But what if a ghost bites or slaps you? It means you’ve probably upset him.

The Chinese classify ghosts and spirits in great detail. I’d just like to mention what seems to be the two most common types encountered on television programs shown in the United States such as “A Haunting,” and “Ghost Hunters.”

Let’s say you are investigating a ghost who seems to be doing a repetitive action like slamming a door. Let’s say the ghost is the dead sister of someone who used to live in the house. There are few possibilities for what kind of a ghost can be creating such an annoyance:

1. If the sister passed away at young age, her earthly energy within this world is still strong, and her soul will remain in a Bardo (intermediate/transition) until her ‘rightful earth years’ are exhausted.

Another options is:
2. The sister has lived her life, and she knowingly chooses to be reborn inside of the ghost realm. The ‘ghost’ then cannot rightfully be called the sister but that ‘energy’ does carry the residual memory of the sister’s past human life. But she is no longer the ‘sister’ but has many different characters.

Ghosts are not the souls of the dead. Once you’re dead your soul leaves the earth plane. Ghosts are beings from another dimension, yet they see and understand what we’re doing in our dimension. We live in a ‘parallel-universe’ with them. In other words- they are not coming and we are not going. Our worlds overlap each other. They are simultaneously doing things in the exact same space that we occupy and at the same time too. Their habitual tendencies anchored them to this earth plane of existence where they share a similar frequency. But because we are at a different wavelength from them we do not disturb each other and normally they are invisible to us. Usually only a person with a high level of spiritual attainment can see them.

Sometimes a great magician or ‘medium,’ (person calling on the spirit), can manipulate an audiences’ frequency to see ghosts, like at a séance, but it requires a lot of energy from the medium. In Buddhist texts, many times, Buddha displayed very vivid scenes of pure realms before certain crowds of disciples.

“Everything changes, nothing remains without change.” -Buddha

Sometimes we get caught up in our routines. We focus on our limited telescopic viewpoint of the scenes closest to us and forget about the bigger picture. We can’t remember how we got into our current situation we only know we’re doing the best that we can with what we have.

If you look back on your life you’ll see that it was a series of movements and you can examine the many changes you went through to get where you are today. Some things you chose for yourself and other things that happened to you were completely out of your control. You always have options. True, sometimes those are limited. But this is because of prior decisions you made. Some people call this Karma.

Many people use Feng Shui cures/enhancements with the desire for immediate transformation of this or that situation that they’re experiencing. Usually it is something unpleasant they want changed. However in Esoteric Feng Shui we don’t use mirrors, wealth toads, wind-chimes, or other things like this, to ‘cure’ Qi. Simply put- if your outside environment supports it there are applications to your interior environment that can help you, (if the movement is possible within the room), to make those more positive changes sometimes happen very suddenly. That being said, you must also put forth your own effort or you’ll miss opportunities that are to be taken advantage of that are glaring you in the face.

In working with Qi, keep in mind that the longer you stay in one place the stronger you’ll be affected by the Qi of that place. Some folks will claim that all of their bad luck happened the day they moved into their new house. This is unlikely. It is more plausible that the old negative energy that has been following them around hasn’t changed yet, and the affects of the new place are not being felt, although if the Feng Shui arrangement isn’t right, after a while the affects might be just as bad but in a different way.

As a test of this you could go sit in front of a fan blowing in your face for hours upon hours. How would your face feel once you left that spot? How would you feel for the rest of your day? Do you think it would affect the choices you made for the day? Would you be a little blurr? You are not consciously aware of it but Qi is having an affect on you body and brain all of the time.

In using Feng Shui we try to ‘balance’ our life is such a way that when change does come, as it always does, it is not so alarming or discomforting for us. No one likes or wants a shock to their system. Having a bright mind is also ‘key’ to making good decisions for yourself so that your life proceeds smoothing.True Feng Shui can help you make the changes easier on you.

What are we here for? What does this question have to do with feng shui?

How many of us desire for more ‘things’ in life: a beautiful body; to be rich; a own huge house and a fast car; to be powerful at work? But what does all this mean without family? In the ancient Chinese culture the family ‘force’ was seen as the most important and vital root of life.

When I began my feng shui journey I was looking for great change in my life. I was putting out a lot of energy in finding a new job, looking for a relationship, trying to pay my bills, and yearning to travel to Europe. I thought that I was doing my life all right, yet I was seeing no results. It was hard for me to believe that the Universe was not supporting me. I knew there must be some other key…

I had become friends with some of the folks that worked at the New Renaissance Bookstore in Portland, Oregon, and I asked them if they had ever heard of anyone who practices feng shui. They said ‘yes’ and gave me her phone number.

That was over 10 years ago and I have learned more about feng shui then is contained in any books on the market.

Probably many of you, like me, would like more wealth, recognition, to have good health and better personal relationships. Let me share with you- the first place to start making these things ‘change’ is within your own heart and mind. Then feng shui can help you make it a reality.

Hold together with your loved ones in times of crisis, reach out to them to overcome the difficulties in life. Try to see the good in life even in the worst of times. Learn to appreciate at least one thing a day.