Feng Shui is a discipline and can help us in many ways on different levels.
Since it is a discipline, the practice of it instils calm, order and beauty to the user. Feng Shui is not necessarily designed or used at its best to be acquisitive: although placing a pink crystal to bring a lover may work for you, Feng Shui has never, in my twenty or more years of practicing, worked for me that way.
What I do have, from the practice of Feng Shui, is a clean, uncluttered, functional home (not moneyed, that is not what I am discussing here) and beautiful inner space to live in.
Feng Shui has not brought me a mansion, but it has bought me a level of spiritual calm and discipline – what you might call inner peace. I would not live without Feng Shui: though I have tried sometimes, in the search for increased freedom, I always am unable to abandon it because of the feeling of guidance, protection and order it brings to me and my life.
A Basic Principle
A simple way to start practicing Feng Shui is to apply a non-mysterious, common-sense principle that clutter (which I define as generally unnecessary things and objects) equals energy, and the spending of energy is precious to us in determining how calmly and clearly we are feeling and behaving in life.
While some of us may enjoy being surrounded by many things and using our energy to maintain that, others, like myself, feel that the expending of energy on acquiring, looking at, owning, and caring for ‘things,’ can be a wasted resource and a drain of energy.
For those of us who are seeking to ‘live light’, the way to achieve it is, as in most things, to begin.
Choose an object that you own—from a bundle of old love letters, to a new vase or ornament or one too many plates—and question and asses its value in your life. In Spiritual Feng Shui, this is done with each and every item. Thus, decisions are made and we begin to walk the spiritual path, one that carefully questions the impact of what we have, own, choose and do.
Questioning and Relinquishing
Take that object you are considering and apply the following: is it beautiful? Is it useful?
If yes to one or both, ask: Do I use it? Do I want it? Can I live without it?
I have had many beautiful things that have been useless to me, and useful things that have not been beautiful. Now the question for me has become, ‘Can I free myself of owning that?’
De-cluttering and releasing objects and possessions have become freeing—an aspiration and a goal towards light living. If you can adjust to seeing that each object on the outside is an entry in your mind, you may begin to desire a clear and simple living space.
Spiritual Feng Shui
A man visited a famous rabbi at his home. Expecting a grand place, he found the rabbi living in one small room lined with books and asked him, “Where are all your possessions and furniture?”
“Here,” said the rabbi. “Where are yours?”
The man looked puzzled and replied, “But I am only here for a short time.”
“So am I,” replied the rabbi.
I do not consider myself a spiritual person; I just am one. I have learned that, for me, a simple life works best and delivers freedom daily and inner wealth abundantly.
When I began using Feng Shui, and even up to late, I imagined I wanted a large beautiful house filled with beautiful objects and perfect Feng Shui.
While I still desire the perfect Feng Shui, I relinquish my desire for the large, ‘filled’ home as I feel that it tethers me to ‘things’ and, as it says on a tee shirt I have been wearing lately, “The best things in life are not ‘things.’” Where Feng Shui for me was once about acquisition, it has now become the practice of freeing myself.
Superficially, I never intended this and have felt disappointment many times when Feng Shui did not deliver me a wealthy home, a husband or a fantastic career even though all the symbols and so on were in place.
Now, though, having made the journey just enough to see the sense of it, I see the gift I have gained: the beauty of a life that is built on inner discipline, much like spiritual practice, that delivers freedom, lightness and contentment within beauty.
The source of the beauty is not around me and outside me, though beauty is; it is within me. I carry it with me and express it, live it, in my ability to see negativity, weighed-down energy, low vibrations and clutter and heaviness, in all forms.
Begin
So, I urge you to begin.
Assess the object and release it if, ultimately, it doesn’t serve you, or you simply would like to begin the journey—then assess the next object and the next one until tomorrow where you begin again.
You may find that Feng Shui itself will tap you on the shoulder and say, “Throw or give something away. I am weighed down–change things.” Our lives are heavy, literally, compared to lives of those in less affluent countries. I do not advocate poverty, but I do advocate lightness.
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