Feng Shui expert West Coast | Spacessential

Can you please tell me more about some of the myths, mistakes or misconceptions in Feng Shui?

Well, we could cover a whole book or another website with this chapter only! However I am happy to share more on the matter.

1. You have to be Chinese/Asian to use Feng Shui

Feng Shui is not a word that refers to a religion. The techniques are born in China, thousands of years ago, and have a link with Taoism as a philosophy. However there is no part in Feng Shui that tells you to follow such or such religion, or spiritual practice. The belief in karma can help to understand your Bazi, however you can still ripe the benefits of a consultation even without spiritual beliefs. This is energy work; you simply need to acknowledge that energy exists and affects you.

2. You have to decorate your house in a Chinese fashion to make it work

Once again we are talking about energy work. Some symbols, traditional and cultural, will speak to Chinese people and therefore trigger something in their life. However the core of Feng Shui is NOT symbolic but based on architecture, landscaping, astronomy and astrology; as such there is no need to decorate your house in a Liberace version of a Chinese dollar or pound shop. It works all the same with a western design!

3. Southern hemisphere Feng Shui

Ah! This is one of the biggest, longest running Joke in Feng shui circle, and you will find endless arguments and pro and con on the problem of Southern hemisphere Feng Shui – some apparently logical and “documented”. Here is the idea: some consultants pretend that the Bagua map was created in China, in the Northern hemisphere, and that therefore you should reverse it when you use it in Southern hemisphere. That wouldmean that the Fire would be associated with North instead of South, Water with South instead of North, and so on.

There is a bit of logic in it. For having myself lived in New Zealand, and travelled extensively to Australia for both work and leisure, I know that southern hemisphere seasons are reversed. Winter is warm, summer cold. Moreover, the northern wind is warm and the Southern wind cold, has it comes from the South Pole. So we have to agree that the Fire coming from South direction in the Southern hemisphere is indeed less hot than the Northern hemisphere one. Likewise the Water Chi coming from North is warmer in the Southern hemisphere than it is in the Northern one. Agreeed!

However inverting the Bagua map is a nonsense for several reasons. First, Bagua maps contain large part of symbolism. The Early Heaven Ba Gua for example describes the universe in perfect harmony – in the other realm, where the spirits have left their body. Very logically this map should not be inverted in any hemisphere as the destiny of the souls is not bound to physical reality anymore. So already we are in a tricky situation –reversing one, the later Heaven Bagua, and not the other, the Early Heaven Bagua.

Moreover the same symbolism is part of the Later Heaven Bagua too. For example this is not because you are heading East that you will necessarily encounter Wood – the association East-Wood talks about the quality of the Chi, not of the physical Element! There is actually a reason why colours and shapes are as important as the physical Element itself…So the logic which said if South is colder than it should equal Water is a gross misunderstanding of the Bagua.

Besides, the Bagua is also designed to work with compass directions, and the 24 mountains. Even in South hemisphere, magnetic North and South are still the same, and therefore the Bagua map as shown on the Luo Pan should remain the same.

One can also argue than Chinese were already aware of the magnetism, of the Northern and Southern hemisphere, and of their different qualities during the time some classical Feng Shui books were developed. If they have not deemed necessary to indicate we should reverse the Bagua in any traditional book for the Southern hemisphere then we shouldn’t. Be especially wary of modern days development in a practice like Feng Shui that is thousands of years old.

Last but not least, I have done audit in the Southern hemisphere without reversing the Bagua and my clients have achieved the same positive results. The proof is in the pudding!

4. Feng Shui uses the Law of Attraction

Well, the point of this site is not to discuss the Law of Attraction as a system, or other "The Secret" related advices. It might work well. However there is nothing in traditional Feng Shui that talk about law of attraction principles. This is a modern day derivation, and quite an unscrupulous one as it was never in Feng Shui in the first place.

Consider those points:

• Feng Shui is about architecture and energy work. If you acknowledge the Chi and work on it, you are into energetic, physical work, not into positive thinking

• If Feng Shui is law of attraction, why then bothers with moving your bed, changing your Water exit or repaint your living room? The power of your mind should be able to overwrite all of this!

• With the same logic, why did Chinese emperors build whole cities on Feng Shui principles when they could have relied extensively on the law of attraction?

• Most of all, some parts of Chinese metaphysics directly CONTRADICT the law of attraction. When we decipher a Bazi, it shows the potential and LIMITATIONS of your life. Therefore sky is not the limit: your karma, your fate is the limit. Feng Shui is used to boost your luck and fate inside your own boundaries.

Feng Shui is traditionally one of the 3 lucks: Heaven/Human/Earth lucks. They all talk about human BOUNDARIES. If you believe you can achieve anything with the law of attraction, you are then obliterating this essential principle of the Bazi and at the same time notion of karma, fate, and 3 lucks which are at the heart of the Taoist philosophy and at the core of Feng Shui!

Therefore saying that Feng Shui = Law of Attraction, or even incorporate the law of attraction, is a nonsense that goes against the very own essence of this philosophy. One cannot therefore help but be cynical when seeing those Feng Shui “experts” that promotes themselves as Law of Attraction teachers. My point is that if they knew how to use real Feng Shui in the first place they would have no need to coat it with Law of Attraction icing! If someone needs to add the Law of Attraction it means the Feng Shui part did not work in the first place…

Please do not mistake me for a law of attraction basher, or hater. I am all for it if it puts you in a positive set of mind and help you to achieve more. My point here however is to educate about real, genuine Feng Shui, and the technique known as law of attraction is not part of it. Feng Shui is actually in my eye the REAL Law of Attraction, but ones that relies on physical energy, offer realistic guidance based on your fate, and do not pretend you should not answer to your karma.

5. You need to use the Flying Stars to achieve great Feng Shui

Ah, flying stars! A few years ago, they were all the rage, even in Hong Kong, the Feng Shui mecqua. Then most Feng Shui masters dropped this system – that is for those of them whom adopted it in the first place. This is because they understood the real value and place of the Flying Stars system.

It is one the most recent system in the development of classical Chinese metaphysics as it initiated under the Ching dynasty (1644 to 1912). Xuan Kong Flying Star feng shui or Xuan Kong Fei Xing, as it is called, is meant to be an ORACLE. That is a tool of prediction. If you occupy a building for a period of time it will help you to predict the likeliness of an occurrence, a specific event. However, as soon as you change the Feng Shui setup of the place, and correct it according to your chart, this does not work anymore! Because you have taken action the fate is not the same.

Flyings Stars were never meant to be a CORRECTIVE tool. They are an oracle. Other oracles we use in Chinese metaphysics are Da Liu Ren, Chi Men Dun Jia, Xuan Gong Da Gua, Yi Ching. They are not meant to be corrective tools for a Feng Shui setup!

However the monthly and annual Feng Shui are real; they represents pattern of the Chi. You can stimulate a monthly 8 flying star to give a bit of a boost with money matter for example. But to base a Feng Shui audit on transient influence is illogical. This is the same logic as designing a home with no rooftop because you conceived it during the summer. What when it will rain or snow then? You can’t rely on a transient influence to design a living place that should sustain your whole family for years! It is therefore better to build an all-weather proof house, and this is what a real Feng Shui audit does This is the reason why using Flying stars as the basis of a Feng Shui audit is pointless.

Besides, there are so many way to interpret the stars that it becomes quite impracticable. For example, some say tall piece of furniture are mountains; some say buildings are mountains; some other say that only real mountains are mountains! Then there is the date of construction/date of renovation matter. Which one should be considered to be the “date of birth” of the building? Countless arguments on the matter!

Worst of all, there is the facing problem! A genuine system of Feng Shui must have been validated by centuries of practice and be able to deal with ALL cases. With the flying stars, as soon as you have an open air restaurant or stall in the middle of a shopping centre that bear no significant facing and sitting, you cannot apply the system anymore. Does it means such place have no Feng Shui? Certainly not…

You want to hear about one more, very SIGNIFICANT example of the problems with the Flying stars system? Then take a row of identical houses, or shops. Same shape, same facing, same setup, they are all part of a lot and have been built exactly at the same time. If you can prove me that all people living or working there encounters the same destiny – same money or relationship problems, same fame etc. as seen by their flying stars setup, then the Flying stars work. Good luck with that! In real life it doesn’t happen. This is because each and every one of them has a different Bazi, therefore different destiny; and their Bazi can work well, or not, with the Feng Shui setup of those houses or shops. So as you can see there are many problems with the Flying star system, except if you consider it for what it is: a predictive tool. To base an audit on such system however will only lead to major mistakes…