Essential Feng Shui: A Step-By-Step Guide to Enhancing Your Relationships, Health, and Prosperity - Softcover

Too, Lillian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345429044 ISBN 13: 9780345429049

Publisher: Wellspring/Ballantine, 1999

Synopsis

"Feng shui is not magic. Nor is it a spiritual practice. . . . It is an ancient Chinese method of living in tune with the energies of the living earth."
--Lillian Too

Like other ancient Eastern practices that are adding rich new dimensions to American life, feng shui is both science and art. It is a system for arranging your living and working environment to promote the beneficial flow of chi, the dragon's vital cosmic breath, the fundamental energy of life itself. One of the world's most renowned practitioners of feng shui, Lillian Too has helped thousands of people bring success and contentment into their lives. Too makes accessible a wealth of Chinese wisdom, the five elements, yin/yang theory, numerology, and other practices, showing you how to apply the principles of feng shui to achieve a richer, fuller life.

- In and around your home: Interior and exterior layouts that attract chi into your entryway, living room, dining room, bedroom, and kitchen--plus structural features to avoid and the most harmonious fences and gates
- At work: Office shapes and furniture placement that maximize chi and deflect the poisonous negative energy of shar chi; the best sitting arrangements and lighting for beneficial energies
- Relationships: Potent environments for romance, marriage, conception, and the well-being of children
- Health: Healing orientations for sleeping and eating
- Finances: Secrets for attracting money and encouraging economic growth
- Good luck: Tapping into the auspicious energies of the crimson phoenix, the green dragon, the turtle, and the tiger

Fully illustrated, comprehensive, and packed with hundreds of practical, easy-to-follow suggestions, Lillian Too's Essential Feng Shui gives you everything you need to know to harmonize your life with the powerful energies of the earth.

About this title

About the Author

Lillian Too had a highly successful career in the business world before becoming a leading expert on feng shui. She now lectures internationally and has written eight bestsellers on the subject.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Feng shui is an ancient Chinese method of living in tune with the energies of the living earth. It is a set of techniques and a body of knowledge that can be studied and then systematically applied to your personal space and environment. When applied correctly, feng shui holds out the promise of creating great good fortune to those who arrange their homes and offices according to its principles of harmony and balance.

Feng shui can seriously enhance your fortunes, improve your material well-being and look after your good health. It directly addresses all the aspirations of mankind, bringing opportunities for advancement and prosperity even as it magnifies chances of achievement, promotion and success.

Feng shui as science and art

But feng shui is not magic. Neither is it a spiritual practice requiring a strong faith in its potency, or a belief in its effectiveness. Feng shui is best approached as a science and practised as an art. It is a science because much of feng shui applications are based on the accurate usage of what are collectively grouped under Compass School feng shui, also broadly known as formula feng shui. Under this system of techniques, building and laying out rooms and furniture in accordance with the orientations of the compass combined with calculations based on formulas bring the desired good fortune. But accuracy of measurement, both of the compass direction (sometimes to the nearest degree), and the correct measurements of dimensions are crucial factors in the success of the practice. If the proportions are accurately measured and the computations have been correctly worked out, formula feng shui almost always works by improving the luck of residents. Results do not take long to manifest. But also remember that i
f practised incorrectly, feng shui simply does not work!

Much of feng shui is also an art that requires subjective judgement and interpretation. Experience is a significant asset in the practice of feng shui. This is because much of feng shui assessments are highly visual, requiring the human eye to make important evaluations with respect to shapes, terrain and contours.

This dimension of feng shui practice has been collectively grouped under what is generally referred to as the Form or Landscape School of feng shui. Here the physical surroundings are judged according to how they visually appear. Mountains, hills, rivers, roads, levels, undulations, shape, smells, and just about everything that assails the senses, enter into the analysis of the surrounding environment. In addition, the quality of the soil, the strength of the winds, the intensity of the sunlight, the lushness of plants, and the angle of inclines, are factored into the feng shui man's evaluation of the land.

Literally translated, feng shui means wind water. Basically it is these two elements that have carved out the land resulting in the physical formations of the living earth. What feng shui offers are guidelines that enable the practitioner to interpret the features of the landscape in terms of whether they bring good or bad energy, and thus, whether they will bring auspicious or inauspicious luck to those who live in their vicinity.

The auspicious and inauspicious features of visual feng shui, as defined under the Form School, are very important to get right. The effect of bad landscape feng shui supersedes good compass feng shui. This is a vitally important first rule of feng shui practice to remember; that the physical structures of both the natural and man-made environment can destroy carefully worked out feng shui orientations.

Activating luck

Feng shui is also about consciously activating excellent luck in your environment and in your living space. Having learnt how to protect yourself, your home and your office from the incidence of bad feng shui (covered in Parts 2 and 3 in this book), the next step is to learn to energize the specific types of good fortune. These are covered in detail in Part 4.

This is an exciting aspect of feng shui practice. There is an impressive array of feng shui symbolism that can be effectively energized within corners of any home, room, or office, to create eight broad ranging types of luck. You can activate luck in your career and in your professional relationships. It is possible to improve your health, and enhance the luck for every member of your family. You can magnify luck for your children, and improve their luck for examinations. And, finally, you can create the kind of luck that enhances your income, bringing you wealth.

The promise of feng shui is thus exciting. What does it take to tap into these luck-bringing energies? It is not simply an understanding of the theory and philosophy of feng shui. It is also the need to start living in a state of awareness of the subtle changes in your environment. Get used to seeing your environment with feng shui eyes. Develop sensitivity to the powerful, yet invisible, energies surrounding you.

The trinity of luck

Understand from the start that feng shui is simply one component of the trinity of luck. Feng shui is earth luck in the trinity of heaven, earth and mankind luck - or tien ti ren, to use the Chinese words.

It is in this context that the trinity of luck exerts its influence on the results of feng shui practice. This explains that everyone has three types of luck:

-Heaven luck determines your fate and it is something over which you have no control; it determines the condition of your birth, your character and your circumstances. It is like karma.

-Earth luck comes from living in harmony with the environment and is encapsulated in the body of knowledge known as feng shui. Earth luck is within our control for we can choose whether or not we wish to live harmoniously with the energies of our living space.

-Mankind luck is the luck we create for ourselves and so it, too, is within our control. Good feng shui brings the opportunities for advancement and happiness to our doorstep, but whether or not we take advantage of these opportunities and maximize them to their fullest potential depends on us.
How, and at what speed this luck changes or magnifies, depends on how we are influenced by the trinity of luck and it is in this context that feng shui should be understood and practised. If your heaven luck is good, feng shui makes it better and this, when supplemented by your own efforts improves your circumstances, making you more comfortable. On the other hand, if your heaven luck is not so good, feng shui can at best only reduce your sufferings and problems. Good feng shui can make you comfortable. But it cannot make you a seriously wealthy person if that is not in your heaven luck.

Practising feng shui

Anyone can learn feng shui. It is not a difficult subject, either to understand or to practise. Feng shui is neither a spiritual nor a religious practice. It does not require an intensity of faith or possession of metaphysical or psychic abilities. Feng shui is a science, a method, a technique - it is based on a comprehensive set of guidelines that expresses the Chinese view of the Universe. It defines the existence of a life force in the natural environment, and this life force can be either auspicious or accommodating, or it can be threatening and lethal.

Feng shui advises the arrangement of one's personal space in a way that taps into the multitude of auspicious energies circulating in abundance in the environment. It advocates the avoidance of structures and arrangements that inadvertently change this auspicious energy into poisonous energy. Most feng shui masters possess enough knowledge to capture accommodating energy and deflect poisonous energy. If you observe and practice the information contained in this book, you too will be able to achieve this.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wellspring/Ballantine
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0345429044
• ISBN 13: 9780345429049
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192