Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life
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Relationships and Love
If you are looking for a relationship, looking to make an existing one better, or simply looking for a shagedelic good time, look no further. It is vital that this part of your home be balanced so there can be harmony in relationships of all kinds. So before you give up and choose to join a cloistered convent or a group of chanting monks, check out this area.
Creativity and Children
This section of the home relates to thinking creatively. You might consider beginning with this area so you can come up with creative cures for the rest of your home. This locale is also associated with children, since children usually think creatively (like when they figure out how to put a pop tart in the disk drive of the computer). Anything to do with kids—yours, not yours, your siblings, your future kids—this is the spot to work with them.
Helpful People and Travel
This part of the home is set aside for calling upon someone who makes your life easier (easy teacher, sympathetic IRS agent, efficient waiter, the cleaning lady, truthful car dealer, networking peer). Maybe it’s someone you know, or perhaps the help appears out of the blue. And of course, sometimes it’s an angel from the “other side” who helps. This area is also about being treated fairly and honestly. Also, if you would like to do more or less traveling, or have a move coming up, this section applies to making these situations flow more smoothly as well.
Career and Life Path
This area of the home is linked to what you are supposed to be doing in life, whatever that is. Whether it’s hard-core business, traversing a more spiritual path, or creatively mooching off others, this area of the home is dedicated to getting you on the right track in life.
Skills and Knowledge
This part of your home affects how you learn, store, and use knowledge. Although the energy in each gua will affect the other eight, this one is especially worthy of attention. For example, if you don’t have the smarts to manage the money you make, it may erroneously appear that your Prosperity section is not working for you.
If you are in school, this is the area to enhance, especially if you think serious studying is when you calculate the bartender’s tip on the last pitcher of Michelob.
Family
This section is associated with family issues. Montel, Jerry, Ricki, and Jenny would be out of business if everyone paid attention to this area. It also holds the energy for everyday coinage—paying for rent, food, and other necessities in life (chocolate, Chap Stick, bamboo steamers). So, if you don’t have this area juiced up, your Prosperity (major coinage) area may never reach its potential.
Health and Other
The center of the bagua contains all other life situations not mentioned above. It impacts health as well. Since this area lies in the middle of the home, it touches all other areas geographically, and can literally and figuratively affect all other areas by association. As they say, if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything (except doctor bills and a lot of medication that is obviously not working).
Take a moment to redraw the simplified bagua illustration (with the nine life situations inside the boxes) in your notebook. You will probably want to refer to this illustration often as you read on, and it may be easier if you have it handy in your notebook.
Although we will be discussing this information at length later in this chapter, please note the doors in the illustration. The location of the main door plays a specific role in the orientation of the bagua in a room or home.
| Cures, Cures, and More Cures |
Just as you eat a big, juicy Wendy’s single to cure the effects of a hangover, in feng shui you apply cures to get what you want out of life. Remember, that’s the fancy term for adding or moving stuff in the areas around your living space to balance it. There are nine categories of traditional feng shui cures. (Have you noticed a fixation with the number nine? It’s a powerful number in feng shui.) These cures have been used for thousands of years to help solve problems—so much for calling feng shui a new fad. Almost without exception, you can add any of these cures to a space to help change its energy for the better. Here are the nine categories of traditional cures.
Light
By adding light to a specific area, energy is activated and will eventually foster change. Light can come from candles, electric lights, oil lamps, fires (hopefully contained within a fireplace or candle top), lava lamps, or your old Lite-Brite. This category also includes reflected light from mirrors, crystals, or shiny objects (the aluminum foil covering your sandwich or the chrome retro toaster).
Sound
Adding a pleasant sound to a space can create a change in the energy vibration and enhance your digs. Appealing sounds such as moving water, music, singing birds, chirping crickets, chimes, bells, and other musical instruments can enhance the energy of the space. Toilets flushing, belches, and gurgling garbage disposals usually don’t count.
Living Things
From fish to flamingos, animals not only make great pets, they’re great energy enhancers for a sluggish space. Just make sure these nonhuman companions are clean, well kept, and healthy. A Habitrail full of hamster poop not only reflects negative energy but makes your house smell like that nasty pet store in the mall. Plants are also alive with energy, provided they are actually alive. A little water and Miracle-Gro can go a long way in fulfilling your feng shui dreams.
Weight
Items that weigh a lot, or symbols of things that are heavy, are used in feng shui to ground a space. Grounding is needed when you live above the ground floor or if your head is always in the clouds. Tiny elephant statues and big boulders can both work. While a picture of John Candy or Chris Farley works, it would be in bad taste.
Color
Each area of the home corresponds to a specific color. Using the right colors in the correct area reflects positively on the person who lives there. It can be as obvious as painted walls or as subtle as colored construction paper behind a couch; as long as the color is there, it will work for you. Various colored food stains on the upholstery and carpet don’t quite meet this criterion.
Moving Objects
Moving objects seem to be alive and therefore are capable of greatly energizing a space. Mobiles, chimes, water, butterfly wings, fans, and curtains blowing in the breeze are a few of the many things that exhibit these good qualities. Scampering roaches technically qualify but usually infringe upon dinner parties and make guests expend all their energy running from them.
Electric Power
Your TV, computer, alarm clock, vibrator, and automatic potato peeler are charged with electricity. So make them and all other electrical appliances work to your benefit by placing them in appropriate spots in the home. Use caution, though, when planning the location of vibrators or other sex toys (see Chapter 4).
Symbolic Objects
This category includes intentionally placing items in the home that have symbolic meaning in order to shift the energy. One symbolic traditional-cure example is a bamboo flute. Flutes can be used as a ch’i uplifter and enhancer in certain circumstances. At one time they were a symbol of the coming of good news. Today’s equivalent might be things like church bells, a trumpet, a wedding invitation, or a doorbell. Although bamboo flutes don’t usually fit into Western decor, feel free to use them in settings where you feel comfortable. Or if you want to fool your guests into thinking you’re some hot bamboo flute musician, leave them lying around in prominent places.
Other
This category has the potential to be the most powerful, even more than Wonder Woman and Madonna combined. It is the category of cures that encompasses all other possibilities for creating a nurturing environment. The cures in this category should be personalized and have great significance to you, either symbolically or literally. Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life concentrates on this category and explores some unique situations and cures. You can either follow an example of what someone else has done before or be a rebel and follow your heart by doing
something uniquely suited to you. After reading this book, you will know the difference and realize the power behind both options.
| So Much to Do and So Little Time |
Are you ready to start? Then the first step is to decide which guas get top priority.
For a good indicator of what needs most work in your home, honestly evaluate what is going on in your life—and the lives of those who live with you. Your environment is what supports you, either weakly or strongly. Either way, it definitely affects you. Ideally everyone who inhabits the home should be involved in the process, but if that is not possible, simply keep them in your awareness as you proceed. They may snicker as you put strange items behind the couch and microwave, but I promise you’ll have the last laugh.
| Truth or Dare |
Here’s an exercise to help you assess your life and guide you to where you might focus your feng shui energy.
Get out your notebook and start thinking about your life.
Are you satisfied with your career? Is that assistant managerial position at Beauford’s Video and Bait Store challenging and stimulating enough for you? Do you just barely make rent each month? Ever heard the words savings account? Stuck in a dating rut or a boring marriage?
In your notebook, write down anything that’s bothering you or coming between you and true happiness. Categories will become evident eventually, so don’t worry about that now. Just keep writing, and know that they will be tended to later on in this process.
If you are having trouble being thorough, carry a paper and pen with you at all times (but no pocket protector, please). Every time anything bothers you, and you hear a complaint of some sort running through your head, write it down. It could be as simple as “I have a stomachache” or as complex as “My boyfriend never listens to me.” Even if you are being repetitive, write down the complaint each time. You may notice a pattern of complaints or a repetitive complaint that you didn’t even know you had. The following questionnaire may help you start to uncover some of your complaints.
Career and Life Path
Are you fulfilled in your current career? If not, what is it about the career that is less than optimal? People? Money? The type of work? Location? Traveling? Late nights? Stress? Lecherous boss? Boss not lecherous enough?
Skills and Knowledge
Are you content with your current level of education? Having a hard time in school? Seem to repetitively make bad decisions and wish you were wiser? Want to change careers but don’t have the skills to master your dream? Feel like an idiot when you watch Jeopardy!? Rely on Entertainment Tonight for your hard news?
Family
Do you have a good relationship with your family? Wish to be treated like one of the family even when you’re not a part of the bloodline? Want to start a family? Is it hard making enough money just to pay for the basics? Have they ever based an afterschool special on your family?
Prosperity
Do you live paycheck to paycheck? Do you have a yearning for a material item but the main ingredient stopping you is lack of money? Make a fair sum of money but it goes out as fast as it comes in? Would you buy a pair of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes in lieu of a month’s supply of groceries?
Fame and Reputation
Does it appear that people are talking poorly about you in public, hurting your career, family, or feelings? Want the courage to do something you can’t seem to make yourself do? Does fear stop you from fulfilling dreams and being happy? Have you received a phone call from someone who got your number from the bathroom wall?
Relationships and Love
Are you content and fulfilled with current relationships (family, spouse, business associates, children, friends)? Feel depleted from your relationships with certain people? Wish to be in a committed relationship but can’t seem to find the right person? Need an exorcist to fight off the partners you attract?
Creativity and Children
Are you having trouble having children? Having trouble with your children? Are the children leaving home too early or too late? Wish you were more creative? Burnt out or bored in your work, hobby, or life? Feel limited, as if there is no opportunity? Is switching shampoos the most creative thing you have done lately?
Helpful People and Travel
Do you always do everything yourself? Have a hard time finding the right person to help with things such as baby-sitting, home improvements, spiritual guidance, health issues, business ventures? Travel too much or too little for your liking? Do you get taken frequently or played the fool? Have a permanent Kick Me sign stuck to your back?
Health and Other
Do you have any complaints about your current state of health or the health of someone else living with you in your home? Find yourself eating Ho-Hos and drinking Yoo-Hoo while you ride the exercise bike? Always seem to be the first to catch the latest strain of flu going around? Think you should be happy but can’t find your funny bone anywhere? Is Clutter or Pack Rat your middle name? Have any other complaints that did not seem to fit in any of the above categories?
Also, take a quick inventory of what is working. Get the total picture. You may just find the properly placed stuff in your home. Refer back to this list later on to see if your feng shui is working for you. Sometimes a shift can go unnoticed, because some people tend to forget the troubled times. Keep extensive notes on how things are at the start so you can laugh at those bad times when they are gone.
Once you feel comfortable with your lists, you may want to prioritize the items on the “What’s Not Working” list, starting with the ones you feel need immediate balancing (for example, “I want a meaningful relationship”), and ending with items that are less of a priority (such as “I want better shoes”). This will help you choose which items to implement now, and which later, if there are cost concerns.
List the nine life situations in your notebook, and then place each complaint from the life inventory in one of the nine categories. The nine areas, once again, are (1) Prosperity, (2) Fame and Reputation, (3) Relationships and Love, (4) Creativity and Children, (5) Helpful People and Travel, (6) Career, (7) Skills and Knowledge, (8) Family, and (9) Health and Other.
Sometimes a problem falls into several categories. For example, if you are having trouble in school, you may want to place that complaint both in the Skills and Knowledge area (for obvious reasons) and in the Helpful People area (for tutors, reasonable teachers, smart friends, and Mr. Cliff and his notes). Every gua could have a complaint in it, or perhaps just a few do. The list now becomes an easy reference pointing to the problem places in your home.
This exercise should make you feel empowered because now you have all the things you want to fix in your life written down in one spot. It’s time to turn these misfortunes into good fortune!
The mere fact that you have put energy into carefully evaluating your life and writing this list will start to cause change for the better immediately. So, congratulations! You have already begun the process.
| Oh, Bagua |
As you found out earlier, each gua is associated with a life situation. But that’s not all: each gua also has its associated colors, shapes, symbols, body parts, and so on. Of the nine bagua areas, five have elements assigned to them. Study the chart on pages 38-39 for a minute to learn what symbols and elements are associated with each of the nine guas.
I know you haven’t learned what most of this stuff means yet, but I wanted you to know now that there is a cheat sheet included in this book that displays the gist of Move Your Stuff’s information (I think every how-to book should have one!). Use this as a quick reference when applying cures later on, or to spout unique trivia to impress friends. It may appear technical and drab now, but I think you will appreciate its simplicity later.
Take a moment to color each of the nine guas of the bagua illustration in your notebook, if you want. Use the first color on the list for each gua in the chart (for example, Prosperity is purple and Relationships is pink). The rest of this information can be
transferred as well, but is not totally necessary. Simply keep this little cheat sheet available to reference after reading the book.
| The Cycle of Life and Your Home |
If you have ever played the round-and-round “rock, paper, scissors” game, you will easily understand what I am about to explain (and you thought that games were just for kids). As you can see in the chart, the five elements used in feng shui are wood, earth, metal, fire, and water. When these five are balanced in your home, you have better balance in your life and a better chance to have what you want out of life. Then your home is working for you, and not the other way around. The way to use these elements is to place them in the appropriate area of the home and give intention that they work for your particular cause. Don’t worry, they don’t mind. They like to work.