Những lời khuyên và những điều sai lầm về phong thủy

Đây là suy nghĩ của Stacy Davenport, một phong thủy sư người da trắng tại Austin. Nguyên bản tiếng Anh, nhờ anh vanhoai, anh anhngoc chuyển dịch. Cám ơn.

TOP FENG SHUI TIPS AND BLUNDERS

TIPS:
1. De-Clutter your home and office environments – including your closets and attics. Clutter and dirt stagnates energy - which will keep you stuck in your life. Let go of the old to allow for the new to come into your life!

2. Look at the things that you own and ask yourself “Does this bring me Joy” – Yes, No, Maybe. Only surround yourself with objects and people you love. This will insure that the energy that surrounds you is nurturing and conducive to health, happiness and prosperity.

3. Keep your stove clean - inside and out. The stove represents abundance in Feng Shui. Placing a reflective object like a mirror or silver platter behind it can assist in “doubling your abundance”.

4. If it’s broken - fix it! This is a very important consideration, especially with plumbing and leaks of any kind. The water element represents wealth in Feng Shui and nobody wants to see their money going down the drain.

5. Keep you toilet lids down and your bathroom door closed. It is often suggested that you place a mirror on the outside of your bathroom door to reflect the energy back into the house and keep your wealth from draining away.

6. If a plant dies, replace it with a bigger and better one. Plants represent life, health and prosperity in our environment. Look around you… Do your plants appear to be happy and thriving?

7. Don’t block entrances and doorways. If you have difficulty entering a home, opportunities are probably also meeting with difficulty. Clear all paths to keep the Chi and the opportunities flowing in!

8. Keep your corners “rounded” so that the energy won’t get “stuck”. You can do this in many creative ways. Plants, statues, lamps, etc. can help you to keep the flow going.

9. Hang a bagua or convex mirror outside over all doors leading outside. This will deflect disruptive/negative energy so that it won’t enter your environment.

10. Keep one arrangement of fresh flowers in the home at all times.

11. Have a water fountain in your home in either the Career or Money Gua.

12. Keep your car impeccable – Cars represent our emotional bodies.


BLUNDERS:
1. GREAT EXPECTATIONS
You have just discovered this living skill. You have watched as your best friend gets promoted, finds a fabulous guy and seems to be blooming overnight all seemingly due to good feng shui. You have been secretly practicing for a couple of weeks now and still life is drab and unexciting as ever. Expecting too much too soon is one of the biggest feng shui blunders. Feng shui is a complex practice and results are a function of different forces. Putting too intense an expectation of results can often cause obstacles to arise because of all the negative angst you are generating..

Solution
Take it easy. Relax and steady should be your attitude. Remember that feng shui is about being protected against bad things happening so when life is boring, it can be that things are moving along so smoothly you feel bored. Think this through carefully and you might start to see how feng shui has already worked for you without you even realizing it!

2. LOOKING FOR INSTANT RESULTS

When you first start it is understandable that you will be on the constant lookout for fast results, constantly checking for progress. When it is love you seek, you expect to meet that special someone everyday not realizing that sending out these kinds of desperate vibes has just the opposite effect. And if money is what you have activated for, keeping a daily vigil for money to drop from the skies will not do the trick. Feng shui rarely works like this!
Solution
Usually, good things creep up on you without you noticing. Let your luck build up steadily and in whatever speed is in sync with your personal chi energies. Feng shui always brings results but the speed with which it works differs from time to time and from person to person, so get your feng shui done and then let it go. Leave it to the cosmos to bring you the results you want without you having to keep checking.
3. CONSULTING TOO MANY “EXPERTS”

The kiasu attuitude in all of us makes us ask too many people for their opinion. We cannot help wanting to check with anyone who claims to be an “expert” whether what we are doing is right or wrong, assuming they must surely know. Experts know things from their own perspective and when answering your questions often do not have the same perspective as you. When you consult too many experts, you cause yourself to get confused and this can cause you to get things mixed up. Here is where problems almost always arise because the end result is a rojak of methods that does not work. A bit of this and a bit of that is definitely not good feng shui practice.

Solution
The key to success is to understand exactly what you need to do, and to have confidence in yourself. Sometimes it is better to keep things simple. Stay the course and have faith in your own methods.

4. GETTING SIDE TRACKED
It is easy to get distracted when trying to do too many things at the same time. Better to go step by step. Take an organized approach and be clear what you want to achieve. Feng shui is a complex practice that involves design, construction, arrangement of layouts, appearance and aesthetics. It is not a straightforward matter so try not to get sidetracked. Instead, get organized and stay on course. Those who get the best results from feng shui are not those who know the most formulas. They are those with a clear perspective of what they want to achieve from using feng shui.
Solution
Plan your feng shui practice carefully. Install all the cures, remedies and enhancers. Finally, activate to attract different kinds of good luck. I have been using this approach for over eleven years and it just keeps getting better!

5. OVERWHELMED BY ALL THE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
Worse than terminology is the arrogance of “staying pure to the lineage” as if feng shui were a DEAD PRACTICE FROZEN in the China of 4000 years ago! The chi energy of those days were most definitely different from modern day environments and to ignore this can cause serious blunders in your practice.
Solution
Look on feng shui as a dynamic, evolving practice. Recognize that environments today are a completely different landscape, generating very different energy from ancient environments. So do not get too uptight about all the vintage stuff. Instead, look for new ways to use old formulas and keep in sync with the new environment of today.

6. TOO MUCH PERFECTION

Too many of us get immobilized by wanting perfection. No house has perfect feng shui. So when you try to get everything perfect, chances are everything goes wrong.

Solution
Accept that feng shui practice requires us to choose from varying options. In feng shui, many things must be taken into account so it is better to give up on the idea of following everything perfectly to the T.

7. SKIPPING THE HARD PARTS

There is preparation work before one is able to design one’s space to capture feng shui. Preparatory work should never be compromised. If you skip the hard part, it is harder to get the results.
Solution
Avoid making big mistakes by being careful about your analysis. Good feng shui comes from good analysis of how the bagua layout fits into the footprint of your home/space.

8. GETTING HUNG UP ON TERMINOLOGY

Feng shui has become so popular we are seeing plenty of opinions on what feng shui is and how feng shui should be practiced. The danger of this is that we can get too hung up on terminology as a result, causing blunders to occur.
Solution
It is best not to worry about the way feng shui is defined. What is important is to look at what YOU want to do. You can incorporate anything you want into your practice if that makes you happy. Definitions and terminologies only cloud the real practice so rise above these things.

9. NOT USING CONVENTIONAL WISDOM a.k.a. COMMON SENSE!

It is so easy to get hung up on “expertise” that we give up on using good old common sense. Never belittle the importance of conventional wisdom. Even as we use feng shui, we should also use our brains.
Solution
Feng shui is about good sound common sense and it is this that ensures everything is approached rationally and with a big dose of our personalized cultural beliefs and habits. Feng shui must be used to serve us. It is after all a skill – a tool for us to use with wisdom. So whenever you are in doubt about anything, ask yourself if it makes sense to you.