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Should You Move Because of Your Feng Shui? Not Likely!

Countless times I've been approached by people asking what they can do about the feng shui of their house or business and whether they should move because of feng shui. The issue of moving -- which is an important question that involves big life changes and large sums of money -- has to be approached through common sense and a level head instead of through overreaction and fantastical expectations.

When people ask this sort of question, you must immediately suspect that there's something going on at the moment that they don't like and sincerely want changed. Too often they're hoping that feng shui is the instant answer to dissolve their woes when of course it usually isn't.

Rarely does a comfortable environment prompt this sort of question, unless the questioner has never felt comfortable with their house or office in the first place. Of course there's also the case of mild curiosity, but folks usually don't go out of their way to come to you and ask about feng shui if they're just curious.

As one of my astrologer friends put it before he passed away, his own occupation should be called "Misery 'R Us" because the great majority of people only call on astrologers when there's a problem on the immediate horizon. Extending the principle a bit further, rarely will people ever consult astrology or feng shui for purposes of planning and prevention when things can really help. So when you get a feng shui request, this is the first thing that should run through the back of your mind.

"Please help me fix it" someone is likely asking, but you have to inquire what they want to fix. Most times it's actually something that has to do with their fortune rather than feng shui, yet only looking at the chi flows of the situation will tell.

Let's start with the basics so you can understand all this.

The first question is, "Does feng shui work?" In other words, is it valid?

The answer is, "Yes." It works because of chi, and behind that, because of the seeds in the alaya consciousness.

The second question is, "Does feng shui matter?"

The second answer, for most instances, is "Probably not."

Surprised?

You shouldn't be. It's common sense.

I would say that 99+% of the houses or businesses I see never have anything especially particular with their feng shui that would give rise to any special fortune that's due to feng shui, or to the need for any special feng shui corrections other than what will make the place feel more comfortable.

If you rearrange the furniture or put up a picture or change the colors and decorations and it feels more comfortable, then by all means do so. That's mild feng shui practice that might actually help you feel better or more comfortable so that you are more productive at work or more relaxed in the home, so why not? However, this isn't anything fantastical, supernatural, esoteric or anything to get all worked up over. This is just normal commonsense activity … this is a normal everyday living type of decision.

The chi flows impacting upon most houses and businesses -- which are the reason behind the workings of feng shui in the first place -- are usually just so-so in suburban and city areas, and so you cannot expect any sort of special events to transpire in those households (consider that most individuals fall into the middle class, so why would their feng shui be especially propitious for wealth?) other than from what the inhabitants would usually accomplish as normal individuals. There just aren't too many places with special feng shui in cities and urban places.

When the chi flows are nothing special in particular, the effects of feng shui will not be anything significant in particular. In other words, in most cases you can ignore it.

Therefore, since most businesses and homes don't have any special chi to them originating from the environment, then 99+% of the time when something is "off" or "going wrong" in your life, you have to look to changing your behavior to bring about positive changes in your life. Forget the feng shui ... examine your life in detail and see what changes need to be made.

Positive life changes most always come down to consistent, disciplined, wise courses of action accompanied by awareness, because that's the formula for producing a positive change in your fortune. Another necessary ingredient to changing your fortune is accumulating merit because you always need a lot of merit (along with the right efforts) in order to change karma.

This is something I tell people time and again, and something I've even bothered to write a book on which I'll introduce later this year. I've collected dozens and dozens of "supernatural" stories on how people changed their fortunes so that you don't get hoodwinked by the positive thinking, love-the-whole-way-around crowd into thinking visualizing, affirmations and some simple dreaming will do it, but we'll have to hold on this conversation for later.

The bad times that come in life, when everything just seems to be going wrong, might simply be the result of a "bad astrological cycle" that will in time pass (just as most illnesses pass without any medicine at all). And for these instances, once again you must also attend to the details of prudent behavior and simply do what needs to be done until the situation turns for the better.

If something is a matter of fate like this, then no feng shui will change it.

In other words, to solve the problems you do what you would normally do in prudent, ordinary everyday living.

Remember that this doesn't negate the fact that there is such a thing as feng shui in the first place, or that the chi of an environment can have a significant impact on your life and fortune. I'm simply saying that there are very few places with especially significant chi that makes a difference and will produce a particular fortune worthy of special mention. That's one of the reasons so few people have such a fortune, isn't it?

While I have indeed seen a few such places over the years, you should question why you would think yourself so fortunate or unfortunate to have merited such a great or lousy feng shui location in the first place. If you have bad feng shui, you have to think what's wrong with your character and behavior that you've earned it, and then make amends to change things.

Having good or bad feng shui is a matter of your fortune and if something is a result of your fortune, it's up to you to create a new fortune by working hard to change your life.

Here's the main rule for feng shui which one of my teachers, an eighty year old Chinese woman named Lyou Laoshr -- an expert at feng shui and Chinese astrology -- taught me. Forget all the formulas in books you read, forget all the calculations. If you can see or feel the chi, you just go by that and throw everything else out the window.

That's the main rule -- feel the chi and go by that. That's the actual rule written in the Bible of all ancient Chinese feng shui texts. In other words, she showed me this ancient feng shui work which was the basis behind all the subsequent work on feng shui, and it said that you must learn how to feel the chi, and when you can do that you throw all the other rules out the window. In my own personal experience, that rule is right 100%. If you can master this rule, then you can master feng shui without having to be taught anything.

Okay, so let's apply this rule to daily life. With most residences, the chi is so mellow or mild that feng shui makes hardly any special impact or difference on life at all. So for most situations you can ignore it and just concentrate on improving your behavior and creating better courses of action that will get you what you want.

The problem is, most people cannot feel chi, so they have to rely on formulas and rules that various masters have concocted over the centuries for general feng shui instances, but once again if the chi for a location isn't particularly strong, these formulas aren't usually of any great importance. Sure, you can fix up your home and apartment according to the rules of feng shui, and this effort will create a change in your environment as any rearranging would, but whether it's a significant change that changes the actual fortune, in 99+% of the cases, the answer once again is NO.

Not understanding this point and not being able to feel chi, that's why most feng shui practitioners can never become true feng shui masters. That's also why most people will waste their money on a feng shui reading, or the multi-thousand dollar readings of most masters are unmerited.

Modern feng shui practitioners can only memorize feng shui rules, and then throw in some charm and hocus pocus to please their clients, but that's about it. If they cannot cultivate and cannot tell chi, employing them is usually a waste of money. As my best friend's father said, "In the world there are three types of master difficult to find -- a tea master, ginseng master and feng shui master."

I especially get a kick out of the feng shui practitioners I meet who have "secret formulas" and a lineage that "goes back 1000 years" and the like because as I previously said, if they cannot sense the chi their advice is worthless. Then again I've heard stories of great modern masters who could walk by a random grave site and tell you the number of children in the family, who was rich, poor, and so forth just by the grave site. This is actually possible and impresses me. But when a yin feng shui master, who deals with burials, marks off an entire mountain by feng shui and tries to sell the mountain for a large profit, it makes me wonder.

Now that I've spilled the beans on these things, I'm sure a few people will start claiming these special abilities and come up with ways to cheat people, but I had to tell you the truth of the matter.

To do real feng shui, you have to have cultivated a lot and have developed some stage of supernormal ability so that you can sense chi and your wisdom is awakened. Even then, you still won't find many houses or residences where the chi has too much impact at all on the residents' fortunes. It's not that feng shui doesn't work ... it's just that the place usually isn't anything special. At most the house will build up its own character or collection of chi based on what the residents are already doing and what they are already like. That's why you can look at it and describe the fortune of the residents -- because they've produced the feng shui themselves.

Big secret, eh?

Now to feel the chi, you have to be able to cultivate to a certain level so that your chi mai have become cleared, and then you will immediately know the feng shui of a house or region without having to be taught anything. When your chi channels clear, you'll also be able to tell if someone is sick or not at a distance, and you'll immediately know their fortune without any reference to books or formulas.

You'll just know it.

Of course the rules you find in popular feng shui (and some fortune telling) books can be valuable, but there are very few instances where they are really and truly merited. If you like a place and it feels comfortable then buy it; if the furniture feels better with a different orientation, then do so. If following the formulas leads to a better situation like that, then great … go ahead and rearrange the furniture.

But in most cases, that's not going to produce any significant change in your fate and fortune. If a significant change occurs, it's most likely due to your own efforts, or to a new astrological cycle or transit or change in your long term fortune. Most people don't realize that the success stories you hear about in most "life change" books correspond to a coincidental change in astrological cycles for those individuals. Sure they needed to do the prep work to make change possible, but the change in timing is what brought things to fruition.

Let me tell you a story about the real feng shui formulas which are higher than what you normally find in regular feng shui books. It's a story my best friend told me since she saw it for herself when she was in college.

It turns out that one of her neighbors (in Taiwan) had supported a famous feng shui master for years, and the head of this household passed away. The feng shui master said that now was his chance to repay the family's kindness for their support over the years.

The first point to make is that even though he knew feng shui, the master could not use it to profit his own family because that was his fortune. He was indeed a genuine master, but it was his fortune that life to be poor in this life, so no feng shui could be used to change his own situation.

In fact, there's a rule in Chinese culture that if you want to be a great astrologer or fortune telling master with supernormal abilities, you can do so only if you accept the fate of being poor, blind, crippled, having no family, never being able to hold money or being looked down upon by society. You'll have to suffer in one of several major ways in return for being able to reveal the secrets of fate. That's why many famous fortune tellers in Chinese history were blind or crippled.

The famous I-Ching master Shao Kan Jieh, as an example, always had to travel around in a covered carriage because he could catch a cold so easily. This tendency to suffer from countless minor afflictions can also be considered another form of sacrifice, or just the normal scheme of things. When your chi mai open up, your sensitivity to the environment and susceptibility to colds always increases so that you have to work hard to protect yourself from flu and colds and wind invasions.

But let's put this discussion aside for the moment and return to our story.

Based on the deceased father's age, the feng shui master who wanted to repay the family's kindness picked out a special type of grave location and specified a specific time of burial. Because of this grave and burial time, the master said the family would gain wealth. To prove the truthfulness of his calculations, the master showed everyone a book which said that that several things would happen at the burial time if he was indeed correct and his prognostications were to come true. My friend saw the book and description of the forecast, which is why she wanted to go and see if everything would come out as predicted.

First, the book indicated, it would start to rain at the time of burial if they did all things properly. Second, they would see a man wearing white, and third, dogs and ducks would make a lot of ruckus at the time. All these events were sentences he read from a special ancient feng shui book, which he showed to everyone so that they would believe him when the time came for burial.

The manual was sort of like the specialized Tieh Pan Shen Shu iron abacus numerology books found in Hong Kong, but this feng shui book was probably a derivative of Chinese 9 star astrology. Most of these old texts have been lost or destroyed over the centuries, or many that have survived have been fakes or there is no one alive who knows how to use them.

Now when my friend heard this implausible train of events-to-be written in this book, she decided she had to see the burial for herself. Wouldn't you? And here's what happened according to my friend's recounting.

The day was completely sunny, which put the forecast for rain into question and made everyone present doubt the words of the feng shui master. Right before the time for the burial, which was at exactly one o'clock in the afternoon, all of a sudden they had a light drizzle.

A big wind also suddenly came up at that time and a boy crossing the field in the distance turned his jacket inside out and put it over his head so that he was protected from the rain. The inner white lining of the jacket was now showing on the outside, so the prediction of seeing a man in white crossing the field was also fulfilled.

Because the wind had come up, everyone was amazed when ducks in the distance were heard to quack in unison all of a sudden and out of nowhere, a group of stray dogs appeared and surrounded the burial party. They started to bark at the burial, which is quite unusual. That's when the feng shui master shouted, "Now is the time, now is the time, hurry, hurry and lower the coffin."

So everything came out as predicted.

As to the future fortunes of that particular family, that's another story we'll save for later.

This was an example of a type of formula feng shui which is extinct today, or only existent in rare books handed down from master to student and not available to the general public. I personally tried to get a copy of this book for documentation's sake since I always try to do that, but all attempts failed.

Anyway, it is a perfect example of real formula feng shui, but not the type you'll find in ordinary feng shui books. The chances of you finding a master who can do this are zilch, so the chances of you finding a special grave site and burial time are zilch as well … which means the burial feng shui of your family will just go along with fortune.

As to finding a house with auspicious feng shui, the same rule holds … you already need a great deal of merit to get a house with great feng shui. That's why one of the cardinal rules in feng shui is that feng shui remedies cannot be used to help someone who lacks merit, like a thief or Mafiaso, because you cannot turn the really bad into the good. When someone's fortune is really significantly high or low, in actuality it is hard to significantly change that person's fortune for the better or worse because of the weight of their deeds meriting retribution.

A general rule to remember is that your feng shui and your fortune are linked, and your fortune is far more important to your fate than feng shui. Of course, then again there are always exceptions, but that's the general rule. Don't take everything I say and write it in stone, because there are always exceptions and special cases and instances.

Now there is also the form school of feng shui that involves choosing auspicious locations based on the flowing chi of mountains, rivers, and various pieces of land. If you can find someone who can do this right, this is something you can bank on because these flows are so strong, so they definitely will produce exceptional fortunes when you find these locations.

In my life I've only come upon a dozen or so places where the chi was so strong it guaranteed riches, or an artistic life, or fame, or political power or whatever. When you find these places you're always a bit excited because you've found one, and also sad because you know what they're good for and yet know no one who can use them. I've found two or three burial places for tremendous wealth, but who would climb the mountains to use them, or who could use it at that instant when I found them? It's all a matter of fate and fortune for the opportunity and need to come together.

If you meditate you'll become able to feel this sort of chi and notice where it comes from and what it stands for, meaning what type of building or organization it will support. It just takes time and climbing up the cultivation ladder. The masters at the top who wrote feng shui books had these abilities and tried to code them into rules simply so that their students could also more quickly climb up the ladder, but most people today think it's the rules that are important rather than the climb.

I've been to several places in the world where the feng shui is truly extraordinary and just begging for a temple, a billionaire's house, a school, and all sorts of other places to be built on that location. However, finding those spots takes an awful lot of time but when you do bump into them you know them for what they are immediately.

Those are the locations of truly auspicious fortune, which is why they are so rare and also so noticeable.

Then again sometimes you'll bump into an asura's castle or place where heaven connects with earth, and you cannot reveal these locations to others unless you want to be punished. There's an old Greek saying that "the Gods are jealous," which means they have emotions just like us and don't want human invaders or troubles.

An explorer, for instance, once told my teacher that he was almost killed in a freak hail storm visiting a mountain that had claimed the lives of countless trekkers. My teacher scolded him for going to the place telling him that it was the home of devas who didn't want humans there, and who had actually made an exception and spared his life. So there are places on earth where heavenly beings do choose to live and this explorer's tale explains several other stories I've heard about people being killed exploring certain areas cutoff from the hub and bub of society.

If you can feel the chi, you can know immediately what type of business or dwelling will prosper in any location which is why my friends in Shanghai always delay their real estate purchase decisions until I visit. Then we drive around in a car for hours looking for prosperous locations, and astound the driver with predictions that this or that building will be torn down, this one is bankrupt and so forth all because of the chi … as the local, he knows all the stories and is always surprised to confirm our synopsis on the spot.

The problem is that we have to go for hours before we can find a building with special chi, and which is also already available for rent or purchase. So once again there isn't much special feng shui, and if you find it it may not be available. Once again your own fortune has to match.

Here's the moral … such locations are rare indeed. For 99 out of 100 locations, the chi just isn't anything special. Yes, you have to follow normal feng shui rules of avoiding "poison arrows," which are dangerous chi flows hitting your location, but that's about it. The house or office location will be normal, and will just follow the fortunes of the occupants which means that if the people do lots of merit they'll have good fortunes. If they do bad deeds or have a bad fortune period coming up from past life actions, then they'll suffer from a bad fortune.

Sometimes you can tell that the chi in a building will definitely change for the worse after ten years or so because it will take that much time to build up to a critical massing point whereupon the effects will finally be noticeable. Nonetheless, until that point living in such a building is perfectly safe.

What do you tell people in such situations? Do you tell them not to buy it or live in the house or apartment building because the chi will change in ten years time even though it's a perfectly fine residence until then? Most people change residences after several years anyway, so should they bypass a nice house or apartment if they like it? On the other hand, most people will forget your warnings or disbelieve them after living so many years in a location where everything is going fine. Knowing this, do you say avoid the location or not? Then again, if they're destined to have bad fortune, bad feng shui is just part of it. So what do you say?

The moral is -- feng shui changes over time -- no place has good or bad feng shui forever. What you experience will be part of your fortune. Just think of the Beijing Palace which is built according to feng shui rules. You might be a Prince who lives in the palace, but you might also be killed because you're a prince even though you are enjoying all that good feng shui. You cannot expect feng shui and fortunes to stay the same forever.

I have story after story about feng shui -- some of them on the esoteric side -- but the big question is whether you should do anything about the feng shui in your house. Usually the only thing you can do is look for poison arrows (shar chi) that might cut across the bed or room since this will tend to make you sick, separate husband and wife, or create disharmony and other troubles.

As to the big question on whether one should move, BIG feng shui is moving not from house to house but from one part of the country to another, or yet to another country entirely. A change that big will definitely bring about a change in one's fortunes, such as moving from China to America, so the question is how to predict if such a move is worthwhile.

Feng shui cannot make that sort of prediction. Astrocartography cannot make that sort of prediction. Relocated natal analysis, however, can make that sort of prediction and there's only one expert in the US that I know of for answering this type of question - Julian Lee. Look him up before you're going to make a big move decision, specially if you want to determine where you should move in this country or in the world to change your fortune. He's the best there is for making a decision about whether or not to relocate to a different area. Give him a call at 805-640-9591 (www.locational-astrologer.com) and tell him I sent you. I tell you truly with the best intentions and nothing to gain other than your thanks that before you spend big time money on a move with "possibilities," invest the two hundred or so bucks with Julian to see if it's a wise move and to get an idea of what your life is likely to experience on all levels in that location.

As to fixing the feng shui of your house, here's what to look for - "shar" chi or poison arrows. Only a feng shui expert can tell you whether or not they really exist. Let me tell you some illustrative stories.

A high government official in a foreign country, the equivalent of the Speaker of the House, had me look at his home's feng shui and the only thing I found was that there was shar chi cutting across the bed in one bedroom. There was no chi indicating prosperity, a high government position or the like, however the individual sleeping in the affected bed suffered from stomach and digestive troubles precisely because the poison arrow ran right through his abdomen where he slept. Blocking the window with a bookcase basically blocked the arrow and solved the problem.

The moral of this story is that sometimes a poison arrow can account for a small problem like this, and secondly that while you might expect great house feng shui because of the man's high position, there was nothing in the house to indicate that at all. So his position was due to his efforts … his fortune. If you wanted to improve the feng shui of the house for wealth or position, there was really nothing you could do. Only one poison arrow affecting the health of a child is what you could come up with as anything noticeable.

In another instance, one of my friends had me look at the feng shui of a millionaire's house and you could immediately see the shar chi cutting across the bed in the couple's bedroom, which in this case would cause divorce so I advised the corrections immediately. "That's exactly what a feng shui master said," he mentioned.

What the master missed, however, was the bigger fact that massive amounts of prosperity chi were leaking out the garage, meaning that this family was destined to lose millions over what appeared to be about the next two years of time. (When you see the chi, you can actually put time dimensions on certain variables.) The amount of chi leaking from the house was incredible, so you knew immediately that large sums of money were involved and only a stone wall to board up the garage (so the chi couldn't leak out) could have helped mitigate the misfortune, but who wants to do that?

The family lost probably $40-50 million the following year as predicted, which was the great bulk of their family wealth, and it was predictable one year in advance from the house feng shui ... the leaking chi was so massive you couldn't miss it. Now, could remedial measures have alleviated this fortune somewhat, or was it fated? Who knows? Maybe that fortune was fixed and maybe it wasn't because had the family done lots of charity (which produces merit) they could have definitely changed some things. They would have spent some money on good deeds, rather than lost some money, and generated merit in the process that could have changed the fortune and which would definitely have produced better fortunes in the future.

Given a choice, now that I'm older and understand things I would rather spend $1 million on charity than lose $1 million in the stock market because with one I earn a return and with the other I earn nothing at all. At the end of the day, the net sum is that I'm still down $1 million in both cases, but the charity route brings positive returns whereas the loss brings nothing but sorrow. People always feel good when they give charity, so practice giving and create a better fortune for yourself and others.

That's another reason I always emphasize charity.

The point is that you can use formulas to calculate small feng shui matters but miss the big picture, the big event. Furthermore, the feng shui cure is often something people would not agree to even though it might save them $50 million. … People might believe in feng shui, but not that much to be willing to lose the use of their garage.

I've seen the same sort of phenomenon in the health field where people are dying of cancer and an herbalist advises them to do a certain type of herbal bath that will stain the sheets of their bed. "I don't want to do that because it will destroy my sheets," they tell the master herbalist. "Look," the herbalist responds, "you're dying. So you have a choice between clean sheets or living. You choose."

One of my own brothers also had a house which had shar chi hitting the resident of one of the bedrooms, and I told him that the occupant was destined to have bad teeth and be in a terrible car accident the next year. There was no way around this because the chi was so strong. There was no way I could be wrong in this.

When it didn't happen, I was really curious to know why because from the chi that I sensed, there was no way this sort of prediction could be in error. When I visited the house again, it turns out that the neighbors had planted three trees in the distance perfectly blocking and absorbing the shar chi, and hence the "inevitable" fortune was averted. Who could have predicted that would have happened?

This story just goes to show that your neighbors can do something to change your feng shui that will change your entire fortune; if you weren't destined to have something bad happen to you, then the feng shui producing such a situation wouldn't be there.

The story tells you that you can do all sorts of work selecting a site with great feng shui, but then someone can also come along and build a house in the area that destroys all your work. That, too, is fortune. It's also why people want burial grounds for their parents that are hidden away in the mountains where they won't be disturbed for generations, because after they are disturbed, family fortunes are certainly changed. For instance, I once met a Jewish businessman who told me that for 9 generations all the men in his family had become rabbis but he was the only one who wasn't. I immediately knew the family graves had been changed and feng shui altered, and when I asked him he said that indeed they had been desecrated, for the Nazis had purposefully destroyed them in World War II after which he had decided to become a businessman.

In another instance, while on a business deal I was visiting Little Rock, Arkansas, which is the home to three billionaires and one president. That, in itself, tells you that the feng shui of the area must be something special, so poking around in the region might turn up some fantastic locations for wealth, scholarship, power, fame or fortune. One of the business partners drove us around a number of neighborhoods when I noticed a yellow rectangular mound on the front lawn of a house, and knew that it boded special feng shui.

After we passed the house, my host mentioned that the house belonged to one of the three billionaires in Little Rock's 200,000 population of residents, and for the first time in my life I realized that the teachings on mountain shapes (triangular fire mountains, earth rectangular mountains, water mountains, etc.) in old Chinese feng shui books actually also corresponded to this small mound in the front yard, which had produced a billionaire.

But had the feng shui produced the billionaire, or had the billionaire bought the house with good feng shui? We'll never know. The two deserve each other when the fortune is so special. My teacher, upon return of the trip, also told me several other details about the house's owner that we could expect because of this feng shui. The feng shui of this billionaire was tied to his house whereas the feng shui of Teddy Roosevelt's family was tied to a tree in yard, which was destroyed by lightning before the family fortunes were put on a down slope.

Now there are other situations where the feng shui is yet untapped, and waiting for people to make use of it. In particular, I love it when city officials ask me what to do for their city, and which industries to support, based upon the natural feng shui that supports the area.

For instance, I once visited Chiang-xia University and the Business School asked me what type of new curriculum they should build. It turns out that the main mountain on which the university was located had a very rare 20-30 meter wide strip of what we call "white silver" chi inside which boded auspicious fortune for any type of cultural-artistic endeavors. This type of chi is rare, and the white silver chi vein was so thick inside that if they didn't tap into it they were wasting a precious opportunity for the nation.

I told the university officials that they could therefore create a new major for managing artistic/stylistic programs and organizations -- such as art galleries, pottery and statue factories, musicals, art conventions and so forth. They could not teach art itself, just the management of those sorts of industries. I was then surprisingly told that Chiang-xia has the largest number of China-type Las Vegas/Broadway shows than anywhere else in China, and is also world famous for its architecture school, so the feng shui was already showing its influence in supporting that type of effort.

London is an interesting city which, in feng shui parlance, is built on the skeletal remains of a giant turtle. Because of the chi arising from these chi bones, that's why London people are stout and stocky, the homes are solid, and the behavior is quite conservative. They are all characteristics of the earth element amplified by this sort of feng shui. London also has many Mahagala denizens who enjoy this sort of atmosphere and the power atmosphere that goes with it. This is an example of how the feng shui shapes the residents of a region.

Shanghai, on the other hard, is built on what we call a hibernating dragon, so the chi of the place is vibrant and moves with each inhalation and exhalation. That's why Shanghai can prosper and succeed as a business and industrial center. Two hours outside of Chiang-xia there is a famous temple that has rejuvenating "dragon's breath" chi which isn't good for industry at all, but does connect heaven and earth. That's the reason why many Chinese Emperors in the past would go to this place to make offerings to the gods protecting the nation. Incidentally, this temple is also located near the only long-life turtle mountain I've ever seen in my life, which is a marvelous feng shui rarity. It would be a great place to renew oneself and to cultivate for longevity.

Unless you really cultivate and somewhat succeed, you cannot understand what feng shui masters refer to when they talk about dragon and turtle mountains but they really do exist. Most mountains aren't anything special, but when you find one that gives off good chi,it makes sense to tap into it. As to tiger mountains, there aren't any etheric tigers inside as there are with dragons, but the yin chi is so strong that the mountains earn this name. It's sort of a yin-yang polarity that has to exist.

What you really have to worry about are special mountains with sharp pointed tips, as they can give off shar chi for miles. I've only seen one in my life when I was flying over the US, and while it looked the same as all the other peaks surrounding it, it was actually broadcasting terrible chi for miles into the distance. When I saw it I finally understood another diagram of mountains that I had seen in some ancient feng shui book, but if you didn't know chi you could not tell any difference between this mountain and all the other ones surrounding it.

All these stories bring out various principles in regards to feng shui, and I have thousands more that are far more interesting. However, unless you are building a house from scratch, in most cases feng shui doesn't matter.

That 80-year old Chinese feng shui expert I talked about taught me a valuable lesson years ago when I asked her what she did about her father's ashes when he passed away. "Did you go looking for any special feng shui to for their final resting spot?" I asked.

"Not at all," she replied, "I just let them temple place them any place they wanted. After you see through feng shui you realize everything is fortune, so I don't care about trying to maximize everything and use up my good fortune. I just let things like that happen according to fate." In other words, she studied feng shui and esoteric sciences all her life and at the end of her life she didn't care about it anymore, despite being an expert. It didn't really matter.

The best astrologers I know also tell me the same thing … they don't even look at their charts anymore, but just let things come and deal with them according to wisdom. Is this not the best course of action? Shouldn't we teach this more rather than to be superstitious and hope there is an instant supernatural cure for our ills?

Live life with virtue and wisdom, and if bad fortune comes your way, deal with it according to the same principles. What teaching could be higher? After all, there is no way to escape from your karma. Maybe you can delay it until later, at which time you still have to deal with it, and maybe you can change it into something better, or change it so that it appears in drips and drabs rather than in one lump sum, but this all requires merit and wise action.

Once again it all comes down to merit, virtue, awareness and wise behavior.

When shar chi was once hitting our office floor through a corner window, my teacher used to sit in the very path of that terrible feng shui chi flow in order to absorb that chi on purpose. He did that because he wanted to test himself, because he wanted to use up some of his bad fortune that way, because he wanted to change the feng shui of the office to something better, because if someone was to suffer for it he would rather it be him, and for a whole host of reasons.

In other words, he used the opportunity of poor feng shui to turn a bad situation into a better one, to change bad fortune into good fortune. That's what he always taught me to do ... if you have some activity you must do, then just start and try to change things for the better. That's what a Bodhisattva does.

So I've basically talked about feng shui to tell you several things which I hope you take to heart:

(1) you probably don't have to worry about it,
(2) if you do have to worry about it, you probably only have to worry about some minor shar chi that requires a few minor changes to your house,
(3) that feng shui formulas probably won't help you but that understanding chi flows is the key to feng shui,
(4) that moving to another part of the country will change your fortune and is therefore a sort of feng shui decision, and that Julian Lee can help you there with predictive work as to the type of life you're likely to lead in a new location,
(5) that form school feng shui is very powerful when you find a location with it, but that your chances of finding such a location are pretty slim,
(6) that you need great good fortune to merit great feng shui and that your fortune is more important in overriding feng shui, and yet your feng shui is part of your fortune (a reflexive situation)
(7) that if something is going wrong with your life then changing your behavior will probably do more for you than changing your feng shui ... checking your feng shui is probably seeking in the wrong direction
(8) that the real course of action is to turn all feng shui and bad situations into good ones rather than be scared of them, and
(9) that even though feng shui doesn't matter in most instances, it's real, it exists and you better pay heed to it if you're planning something big (like a national capital or a great institution) you want to last,
(10) but you probably don't have to move if things just aren't going right at the moment, but then again, you never know ... if you have access to a real feng shui expert they can tell you

I could write more, but that's enough for these tired fingers. Be balanced and respective when it comes to feng shui, but if you're like most people it's probably not going to bite you at all in life, and your fortune is going to count for far more than the feng shui of any ordinary house.

From time to time I'll have to add more stories and explanations to this article, but that's enough for now. If you want to know more, you'll have to write and ask or get in contact with me another way.

But as a final bit of advice, trust your judgment and don't head into supernatural explanations for this or that in your life. If you feel comfortable with a house then buy it, if you don't feel comfortable then don't buy it. If rearranging your furniture makes you feel better then do so. If not, then put things back to the way they were.

Whatever you do, your fortune is something you make yourself so to merit a better situation or even the good fortune to meet someone who can tell you to change your feng shui and how to do it, you must personally do lots of good deeds, practice meditation to increase your awareness so that you avoid bad deeds, and never forget good old common sense.

Remember the formula: awareness (meditation) + merit (good deeds/virtue) + discipline + wisdom. When I release my book on changing your fortune and destiny through merit and meditation, I'll let you know through the ezine.

Yes, all these supernormal esoteric sciences like feng shui have some validity to them, but you have to live your life according to what you know and see without going off the deep end, so conduct yourself with normal due diligence and wisdom. That's the best I can tell you.