Chinese Wisdom that Makes Feng Shui Work
The principal aim of Feng Shui is essentially to find a harmonious balance and a supportive connection between people and the environment that they live in. From a Chinese cultural perspective there is a fundamental interactive relationship between nature and man, space and time, influenced by tangible and intangible factors that generate human reactions.
Following the changing patterns of nature, time is cyclical in Chinese thinking, not linear, and its progress is elliptical as it moves forward. It is hard work aiming for something that is not likely to be achievable at the moment. However as the season or year changes, so does the situation we find ourselves in. The opportunity will be there at the right time, and being in the right place too at the right time is even better. Shi means timeliness.
According to Chinese philosophy our lives are shaped by fate, by destiny or ‘luck’, and by free will. Only our birth is fixed, it is our Heaven fate, because we have no control over the life situation we were born into. The rest is largely up to us. We shape how we progress in life and thereby create our own destiny by our endeavours and consideration, by continuing to acquire knowledge, and by decisions we choose to make. We can also organise our environment to support our needs and desires.
Characters, images and pattern language creatively guide Chinese thinking. Recognising several possibilities or correlations for a situation, as well as analysing it to reach a definitive outcome, becomes effective as well as efficient. This fascinating and preagmatic, yet apparently opposing, blend of left and right brain integration is also used to reach purposeful Feng Shui decisions.
This is a sophisticated example of Yin and Yang, the Chinese concept of complementary opposites as the binary code of life. Everything can be related to Yin and Yang. There can be no procreation without male and female, no shadow without sunlight. It is the different Yin and Yang qualities of Qi that determine its potential to become desirable or undesirable.
To make Feng Shui right, there also has to be Qing, which means feeling or affection, so that the built space we inhabit enjoys a mutually supportive resonance with forms in the natural landscape and in combination they give us protection as well as opportunity.
The connection between nature’s form, heaven’s intangible influences, and human needs, called San Cai in Chinese, is the secret to creating balance and harmony in your home or workplace so that you will thrive and flourish, gain life enrichment and happiness. That connection is where the solutions are most likely to be found.