How can I work on bringing in more abundance?

This is a popular question, and I invite you to read through some of my earlier blog posts on feng shui and abundance as well. Today, I want to talk about how we can approach this from the perspective of giving and receiving. There’s a Zen saying that there’s no giver and no receiver. I encourage you to think about what this means to you. It might sound paradoxical, and there are many ways to unpack this statement.

I invite you to contemplate how you give and receive, and what generosity means to you. In BTB feng shui, we were taught by our teachers to honor something called the red envelope tradition, and this is something we teach our students at Mindful Design School. It’s a way to formally exchange energy with our students, since we are offering them teachings. At the same time, my students are also my teachers because they help me to become a better teacher.

Whenever you do give something, you can think about why you are giving. Is there a balance in what you’re receiving? How can you be generous in new and different ways? This concept connects to the feng shui area of abundance, called Xun. In feng shui, the opposite areas of the bagua are closely related. Opposite Xun is Qian, which has to do with benefactors and helpful people. How abundant you feel is directly related to how you can invite helpful, supportive people into your life, and the way to invite more helpful people into your life is to become a more helpful person. A lot of people want to work on wealth, and it’s something I get asked a lot about as a feng shui practitioner. Often, however, what people really need to work on is how to give and receive. How can you become a benefactor to others, and how can you receive what is offered to you?

A lot of people, myself included, have a hard time receiving wealth. One lesson that many of us are learning is to not help other people so much that we hurt ourselves, and to be open to receive when people do offer their help and support. In addition to being open to support from others, it’s important to be able to support yourself too.

If you’re working with abundance, I encourage you to think about your relationship to giving and receiving. How can I give and support others, and how can others support me? Feng shui isn’t just about moving things around. Changing the objects in your home is just one way you can start to manifest these deeper philosophical concepts in your physical world.

by Anjie Cho