Q&A Sunday: I Ching Divination for Moderation and Self Care

Anjie Cho November 12, 2017

What would be the most effective way to bring, health, protection, and prosperity to our home? My 87-year-old mother lives with us. My husband is struggling, and his mental and physical energy is very low. Can you help prevent him from forgetting so much and struggling to concentrate and increase his mental and physical energy?

Eliane B., Coral Springs, FL

Hi Eliane,

Thank you so much for your question! It's a little complicated and there are a lot of things going on in this question. I understand you're having problems with health, protection and prosperity and with your husband forgetting a lot and having mental health issues. My intuition guided me to an I Ching reading for this question, so I'll share that insight with you.

The I Ching is also known as the Book of Changes, and it's a way of divination based on Taoism. As is the I Ching practice, I threw coins for your question and received what is called Hexagram #39, which is Water over Mountain. This hexagram represents obstacles. One thing the I Ching tells me is that right now you have a lot of stumbling blocks in your life, and that's obvious in your question. It feels like you may have a lot of confusion there as well. I Ching reflects that as you're experiencing these obstacles, now is not a good time for you to push ahead into the danger. Imagine you're like a rushing river, but you have a lot of snags in your way. If you wait and build up your strength, you will push through these difficulties naturally, much like a river makes its way through a mountain.

So my suggestion would be to not use force right now. Instead, just sit and be patient. The I Ching suggests you don't have the strength to move past these obstructions yet, so focus on building your power and vigor. The second hexagram that comes up is 15, which is Moderation. This confirms that now is a time of moderation, not stubbornly moving forward. Practice moderation in your eating habits, how you spend money and in everything you do, and be careful not to go to extremes, because that could actually create more problems for you.

As for a feng shui adjustment that could support this path, you may begin to cultivate patience and moderation in your journey to gaining the might you need for this task. I recommend working on a few opposite areas of the feng shui bagua: Self-Knowledge and Relationships, which is also related to self-care. Both of these areas are Earth elements, so nurturing them is not about doing anything, but about taking care of yourself, moving slowly and implementing self-control as you build strength. Since this is an issue between you and your husband, I suggest activating these bagua areas of your bed. To do this, place a nine-inch long red ribbon under your mattress in each area, Knowledge and Relationships. When working with a bed, set the bagua at the head of the bed so that the headboard runs along the Abundance, Recognition and Relationships areas, and the foot borders Knowledge, Path in Life and Benefactors.

Facing your headboard from the foot of your bed, the left corner closest to you would be Knowledge. Put a nine-inch long red ribbon there. The far right corner, near the headboard, would be where you place another ribbon to activate Relationships. That's my advice for now. Make these small adjustments with intention and keep the idea of moderation in mind. You are experiencing setbacks, but instead of focusing on that, really take care of yourself and actively work on your self-cultivation and self-care right now. Good luck!

by Anjie Cho

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51 Feng Shui Experts Share Their Decorating Secrets

Anjie Cho October 25, 2017

featured this month on Insider Living by Jennifer McBride

Oftentimes you come home tired and stressed after a long day of work and you can barely wait to relax and stop all the hustle. Your home is a refuge where you spend precious time with your family.

More than the overall home, your bedroom is a place for intimacy and rest. If you are part of a couple, the way the bedroom looks and feels can influence your relationship. It can be the perfect environment for love and romanticism.

Even if you are single, the way your room looks impacts your state of mind and productivity.

The best solution for transforming your bedroom into a place of harmony that is pleasant to the eye and spirit is to follow the rules of feng shui. To do that, it would be ideal to hire a feng shui expert or even an interior designer. If you are on a budget and want to arrange your room alone, then we have a solution for you.

We reached out to forty-nine feng shui experts and interior designers and asked them:

What are your best tips to feng shui your bedroom?

We got some great feedback that we would love to share with you.

Anjie Cho

One important area to address in the bedroom is actually under the bed. It is best to leave this space clear, so as to allow qi to flow freely. However, if you must keep items below your bed, aim for soft, sleep-related things, like linens and pillows, and avoid items that may cause stress or distraction, like old love letters, sharp objects or even shoes, which can keep you walking in circles!

...read full article

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Q&A Sunday: Mirrors and Spirits

Anjie Cho October 15, 2017

I have recently been getting into feng shui with the background of the I Ching and qi gong and have been enjoying your podcast. I am wondering if you had heard the same thing as I have, that mirrors only reflect energy but they are doorways for spirits to walk between the world. I have personally experienced a dark spirit walking through a mirror while I was sleeping, which is very dangerous and disturbing. Have you heard of this? What are your thoughts?

Samantha B., Bellevue, WA

Hi Samantha

Thank you for your question. For this one, I thought I’d have one of my beloved feng shui mentors, Barry Gordon, provide an answer. It may be more than you expected and not what you were looking for, but I think it’s a thorough and enlightening response :)

From Barry Gordon:

There's more than one answer to this question, depending upon whether you’re looking at it from the personal viewpoint or the universal viewpoint of natural mind. I’m a physicist, Feng Shui Master, and shaman.

There is a lot of confusion about mirrors in the more traditional forms of Chinese Feng Shui. The ultimate purpose of Feng Shui is to change that Qi of the person being helped. So from that viewpoint, we need to look at the effect of the mirror on the person’s mind. When I look at a mirror, I do not experience energy coming towards me. I experience the increase in spaciousness created by the mirror effect. So mirrors do not push energy away, they actually pull energy in, because they pull your mind in.

Since mirrors create the effect of enlarging a space, they also have a feeling that one is being pulled into or could move into the mirror. So metaphorically and perhaps neurologically, mirrors can appear to be a doorway. They are not a physical doorway. They're a mental doorway.

So, in your dreams, when you’re totally in your mind, the mirror can become a doorway. Your subconscious mind cannot distinguish very well between physical imagery, your experience of the physical world through the gates of your perception, and mental imagery which has much broader and more gates of perception available. That’s why so many healing techniques and methods to create a new future use visualization.

You have personally experienced a spirit in a mirror during a dream. I’ve also experienced them in mirrors and many other objects in the waking state. There are spirits all around us all the time, but our gates of perception have been trained not to allow them into our consciousness. They are sentient beings just like us. They just have less physical substance, so they're less physically real. But just like us, they have different levels of trauma and wounding. The more wounded ones are the ones we usually think of as dark. Their structure is created from the resonant magnetic gravity of lots of negative emotional energies that were never resolved or reintegrated into their creators before their death and are now floating around in the Tao, the zero point energy.

From another viewpoint, they are you. We have been taught and trained so deeply that there is an outside and an inside, that is, a you and other than you, that we totally believe it into reality. But the teachings of so many spiritual traditions say the opposite. And quantum mechanics says the opposite. There is no separation. There’s no real boundary, only an imaginary boundary between you and anything you experience as other. We only have mental emotional boundaries.

The bedroom, the bed, your body, your thoughts and emotions, your sense of identity, your "I" are all experienced in your mind, which, according to the last paragraph, is not really yours. It’s like when you look at one of those paintings that looks like a particular image, but the longer you look, you realize that there is also a different image than the first one seen, another way to look at it.

When you believe the ghost in the mirror to be real, you are caught in your personal addictive relative reality trance. When you step back and witness the trance through meditation or other method, you are free and fearless.

by Anjie Cho