Chi-va Las Vegas

I took my first ever trip to Las Vegas this month and found it to be a fascinating lesson in Feng Shui.

Vegas is a city built in the middle of no-where, on land that grows nothing. It is hot, dry and desolate, hardly the sort of location that an ancient Feng Shui master would have recommended for a home or business.

However, Grandmaster Professor Lin Yun used places like Las Vegas and Dubai to illustrate the power that man has, using Feng Shui, to harness the chi from deep within the earth and draw it to the surface to create lively environments. Three types of enhancements are particularly evident in Vegas.

Light: Vegas is a city where the lights never go out! Light is controlled in Vegas to a science. External light sources are removed from Casinos so that patrons have no sense of time, and the strip is lit like a Christmas festival so that people can party into the wee hours of the morning. Light is a powerful Feng Shui enhancer. Imagine how different the strip would be if the lights went out at midnight!

Water:

There is water everywhere in Vegas, an incredible contrast to the desert which surrounds it. In the residential areas the City of Las Vegas is offering cash subsidies for those willing to remove their grass to conserve water. On the strip though, water is used to draw people like a magnet. Thousands of people gather every day to watch the famous fountains at the Bellagio Hotel. There are fountains and lagoons at nearly every hotel. If there is water, there is life and Vegas is a lively as it gets.

Sound: Vegas is loud - really loud! Sound is used to create atmosphere matching the theme of each hotel, to convince customers to visit this bar vs. that bar, and to keep you stimulated for your entire visit. Sound is nearly inescapable in Vegas. This is not the sort of sound that most of us would choose for our home, you can certainly see how important it is to bring life to the strip.

Though Vegas is a particularly surreal environment which would overstimulate most of us if we stayed for any length of time (3 days is the average stay, and likely as long as most of us could stand), it is an excellent lesson in the use of Feng Shui for environmental transformation. The addition of light, sound or water in your own environment is a powerful way to bring Feng Shui into your home, uplifting your chi and creating movement in your life.

Joyful, Bountiful Tui

Tui is expressed beautifully in this painting by Lester Ancheta.

Tui, or Lake, is the trigram or symbol of the I Ching which expresses the energy of this time of the year. As we head into fall and the time of harvest, the efforts of the spring planting and summer heat begin to bear fruit. This is evidenced in the natural physical world as well as in our inner realities.

If we have worked hard to plant seeds of the highest quality in our gardens and our lives throughout the year, our efforts have been paying off with an abundance of fruits, vegetables and beautiful flowers. The bounty of fall brings us great joy, and an abundant harvest allows us to share that joy with others.

In contrast, if the seeds that we have planted were of low quality, if our gardens were not tended regularly, and if our thoughts and actions were less than expressions of our highest nature, these too will bring forth fruit of a different nature.

In our homes, Tui represents creativity and children. The bountiful product of our minds and our bodies. It is a metal gua in five element theory, supported by earth, reduced by water and melted with fire. The use of images and materials which reflect these elements can help to create balance in Tui areas. The colors of metal; gray, silver, and gold all work well in metal areas and bringing earth tones and materials into these areas is also helpful. Limiting fire, fiery colors and images will keep our metal from being destroyed.

Perhaps the most important element in all Feng Shui cures is the element of intent. Our strong intention to plant seeds which we know will bear the type of fruit that we want to see manifest in our lives is of utmost importance. Seeds of kindness, of honesty and of love will create a ripple effect in the Lake of our lives which we can enjoy the bountiful harvest of.

H.H. Grandmaster Professor Lin Yun

Professor receives the honor of the White Hat in Calgary, 2009

The BTB Feng Shui community is in mourning this week over the loss of the beloved Grandmaster, Professor Lin Yun. 'Professor' as he is commonly referred to, changed the history of Feng Shui forever with his revolutionary, modernized theories about the workings of Ch'i in the person and the environment.

BTB stands for Black Hat Sect Tantric Buddhist (Feng Shui). While the entire explanation of the name is not the intention of this post, two words are important today. Black as a color is the inclusion of all colors. It represents a deep, oceanic wisdom unsullied by outside influences. Tantra is a word with many connotations and definitions, most of which are inaccurate and misunderstood. The Sanskrit root of the word means 'loom, or warp' as in the weaving of a fabric into a consistent whole. These two words are important in understanding Professor's lineage and teachings.

They are also important words in understanding Professor himself, his impact on his students and the current versions and schools of Feng Shui in the world. Professor wove many cultures and ideas together, incorporating modern thinking, science and ideals into his world view. He taught his students to see Feng Shui as the Tao, a living and ever changing path. A wisdom which has forever altered thinking in this field of study.

Professor also wove together people from all over the world. His students come from many countries and have taken his teachings across the globe, sometimes modifying them into their own unique schools. He encouraged his students, many of them teachers in their own right, to be seekers of knowledge and understanding first and foremost.

He created a community; a tantric web of like-minded individuals all looking to improve their lives and the lives of others. It is a community which I feel honored to be a part of. I am forever changed and deeply grateful.

Lovely Lavender

I travel nearly every year to the Okanagan Valley to visit with family living in Penticton, British Columbia. If you haven't been, or if you haven't been since you were a kid you've really got to go. In the last 15 years the whole look and feel of the valley has been transformed. Where apples, cherries and peaches used to dominate the landscape, wineries abound. The feel of the valley is morphing from down home to upscale as people try new cultivars of grapes suitable for making quality wines.

It is not just the big players who are experimenting though, hobby farms are also getting in on Nappa North and trying their hand at growing crops which are newer to the area. One such crop is lavender. While traveling, Ok wine tasting, our way through the Naramata area recently I stopped to visit a local grower of the aromatic herb, Forest Green Man Lavender.

The place is beautiful. A field of purple, the sound of thousands of busy bees, and a smell that is just heavenly. Forgetting for a moment that you are in Canada, you can be temporarily transported to the fields of Provence. I was given a wonderful lesson in the cultivation of lavender by one of the owners, Doug Mathias, and allowed to wander the field to soak up the smell, check out the little gift shop, and bask in the wonderful atmosphere.

Lavender has been used for centuries to promote relaxation and healing. It can be used for mild space clearing and to engage the sense of smell in our interior spaces. It is particularly wonderful sprayed on a pillow a little bit before going to bed to help with insomnia.

In an upcoming newsletter I will expand on lavender's uses in the interior landscape. For now though, I will think of Forest Green Man and be transported.

Welcoming Water

Without water there is clearly no life on this planet. A fundamental building block of life, it is largely what we are made of. All ancient cultures revered water and included it in their categorization of the elements. As one of the five elements in Chinese culture, it plays a very important role in Feng Shui. The very name Feng Shui means wind and water.

The use of water in the Feng Shui of our landscapes is essential, particularly if we live inland and do not have access to lakes, rivers or the ocean. Dynamic water features provide movement to delight the eye, sound to encourage relaxation, and they increase the air quality by charging the surrounding air with negative ions. Each of these benefits will add to the positive chi of your outdoor spaces and create a stronger connection to the natural world.

Your front door is considered the 'mouth of chi', the place where energy enters your home from the surrounding environment. Creating a water feature at the front entry to your home is a great place to start. Water is symbolic of money as well as your social status so placing water at the front door encourages prosperity and an active social life to enter your home. An added benefit is that the gentle splashing of a water fountain will help to mask any traffic noise, creating a buffer zone between the neighborhood and your home. It is important that water runs either toward the home or straight down and not away from the home as we want to encourage prosperity and friends to flow in to our lives.

Water features do not need to be large or expensive but it is best if they are moving, or if they combine both moving and still water. An example would be a fountain which ends in a small pond of still water. This combination represents overflowing abundance which gathers and stays around for a while.

For those of us who either don't have the space or the resources for a large water feature even a birdbath can add life and movement to the front yard by attracting our avian friends and beneficial insects to the garden. Just be sure to keep the water very clean, preferably changing it daily preventing stagnation as well as mosquitoes.

Kindness and Prosperity

As all Feng Shui practitioners know, some of the most commonly requested cures are those which enhance the prosperity of our clients. Everyone wants prosperity. Money makes the world go round and most of us don't think we will ever have enough to buy, or to do all of the things that we want in life.

As the world consciousness is shifting though many of us also realize that abundance, like any other physical reality, is first a state of mind. The universe is in a constant state of yin and yang, a state which Walter Russel called 'Rhythmic Balanced Interchange'. What we put out there (yang), comes back to us (yin) in a non judgmental and perfectly balanced way.

So before we look to change our prosperity only through Feng Shui adjustments in our environment we must remember that this is only 1/3 of the equation. Our destiny and our actions make up the other 2/3 of the formula. We may have little control over our destiny but our actions are completely within our reach. Professor Lin Yun has advised all of his students that the key to prosperity is kindness. If we want to change the world economic situation his most sincere instruction is to encourage each person to do one good deed per day.

While it is easy to see the nobility in such an act, many will have difficulty understanding how this can contribute anything real to an economic situation. However, when we understand Rhythmic Balanced Interchange it becomes plausible that a simple act of kindness can make an impact. When one does something good, solely for the benefit of another, the reality is that both benefit. When many do something good, many benefit. If we would all just do one small deed in service to another we all benefit.

Coyote Kirtan

About 4:30 am this morning the quiet was pierced by the cry of a lone coyote. The sound he made was very distinctive and unlike the howl that most associate with the canine. It struck me as a very specific message sent out into the night. After only a few seconds I could hear the call answered. Quiet howls responding from a seemingly impossible distance, and from many directions. Clearly something had been said, in a language that I had no access to. A sort of prairie Kirtan, call and response.

All creatures communicate with each other in some way and humans have the most complex of all languages. Even then we often run into trouble. Misunderstandings are common and good communication skills sometimes elude us.

In Feng Shui, the gua which is associated with communication is Dui, or Lake. This is also the area which is connected to creativity as all creativite endeavors use a specific medium to get across an idea, express a feeling, or answer a problem. If you are having trouble getting your ideas across to others, feeling that you are not heard, or that you could use a little creative spark then Dui is the gua to enhance in your home.

This gua can be enhanced through the use of metal, particularly bells, chimes or gongs which ring out in a clear and resonant tone. The color white and spherical shapes enhance the metal element of the area while fire, red and pyramidal shapes should be limited or avoided. Earth tones and design elements can also be used to enhance the metal nature of this area. Be sure to display your creativity in these areas as well whether it be through art, music, poetry or another media.

These simple changes can help to bring your Feng Shui into alignment. You may find that like the lone coyote your message will be clearly heard, and you will more easily hear the quiet responses received through the stillness of the cosmos. Listen carefully to the answers within.