Feng Shui:

Silly Superstitions or 

Common Sense?

Once I got interested in Feng Shui

(pronounced "fung schway"),

I went all in to learn. 

I read books, online data, signed up for emails and subscribed to a magazine written by its foremost guru Lillian Too, etc...

There are many principles and beliefs that

go with feng shui.  Many that I can support

because they are common sense;

and many that I didn't or don't because as a Christian,

I do not believe in, nor worship, multiple gods,

nor do I participate any longer in letting crazy

man made superstitions, control me.

With that said, I did buy a big, fat, gold, laughing Buddha

statue and plop him on my cocktail table

because as soon as I saw him at the store,

I burst out laughing! 

He was delightfully gaudy and I smiled

or laughed every time

I looked at him!  That is always a healthy thing! 

I did not pray to him or worship him so I didn't see it

at that time, as a compromise to Christianity.

The major principle that I already supported,  

is that clutter in your living and work space,

will, lead to a cluttered mind and

by default, negatively impact your thoughts and energy. 

Thus, when I read this in my Lillian Too book,

I immediately felt vindicated about getting upset with my ex-fiancé for treating the dining room table like a junk drawer! 

He drove me nuts with this and the more cluttered he made it, the more terrible I felt to not have this beautiful table kept cleared, polished and with a vase of flowers in the center.  When it was cleared off, even without flowers,

I instantly felt much better! 

Another "feng shui" or common sense principle that I knew

to be correct was that when I worked in my home office

and the sun would be so bright as be blinding,

I had to adjust the blinds to block it out. 

Don't get me wrong, I love natural light, lots of it actually;

if you suffer from depression,

too much light is far better than too little light. 

However, just as a lack of sunlight will leave you listless,

you can also feel depleted when

blinded by super strong sunlight.

  Check it out for yourself;

I'm confident that you will see what I mean.

However, once I finally read the bible in 2015,

I had to ask myself:

 Did my fascination with feng shui slip
unwittingly into a form of idol worship,

even though I didn't pray to a Buddha statue,

multiple gods, or give up Christianity? 

In hindsight, I would have to say a sad and pathetic YES!,

that once I placed salt around the corners of the bedroom

for protection, I began a slow descent

that casually picked up great speed

(without me even realizing it!)

when I added the multiple symbols in and around

my home for good luck and protection,

such as feng shui money frogs,

a Wu Lu statue for protection,

a wind horse statue facing the front door

to welcome success riding in

and prayer flags on the outside of the house!

I absolutely, positively and quite stupidly,

 crossed a Christian line. 

It happened so gradually that I didn't even realize

how wrong I was; only after I completed my bible reading did I recognize how offended God must have been. 

Fortunately, I had already given most of it up a couple of years earlier, but this realization had me tossing out the 

3 remaining items that I had stored.

I also threw out an astrology book that I had been

gifted years earlier; I had always found it fascinating

but I never understood it, now I am glad.

As I read the Old Testament and the amazing things

to which the Israelites were first-hand witnesses,

such as the parting of the Red Sea,

quail and manna falling to the ground from heaven

to provide them with sustenance, etc...

they still strayed from God and did

the opposite of all that He commanded,

I couldn't believe their stupidity...

How easily we recognize sin in others,  

yet can remain so blind to our own.

Needless to say, I apologized to Him for my own,

and acknowledged just how deeply wrong I'd been.  

Looking back here with distance and clarity,

here is what I now realize:

Study feng shui long enough

and what it will teach you

is to become paranoid

about what type of plants

you keep, numbers,

which direction your stairs face

if near the front door, 

where you keep brooms and

which way they stand,

 and a host of other silly superstitions

such as shutting your toilet lid to prevent flushing away money and wealth!

Seriously, you aren't even allowed

to flush until the lid is closed

because of this feng shui belief.

 Now, it has been proven, fecal matter does spray out 

as a toilet flushes; so since that is as gross as it is unsanitary,

let that prevail as your incentive to close the lid

and then flush, because you don't want 

fecal matter on your toothbrushes.

Not because you think evil spirits are lurking

there to strip you of your money.

(Evil smells yes, but they can't touch your money!)

The other common sense reason I had already been a

"lid down" person is because when first out on my own, 

I knocked too many things off the sink into the toilet

that then had to go in the garbage.

Thus, it just makes sense to not waste money, items, and/or

in some cases, clog a toilet and create an

unnecessary and costly plumbing nightmare.

Plus, if you back up your toilet by knocking stuff in it,

and you only have the one toilet in your home,

you now have an additional, unnecessary problem.

I grew up Catholic and my family had our share of absurd

and silly superstitions that I have finally come to realize

are just as ungodly, such as:

don't open an umbrella indoors, it's bad luck,

breaking a mirror equals 7 years of bad luck,

if you spill salt, pitch a pinch over your shoulder, etc...

When you believe in the one true God,

you will not allow

your mind to accept

and live by

such human created falsities

that are anti-bible, life limiting

and controlling.

Green oxygen producing plants are touted in feng shui

but since they put oxygen into the atmosphere,

that's just a common sense gift from God that He intended!

In feng shui, plants with pointed leaves are bad

because they are "poison arrows";

as are sharp desk corners

and other equally absurd things like

the direction your neighbor's house

across the street from you sits! 

(And we all know how much control we have

over things like that...come on.) 

Bonsai plants represent stunted growth, etc...

The word for the number 4 sounds like the word for "death" in Chinese so the default position is that the number 4 is very bad.

The number 8 is shaped like the infinity symbol,

hence it is considered very good and people in Asia will actually pay out big money to get a license plate

that has only 8's or ends in 8's. 

Many years before I got into feng shui,

I created an email account. 

The one I wanted was unavailable so I picked

one of the alternates that just happened to have three 8's in it and I still have not won the lottery...so much for the luck of 8's!

Again, I agree with the importance of living clean and organized, but that is just common sense, not feng shui. 

If you allow numerous superstitions to control your behavior,

I asked you to please stop and think about them,

so you can stop them from doing so.

If you are a Christian, I ask you especially to

please stop and think about this article so that you

do not unwittingly offend God as I did.