Fu Hsi was a philosopher who later became emperor of China. He also is known as the father of feng shui as we know it today because he used the energetic principles and applied them to buildings and dwellings. Feng shui is the arranging of items in areas of your home to create the most balance with the energy within. This balance also takes into the consideration the elements, the directions, and the energy of the people who live within the home. There is also a map, called a bagua map, which correlates each section of the home with different areas of your life.

Why would you want to do feng shui in your home? Everything has energy. The energy of the land, the energy of the belongings in your home, the energy of the people who lived in your home or worked in your building prior to you, has the tendency to affect the environment. You want to clear out all negative or unnecessary energy that is in the spaces you inhabit, and create a loving, energy free-flowing environment. Feng shui helps you to do so.

There are many different skill sets involved with feng shui, and it can take years to learn them all masterfully. The purpose of this blog post is to provide you with some quick tips to help get the energy moving freely throughout your home. If you feel this is too monumental a task, start with the room in which you spend the most time, or start with the room which is for the area in your life you want to work on first. Some people would want to work in the relationship corner first, some people may think the abundance corner is more important. Whichever you decide, start with baby steps.

First, clear the energy of the room. I would put down sea salt on the floor overnight and sweep it up the next day and throw it out. Then set to cleaning up the room, decluttering, throwing out anything that is unneccessary and organizing what is left. I would also take a hand bell and ring it throughout the room to clear the energy . Then next thing I would do is to bring in a plant that best suits the area. A money plant, a pointy leaf plant, a bushy leaf plant - you can look up which is best for the specific area you are clearing. I would also decorate the room to balance the look, trying to represent earth, air, water, fire, metal, and wood.

There are plenty of books and websites to help, the most important tip I would give is to start small, and if you get overwhelmed, do it in small chunks. There are different schools of thought (as with most things) with the bagua map, and which items work best for specific intentions. Do what resonates with you. Most of all, have fun with it. You certainly don't want to be putting frustrated energy into the clearing of your home.

Here are some quick tips:

~ put some sea salt in a small bowl and place in rooms to clear the energy. Throw out salt and replace every 2 months.

~ if you have a water feature like a fountain, fish tank filter, or even a waterfall for a pond you have outside, make sure the water is flowing towards the middle of the house. Water represents money and abundance, you want that energy flowing in, not out.

~ if your bathroom is in your abundance corner, be sure to put stones (pretty decorative ones are available at home stores and maybe even Target or Walmart) in the sink and put the lid down on the toilet when you flush it.

~ fill your bathroom with live plants

~ have fresh cut flowers and plants throughout your home to brighten the energy

~ on your desk, put fresh cut flowers to the left of you and your phone or cell phone to the right of you to bring in more clients, money, abundance, etc.

~ make sure your front door entry (the outside and inside) is clean and free of debris.

~ make sure your back door entry (the outside and inside) is clean and free of debris

~ make sure you can open all doors all the way open, with nothing blocking the way (jackets or robes hanging on hooks or things behind the door)

~ mirrors are great for dark or small rooms, do not place them directly opposite a door or window, avoid mirrors opposite one another, keep mirrors in the bedroom to a minimum, if you have stairs that lead to the front door, put a convex mirror above the door.

~ hang wind chimes by your front door to disperse chi. If the wind doesn't  blow them, make them chime yourself as you walk in and out the door.

Below is a sample diagram of the bagua map that I use from feng-shui-vibes.com:

Good luck and have fun!

Blessings and Love,

Crystal

Reincarnation and Karma ~ March 24, 2013


I have always been one to believe in reincarnation. I don't really know why, it just made sense to me and therefore resonated well with me. I never understood the dynamics of it, but even as a young child I believed that I lived prior lives before. Growing up, I even had "dreams" or perhaps recollections of these prior lives, sometimes as men, sometimes as children, sometimes as older women. I don't know how to explain how these dreams just "felt" different than others, therefore I knew they were glimpses from past lives. I have read about lots of different accounts of reincarnation and watched videos or news reports about people who remembered uncanny facts about their past lives. I even read Edgar Cayce's transcriptions of his recordings regarding past lives and how sometimes the same people would come into a new lifetime with different roles with one another. It wasn't until I started studying Kaballah that I started questioning certain actions and karma and reincarnation. I have always been apt to over think things, and sometimes that makes me skeptical about a lot of things. There have been many occasions where I look at the facts on both sides and honestly don't know what to believe so I walk away with uncertainty about a subject matter. I have had many discussions with well-read and very spiritual people who all have their own theories about reincarnation and karma. When I read about different scenarios of karma and reincarnation in my Kaballah studies, it made me question the cycle of things and why they happen.

Consider the story told in both Yehuda Berg's and Karen Berg's books about a student who asks his teacher about karma. The teacher tells his student that if he wants to learn about karma, to go and sit by the tree across from the bench in the park. The student goes and soon sees a man sit down on the bench with a brown paper bag. The man looks at his watch, quickly gets up, alarmed, and takes off leaving the brown paper bag on the bench. Another man comes along, sees the brown paper bag, opens it up and pulls out wads of money. He is surprised and takes the paper bag and goes running away. A third man comes along and sits on the bench. The first man comes back with a look of worry on his face and starts yelling at the man on the bench and asks him the whereabouts of his paper bag. The third man states he knows nothing about a bag, but the first man beats him up anyway.

The student goes back to his teacher and tells him of the day's events. He tells his teacher that he does not understand what a man losing his money, another man taking what is not his, and a third one getting wrongly accused and beaten for it has to do with karma. The teacher replied, "Ahh, but you see , in a past life the first man stole money from the second man and the third man was the judge who declared the first man innocent."

A good story; however, it leaves me with questions. The first one being: Does this make them all even? Will these men cross paths in a future life and have karmic repercussions that have to do with taking money that does not belong to them and for beating up an innocent man? Does the cycle continue? Who determines when all is even? God? Is there a special angelic committee? Is there reincarnation for every wrong you have ever made in each life and you have to come back to fix them all? Is there an age cutoff when transgressions start to count? If we can ask for forgiveness of our sins, like some religions believe, then do we still have karmic lessons in the next life? I am sure I won't find the answers to these questions while still in our earthly form, but it sure is interesting to ponder these questions. It is for me anyway.

What are your thoughts, Readers?

Thanks for reading my rambling...

Blessings to you,

Crystal

Grief is an interesting topic for me. I know that people grieve differently and that people react to grief differently as well. I have actually started and stopped this blog about grief several times over the last few months
and I am finally ready to finish it. I have often reflected as to why it was so hard for me to write about something so common. We all have dealt with grief; it is part of our human experience. Through the passing of a loved one, a deep loss or disappointment, grief is definitely one of the heaviest feelings that we can have. I think my avoidance of finishing this had to do with avoiding that heavy feeling.

 As a lightworker, I don’t do heavy well. But that is the point that I want to embrace in this blog post. We HAVE to do something about our grief. We HAVE to work through it and look it in the face in order to process it. There are people who like to be alone with their grief and people who like to share with others at their time of sadness. Some people are really good at coming around and being there because of the basic human need to want to “do
something” to help during a crisis, but many times the person who is grieving is not thought about months later when some of the deeper need for healing is happening. Other people are not so good at coming around because they do not know what to do or say or perhaps they do not want to intrude on a private time.

I never seem to know what to do when a friend or colleague of mine is going through grief. I may ask them how they are doing, but if they don’t want to share or are evasive, I don’t pursue the conversation. Perhaps this is because of the way I deal with my personal business. I am a very private person when it comes to serious matters, so I would rather be alone or with my immediate family members at that time. As a result, I really don’t know what to do other than pray when it is someone else who is not immediate family going through grief. 

As a teacher, over the years, I have had students lose a parent and I have had students pass. In the times when I had a student lose a parent, I just held that child as long as I could and cried with him or her. Having students pass is hard. Teachers all call their students their “kids”.Most of us really feel that way too. They are our kids. Most of the time, we don’t have a relationship with the family, so it is hard to do more than give our condolences. Without knowing the family or the dynamics of the family, many teachers want to do more, but are afraid to overstep our boundaries.

 Recently, my niece that was involved in a tragic accident. She and her family were hit by an ambulance that did not have its lights going and it ran a stop sign and hit her at a high speed. She was pregnant and due to be induced in two weeks. She has extensive injuries to both arms, lost a massive amount of blood, and had to have an emergency c-section. The baby died. 

The grief around this is tremendous. It is for her, for us as  family, and for the ambulance driver. Over the past few days, I have witnessed some interesting ways people deal with the grief. Of course, my sister, who is
one of the strongest women I know, was immediately here from Georgia and helping at the hospital. My sister’s sister, who has unfortunately been through a similar horrific accident, also came down. My niece has had her three Aunts,  whom she never has had in the same room, other than a holiday, at the same time
helping her with different things. We all bring separate strengths with us. We joke with her that she now has three witches with separate powers by her side.

During this time, I have noticed how different people are reacting. Coming from a place of no judgment and just observing, I have noticed how this grief has touched certain people. I see it in the hospital staff and doctors that were in the ER and worked on her and the baby. I see it in the way the nurses lovingly deal with her and speak to her. I feel the grief of the ambulance driver every time I tune in to him. He immediately ran over to my niece and got in the truck with her and stayed there until help came. She said he kept apologizing and when she told him she was pregnant he started crying.

Different people are grieving in different ways. There are people who have not shown up to see her at the hospital since she has been conscious, people who really should be there, and there are people who have been there every day with her. There are people she hasn’t seen in a long time coming in to see her. The media
has been ridiculous, but when asking her how private she wanted to keep things, she said that the media already told the world about everything, she just wanted to make sure everybody knew it was not her fault and she did nothing wrong. The poor kid.

Of course, there are the people who tend to say the wrong things.  I think if my niece hears “things happen for a reason” one more time, she may scream. This is part of the process. We talked to her about people coming from
the right place but saying or doing hurtful things and how to cope. She has a lot of healing to do in the days ahead. She still has a funeral to plan for a baby she hasn’t even held.

Grief. I think that prior to this incident, I was not ready to finish this blog because I had not yet come to a conclusion with which I was comfortable. I think that if somebody is grieving, reach out to them. Let them know you care. If you can’t be there, call. Send a card. Send an email. Send a message via another loved one. Say a prayer. Offer to watch the kids, take the dog out. Ask what you can do. Sometimes all there is for you to do is hold space. However, if you feel the need to run away and avoid the situation, reflect on why and come to terms with it; especially if it is an immediate family member that is affected. That person needs you and the other family members do too.

You truly learn a person’s heart and what they are made of when there is a crisis. What is it that you are made of?


Blessings, my friends.


~Crystal