Feng Shui: a New Age Scam or a True Philosophy?

I am not an expert in Feng Shui. I really don’t believe it is possible for a Westerner to BE an expert in Feng Shui. Feng Shui is a Chinese philosophy. It is totally Eastern in nature and, therefore, not easy to understand in our minds.
A friend of mine went to school in Boston to be a Feng Shui Decorator. She has since redecorated many apartments and homes and oriented them to help the Chi flow correctly. She fuses with colors and she adds elements to the areas that are supposed to make the room more balanced. She brings in plants, hangs wind chimes and moves lights. When she is finished, she burns a small bundle of herbs to “cleanse the air”, hands them her bill and moves on to the next person. Hopefully, what she does actually helps but how do we really know? Do you learn enough in a week’s classroom experience to change the energies in a person’s life for the better? I don’t know. I know that when you believe in something it seems to work. Maybe that is all that is required.
Feng Shui began in China a long, long time ago. It was originally used to orient buildings in an auspicious manner. The determining factors were water, stars, compass. Historically, it has been used over 3500 years. There are several schools of Feng Shui.
By using the elements of Feng Shui to organize your home and other elements of your life, you can attract good energy to you. The right balances of harmony affect our work and our rest. It is important to bring auspicious energies into your home and work place so that inauspicious energies can be repelled. By Feng Shui we use the elements to do this.
• Wood
• Water
• Fire
• Earth
• Metalr
How we use these elements in our environment decides what energies come into our lives. Some Feng Shui practitioners use a BAGUA or a map of Feng Shui to know where they should place objects in a room. The Bagua is divided into 9 areas to represent the 9 areas of our lives. A house also has a Gua. It is divided into 8 different areas.
Feng Shui really is the philosophy that we should live with nature instead of living against nature. The philosophy also says that our physical and mental being is affected by our environs. Surrounding ourselves with nature, beauty, music, and other good things, we negate the influence of negative things in our lives. Although people learn the fundamentals of Feng Shui and try to practice them it takes a true master to be able to walk into an environment and know whether or not the energies are flowing correctly. A true master has special metaphysical senses that have been honed over a long period of time. This is not something that can be taught or learned.
Before you try to practice Feng Shui you must decide which school of thought to follow.
• Compass School of thought
• Eight Mansion School of thought
• Form School of thought
• Black Hat Sect
• Nine Star Key School of thought
• Flying Star School of thought
• Four Pillars School of thoughtr
You can see why it is important to investigate each school of thought separately and thoroughly. If someone tells you they have been to school to become a Feng Shui Master, you can tell them that it would take many, many years of study and immersion in the philosophy for them to be a master. Claiming to be an expert at Feng Shui is one of the New Age scams that are perpetrated on unsuspecting people who want to believe that being more holistic and esoteric will make their lives better. Most of these people know just a little about a lot of the things that make up Feng Shui. Those of us from the West will never understand everything there is to know about Eastern thought and philosophy because our brains are just not wired that way. We have been brought up to be more cerebral and have difficulty accepting things we cannot explain. However, it has worked well for over 3500 years so I think it must be accepted.