Feng Shui

Feng Shui (literally “wind and water”) is the Chinese teaching, over 2,500 years old, of consciously shaping the living space – in such a way that favourable energy is strengthened and burdening energy lessened. At the Kyborg Institute we take Feng Shui seriously, but hold a clear, personal and worldview-based attitude: instead of adopting foreign dogmas, it is worth developing an independent, European Feng Shui.

What is Feng Shui – and why are the schools at odds?

Even within traditional Feng Shui there is no consensus: many rules are disputed between the masters, some things openly contradict one another. For us this is no flaw, but a hint – namely that it is a matter of grown experience, not of exact science. All other cultures too knew a conscious shaping of their buildings and sanctuaries; in Europe the Germanic and Celtic equivalents were largely lost with Christianisation, while Christian master builders later created orders of their own (one thinks of Versailles or Sanssouci).

Where does Feng Shui really come from? Vastu Shastra

According to our conviction, the origin lies not in China, but in the Indian Vastu Shastra – a very old teaching from the environment of the Veda. According to tradition, Bodhidharma brought Indian knowledge (Kundalini Yoga, Vastu Shastra, Buddhism) to China. There, however, it was reinterpreted in the sense of the local culture: out of a spiritual path directed at inner perfection and karma-ethics there became an above all pragmatic-mental system aimed at success and effect.

“The closer one comes to the source, the clearer the water becomes!”

Whoever wants to understand Feng Shui therefore looks better at its Indian root than at holding the Chinese end-product to be the original.

Can Chinese Feng Shui be applied in Europe?

Only to a limited extent. Much in traditional Feng Shui is closely bound to 2,500 years of Chinese way of life – to a different morality, a different pragmatism, a different taste. A direct transfer often leads to exotic solutions without practical use.

This becomes especially clear in the teaching of colours: colours are assigned to fixed compass directions, faculties and organs. A house consistently furnished “correctly” can, to Western sensibility, seem inhospitable or garish. Our measure is a different one:

“We need a Feng Shui knowledge that recognises, respects and fosters our Western needs and interests.”

Which practical rules work everywhere?

Some recommendations are sensible across cultures, simply because they have to do with well-being and common sense:

• To have something beautiful in view – for instance the view into a garden – and at the same time to be able to see the entrance (one feels safe).
• To provide for good ventilation; to close off kitchen smells and the bathroom spatially.
• To bring life into the room with plants and water – symbols of vitality and abundance, in which psychology and Feng Shui meet.

Such rules one may confidently apply. The decisive thing is to proceed with patience and a fine feeling rather than with rigid tables.

The tradition of the masters – regarded with a sense of proportion

Traditional Feng Shui is in many cases a secret teaching, bound to families and schools. The actual reasons for a recommendation are rarely disclosed – this creates dependence. According to our own experiences, the master scene is moreover strongly marked by competition and status thinking; that belongs to it within this cultural frame, but has for us little to do with lived spirituality.

From our point of view, Feng Shui has little to do with a free, independent and quite personal development of the individual.

It is also told, in these traditions, that criticism of a master could have consequences “on the mental level”. We render this expressly as cultural tradition, not as a demonstrable fact, and certainly not in order to make fear. Our conclusion from it is a constructive one: whoever is strong in themselves does not make themselves dependent on such dependencies in the first place. More reliable than a highly decorated school affiliation is, for us in any case, personal fine feeling and independence.

Our way: a European Feng Shui

Instead of copying foreign dogmas, we argue for schooling one’s own perception. For:

“It is not we who are a product of the environment, but our environment is a product of our thoughts and feelings! We shape this world according to our consciousness!”

And because perception is practice, the following holds for us:

“Every kind of intellectual study removes us from our own intuition rather than bringing it closer to us.”

The aim is that everyone informs themselves well, trains their sensitive perception and then shapes their own ground or their own home according to their own inner needs – freely and without master-dependence.

How does one school one’s own perception?

Helpful ways are, in our experience, pranayama (conscious breathing), meditation and Energytraining (see methods); for the harmonisation of the space a Horus energy pyramid can contribute. This is a spiritual suggestion, no promise of healing. Related background knowledge is offered by the lexicon under energy, chakra and esotericism.

Note: This article renders a personal, worldview-based view and is not medical advice.

Autor: D. Harald Alke