Feng Shui and Energy Flow

The Feng Shui of Abundance
by Suzan Hilton

Money is more than a bank balance; it's a reflection of the overall abundance in your life. Now, a CPA and feng shui practitioner presents an unusual and valuable application of the ancient Eastern tradition of feng shui. Delving into all of the life forces that affect financial health, The Feng Shui of Abundance is not just a monetary makeover; it is a whole-being program whose benefits include:

• Locating the wealth area of your office or home
• Dislodging clogged energy in your career
• Drawing on the five currents of the "River of Gold" to address debt, personal spending, and your own potential for abundance
• Creating a financial plan that speaks to your dreams and desires

A liberating book for those who feel financially "trapped," and for anyone who wants to achieve his or her potential, The Feng Shui of Abundance incorporates all three feng shui aspects - wind, water, and energy - unleashing the forces that control true wealth, creating clearer harmony between your money, goals, and dreams. This is the perfect handbook for anyone seeking genuine peace of mind as well as financial prosperity.

Everything — everything in the universe — vibrates at its own frequency. Colors, chairs, tables, people, dreams, and longings — all are in continuous motion, though it may not be visible to the naked eye. How can I say that? Well, scientists have recorded the vibrational frequency of many if not most things: light and sound frequencies in ranges we can see and hear, visible and infrared light, radio frequencies, X rays, chemicals using spectroscopy, tuning forks . . . the list goes on. Perhaps you remember the recording of the vibrations made during the earthquake in the Seattle area in 2001 — a pendulum suspended in sand drew a rose pattern, and beauty emerged from the shifting of the earth itself.

Feng shui recognizes that everything vibrates and focuses on encouraging harmony among the various vibrations by creating alignment. Creating harmony is about singing the same tune as the things surrounding you and as your dreams and heart longings. That like attracts like, vibrating at similar frequencies, creating resonance between the objects, is a basic scientific statement and a major step toward manifesting your heart's desires. Picture people singing "Auld Lang Syne" on the Fourth of July with the fireworks in full display. Seems a bit off to me! There is no harmony between the holiday and the music; they are out of alignment. Yet when you're in harmony and alignment, your River of Gold flows peacefully, you move with ease and comfort, and wealth and abundance flows to you.

Abundance has a particular vibration, a signature energy field. Learning to resonate in harmony with anything leads to both more flow and more energy between you and your focus. Coming into resonance with the vibration of abundance opens the flow in your life so your heart's desires flow to you.

Resonance, in electronics, is the condition of adjusting a circuit to allow the greatest flow of current of a certain frequency. In physics, it is the reinforced vibration of a body exposed to the vibration at about the same frequency as another body. Used here, resonance is allowing the vibration of a certain frequency to match the frequency in your body, your space, and your life. Resonating in harmony with the frequency of abundance leads to more money and a greater sense of financial freedom. My goal is to enhance your abundance as open-hearted energy. Now what does that mean? Open-hearted means being in tune with your values, in alignment with your deep inner guidance, knowing what you value with your most positive emotions and thoughts, and knowing what brings you joy as you create abundance.

Feng shui is based on noticing where energy is felt on the land and in a building or a room — your physical environment. Wealth and abundance have a different vibration from relationships, career, or family. You'll come to know this in your body and your environment as we continue on this journey. There is a natural order and flow in life that includes a sense of abundance. Consider how many leaves are on one tree. Now think about how many trees you see in a week's time. In the middle of winter you can still remember the leaves that were there last summer. Acknowledging the cycles of the seasons reminds us that patterns and changes are a natural part of life. Feng shui connects you to the harmonious patterns and gives you reminders before you go too far in any one direction. Remembering and experiencing abundance in one area of your life creates a pattern, an energy field, that you can use to experience abundance in other areas of your physical environment and your life.

Feng Shui

More money is about more flow — economic flow. Wealth and abundance are about accumulating part of that flow. Let's cut to the chase: Does feng shui really work for enhancing money flow and accumulation? There is only one way to know: results. In the end, it is the final outcome, the results, that determine whether it's thumb's up or not. The bottom line: Everything gets reduced to one simple answer: more money or not; yes or no.

Surprised that an accountant would use the term "bottom line" and focus on results? I hope not. I love the warm, sensitive aspects of life, and I also appreciate having real money to spend and invest. Balancing both leads to floating with ease on the River of Gold and enjoying the abundance I desire.

Why would an accountant approach money from a feng shui focus? Because it actually works! Feng shui reveals what and how you think about money, and the flow of economic energy in your life, themes that are covered in detail in Chapters 2 and 3 and woven throughout the book. There are suggested changes, called "cures" in classical feng shui, to enhance your life and to produce results. Changing your environment eases the path to changing your thoughts and actions and experiencing more abundance in your life. What and how you think about money, the thoughts you hear yourself say and those that just flow out of your stream of consciousness show up in your physical environment. What you truly believe about yourself and your relationship to abundance is reflected in the setup of your physical environment. Strange as it may seem, where you choose to physically place your possessions reveals your relationship with money. Things are symbols and give a message each time you look at them. You also issued a message when you placed the physical objects and when you agreed to occupy the spaces you live and work in. We literally mirror our environments. Like attracts like and vibrates in harmony. The mystical actually influences the practical.

Feng shui can be a rich and somewhat complicated philosophy taking years to master, yet the basics can be understood in a few minutes. The first concept to be aware of is the nine areas in both your physical environment and your life.

Your Wealth and Abundance area is one of the nine. Chapter 2 covers this in detail.

The other areas are

• Fame and Reputation
• Marriage and Relationships
• Creativity, Children, and Projects
• Helpful People, Travel, and Angels (Benefactors)
• Career and Life Path
• Self-Knowledge and Wisdom
• Ancestors and Family
• Health and Unity

We will also discuss the concepts of ch'i (chee), breath or energy and its flow, yin and yang, and the Five Elements. All of these forces affect the nine areas.

A basic idea that permeates feng shui is that your home and work space represent your life and mirror what you think and experience. Changing your physical environment will change your life. This will become much clearer as we proceed. Understanding the message comes through the language of symbols. The words we use, orally or on paper, are symbols of something real, some object, mark, or experience. Rather than carrying around these physical things and showing them to one another, we use symbols to communicate. We also use symbols to communicate what is abstract and intangible. Metaphors and poetic language are especially useful here, and they are used throughout this book. Physical things have a double meaning, that of the thing itself and then a message that depends on its placement in your space. Sometimes the message is right in front of us and we misinterpret it, until we check our results. For now, just notice the results.

Here's an example: My Wealth Area in a former home was 90 percent windows. Too many windows allow energy to leak out. I had hung crystals in the windows when I first moved in, a classic feng shui cure, assuming that that was enough to contain the energy flowing out. I also have always shared my time and abundance very easily and freely. I was the person you could always count on to volunteer to help, from decorating Christmas trees for a charity to dropping everything to meet an unexpected friend at the airport. The year I was bitten by a poisonous spider and nearly died, I began to reexamine my life. One day I realized that I literally gave myself away, expecting nothing in return. Energy and money just flowed out of my life. It was then that I truly saw the significance of the wall of windows. I immediately closed the lower shades and rehung the window coverings on the corner windows in my Wealth Area to hold more energy inside. Within a week I received four checks. My new motto? "How can I honor my self and share my time and energy, so that I also benefit from the flow?" Quite a radical shift!

Copyright © 2001 by Suzan Hilton, CPA. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Suzan Hilton is a former certified public accountant who worked her way up from small accounting firms to large international ones. She now works with people to transform their homes and office spaces. Hilton lives just outside of Portland, Oregon.