12 Feng Shui New Year Tips!

The events that occur on New Years Day may have an impact on the rest of the year so be careful with your words, your deeds, what you eat and whom you greet.

  1. Don’t wash your hair or you will wash away any good luck for the new year
  2. Wear brand new clothes Wear the color red for joy and happiness.
  3. Don’t wear white or black as they are colors of mourning.
  4. Greet your relatives, neighbors, and friends and wish them well.
  5. Don’t greet people in mourning.
  6. Give red envelopes with lucky money to children and unmarried people.
  7. Don’t sweep the floor or clean or you may sweep away your luck.
  8. Don’t say the number “four” (which sounds like the Chinese word for death) Don’t mention death or tell ghost stories.
  9. Don’t cook.
  10. Don’t use knives or scissors or you may cut off fortune.
  11. Don’t lend money or you will be lending all year.
  12. Don’t borrow money.

Are you wearing the best colors for you? According to the ancient art of Feng Shui, each of us has a power color based on the five elements and the day you were born. Sign up for my email list and provide me the day, month, year of your birth and I will send you your birth element and power color!

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Inner Flame

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October is my favorite month. In the Roman calendar, octo, Latin for eight, was actually the eighth month, but the Gregorian calendar, instituted by Pope Gregory XIII established January as the first month of the year, making October the tenth.

The leaves are changing colors; the weather is cooling off; football is in full swing; Halloween decorations are going up and I am going to celebrate another rotation around the sun. October is my birthday month and I get to blow out a candle.

Candles on birthday cakes derived from an ancient practice. Birthday celebrations began as a way of recognizing the spirit that comes to life with each soul born. Originally, there was only a single candle representing individual life no matter what the age of the celebrant might be. The single flame symbolized the inner spirit and natural, shining genius that enters the world at the birth of each child. The flame of inner intelligence burns at the center of the soul and would light a path through this uncertain world. The single candle was lit to remind everyone of the invisible fire at the core of each life and birthday gifts were not given to the person, but to the spirit born within them.

In this old sense, a birthday serves as a reminder that each person is already gifted – each having an inner genius and some God-given gifts to bring to life. One’s birthday involved a return to the mystery of oneself and a reminder of the inner flame of one’s life. The point wasn’t simply to make a wish, but also to consider what the candle of each life burns for. When the candle was blown out it was said that the rising of the smoke could carry prayers for the spirit of the celebrant to the heavens above.

I am a disciple of myth, a servant of stories, and strangely a devotee of the notion that the soul is threaded through with a plotline from the beginning that aims at a destiny that might be possible to find before the end. For life is an eternal story, a mythic drama that begins again each time a soul enters the world. This year on my birthday I am going to contemplate the candle on my cake, my inner flame and what my life burns for. Through meditation and prayer, I will begin this quest by seeking the counsel of my soul. The soul is a kind of ancient library that holds the exact knowledge we seek and need most. Call it an inner spirit, the great soul or deep self, the inner genius or divine twin. It has many names but each refers to the older wiser self. We may enter paths where others have found meaning and even transcended; that’s a good way to begin a quest. But in order to answer the question of our own lives, we must risk taking our own steps. The only genuine safety in this world comes from risking oneself completely in order to become oneself more fully.

Moses began being Moses when he was placed in a basket and given to the river of life. Later, he knew how to part the waters and lead others from bondage to safety. Buddha had to find a way to go between the two great religions of his time because he could not go along with either of them. Each of these men became a prophet in their own way and each is remembered for the way they became themselves.
Those who learn to paint like Da Vinci imitate a master; yet as long as their own inner mastery remains unknown, they are imposters. They may grow by following the brushstrokes of an original but only become themselves by grasping their own originality.

So, this year, when I blow out my candle you will know exactly what I am wishing for, searching for and hoping to find…me.

Changing

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“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” ~Anatole France

My doctor says I need to change my eating habits, my husband says I need to change the way I interact with him, my fat butt says I need to change my workout routine, and I think I need to change my approach to God. I continually tackle life with habitual attitudes while expecting outcomes to be different. The outcomes don’t seem to change. Not simply doing things differently but becoming a different person, both more aware within and more alert in life is really what I am attempting to accomplish.

It seems that changing doesn’t happen simply because a person joins a movement or converts to some form of faith. Those things can help; they can widen one’s perspective and bring you to the banks of the flowing river of life. Yet the baptism takes place under the water and no one actually sees the change that occurs.

In ancient India hunters developed a proven method for catching monkeys. A big coconut would be hollowed out. Then a hole was made in it; just large enough to allow the monkeys paw to pass through. The coconut would then be pinned to the ground and some tempting fruit would be placed inside the hollowed shell.

Inevitably, a monkey would approach the shell and want the fruit. As soon as the paw of the monkey grabbed the fruit, he was trapped because the fist and the fruit were too big to go through the opening in the shell. In order to become free of the trap all the monkey had to do was let go of the prize it coveted so much. But, the monkey would not let go. The monkey was trapped by what it desired and held onto. I think a lot of us are like these monkeys. Some of us stay trapped and imprisoned, caught by a narrow desire, and also by a fierce and blind unwillingness to simply let go of what we’ve held to be necessary or important.

Many take hold of something and refuse to let go, even when they become stuck in one place, even if they can’t taste the sweetness they first reached for in life. Some hold onto another person and refuse to let go; others take up an idea, a political belief or a religious notion that was supposed to set them free. After a time, they become trapped inside narrowing ideas or rigid rules. Soon they are caught in a trap made of their beliefs.

Change is hard because we hold onto what keeps us from changing; because freedom feels like losing something that we are used to clinging to; because real change means that we would no longer desire what is trapping us.

Genuine change involves pain just as birth involves labor. Many come to prefer the pain that they know to a birth that they can’t control.

There are many religions and philosophies that promise to end the piercing troubles and deadening habits if you only believe in them. However, belief in a spiritual experience of others can only act as an inspiration. In order to truly change we must let go of our habitual ways of being and cut off that which otherwise seems natural and common to the rest of us.

Wisdom is always valuable because it remains hard to find; it hides where most people prefer not to go. Wisdom and true freedom are found when we submit to the way we are intended to go and surrender to the mysterious ways we are intended to grow.

Like Leo Tolstoy said, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

This summer it’s time for me to start changing me.

Men and Meditation

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The average American man works an average of 8.73 hours per day and according to a new study published in The Lancet, most men are also under “job strain,” or stressed out. The findings also showed that men who experienced job stress have a 29 percent greater chance of developing heart disease. Stress, which increases your blood pressure, could lead to a long list of other heart-damaging side effects, researchers explain.

If you can’t control your workload, you can beat the harmful effects of stress by developing a simple meditation practice.
People who meditate have fewer doctor visits and can lower their blood pressure, cholesterol, and stress hormones. They have less heart disease, less depression, and increased confidence. They are calmer and for reasons still unknown, mediation seems to slow down the aging process.

Meditation is essentially deep relaxation. It’s a distinct way of learning how to be present from moment to moment and offers us a way to turn inward to find a calm and quiet place. Mediation is the awareness of the flow of reality, space and time. Unlike philosophy, which strives to achieve order through mental reasoning alone, mediation looks for a deep acceptance; a knowing that comes from the mind.

Like learning any new skill, meditation takes practice. Try setting aside five minutes a day at first, then after a few days increase your meditation practice to 10 minutes, then 15. Twenty minutes is proven to be enough time for the stress-reducing benefits of meditation.

Here are a few simple steps:

  1. Find a comfortable place to sit. Make sure that your back is straight and upright so that your attention can be on your practice and not on the pain in your back.
  2. Set a time period. Like learning any new skill, meditation takes practice. Try five minutes a day at first, then after a few days increase your meditation practice to 10 minutes, then 15. Twenty minutes is proven to be enough time for the stress-reducing benefits of mediation.
  3. Eliminate distractions. Turn off your phone, computer, anything that will ask for your attention.
  4. Set your focus. It is important to have a solid focus point – your breath and to have a word that your breath into and a word that you breathe out. Perhaps breath into “So” and breath out to “Hum.” It really doesn’t matter what word or mantra you focus on, but you need to have something to return to when your mind gets hijacked with thoughts, and you will get hijacked.
  5. Begin. Close your eyes, set your focus, breath in and out to your mantra, your mind gets hijacked, release those thoughts and return to your breath.
  6. Develop a practice. Schedule mediation into your busy schedule and honor that daily appointment.

Are you wearing the best colors for you? According to the ancient art of Feng Shui, each of us has a power color based on the five elements and the day you were born. Sign up for my email list and provide me the day, month, year of your birth and I will send you your birth element and power color!

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A Life Well Lived

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A mother of a dear friend of mine died recently. As Cathy, my friend courageously stopped life support on Carol her mother, I witnessed Carol’s children, grandchildren and close friends come together to share heart warming and hysterical stories of a life well lived. This scene reminded me of a childhood story.

Sebastian, an old Priest lay on his deathbed. He was a holy man who had studied scholarly texts and taught others for years. He had become widely known and greatly respected. More than that, he was revered and loved by his students.

Now that his time had come, his faithful students gathered around to share in his final moments. With characteristic honestly, the old teacher told his students the truth of the situation, he was afraid to die. “I am afraid,” he said, “of God’s final justice. I fear I will be punished in the world to come.”

The students were shocked and began to reassure their teacher: “Father, you are a pure and righteous man, what do you have to fear in facing God?”

With his final breath Sebastian replied to his students, “I am not afraid that God will ask me, “Sebastian why were you not more like Abraham? Why were you not more like Moses? I can honestly say that I did not have the god-given abilities of Abraham or the talents of Moses. But if God asks me, “Sebastian why were you not more like Sebastian? For that I have to answer!” In so saying the old priest passed into the world that waits beyond this one.

Death, they used to say, is a great teacher and often a great teacher will use their own death as a final lesson on life. The final exam turns out to have but a single question and it involves the specifics of life rather than some generalities of religion or philosophy. People ask: What is the meaning of life? They believe there is some general answer. A better question would be: What is the meaning in my life? While you had a chance to live, did you become your true self? Having received the gift of life, did you learn the nature of your gifts and the purpose of them? Have you lived the life that was given to you or substituted some general model or abstract idea?

When it comes to the question of whether or not you have become yourself, there is no way to cheat; there are no excuses and no big reprieves. There is no higher authority to call upon; for the final exam is not about the things outside oneself. Those who believe the answers are “outside there somewhere” are in for a shock when the final question asks who they are within themselves. The answer to the question of life was hidden inside the questioner all along.

The qualification for entering the after-life do not derive so much from following rules and obeying commandments. We qualify for the next world by living uniquely and creatively in this one. When someone’s life becomes meaningful to them their death will have meaning to others.

The saints and prophets, the great philosophers and wise teachers may be proper models for finding the paths of discovery, but each life must eventually become a revelation of itself. Simply imitating a Moses or Jesus, or a Mohammed doesn’t satisfy the question that the divine has for each soul. Living by religious rules and precepts may open a path of learning, but in the end no outer model can lead us all the way to becoming who we are at the core of ourselves.

Seen this way, the final judgement will not pivot upon doctrines or dogmas; for there is no theory or system that can substitute for a life unlived, for a story undeveloped, for a fate not faced, for a destiny not embraced. That’s the final lesson, the last word, and essential wisdom that the good preist was honest enough to communicate with his final breath and Carol was able to prove with her life, well lived.

Michelle Cromer