Cover Artist: Gerhard Hillmann
Title: African Tulip 2007
Medium: Photo Montage
Website: www.naturesface.com.au
Your Feng Shui Connection with Nature
Feng Shui practitioners use a number of different approaches to connect with the ‘energies’ or ‘feel’ the place and fine-tune it to make the environment work for those living or working there. When we purchase a house or move into an apartment our first concerns are likely to be the number of bedrooms, the size of the kitchen and
the condition of the building. Rarely do we choose a home on the basis of its garden even though it plays an essential role in the first impression you get from the place.
It is often in your garden that you connect with nature, and correct the imbalance created by the frantic pace of modern living.
People are drawn to a garden by their emotions, memories and five senses. The more these triggers are incorporated in the garden, the stronger your relationship is to it and the more effective your harmonising experience will be. Visualise what you experienced as a child or reconnect with a place that most captivated you in your travels and create this in your own garden. No matter the climate, the plants or the spaces you have to work with, there are always methods of capturing elements of those special places and memories.
Sight and Colour
Vision is the most utilised sense. In designing the landscape with Feng Shui principles, incorporate plants that have the resident energy of the land and climate. Select a colour-coordinated palette of flowers that pleases you, though it is still important to retain the intrinsic balance of Yin and Yang (soft and small plants are Yin while high plants and trees are considered Yang).
Taste
Adding food and herb plants to your garden brings added dimension. Growing your own food in an organic veggie garden is the only guarantee that you can get the freshest, purest food to nourish your body. Herbs are particularly powerful plants to include in your garden, and for those living in a unit it is always possible to grow them in pots on your kitchen windowsill.
Sound
The use of water and soft sound wind chimes are highly pleasing.
Being greeted by the sound of water welcomes you home. Other lyrics come with the songs of the birds and bees visiting your garden; attract them with a birdbath or a tasteful water feature and flowers.
Touch
Touch can be experienced through your hands and through your eyes. Big bold textured plants represent Yang energies while finer, smaller plants represent Yin. Balance is the choreography between them. Tactile plants encourage a physical interaction and foster a connection with the plant kingdom.
Smell and Fragrances
Our primal sense is smell: memories are triggered most by the smells of our past. In addition to planting flowers with the fragrances you love, also plant with fragrances that create balance as suggested by aromatherapy.
Always avoid: dying plants, cactus and spiky leafed plants near the entrance; too many empty pots; statues of single women; broken items; stagnant and dirty water. It is essential to change and renew the water in your birdbath regularly!
Important: if you decide to get rid of a tree or a plant, ask permission to the spirit of the land, explain the reason for your decision.
If you go ahead, also remove the root system hidden in the soil; the soul of the plant or tree will re-incarnate in the same area of your garden in the new plants or a young tree.
Suggestions for Feng Shui enhancements:
- A few pots with healthy plants for focus
- A small and tasteful collection of art works for achievement
- Light to illuminate pathways and activate Chi in the surroundings
- Fountain and water features for abundance (in the far left hand side of your garden-sector 4)
- Moving objects like wind chimes, whirlwinds and mobiles to stir up the energy and create movement
- Rocks and stones for stability
- Gazebo for cosiness and love
- Barbecue for socialising (in the far middle end of your garden-sector 9)
- Place a cubby house for the children or a decorative lantern in the garden where you have a missing area of your house plan.
- A water feature in the far left hand side of your garden brings abundance
Align the 8-1-6 edge of the magic square with the front of your block of land (where your driveway is)
-By Roseline Deleu
Feng Shui Master Roseline Deleu (0412 717 454) www.fengshuisteps. com trains Feng Shui practitioners and consultants worldwide.
Her next course will be happening on the Gold Coast 25-29 February
2008. To organise a course in your area or to book your consultation with this amazing Master call Roseline on 0412 717 454.
Susan O’Sullivan (0417 730 313) www.metaphysicallyspeaking.
com is a gifted Feng Shui consultant who is based in Cairns. Susan
studied with Roseline Deleu and her Feng Shui passion has grown
ever since.
We are living in a time where the care of our natural environment is demanding our attention. The threat of global warming looms large and calls us to question the way we live, and how it might impact on our planet. At the same time, we are also discovering the personal impact to our bodies of eating processed foods and applying and ingesting synthetic chemicals and medicines. Organic, natural foods and medicines are being sought out by more and more of us. The key word in this current age is ‘Natural’.
Whilst it is important that we look after our planet and our bodies, the bigger issue is looking after our soul. After all, for all the care and nurturing of our external environment, including our bodies, it is our internal self, our soul, our eternal self that lives on and requires our attention.
If we are to take full responsibility for our lives then we must reconcile that we create everything in our lives. Our mind projects all our experiences and is therefore the cause of all that happens to us. The external environment is but the effect.
If this is so, then it is clear where we need to focus our attention – our mind, as it is the cause of all things. Yet many of us spend our entire lives trying to fix the effect – the world around us.
I’m not suggesting that we neglect the world around us, as we still have to live in it whilst we are in form (body).
But if we prioritise the healing of our minds then the rest will fall into place effortlessly, because we will be acting from the Oneness that we are.
This realignment of priorities and acceptance of responsibilities leads us on a path to finding our authentic nature by uncovering and discarding our inauthentic nature – the ego.
“Our authentic nature, on the other hand, is pure love. It remembers that we are eternal, and as such, it has no need for attack or defence.
In fact it has no need or desire beyond extending love and offering forgiveness.”
The ego is the ‘I’ we think we are. It can be defined as our values and beliefs, our fears and guilt, and at a very practical
level, our gender, age, and past upbringing. It is the limited package we believe we are. It is duality – always seeing good and bad, right and wrong, victim and perpetrator. Its motto is, ‘Seek and never find’ and it continues to lead us to ongoing pain, suffering and disillusionment under the guise of protection. It seeks to replace the Source and voice of the Divine by use of our mind’s logic and past experiences.
Our authentic nature, on the other hand, is pure love. It remembers that we are eternal, and as such, it has no need for attack or defence. In fact it has no need or desire beyond extending love and offering forgiveness.
The ego’s terms for success always demand planning, effort, striving and sacrifice, yet to know our authentic self we only need to let go; to step out of the way and to allow; to see each moment with new eyes unencumbered by the ego’s fearful projection of the past into the future; to allow the Divine to show us a different, miraculous picture.
Each of us is a sacred shard of the one eternal mirror that was seemingly shattered at our point of separation and choice
to experience duality in the form of life. As such, each of us has a role to play in the collective healing and remembering of who we truly are – One.
There is only one purpose for time and it is for us to wake up; to realise that this separated, dualistic world we live in
is but a dream we made up. Our main priority then is to make the journey to wholeness, back to our authentic nature. It is only from this place of love and forgiveness that we can truly give consistently and effortlessly, and in so doing, look after our natural environment.
– Tomas Vieira
Footnote: Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira are the authors of best seller ‘Take Me to Truth; Undoing the Ego’. Published by O- Books UK. ISBN 1
84694 050. For more details go to www.takemetotruth.com