Friday July 7th 2006 14.57
Siu Shu – Slight Heat
Richard Ashworth
Feng Shui Diaries
Solar fortnight beginning:
Friday July 7th 2006 14.57
Now on myspiritradio.com every month.
Hour Day Month Year
fire fire wood fire
ding ding yi bing
wei yuw wei xu
sheep rooster sheep dog
Month: yi wei the Wood Sheep.
Solar Fortnight: Siu Shu Slight Heat
Wooden Sheep: cats out of the bag.
As you know every branch (that is animal sign) comes attached to a stem which defines it. Hence yi wei,wood sheep.The yin earth sheep is relatively happy with a wood stem. This is an appropriate and cooperative pairing but not very fruitful.The composite element or lap yum is Metal in the Sand which conjures an image of painstaking search.
This fortnight is appropriately called Slight Heat. Great Heat follows later in July. The tendency of wood is to exhaust the sheep. There is not much moisture in the fragile yin earth to feed the wood in the first place. So this month may be dryer than otherwise. No prizes for that; just look out your window.
The year is peaking. This is a time to talk. To open up.
If we will listen now we need not regret our deafness in 6 months. This is useful counsel at any time of course.
Cats will be let out of the bag but that’s much better than having them they stay there. By the same token, the ruling Hexagram, Tai is about the cooperation of Heaven and Earth, it is frank open intimate relationship. If you have this, work on it. If you don’t, now may be the moment to be open to finding it. And don’t tell me all the good ones are taken. We don’t need a statistic, we need one person..
The world is no more precarious now than at any other time in history. The one we live in remains our choice: yours and mine.
Onwards and Upwards
I used to hate getting up. That was when I still had a secret identity as an insurance broker. For more than 20 years I led a double life as pioneer of the world of woo-woo™ and purveyor of pensions. Twenty two years which was about seventeen too long. I had mouths to feed. When I finally sold my business after doing a deal with God (which I may elaborate on one day) I had enough to keep us for a little over two years. It was a little over three before I was making enough to keep us; me, my wife Sheila, twin daughters Jess & Hen, my son Joey and occasionally one or more of my other three grown sons from my first brood.
I have known it be December 21st and not have any money for presents. One year I was Santa at Debenhams which is a good story too.
These days I often rise cheerfully at 4.30. I love what I do.
Sheila isn’t so good at mornings but then she doesn’t fall asleep in front of the tv as often as I do. I usually look in on the kids. Jessie has made the decision to drop out of the second part of her A-levels and be a fulltime actress. She is very beautiful and very talented but nobody is so talented that this is not a huge risk. She doesn’t get up too early when she’s not working but all her attention is focused on that big break. She makes calls, she goes to meetings, she tones up at the gym, avoids nourishing food. Many would say show business is a lottery but they haven’t drafted her ba zi (or personal feng shui) as I have.
“Goodbye star twin.” I say and kiss her.
She shares a room with Hen who is carrying on with her studies.
“Goodbye boff twin,” I say.
Joey is an unruly ball of potential. He has starred in two films but neither has seen the light of day. He is 10 years old and he doesn’t really care. He loves Yugi-oh, his computer and reading. His favourites are Garth Nix, Eoin Colfer and of course JK Rowling but the open PG Wodehouse on his bedside table is a healthy sign of broader reading. My father who died in 2002 loved Wodehouse. Joe is quite tall for his age.
“Bye, Shorty,” I say.
I make sure my luo pan is in my shoulder bag, my iPod in my jacket and my moldavite in my jeans pocket. Moldavite is a tektite –a glassy fragment of a meteor that landed by the Moldau River around 15 million years ago. Moldavite is often prescribed for centring. I find that it supports me to get in touch with houses and people rapidly. There are times in a survey when I suddenly know a whole lot for no good reason. I am not very interested in ascribing cause but the moldavite may have something to do with that.
Today I’m placing a water feature for Singha who works in the Social Services in East London. Her office is drenched in stress even at 8 in the morning. If you walk into the waiting area during the day when it is full you could, if you are sensitive to these things be poleaxed. So much misery, so much desperation. Singha advises on what to do in cases of chronic debt; a lot of her work is in the even more miserable environment of a civil court.
That’s what I call working for a living.
She insists she can get away with a small water feature by her desk in the open plan office. That sounds a little daring. I have known her to interpret my instructions over literally before now and end up sandwiched between resentful neighbours. On the other hand her whole life did turn around. Still I make clear that she can use a mirror instead of water as long as her placement is exactly correct. I use an extension of a formula I have been using for several years. There are two compass directions that get rapid results in such cases. I have recently discovered a way to make it work even faster.
The principle is that certain points on the compass are what are called low guas – that is all other things considered, good locations for water and others are high, that is good locations for weight and bulk.
As well as the low gua that houses the water and the high one where I place something heavy, I am now putting something in a third position called an active gua which knits the other two together. There are numerological formulae for working this out but I have two or three pre-prepared for most situations.
Marking the locations takes moments. I am charging her at my hourly rate for this and I feel I still owe her forty minutes but I can’t stand to be here any longer. I am skilled at separating “my” feelings from those that belong to other people and places and I could make a some permanent difference here but it would be several day’s work and I have no brief to do it.
“Do you want to buy me cup of tea, then?” I suggest.
Her voice often has sadness in it; her husband is not well and she worries about him at home without her. But that tone, I sometimes remind her, is predictive rather than explanatory.
“Okay,” she says, brightening.
We talk about the similarity between the ambient feelings in her office and her home.
“Is this a coincidence?” I ask her.
“I suppose not.”
She is a brave powerful woman with a great deal of spiritual awareness.
“We could not feel other people’s feelings if they were not to some extent ours,” I add.
“I understand that.”
“But what happens is that when we feel something we instantly start making up reasons for it. A feeling arrives. We explain it. We relate it to ourselves. Rapidly we have a story. We have culprits. We have explanation. Human beings very often prefer to be miserable for reasons they can explain to being happy for no reason at all.”
“I know that,” she says. “What do I do about it?”
“I’m going to give you two pieces of homework,” I say. “One: when you are at work and someone brings you the worst story you’ve heard all year, notice the feelings that accompany it. Notice that you didn’t feel them before. Notice that your tendency is to think of Rajul back at home and link the feelings with that idea. Take a deep breath and deliberately feel the distress, then in that moment. Notice how this lightens the load of the people you are dealing with. Notice how it makes you better able to help them. Notice that choosing to feel this stuff makes it less not more painful.”
“Okay. And the Second piece of homework?” She pronounces the last word with just a shade of irony.
“On your way home…Do you travel in by car or tube or what?”
“Car.”
“Pity. Public transport is better. Anyway, on the way home remember each of the most stressful moments of the day. And relive them. Feel the feelings. Breathe deeply into them. Keep breathing deeply – don’t hyperventilate, I want you home safely – until the distress has faded. Then relive the next one.”
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much. All distress is an attachment to a reality other than what is real. In other words while we’re trying not to feel what we are feeling we can’t get on with our lives. The Tao is flowing one way and our preferences another.”
I point racily at the Tao with my left hand and her preferences with my right – much like the lady traffic cop in the Gaviscon ads.
“Just get up to date and move on. If you do that at least three times every day on your way home you might even arrive optimistic.”
She closes her eyes and breathes deeply. Really this stuff is that simple. Then she opens them again.
“That’s wonderful.”
“All in a day’s work, ma’am.”
“More tea? Breakfast?”
“My work here is done,” I say like Christopher Reeve returning a bus to the vertical.
I had a committee meeting next. Now that was likely to be hard going.
Feedback is encouraged including that you never want to hear from me again if that happens to be the case.
Richard Ashworth
Richardashworthfengshui@hotmail.com
Names have been changed to protect ..uh…me
I will be on holiday from the 11th to the 25th; so response to communications may be a little erratic during that time.