warning may stick in the back of our minds from childhood: if we receive something we really desire, someone could take it away, our friends might be jealous or we may feel guilty for having something while others suffer. But we don’t have to think this way; as we can do with any thoughts that are no longer serving us, we can place them into a sacred fire of our own choosing, allowing them to be released once and for all.
In feng shui, we talk about intentions being the seeds that grow into the gardens of our experience. My feng shui master always said that we are allowed to ask for anything we can imagine, anything under the sun, and to never set limits to our desires. He also tempered this by saying that we can ask for anything we desire because we always add the phrase: “…as long as it is for our highest good and the highest good of others.” This is like a spiritual or energetic insurance policy that can help allay the worries that stem from dreaming big. (The section Highest Good of All, explains this concept even further.)
Don't put limits on your manifestations
Now that you’re thinking about your specifics, don’t put any limits on them. It’s funny how sometimes people put so many limits on their beliefs before they even get started—sometimes even on their fantasies. The tree is the symbol for wealth in feng shui. They say your branches can only grow as high as your roots are deep. If you can’t dream big, how can you receive big?
Prosperity and abundance are often thought of as money, and having lots of it. Some people think of monetary wealth as abundance, while others think of health as abundance or a relationship as abundance. Those ideas seem to be hinting at a bigger picture, which is the good life—all areas of your life. The good life is the concept that you can have it all. Why choose? Why have a life where your career is thriving at the expense of your health, or have financial gain at the expense of your relationship? If you get what you focus on, why not conceive of a win-win scenario where you can aim at all of it and have it all? If it’s overwhelming to focus on all the areas at once, then focus on one section at a time and the rest will come.
Clarify Your Intentions
The first thing to do is create a clear image of what prosperity and abundance is for you. For example, let’s say you feng shui the prosperity corner in your home and a few days later you find $20 in the street. Does that mean it’s working? Technically, you have more money than you had before, but if you don’t have a clear vision of what you’re aiming at to begin with, then you won’t know when you’ve received it. See if you can figure out how you will know you have accomplished your intentions. Picture it in your mind’s eye. See the cast of characters who are present. Being specific about your intentions can allow you to track your progress to your goal.
Feng shui is about balance in all of its forms, especially in regard to your intentions. This means addressing all nine areas of life, not simply focusing on one area like wealth. If you were working out, it wouldn’t make sense to use just one arm to lift a dumbbell every day. You would look funny, and you would hardly be in shape. The same is true when we define abundance or prosperity to simply mean wealth. See if you can expand your definition to include the idea of having the good life—health, wealth and happiness, or whatever the good life means to you.
A lot of people focus on just getting money, but then have no idea what to do once they have it. Studies show that more often than not, when people win the lottery, they eventually go broke or end up in a worse situation than before. It’s not about just getting money, but also the wisdom of how to handle it. If you haven’t healed your family area and your past, you might get big chunks of money, but you’re constantly paying down debts you’ve accumulated. It’s like having a hole in your bucket of wealth and before you can even count what you’ve brought in, you have pieces taken off the top.
Each of the nine areas of life needs to be addressed so you don’t create an imbalance in your manifesting.
The Magic Words
Let’s imagine for a second that our words are powerful. Imagine that the thoughts we think and the words we say could be taken literally by some force, some presence that exists in our lives. Would this change the words you use when you are making your requests of the unknown and the infinite? For example, have you ever noticed that some people (let’s call them the “just enough” people) always seem to have just enough to cover their monthly expenses, and no more? These people are constantly praying to just have enough to cover their bills. They are imagining their bills being paid and they are putting extra wattage of intention behind it by getting their whole heart involved. Please. Let. Me. Have. Enough. This. Month. This is the message that is being sent out like a radio signal to attract a "like match", and so it is.
Pitfalls: Guilt and fear
Are guilt and fear keeping you from receiving what you want? Everything you have been asking for might be right at your door, waiting to be invited in, but those emotions may be indications that there are subversive thoughts keeping you from receiving what you say you want.
From a universal perspective, if you get what you have asked for but you feel guilty for receiving it, the vibration of guilt may send out a message that you are being harmed—a big red flag. Imagine that the universe is functioning from a neutral place of love and compassion. It would never want to see you harmed in the process of bringing you what you desire, and it might just be waiting for you to work out your guilt issues around receiving before you can fully receive what you are asking for.
If opportunities in your life are like water flowing to your front door, then fear is like a cold front freezing that water into ice. Fear literally constricts our blood vessels and slows down the flow of blood in our body. The message your body sends is to slow everything down or stop it until the danger is gone.
Both of these conditions seem to come from an imbalance in thought. A thought that If I receive this, then someone or something else will not have enough, or will judge me for having it. How can you put some space around these thoughts to include the possibility that if you receive what you ask for, it may benefit you and also those around you?
In feng shui, you can’t pick up something new unless you put down what you are holding onto. It’s almost like a garden full of weeds—there’s no room for anything new to grow. So the first stage of making space is to declutter; in this case, decluttering your mind from thoughts of “just enough-ness.” But nature abhors a vacuum. If you don’t put something new in place of the old thought, similar useless thoughts are likely to pop back up, rendering your decluttering work a waste of time. So what are two of the most powerful words you can plant in the garden of your mind? The magic words or more.
You don’t even have to change what you are asking for, but the invitation is to stay open to receiving that which you believe you need, or more. So the next time you are asking to receive “just enough work” to cover all of the bills you have coming up, see if you can make a little space for grace to add a little extra into your coffers.
Win-Win
In the old paradigm of wealth, people needed to accumulate wealth in order to have power, create status and fulfill aspects of the ego that would make them feel a sense of accomplishment. Throughout history, they accomplished this by doing whatever it took to achieve the vision or dream. The journey may have included stepping on people along the way and doing things that they knew, on some level, were wrong. These are examples of achieving personal gain at the expense of others, which makes achieving the goal feel empty. These actions are win-lose.
When I was twelve years old, our school asked us to raise money for a local charity. We were encouraged to go door to door and collect money for the cause. I don’t know if I was
