Everything is Alive with Ch’i

The first principle in the Feng Shui philosophy is that every person, place, and thing is alive with Ch’i, or vital energy. In addition to being molecularly alive, our material possessions are subjectively alive with our thoughts, feelings, and associations. This concept is all-inclusive and tends to throw a monkey wrench into how we’ve viewed the world to date. It changes our physical existence from a world that is largely inanimate to a world “who” is completely alive. 

When we see our world as made up of animate beings, we make decisions very differently than when we see it as a bunch of inanimate stuff. Clear-cutting and bulldozing areas to bang up as many houses as possible can only happen when we believe none of it is really alive. When we feel the aliveness of all things around us, including the earth beneath our feet, we tend to take good care of them. We slow down, build around the knees and elbows of the land, and work in harmony with “who’s” already living there. We also choose our belongings much more carefully, knowing everything is imbued with living energy that can build us up or break us down. We want to be surrounded by belongings who strengthen our sense of well-being all the time.

Every “thing” that lives with you evokes certain memories, associations, and feelings.  That’s why it’s important in Feng Shui to assess your material possessions. What are they “saying” to you? The quality of your inner life is constantly influenced by what you’re keeping alive in your surroundings. Your feelings and memories may be of good times and delicious moments, a mixed combination of associations, or they may be quite negative.

In Feng Shui, one of your primary goals is to surround yourself with environmental affirmations, or the things who are alive with life-affirming thoughts, feelings, and associations.  When you design your environment to affirm your life, you are opening the pathways for happiness, health, and prosperity to take up residence with you, and you’re inviting your environment to be your personal paradise.