Carter Karen Rauch - Move your stuff, change your life: how to use Feng Shui to get love, money, respect and happiness

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FIRESIDE

Rockefeller Center

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2000 by Karen Rauch Carter

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

F IRESIDE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

DESIGNED BY JUDITH STAGNITTO ABBATE/ ABBATE DESIGN

Cover illustration by Coco Masuda

Cover design by Kai Chu

Author photograph by Carrie Pulone

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carter, Karen Rauch, 1960Move your stuff, change your life : how to use feng shui to get love, money, respect, and happiness / Karen Rauch Carter; illustrated by Karen Rauch Carter and Jeff Fessler.

p.cm.

A Fireside book.

I. Feng-shui.I. Title.

BF1779.F4C372000

133.3337dc2199-35705

CIP

ISBN-13: 978-0-684-86604-8

ISBN-10:0-684-86604-8

ISBN-13: 978-1-5011-2752-6 (ebook)

My special thanks to:

Professor Lin Yun, for all his wisdom

Nate Batoon, who has been kind and generous enough to teach me about feng shui and allow me to use so many of his stories for this book

Bridget Skinner, Vicki Allinson, and all the members of the Orange County Feng Shui Guild, for their support

Obie Wade, for his undying support and our conversations about whats possible

Marcela Landres, for recognizing the need for this type of feng shui book, and for her enthusiasm and editing savvy

Jeff Fessler, for helping me illustrate this book and for sharing his gift of humor

Donna Allen, Erika and Alton Burkhalter, Nancy Finley, Alison and David Hahn, Annemarie Hall, Melissa Moore, Margaret Rauch, Nancie Vollmer, and Rich Welt, who all agreed to read drafts of this book and comment

My husband, Steve Carter, who allowed me the space in our lives to take on this endeavor

And finally, all the people whose lives were changed in such outrageous ways by feng shui that they became stories in this book

To my son, Cole, my favorite distraction while writing this book

T he best way to read this book is with pen and paper in hand. Since your notes may be around for a while, I would suggest using one of those small, nicely bound blank books worthy of sitting on your nightstand or a bookshelf in your home.

Not only will this notebook become your personal feng shui guide to happiness and fulfillment; it will serve as a written account of your old lifethe one before knowing and using the ancient Chinese secrets of feng shui.

Be inquisitive, yet have a jovial frame of mind when reading and following the advice in this book. I attempted to write Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life in a lighthearted, humorous manner because love and laughter are energetically more powerful for this work than sadness or seriousness. In other words, move your stuff with a smile and you will experience faster results.

If you dont control your attitude, it controls you.

I f you want to create a sundae that would put Jenny Craig into a spin, you need some tools: bowl, spoon, Ben & Jerrys Chunky Monkey ice cream, and calorie-laden toppings. If you want to create a life worth living, you also need some tools: a living environment, an idea of what you want out of life, good intentions, and an understanding of the ancient Chinese secrets of feng shui (better say it right: fung shway ). Translated, it means wind and water.

Feng shui is just a term borrowed from the Chinese. Since they have honed this art throughout the past centuries, lets honor them by keeping their name. But dont just think of it as local Chinese wisdomthink of it as universal common sense. Everyone, regardless of culture or creed, has employed some system of thoughtful placement with regard to their living environment and furnishings. Simple spatial organization actually comes quite naturally to most humans. Its when things get complicated with contraptions like computers, microwaves, and all-terrain vehicles that mistakes are often made.

Proper feng shui is purposefully arranging the stuff around you to gain positive results. What stuff? you ask. All stuffyour worldly possessions, your desk at work, your toothbrush, your underwear. Just as that Chunky Monkey sundae affects your body when you eat it, each object you place in your living environment affects you as well. You also affect each environment you encounter. Wouldnt it be nice to know how?

This book will give you that answer. Consider it the proper nutrition guide for your home.

I want to emphasize this point a bit more because I have been asked by a few clients and friends if feng shui is a religion. Some others have asked if it can conflict with their organized religion. Although I dont claim to know the dogma of every religion, I do know that feng shui is not meant to replace or challenge anyones religious values or ideas. It is simply a collection of environment-oriented information, just as a cookbook is a collection of food-oriented information.

If you are still questioning about this, heres a quick test to help you find your answer. If knowing how food affects your body interferes with your religion, then perhaps knowing how feng shui affects you would too. OK, nuff said. Lets get on with it.

Everything consisting of matter in this three-dimensional universe is placed next to something else. This spatial relationship is feng shui. So really, feng shui has been around you as long as youve been around. It is the type of feng shui you have around you that this book addresses. Instead of thinking everything is not feng shuied until you feng shui it, think of everything always being in some state of feng shui, and you changing it for the better.

For all you scientific minds out there, I asked Barry Gordon, a physicist as well as a feng shui practitioner, to briefly explain from a science perspective how and why feng shui works. He sees feng shui as the intelligent use of intention through environmental metaphor. In more detail he states:

If we accept the message of both quantum mechanics and the great spiritual teachers, then every smidgen of our universe affects every other. From this viewpoint there is no inside or outside. Everything is contained in consciousness, which has no boundaries. So the placement of your bed has meaning in relation to the rest of your experience. The bed is a representation of your beliefs and emotions on the physical dimension, which manifest differently, and seemingly disconnected by you, on other dimensions. When your bed is moved with intention, the belief and emotion dimensions also move.