Okay, so this is a teensy bit random, maybe, but I’ve been hearing a lot about this topic
lately and, you know, you’re going to find this conversation to be familiar. It's been
oddly relevant for the last year or two.
Anyway, there’s a well-known feng shui maxim that your living space and work space should
be clean, tidy, and clutter-free.
Also, big, heavy bookcases and walls upon walls of books in a home is “bad feng shui.”
As maxims that get passed down and onward through the generations, these are certainly
true, but let's talk about the exceptions to the rules.
I want to differentiate what I call "creative chaos" from the "bad" or atrophic kind of
clutter.
There are times when my home office is messy because there's three months’ worth of papers
I no longer need that I haven't gotten around to recycling, empty wrappers I haven't tossed,
crumpled tissues, meaningless junk I've been too lazy to put away, cobwebs, and dust collecting
everywhere. Heck, maybe there's a dead bug on my windowsill
to boot or house plants wilting from neglect. That's atrophic clutter. That's "bad feng
shui."
But then there are those times when my home office is messy because I've got stacks of
books for my active, ongoing research on a project I'm working on, journals and binders
of notes that are presently relevant, clusters of crystals, recently acquired baubles, mementos,
a vision board, magazine cut-outs of my favorite things that I have yet to piece onto my vision
board, and colored highlighters rolling around everywhere.
That's not necessarily bad or unwanted clutter. I call that "creative chaos." And creative
chaos is the primordial soup from which my projects, my ideas, my creativity, and best
works manifest.
I’m actually, whether I am conscious of it or not, whether you as a creative are conscious
of it or not, we draw from the energetic imprints all of these objects give off and that can
help to fuel our inspiration. A simpatico relationship can happen here.
And this is in no way to say you can’t be creative in a clean, sanitized room. We’ve
got to stop thinking in these limited ways of the binary.
A clean, spotless, and sanitized work space will give off a particular imprint of energy
that for a lot of people will help them to keep their personal energies focused and channeled
on their work. It can reduce the amount of energetic distraction, especially if your
personality and character is prone to distraction.
On the other hand, if your personality and character is one that is more empathic, where
you’re a sponge and you like being a sponge that absorbs all the goodness from the world
around you and then you alchemize that into the Work you produce, then a really clean,
sanitized, spotless and tidy room might actually be bad for you.
And I always talk about this in feng shui consultations: these traditional, popular
feng shui maxims that everyone knows are just a generic starting point, but it's not feng
shui until you take into account the occupants. No feng shui master is going to not take into
account the occupants. What's great feng shui for one might be horrible, disempowering feng
shui for another.
So. Not all clutter is bad. When clutter is creative chaos, it’s a treasure trove of
energy resources for the creative or artist to draw from.
But when clutter is atrophic, or causes energy atrophy, that’s when clutter is bad feng
shui and also bad for your productivity.
How can you tell the difference?
We start by understanding the metaphysical theory of animism. All of these objects in
your space carry energy and what that object signifies to you right now, at this moment,
affects its energetic imprint and how that imprint will affect you.
That’s kind of the feng shui explanation of objects that spark joy, yada yada? You’ve
heard that bit of advice before, right?
I love that bit of advice for the common person because if you are a Shinto priestess with
a deep connection to the spirit world and Joe Plumber who is about as spiritual as a
doornail wants to know how to live a better life, maybe this Shinto priestess will simplify
the concept by saying, okay, okay, if it sparks joy.
Now, let’s say I’m now here actually talking with an occultist, someone who is already
by disposition a bit of an empath, some sort of practitioner of metaphysical arts. I don’t
need to talk at you like you’re Joe Plumber.
Even though the energetic imprint, the animistic character of these objects are independent
from any judgments I may have of them, my feelings are important because my feelings
help to reveal what chemistry is happening between my spirit and the object’s spirit.
So it’s not about whether this object is inherently and objectively good feng shui
or bad feng shui, though that assessment most certainly exists.
It’s that what matters more here, when we’re talking about the objects in my home and personal
space, is the chemistry between the object and me.
In certain instances, like my relation to Mother Nature, like where to build a house
or structure, you do want to yield to Mother Nature so you’re in harmony with Mother
Nature.
When you build stuff not in harmony with Mother Nature, look, at some point, Mother Nature
is going to win. You’re going to lose that war, plain and simple, so why fight? Always
build and live in harmony with Mother Nature.
Getting off topic here, my point is when buying a house, choosing a place to live, yeah, that’s
when you need to find a building structure that yields to the land, rather than forcing
the land to do what goes against that land’s nature.
But come on now, in terms of random objects on my office desk, eh… I can be more in
control. I don’t have to yield.
If you care to get into the chemistry of feng shui, each object is either predominantly
yin or predominantly yang, and then beyond that, at present occupies one of the five
changing phases (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water), and that will interact with your particular
metaphysical/energetic composition and disposition in particular ways, which a feng shui master
would know all about via birth chart, face reading, palm reading, divination, chatting
it up with your ancestors, or what-not.
But we're getting too complicated here. Let's keep it simple. Considering an object's condition,
its energy is: (a) positive,
(b) atrophic [kinda bad], or (c) results in poison arrows [really bad].
Anything rotting, in a state of decay, causes you to enter a state of inertia, or what you
would consider waste is (c) poison, i.e., really bad, i.e., get rid of it now.
Anything that sparks joy is (a) positive. Easy, right?
That’s because you’re utilizing your intuition. You can intuit the science. So the feng shui
master is someone who studies the science of it all, and can explain in technical, or
metaphysically technical terms why things are the way they are.
But I genuinely believe you can intuit feng shui too. You just know when something is
off. And you just know when everything is on point.
The science helps you to immediately spot what’s wrong, so that’s why some people
want to study the science. Right?
Now let’s talk about books.
Heavy bookcases lined wall to wall with books… why is this considered “bad feng shui”?
Asians are all about education and scholarship, so why would Asian feng shui masters say that
bookcases and walls upon walls of books would be bad?
Feng shui is, whether Westerners want to admit it or not, is premised on animism. You start
with this fundamental belief that there’s some sort of sentience to objects.
Once upon a time, sure, we talked about spirits. But I think today, a better way of expressing
the concept is as an unseen, metaphysical counterpart to the physical, measurable counterpart
that you can see, touch, and physically experience.
In the same way books, as material objects, have certain chemical and physical properties,
they have alchemical and metaphysical, spiritual properties.
This might sound crazy to some of you occult practitioners out there, but conceptualize
every single book on your bookshelf as a sigil. Yeah, that’s right.
This is a sigil.
And this is a sigil, too. These are all powerful sigils.
At least in a manner of speaking. It’s just to help conceptualize what I’m trying to
explain. The level of concentrated, intense energy
that needs to be channeled, the cone of power produced by many sharing the same objective
required to produce something like this does, whether its creators realize it or not, result
in, well, sigil magic, it’s..well, roughly speaking.
Here’s the thing. To the seasoned practitioner, now that I have explained that a wall of books
is basically a wall of, like, a hundred very different sigils each one emanating its particular
signature of power and energetic imprint, the feng shui maxim kind of makes more sense,
right?
Everything gives off a life essence, which in animistic theory you might express as spirits.
Wall to wall bookcases full of books, assuming you buy in to the description that it’s
like a bunch of powerful sigils each with a unique and very different yet distinct energy
imprint having its unseen impact on you and your space, can be either a good thing or
a bad thing.
It’s energetically a bad thing if your objective is empty mind, clear mind, and total serenity.
If you want the feng shui or Qi life force in your room to be clean, clear, unfettered,
then lots of books is energetically bad, as in that’s not in line with your own objectives.
But if having all that creative chaos around you, that diverse sigil magic wall to wall
of books creates is exactly what you want to be able to draw from on the Qi energy level,
then yeah, absolutely books are awesome, because they are in line with your specific objectives.
And that’s usually going to be the writers, the artists, creatives, philosophers, and
academics among us who most benefit from the feng shui of bookcases, because on some unconscious,
animistic, spiritual level, they are drawing from the energies of those books, the treasure
trove of ideas and inspiration they’ve surrounded themselves with.
So in feng shui, clutter is only bad when it energetically blocks or hinders your own
goals and objectives. But clutter is good if it’s creative chaos, the primordial soup
of energy you are pulling from for intellectual productivity.
Okay, that’s all I wanted to jump on here to talk about.