Journey to Feng Shui: Gayle’s Story

The story of how I became involved with Feng Shui is one that is possibly interwoven across most of my life.

My first encounter with a Chinese metaphysical science began on my sixteenth birthday, when I was given my first book on the I Ching. Little did I know at the time that the I Ching was the basis of Feng Shui, the entire Chinese Luo Pan compass or what this would mean to me in the future.

At the age of eighteen, I became interested in Chinese medicine and began to study it informally. Whilst I understood that Chinese medicine had a direct relationship to the meridians, the flow of Chi, the relationship between the five elements, etc, I did not know that it was so intertwined with the I Ching. For many years the I Ching was my guide and companion in life, and the study of Chinese medicine was just something I was interested in.

At the age of twenty-three, I entered a period of serious illness and came very close to dying. At the time, the doctors did not give me a good prognosis and a friend of mine suggested I do some meditation classes to calm my life, heal my health issues and connect to the Supreme Soul (in reality I really was facing not surviving…). Within ten days, the difference the meditation had made to my health and my life was significant. Not only was a I calmer but my health actually improved and the problems I had just seemed to mystically stop. In particular, connecting to the Supreme Source was very soothing and healing.

For the next twenty years, I traveled to India regularly for spiritual self growth study and the study of human life force energy. During that time, I have had the remarkable fortune to be closely connected to some of the most powerful Yogi Souls in India. Also during that time, I came to be around a study known as the Vastu Shastra.

The Vastu Shastra is the Indian equivalent of Feng Shui. In India the Vastu is commonly practiced (by the wealthy), but never spoken about openly. According to Indian tradition, Vastu practitioners usually come from a long lineage of specialized Brahmin families where the secrets of the Vastu have been handed down from generation to generation. In truth, even though I accepted the Vastu through my exposure, I had never really given much thought to it except to say that whenever I was choosing a new house to live in, I would never take a house where the toilet was next to the kitchen or opposite the front door.

One year I returned from India and moved into a house with a good friend of mine. Prior to me living there, a mutual friend had been living with my good friend. Eventually our friend moved out, having developed chronic fatigue syndrome and financial problems. At the time my housemate and I had been really amazed, because our friend was very clever, she’d spent many years in the financial industry and she wasn’t really the bankruptable type. Unfortunately, in only a short space of time (after moving into the same room where my sick friend had been staying), I began to develop the same symptoms of sickness our mutual friend had developed!

I kept saying to my housemate, “There’s bad energy in this house – I can sense it – it’s strong!” And, within a few short months of living there, my finances and luck began to dwindle in a way that I could not explain. I spent the next few months mumbling on about the energy in the house and feeling quite helpless at the same time. Indeed, my health was rapidly declining to the point where I was going to have to give up my full-time job.

Then, one day I went to a farewell party for a friend of mine. At the party, I met up with other friends, who were working for the Standard Charter Bank in Sydney at the time. One of my friends was telling us an entertaining story about how the Sydney branch plus one other branch were the only two branches in the world that had never had their Feng Shui done… They were also the only two branches (in the world) that had never made a profit! Finally, the Sydney bank manager had relented and called in the Feng Shui Master, who had come from Hong Kong and altered quite a bit of their internal layout. My friend had been shuffled out of his room, asked to install certain color schemes in his new room and told to place water pictures in it. Some six months later, the bank made its first 6.7 million dollars profit and according to my friend… never looked back!

After hearing this story, things began to ‘click’ for me and I realized that I really was not imagining things, that our house did in fact have bad energy…

Excitedly, I went home and told my housemate I wanted to study Feng Shui in an attempt to improve the energy in our house. My housemate agreed. The next day I went out and bought my first book on Feng Shui (the only book out on the market at the time) and began to read it. It was as though the whole of my life began to come together and ‘click’ for the first time. All those years of studying the I Ching and Chinese medicine. All those years of making spiritual studies of life force energy as a Yogi. All those years of having been around the Vastu….

Within a few days I had worked out what our main problems were, and my housemate and I installed the ‘cures’. The effect on the energy in our house was immediate!

In fact, it was so immediate that my friends began commenting, requesting that I come to their houses and do the same thing. I did, and that’s how my business and career in Feng Shui started. Within a few short months, I was in the midst of my new business; my housemate, who had been an out-of-work actress for many years, was now flourishing in her new acting career. Within months, my friends had spoken to their friends, and their friends had spoken to their friends… and, my business was growing steadily.

At this point, I began to get concerned. When I was consulting, I would often notice energy in a building that I could not explain. This energy was very toxic, powerful and difficult to ‘cure’.

I also recognized that the book I had been reading did not have the complete Feng Shui story (only form and shape applications, as useful as these were). I sensed there was still so much information missing. I was now beginning to attract clients who wanted me to do more complicated things with Feng Shui – things that I needed to be trained in. Since these clients were spending a lot of money based on my advice, I began to search for a teacher. I knew I needed to learn from the source and that that source was in Hong Kong (because Feng Shui was been banned in China at the commencement of the cultural revolution). I began to put out my feelers for a teacher and, shortly afterwards, I came across Master Lo.

I cannot explain how I feel about Master Lo: he is a very special person. I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to study with him. I remember asking him once why he had decided to teach me… He stated it was because he had thought I had a deity with me. In 1994, my teacher gave me the title of Feng Shui Master. This was later agreed upon by several of Hong Kong’s leading Feng Shui Masters, after they tested my skills and knowledge to the limits on one of my trips to Hong Kong.

When I first started learning Feng Shui in Hong Kong I could barely believe the depth of the knowledge. Like all other Asian healing arts, Feng Shui was so intricate and detailed that I used to come away with my head spinning! I first began by experimenting on my own building. Back in those days, Flying Stars Feng Shui was a challenge to learn because no-one else around me knew it (so I had no-one else to talk to – other than Mr Lo) and the Flying Stars appear at first to be so intangible – especially for a ‘Westerner.’ At times, it was like being in cyberspace!

It was also difficult in the sense that it was not printed or available in any books. I later came to discover that the actual interpretation of how to do, decide, apply Flying Stars Feng Shui is not completely translated in Chinese. As I progressed in my study, I realized why this was so.

The truth about Feng Shui is that it has so vast, with so many dimensions that it in fact, changes according to every unique circumstance. The study of Feng Shui is the study of life force energy itself, and life itself is in a constant state of change.

Life force energy does not necessarily have any logic to it, but it does have a sequence. It does not favor one human being over another. It just has a way of functioning, and if you support that way, the life force will support you.

When I first began, I could not understand how my teacher could know the destiny of a building so accurately (as I came to find out later). He could predict its ‘future fortune’ with amazing accuracy. I have never found him to be wrong. The Flying Star system of Feng Shui is practiced by 90% of Feng Shui practitioners in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. Its true depths have never been written into a book. Flying Stars is the formula that these wealthy countries have been based on for years.

In the early days, I could not understand how two particular areas of a building could attract prosperity and another two could enhance and strengthen a person’s human fortune – just because of the time period. Some 15+ years later, I no longer question it and, like my teacher, I can predict the fortune of a building with pin-point accuracy.

As human beings, we live in what we think is a tangible world. But the more I observe, the more I have to question: is it as tangible as it seems? The most fundamental ‘make-up’ of humans – the emotions and instincts – are so intangible. In fact, we live with life force energy every day in so many ways… taking it into account and yet, we do not seem to identify it.

In Asia, Feng Shui is not a little subject…

In fact, Feng Shui is a very ancient science. In reality it involves years of learning usually accompanied by intricate teasing puzzles which you can bang your head on, to your hearts content…

These days, Feng Shui is much easier to learn than when I first started. The more authentic strains of Feng Shui are out in the open in many western countries where they were previously unavailable. In Australia, I was the first practitioner to introduce and teach the authentic Flying Star Method and many of the more established consultants first learnt the Flying Stars from me.

Prior to that, Australian consultants, like the majority of other western consultants (world – wide), only had access to the Black Sect method.

Whilst this may seem like an unassuming little milestone to some, the reality is… back in those days, the introduction of authentic Feng Shui and the Flying Stars system changed Feng Shui in Australia forever and put “Australian Western Feng Shui practitioners” on the map when it came to practicing the same authentic Chinese methods as their Asian counterparts.

In some Western countries, Feng Shui tends to get thrown into the ‘new age basket’, but Feng Shui is not new age, it is very old age. It is a science that is based on knowing about and being able to calculate life force energy of all descriptions. Contrary to some beliefs, it is not based on the intuitive assumptions of a practitioner. It is based on age-old-time-tested knowledge that’s been passed down from Master to student for thousands of years.

Enjoy your journey into Feng Shui. It is my hope that you will find the essence of Feng Shui way beyond what you had thought it was, as have I.

With my best wishes
Gayle Atherton