…"Enterprise!" They had a model of it home. The couple hung the model so it looked into an interior window that looked into the financial officer's office. It completely shifted the power play. In this case, good Feng Shui is using an environmental enhancement to shift the energy

Crescent Blues: And a very nontraditional one!

Terah Kathryn Collins: Yes. And when the financial officer looked at the model, he got it. He knew enough about his bosses to know they were Trekkies -- and he wasn't. He resigned a month later.

We see this in Feng Shui all the time; when we get the environment to reflect who we are and what we do, it completes the cycle of manifestation. We have all our hopes, our dreams inside in that unseen place. When we bring that out, place a symbol of our hopes and dreams in a visible place, it creates the cycle of manifestation.

Crescent Blues: What would you say is the most common Feng Shui problem in most American homes?

Terah Kathryn Collins: Being completely overwhelmed with physical possessions. We can have as many possessions as we can take good care of and give a home.

My mother-in-law has a million possessions. She was an antique dealer for fifty years and has all these beautiful antiques. She spends all day taking care of them, and she loves them. That's all right. It's not about everybody going Zen, but about taking responsibility for our possessions.

If we have stuff that has just been smashed into closets indiscriminately, it's a statement about how we run our lives. A closet is a perfect demonstration of that. People can see their consciousness displayed across their living rooms, dining rooms and closets.

Feng Shui is all about honoring ourselves. We honor our neighbors, we honor every possession, and we do that by being kind and living out the idea that everything in our environment is a manifestation of our consciousness. So how do we want that to be? If you need to have five hundred pairs of shoes, that's fine. Just make sure those five hundred pairs have a home, that they are supporting your life, and that they are loved.

I love the idea so many Americans have that possessions mate in the night -- where you only had one blender, and all of a sudden you have five. One of them needs a new blade, one of them has one button that doesn't work. We have this problem continually in our materially oriented culture. The problem of managing our stuff is never over -- just have a birthday and stuff comes pouring in the door.

Crescent Blues: It sounds as if one unique thing about your view about Feng Shui is your emphasis on the practical.

Terah Kathryn Collins: Yes, it's practical and it's been honed from many kinds of Feng Shui. Most people in our culture respond more to the practical than the transcendental kind of Feng Shui.

Crescent Blues: How would someone interested in Feng Shui go about finding the right practitioner?

Terah Kathryn Collins: The part of Feng Shui that I feel is really important in our culture -- besides personalizing it and empowering the client -- is to concentrate on the practical aspects. A person can understand that they need to turn their desk around so they're not jumping all day. "Oh, yes, that's good sense. That's practical. I can do that. I can get behind that, or maybe I need to change my art to support or inspire me every day rather than to depress me every day."

There's tons of those kind of things. That's the form of Feng Shui I like to practice, rather than concentrating on transcendental cures. The school that I have started trains people in that [practical] form. We keep a list of the folks who graduate, and our administrative office uses the list to refer people who call seeking a Feng Shui practitioner.

Crescent Blues: In addition to your school, you also write about Feng Shui. Your first book, The Western Guide to Feng Shui, is still in print, and you have a new book coming out soon.

Terah Kathryn Collins: Yes, It's going to be fun to see it again, I haven't seen it since the end of June. I waved goodbye to it, and it's like a child that went off to college or something.

Crescent Blues: You mean you didn't have to see five million drafts of it? I'm in the book production process myself, and I got tired of proofing things.

Terah Kathryn Collins: You know, I did get sick-to-life with it. I feel almost like I'm blind to my own work because I've seen it too much.

Crescent Blues: I consider that the point where it's grown up, and you need to let it take flight.

Terah Kathryn Collins: This book's called Home Design with Feng Shui A to Z, and it's kind of a real bottom-line little book. I think it's going to be a great book for our culture because, if you just want to do the bedroom, you've just got the bedroom stuff to look at -- the linens, and the way that the bed's in the room and what other furniture you have going on in there. How would you do it if you're a single woman or a single man, etc. That book's going to be out in mid-January.

Crescent Blues: From talking to you, though, I gather the most important thing is personal comfort. If you feel comfortable with a Feng Shui practitioner, that might be the person for you.

Terah Kathryn Collins: Absolutely. However, there are people who want to have a lot of ritual and a lot more transcendental work done. There are people that want to have their astrology and their birth date taken into consideration and have the compass done.

I personally find that the compass school of Feng Shui is tough in this country because everybody's houses fail miserably. It's sad. I practiced it to begin with and…

Terah Kathryn Collins (continued)