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Feng
Shui in Las Vegas
Feng Shui is defined as the “art of
placement” where the interior of a man made space reflects the harmony and
flow of nature. I will be discussing Feng Shui from the perspective of the
Form School and Black Hat Sect Feng Shui, as brought to America by Professor
Lin Yun.
Feng Shui is a way of arranging spaces to
bring abundance, health and satisfying relationships to the inhabitants. In
Las Vegas this prescription for abundance is directed towards the owners of
the casinos, not the players.
One of the highest priorities in creating a
space is having an “auspicious” front door. This would be a door that is
colorful, obvious because of its decorations, and easy to enter. It could be
further enhanced with moving objects, like flags, and water features. The
casinos of Las Vegas have this down to a science as well as an art. The
casinos of Las Vegas, without a doubt, have some of the most inviting
entrances on the planet. Whether it is the fountains of Bellagio or the
pirates frolicking with explosions and fire in front of Treasure Island, or
volcanoes erupting as you enter the Mirage, the entrances are full of energy
and enticement. The problem is that once you are in, can you find your way
out? The casinos lure the energy (you) into their establishment with well
designed, regal entrances. In a residence, you would want the energy brought
in by the auspicious entrance to flow through all the rooms of the house
appropriately. Instead of letting the flow of pathways take you
softly through to the games, and then allowing for an evident way out, you become
trapped in the casino's confusing floor plan and lost. The “casino's gaming pit” is the easiest destination. Fed by sound
and lights, one is drawn to the casino floor like a bee to honey. Leaving the
gambling area to find food and bathrooms can be a journey through a labyrinth
of small isles, where landmarks need to be memorized to find your way out of
the gaming area.
The excessive stimulation is riveting and it becomes easier to stay than to
leave.
This is a type of power Feng Shui not
appropriate for a home because a house is usually designed to be a place of
rejuvenation and harmony. The stimulation of a casino pushes gamblers to do
more, try harder, and keep at it. The rejuvenation is the winning, but everything else
in the environment is out of harmony and exhausting, making the win harder to
achieve or to keep. In the art of Feng Shui, your environment is the template
that supports the fulfillment of desires and creates success. Now, reflecting
on the over stimulation and confusion in the casino, what type of success does
it support and for who? The noise and turmoil certainly do not encourage confidence
or support a strong self esteem. The player is constantly being undermined by the
"Feng Shui of Chaos". The gambler must put extra effort into being grounded and
centered enough to play. This of course is a huge energy drain. It is a true challenge because all the casino
distractions work against the player. It is no wonder that the easiest play is
to put money in a slot machine and pull the handle.
Stairs can be a deterrent to entering a
building, but what if you have to climb stairs to get out? The Las Vegas
Hilton and Bally’s add this obstacle to an easy exit. One has to climb stairs
to leave the casino floor. If you are tired and overwhelmed, the stairs can
give patrons the feeling that it is too difficult to leave, so they will stay.
When the Luxor first opened, you had to walk down a steep ramp to enter the
casino. Of course to get out, you had to hike up hill. The Luxor’s casino
entrance has now been redesigned for a less strenuous exit.
Have you ever tried to walk down the Las
Vegas Strip by going through each casino, so that you can stay out of the
heat? This would seem like a good idea, you can do it at shopping malls. In
Las Vegas it is almost impossible because of the convoluted pathways
inside the casinos. Shopping malls are designed so that you can go to the most
stores possible on your visit. However, each casino wants to keep your
business within their walls. I have not visited a casino yet where any part of
the casino is on an easy passageway to another part of the casino,
particularly exits.
One of the main tenants of Form School Feng
Shui is that it is important to create protection at the back of a building to
collect the chi (energy) and protect the building from a current that might
take that chi with it. For instance, having a road or rushing river at the
back of a house would be bad Feng Shui and the owner would want to construct a
wall, put up flags, or plant trees to protect the back of the building. This
is also true for people. The place of honor at a table would be the seat that
has its back to the wall and has full view of the room ahead of it. Think of
how the gaming tables and slots are arranged in a casino. All the players have
their back to the many people who are passing. These people, passing and
rushing, can literally “rip off” that player’s energy and leave them depleted.
A part of our brain needs to be vigilant when our back is unprotected,
particularly in a public place. When our brain is involved in the animal
instinct of protection it is less focused on the task at hand. As an example,
it is more difficult to listen to a conversation in a restaurant when waiters
with heavy trays are running to and from the kitchen through a swinging door
behind you. These are the seats that savvy patrons will tip the hostess to NOT seat
them in the line of traffic.
The same distraction happens at the blackjack table or the rows of slots as
people pass, particularly if their feelings are focusing on anger, agitation,
and/or loss. You will notice similar conditions for the placement of craps
tables.
An added problem is that some of these people
might also be looking over your shoulder; say at a craps game, and invading
your space from behind you. Even though people get accustomed to the crowding
and bumping in a casino, our bodies are still reacting with their animal
response while our brain has to take time to tell us that, “it is alright and
we are safe”. There is no way to keep your comfort zone of space protected or keep
negative currants from zapping your concentration. The main thing is to be
aware of what is happening and position oneself accordingly. The inside seats,
(first and third base) of a Blackjack table are more protected and allows the
you more vision of the room and what is coming towards you. The inside hook
and table end on the Craps table are more protected than the positions left
and right of the stickman. Poker rooms are usually separated from the rest of
the casino, which creates seating where backs could be towards a wall and
players could have a view of the entrance to the room. On an energy level,
facing the door, you are not a
surprise when people enter the room. This reminds me of the old westerns when the poker
player does not want to sit with his back to the door. I guess there was a Feng Shui consciousness even in the old west.
Personal meditations or visualization exercises that
foster a feeling of being "inside your skin" with your feet on the floor are
great preparation for entering a casino. You can do something as simple as
patting yourself on your arms and legs and torso before leaving your hotel
room. This can have a grounding effect on your body. The “Professor” Michael
Vernon teaches several meditations in his classes that address
this issue. The phrase, “it’s a jungle out there”, comes to mind as you enter
the casino playing floor. The Feng Shui arrangement is definitely planned to
be against you so do your best to keep your energy as you hunt and forage.
Lin H. Vernon M.A. has been a Feng Shui
practitioner since 1996. She trained with two different disciples of Professor
Lin Yun, who brought Black Hat Sect Feng Shui to America. She also is an
advanced practitioner of Instinctive Feng Shui and Interior Alignment as
taught by Denise Linn, author of Sacred Space, Altars, and many
other books. In her spare time she is the wife of “The Professor”, and
is a special education teacher for autistic children. You may contact Lin by
email.
lin@playing4keeps.com
Last Call Ya’ll…
A few spots remain for the next Dice Buster™
workshop September 27th. You still have time to get in on a good
thing. Call toll free to register 886-342-3626.
In July I received a phone call from a fellow that
was pretty down on himself. Seemed that he felt he was a jinx to any game he
played. After listening to his stories, it reminded me of a movie that I wrote
about several years ago and I said, “I’ve got just the movie just for you.” I
thought the timing of this phone call warranted a rewrite and I am publishing
the article again. I wrote about the movie The Cooler. The Cooler
starring William H. Macy, Maria Bello and Academy Award Nominee, Alec Baldwin.
In short, it’s a Las Vegas love story. Bernie Lootz, played by Macy, is the
Cooler.
I especially liked this movie because it depicts
real life behind the scenes of gambling in Las Vegas. The glamorous people that
deal you the games and serve you the drinks are real people with real problems.
No amount of make-up, costume, glitz and pearly whites can take away the
problems for the people serving up the game. The Cooler allows us to peek
behind the casino’s curtain to expose the lives of two lost souls in the City of
Dreams.
Bernie Lootz is a loser. Even his name says loser.
He lost so much money to the Shangri-La Casino that he becomes an indentured
employee to cover his marker. What’s Bernie’s job? Well, he’s the guy that goes
to a hot table and cools it off. In the movie, the early scenes frankly depicts
many examples of what I explain as the metaphysics of the game. It is because of
these scenes that I recommend viewing the motion picture, along with drama
encountered by Bernie and his unexpected girlfriend. The story ending… well, you
better see for yourself.
Everything about Bernie exudes a losing energy from
his low life loser self-esteem, to the thin walled dump he calls home, to the
bartender at the Shangri-La never having cream for his coffee. It is uncanny,
every time Bernie gets the call to cool a game the game breaks down like magic.
The winning streak comes to an abrupt end. The winner continues to play on until
becoming a loser. Bernie calmly walks back to the bar to finish his now cold
coffee less the cream. And so it goes, for Bernie, cooling off hot games at the
Shangri-La Casino until his debt is paid off.
I cannot say that I have ever been in a game with a
deliberate cooler. However, I have been in loads of great games, craps and
twenty-one, when a low energy player enters the game, imploding the energy and
ending the hot streak. Of course the casino floor personal interceded to do
whatever they can to break up the game, but that is a story for another time.
So, how did the Cooler do his work? He was able to
shift the energy. He interrupted the winning energy with his imploding energy.
He believed that he was a loser. He was so invested in the belief, that he owned
the ability of sending the winning energy off course. That was Bernie’s gift. He
truly believed in his losing ways. He was resigned to the label of loser. If he
was in a game, there was no way the players could win.
Innocently enough, some players are coolers. These
individuals may come into your good game, buy-in, and end a good thing. How? It
is like viewing a reflection in a still pool of water. Then someone comes along
and rudely splashes a large stone into the pool and the reflection is destroyed.
It is not their intention to wreck the game. It is just that they “splash” it.
You can see how it all falls apart in the movie. There seems to be a delicate
balance to any game. All it takes is the Cooler to come a long to have it all
slide away.
This is why I teach, “pick your playmates”. Not
everyone playing is a knowledgeable and skilled player. Not everyone playing has
a positive attitude about winning. Many player expect to lose. So, some players
are like Bernie Lootz, they simply can’t help but lose and bring down a game.
It is not about a person’s luck in a good or bad
framework. It has to do with the energy resonating within that person and what
they believe about themself. Some people have a big expansive energy and succeed
in life. Others live a life of contraction and withdrawal. Failing in life is
their only way. When you change your energy, you change reality. How do you
change your energy? See how it works out for Bernie in The Cooler. This
is the reason I choose to teach about spirituality and metaphysics as it is
happening in the classroom of a casino. When it comes to energy, emotion and
life lessons, it’s all happening in a casino.
Without giving more away, I suggest you pick up
The Cooler. Watch it once for the enjoyment and then a second time for the
life lessons that it holds.
