Dabbling with Qi Men Dun Jia (奇門遁甲)

We've just returned from Kuala Lumpur where we had spent two days attending a Joey Yap seminar on Chinese metaphysics. While the event was interesting enough, I wouldn't say that I am completely sold on the subject.

Yap had called his seminar "Getting Whatever You Want From Whatever You've Got." I know, it was quite a mouthful just to repeat it, but it attracted about 250 participants from around the peninsula, and there was even two ladies who had turned up from Hong Kong and the United States.

Since about 10 years ago, Yap had seen his popularity soar at the expense of other fengshui practitioners. His mantra of "location and direction" has become a common household saying among his legion of fengshui followers, my wife being one of them.

But as I said, I'm not completely sold on the subject. I do admit that there may be some truth to Chinese metaphysics studies but it is not something that I would wholeheartedly embrace. There is just something that leaves me sceptical. What is it? I don't know. It quite unexplanable.

During our two days at this Joey Yap seminar, the man explained quite a lot about Qi Men Dun Jia (奇門遁甲) which in a nutshell can best be explained as taking your own destiny into your own hands. He presented many techniques that can be applied and claimed that many of the people he had taught had already benefited from it.

In itself, Qi Men Dun Jia is nothing new, of course. The Chinese people centuries ago were familiar with it and had utilised the principles of this practice in their daily lives. Warriors and soldiers had adopted Qi Men Dun Jia in times of warfare and indeed, Sun Tzu's famed "The Art of War" could have been based on this metaphysical studies.

In Qi Men Dun Jia, Yap claimed that everyone has a personal guardian angel based on their date and time of birth, and this guardian angel can bestow help and favours on the person. There are also other guardian angels that can be called upon to assist when necessary. He even suggested a method to calm down a person, which then opens his mind to communicate with his guardian angels. Once your mind is still and open, he said, you can ask whatever you want from the guardian angel.

Personally, I haven't been able to count down slowly and unwaveringly from 64 to one successfully as my mind would race somewhere during the countdown process and I have to start all over again. Thus, it would mean that I haven't connected with my guardian angel yet. But my wife who is a bigger believer of Qi Men and fengshui than I haven't had the success either. She would tend to fall asleep as she counted down.

So what does this mean? If I can't even connect with our own guardian angels, how much can I rely on Qi Men Dun Jia to get whatever I want from whatever I've got? Is it a question of persistent practice to make it perfect? I really, really don't know at all....