Hi everyone,
Before I start, if you’ve not followed me on my Instagram page, I’d like to invite you to do so. I’m a lot more active there now and posting snippets of cases I’ve come across, client stories (sometimes indirect testimonials), and important reminders on how one should best approach Chinese metaphysics and astrology in general.
My Instagram page will feel very different because it’s a side of me everyone would not have seen from my blog. My blog will always be more solemn, with occasional irreverent analogies to convey a certain point. Instagram on the other hand, which I discovered can be quite fun, is an unfiltered version of how I express myself and how I feel about my work. Just see it as a medium for me to destress and keep followers updated.
One reason I’m pushing my Instagram page a lot more is that I am considering phasing out my blog updates via MailChimp, and I might post blog updates on Instagram instead. I am not able to blog as much as I would like to, and many of my subscribers are the kind who subscribe to everything under the sun and doesn’t clear their inbox, so it defeats the purpose of having an email newsletter. I figured Instagram is a much better platform to engage everyone. I’m a bit ‘slow’, I know.
I will definitely not do TikTok – because I have no cleavage, then again, I think I’m starting to grow one becauses – fats! And as politically incorrect as this will sound, it’s a platform that is being used by all the ’practitioners’ I don’t think very highly of, and if I wanted to dial up the tone here, utterly despise.
It’s a hectic month for me. I’m unsure why I have a significant spike in my web traffic this month. It’s not as crazy as the traffic I get during Chinese New Year. Still, because it’s a non-seasonal increase, the visits to my website are likely people looking for a consultation, so the conversion rates and people who sign-up for a BaZi reading are much higher. I’ve not been doing anything different other than posting a bit more on social media, but the data I’m seeing doesn’t suggest the spike is due to social media.
I’ll be honest, I have a bit of a shorter fuse this month, possibly because I have a lot less bandwidth for myself to rest and recharge, or perhaps it’s due to Mercury retrograde. But perhaps the main reason is that I’ve been getting a lot of utterly warped cases recently due to my increased traffic. These warped cases are making me question my faith in humanity. You can’t begin to fathom how grown adults can mess up their lives so badly, and instead of making it better, make it worse.
I’m not sure what’s going on. It’s as though people lie about reading through my blog before signing up for a BaZi analysis, or they fail to understand what I’m trying to convey. I wish to make one thing clear, which is that, sometimes, reading my blog is more important than the consultation itself. I do wholeheartedly feel this way because the mere act of getting your chart read is not going to achieve anything, and this should be common sense.
I’m going to take this opportunity to revisit a very uncomfortable and somewhat taboo topic in Chinese metaphysics: the notion of bad BaZi charts. You can find the epic blog post here I wrote long ago below, but I would suggest you finish reading this post before revisiting the old one:
Everything I say here isn’t new, but it’s a good time to revisit some old topics and talk a bit more about them, and come in with some new perspectives.
Why I Spoke About Bad BaZi Charts Long Ago
I went into my practice of BaZi and Chinese metaphysics with the same amount of naivete that most people explore Chinese metaphysics with. I thought that things would generally turn out well as long as my intentions were good and pure, just like how everyone thinks their BaZi charts are good and pure until they met me.
Little did I know that my foray into Chinese metaphysics would be marred by people I labelled Category 4 chart-holders, which you can generally interpret as people with the worst of the worst BaZi charts. We know them as toxic people who like to spread their unhappiness and bitterness to everyone around them. They could also be people who just simply cannot get their lives together and keep spiralling downwards. Their behaviour and thought-patterns are pathological. It came to a point where I realized I shouldn’t need to care about such people anymore because if I did, I won’t be able to serve those can actually benefit from BaZi.
Someone once said this to me: perhaps some people are just not meant to benefit from Chinese metaphysics or astrology. It was once a sacred art meant for rulers and nobility. Of course, I’m inclined to agree with that because this is something that’s historically and factually true. The right use of astrology can help put the right people in the right places so that society can function at its best and be run by competent, morally upright people. But of course, over time, such knowledge leaked into the public, and we into the mess we are in today.
Astrology was never meant for the masses, just like how you want to be the few who owns that Hermès bag.
It’s not that astrology discriminates. Nature’s laws are nature’s laws – impartial, objective, and just. Your chart will bring you to the practitioner deserve, just like how my own chart will bring me to the clients I deserve. Astrologers and practitioners aim to study it to the best of our ability. To talk about discrimination here is irrelevant. The only discrimination here is self-discrimination. If the thought of having a bad chart or a challenging time can scare you that much into inaction or self-destruction, then yes, don’t touch BaZi or astrology. Doing something constructive like picking up a book for once in your life is better.
I decided to speak about bad BaZi charts many years ago for a few simple reasons:
1) I was getting a lot of clients with bad BaZi charts. They approached the consultation as though I was the one who gave birth to them and subjected them to their charts when it was someone else who shat them out of the wrong orifice.
2) No practitioner was talking about this important topic. Absolutely no one. And that, to me, is a problem. If you do not see why this is a problem, then you are part of the problem.
3) Not talking about this uncomfortable topic is bad enough, but ‘practitioners’ make it worse by denying it and spinning it into a narrative to fit their agenda, whatever it may be. No BaZi chart can be bad because Qi Men Dun Jia exists or because everything is simply a matter of subjectivity.
That post from long ago is an absolute must-read for any of my clients because one must not approach astrology with rose-tinted glasses.
The topic of bad BaZi chart is akin to one of those societal issues that we all know we must address and talk about more, but we don’t because it is uncomfortable. And it is. It’s as uncomfortable as talking about social class and social mobility. Still, little do people know that these sensitive topics are also a reflection of Yin and Yang because reality can also exist as a duality, and duality includes polar opposites. Both simply have to exist at the same time, which is why society is the way it is.
Imagine a world where Category 4 chart-holders sat in positions of power and ran the world. We would go extinct.
The Chinese Metaphysics Delusion
I can’t speak for other forms of astrology, but I will speak for Chinese metaphysics.
This is a topic I’ve spoken about before: The way Chinese metaphysics is being presented or sold to the public is not healthy, in my opinion. If Chinese metaphysics is sold simply as some rah-rah, everything is awesome, and life is the beautiful panacea to the masses, it defeats the purpose of using Chinese metaphysics in the first place. There lies an irony there that few people think about. It’s like someone who studies medicine but at the same time feels that the best cure for cancer is prayer. Let’s just pray the damn ailment away because, surely, some benevolent supreme being will take care of us. As much as I would like to believe in the power of thoughts, if reality works this way, I think it’s valid to say some ‘practitioners’ won’t be around for much longer.
Suppose you want the whole “I am the physical manifestation of positive vibes”. In that case, you might as well just sign up for a proper coaching session or just join a multi-level marketing company where delusional people call themselves entrepreneurs and inspirations, hoping to make it rich by shoving vitamins down people’s throats. I know some of my clients are in MLM and what I said might be offensive, but hey – I don’t care.
I know my blog and writing touch on really heavy topics, and that sometimes isn’t uplifting or might even come across as pessimistic, but please don’t mistake that as my intent or what I am trying to achieve. It is still about balance. If society or people interested in Chinese metaphysics were already approaching it with a proper mindset, I would not need to talk about such things. But alas, no one is talking about it.
As I have said before: There will fascinating things about Chinese metaphysics and beautiful moments where it inspires hope, but there will also be the polar opposite of it, that of disappointment, despair, and destitution. That is reality. There will be two sides, Yin and Yang. Nature’s laws and the life & death cycle of everything is something no one can avoid. Your BaZi chart is a picture of where you are on this cycle because we are the physical embodiment of nature’s laws, which is why some people keep growing and moving up, and some figuratively rot and become someone else’s cosmic fertilizer.
It does not make sense that someone approaches Chinese metaphysics with a warped sense of reality because Chinese metaphysics is a study of reality. To approach it with preconceived notions and stay fixated is not just irony but idiocy as well.
To be fair, it’s no one’s fault because most are laymen and being interested in Chinese metaphysics is just a transient phase in their lives that’ll pass quickly. Myself, on the other hand, am conditioned to look at reality for what it is, and it will neither be too optimistic nor pessimistic. I will always have to see both sides of a situation, and I will always have to present both sides.
I know Western astrology has this: “There is no such thing as a bad chart. It’s about how you use it.” Whether this is written in the ancient Hellenistic texts on astrology or just some hippie-gipsy balderdash is not something I will know for sure because I’ve not studied the Hellenistic texts, although I do have books on them. I can’t help but feel like it’s a mild form of new-age toxic spirituality, although I can’t speak much of it. What I do know is that certain synastries between the planets can be extremely harsh, and they can manifest as very challenging situations in life, similar to how imbalanced BaZi charts or Zi Wei Dou Shu charts with bad star placements can manifest in horrid ways.
I must remind everyone that the Chinese classics passed down from our ancestors have chapters describing what a 貧賤 BaZi is, translated as being poor and of lowly status. Do you think I’m a wet blanket and masochist for writing about bad BaZi charts? Hello? Try reading the books passed down from feudal China; they write about it all the time and even take the pain level up another notch by doing it in Classical Chinese, and you even have to read it from top to down, not left to right. The books don’t just talk about charts that are 貧賤 charts. There are also chapters on deducing whether someone is evil and of vile character and whether some are scheming and conniving.
The notion of “There is no such thing as a bad chart – it’s how you use it.” does not stand very well in Chinese metaphysics because what does that even mean? I guess you could say Nickel Sage personified this well because he did not just scam people on the streets; he went for the lawyers and bankers and scammed a billion instead of a few nickels (pun!). He definitely used his chart very well, but he used his bad chart very well. Perhaps that’s really what it meant after all. You have such a cosmically repulsive, black-hole gagging chart that you get on international news while yielding such a chart. I’ve seen worst charts than his that didn’t get on the news – what a pity.
It’s not difficult to understand why metaphysics became as such. It’s simply because of the commercialization of this field. Hope and positivity sell better and scale faster. There is nothing wrong with commercialization because we all need to eat, and we want to live more comfortably, but again, if balance is lost, it becomes something else. For the sake of a sale, ‘practitioners’ are willing to say anything: “You will get promoted if you wear this colour”, “Buy this crystal, and you will find the love of your life.”; “Wear this Pi Xiu bracelet or your penis might fall off.”
What A BaZi Chart Reading Does For You
I need to make a few things very clear.
The mere act and process of getting your chart read and deciphered do absolutely nothing for you – well, almost nothing. Getting a printout of your chart or an email and having it deciphered doesn’t amount to much.
What you will get at the end of the day – is information. And I hope to the high Heavens that you are getting the right information from whoever you choose to approach.
The point here is what you do with the information. If you do not know what to do with the information or insight, there is no point in getting a chart reading in the first place. So I implore everyone thinking of getting a reading to ask yourself why you wish to get the reading in the first place. If you think it’s to solve your problems, then may I suggest that you first recognize that you ARE the problem. I am so hung up about getting clients to read my blog because, hopefully, it is the place that teaches you what to do with this information.
Doing the right thing is the part most people fail at. This is also the part that separates people with good charts from bad ones or those with good Phases from bad ones. Most of the time, knowing what is the right thing to do is not difficult, but people cannot find the will or the courage to make that decision. You know your marriage is toxic, but you chose to stay; you hate your job, but you chose to stay; you don’t like the way life is not, but you did nothing about it.
Why I Categorized BaZi Charts Into Four Categories
I hate it when people ask me this question during consultations. Firstly, I said don’t ask me this question because it is pointless. After all, Phases change, and no one stays stuck in a particular category forever. Second, my purpose in classifying these four categories is to drive a point across.
One interesting thing I noticed is that books open about discussing difficult topics like bad natal charts (命) or bad Elemental Phases (運) are written in Chinese. They were written in the 80s and 90s, before social media or even the internet became a thing. Toxic positivity and putting up a false front eventually spread to Chinese metaphysics, and even Chinese books these days fall prey to the need to be toxically positive. I can assure you that you will not find such books being written by anyone anymore.
The Chinese books I read also categorize BaZi charts into four main categories. It’s nothing new, and when I wrote that blog post about Good BaZi charts vs Bad BaZi charts, I drew inspiration from there. Yin and Yang express themselves in your natal chart and Elemental Phases. Good vs Bad, Yin vs Yang. It’s that simple.
When we put BaZi into four categories like that, it is to drive a point across. What does it mean to have a good or bad natal chart, and what does it mean to have a good or bad Elemental Phase? Why is it that balanced BaZi charts are good? Because if you know what the difference is, you can hopefully harness the good and avoid the bad. It also allows people with good BaZi charts to learn from the bad ones, hoping they don’t fall to that level, whereas people with bad BaZi charts can learn from the good ones.
I tried my best to explain how one’s Elemental Phases show up in reality in my blog post on Good BaZi Charts vs Bad BaZi Charts and gave the example of why two people with similar backgrounds and starting points can end up being so different and also what I observed when I speak to people of differing chart qualities. People don’t ask themselves what the 10-Year Phases truly represent; to most, the 10-Year Phases are just something waiting to happen. It’s not.
I aimed to let people know that if I can observe a difference in someone’s mentality through their Elemental Phases, therein lies an important message. I won’t repeat what I said before – everyone can read that epic blog post from long ago.
Why does everyone think I always give examples and pit bad BaZi charts against good ones? If you don’t understand or acknowledge the dichotomy, you will either not get to where you want, or you will eventually fall to the place you don’t want to be. Because every single thing is somewhere in this never-ending cycle of birth, growth, death, and decay. It is not about comparing for the sake of comparing or trying to rub it in the face of people with the bad BaZi charts. Perhaps to put things in a more balanced manner, all charts can swing between good and bad – it becomes a spectrum. Please do not interpret what I say in merely black-or-white.
Don’t Ever Let Me See You Use The Word “Luck”
Don’t. Just don’t.
I’m not going to say much. Just read this:
Please understand that not every Chinese word or concept has an English equivalent. Translations help us understand things better, but some nuances get lost. One of the worst things that happened to Chinese metaphysics was thinking the Chinese character “運” is translated into the word “luck”.
Why I Always Say Our BaZi Charts Make Us Different
Everything I touched on above basically says I’ve done enough consultations and spoken to enough people to know why people with good BaZi charts have good lives and why people with bad BaZi charts often wish they weren’t born.
There are so many ways to put this across. Charts describe you, your soul, and how your mind works. If you have a bad BaZi chart, you can be sure there is something about your mind and soul that isn’t working healthily. If you have a good BaZi chart, then be relieved that you’re likely growing from each test thrown at you.
No one’s BaZi chart is perfect. There will always be certain phases in life that are tougher or an aspect of life that is weaker or imbalanced. In other words, everyone has something to work on. And it should surprise no one that everyone works on the same things – family, health, money, love, and whatever rocks our boats. We are all human, with the same needs and desires.
We’ve all been around long enough to know that some people will eventually be able to fix the weaker aspects of their lives simply because they put in the effort to do so. There’ll also be a group of people who continue to slip further, and their lives spin out of control.
I know this will come across as very crass, but people with bad BaZi charts handle life extremely poorly and call it “bad luck”, not knowing they are part of the cause-and-effect chain. It has nothing to do with “luck”. “Luck” means arbitrary, random events, but Chinese metaphysics and any form of astrology were never about random, arbitrary events. It’s always about cause-and-effect or karma.
Everyone should be able to tell my Instagram and blog that I’ve come across all sorts of stories. Nothing surprises me anymore. Here’s why:
- I had a client who invested in Nickel Sage’s (Ng Yu Zhi) Ponzi scheme. I have Nickel Sage’s chart, which would make an epic case study. I will get to that someday.
- I had a client jailed in the US for spying for China. I don’t want to mention names, but it should be obvious who this doughnut is. People who have worked with him before reached out to me to tell me about their experiences with him.
- I had a client who is a scion for an Indonesian conglomerate, and he reminded me that money doesn’t mean anything when half your family is trying to kill each other. The other half is involved in Heavens-know-what kind of drama.
- I had a client whose husband slept with the maid, got a new maid, and the husband proceeded to sleep with the new maid. No, there wasn’t a threesome, you dirty animal. The husband then tried to force my client out of the house, and the new maid was basically the new wife.
- I had a client whose husband lifted her up and choked her against the wall, and this client still had the audacity to laugh and joke around with me during the consultation, asking me whether she’ll be rich one day. Perhaps if she allowed people to choke her for a living, then yes. Kinky, but viable.
- I had a Caucasian client from overseas in his 60s who wanted me to screen the BaZi of a lady he met, and it turns out the girl is an escort he met in Thailand during Christmas, and went full erotica on me to describe the whole carnal, life-changing process of fornicating with a foreigner.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. “Sean, you are making this up for content’s sake. You’ve changed. How bloody dare you.” I said it before, and I’ll say it again, I have too much self-respect to fake things. Your life, and job, are just too boring:
These are moments when I just sink into my chair in front of my laptop and stare into blank space, not knowing whether to sigh, cry, laugh, or stab myself in the eyes because never have I thought I would be deciphering charts, trying my utmost best to uphold the integrity of Chinese metaphysics, to the image of a white 60+-year-old man fornicating with an escort he met in Thailand.
The above story is funny because, for a moment, I felt hopeful for the old man until I saw the charts and got the full picture. In moments like these, does anyone ever stop to ask, “What would Sean advise here?” Perhaps try the Songkran festival instead of Christmas? Use protection? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not judging the client, and I’m, in a way, happy for him that he’s still getting it on by getting it off. I am no one to judge, just that I just can’t help but be amused sometimes.
I’d like to think I’ve proven my point – I’ve seen all sorts of cases. I love my job, but I also hate it sometimes, but mostly, I love it. I really do get to meet all sorts of people from all over the world, and the side of people that is most raw, and unfiltered. It’s a privilege and also an honour that I don’t take for granted.
Again, I don’t come from a place of judgement because this is life. It is as beautiful as it is messy sometimes, but we try to figure it out no matter what. I am really, really no one to judge anyone else, especially if you don’t regret your choices. What I do have, are opinions.
On a serious note, not every case or story I get makes one chuckle. I will talk about this later below.
A Practitioner’s Role & Responsibilities
The Chinese metaphysics field does not have a governing body to tell, advise, or train practitioners on what to do before, during, or after a consultation. Everything is very fluid and up to the practitioner. As I’ve said, this field is not regulated and will likely never be regulated. It is up to the practitioner to self-regulate, do the right thing, and hold him/herself to some standard. Unfortunately, for some, my standards do not include making you feel like you just booked Singapore Airlines Suites – it can feel like the highway to hell instead.
The fact that this is an unregulatable field is also the reason why you have ‘practitioners’ selling the same generic BaZi report to people and getting away with it, why any item from Taobao is suddenly a magical panacea for your life’s problems and a cure for stupidity, and why you have practitioners like myself chastising all these things. There’s a huge ‘assortment’ of practitioners, and it might be in everyone’s interests to ask themselves what’s going on and why.
I have all these rules and boundaries during consultations because I need everyone to be clear that we are not trained to handle situations that counsellors or psychiatrists are trained to handle. Everyone should also be mindful that you should always seek professional help before you even turn to an esoteric field like mine. If you feel that goat-symboled bracelets can save your marriage, you surely need therapy. I know it’s a societal stigma that stops people from seeking help from therapists and why people in some countries like Korea prefer to go to fortune-tellers instead of therapists, which shouldn’t be the case.
I’m not saying all this to shirk responsibility. I’m saying all this because I want to be responsible, and people should also be responsible for themselves.
If I were a monk or took the persona of a devout Buddhist, I would say things like “Go do good deeds”, “Chant mantras to cleanse your karma”, “Go ‘Ohmmmmm’ while taking a dump'” and if I wish to put in more effort, I’d explain why these things help. I actually wrote about why we do good deeds and what it does if anyone bothered to read. If I were a coach, I’d be saying whatever stuff coaches are trained to say. This is also not the Miss Universe pageant where everything you need to say is uplifting, positive, and sometimes even pretentious.
If someone turns to Chinese metaphysics and myself for guidance or whatever reason and proceeds to ask me whether wearing a bracelet with a goat would save her marriage, I doubt the persona of the monk or life coach is going to be of any help. Again, if I were a monk or life coach, I would say very different things. Exactly what in the hell do you want me to say? Perhaps it’ll be things like, “Yeah! Be the goat! Feel the goat! Because GOAT means “Greatest of All Time!”
Alas, I am a practitioner, and to hear such things makes me want to say things that aren’t perceived as very nice, and these unpleasant things sometimes have a lot more impact than things like “Be the goat! Feel the goat!”. Then again, some people’s lives would have been better if they were a mountain goat.
I’m not shy of saying, “Your chart is bad because you really are that stupid.” because it’s true, and I am not the only one who says such things. I just happen to have a style of delivering it, like a colonoscopy. Straight up the butthole, and sometimes I forget the lube, but I always remember the glove. If I wanted to deliver the message in a more politically correct way, it could have sounded like “Not everyone is born wise.” or “You’re not living up to your real potential.”
Then comes my question of balance in this situation because I am dealing with someone who falls on the extreme end of the spectrum, and gently delivered messages don’t work.
My point is: that I am the way I am because of my role and what I see as my role and purpose in this lifetime, and I need everyone to understand this. My life path is, obviously, of a Chinese metaphysics practitioner. I will probably be doing this for the rest of my life, and my last act of balance would be making sure my coffin doesn’t fall off the catafalque. If my life path were to have been different, I would be dealing with people who come to me differently. If I wanted to deal with people differently, I would have chosen another path, although the path I am on now wasn’t exactly chosen, and it fell upon me.
If I were to give a very Sean-esque, irreverent analogy, when you fall sick and go to a doctor, you really just want the doctor to fulfil his/her role. Sure, some doctors are snobbish, but please just cure my ailment. You don’t want to hear their bloody life stories and how they mugged their whole life to sit in a chair the whole day; just give you the damn fungal cream for the mushrooms growing in your nether regions. You’re paying for that fungal cream to stop scratching yourself in public – that’s it. Suppose this is a male doctor and he has a profound passion for body-building and pole dancing, you don’t want him to start unbuttoning his cloak slowly as he measures your blood pressure and then goes full Magic Mike on you and ask you to slap his man-buns while he hands you your 3-day medical certificate.
You just want him to do his. God. Damn. Job. Because that is his role. If you wanted Magick Mike, I’m sure you know where to go to scratch that itch (pun?).
My point is, please remember what my Heaven damn job is, and I am doing my very best, in my own way, with my own flair. But the essence of my job is studying the laws of Chinese metaphysics and delivering them in a way that can help people. Everything else is secondary. I need people to understand that I am but one person with a very small but sonorous voice in the industry trying to do what I feel is the right thing.
The people who usually have an issue with me are the Category 4 chart-holders themselves because it hits a raw nerve, and it hits where it hurts the most, even when they weren’t even my clients because something I said – got to them. It got to them because, deep down, they know what they are like but are in denial.
If anyone feels like I am not doing the right thing, there is no need to come to me; if anyone feels that I am a bad person, there is no need to come to me; and if anyone doesn’t like me, there is no need to come to me.
Bad BaZi Charts And The Consequences
Before I move on, I need to mention again then whenever I say “bad BaZi charts”, it refers to people who are pathological and have character issues. It is never to invalidate people’s sufferings, those born with health issues or special needs, etc. It should be obvious that I am not referring to this group, and I never, ever will, but I need to spell it out because there are more morons than critical thinkers in this world.
Again, I don’t want anyone to mistaken me and accuse me of trampling on people with challenging BaZi charts. If I can help, I will, and I have, especially when it’s cases where they also help themselves. These cases are also the ones that will eventually ascend to Category 2 charts and stay in Category 2. But alas, there are many moments, especially when dealing with a perpetual Category 4 chart-holder, that I can’t help and will have to remove myself from the situation.
A few cases involving children motivated me to write this post. It’s the usual family drama that anyone would hear of, just that I’m in one of those jobs that get the details. The other job that hears such stories would be divorce lawyers.
I don’t think I need to remind everyone what kind of background I came from, and if there’s one thing that makes me livid, it’s seeing how adults are ruining their children’s lives.
Some of my clients whose marriages are falling apart want to hang on to the marriage for children’s sake, even when no love remains. In some cases, there isn’t even any responsibility anymore, and one side completely abandons the family. These people convince themselves that they are doing the noble thing, but underlying that is the pain that they are not willing to accept or face – their marriage has fallen apart, and they have wasted their best years on the wrong person, they might not be as financially secure. Honestly, children and their desire to give them a complete family are often used as an excuse to stay in denial.
In some cases, the divorce hasn’t even been filed, but people are already sleeping with others who are still legally married, with children, and also intending to divorce but have yet to file the papers. Mind you, these people have children, and their legal spouses are also aware they are sharing the bed with someone else who is also legally married and with children, but no one is filing for a divorce and just leaving things hanging. I don’t care who these people sleep with, but I cannot stand how the children are sidelined because of the lackadaisical way these issues are being handled, and all these are happening while the parent says, “I want the best for my children.”
Then for goodness sake, please handle your life properly. Sometimes, these are the very same people who tell me they wish to learn Chinese metaphysics so that they can help people when they don’t even have the common sense to help themselves. This is the point where I go absolute livid because are you kidding me here?
I don’t want to turn this post into a case study, so I’m not going to attach any charts or conversations here. Please trust that the stories are real.
There is one case that stood out: This client, interestingly, shares the same birthday as I do (date and year) with a different gender and birth time. But our lives turned out very differently, as they should, because one’s gender and birth time make an enormous difference.
The client had an unwanted pregnancy ten years ago and married her husband when they’ve only dated for half a year. The husband turned out to be physically and verbally abusive. The marriage lasted till 2015, and it was filled with nothing but violence, abuse, and trips to court. They now have shared custody of the child, and till today, the drama continues. I don’t want to go into the details, but it’s as bad as you can imagine because we are talking about an ex-husband who was, and still is, abusive in every sense of the word. Social workers and the police are still very much part of their lives because two people crossed paths ten years ago. The daughter is now a ’weapon’ for the ex-husband to inflict pain on the mother.
I have everyone’s charts and trust me when I say everything can be seen in the charts. It’s just that I’ve not come across such a severe manifestation before. My heart sank when I saw the daughter’s charts because the story of how her parents are ruining her life is written so clearly in her charts, and I know she’s not going to come out of it well because those are written in her chart as well and reflected through the 10-Year Phases she’s going to go through.
I was honestly at a loss for this case because what can I do, or say, at this point, to help? Everyone is stuck in a death spiral. As I said above, the steps to take are not difficult to figure out, but people often lack the will and courage.
The part that made my mind go blank and give up was the point when I broke down the daughter’s chart and asked my client whether she was aware of the trauma and harm she was causing her daughter. She replied, “May I check in what manner will my daughter suffer?”
Is there really a need to spell things out? Is it not already clear? Are you that stupid?
I cannot empathize with my client and her ex-husband because their minds work in ways I cannot perceive or understand, and it goes back to the point where I always say our charts make our hearts, mind, and souls different. I just feel really, really sorry for the daughter, who is only 11 years old, stuck in between two idiots who can’t handle their lives.
Drawing The Line On Empathy & Accountability
This is a topic I’ve always wanted to discuss, and it’s perhaps one of the reasons why Chinese metaphysics has become all about toxic positivity and delusion.
It’s simply safer for practitioners to play the empathy card and be the ‘nice person’, take the money, and send the client away. If the practitioner wants to take it further, sell them hope in the form of an expensive feng shui cure and hope they come back a few years later to ‘recharge’ it.
Let’s face it. People come to get their charts deciphered because something is bothering them, but do you think everyone comes to get a reading in a state of humility and that something is wrong, or in a defensive state and denial? Few people come to an astrological reading with the mindset of “Alright, time to get my act together. Let’s be open-minded about this.”, especially the ones with the weaker charts. No one likes delivering bad news, but unfortunately, it’s a practitioner’s job to do so sometimes.
But I guess everything is just a huge cluster-fornication and death spiral where scammer-‘practitioners’ feed on deluded people, and deluded people seek false solace from scammer-‘practitioners’. I don’t think I need to remind anyone that I do not intend to be part of this debauchery.
The bad BaZi charts are usually the most defensive because they are the way they are and keep them the way they are. To these people, acknowledging something is wrong or that they aren’t that good is more painful than remaining in their current state. Self-help books talk about this all the time, which some will label as “self-deception” or “ego-preservation”. To them, the current state is fine when everything is not, which comes from the extreme fear of reality, and their minds stay in psychosis.
It’s really, really just safer for practitioners to go, “Oh, you poor little thing. I hope things get better for you. Oh, by the way, I think this Pi Xiu bracelet will help.” The client leaves the consultation thinking something miraculous has happened and goes home, only to continue the nightmare.
I’ve posted this on my Instagram:
There are some things that I can be empathetic about. I am not a monster, everyone. And if anyone wants to accuse me of being an unempathetic monster and act as though you know me very well, may I suggest you sort out your marriage first because I have a marriage that most people can only envy.
The topic is extremely touchy because of the empathy movement, which Heavens know started from where. It’s trendy now because you are an animal if you are not empathetic to everything under the sun. If this continues, we’ll soon need to empathize with child abusers, and we will all be bigots trying to protect children. The funny thing is that some of these people who preach about empathy are always the first to bail when real help and effort are required or sometimes indirectly contribute to the problem by being lenient with someone they shouldn’t.
If you know me, I talk about balance all the time, and I truly believe this extends even to empathy and compassion. Saying that these two virtues require balance does not mean undermining their importance, just that we can use them better.
There is a time to feel empathy and compassion, and a time to withhold it. When the time to feel empathy and compassion arises, there is also a right way of executing it. Both these scenarios are an act of balance in themselves and how Yin and Yang interact and unfold.
As I said in the Instagram post: If empathy and compassion are whored around like it’s some commodity or weaponized by some spiritual narcissistic just to appeal to the mob, these virtues lose their meaning – and I’m going to spare everyone another irreverent analogy here. Empathy and compassion would end up being nothing but a charade for the spiritual narcissist to feel popular and self-destructive people to feel better about themselves. Nobody can be wrong anymore, and no one needs to be responsible for themselves anymore.
Perhaps let me give a few examples. If you have a friend who is a self-destructive person, perhaps like an addict or violent person, where is the line you draw empathy before you tell this person to get their act together and seek help because there’s nothing more you can do?
I’m sure that somewhere out there, someone is preaching the right way to use empathy. Thankfully.
Unless you’re an imbecile or a doughnut, please do not misinterpret or gaslight me and try to say, “Sean is saying empathy is bad.” I am not saying that. I am just saying it can be used and executed better instead of being weaponized or whored around for validation or just because it is trendy.
If you were born into a dysfunctional family like I was, I would definitely feel for you. I can only offer some words of encouragement and share with you what I went through, learned, and did to overcome it. I will hold space for you. That being said, there will come the point where I have to remove myself from the situation because what I can do is limited, and besides, it is your life and your soul, after all. Meet me halfway, and we can both become better than before.
But if you choose the self-destruct, I will let you because if I go down with you, my loved ones go down with me – and I will not let that happen.
If I told you that it is OK to have boundaries, to move out and protect yourself and that even Confucius himself said that parents needed to deserve filial piety, but you still don’t get it, then there’s not much else I can do. My empathy has to stop there because it has served its purpose in giving you some solace and trying to uplift you, any more of it is just for the sake of it.
I know not everyone’s situation is the same, and mine was rather extreme, so it often gets hard to know what is right or wrong. Perhaps, there is no right or wrong – only a decision you won’t regret. I don’t regret any decisions I’ve made regarding my biological family.
I know we Asians are worried that cutting off family ties will be met by bad karma, but do you see me being struck by lightning like our parents always tell us we would? Please understand where the real karma you need to deal with here is. What our boomer parents ‘preaches’ to us sometimes is not karma – they are threats.
The whole topic of family and how to deal with them can be another 9,000-word blog post. I’ll leave that to another time.
I know some people won’t agree with what I say here, and this is just the way I function as a person instead of some universal truth: Whenever I’m not sure of which path to choose, I usually choose the path I won’t regret, because the path of regret will lead to even more bad decisions later. I guess the trick here is knowing which are decisions you will eventually regret or not, which is why I’m always very honest with myself so that I can think clearly. For example, I always tell people that unless I am willing to help someone wholeheartedly, I won’t help the person just to appear or look nice because if I regret my decision later, I will feel imbalanced. I might even grow to resent the person after.
In order words, I am always trying to feel inner balance. I don’t want to regret anything I do because if I don’t, I can take any consequence and move bravely forward.
My point is: that if something feels like the right thing to do, but you regret it, it might not be that “right” after all, especially when you fail to see what might happen due to your regret. This is the same reason why someone whom you once fell in love with can become someone you resent the most. It’s that imbalance and regrets you feel.
Exceptions To What I Said Above: My Younger Readers
I want to make one thing very clear. Whatever I wrote in the above section is more targeted at us grown adults. I am making it a point to write this portion because I know the demography of my readers is changing and becoming younger, and I must address this. My most recent client is only 18, and she shared with me that she had cancer two years ago and had a slight relapse.
Children, teenagers, and people in their young adulthood deserve support and guidance simply because it’s something they need in that stage of their lives. Growing up is tough, and I am no monster to tell people who are still figuring out their lives to say they don’t deserve empathy simply because of a few mistakes. Please, everyone, I’m not stupid, and I talk about balance and being in touch with reality all the time, and I know you don’t blindly apply everything to every demographic.
I wish to tell my younger readers that there are people out there who will be willing to guide you and understand you because people older than you have gone through what you are going through now. Do not be afraid to ask for help or an opinion, but of course, do it in a respectful and non-entitled way. At the same time, please make it a point to tell yourself to grow, be stronger, and be balanced. Be kind, too, but not the type that is doing it for show or narcissism because there are too many such people out there.
I know what it’s like to deal with life alone as a child while receiving absolutely no empathy – even from your parents.
But alas, there will come the point where you reach your 30s and will be out on your own, and I can only wish that life, the parents you have, the people you’ve met, and most importantly, the soul you have prepared you for what’s to come. Because this is the point where everyone expects you to get your act together, and you will need to take some responsibility for your own healing. You will understand why this is important when you find someone you wish to marry.
I’ve said this before, and I hope my younger readers who have reached out to me also noticed this, but I really do have a soft spot for younger clients. I do because I know some of you do not have anyone to go to for some of the issues you’re facing and I wish I had someone to turn to when I was your age.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think my life would turn out the way it did, and I hope life surprises you the same way it surprised me. But before that happens, know there will be tests from the Heavens.
Oh, and by the way, if you’re above 30 already, you’re not young anymore.
This isn’t exactly a personal bias because I do draw from what I’ve read, but 30 is a very important milestone for anyone. Confucius did say “三十而立”, and it’s the age where you must start to stand on your own two feet. In Western astrology, something called Saturn Return also happens a few years before or after 30, and it’s meant to test you and truly make you grow up. It’s time to metaphorically get your s*** together while others are doing the literal. If you’re 50 and still getting your s*** together, then you are the s*** who never got together.
My life also turned around when I hit 30, and it was also the age when I met my beloved wife.
You can feel free to disagree with me, but I feel that there comes the point where everyone needs to tell themselves they are adults and grown-ups now, and there are certain things to get right. It’s like how the law is sometimes different for minors and adults. Nature also doesn’t expect you to get everything at the start. Plants that just sprouted won’t bear flowers or fruits immediately. However, if by a certain point, you still don’t get it right, then, of course, there will be consequences.
Everyone only has that many years in our lifetimes, I’m sure those in their mid-30s like me are looking back and wondering how time passed so quickly. As much as I empathize with the difficulties and traumas many of us bring into adulthood, it’s also time to grow up, let go, try to heal, and not waste any more time.
Now that I’ve written a few thousand (close to 9,000, I counted) words on the verge of going blind. What’s the conclusion?
Quite frankly, I don’t actually know. Everything that I’ve said here is nothing new. If you’ve bothered to prowl through the archives, it’s all there. I guess each post doesn’t need to have a new topic or theme and some of it can be seen as addendums and a deeper exploration into some of the topics I’ve encountered before. Suppose I put out a thought experiment and ask, “Do Category 4 chart-holders who self-destruct deserve empathy?” It would actually open up interesting conversations, and these are some of the things we talk about in our moral philosophy modules.
I guess this post also reminds us of the daunting fact that a lot of things are already mapped out for you in your chart. Some of it can be good; some of it can be bad. If it is bad, then what are you going to do about it? Because if you are not going to do anything about it, why are you wasting your time on a reading then? It’s your life – not the practitioner’s. Only you can solve your problems. No one else can solve it for you.
This post is also a way of me saying that I can sometimes feel helpless with the cases I’ve come across because it’s beyond my ability to help the client. It is also a reminder to everyone to please, no matter how tough life is, do your best, whatever “doing your best” means to you. Whatever you do, just please don’t self-destruct. And if you’re a parent, please for Heaven’s sake, get your act together and stop making your life a joke.
I got lucky because I got a chart that told me I would be a fighter and survive, and I did. I know not everyone has a chart like that. It’s not about me praising myself – it’s really not. Why do I bother writing 9,000-word blog posts when I can just be like the degenerate ‘practitioners’ out there selling you crap and saying it’ll help when it doesn’t? I grew to enjoy writing, and my followers who reach out to tell me they enjoy my writing eggs me further to write more.
I still live with my trauma and pain every day, for sure. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have such reactions when it comes to clients who are horrid parents. Some may just call it a bad temper, although I choose to see it as seeking due justice for the people who need it. The trauma and pain will always linger, which is normal, and human. It has become part of me. But I do my best to rise above it and put it to use. I don’t always get it right, but I do my best.
Putting all my thoughts down in writing, sharing my experiences, and becoming the practitioner I am now is my path to finding meaning in the way I suffered because if what I went through can help someone who stumbled upon my blog, then perhaps, being misunderstood as a person once in a while – is fine.
– Sean
P.S. I know everyone’s wondering which Category I fall under and what kind of chart I have. I will probably only give a full detailed breakdown of my chart when I know my time is up. If you know palmistry though – I have a very interesting palm. And if you’ve seen me in person before, I have a red mole in between my eyes. I’ll leave what all these means to your imagination because I also don’t know what it bloody means, or do I?
