Hey everyone!
Before I start penning down my thoughts. I just want everyone to read this in a light-hearted tone. My words can’t accurately convey the feeling of gratitude I’m feeling now. Also, pardon the ridiculous image above because I’m not sure what I should put there at the moment. It feels weird blogging about myself but I guess given the nature of the event, I should say a few words since I expect a lot more traffic coming to my website and it’s going to be the first time many people hear of me. This is going to be yet another personal post and nothing to do with metaphysics and I apologize that this post is a bit centered around myself. I always remind myself that having an ego is not a good thing, so talking about myself too much tends to make me uncomfortable at times. Before I begin writing, I just want to thank everyone – my past clients and readers – for all your support. I would have never gotten this far without everyone’s trust and faith in me.
It’s been a rather crazy week. I don’t even know where to begin. It was only a while back when I mentioned I don’t think I’ll ever appear on media, and the irony of it all is that the first ever formal media engagement I had was from the news agency – Channel NewsAsia (CNA). Perhaps this isn’t exactly the first media engagement I had – the last time time I appeared on media was on a Her World feature a long time ago back in 2016. If there’s any news platform I want to be featured on for my sideline, it’s definitely CNA and I can’t believe it really happened. It was a personality feature on their Lifestyle section and you can find the article here. The crazy thing is that there’s going to be another feature coming soon and that’s in the July edition of T: The New York Times Style Magazine (Singapore) and it should be on the shelves by next week and it includes a video of me having a conversation with a Western astrologer. I’ll share the magazine feature and video when the time comes.
About That Channel NewsAsia Feature
The outpouring of support in the past week has been overwhelming and it was a really touching moment for me when past clients started reaching out to congratulate me on my milestone:
The above client is part of a group of six friends who all come to me for a reading some time last year and I guess the above case showcases why I took this ancient discipline online and formalized it. It’s not like I a choice anyways as I’ve always held on to a day job and I have good reason for not wanting to do this full-time for reasons I’ve explained plenty of times. It’s simply not the right time to do this full-time. Conducting my consultations online made a lot more sense to me and I gave it quite a lot of thought back then before launching it. The flexibility for both parties, and being able to open up your email and getting a refresher on everything I said is something clients really welcomed. If I conducted in-person consultations with no written report provided, people are going to walk away and forget everything. The lead time I have allows me to refer back to the books in the event I come across a chart I’m not familiar with, so I can make sure I’m analyzing the chart the right way. It’s dangerous for practitioner to pretend they have everything memorized in their head just to appear credible – I certainly don’t have everything memorized, but of course with each case I close, the need to refer back to the books diminishes as well.
Let me just get this out of the way: I did not pay Channel NewsAsia to feature me and this was not something I secretly arranged. If that were the case, someone else would have done it a long time ago. The world doesn’t work like that. There’s something amazing I would like to share with everyone though. I’ll give a chronological breakdown of the events: The CNA reporter reached out to me out on the 19th of June after getting hold of my name and number from a friend of hers. I met her on two days later on Thursday for the interview and did the photo-shoot at Mediacorp the following Monday during lunch time, and poof! The article was out the very next day and everything happened within a week. It was a very refreshing experience for me and it’s amazing how fast they worked.
Here’s the amazing thing: I found out yesterday that May’s friend is a close friend of one of my clients way back way back in December 2016. I remember handling this client’s case when I was in Korea on a holiday with my partner. This client was a referral from someone else, and she had suffered a miscarriage back then, and wanted to seek my opinion on her chart and see if anything can be done. It was very clear in her chart that her reproductive organs were on the weaker side, so I told her to get some help from a Chinese physician and she’s now a mother of an extremely adorable boy a year later. If not for this client in 2016, this CNA article would not have happened. I got in touch with this client of mine and we were reminiscing how amazing one thing led to another and seeing the cause-and-effect chain come full circle the way it did.
The article May wrote about me certainly did get me a lot of attention which I’m not entirely used to. To see my face on a full-width banner on their website felt rather surreal and it’s really beyond my wildest dreams but at the same time, it does bring me a bit of discomfort as I’m someone who is used to staying low profile. I am EXTREMELY grateful towards the reporter for making sure the message I wish to deliver is consistent with the principles I’ve set out when I first started this sideline. My previous post on why I felt I’ll never be on media explains why I shy away from most engagements, because most requests come in the form of nonsensical requests for zodiac forecasts or articles about lucky colours. I don’t understand why any self-respecting practitioner would put their name on something like that as I genuinely feel it’s a deviation from what our ancestors wanted this field to be. A lot things currently being practiced in this field doesn’t make sense to me.
What I’m Really Like As A Person
I remember my eyes welled up a little as I was reading the article on the bus on my way to work. I’m not exactly sure how to describe the emotion, but it was a mixed one for sure. My life really turned around in the past few years, and the change has been so significant that sometimes I find it hard to believe it myself. I can only say that I’m very grateful for how things turned out and I’m glad I survived.
The article meant a lot to me, because it made me feel that everything I went through in my past was worth it. It feels a little weird for the public to know I was a victim of childhood abuse, but it’s not something I try to hide and I’m pretty open about it. I wrote about what I went through on my personal Facebook page in the Notes section and it’s a public note which is open for everyone to read. That part of my life is long gone and I’ve already dealt with the demons – I no longer build my identity around my past and what I’ve been through and I’ve been telling myself to always be in the present and look forward. If you’re read some of the really old posts in my blog, I recommend a book called Power of Now by Eckhart Toelle which helped me a lot back then. Don’t forget to do the Enneagram test too when you have the time.
I know the article painted a very good picture of me as a person, but of course that’s not the whole story but not like it was their duty to point it out. Perhaps let me offer a balanced view on this.
I’m still human with a lot of flaws and I am after all only 32 years old and I most certainly behave like one in my personal life. To my knowledge, I’ve not used a single curse word on my blog as it is public facing and not a constructive thing to do, but trust me I curse and swear like a sailor in real life. The way people perceive me via my blog and how I’m really like in person does have some disparities, and I have to say I derive a bit of fun from this when I think to myself “you guys have no idea what I’m really like in person”. It’s just the cheeky side I have that people can’t usually see. =)
I am not the perfect practitioner and I’m not someone who has it all figured out. I have the same troubles as everyone else and I make bad decisions in my life too despite me being a practitioner. The only credit I can give myself is that I’ve gone through some things that made me grow up a little faster, and some of the things I’ve gone through, on top of my knowledge in metaphysics, allows me to give an opinion which many of my clients find useful or insightful. I hesitate to use the word “advice” because I don’t want to see myself as someone who is qualified go give advice or that I know better than others. I blogged about this many times, but I’m not someone with the best of tempers or patience, although this is usually ONLY triggered usually when someone with a toxic mindset tries to project their issues onto me. My past certainly made me this way because it took a lot from me to be able to get out of the rut I was in and heal from the environment I went through as a child. I had to learn to be very strong and I hardened up emotionally, telling myself that, despite being seemingly like the victim, I am ultimately responsible for the way I feel and I got myself to where I was. Looking myself in the mirror and telling myself that I had issues and that I had to face my demons was really not easy, and the last thing I’d ever want was to become someone who uses my tough childhood as an excuse for being a lesser man. Everything you want to know about me and my past is on my personal Facebook page – I don’t wish to repeat the story here, so just head over and read it there if you are interested to know more about what I went through.
The bottom line is: I don’t want anyone to see me as someone special. I’m a seriously flawed person and my partner is trying her best to help me find my softer and compassionate side back after all these years of being hardened up. It will take time. My older entries should show enough what I’m like as a practitioner providing this service. I do lose my temper at my clients sometimes and I’ve expressed my frustration many times via my blog, especially those who engage me without first doing their research and read up on the articles I’ve told them to read, or worse, expecting me to provide a shortcut solution for their problems. There have been cases where I exercised my right not to conduct the Q&A after the report has been sent because some clients were either abusive or downright disrespectful, and I am the last person on Earth who will waste my time and these people and tolerate such treatment. All these are stated in the T&Cs when you submit the request form for a consultation. I can’t emphasize enough how serious I am when it comes to what I do, because I know my words can have a huge impact on someone, and you would never want to have someone mess up their life because of something you said recklessly. What I do, despite it seeming like it’s just about sending emails, can be very mentally and emotionally draining. I’ve decided a long time ago to take measures to protect myself from people who just aren’t very nice.
In case you’re new to this blog: I do not take on every case that comes to me, and I do ‘pick’ my clients and the filtering process is only going to get increasingly stringent. I’m not doing this because I’m arrogant or wish to put myself on a pedestal. There are a lot of people out there who don’t benefit from metaphysics but harm themselves instead. These are the people who end up spending thousands to buy charms and items hoping their life would turn around, but only to worsen their situation. I’ve seen too many cases. I hope everyone understands why I have to do this and my previous posts will explain the reasons. Again, metaphysics is not a magical cure – I can only tell you why you are going through the things you are going through, but I cannot solve them for you.
I’m going to be around for a very long time, so I would encourage anyone who is looking to engage me to really take your time to go through my blog, and even my personal Facebook page to get to know me and understand what you’re getting yourself into, because I don’t sugarcoat my reports and I’ve lost count of the number of times a client tells me my analysis paints a drastically different picture from previous practitioners. Clients in this field are on the losing side, because everyone is approaching this field with absolutely no idea what it is about and it is a very vulnerable position to be in. I blog because I don’t want people to be in this position.
About My Age And Self-Studying This Art
I know it’s hard to believe that I taught myself BaZi and Zi Wei Dou Shu, but I really did. I’m not saying I know every single thing about about these two Chinese astrological methods – I don’t. There’s still so much to learn and I’m always trying to deepen my understanding of this field. It frustrates me when I don’t know why and how something works, especially when it’s something I’m interested in it.
I went straight to the source material and I have never taken any classes from anyone. I didn’t see a point in taking someone else’s watered down syllabus when I have access to everything a prospective student needs and it helps that I’m able to read Chinese. I’m looking to start my own classes soon, and I’ll be honest, it’s not going to be able to teach you everything because there is simply too much content to go through. Classes, at the end of the day, only provide a stepping stone for one to pick up this discipline and I personally don’t feel any of the courses outside is meant to turn you into a practitioner per se. It’s the reason why I don’t believe in the model of training others to do readings for you and ‘scaling the business’ this way. There are certain professions that aren’t suitable for such a way of scaling.
For those who don’t know – I am renting a room in a HDB apartment. I moved out of my old place some years back. I had to go back to my parent’s place recently to clear some of my stuff and don’t even get me started on how weird it felt to be back there. It was a weird feeling because I’ve not spent Chinese New Year with biological family for 4 years now – I spend it my other family. I managed to retrieve some books I left in my old room when I moved out 4 years ago. Check them out:
The two green-coloured books on Zi Wei Dou Shu were the very first books on metaphysics I touched when I was 18 years old. You can tell how old these books are with the faded gold colour on the Chinese character.
Of course, I studied it with the mind of a person reading through the tabloids and wasn’t able to appreciate metaphysics back then. I can’t remember when I got hold of the red book on BaZi but it should be around the same time.
Yes, that is the ‘legendary’ 《三命通会》 I bring up once in a while on my website and it is almost a thousand pages long and a huge pain in the behind to read. Definitely not the first book to dive into if you’re thinking of learning BaZi as 《三命通会》 is a compilation of a few older Chinese classics that came before it. There are other books more suitable for beginners. If you’re going “What the hell? You can understand that?”, trust me, I feel like that once in a while too, but I’ve come to a point where I can read those vertical lines of Chinese words and understand what’s going on. These weren’t the only sources I turned to of course, but it was definitely the very first trigger and what got everything started. I had to turn to some modern day books written in modern day Chinese to lay that foundation of understanding what metaphysics was about before I could digest classical Chinese, and I would say reading the Chinese classics and straight from the source material was a lot more ‘fun’ because it feels you were brought back in time and had to view the world with a lens our ancestors used. A lot of the other books I have are in e-format which I read from my iPad. I also went into books written by various modern day scholars, and particularly enjoyed books written by the late 南懷瑾。That was the period where I really started to appreciate Chinese culture, philosophy and history.
The bottom line is: I really did self study everything and I did not have a lineage. I would think that anyone at the top of any lineage probably turned to the Chinese classics as well.
There’s so many other things I wish to say, but I guess I’ve already said it at some point in my past entries. I think… I just really want to thank everyone for their trust in me. My past clients, my loyal readers of my blog, my friends and anyone who has ever reached out privately to tell me you enjoy reading my blog. I don’t know where this sideline will take me, but I promise I will never change the way I do things. I will always only speak the truth and share what I feel metaphysics is really about, and none of that commercialized nonsense you see online all the time. My only hope and dream is that whatever I do, and write, will bring some form of peace to people seeking clarify. I hope the work I do can bring some good to this field and that people can benefit from metaphysics the right way – the way our ancestors intended it to be.
Thanks for reading this self-indulgent post everyone, and thank you so much for the trust and support you’ve put in me. I will probably have to take a break from blogging and handle the influx of requests coming in, but i’ll be back soon. =)
-Sean