Deal with Daily Stress

The Creator has created for us a world of changes: everything is changing with every moment, and nothing remains permanent. It is through changes that we transform ourselves into a better and a happier human being. Even in a difficult and challenging environment, we learn from our mistakes and wrong choices in life, and change ourselves. Transformation is educational and self-enlightening. Transformation is synonymous with impermanence, which is the essence of change.

Understanding that everything is impermanent is self-enlightening. Nothing is permanent: the good as well as the bad things that happen to us are impermanent; nothing last forever. We all are aware of this universal truth. We all know that we cannot live to one hundred years and beyond, and yet we resist our aging, continuously fixing our faces and bodies to make us look younger. We may have the face of a forty-year-old but the body of the seventy-year-old. We simply refuse to let go; we desperately and self-delusively cling on to the permanence In other words, we wish the impermanent were the permanent. It is this wishful thinking that makes us unhappy. We were once healthy and now our health has declined, and we are unhappy. We were wronged by our enemies, and we hold on to our grudges, instead of forgiving and letting them go, and we are unhappy. Our past glories gave us the ego, which we refuse to let go, and we become depressed and unhappy.

Life is about changes, and living is about letting go what is impermanent that we naively believe and wish that they were permanent. Remember, nothing is permanent, and every moment remains with that moment. Therefore, live in the present, and live your moments to their best.

Get the wisdom of Lao Tzu, the author of Tao Te Ching, the ancient classic from China about human wisdom to learn how to let go of the self-delusional mindset of permanence.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The First Chapter of "TAO TE CHING"

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu is one of the most translated books in world literature. TAO wisdom—the wisdom of Lao Tzu—is profound human wisdom that is intriguing, perplexing, and paradoxical.

To illustrate, the first chapter of the book is short, but is capable of many multiple interpretations and translations.

"The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

As nameless, it is the origin of all things; As named, it is the mother of 10,000 things

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery of all things.

Ever desiring, one sees only their manifestations.

And the mystery itself is the doorway to all understanding."

(Lao Tzu,ally  Tao Te Ching, chapter one)

If we could understand the Creator or explain His ways, then He is no longer infinite and eternal.

What it really means is: Human wisdom is limited and therefore we can never completely understand the ways of Nature or the Creator.

Mankind, once given a name with an identity, is only the source, but not the creator, of all things.

What it really means is: Man invents but does not create something out of nothing; only the Creator, who is nameless with no identity, creates everything out of nothing.

Ever humble, we see the mystery of all things in the Creator's realm of creation.

What it really means is: With humility, we may understand why certain things were created.

Ever boastful, we see only the manifestations of all things created.

What it really means is: With pride, we see the wonders of our own inventions, but not the mystery of the Creator’s creations.

And the mystery itself is the pathway to attaining greater spirituality and further understanding of the Creator.

What it really means is: Not knowing everything leads to further understanding of the purpose of creation by the Creator.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is everything in life, in particular, the true pathway to true human happiness.

Why?

If we look back in anger, we may have regret and remorse; if we look forward with hope and expectation, we may develop anxiety and disappointment. 

Mindfulness is staying with the present moment; after all, the “present” is the only reality because the past was gone, and the future is yet to come. The now is a gift, and that’s why it is called “present.”

We are living in a world of technology with many attachments and distractions that cultivate a compulsive mind.

What is a compulsive mind?

A compulsive mind is unable to slow down, because it is forever focusing on what to do next.  If you’re texting while driving, or talking on the phone while walking—you definitely have a compulsive mind. Even if you’re walking to a supermarket, and your mind is all about what to buy, instead of observing what is around you—you don’t have mindfulness.

Mindfulness relaxes the mind first, and then the body. Relaxation avoids stress and enhances concentration. All in all, mindfulness holds the key to good health and get well-being of an individual—the groundwork of human happiness. That said, mindfulness is easier said than done; you need mindfulness resources to help you get your mindfulness.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Wisdom of Letting Go

The Wisdom of Letting Go

What Is “Letting Go”?

“Letting go” literally means releasing your close or tight fist in order to abandon or give up something that you are holding in your hand. If you are close- or tight- fisted, you also cannot receive anything. “Letting go” is detachment.

The opposite of “letting go” is “attaching to” something that you are stubbornly holding on to.

The Wisdom in Asking Questions

There is an old proverb that says: “He who cannot ask cannot live.” Life is all about asking questions, and seeking answers from all the questions asked, including questions about “letting go.”

To live well, you need to ask yourself many self-probing questions as you continue on your life journey in order to find out: who you really are, and not who you think or wish you were; what you really need, and not what you want from life; why certain undesirable things happened while certain desirable things did not happen to you. Without knowing the answers to those questions asked, you can never be genuinely happy because you will always be looking for the unreal and the unattainable, just like the carrot-and-stick mule forever reaching out for the unreachable carrot in front.

In many ways, the human brain is like a computer program. Your whole being is like the computer hardware with the apparatus of a mind, a body, and its five senses. The lens through which you see yourself, as well as others and the world around you, are the software that has been programmed by your thoughts, your past and present experiences, as well as your own desires and expectations. In other words, it is you—and nobody else—who have programmed your own mindset. All these years, you may have been trapped in a constricted sense of the self that has prevented you from knowing and being who you really are. That is to say, your “conditioned” thinking mind may have erroneously made you "think" and even "believe" that you are who and what you are right now; but nothing could be further from the truth.

By asking relevant questions, you may have the human wisdom to "change" that pre-conditioned mindset, and thus enabling you to separate the truths from the half-truths or even the myths that you may have created for yourself voluntarily or involuntarily all these years.

The important thing in questioning is to experience everything related to all the questions you ask concerning yourself, others, and the world around you. Live every question in its full presence.

Always ask yourself many “how” and “why” questions regarding whatever you may do, say, and want in your everyday life and living. Ask questions not just about yourself, but also about all those around you, whether they are connected to your or not.

Be patient toward all those questions that you cannot find the answers right away. Enlightenment may dawn on you one day when you ask fewer or even no more questions, because by then you may already have got all the answers; that is your ultimate self-awakening to the truths.

Empower your thinking mind to increase its wisdom by asking questions to initiate its intent to learn, to discover, and then to change yourself for the better.

Ultimately, you will self-intuit the wisdom of letting go, which plays a pivotal role in how you are going to live the rest of your life.

To get your copy, click here.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The TAO of Discovery and Recovery

The Discovery and the Recovery

Hippocrates (460 - 370 B.C), the father of medicine, once said: “Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food.” Take a step further: Let food be the “only” medicine. If you have developed a degenerative disease, start thinking of food as your medicine, in fact, the best medicine, if not the “only” medicine. Your body is designed to digest and utilize food to get its nutrients and energy. But only wholesome food can do just that—not even supplements, because all supplements are just what they are called.

If food is the “only” medicine for you, you will empower yourself with knowledge about food, and you will then pursue a proper diet with high quality, non-toxic, and nutritious food. That means, you will refrain from eating the commercially-prepared and chemically-loaded food obtainable at supermarkets. When food becomes the “only” medicine, you will also learn to trust your body; that is, you will learn what your body is telling you, and how it responds to real and wholesome food.

When you do become sick, you should also learn how to use herbs as medicine. Herbs from different parts of plants have different therapeutic values that promote self-healing without the use of dangerous pharmaceutical drugs. As a matter of fact, many common herbs, such as cinnamon, garlic, and ginger, have been used as “food” medicine for thousands of years.

If food is your “only” medicine, you will make good use of it to improve your health and heal yourself of any disease, including myasthenia gravis.

Hippocrates had also said: “Healing is a matter of time, but it is also a matter of opportunity.” Therefore, give your body that opportunity for natural self-healing by going drug-free, although it may take more time.

Your life is a journey through which you make many choices—some good ones and also some bad ones—that contribute to your health or illnesses. Life has a purpose with a unique destiny for each individual. Therefore, it is important that you know yourself, and self-healing is "knowing the self" as a part of your destiny. Sometimes and somewhere along your life journey, you may hit rock bottom and begin to despair. You may even ask the frequently-asked question: "Why me?" But that may also be the time of self-awakening for you. You may then begin to question how and why you have found yourself in that difficult and despondent situation. True self-awakening will make you take a different path—a detour from that journey you have been prodding along. Taking a different path creates the energy for self-healing.

Your self-awakening can be physical, such as a change of diet or taking up an exercise regimen. Your self-wakening can be emotional or spiritual, such as self-awakening to the power of love and compassion. Self-awakening may give you the desire and intention to heal, precipitating in changes that will ultimately heal not just the body but also the mind. Your very desire to heal is the healing energy for the body and the mind.

If you know yourself well, you will empower your mind with knowledge to heal yourself, and that empowerment generates more healing energy. If you know yourself more, you will make more right choices, than wrong ones, regarding your health. In making those right choices, you are well on the path to your own self-healing.

The bottom line: self-healing begins with knowing yourself through self-awakening to generate internal healing energy

         

The TAO

According to the TAO, the ancient wisdom from China, your discovery in life is your effortless search for learning and teaching from unexpected people in unexpected places; your recovery is your subjective perception of all the connections of life with your own spontaneous flow with them. Embracing everything and everyone with no judgment and no preference is the way to the discovery and the recovery of your health.

“The Way is paradoxical.

Like water, soft and yielding,

yet it overcomes the hard and the rigid.

Stiffness and stubbornness cause much suffering.

We all intuitively know

that flexibility and tenderness

are the Way to go.

Yet our conditioned mind

tells us to go the other way.

We accept all that is simple and humble.

We embrace the good fortune and the misfortune.

Thus, we become masters of every situation.

We overcome the painful and the difficult in our lives.

That is why the Way seems paradoxical.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 78)

The recovery journey is never smooth and straightforward; it is always long and winding, with many detours and even setbacks. Healing is invisible, inaudible, and intangible:

“Look, it is invisible.

Listen, it is inaudible.

Grab, it is intangible.

These three characteristics are indefinable:

Therefore, they are joined as one, just like the Creator—invisible, inaudible, and intangible.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 14)

Discovery and recovery are part of your healing journey.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

  

To download the e-book, click here; to get the paperback copy, click here.

Today and Tomorrow

Ernest Hemingway in his book Farewell to Arms described how once he was sitting all by himself as he watched the ants busily working under his feet, and then after a while he stamped out the ants under his feet. Tomorrow, we could become those ants. Today, living in the now ushers us into grateful living, preparing us for tomorrow, which is just another day.

Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With the Wind said at the end of the movie: “Tomorrow is another day.”

Yes, tomorrow is another day, but that day may or may never come. We always choose to believe that it will come. The truth of the matter is that it might never come. Our self-delusion that it will come may give us expectations that often lead us into doing many things to anticipate that our expectations will be fulfilled. This is one of the reasons why many of us have a compulsive mind, such that the mind is forever shuffling between the past and the future,  except staying in the present, which is the only reality; the past was gone, and the future is yet to come.

Living in the now is wisdom in living.  Living in the now is the consciousness of being. Today is now, and mindfulness of the present is realization not only that tomorrow is another day but also that it might never come. This mental consciousness may make us appreciative of what we already have and grateful for not getting what we deserve. Have you ever thought that human birth is unique? Fathoming that mystery may be enough to make you become more grateful for and thankful of your being. 

Tao wisdom focuses on mindfulness, that is, living in the present moment, which is the reality of living. By the same token, Jesus told us not to worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will take care of itself. Living in the now is basic human and fundamental Biblical wisdom. Do you really believe in that? More importantly, do you put that in your everyday life and living?

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The TAO Healing Journey

The Healing Journey

One of Lao Tzu’s famous sayings is “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” The TAO journey of healing myasthenia gravis, or any autoimmune disease, is a great undertaking: every step is as important as the first; and each step is as firm as the previous one. The Chinese often like to say “feet stepping on solid and steady ground.” Your healing journey is the sum of all the steps you are going to take.

Before you take your first step, ponder on this reality: in life, all humans have two desires or pursuits—happiness and healthiness, which not only often come with many delusions and illusions but also always are unattainable and unsustainable. But the TAO may give you self-intuition and self-enlightenment to help you along your own journey of healing myasthenia gravis.

The Step of No Desire and No Intent

It is your healing journey, and only you can take your first step. So, you must choose to take your first step to go on that healing journey.

To continue on your journey, paradoxically, you must show no desire to heal and no intent to reach your destination.

But why?

The desire for good health may be difficult to sustain for someone who is currently confronted with the many health issues related to myasthenia gravis. It may seem not only difficult but almost impossible for that individual to restore natural health and get well again. Worse, ill health may even make that individual feel depressed and forget to take care of the body, and thus allowing the body's malfunctions to continue and deteriorate further.

A wise traveler on a long journey has no fixed plans, and is not intent upon arriving the destination within a certain time frame. But that traveler is ready to use all the situations and all the people encountered to help him along the long journey.

               

Likewise, healing is a long, on-going process, and not a destination. With innate and inexplicable power, it may appear that everyone and everything along your journey are also playing a part in facilitating in your favor all your endeavors in healing your myasthenia gravis.

The bottom line: take your first step of no desire and no intent for healing so as to change and to overcome any attitude of confusion and even despair related to the trauma of your myasthenia gravis diagnosis. On your healing journey, with no intent upon arriving at the destination any time soon, you will continue to keep yourself moving forward, and you will then go the long distance on your long healing journey.

The TAO

According to the TAO, being free of desires is your path to detachment, and thus giving you clarity of thinking to start your own healing journey.

Paradoxically, if you have no desire to desire for change or healing, there is stillness, in which you may see yourself gradually changing for the better in order to slowly heal yourself:

“To live a life of harmony, we need letting life live by itself. . .

So, follow the Way.

Stop striving to change ourselves: we are naturally changing.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 57)

“Accordingly, we do not rush into things.

We neither strain nor stress.

We let go of success and failure.

We patiently take the next necessary step, a small step and one step at a time.

We relinquish our conditioned thinking. Being our true nature, we help all beings

return to their own nature too.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 64)

According to the TAO, a good traveler neither has fixed plans, nor shows any effort to arrive at the destination:

“The softest thing in the world

overcomes what seems to be the hardest.

       

That which has no form

penetrates what seems to be impenetrable.

That is why we exert effortless effort.

We act without over-doing.

We teach without arguing.

This is the Way to true wisdom.

This is not a popular way

because people prefer over-doing.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 43)

Begin your healing journey, and take your first step with effortless effort and humble simplicity:

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

To download the e-book, click here; to get the paperback copy, click here.

The TAO to Heal: Knowledge and Wisdom

If you or your loved ones have been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, one of the autoimmune diseases, it must have been a devastating experience, especially if the neurologist has said that there is no known cure, except using medications to control and manage the many debilitating disease symptoms associated with myasthenia gravis.

A traumatic experience may have a prolonged effect on the human mind: having overwhelming negative emotions; feeling numb and unable to experience pleasure or even pain over a long period of time. The ultimate impact is that it may affect how you think, feel, act, and react in every aspect of your daily life and living.

To heal yourself of myasthenia gravis or any illness, you must be both knowledgeable and wise.

Knowledge and Wisdom

Knowledge comes from how your mind perceives and processes any information available. Wisdom, on the other hand, is how you apply the knowledge acquired to cope with any disease and disorder you may have, as well as your everyday life and living. The important implication: being knowledgeable may not  necessarily make you wise or wiser.

The bottom line: you need both knowledge and wisdom to heal yourself of myasthenia gravis.

Given that both knowledge and wisdom come from the thinking mind, your brain is, therefore, the most important of all your body organs. With its billions of brain cells, your brain is not only most complicated but also major source of all your health issues and problems related to myasthenia gravis.

So, it is important to keep your brain healthy as much as possible in order to be capable of acquiring the knowledge and attaining the wisdom to heal your myasthenia gravis.

The Healthy Brain

This is how you may keep your brain healthy:

·      Keep yourself hydrated because 80 percent of your brain is water. Drink at least 7-8 cups of water per day.

·      Keep healthy gums, and floss your teeth regularly to prevent any gum disease.

·      Enhance and improve blood flow to your brain with your 30-minute exercise at least several times a week.

·      Eat a healthy diet: high-quality lean protein; low-glycemic and high-fiber carbohydrates; natural and not processed foods.

·      Avoid inflammation and the formation of free radicals in your body.

·      Avoid sugar and sugary drinks, including all sodas and diet sodas.

·      Quit smoking, and limit your alcohol consumption to no more than 5 glasses per week.

·      Manage your blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels.

·      Maintain healthy levels of nutrients, e.g. vitamin D and omega-3s.

·      Maintain healthy hormones of the thyroid and the testosterone.

·      Promote good mental health, and avoid anxiety and depression.

·      De-stress yourself with correct breathing and daily meditation.

·      Get quality sleep of at least 7-8 hours a night without the help of medication.

·      Develop meaning and purpose in your life.

In addition to having a healthy brain, you must learn how to empower your thinking mind to seek and acquire the knowledge to heal your myasthenia gravis.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

To download the e-book, click here; to get the paperback copy, click here.