Awareness and Mindfulness Healing

The Step of Awareness and Mindfulness

On your healing journey, you must always be aware of your steps and mindful of your surrounding.

Awareness

Awareness is deep concentration of the mind to know what is happening to the body. This is essential to healing of the body. Nobody—not even your doctor—knows your body better than yourself, but you have to be aware of it.

Breathing is your awareness of what is happening to your body. It is critically important to your overall health. Breathing gives life. Without food and water, you may still survive for a while, but without your breath, you die within minutes.

Breathing has to do with the lungs, which serve two main functions: to get life-giving oxygen from the air into the body, and to remove toxic carbon dioxide from the body. So, do not compromise your lung functions with nicotine or any drug.

Breathing patterns are critical to health. That is, how you breathe may positively or negatively affect your body organs and hormones. For example, taking short, shallow breaths, you are in fact telling your brain that a threat exists, which then stimulates a stress response, and thus creating destructive thinking patterns in your brain. Conversely, taking long and deep breaths, you are sending positive signals to your brain for positive thinking patterns. When you own your breath, you have calm and peace. Breathing is just a simple strategy for instant stress-relief.

Diaphragm breathing

Learn how to breathe right: diaphragm breathing is natural breathing; it is the complete breath.

Consciously change your breathing patterns. Use your diaphragm to breathe (the diaphragm muscle separating your chest from your abdomen). Place one hand on your breastbone, feeling that it is raised, and put the other hand above your waist, feeling the diaphragm muscle moving up and down. Deep breathing with your diaphragm gives you complete breath. This is how you do diaphragm breathing:

Sit comfortably.

Begin your slow exhalation through your nose.

Contract your abdomen to empty your lungs.

Begin your slow inhalation and simultaneously make your belly bulge out.

Continuing your slow inhalation, now, slightly contract your abdomen and simultaneously lift your chest and hold.

Continue your slow inhalation, and slowly raise your shoulders. This allows the air to enter fully into your lungs to attain the complete breath.

Retain your breath and slightly raise your shoulders for a count of 5.

Very slowly exhale the air. Your upper chest deflates first, and then your abdomen relaxes in.

Repeat the process.

Learn to slowly prolong your breath, especially your exhalation. Relax your chest and diaphragm muscle, so that you can extend your exhalation, making your breathing out longer and complete. To prolong your exhalation, count “one-and-two-and-three” as you breathe in and breathe out. Make sure that they become balanced. Once you have mastered that, then try to make your breathing out a little longer than your breathing in.

Practice diaphragm breathing until it becomes second nature to you. Diaphragm breathing is relaxing and stress-relieving.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is acute mental awareness, which is deep concentration of the body and the mind for their inter-connection: the body is created to support the mind. To sharpen your mind power, you must enhance the awareness of your body first. If you feel that your body, mind, and soul are not connected, most probably there is lack of body awareness by the mind in the first place. Therefore, mindfulness begins with awareness of the body first.

Most of us do not pay much attention to the body—except when we experience physical pain—let alone paying attention to the mind. But mental attention is important to the wisdom in stress-free living. The mind and the body are inter-connected. Your mental attention is essentially your body consciousness, or your attention to the physical conditions and the needs of your body in relation to how your mind thinks. Understanding this intricate relationship may help you relax both your body and your mind.

Are you always paying conscious attention to your body at all times?

The way you normally eat speaks volumes of the degree or intensity of your body awareness. It is not the food you eat, but how you are eating your food that shows your body awareness. While eating, if you are reading your newspaper, watching your TV, working on your computer, or checking your cell phone, you are not paying any attention to your body, which at that very moment is supposed to be eating and not doing multitasking.

Train your mind to pay more attention to how your body reacts when you are eating, such as chewing your food thoroughly, slowing down your eating process by tasting each morsel of the food in your mouth. Always give the full presence of your mind to your meal. Again, how often you look at something without seeing it at all because your mind is not paying its full attention to what you are looking at. When your mind is not paying its full attention, your body becomes incapacitated; only when your body becomes fully conscious, then your mental capacity will then become enhanced and sharpened. Body awareness is simply paying full attention to what your body is doing at that present moment. In other words, be more conscious of what your body is doing when you are eating, walking, or doing anything routine. In any life situation, even while doing your dishes, you can use your total body awareness to switch off your thinking mind, and give it a meaningful break for your stress-relief.

The bottom line: with awareness and mindfulness, you may then begin to see the ultimate truths in anything and everything—including who you really are, all those close and related to you, as well as what is happening to and around you, including any illness or disease you may have.

The TAO Wisdom

According to the TAO, awareness is knowing who you really are, instead of who you wish you were. This is the only path to humility, which gives you an empty mindset with reverse thinking to rethink what is already in your pre-conditioned mind:

“Can we embrace both good fortunes and misfortunes in life?

Can we breathe as easily as innocent babies?

Can we see the world created as it is without judgment?

Can we accept both the desirable and the undesirable?

Can we express compassion to all without being boastful?

Can we watch the comings and goings of things without being perturbed?

Saying “yes” to all of the above is spiritual wisdom from the Creator,

who watches the comings and goings in the world He created.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 10)

According to the TAO, awareness is:

“watchful, like a man crossing a winter stream;

alert, like a man aware of danger;

courteous, like a visiting guest;

yielding, like ice about to melt;

simple, like a piece of uncarved wood;

hollow, like a cave;

opaque, like muddy water.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 15)

Mindfulness is the deep understanding of your body: how and why you are sick. The reason why a sage is not ill is that he sees illness as illness, and not as something else:

“Not knowing the Way,

but pretending we know,

we remain ignorant, and suffer.

Knowing that we do not know,

we pursue its wisdom:

knowing its origin,

knowing its ending,

and knowing our true nature.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 71)

Mindfulness is watching and observing what is happening to your body, as well as anything and everything around you. That is how and why you may have become sick.

“The Creator seems elusive amid the changes of life.

At times, He seems to have forsaken His creations.

In reality, He is simply observing the comings and goings of their follies.

Likewise, we watch the comings and goings of our likes and dislikes, of our desires and fears.

But we do not identify with them.

With no judgment and no preference,

we see the mysteries of creation.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 7)

With awareness and mindfulness, you may attain the true wisdom of knowing yourself:

“Knowing others is intelligence.

Knowing ourselves is true wisdom.

Overcoming others is strength.

Overcoming ourselves is true power.

Understanding that we have everything we need,

we count our blessings.

Identifying with our own true nature,

we hold fast to what endures.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 33)

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Your Journey of Healing

Journey of Healing

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 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.

It is your 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:

“Those, who think they know, know not the Way.

Those, who think they know not, find the Way.

Simplicity is clarity.

It is a blessing to learn from those

with humble simplicity.

Those with an empty mind

will learn to find the Way.

The Way reveals the secrets of the universe:

the mysteries of the realm of creation;

the manifestations of all things created.

The essence of the Way is to show us

how to live in fullness and return to our origin.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 65)

So, begin your own journey of self-healing of any disease you may have.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

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Oneness with All Life

Oneness with All Life

With both human wisdom and spiritual wisdom, you may see anything is everything not just for yourself but also for others as well. In other words, you may intuit the wisdom of oneness with all life, which is your interconnection with others, not just with those who are close to you,  but also with those  who are  distant and unrelated to you. Life is all about anything and everything.

No man is an island

According to John Donne, the famous English poet, “no man is an island”; that is, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. Therefore, we are all interconnected with, as well as inter-dependent on, one another in many different ways.

Connectedness

Oneness is the law of nature: what we do to others, we also do to ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously. It is the unity of all life—life is what we all have, and what empowers all of us, giving us the enlightening experiences and the holistic ways of living.

The Bible has repeatedly stated the significance of oneness of God’s creation and salvation to all.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

(John 1: 1)

For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. (Colossians 1: 16)

For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles,  slave or free—and we  were all

given the one Spirit to drink.

(1 Corinthians 12:13)

According to Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese sage, one of the reasons why nature has continued to exist for thousands and thousands of years is that all forms of life in nature have their presence, which depends on one another for their co-existence. Just think about that: everything in nature does not exist just for itself, and that is why it can last forever.

Each and every being in the universe.

is an expression of the Creator.

We are all shaped and perfected by Him.

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 51)

Blessed is he who has no ego-self.

He will be rewarded with humility to connect with the Creator.

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 9)

So, always focus on others, instead of just on yourself all the time. Focusing on others also initiates your connection with the Creator, providing you with spiritual wisdom to guide you along the rest of your life journey.

According to Buddha, “Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is in relation to everything else.”  What Buddha means is that it is not uncommon for humans to blame their problems on all the things outside themselves—other people and circumstances that are beyond their control. But the connectedness with all life contradicts that common but erroneous belief; the reality is that what we see in others and in our own circumstances is a reflection of our inner life, of what we believe in—which is the main source of all human  miseries  and sufferings.  The truth  is that  all humans suffer because they do not see the miseries and sufferings in others, except in themselves.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Baptist minister, and leader in the civil rights movement, once said: “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.” So, your connectedness to others plays a pivotal role in helping you become your true self, instead of who you wish you were.

Even John Lennon in his famous hit song “Imagine” says: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope one day you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.” That the world will live as one may indeed become a reality, and not just a dream.

To get your paperback copy of Anything Is Everything! Everything Is Nothing! Nothing Is Everything!, click here; to get your e-book, click here.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Be Wise and Knowledgeable to Heal

To heal yourself of any illness, you must be both knowledgeable and wise. Knowledge comes from how your mind perceives and processes the information. Wisdom is how you apply the information acquired to cope with your illness, including your everyday life and living.

The Trauma

If you or your loved ones have been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, or cancer, it must have been a devastating experience for you.

  

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

In other words, your brain is the most important of all your body organs. With its billions of brain cells, your brain is not only most complicated but also most vulnerable to all your health issues and problems related to myasthenia gravis or cancer

Therefore, it is important to keep your brain healthy as much as possible in order to develop a healing mind to cope with all your disease symptoms.

The Healthy Brain

Human wisdom originates from thinking, more specifically, how the mind thinks. Accordingly a healthy brain plays a pivotal role in human wisdom.

This is how you may keep your brain healthy:

Keep yourself hydrated because 80 percent of your brain is water. Drink at lease 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, e.g. testosterone and thyroid.

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 empower your thinking mind.

The Thinking Mind

The brain is composed of grey matters and neurons or nerve cells that transmit information and messages; they are the building blocks of the brain for the efficient functioning of the thinking mind.

                

Neurons are responsible for all human behaviors in the form of perceptions, which then trigger a mental process in the thinking mind that may result in an action or an emotion. If the process becomes instinctive, then the output in the form of actions or emotions is also automatic and predictable. That is how attitudes and habits are formed, including the fight-or-flight response to any given situation. This automatic or spontaneous mental process is often not “by choice” but by instinct.

But this so-called “learned” mental process is often responsible for the way you think and act, for your beliefs and emotions, for your actions or inactions, as well as for your overall choices and decisions resulting in your behaviors.

The good news is that you can learn to do the following: understand how your thinking mind perceives and processes all your life experiences; recognize your instinctive or automatic mental process; challenge its reality or validity in order to see through the myth or even the deception; and then ultimately change your mental process by taking appropriate actions accordingly.

Wisdom is the capability of the thinking mind to recognize the deceptions behind the quasi-truths perceived, that is, the ability to separate the sheep from the goats.

Your thinking mind processes all your life experiences, and they then become your thoughts and memories, which are the raw materials of your thinking process.

YOU JUST DON'T DIE!

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Solving Money Problems

Solving Money Problems

Money plays a major role in life. You need money for almost everything in life. Given the importance of money, you need to know the basics of money—what money is all about.

In the past, people could enjoy the blessings of life without spending any real money. Nowadays, to many people, enjoyment of life requires money—and lots of it!

According to Buddha, craving or desire for material things is the source of all human miseries. Jesus also has this to say about money: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven.” (Luke 18:25)

So, what is the value of money? According to author Jonathan Swift, a wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart. 

More importantly, what does money mean to you?

Your perceptions of the value of money determine two of the most important things in your life: how you are going to live your life; how you are going to spend your money.

The value of money is based on your core values in life. One of the core values in life is integrity. Life, at any phase, is all about living—it comes with some hard work and simple integrity. Integrity is an important personal value, which has little to do with money. Integrity is an important value that the Creator has bestowed on each and every one of us, and its availability is the choice of an individual. Essentially, integrity is the value of what life has to offer, not the value of things that can be purchased with money. Your core values affect your attitudes toward money, including your financial priorities, financial decisions, and money management. So, what is the value of money to you?

Once you know the real value of money to you, you will know what to do with your money, and you will find the money you need.

Spending money is also an extremely important issue in life: throughout history, countries have become bankrupt, empires have collapsed, and families have broken up because of spending much too much money. So, spending money can affect positively or negatively your life, and can be a major stress factor.

Spending money has little to do with whether you have or you do not have much money. Spending money has to do with your attitude toward money. It has everything to do with the practical as well as the spiritual aspects of money and finance.

The practical aspect of spending money is that it may lead to debt—which is the source of financial stress. 

Why do people go into debt?

People go into debt for various reasons: deficit spending,  a result of buying things they don’t need with the money they don’t have; unforeseeable circumstances, due to exorbitant medical bills or loss of employment; personal choice, a consequence of reckless spending or buying on credit, bad investments, wrong financial decisions; ignorance, such as not knowing the meaning of APR or the implications  of “minimum  payments”  on credit cards, lack of knowledge of finance and money management; greed, leading to taking financial risks, or trying to get something for nothing. The list could go and on.

Don’t ever fall into the trap of “buy-now-and-pay-later”! Don’t run up your credit card debt. Consumer debt is the No.1 financial stress factor in life. Don’t let debt devastate your life. Don’t use a credit card if you don’t have control over spending; instead, use a debit card or a pre-paid credit card for the convenience of not carrying cash. Be careful when you use credit-card counseling services to get you out of debt, especially those so-called “non-profit” organizations. Just beware!

The spiritual aspects of spending money include being grateful and generous, as well as being a good steward.

Be grateful. God may have given you much less than others—or so you think! Remember, everything is relative. Maybe less is more: God has given you less so that you will have the incentive to make more.

You may have worked hard, but with little to show for it.  “You plant much but harvest little. You have scarcely enough to eat or drink and not enough to keep you warm. Your income disappears, as though you were putting it into pockets filled with holes.” (Haggai 1:6) Be grateful, instead of whining and complaining; put your time and effort on making money to live a debt-free life. More importantly, be generous with your money.

According to the biblical principle of money, God owns it all! You are but a steward of God’s money. Responsibilities of good stewardship include diligence, productivity, good time management, and self-discipline in matters of money. The money is not yours anyway. That is why you cannot take it with you when you are gone for good.

Stephen Lnd au

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Why Prayers Are Seldom Answered?

Why Your Prayers Are Seldom Answered?

Albert Einstein once said, “Thinking is difficult; that’s why so few people do it.”

Thinking is a process of self-intuition through asking relevant questions to create self-awareness and self-reflection. It’s the natural habit of the human mind to try to solve all problems by asking questions. Through the process of solving problems, the human mind may then make things happen.

So, asking all relevant questions is self-empowerment of the human mind to increase wisdom because it initiates the intent to learn, to discover, and then to change for the better.

Here are some of the questions you may want to ask yourself concerning why your prayers are seldom answered or not answered at all:

What’s a prayer?

Jesus said: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7) Is a prayer just your way of asking for something that you want?

Is it a personal request to the Creator to make something happen or not to happen in your life?

Is it a conversation or communication with the Creator to further develop your relationship with Him?

Is it a way of seeking advice from the Creator to help you deal with your own life’s problems and challenges?

Is it a means of asking the Creator for His blessings you think you may be entitled to?

Or is it none of the above?

How often is a prayer said or offered?

Before you getting up, and before you going to bed?

Several times throughout the day, such as before your meals?

While attending a religious service?

Seldom, if ever, unless expressing with your condolences to someone you feel sorry for?

There’s 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.

By answering all of the above questions, you may be able to self-intuit why your prayers are answered or not answered at all.

Your self-intuition requires not only your spiritual wisdom, but also your human wisdom, in particular, the TAO wisdom of the ancient sage Lao Tzu from China, who was the author of Tao Te Ching, the ancient classic on human wisdom.

Click here to get Why Prayers Are Seldom Answered.

Click here to get The Complete Tao Te Ching in Plain English.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© Stephen Lau

Get Your FREE Book on Your Money Wisdom

We are living in a world wanting wisdom. The majority of people experience the lack and not the abundance, while only a small number of people feel both the affluence and the wealth. Surviving and navigating in this world of money disparity require profound wisdom—the perspectives of human wisdom, Biblical wisdom, and the TAO wisdom from ancient China.

This 141-page book is about asking many questions regarding money wisdom, given that money always plays a pivotal role in this world of both lack and abundance. Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a German-born American mathematician and electrical engineer, once said: “There are no foolish questions and no one becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.”

So, it is important to ask many self-intuitive questions to enhance your money wisdom. The spirit of wisdom demands you to ask as many questions as possible on how you view the world today based on your own past and present life experiences. Your perceptions of those experiences affect your attitudes, prejudices, and presumptions that may change your perspectives of money. Your money wisdom is your need to think about money more. Don’t bury your head on the sand! Be wise on all your money matters!

Click here to get your FREE copy. It’s FREE only on April 3-April 5 (Friday to Sunday!Don’t miss this opportunity to get YOUR MONEY WISDOM.