Thursday, May 2, 2024
Your Journey of Healing
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Change Your Emotions and Feelings to Save Your Marriage
Save your marriage by changing your emotions and feelings as well as those of your marriage partner.
Emotions and feelings are two sides of the same coin. They’re closely related to each other, but they’re different in that emotions create biochemical reactions in the body, affecting the physical state, while feelings are more mental associations and reactions to emotions.
According to the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), we all have qi (氣), which is the internal life-giving energy circulating within each of us, giving us internal balance and harmony. Emotions are energy states, which may either contribute to or deplete our own internal life-giving energy, causing harmony or disharmony, and thus leading to positive or negative emotions and feelings.
Diseases and disorders
The truth of the matter is that any “excessive” emotion or feeling may become the underlying cause of many health issues.
Dr. Caroline B. Thomas, M.D., of John Hopkins School of Medicine, discovered that cancer patients often had a prior poor relationship with their parents, attesting to the pivotal role of emotions in the development of cancer.
In another study by Dr. Richard B. Shekelle of the University of Texas School of Medicine, it was found that depression patients were not only more cancer prone but also more likely to die of cancer than the other patients. If emotions play a pivotal role in cancer, by the same token, negative feelings may also adversely affect the symptoms or the prognosis of any human disease. Thoughts and feelings of anger, despair, discontent, frustration, guilt, or resentment are instrumental in depressing the physiological processes, including the human body’s immune response—a formula for promoting the development of an autoimmune disease.
So, an unhappy marriage may negatively affect your mental and physical health.
The seven emotions
According to the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), there’re seven emotions which are the underlying causes of many internal diseases, and these emotions are: anger, anxiety, fear, fright, joy, sadness, and worry. Because Chinese medicine is all about internal balance and harmony, these seven emotions may even affect different human body organs. For example, excessive anger impairs the liver, causing headaches, while even excessive joy dysfunctions the heart, leading to mania and mental disorders.
Anger
Anger or rage is an ineffective and inefficient way to resolve any issue or to make any problem go away. Anger is a disruptive emotion that may often lead to depression, and worse, the breakup of a marriage or a love relationship, especially if the anger isn’t properly addressed and controlled.
So, how to change your disruptive emotion of anger or rage?
Take a deep diaphragm breath, and just feel your anger as you breathe in.
Look at your anger in your mind. Then review the situation, and ask yourself one simple question: Can your anger change the situation or anything?
Accept that you’re now angry, and then breathe it out. If necessary, use your arm like a sword cutting through your feelings of rage, while saying: “I can see my anger: it is as it was!”
Don’t hold your anger in; instead, let it go, by breathing it out. Don’t let it go as pain; instead, let it go as your acceptance. But your acceptance should be viewed not as a sign of your own weakness but as a statement of your own communication to yourself that getting angry will never solve the problem anyway or right away.
Then, remind yourself that anger is always present to serve a purpose to release some deeper issues, problems, and internal conflicts that you may be carrying in your own bag and baggage all these years. It’s always better to release anger than to turn it around to destroy yourself.
But suppressing your anger is also self-destructive, as the negative energy redirects itself back into your own body. Anger is always a path of destruction. Resolve anger by developing habits that may release internal conflicts in a constructive manner before it can be released as rage.
An illustration
Donna Alexander, the creator of the “Anger Room” in Chicago, first thought of the idea as a teenager living in Chicago. Having witnessed much domestic violence and many conflicts at school as a teenager, Donna Alexander finally decided to create a space where anyone can lash out without serious consequences. While at the “Anger Room,” the guests, after paying a fee, are given a safe space to unleash their anger and rage by smashing and destroying objects, such as glasses or even a TV. In addition, the room can also be set up to look like an office or a kitchen, where anger often becomes totally uncontrollable.
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
“GETTING MARRIED TO MAKE YOU HAPPY?”
Click here to get your paperback copy; and here to get your digital copy.
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Death and Emptiness
Death and Emptiness
Death empties anything and everything—that is, the ego and all its attachments to the material world. Emptiness is nothingness in which everything becomes nothing.
For all human efforts, death will come in the end, and this is the way of all flesh.
An illustration
Ernest Hemingway’s famous novel A Farewell to Arms may show you one perspective of death and emptiness:
“Once in camp I put a log on top of the fire and it was full of ants. As it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went first toward the center where the fire was; then turned back and ran toward the end. When there were enough on the end they fell off into the fire. Some got out, their bodies burnt and flattened, and went off not knowing where they were going. But most of them went toward the fire and then back toward the end and swarmed on the cool end and finally fell off into the fire. I remember thinking at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire and throw it out where the ants could get off onto the ground. But I did not do anything but threw a tin cup of water on the log, so that I would have the cup empty to put whiskey in before I added water to it. I think the cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants.”
The hero in the story was observing how the ants were swarming back and forth on a log on top of a fire in a futile attempt at survival—just like God watching over mankind’s stubborn struggle to refuse letting go of the impermanent in the material world. Instead of acting as a messiah to help the ants, the hero simply emptied a tin cup of water so that he could have his own whiskey.
The hero’s attitude to death is also a reflection of the author’s own perspective of man’s ultimate fate: death happens no matter how hard one strives to avoid it, and anything and everything then simply become nothing.
Sadly and tragically, author Ernest Hemingway—essentially an atheist, although initially a Catholic—shot himself with a gun when he realized that anything and everything in his life were really nothing after all in spite of all his accomplishments. With his perspective of nothingness, he had lost hope of human existence, including his own.
Another illustration
Francis of Assisi, the Italian Saint who chose a life of poverty in spite of his family’s wealth, said on his deathbed: “Death will open the door of life.” He died gracefully, while singing.
To Francis, death or emptiness is everything. Maybe for a believer, death is, indeed, a triumph, a meaningful exodus from this mundane world to the eternal world beyond. The emptiness is just a rite of passage to everything.
Revelation
For a non-believer, life may have little meaning at all, when the end is near, because everything will become nothingness when death strikes in the end. Without God, Hemmingway viewed life as everything is nothing, despite all his fame and accomplishments, and he thus killed himself.
For a believer, the nothingness brought by death may then become everything in the life to come, and that explains why Francis of Assisi was singing on his deathbed.
So, there're only two options. If you're a believer, you could sing with joy while lying on your deathbed, just like St. Francis of Assisi. If you are an unbeliever, you would just pass away and become nothingness, just like Ernest Hemingway.
So, now that the end is near it may also be the right time to be spiritual, and to become a true believer. But how to become a believer?
Angry No More: A new book on how to control and eradicate your anger.
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
Monday, April 29, 2024
Saving Your Face
Saving Your Face
Fat injections
Sunday, April 28, 2024
Teaching Children About Sex
TEACHING CHILDREN ABOUT SEX
Sex is “a big deal,” especially in a marriage.
Surprisingly, some couples may have more sexual intimacy after several years of marriage. The explanation is that by then they may have much reduced level of stress: better financial environment; children growing up; less worry about conceiving a child. In short, sex can even get better as years go by in a good and healthy marriage.
However, some couples may also cease their sexual intimacy due to: childbirth; pursuing a career; midlife crisis; an out-of-marriage affair. That, unfortunately, is also the reality.
Living together without love or physical intimacy is “living separate lives”—it may also be due to pornography, which is addictive, pervasive, and destructive to the addicts and their respective relationships.
So, it‘s important for parents to educate their children about sex. But how?
Like building the foundation of a pyramid, teach them about the values of life and living, which are usually dignity, honor, and respect for self and others.
Growing up and getting married isn’t just about self or just two people: it’s about human relations—how you relate to others around you. For example, in a marriage it isn’t just about the relationship between you and your spouse; it also involves your children or stepchildren, the in-laws, and the friends. So, learn to develop good relationships, and teach your children to do likewise as they grow up.
Relationships are related to emotions, both positive and negative ones. Teach your children to control and manage their emotions and temper tantrums, which will play a pivotal in their subsequent life choices and decisions.
All of the above will define and shape your children’s perceptions and understanding of the meaning and the importance of sexual intimacy when they grow up into adolescents and young adults.
The reality
Remember, just do your best, and let God do the rest. You can teach your children about sexual intimacy, but you just can’t control what they feel and experience in their lives. Controlling only generates resistance and distancing. This applies not only to your children, but also to your spouse. You can share with them what you believe in, but you just can’t make them believe what you believe in. That’s the reality.
Stephen Lau
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Adultery in Marriage
INFIDELITY IN MARRIAGE
Tiger Woods, one of the world’s most famous and wealthiest golfers, was caught with his dark secrets of infidelities and lies in 2009. At first, he vehemently denied and even concealed them. But, eventually, he was more forthcoming and apologetic to his fans and his family at several press conferences:
The reality
King David’s adulteries
In spite of his efforts in seeking God’s wisdom, King David also demonstrated his darker side of the sin of lust.
One night, King David saw Bathsheba, the wife of one of King David’s generals, bathing on the rooftop. Succumbing to his own sin of lust, King David sent for Bathsheba, and committed adultery with her. To gratify his lust, King David even purposely sent the general to the war front to have him killed so that he could marry the general’s widow.
King David eventually married Bathsheba. Although penitent for his sins, God punished King David, and their firstborn son died.
King Solomon’s adulteries
King Solomon, the second son of King David, despite his profound human wisdom, violated God’s standards of sexual purity. His decision to disobey God and marry foreign women with their different gods led to his own idolatry. As a punishment for his sins, God divided Israel, and Solomon suffered bitterness and emptiness at the end of his life.
The difference between King David and King Solomon is that King David always lived in the presence of the Lord. So, King David always turned back to God with remorse and repentance, while King Solomon only distanced himself from God with no contrition and remorse.
So, living in the presence of the Lord always reminds you of your own accountability to Him, without which you will do anything and everything, thinking that you can get away with it.
The reality
Always live in the presence of the Shepherd. Always let the Shepherd guide you in the green pastures. Always let the Shepherd overcome your enemies of pride, lust, and deceit. Always let the Shepherd use His rod and staff not only to protect you but also to restrain and discipline you. Always let the Lord be your Shepherd throughout your marriage journey.
Adultery is a conscious and deliberate act to do just the opposite of what a marriage commitment requires. Adultery is prevalent because it has become the new “norm.” According to many, adultery is just a sin, not a crime, and everybody commits sins of some sort anyway. But adultery is a sin directly against God, who creates the marriage, joining the two as one. So, committing adultery is lack of accountability to God, and is unforgivable without judgment and repentance.
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
Friday, April 26, 2024
Letting Go
Thursday, April 25, 2024
You Just Don't Die!
All About . . . .
In ancient times, many individuals were in quest of immortality, especially those in power.For example, Qin Shi Huang (259 BC - 210 BC), the First Emperor of China and the builder of the Great Wall, had made many futile attempts to discover and access legendary sources of immortality during his relatively short lifespan.
Another example, the ancient pharaohs of Egypt might not have been on a quest for immortality because they earnestly believed that they were already immortal; nevertheless, they had spent an enormous amount of resources into retarding the decay of their physical bodies, as well as into building spectacular pyramids and grand tombs in which they could preserve their wealth and riches for their immortality.
Realistic Realities
Nowadays, we all know the reality that all humans are mortal and that death is as inevitable as day becoming night.
“Is there anything we can do about our mortality?” This might be a question that many of us would like to ask ourselves.
First of all, man’s perceptions of mortality always change with age and time. If you ask a young adult if he or she would want to live long, probably the answer is “I don’t know” or “I just don’t want to grow too old and decrepit, like my grand-parents.” The young adult’s perspective of mortality also explains why many of the younger generation are living a reckless lifestyle as if there is no tomorrow.
Naturally, their perception of mortality would change over the years as they grow older with a family of children, or if they have a successful career with all the trimmings of a luxurious lifestyle that they would like to continue. A longer lifespan would then become an extension of their own legacy or continuation of their enjoyment of the fruits of their own accomplishments. The inscription on the tombstone of Bruce Lee, the Hollywood actor, reads: “The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.” That says much about the hope of many to extend beyond the grave.
As aging continues, the fear of death or the unknown might also dawn on humans, driving some of the elderly into craving a longer lifespan in order to delay and defer the inevitable.
Indeed, many people may have different perspectives of their own mortality, depending on their upbringing, the life experiences they have gone though, their religious beliefs, as well as the meanings of death and dying to them. As a result of the differences, some may focus too much on death to the extent of creating death anxiety, while others may deliberately deny the existence of death, just like the ostrich burying its head in the sand.
The objective of this book is neither to convince you to crave longevity, nor to show you how to live to one hundred and beyond. It simply presents you with the consciousness of living the rest of your years as if everything is a miracle -- if you just don't die!
Click here to get your copy.
The Book Outline . . . .
INTRODUCTION
ONE: Consciousness Is Everything
TWO: Consciousness of Breath
THREE: Consciousness of Thinking
FOUR: Consciousness of Wellness
FIVE: Consciousness of Living
SIX: Consciousness of Changes and Challenges
SEVEN: Consciousness of Being
The above is what this book is all about. Click here to get your copy from AMAZON.
What is consciousness?
“The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our aware-ness.” Lao Tzu
Consciousness is everything; if you are not conscious, you are not living your life, if not already dead.
What is consciousness? Being conscious is a "special quality of the mind" that permits us to know both that we exist and that the things around us exist too. Surprisingly, some of us may not have this consciousness.
Life is an inner journey that requires consciousness of the body and the mind, together with that of the soul, to continue to make its progress in the right direction in order to reach its final destination. Unfortunately, since the beginning of time, many people have traveled the same journey of life but without reaching their destinations because they simply lack their consciousness of the body, and the mind-not to mention that of the soul-to guide them along that journey.
Consciousness comes from the mind, which is created by the brain. Hippocrates (460 - 370 BC), the father of modern medicine, was one of the first scientists to observe and notice that people with brain damage tended to lose their mental abilities. He realized that the mind is created by the brain, and the mind crumbles piece by piece as the brain dies.
The human brain creates the consciousness of the mind, giving humans pleasures and displeasures, happiness and unhappiness, as well as many other positive and negative emotions and thoughts. They become our experiences which are stored in our minds, and these experiences also become our memories that generate our subsequent thoughts-they are the byproducts with which we weave the realities in our lives. Therefore, consciousness is the capability of the mind to see them as they are. Without consciousness, which is knowing what is happening in the mind, you just obediently follow what your mind tells you. That is to say, you have become a slave to your thinking, instead of being the master of your own thoughts.
Consciousness is probing deep into the conscious mind: asking meaningful and relevant questions, and then seeking self-enlightening answers to all the questions asked. After all, throughout one’s life journey, one has to ask many different questions at different stages, and seeking different answers from the questions asked. In order to reach the destination of one’s life journey. consciousness of the mind is a necessity, and not an option.
You Just Don't Die!