Knowledge and Wisdom to Heal

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.

Autoimmune Diseases and the TAO

Millions and billions of people worldwide are suffering from autoimmune diseases, including myasthenia gravis which is only one of the many different autoimmune disorders that are causing anxiety, fear, pain, mental confusion, and even suicidal thoughts in some of those afflicted.

According to Western medicine, there is no known cure for autoimmune diseases due to the complexity of their causes. Understandably, patients afflicted with autoimmune diseases are seeking healing from many different healing modalities, such as the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the Ayurvedic medicine, and among many others. In addition, they are desperately looking for help from herbs, fruits, and all kinds of natural nutrient supplements, as well as from physical exercises and spiritual practices, to rejuvenate their failing health due to their weakened immune systems.

The TAO may play a pivotal role in the healing process of any autoimmune disease, including that of myasthenia gravis.

The TAO is the profound wisdom of Lao Tzu, the ancient sage from China more than 2,600 years ago, who was the author of the immortal ancient classic Tao Te Ching on human wisdom.

The word “TAO” (道) in Chinese originally meant “road.” Later, it came to mean “way” and hence “the Way.” The TAO is “the Way” of looking at the world with a certain attitude of the mind, which is totally different from that of the West, and that is why it is so intriguing and fascinating, as evidenced by the fact that Tao Te Ching (道 德 經), the book of the TAO by Lao Tzu, is one of the most translated books in the world.

The TAO may provide self-inspiration and self-intuition for those who have to confront all the changes and challenges when diagnosed with myasthenia gravis or any autoimmune disease.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Why Prayers Are Not Answered

“Prayers not answered” simply means “expectations not fulfilled.”

But what are your “expectations”? And where do they come from?

You experience whatever that happens to you through your five senses (seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling) as a result of the choices of all your actions, inactions, and reactions in your everyday life.

Your sensations often become your own perceptions, which then form your own assumptions and predictions; for example, a good education will lead to a successful career, and bring about happy relationships.

All your “expectations” are only the personal and the subjective perceptions of your mind. But your “expectations” are often unreal and even self-delusive.

Even what you think you see with your own eyes may not necessarily be the reality.

To illustrate, in 1997, Richard Alexander from Indiana was convicted as a serial rapist, because one of the victims and her fiancé insisted that he was the perpetrator based on what the victim and her fiancé claimed that “they saw with their own eyes.”

But the convicted man was later exonerated and subsequently released in 2001, based on the new DNA science and other forensic evidence. Experts explained that a traumatic emotional experience, such as a rape, could “distort” the perceptions of an individual. That explains why the woman and her fiancé “swore” that Richard Alexander was the rapist, but evidently he wasn’t.

To illustrate “unreal expectations”: Helen Keller, celebrated author, political activist, and philanthropist, was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree; she became deaf and blind at an early age of less than two.

Imagine you were Helen’s parents: would you have “darkened expectations” of the future of Helen when she suddenly became deaf and blind?

Another illustration of “unreal expectations”: Shon Robert Hopwood, a young American convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to prison, became well-known as a jailhouse lawyer. While serving time in prison, Shon started spending time in the law library, became a jailhouse lawyer for the inmates, and ultimately a very accomplished United States Supreme Court practitioner by the time he left prison in 2009. Currently, Shon is professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.

If you were the parents of Shon, would your own “expectations” of your son have fallen short after his conviction of 12 years of imprisonment?

The truth of the matter

Your perceptions—whether true or untrue—become your realities, and are then stored in your subconscious mind as your memories.

Whenever you want to make a choice or decision, it’s your subconscious mind that provides your conscious mind with your many attitudes, beliefs, and predictions—all based on your memories of your past experiences. Your thinking mind then begins to process and project them into the future as your “expectations to be fulfilled.”

Points to Remember

Perceptions may easily become distorted and unreal. So, don’t let your own perceptions become your assumptive predictions.

All “expectations” are in the future, and their timeline is indefinite. So, don’t jump to any conclusion yet that they’re “not fulfilled.”

The past was gone; the future is yet to come; only the present is real. So, don’t use the past to predict the future as your “expectations to be fulfilled.”

Prayers Are Seldom Answered

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Finding God in Your Grieving

Finding God in Your Grieving

The Bible is a real, authentic, genuine book—filled with the stories and thoughts of real people. Whereas some grief-coping strategies may encourage you to deny your grief and try to convince you that your grief is just in your head, the Bible takes a different route. Your grief is real, your pain is actual, and there's still the opportunity for true healing.

Consider the story of David, one of the most prominent authors in the Bible. David was king of a whole nation, a military leader, a wise man, and a gifted songwriter. And yet his life was filled with sorrow: much of his life, he was being chased by a vengeful predecessor who wanted to kill him; his best friend was killed; his son died. And yet in the midst of this pain, David is able to sing out to God:

"You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness;
To the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever." 

What is the hope that propels David through his seasons of grief? David devotes himself to loving and serving God and he finds God to be more than enough for his hurting heart. Want to find the hope that David had? Let God turn your mourning into dancing, too. Grief is hard, but God is bigger than that grief. He wants to comfort you, to sit with you as you mourn, and to carry you through to the other side.

Human beliefs may come from our genes and we have a fundamental need to tell ourselves stories to make sense of life

Lewis Wolpert: “Few people are content to accept that blind chance plays a large part in their lives; they seek reasons, even when these do not exist.”

Children, by contrast, have a good understanding of forces, how they act and their consequences

The concept of cause was fundamental to human evolution.

With language and a concept of cause, humans were faced with dilemma. There were many important events for which they could find no clear cause. Life was tough and many children died at a young age. Volcanoes, storms, lightning, climate change and other natural disasters abounded.

But they had no explanation for such distressing occurrences.

Children provide good examples of how they will distort their own observations and "cook" them to maintain consistency with beliefs.

Our brains are programmed with causal reasoning

The world is not built on common sense; if an idea fits with common sense, scientifically it is bound to be false. History has shown how it is not easy to explain the basis for our belief that it is the Earth that goes round the Sun, and not the other way round; that force causes acceleration not motion; and that quantum mechanics underlies all physics, even if it does depict waves as particles and possess other bizarre features.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Darker Side

The Darker Side

“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.” John Milton

It is the mind that makes the body and the soul—the being of an individual. Unfortunately, the mind also has its own darker side, which creates the darkness of life, and its negativity affects the real self involuntarily.

The darker side of life is a reality, not a myth, and that everyone has a darker side to his or her being. The darker side does not necessarily mean that it is something evil. Any connotation of evil may lead to denial, instead of acceptance.

For example, the sexual abuse of children by Jerry Sandusky and the pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff and the scams and rip-offs by some of Wall Street executives are just some of the many examples of the extreme darkness of our society and culture.

But, in spite of the human inclination to be good, we all show our own darker side every now and then—such as not expressing as much compassion and loving-kindness as we should to our fellow human beings, or telling a white lie—because we are imperfect, and, as such, all human behavior is imperfect.

Robert Louis Stevenson in his famous story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a classic example of the darker side of human existence. In the story, both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have a darker side of life, and each tries to hide it from the other; it turns out that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide are just one and the same person.

The Bible calls the dark side of human nature “sin.” None of us is exempt from sin. Life is always an inner struggle between what is perceived in an individual’s moral system as “right” and the dark opposing force inside to do just the very opposite. To make matters worse, most of us are really quite good at self-deception. Either we deceive ourselves into believing that the dark opposing force does not exist in ourselves, or we simply inflate our own personal virtues to overshadow the dark force within us.

The Book of Life and Living:  This book provides a blueprint for the art of well, based on the conventional wisdom, the ancient Tao wisdom, and the Biblical wisdom. We all have the darker side, but we still have to live as if everything is a miracle. 

Tao wisdom is the essence in the art of living well. It is the profound wisdom of the ancient Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, the author of the immortal classic Tao Te Ching, one of the most translated works in world literature. The book has been popular for thousands of years due to its unconventional wisdom, which is simple but controversial, profound and yet intriguing. To fully understand it, you need to get all the essentials of Tao wisdom.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Injustice and Tao Wisdom

We are living in a world in which injustice and vengeance are rampant. Many of us are in the midst of this storm of unfairness that causes unhappiness.

A Case in Point

In 1984, Archbishop Valerian Trifa was deported from the United States after being accused a Nazi supporter, who not only had incited attacks on Jews, but also was responsible for executing many Jews in World War II.

After World War II, the Nazi supporter came to the United States as a refugee immigrant. He assumed the name of Valerian Trifa, and was ordained as a priest of the Rumanian church soon after his arrival in the United States. He rose quickly to the rank of bishop and archbishop, and lived in comfort in a 25-room farmhouse on a 200-acre estate maintained by his church.

Later on, a dentist, who was a Nazi survivor, recognized the Archbishop as the Nazi supporter. The case against him was then pursued for more than a decade by survivors of the Nazi years, Jewish organizations, journalists, and the Justice Department of the United States. Their efforts helped focus public attention on Nazi war criminals who were living in the United States.

At first, the Archbishop vehemently denied his former identity, despite some handwriting experts confirming that his handwriting was identical with that in some of the execution orders he had carried out while he was a Nazi supporter. As luck would have it, with the advancement of forensic science, some experts could incredibly still retrieve some DNA from those execution orders. That was his undoing, and his final judgment.

The Archbishop was ultimately ordered to leave the United States in 1982, but spent two years trying to find a country that would give him refuge. Portugal admitted him in 1984, and he finally settled in Estoril, where he died at the age of 72 of a heart attack.

Tao Wisdom

Tao teaches that the Creator is in absolute control of everything that happens in this world, but only according to His own timetable. His “vast net” is encompassing and all-inclusive, and nothing slips through it.

“We try to be good, and do the best we can,

yet sometimes bad things happen to us.

We have no explanation for that.

We just follow the Way,

one step at a time,

accepting the good and the bad,

as essential parts of life.

We quietly respond to every situation

with neither strain nor stress.

We trust the Creator.

His net, vast and loose,

covers the whole universe,

and nothing slips through.

He controls all.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 73)

“When we are separate from our true nature,

we experience no natural goodness,

no compassion and no loving-kindness.

Our goodness then becomes contrived,

demanding fairness and justice,

focusing on appearance and superficiality.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 38)

           

The bottom line, do not waste your internal energy by striving to seek answers to those unanswered questions about unfairness, inequality, or injustice. Just accept and embrace whatever happens in your life, and the Creator will take care of everything. Just leave it to Him, and nothing slips through His vast net  of justice.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Suicides Are Misperceptions of the Mind

The suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade lshocked and stunned the world. To many, their suicides were inexplicable: they had fame, money, success, and public recognition. But they are no more than perceptions or misperceptions of the mind.

Your mind perceives all your life experiences through your five senses: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. To most people, seeing is the most important perception; however, what they see may not be the absolute reality, because their visual perceptions may be conditioned by what they see, and distorted by many other factors during the processing of their perceptions. Remember, it is the intuition of your soul that really perceives your reality. The wise have known for a long time that what we know through our eyes are not the same as the intuition of the soul. If that is the case, sadly, most people rely on what they see, thinking that "seeing is believing," and thus lose themselves in external things.

As an illustration, in 1997, Richard Alexander from Indiana was convicted as a serial rapist because one of the victims and her fiancé insisted that he was the perpetrator based on what they saw with their own eyes. However, the convicted man was exonerated and released in 2001 based on new DNA science and other forensic evidence. Experts explained that a traumatic emotional experience, such as a rape, could “distort” the perception of an individual.

The truth is that your brain is composed of grey matters and neurons or nerve cells that transmit information and messages; they are the building blocks of your brain for the processing of all your perceptions. Neurons are responsible for all your behaviors in the form of perceptions, which trigger a mental process that results in an action or an emotion. If the process becomes instinctive or habitual, then the output in the form of an action or emotion is also automatic and predictable. That is how attitudes and habits are formed, including the fight-or-flight response to any dangerous situation. This automatic or spontaneous mental processing is often not “by choice.” The fact of the matter is that this “learned” mental processing is responsible for the way you think and act, for your beliefs and emotions, for you attitudes and prejudices, as well as for your decisions or indecisions—in other words, every aspect of your life experiences.

Descartes, the great French philosopher, made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." That means, you think, and your thoughts then become who and what you think you are. But that may not be the real you

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 the five senses. The lenses, through which you see yourself, others, and the world around you as well, are the software that has been continuously programmed by your thoughts, your past and present experiences, as well as your own expectations and those of others projected into the future. In other words, you and nobody else have programmed your own present mindset. All these years, you might have been trapped in a constricted sense of self that has prevented you from knowing and be who you really are. Your “conditioned” mindset might have erroneously made you "think" and "believe" that you are who and what you are; but nothing could be further from the truth.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Role of Spiritual Wisdom

The Role of Spiritual Wisdom

“Life lives itself in us, when we focus on the Creator.

From that focal point, around which all of life revolves.

We watch everything come and go,

with no judgment, no preference.

Everything that is, was, or ever will be,

will return to its origin: the Creator.

Understanding the comings and goings of things,

we fret not, and judge not.

Focusing on the Creator,

we are open to all of life.

Opening to all of life,

we embrace all with thankfulness for what we get,

with gratitude for not getting what we deserve.

Discovering the true nature of things,

we live with compassion and loving-kindness.

All endings become beginnings, all returning to the Creator.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 16)

        

To seek the Creator, take a look at nature. You will see why it lasts: the reason is that everything does not exist for itself, and that is why it can last forever—they are all inter-connected with one another for existence and survival.

So, focus on others, and not just on yourself. By doing so, you may discover the true meaning of love and loving-kindness.

Opening to all, you learn to appreciate others and connect with them.

“In the absence of the Creator, we forget who we really are.

Then we turn to other things to define who we are, what is good and moral.

In the presence of the Creator, we act according to our hearts,

instead of relying on rules and regulations from those above us.

Rules and regulations may bring fairness and justice,

but no more than a pretense of life.

A pretense of life is our inability to love indiscriminately.

Then we insist on those above us to heal our suffering,

which originates from ourselves.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 18)

Living in the world means following all the rules and regulations that are made exclusively for the world.

If you are in the world but not of the world, these man-made rules and regulations are no more than a pretense of life—abiding by them is not what you would seek in your search for the TAO of living for life.

Stephen Lau        

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Letting Go of Attachments

Attachment is basically your emotional dependence on things and people that define your identity, around which you wrap your so called “happiness” and even your survival. Attachment is holding  on to anything  that you are unwilling to let go of, whether it is something positive or negative.

We are living in a world with many problems that confront us in our everyday life, and many of these are not only unavoidable but also insoluble. To overcome these daily challenges, many of us just turn to attachment as a means of distracting ourselves from facing our problems head on, or adapting and changing ourselves in an ever-changing environment. All of our struggles in life, from anxiety to frustrations, from anger to sadness, from grief to worry—they all stem from the same thing: our attachment to how we want things to be, rather than relaxing into accepting and embracing whatever that might happen after we have put forth our best effort.

Attachment is the source of human miseries. Worse, attachment may come in many different forms that we are unaware of.

Career attachments

Your career may span over decades, involving many ups and downs, such as promotion and unemployment, changes of career and pursuits of higher qualifications, among others. They may have become your problematic attachments.

Money and wealth attachments

Money plays a major role in life. You need money for almost everything in life. In the past, people could enjoy the blessings of life without spending too much real money. Nowadays, to many people, enjoyment of life requires money—and lots of it—and you may be one of them. Attachment to money and the riches of the material world is often a result of an inflated ego-self. You may want to keep up with the Joneses—driving a more expensive car than your neighbors and friends.

Relationship attachments

Living has to do with people, involving agreements and disagreements, often resulting in mixed emotional feelings of joy and sorrow, contentment and regret, among others, and they become attachments to the ego-self as memories that you may refuse to let go of—forgetting and forgiving, for example, are hurdles often difficult to overcome.

Success and failure attachments

Success in life often becomes an attachment in the form of expectation that it will continue, bringing more success. Failure, on the other hand, may generate disappointment and regret—an emotional attachment often difficult to let go of. 

Adversity and prosperity attachments

In the course of human life, loss and bereavement are as inevitable as death. Loss can be physical, material, and even spiritual, such as loss of hope and purpose. You may want to attach to the good old days, and refuse to let go of the current adversity. Adversity and prosperity attachments stem from the ego-self.

Time attachments

Time is a leveler of mankind: we all have only 24 hours a day, no more and no less, although the lifespan of each individual varies. Attachment to time is the reluctance to let go of time passing away, as well as the vain attempt to fully utilize every moment of time, leading to a compulsive mind and over-doing.

Sometimes we are so busy in the outside world that we seldom have an opportunity to look inside of ourselves, to understand who we really are and what really makes us happy—probably not the material things around us. Imagine you are all alone in a room with nothing, except a pen and a piece of paper. Surprisingly, you may become creative and even happy, with nothing there to worry about, and nothing there to distract your mind.

Are you unhappy because of some of your attachments to the above? The only antidote to your unhappiness is letting go of all your attachments to the material world you are living in. Understandably, letting go is never easy. That said, nothing is impossible if there is a will. 

Read my book: The Wisdom of Letting Go. Find out how and why human attachments are obstacles to living a life of balance and happiness. Get the wisdom to let go of your emotional and material attachments in order to live as if everything is a miracle.

Stephen Lau 

Copyright© by Stephen Lau