Be Who You Really Are

Knowing your true self can also make you re-assess your strengths and weaknesses, which may help you along your journey.

With acute body awareness and mind focus, you begin to train yourself to pay greater attention to what is happening in your body, in your mind, as well as in your perceptions of others and of the world around you. In other words, it is your deliberate and purposeful intention to bring more being into your own life experiences. According to research studies, mindfulness of your being is instrumental in helping you cope with your everyday problems, look after your physical health, let go of your undesirable patterns of thinking and behavior, and relate to others with better understanding and greater compassion.  In other words, awareness and focus may bring about the miracle of being, which is now your new perception of your true self—who you really are, and not what you wish you were. Your new being is the outcome of your becoming from where you were.

An Illustration of Becoming

There was ancient Chinese fable of a stonecutter who worked so hard cutting stones that he often felt stressed and depressed.

One day, while standing behind a huge stone where he was cutting his stones, he looked up at the sky, and saw the beautiful sun. Then, he wished he were the sun that could give warmth and sunshine to everyone on earth. A fairy came to him and granted him his wish, so he became the sun.

For a while, he was happy and contented. Then, one day, a big cloud came over, blocked out everything from his view, and he could not even see what was below. He became distressed, and wished he were the cloud, instead of the sun. Again, the fairy came to his rescue, and granted him his wish. He became the cloud, and began drifting and floating happily and peacefully in the sky.

After a while, a strong wind came and scattered the cloud in many different directions. Now, he wished he were the strong wind that could blow away anything and everything that stood in his way. Again, the fairy made his wish come true: he became the strong wind, blowing here and there. For a while, he was happy and contented.

Then, one day, he found that he could not blow away the big stone behind which he used to cut stones in the past. Worse, he was stuck there at the big stone, and going nowhere at all.

Now, finally, he realized that was where he belonged, and where he was supposed to be.

He made his one last wish to become the stonecutter that he used to be. The fairy granted him his last wish, and now he was contented to be the stonecutter again.

The moral of the fable: comparison and contrast between the self and others is often a stumbling block to self-contentment, without which there is no self-discovery, which is the ultimate enlightenment. Self-acceptance is self-love—accepting yourself as who you are in spite of all your shortcomings and imperfections, without comparing and contrasting with others. Letting go of your ego-self is detaching yourself from all your attachments that may ultimately become the sources of your miseries and sufferings in your life.

Remember, all human attachments come in the form of many different stressors in life, and are often the stumbling blocks in the human quest for true human wisdom because they create many delusions and illusions for the thinking mind.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Holistic Health for Self-Healing

Holistic health is the pursuit of the highest qualities of the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of the human experience in order to initiate holistic healing to recover from any disease or disorder.

Is holistic health for everyone?

Almost anyone can pursue holistic health. But for the individual to eventually embrace holistic health, he or she must have the following attributes:

Intent to heal

The intent to heal is expressed in a deep desire to improve health in order to heal. That begins with self-awareness. That is, you must, first of all, become aware of the need for living for life to the fullest. If you are already content with the life you are living at the present moment, you will continue with your current lifestyle patterns. If, on the other hand, you are dissatisfied, you will have to make meaningful changes in your life. So, it has to do with self-awareness of the intent to heal.

Self-responsibility

Life is full of choices, and holistic health is simply a choice. You are responsible for your life. Once you decide that the power to change is well within you, almost anything can happen. But if you hand over your responsibility for your health and well-being to the professionals, you cannot and will not live your life to the fullest. Why? It is because others cannot live your life for you; given that life is about choices, nobody can make those life choices for you, and, above all, no one can establish balance and harmony in your life.

Self-acceptance

Self-acceptance is as important as self-responsibility in holistic health. You must accept yourself for what and who you are. Never strive to become the someone else that you are not. Mental anguish impairs holistic health.

Self-empowerment

Empower yourself with knowledge and information so that you may have the wisdom to discern the truths from the myths about health and healing. For example, there is a growing body of evidence showing that antibiotics and other pharmaceutical drugs weaken the body's immune system, and thus increases the susceptibility to illness over the long haul. 

HOLISTIC SELF-CARE

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Quiet A Compulsive Mind

How to Quiet A Compulsive Mind

Because your mind does not voluntarily stay in the present moment, constantly shuffling back and forth between the past and the future, the only way to stop the thinking mind is to direct it to the present moment. When your mind stays in the present moment, it stops its thinking process of the past or the future—at least for the time being. To make your mind remain in the present moment—even though for just a short moment—you need acute awareness and deep concentration. To do that, you need constant and regular practice to focus or re-focus your mind on the present moment.

Once you can stop, at will, your mind from thinking, you have control over your thinking process, you are no longer a slave to your thoughts, and your mind becomes once again your friend, instead of your enemy. Learn to switch your mind on and off, just as you do with your computer.

Remember, we are all addicted to thinking, whether we want it or not; we must stop our thinking sometime and somehow.

Mind Training to Focus on the Present Moment

In your everyday life, you can practice mind training to focus on the present moment. Essentially, you are giving your full attention to what you are doing at that very present moment.

Reflective Thought

Focusing on the present moment makes you forget the past and the future.

Case in Point

Some people like to engage in dangerous sports, such as car racing or skydiving, because they would like to obliterate thoughts of the past and the future by focusing only on the thrills of the present moment.

If your mind is fully engaged in doing something, you will not be thinking of the past or the future, just like the car racers or skydivers. It is only when you are half-engaged mentally, then your mind begins to wander, letting your subconscious mind take over.

There is a difference between the knowledge mind and the thinking mind. The former provides facts or information about something or someone; the latter provides labels, judgments and opinions. Practice mind training to focus on the present moment so as to withdraw the thinking mind from the past and the future whenever it is not needed.

For example, you can focus your mind on your breathing. Notice how you breathe in and breathe out, how your body feels during inhalation and exhalation, and how the flow and rhythm of your breaths are affecting your mind. Put some stick-on notes on your computer monitor or anywhere in your house to remind you to practice conscious breathing every now and then throughout the day. Practicing conscious breathing for 2-3 minutes every hour or so does not interrupt with your daily work; just form this good habit of mindfulness and internal focus.

For example, you can focus your mind on your walking. Pay close attention to every step, every movement of your hands and feet, your breathing, and your body sensations while you are walking. Many people do their walking while listening to their music, or worse, talking on the cell phone; they are not letting their minds focus on the present moment.

THE TAO OF LIVING LONGER

THE POWER OF NOW

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Discovery and Recovery Wisdom

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.

Empty Mindset to Heal

Prevention is always better than cure. If there is no disease, where is the need for a cure or even a doctor?

Take the step of maintaining optimal health and wellness in the body, the mind, and the soul, irrespective of your current conditions of health.

Nobody knows your body better than yourself; you have been living with it for years, if not decades. It is more than just treating a disease: it is also using that disease as a tool for understanding yourself—or, more specifically, why you are sick in the first place. It may give you the knowledge and wisdom to live in balance and harmony, thereby instrumental in initiating your healing with or without your doctor.

Remember, you do not have to follow any specific program or even the advice of anyone, maybe even including that of your doctor.

An Illustration

You need not follow the advice of former President Bill Clinton with respect to his dramatic weight loss—simply because you are not Bill Clinton, and your body’s constitution is not the same as that of his. Therefore, what is good for Bill Clinton may not necessarily be good for yourself. Nor do you have to impose any deliberate discipline on yourself. The reason is that any imposition may stimulate your inherent resistant nature. Discovering your own sensitivity to life is often more important than rigidity.

The TAO Wisdom

According to the TAO, the wisdom of Lao Tzu, the ancient sage from China more than 2,600 years ago, an empty mind paves the way to both unlearning and relearning. Emptiness is synonymous with simplicity and receiving—the former is living a simple lifestyle with humility to develop an empty mindset to let go of all your attachments; the latter is the readiness and the capability to self-intuit true knowledge and profound wisdom.

Wisdom, which is invisible, intangible, and invaluable, is emptiness, which comes only from an empty mind:

“The spokes and the hub are the visible parts of a wheel.

Clay is the visible material of a pot, which is useful because it contains.

Walls, doors, and windows are visible parts of a house.

We always look for the visible and the tangible without.

But what really matters is the invisible and the intangible within.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 11)

According to the TAO, to attain knowledge, add things every day, but to attain wisdom, remove things every day:

“Seeking the Creator,

we give up something every day.

The less we have,

the less we need to strain and strive

until we need to do nothing.

Allowing things to come and go,

following their natural laws,

we gain everything.

Straining and striving,

we lose everything.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 48)

The explanation is that “less is for more” and not “more is for more” according to the contemporary thinking:

“Without going out the door, we know the world.

Without looking out the window, we see the Creator.

The more we look outside ourselves,

the less we know about anything.

Trusting the Creator, the ancient prophets

knew without doing, understood without seeing.

Trusting the Creator, we accomplish without striving.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 47)

On your healing journey, you just have to learn, unlearn, and relearn from anyone, anything, and any situation:

“Everything that happens to us is beneficial.

Everything that we experience is instructional.

Everyone that we meet, good or bad, becomes our teacher or student.

We learn from both the good and the bad.

So, stop picking and choosing.

Everything is a manifestation of the mysteries of creation.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 27)

he healing process, you do not set any goal or have any objective in your learning, unlearning, and relearning. The explanation is that setting any goal or having any objective will make you judge and choose, and thereby instrumental in pre-conditioning your thinking mind with respect to your learning, unlearning, and relearning:

“The foolish all have goals.

The wise are humble and stubborn.

They alone trust the Creator,

and not the world He created.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 20)

To sum up, on your healing journey,  you need to have an empty mind to learn, unlearn, and relearn everything about your health. After all, it is your health, and only you have the answers to why you may be unhealthy, and how you may heal yourself.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

  

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

The TAO of Unlearning and Relearning to Heal

 Unlearning and Relearning Pharmaceutical Drugs

On your healing journey, take the step to unlearn and relearn many things related to your autoimmune disease, such as myasthenia gravis.  

To heal, you must unlearn what you have previously learned, that is, letting go of all your preconceptions related to all the hows and the whys you might have got your myasthenia gravis in the first place. Remember, the knowledge you are currently having may have been generated by the limited and the finite material world you are living in.

Life itself is a sacred journey involving change, growth, and self-discovery. Knowledge is self-empowering, but it has to be distilled by true human wisdom. Therefore, to deepen your love of heath and your quest for health and healing, you must seek not just knowledge but also wisdom in order to expand your vision and stretch your soul so that you may stay both physically healthy and spiritually wise. Your knowledge and wisdom may provide you with meaning and direction to continue with every step of your long healing journey.

Unlearning Pharmaceutical Drugs

As we age, our self-made energy from the food we have consumed over the years begins to decline, and this is evidenced by our inability or difficulty to cope with the stressors of life. These stressors may have come in many different forms, such as overexposure to sunlight, polluted air, contaminated water, and a host of other lifestyle factors of modern life. After decades of abuse to our bodies, our choices—whether we have made them knowingly, or they have been imposed unwittingly on ourselves—begin to take their toll, resulting in the development of chronic conditions and degenerative diseases. To add insult to injury, our metabolic slowdown that comes with the natural process of aging makes it even more difficult to maintain our health and energy.

To deal with our health issues, many of us may desire a quick-fix, and thus turn to pharmaceutical drugs, which are toxic chemicals that only address the symptoms but without removing the causes of the health conditions.

Unfortunately, unsafe and toxic pharmaceutical drugs are prevalent. This is an indisputable fact! Unreliable drug tests abound in the medical and pharmaceutical research communities. Drug tests prior to their FDA approval may not be reliable due to the following reasons:

• Pharmaceutical companies may often influence medical researchers, through coercion, incentive, and even threat, to produce the desired results in clinical trials. There have been many cases of data fabrication in clinical trials of drugs in order to facilitate their intended applications.

• Clinical trials usually involve a small number of people, and may not truly reflect the outcome of those who will ultimately be using those drugs after their approval by FDA.

• Drugs tested on animal models may be biased and even irrelevant. An artificially-induced disease in non-human animals may not yield results relevant to a spontaneous, naturally-occurring human disease.

 Relearning Pharmaceutical Drugs

Regularly taking pharmaceutical drugs does not make you live longer because longevity is always drug-free. This makes sense: taking too many pharmaceutical drugs means your body is already stressed by many physical ailments. Ironically, these drugs may do a further disservice to you by ingesting more toxins into your already toxic body.

Pharmaceutical drugs do not heal a disease; they only temporarily suppress the disease symptoms.   Remember, when you give your body a drug to replace a substance that your body is capable of making itself, you body then becomes weaker and will begin not only to manufacture less of that substance, but also to become more dependent on the outside source, which is usually the drug itself. Over time, you will become no longer drug-free.

Unfortunately, no drug can give you insight into the circumstance that created your problems in the first place. At best, it can only temporarily assuage the physical pain created by your situation. Remember, there are no miracle drugs—only wholesome natural self-healing. Utilize your body’s natural self-healing power, rather than relying on those unsafe pharmaceutical drugs. Keep yourself drug-free as much as and as long as possible!

However, it does not imply that you must desist from taking your medications prescribed by your doctor. Rather, it suggests you should always be more alert to the side effects of the drugs you are currently taking; you should not readily reach out for unsafe pharmaceutical drugs, especially over-the-counter ones, without any second thought as if they were coupons or silver bullets.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

  

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

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.