Breathe Well to Increase Mind Power

According to Buddha, we all have a "monkey mind" which is forever riddled with anxiety and worry. The human mind has a tendency to shuffle between the past and the future, except the present, which is the time that is real, and that is why it is called “present”—a   a gift in itself. Most of us not only plan for the future, but also worry about its outcome. Accordingly, we often go back to the past to look for clues to help us fulfill our hopes and expectations in the future, as well as to avoid errors and mistakes made in the past. In the process, we not only create undue stress for ourselves but also deprive ourselves the opportunity to live in the present mind. A mind that stays in the present moment is calm and relaxed. Living in the present is moment-to-moment mindfulness of breathing. Mindfulness of breaths increases mind power.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t live in the present moment, especially in this age of speed and technology. With so many daily chores and life goals to accomplish, we find little time for ourselves, let alone time to remain in the present moment. Even if we are fortunate enough to have some time for ourselves, we may spend it to go online or to watch our favorite TV programs. Living in the present moment is a gift that is often ignored and rarely appreciated.

But things don’t have like that. We can always find time to do little things that enable us to let our minds stay in the present moment. Learn to focus your breaths on the present moment, which is no more than awareness or mindfulness of your breaths. Focusing your breaths on the present moment makes you become more aware of what is happening around you at that present moment, thereby instrumental in releasing stress from your body and mind, as well as enhancing your clarity of mind. 

Practice diaphragm breathing to help your mind stay in the present moment. Diaphragm breathing is using your diaphragm muscle -- muscles between your lower lungs and your abdomen -- to fill your lungs with life-giving oxygen, and to push toxic carbon dioxide from your lungs to achieve the complete breath. Diaphragm breathing is achieved through your nose, and not your mouth. Practice diaphragm breathing by placing one hand over your chest, and the other over your diaphragm muscles: you should feel the hand over your chest not moving, while that over the abdomen moving up and down as you inhale and exhale. Diaphragm breathing gives you complete breaths. For thousands of years, Chinese physicians have believed that an individual is given only a certain number of breaths during his or her lifespan. If the breaths are shorter, that individual then has a shorter lifespan. Therefore, the key to longevity and anti-aging is to prolong the breaths. Breathing right makes you live longer and look younger.

When you focus your mind on your breaths, you breathe better. Remember, your breaths are vital to your health, especially your brain health because your complete breaths bring more oxygen to your brain cells. Mindfulness of breaths plays a pivotal part in meditation, which is critically important to your mind power..

Read my book publication: As If Everything Is A Miracle. Learn to rethink your mind through your breaths to live your life as if everything is a miracle.

Also, learn Chinese exercises, such as Qi Gong and Tai Chi to enhance your breaths to increase your mind power.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Paradoxes of Life

The Paradoxes of Life

A paradox is a statement with two totally opposite meanings that may seem contradictory to each other and yet together they not only are true but also make sense.

Believing in God in itself has many paradoxes: the Creator becomes a creature; the Infinite becomes finite; the Eternal One enters into time; and death is the way to life. These are some of the paradoxes expressed in the Bible.

The presence of God is one of the many paradoxes of life. Indeed, sometimes we see God’s love, mercy, and justice, but there are also times we see only His indifference, condemnation, and even injustice. In fact, there are many times we are prone to asking the pivotal question: “Where is God?”

So, how do we explain this enigma and the paradox of God’s presence in human lives?

The reality is that God does not change. God is always and will forever be who He is: God is constant and present. It is only humans’ perceptions of God that constantly change under many different circumstances.

 

Believing in God is a tall order because we are living in a world not only of paradoxes but also of changes.

The paradox of two-in-one person

You are a two-in-one person. As a matter of fact, we all are, to a certain extent.

There are two persons living inside you: one is your ego-self; the other is your spirit. They co-exist: your ego-self is living in the physical or material world, while your spirit is living in a totally different environment with a different dimension. There is constant and continual contact and interaction between these two personalities.

Your ego-self is assertive, and even aggressive, always telling you that you are separate from everyone else. Your ego-self wants more of everything, not only to define who you are but also to separate you from others. Your ego-self is judgmental, not only self-evaluating but also assessing others through comparison and contrast with yourself. Your ego-self is constantly shifting and shuffling back and forth between the past and the future, instrumental in improving the ego-self in the past, as well as in enhancing the ego-self expected in the future. 

Your spirit is the other person living inside you. Your spirit, on the other hand, is gentle and submissive in nature, always nudging you to do what is right and to avoid doing what is wrong.

The paradox is that both your ego-self and your spirit co-exist, and that each strives to dominate and influence the other.

The classic illustration of the two-in-one person is Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the story, both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have a dark side within them, where evil is always lurking underneath to surface anytime. In the end, it turns out that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are actually one and the same person. 

Given that the ego-self and the spirit co-exist and that one can never totally get rid of the other, the reality is that the more control the ego-self has over the spirit, the more difficult it is to understand God’s presence, not to mention to attain His wisdom. To unravel the paradox of two-in-one person, let go of the ego-self, or at least diminish its control over the spirit, so as to feel more the presence of God in order to seek His wisdom.

The paradox of understanding

One of the reasons for the paradox of God’s presence is rationalization. Man is a rational being, and understanding is vital to believing.

According to St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo (354-430 A.D.), in life there are certain things we do not believe unless we understand them, and there are also other things that we do not understand unless we believe them first. According to St. Augustine, faith is not opposed to understanding, nor is it independent of understanding. His famous statement “faith seeking understanding” is an act of believing first, without which unbelief closes the door to further understanding. In other words, believe first, and understanding will follow. St. Anselm of Canterbury, a well-known Christian philosopher and theologian of the eleventh century, also echoed St. Augustine’s statement in his famous motto “I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.”

“By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”

(Hebrews 11:3)

The reality is that man has only limited power of understanding. Therefore, let go of any pre-conceived concept or rationalization in order to appreciate the presence of God, thereby opening the door to further understanding the mystery of His presence.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Is Anything Everything or Nothing?

Anything Is Everything Or Nothing?

Living in this material world is all about struggling and surviving. The good news is that it is a human race in which there are really no real winners and losers in the end. But no matter what, we all have to finish that race somehow, with no exception. Just do your very best, and let the Creator do the rest to help you finish your own race with grace and dignity. The wisdom of your body, your mind, and your spirit may awaken and rejuvenate you along the rest of your life journey.

Living is always a discovery process. Life is a journey of self-discovery—finding who you are, why you are here, what you really need, and how you may meet your basic needs, so that you, like every one else, can fulfill some of your life goals and purposes that are exclusively designed for you. But to do just that, you need profound human wisdom and spiritual wisdom to continue that journey as if everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein once said: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle.”

Indeed, life is a miracle in itself. Being alive is a miracle. Having your breaths is already a miracle. Everything in life is a miracle.

To truly believe and appreciate the miracle of life, you need the wisdom to grasp the full meaning of anything is everything, everything is nothing, and nothing is everything—they may all ultimately lead to your self-awakening, without which you will continue to live as if nothing is a miracle.

What is meant by “anything is everything”? It may have different meanings and different interpretations to different individuals.

First of all, human perceptions are subjective and individualized: they are affected not only by the five senses, but also by the unique experiences of an individual, as well as by the indelible memories of those experiences retained in the mind of that individual. Therefore, what is important to you may not be as important to others, and vice-versa. For this reason, anything could be everything to you, but not to others.

An illustration

Near the end of 2016, a road rage occurred in Arkansas that ended in the tragic death of a 3-year-old child. 

A woman, with her 3-year-old grandson sitting at the back of her car, stopped at a stop sign. A man in the car right behind honked her for not starting her car immediately, but the woman honked back; thus the road rage began with the man firing a gun shot at the back of the woman’s car.

Stopping too long at a stop sign,  or wanting to get to a place on time might be everything to the man. Having the right to remain where she was might also be everything to the woman, so she naturally honked back.  

Unfortunately, that anything-is-everything incident ended in tragedy—the death of the woman’s three-year-old grandson being shot dead while sitting at the back of her car.

In real life, anything could be everything to real people—it all depends on their respective perspectives of anything is everything.

A frog in a well

In many ways, many of us are just like a frog in a well, looking up at the limited sky above, in that we see only ourselves, and no one else, and therefore anything is everything to us. In other words, we see only our own needs and desires that have to be fulfilled and gratified no matter how, but without seeing those in others.

Just like the man in the car rage who saw only his own need to get going, but without even considering why the woman might be stalling her car at the stop sign and not moving ahead right away.

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

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

How I Look at My Life Problems

Looking at Life Problems

How I deal with my complaints

In my daily life, I try to catch myself complaining about anything, such as the weather—whether I am making a comment or just thinking a thought about the weather. By not complaining, I try to avoid putting my mind in a state of unconsciousness that creates negative energy and denial of the present moment. When I am complaining, I am in fact saying: “I cannot accept what is, and I am a victim of the present situation.” Understandably, in the present moment, we all have only three options in any situation that we are complaining about: get away from the situation; change the situation;  and accept the situation as it is.

If I want to take any action—whether it is getting away or changing the situation—I try my best to remove any negativity first and foremost.

If it is my decision to take no action, I honestly ask myself if it is fear that stands in my way of taking any action: I tell myself that any action is often better than no action. Staying in the present moment does the mental trick of controlling my thoughts:  focusing my mind on the present moment, and looking objectively at the fear that may be holding me back from taking any action, without letting fear get into my subconscious mind to create any negativity.

If, after much deliberation, I still decide to take no action, then I accept it fully and consciously, with no regret and no “should have” or “might have” because the whole episode now belongs to the past and is no longer real for me. It is important for me not to experience any inner conflict, resistance, or negativity in the mental process of deciding to take no action.

How I deal with stress

Stress is inevitable in contemporary living. My wife sometimes complains that I stress her, and my spontaneous reply is: “If I don’t stress you, something or somebody would stress you. Just learn to cope with it!” Yes, everybody has to cope with stress, and not to deal with the stressor.

When I was working on a book, it was easy for me to focus too much on the future and forget about the present. My mind seemed to be preoccupied with getting to the future, that is, finishing a certain chapter or the completion of a book, such that I easily forgot about the present. Then I began to realize that my stress was due to my “being here” but “wanting to be there.” With that realization, I have learned to re-focus more on the present, and less on the future. As a matter of fact, I have stopped creating timelines for my writing. In the writing process, sometimes I don’t like what I have written (what is known as a writer’s bad days) but I try to enjoy the writing process, rather than looking at what I have written and what I don’t like about. By focusing on the present, instead of on the finished product in the future, I have learned to enjoy my writing and the writing process, and I am able to revise what I previously did not like. So, the key is doing something totally focused on the present moment.

Awareness and concentration are important ingredients in mental clarity and relaxation to de-stress the mind.

How I deal with the past

In my life, I have made many mistakes, which have changed my life—maybe for the worse, or maybe not. Who knows? And who cares?

I never let the past take up my attention. I do not let my thinking process create any anger, guilt, pride, regret, resentment, or self-pity. Like everybody else, I do have these negative feelings and emotions, but they do not last long. I believe that if I allow these thoughts of mine to control me, I would look much older than my calendar age, and, worse, create a false sense of self.

To reminisce what was good in the past would intensify a desire to repeat such an experience in the future, and thus creating an insatiable longing that may never be fulfilled. To recall what was unpleasant in the past would generate feelings of remorse and unhappiness. What is the use? I just let bygones be bygones. In my mind, there is no ”what if.”

How I deal with failures

The path of living is strewn with failures, big and small. But they should not become stumbling blocks in life journey.  Like everybody else, I have met my failures:

I look upon my failures with positive attributes: a lesson of humility to show my own limitation and inadequacy; a lesson that I may never get what I want in life; a lesson to strengthen my character as a human being; a lesson to learn about perseverance and survival from failures.

If I had succeeded in those endeavors in the past, I would have embarked on a totally different life journey heading toward a totally different direction. Would I really have been better off or worse off? Who knows, and who cares? I never ponder on the “might have” or the “would have” scenarios.

How I look at death

I am now closer to the end rather than the beginning. That is to say, the thought of death has become more and more real with each day passing. I have come to believe that most elderly people have similar experience.

If I could ask but one question about the future, it would be: “How am I going to die?” and not “When am I going to die?”

I wouldn’t want to know about the when. To me, time is not a big factor. My desire to know the “how” is just out of plain curiosity. Anyway, they are just hypothetical questions without any answer.

In life, we all ask many different questions, some of which are practical, some hypothetical, and some without an answer. To many, living is a search for an answer to many of the unanswerable questions in life.

So, stop looking for an answer to every question asked, but continue to ask, and just live if there were no tomorrow.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

My Ingredients of My Recipe of My Daily Living for Life

The “Complaint” Ingredient

How I deal with my complaints

In my daily life, I always try to catch myself complaining about anything, such as the weather—whether I am making a comment or just thinking a thought about the weather. By not complaining, I try to avoid putting my mind in a state of unconsciousness that often creates negative energy and denial of the present moment. When I am complaining, I am in fact saying: “I cannot accept what is, and I am a victim of the present situation.” Understandably, in the present moment, we all have only three options in any situation that we are complaining about: get away from the situation; change the situation; and accept the situation as it is.

If I want to take any action—whether it is getting away or changing the situation—I try my best to remove any negativity first and foremost.

If it is my decision to take no action, I honestly ask myself if it is fear that stands in my way of taking any action: I tell myself that any action is often better than no action. Staying in the present moment does the mental trick of controlling my thoughts: focusing my mind on the present moment, and looking objectively at the fear that may be holding me back from taking any action, without letting fear get into my subconscious mind to create any negativity.

If, after much deliberation, I still decide to take no action, then I accept it fully and consciously, with no regret and no “should have” or “might have” because the whole episode now belongs to the past and is no longer "real" for me. It is important for me not to experience any inner conflict, resistance, or negativity in the mental process of deciding to take no action.

The “Stress” Ingredient

How I deal with my stress

Stress is inevitable in contemporary living. My wife used to complain that I stressed her, and my spontaneous reply was: “If I don’t stress you, something or somebody would stress you. Just learn to cope with it!” Yes, everybody has to cope with stress, and not to deal with the stressor.

Awareness and concentration are important ingredients in mental clarity and relaxation to de-stress the mind.

The “Past” Ingredient

How I deal with my past

In my life, I have made many mistakes, which have changed my life—maybe for the worse, or maybe not. Who knows? And who cares?

I never let my past take up my attention. I do not let my thinking process create any anger, guilt, pride, regret, resentment, or self-pity. Like everybody else, I do have these negative feelings and emotions, but they do not last long. I believe that if I allow these thoughts of mine to control me, I would look much older than my calendar age, and, worse, create a false sense of self. 

Reminiscing what was good in my past would only intensify my desire to repeat such an experience in the future, and thus creating an insatiable longing that may never be fulfilled. To recall what was unpleasant in my past would generate my feelings of remorse and unhappiness. What is the use? I just let my bygones be my bygones. In my mind, there is no such thing as ”what if.”

The “Present” Ingredient

How I try to live in the NOW

To me, living in the present holds the key to stopping my mind from processing my past and my future thoughts, which is an instinctive and automatic output of my mental process.

The human mind is cruel and demanding, such that we easily become its slave, doing whatever it commands us to do without even being consciously aware of it. So, the only way to free myself from that invisible bondage is to live in the now, even though just for a short while. Living in the now changes my mind for the better. Living in the now is my mental state that cherishes my mental clarity, my loving compassion, my deep insight, and my internal peace; it is a strong tool for my mental self-control.

Yes, my mindfulness is my mental practice that can be performed anytime and anywhere. It is like my daily mini-meditation.

The “Future” Ingredient

How I stop myself from worrying about my future

To me, the solution to worrying is to stop identifying myself with my mind, which is forever projecting itself into the future, creating imaginary images of myself living in a nursing home, being totally disabled, and thus creating my imaginary fear. I have learned that the projected future is "unreal" because it does not exist. It is real only when it happens. I just have to learn to cope with the present moment, and not with the future—not before, and not after.

Waiting is a state of mind. I have learned to acknowledge my present reality—where I am, who I am, what I am doing with my life. 

The “Misfortune” Ingredient 

How I accept and embrace my tragedies

Misfortune is an ingredient that one needs to blend with the rest of the ingredients. My life will not be wholesome without my tragedies, which enable me to appreciate more what my life has to offer.

The “Right Conduct” Ingredient 

How I try to do all the right and righteous things

I believe that the art of living well is no more than acting in the right way and living in the right way. Right conduct is tantamount to asking the question: “How should one live in the right and righteous way?”—the question asked by many ancient Western philosophers, such as Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. There is no definitive answer.

The “Failure” Ingredient

How I deal with my failures in my life

The path of living is strewn with many failures, big and small. But they should not become the stumbling blocks in any life journey. Like everybody else, I have met my many failures: I failed as an antique shop owner when I set up my retail business, and as an entrepreneur when I bought a franchised cleaning business.

I look upon all my past failures with positive attributes: a lesson of humility to show my own limitation and inadequacy; a lesson that I may never get what I want in my life; a lesson to strengthen my character as a human being; a lesson to learn about perseverance and survival from my failures.

If I had succeeded in all my past endeavors, I would have embarked on a totally different life journey heading towards a totally different direction. Would I really have been better off or worse off? Who knows, and who cares? I never ponder on the “might have” or the “would have” scenarios.

The “Life Purpose” Ingredient 

How I look at my external and internal life purpose

I understand that life must have a purpose, or, more specifically, an external as well as an internal purpose.

I realize that in life setting a purpose is important, but not so important that it drives you crazy in pursuing it or giving it up altogether. As a matter of fact, my external purpose only sets me a direction for the destination of my life. In that direction, there are many different signposts guiding me along the way. Arriving at one signpost simply means that I have accomplished one task; missing that signpost means that I am still on the right path but simply taking maybe a detour or just longer time because of misdirection or getting lost on the way. 

My internal purpose is more important: it has nothing to do with arriving at my destination, but to do with the "quality" of my consciousness—what I am doing along the way.

That Jesus said: “gain the world and lose your soul” probably said everything there is to say about the internal purpose of life for any individual.

No matter what you do in your life, just do your very best and do it well, no matter how insignificant they may be.  I always tell myself to try doing everything as if God had called upon me at that particular moment to do it. Of course, admittedly, it is not always that easy, given that the human mind may be troubled by the ego-self, by invasive and unwanted thoughts from the past or by projections of those thoughts into the future. But having the mindset with the right intention is already the first step or breakthrough for me.

I understand that I have three options in whatever I have been called to do: do it; not to do it; and do it while enjoying the present moment of doing it. 

The “Death” Ingredient 

How I look at my death

I am now closer to the end rather than to the beginning of my lifespan. The thought of dying and death has become more and more real with each day passing. I have come to believe that most elderly people have similar experience. If I could ask but one question about the future, it would be: “How am I going to die?” and not “When am I going to die?”

I wouldn’t want to know about the when. To me, time is not a big factor. My desire to know the “how” is just out of plain curiosity. Anyway, they are just hypothetical questions without any answer.

In life, we all ask many different questions, some of which are practical, some hypothetical, and some without an answer. To many, living is a search for an answer to many of the unanswerable questions in life.

So, stop looking for an answer to every question asked, but continue to ask, and just live if there were no tomorrow.

Stephen Lau

Author, The Book of Life and Living

Books by Stephen Lau

 

Enlightenment Is Self-Awakening

The Chinee Proverbs

"Find enlightenment through heeding many points of view. Find ignorance through few." Wei Zheng

"After the long slumber of ignorance, a single word can change a man forever." Nan Guo Zi

What is enlightenment? Enlightenment is self-awakening. But self-awakening to what? To the universal truths, such as "sunset will be followed by sunrise" and "what goes up must also come down." These may be simple truths, but many people are simply unaware of them. Self-awakening may dawn on you suddenly. It is effortless. Enlightenment requires clarity of thinking through asking many self-intuitive questions. The more questions you ask, the more self-enlightening answers you may get until one day you stop any more question because by then you may already have the answer, and that is enlightenment.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Letting Go to Let God

 THE MIRACLE OF LETTING GO TO LET GOD

Spiritual wisdom facilitates the process of humans’ letting go, and spiritual wisdom comes from faith, which is belief in God.

“Belief in God” means complete trust in Him that has to be expressed and validated by obedience; in other words, let go to let God.

Does the wisdom of letting God sound simple and straightforward?

According to Albert Einstein, knowing and understanding are the essentials of wisdom—they are also critical to attaining the wisdom of letting go to let God.

The mysteries and the manifestations

Have more knowledge of the invisible and the inexplicable that is happening to you and also around you, as well as have better understanding of the mysteries and the manifestations of all things created by God, who is the origin of all things. His Creation has been one of the most controversial, profound, and unfathomable mysteries since the beginning of time, while all the things subsequently originating from His creations are only further manifestations of the mysteries of His Creation.

God-given image and man-made identity

Letting go to let God begins with believing in the mysteries and manifestations of human creation: we are all created in the image of God.

“So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.”

(Genesis 1: 27)

                  

What does that really mean, and what is the wisdom in that?

You may never know why you were created in the first place, but one thing you know for sure is that not only you are different from all His other creations but also all humans are uniquely different from one another in that respect—just like the uniqueness in humans’ fingerprints. The wisdom is that you, just like everybody else, have His image, and this is indeed a blessing. That also means you  have a spirit within you that not only defines who you are, but also connects you somehow and somewhat to and with Him in a uniquely individual way, because your image is a reflection of Him. In other words, we all have a unique identity of our own, which is composed of some of the attributes of the Creator.

Living in the material world, you may also have consciously and subconsciously created another image of your own—a man-made identity, or an ego-self. If you are more aware of your man-made identity, you may then become less conscious of your God-given image. Your attachments that have created your own man-made identity may then slowly and imperceptibly detach and distance yourself from your God-given image.

The bottom line: letting go of some, if not all, of your attachments to your man-made identity may enhance your God-given image within you. Do you always identify yourself with the car you drive, the neighborhood you live in, the social circles you belong to, and the career you have taken up? All these attachments in the material world may have created your own man-made identity, but not your God-given image. Just think about that.

Let go to let God define your own identity.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau