Healthy Posture Healthy Vision

Science has attested to the close connection between the body and the mind. As a matter of fact, your body organs and systems are all inter-connected. Accordingly, your vision is inter-connected with your body posture. Therefore, to improve your eyesight, you must also improve your body posture.

Vision health is holistic health, that is, it includes the health of the body, the mind, and the spirit. Eyesight is an integral part of vision. Your eyesight determines how you see the world at large; your perception is your reality. Therefore, your perception becomes the raw materials of your life experiences, which will directly or indirectly affect your physical, mental, and emotional well-being. By the same token, your physical, mental, and emotional health will have an impact on your vision health, and hence your eyesight.

According to Dr. William Bates (1860 - 1931), the founder of natural vision improvement, poor vision is the result of eyestrain, due to mental and physical stress on the eye, and hence the distortion of the eye shape, causing nearsightedness and farsightedness. Dr. William Bates strongly believed that eye relaxation holds the key to improving vision. As a matter of fact, stress is the major underlying cause of most human diseases. It is important to reduce, if not remove, the stress factor in your life. 

But eye relaxation begins with the mind first, and not the eye. The mind must be completely relaxed before it can relax the body, and then the eye, which is only one of the organs of the body. Posture health is overall health because poor posture affects different parts of your body in many different ways, such as back pain and breathing, among others.

Good posture improves your breathing. Incorrect breathing results in compromised lung functioning, leading to inadequate oxygen intake by all body organs and tissues, and hence a host of health issues, including vision health. Improve your posture to optimize breathing for your vision health.

Good posture helps you avoid debilitating body pain, such as back pain, neck pain, leg pain, and even headaches. In addition, an arched back exerts undue pressure on the joints and nerves, causing joint pain and rheumatism. Due to poor body posture, all the muscle groups supporting the crooked spine may become stretched and strained, causing wear and tear, resulting in lower back pain. Chronic body pain often interferes with natural sleep, which is a major factor in relaxation of the body and the mind, in particular, the eye. Therefore, it is important to have good posture for eye relaxation to improve eyesight.

To successfully improve posture, you must develop an acute awareness for good posture at all times.

Good posture does not mean "jamming your shoulders back, tucking in your tummy, and standing stiff"; this posture does not align your body, nor is it practicable in that you can maintain that position over an extended period. To learn how to maintain good posture. Visit my web page: Healthy Posture Resources.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Look at Life Problems

Look 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

The TAO in Anything OR Nothing?

 

The Bible says wisdom is everything. "Joyful is the person who finds wisdom, the one who gains understanding." (Proverbs 3:13) 

Without wisdom, there is no understanding. 

But why is understanding important?

Without understanding, anything and everything in life may seem paradoxical and inexplicable. It is this mindset that may make many people "not living in reality" -- in their minds they only see "unfairness" and "inequality." This distorted mindset may even lead many to committing crimes and violence: "Why shouldn't I rob them who've the money that I don't have?" or "They too have broken the law, so why shouldn't I do the same?"

Biblical wisdom is about "accountability" to God, which will give you spiritual "understanding." But if you are not a believer, that "understanding" may be irrelevant to you.

Having said that, human wisdom is indispensable in contemporary living. Human wisdom is not the same as acquisition of knowledge; human wisdom is the application of what you feel and understand to your everyday life and living. So, being knowledgeable does not necessarily mean being wise.

The TAO is the profound wisdom of Lao Tzu, an ancient sage from China more than 2,600 years ago. The TAO has survived and thrived for thousands of years for a good reason: it is applicable to anything and everything in contemporary daily life. The TAO shows you all the hows and the whys of anything and everything happening in your life, including the following: growing up, receiving education, earning a living, making money, getting married, starting a family, raising children, staying healthy, growing old, and dying.

The TAO helps you confront all your daily challenges, and live in balance and harmony.

TAO in Anything and Everything

Stephen Lau

Oneness with All Life

Oneness with All Life

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

No man is an island

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

Connectedness

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

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

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

(John 1: 1)

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

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

given the one Spirit to drink.

(1 Corinthians 12:13)

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

Each and every being in the universe.

is an expression of the Creator.

We are all shaped and perfected by Him.

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 51)

Blessed is he who has no ego-self.

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

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 9)

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

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

Examples of How to Live Your Life

          In your life, there're different ways of living, and here're two          examples:

      Living by Wants

      Many live according to what they want in life. Wants can come from basic needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter, or from other things desired in life, such as comfort, health, love, pleasures, success, wealth, and many other things in daily life.

     Yes, in life and living, there’re many wants, including the following: wanting alcohol may result in AUD (Alcohol Use Disorder); wanting gambling can happen to anyone from any walk of life, due to the fun that often turns into an unhealthy obsession with many serious financial and relationship consequences; wanting sex can lead to pornography, adultery, infidelity, and extra-marital affairs; wanting money can cause greed and attachments to material things; wanting hobbies can make life more interesting, such as dancing, drawing, and singing; wanting sports can increase physical and mental skills in competitive sports, such as football and soccer, while wanting non-competitive sports, such as running and swimming, can be exercises for physical health; wanting success in any endeavor, such as careers and businesses, love and relationships, health and healing, can set goals and objectives in life and living.

     But living by wants requires the means, that is, the money or the earnings to make a living, without which it’s impossible to get the wants. Unfortunately, many even without their means yet demand their wants, and thus ending up in crimes, such as stealing and robbing.

 

Living by Personality

 

     An ego is self-identity. Many may have an inflated ego that gives them a distinguished personality to live by. They believe they’re not only much better but also totally different from others. Accordingly, others must succumb to their demands and desires. They’ve become so self-centered that they’ll continuously inflate their own ego with higher expectations while controlling and demanding others to do what they want them to do for them.

 

An Illustration

 

     Donald Trump, with little discipline in childhood and adolescence, came from a wealthy family with high expectations. He began his own business in hotels and casinos. Unfortunately, he was labeled “public laughingstock” due to his repeated business failures in several of his different tumultuous business careers. But, with his self-inflated egoistic personality, Donald Trump was still able to give the public “delusional” perception of his high-flying success in real estate. He even started the Trump University, but that only ended up in many lawsuits. The bankruptcy protection in the United States saved Donald Trump from his own bankruptcy caused by all his business failures.

      Donald Trump’s ego-self turned around sharply and suddenly when he was elected the 45^th President of the United States. With that great boost to his already self-inflated ego, he thought he could do just about anything to control everyone and everything around him. But his inflated ego was severely compromised when he “unexpectedly” lost his second-term presidency that led to many allegations of his conspiracy, insurrection, and plot to illegally hold onto power to sustain his inflated ego.

 

     On the other side of those with an inflated ego are those living with a deflated ego. They often feel inadequate, incompetent, insecure, and even unloved. Their perceived low self-esteem often originates from an unhappy childhood with extremely critical and demanding parents, as well as from their own ongoing life events, such as career and relationship failures and problems.

 

An illustration

 

     Paris Hilton is the great-granddaughter of the founder of the famous Hilton Hotels. Being given the nickname of “Star” by her mother and grandmother, and growing up in fame and prestige, she began her modeling career at any early age. Due to her own demand for celebrity status and media attention, Paris also began her other careers in books, music, and screen appearances. Her book “Confessions of An Heiress” was on the New York Times’s bestseller list; her role in the film “The House of Wax” earned her The Teen Choices Award.

     But Paris Hilton always thought that she was “less successful” than others. Her “deflated ego” and her envy of those who were “more successful” than she was led to her continual pursuit in music and television shows, such as “The World According to Paris,” and “Hollywood Love Story.” Feeling being a mediocre, she was always envious of those who she thought were more successful than herself. Throughout her different careers, she was haunted by the sin of pride and the sin of envy. The Guinness World Record in 2007 named Paris Hilton “the most overrated celebrity.” According to the media, she was “the worst actress of the decade.”

 

The Bottom Line

 

     Living by faith, you live with humility and not pride if you’ve an inflated ego; you live with simplicity to give you confidence, hope, and strength if you’ve a deflated ego.

     Living by faith, you believe that God has given you your true self destined by Him to live a life of humility and simplicity.

 

Living By Faith shows you how to live your life in this material world with real-life examples.

Stephen Lau

Living in the Now

In this day and age with the advancement of technology, living in the now is not easy. Speed is everything, and performance is based on speed and efficiency, which has much to do with speed too. As a result of the craving for speed, the human mind slowly and increasingly becomes more compulsive.

According to the most recent NBC news, even young children have become addicted to speed with their multi social media in their digital world that they have become disconnected with the real world and the people around them.

As a parent, you should make sure that your child or children stay more in the present. Of course, you, as the parent, should also set a good example, such as, not talking on the phone while driving.

Are you yourself living in the present? If you are, your mind should not be focusing on the electronic gadgets, which you are holding in your hands. According to the NBC news report, some children are even texting hundreds of messages a day, and they have lost physical contacts with their families and friends. Instead of eating their dinners, they are looking at their electronic devices. This multitasking is not living in the present, just as texting while driving is not living in the present

Not living in the present is akin to the mind shuffling between the past and the future. Your actions or inactions are derived and driven by your thoughts and memories of your past experiences, and how you project them into the future as desires and expectations. Accordingly, the human mind constantly shuffles between the past and the future. As a result, it seldom stays in the present moment. To illustrate, while talking on the cell phone, how often do you talk about what happened or what you are going to do next? If you think more deeply, the subject of your conversation mostly involves the past or the future. In a worse scenario, if you are talking or texting while driving, your mental focus is certainly not on the present—which is driving your car.

The first step to train your mind to focus more on the present is to concentrate on your breathing. Most of us are totally unaware of our breaths, unless we are short of breath after running or climbing stairs, or due to some medical conditions that may cause difficulties in breathing. Concentration on how you breathe in and breathe out, as well as your body’s sensations during the inhalation and exhalation trains you to develop mindfulness. It is important to know that your body is yours only, and it is always with you. Finding the moment-by-moment relationship with your body through your breathing is your key to wellness of the body, the mind, and the soul. Be mindful of the present.

Mindfulness is your deliberate attention to the present moment. This purposeful focus enables you to recognize your thoughts as they occur, but without paying judgmental attention to them; in other words, they neither distract nor disturb you, and you just observe them objectively, like watching a movie about yourself unfolding before your very eyes. Essentially, letting the mind stay in the present is a simple way to meditate.

Are you living your life, or your life living you?

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau