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

EMBRACING TO LETTING GO

Embracing is accepting the good and the bad with grace and gratitude. Embracing everyone and everything is beneficial because it holds the key to awakening, which is the ultimate understanding of the TAO.

“We act without over-doing.

We manage without interference.

We enjoy without attachment. . . .

Therefore, we focus on the present moment,

doing what needs to be done,

without straining and stressing.

To end our suffering,

we focus on the present moment,

instead of our expected result.

So, we follow the natural laws of things.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 63)

Before you could embrace, you need to let go of anger, desire, disappointment, expectation, frustration, and grudge, among many other negative emotions. But you will be rewarded with spiritual instructions and inspirations.

 

“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)

Letting go is the natural surrender of the human mind to any involuntary reactivity aimed at removing anything that might threaten or undermine the ego-self. Letting go should be a natural instinct, and not a technique that one has to learn and master; it is simply a spontaneous human ability to give up all human attachments that create the unreal ego-self.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

PARENTAL ANGER

 Conflicts and misinterpretations often lead to anger with parents, resulting in the development of future relationships with a lack of love and trust.  Conflicts with biological parents, stepparents, foster and adoptive parents may vary in intensity, and even change drastically due to the separation and divorce of parents. In addition, bad parental relationships may worsen due to the following:

·       The birth of a new baby demanding more parental attention.

·       Financial problems, such as unemployment.

·       Development of anxiety and depression in both parents and children.

·       Experiences of abuse and bullying at home, at school or elsewhere.

·       Drug and alcohol use.

      Children, while growing up into preteens and teenagers, often become more independent and more responsible, with their own perspectives and preferences in every aspect of their lives. Their mental and emotional changes are the foundations of their disagreements with their parents, including their time management, their doings, and non-doings, as well as their obedience and disobedience to their parents’ demands.

 Irrational anger

      On November 21, 2022, a 10-year-old boy shot and killed his mother by mistake. He allegedly claimed he took the gun from his mother’s bedroom down to the basement, where his mother was doing her laundry. The boy initially claimed that he was twirling the gun around his fingers when it went off and “accidentally” killed his mother.

     But, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the boy later confessed that he carried out the heinous act out of his anger after his mother refused to buy him a VR headset. Members of his family further revealed the 10-year-old boy’s many previous episodes of erratic anger and rage issues, such as setting fire at home and causing explosion when his demands were rejected by his mother.

     Even while being interrogated by the FBI, the boy surprisingly asked if the VR headset that he ordered from Amazon the day after killing his mother had arrived or not.

The Bottom Line

      So, as a parent, you need to improve your relationships with your children by doing the following:

·       Spending more quality time with more one-on-one interactions with your children as they grow up.

·       Finding the right time to address any issue, instead of responding to it right away.

·       Listening to complaints without any interruption.

·       Acknowledging their needs and wants, and explaining to them the differences between needs and wants.

·       Connecting or reconnecting them with warmth, such as hugging.

·       Being willing and open to any compromise.

·       Teaching them about love, compassion, forgiveness, and empathy.

·       Helping them set their own life goals, and not what you want them to do.

Angry No More: A new book on how to control and eradicate your anger.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

 

NO ATTACHMENTS

Attachments and Illusions

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.” Simone Weil

                

An attachment is no more than a safety blanket to overcome human fear—the fear of any change and the fear of the unknown from that change. To cope with that projected fear, you may just need many more attachments.

An attachment is basically your own emotional dependence on things and people that define your identity, around which you wrap your so called “happiness” and even your survival. Attachments are your holding on to anything and everything that you are unwilling to let go of, whether it is something positive or even negative. Attachments do not make you live longer.

We are living in a world with many problems that confront us in our everyday life and living, and many of these problems are not only unavoidable but also insurmountable. To overcome these daily challenges, many of us just turn to our own attachments as a means of distracting ourselves from facing our own problems head on, or from adapting and changing ourselves in an ever-changing environment. All of our struggles in life, from anxiety to frustration, from anger to sadness, from grief to worry—they all stem from the same source: 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 own best effort.

Attachments often become the sources of human miseries and sufferings. Worse, they may also come in many different forms that we are unaware of because of the illusions they have created in our minds.

 

Career attachments

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

Money and wealth attachments

Money plays a major role in life. You need money for almost anything and everything in life. In the past, people could enjoy some of 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 the ones of your neighbors and friends.

Relationship attachments

Living has much to do with people, involving agreements and disagreements, often resulting in having mixed emotional feelings of joy and sorrow, contentment and regret, and among many others; they often become attachments to the ego-self as memories that you may refuse to let go of—not forgetting and not forgiving, for example, are some of the emotional hurdles that are often difficult for many to overcome.

Success and failure attachments

Success in life often becomes an attachment in the form of expectations that it will continue indefinitely, bringing more success. Failure, on the other hand, may generate regret, frustration, and disappointment. These emotional attachments are 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 also want to attach to your good old days, and even refuse to let go of your current adversity. Both 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 and maximize every moment of time. This attachment often leads to the development of a compulsive mind and the action of over-doing.

The bottom line: sometimes we are so wrapped up in the outside world that we seldom have an opportunity to look inside of ourselves. Understanding who we really are may make us happy, instead of creating our own attachments in the material world we are living in. Imagine you are all alone in a room with nothing, except a pen and a piece of paper. Well, surprisingly, you may then become creative and even happy, with nothing there to worry about, and nothing there to distract your mind.

Identity crisis

According to Tim Hiller, a motivational speaker, a football coach, and a writer, “We usually don't realize the thing that is defining our identity until that thing is taken away.”

Without attachments, we may have an identity crisis; but the truth of the matter is that attachments only give us a false identity, and this may, ironically enough, lead to an identity crisis.

The spiritual wisdom is that Jesus Christ did not have an identity crisis: He clearly knew who He was; He never claimed to be someone else that He was not; He knew where He originated from, and also where He would be going. The problem with humans is that we do not know who we really are; through comparison and contrast, the human ego is forever striving to be someone else. Sadly, in the process, a real identity crisis ensues.

Attachment illusions

All human attachments are the raw materials with which we both consciously and subconsciously create our own identities through a period of confusion and uncertainty that may eventually lead to not only the identity crisis but also the attachment illusions that distort our perceptions of the realities of life. Without human attachments, there will be no identity crisis, and no illusion of the mind.

For example, does the attachment to money bring happiness, or make you live longer?

To many, it does, especially if they have been experiencing the lack of it! That explains why thousands of people line up for hours to get their lottery tickets, hoping against hope that their tickets would win them great fortunes, and hence their happiness. But the reality is that many lottery winners claim that their happiness from the winning is only transient and is not lasting.

Bruce Lipton, author and cellular biologist, once said: “The function of the mind is to create coherence between our own beliefs and the reality that we experience. We generally perceive that we are running our lives with our own wishes and our own desires. But neuroscience reveals a startling fact: we only run our lives with our creative, conscious mind about 5 percent of the time; 95 percent of the time, our life is controlled by the beliefs and habits that are previously programmed in the subconscious mind.”

It is your pre-programmed subconscious mind that tells you money can give you happiness. That can also explain why you may find yourself working in jobs that you do not even like due to your subconscious belief that money is anything and everything in your life.

The whole world out there that you see in front of you right now is nothing more than a projection of what you feel deep inside. Not only is it a projection of your deep feelings but also you internal energy. Yes, money is energy too, just like you, me, anything and everything else. Money is an expression of energy of your subconscious mind, building a complex system of money beliefs, such as “money makes the world go round” and “when I have enough money . . . then I’ll be happy, and can do whatever I want to do.”

But according to Harvard Business Review, money and happiness are not positively correlated, because money may make people less generous and more demanding and domineering. In addition, money may not bring out the best of an individual: the more money that individual has, the more focused on self that individual may become, and the less sensitive to the needs of people around, as well as the more likely to do the wrong things due to the feeling of right and  entitlement.

The bottom line: any attachment to a just about anything we crave or value only creates an illusion in the mind.

ANYTHING IS EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING IS NOTHING! NOTHING IS EVERYTHING!

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

MAKE YOUR BABY SUPERSMART

Understand some of the basics to make your baby super smart.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR BABY’S BRAIN

Understanding how the brain functions and develops is important.

Brain cells develop and functio as soon as they receive data from the surrounding through the five sensory organs—ears, eyes, mouth, nose, and skin; that is, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and touching. The development and sharpness of these organs depend a great deal on the amount as well as the intensity of stimuli that they receive.

There are billions of brain cells, and they are like blank sheets of paper to be filled up with data obtained from the five sensory organs. They gradually become the brain, the physical organ of the body, which is responsible for thinking, often referred to as the mind.

The mind serves to control and coordinate mental and physical actions, including thoughts and feelings, as well as beliefs and attitudes. Over time, thinking will continue to develop and shape the mind, turning it into two major components—the conscious mind, and the subconscious mind. The former selectively controls the data input; the latter involuntarily and indiscriminately takes in all the data received. The truth of the matter is that the subconscious mind dominates the conscious mind. In other words, one’s conscious mind may want to do one thing, but one’s subconscious mind may instruct one to do another thing, and one may end up doing the other thing, which may be quite different from what one originally intended. Therefore, it is important to provide the right and appropriate data to the baby, because the mind of the baby is not mature enough to separate the truths from the half-truths or untruths. In other words, a baby’s perceptions are permanently stored in his subconscious mind.

Remember, in the beginning, the baby’s brain is not fully developed. Speed up its development through enhancing its five senses.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR BABY’S VISION

Even before birth, babies can see: they can tell what is light and what is dark. After birth, their vision improves significantly when they see shapes by following their lines. At first, they can see only within 8 to 12 inches, and they see only black, white, and gray. When they are several weeks old, they may begin to perceive their first primary color—red. Progressively, they learn how to use their eyes to see what they want to see by following moving objects. Then, they begin to learn their “binocular vision,” which is coordinating and seeing with both eyes. Babies should develop their normal vision, which includes eye-hand coordination, within the first several weeks and months.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR BABY’S HEARING

Hearing is the 1^st step towards language learning. Therefore, it is important to identify and address any hearing problem by having a hearing screening test right after birth.

Babies have different responses to sounds, depending on their own temperament; more sensitive babies are more reactive to sounds; calmer babies are less reactive.

Around two months, babies begin to respond to familiar voices by making vowel sounds like ohh. At about four months, babies start to look for the source of a sound, and by six months they try to imitate sounds. By eight months, they babble and respond to changes in the tone of voice. By twelve months, babies may be able to say single words like "ma-ma" and "da-da."

The baby’s brain continues to respond to complex sounds and attach different meanings to different sounds heard. Your baby will continue to use hearing to make sense of the world and to learn to communicate with sounds.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR BABY’S SKIN

The baby’s skin is most sensitive to touch. Tactile sensations are responsible for the connection between the skin and the sympathetic nervous system; these nerves regulate heart, blood circulation, lungs, and other internal organs.

Therefore, it is important to touch the baby while breast feeding or changing diapers by touching and massaging his toes and fingers.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR BABY’S SENSE OF TASTE AND SMELL

Most newborns will eat every two to three hours around the clock.

By the end of the first month, babies may develop an eating and sleeping pattern, but don't impose it on your baby. At this age, your baby should be fed whenever it shows signs of hunger.

Most babies have developed a sense of taste. In fact, newborns seem to have more taste buds than adults do. Sensitivity to sweet and bitter tastes is present at birth, but babies’ reactions to salty foods don't come until about five months.

Babies use their sense of smell right from the start and can localize odors. Studies have shown that five-day-old newborns will turn towards a pad soaked with breast milk, indicating that they can smell it, and a few days later they demonstrate a preference for the smell of their mom's milk.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

THE DARK SIDE OF ATTACHMENTS

Why Letting Go of Attachments in Life

The dark side of attachments

Desire

Attachments create desire, and desire generates an expectation. To guarantee the fulfillment of the expectation, the mind has to make choices—not so much the choices between doing what is right and what is wrong, as the choices between doing what can and cannot repeat the past success, as well as what can and cannot avoid the future failure. In the process of making these difficult choices, the mind may becomes unduly stressed, leading to anxiety, frustration, and disappointment. Human desire is the root cause of all human woes.

“There is no greater sin than desire,

No greater curse than discontent,

No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself.

Therefore he who knows that enough is enough

 will always have enough.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 46)

Control

Control is the byproduct of attachments, a tool used by the mind to perpetuate the attachments.

“The world is ruled by letting things take their course.
It cannot be ruled by interfering.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 48)

Most of us are controlling to a greater or less extent. We, as parents, control our children’s destiny by striving to steer them clear of the wrong path we had previously treaded ourselves.

Our culture tells us that we should be in control of everything around us at all times; controlling, to many, is synonymous with independence.

But controlling is not Tao because it is an unnatural way of running away from everyday problems, instead of embracing them. Controlling is a direct or subtle way of exerting influence over others so that we may have power over the turn of events in our lives. In other words, we delusively think we can make things happen the way we want them to happen in our lives through control and manipulation of others. Of course, it is only a wishful thinking that we can have total control of what happens in our lives.

Indisputably, life is forever changing, whether we like it or not. Just learn to accept the fact that we are sometimes helpless to stop an unwelcome change in our lives. Paradoxically, accepting that unwelcome change may surprisingly bring us peace of mind. Unfortunately, many of us simply choose to avoid it by controlling people who, we think, may either cause or avert that unwelcome change. Control stems from fear and worry, which are projections of the mind into the future, and which are the major factors of stress.

How often we control our children, our parents, our friends, and our co-workers without being aware of our control.

To let go of control requires courage. Mark Twain once said humorously about the cure for insomnia: “Try lying on the edge of the bed, then you might drop off.” Indeed, to go to sleep, you must have the courage to let go of your thoughts before you can fall asleep—just like letting go of the fear when lying on the edge of the bed.

“. . . sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.” Edwar Albee

The bright side of non-attachment

Spontaneity instead of choices

But, with the wisdom of Tao, life does not have to be filled with difficult choices and anxious expectations. Spontaneity is the solution, the secret to the art of living well: letting nature run its natural course.

”Empty yourself of everything.
Let your mind rest at peace.
Watch the workings of all of creation,

and contemplate their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness,

which is the way of nature.
The way of nature is unchanging.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 16)

Spontaneity is similar to what is said in the Bible: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 26: 26)

Do not over-worry because things do not turn out the way you think they should.

”That which shrinks

Must first expand.

That which fails,

Must first be strong.

That which is cast down

Must first be raised.

Before receiving, there must be giving.

This is called perception of the nature of things.

Soft and weak overcome hard and strong.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 36)

Stephen Lau

Copyright©by Stephen Lau

MARRIAGE ACCOUNTABILITY

 

ACCOUNTABILITY IN MARRIAGE TO GOD

Lack of accountability to God for what you’ve been doing to your marriage and your marriage partner is one of the reasons why divorce is rampant these days.

You’re living in a world in which injustice and vengeance are rampant. Living in the midst of this storm of unfairness may cause you unhappiness and even your own lack of faith in God.

But seeing the lack of accountability in others should, on the contrary, enhance your own accountability not only in your marriage but also in your everyday living. God is forever just and will bring judgment and justice to all—at His own timeline.

An illustration

In 1984, Archbishop Valerian Trifa was deported from the United States after being accused of being 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 former Nazi supporter came to the United States as a refugee immigrant. He assumed the name of Valerian Trifa, and he 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 then archbishop, who lived in comfort in a 25-room farmhouse on a 200-acre estate maintained by his church.

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

At first, the Archbishop vehemently denied his former identity, despite some handwriting experts had confirmed 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 with the Archbishop’s own saliva on them. That was his undoing, and his final judgment.

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

So, believe that God is merciful, but also a just God, who’ll judge injustice and any wrongdoing according to His own timeframe.

So, living in the presence of God is showing your accountability to every aspect of your married life. So, be faithful to your marriage partner to receive the blessings of God in your marriage.

Getting Married to Make You Happy?

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

LIFE PURPOSE

Looking at Life Purpose

Life must have a purpose, or, more specifically, an external as well as an internal purpose.

External Purpose

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, there is an external purpose that only sets you a direction for the destination of your life. In that direction, there are many different signposts guiding you along the way. Arriving at one signpost simply means that you have accomplished one task; missing that signpost means that you are still on the right path but simply taking maybe a detour or just longer time because of misdirection or getting lost on the way.

Internal Purpose

Your internal purpose is more important: it has nothing to do with arriving at your destination, but to do with the quality of your consciousness—what you are 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 an individual.

External purpose can never give lasting fulfillment in life due to its transience and impermanence, but internal purpose, because of its unique quality of being in the present moment, may give us inner joy and a sense of fulfillment. That is how you should feel about your internal life purpose.

No matter what you do in your life, just do your very best and do it well, no matter how insignificant they may be.

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’” Martin Luther King Jr.                                    

Always tell yourself to try doing everything as if God had called upon you at that particular moment to do it. Of course, admittedly, it is not always that easy, given that the 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 a first step or breakthrough for you.

Always understand that you have three options in whatever you have been called to do: do it; not to do it; and do it while enjoying the present moment of doing. So, just do what you have to do, whether you like it or not, just as Michelangelo painted—who, believing that his talent was in sculpture and not in painting, was at first unwilling to do the fresco, which turned out to be one of his greatest masterpieces.

The bottom line: Do what you may not like to do, and  learn to like what you have to do.

Sometimes you may like to ask this question: “What about tomorrow?”

Well, you cannot speak for tomorrow. Tomorrow hasn’t come yet. After all, tomorrow is another day, just as Scarlet O’Hara said in Gone with the Wind. 

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau