Solving Money Problems

Solving Money Problems

Money plays a major role in life. You need money for almost everything in life. Given the importance of money, you need to know the basics of money—what money is all about.

In the past, people could enjoy the blessings of life without spending any real money. Nowadays, to many people, enjoyment of life requires money—and lots of it!

According to Buddha, craving or desire for material things is the source of all human miseries. Jesus also has this to say about money: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven.” (Luke 18:25)

So, what is the value of money? According to author Jonathan Swift, a wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart. 

More importantly, what does money mean to you?

Your perceptions of the value of money determine two of the most important things in your life: how you are going to live your life; how you are going to spend your money.

The value of money is based on your core values in life. One of the core values in life is integrity. Life, at any phase, is all about living—it comes with some hard work and simple integrity. Integrity is an important personal value, which has little to do with money. Integrity is an important value that the Creator has bestowed on each and every one of us, and its availability is the choice of an individual. Essentially, integrity is the value of what life has to offer, not the value of things that can be purchased with money. Your core values affect your attitudes toward money, including your financial priorities, financial decisions, and money management. So, what is the value of money to you?

Once you know the real value of money to you, you will know what to do with your money, and you will find the money you need.

Spending money is also an extremely important issue in life: throughout history, countries have become bankrupt, empires have collapsed, and families have broken up because of spending much too much money. So, spending money can affect positively or negatively your life, and can be a major stress factor.

Spending money has little to do with whether you have or you do not have much money. Spending money has to do with your attitude toward money. It has everything to do with the practical as well as the spiritual aspects of money and finance.

The practical aspect of spending money is that it may lead to debt—which is the source of financial stress. 

Why do people go into debt?

People go into debt for various reasons: deficit spending,  a result of buying things they don’t need with the money they don’t have; unforeseeable circumstances, due to exorbitant medical bills or loss of employment; personal choice, a consequence of reckless spending or buying on credit, bad investments, wrong financial decisions; ignorance, such as not knowing the meaning of APR or the implications  of “minimum  payments”  on credit cards, lack of knowledge of finance and money management; greed, leading to taking financial risks, or trying to get something for nothing. The list could go and on.

Don’t ever fall into the trap of “buy-now-and-pay-later”! Don’t run up your credit card debt. Consumer debt is the No.1 financial stress factor in life. Don’t let debt devastate your life. Don’t use a credit card if you don’t have control over spending; instead, use a debit card or a pre-paid credit card for the convenience of not carrying cash. Be careful when you use credit-card counseling services to get you out of debt, especially those so-called “non-profit” organizations. Just beware!

The spiritual aspects of spending money include being grateful and generous, as well as being a good steward.

Be grateful. God may have given you much less than others—or so you think! Remember, everything is relative. Maybe less is more: God has given you less so that you will have the incentive to make more.

You may have worked hard, but with little to show for it.  “You plant much but harvest little. You have scarcely enough to eat or drink and not enough to keep you warm. Your income disappears, as though you were putting it into pockets filled with holes.” (Haggai 1:6) Be grateful, instead of whining and complaining; put your time and effort on making money to live a debt-free life. More importantly, be generous with your money.

According to the biblical principle of money, God owns it all! You are but a steward of God’s money. Responsibilities of good stewardship include diligence, productivity, good time management, and self-discipline in matters of money. The money is not yours anyway. That is why you cannot take it with you when you are gone for good.

Stephen Lnd au

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Sunny Side of Your Golden Years

The Sunny Side of the Golden Years

Santa Claus is a testimony of what the sunny side of golden years would be like—full of fun and adventures never experienced before. If having your birthdays is no longer appealing to you, maybe you should start looking at the sunny side of your golden years.

In your golden years, you have become older but wiser—wiser being a process of becoming more of what you have been.

In your golden year, you have become more confident due to the benefits of accumulated life experiences. You should not be experiencing any identify crisis because by now you know who you are and what you want out of your life. In addition, life has taught you not to take any rejection by anyone as personal; you have come to believe that the way people treat you is no more than a reflection of their own inadequacy and insecurity.

In your golden years, you may have by now become more proactive, instead of procrastinating, because you are fully aware that your clock is ticking. An increasing awareness of how precious time is and a desire to utilize it more effectively is self-motivation not to procrastinate any more.

In your golden years, you have become more patient and less impulsive; maybe by now you have more time to yourself. With more tolerance and less impulse, you have become more rational in your thinking as well as in your behavior.

In your golden years, after decades of pushing, striving, and struggling, you have finally cooled down and attained inner tranquility without the need to excel or to shine any more.

In your golden years, you have grown mellow. Instead of looking only at the bigger picture, you have begun to shift your focus on the little fine things in life that now afford you pleasure and satisfaction of a different kind, rather than on your quest or pursuit for success in your younger years. You have learned that it is better to take things in stride, especially the bigger ones, such as life challenges. Most importantly, you have acquired the wisdom of having no need for you to be right all the time, let alone championing your beliefs and standpoints.

In your golden years, you have more free time to develop a network of both old and new friends.  Getting involved not on a career level often broadens your horizon and extends your perceptions of life.

In your golden years, you may have become more spiritual, not necessarily being connected to a specific belief system or religion; your inner spirit is simply awakened to the people and the world around you.

In your golden years, you have learned to accept the unalterable; this acceptance teaches you to live in the now, as well as to appreciate what you still have, not what you are going to lose.

To sum up, look at your golden years as your rewards and blessings, and perceive yourself as desirable and deserving.

  

Positive Facts about Aging

 

If you are over 65, you belong to the 10 percent of the U.S. population heading towards longevity. If you are one of them, continue to forge ahead with your healthy lifestyle to remain younger and healthier for longer!

Only 5 percent of individuals over 65 are confined to an institution. Being healthier for longer assures you will not be one of them!

About 95  percent  of individuals  over 65 are still healthy without chronic health problems. If you are one of them, good for you! Continue your healthy lifestyle!

Cognitive function does not decline dramatically with age. The majority of seniors are still capable of learning new skills and acquiring new information. In general, your ability to learn new things is affected not so much by your age as by your desire to learn them. Keep up with your desire, and don’t lag behind the world of information and technology! This will keep you mentally fit for longer.

Your physical strength is maintained from your biological maturity until around age 60. But physical strength and body mass are more related to disease and health than to your number of years. Continue to exercise to maintain your muscles. Use it or lose it! Be physically active and mobile to keep you younger for longer. Also, keep your good posture, which is important not only in preventing falls and improving muscular strength, but also in maintaining your youthful image and physique.

 

A Life of Leisure

 

Santa Claus is having a life of leisure: traveling and giving presents. The golden years often become a life of leisure for many seniors: traveling and playing golf. Your leisure is what you like to do because you want to do it, you look forward to doing it, you feel good about doing it, and you simply enjoy doing it.

But your life is more than just a life of leisure. Your leisure has to satisfy your inner soul or spirit as well—it needs to give you a sense of satisfaction and achievement. Man does not live by bread alone, nor does he thrive on only personal enjoyment. Your life has to be meaningful and rewarding, such that it provides you with an incentive to go on even against all odds, to make the most and the best of what has been given to you, or maybe what is left of you. It is this incentive that makes your golden years meaningful and rewarding. Always make your life purposeful, irrespective of the different phases in you life, and savor the rewards of  all your accomplishments, no matter how insignificant they may be. If you are about to retire or have already retired, do not make your retirement only a perpetual holiday. Do something about your golden years!

Myths and Truths about Aging

 

You inevitably feel much older as you advance in years. Quite the contrary, according to a 2009 Pew Research survey, many seniors feel they are as many as 10 to19 years younger, not older, than their chronological age.

Dementia is inevitable in life. But dementia is only one of the many symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. If you don’t have the disease, you may only have senior moments, which are just momentary memory lapses. Use it or lose it. If you regularly use and exercise your brain, you will have fewer senior moments. Of course, if you do have the Alzheimer’s disease, then it is something else.

You can no longer exercise your body and mind in your 50s, 60s, and beyond.  Nothing is further from the truth than this. It is never too late to exercise, despite your aches and pains. As a matter of fact, immobility only aggravates muscle weakness and inflexibility, and thus creating a vicious circle of inactivity and pain.

If you think you are too old to give up your nicotine, think again! Research studies have indicated that most seniors are able to give up their lifelong habit of smoking in their golden years.

You can never teach an old dog new tricks. Scientists have found that the cognitive reserve in the human brain enables learning new things in the latter half of life. Whether you wish to continue to empower yourself with new knowledge in your golden years is your personal choice, and it has little to do with your mind power or your age.

Women in senior years are more likely to develop depression than men. According to National Women’s Health Resources, women in their golden years become more adventurous and more ready to look for new opportunities in life than men do. It is also a myth that depression will impair an aging body and mind. The truth of the matter is that depression is a treatable medical condition. Don’t stigmatize yourself!

Western cultures perpetuate the perception and the negative stereotypes of the elderly. Do not buy into all the negative and erroneous beliefs about growing old. If you can only remove all your negative stereotypes and myths of aging, you are well on the way to the sunny side of your golden years.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Life Experiences and the Thinking Mind

Your experiences in life are the byproducts of what happens to you throughout your life journey, which is determined by two pivotal players: circumstances and choices.

·       Circumstances are events that happen to you and around you, and they fall under two categories: self-inflicting internal circumstances, such as your procrastination affecting the subsequent turns of events in your life; uncontrollable external circumstances, such as accidents due to no fault of your own.

·       Choices result in actions or inactions, which often bring about consequences as well as circumstances that may affect your life in general and in specific. Choices may also create self-inflicting internal circumstances that ultimately affect the other choices subsequently made.

For example, you had to complete a project and submit a report on that. You had sufficient time to do what you were supposed to do, but you chose to procrastinate until the last minute. An unforeseeable event happened and made it impossible for you to finish your work on time, thus creating a self-inflicting circumstance of frustration and undue stress that might affect other choices you subsequently made.

Personal choices may not be able to alter uncontrollable external circumstances, but they may still play a primary role in one’s reactions and adaptations to those external circumstances that are beyond one’s control.

To illustrate, in the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, the Japanese people demonstrated their remarkable resilience in their reactions and adaptations to the uncontrollable external circumstances inflicted on them by nature.

Remember, life is about choices and consequences, and living has much to do with causes and results—they become the components of life experiences.

Experiences and the Five Senses

The five senses form the basics of human sensations: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. These five senses can best be epitomized in sex (the “s” stands for “senses” and the “ex” for “experiences”)—all the five sensual pleasures experienced in the very act of sex.

Questions for Reflection

·       Are your sensual pleasures synonymous with your happiness in life?

·       Does your happiness come solely from your sensual pleasures?

But our five senses do not tell us everything; as a matter of fact, they often give us only the half-truths.

The person who uses only the vision of his or her eyes is conditioned by what he or she sees. It is the intuition of the spirit that really perceives the reality. The wise have known for a long time that what we know through our eyes is not the same as the intuition of our spirit. If that is the case, sadly, most people rely on what they see, thinking that “seeing is believing” and thus lose themselves in the realities of external things.

A Case in Point

              

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

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

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Gift of Grace in Human Relationships

Human relationships are complex and difficult. Jesus’ parable of the king settling debts with his servants (Matthew 18: 23-34) attests to the complexity and difficulty of interpersonal relationships.

The major source of conflicts in human relationships is the inability to fully comprehend God’s mercy - which is His gift of grace - something freely given, something totally unearned and undeserved, and something never to be repaid. Due to the lack of understanding of the mystery and significance of the gift of grace, or the refusal to believe something that is too good to be true, many of us, ironically enough, cannot and will not receive that gift of grace, although it is freely given to each and everyone of us.

Indeed, many Christians, read about grace, hear about grace in Sunday sermons, sing about grace in their hymns, and even believe grace in their heads, but they never fully live in the gift grace. They simply do not have the faith to live it out.

We need living in faith to believe in the power of grace; we need living in faith to believe that we are truly and totally forgiven through the gift of grace. The unforgiven become unforgiving, and the unforgiving will not be forgiven, and hence the vicious cycle of emotional conflicts and broken human relationships.

To illustrate, when you take your marriage vow, you solemnly promise to love and care for your spouse “for better or for worse.” But this is the tallest order in a marriage. Your marriage partner owes you a debt (or so you think!) because he or she falls short of your expectations. As a result, you become angry and resentful. Without God’s saving grace, you see yourself as unforgiven and unacceptable to God. In turn, you become unforgiving and unaccepting towards your spouse. The outcome may be a divorce or at best an unhappy marriage.

What you need is living in faith - faith that God has forgiven you for your shortcomings and wrong doings. Likewise, you become more forgiving and accepting towards your spouse for all his or her shortcomings and wrong doings. Jesus said: “. . . freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8). Remember, a recipient of the gift of grace must also be gracious to others - a prerequisite, not a choice.

You have to allow God to do for you what only God can do, which is, in essence, giving the gift of grace. You have to understand, receive, and live out God's gift of grace, and this is living in faith.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Human Natural Gift

We were all born with a natural gift -- freedom from anxiety and fear, expectation and regret, ambition and disappointment. However, as we grow older, we knowingly or unknowingly abuse or misuse that natural gift.

This is how.

We begin to develop our sensations and become affected by them. We all have our five senses: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting; they then become our perceptions and sensations that are stored as memories in our subconscious minds. Over the long haul, these accumulative experiences form our beliefs and personalities, and make us who we are. In other words, these memories become our bondage and we no longer have that innate freedom.

It is difficult to regain that natural gift once we have relinquished it. To illustrate, if we experienced something unpleasant in the past, we might have anxiety and fear that it would happen again. On the other hand, if we experience something pleasant, we would expect it to happen again; our expectations begin to precondition our minds to do certain things that we think will enable us to fulfill that expectations; by doing so, we pick and choose; any wrong choice or decision may lead to regret. By the same token, disappointment may be the consequence of ambition. 

How do we regain that natural gift?

Understand the natural cycle of things. Everything follows a natural cycle: what goes up must come down; the cycle is like the four seasons, or day and night. We, as humans, naively believe that we can change the natural order of things, deluding ourselves into thinking that we can make things happen the way we want them. Not following the natural order stems from the human ego. Accepting things as they are is the pathway to true human wisdom  It is by no means a passive outlook of life: we do what we can, and no more, and with no expectation and no judgment, 

“Good fortune and misfortune are all in one.

Seeking one and rejecting the other,
we become completely confused.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 58)

“There is no gain without loss.

There is no abundance without lack.
We do not know how and when
one gives way to the other.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 42)

Stephen Lau

Copyright© Stephen Lau

Begin Your Life Journey of Living Longer

One of Lao Tzu’s famous sayings is “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” The journey of the TAO of living longer is a great undertaking: every step is as important as the first; and each step is as firm as the previous one, given that the Chinese often like to say “feet stepping on solid and steady ground.”

It must be remembered that the TAO is about neither longevity nor immortality. Instead, it is about the wisdom of living life to the fullest in the physical world, making its final departure with grace and meaning at the appropriate time, whether it is 30 years, 60 years, or even 100 years and beyond. Having said that, the TAO may still enable you to embark on your living-longer journey through the all-inclusive and self-awakening lens of the TAO.

Your journey is the sum of all your steps. 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-awakening and self-intuition to help you along your journey.         

The Step of Intent and Desire

It is your journey, and only you can take your first step. So, you must have the intent and desire to go on that journey of living longer.

The lifespan of humans is relative. In other words, your lifespan is related only to you alone—just as in nature some insects are born in the morning and die by nightfall, while other insects are born in the spring and live until the late summer.

Irrespective of your own lifespan, you may still want to live longer. To embark on your journey of living longer, you must, first and foremost, show your intent to live longer, especially if it is your steely resolve to reach the destination of your journey. 

So, what exactly is your intent?

Intent is your innate and yet inexplicable power that comes into play when you desire to move forward on your journey of living longer. With your focused intent, it may appear that everyone and everything around you are also playing a part in facilitating all your endeavors in your favor. Intent is your inner drive.

In addition to your intent to live longer, you must also demonstrate your desire for good health, driving your intentions and aspirations to take your first step on your journey of living longer.

But the desire for good health may be difficult to sustain for someone who is currently very ill or has many health issues; 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 forget to take care of the body, and thus allowing the body's functions to deteriorate further.

The bottom line: take your first step of intent with your desire for good health to change and overcome any attitude of despair and confusion related to any ill health you may currently be having. On this journey of living longer, always keep yourself moving forward with your intent and desire backed up with actual actions, and you will then go the distance on your journey.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Get Your FREE Book on Your Money Wisdom

We are living in a world wanting wisdom. The majority of people experience the lack and not the abundance, while only a small number of people feel both the affluence and the wealth. Surviving and navigating in this world of money disparity require profound wisdom—the perspectives of human wisdom, Biblical wisdom, and the TAO wisdom from ancient China.

This 141-page book is about asking many questions regarding money wisdom, given that money always plays a pivotal role in this world of both lack and abundance. Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a German-born American mathematician and electrical engineer, once said: “There are no foolish questions and no one becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.”

So, it is important to ask many self-intuitive questions to enhance your money wisdom. The spirit of wisdom demands you to ask as many questions as possible on how you view the world today based on your own past and present life experiences. Your perceptions of those experiences affect your attitudes, prejudices, and presumptions that may change your perspectives of money. Your money wisdom is your need to think about money more. Don’t bury your head on the sand! Be wise on all your money matters!

Click here to get your FREE copy. It’s FREE only on April 3-April 5 (Friday to Sunday!Don’t miss this opportunity to get YOUR MONEY WISDOM.

Non-Doing to Increase Mind Power

According to Lao Tzu, the famous ancient sage from China, everyday something is dropped; therefore, less and less do you need to force things “to happen” until ultimately you arrive at “non-doing.” When nothing is done, nothing is left undone—this is the essence of “doing without doing.” It may seem paradoxical to many, but there is so much truth about that statement; in Tao, the profound philosophy of Lao Tzu, “nothingness” is paradoxically everything. The wisdom is that when you are in the middle of nothing, you are actually in the presence of all things.

The explanation is that everything originally came from nothingness, that is, before the Creation—the nothingness is God. That also explains why Tao (true wisdom) is beyond words because God is infinite and man is finite.

The problem with people in the Western world is that they are so “action-oriented” or so preoccupied with the “doing”—usually out of fear, worry, or doubt of the outcome—that they fail to understand the power of their thought (Never underestimate your mind power; it is often mind over matter!). As a result, ironically enough, their “over-doing” may hinder the progress of their efforts, and hence creating a reverse result. That is to say, they are striving to force their desire through action into manifestation of their expected outcome; and, by doing so, they mess up what they are trying to do because they have unduly created stress for themselves.

The Book of Life and Living: is a book about ancient wisdom, contemporary wisdom, and spiritual wisdom, and how their interaction may serve as a recipe for modern living.

Also, visit my website: Wisdom in Living.

THE TAO OF LIVING FOR LIFE

Stephen Lau

Copyright © Stephen Lau

The Ego and "Expectations Not Fulfilled"

If your “prayers not answered” meaning your “expectations not fulfilled”, maybe you’d like to ask why not? Yes, many of us would like to ask the same question, whether we pray or not. Indeed, many of our expectations in life are seldom or never fulfilled.

Lao Tzu recommends the wisdom of reverse thinking, which is thinking backward to find out the origin of something.

“Expectations not fulfilled” has its origin from the ego.

The Ego

What’s an ego? Do we all have an ego?

An ego is an identity of any individual. Yes, we all have an ego, with no exception.

As soon as a baby begins his or her perceptions through the five senses, that baby begins to develop an identity, such as “this toy is mine” and “I want this.” There’s nothing wrong with that initial identification. However, as time passes by, the human ego continues to expand and inflate to the extent that it may become problematic.

Well, what exactly is an ego, or the ego-self?

Simply look at yourself in front of a mirror. What do you see?

A self-reflection. Is it for real? Can you touch it? Not really; it’s only a reflection of someone real—the real you in front of the mirror!

Now, do something totally different. Place a baby—if there’s one immediately available—in front of the mirror. See what happens. The baby might crawl toward the baby in the mirror. Why? It’s because the baby in front of the mirror might think that the baby in the mirror is another baby, and just not his or her own reflection.

Likewise, the ego-self may look real, but it isn’t real. To think otherwise is self-deception.

How You May Have Become What You Are

Descartes, the great French philosopher, made his very famous statement: “I think, therefore I am.” Accordingly, you think and you then become what you think you are—the byproducts of all your thoughts and your own thinking.

Unfortunately, Descartes’ famous statement is only partially true: it’s true that you identify yourself with all your thoughts projected into your thinking mind; but it’s not true that your identities thus created by your thoughts and your own thinking truly reflect your true self. The fact of the matter is that you’re not your thoughts, and your thoughts are not you. To think otherwise is a human flaw, which is no more than self-illusion or self-delusion. In other words, you’re not what and who you think you really are.

Gradually, all your life experiences with their own respective messages—the pleasant as well as the unpleasant, the positive as well as the negative—are all stored at the back of your subconscious mind in the form of your assumptions, attitudes, causal concepts, and memories.

Accumulated over the years, millions and billions of such experiences and messages have become the raw materials with which you subconsciously weave the fabrics of your life, making you who and what you have now become—or so you think. In other words, they’ve now become your “realities” or your ego-self.

Why Prayers Are Seldom Answered

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

An Empty Mind 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

  

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