Healthy Pregnancy

 

All About . . . .

Pregnancy is a nine-month period during which a baby develops and becomes a human being. The mother-to-be and the father-to-be have many dos and don'ts in order to ensure a safe and healthy pregnancy. This book provides not only a list of all the dos and don'ts, but also all the whys and why nots because as a mother you would like to know why there are certain things you should do and why there are things you should not do to guarantee a safe and healthy pregnancy.

This book is concise with a holistic approach to a safe and healthy pregnancy through the mind, the body, and the spirit.

Click here to get your copy.

An Excerpt from the Book . . . .

THE PRE-PREGNANCY

Pregnancy is more than just nine months; it is a lifelong project that requires adequate preparation to ensure better results.
   
The Dos

Do physical checkup first for both you and your partner. (why: to resolve all health issues and problems, e.g. chronic diseases, such as asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, etc.).

Do blood tests to check your immunity to German measles (why: it can cause malformations in the baby) and chicken pox (why: immunization before conception if you have not had it before); to check your antibodies from toxoplasmosis (why: an infection that may affect conception and pregnancy).

Do discuss medical conditions with your doctor: previous pregnancy problems, such as miscarriage, stillbirth, premature baby; genetic disorders in family; current prescribed medications.

Do dental checkup (why: gum diseases may lead to premature birth), and dental work (why: avoiding filling or extraction during pregnancy).

Do weight management (why: overweight may lead to diabetes and high blood pressure during pregnancy; underweight may result in a small baby, problems during labor, and after birth).

Do find out your ideal weight: to determine that, you need to know your height, and weight, as well as your waist size (i.e. your waist circumference between your rib cage and above your belly button). A waistline of 35 inches or more for most women may indicate overweight.

Do find out your Body Mass Index (BMI), which is a measure of your body fat based on your weight and height. Your BMI is determined by this formula: BMI = (body weight in pounds) divided by (body height in inches x body height in inches) multiplied by (703). To illustrate, if you are 5’11” tall and you weigh 165 pounds, your BMI will be: (165/71x71) x 703 = 23   The BMI numbers have the following implications:

Any BMI that falls between 19 and 24.9 is considered ideal and healthy.

Any BMI that is below 18.5 is considered underweight.

Any BMI that ranges from 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight; any BMI that is above 30 is considered obese.

You should be within 15 pounds of your ideal weight before pregnancy, and that also applies to your partner (why: an overweight partner may have decreased testosterone leading to depressed libido).

Do birth control until you are ready for pregnancy. Hormonal contraception may take months for fertility to return to normal. Natural family planning is the way to go.

Do boost nutrients for a healthy pregnancy. Important nutrients include the following:

Calcium (why: avoiding back and leg pain, insomnia, and irritability)-eat figs and raw leeks.

Folic acid (why: avoiding structural defects) -- eat chives. Chives are a nutrient-dense food low in calories but high in nutrients. Always use a sharp knife to cut chives (why: avoid bruising the herb), and add chives to any dish near the end of cooking (why: avoid losing its flavor).

Iron (why: healthy growth of baby) -- eat chives.

Magnesium (why: cellular development; over-coming early pregnancy discomfort, such as constipation) -- eat chives.

Manganese (why: baby’s normal skeletal development) -- eat raw leeks.

Vitamin B6 (why: avoiding nausea and morning sickness; metabolizing proteins, carbohydrates, and fats) -- eat raw leeks.

Vitamin C (why: proper absorption of iron) -- eat fresh fruits and vegetables.

Vitamin K (why: healthy bone growth and proper blood-clot formation) -- eat raw leeks.

All the above nutrients and vitamins are especially important not only for pre-pregnancy but also for the first trimester of pregnancy.

Do get sufficient sleep (why: research has shown that the more sleep you get,  the less time of labor may ensue; getting less than 5 hours of sleep may even increase the chance of having a C-section for delivery. Do set a schedule for your sleeping hours to help your body get on a set schedule of sleep. Do go to bed earlier.

Do take herbs to increase fertility (why: drink clover flower tea and nettle tea to increase female fertility).

Do avoid unpasteurized milk and blue-veined cheeses.

Do cook all your food thoroughly.

Do help your partner to enhance his fertility. According to a Danish study, overweight men have fewer sperms. According to State University of New York, placing laptop computers on laps may decrease sperms (why: due to accumulation of heat). Certain drugs on men’s hair loss, high blood pressure, and ulcers may also affect the quality of sperms. Do increase his intake of folic acid, vitamin C, and zinc to enhance the quality of sperms.
   
The Don’ts

Don’t start a teenage pregnancy (why not: pregnancy between age 15 and 19 may result in many emotional traumas, such as difficulty in keeping up with peers, financial problems, and health and life challenges).

Don’t contact mold (why not: harmful to fetus, leading to birth defects, such as paralysis, developmental problems, and even miscarriage).

Don’t eat bacteria-harboring foods (why not: increasing the chance of developing food-borne infections during preconception stage and in a developing embryo).

Don’t stress out, develop anxiety or depression in pre-pregnancy stage.

Don’t eat raw, such as sushi, raw clams, and oysters.

Don’t eat undercooked meat and eggs (why not: avoiding bacteria growth; do refrigerate food below 40°F/4°C).

Don’t take certain herbs (why not: some herbs, such as echinacea, ginkgo biloba, and Saint-John’s wort may prevent conception).


THE DOS AND DON'TS DURING PREGNANCY

Letting Go to Let God

THE MIRACLE OF LETTING GO TO LET GOD

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

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

Does the wisdom of letting God sound simple and straightforward?

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

The mysteries and the manifestations

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

God-given image and man-made identity

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

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

(Genesis 1: 27)

                  

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

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

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

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

Let go to let God define your own identity.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Anger and Depression

Anger

Anger or rage is an ineffective and inefficient way to resolve any issue or make any problem go away. It is a negative emotion that may lead to depression, if it is not properly addressed.

An illustration

Donna Alexander, the creator of the “Anger Room” in Chicago, first thought of the idea as a teenager living in Chicago. Having witnessed much domestic violence and many conflicts at school as a teenager, Donna Alexander finally decided to create a space where anyone can lash out without serious consequences. While at the “Anger Room,” the guests, after paying a fee, are given a safe space to unleash their anger and rage by smashing and destroying objects, such as glasses or even a TV. In addition, the room can also be set up to look like an office or a kitchen, where anger often becomes totally uncontrollable.

Thinking questions

Can you really hold off your anger until after you have checked in at the “Anger Room”?

If you are so accustomed to smashing and destroying many objects at the “Anger Room,” could you still restrain yourself from doing the same when your anger is sudden and unmanageable in the office or the kitchen?

                                                     

The reality

As much as 50 percent of human diseases may be psychosomatic. Therefore, it is not an overstatement that the mind and diseases are interconnected.

Dr. Caroline B. Thomas, M.D., of John Hopkins School of Medicine, discovered that cancer patients often had a prior poor relationship with their parents, attesting to the pivotal role of emotions in the development of cancer. In another study by Dr. Richard B. Shekelle of the University of Texas School of Medicine, it was found that depression patients were not only more cancer prone but also more likely to die of cancer than the other patients. If emotions play a pivotal role in cancer, by the same token, negative emotions may also adversely affect the symptoms or the prognosis of any human disease. Thoughts of anger, despair, discontent, frustration, guilt, or resentment are instrumental in depressing the physiological processes, including the human body’s immune response—a formula for promoting the development of an autoimmune disease.

According to other studies, strong negative emotions, such as anger, can create destructive mental energy that is health damaging. However, it must be pointed out that it is more damaging in not experiencing raging anger, or not wanting to experience it than in actually experiencing it. The former may cause diseases, or trigger a depression.

Conventional wisdom

Conventional wisdom is to use distraction to defuse and dissipate the sudden anger or rage.

Thomas Jefferson famously said, "When angry, count 10, before you speak; if very angry, 100." 

TAO wisdom

According to TAO, the wisdom of Lao Tzu, the ancient sage from China, take a deep breath, review the situation, and ask yourself one simple question: what is the original purpose of driving your car—to get to your destination, or to get angry?

Don’t hold your anger in; instead, let it go, by breathing it out. Don’t let it go as pain; instead, let it go as your acceptance. Your acceptance should be viewed not as a sign of your own weakness but as a statement of your own communication to yourself that getting to your destination is much more important than getting angry.

Remember, anger is always present to serve a purpose to release some deeper issues, problems, and internal conflicts that you may be carrying in your own bag and baggage all these years. It is always better to release anger than to turn it around to destroy yourself. Suppressing anger, on the other hand, is also self destructive, as the negative energy redirects itself back into your own body. Anger in itself is a path of destruction. Resolve anger by developing habits that may release internal conflicts in a constructive manner before it can be released as rage.

Remember, the world always reflects your actions. If you lash out in rage, then the world lashes back at you with that same rage causing pain or grief that still has to get resolved. There is no true “release” of anger, except by resolution.

TAO teaches that peace is the true warrior’s path. The sword while an option is never used with anger, or you may have lost from the start. According to Lao Tzu, “The best fighter is never becoming angry.”

Learn to do the following when you become angry:

Take a deep diaphragm breath (See Appendix B), and just feel it.

Just look at your anger in your mind.

Accept that you are now angry, and then slowly release your anger as you breathe it out.

If necessary, use your arm like a sword to sweep away your anger and cut through your feelings of anger, while saying: “I can see my anger: it is as it was.”

Subconsciously, we all exert a great deal of mental energy to hold on to the past, which is no more than what we think happened. In the now, what happened in the past is just a memory, and no longer there; all memories are no longer truths, but at best only guidelines for the future. That is to say, your anger is as it was. Just learn to release your anger over any issue. Anger on its own has no power at all, except the power you give it to make it real to you.

The bottom line: anger is often caused by an inflated ego that one has to be right about an issue; without an ego, nothing can anger or trouble you. Seek only your internal balance and harmony.

“We do not become aggressive when we are confronted.

We do not become angry when we are provoked.

We see neither an enemy nor a competitor,

because we do not seek our own way.

Knowing both our strengths and weaknesses,

we use them to complement one another.

Thus, we find balance and harmony.

Naturally and easily, we follow the Way.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 68)

Just do not let your anger depress you!

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Marriage and Money

 

LOVE AND MONEY WISDOM

The wisdom of love

If you feel gratitude for those you love and for those who love you, you‘ll be happy.

If you appreciate what you now have, you’ll not feel the lack.

If you love and forgive yourself totally (only you can do that, and no one can do that for you), you’ll learn to let go of the past and move forward with your happiness.

The wisdom of love will give you the energy within for you to do anything and everything in every aspect of your life to give you happiness.

The wisdom of love and money

If you want to marry rich, do you think of love first, or the one you’re going to marry?

If you’re rich, does your loved one love you or your money? The rich and the wealthy, due to their ego, often don’t really care.

If you aren’t rich, do you love an individual irrespective of that individual’s abundance or lack?

There’re no definitive answers to all of the above questions. True and genuine love is unconditional, which is loving someone with or without money, and love is priceless.

The bottom line

Money cannot buy love, and love cannot buy money—that’s the reality. But love is hardly disconnected from the reality of living in the material world that involves money. And that’s also the reality.

So, you must focus on your own core values, such as honesty, integrity, love, compassion, generosity, and gratitude, among others. Your core values have little to do with money; instead, they demonstrate the values of what life has to offer, and not the values of things purchased with money. Your core values affect how you may live for the rest of your life, including with your marriage partner.

So, look at love and money from your own perspectives, such that you’ll not end up only loving money, and not its wisdom.

Getting Married to Make You Happy?

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Meaning of "Prayers Not Answered"

The Meaning of “Prayers Not Answered”

Prayers not answered” simply means “expectations not fulfilled.”

But what’re your “expectations”? And where do they come from?

You experience your own life experiences through your five senses (seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and smelling) as a result of the choices of your actions, inactions, and reactions in your everyday life.

Your sensations often become your own perceptions, which then form your own assumptions and predictions; for example, a good education will lead to a successful career, and bring about a happy relationship.

All your “expectations” are only the personal and the subjective perceptions of your mind. But your “expectations” are often unreal and even self-delusive.

Even what you think you see with your own eyes may not necessarily be the reality.

To illustrate, 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 the 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 wasn’t.

To illustrate “unreal expectations”: Helen Keller, celebrated author, political activist, and philanthropist, was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree; she became deaf and blind at an early age of less than two.

Imagine you were Helen’s parents: would you have “darkened expectations” of the future of Helen when she suddenly became deaf and blind?

Another illustration of “unreal expectations”: Shon Robert Hopwood, a young American convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to prison, became well-known as a jailhouse lawyer. While serving time in prison, Shon started spending time in the law library, became a jailhouse lawyer for the inmates, and ultimately a very accomplished United States Supreme Court practitioner by the time he left prison in 2009. Currently, he is professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.

If you were the parents of Shon, would your own expectations of your son have fallen short after his conviction of 12 years of imprisonment?

The truth of the matter

Your perceptions—whether true or untrue—become your realities, and are then stored in your subconscious mind as your memories.

Whenever you want to make a choice or decision, it’s your subconscious mind that provides your conscious mind with your many attitudes, beliefs, and predictions—all based on your memories of your past experiences. Your thinking mind then begins to process and project them into the future as your “expectations to be fulfilled.”

Points to Remember

Perceptions may easily become distorted and unreal. So, don’t let your own perceptions become your assumptive predictions.

Expectations are in the future, and their timeline is indefinite. So, don’t jump to any conclusion yet.

The past was gone; the future is yet to come; only the present is real. So, don’t use the past to predict the future as “expectations to be fulfilled.”

Click here to get Why Prayers Are Seldom Answered.

Stephen Lau

Copyright © Stephen Lau

Nothing Is Everything

 

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

All About . . . .

"Anything Is Everything, Everything Is Nothing, Nothing Is Everything" is a miracle of life and living, based on the ancient wisdom of Lao Tzu from China, and the Biblical wisdom.

Live your life as if everything is a miracle. To do just that, you need the wisdom to know how your mind works--especially how it has created your ego-self that demands your attachments to the material world.

Learn how to be in the physical world, but not of the material world. More importantly, get the wisdom to know who you really are, and not who you wish you were. Knowing and understanding the truths of anything and everything may enlighten you so that you intuit the ultimate truth that everything is actually nothing, but this nothingness is your pathway to everything in your life.

The Outline of the Book . . . .

ONE: ANYTHING IS EVERYTHING

A frog in a well
Human wisdom and spiritual wisdom
Oneness of all life
Love and forgiveness
Gratitude and generosity
Sympathy and empathy
Compassion and loving-kindness

TWO: EVERYTHING IS NOTHING

Understanding is everything
The mind and the ego
Attachments and illusions
Control and power
Detachment and letting go

THREE: NOTHING IS EVERYTHING

The paradox
The Way
The miracle
The enlightenment

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

Click here to get your copy.

An Excerpt from the Book . . . .


NOTHING IS EVERYTHING

The Paradox

”I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” Plato

“The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind's eye.”   Shana Alexande

“The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without a feeling: a paltry mediocrity.”  Soren Kierkegaard

“Nothing is everything” is a paradox. In life, there are many paradoxes. The way of paradoxes is the way of attaining the ultimate truths of anything and everything. Knowing and understanding a paradox requires wisdom to see different human perspectives in anything and everything.

Paradoxes may be the way to wisdom, to the miracle of life, and ultimately to enlightenment.

An illustration

Christopher Paul Gardner, an American  author, entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist, was very poor and homeless in the early 1980s. Sleeping on the floor of a public toilet, Gardner never dreamt that he would become a multi-millionaire one day. His inspiring life story was made into a hit Hollywood movie: “The Pursuit of Happyness.”

Gardner was brought up with the belief that he could do or be anything that he wanted to do or be. At some point in his life, he was homeless; everything seemed nothing, just emptiness and nothingness, to him. But he was not hopeless. He continued to dream of wealth and success, and his dreams were not mirages. Because of his right doing and right thinking, he made his dreams come true.

Initially, Gardner made his living by selling medical equipment. He did not make enough money to make both ends meet, and his poverty made him homeless for a year.

Then, one day, Gardner met a stockbroker in a red Ferrari, who offered him internship because of his incredible drive and sustained enthusiasm. Thus he began his own successful investment career, and he subsequently even opened his own investment firm, Gardner Rich & Co.

More than two decades later, after the death of his wife, who challenged him to find his true happiness and fulfillment in the remainder of his life, Gardner made a complete career change. He was suddenly awakened to the notion that his fame, success, and wealth seemed like nothing to him then. His feeling of nothingness transformed him completely: he then became a philanthropist and a motivation speaker traveling around the world, focusing not on his own wealth, but on humanity and the needs of others to pursue their own happiness.

According to Gardner, life journey is always a process of lesson learning and forward moving: “People often ask me would I trade anything from my past, and I quickly tell them no, because my past helped to make me into the person I am today.”  Yes, nothingness could be everything to him.

On any life journey, mental focus is essential: focusing not just on the big things in life but also on the small things as well; appreciating what you have, rather than dwelling on what is your nothingness.

What seems to be nothingness in the eyes of the world, when properly valued and put to use, can become anything and everything in the eyes of the beholder. Gardner turned his nothingness into great wealth. His ultimate enlightenment came when he looked at his own wealth in a different perspective-as no more than just nothingness-when he began to refocus his life goals on humanity and on inspiring others to become who they really are.

The bottom line: with wisdom you may know and understand the “nothing is everything” paradox that opens the door to self-enlightenment.

The Way

TAO, the profound wisdom of Lao Tzu, is the way toward knowing and understanding self and others, as well as things and circumstances around self. It may or may not lead to self-enlightenment, but at least it may help you see things as they really are, and not as they should be.

"Not knowing the Way,
but pretending we know,
we remain ignorant, and suffer.

Knowing that we do not know,
we pursue its wisdom:
knowing its origin,
knowing its ending,
and knowing our true nature."
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 71)

TAO wisdom begins with emptiness, or more specifically, with an empty mindset.

The emptiness

Enlightenment has its origin from emptiness. Irrespective of whether or not attaining self-enlightenment, emptiness is the way to go toward attaining profound wisdom of living in this material world.

Emptiness is a way of human perception: looking at life experiences without adding anything to them, or without taking away anything from them. It is the thinking of the mind with no assumption and no presumption -- that is, only an empty mindset.

As previously mentioned, emptiness can be either positive or negative (the glass half-full, or the glass half-empty). Positive emptiness can only occur when you allow yourself to surrender completely to any given circumstance or situation without any previous attachment.

According to Lao Tzu, develop an empty mindset, which is more than just “thinking out of the box”: it is your reverse thinking to create your own empty box of thinking.

"An empty mind with no craving and no expectation helps us letting go.
Being in the world and not of the world, we attain heavenly grace.
With heavenly grace, we become pure and selfless.
And everything just settles into its own perfect place."
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 3)


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

Emptiness and Impermanence

Essence of change

The Creator has created for us a world of constant changes: everything is changing with every moment, remaining only with that very moment, and nothing remains permanent. It is through changes that we may transform ourselves into a better individual. Even in a difficult and challenging environment, we may learn from our mistakes and wrong choices in life, and so change ourselves. Change is transformation, which is educational and self-enlightening. Transformation is synonymous with impermanence, which is the essence of change.

Understanding that everything is impermanent is self-enlightening. Nothing is permanent: the good as well as the bad things that happen to us are impermanent; nothing lasts forever. We all are aware of this universal truth of impermanence. We all know that we cannot live to well beyond one hundred years, and yet we resist our aging process, continuously fixing our faces and bodies to make them look younger. We may have the face of a forty-year-old but the body and the mind of a seventy-year-old. We simply refuse to let go of the impermanence of all things; we desperately and self-delusively cling on to the “permanence” of all our attachments.

The illusion or self-delusion is that many of us wish the impermanent were the permanent. It is this wishful thinking that makes us unhappy. We were once healthy and now our health has declined, and we are unhappy. We were wronged by our enemies, and we still hold on to our old grudges, instead of forgiving and letting them go, and we are unhappy. Our past glories gave us the ego, which we refuse to let go of, and we become depressed and unhappy.

Life is about changes, and living is about letting go of what is impermanent that we naively believe and wish to be permanent.

Remember, nothing is permanent, and each and every moment remains only with that very moment. Therefore, live in the present, and live all your moments to their best and to the fullest as if everything is a miracle.

­

Permanent truths

Impermanence and change are the undeniable and permanent truths of all human existence. What is real is the existing moment, the present moment that is a product of the past, or a result of the previous causes and actions.  Due to ignorance, an ordinary mind may conceive them all to be part of one continuous reality. But the fact that they are not is the permanent truth.

The various stages in the life of a man, the childhood, the adulthood, the old age are not the same at any given time. The child is not the same when he grows up and becomes a young man, nor when the young man turns into an old man. The seed is not the tree, though it produces the tree, and the fruit is also not the tree, though it is a product of the tree. This is the permanent truth of all life.

Emptiness and nothingness

Death empties anything and everything—that is, the ego and all its attachments to the material world. Emptiness is nothingness in which everything becomes nothing.

For all human efforts, death will come in the end for all and sundry. This is an indisputable fact. No matter how long a life you may want to live, you will, like everyone else, face dying one day. This is the way of all flesh because you have a built-in mechanism in your genes to ensure your mortality.

Perspective of death

According to CNN news, Cathrin Ertmann, a celebrated photographer from Denmark, chronicles the enigmatical journey of the deceased from death until burial. While keeping all her subjects’ identities anonymous, she diligently records all the different stages of death, including autopsies and cremations, in quiet detail.

Before  she  started  photographing  death, Cathrin Ertmann had never seen a dead body. Viewed through her lens while standing in a quiet morgue, it was, surprisingly, much less frightening and more of a quiet mystery for her to explore death and its implications.

“I was amazed about how peaceful and undramatic everything looked,” she said. “I got the chance to look at death without it being my own relatives, without feelings involved, and it gave me a peace. The imagination of what death looks like is way worse than what I experienced. . . . . .

I also saw a peace and beauty. Sometimes the scare is in the brief look at something. Like when you watch a horror movie, you only see a glimpse of the ghost, murderer or monster, and your imagination works all the fright up for you. I think I felt I need to see everything to make it ‘normal’ and undramatic. And I think it works the same way with our relation to death in general.”

A new study of death gave Cathrin Ertmann a new perspective on life. “After working in the morgue, I was walking in the street and I got really over-whelmed by seeing all the people just walking, chatting and laughing,” she said. “I wanted to yell: YOU ARE ALIVE, USE IT!"

Indeed, death is a leveler of all. We all have a life; so go out and live it as God has intended and planned for you.

You will have to work hard and sweat a lot to produce the food you eat.

You were made out of the ground. You will return to it when you die.

You are dust, and you will return to dust.

(Genesis 3:19)

The news on death by Catherin Ertmann is very illuminating: it sheds light on how we should all view death—or  rather  life  and  death,  which  are  always interrelated. Remember, life always begets death, and what goes up must also come down. This is the natural cycle of anything and everything in this world. Many people live without ever thinking of death or deliberately ignoring its existence, while others live but always with death on their minds—especially those elderly. That death is inevitable is an indisputable fact, but one need not anticipate it as if it is imminent, even if one is advanced in years. Nobody knows when death may descend. Just live your life as if there is no tomorrow, live in the now, and live as if everything is a miracle.

Remember, whether or not you would like to let go of your attachments in the material world, you came from dust, and dust you shall return to.

Remember your Creator

before you return to the dust you came from.

Remember him before your spirit goes back to God who gave it.

(Ecclesiastics 12: 7)

The bottom line: remember your Creator, or where you came from; everything is nothing in the end. So, why hold on to, and why not let go of, anything and everything that eventually will become nothing? Just let go to let God, who is in absolute control; anything and everything must return to Him as nothingness. Indeed, the wisdom of everything is nothing is the wisdom of letting go to let God.

Death is emptiness, which brings an end to anything and everything in life. This emptiness, however, may have both positive and negative perspectives.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The TAO in Everything

 

The TAO is the profound wisdom of Lao Tzu, the ancient sage from China more than 2,600 years ago. as 

The TAO has thrived and survived thousands of years for a good reason: what was applicable in the past is still applicable in the present; what was true in the past is still true today. Another testament to this universal truth is that "Tao Te Ching"-- the only book written by Lao Tzu -- is one of the most translated books in world literature -- probably only after the Bible.

The TAO is easy to understand but most controversial. The explanation is that there is no absolute truth about human wisdom, which is all about self-intuition and self-enlightenment. That is to say, your mind is uniquely yours, and your thinking is your own thinking.

The TAO plays a pivotal role in every aspect of your life. With wisdom, you will see the TAO in everything, including the following:

Don't Die     Letting Go    Immune System    Golden Years    Cancer Cure   Yin Yang

No Depression   Healthier Younger   Miracle Living   Money Wisdom    Living Life

Prayers Unanswered   Happiness Wisdom  Nothing Everything   Healthy Pregnancy

Aging Revelation   Marriage Divorce   Deadly Sins   See Better  Biblical Wisdom

No Ego

Go to: TAO in Everyday Life.