Why You Should Have Your Freedom Not to Choose "Fondling"

FONDLING

What is fondling? It is your desire to do repeatedly something that you are fond of to the extent that your mind just cannot stop your action. In other words, your fondling is your addiction and bondage.

DRINKING

Alcohol drinking is common among teenagers; about 40 percent of high school teens drink alcohol due to social acceptance of drinking and the belief that alcohol can lower anxiety.

Alcohol is an intoxicating ingredient produced by the fermentation of yeast, sugars, and starches found in drinks. Beer has 5 percent of alcohol; wine, made of grapes, has 12 percent of alcohol; liquor, such as gin, vodka, and whiskey, has about 40 percent of alcohol.

But alcohol has its many dangerous side effects. It slows down the brain functions, leading to slurred speech, lack of coordination between the body and the mind, unconsciousness, and temporary loss of memory. In addition to brain and nerve damage, there are many health issues of the heart and the liver related to alcohol drinking.

Social drinking may lead to binge drinking, which is drinking several times within 2 hours. Drinking only beer may progress to drinking wine or even liquor. The truth is that no amount of alcohol is safe or risk-free, and alcohol drinking is a progressive disorder that often leads to alcohol addiction and drug abuse over the long haul.

Freedom

As a teenager, you have the freedom to choose or not to choose social drinking as a platform for your interactions with others.

Not choosing it gives you the freedom to use other platforms for your communication with others, such as actively involved through traditional sports, afterschool clubs, and social excursions. Social media may or may not be an ideal alternative.

If you choose to start drinking beer, you must have the freedom to say “no” and not be pressured by others to start drinking wine or liquor.

Bondage

Alcohol addiction will put you in the bondage of alcohol withdrawal symptoms—anxious, confused, depressed, fatigued, and shaking while not drinking alcohol.

Another bondage of alcohol addiction is the shackle of drug abuse. Alcohol is very reactive with many drugs and medications in that it can magnify or negate the medicinal effects on an individual with alcohol addiction while taking those medications. So, drugs can be abusive and destructive to an alcohol addict.

The way to turn bondage into freedom is to stop consuming alcohol. It is never easy without medical and professional help. But you have the freedom to free yourself from that bondage.

 SMOKING

Smoking cigarette must be avoided because it contains nicotine, which damages the brain, leading to many health issues of the brain, the heart, and the liver later in life. Your brain, which continues to grow and develop up to around age 25, can be damaged by nicotine. The damage initially affects your learning with lack of attention and mood swings. Nicotine withdrawal—stopping smoking with symptoms of anxiety, depression, insomnia, irritability, and physical fatigue—often puts you back to smoking.

Nicotine is an addictive drug that initially gives you excitement to “free” you from boredom and anxiety. Many teenagers begin smoking cigarette out of curiosity, as well as having observed many celebrities smoking on screen in old movies or even their family members. 

Now, it is not even “cool” to do e-cigarette or vaping with its appealing flavors because they also contain nicotine

Freedom

You have the freedom of choice to smoke or not to smoke.

If you are already a smoker, you still have the freedom to quit smoking or continue to smoke.

But your freedom to smoke will inevitably put you in bondage.

Bondage

Your bondage to all the physical, emotional, and mental damages of smoking may be lifelong.

The only way to turn the bondage into freedom is to quit smoking. That requires physical, mental, and spiritual efforts and perseverance.

CALMING

In your transition phase, many addictions, other than drinking and smoking, may crop up as your mind continues to grow and expand.

Addictions are distractions from focusing on other more important things in life. These distractions can temporarily calm you down, but they do not solve your problems. Addictions to calming yourself can come in many different forms, including some of the following:

Eating: Foods give pleasures to the tongue. Over-indulgence in eating leads to obesity and other eating disorders.

Gambling: Winning satisfies the mental craving for success and self-confidence. Compulsive gambling is the source of many financial problems later in life.

Games: Video games can create “gaming disorder” with social anxiety, lack of motivation in life, and interpersonal conflicts in everyday life.

Networking: Internet obsession may lead you astray by directing to many platforms of misinformation and wrongdoings.

Freedom

You have the freedom to eat, to play video games, to go online, and to do just about anything in your daily life.

But you have only 24 hours a day, just like everybody else. So, you must learn how to manage your time and not giving yourself time stress. Good time management involves setting precedence and priority over anything and everything you need to do.

Living is about doing—doing what needs to be done, but not over-doing, which may, paradoxically, lead to non-doing.

In your transition phase from adolescent to young adult, your knowledge is essential to your doing. However, you must also understand the fact that knowledge is infinite, and your capability to acquire your knowledge is only limited. Your true wisdom is to apply your “limited” knowledge to see how it works in your everyday life and living—that is, knowing what to do and doing what you know.

So, spending too much time on anything is not the way to go.

Bondage

Not knowing that “excess leads to depletion” is your vulnerability to bondage.

To free yourself from being trapped to any bondage, remember the golden mean: “more for less” and “less for more.”

FREEDOM with BONDAGE shows you how to free yourself from your bondage to the flesh that gives you the "freedom" to make the wrong choices and decisions in your everyday life.

 Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Letting Go Attachments

The Origin of Human Attachments

All attachments originate from the ego-self.

What is an ego? Do we all have an ego-self?

An ego is an identity of any individual. Yes, we all have an ego-self, 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.” Well, there is nothing wrong with that initial identification. However, as time passes by, the human ego may continue to expand and inflate to the extent that it may become problematic with all its attachments.

What is 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 actually touch it? Not really; it is only a reflection of someone real—the real you in front of the mirror!

Now, do something totally different. Place a baby—if there is one immediately available—in front of the mirror. See what happens. The baby might crawl toward the baby in the mirror. Why? It is 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 is not real. To think otherwise is self-deception.

How is the ego-self formed?

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 is true that you identify yourself with all your thoughts projected into your thinking mind; but it is 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 are not your thoughts, and your thoughts are not you. To think otherwise is a human flaw, which is no more than self-delusion or self-illusion. In other words, you are 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 have now become your “realities” or your ego-self with its many attachments to make you believe you are what you think or wish you were.

Likewise, a baby originally does not have the ego-self (at least, not yet), and thus sees the reflected image in the mirror as another baby. But you, on the other hand, with your own ego-self, see the reflected image in the mirror as the same you, and not a different person. So, your ego-self is simply a reflection of you; what you see in the mirror is not real, just a reflection. But the problem is: you think it is the real you, and your false identity may lead to an identity crisis.

Learn how to let go of your attachments to the material world that define who you think you are, and these attachments may include your attachments to money and wealth, career and success, among others.

Stephen Lnd au

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

God and Marriage

 

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

Losing Your Money

Making money is all about your being and your doing: being who you are and doing what you can with what you have.

Not knowing your true self and not doing what you are supposed to do, and yet wanting your money, and even lots of it, leads to your “money fantasies”, such as becoming a professional gambler, lining up for hours to get your Power Ball, and even engaging in burglary or bank robbery.

No matter what, you may lose your money at some point in your life, and that is a reality. Remember, the opposite of "gain" is "loss", and what goes up must also come down, and this is a universal truth.

LOSING

Even if your life is a bed of roses, it must also have some thorns to go with it. What goes up must also come down. Gains are followed by losses. That is the natural cycle of all things.

While pursuing your careers, you might have encountered your discharge or unemployment, and while making your money in your businesses or financial investments, you might also have been overwhelmed by your money losses.

Freedom

Free yourself from “money miseries”—living from paycheck to paycheck; not making both ends meet; always seeing your lack and deprivation when compared with others.

Remember this: Even wealthy celebrities went broke, and you are not alone. For example, Mike Tyson, a boxing champion, earning over $300 million dollars, ended up in bankruptcy in 2003; and Michael Jackson, a recording artist, dancer, singer, and songwriter, earning over $500 million dollars, was heavily in debt when he died in 2009.

So, fight the good fight to recover, restore, and rejuvenate yourself from the bondage and wreckage of losses. 

Bondage

Money is emotional, especially when always feeling the lack of it. Yes, money can cause many mental problems, including depression.

With more money, you can live rich. But even with less money, you can still live richly, and free yourself from the bondage of lack.

But how to live richly if you have less money? The answer is thrift, which is an alternative lifestyle to consumerism, materialism, and over-consumption in this material world you are living in.

Thrift may help you work less, and not more. Many people are not paying with their money; instead, they are paying with their time from their lives. Are you one of them? Are you doing two or more jobs just to earn that extra money to spend more? 

Thrift may promote your positive consumption values. Are some or most of your purchases aimed at your instant gratification, or just enhancing your self-esteem, making you feel rich, such as wearing a designer’s dress?

Thrift may encourage your savings. It may give you more space to save, thereby instrumental in protecting you from negative income shocks, such as an unexpected unemployment.

Yes, living richly with thrift may turn you from bondage to freedom.

FREEDOM with BONDAGE shows you how to free yourself from your bondage to the flesh that gives you the "freedom" to make the wrong choices and decisions in your everyday life.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Immune System Recovery

 

THE IMMUNE SYSTEM RECOVERY

 

Your Creator has given your body an immune system that protects you from disease and infection. Sadly, your immune system may attack itself in the form of autoimmune diseases, which can affect many parts of your body, including your nerves, muscles, endocrine system (the system that controls your body’s hormones and other chemicals), and digestive system.

 There are more than 80 types of autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis, and myasthenia gravis, among many others.

Many of these diseases associated with autoimmunity are often chronic, requiring lifelong care and monitoring.

Most of these diseases strike women more than they do men, particularly women of working age and during their child-bearing years.

 Essentially, autoimmunity can affect almost any organ or body system. The exact problem you may have with autoimmunity depends on which body tissues are targeted by your immune system. For example, if your skin is targeted, you may have skin rashes, blisters, or color changes; if your thyroid gland is affected, you may feel extremely tired, sensitive to cold, and muscle aches; if your joints are attacked, you may have severe joint pain, stiffness, and loss of function.

Risk Factors

 (1) Stress is a major factor triggering the onset of an autoimmune disease, especially if you already have an over-stressed or a weakened immune system. As you age, your stress may increase with increased limitations on your life. In order to cope with daily living, you need to conquer your stress, which may lead to depression and anxiety, which are commonly associated with aging.

(2) The genes you inherit may predispose your susceptibility to developing an autoimmune disease.

(3) Viruses may also contribute to the development of an autoimmune disease.

 My Myasthenia Gravis

 Myasthenia gravis is one of the many autoimmune diseases, which, according to contemporary Western medicine, offer no known cure, except controlling or suppressing their many disease symptoms. This book is based on the author's own experience of battling against his myasthenia gravis: how he stopped all his medications through a holistic approach to controlling and managing the disease. This book provides insight and well-researched information that he would like to share with those who are afflicted with myasthenia gravis or any other autoimmune disease.

 This book covers every aspect of holistic health to cope with autoimmunity: body detox, diet, lifestyle changes, exercises for muscle weakness, and mental relaxation techniques for vision problems associated with myasthenia gravis.

THE IMMUNE SYSTEM REWCOVERY

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Consciousness of Living

Consciousness of living

“Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.” Pope Paul VI 

To live well, you must always be conscious of your living.

Simplicity in Living

Consciousness of living a simple lifestyle is the key to happiness and longevity. In this day and age, living in this complex world of technology is not easy: The complexity of this world has taken a toll on the human mind, creating undue stress, as well as many emotional, mental, personal, and psychological attachments in the material world. For these reasons, profound human wisdom in living is essential to overcoming stress and letting go of all attachments. Simplicity is the first step towards detachment, which holds the key to unlocking the door to happiness. Live a simple lifestyle, deleting all the trimmings of life and living, as well as all the attachments that may have a negative impact on your mind.

Epicurus, the Greek philosopher, had this advice on how to lead a pleasant life: avoiding luxuries, and living simply. The explanation is that luxurious living may make you into a “needy” person whose happiness always depends on things that are impermanent and easily lost.

The late Robert Kennedy once said: “Sometimes I think that the only people in this country who worry more about money than the poor are the very wealthy. They worry about losing it, they worry about how it is invested, they worry about the effect it’s going to have. And as the zeroes increase, the dilemmas get bigger.” 

Can you live a simple lifestyle to help you let go of all the trimmings of life?

When you were in your younger days, you might have had many attachments to life that define who you were, such as the car you were driving, the designer dress you were wearing, or anything that defined your social status. Can you, at this point in your life, let go of all these attachments and just lead a simple life? 

Living in simplicity is living a humble life, which is emptying your toxic cravings and attachments.

“All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” (Ephesians 2:3)

Attachments create your ego-self that not only separates you from others but also gives you your pride, instead of humility.

“Focusing on status gives us pride, and not humility.

Hoarding worldly riches deprives us of heavenly assets.

An empty mind with no craving and no expectation helps us let go of everything.

Being in the world and not of the world, we attain heavenly grace.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 2)

But with humility, we may see who we really are, not what we wish we were, and what we really need, not what we want. Humility is self-enlightening.

“Ever humble, we see the mysteries of all things created.

Ever proud, we see only the manifestations of all things created.

Only the mysteries, and not the manifestations,

show us the Way to true wisdom.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 1)

Live a simple life, especially as you continue to age, and you just don’t die!

Simplicity gives your clarity of thinking to see the wisdom of living in the present: the past was gone; the future is yet to come, and only the present is real—a gift from the Creator, and that is why it is called “present.”

"Simplicity is clarity.

It is a blessing to learn from those

with humble simplicity.

Those with an empty mind

will learn to find the Way.

The Way reveals the secrets of the universe:

the mysteries of the realm of creation;

the manifestations of all things created.

The essence of the Way is to show us

how to live in fullness and return to our origin."

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 65)

Clarity of thinking may let you have the true human wisdom to know your true nature, thereby ending your craving and hence your self-imposed suffering.

In the present moment, with clarity of mind, you may begin to see the ultimate truths of the self, others, as well as everything around you. More importantly, you may see your past follies in identifying yourself with your thoughts that have created your ego-self, your present futile efforts in striving to protect your ego-self, and your future futilities in expecting that your ego-self will all its attachments will continue to exist in the days to come.  

Living in the present is an awakening to the realities of all things. It may afford you an opportunity to look more objectively at any given situation, allowing your mind to think more clearly, to separate the truths from the self-deceptions that might have been created in your subconscious minds all along.

Focusing on the present moment liberates you from projecting your desires into the future as expectations that necessitate your over-doing to guarantee their fulfillment.

“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)

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau