Teaching Children About Sex

 Sex is “a big deal,” especially in a marriage.

Surprisingly, some couples may have more sexual intimacy after several years of marriage. The explanation is that by then they may have much reduced level of stress: better financial environment; children growing up; less worry about conceiving a child. In short, sex can even get better as years go by in a good and healthy marriage.

However, some couples may also cease their sexual intimacy due to: childbirth; pursuing a career; midlife crisis; an out-of-marriage affair. That, unfortunately, is also the reality.

Living together without love or physical intimacy is “living separate lives”—it may also be due to pornography, which is addictive, pervasive, and destructive to the addicts and their respective relationships.

So, it‘s important for parents to educate their children about sex. But how?

   Like building the foundation of a pyramid, teach them about the values of life and living, which are usually dignity, honor, and respect for self and others. 

   Growing up and getting married isn’t just about self or just two people: it’s about human relations—how you relate to others around you. For example, in a marriage it isn’t just about the relationship between you and your spouse; it also involves your children or stepchildren, the in-laws, and the friends. So, learn to develop good relationships, and teach your children to do likewise as they grow up. 

    Relationships are related to emotions, both positive and negative ones. Teach your children to control and manage their emotions and temper tantrums, which will play a pivotal in subsequent life choices and decisions.

All of the above will define and shape your children’s perceptions and understanding of the meaning and the importance of sexual intimacy when they grow up into adolescents and young adults.

The reality

Remember, just do your best, and let God do the rest. You can teach your children about sexual intimacy, but you just can’t control what they feel and experience in their lives. Controlling only generates resistance and distancing. This applies not only to your children, but also to your spouse. You can share with them what you believe in, but you just can’t make them believe what you believe in. That’s the reality.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

“GETTING MARRIED TO MAKE YOU HAPPY?”

YOU CORRECT THE INCORRECT

 

"YOU CORRECT THE INCORRECT" is a newly published book on how to write well. To write well, you must know how to avoid incorrect sentences.

First and foremost, you are given some grammar basics, such as the Eight Parts of Speech. Knowing how to avoid incorrect sentences is the first step toward good writing.

Then, you are given many groups of sentences, containing both the correct and the incorrect ones in each group. You will be provided explanation why the sentences are correct and incorrect. Correcting the incorrect is the only way to help you write correctly.

After correcting the incorrect many times, you will be shown how to write well through practice and practice, using the right tools, knowing the subject, knowing the readers, developing style and strategy.

Get this book YOU CORRECT THE INCORRECT for only $5.50. Learn how to write by writing and how to correct by correcting.

Money and Marriage

Money matters

We all need money to survive. As a result, in many marriages, many people fight over money matters. The problem is that people have different perspectives of money-worth. For example, you may think spending $100 on a pair of jeans is worth it, but your spouse may think otherwise. To determine the real worth of anything is subjective and difficult, and therefore should be based on the man-hours spent: that is, if you think you are willing and be prepared to work those hours for that pair of jeans, then it is worth it, at least to you.

All your behaviors are your choice, and hence you are responsible for the consequences—not somebody else, not even your spouse. Understanding the principle of choice may avoid unnecessary fights over money matters 

Nearly half of all divorces in the United States are a result of money problems in marriages.

Remember the saying of John Woodbridge Patten about money: “buys everything but happiness, and takes a man everywhere but heaven.”

Money is symbolic of so many things in life—effort, self-worth, and status, among other things. Money also symbolizes the unity and oneness of a married couple. If there is no harmony in money matters, it would be difficult to have balance and harmony in other things that constitute a good and healthy marriage.

The relationship with money

Identifying the real relationship with money, with neither self-criticism nor self-justification.

If you want to get rich (it is your choice), remember these:

The essentials of food, clothing, and shelter are all you need to be content and thankful.

The love of money often destroys a man’s life and his soul.

If you want to stay rich, remember these:

The ultimate ownership belongs to God, who owns all things.

Do good and be rich in your deeds and generosity. Help those who are less fortunate than yourself.

Understanding money problems

Understanding money problems is more than half way through solving the problems of money.

The principle of spending is simple: Never buy what you don’t need with the money you don’t have.

Buy what you need, not what you want.

Create a budget to avoid conflicts:

Determine the total net income after taxes.

Decide your basic expenses (rent/mortgage, foods, bills etc.)

Total income less expenses is the monthly spending money. Divide it into two.

Spend however you want to spend it.

Do not let money become a stress factor in life: money can age you more than anything else.

Do not let money become a bone of contention in your marriage: many money fights are in fact continuing fights between partners over control and power, but thinly disguised in money matters; they are only “fake” money fights.

Destructive marriage behaviors

Problems in a marriage often occur as a result of these behaviors related to money:

Playing the blame game

Complaining and criticizing too much

Nagging and threatening to get what one wants

Divorce

A marriage is made to last. So do everything within your power to make it last.

If your marriage is on the rocks, save your marriage and stop your divorce!

Julia Smarty 

Copyright© by Julia Smarty

Death and Emptiness

 

Death and Emptiness

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, and this is the way of all flesh.

An illustration

Ernest Hemingway’s famous novel A Farewell to Arms may show you one perspective of death and emptiness:

“Once in camp I put a log on top of the fire and it was full of ants. As it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went first toward the center where the fire was; then turned back and ran toward the end. When there were enough on the end they fell off into the fire. Some got out, their bodies burnt and flattened, and went off not knowing where they were going. But most of them went toward the fire and then back toward the end and swarmed on the cool end and finally fell off into the fire. I remember thinking at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire and throw it out where the ants could get off onto the ground. But I did not do anything but threw a tin cup of water on the log, so that I would have the cup empty to put whiskey in before I added water to it. I think the cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants.”

The hero in the story was observing how the ants were swarming back and forth on a log on top of a fire in a futile attempt at survival—just like God watching over mankind’s stubborn struggle to refuse letting go of the impermanent in the material world. Instead of acting as a messiah to help the ants, the hero simply emptied a tin cup of water so that he could have his own whiskey.

The hero’s attitude to death is also a reflection of the author’s own perspective of man’s ultimate fate: death happens no matter how hard one strives to avoid it, and anything and everything then simply become nothing.

Sadly and tragically, author Ernest Hemingway—essentially an atheist, although initially a Catholic—shot himself with a gun when he realized that anything and everything in his life were really nothing after all in spite of all his accomplishments. With his perspective of nothingness, he had lost hope of human existence, including his own. 

Another illustration

Francis of Assisi, the Italian Saint who chose a life of poverty in spite of his family’s wealth, said on his deathbed: “Death will open the door of life.”  He died gracefully, while singing.

To Francis, death or emptiness is everything. Maybe for a believer, death is, indeed, a triumph, a meaningful exodus from this mundane world to the eternal world beyond. The emptiness is just a rite of passage to everything.

Revelation

For a non-believer, life may have little meaning at all, when the end is near, because everything will become nothingness when death strikes in the end. Without God, Hemmingway viewed life as everything is nothing, despite all his fame and accomplishments, and he thus killed himself.

For a believer, the nothingness brought by death may then become everything in the life to come, and that explains why Francis of Assisi was singing on his deathbed.

So, there're only two options. If you're a believer, you could sing with joy while lying on your deathbed, just like St. Francis of Assisi. If you are an unbeliever, you would just pass away and become nothingness, just like Ernest Hemingway.

So, now that the end is near it may also be the right time to be spiritual, and to become a true believer. But how to become a believer?

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

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

 

Changing Your Emotions

 Help your marriage by changing your emotions and feelings as well as those of your marriage partner.

Emotions and feelings are two sides of the same coin. They’re closely related to each other, but they’re different in that emotions create biochemical reactions in the body, affecting the physical state, while feelings are more mental associations and reactions to emotions.

Harmony and Disharmony

According to the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), we all have qi (氣), which is the internal life-giving energy circulating within each of us, giving us internal balance and harmony. Emotions are energy states, which may either contribute to or deplete our own internal life-giving energy, causing harmony or disharmony, and thus leading to positive or negative emotions and feelings.

Diseases and disorders

The truth of the matter is that any “excessive” emotion or feeling may become the underlying cause of many health issues.

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 feelings may also adversely affect the symptoms or the prognosis of any human disease. Thoughts and feelings 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.

So, an unhappy marriage may negatively affect your mental and physical health.

The seven emotions

According to the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), there’re seven emotions which are the underlying causes of many internal diseases, and these emotions are: anger, anxiety, fear, fright, joy, sadness, and worry. Because Chinese medicine is all about internal balance and harmony, these seven emotions may even affect different human body organs. For example, excessive anger impairs the liver, causing headaches, while even excessive joy dysfunctions the heart, leading to mania and mental disorders.

Anger

Anger or rage is an ineffective and inefficient way to resolve any issue or to make any problem go away. Anger is a disruptive emotion that may often lead to depression, and worse, the breakup of a marriage or a love relationship, especially if the anger isn’t properly addressed and controlled.

So, how to change your disruptive emotion of anger or rage?

Take a deep diaphragm breath, and just feel your anger as you breathe in.

Look at your anger in your mind. Then review the situation, and ask yourself one simple question: Can your anger change the situation or anything?

Accept that you’re now angry, and then breathe it out. If necessary, use your arm like a sword cutting through your feelings of rage, while saying: “I can see my anger: it is as it was!”

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. But 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 angry will never solve the problem anyway or right away.

Then, remind yourself that 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’s always better to release anger than to turn it around to destroy yourself.

But suppressing your anger is also self-destructive, as the negative energy redirects itself back into your own body. Anger is always 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.

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.

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

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Life Purpose

Looking at Life Purpose

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

External Purpose

In life setting, a purpose is important, but not so important that it drives you crazy in pursuing it or giving it up altogether. As a matter of fact, there is an external purpose that only sets you a direction for the destination of your life. In that direction, there are many different signposts guiding you along the way. Arriving at one signpost simply means that you have accomplished one task; missing that signpost means that you are still on the right path but simply taking maybe a detour or just longer time because of misdirection or getting lost on the way.

Internal Purpose

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

That Jesus said: “gain the world and lose your soul” probably said everything there is to say about the internal purpose of life for an individual.

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

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

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

Always tell yourself to try doing everything as if God had called upon you at that particular moment to do it. Of course, admittedly, it is not always that easy, given that the mind may be troubled by the ego-self, by invasive and unwanted thoughts from the past or by projections of those thoughts into the future. But having the mindset with the right intention is already a first step or breakthrough for you.

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

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

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

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

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Yin and Yang Love Story

 

FOREVER YIN AND YANG
(A Novel)
                       
The Novel Is All About . . . .

This is a love story in ancient China, about a cock wedding with the presence of a cock instead of the bridegroom.

It is also a story of unrequited love, of murder and execution, of blood reincarnation, of death bringing back life leading to enlightenment. The story reflects TAO wisdom in love with no ego, as well as Nirvana, which is awakening to the ultimate truth of consciousness without being self-conscious.

Click here to get your novel.