“Every man is the architect of his own fortune…” – Sallust
Author Archive for Nature luvr
18
Oct
09
* To accomplish great things…
“To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act…” – Anatole France
11
Oct
09
* experience tells you…
“Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it.”- Stan Smith
“If you aren’t going all the way, why go at all? – Joe Namath
“Why is it we never have time to do it right, but we always have time to do it over?” – Zig Ziglar
“You are free to choose, but the choices you make today will determine what you will have, be, and do in the tomorrow of your life…” Zig ZigLar
“One learns people through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect…” – Mark Twain
“Anything that changes your values changes your behaviour…” - Max Stein
11
Oct
09
* our words reveal our thoughts…
“Our words reveal our thoughts ; manners mirror our self-esteem;
our actions reflect our character; our habits predict the future…” – William Arthur Ward
“The best time to do something significant is between yesterday and tomorrow…” – Zig Ziglar
“Each of us will one day be judged by our standard of life, not by our standard of living; by our measure of giving, not by our measure of wealth; by our simple goodness, not by our seeming greatness…” – William Arthur Ward
“I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present..” – W. Somerset Maugham
11
Oct
09
* failure is not necessarily…
“Failure is not necessarily at the end of the road. Many times it is the beginning of a new and more exciting trip…” – Zig Ziglar
11
Oct
09
* our challenge is…
“Our challenge is to learn from the past; live and grow in the present, and look to the future with hope and optimism…” – Zig Ziglar
11
Oct
09
* the disciplines of growth…
“Most of the significant things done in the world were done by persons who were either too busy or too sick! There are few ideal and leisurely settings for the disciplines of growth…” – Robert Thornton Henderson
“Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways, it can change someone else’s life forever…” – Margaret Cho
11
Oct
09
* how the character is built…
“People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built…”- Eleanor Roosevelt
11
Oct
09
* Rudeness is…
“Rudeness is weak man’s imitation of strength…” – Eric Hoffer
11
Oct
09
* It’s not how much you have…
“It’s not how much you have but how well you use what you have that counts…” – Zig Ziglar
“Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things…” – Denis Diderot
11
Oct
09
* Courage is resistance to fear…
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear; not absence of fear.”- by Mark Twain
“Health makes all things possible; Wealth makes all things work; Happiness makes all things beautiful…”
“Personality has the power to open doors, but it takes character to keep them open.” – Zig Ziglar
11
Oct
09
* the god and the nuts…
“God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them…”
11
Oct
09
* the secret of joy in work…
“The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – Excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.” - Pearl Buck
11
Oct
09
* what is faith…”
“faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into light.” – Helen Keller
“If you want to get the best out of a man, you must look for the best that is in him.” – Bernard Haldane
“There is no royal road to anything. One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.” – Josiah G Holland
18
Jul
09
* Does love exist…?
Does love exist?
I came across this little story from the author Don Miguel Ruiz, who interestingly shared this story in his book called “The Mastery of Love.”
It clearly and truthfully described my thoughts and my feelings towards the conventional wisdom of love. I would like to share this story with you here, perhaps this story reaffirmed my thoughts on what is “real love” that I have found, which I have shared in my previous article here.
There was an ordinary man just like you and me, but what made this man special was his way of thinking – “he thought love does not exist”. Of course, he had observed the people around him and had many experiences trying to find love. Much of his life has been spent searching for love, only to find that love did not exist.
Wherever this man went, he used to tell people that love is nothing but an invention of the poets, and invention of religions just to manipulate the weak mind of humans, so that they can have control over humans. He said that love is not real, and that is why no human could ever find love even though he might look for it.
This man was highly intelligent, and he was very convincing that he could stand in any public place, in front of any kind of people, and share his thoughts, and his logic is very strong. He read a lot of books, he went to the best universities, and he became a respected scholar. What he said was that love is just like a drug, it makes you very high, but it creates a strong need. You can become highly addicted to love, but what happens when you don’t receive your daily doses of love? Just like a drug, you need your everyday doses.
He used to say that most relationships between lovers are just like a relationship between a drug addict and the one who provides the drugs. The one who has the biggest need is like the drug addict; the one who has little need is the one who controls the whole relationship. You can see this dynamic so clearly because usually in every relationship there is one who loves the most and the other who doesn’t, and who only takes advantage of the one who gives his or her heart. You can see the way they manipulate each other, their actions and reactions, and they are just like the provider and the drug addict.
The drug addict is the one who has the biggest need, lives in constant fear that perhaps he will not be able to get the next dosage of love, or the drug he so desire to. The drug addict thinks, “What am I going to do if she leaves me?” That fear makes the drug addict very possessive. “That’s mine!” The addict becomes jealous and demanding, because the fear of not having the next dosage. The provider can control and manipulate the one who needs the drug by giving more doses, fewer doses, or no doses at all. The one who has the biggest need completely surrenders and will do whatever he can to avoid being abandoned.
The man went on explaining to everyone why love doesn’t exist. “What human call ‘love’ is nothing but a fear relationship based on control. Where is the respect? Where is the love they claim to have? There is no love. The young couples in front of the representation of God, in front of their family and friends, made a lot of promises to each other; to live together forever, to love and respect each other, to be there for each other, through the good times and the bad times. They promise to love and honor each other, and make promises and more promises. What is amazing is that they really believe these promises. But you can see that none of these promises are kept after one week, one month, or few months after the marriage”.
“What you find is a war of control to see who will manipulate whom. Who will be the provider, and who will have the addiction? You will find, few months later after their marriage, that the respect they swear to have for each other is gone. You can see the resentment, the emotional poisons, and how they hurt each other, little by little, and It grows and grows, until the love stops. Somehow, they do not even know when it stops. They stay together because they are afraid to be alone, afraid of the opinions and judgments of others, and also afraid of their own judgments and opinions. However, where is the love (that they once knew they had)?
He used to claim that he saw many old couples that had lived together thirty years, forty years and fifty years, and they were so proud to have lived together all those years. However, when they talked about their relationship, what they said was, “We survived the matrimony.” That means one of them surrendered to the other; at a certain time, she gave up and decided to endure the suffering. The one with the strongest will and less need won the war, but where is that flame they call love? They treat each other like a possession: “She is mine.” “He is mine.”…
The man went on and on about all the reasons why he believed love doesn’t exist, and he told others, “I have done all that already. I will no longer allow anyone to manipulate my mind and control my life in the name of love.” His arguments were quite logical, and he convinced many people by all his words that “Love doesn’t exist”.
Then one day this man was walking in the park, and there on a bench was a beautiful woman who was crying. When he saw her crying, he felt curious. He went on to sit beside her, and asked if he could help her. He asked why she was crying. You can imagine his surprise when she told him that she was crying because love doesn’t exist. He said. “This is amazing – a woman who believes that love doesn’t exist.” Of course, he wanted to know more about her.
“Why do you say that love doesn’t exist?” he asked.
“Well, it’s a long story.” She replied. “I married when I was very young, with all the loves and illusions, and full of hopes that I would share my life with this man. We swore to each other our loyalty, respect, and honor, and we created a family. But soon everything changed. I was the devoted wife who took care of the children and the home. My husband continued to develop his career; his success and image outside of home was more important to him than family. He lost respect for me, and I lost respect for him. We hurt each other, and at a certain point. I discovered that I didn’t love him and he didn’t love me either.
“But the children needed a father, and that was my excuse to stay and to do whatever I could to support him. Now the children are grown and they have left. I no longer have any excuse to stay with him. There’s no respect; there’s no kindness. I know that even if I find someone else, it is going to be the same, because love doesn’t exist. There is no sense to look around for something that doesn’t exist. That is why I am crying.”
The man understands her very well. He embraced her and said, “You are right; love doesn’t exist. We look for love, we open our heart and we become vulnerable, just to find selfishness. That hurts us even if we don’t’ think we will be hurt. It doesn’t matter how many relationship we have; the same thing happens again and again. Why even bother to search for love any longer?”
They were so much alike, and they became the best friends ever. It was a wonderful relationship. They respected each other, and they never put each other down. With every step they took together, they were happy. There was no envy or jealousy, there was no control, there was no possessiveness. The relationship kept growing and growing. They loved to be together, because when they were together they had a lot of fun. When they were not together, they missed each other.
One day when the man was out of town, he had the weirdest idea. He was thinking, “Hmmm, maybe what I feel for her is love. But this is so different from what I have ever felt before. It is not what the poets say it is, and it is not what the religions say it is, because I am not responsible for her. I don’t take anything from her, I don’t have the need for her to take care of me;, I don’t need to blame her for my difficulties or to take my dramas to her. We have the best time together; we enjoy each other. I respect the way she thinks, the way she feels. She does not embarrass me; she does not bother me at all. I don’t feel jealous when she‘s with other people; I don’t feel envy when she is successful. Perhaps love does exist, but it’s not what everyone thinks love is.”
He could hardly wait to go back home and talk to her, and to let her know about his weird idea. As soon as he started talking, she said, “I know exactly what you are talking about. I had the same idea long ago, but I didn’t want to share it with you because I know you don’t believe in love. Perhaps love does exist, but it isn’t what we thought it was.” They decide to become lovers and to live together, and it was amazing that thing didn’t change. They still respected each other, they were still support of each other, and the love grew more and more. Even the simplest things made their hearts sing with love because they were so happy.
The man’s heart was so full with all the love he felt, and one night a great miracle happened. He was looking at the stars and he found the most beautiful one, and his love was so big that the star started coming down from the sky and soon that star was I his hands. Then a second miracle happened… his soul merged with that star. He was intensely happy, and he could hardly wait to go to the woman and put that star in her hands to prove this love to her. As soon as he put the star in her hands, she felt a moment of doubt. This love was so overwhelming that in that moment, the star fell from her hands and broke into a million little pieces.
Now there is an old man walking around the world swearing that love doesn’t exist. And there is a beautiful old woman at home waiting for a man, shedding tears for a paradise that she once had in her hands, but for one moment of doubt, she let it go. This is the story about the man who didn’t believe in love.
in summary…
Who made the mistake? Do you want to guess what went wrong? The mistake was on the man’s part in thinking he could give the woman his happiness. The star was his happiness, and his mistake was to put his happiness in her hands. Happiness never comes from outside of us. He was happy because of the love coming out of him; she was happy because of the love coming out of her. However, as soon as he made her responsible for his happiness, she broke the star because she could not be responsible for his happiness.
No matter how much the woman loved him, she could never make him happy because she could never know what he had in his mind. She could never know what his expectations were, because she could not know his dreams. Especially a lot of us don’t even know that ourselves, and how could one expect other to know us better.
If we take our happiness and put it in someone’s hands, eventually, she is going to break it. If we give our happiness to someone else, she can always take it away. If happiness come from inside of us and is the result of our love, then we are responsible for our own happiness.
We can never make anyone responsible for our own happiness. But when we go to the church to get married, the first thing we do is to exchange rings. We put our star in each other’s hands, expecting that she is going to make us happy, and we are going to make her happy. It doesn’t matter how much we love someone, we are never going to be what that person wants us to be.
That is the mistake most of us make right from the beginning of our relationship. We base our happiness on our partner, and it doesn’t work that way. We make all those promises that we cannot keep, and we set ourselves up to fail.
“Happiness is not a when — it is a NOW! It is not what we have that makes us happy, it is what we are that’s going to make us happy! Material things are never going to make us happy.” Zig Ziglar
The same life episode seems to unfold itself repeatedly despite our efforts in sieving out the learning points. Why is that so? Why does nature always seems to put us through the same mode of suffering again and again….. why is she (the nature) so cruel?
Everything happens for a reason….
Some may blame it to a streak of bad luck; some may resort to fate. Whatever the case, most likely reason is that we have not learnt the right lessons in life for us to grow to our fullest authentic self.
Each time when an episode is unfolding right before our eyes, there seem to have zillions of lessons we thought we knew and we tell ourselves to be wiser the next time. However, if we examine the things we thought we knew each time, we would find ‘blames’ all over the things that we thought we ought to learn. An example of such episode is when we fall out of a relationship and we blame the person we once lovingly fell-for for being selfish, lack of commitment, lack of communication, or being stupid. Sometimes we blame ourselves for being involved with a married person… so was it the right lesson that the nature wanted us to learn? Will those blames that we’d learnt ever able to get us to our fullest authentic self? Have we ever thought of why we got into this relationship, if we have not, perhaps it is time for us to reflect upon it and ask ourselves that when we got into relationship is it because it is part of the marriage process? Or is it for us to find someone whom can give us the unconditional spiritual motivation to grow to our fullest authentic self?
Nature has a way to remind us, the superior human being, of a basic principle associate with the law of nature, that is every living thing on earth will need to grow to our best authentic self and fulfill our primary mission of reproduction in any given circumstances.
If we learn the right essence in life from each unfortunate episode, it will inspire us and motivate us to look forward to the future. For people who are willing to learn, life is an ultimate nurturing place, and the learning will define and clarify the true course to our life journey. Every time when we discover something that did not work out for us, it brings us a step closer to where we wanted to go in life. We should not have trouble being who we are, or finding the need to gain approval to pursue a livelihood or hold a network of relationship intact.
Do we still believe in the old thought of in order to survive in this world, we have to wear a mask?
Usually it is not that we did not learn our lesson well, but it is because we did not learn the right lessons. We tend to be very judgmental and quick to put blames on anything to justify for the failure or inaction.
So what are the right lessons that we suppose to learn?
Mira Kirshenbaum, the author of the book “Everything happens for a reason: Finding the true meaning of the events in our lives”, has discovered the ten common reasons that most of us needed in order to grow to our fullest authentic self.
The ten common reasons for us to learn from each episode that unfold in our lives are:
- To help us feel at home in the world.
- To help us totally accept ourselves.
- To show us that we can let go of fear.
- To bring us to the place where we can feel forgiveness.
- To help us uncover our true hidden talent.
- To give what you need to find true love.
- To help us become stronger.
- To help us discover the play in life.
- To show us how to live with a sense of mission.
- To help us become a truly good person.
Mira Kirshenbaum also recommended some diagnostic questions in her book to help us see the reasons that we ought to learn clearly when something happened to us that was big enough to leave us hungry to understand its meaning. If we answer “yes” to majority of these questions listed in that particular reason, that would be one of the reasons that things happen that way (for us to learn).
Reason 1: To help us feel at home in the world.
- Would you describe yourself as a restless soul?
- In high / secondary school, did you have a hard time fitting in?
- Is there some secret, private part of you that you haven’t feel comfortable showing anyone?
- When you see people who seem to really belong somewhere – people live in a small town, or people who come from a tight-knit family – do you envy them?
- Have you felt that you’ve been looking for something in life for a long time but you’re not quite sure what you’re looking for?
Reason 2: To help us totally accept ourselves
- Would you say that you’ve live your life overly concerned with what other people and what they think is important?
- Does it seem like you’ve always trying to change things about yourself without making much long term progress?
- Are you afraid to tell people close to you what you want?
- Do you often feel like someone who doesn’t matter, or do you often let a person treat you like someone who doesn’t matter?
- Do you feel that if people knew the real you, they wouldn’t like you?
- Do you have a clear dream of something you want to do or a way you want to live, based on what’s most important to you, that you’ve not doing anything to make it come true?
Reason 3: To show us that we can let go of fear
- Is it hard for you to trust yourself to deal with new situation?
- Think about a couple of the things you’ve done in your life that you regret. Was the main reason you did those things because you were acting out of fear?
- When you make a decision, is fear an important factor that you weigh in the balance?
- Would you say that your life is filled with things you’ve scare of?
Reason 4: To bring us to the place where we can feel forgiveness.
- Do you think a lot about some of the ways you’ve been hurt or about disappointments you’ve suffered in the past?
- Do you get angry a lot or have you been holding onto your anger for a long time?
- Is feeling guilty very much an issue for you?
- Do you spend time having “if only” fantasies where you think about how your life would be different now if you or someone else had done things differently in the past?
- Do you often feel envious?
- In some important way, do you not feel safe or secure in your life?
Reason 5: To help you uncover your true hidden talent
- Have you felt for a long time that you’re bigger than you life or better than the circumstances you find yourself in?
- Have you always suspected or wished you were special?
- When you were growing up, did you often feel disparaged for you intelligence or abilities?
- Have you found yourself saying no to opportunities because you’re afraid you don’t have what it takes to handle them?
- Do you feel that when you were younger you had talents or abilities that you’re not in touch with now?
Reason 6: To give you what you need to find true love
- Do you feel that you’ve made more than your share of mistakes when it comes to love?
- Are you afraid you’re unlovable?
- Have you too often felt that you haven’t found real love? (You may have had plenty of relationships, bout you haven’t found the kind of love you need in those relationships.)
- Have you too often felt lonely in your life?
- Have you ever lost a great relationship filled with the possibility of love because you didn’t value it, nurture it, give time and your best self to it?
- Is it usually hard fro you to be yourself in your relationships?
Reason 7: To help you become stronger
- Have you had more than your share of loss in your life?
- Has low self-esteem been an issue for you?
- Do you have trouble identifying things in your life that can’t be taken away from you?
- Has it been you experience that most thins in life are impermanent – relationship, friends, jobs, and so on?
- Do you feel you’re under serious threat of losing what you have?
- Are you hungry to have something in your life that you’re really good at?
- Have you felt there’s something important missing at your core?
- Do you feel that your ability to move forward into your future is blocked?
Reason 8: To help you to discover the play in your life
- Enjoy life often means allowing ourselves to get pleasure from our lives exactly as they are. But sometimes the only way to do that is to stop taking so seriously the very things that rob us of pleasure. I am talking about the worries, ambitions, obsessions, confusions, distractions, and stresses that suck the blood out of enjoyment of what should be happy life.
Why for many people, enjoying life is a complicated issue…
- Due to wrong message or wrong experiences.
- It brings worries.
- Because it touches a deep part of the self.
- If you’re enjoying life, then you’re not taking care of the business
- It brings up guilt – you don’t deserve to enjoy life
- It brings up insecurity – you don’t have the inner resources necessary for enjoy life
- Enjoyment is the food for motivation. When you don’t enjoy yourself, your sense of being motivated gradually withers.
Reason 9: To show you how to live with a sense of mission.
- Have you always had in the back of your mind a desire to make a sacrifice for something you believe in?
- Growing up, did you get the message that you have to do something big and important with you life?
- Do you sometimes feel you have to justify your existence, as if just living you life and not hurting anyone weren’t enough?
- Is feeling proud of yourself something that matters a great deal to you? And when you think of feeling proud of yourself, does it always feel connected to doing something that will make a difference?
- Have your heroes typically been people whose lives are defined by the intensity with which they lived or how they stood up for what they believe in?
Reason 10: To help you to become a truly good person
- Have you experienced loss or pain in your life both because you’ve been mistreated and because you’ve mistreated others?
12
Apr
09
* the awakening…
After awakening from my dream, I realized that my garden is still standing beautifully right before my eyes. I wonder why I have that empty feeling from within.
Perhaps this is a lesson I have to discover for myself this time round….
Now that I recall, there was a moment where I was living in the past and having to deal with loses, where people came and gone in my life. For that moment, I allowed the experience of loses, sadness, betrayal and disappointment in the past to re-emerge and led my life.
And also there was moment where I was living in the future, having to face the fear of losing all that I have, where I have to live in loneliness, and feeling worthlessness in my life.
The space in my soul was filled with these soul-less phantom energies and that was why I felt the emptiness deep within me. Once I have filled up my soul with something real, something that I have on hand in the present moment, the emptiness within my body just disappears into the thin air.
Now that I am awake and living in my present moment, I can see that, my garden is still full of life and energy with happiness and with all my friends all around me.
To hell with what the future may be, I want to live my life to my fullest authentic self, I want to enjoy what I have now, and let my guilt and fears to live in my future forever and ever…
Now I feel blessed once again. Thank you very much, my friends in my present world, for being with me all these while. I am alive and kicking now… :)
11
Apr
09
* the garden…
I had a dream…. I saw a small deserted bare plot of land around the corner of the glittering city light. It was made obscured and secluded by the surrounding structures.
Many people have passed by but no one ever took notice of the vacant land. Some pee on it and threw their garbage there as a matter of convenience.
Over the years, garbage started to fertilize the soil, with the wind carrying pollens from the nature. It started to cultivate into a small shady nice greenery with birds, flowers and shades… Eventually it transformed into a small little cozy garden providing shades and serenity for birds, pets, and people.
Slowly over time, people began to take notice of the small little landscape and more and more people came to take shelter from the rain, or from the blazing afternoon sun. Some even find it thrilling to make love there at night.
After a long period of time, the soil started to tighten up, bees and birds stop patronizing the garden. Plastic bags, drink bottles and condoms left behind by the people were scattered all over the ground. The flowers withered and the plants dried up. foul smell lingered everywhere. Slowly the garden was thrown back to its original state or even worse, it has lost its flaming soul and the spirit of growth.
The garden was created by nature for people to rest their unsettling soul, but once they gained back their senses, they took a piece of soul from the garden and left… unfortunately they have not remembered to clean up the messes they’d left behind. They left their condoms, plastic bags, and they had packed the fertile soil with their heavy footsteps or their rolling body when they were making hot love at night. They brought their poisons and spilled all over the garden. and they left after gaining their senses with a newfound meaning in life. The things that were left subtly and unconsciously behind seems insignificant to them. Some even thought, being there with the garden was doing a good deed to the garden. Some even blame the garden for dirtying their shoes, clothes and body.
Everything happen for a reason, so what’s next?
I woke up from the dream with a sense of unsettling mind and a lose soul. Felt lonely deep within me. Why the garden…? Am I the garden…? I asked myself…
The life journey…
Life is a journey, a journey that will allow us to grow to our fullest authentic self.
After lobbying through my life for almost 5 decades, I came to realize that the cosmic universe seem to have certain way to make us learn and grow towards our authentic self. The growth is very much within the boundaries of two governing laws; they are the Law of Social Living, which teaches us how to build relationship with the world around us, and the Law of Nature, which teaches us how to build relationship with ourselves.
how to live our life…
When we were born, our parent did not give us any user manual or operating manual on how to live and discover our life purpose. Why is that so?
This is because no one really knows our future, not even our mighty cosmic universe. We are not pre-destined to be what we are today or in future, we are what we are today because of the decisions we’d made in the past. We shape our own destiny, our fate is in our hand and it is our own responsibility to make our life more meaningful and happy; it is not the responsibility of our spouse, children, friends or our government to make us happy.
We, human being, are meant to explore and discover our own destiny in life. Having said that, the cosmic universe did not leave us alone either, we are all pre-programmed by nature to follow the two life learning and exploration processes. First, is the process of learning how to build relationship with the external world; second is the process of learning how to build relationship with our inner world.
our life graph…
If you refer to my graph above, all of us will have two distinct learning processes in our life, the blue and red processes. The graphs are not pre-destined, the processes are.
The blue process enables us to integrate into our society expeditiously and it is governed by the law of Social Living. The red process is for us to discover who we really are and what we really want to be in life, and is governed by the law of Nature.
All of us started (in the blue process) in this world learning how to adapt to the external environment in the first part of our life. This is important to our survival as we are a creature of communal living, hence learning to build relationship with others and the environment around us is critical in order to enable each one of us as a human being to co-exist in harmony and protect our well-being.
Phenomenon in mid life…
As we move on towards our mid life, we start to experience another phenomenon (the red process), which will inevitably lead us to look inward for a solution to the worldly issues that bothering us. We started to examine all the past events in our life, we can even reflect back to as far as our childhood time, and trying to make sense out of it.
the crisis…
The mid life crisis begins when we start to look inward (the initiation of the red process) for a profound answer to all our confusions in life. It will only be over when our awareness of our inner world takes a balance with the external world and beyond.
The initiation point of us looking inward varies from one person to another. In addition, I realized that people are having a mid life crisis as early as late 20s, possibly due to heighten awareness through internet access and well-informed education system.
On the other hand, I also realized that people are staying longer in the period of crisis, hence prolong the agony and suffering within ourselves.
why mid life…
Mid-life period is essential to us in order to lead a balance life. The more we understand about our own inner world, the better outlook of life will be. We will eventually reach a stage where by we are responsible for our own destiny and happiness.
A traditinal woman’s graph…
In a traditional relationship, a woman tends to suppress their red curve and live their life around her man. That is okay if she so decide whole heartedly and unconditionally.
if we can’t live life around another person…
If a woman can’t live her life around her man, she has to find a partner whom is willing to compromise his blue curve and learn to live his life around his woman (compromising partnership), or be single and has many friends for her emotional support.
Both logical and morally acceptable options mentioned above are not easy to find in today’s world where women have more aspiration to seek fulfillment like man to live and grow their life to their fullest authentic self.
the proposition…
The rate of dysfunctional family is on the rise in an alarming manner. In order not to discourage men and women to set up a ‘new world’ family, where two individual man and woman can be themselves in a marriage, we need a revolutionary change in our mindset toward a happy marriage. I would challenge you to think that every man and woman, if you cannot find a perfect partner to set up your family, consider to allow your wife/husband to have a lover in their life. That is to say, look for a responsible husband/wife who can allow you to be your own authentic self, to set up your family, and a lover, based on unconditional chemistry with no string attached, to compliment what he/she lack of in the marriage.
Summary…
In summary, is mid life a crisis or rebirth? It is very much depending upon our perspective towards it. Whatever the case, it is a necessary transition in our life. Since we cannot avoid it, why not learn to treat it as a rebirth; enjoy the transition and works towards a better life ahead.
20
Mar
09
* What is real love…
Life was never been easy for me since my childhood. I had to put up with many people’s faces, and took in humiliation as part of my growing up.
What I am today is pretty much due to what I had to put up during my past struggling years. Everything happens for a reason, and the reason is always for me to grow to my best authentic self by showing me a noble path to a deeper meaning of living my life. That was what I came to realize when I was in the mid 30s. Somehow, I always find ‘real love’ fascinating me, because I was never experience love in my critical tender years. Real love seems to elude me always.
Since then, I have been very mindful in my daily living to find the authentic meaning to real love. I knew how real love feels like deep within me, but somehow I could not verbalize it when someone will to ask me what real love is to me.
I’ve come across many different interpretation and teaching of real love, ranging from Bible, sutra, Tao Te Ching, and many other books published by the guru, but none of them could really resonant my feeling of real love that I feel deep inside me.
Lately, since I was diagnosed with Carcinoid tumor, so many good and challenging things happened to me and to the people around me. I knew there would be a great lesson for me to learn this time. However, what was it? I have no clue of it.
Somehow, just few weeks ago, I came across an author’s name Mira Kirshenbaum in the internet talking about her book called “Everything happens for a reason – Finding the true meaning of the events in our lives. I went to the neighborhood library the next day to look for that book, found it but it was on loaned. I placed a reservation immediately and got the book a week later.
Right from the start, I knew it is my destiny to read this book now; it is the right time for me to make that great connection with this book. True enough, on page 150, I found those words that truly reflect my feeling about what is the real love.
Now I would like to share those words, the excerpt from Everything Happens for a Reason by Mira Kirshenbaum, with you here.
· Real love is not just how you feel about your partner. It’s much more how your partner makes you feel about yourself.
· Real love is not about losing yourself in your partner. It’s about becoming true to yourself with your partner.
· Real love is not about how great your partner is. It’s about how great you can become alongside your partner.
· Real love is not just about how much you love your partner. It’s about how your partner helps you love yourself.
· Real love is not just about your partner finding room in his or her heart for you. It‘s about your partner finding room in his or her life for your energy, drive, ambition, passion, interests, and needs.
· Real love is not just based on how good your partner is “deep down.” It’s based on how much you actually experience your partner’s goodness as you live your life together.
· Real love is not based on how your partner makes you hungry to be with him or her. It’s based on how much your partner makes you feel at home when you are with each other.
· Real love is not about the love you say you share. It’s about the life you really do share, fully, equally, deeply.
· Real love is about treating your partner the way you’d want to be treated.
· Real love is about falling in ‘like’.
These signs of real love constitute a pretty high standard. Most of us fall short of this standard a lot of the time in our relationship. But some of us aren’t even close. Then something happens, and it turns out that the reason it did was to give us what we need to find real love like this.
The result is that if you look at our lives as they actually are, there’s too often little real love in them, love that truly bring us close, love that makes us feel good about ourselves and bring out the best in us, love that’s based on truly liking and respecting the other person. No wonder we so often need to learn a lesson about love.
“Love is richest, most genuine, and most long lasting when you focus on being yourself and doing everything you can to make it possible for the other person to be him- or herself” – Mira Kirshenbaum
Why are we allowing things in the past to hurt us…?
“I can forgive, but I can’t forget….”
No matter how much efforts we put in to shelter out the adverse elements from affecting our life, we can never be sure to avoid occasional unexpected shower and thunderstorm that may just raining down on us when we are least expecting them – that’s life.
Just when we beginning to feel love, to taste the fruit of success in our career, to enjoy life, or feel like we are the luckiest man/woman on earth, somehow we will soon find ourselves having to deal with recession, retrenchment, sickness, death, or having to overcome the loneliness of breaking up. Why is that so? Why does it has to be me? “It is a question most often filled with anguish, hurt, and blame.
Psychotherapist and author Mira Kirshenbaum offer a unique insight and ten different and intriguing responses in her book ‘Everything Happens for a reason – Finding the True Meaning of the Events in Our Lives’. Kirshenbaum explains that nothing is random.
Even having found some meaning to those things that has happened in our lives, and learnt something profound out of it, but are we able to drive those hurtful sour feeling out of our mind? Well, my take is most probably not that easy.
Martin Luther King once said, ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that; hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that’. This is the secret that I have learnt from Martin Luther King sometime ago when I was in search of the answer myself during the darkest moment of my life.
It is written in simple English that everyone can easily understand; but it is also the most profound secret for us to unleash the power within to drive out those anguish and hurtful feeling resided deep inside our soul.
In another word, negative action cannot drive out negative feeling, only positive action will.
When we have to face challenges in our live such as disappointment, separation, departure, rejection, humiliation, or lost of our valued possessions, the blames and hatre will not help to drive out those negative feelings inside us, only the positive actions will.
So what are the examples of the positive actions?
Positive action means doing things, which we passionately love with our heart and soul. With our heart and soul means, we will go in-depth into studying and understanding every detail about the thing that we do, and not just doing it for the sake of doing. Do it as if we are doing our PhD thesis paper, if possible go on to share our new discovery with others, that will multiply our power and yield much greater effects in driving out those negative feelings.
The activities below will produce a mighty force in helping us to drive out those negative feeling resided deep inside us.
· Pursuing our dream hobbies or things that we always wanted to do but no time to do in the past.
· Involving in the volunteer work to help people or nature whom or which are in need of our times, skills and experiences.
· Exercising to make ourselves feels good and looks good.
· Picking up new skills to lighten up our soul, like Zhineng qigong, yoga, meditation, or even a religion.
· Learning to love ourselves more, and feel good for ourselves from within.
The list here is not necessarily finite, for those of you who are passionately love your job, and prefer to put your heart and soul into it, can also yield the same effect.
Besides having the food for our soul, we also need to eat well, having enough rest and sleep, and be sure that we keep our body hydrate at all time. This is the time where our body are subjected to tremendous amount of strains, hence we can’t just focus on our mind, but also to take care and make sure our physical body is in the pink of health. Healthy body, healthy mind and soul are inseparable. One can affect the other easily.
Last of all, if situation allow, go for a good sensual massage or a good love making session to lighten up our mind and soul with good orgasm. But it must be a good and guilt free experience, if not it will generate more harm than good.
Finally, do not lay blame on anyone for the things that has happened to us. Not ourselves nor others. No one is at fault for what has happened, though we may feel responsible for it (that is normal), but it does not necessarily mean that we have to find someone to put the blame on to ease our sense of responsibility. If we do that, we will unknowingly being sucked into the deepest end of the black hole, to a point where we might not be able to recover easily.
Most of the time we cannot control what has happened around us, but we can control what we going to do or feel after it has happened to us, and that is what determines our success and happiness in life.
10
Mar
09
* Stand up for yourself…
Excerpt from today Straits Times, “Stand up for yourself” by David Goldwich.
· Studies show that only 5 to 20% of the population is assertive.
· Nearly all top managers are assertive.
· Assertiveness is the ability to stand up for yourself without stepping on anyone else’s toe. It means communicating your interests in a manner that is clear, direct, specific and considerate.
· It is the “golden mean” between passive and aggressive.
· If you cannot stand up for yourself, you are passive.
· If you can stand up for yourself but disregard the rights and feelings of others, you may be aggressive.
· Assertiveness is not just a personality trait – it is a skill that can be learnt.
· Most people who take assertive training are passive.
· Passive people may have unsatisfactory and unbalance relationships, without the give and take of healthy interpersonal relationships.
· Passive people may regret their lack of assertiveness and resent others. They may also suffer from low self-esteem and depression.
· Assertive people have positive self-esteem. They enjoy fulfilling relationships based on open communication and mutual respect. They take responsibility for their feelings, statements and action. Assertive people stand up for themselves, exercising their rights while recognizing the fights and opinions of others.
· 3 skill sets that assertive people use:
a. The ability to say no.
b. The ability to ask.
c. The ability to craft assertive messages.
My reflections…
Assertiveness is the state of balanced between the passiveness and aggressiveness. There is no right or wrong in the balancing scale, dependant upon the situation that we are in.
Balance does not necessarily mean equal amount on both side of the scale. We need a lot more cotton to balance with a piece of small solid rock. Hence discretion is the key to success.
Some of us being assertive and get promoted, some of us being assertive and get into trouble.
The secret lies in the alignment of our values to those of our bosses’ and the corporate one. The alignment of the moon and the sun will determine the consequences between ‘appreciation’ and ‘insubordination’.
Hence, we need to constantly reflect upon ourselves, to find out and update our own true values as we journey along our life through the ups and downs. Being ourselves is also means being assertive to our values. If being assertive to our own values is conflicting with our friends’ or our bosses’ values, then it is time for us to move on without them.
Success does not measure by our job title, position, salary or the power that we have. It is measured by our ability to contribute to our nation, our company, the people, friends and the environment around us, without losing our soul.
“He wants sex to feel loved; she needs to feel loved to feel like having sex…” this phrase is not new to most of us; however, can we accept the differences between the men and the women, and go on to enjoy sex as a gift from nature?
Sex is the process that leads to reproduction; reproduction is the primary purpose of all living things to maintain the ultimate eco balance of our mother earth.
The nature has made men and women in such a way that we will not only attract each other sexually, and also to make sure that our off-springs are well taken care of until the point that they are able to survive by themselves.
With these requirements in mind, Nature has made men and women differently, and blessed us (men and women) with different competencies and gifts to perform different roles in sustaining our human kind.
We should not compete and complain about one another, we should learn to work together, accept and enjoy our differences. After all making love (not raw sex) is exclusively only to mankind.
Well I do understand that most people today will not accept certain behaviors if they do not understand why… hence I would like to share with you an interesting article published on Sunday Time, March 8, 2009, by Chua Mui Hoong, called “The joy of sex talk”.
· Oxytocin makes women feel bonded, secure, loved, making them more inclined to feel sexual. In other words, they are in the mood when they feel loved.
· Men’s social attachment however is influenced by vasopressin, a hormone that boosts a man’s energy, attention and aggression.
· Sex releases vast amounts of vasopressin in males, triggering pleasure centre in the brain, and strengthening attachment to the female engaged in the activities. In other words, sex makes him feel more loving.
· Studies of prairie voles show that sex releases oxytocin and vasopressin in males. Oxytocin makes him recognize and feel bonded to one particular female (and not just any female he has sex with). Knock off that gene and the creature forgets not only who its partner is, but also who its friends are.
· Oxytocin and vasopressin both activate the pleasure chemical dopamine, which sets off a positive feedback loop – whereby more coupling with one particular partner releases more of the hormones, which activate the brain’s pleasure centre – bonding the pair strongly for life.
· Men’s sex centres are 3 times the size of women’s. When men have sex, they feel bonded and relaxed – the way women do when they talk to their friends.
· Women should just see sex with their husbands as similar to a good heart-to-heart talk with their girlfriends. As a (male) form of communication.
· Oxytocin is a mammalian hormone that also acts as neurotransmitter in the brain.
· Oxytocin is best known for its roles in female reproduction: it is released in large amounts after distension of the cervix and vagina during labor, and after stimulation of the nipples, facilitating birth and breastfeeding, respectively. Recent studies have begun to investigate oxytocin’s role in various behaviors, including social recognition, bonding, anxiety, trust, and maternal behaviors.
Finally I would like to fore warn you that due to the evolution of mankind, there is a new equation that you might not aware of, that is:
· Sex is not the same as making love.
· Having sex will not necessarily lead to orgasm or child-birth.
· With no orgasm or child-birth, our body may not produce the necessary chemicals to make us feel good and healthy.
The experiment was so far conducted by using animals, and animals do not make love, they just have sex. The fact of our women today, majority of them have experienced very little or no orgasm at all during sexual intercourse. Hence do not ask ourselves the question of why I have sex every other day, but I do not feel the effects as what the research had indicated. 
“it is just a job….” This is the phrase that we often hear during our gathering with friends or colleagues. Sometimes we just smile at them and walk away.
But truly, do we really know what is a job? Is there a difference between job and work?
My hospital experience….
Not too long ago, I was visiting hospital T with my mum for her breast cancer operation. After having done all the procedures, we finally got to sit down with the staff to sign the admission contract. Just before I sign the contract, I observed that my mum was assigned to B2 ward after the surgery. I asked why it was the B2 ward instead of C ward. I explained to the nurse that we wanted maximum government subsidy for my mum’s operation and her follow-up treatment. Since she was not working, she should be entitled to maximum subsidy by the government based on the Mean testing result (Ward C is where government subsidized maximum on).
The staff was shocked and looked as if she was hearing it for the first time. She tried to accommodate me by changing it to Ward C, but alas… She got herself a second shock; Ward C became more expensive than Ward B2. After consulting her supervisor, they finally admitted that they needed more times to sort this out, and would call me the next day.
How could I make a decision if the people in hospital, who are dealing it on the daily basis, could not even make sense out of it?
Eventually they called me the next day, and the answer was very simple, there are no Classes of ward for day surgery, only ‘Private’ or ‘Subsidized’ rate. Ward B2 is referring to subsidized rate. They would highlight this to their relevant authority to make it clearer in the admission contract.
Couple of days later, I went for my closure procedures on ‘Ileostomy’ (the intestines) in Hospital S. I was impressed by the attitude of their serving staff there. One of the staff in the admission office explained to me that one of the check cost approximately $100 and could be included in my admission package. It would be free if I get it certified by the staff there. Having understood that, I was motivated to get it done and do not mind waiting for another 30 minutes for it.
It just took that person a minute or so with the right attitude to make me feel that they are on my side to maximize my dollar. And I don’t mind to spend another 30 minutes to do that extra procedure without having any ill feeling.
Hence, same type of admission procedures, but the feelings I walked out of both hospital with were different. Why was that so…?
The different is that the Staff in hospital T was just doing her job – that was to make sure I signed the admission contract, whereas the staff in hospital S worked for me, and made sure that I got what I was looking for – that was to get the maximum values out of my money.
Important to understand the differences…
It is very important for us to internalize and understand the differences between discharging our responsibity as a job or as work. The success of our career is very much dependant upon our perception of the two, and it has a great influence on our actions. Our thoughts influence our attitudes; our attitudes shape our behaviors; our behaviors dictate our actions of success or failure.
Understanding the fundamental governing laws is the key to success…
As I mentioned in my other articles, the secret to living our life successfully is very much dependant upon how we understand and comply with the two fundamental governing laws, that is the Law of Nature and the Law of Social Living.
Law of Nature is about self, and the Law of Social Living is about managing relationships. A very large part of our career and daily living are associated with managing relationships.
Job and work..
A Job is something we do simply to earn money or for our bosses to pay us. A job can easily be measured by work hours, number of sales or number of products we produced. As an executive, we usually get pay according to the complexity, qualification and responsibility of our job scope.
A work is something more than just a job. A good piece of work requires good deals of our skills, our passions, our commitments and good knowledge of the work purpose and intent.
A job is for our bosses, whereas a work is for our friends, colleagues or people who need our help with our skills and knowledge.
A job is to provide services to our clients or to sell our products to our customers. Work is to find out what our customers’ need and serve them accordingly, or be the buyer for our customers, or to help them make decision by providing them with adequate information and options.
Hence, work is very subjective and it is usually very difficult to measure, but we can tell and feel the differences if we see someone is having the mentality of “got to work” or “get to work”. If someone says he got to work everyday, that is the job mentality, and if someone says that he gets to work everyday, that is the work mentality.
Keys to sustaining our successful efforts…
As we can see, be it a job or work, it is always about others or dealing with others, either for our bosses, our customers or our colleagues (subordinates). How successful in our work dependant upon how many people we have helped to get what they want and how long can we sustain our efforts in helping people.
The secret to sustaining such action lies in how much we master the art of balancing between Ying and Yang. Ying is about self, life, rest, nurturing and inward looking. Yang is about others, work, activities, contributions and outward looking.
A chat friend once told me that she is a super self-centered person, and she is not ashamed of it.
My take to that is that we do not have to be ashamed of who we are because that is uniquely what we are. Each one of us is unique and has a different purpose in life. We can be introvert or extrovert, selfish or selfless, self-centered or people-centered, it does not really matter, it is part of a balancing equation of man-kind (the big picture), and it is the job of Nature, we can’t do much to alter that balancing scale.
We are all born imperfect and imbalanced. However, more importantly in our life journey is to find out who we are and balance it within ourselves. If we are an introvert, we must learn to love social activities. If we love our work to the extreme, then we need to learn to find meaning in life and relationship. Balancing is about being humble without being submissive; being confident without being arrogant; being kind without being weak. That is the secret to happiness in life.
Summary…
In summary, A job is an empty entity where bosses used to justify our pay, a work is an art, which varies according to the level of passion, commitment, relevant knowledge and skills that mould into a piece of art work. A good piece of work always embedded with pride.
24
Jan
09
* Sexual healing…
I don’t usually read newspaper, because it has more negative messages than positive ones. However, I was so bored and restless while waiting for my mum to complete her medical check-up. So I picked up a crumpled newspaper on the sofa and flipped through the ‘Mind your body’ section of the Straits times, dated 22 Jan 2009. While I was flipping through the pages, a green drawing of a sensual woman lying down on her side, deep in thought, caught my attention.
I find this article written by Dr Peter Chew, Sexual healing, very useful for people whom may take orgasm for granted. Hence, I would like to share it here, and hopefully it can shed new lights and provide some hopes to those people who are feeling frustrated sexually.
Dr Chew recounted his experiences with his patient, a 32-year-old woman name ‘F’.
‘F’ looked tense and agitated when she first visited Dr Chew.
‘F’ told Dr Chew that she was married for 3 years and had a good relationship with her husband. It took her a long time to realize that she was not achieving climax during sex. She got aroused easily but she did not get the pleasurable orgasmic sensation that her close friends had experienced. The frustration is indescribable for her…
“My husband is feeling the stress too. We discussed different approaches such as more foreplay and going away on short holidays, which might help us feel more relaxed. It was all to no avail. I am afraid that this may affect our relationship in the long run.” said ‘F’.
According to Dr Chew, ‘F’ is suffering from a common female sexual disorder called anorgasmia (I term it as an-orgas-missing in action) in which she is unable to reach orgasm when sexually excited and is distressed by the problem.
Anorgasmia affects between 15 and 40 per cent of women. It can be divided into a primary disorder, in which a woman has never experienced orgasm, as in F’s case, and a secondary one, when the ability to reach climax is lost.
Orgasm is a phase of sexual response where there is a feeling of intense physical pleasure and release of tension, accompanied by involuntary, rhythmic contraction of pelvic muscle. Sexual response is a complex coordination of the mind and the body, and both need to be functioning well for orgasms to occur.
Inability to reach orgasm is usually a result of sexual inexperience, performance anxiety, past sexual trauma or strict upbringing that lead to an inhibition of sexual response.
In F’s case, she was brought up in a very strict and traditional family where the subject of sex was never brought up.
What is Primary Anorgasmia…
Primary anorgasmia is a condition where one has never experienced an orgasm. This is significantly more common in women, although it can occur in men who lack the gladipudendal (bulbocavernosus) reflex.
Women with this condition can sometimes achieve a relatively low level of sexual excitement and may think of intercourse or other sexual activities as pleasant despite their inability to orgasm.
They may get most of their reward from touching, holding, kissing, caressing, attention, and approval. However, women who regularly achieve high levels of sexual response without orgasmic release of tension may find the experience frustrating. Emotional irritability, restlessness, and pelvic pain or a heavy pelvic sensation may occur because of vascular engorgement.
Primary male anorgasmia is very uncommon, and thus has been studied very little.
The recovery program…
‘F’ and her husband were taught the mechanisms of sexual arousal and the differences in the male and female sexual response. To help her achieve orgasm, sensate focus (specific sexual exercises) and Kegel exercise (contracting and relaxing of the pelvic floor muscles) were recommended to improve the tone of her pelvic muscles. Through the body-awareness program and comfort with orgasm, ‘F’ slowly took charge in directing her husband during intimacy.
Last Christmas, Dr Chew received a card from ‘F’. She wrote, “Dear Doc, thanks for your help, my marital life is more fulfilling and I feel more complete as a woman now”.
Why are we in this situation…
I have the feeling that there are many women out there today are suffering from anorgasmia in silent. Perhaps they do not see the moral needs and to have the courage like ‘F’ to seek help to enhance their sexual fulfilment. Some may still think that having orgasm is a reflection of being ‘loose’ and ‘wild’ person. Some may chose to ignore the need to have orgasm so long they are able to make baby….
I am not the least bit surprised to read this article at all. As in our society today, we are so caught up with our daily chaos, chasing after all the material things, incurring undue stresses to all aspect of our life; hence depriving us the time to explore the deeper and sensual part of our life.
We are a lot more impatient these days as our society progressed into the virtual age. We used to wait patiently for two hours at the dinner table for a meal to serve; but in today’s context, we will be very mad if a microwave oven will to take more than 5 minutes to cook a meal.
Being productive is good. But on the other hand, I also know a lot of us spending large amount of time chatting away in front of computer, wasting our time away in the office doing nothing, or to entertain our bosses because we think these effort and times will yield a better return than to use it to explore our sensual-self.
Sensuality is not just about sexual intercourse but a stimulant to our mind to feel pleasantly good through our five senses (refer to Sensuality vs Sexuality in my other article). In today’s context, the notion of sensuality is equal to sexuality, and it is equal to sexual intercourse.
If we will to browse through the internet, we would easily find more than 95% of the sites are advocating Sexuality rather than Sensuality. Even in sexuality, it is always myopically focused on sexual intercourse. We even have men brag about their ability to pump for hours; and we have many aids developed to help men to prolong their erection or enlarging their size etc. All these messages in the world today are subtly educating our mind that intimacy is about sexual intercourse.
Does the man need to maintain an hour of erection, and have the size of a ruler in order to make his partner cum? That is a myth to me.
Women can have multiple orgasms even before the actual intercourse. However, most men are very reluctant to engage in those activities, because they do not enjoy or know how to derive pleasure in those activities without the intercourse.
Out of the five senses, most men only know how to derive pleasure using the area between their legs. Everything else is numb.
The men…
The men need to learn to enjoy contact feeling not just from our penis, but also from our fingers, lips and tongue. Learn to enjoy and derive pleasure by giving sensual massage using our palm, fingers, lips and tongue.
Sharpen our smell and taste by being mindful in our daily living environment. Get to know the different effects of various fragrance and taste has on our sensuality. There is a reason why the nature put the nose and mouth in close proximity to each other, hence to maintain good oral hygiene is utmost important enabler for ourselves to feel sensual. Brush our teeth and clean our tongue after each meal. Stop smoking if you are a smoker, which is the biggest turn off for a non-smoker partner. Learn to acquire the liking of different taste and smell. Throw away the mindset of only sweet thing is nice, but sometime sour and fishy taste is sensual too. Learn to enjoy the taste, the smell and the texture of the virginal fluid; learn to smell the aroma of a sensual body, it can be a real turn on.
Develop and understand our responses to sound through mindfully feeling the effects that different music and sound have on our state of mind. Learn to enjoy and derive pleasure from the moans and groans of our partner during intimacy.
Learn to see beyond the look and the size of the breast. Learn to feel the sensuality from what we see. Learn to see and feel the differences of a sensually turn-on woman and a cold woman.
The women…
Women are aroused by a good chemistry with men through the five senses. Hence, women need to be totally at ease, relaxed and be ready to receive the pleasure from their partner. No good chemistry can be achieved if the mind is not in the total relaxed state. Hence, learn to leave your work and your problem outside the bedroom before the start of intimacy. A good, safe sensual environment can help to expedite the relaxation process of the mind.
Women need to understand their sensuality well. In the case of ‘F’, the doctor prescribed a program to explore her sensual self; learning to connect her sensual part of her mind to sight, smell, sound, taste and touch through self exploration. If we do not understand ourselves well, and we do not know what are the things that turn us on, so don’t expect others to know. Through the exploration program, ‘F’ was eventually aware of her own desires and sensuality well enough to guide her hubby to achieve what she desired in their sexual intimacy session.
Summary…
In summary, the man has a significant role to play in a fulfilling love making session. Women by Nature are being aroused by good sensual chemistry and contacts. Hence the men need to learn to enjoy and derive pleasure through our fives senses, and leave the sexual intercourse to the grand finale; as for the women, you need to learn to put yourself in a totally relaxed mode to feel what your partner does on you. Feel free to moan and groan to communicate to your partner of your sensual feeling. Learn to relax and enjoy the journey of intimacy rather than focus on the performance and worrying about not having an orgasm.
Lastly, should the title be Sensual healing or Sexual healing….
“Women who feel prettier may be more likely to cheat”. This is an article published in the newspaper, The Straits Time, on January 16, 2009.
The author, Grace Chua, wrote that WOMEN with high levels of a key sex hormone look and feel prettier, and could be more prone to cheating on their partners, says a study done by a researcher currently teaching at Singapore Management University (SMU).
The effect of oestrogen…
The sex hormone in the study, oestradiol, is a form of oestrogen, which has been linked to greater fertility. For instance, women dress more provocatively when oestrogen levels are highest, near ovulation when they are most fertile, said Dr Norman Li, a co-author of the study.
High levels of oesterogens are also linked to outward signs like larger breasts, attractive faces and curvier figures.
A study was published online this week in the journal Biology Letter. They concluded that such highly fertile women “are especially motivated to be acquainted with other, presumably more desirable men” in a strategy of “trading-up’.
Why women commit adultery…
“Why women commit adultery?” is another article I came across in the internet on the similar issue.
I tend to agreed with the author that when women are forced to cheat; the society and the men have a responsibility for that situation too.
Cheating among modern women is as common as it is among men, which is contrary to what used to happen just two decades ago.
In the ancient times…
Starting from the ancient times, men in many cultures have considered it as their prerogative to have some kind of extra-marital relationship. The practice was so widely prevalent among men in some macho cultures that their wives even supported it in a subtle manner so that family life was not disturbed. There were reports that when Japanese and German men would travel to Thailand and the Philippines on so-called sex tours, their wives would even include condoms in their suitcases so that they would at least have protection.
In the 90s…
Since the 90s, things have changed in the sense that a lot of the married women now have extra-marital affairs assisted by the Internet. This has been going on very quietly throughout the world in the same manner that it goes on for men. There are websites, clubs and hotels that would oblige and actually make it easy for these bold women to engage in extra-marital relations. And of course, if you do happen to see your neighbor in one of those situations, you keep it to yourself since you might try it soon or are already trying it.
Why women behave this way today…
Why women behave the way they behave today…? Is it due to the quest of women equal-right movement? Or is it that the sex drives for women have gone up due to human evolution? Or women these days are more curious and well informed in the internet era? Or is it something else that we don’t really understand…
It is a complex issue where many experts are still trying to understand. Let us leave the scientific and psychology part to the experts. I think it is much easier to understand if we look at this issue from the behavioural and the past cultural standpoint.
What is adultery…
The definition of adultery is consensual sexual intercourse with a partner that is not your husband or wife. According to the 2003 United Nations World Fertility Reports, 89% of all women and men get married by the age of 49. However, not all marriages follow the monogamy rule. Anthropological studies have reported that 80-85% of societies allowed polygamous marriage. It is a well-known fact that the early Mormons practiced Polygamy. However, most men in societies are not able to afford multiple wives so the average societal marriage involves one man and one woman.
Adultery stories have been a part of history since the beginning of time. Adultery is clearly forbidden in the seventh commandment of the Ten Commandments and is punishable by death. Jesus preached that it was a sin. However, in the past, only a married woman engaging in sex with another man was counted as adultery.
It is clear that the scripture itself has no prohibition against singles sex, only what has been added by Church tradition. Adultery is more complex. The Jews understood “Thou shall not commit adultery” very differently than Church tradition. It only applied to men if they had intercourse with someone else’s wife. But it was allowable for a married man to have intercourse with a single woman. Adultery was the sin of “trespassing” on a man’s property. Until marriage, women were the property of their fathers. After marriage, they became the property of their husband.
When we examine laws pertaining to sexual relationships, we have to examine them under Biblical law, and then under Rabbinic law, as the two are not the same.
Inherent inequity in the laws…
We will discover the inherent inequity in the laws, as things that hold for men do not hold for women. For example, according to biblical law, a man was permitted many wives, and concubines (which one could equate with either mistresses or concubines). The only way a man could be an adulterer, under biblical law, was if he had relationships with a MARRIED women (i.e. another man’s property).
Relations with any unmarried women did not constitute adultery for a man. On the other hand, a married woman was an adulteress if she had relations with any man other than her husband. However, it seems that only an adulterous woman was punished after which her husband was then forced to divorce her. An adulterous man, however, could remain married to his wife with impunity.
In today’s context, the practices and cultures of the past seems to incline toward the men. That is to say women in the past can only have one sex partner in their life, whereas the men can have many sex partners so long the partner is single or one of his many wives.
Why was it this way? They could not be stupid and ignorant, as they have built many civilizations before today. I will attempt to view this in the nature’s perspective of men and women are made different.
I want to qualify myself that this is to explain the cultures and practices of the past, and not of any intention to support their practices.
In the olden day, where science is not considered as advance as today, there are many things we do that were deemed impossible in the past. The attritions and reproductions of our human being were left very much to nature and fate.
Hence the cultures and the laws of the past were also took reference to how the men and women are made differently.
Women are the strongest sex…
“Woman, I hold, is the personification of self-sacrifice, but unfortunately, today she does not realize what tremendous advantage she has over man” said Mahatma Gandhi.
Women are the strongest sex in term of human reproduction or sexual behaviours.
Men are made easily aroused by the appearance and the presence of a woman, and the level of sperm in his body. He has to ejaculate frequently in order to keep his mind cool and calm.
The women, on the other hand, only get aroused by closed intimacy through kissing, caressing, licking during foreplay. Nature also made women (unconsciously) more sensual and attractive during the ovulation to attract men for reproduction purposes. This is why women always get many attention from men during their ovulation period.
The Nature’s role for men and women…
Women made many sacrifices in term of reproduction; they have to prepare their womb every month to get ready for the sperms to meet the egg, and to clean it up if it is not used. Once pregnant, women will not have the need for sexual intercourse, and their attention will focus on nurturing the fetus and the young until they are able to take care of themselves.
So most of the married women are kept at home to nurture the young while the men have to go out hunting and be the breadwinner.
Women responsibility will probably slightly ease off when the child is around 5 years old. Based on a family of 3 children, a good 21 years are gone for bearing children. If a woman is married at 20 years old, he should be well into the 40s. She would be very tired by then, and with menopause around the corner, she has no time and desire for sexual exploration anymore.
Reasons for women to explore…
Living in the affluence society today, a sole income from the husband is not enough; coupled with shrinking family size due to advancement of science in contraceptive method, and prolonging of human life, women need to be deployed into the society to work. Thus women today are subjected to many reasons to explore sexual fulfilment outside their marriages, such reasons can be:
· The husband may neglects his family life or is just not able to fulfil the emotional needs of his wife. After several years of marriage, as his wife takes care of the kids and has less time for the husband, the communication between the couple is extremely limited. Reports indicate that once kids are born, many couples do not share the bedroom any more. Dr. Andrew Atwood, the reclaimed author of the book Hopeful Solutions for Sexless Marriage, estimates that as many as 17 million married people in the United States have hardly any physical intimacy.
· Women are exposed to more men during their ovulation period, where women are feeling more sensual and prettier, in the society than in the past.
· Women are subjected to more stresses, as they have to take care of their family, and to put up with their bosses, colleagues and customers at work at the same time.
The figures of cheating married women and divorce are kept in today’s level mainly due to good existing moral values and peer pressure by various religion’s believes and traditions. There is no win-win situation, whereby women of today are subjected to mammoth tasks in balancing work pressure, family pressure, sexual pressure and many external temptations. It is only a matter of time, which she either give-in to the pressure or check-in to the mental hospital.
In summary…
In summary, it is the men and the circumstances in the society that put the women in the situation to explore sexual fulfilment outside their marriage. I will not be surprised that the role and the perspective of sexual behaviours of the men and women will change in near future. The guilt that associated with divorce or cheat, are not healthy to the society and family. This is the issue pertaining to the law of Social Living not the law of Nature; hence, there is no right or wrong but a matter of acceptance by the community. If you are a man, get ready to change our perspective in women sexual behavioir, and be prepared to accept the change when the time comes.
Nature luvr
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