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Conversations with Dad: Words of Wisdom to Help Raise Your Frequency

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 14:23:35 GMT

Perspective

Growing up, I was aware that my Dad was different. He had a powerful energy about him that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Several of my friends stated that my Dad had a great aura or amazing energy that you could sense when he entered the room, and one of my friends even said my Dad was like the Dalai Lama (The highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism.)

I used to hide the fact that my Dad never had the opportunity to go to school. I tried to protect him and myself because of what other people might think. I feel ashamed and disappointed in myself that I thought that way. The fact is, Dad never cared what others thought of him, but how he saw himself. His life philosophy was much greater than I could imagine.

While sipping our coffee at Dad’s favourite café in a garden centre, enjoying the natural beauty around us:

Dad: You know, life can be simple and joyful if you want it to be.

Me: ...I'm listening ( sipping my coffee ).

Dad: There is a saying "The greatest gift a man can have in this life is a contented mind; contentedness is happiness. (知足常樂)”

Me: Okay…

Dad: Look around, there are so many different types of flowers and trees. So many distinct colours and scents. It's a blessing that we can enjoy our coffee in such beautiful surroundings. When you are content and appreciate what you've got and where you are in life, you can always find happiness.

Me: ( Looking around, admiring all the beautiful nature around us )

Dad: Throughout all these years of working, I've met a lot of people and seen a lot of things. Money is very useful because it makes life easier, takes you places, and enables you to enjoy many experiences. But money can't buy happiness; happiness comes down to your own mindset.

Me: I understand what you mean; money is important as we can't live without it, but certainly money doesn't always fill your heart. Sometimes the pressures of today's fast-paced capitalistic world can be overwhelming.

Dad: Some people are always worried about how others see them and feel the need to act like someone they are not, constantly chasing the next best thing. To me, it's exhausting to live like that.

I don't need to dine at a five-star restaurant, have the biggest house, or have the shiniest cars to be happy. I am who I am. I am content just enjoying my coffee surrounded by this beautiful nature. When you are content, your heart is full. When your heart is full, you feel blessed and happy from within. They go hand in hand.

Me: We need more people like you in this world, Dad.

Dad: You know, it all comes down to perspective and how you view yourself. I remember knowing a guy who had several restaurants when I was younger. He was very wealthy. I remember he was such a nice man too. Something happened to the business, and he had lost a significant amount of money. Even though he still had plenty of money compared to many people, he committed suicide because he couldn't face the reality of feeling like a failure and feared what others may have thought of him.

Me: Oh my, that is so sad…

Dad: It's a mental trap that people can't get out of. The mental trap of how others may perceive you is a total waste of time and energy. We all have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We are all equal, no one has more or less. Why do we want others to approve of us so that we may feel worthy of ourselves? It doesn't make sense. To be honest, everyone is just concerned about their own life and their issues.

Life has its ups and downs, even banks close their doors from time to time. When life offers you a lemon, make lemonade. When you fall, stand up and brush it off; learn from your mistakes and do better the next time.

Expand your vision and challenge yourself to learn. You're responsible for your path. Do the right thing that your heart and your conscience leads you to.

Success is not determined by how much money you make or the admiration you receive from others. To me, success is defined by one's strength, resilience, and integrity to do the right thing. Even if you experience certain setbacks or crises, you have the inner power to overcome and face life again. And this time, you’re stronger and wiser.

(This post is an excerpt from my book Conversations With Dad Pages 34–37)

Not for the Faint-Hearted Spiritual Awakening

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 14:05:36 GMT

I’m not going to lie - spiritual awakening isn’t easy. It’s not for the faint-hearted, and once it starts, there’s no turning away.

What you once believed was important begins to shift. The layers of your personality that helped you survive, belong, or please others slowly start to fall away. Suddenly, life feels different, and questions you never asked yourself before begin to surface.

For a long time, many of us believed that a “good life” was something that looked right on paper - the perfect relationship, a comfortable home, financial security, success, status, and even how many likes we get on social media. We chased approval and validation, convinced that this was happiness.

But awakening doesn’t follow the rules we’ve been taught. It isn’t about eating more raw vegetables, adopting spiritual rituals, or living the “spiritual lifestyle” on the surface. Those things can be helpful, but they are not where awakening truly begins.

Spiritual awakening begins quietly, at your core, as you recognize the deeper truth you’ve always carried but may never have noticed.

In our younger years, we explore, experiment, build friendships, chase excitement, and make mistakes. That stage matters. It shapes us and gives us context for life. But as we grow older and step into adulthood - with responsibilities, relationships, losses, and real-life challenges - something deeper begins to stir. A quieter question starts to surface:

Is this really all there is?

Awakening can emerge through grief, trauma, illness, a near-death experience, or a persistent inner calling that cannot be ignored. Sometimes it arrives through depression, forcing us to finally turn inward.

When my dad passed away, he took his last breath in my arms - the world stopped. Amid unbearable pain, as I struggled to process my grief, I entered a dark tunnel and sank into a deep silence, unsure if I would ever find the light again. Something inside me woke up, and a question rose that I couldn’t ignore:

What is life?

In the days that followed, I asked myself whether I was truly living and whether I was being honest with myself. The answer was confronting - not fully. That realization is why I’m doing what I feel called to do now, sharing what feels true, what has moved through me, and what I continue to learn along the way. Sometimes that calling comes through my book, sometimes through writing like this, and sometimes through quiet, honest conversations with people who feel guided to talk.

Through my book especially, my hope is that people can find comfort in their grief - to feel less alone, and to discover that grief itself can become a doorway. A doorway back to their inner voice, and often the first step toward recognizing the deeper truth we carry within us.

We are not as limited as we were taught to believe. Our inner divinity has always existed, waiting to be seen. And while love may change form, it does not end when a body does.

If my words help even one person feel supported as they move through loss, then the pain I walked through carries meaning.

I’m not sharing because I have everything figured out. I’m sharing because awakening changed me, and because stories help us find each other.

In quieter moments, you begin to hear your own deeper knowing - your true voice. It isn’t loud, but it’s steady. Following intuition isn’t always easy, because your ego instinctively resists what feels foreign or unfamiliar. Yet in the silence, your inner guidance often points the way, bringing a sense of alignment that logic alone can’t explain.

Many of the labels we carry didn’t come from truth. They came from people speaking from fear, unhealed patterns, or inherited beliefs. Often it isn’t obvious; it shows up as backhanded comments or subtle remarks that leave you questioning yourself.

Awakening isn’t about rejecting your life. It’s about noticing the beliefs, fears, and expectations you carry. Once you see them clearly, they lose their power. Your inner guidance acts like a small lamp along a dark path - you may not see the whole road ahead, but it shows you the next step. And when you take that first step, your soul often helps you move further than you expected, quietly confirming that you are on the right path.

We are not just humans moving through routines. We are souls evolving, remembering, and growing. Cultural standards shift, definitions of success change, and roles come and go. Instead of reshaping yourself to fit the world, the invitation is to return to the truth that already lives within you.

When you live from that place, life becomes more authentic, and peace begins to grow.

A friend once shared something that stayed with me. Imagine yourself at the very end of your life, when a Catholic priest gently asks:

Do you have any regrets?

That question isn’t always about what we did. Often, it’s about what we never allowed ourselves to live or fully express. Awakening invites us not to wait until the end, to ask ourselves now - where we are holding back, where we are living more for others than for our soul, and what part of us is ready to live in fullness.

Spiritual awakening isn’t about throwing your life away. It’s about learning to live it more consciously, gently, and authentically. When you remember who you really are, you begin to see that what matters most isn’t how your life appears from the outside.

What matters is how deeply you live, how genuinely you love, and how truthfully you walk your path.

And that is enough.

Inner Pilgrimage

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 17:29:28 GMT

Pause for a quiet moment and look inward - what is the landscape of your heart today?

As humans, we experience a wide range of emotions, happiness, joy, and peace, that makes us feel alive, connected, and on top of the world. Yet we live in a world of duality, where light and shadow coexist. Without sadness, we would not truly understand happiness. Without discomfort, peace would have no meaning. We welcome happiness with open arms, but when anxiety, disconnection, sadness, or unease arise, we often respond with resistance or self-criticism. These emotions are not flaws. They are simply part of being human.

So often, we carry emotions quietly, without fully realizing how deeply they shape the way we see the world and respond to what unfolds around us. Some emotions carry stories, influenced not only by the present moment but by what we have lived, learned, and absorbed along the way. When we slow down and allow ourselves to observe them, we may discover that they are not here to be fixed or pushed away, but simply to be seen, recognized, and understood. By doing so, they begin to reveal their influence on the reality we experience.

Our inner landscape shapes our outer reality.

To transform the dynamics of our lives, we must first transmute our inner thoughts and energy. Like attracts like. This is a universal law, as natural as the tides of the ocean and as inevitable as leaves falling in their season. Humans are energy, and what we feel is what we manifest.

To live in alignment with this truth, we must attend to our emotions with gentle awareness. They carry subtle vibrations that shape our reality far more than we often realize. Observing emotions and their patterns is not just noticing - it is a form of conscious, deliberate living. This journey of self-observation and understanding is what I call an inner pilgrimage.

Tracing the Roots of Your Feelings

Inner pilgrimage begins by turning inward and asking:

Why do I feel this way? Exploring the emotion itself
What is this emotion trying to show me?
Why am I responding like this? Exploring my learned responses to the emotion
Where might this response come from?

Two people can hear the same words and experience them differently. Meaning is shaped by our inner lens, memory, sensitivity, conditioning, and lived experience. Many of our emotional patterns and responses are not consciously chosen. They are learned, shaped by family dynamics, culture, and early survival patterns. We learn how to handle conflict, how to express discomfort, whether to stay quiet, endure, or react. Often, we do not question these patterns. We simply repeat them, like cooking a dish the way it has always been passed down through generations.

Inner pilgrimage invites a gentler curiosity

Is this emotional pattern or response truly mine, or is it something I learned along the way
And if it was learned, can it now be softened, reshaped, or released

Allowing Emotions to Flow

When emotions feel heavy, there is wisdom in pausing and asking, how can I alchemize this feeling? As humans, we are intelligent and resilient beings. Life does not require us to live as victims of circumstance or be defeated by situations. Even in pain, there is choice, not always in what happens, but in how we meet it. When we raise our perspective, we remember that we are not just living our story, we are writing it.

I still remember the moment my father passed away. A part of me died inside; the pain was unbearable, and each breath was a struggle. While I was unravelling, my mother was steady and composed, carrying a strength I could not yet reach, even as she grieved in her own way and time. She was quietly holding everything together.

I went into her room, where the remnants of my father’s belongings echoed the nostalgic and deep sorrow I felt inside me. I sat on the edge of her bed and broke down, sobbing, unable to understand how she was still standing. I asked her how she could do it. She looked at me with soft, tear-filled eyes and said:

“When life throws things at you, you face them. Even when it is hard and painful, you still need to live.”

In that moment, my restless, exhausted mind finally paused. In the quiet between us, I saw my mother’s soft, grieving figure, and I realized that her strength was not a mask, not a holding back, but a presence that allowed grief and emotion to move freely through her. I understood then that my mother is one of the strongest and bravest women I know, and I felt a deep admiration for the quiet beauty she carries within her.

When discouragement or difficult emotions arise, sometimes all that’s needed is a subtle shift in mindset and a gentle turn inward. It could be writing, talking with someone you trust, or sitting in silence to allow feelings to move through us rather than remain stored in the body. Like clouds drifting across an open sky, emotions shift when we give them space. The body softens, the mind clears, and balance begins to return without force.

Taking Ownership of Your Inner Pilgrimage

Inner pilgrimage is a sacred space you can return to at any time, even in the middle of a busy day. It begins with the simple act of checking in and asking, How do I feel, really? If today feels heavy, that’s okay. There is nothing that needs to be fixed or pushed away. Thoughts and emotions are part of being human. Each time we meet them with mindful attention and compassion, we take the first step in freeing ourselves from the mental loops that keep us stuck and creating space for clarity and understanding. With each mindful step, strength becomes wisdom, and pain becomes discernment.

As we become more conscious of our inner world, we also become more mindful of how we express it outwardly. Words reflect the inner landscape we carry within. Spoken with awareness, words can uplift, soothe, and heal. Spoken unconsciously, they can just as easily wound, leaving marks we may never see. This, too, is part of the inner pilgrimage, paying attention not only to what we feel, but to how we give it voice.

Change starts within. Own your inner pilgrimage.

Moon

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 13:03:27 GMT

Once, a wise man said to me, “Isn’t it amazing that we can see another planet in the sky - the Moon, while we live on a planet called Earth? There are so many planets and galaxies, and we’re living in just one of them. If you think about it, we are part of this universe.”

Somehow, that comment has stayed with me ever since, as though it has been sitting in a holding tank inside me, waiting for something to bubble up.

Who are we, really?

Most of us are born into a world where beliefs, expectations, and patterns are already in place, waiting for us to absorb them from the moment we arrive. Our families, cultures, languages, and religions shape the way we see the world. Social and economic trends define what is considered “normal” at any given time. All of these layers build our belief systems and eventually the identity we think of as us.

But are we really who we think we are?

Throughout time, humans have searched for answers, not only to survive, but to give their lives depth, purpose, and meaning.

Across history, religions have offered guidance on who we are and how we should live. Their teachings were meant to help us lead better lives, promising reward for good actions and punishment for wrongdoing. For many, they provided structure, order, and a moral compass. Yet over time, some in positions of authority within these traditions used their power to influence practices and interpretations.

As societies grew more complex and people sought meaning in new ways, the Industrial Revolution brought a belief that more is better, that material wealth could make us happy. Money can make life easier and allow us to experience extraordinary things. Yet even with all that, depression is widespread. Conflicts between nations continue. Families fall apart. Poverty persists.

Then came one of the strangest times in modern history, the COVID pandemic. We treated each other as deadly virus carriers, where even a touch or a breath could kill. Some attacked those who refused the vaccinations, deepening rifts between friends and families. Right and wrong became sharply divided. We were forced indoors, and much of the world seemed to stop.

In the middle of that chaos, many of us began looking inward. A small voice inside started whispering again, or for some, perhaps for the first time, asking how we want to live, who we truly are, and why we are here. Some people began to recognize, with conscious awareness, the influences and patterns that had long shaped their lives. Quietly, a new movement was emerging - a collective pause, a rare stillness for humanity to observe itself.

Now when I look at the Moon, it feels like a quiet invitation to look deeper, something I can sense but cannot fully describe. Something stirs, a feeling that is distant yet familiar and mysterious, a mix of the reachable and unreachable, the known and the mysterious.

It reminds me of the wise man’s words - even as we live on one planet among so many, we are part of this vast universe.

We humans have always searched for the meaning of life, seeking to understand who we are. Will we find the answer this time? We don’t know. But perhaps the most important thing is that something has stirred within us, a sense that we are more than we realize. And maybe that is the point, the beginning.

Who are we, really?

Montserrat: Seeing Through the Clouds

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 13:01:40 GMT

Walking up to Sant Jeroni in Montserrat, I was met with a breathtaking sight — a thick blanket of cloud spread across the mountains, so vast it felt as though I was standing in heaven itself. It was mystical, and at the same time grounding — where I could sense clearly: we are part of something greater. We are not separate, we are One.

Through the cloud I could see the towns, the roads, even tiny cars moving below — the rhythm of life. The contrast touched me deeply: the mystical above and the ordinary below. Heaven and earth layered together. It spoke to me about duality — the same kind we carry in our own inner world.

From the mountaintop, everything felt lighter, clearer. Perspective came naturally, almost without effort. But I realised that when we are “down there” — in the density of everyday life — problems can feel overwhelming, consuming all of our attention.

Later that night, over dinner in Montserrat with a new friend, the reflection grew deeper. She didn’t speak Chinese, but she asked me if it was true that the word “crisis” in Chinese is also “opportunity.” I was intrigued by the timing of her question and explained:

危 (wēi) means crisis or danger

機 (jī) means opportunity, or chance

Together, they hold a paradox: within every crisis lies the seed of opportunity.

Her question felt like an echo of what Montserrat had already shown me through the clouds.

Life will always bring moments that feel unbearable — too much to carry. What if, by lifting our perspective to a higher place or even just pause for a moment, we could see differently? Maybe then, life wouldn’t feel quite so heavy. Crisis is not only an ending; it can also be a doorway. Sometimes, all it takes is a small shift in perspective to change how we feel.

Someone with quiet, subtle wisdom once said, “Flip it,” and it sparked something in me. It means making a conscious choice to shift your mindset — to turn a negative thought, feeling, or situation into something positive. The moment we flip it, the energy shifts instantly. The negative spiral begins to lose its grip — the light finds its way in.

It’s a simple but powerful reminder I carry with me: flip it.

Montserrat: A Mountain of Spirit and Silence

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 12:58:28 GMT

Not far from Barcelona, the sacred mountain of Montserrat rises with its unusual peaks and timeless presence. For centuries, people have come here—pilgrims, seekers, wanderers. Some arrive for the views, some for the monastery, but most of us soon realise there’s something deeper waiting to be felt.

Montserrat is not just a place you visit—it’s a place that touches you. Among the busy footsteps of tourists, there’s another rhythm, a quiet invitation to slow down, to listen, and to meet your own soul again.

I was very lucky to stay as a guest at the monastery. Life there moves gently between prayer, silence, and simplicity. After a while, the noise of the outside world softened, and a different sound began to rise inside me—one that felt clearer, more honest.

And then came the bells. The way they carry through the valley, echoing off the mountains, does something you can’t quite put into words. With every strike, it’s as though something inside you stirs awake—a memory, a longing, a truth that has always been there. The sound feels like an ancient language, speaking straight to the heart, whispering a gentle question: can you hear your own soul?

The monks live quietly, gently showing that the path isn’t about striving or becoming more—it’s about returning to what has always been within. In their presence, I felt love, acceptance, and the simplicity of being at peace with myself.

Montserrat leaves you with a question: Can you see the beauty of your own soul? In the stillness of the mountains, in the echo of the bells, the answer comes—soft, but steady: yes, it has been here all along.

Lighting a Candle at Montserrat

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 12:52:31 GMT

Whenever I visit a sacred place, I light a candle. It’s such a small act, yet it feels full of meaning. Here at Montserrat, surrounded by centuries of prayer, the flames remind me that love and spirit continue beyond time and space.

Today I lit a candle for my Dad. Even though he has left his physical body, his love never dies — it still lives through me. Love transcends space and time, and the flame becomes a way to honour that eternal bond.

As I walk these old stone steps, I think of how many people have walked here before me — pilgrims, families, seekers. Each left something behind. This is what lineage feels like to me: the wisdom, love, and strength passed from one generation to the next, from one soul to another.

Lighting a candle is more than remembering. It is a sacred act, woven into the heart of life. A gentle call to pause in the middle of everything, to remember, to give thanks, and to carry the light forward.