Category: Spirituality

Road accident victim reveals pain of living as a tetraplegic

Yvonne Tsui and Paggie Leung
Nov 17, 2009

“It takes me more courage to survive than to die,” Lok Wai-kin, a former firefighter who has been a tetraplegic since a road accident in 2004, said outside the Court of First Instance yesterday.

Lok made the painful summation of how difficult his life was after reaching an out-of-court settlement on a HK$42.56 million claim against the driver and the owner of the car that ran into his motorcycle on Route Twisk in February 2004, leaving him paralysed from the neck down.

Lok, now 34, sustained severe injuries that left him in a coma for two days from which he awoke to find he could only move his head and shrug his shoulders, with no control or feeling over any other part of his body.

After three years in hospital, Lok still requires 24-hour care and a home that can house his bulky wheelchair and a gurney upon which he lies to shower.

“I wanted a mercy killing,” said Lok outside court yesterday, recalling days spent lying in a hospital bed. “All I could do was stare at the ceiling. You better save your tears for when someone is there because otherwise they just hurt your eyes.”

When asked if he was married, he replied: “Almost.” He said he let his girlfriend, aged 25 at the time, go because he thought a life with him would be so unfair to her. He has since lost contact with her.

Lok also lost his job.

“I wanted to be a fireman so badly that I sat for the recruitment tests twice before I was enrolled,” he said.

But he said he had not given up on life. “I can no longer save people, but I can talk to people,” he said. “I tell people my story and show them how they should treasure their lives.

“I have to live and this requires more courage [than dying]. If I died, I would not have to face so many problems. [If] I can survive like this, those who are healthy and able should treasure their lives.”

Lok filed his claim for damages against driver Chow Shing-woon and car owner Chow Shing-kai in 2007. The two defendants were adjudged liable to pay damages on February 23, 2007.

An out-of-court settlement was reached on the amount of damages yesterday but it is to remain confidential. It is, however, believed to be one of the largest such settlements in Hong Kong’s legal history.

Lok’s barrister, Andrew S.Y. Li, yesterday asked Recorder Benjamin Yu SC to approve the settlement.

“For [Lok], it has been an arduous journey to get to this point,” Li said. “Although he realises that whatever compensation he may get, he will never get his previous life back, he wants society to know that if you drive carelessly or recklessly, like the defendant in this case, it may not affect your own life but you may wreck the life of another person.”

Chow Shing-woon had been convicted of careless driving and fined HK$1,200, the lawyer said in court.

Yu approved the settlement.

Insurance firms pay at least some damages in most such cases, lawyers said, and the driver might also be liable for compensation.

Under the Motor Vehicles Insurance (Third Party Risks) Ordinance, a driver must be insured for third-party death or injury. Third-party liability for such accidents in Hong Kong is capped at HK$100 million. In addition to compulsory coverage for third-party bodily injury and death, a portion of that sum may be applied to third-party property losses.

Lost Tribe – Gamemaster (Signum Remix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-UZoRpW-d0One of the best trance songs ever, from the 1999 album, Deeper Shades of Hooj.

Embracing the Goddess energy within yourselves
Will bring all of you to a new understanding and value of life
A vision that inspires you to live and love on Planet Earth
Like a priceless jewel, buried in dark layers of soil and stone
Earth radiates her brilliant beauty, into the caverns of space and time
Perhaps you are aware of those who watch over your home
And experience it as a place to visit and play with reality
You are becoming aware of yourself
As a Gamemaster

Imagine earth restored to her real beauty
Steady trees seems to brush the deep blue sky
The clouds billow to form the majestic peaks
The songs of birds fill the air
Create a symphony on symphony
The Goddess is calling for an honouring of what she allows to be created through the form of strength and blood
Those who own our planet, are learning about love

Chivalry

When examining medieval literature, chivalry can be classified into three basic but overlapping areas:

1. Duties to countrymen and fellow Christians: this contains virtues such as mercy, courage, valor, fairness, protection of the weak and the poor, and in the servant-hood of the knight to his lord. This also brings with it the idea of being willing to give one’s life for another’s; whether he would be giving his life for a poor man or his lord.

2. Duties to God: this would contain being faithful to God, protecting the innocent, being faithful to the church, being the champion of good against evil, being generous and obeying God above the feudal lord.

3. Duties to women: this is probably the most familiar aspect of chivalry. This would contain what is often called courtly love, the idea that the knight is to serve a lady, and after her all other ladies. Most especially in this category is a general gentleness and graciousness to all women.

Atheists and the Stock Market – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb’s exposition of the Ludic fallacy:

“We love the tangible, the confirmation, the palpable, the real, the visible, the concrete, the known, the seen, the vivid, the visual, the social, the embedded, the emotional laden, the salient, the stereotypical, the moving, the theatrical, the romanced, the cosmetic, the official, the scholarly-sounding verbiage, the pompous Gaussian economist, the mathematicized crap, the pomp, the Academie Francaise, Harvard Business School, the Nobel Prize, dark business suits with white shirts and Ferragamo ties, the moving discourse, and the lurid. Most of all we favor the narrated.

Alas, we are not manufactured, in our current edition of the human race, to understand abstract matters — we need context. Randomness and uncertainty are abstractions. We respect what has happened, ignoring what could have happened. In other words, we are naturally shallow and superficial — and we do not know it. This is not a psychological problem; it comes from the main property of information. The dark side of the moon is harder to see; beaming light on it costs energy. In the same way, beaming light on the unseen is costly in both computational and mental effort.”

The 10 Levels of Healing

The 10 Levels of Healing

1. Awareness: Identifying with victim behavior.

2. Commitment to change old patterns and begin to practice healing tools.

3. Step by step, you begin to see results of using the tools.

4. You are now processing and integrating new insights while releasing old patterns.

5. The determination becomes stronger to create more balance in your life.

6. Increased awareness of your ability to manifest the life you deserve.

7. Self-worth expands and grows significantly.

8. You have stopped creating dramas and have drawn in mentors.

9. Confidence in handling life’s lessons.

10. Experience more pleasure, happiness, delight, clarity, and peace, in your daily life now.

~ Lori Rekowski

Vedanta

Vedanta is a spiritual tradition explained in the Upanishads that is concerned with the self-realisation by which one understands the ultimate nature of reality (Brahman) and teaches the believer’s goal is to transcend the limitations of self-identity and realize one’s unity with Brahman. Vedanta which implies “the end of all knowledge” – by definition is not restricted or confined to one book and there is no sole source for Vedantic philosophy. Vedanta is based on immutable spiritual laws that are common to religions and spiritual traditions worldwide. Vedanta as the end of knowledge refers to a state of self-realisation, attainment, or cosmic consciousness. Historically and currently Vedanta is understood as a state of transcendence and not as a concept that can be grasped by the intellect alone.

In the Bhagvad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, “It is better to follow your own calling imperfectly than follow another’s perfectly. If death should come while following your own path, this is surely better than living with the fear and anguish of following a false path.” (3:35)

Shantideva: Far-reaching Mental Stability

(10) One moment, they’re friends;
In an instant, they’re enemies.
At a time for being delighted, they fall into a rage:
Ordinary beings are so difficult to please.

(11) Told what’s of benefit, they get enraged
And cause me to turn from what’s of benefit too.
But, if their words aren’t listened to,
They fall into a rage and go, then, to a worse rebirth state.

(12) They’re envious of superiors, competitive with equals,
Arrogant toward inferiors, conceited when praised,
And hateful when told what they don’t want to hear:
When is there benefit from infantile beings?

(13) If I associate with infantile people,
Then destructive behavior inevitably arises among infantile folk,
Such as praising myself and belittling others,
And prattling on about the pleasures of samsara.

(14) From entrusting myself to others in this way,
Nothing but loss comes about in the end,
For they’ll be, in fact, no-good for me
And I’ll be, in fact, no-good for them.

(15) So let me flee far away from infantile folk;
But if encountered, I’ll please them with pleasantries,
And without becoming overly familiar,
I’ll conduct myself nicely, merely as an ordinary person would.