Dr. Louis Koster is a distinguished humanitarian who served for over ten years as a medical doctor for Doctors Without Borders. He worked in the war zones of Bosnia, the Sudan, Angola, Liberia and with Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and Cuban refugees in Guantanamo Bay. For his humanitarian efforts, Dr. Koster has received numerous awards and has appeared on radio and TV. For the past decade, he has practiced medicine in Australia.
Visit the author online at www.louiskoster.com/book
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I was blessed with a speech impediment when I was seven years old that ultimately brought me on a path of higher awareness. The design of stuttering is that of a silent entrapment. Speech is very complex. When you get entangled in something our natural response is to resist, which only reinforces the entrapment. For me this exemplifies the way people live their lives. My speech became an issue, when I took on what other people said of me, and I sentenced myself to being a stutterer. Now my life became about not being a stutterer. My life became about avoiding situations, where I could be “exposed” as a stutterer. The solutions I brought to the stuttering did not set me free from it, but actually aggravated the problem. Not only did my solutions aggravate the problem, it removed me further from the true sense of who I was. I believe that when we define ourselves inside of an “I am”, that this is at the expense of our sense of presence—we forget who we really are. We then lose our reference to life. When you are consumed by your issues, you lose your presence, and you now have lost your reference to know what makes you happy. This is where we believe that happiness lives outside of ourselves, and we live a life of ambition, never really being fulfilled. We get lost in the busyness of life, and at some point we wake up, wondering what has happened to us.
I believe that a commitment to being happy, no matter what brings us back home again to being, since happiness and joy are our true nature. This commitment reminds you of who you are, and aligns you to your true nature. Making this commitment tells you what you need to discover about yourself to be present again to the joy of life.
What made you first decide to become a writer?
I had a series of experiences that grabbed me, and when I made the choice to be happy, no matter what, I started to keep a journal to record my experiences. I started to notice a pattern, which I came to distinguish as the Pearls of Wisdom, which I describe in the book. I don’t identify myself so much as being a writer. I started writing at a young age, as another way of expressing myself, since my speech was a problem at that time.
Writing comes to me naturally as an exploration of life. It is a way of capturing something that lives for me, that is germinating, and wants to come to awareness, ready to be expressed. Writing for me is coming to clarity, and reaching another level of expanding myself inside of life, a new understanding. This expanded awareness and new level of clarity is what I love about writing and lights me up.
Tell us about A New Language For Life: Happy No Matter What!
A New Language for Life: Happy No Matter What! is an inspirational guide to personal freedom and long-lasting happiness.
Using A New Language for Life as a guide will help you defeat depression, stress, unhappiness, and even ordinary daily moods. A New Language for Life is for anyone who wants more peace and joy from life.
I was humbled by my experiences. There is no other way of saying it. I felt entrapped by the circumstances of my life at some point in my life, and I realized that there was nowhere else to go in the world, and that something in the way I viewed the world that had to change. This was my defining moment. I realized that if I considered life as fundamentally good, I may as well trust what was occurring in my life as fundamentally good, rather than condemning it. I made then and there a commitment to be happy and content, no matter what the circumstances of my life were. This commitment became a passage of awakening and higher awareness that allowed me to transcend the circumstances of my life and reclaim my capacity to manifest my life. I then became willingly compelled to share this message of awakening and inner peace with others.
What are the three stages of awakening and what do they mean?
The first stage of awakening is getting a taste of being. This is where you distinguish being as the true sense of who you are versus the things that you identify with.
The second stage of awakening is where you transform you current reality by bringing this new awareness of being to your current experiences of life. Life no longer occurs in a language that is accusatory, but in a language of allowing.
The third stage of awakening is where you transcend your current reality, and duality of existence no longer lives as a condition in which we live, but as a mode from which we think. This is the stage, where we truly awaken to the oneness of life.
Is it difficult for those who have dealt with a great deal of hurt to trust that life is fundamentally good?
I know exactly what you are referring to when you ask me this question. I recognize the pain, the confusion, the hurt when something happens that is totally unexpected, and is a serious interruption of our lives as we know it. When you take on the premise that life is fundamentally good, and trust life, it gives you the permission, the courage, and the strength to be open to the experience, although that experience is not necessarily what you wanted in your life. Contentment in this context may just mean a willingness to experience something fully.
This also opens up the question: “If I trust life, and say that life is fundamentally good, then “why me?” “Why did this happen to me?” Speaking to this question, I do not have the answer. But it opens up for me a more fundamental question, or inquiry into the mystery of life. If I am willing to relate to this question as an open question, if I can be at peace with not knowing the answer, then this may just open up another dimension to me.
The other aspect of this question is: There is something about the design of life that when you somehow come at peace with your circumstances, we then bring ourselves to a place, where we are not only more effective, but we regain our sense of presence, which embodies the true sense of who we are. This is what ultimately makes all the difference. There is no power in accusatory language, i.e. a language of fault-finding, complaining, shoulds, or musts. In reclaiming our sense of presence, we reclaim the power of our language, and our ability to manifest our lives as we are, i.e. as our true intentions.
I believe that a lot of human suffering, in particular the persistence of it—when our primary needs are met—is due to how we relate to our changing circumstances, and how as a consequence we view ourselves.
How does being a guardian of the planet Earth impact happiness?
I assume you speak to the wisdom of the indigenous people that I mentioned in the book. I hold them as the guardians of an ancient wisdom that teaches us about the oneness of life.
Happiness occurs as a natural phenomenon when we have the experience of connectedness with all human beings and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Happiness occurs in the space of being one with life.
I believe that happiness is neither found within, or without, i.e. neither inside nor outside of us. Happiness occurs when we have left behind us the state of division and separateness that we bring to our experience of life; when we have transcended the duality of existence—which includes the illusion of the “I”—and we recognize that our true nature is found in the awareness of oneness of being and oneness of life.
The indigenous people of the world are the carriers of this wisdom.
What is one thing you hope readers will take away from this book?
The book gives the reader a foundation that they can trust themselves, and can trust life. This may give the reader a new perspective; one that allows for more peace in their lives, and that they are the agents of their own destiny.
Where can readers purchase a copy of your book?
Readers can purchase the book in every book store. It is available everywhere. You can also order it online with Amazon, B&N, and other online bookstores.
What is up next for you?
A New Language for Life basically is a series with a potential endless list of titles. A New Language for Life is an ever-evolving conversation, since life is evolving continuously, and there is always more to say.
I finished recently the draft of three manuscripts with the titles, A New Language for Life and Relationships, A New Language for Life and the Way of Oneness, and A New Language for Life and Manifesting. Currently I am working on a draft with the title A New Language for Life and The Art of Living, which is a practical guide that teaches people life skills in how to experience enduring happiness and peace in the face of life’s daily challenges. I think this book will be very contributing to a lot of people who are searching for a practical, common sense guide to managing their life from the perspective of a higher awareness.
Is there anything you would like to add?
I found the questions you asked me very contributing. It gave me the opportunity to discover some new aspects of the book, the writing process, and life itself that I did not notice before. Thank you!
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2012 Virtual Tour Itinerary
for
A New Language For Life: Happy No Matter What!
by
Louis Koster
October 13
October 14
October 15
October 16
October 16 - October 29
October 17
October 18
October 19
October 22
Interview at Alpha Chick
October 23
October 24
October 25
October 26
October 28
October 29
October 30 – November 12
October 31
November 1
November 2
November 5
November 6
November 7
November 8
November 9
November 12
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