by Rod Harvey, Marketing Manager, Gold Coast, Australia
For about 40 years, I shunned the ‘God’ word – it brought up all sorts of reactions. I saw God through the eyes of the religions I had read about and rejected. I felt embarrassed to be associated with God.
Then I had ‘a change of heart’.
The catalyst was Serge Benhayon from Universal Medicine. Over the last six years I‘ve enjoyed attending Serge’s presentations and found them to be informative and enlightening. Serge presents possibilities: something to take away and ponder on.
I realised that the great religious leaders brought many truths to the world; however those truths were changed and reinterpreted by insecure, possessive and angry men who moulded religion to suit their own purposes.
I recognised how I had metaphorically placed ‘God’ and ‘Religion’ into the same basket, so if one didn’t work for me, then by default the other did not either.
Gradually I considered the possibility that ‘God is Love’ – a theme that appears to be consistent throughout various religious groups and accepted by millions of people around the world. By substituting the word ‘Love’ for ‘God’, I started to open up and break through my barriers.
The concept that ‘God is Love’ was revelatory for my pre-conditioned brain. And that’s where I had been stuck – inside my brain! God is something to ‘feel’ rather than ‘think’ about or ‘study’.
But accessing feelings wasn’t so easy. Because I had shut myself down from feeling deeply, I needed to make changes if I wanted to open up. This meant looking at my choices and taking more care of myself, altering what I ate, drank and improving my sleep. It meant being gentler, more present with what I was doing and making changes to the way I related and expressed to others. It involved unravelling and discarding old beliefs and patterns I had held on to. It meant taking time out to be still, rather than get caught up in distractions that pulled me away from myself.
As I gradually opened up, I found those moments of stillness. Through stillness I connected to my inner heart and a glorious love within… my essence. Within that space I felt divine love and understood that God is always present within me. I realised it was me who had built up the fortress to try to shut God out.
But God is not here to provide for me, blame or fix things up. I still have to take responsibility for the choices I make and I regularly go ‘off track’. Yet if I embody love, all will work out.
I also realised that this connection to love is something we all have within us at all times, even if we have shut it down. It can bind us together in unity.
Religion is not about rituals, clothing, adornments, rules or fear. After all how can there be fear with love?
I now see religion as my personal union and relationship with God, along with being open and loving with others. Simple, personal, all encompassing and loving: that’s my religion. It’s a way of living.
Universal Medicine helped me to open up my heart – the rest was my choice.
Wow, what a turnaround!
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
This is beautiful Rod, connecting with stillness…’Through stillness I connected to my inner heart and a glorious love within… my essence. Within that space I felt divine love and understood that God is always present within me. I realised it was me who had built up the fortress to try to shut God out.’
Ideals and beliefs cause much mayhem in human beings, and in the world.
‘God is Love’, no ifs or buts, pure Divine Love.
Even if we understand God is love, we still need to re-connect back to that love inside of ourselves and live that love to understand the true meaning of God and religion. And the choice is always ours to live with God (in love) or without God (in lovelessness).
I remember seeing ‘God is Love’ on a T-shirt many many years ago, and it really puzzled me. To me ‘love’ was a doing, so I wanted to think it was the language thing, but then I realised that I actually did not know much about neither God nor love.
And don’t forget Truth, especially in these times where corruption seems to be everywhere, and what is the purpose of having Truth if we do not have a True purpose?
It is crazy how we try and shut God out and yet go through life craving love and feeling lost until we choose to reconnect with our inner essence and the love within us all just waiting to be expressed.
My whole life I have held religion as a place of rules and restrictions. I’ve thought that if a person is religious they must obey the book and walk around with their eyes shut. Thank God for Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon who have brought in the question of what if that is not what religion is about? What if there’s much more to our relationship with God, with the Universe and the Stars than we are taught in mainstream religion, science and astrology? What if there is more to life, what if our perception is skewed and needs cracking?
Yes, thank God for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for bringing Love and Truth back into our lives.
“God is something to ‘feel’ rather than ‘think’ about or ‘study’”. I couldn’t agree more Rod. I felt God without putting any labels or conditions on it when I was little. I am so glad that is back, just by me felling/ living in my body rather than my mind.
“As I gradually opened up, I found those moments of stillness. Through stillness I connected to my inner heart and a glorious love within… my essence. And it is through this connection that I re-connected to God, because I realised that God lives within us all, it is not about religion but about true connection.
Through connecting back to our essence we are able to re-connect with God, with Love.
This is a great way to define Religion Rod… ‘Simple, personal, all encompassing and loving….. a way of living’. Nothing awkward, complicated or imposing – direct access to God at all times whenever we choose it.
When we choose to reconnect with our inner essence and God and the knowingness of a true religious way, we discard all the impositions of current religions and simply reflect the love that we are.
And let’s add “equality” – no superiors or go-betweens needed, everyone has equal access to God and Love.
There are so many misconceptions about God that are based on fear but to understand and accept that God is love really opens your eyes to the misinterpretations we have been indoctrinated with in the past.
We have been fed so many falsities about God from main stream religion, it is hardly surprising many of us are/were wary of religion, and God.
(……this connection to love is something we all have within us at all times, even if we have shut it down. It can bind us together in unity. The oneness with and in God.
I guess it will take some time till we rid ourselves from the impact reinterpreted words such as God and Religion has had with us. I grew up with a meaning of God that wasn’t at all true but at that age I didn’t feel I had the authority to claim my version of God since the other version was what everyone else accepted. I think with the application of self love we will slowly claim back what God really means and what being religious truly means as well. That it’s very natural and not at all exclusive to anyone, and you need no degree to know about God, it’s a knowing we are all born with, fully mastered from the word go.
Just like you Rod, “Universal Medicine helped me to open up my heart – the rest was my choice.” It didn’t take long to say yes to open up my heart but when Serge Benhayon first mentioned God, part of me wanted to run. But thankfully there was a much bigger part that wanted to stay as this was what I had been looking for, for what seemed forever. So, I stayed and as a result today, and every day, I celebrate my re-connection to God and to me.
The eyes we use to see God are everything, because either we find him or not.
Those eyes need to be seeing clearly as it is a terrible fact of this world that there are many street sellers hawking their version of God, misshapen and twisted by their own investments and personal agenda.
“Through stillness I connected to my inner heart and a glorious love within… my essence.” – Everything about modern day life seems to distract and lure us away from feeling that stillness that lies within us, waiting to be felt (I know I sure have avoided it) via all of what we are sold is important in life (having fun, exhibiting drive in our work at the expense of our body, being competitive in sports and in school, video games, coffee, energy drinks, etc.). Isn’t it time to ponder on why that may be the case in the first place? Could it be that we are being distracted away from the most important thing of all that will bring us connection with our souls, God, and true purpose in life?
When Universal Medicine presented The Way of The Livingness as a religion I was anxious, having deliberately chosen to leave the Roman Catholic church when I was 18 and having lived most of my adult life as an agnostic. Over the years, I have come to accept God as a fact of life, not so much as a belief, but because it makes sense. I still can’t feel God within but I know that will come as I allow myself to be more still.
Knowing, ‘‘God is Love’’ is supportive in this process.
We are taught about God through pictures and words but it is a feeling.
It makes sense how so many of us have had difficulty relating to God as a concept according to pictures presented by organized religions and as a result rejected Him. He is a multi-dimensional being and a relationship with Him encompasses the physicality and beyond, it is a lived experience.
We are taught about God from a book, and we create images in our heads of what God looks like. We imagine God to be forgiving or angry, and we know that He loves little children. But we are not taught to FEEL God, to connect deep within and feel the presence of God that is in all of us equally.
“God is something to ‘feel’ rather than ‘think’ about or ‘study’.” I loved this line Rod, most of my religious life has been thinking about God, and studying to find God, but with no avail, I had not learnt to feel God, and did not know that God lived within me and that by my gentle breath I could simply connect to him. As my connection deepens so does my sense and love for myself as a divine being grow.
I’ve always known there has to be a God of some sorts, but what life presented by way of picturing God didn’t quite work for me. I refused to believe that there was no God at all. Universal Medicine presented God, as you mentioned by how God feels. This God I understand, as there’s far more understanding when I feel something, rather than mentally visualising it.
As you say Rod, for all of us it “meant being gentler” to start with, and as we were so lost we had to start with what we could handle and that is the Gentle Breath Meditation.
Being more gentle, and delicate, along with being present is always supportive, ‘It meant being gentler, more present with what I was doing’.
“Through stillness I connected to my inner heart and a glorious love within… my essence.” When we connect to the inner stillness of our essence we can feel the Divine love flow through every particle of the body.
Having been bought up in the Catholic faith for many years it was obvious that this religion was designed to crush and reduce you – especially if you are a woman. And now experiencing The Way of The Livingness for many years I can truly say this is a true religion that reminds you and celebrates you as an equal Son of God. I am so blessed to be a part of this religion and for re-connecting back to the truth of God.
Trying to see God through the eyes of established religions is an impossible task even if we try very hard. And, it is not us who fail; the problem lies with the eyes on offer and us saying yes to it and engaging in a pattern of movement that guarantees walking away from God even if we tell ourselves that we are walking towards Him.
I like this line about true religion and love “It can bind us together in unity.” It does naturally so. Is this the answer to our woes?
This is what (in my experience) many religious groups claim to do (with prerequisites however) and yet its the very opposite. That’s because love doesn’t come with a prerequisite.
Through out my life I have prayed to a God that was out there, separate from me, mainly because I was considered a sinner who had to ask forgiveness before God would consider me his child, understanding now that this is not true, it has taken time for me to learn to love myself and to feel worthy of God’s love, as I bring more tender loving care to my body I feel more of this love within me I am starting to feel a deeper sense of my connection to God.
‘God is Love’ and love is who we are. The more I began to develop a loving relationship with who I am, the more I have realised that my relationship with God is inseparable, as we are in fact the sparks of God no less. God is not separate from us, or an unreachable communion that can only be attained through our doing good deeds and death. We can never escape the fact that we are held within the ever-present body of God and that as the fiery sparks that we are we are, through the way we live we represent this vibration. As such a religious life is lived when we surrender to being who we are, through which our Godliness is our natural way of being.
This two-part blog is epic, it really feels like you are writing on behalf of us all. I relate so much to what you have shared. Unfortunately, it’s still a bipolarish situation for me, back and forth about being settled with The God word and feeling ashamed and hoping it doesn’t come up, it all depends how I have been living and who I am sharing it with. It’s great for me to keep reading stuff like this, it keeps opening my heart up even wider.
I too used to feel embarrassed when mentioning the word God as if I was claiming Santa Claus was real. Yet, I would conveniently allow him to appear in my landscape at some occasions to justify my judgment, or to explain away the unexplainable. He never was a full-time presence in my life for a very long time. Even though I always knew there was more to life than meets the eyes, I never allowed God to be that missing piece which actually holds and makes sense of everything, or maybe just did not want to use that word to give Him the full credit. There’s actually quite a bit of stuff there. This feels like the relationship I need to go deeper into honesty with.
It is impossible not to feel God when connected to my inner heart yet I realise I have wanted to separate the two. I have wanted to blame God when the going got tough thinking that if there was a God he would save me yet at the same time knowing it was my responsibility to connect to my inner most and live from my essence. The ideals and beliefs that we think we have overcome can still arise as they are not healed in full, the deeper we go.
I have had an issue with God, because I felt that he didn’t truly exist because if he did then humanity would not treat each other as they do. Through Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I found that God is actually in me to connect to whenever I connect to my inner self, what I was missing was the connection to my inner being.
It’s because humanity treat each other so badly that we know God exists, otherwise we would not question the bad behaviour. We know there is another way to live and be together, and that knowing comes from our connection to God.
Love this sharing Melinda, we do know, we know there is more, and how we live, how the world is today is far from the divinity and love we innately know deep inside.
‘God is something to ‘feel’ rather than ‘think’ about or ‘study’. What you share here Rod is something for me to definitely ponder on….
This description of religion brings with it responsibility for how we are and relate with others. A way of being that brings people together. “I now see religion as my personal union and relationship with God, along with being open and loving with others. Simple, personal, all encompassing and loving: that’s my religion. It’s a way of living.”
This is beautiful Rod. Religion in its truth is so simple, and do so pure, the pathway to our inner most essence.