When I was a child I was raised with a Christian belief, an evangelical and baptised catholic. My father wasn’t an active catholic but I could feel the destructive behaviours he used. As a consequence of his catholic upbringing he acted often out of guilt and shame. And so his decisions for himself and our family members did not stem from love.
My mother was raised evangelical, and my grandmother, a dedicated and ‘good’ Christian. Their Christian belief seemed to give them a comfort somehow, and a feeling that they were ok and life was ok.
In contrast to my father, my grandmother and mother were more consistent in their belief… they went regularly to church and seemed to be more balanced and harmonious within themselves. So my learning was that the evangelical system was good and the catholic was difficult. As a consequence, the different belief systems created separation in the family – not in an open battle, but very hidden, and constantly harming.
In my striving to also become a good Christian, I pushed myself to believe what my family and the church members believed. I wanted to be one of them, to belong to the church group and receive acceptance and recognition.
As part of my Christian belief and upbringing, I was taught that God was a being outside of me and I needed to ‘be good’ to win his love… and I needed ‘to do’ something in order to earn his love.
I was looking for security – to be accepted in heaven and on earth. The problem was that the secure feeling, “now I’m ok and accepted”, only appeared in short moments. My feeling of insecurity remained and even got worse.
On the other hand I had a deep connection to something true within me:
I had a different understanding of God… and one that did not always match the Christian belief I was raised in…
It never made sense for me that Jesus was not married. My feeling was that God loves everybody equally and that his love is not restricted to those who believe that Jesus is the only way.
I had and still have a deep connection to nature where I feel the reflection of God always – in contradiction of finding him only in a church.
Feeling so differently to what the Christian belief system was telling me gave me the impression I was strange. Thus my searching in the outside instead of trusting myself made life more complicated; I felt torn into two pieces. To not feel whole was a normal state for me.
Through choosing to constantly not trust me and my inner feelings, and instead to trust in something else which is not me, I ended up being ill.
My body was hard and numb and I felt very frustrated and exhausted.
At that time I came to know Universal Medicine.
The presentations of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon have allowed me to re-connect to myself. I have begun to trust my inner feelings once more. I have started to connect back with myself. My body has now recovered and I am learning to feel deeper and deeper who I am in truth.
I am constantly becoming more and more aware of what is truly going on and thus make choices out of love. This way of living creates feelings of joy, richness and preciousness in my body.
By Kerstin Salzer, Germany
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The Truth about Universal Medicine 
“As part of my Christian belief and upbringing, I was taught that God was a being outside of me and I needed to ‘be good’ to win his love… and I needed ‘to do’ something in order to earn his love.” Wow, this is in direct contrast to the truth I now know from within me, that my essence is love and when I’m connected to that I’m naturally connected to God – nothing to do but just be together.
“I was looking for security – to be accepted in heaven and on earth” – this feels very important. To be accepted both in heaven and on earth, we bring in compromise and make a deal, as our reality says that they are two very different things. But what if it was in not making compromise that we bring heaven to earth?
A true connection with God gives us the most glorious way of living so we can live as the Soul would on earth and as a Soul-full being we are the Living Sons of God on earth.
To develop a connection with yourself where you trust your instinct and more so, you are certain in your knowing is more precious than anything a priest, a rabbi or an imam can give you.
History clearly shows that beliefs and belief systems separate one from another. When we reconnect to ourselves and to God within us we feel the love that unites us all.
To do ‘good’ is laced with feeling better about oneself; there is not one drop of love for another as it comes from self and nothing but self.
“I have begun to trust my inner feelings once more. I have started to connect back with myself. My body has now recovered and I am learning to feel deeper and deeper who I am in truth.” This is so beautiful to read. Returning to the Ageless Wisdom has enabled me to return to who I truly am also – along with many other students.
I personally don’t feel that we have any idea of the poison that is harbored in our bodies because of the association we have had with various religions over the many lifetimes we have been here on this plane of life. We get caught up in the dogma of the teachings and because we are energetic beings, the energy of the dogma stays with us into our next life/lives. This is my experience based on the energy of the Roman Catholic Church I have been clearing from my body which has capped me from feeling the truth of who I truly am.
We do not need to find God, we simply need to live him, which simply means living the godliness we are and are from.
Being a “good” anything, whether that is a “good” girl/boy, Christian, atheist, citizen etc will never help us to evolve. Evolution can only occur if we are true to ourselves.
As I am discovering after ‘trying’ to be a ‘good student’. No more! Being true to ourselves feels so important.
Agreed Elizabeth, it begs to question every movement made from ‘doing good;’ if they do not come from our body then where do they come from?
The choice to reconnect with the inner heart is one to connect with the all.
When a religion makes a person feel either guilt and shame I wonder if is it kind of shameful in itself as we all make mistakes. What is important is that we take full responsibility for our mistakes and imperfections and in that process also master the art of learning from them.
Guilt and shame, the ‘gift’ of poison from man made religion that keeps on giving… and giving… and circulating amongst us all. On the topic of taking responsibility for our mistakes this would be a good one for religions to own up on and correct. The eradication of guilt and shame would be a very true healing for humanity, but why wait for religion to instigate this, as we can each begin our own healing by eradicating it out of our lives now.
The world is full of people practicing various religions but we still have corruption, hatred, wars etc. Could it be that we have been fooled and that true religion starts with our relationship with ourselves and once that is established then we live in a very different way than we do now.
Yes I recognise this guilt and shame thing that still sometimes influences my decisions in life, a hangover from a religious upbringing long left behind but the tendrils of it still linger and when I do make choices in my life based on guilt and shame things feel narrow, squashed and limited and there is a great tension in my body. When I make choices simply based on what feels loving and what does not, things feel far simpler and definitely less tension involved!
Kerstin your story confirms we have everything inside us.
The amount of love lived is the amount of love claimed, walked and breathed. Great examples of people living in this way is our student body, for sure the Benhayon family holds their quality of love if not always than almost all the time consistantly. Inspiring they are, so we can all choose to live.
Mainstream religions rely on obedience even it appears to me in the face of absurdity. I cannot understand how any woman is part of mainstream religions, it must be that the desire to be a part of something in the community is greater than common sense. Female Genital Mutilation is such a case, where a societal pressure is so great woman upon woman inflicts the worst pain on their own children. All I know is this has nothing to do with God and everything to do with man.
We are taught that we ought to apologise for ourselves – when in the end the only thing to regret is not backing your beautiful heart 100% of the way.
Can looking outside of ourselves to gain comfort or to feel we are okay ever bring true security inside? I have tried it and it is a big fat no, I only felt more needy and more scared and timid, or I had to bring in the yucky energy of righteousness and think I’m better than everyone else, neither feels truly settling. So I started to look within and the kingdom of heaven is already there.
How does a god un-god themselves? By creating a belief system that exists entirely outside the realm of the inner heart (the Kingdom of God that lives within us) and then reducing and contracting themselves in order to ‘fit into’ these imposed beliefs. From here the amnesia is guaranteed as the god forgets he/she is a god and learns to play ‘only human’ instead.
And what could be more ungodly, religion that contains all the right sounding words but not the essence of God.
There is a belief that in order to connect to God you need to go to church every Sunday and on religious occasions throughout the year, however I have found that my connection to God is through my innermost, and I know from that connection that God walks beside me everyday even on the days I am so distracted that I don’t notice His presence, He is always there.
I never understood how God could just love Christians either! It doesn’t make sense to paint God with our version of “love” where you can “love” one person and hate another without considering that God’s love could be much grander than any love we’ve ever experienced. I know when I feel love – true love – I’m in love with everyone and the whole world – there is no part that that love cannot reach. Now imagine what God can do…
I find it fascinating how there is very little if any bodywork in the popular organised religions of today, because how is a person to know God, if they are not supported to know their body first?
It’s actually the complete opposite in some religions, such as denying the body in many ways by living in an austere and sometimes harsh way, by being celibate, doing long meditations in postures that are comfortable, not eating well by begging for foods…. the body is generally seen as unimportant to our connection to God and in some religions it is seen as dirty (if you have your period or are a woman) and sinful or shameful. What I have learnt is the more I care for my body with love the more I am in connection with the love I am as a soul and the love that God is – bodily self care is very religious indeed.
I think it’s great to recognise when we are overriding what we truly feel in order to instead seek recognition or acceptance from others, to fit into a group by just enjoining whatever the predominating energy is rather than being there or being with others whilst also being true to who we really are or really sense.
The truth is that we do already belong, to a divine magnificence and a oneness that is Gods love, as this is in essence of who we are. As Sons of God our relationship with Him is ever-present and accessible through being and surrendering to our connection to our Soul. As when we live guided by the impulse of our Soul we then live religiously with whatever we do, and this quality of Livingness is equally accessible and available to each and every one of us regardless of our culture, race, gender or age.
We have a deep seated need to belong, which is only apparent because we have separated from the whole we are from – hence the pull to know something is wrong. We go searching for who ‘we’ are, all the while we are waiting for us to come back and look inside where we are waiting all along! It is a silly story when you consider how far and wide and how much money we have spent on our quest to find ourselves!
Yes it is all the different ideals and beliefs that keep us from knowing the simplicity that we can connect with our divinity in ourselves and thorough nature easily if we just choose to.
‘I had and still have a deep connection to nature where I feel the reflection of God always – in contradiction of finding him only in a church.’ I know I never felt God in a church, as the famous saying goes ‘The Kingdom of God lives within you’, when you connect and live this truth you feel what true religion is.
“Through choosing to constantly not trust me and my inner feelings, and instead to trust in something else which is not me, I ended up being ill” – this is a fact very much worth studying. We have an increasing number of people being unwell even though they may deny and/or accept how they are feeling is the normal. I can definitely resonate with this through a feeling of tightness, contraction, hardness that gives me an immediate feedback that I am not in my fullness.
God loves us regardless of who we are or how we act. In the past people were told that God was judgmental, and many lived in constant fear. God loves unconditionally and the only person I know on earth who lives that also ( but maybe without perfection) is Serge Benhayon, the Director of Universal Medicine.
Telling children they won’t go to heaven if they are naughty ( as I was ) – what a set up, resulting in ‘good and nice’ children who grow up to be anything but true – to themselves or to others. The hypocrisy I witnessed in various church communities was all about showing yourself to be of value in public, but what went on behind closed doors was somewhat different.
Living according to these ideals and beliefs sounds very complicated and that to me exposes how it can not be true. Truth is simple, straight forward and easy for everyone to apply if they are willing to do so.
Is it even conceivable that religion may be behind ill behavior? If it is, obviously what that religion has to offer is simply not true.
Whenever we act from fear, guilt or shame our relationship with life is an emotional reaction which is not aligned to the truth of our innermost.
Beautifully said Jenny – living in connection to our love within is living in truth and with God, and when we live this way, our way is one that is truly religious.
We all deep down have a deep connection to something true within us, this truth, this divinity is what will eventually lead us all home.
Beautifully said Sam, it is the most yummy feeling to know the warmth within.
It sure is Sam and Vanessa, we all have this deep loving warm connection within and nothing ever in this world compares.
We have been told that God is only available in one building or book – when he is everywhere – every spot every nook. We know this is so in our cells and our bones – so what on earth was going on for us to subscribe to the lies that make life small and sinful?
” My feeling was that God loves everybody equally and that his love is not restricted to those who believe that Jesus is the only way. ”
Yet this made no sense to me when I was growing up. I remembering saying when I was young that this was very unfair and how come some people are the ” lucky ” ones to have heard of Jesus. It made no sense.
No sense at all. But equally, who said everyone else was wrong?! There are many different facets of Love and this need to be the ones with the answer, or the prophet is a little tiresome.
Shame and guilt can be held deep within the body colouring our behaviours and experience of life. Universal Medicine supports us to look at the beliefs and ideals that keep guilt and shame in place. It lets us see and feel the impositions that we have taken on and helps us to unpack them to return to the love and truth that we are.
True religion begins and ends with our connection to God, ourselves and other people.
I have felt for a long time that one of the reasons that religions are so opposing to one another is that fundamentally it is a relationship with God, the universe, with the planes above us and should our certain flavour not be ‘it’ then the exposure of accepting lesser than a true relationship with God is exposed and with it the great hurt in having separated.
The problem with the institutionalize religions is that they only hold part of the truth and not the whole truth as it is a reinterpretation and that is the tension we can feel in our bodies because our body is religious in how it is naturally connected with nature, the Universe and with God.
You can feel how institutionalised religion is. A complete set up to take you as far away from your inner knowing as it can. Filling ones mind with ideals and beliefs no one could truly live up to.
If our beliefs separate us, how can they be truly considered to be religious?
It certainly is evil and exposes the ‘good’ being done through them.
‘Through choosing to constantly not trust me and my inner feelings, and instead to trust in something else which is not me, I ended up being ill.’ I can very much relate to this. I’ve very much looked outside of myself to see what danger is presenting itself and whether I need to hide or not. I am now wondering what would like be like if I were to stay connected with me and feel from within what I let in and bother me. It’s like no longer looking outside through the open windows but looking within to clear anything that shouldn’t be stored in the cupboards and keeping them closed to anything untoward but still letting the love and light in and through.
As a child and teenager I marveled at the fact that children always chose the same religion as their parents. It was plain as day to me that there was no real choice in the matter. Most children were given no understanding by of any religion outside of their own and I never heard of a child’s parents encouraging them to feel what was true for them, just imposition upon imposition. The way of the Livingness is the only religion I’ve ever come across that supports each and every one to connect to what is true in their own body without any imposition.
Indeed Leonne, an institutionalised religion can become a way of life that is repeated over and over, generation after generation and with that we completely lose that inner connection that is naturally there when we are born because we are put in a way of life that makes us disconnect from our inner livingness that otherwise naturally would be there.
I wasn’t brought up in a religious household but I was always fascinated by God even as a young girl. I always felt though that there was more to it, than there just being a bearded man in a robe, it always felt like God was all encompassing and I always felt held by nature. I appreciate that I never lost this knowing and still love looking to the stars or walking and appreciating the flowers and insects because I know we are all connected as one.
“My father wasn’t an active catholic but I could feel the destructive behaviours he used. As a consequence of his catholic upbringing he acted often out of guilt and shame.”
This is one of the burdens people are laced with when growing up in a Roman Catholic society, one will always be known as the sinner and spend one’s life trying to make up for this label.
Yes a ploy that keeps one dis-empowered should they accept this and never know what it is to live in true relationship with god.
A belief is like a rod of iron, thin and inflexible – gather together a few of these and pretty soon you have yourself a prison, keeping you in pain. To be free of belief is like remembering how to breath. Without these stiff rods in place, life is simply there for us to embrace. Thank you Kerstin for reminding me how the comfort of these ‘certain things’, actually impinge and bring sadness and misery.
Thank you Kerstin for you share – Religion has caused so many atrocities over the centuries because man kind thought their religion was it.
I grew up with my own religion of Hinduism and re-incarnation was often spoken about but it was based on the doing that was considered ‘good’ or considered ‘bad’ and based on this, we will repent in our next life. But the question is how do you define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and who defined it in the first place?
If we allowed the body to define this, it will never lie and I’m re-learning this with Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon. True Religion lies within us all its masked by many beliefs and flavoured religions.
I remember feeling very grateful that I was raised a catholic because I would never seek religion to fix my life’s problems as I felt religions were inherently flawed. So it amuses me greatly that I am now very religious in my life and seek not to fix my life but in seeking truth and love found myself The Way of The Livingness which is definitely true religion, reconnecting to the love within that connects us to god and universal wisdom. So very cool.
Believing in God and belonging to religion in a way holds us back from the truth of God and the very essence of who we are. Holding a belief holds us back from connecting to who we are, because we get caught in “being a good person,” and hence what quality are our movements then made in? When we allow ourselves to be and connect in full to this quality we feel a shift from what may have been a belief of God to knowing God is within all our particles and everything around us and this then becomes a way of living and moving everyday. Religion is then an expression of movement and a reflection of the all.
Letting go of all the beliefs and dogma of all that I was taught in RE classes at school and heard in church gave me the freedom to know that my sense of a deep connection to God remained true.
I find that ‘comfort’ is one of the big selling points of mainstream religion. Belonging or believing that you belong is a very big part of that. However, as you say these moments are fleeting and not a consistent way of life. You also are aware that you can’t just be you, as you need to behave a certain way to belong. I can relate to the belief that you have to do good to win favour with God. This was not only my childhood experience but I feel I came into this life with a track record of living out this belief.
The harm of religion confirming the emptiness and not telling you who you really are. It is always an argument. “As a consequence, the different belief systems created separation in the family – not in an open battle, but very hidden, and constantly harming.” Where as, Universal Medicine made sense right away. Serge Benhayon went there. He defined the difference between spirit and Soul and the unnecessary struggle in our world – the evil of separation to the Soul.
Without the presentations of Serge Benhayon on The Way of The Livingness and the Ancient Wisdom I would be still quite confused about religion as you too were Kerstin.
This is a great sharing Kirsten, I too was brought up under a Christian belief system and was lucky enough to see the falsity of it at an early age and how it is based on fear and disempowerment of who we are, always being at the mercy of something bigger than us which prevents us from understanding the responsibility we all have to be and express ourselves and that when we live from an open heart we are everything there is.
Neither family nor religion bounds us together, it is the connection in our hearts that does. If anything tells us that without following rules we will lose this connection, it is purely false, as our body can testify. Religion is the most amazing and beautiful union we feel we have with ourselves, with God and with the entirety of the Universe, this is what we are all offered equally.
The light of Christ lives within us all. It is a beholding light that emanates out from our hearts so that we are able to hold another in and with the love they already are, that we all are. As such it cannot be owned by any one man or religion, as it exists in each of us in equal measure. This is what Jesus was reflecting to us all. It’s just that somewhere along the line and as a deliberate move on behalf of those that sought to gain from erecting structures (institutionalised religions) that stood between ‘man and God’ or man and his divine nature, they took the Christ out of Christianity and indeed out of many more ‘religions’ and peddled a version of religion that has more to do with keeping us away from our divine expression that it does with reconnecting us more deeply to it. If this were not the case, we would not have so many wars fought in the name of God. For how can a being that is pure beholding love and light, that we each have access to in equal measure no matter the colour of our skin nor position on which we stand on this vast globe, have anything to do with an act of brutality that keeps us so divided?
Kerstin, this is a great example of the misleading seperative life organised religions offer. They offer a constant deterrent from God by claiming he is outside of us, keeping us separate from what we can never truly separate from.
What you describe shows how much we rely on rules and rulebooks to live our life instead of trusting in our inner knowing and let ourselves guided by what feels right for us and is truly working not only for ourself but in harmony with everybody else.
How accustomed are we to buy into something even when we know that it is not completely it. We tend to discount the part that is not it and simply open our heart to the part we buy into. That notwithstanding, the fact remains. There is a part that does not add up. We tend to see this is normal. Yet, this ends when we discover that when something is true, it feels very specifically in the body and there is no part, not even a bit, that we do not feel totally at ease with. This has to be the new normal.
Thank you Kerstin. It is so often the case that we see most religions claim that a relationship with God, who is firstly deemed as a being outside of us, is found through what we do, the rules we follow and if we are ‘good’ enough in death we will be united with him. What you have shared brings to light that this is not the case, that in fact we already are the Sons of God and our relationship with Him is already established by virtue of this truth, we only need to connect to our essence, to our Soul, to who we naturally already are. This is connection, is what truly defines who we are through which our union with God is always known.
“I am constantly becoming more and more aware of what is truly going on and thus make choices out of love. This way of living creates feelings of joy, richness and preciousness in my body” – this is very profound and tells me how on the other hand dis-ease is created.
What I am finding more and more is that if we feel we need to belong to someone or a group of people e.g our families or friends we are connecting to a need which inevitably is separating us from the whole. Connecting first to our own true expression and ways of moving our bodies allows us to connect to our inner wisdom and to let go of the need to control. To feel a sense of connection or belonging from something or someone outside of ourselves disconnects us from truth, so the real love comes in our choice to simply make a new movement towards the connection of our bodies inner heart, this is where true religion is lived and explored for life.
The pull to ‘belong’ to a group is strong and often we accept what is unloving and abusive in order to not be separated out from the group. Yet the truth is that we already belong to the family that is Humanity, we are all Son’s of God and are the fiery essence of love carried, available and shared within each of us. Man-made religions are being exposed more and more for their imposing nature, control and separative way. True ‘Wellbeing’ is claiming, being and living who we truly are for it is then that we truly belong.
To deny our true and innate connection with God, and deem that it may only be found in a particular building, or via a particular religious doctrine, is to allow destructive forces within our own body that I would say may well lead to illness… Indeed, are we not already unwell, when we do not claim ourselves as His equal Son, and give over to the doctrine of there only being ‘one’?
What you have shared here Kerstin says a lot, particularly in terms of the harm done to our own bodies and beings, when we subscribe to beliefs that are not in accord with all that we innately know God, and yes also the life of Yeshua (Jesus), truly is and represents for us.
I grew up in a religious family and it was always implied that we were sinners and we needed to bring ourselves out of this, this instilled belief did not come from love and I took it on and it set up a belief within me that I should be ashamed, guilty or that I was not good enough. It is hard to come out of that when it is entrenched as it creates a totally different version of love.
The relief we get from another’s recognition or acceptance of us is transient and no substitute for the true joy of living in connection with our essence and honouring that.
Beautifully said Fiona, it’s the dangling carrot that even when eaten never fills the void.
It is very telling that even though each religion in this house was different, in many ways, they still fostered separation. As neither came from within, but instead from presssures of how to be in each religion from without.
When we want another to change we can tend to try and push them into believing what we believe. We have all had this done to us and also would have done it to others – but it is imposing. To truly encourage change firstly we need to accept that inspiration initiates the most potent form of change and transformation, and secondly, it is essential that you actually live that quality of inspiration yourself so others can see it, feel it and know that it is reliable and true.
How amazing that someone raised in the Catholic religion should behave in ways that are not loving. It shows that the religion is not all-encompassing, you cannot be good and go to church on a Sunday and then mis-behave the rest of the week – any true religion teaches us to be love all day, every day.
‘Their Christian belief seemed to give them a comfort somehow, and a feeling that they were ok and life was ok.’ It is interesting how we use religion as a belief to give us a form of comfort, when we are truly connected with ourselves we feel God and there is no need to believe in something when we can actually feel it for ourselves and know that God exists in every breath we take.
Most of us have unhappy and hurt memories of when at home or at school we were expected to achieve or act out something otherwise acceptance, acknowledgment and appreciation was held back by the adults. It was as if ‘we’ did not matter and it was all about the outcome of our striving. How tragic that this devastating charade has been superimposed onto teachings about God and religion.
I love the openness in sharing the difference between how separate religions are lived, in reference to Kerstins parents. A reality that is seen all over the world between religions, a reality that is the underlying cause of many wars. Just how much we are influenced by them is often not perceived or understood, however to deny that there is opposing ways between religions is to deny the innate truth we feel, that instead of feeling that strong true connection with humanity, we instead feel separate, vulnerable and needing acceptance so we are not left to the wolves. Much to ponder here in how humanity responds to what could be an all encompassing, fully loving, tender way of being with each other, if we but let go of our beliefs, be that in religion, behaviors, thoughts or old disfunctional ways of living.
I can remember as a child feeling the separation of the different belief systems. In my case it was an open battle with very little understanding for one another. I felt sad and confused feeling the harm created. Fortunately I only got to experience the conflict a couple of times that I can remember but it was enough to have a lasting impression on me. Surely with there being one true God how could one religion be better than other? How could a religion condemn another religion? What or whose right was it to say that their religion was the one to join? These are just some of the questions I kept asking myself later on in life until I came across The Way of The Livingness and then I stopped asking. I knew and know The Way of The Livingness is the way to be and live. It has no rules or regulations, no preaching, no convincing me to join, no saying it is better than any other religion but supports me to connect to my inner heart and find out what is true for myself.
Thank you, Kerstin, even though I might have not been brought up religously as in by an institutionilzed religion, I can feel definitely I have picked up on those beliefs, and to my shock also the one: that Jesus only loves you when you are a fan of him or adore and worship him! Auch! Since coming to the work of Serge Benhayon/Universal Medicine and following workshops, presentations and courses… I am coming back to my power of what Jesus truly means and what he had offered people in the world.. all people, yes all people. His love and dedication was to show all people another way and that his love was endless and had no limits. Hence, interesting how this limited version of Jesus has been brought to us, the contrary of what I had examined in my heart that Jesus is. So thank God we all have a heart, senses and we all can feel. Let’s truly use it and not let any confusion, distraction and evil let get in the way of that.
The old religious chestnut and what’s true and who to believe. Are we suppose to get in an argument over religions or convince others that we are right and they are wrong? Are we suppose to tell the world to follow something or someone? Or are we meant to live true to what we deeply feel in each moment and allow others that same choice? The Way of The Livingness offers us all an opportunity, an opportunity to let go of what we have been told and walk our own way. I remember reacting and turning off when I was younger and I remember saying to myself a lot and others that when I was old enough there was no way I was going to church. Why was I turning off? Because I already knew what was being given to me wasn’t true, I couldn’t grab it clearly but I could feel a deep echo inside that didn’t ring true to what I was being told. Now that echo is no longer deep but easily touched and I can see more and more how I was sold and how we are sold the untruths or lies. We set it up or we are set up to live in a way that we think we need to live to fit in or to be accepted. When there is a way to live that holds a true quality of who we truly are and from there we can feel everything and everyone. Not amount of selling will have you sold and it is only from your deep and true feeling that you will move. The Way of The Livingness, it’s how I have always been but not always what I have touched.
What a great addition to this blog and yes the old Religious chestnut; it’s certainly an interesting one, everyone thinks that they have the answer to who God really is and what he wants us all to do. I have always been turned off by all of this and steered very clear of Religion of any kind because the battle of faiths felt like the opposite of what Religiousness on earth was supposed to be. To me, Religion was a way be to reconnect or rebind us to heaven, to live a godly way on earth and that can only be achieved by us following our hearts and what we feel to be true.
God never judges and no matter what our choices are, we are always shown a way to return to a deeper love through our body. The life we have chosen is one which has constellated for us to realize that we are the deep Love that God reflects.
Trusting what I felt rather than what I was told saved me from blindly following conventional Christian religions, but did not stop me from restlessly pursuing, for two decades, other ‘spiritual’ paths: an Indian guru, false new age teachers and healers and much more. I found a resting place, a homecoming in the Ageless Wisdom teachings as presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. Earlier feelings I had of the innateness of God re-confirmed: we are all living expressions of God, and true religion is how we live day by day with ourselves and others.
It is so true that the seeming ‘blind faith’ that is so commonplace is just that for a reason… because it serves to ‘comfort’ the follower in life, reassuring them that all is ok, when deep down they know it is most definitely far from it. There is no judgment leveled here as we all have our version of ‘comfort’ that sustains us through a life devoid of the depth of love and connection we all actually crave.
As a child I was schooled in two forms of Christian worship: Methodist quiet, simple and plain, evangelical, loud, imposing and emotional. I observed how, although doctrines were the same, the two versions of Christian worship were total opposites. I remained unconvinced by both, simple because what was said in church did not reflect how people lived: there were too many hypocrisies and many lies. Connecting to God within myself and in all others is my chosen way.
Many visit what is known as a ‘house of god’ when in truth we en-house god in our own bodies and simply have to connect and walk with him.
“On the other hand I had a deep connection to something true within me:” We do know what is true when we connect within us, and beliefs are seen for what they are and the comfort they seemingly provide.
The path to God is one that leads inwards, rather than outwards. And once you begin the journey inwards it’s impossible to imagine going to a special building to meet God, because he’s right there and the magic of that meeting is impossible to describe in words.
After spending many years as a child involved in the Catholic Religion, I always struggled with the beliefs and ideals the church taught because I knew that God was ‘love’ and that everything they spoke about reduced everyone into feeling less. I finally turned by back on Catholicism and all religions as I could feel we had been sold a version of God that was simply a lie. Then years later I got introduced to The Way of The Livingness and at first I was a little hesitant because it was a religion and my past experiences had left me distrusting, this dissolved very quickly because this religion is absolutely true in every way, the level of love and deep connection to God and brotherhood is beautiful to feel and I can now say I am a deeply religious person.
Many untruths have been spoken and acted out in the name of God. Anything that separates us from ourselves and each other can not in truth be considered religious.
“To not feel whole was a normal state for me.” Unfortunately this is the case for a lot of people. It certainly was for me until I discovered the teachings of Universal Medicine and started to implement them into my life. There is nothing normal about feeling disconnected from the love that we all come from.
Thank you Kerstin for sharing your experience of coming out of Christian beliefs to know and live the truth of who we truly are, equal divine sons of God.
We are God’s love and as such at one with Him, forever held in His love, here to realise this is our Divine way. The fact that religions use the name of God to generate fear, create separation and fuel guilt and shame through imposing beliefs that we are far less than the Sons of God as such born sinners, is a crime against humanity and in itself true evil. For anything that acts to separate us from the truth of our Divinity, the oneness of God, is not at all an act of God as in-truth Gods love is all-embracing and forever calling us all to be and live the light we are as His equal sons.
Thanks to Universal Medicine I too have found my true religion, and that is my connection with my soul and everything around me- nothing is separate as absolutely everything is interrelated and part of the all.
True religion is equallly available for us to live in the constant appreciation and confirmation of our connection to God.
I get a sense from reading your blog, how pushed and pulled we all can be, depending on our upbringings and sets of beliefs. Here you share about religion, and I have read other blogs that share about many other different topics, but the essence is the same. That there is an inner-truth that is holds everyone equal, and is about us living in harmony with ourselves, each other and the universe around us. When we choose to layer this truth with a set of ideals and beliefs, there is a tension from what we know is true and what we are choosing to live. And what I love about Universal Medicine, is that it is supporting us to reconnect to ourselves and from there we can connect to our own inner-truth and discern for ourselves, what is true and what is not. And not live from what is thrust upon us.
True religion is believing in and loving ourselves first and foremost and then it naturally flows through to all.
“…I was taught that God was a being outside of me and I needed to ‘be good’ to win his love… and I needed ‘to do’ something in order to earn his love.” How many of us have grown up with the belief we are not okay, we have to do instead of just be the love we feel inside and get caught in self worth or self loading issues. To reconnect back to our natural way of living, The Way of The Livingness is the truth of being a sacred being.
I always felt more of a connection with nature than I did the church, I would be restless and fidgety on the few occasions I went to church, wondering why I needed to be there, where as nature offered me a place to just be, it felt light and joyful unlike the church that felt imposing and oppressive .. Now I know that God is not just all around us but within us too, this makes sense as to why I found the Church so difficult to be with, it was holding back the truth that we all innately and deeply know.
I relate to your comment Alison, in nature there is no imposition, we are left to connect and feel the natural interconnectedness of all around us. No words are spoken and yet the communication is felt and confirming of our Godliness.
When we look inward and connect with the divinity within our heart, we look outward and see this love reflected in nature and in all the hearts of others regardless of their religion, race or creed or whether they are choosing to express this love or not. Re-igniting the awareness that we all are One brings unfathomable joy and a sense of ease and settlement to the body for we are no longer choosing to live in resistance to this. From here we then can fine tune our way of living so as to deepen our expression of this love. This is the esoteric way, never hidden or secret but available to all.
Why is there so much conflict around religion, even those who agree that God is Love?
“…I was taught that God was a being outside of me and I needed to ‘be good’ to win his love… and I needed ‘to do’ something in order to earn his love.” I can very much relate to this too Kerstin. Having been raised to ‘do’ it can still be something of a struggle to ‘be’ me first and only then do what needs to be done. It is all about the quality with which I do xyz.
What you have expressed here Kerstin is such a beautiful testimony to Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine and you, it is very inspiring;
“The presentations of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon have allowed me to re-connect to myself. I have begun to trust my inner feelings once more. I have started to connect back with myself. My body has now recovered and I am learning to feel deeper and deeper who I am in truth”.
As children we feel everything so nothing is kept hidden from us no matter how hard our parents, grandparents, teachers etc try and hide. We know truth yet we grow up following ideals and beliefs that are not true. I was very confused when I was a child and thought like Kirsten being good was the way, to find out later in life that being good was actually causing much resentment in me because I was listening to others and not following my inner heart.
I have now got a true understanding of religion, before I saw it as separate groups living in their own world, with their own ideas and beliefs. True religion is not this, it is about connecting back to the inner self the God within. Our true connection back to God
Thanks Kerstin, denying what is true within us is always disastrous in my experience. Attempting to live up to ideals imposed upon us by others does not ever fare well for the body, and contributes substantially to why we have such escalating illness and disease.
I have had no experience with any Religion growing up, I never thought of myself as searching for anything, I am very Religious now but in the true sense of the word, I am committed to my relationship with myself and nature and deeply respect the body of God in which I live inside. I am appreciate to know the truth, which is we are all connected.
“my searching in the outside instead of trusting myself made life more complicated; I felt torn into two pieces. To not feel whole was a normal state for me.” I love this line Kerstine as it describes exactly how I felt as a child and long after in adolescence and adulthood. I did not felt ‘whole’ as if something very important was missing in me, something I knew that must be there. And there lies for me the crux, to belief that there must be something more ‘there’ instead of referring to my inner most. That is how have been raised through the Christian beliefs and religions that had and still have a big hold over our societies. Thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I have been able to reconnect to a true religion, The Way of The Livingness, the religion of my heart, a religion that makes me whole and to celebration life in full.
Dear Kerstin,
Trusting our inner feelings as a way of living life, has completely transformed my life. I too knew God as a child, but no where around me was this deep inner knowing I had lived by any one else, so I too lived to fit in with the world. Whilst from looking from the outside my life was ok, inside there was this constant turmoil. With the lived love I see in Serge Benhayon, his family and many students of Universal Medicine, I now know that what I felt as a child is the truth of who I am.
As children we have a deep connection to the all, we know with an absoluteness in our body where we come from and who we are; unfortunately, this gets tainted with as we grow up and subscribe to what the world tells us to be, losing that innocence and connection to God. The Way of The Livingness is the true religion offering us the opportunity to reconnect to that which we know deeply within ourselves is the truth we once knew in our bodies so well, the universality of the all.
The religious education I was taught at school and heard during church services never really made sense and came with rules that if I broke would have dire consequences. The presentations by Serge Benhayon on the true meaning of religion all made and continue to make perfect sense and The Way of The Livingness is a way of living in true connection to your inner-heart and to God.
The belief that we need to do something in order to gain God’s love or another’s approval undermines our self-worth and leaves us constantly looking outside of ourselves for recognition from another rather than knowing and appreciating who we already are and feeling at ease with expressing in the world from that foundation.
True religion makes sense to all of life, leaving nobody out or lesser in any way, shape or form.
Thanks Kerstin, there is a lot to be said for the complicated and convoluted beliefs and ideals so many have taken on in the name of ‘religion’. I grew up without any ‘religious’ indoctrination other than it was all rubbish and yet I still had elements of guilt and shame around certain things about myself. This, as you’ve pointed out, is a remnant of the Catholic religious indoctrination for sure, and shows just how insidious and tenacious it is. It was only through Universal Medicine teachings and presentations that I have been able to identify and now eradicate such false ideology from my way of life.
I grew up in a very catholic country within a very catholic household. My whole family was full of shame and guilt with a deep hatred for the body. The church would preach on and on about love but it was very obvious that they were speaking empty words. I now know that if we are not living the truth of something e.g love then we do not carry the quality of love within us and hence why the words are hollow and empty.
It is pretty incredible how the church removes us from our inner knowing of God. While everything in nature and what we feel reflects that God is love, we only need to be reminded and pointed at that this is the case.
TO be truly religious requires one to ponder, not believe.
Beautifully said Adam, and the simplicity with which you can say something like that shows a TRULY RELIGIOUS man.
Adam, you are right, ‘truly religious’ is about truth. Belief may or may not be about truth.
It is lovely to get to a place where you do not need to swallow the belief system of an organisation to find acceptance or inclusion but rather make choices that are based on what you feel love to be. Through this you are able to connect back to yourself and trust what you feel to be true and in doing so, find the divinity you are.
True religion needs to be based on love. To date many of our worldly religions have aspects of love but many over time have been bastardized to suit the political agenda at the time. True religion is found in the inner heart of every man- equally so.
It is so freeing to know that God is within us and not existing as something outside that we must find. We know God, have always known God, but as your story reveals Kerstin, when this knowing is not validated by those around us when we are young, we can lose trust in what we have always known to be so.
We have been told many lies to take us from the truth, thankfully Kerstin as you have so beautifully presented we always have the choice to connect to our heart and see through the untruths we have been told for so long.
There is much that is done in the name of God and religion that we should question and challenge, especially that which is hypocritical and does not make sense to all of life.
Thank you Kerstin for sharing your experiences; so lovely to feel your deepening sense of self and what is true. There is no doubt about it it is so freeing to make loving life choices that feel true, rather than choices that please others and/or come from outside sources e.g religions.
I was raised in a Catholic family, went to church and attended a Catholic School and yet I was always aware of a tension that existed with those from other religions or those that did not subscribe to a religion. Even within my own family this was the case. My grandmother was ‘disowned’ by her family because she wanted to marry my grandfather who was a catholic, when her background was not. In the mid 1930’s this would have been pretty tough going. This was even within the broader ‘christian’ tradition, not even from apparently different religions. But currently that tension remains, no matter the religion and has been present for a very long time. We are so used to this that we just think that that this is the way it is and will always be, and we can’t see any other way for us to be harmoniously together. The truth is is that every single one of us knows what true religion is, we come from this and it is our strength when we live from this and it is so powerful for all of us that a version of what religion is has been created, that is very close to the truth but so far away that it results in such terrible acts such as war. But even those ongoing tensions are not our way, they are not of true religion and they are not who we are.
In my experience, traditional Organised Religion is like a coat we wear, a club we join, a separate thing to the rest of life, that is there for the few to get involved if that is what they choose. Yet the presentations of Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine and you here Kerstin have reminded me that Love is our true one way, it is there every day, just waiting for us to remember and engage it again. Every thing we do and say, feel and see points back to Love. And so all of life is a return to this truth, and re-living of this ancient art. Religion is this process of remembering you are great, you are grand and your something bigger than just a man. You are part of a universal plan. Whether you choose to see this or not, life still supports you every day, religiously, to see your way,
There are so many ideals and beliefs around many of the traditional religions which are imposed on their members. This stops us from truly feeling what is true. The Way of the Livingness is the only religion I know which encourages us to feel our own truth and to live from this truth in the way that we choose.
Growing up I could feel the comfort that others got from their religion and tried to conform but the inconsistencies were so glaring for me that I always failed in my attempts and ended up feeling less than. It is only now that I have found The Way of the Livingness that I have a religion that I can truly connect with and make it my living way. This has supported me to bring equality and balance into my life and to appreciate the universal flow of things.
I have found that the traditional religions couldn’t offer me what I was searching for either Kerstin and neither did they seem to be working in a light and joyful way in and amongst my family members. I went for a period of time where I felt stuck – I didn’t believe in religion in the way I had been raised to believe in it but still felt that there was a greater being than me who was there for all mankind. Universal Medicine was the first place to be able to explain to me who and what God is in a way that made sense and without the imposition I had felt previously when others talked about God and religion. Now I am in communication with God in my own way every day and it feels authentic and vibrant.
My experience of guilt and shame is a furious level of anger by the person at themselves and this anger can at any time burst out in a rage at others or at themselves, burying them even deeper in the hurt of the guilt and shame. What an awful tool to use on others, inducing guilt and shame in them.
This is a beautiful journey to find what is true for you Kerstin. lt is as if your soul has guided you all along and there is great love there. Your unfoldment is truly inspiring. Thank you for sharing.
Kerstin, it’s great that eventually you have found something that confirms your feelings all along. It’s amazing how dismissive we are of the signs we feel in our bodies, because no one ever talks about them.
When we connect to the inner feelings you describe Kerstin, it becomes much harder to deny God and the fact that he lives inside our each and every cell. When I understand life this way I come to see that God’s love is always with me, its abundant and without end. Such a contrast to the slim pickings we grow up believing in.
Beautifully said Joseph, God ‘lives inside our each and every cell’. When I connect to this truth my life is full of joy and simplicity and my love naturally deepens with myself and all my relationships.
Thank you Kerstin, your words are a great reminder that we all carry within us the very tools we need to know Joy and Warmth. Re-understanding Religion as a relationship makes so much sense, when it starts and flows from my connection to me.
Thank you Kerstin for sharing your experience, I too was brought up with religion, and carried deeply buried within that I was a sinner, a dark stain on my soul and that I needed to be good to be accepted by God. Good and bad is such a set up keeping us in the endless cycle of guilt shame and forgiveness, Thank heaven for Serge Benhayon who has shown us the way back to the love that lives inside of us, to claim that love that we all are in deed Divine Sons of God.
I was raised in a very traditional Catholic family and I found it very difficult and confusing when I started to move away from the religion as an adult. I could see and feel the discrepancy within the Catholic beliefs and teachings, yet felt very mistrusting and guilty about walking away from that. Reading your blog Kerstin has made me realise that as much as I wasn’t accepting of what was going on I at least had recognition and acceptance if I stayed within that group. Many years have passed now since I last attended church etc and I have worked hard on healing the ingrained beliefs and ideals associated with such a religious organisation but still find bits cropping up now and then. It amazes me how deeply I had taken on those teachings. I love the spaciousness I can now feel growing within me as I commit first and foremost to myself, rather than any outside deity.
I like you Kerstin have found The Ageless Wisdom presented by Serge Benhayon has been the most effective and true way of living.
The institutionalized religions want you to believe that the only way to god is through them. We innately know that god loves everyone equally without favoritism. Like you Kerstin I felt at odds with my family religion, but I went along with it, now it feels like selling out. Through Universal Medicine I have found true religion that is in harmony with how I feel.
Religion in its present form is here to control us . What better way to do that than say we are not good enough, therefore Love is denied us and also our entry into Heaven. That we need to repent our sins and ask for forgiveness of a God who is out there somewhere. How fortunate that we have the teachings of The Way of The Livingness as presented by Serge Benhayon that show us that God is within us all and we are all equal sons of God! Thank you Kerstin for your sharing.
What a trick Kerstin, what a game that has us all perpetually chasing the prize of being ‘good’, with everyday laced with the shame of how ‘bad’ we are. How crazy, when all the time we are already divine, with all the wisdom we ever need in our heart.
exactly Joseph, seeking to be good or better when all the time coming from the same false energy of not being good enough, or somehow bad, its all the same energy and all playing the same games. All we need to do is remember who we are, that we are already everything and instead just choose to not engage with these false imposters.
Thank you Kerstin – true religion is found within – it is the stillness and the spaciousness of our being – your sharing is inspiring as it is difficult to free yourself from ideals and beliefs that come with such a force.
Seeking acceptance and recognition can be so exhausting and come from ideals and beliefs we are saddled with early on in life. I am inspired by your story of releasing and freeing yourself to find love and truth.
Seeking comfort and recognition is often so exhausting, because we force on ourselves to live and act in ways that simply are not us. We try to live up to those ideals and beliefs, knowing that we will never be able to match them.
So why not simply free ourselves from these chains we put ourselves in? Who should free us from them if not ourselves?
What is the perfect way to disempower and set us up to follow beliefs and mistruths from outside us? Enforce and constantly keep impounding the idea that God exists outside us and that we are lesser than He. If we truly knew and felt in full that God is within us all of the time then we would know that first before anything the truth is always there within.
The concept that God is outside of use and something to seek of go to or please is, I feel very misleading. It feels natural of me to know that I am an expression of God as is everything around me. what I have a is free will to align of attempt to discount. There are signs and messages everyday letting me know that I am part of the whole if I choose to observe them. Knowing I am part of the whole and not separate, feels for me to be true religion.
Truth will never be found in most organised religions – how can it be when it’s built on lies and distortion of historical facts to suit the powers that be at the time as a means of keeping people separated firstly from themselves and then from others. I grew up being made to attend Sunday School and church but it felt cold and loveless and full of rules and hypocrisy. I agree with previous comments and from my own experience that The Way of the Livingness is inclusive of all and truly about brotherhood.
‘As part of my Christian belief and upbringing, I was taught that God was a being outside of me and I needed to ‘be good’ to win his love… and I needed ‘to do’ something in order to earn his love.’ Instilling the ‘fear of God’ is something that many religions do. But it is controlling and manipulating and not the Love and Truth that God is.
A beautiful sharing Kerstin, your experience of being a ‘good’ Christian is one many of us can relate to I am sure. The wisdom and love offered by ‘The Way of the Livingness’ is amazing in everyway and has given thousands of people an opportunity to experience not only a true Religion but true brotherhood.
How can any religion that has you not feeling whole as your normal state, be a loving one? I also agree it’s ridiculous that you can only connect with God in a church or kneeling by your bedside at night. God is everywhere and equally within us all. It’s the not-living of this fact which leaves us feeling not-whole.
Although there was not a separation in Christian belief systems in my family when I was growing up there was (and still is) in the community we lived in. The small village I lived in counted for 5 different churches, all of different Christian beliefs and from young I was made aware of this fact by my parents, that we where of the Catholic belief and the others not. This has let me to belief that we are not all the same, but different in a way that seemed incompatible with each other. Later on when I grew up there also came a separation within our family as the way my parents understand religion did not match with how we, the children understand religion for ourselves and it felt that there was no way to overcome this different in understanding. This made me decide to not make religion part of my life as it only brought separation and misunderstanding.
But I found that this decision made me miss out on a very important aspect of my life, the religious man I have found back with the help of Universal Medicine that introduced to me the true meaning of religion. That religion is not some institutionalised doctrine but that religion is about my connection with God, the part that lives in all of us equally so.
Beautiful thanks for sharing Nico. from reading this I really get an insight into the separation religion can create, and how it can make us feel we are different from one another. Time and Time again I have come to see how false these religions are and how The Way of The Livingness really has something that unifies everyone and so that it can get everyone on board but because everyone has an inner most truth and this is what The Livingness is all about.
correction “and NOT so that it can get everyone on board but because everyone has an innermost truth and this is what The Livingness is about”
That is the big difference indeed Harry, the Way of the Livingness unifies all of humanity as it is comes form the livingness that we are all part of and are connected through by our inner most.
Really enjoyed reading your blog Kerstin. It brought up memories of my own experiences around religion and my deep appreciation of how much my understanding has expanded since coming to the teachings of Universal Medicine.
Could Kerstin mean ‘protestant’ instead of ‘evangelism’? Evangelism is a very outwardly emotional expression of Christian religion while Protestantism is a much cooler, more cerebral expression.
Religion does not arouse big passions in Germany so it is interesting that it even in an outwardly harmonious setting there is a lot of underlying religious tension and conflict, something I wouldn’t have expected.
I didn’t grow up with any religious beliefs but could feel in this blog the same feelings of being torn between what you know is true and seeking that outer acceptance and recognition, when your not listening or trusting yourself you’ll end up anywhere
Great point Jaime – one way or another it is not listening to our true, forever wise and loving inner heart.
Growing up a Catholic meant that we were separate to many people around us. At school we knew the kids that were non Catholics (a term that was used often) as they were singled out by the teachers. This separation always felt awful and I struggled to reconcile it with the love I felt inside. The only way I could come to terms with it was to ignore it and bury the truth. Well that just didn’t work.
Finding Universal Medicine was such a blessing. I have found there is no true separation as we are all the son of God, some have just forgotten it for the moment. It is the only thing that makes sense and rings absolutely true.
I agree Amanda that the way religion is practiced today only maintains the separation between us. I grew up with the conviction, although I do not remember ever it being articulated, that the catholic religion was the One. I married someone of a different religion and the contrast in beliefs confirmed to me that religion was a means of defining ourselves, keeping us segregated into groups, suspicious of others. On the other hand the Way of the Livingness is one of encompassing love for all and for oneself.
‘The presentations of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon have allowed me to re-connect to myself. I have begun to trust my inner feelings once more. I have started to connect back with myself.’ – beautifully said. Through the presentations of Universal Medicine I also have been inspired to re-connect to the truth of my Soul, which I’ve always known within, but had lost trust in. And this is loving connection is constantly reflected to us all, as we are all held in, and inter-connected by, God’s divine all-encompassing Love.
When I was growing up we attended the Anglican Church but really only at times like Easter and Christmas and it always felt like there was an element of fear basis on why I was attending. The point was always made that you had to be ‘good’ to go to heaven, which made me fear that perhaps I were not good enough and the what happens then question.
Yes Heidi, I felt the same way about religion at school, I always felt inadequate because I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand all the stories that would be told and all of the characters and sayings, it was full of miasma and very complicated. I have found though The Way of The Livingness to be very simple and understandable.
The established religions expect you to believe what you are told and what you are told changes depending on who is doing the telling. The Way of the Livingness is true religion which allows you to reconnect to God and divinity by all you know and feel in the love of your inner-heart.
How odd it is that all our religions until now talked a lot but never made a comment on the energetic quality we lived our life, and how our body felt to be in. You sum it up Kerstin, that without connection to our body and thinking we are good or bad, we become in separate pieces.
I feel and see God all around, the stunning magic of nature and animals, the design, the incredible intricacy with nothing wasted, everything has a purpose. We are made with a heart that pumps blood around our bodies which make us autonomous on some level, essentially we do not need to plug in every night to get going the next day (Although that could be disputed if you are addicted to coffee!) but that is the magic of God. It cannot be contained, put in a box, given a label. It is our job to walk that and be that in every moment so that others can feel that connection in themselves too. Ideals, beliefs, labels, they are all way too small to describe the magic of God! I keep coming back to this blog, thank you for reminding me and helping me to shake a few cobwebs off that innate knowing.
What you describe here Kerstin illuminates how there is no carrot we need to reach to, no objective to obtain, nothing we need do to be accepted. How crazy is it that we seek so long something that is with us all along. What a release to live knowing now as you do that God lives in and with you.
It’s crazy how we can get caught up in ideals and beliefs. Wanting to be part of a community, wanting to belong. I was caught up in the Hindu faith growing up, worshiping different forms. Though I was told there is ultimately only one God, I was also told the massagers of Gods where many, and we would worship different massagers too. This used to confuse me a lot.
Kerstin your words ‘Through choosing to constantly not trust me and my inner feelings, and instead to trust in something else which is not me, I ended up being ill.’ resonate with me. Trust has been a huge issue for me, and the lack of it has led to procrastination and putting my life on hold, which literally hurts my body. Looking for God through outer religions created a tension, as I too felt I had to earn God’s love and was quite tough on myself, seeing only my flaws and the flaws in my family and others. It was an extremely unloving feeling and the only way to reduce that pain was to ditch religion. Only since attending presentations with Universal Medicine have I been able to disentangle religious concepts I had taken on, my reactions to them and allow myself to truly feel my connection to my heart, my inner religion, and God within me.
It is wonderful to read how your true religion is found within, not in any dogma or doctrine but in your inner heart and your own relationship with God. That has been my experience too. It would have been so easy to walk away from all forms of religion without having considered that it was inside me all along. It was Serge Benhayon who guided me to look inward and discover the richness of the connection that lies within.
“As a consequence of his catholic upbringing he acted often out of guilt and shame.”
I had a grandfather who also carried this pain and behaved poorly during his life … the ramifications echoed down the next two generations … however it’s great that the catholic church worldwide is being called out at last, this will go a long way to healing many many families.
Also what I absolute respect from what you have written Kerstin, is that we are never dependent on a certain religion and that religion can be simple how we feel in our hearts. And that this true religion actually helps us to recover from an ill rhythm and ill way of living. To me this is true medicine !
There are many religions with their own beliefs around what is true and correct. When a person is born into a religious family and takes on the beliefs from a very young age their community and where they belong grows. Many of us choose to live with the ‘separation’ that is felt within and do not challenge what is governing outwardly, because there seems to be much at stake. As you found Kerstin to live with the separation has more at stake with profound results. Hidden in the ‘damage’ are pots of gold and the gift of re-connecting to self and the celebration of that. It is never too late to return. Thanks for sharing 🙂
I can relate to that desire to belong to a community the notion of being special and belonging. I have come to realise it is because I always felt like I didn’t quite fit. As I have come to accept and appreciate what I bring the need to belong has definitely lessened.
I can totally relate to that feeling of not quite fitting in nicolesjardin, always feeling on the outer edges of any group that I joined. I have found by getting to know the real me more deeply, “the need to belong has definitely lessened.” In fact I have finally found my true home, and that is within me.
Understanding that true home is within has also helped me to let the divinity out.
I feel that is a choice I have made too Ingrid, always feeling on the outer edges of whatever group I was joining and I behaved as such as well, as if I was not worth being in the group. It’s time to leave this behind and to feel it is giving my power away when I look outside and try to belong. My true home is inside me and I don’t have to doubt this but just connect to the power I know to be me.
Kerstin, re-reading your blog gives me another view on what the influence can be of raising kids with one or the other belief system. Deep within everyone is the feeling of knowing God for me being raised with the catholic belief it was quite confusing and just as you have shared it made me insecure of what to follow. To value myself as a Son of God equal to all is what I know to be true and it is in my connection with my body, my inner heart and nature that I feel worth and confirmed.
Reading this blog has exposed a whole new area of my life to deeply consider: my relationship with God. My father was brought up presbyterian and my mother anglican – I was christened anglican, however we only ever went to church for weddings and funerals, and my parents were involved in a meditation/philosophy group as well. I don’t remember the word God ever being spoken at home. Around the age of 12 my father told me I was to choose between going to bible study class or the meditation group. I chose bible study although I would sit in an armchair in the corner of the room and switch off – I remember nothing of what happened there except the floral fabric of that chair! At 15 I swapped to the meditation group and meditated until I left home at 18. None of this brought any form of truly loving care, true connection or truth to our home. When I started attending Universal Medicine events I would react every time Serge Benhayon mentioned the word God – I couldnt even say the word God to start with, and yet I have always felt the stillness that is there in nature. There are certainly many ideals and beliefs for me to look at here – thank you Kerstin.
Thank you for sharing your experience, this believe of what god is, something outside of us and out of reach I find awful and can feel now that I have always known that to be not true. In the connection I feel with nature is the absolute confirmation that that is what god is an abundant reflection of love, that is also inside us.
Is it possible that using anything to make us feel better about ourselves, like we fit in, is selfish and actually abusive? Is it possible that we have come so far from the true meaning of religion because we have used it to define us, therefore creating separation amongst others?
Reading this blog and the way 2 religions divided a family makes me ask the question, and wonder why we look so far outside of ourselves to be something when we have it all in the palm of our hands.
Unbelievable how we bring up children in this utter confusion of religions that are contradicting each other and send so many double messages to our young. When in truth they innately know God and are connected to the universe in a way that many of us have long forgotten.
Absolutely Judith, institutional religions are there to keep us separate. Separate from each other and from ourselves and the truth we hold within.
Reading your article made me realise there is a distinct possibility most people are feeling torn between the two worlds; one that expresses naturally from within and the other imposed upon us from the outside. Could this be what is making us emotional and mentally unstable? You can only go so far in denying what is held within you before you become ill or lose the plot!
Beautiful Kerstin. Thank you. “As part of my Christian belief and upbringing, I was taught that God was a being outside of me and I needed to ‘be good’ to win his love… and I needed ‘to do’ something in order to earn his love.” This was my experience growing up. But like you, I knew God was in my heart, treated everyone equally and could be connected to in nature. I physically walked out of a church service at 18, and in my mind the words “I can commune with God in a field” were with me. Universal Medicine has brought back the very dear relationship I have with God, and for that I am forever grateful.
To grow up with such strong ideals and beliefs as you describe Kerstin and to then make the changes you have is nothing short of miraculous.
When we free ourselves from being tightly bound my the false ideals and beliefs and embrace ourselves with tenderness and love and connect to our inner wisdom and love, it is a celebration that the world needs to know about.
Spot on Thomas – Kerstin’s changes are to be celebrated.
Kerstin, your blog helped me see how insidious belief is, even if it’s not necessarily practiced – it bleeds out into the way we approach life. So for instance looking outside yourself for God and wanting his approval feeds a behaviour in life which asks us to look outside and seek approval / recognition from another. That seed is there which says we have to look without, rather than asking us to come back and see within, and nurture the connection we already have.
Gorgeously said Monicag2, there are so many beliefs, once it is a belief it seems that it is approved and good to go ahead with, but like this article shares so beautifully, many beliefs actually hurt and harm – are not true!
I always found that my idea or knowing of God was much more loving too Kerstin. I used to argue with people when there were stories of a vengeful or angry God, it just didn’t seem right or true. Yet I allowed the idea that I was lesser take hold. It was very confusing as a child to have the different adults in my life believing different things. Now I have allowed myself to know the truth. My original feelings were true and I trust my own feelings about many things including God.
A wonderful blog Kerstin, one that brought back much to ponder on. I grew up very confused about what religion exactly was. My father’s father had denounced the Catholic faith and brought his children up as Rationalists. As a result of this upbringing my father said he didn’t believe in God, but at the same time he had the strongest connection to nature, which he instilled in me, and an amazing and most natural way of connecting to people everywhere, without the slightest judgment and comparison. And when I observed the inspiring way he lived, it felt as if he was living as what I imagined how a true “Christian” would live. My mother was brought up as Lutheran but only went to church when someone died. I tried Sunday School, then Bible studies classes, but it wasn’t too long before I left knowing what I was being taught did not feel true, but at that stage I didn’t know what did; I just knew that there was something more than what I had been presented with.
As a result of this religious confusion, until recently, I struggled to say the word God, particularly as I feel that I took on my father’s beliefs out of loyalty, but gradually, as I have committed to being a student of the Way of the Livingness my relationship with God, which I now know had never gone away, has grown stronger and clearer. These days it is so easy to talk about God, to God and to feel and embrace his presence in every moment of my life, and blogs like yours are supporting me to deepen this divine relationship.
Thank you for the comment too Ingrid because it shows how Kestin’s experience is not unique. For me the confusion around God is made by trying to control something that is uncontrollable. Making it into an ideology and a prescribed way of connection rather than through our hearts, through nature and through people.
That’s great Lucy it is also an experience that I have had.
It is hard to trust in religion when the experience as a child is to see and feel everything that is not of truth in it. Thanks to Universal Medicine, I can now reconnect to that which I knew was true back then as a child, and confirm that which I knew was not true.
Mary I had the same experience with my parents, rather than going to church it was the temple. There is definetly control in regliion as I felt it very strongly as a child. My parents too, always said to me God is within you always. That felt true, everything else did not make any sense.
Our societies revolve around religion, or at least give the appearance of doing so yet the impulse to act lovingly never stems from what we have come to know as religion, it only ever comes from an innate impulse that lives within us all. Therefore, I often ask myself, what does religion bring us and why would we need to have faith in something that is external to the wonders that live inside ourselves. This feels like it comes from a lack of trust we have developed in ourselves and the deep wisdom we all actually have but seem to have misplaced. And of course what true religion really is, something that comes from our own connection to ourselves and to god.
So true, Stephen, I have been horrified in the past by some of the things committed church attending Christians have said. Things so far removed from love that I could not be part of such a congregation. Thank God that in The Way of the Livingness is a religion in the true sense of the word, one that connects to the deep wisdom held in the inner heart of each one of us.
Brilliantly Said Stephen. If there is a mistrust in ourselves, how can we truly know God, because he is found within. We are all the Sons of God, there is no question about that, so what’s with all of our beliefs, mistrust and versions of God that aren’t part of the Livingness of our own true being?
I feel we need a simplicity in our approach to religion, while it is important to respect all religious beliefs I also feel it is time we addressed religious practices that condemn one another or that place certain faiths above those of others. Equality must be at the heart of every religious practice and perhaps as you say Harry it is time we question those beliefs that don’t respect this basic decency.
Great question harryjwhite. What’s with all the separation between organised religions? Can’t we all see that it doesn’t work and agree that we are all on fact looking for the same thing?
In a world that cannot know the nature of God and the Universe by design, the most important thing that we should ensure as a humanity is the freedom of expression and the freedom of religion. If by chance, there then happens to be such a thing as true religion, at least it has the opportunity to live alongside all that is not true and that it may be found. The worst thing that could happen to this world is that society becomes so reactionary to the very word of religion itself – as a result of all that has been done in its name – that it moves towards a culture of denial and condemnation of all that is religious, and in doing so imposes a viewpoint that the only truth in the world is to be found through the lens of rational and linear thought. What a tragedy that would be if life was reduced to a single line, and our passion for understanding life is limited to what is known, where the heart is denied and we are left to the cold calculating mind to dictate what we should and should not aspire to see.
The Way of the Livingness presentations through Universal Medicine have allowed me to feel that true religion does not come from within the walls or words of the varying religious institutions but through the connection to myself and the way I choose to live. This resonates much more deeply with me than any mainstream doctrine I have ever come across.
I was cluey enough to know God wasn’t in the church but what then? I too felt like there was a part of me that was missing and I expected to find it in soul mates ie. In my relationships but I always came to a point in them that I felt let down as they didn’t meet my expectations of what a soul mate meant to me. It has only been recently that I have learnt the significance of dedicating myself to connecting more deeply with myself through time alone with nature and other rituals that confirm the divine connection I have with God always.
“Their Christian belief seemed to give them a comfort somehow, and a feeling that they were ok and life was ok.”
I see this in the nuns and pastoral care workers in a catholic hospital nearby … they feel good about themselves for all the ‘good work’ they’re doing in their own time which, for them, means they are ok and life is ok. And truly some real assistance is sometimes granted by their work, but on the whole I see they are doing it for themselves, keeping themselves busy and needed, so they don’t feel lonely or useless.
Thank you Kerstin for sharing your experience with religion so openly. I was brought up with catholic religion but my parents were not strong religious so I was sure that I had the “freedom” to find out about religion without to much of this dogmas. But today as I allow myself to look deeper I can feel that the catholic religion has left very subtle his ideals and beliefs inside of me. It is scary how these can happen without me feeling it consciously. I am now more aware about this because religion is different for me it is not outside with all the ideals and beliefs – now it is inside of me – a inner knowing and with that I don’t need to look outside.
I was brought up in a culture where people would go to Shinto shrine to get a blessing at birth, and have a church wedding then a Buddhist funeral – it was all mixed up and nobody around me thought themselves as religious and the common thread was that ‘We don’t know anything about God, but there’s a someone who does’ and rely on those who are engaged in institutionalised religions and are happy to pay them considerable amount of money for their services – anything from getting rid of bad fortune to getting an afterlife name for a dead relative. It felt strange, but I was a good enough girl to go along with it. What Universal Medicine presents about true religion makes absolute sense to me and I can now understand how harmful it is to give myself over to a disempowering belief under the guise of being faithful.
We all know the truth, it lives inside of us. To live from this place is to live in our true power and not give it away to any source outside ourself.
I felt a pain on my heart reading this, how awful it is to be turned away from ourselves in this way when we can all find God and true religion inside. Unimedpedia Religion – http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-religion.html gives a great description of what the word religion really means which is not what we generally think at all!
I have always loved the word religion and feel a strong connection with it, thanks to Serge Benhayon and The Way of the Livingness I have found out the truth of why. For me true religion is love and equality and living in absolute harmony with each other and God.
I have looked to many ‘religions’ for the truth – but none of them came close to the truth I have found in my inner heart, God is inside of me – and I am equal to him – we are all equal sons of God. This truth and the freedom it brings – has only ever been presented to me by Universal Medicine, Serge Benhayon and the Way of The Livingness. The truth is we are all one.
I know God to be everywhere, in every bird, flower, person, smile, breath.
Dear Kerstin I would agree, I have dabbled with Christianity so to speak, but it never rang true for me, I went to please someone else, instead of feeling what was true for me. This lasted for so long before I could no longer hold back the truth I felt so clearly in my body. The final stage was when it was shared that people would go to hell because they had not asked Jesus into their life – this was absolute nonsense and is a very deeply harming belief. So I left there and then and never went back again. I know for a fact that Jesus would never ever once say or believe this to be true, he deeply cared for and loved everybody. God does not hand pick who he does and does not want in heaven – this is not true and is a man made belief. God knows we will all return together.
It’s beautiful that even with the influences of your parents’ religions, your inner heart knew what was True. A great lesson to honour those feelings we have. Thanks Kerstin.
It feels like all of the different religions are based on past belief’s and you should try to replicate them. The Way of The Livingness is based on how you live now with god inside of us…this feels true.
This is a beautiful sharing Kerstin. As a child and growing up I also experience having deep feelings about God and my connection to Him, which also where very different to what I was being taught at the catholic school that I was attending. This left me doubting and distrusting my feelings. I too found that I felt harmonious when I was immersed in nature as the magic of God and the oneness that I felt was reflected to me here and confirmed my knowingness. As I grew up nature always remained the refuge I took when I was feeling too lost or I was feeling too overwhelmed, I was always able to return to feeling my connection to me here. I love how you expressed your deep appreciation for Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon – ‘The presentations of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon have allowed me to re-connect to myself. I have begun to trust my inner feelings once more. I have started to connect back with myself. My body has now recovered and I am learning to feel deeper and deeper who I am in truth.’- as I feel the same. As there is another way that we can return to the truth of who we are as we live our day to day lives with all – The Way of the Livingness.
I love your blog Kerstin and it makes me wonder, how many of us feel innately what is true and what is not and ignore this in order to belong, be safe and be accepted and recognised? What if we all just took a leap and went for what we feel inside regardless of existing religions, cultures and belief systems? I have taken this leap and have found my own way in The Way of the Livingness. This true religion is everything I always felt within me but never dared to trust simply because I did not see it around me.
From reading about your experience of religions and the comments from others who have had similar experiences, Kerstin, it seems that we all knew as children that the divisive religions and taught beliefs about God were not loving and true. It does take time to dislodge these impositions, but I too have found the way Serge Benhayon speaks about God goes straight to my heart. It feels like I have known this all along – God is love.
I love that you knew all along how it really is, and while you felt different to everyone else, something inside of you didn’t let go of what you knew the truth to be.
Thank you for a simple and profound blog Kerstin. The magic of Universal Medicine is that it allows us to feel the truth from within, and confirms who we truly are. This is so opposite to how most of the world operates but is such a simple and easy way to live.
I like how you point out that it doesn’t make sense that Jesus was never married and that God’s love is not only for those that follow the Christian’s way, as this makes everything so exclusive and special and cuts out so many people. How can an all loving God not love all of his children, that does indeed not make sense. And though in fact sooo many things do not make sense in this world, we oblige to what is shown and taught to us and doubt our own inner feeling and knowing, trading it in for the nonsensical, the absolute opposite to our true being.
sounds like a true religion Kerstin!
Religion never made much sense to me and I only attended church as it was a part of the schools program for the day. The hymns where mouthed as I didn’t feel to put effort into something that didn’t make sense. But as you’ve shared here Kerstin is that feeling God within us makes total sense to me and is growing everyday. The best part about how The Way of the Livingness is presented is that there is no trying required, only choosing to let ourselves feel that there is a relationship with God for us without all the dogmatic rules or dictations that mainstream religions have presented.
Those Hyms Leighmatson! I never really sung them either, because I rarely went to church, didnt know any of the words and they just were SO SAD. I have found there is no sadness in my connection with God, only LOVE
The Hymns that are sung in church gathering are sung with such grief, sadness and despair, it is possible that they are written and sung this way because one deeply misses their connection with God.
Kerstin I found what you said about;
“Through choosing to constantly not trust me and my inner feelings, and instead to trust in something else which is not me, I ended up being ill.”
I found this very interesting, and then by connecting to your self and trusting your inner feelings you became healthy and well again.
It is a true blessing to have learned that love does not equal being good. Getting rid of this non-loving protestant and catholic ideal and belief for me is a lifetime-long process. The ideal sits very deep. Having met Serge Benhayon has accelerated this healing process immensely.
Thank you for sharing Kerstin. I too always felt confused about the different religions and what they were offering to be the truth, so I turned away from all of them and God as none of them felt true. Universal Medicine also helped me reconnect to the fact that we are ALL the Sons of God and that I didn’t have to do, or be anything to know and feel this.
Kerstin this a powerful piece in that it reflects how often religions deem God to be an outside force that we must look up to, bow down to and are always seen as lesser than. I like you never connected to this idea of God, that to connect to God I had to attend a church never made sense to me. It is only through my connection to Universal Medicine that I have began to see that we all equally capable of connecting to God as God lies within and as such we are all divine beings who have a choice and responsibility in the way we live and that can be truly joyful. It is up each of us to choose the life we live and seeing God as part of myself I know feels true to me, never judging but always there ready and waiting for me to embrace the amazingness we are. That is truly divine.
Beautiful Kerstin. Yes, when we are re-connected back to ourselves and live this connection, we are in religion, and know God – because we know ourselves.
I was raised a christian but the faith I was exposed to did not answer any of my questions, left me doubtful about the existence of god and confused about the meaning of life. It says an incredible amount for Universal Medicine that I am no longer confused or in any doubt about either. I would never have believed that possible before I listened to the presentations by Serge Benhayon and felt the truth that I had known all along, delivered so clearly and lovingly. The Way of the Livingness, a down to earth religion that inspires me to be more loving with everyone.
I agree Stephen, I’m just waiting for the next form which asks me my religion, this time there will be no hesitation!
I agree kathiefreedom it feels great to claim The Way of the Livingness as my religion.
Kerstin, I found you comment ‘As part of my Christian belief and upbringing, I was taught that God was a being outside of me and I needed to ‘be good’ to win his love… and I needed ‘to do’ something in order to earn his love.’ to be a carbon copy of the beliefs I was raised with. Even though since becoming involved with Universal Medicine I have found confirmation that God is within and all around me and that self love and acceptance is a basic aspect of true religion, it has been a challenge to let go of these old ingrained beliefs and thoughts which seem to creep into so many areas of my life. Thankfully, I can now realise them for what they are when I do notice their presence.
A beautiful sharing of your experiences Kerstin thank you.
Kirsten the only religion where I’ve felt at ease, where I’ve felt it’s not about being good or ticking boxes or getting ordained, but instead inspired to build a deeper and loving connection with myself has been the Way of the Livingness. Before this I would have summed up religion as controlling, manipulative, dogmatic and purposeless. I now understand what I was referring to as religion was not truly religion.
Thank you Kirsten for your beautiful sharing. Somehow we all seem to have this innate wisdom that knows true religion is within us all despite everything we are exposed to that says religion is an outside authority you have to prove yourself to, over and over again.
Kerstin, what you write is very interesting. Your female relatives looked better but that may have come from them going more regularly while ignoring what they noticed while your father may have been more honest, acknowledging that not everything was right?
In other words, the more honest person had a harder time in their life?
I too was very confused as a child to listen to adults recite the lines in the Lord’s prayer about forgiveness whilst maintaining a family feud.
It makes so much sense now that I don’t have to beg forgiveness of the most loving of all fathers because he doesn’t judge me in the first place ( and increasingly I am doing so less and less!)
I feel we all do know the truth of life deep down, and feel that most religions out there are not truly aligned with love, which makes no sense whatsoever. We are all longing to return to love, and Universal Medicine and the Way of The Livingness present a true religion based on love, of which I feel very blessed to be a part of. For the first time in my life I feel a level of love and support in my life like never before and this is not coming from outside myself but from within.
Wow such a turn around Kirsten, from birth we can be imposed upon by religion telling us how we should be what we should think and how we should act, all these should be’s are exhausting. Amazing that you surrendered back into your heart back to your truth and found you again. What a turn around! “I am constantly becoming more and more aware of what is truly going on and thus make choices out of love. This way of living creates feelings of joy, richness and preciousness in my body”
Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine has also enabled me to trust my inner feelings and give me the authority to honour it.
Same, same for me Concetta. I went briefly to Sunday School and church and religion was a compulsory subject at school, but it never felt right. Like you, I did not trust my inner feelings until inspired by the presentations of Serge Benhayon.
Great blog, great comments and great subject to discuss openly.
True Religion is what I was asking for from a young age as I was constantly questioning the hindu religion for as long as I can remember. I then went off and joined other religions in search for truth, true meaning, and if there really was a white man with a long beard in the sky watching over us called God. My life and my world never made any sense and it was because there was no understanding.
The work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine gave me answers, in fact I got ALL my questions answered and more.
I now know without any doubt what the true meaning of religion is and what God is.
Living a deeply self-connecting life everyday by choice to the best of my ability, is what I call religion. God is inside me and walks with me and all I need to do is check in and stay connected. Simple and a great way to live. Nothing missing and no need to look outside as everything is inside me.
Having been raised Catholic I know precisely what you mean Kirsten. It was all about needing to ‘be good’ or ‘do good’ to be worthy of God’s love… and then of course there was the burgeoning guilt that comes from not being or doing good which in turn played out in a constant need for acceptance. What a crippling weight this is to carry around our entire life. It never really made sense to me so I too spent many years searching for answers outside of myself and never felt truly at peace or at home with religion until I was led to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. Put simply – Serge was the guy that made life and my relationship to everything in it… make complete sense.
I love the way in this blog you are not saying to anyone what they need to do but just sharing from your experience what you have felt and that is very nice to read. In no way are your dictating and or telling people what to do.
I can very much relate to this ‘As part of my Christian belief and upbringing, I was taught that God was a being outside of me and I needed to be ‘good’ to win his love… and I needed ‘to do’ something in order to earn his love.’ I too came across Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine and found truth, that God is within me and all I have to do is simply connect to my inner heart.
Thank you Kirsten. I can very much relate. I was raised in the Catholic faith. While my parents were not particularily devout I attended a very strict convent school. I experienced the underlying guilt and shame that my parents carried but tried to hide and the more obvious strict expression from school. As a young child I felt a lot of confusion around the mixed messages that I received. Religion and God just didn’t add up. Through the teachings of Universal Medicine my relationship with God and divinity has been reignited and the simplicity and love of true religion is now deeply felt.
As a child I was forced to go to Greek church and when I became of age old enough to make my own decisions I stopped going. The churches dogma never made sense to me and even though I couldn’t understand what the priest was saying because he spoke in ancient Greek, I could feel it wasn’t true and so I rebelled against religion. But when I was introduced to the ‘The Way of the Livingness’ by Universal Medicine, every part of my being knew this was truth. That God is equally inside all of us and is with us everyday on our path of return back to love.
Wow Kerstin, you had a young life steeped in religion in different forms. I could feel the confusion and heaviness of this in your writing. How glorious to come back to yourself and come out of the frustration and exhaustion. Your choice to trust your inner feelings has obviously led to lighter feelings of freedom and joy. What a contrast to your early life.
To me the esoteric way makes perfect sense compared to being raised as a catholic. I too went searching for something else to connect to once I decided not to return to the catholic church, but it took many years until I found what is being presented by Serge Benhayon today. It isn’t easy to forget what seems to have been drummed into me as a child but with persistence, lots of love and acceptance of who I am it is already so much better.
The Anglican church that I was brought up to believe I came to realise didn’t really make sense as I could see it was just talk with no true harmony existing between what was said and what was done. So like many others I went searching outside of myself to find what felt right, that is until I was introduced to Serge Benhayon and the teachings of Universal Medicine, which from the very beginning connected with my inner-most being and I knew deep within me to be true. I observed and could feel the truth and harmony of what was being presented not only in words but in every move and action. At long last I knew who I was/am. God is love, I am a Son of God and so my very essence is love and I know this is true for all human beings. It has to be it is the only way that makes sense.
Yes, Kerstin, this kind of religion leaves traces in the body when we try to bend its way and the demands of that particular religion. Many religions, many truths – how can that be? How can there be more than one truth?
Exactly Christoph, this was always a question I had as a child.
Yes I agree Christoff…will the real religion please stand up & tell the truth & nothing but the truth 🙂
Absolutely agree christophschnelle. There is only one truth.
Kerstin your post shows that in spite of all the different religions you experienced as a child and adult, not one of them – with the exception of The Way of The Livingness as presented by Universal Medicine – brought you back to yourself wherein, and in truth, we find God.
Thank you Zofia, Universal Medicine reflected in me what I already felt was true and as such I felt very confirmed by the presentations of Serge Benhayon.
Spot on Zofia! It is The Way of the Livingness that holds truth and brings us back to ourselves, the truth and God. Profound and so simple.
As a child for me there were so many things that did not make sense in what I was presented in religion and seemed almost fairytale like, but not in a good way. I knew there was a God or divine being because I could feel it – It was that simple. That didn’t seem to match my experience of religious services and morning prayers which felt harsh and judgmental. I loved the ritual and the ceremony of the services, but found the seats so uncomfortable and the pews hard. My knees and the church would be freezing or stinking hot. I loved the thought of prayer but much preferred my own freelance version than what felt the rote learnt monotony of scripture. I remember making up confession because if I told the truth about what I was up to I probably would have been expelled. So I felt excluded and not good enough. There was one moment that really stood out for me and that was when I went to mass with my family and a recently divorced family member was not able to receive the eucharist because she was a divorcee – (this was a woman who at one stage was going to become a nun). At that point I knew there was no God or divinity or Grace in the authority of the church because it was the most loving thing for that marriage to end. It was very broken and dysfunctional and causing harm to all around it.
Nicole, I have had the same experience in much milder form when I grew up. Everything around religion felt contracted and wrong as if people deliberately wore clothes that were several sizes too small and considered the pain as a sign of virtue and constantly tried to convince you to wear the same.
Christoph, that is such a powerful image that you have shared. I can also relate to that notion people considering pain as a virtue it is actually something that I subscribed to in a big way. I quite liked the idea of being “virtuous” and helping people but I definitely had much too wild a social life to be able to be taken seriously in the school’s eyes. However my love and compassion of all people was evident and I wasn’t anti authority so they never knew what to do with me. Which is a shame because i actually had a lot to offer.
Kerstin my experience of religion (the protestant variety) was that I was not good enough as I am. I’m not sure how much was due to religion and how much was what I had absorbed from other influences, but bottom line I believed that I was not innately good enough and had to do something to redeem myself – more so because I am a woman! Universal Medicine presented me with reality that I am the Son of God as are we all, and from that knowing huge healing has occurred, and God is no longer a concept that is outside of myself.
The idea of being good is so insidious, as it can look like how a christian should live. Yet it is laced with trying and conforming to what good looks like rather than coming from our truth. I am sure there is not an ounce of “good” in God and we are his creations.
I remember being taken to church when I was 4 years old and wondering – what on earth is going on here!? All these sensible grown up people saying and doing things that made no sense, (although I really liked the guy at the centre of it all – Jesus). Unfortunately I came to the conclusion that they must know something I don’t and so discounted what I was truly feeling, setting up a lifetime of thinking I must be wrong – at one level – at another I knew better. It was hearing Serge Benhayon for the first time that confirmed what I knew to be true, and began the unfolding back to that connection – and dissolving the years of harm of thinking myself less because I couldn’t understand how the craziness of the world worked.
How crazy is it that we spend half our life (or longer) learning all these false beliefs, to then arrive at a point were we realise the beliefs are the very thing we have to let go of/unlearn, to live life with any sense of self. What a waste of time and resources.
For me, this blog highlights how revered religions hold at least one commonality: they all promote separation. Separation from one another’s beliefs; and separation from the fact that God resides within us all.
The choice to ‘be with God’ is as simple as choosing to be with me. When I connect to this feeling in me I connect to the knowing that this is equally held in every human being on earth, and there is no true separation.
Beautifully said, Greg. Kerstin exposes so clearly in her blog how mainstream religion is all about struggle, not feeling worthy and trying to separate from others, but it is never ever lived as being love and how we relate to ourselves and others from love. Thats what The Way of the Livingness is.
Thank you for sharing this Kerstin. There are many inconsistencies in Christian ideology that just don’t feel like they add up. The simplicity of being love, and being true to your inner heart as presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine provides a consistent basis to live from. I have found these simple tenets to be a revelation.
Kerstin, this is a lovely sharing. I too wanted to fit in and be accepted in church but never felt much like that was possible as I had so many questions about God and Jesus that the bible and the churches I attended could not answer. By the time I was in my teens, I became disillusioned by the seeming holiness of churchgoers and pastors that was in stark contrast to the loveless ways I saw them living outside of church. At some point, I decided that if that is what it means to believe in God, then God must not exist. I started calling myself an atheist.
What I am feeling now is, even though I tried to turn my back on God, I still felt divine love in nature and in moments when I was with myself.
Thank you Kerstin for your interesting blog. Having had an upbringing where my Father was raised as a Catholic and my Mother a Protestant wasn’t as confusing as your situation, mainly because Dad became disillusioned by the Catholic Church and became a strong Protestant. After a lot of searching I eventually found the teachings of Serge Benhayon and the Ancient Wisdom that are so in line with what I feel and make so much sense, especially that God is Love and within each of us and we are all equal in his eyes.
I was born to a Catholic mother and Presbyterian father, baptised a Catholic, went to Catholic and Anglican schools and then in my early twenties became a born again Christian. Phew. They all had varying beliefs and doctrines. But it has been ‘The way of the Livingness’ inspired by Serge Benhayon that makes sense to me and brings the simplicity back to religion.
I can’t imagine how hard it’s be to not only be fighting between a religion or trusting yourself as well as having your parent both within different religions. That’d be tricky, its hard to trust yourself when your raised and taught that everything comes from outside which is the absolute opposite of the truth..
The religions of the world have amazing architecture and art in their churches, their ceremonies have all pomp and glamour of something grand, and yet it all focuses on something that is external, something you can get close to but never be. This is the great lie and so depicted in the masterpiece by Michaelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The choice to be who I am is to walk hand in hand with my father as an equal, not as an inferior from a supreme judgemental being. God is love – we are that same love.
You have summed up beautifully the trap of trying being a good ‘Christian’ and having to do more and more good things to get in favour with God. It is revealing how you observe that the end result of this was to feel increasingly insecure. This was my experience too, and I’m sure that of many others affected by this dogma of the Christian churches.
Thank you Kirsten for the beautiful reminder that all the great teachers told us that the kingdom of God is ‘within’ but all the religions teach us to look outside of ourselves and thus we end up with a belief that we are ‘without’ God. So we assume that it must be something we have done to loose the connection with God or could it be that we ‘created’ the illusion of a Godless state by looking outside of ourselves in the first place.
There are so many christian religions out there espousing the ideal of ‘good’ and what it means to be a ‘good’ or ‘devout’ human being. From my own experience this ‘good’ is simply a niceness, a falseness that masks the real person within. The beauty of someone simply being themselves rather then trying to be good and nice all the time. It is much more enjoyable to be around those who are simply being themselves, no matter what that presents us with.
it just shows that the Religious beliefs have strayed far from the truth of God as you said. How can we be close to God if we are living with guilt, shame and fear, because isn’t God Love? Thank you for this lovely piece.
I was not brought up in a religious family, quite the opposite my parents were atheists and religion or God was never discussed in our family, and yet I can relate to much of what you have written Kirstin the feeling lost and still looking for something. When I was 7 or 8 I can remember feeling there was something much more than being here on earth, but there was nothing to show me this was true. In my 40’s I rekindled this knowing I felt inside and started on the spiritual route which offered a tangible possibility that there could be more, but all the time it was asking me to give myself to something and look outside. The Way of the Livingness has been the only religion that makes sense to me, and offers a truth that I can feel deep within me.
Thank you Kerstin!! Your blog is a great confirmation of the importance of the reflections we get from our parents (hence the responsibility of what we offer as parents to our kids). It also confirms the fact that most of us do not really choose ‘our religion’ because we really feel that this is the way to go but because of more pedestrian reasons. The world has to know that it is also possible to connect to religion when every cell in your body say yes to it!
A wonderfully simple expose of how mainstream Christian religions teach us to look outside ourselves for the answers because we are somehow not enough and how this undermines what we actually feel and know to be true.
So beautifully written… It feels like when you have those insecure feelings of thinking you need to ‘do’ something and do something ‘good’ that God would be there with you, supporting you, if we chose to let all of his love be felt but we let those outer impositions tell us it’s not about how you ‘feel’ it’s about what you ‘do’
Hi Kerstin, I saw through the flaws of catholicism from a very young age, and what I also saw from a young age is how its ideals ruled people such as my grandfather who was brought up as a catholic. He was an ordinary man, who had his issues in life like all of us. He was no saint, but underneath all of his flaws was a man who had a natural passion for people and life. When he was dying in hospital many years ago, I let him know of how loving he had been to me over the years, and I wanted to acknowledge this side of him, despite his obvious flaws. Yet I knew he was struggling to let it in fully, because he was in absolute fear of dying and going to hell, because he knew he had not lived a “clean” and “good” life which he had been raised to believe.
As I used to argue with my religion teacher in year 5, how can a God be all forgiving, and yet judge people for eternity? It makes no sense, and it was in truth an evil belief system designed to keep people in guilt in shame, and prevent them from ever understanding the delicate and all encompassing love that they had naturally within.
Thank you Adam. I too saw the flaws of church at a young age, but I was still being affected by the pervasive manner in which the church has influenced our beliefs about life. My family’s inconsistency with going to church was the first thing that stood out. We went to church at Christmas and Easter, we would be running late, with the rest of our neighbors, and we would end up having to stand up the back. I would then watch everyone gather around and listen to something that made no sense to me at all. It felt like one big joke.
Reading this again today I felt how disempowered we can allow ourselves to be and how by going with what we feel is true brings us back to health. Thank you Kerstin.
Beautiful blog Kerstin, thank you. I was also brought up in a catholic environment where religion was unchallenged and very comfortable. As I grew up and became an adult it was easy to feel that God is much, much more than what religions make of Him and I distanced myself from catholicism. My connection to God was never questioned though and I have found my true religion in the Way of the Livingness presented by Universal Medicine.
Thank you, Kerstin. It is a sad reality that we allow ourselves to be denatured by listening to those who tell us when we are young that God is outside of us and that we need to be deserving of His love. This denies us the opportunity to re-establish that innate connection to the divine through our own inner heart, which is available to every single one of us equally, giving meaning and purpose to life. How evil is it to rob a young person of this inherent right? True religion as presented by Universal Medicine brings us back into connection with the magic of God within us and all around us.
I too now have a true understanding of religion from Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. As I connect more to myself and to God I connect more to others.
I never liked the word religion – I saw it as an alienating word, something people use to show extreme views. It was an ugly word to me filled with separation.
Until Universal Medicine showed me its true meaning and how it is for all and how it is based on love. That for me feels like a way for humanity.
The sense of needing to belong is a very human trait that is perpetuated by mainstream religions. What I have found with The Way of the Livingness is brotherhood based on equality and truth. It takes off the veils to reveal that brotherhood has always been there, but it is me who turned away from it.
I can relate to so much of what you say Kerstin. Conforming to the beliefs of what I was taught religion to be was an onerous burden. Always a feeling of not being good enough and the fear of what would happen if I did not conform. I did not enjoy religion as it was taught to me. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine has opened my heart to my true religion, my connection to the love within me and to God. My religion is my reconnection to God in the way I live every day – The Way of the Livingness. My religion is fun and full of love.
Hi Kerstin, I find it awesome when I read of people like yourself who have been brought up in this sort of environment and even at an early age knowing that something was not quite right and then having the courage to claim what you feel is the truth. Very inspiring, thank you.
True religion, beautiful.
Thanks for bringing this up Kersten I can totally relate as I was brought up in a strict catholic family. Looking outside for acceptance and belonging instead of connecting within is a thing religious organisations can get totally wrong. This has reminded me of how most religions cause separation from who we truly are and from each other as a race of human beings
Thank you Kevin for this comment and whilst I was not brought up as a catholic, I always felt separate from who I truly was and from others because of my hindu religion. It is only now that I know what true Religion is, and that has allowed me to feel equal with others and have that deep sense of ‘I am worthy of Gods Love’. I feel an expansion in my body when I say that and it feels confirming that this is the true way. There is no tension of dismissing in my mind when I say the word God.
I can feel your words as an expansion in my body as well, Bina.
It is so true, Kevin, religions do the opposite of connecting us to God but the reflection of the Benhayon family and Universal Medicine taught me what Bina has stated: I am worthy of God’s Love.
I can relate to your words, “It never made sense for me that Jesus was not married. My feeling was that God loves everybody equally and that his love is not restricted to those who believe that Jesus is the only way.” I felt the same way growing up.
Kersten, this is a great sharing. As a child I, too, was confused by people who said they believed in and what they said about God, Jesus and how to live yet I how I experienced them was so contradictory. Your words, ” choosing to constantly not trust me and my inner feelings, and instead to trust in something else which is not me” have really struck home. I realise that is what I did and how that impacted on my life in a way I had not previously appreciated. It was so damaging as I grew up lacking self-confidence and looked outside of myself for identification.
Thank you, Jonathan for again pointing this out as it is a subject which needs constant exposing and refining.
For a brief period of time when I was a teen, I dated a guy who belonged to a Baptist church. He pressured me to go to a church service (I was not Baptist) and I finally gave in. It was a relatively small congregation (no more than 100 people) and my boyfriend and I sat near the front. I learned later he was told to sit there with me. The pastor gave a sermon about sinners and relinquishing our sins and that God only loves those who pray, etc. I was horrified to hear all of this. It felt ugly and so disturbing in my body. And what was worse, I realized part way through that he was directing his sermon at me! I was the only person in the room who was not a member of the church, and he wanted to convert me. He was looking right at me and I realized that others in the congregation were as well. I was being publicly humiliated for doing nothing other than choosing not to join his church! My boyfriend would not look at me, and I knew he was embarrassed. Later he told me that he wanted me to become a born-again Christian like he was (I had no idea what that meant at the time), because otherwise I would go to hell and he wanted me to go to Heaven with him. I actually almost laughed when he said this.
This came from a person who was on probation for physical assault, property damage and theft, who bragged about the fights he got into and trash-talked his father on a regular basis. It wasn’t long after that I broke off the relationship. But it had disturbed me for years afterwards and I could not reconcile that there were people who chose to act in loveless ways and yet believed they were God’s chosen ones because they went to church.
When I look back on this memory now, I don’t feel any shame or resentment or even sadness. I feel open to the fact that this guy I dated, the pastor of his church and everyone in his family who I knew at the time, are just as worthy of God’s love as I am, as my role models are. We really are all the same.
I can really feel the love in you comment, Julie. Vey beautiful.
Yes, we can celebrate and appreciate, the freedom we have found through the support of Universal Medicine. Thank you Julie.
Thank you Kerstin for exposing a situation which befalls many of us, the need to fit in as far as religion goes but knowing something is just not right in what is presented within the various denominations available. I remember attending church and missing out the line about being a sinner. I knew I was not perfect but did not feel I was the bad person either. The presentations of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine have presented a ‘true’ religion in The Way of The Livingness and I have found that the simplicity of living a life based on love to be the truest way. I still do not claim to be perfect but I know with these presentations I have finally been offered truth and the possibility of a true way of living.
Its amazing how we are brought up to not trust our feelings. We are fed things that don’t really make sense, but often are rebuked if we question them. I always knew deep down that there was a God, but religion never really made sense to me either and I learnt as a child not to question it as it made some adults very agitated and angry. Not being connected to what I felt meant I spent many years in confusion and at the mercy of what other people told me or expected of me. The presentations of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine have helped me to start trusting my feelings and build on my connection to myself which ultimately is my connection to God. This way of Living feels so true and so joyous and continues to deepen as I allow myself to let go of the old ideals and beliefs.
So true Debra and Jacky, we truly are fed things that don’t make sense and to not trust our feelings, and as such learned to override them and hold them back. This is a huge imposition in our early lives and I agree, the good news is, we are able to undo this.
The sentence that summarises it all for me is ”On the other hand I had a deep connection to something true within me: I had a different understanding of God”. THIS is the dilemma that I find we are faced with while the religious institutions in our time take it upon themselves to interpret and impose their take on what God is and wants.
Prior to coming across Universal Medicine I had reached a point where I did not even want to think about God any more because the interpretations were frankly horrible and well below the standard of love I wished to live with, also I did not like the insecurity these images of God gave me. It is very refreshing and empowering that Universal Medicine does teach, as has Jesus, and in fact as the Ageless Wisdom has done throughout history, that the Kingdom of God is within you. There is nowhere else to look. There is no one else to tell you who God is. Thank you for this blog.
Absolutely Golnaz, the Ageless Wisdom has taught us throughout history that the Kingdom of God is inside us and there is nothing more that we need to know about religions.
Kerstin, this is stand out line for me. ‘As a consequence, the different belief systems created separation in the family – not in an open battle, but very hidden and constantly harming.’ Holding back our feelings is in effect acceptance and agreement to something that has never been openly discussed, a common oversight of many families and one that is rarely brought to light, thank you.
I like it that you always had this sense of knowing, and now it is a bodily experience.
When I was younger, what was being presented to me as christianity was not complete. It did not stack up. I could not understand why people had to got to a church to have a connection with God. It felt odd. It made no sense to me that different parts of the world and different religions believed in different gods yet the was only one God. Thanks to Serge Benhayon and the books he has written, I am beginning to understand what true religion is and for this I do not need a grand building or a congregation, just a way of living that helps me connect to the love that I am.
Yes, Fiona, it feels so yummy to understand what true religion is.
A way of living with loving ourselves first and from this fullness loving everybody else equally instead of what most religions offer us that you have to love other people first to get recognised as a Son of God, which is so far from the truth. Love is in us all, we do not have to earn love, it is there when we connect to the love living in our innermost, ready for us when we are ready to listen.
Fiona your comment reminded me of my church days as a child. I was forced to go to Greek church by my parents. The kids often congregated to sit together near the back and we would always find ways to be playful amongst the seriousness of the church ceremonies. Reflecting back on this now as an adult I can see how as kids our playfulness was more godly than anything that was ever presented as religion. True religion is connected to from our hearts, not from our heads.
Marika, I love what you have written here, that as children your playfulness was more godly that anything that was on offer as religion. As children we remain connected to ourselves, to our inner heart and to God, that’s beautiful.
I agree, Amina, I so recognise that feeling of being lost, not knowing who I am, and it is so great to have the support of Serge Benhayon and the Universal Medicine Practitioners who are constantly reflecting our Diviinty.
This is a great expose on the contradictions our well known religions place us in, and the fact that true religion lays within – thank you for sharing.
Beautifully said Meg.
I agree Fiona, beautifully said Meg. As far as I have found there are always contradictions within the mainstream religions which are also open to a vast array of re-interpretations, and no one-unified-truth. Being brought up in the Catholic religion this confused me quite a lot and actually turned me away from religion altogether. How can something be so true and sacred yet be full of contradictions?
Absolutely Meg, beautifully said.
Beautiful Kerstin – this is certainly THE TRUTH. It’s clear YOU’VE found YOUR TRUE RELIGION.
Kerstin, Thank you for sharing your journey to finding true religion. I was raised in the Catholic system, where even as a child this religion did not make sense to me. As soon as I left home as an 18yr old I opted out of religion totally. A couple of years ago I listened to Serge Benhayon present on the true meaning of religion, and following on from this I felt inspired to take another look at religion, from its true meaning, and now I feel very blessed to be a member of The true religion… The Way of the Livingness.
I too had difficulty with many of the things the church presented as true when I was a child. I could never see why God ‘who made us all in his own image’ and is an ‘all loving being’ would reject anyone who wasn’t a Christian. I couldn’t see how going once a week to a certain building made those there more worthy of loving than those who weren’t within those walls. It still doesn’t make sense that there are so many flavours of religion in the world with each saying they are the only true way to God. All you need to do is step back and really look at what is going on in the name of God etc. to see it’s all so illogical and misleading. Thanks to Serge Benhayon, a living inspiration of what true religion is – re-connecting to oneself and holding an abiding and unconditional love for all others, I now know in my heart, the Way of the Livingness is the way for me too.
Here, here Ryan. I couldn’t agree more!
Well said Ryan. There are soo many inconsistencies in the man-made religions, ridiculous notions at times that we are meant to just accept blindly so. One of the main things which I could never understand is the going to war in the name of God, killing another because they hold a different belief system and effectively damming everyone in the world who does not hold the same belief. How is that loving and all-inclusive? All this does is through scare mongering make you align to the beliefs and tenants of the religion, just in case you may go to hell, not because it is what you feel to be truth.
I agree Ryan…common sense told me that it made no sense that all these different man-made religions that espoused separation between cultures could be true. The only one that has made sense is ‘The Way of the Livingness’ – where all of Gods children are equal because God is within each and everyone of us.
Kerstin thank you for sharing how your familiy’s beliefs took hold and played a part in shaping who you were. The knowing that something was not right was very strong inside you and even though it affected you deeply, allowing you to not trust what you were feeling, you have returned to knowing in full who you are and that is a miracle.
Thank you very much for your comment, Sally. It is totally true, the returning to who I am is the most empowering and loving choice in my life.
A miracle indeed Sally. To set oneself free from the ideals and beliefs and pathology that imprisons us isn’t necessarily easy – otherwise known as the human struggle – but the divine wisdom in listening to our inner knowing and the truth that lies within, can be simple. I love that when we allow ourselves to hear and be guided by our inner knowing, that support is all around us to help us on the path.
Amina, it is so true what you are sharing and this connection is deepening and deepening, when we allow it .
Thank you Kerstin, I grew up in a Catholic family, both my parents were raised with the Catholic belief. Although I went to church every Sunday and to the Catholic school next to this church, my parents were very resentful about what the Church had done to their youth, it had frightened them and made them very cautious in what they could do and what they couldn’t do when they met each other. Also my mother hated the Church because of what she felt it had done to her mother who was raised in the belief that a child was a gift of God and that contraception was sinful, and who as a result gave birth to 15 children. My mother was one of the first and her mother told her after 6 babies that it was enough for her, yet imagine 9 had to come (the priest would visit them to ask when the next child would come). As a result, my mother also resented her father for what she saw he had allowed her mother go through.
So my view on the Catholic belief was one of confusion. Nevertheless the rituals and ceremonies I saw in the church attracted me and yes I wanted to be part of it just like you for acceptance and recognition, to be a good girl otherwise no one, especially God, would not love me. It made me hard and very frustrated and I never felt enough, I always had to do something to get this recognition from the outside.
Now I know that all the love of God is inside us. When we connect to the love, we can trust our feelings and that we can let go of all what we have learned to be true from whatever constitution. Life is joyful and full of light in the Way of the Livingness.
Annelies, yes the hardness in the body is a result of the catholic upbringing. I can feel your appreciation of having found your way back to love and as such to a true God, who is living inside of us.
Having been brought up as a Catholic with the statement that the Pope is infallible, personally I thought he was completely wrong when he insisted on contraception being a Bad Thing and to me it was obviously a way to make couples create more Catholics. To make a woman have 9 more children than her body was saying was acceptable is a heinous crime, one of many that the institution of the Catholic Church is itself guilty of.
Gosh Carmel I had never considered the fact that the pope’s stance on contraception would result in there being more children born into the Catholic faith. Obvious but I hadn’t connected the dots. Thanks, Great blog Kerstin.
I feel that this pattern is no different than acts of eugenics that are intended to weed out the ‘undesirables’ in our world, and it has happened not just in Catholicism but in other religions, in mental health hospitals, prisons (death row), and governments.
Indeed Annelies. The Way of the Livingness is my true religion, God and His magic is within us always and life doesn’t need to be a struggle.
Thank you Kerstin. What is resonating in me from your Beautiful blog is the I am also returning to connect more and more to Nature. Which of course starts with reconnecting to me…
Yes Floris, nature is an important reflection of God’s magic and beauty and I am grasping more and more the true depth of it.
Great blog Kerstin, thank you for sharing.
Thank you Kerstin for this great contribution. I also remember being surrounded by people with their different takes on the catholic faith and how they fitted themselves into that system. Everything was always about the building and the congregation and what you wore to first communion and never about the very personal and solid connection with God that I have now developed through the teachings of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon. When I was young, religion felt like something very heavy and menacing, a burden and a weight. Hell, purgatory and damnation were ever present and I was never ever good enough – in the eyes of God, or so I was told. It seems ridiculous now, but it certainly wasn’t then – as a child it didn’t make sense and I clearly remember making the choice to not attend church because what was delivered from the pulpit and what I sensed but didn’t know was going on between a friend of mine and the new parish priest also didn’t make sense. Thank God for the Way of the Livingness!
Yes Gabriele, it is so true, religion has been so bastardised and it is a blessing to have Universal Medicine, which supports to find a true reconnection with God.
Absolutely Kerstin it is a true blessing for the whole world.