I read a blog recently about some of the beliefs we are raised with around God and the link between depression and feeling worthless, and it made me consider my own experience growing up.
For me, the God I grew up with was either mean and punishing or worse, powerless and non-existent. Both my parents were brought up by practising Catholics and also Lutherans, and in my family there was either no God, or for some family members if there was, he was to blame for all the woes they believed that beset them.
I looked out as a teenager at the suffering and emptiness around me and thought, maybe they were right. Or, if they weren’t, I didn’t feel I had access to God or love.
After reading this particular blog I am now pondering upon a definite correlation between depression and one’s relationship with God that I had never considered before. It’s so obvious though! When I was 11 or 12, I was depressed: I remember being at school and thinking none of life makes sense, what is the point or purpose of it all? We’re learning all this stuff but what for? A good job… so what?
I tried talking to my family and one said she felt exactly the same and just wrote it off as the winter blues. I knew then that my primary caretakers – the ones I had thought knew all the answers – had no answers. To avoid the deep despair that I felt, I turned deeper into a life-long affair with food, accumulating other outside distractions as I grew up.
All the time I was looking for real religion and looking for God despite saying I didn’t believe there was a God.
My attempts at avoiding what I felt to be the devastating possibility that the world was only what I could see and that there was no God or love, took me further from feeling love and God. As a result I abused my body for a long time.
The presentations of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon supported me to question my belief that God was a separate entity outside of myself. The way Serge spoke of God, to me, and his obvious direct relationship with God, inspired me to open myself up to the possibility that I too could have a direct relationship with God. I began to feel the truth of what I had heard Serge Benhayon present many times: that when we are fully present in our bodies we are connected to ourselves and to God.
I felt the joy of this for myself. I could feel I was a part of God and I realised that to stay connected to God is to stay connected with my body. As a result I am now beginning to feel that God is in fact within us all – all of the time – and that we are all equal. I never stopped to feel this in the past, or if I did I ignored it.
I am beginning to appreciate the truth of what it means to know and trust my true, innermost feelings and that these do not lie to me – it is only my thoughts and emotions that can lie.
What I am also appreciating is the fact that the only way to know God is to claim who I am (and who we all naturally are) to be one with Him.
This means that any doubt that I am a Son of God or thinking I am not worthy, hampers if not prevents my connection to God. I am realising that many religions are based on God being not part of us and so, in effect, they prevent people from knowing God. For me, I am now learning the meaning of true and real religion and in this, that God is not separate from me, and in this, that there is always a connection, and it is only I who separate from this connection when I am not claiming who I truly am.
By Karin Barea, Age 42, Cleaner, Somerset, UK
This blog originated as a comment inspired by the blog:
Depression, Worthlessness & the Truth about God
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
I agree Elizabeth, this should be shared with everyone from day one, ‘Our connection with God is first and foremost via our connection with our body’.
What a beautiful reminder Elizabeth, that is we feel any disharmony within ourselves then we have chosen to separate from God, ‘ if there is any disharmony within me or within my life that I have chosen to separate from His love.’
Thank you Karin, adding to what you have shared, when we feel the re-connection to our essences, which is our first relationship with God again it is an absoluteness of being home within this skin!
We have a lot of theories around who God is and what he does. All of these designed to dilute the truth of what every single person knows God to be.
Absolutely Viktoria, it is like a witch hunt from the dark age they had to dilute those who were sharing the truth, and if anyone dared to align they also were tested by the inescapable trials that had them persecuted.
. “I could feel I was a part of God and I realised that to stay connected to God is to stay connected with my body” A beautiful re-connection to the magnificence of who you are.
‘…I am now pondering upon a definite correlation between depression and one’s relationship with God that I had never considered before.’ Great point Karin, this is something I have not considered before myself. It makes sense because depression is a given up energy and when we separate and disconnect from God this causes a deep sadness, which makes us feel lost and feel like giving up on life and live with no purpose.
We may look out to the world that we have created and think because it is such a mess we blame god, say how could he let this happen or that there is no god. But we must never forget that we also have free will and with that free will comes choice – and the effect of all our choices both accumulate and have repercussions for others.
It is us who separate from God, never God from us.
No one truly likes the idea of a judgemental God but everyone or at least many of us like the excuse to be small and hurt that this posture gives us.
We tend to reduce God to have human traits because we also reduce ourselves and who we are, so it makes sense why we would think that God is judgemental, such a reduction which means we can no longer truly connect to His true essence.
I’ve always abhorred this image of the judgemental God, or the vengeful one. There are many other faces as well (I sometimes think the Hindus did a great job of showing the full suite of all the different kinds of Gods we think there are.. all steeped in our image, our problems, our issues. But the God who I connect with now walks alongside me, can be very ordinary and equally touches my heart in an extraordinary way. He inspires me to see the God that lives in me.
Beautiful sharing Karin. I also was not connected to God as a youngster because I lost my direct connection, knew everything I heard from outside was false and therefore had no true purpose or meaning to life. Thank God for Serge Benhayon whom I met in 2004 and through that connection reconnected to my own personal connection with God and the great joy I now experience in life. Unimedpedia God provides some really great quotes and audio about God: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-god.html
So not believing in God, or seeing God as a punishing God, that loves us conditionally seems to lead to depression….. So what is the role of institutionalized religion in here?
“I realised that to stay connected to God is to stay connected with my body”. This is such simple wisdom but far from common knowledge and is definitely the key that re-ignited my relationship with God.
Reading this what came to me was the importance and responsibility we have to live and reflect truth to another, as it should not take someone 20 or 30 years in their life until they finally meet someone that does this, but should have this from birth growing up.
It is very true that the world and most of us does not reflect what it is to live in connection to our Soul and God which is our true normal. When we live in disconnection to our love, to God we then live with a loss of sense of who we are and our true purpose all of which is ultimately our choice. Instead we learn, we follow the deemed ‘normal’, that the focus of life is about managing our deep underlying feelings of emptiness with distractions and entertainment through our lifestyle choices that ultimately abuse our body and being in order to deliver the desired effect of numbing the pain we feel of our separation to God and living our Godliness.
‘ I could feel I was a part of God and I realised that to stay connected to God is to stay connected with my body.’ We spend so much time either looking for something that makes sense of our lives, or distracting ourselves from the possibilities, when we do finally make the connection that God lives within us all, we realise our own responsibility to stay connected.
Simply being connected to our body supports our connection with God, ‘I realised that to stay connected to God is to stay connected with my body.’
“The only way to know God is to claim who I am (and who we all naturally are) to be one with Him” – this is so beautifully said, and I so agree. I can feel how I have tried to know God without care or love for myself and how that would never work as we are also god in truth.
We know who we truly are when we want to see the grandness of our power.
“God is not separate from me” and I am never separate from God.It is only the make-believes that make us think we are not connected. Then could it be, when we do make connection to ask for guidance from God we have no runs on the board, which means the response can-not be heard as we have been lost for a long time? Learning how to be a humble servant to the divine plan starts with us being gentle on our path of return.