In my teens I started to acknowledge the feeling that what I am and what the world presents is more than just physical. This led to the exploration of mediumship and clairvoyance and hence began my journey on the ‘Spiritual New Age’ path which eventually led me to Universal Medicine and The Way of the Livingness where I finally became free of all the impositions of the Spiritual New Age.
Looking for the Answer – Reiki, Crystal Healing… but My Life was a Mess
I was very much drawn to complementary therapies and would always look out for homeopathic or natural remedies as opposed to seeking orthodox medicines.
In the search for the ‘one thing’ that was going to offer me what I was looking for (which at the time, I did not know exactly what it was) I stumbled across Reiki, and this seemed to make sense for a while.
I chose to be oblivious of the fact that the ‘Reiki Master’ I trained with had a drinking problem: even after seeing him drunk and feeling the intensity of the horrible energy that came from him, I chose to overlook this and still continued with the course as I saw it to be the route to my salvation. On the course I cried a lot and saw all of this emotion to be part of the salvation I sought.
Some people within the Reiki community began to introduce all kinds of variants to suit themselves. This did not sit well with me, so I went on to train as a crystal healing therapist where I would dowse healing sessions using a pendulum. This gave me a kind of comfort that all was well and that I had found the answer, although even then I still felt really uneasy.
I constantly felt nervous, having a permanent feeling of anxiety running through my body which no amount of crystals or guided meditation would shift. I would wake in the morning feeling anxiousness in my body and I would often feel depressed at the thought of getting through another day feeling this way. I carried this nervous feeling with me on a daily basis and although on the outside I would appear confident, there was an inner feeling of not being good enough and a lack of real confidence. I was always looking for someone else to give me the answer and for someone else’s approval for me to feel okay about myself.
By the time I reached my late 30’s I was a mess. I had left an unhappy marriage, my self-esteem was on the floor and my self-worth was non-existent. I was overweight, unhappy and felt alone whilst dipping in and out of a couple of relationships and struggling to make it through whilst bringing up a child that was by now approaching teenage years. My life had gone from bad to worse even after doing many more courses that were all supposed to offer ‘the answer’.
Time for change! I knew there had to be another way.
Introduced to Chris James, the Gentle Breath Meditation, and Connecting to Me…
A friend told me of a voice presentation in our local town with Chris James, a singer and musician who offers voice workshops through Sounds Wonderful. This was the best £10 I had ever spent as during that evening I was introduced to the Gentle Breath Meditation, a simple technique where you focus on your breath and make the choice to breath gently… no “wandering down wooded paths” or “into a mountain cave to meet an Indian guide or an angelic being”, just a simple focus on my own breath.
This is what I had been looking for!… It was the one thing that supported me to connect to me and it was as simple as connecting to my breath.
For the first time in my life I had a glimpse of feeling whole and complete without the underlying emptiness and anxiety that had kept me relentlessly searching.
Chris had learned the Gentle Breath Meditation from Serge Benhayon, founder of Universal Medicine, and when Chris mentioned him I immediately knew that I needed to know more about this man and his presentations, so I attended the next available course.
Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine, Truth, Spirit & Soul – Search Over!
Following that course I read many books and went to many presentations by Serge Benhayon that unfolded all the answers that had previously eluded me. Never before had I been met with the truth about Spirit and Soul and that there are actually two types of energy, one being the fiery energy of the Soul and the other being the pranic energy of the Spirit with all its emotional baggage. Simple, yet profound. None of the ‘New Age’ study had offered this most fundamental of facts, but instead had wrapped Spirit and Soul into the same package as if to hide the fact of their difference.
In my arrogance as a ‘crystal healer’ I felt that I knew a lot about energy because I had worked with crystals and the use of the pendulum was based on the understanding that the pendulum was a visual indicator of my Soul’s communication. Well if I was really connected to my Soul, why would I need an outside indicator? Surely I could trust what I felt from the inside? So the pendulum had to go, along with all the crystals as I realised I had totally given myself away by investing all my power into them. I had missed the point completely and had actually disempowered myself by choosing to ignore the fact that all I required was inside of me.
Taking Responsibility for my Well-Being
The simplicity of the presentations by Universal Medicine and the practical common sense way of being they offered was profound.
The stage was now set for me to make some changes and start to take true responsibility for myself and my life. I stopped being a victim of my own choices and began to make choices that supported me and my well-being.
One of my first choices was to have a look at what I was eating. I stopped eating gluten and dairy and found that the sinus problem that had been hanging around for years cleared up and the bloated lethargy that was always there went away, leaving me with a feeling of vitality which in truth was already there but had been completely dulled by the food choices I was making. My body weight and shape changed. After being vegetarian for many years I started to eat a little meat and found it to be very acceptable to my body and I actually quite liked it. I had feared eating it for so many years because someone had once told me it would make me heavy and not able to connect to my Soul.
Looking back I am aware of the trap and total arrogance I had fallen into, along with a feeling that I was a better human being because I was part of the ‘Spiritual New Age’ bandwagon.
I now embrace the support of orthodox medicine as part of the healing process and no longer resist it. I understand it does not have all the answers but choose to work alongside it whilst taking the personal responsibility to look more deeply into the root cause of any disturbance that may arise.
I am now part of the student body of Universal Medicine and I endeavour to live the simplicity of the Ageless Wisdom Teachings, which makes a lot more sense compared to anything else I have come across in my relentless search for truth. I have found The Way of the Livingness.
The search is over – This is IT.
By Beverley Bulmer, Norfolk, Uk
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Hi Beverley, like you I tried all sorts of different therapies, even training as a ‘Spiritual healer’ and attended exhibitions where we were told we had to wear white underwear – I never found out why – and we’d offer ‘healing’ to the general public. Looking back it never felt quite right, there was a kind of arrogant ‘I can fix you’ approach within myself that I am sure was causing more harm than good. Fortunately like you, I met Chris James and he introduced me to Serge Benhayon and my life changed for the better year by year as I attended Universal Medicine healing courses and presentations that inspired me to make more healthy lifestyle choices.
We heal ourselves no one can do it for us.
When you talk about medicine and that you chose “to work alongside it whilst taking the personal responsibility to look more deeply into the root cause of any disturbance that may arise.” I was struck by the pure gold and pure wisdom of this line. This is what will save our heaving medical system, people seeking medical support along side taking responsibility and exploring the energetic root cause of the disturbance.
I had day surgery last year for the first time and I sought medical assistance and followed doctors orders, but I also looked at why else that occurred, and I got great insights into how I was being with my body. This supported me in the hospital and with my healing.
I’ve never met anyone who presents with the clarity and true simplicity that Serge Benhayon offers, detailing the difference between spirit and soul, and the real meaning of healing on an energetic level.
“I chose to be oblivious of the fact that the ‘Reiki Master’ I trained with had a drinking problem”. When we want something badly enough or believe it is our ‘road to salvation’ we become incredibly blind to what is glaringly obvious. There is also a suitable belief that what we do in our spare time does not affect the quality of what we do, or that it affects anyone else. This is far from the truth as energy does not start and stop or have any boundaries.
For me too, Beverly, the search is over. After the first Universal Medicine workshop I attended, I was almost too afraid to hope/pray that in Serge Benhayon I had found what I had literally searched the world over for. It took a couple of years for the hoping and praying to turn in to self-care and choosing to take responsibility and I have never looked back. My search is over. This IS it.
It is indeed possible to be freed from the complications of the theory of how we should live a spiritual life by focusing on living connected to our bodies and listening to the wisdom of the inner-heart.
It is interesting how the spiritual new age makes it look like you need to do all these things to connect to your soul but that connecting to your soul is anything but that and it hides that it actually is very simple to do through the connection with our body and life.
As someone who headed down the spiritual new age path for some time, I can attest to how damaging and dangerous this path is. Relinquish your commitment, responsibility, withdraw from life and live in complete disregard of your body (and all other bodies) while you arrogantly assume you are reaching a more enlightened state and healing old wounds.
All along those wounds are being further cemented into a body that is being numbed to the bone, while the being itself is being slowly eaten away by an energy that thrives off the illusion the spiritual new age is steeped in.
Good question Doug. I would say yes – and as we discern that spirituality isn’t the answer we can be dissuaded from the truth in so many subtle ways, as we seek to return to soul.
Thank you Beverley, it’s a story I’m sure many can relate to about the spiritual New Age, that despite all the promises and practices life’s issues do not go away, nor the emptiness or feeling that truth has not been found. This is a very powerful line “I stopped being a victim of my own choices and began to make choices that supported me and my well-being.” That line could relate to every human being and has the potential to bring much understanding and change.
I too was taken in by the Spiritual New Age after having given up on the Religion of my family. When we are searching for the connection back to who we truly are we often get pulled off track . I consider myself truly blessed that I was introduced to Universal Medicine and its founder Serge Benhayon.
The really weird thing with me and the Spiritual new Age is that all along I knew that it was shonky! But I fell for one of them which had the appearance of being ‘pure’ and real. Oh how mistaken I was in this – I allowed myself to be totally hoodwinked by the illusion of the ‘goodness’ of this group, which was, in the end, taken over by a massive force which I finally saw through . . . but not before some damage to myself because of lack of discernment.
I did a lot of searching too – through positive thinking, popular psychology, philosophy, religion, reiki etc etc…but when I reconnected to my inner heart, through the gentle breath meditation and the support of Universal Medicine, I stopped seeking because a level of settlement came to me that I had not experienced before – the settlement that is my true inner being. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine are the real deal – no doubt.
“I knew there had to be another way.” The Way of The Livingness as presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine offers a true way to find our way back to who we truly are.
I ventured into the New Age many years after leaving religion, still searching for “it.” After a few years of trying different spiritual healings, I was in a New Age book shop one day and as I picked up a book I suddenly felt very ill in my stomach, I dropped the book and never read another one again. This left me in the desert or wilderness for a few years until Serge came along into my life and showed me that the truth I had been searching for was within me all the time and not anywher out there.
Thank you Jill for sharing your comment. I remember buying two books from a New Age author that were very popular, when they arrived by post and I held the package, they felt so negative I threw them both in the bin. I didn’t bother reading them because I felt their energy said it all.
The search is over Beverley. The discovery or new-found awareness is now defining what is the true me and my feelings to my inner-knowing and, what is not me and the false pretences of the spirit wanting to be the more dominant so called light.
“None of the ‘New Age’ study had offered this most fundamental of facts, but instead had wrapped Spirit and Soul into the same package as if to hide the fact of their difference.”
I also was embroiled in the spiritual new age practices and renounced everything that I had invested ten years of my life taking part in – two years before I found Universal Medicine something happened to me where suddenly all the things I was involved in were being shown to me as not being love and of no truth. I hadn’t worried about things being of truth or love before and then suddenly it was as if my eyes were being opened and I felt very strongly to disassociate myself from these practices.
I spent a couple of years of my life lost in the search of spirituality, there was absolutely nothing that felt true and most people that I met were just immersed and identified with the glamour and illusion of knowing how to work with energy, but no one ever considered what source of energy they were aligning to and never question whether that might be the reason why they were still living in with a victim mentality blaming others and feeling sorry for themselves, in poverty, poor health and emotional wellbeing. The spiritual new age is a trick that keeps people stuck in their own pits and the arrogance that they are doing great when in fact they are soooo far from their truth within.
There can definitely be an arrogance about sensing and working with energy as a kind of truth that’s been uncovered in a world that sees only physical from as real. The foolishness of such arrogance is exactly as you say, that despite feeling energy we are still lost if we can’t discern the source and quality of energy we are working with.
The title of this blog says it all “Tricked and Trapped in the ‘Spiritual New Age” recently I attend a mind body fair where there was all sorts of tarot card readings, palm readings etc going on, I was actually surprised that people could actually get away with offering in public these sorts of services as it was so very obviously praying on those vulnerable and looking for help. The unfortunate thing is all this kind of looking into the future is compounds their pain and leads people more astray.
We can be so easily fooled by energy if we do not know the difference between soul and spirit and this simple truth applies to all areas of our lives. There are many that have claimed to have seen Jesus but was it Jesus or another entity mimicking Jesus. The astral plane is very clever and indeed we can be tricked into thinking what we see and sometimes feel is the truth when it is far from it.
“I stopped being a victim of my own choices and began to make choices that supported me and my well-being.” It is truly ironic that our way of life is the result of our choices yet we blame others, bad luck or God for our life and feel a victim to fortune. The Way of The Livingness frees one from this trap.
New Age Therapies could be seen as bandaids because until one begins to make loving choices and aligns to the soul anything else is really a relief. It may be that therapies like reiki or kinesiology are seen as helpful, and I myself have tried them both but in my experience there is nothing as powerful as a simple loving choice that honours the body. I can also see now that none of the New Age therapies I tried actually were from soul, which is why they just gave me a temporary relief, nothing truly changed as my way of life stayed the same and the quality of energy behind the therapies could not reconnect me to soul as they are sourced from the spiritual plane.
” Looking for answers” a challenging place to be , as the world will give us answers as you have found out. But the answers are make up of bits of truth but not the full truth ,as in not the full story. This is why people of spirit always feel lost and are always searching. The spirit is but an aspect of us that is lost without the Soul this is where ” The way of The Livingness ” comes in and brings about the aligning of the spirit with Soul and so the search is over.
Serge Benhayon has inspired many people to look deeper and consequently past the trappings of the so-called New Age which promised much but delivered little.And the health statistics worldwide are but one sign of it.
What’s interesting about the New Age is there are so many different versions of “the answer” in terms of presentations, modalities, workshops, and products. We could say they are different and diverse flavours of the same thing which is the energy of the spiritual plane. Serge Benhayon’s work and The Way of the Livingness has a one unifying truth, and this unity is something definitely missing in the differing flavours and factions of the spiritual New Age.
Words are words and anyone can say anything. It is what comes with words and what energy they carry and are spoken in that matters. The spiritual new age may speak of many things that are true – such as energy, but there is a big part missing. For me that is where I got tricked and trapped – it all sounded good but I was not discerning whether it felt true.
My spiritual new age trappings looked different but I was on the same path relentless and desperately searching for it. The Way of The Livingness has brought me back to me and that is IT.
The spiritual new age is a trap as it keeps you hooked and searching for more and taking you further and further away from your Soul. The Way of The Livingness is completely different as it reminds you of the truth and wisdom that resides within and reconnects you back to your Soul.
The title sums up your article perfectly. I would understand if some people reacted to what they were to read here, simply because all those other modalities are so heavily hooking and feed you with enough insecurity to have you rely on them, hence the need for everything to be outside of you when doing any ‘readings’ if you like, ie: the crystals and the pendulum etc. It feels all too easy if we just relied on our inner knowing…(says the voice in our head), so out there we search….far far away from where it all truly is.
There were many times in my life, as I was lurching from one drama to another, that I knew that it was “Time for change! I knew there had to be another way” but except for a momentary respite from one new age modality or another, life remained as challenging as it always had done. But the moment I sat down in my first ever Universal Medicine workshop presented by Serge Benhayon I knew that my searching was finally over for I knew without a doubt that I had come home to what I had been searching for, for what seemed like forever, and that was home to me.
If the spiritual new age is the answer, we would not need to be going back for more and more, like a hole that can never be filled. Eventually having a band-aid is never enough, it is very exhausting and the arrogance that has accompanied would prevent us to see this honestly, so eventually either our bodies have to warn us extremely or we would have to discard it to clear the dishonesty, lies and pride we have so unnaturally lived with.
The Spiritual New Age pathway is one where people jump into with the hope having a life that they can say it is complete. Yet, those that venture there have already a pattern of movement that they want to be confirmed and changed at the same time so they can feel complete. How far in denial of what their body tells them they are willing to be makes the whole difference in the world for each person who enjoin that path. What is truly confirmed is a question that is really worth pondering on.
I can relate to what you’ve shared Beverley with regards the Reiki and dowsing. I too dabbled very briefly with this, finding more comfort in the dowsing aspect because it seemed to take any ‘guesswork’ out of it. But I still didn’t feel comfortable with these modalities as there seemed no substance to them, no tangible lasting change. When I came across Serge Benhayon and experienced my first Sacred Esoteric Healing I was absolutely blown away… nothing could have been more tangible in terms of what I could feel changing in my body as he worked, and the result was nothing short of miraculous at the time. I never looked sideways at another of the spiritual new age modalities again, they couldn’t touch the power and truth of what I had felt that day.
When I connected to Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon it opened me up to so many changes in my life and the truth of The Way of The Livingness. This then showed me also how shallow The New Age was.
It is through living the principles of the Ancient Wisdom Teachings as presented by Universal Medicine that I have been able to free myself from the traps of the spiritual new age, absolutely no growth or development in it only the indulgence of that which keeps you identified with what makes us live so much less than who we truly are.
Tricked and trapped – that is exactly the way with spirituality – an illusory comfort that we are made to think is better than yet so feeble beneath its might of arrogance once exposed by the true light.
Beautifully said Fumiyo, for any illusion definitely traps us into the monotony of patterns based on our unresolved hurts that dominate and inhibit us living our potential.
There is absolutely nothing new or advancing in the spiritual new age, from my life experience it hooks you into believing you are getting somewhere but in fact is the opposite as it buries everything to a later time where you have to deal with a greater level of intensity, in my opinion it should be called the spiritual retarding age.
I was “Trapped in the Spiritual New Age” as well as Guru’s for many years until I met Serge Benhayon, he was the personal over the years I was search for truth, that I knew when he spoke they where truth there was no seconding guess, questioning there was a solid knowing. Where as others and Guru’s I questioned, what was being presented or said was true or not.
The spiritual new age offers just enough segments of the truth that it’s easy to think that it is the truth. But that is only if we are listening to the words spoken and not the movements of those speaking the words. I know I have been sent way off track by being attracted to what is being said, rather than feeling if the presenter was walking their talk and living everything that is being shared.
I had some similar experiences when I dabbled in the spiritual new age… lured into the promise that it provided the answers, but at the same time seeing and feeling things that were incongruent to what I knew something of truth to be. The most harming part was the constant turning back on myself with self-condemnation when something didn’t work for me… I must be the problem, and hence my ‘issues’ were increasingly cemented, along with my declining health. All so obvious now in retrospect, and all so easily turned around and truly healed through Universal Medicine.
I also experienced that self condemnation when New Age Therapies did not work for me. There is a bit of an arrogance around the therapies and books, etc, as they are written and presented with such an absoluteness that they are “it”. Looking back I don’t recall any humility at all in the various modalities I tried or studied, so I can see now why many would feel that they are the problem, not the therapy or book.
The so-called Spiritual New Age is not usually taken for what it is; a deeply harming set of beliefs and practices that play with energy without saying so and that create footprints in the body that in truth do not help a person to evolve and expand in the divinity we are all and belong to.
The truth about sprit and Soul as presented by Serge Benhayon and the Ageless Wisdom has to be the most important and liberating teaching there is. Understanding and experiencing this has transformed my life in the most wonderful way and brought me great wisdom and understanding about life, myself and others.
The Spiritual New Age has trapped many a ‘genuine’ seeker of truth. This is partly because these are people who know that there is more to life than just the physical. They have felt things, seen things, and know that there is divinity. Along comes a slightly re-interpreted form of divinity and they (we!) are gone hook-line-and-sinker. Thank heavens for Serge Benhayon who has taught and is teaching all to learn to discern, first by clairsentience and then by true Intuition. It is then easy to feel that there is no Livingness in the Spiritual New Age – it is actually a very sneaky cul-de-sac.
There is so much I could relate to here, the arrogance of believing you are better than others who are not as ‘spiritually’ enlightened is a big one. Yet in all the New Age pursuits I tried there was no livingness that ever made me feel complete or inspire to live. There was no commitment to life, as you just asked the universe to do it for you… I never did get that. Universal Medicine supported me to get real, be real and commit to life, self and people.
I love it when people talk and walk ‘self-responsibility’ like this, it’s great to see. We run around into all manner of things in the hope of feeling better. I remember a brief run at Reiki and those style of ‘healing’ courses and what I remember clearly above all is the fact of having no control or no idea what I was really doing. It was a fly by the seat of your pants style of thing that as long as it was working who really cared. These things were ok until there was a challenge and you realised after all you had done nothing had changed. Universal Medicine brings that change by changing or supporting us to truly see our view. It’s only through standing on your own two feet and walking that things become clear.
There is nothing encompassing of our true nature in the spiritual new age, it is all an illusion we buy into in desperation of missing ourselves, it is only through our connection to our inner heart that we know we are all equal sons of God and have the capability and free will to claim that any moment of our life.
Accepting that our soul and spirit are indeed separate is vital to our understanding of human life and how this duality plays out within ourselves and in the world around us.
Yes, I agree the search is over because we are already everything we have been looking for and much, much more than we can even fathom!
I love your experimental approach to life, and how these experiments with food and lifestyle begun with questioning what life is really about. I get the sense that the ability to question and experiment in life is an essential part of learning what’s possible and what we’re inherently capable of.
It’s a bit of a trap the spiritual new age, if for no other reason than it enables you to connect to the world of energy, which is quite enamouring at first – you get a sense of the world beyond the limits of physicality. Of course, the question that is not asked enough in those circles though, is, who is this spirit who says that they are my guide. What is it exactly I am working with here. And if we do not seek to ask even these most basic questions, then we are easily lead astray and caught in the illusion that what we have connected to is “it”, when the truth is it is far from it.
There’s such a big difference in looking for someone to answer and fix all our health and well-being problems and in taking responsibility for our own well-being. Ultimately no book, no guru, no teacher can tell us what is right for our bodies – it’s something we need to take total responsibility for.
“Well if I was really connected to my Soul, why would I need an outside indicator?” When one realises this it is as obvious as, ‘not being able to see one’s own nose’?
It is interesting to see how we know what is true the instant we see it, while we are willing to choose everything that is not true to save us from the endless unease in our bodies.