Before UNIVERSAL MEDICINE: Living a Double Life – Living a Lie
When I was little my mum often said that we would be punished if we were naughty but we would be punished double if we were naughty and lied about it. I remember taking this very seriously and feeling that lying was the worst crime of all.
Back then I equated lying with not telling the truth about what I had done wrong and hiding bad behaviour. I soon learned that lying was about so much more than that. In fact I could tell that the adults around me, my parents included, lied all the time. I found this so confusing.
When I was about 6 years old I was a flower girl at my aunt and uncle’s wedding. I was so intent on looking the part and not ruining my dress that I held my heavy basket of flowers out and away from myself all throughout the wedding ceremony.
I told myself it didn’t matter how much it hurt, it was my job to keep smiling and do as I was told on this important day.
It’s funny to look back on now, for at the time I would never have equated my stint as a flower girl with being a lie… but it was. My refusal to put the basket down showed that I had already learned to act the way I believed others needed me to in order to be accepted and ‘do the right thing’.
I had learned to ignore how my body felt.
My parents divorced when I was 10 and over time I noticed that I would act one way with my mum and her partner and another completely different way when with my dad. I felt like two different people and I didn’t like either one of them. I completely lost myself.
When I visited my dad I would go to church and act as though butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. I didn’t want to let him down. At home with my mum I would unleash my anger, with outbursts of screaming and swearing.
I was living a double life.
I was constantly afraid that people from different areas of my life would meet and realise I was a fraud. Underneath it all was a deep sense of not being good enough and not knowing who I was.
Throughout my 20’s I worked long hours in clothing stores. The chain I worked for sold a picture of health, youth, vitality and happiness and it was my job to look the part.
I ticked the boxes with clear skin, a slim figure, lovely clothes and a big smile, but on the inside I was a mess. It was not uncommon for my co-workers and I to eat several bags of lollies a day and I often had donuts and coffee for breakfast. I took medication daily to control my acne and my cholesterol was so high my doctor asked if I was eating engine oil. I often spent my days off in bed exhausted and feeling totally inadequate: my life was not turning out how I had hoped. I did not like myself and loving myself seemed to be impossible.
When I was 26 I decided that my life would be better if I went back to university. I enrolled in a Masters degree, determined to leave retail and ‘be successful’. I pushed myself hard, determined to ‘make something of myself’. Halfway through my studies I decided to head off on my first overseas adventure: the passport photo on the left shows exactly how hard and tough I had become as a result of how I was living at this time.
When I returned from my trip I decided not to continue my studies; I could feel that the degree was not going to bring me the success I craved and it felt great to let go of something that wasn’t true for me.
Soon after this I switched careers, my circumstances improved and I no longer felt like a failure.
I played the model employee and worked hard from Monday to Friday. My time off was spent attending parties, music festivals and social events. I fuelled my lifestyle with sugar, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine and worse.
I did my best to address my abusive relationship with myself, spending thousands of dollars seeing counsellors and a psychologist to try and deal with my issues. In the end I understood exactly what I was doing but at the core of it nothing changed.
The truth is my new career path was just another lie and my new job did not truly change the fact I did not love myself. I still felt like I was always at the mercy of my circumstances.
I didn’t want to admit the truth so I presented a picture I thought others would admire.
In my late 20’s my Facebook page was full of photos that showed me surrounded by friends, visiting exotic locations and wearing gorgeous clothes. It sure looked like I was living a full life.
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I knew my diet and lifestyle was harmful as I was constantly sick and still on medication to control my acne. I tried cutting out the foods that were having a negative effect but the cravings were unbearable and I always caved in. I absolutely hated the effects my party lifestyle had on my body but I didn’t want to give it up. The parties were the places I had fun, connected with others, let loose and forgot about my problems.
I didn’t advertise the fact that when the excitement of the latest travel adventure or big event was over I often felt depressed, exhausted, lonely and without purpose. I began suffering from chronic and debilitating headaches and it became clear that I needed to change my life.
I turned to a range of modalities, practitioners and self help books and although I could see glimmers of truth in many of these things, I couldn’t seem to change my behaviour in a meaningful way.
I knew I was living a lie but I could feel that everyone else was living one too.
There seemed to be no way out, although deep down I could feel that there was.
Living the way I truly wanted to seemed impossible.
After UNIVERSAL MEDICINE: Living Responsibly – Living Who I Truly Am
Soon after my 30th birthday I discovered the Universal Medicine clinic in Brisbane, Australia. I instantly knew I had found a place where I could truly heal and change my life. I began seeing an esoteric practitioner for esoteric Chakra-puncture and I began to read Serge Benhayon’s books and attend the presentations offered by Universal Medicine. Absolutely everything I read and experienced rang true for me – for the first time in my life I began to feel that there was a way I could live true to myself.
Serge Benhayon consistently presented that the body tells the truth and this really resonated with me. I began to listen to my own body and honour what it needed. Over time I stopped drinking coffee, eating gluten, dairy and sugar and drinking alcohol. I had more energy and felt more balanced.
I found that I still felt like I was living a double life for a while. I would tell some people I had sworn off alcohol and then go out with others and have a boozy night, telling myself I could get away with it. I would then feel sick and depressed for weeks. It was clear that what Serge was presenting was true for me. My body was telling me that alcohol was a very bad idea.
I now know that the most damaging lies are the ones I tell myself.
The fact is my ‘double life’ was just the end result of the fact that I was not willing to truly take responsibility for my choices and do what was right for me.
Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine have supported me to live responsibly and true to myself and begin living in a way where I can truly connect with myself and others.
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A beautiful woman with nothing to hide… Me (Leonne Sharkey) aged 33-34, after Universal Medicine
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I no longer feel like I have something to hide. I am proud of each and every loving choice I make and if I make choices that are not loving I am willing to be honest about this and find out why.
I have so much more understanding for myself and in turn I have become less judgmental about the choices others make or have made. The more I return to who I truly am, the more I am able to appreciate others for who they truly are.
The truth I have come back to is – I am love. I am enough just as I am and I am a son of God. This truth applies to us all. The more I allow myself to accept this truth, the more amazing life gets. Each day I live this truth is a new before and after.
I am eternally grateful to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for presenting and confirming the truth I have always known.
By Leonne Sharkey, Melbourne
Related Reading:
The Before & After Photo Diary of Universal Medicine Students
Before and After My Self Love Program – Forever Unfolding the Real Me
Universal Medicine Before and After Photos – the Man beneath the Tattoos and Dreads
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Leonne, you light up the sky and bless us all with that gorgeous smile, I’m sure you must have had a life as a fairy as you look so at home in the meadow?
The moment I knew that Esoteric Healing is it, is when in my first session the practitioner said to me that the work done is based on the knowing that we are everything first and foremost. When she said those words, it’s almost as if that is what I knew already but hadn’t had the words to verbalise it. So, the bells rang and I knew I wanted to try the modalities this woman was practicing.
It says a lot about society and the systems we have in place, that we need to get support to return to living our true selves, and living in a way that is self honouring. If society is producing people who are disconnected from themselves, we should all be questioning how life is and what needs to change. It’s seems that a lack of love, joy, and true vitality is our normal.
And it seems that many people, especially women, feel that they are not ‘good enough’, ‘a deep sense of not being good enough and not knowing who I was.’
Amazing changes Leonne, thank you for sharing.
Living life without self-love is to live a lie.
Letting go of things that are not true is seriously good for our health!
We all are love bombs so why this addiction to playing nice and holding back? why is this normal? It feels like there are external forces to us that dictates how to be, how to perform, how to look like…to fit in and to not expose what is far away from love. It is a great point coming to feel and see when we are living like a double life, this means not being truthful with ourselves and others, not being who we really are. From this point of awareness we can change and express again with steadiness and clarity, recovering our true voice that remains inside us, always untarnished and pure.
Leonne reading your experience brings me to appreciate Universal Medicine and the loving choices we can make to be and express the Truth within us. Your pictures speaks without words, the joy, spunkyness, the ease and sweetness of the after ones are a blessing to feel. Thanks for sharing.
Absolutely, Universal Medicine has supported many people to return to being loving, and living a life that is more true.
It’s fascinating how when we feel inadequate or empty in ourselves the first thing we do is hunt for an exterior solution, such as a new role we can take on or course to study. What if the true answer could be found in the pause of recognising how we feel and evaluating the source of it, before diving into something new?
Yes, feeling what is going on inside ourselves, and what that is about, rather than reaching for another band aid from the outside.
Leonne, I absolutely love how claimed you are in this sentence “A beautiful woman with nothing to hide… Me (Leonne Sharkey) aged 33-34, after Universal Medicine”. This is how we resurrect ourselves, through claiming who we are.
Claiming our truth, that we are love, ‘The truth I have come back to is – I am love. I am enough just as I am’.
Listening to our body and honouring what we feel or sense is truly empowering.
Great blog Leonne, I agree the worst lies are the ones that we tell ourselves because we are trying to convince ourselves that the lie is true, when deep down we know the truth anyway.
We know the truth in our body and whenever we allow that truth to be ignored and/or overridden, we are lying to ourselves – but we often do not call this a lie and that is a lie. Truth is one-unifying and living a fragmented life is an agony.
Listening to, and honouring the truth and wisdom our bodies share is always vital.
Our bodies never lie to us, how key is it to honour the innate wisdom that our bodies share with us.
‘The more I return to who I truly am, the more I am able to appreciate others for who they truly are.’ So true Leonne, the relationship with myself and others has deepened considerably as I claim myself more.
You are so sweet, adorable and inspirational, the joy of life bubbles up in this page and photos. And with that joy is a seriousness, a serious knowing that we are energy first and we are here to live knowing and being divine. Thank you.
In our heads, we can create any story we like and pretend to be whoever is needed, for us not to get hurt more or again. Yet once we start unravelling the lies we’ve lived we realise by not being our true selves we’ve put ourselves more than anyone else could. I find lies I’m living to this day, mostly in carrying out beliefs and ideals of what I thought was me and living that. It is very empowering to step back and let them go one by one.
To state the truth is much more than not to lie. It is not a coincidence the expression ‘the’ truth. There is only one truth.
What an amazing journey this has been for you Leonne – this is so powerful and reflects how we can get caught going down a road of ‘a better life’ just on the outside – without truly appreciating that it is possible to be free of this. Universal Medicine has brought this to my life too – from the galmorous celebrity soaked party life to what it is now – super simple, solid and with great love and purpose.
I too remember being told that lies were the worst things to tell and would be punished. When I told the truth my parents didn’t believe me and as you say, they told lies and were not punished. This is very confusing as a child. My pet peeve is when people lie and they try and sweep it under the carpet as though the lies don’t exist. Lies always get found out. To me in the end everything will be exposed and only the truth will be left. Then we will really get to see the levels of lies and corruption we have been accepting and living with.
What struck me while reading this transformational story of Leonne’s is just how much she (and all of us) know we are living a lie when we are not being true to ourselves, are living in a way that is in disregard to our body, and trying to be accepted and liked for what we do, instead of just being ourselves in every moment. The depression and misery that comes from that way of life is actually a gift from our bodies to bring us back to living as the Sons of God that we truly are. Looking at the ‘after’ photos of Leonne, it is obvious that she is ‘back’ and radiantly so at that.
Bringing responsibility back into our lives is an important ingredient, ‘Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine have supported me to live responsibly and true to myself and begin living in a way where I can truly connect with myself and others.’
The pictures speak volumes.. the joy you live now Leonne just jumps off the page. Super inspiring to read of you returning to live what is true for you.
We always know when we’re being true to ourselves and when we’re not, and how awkward and exhausting it is to be living and perpetuating a lie. Some of the biggest lies we tell ourselves are wrapped up in images about what we think will make us feel good, and what we think we need to do to be accepted. Thankfully the body doesn’t buy into those pictures- it just reflects very simply and honestly which of our choices are true and which aren’t.
I can so relate to world that equate a lie with “not telling the truth about what I had done wrong and hiding bad behaviour”. But a deeper lie is when we pretend all is well when we know deep down it is not, when we hold our love back and when we live and express only a fraction of the glory that we are.
What a gorgeous blog. The joy that you live now just sings off the page. Very inspiring, thank you Leonne.
Lying is so much more than words. We can present a lie or move in Truth at any time and we are always reflecting one or the other, there’s no in between.
I loved what you shared about you in this blog, living the lies and the real you emerging. The photos speak a thousand words, the eyes says it all for me.
Isn’t it interesting that we are asked to be and do things to please other people but all we are doing is masking their issues too by conforming, hard when we rely on adults to guide us when we know deep down inside that it doesn’t ring true for us.
We are encouraged from birth to not be true to ourselves, that really means we are abusing ourselves.
Life as we are told to know it, is a lie. It makes sense that most of us end up living this lie too. The irony is, we all know the truth and hence we have a world in which almost everyone is exhausted and/or unwell in some way.
This silent communication that takes place is very poisonous because we give ourselves away in order to ‘do the right thing’ and therefore be accepted. It’s so insidious because it’s happening at such a high level, it’s almost as though we are not aware it’s happening.
You have just exposed Leonne so easily how there is a silent communication going on between us all. At such a young age you knew people around you were lying and when it is our own family that is quite hard to bear as we see our parents almost as ‘Gods’. It is very confusing and it erodes our trust of other because if you cannot believe your parents who can you believe?
“The more I return to who I truly am, the more I am able to appreciate others for who they truly are.” A beautiful realisation inspired by the teachings and presentations of Serge Benhayon and The Way of The Livingness.
You’ve got me thinking how we consider lies as just words that come out our mouths, but we can actually LIVE a lie by not being true to who we are.
Yes.. any choice that is not in line with our body’s natural way of operating is a deviation from its truth and obedience to the greater rhythms of life that it/ we are inextricably a part of.
This is such a brilliant read, you capture a snapshot of not just yourself but of how life is for many people. It can be confusing because what we are told works doesn’t, what is modelled to us as success or a normal way of life doesn’t deliver either, it’s the return to who we truly are in essence and living from the love of our soul that truly restores us. Once that’s in place life feels amazing.
We can learn so much from listening to our whole body – it is a true marker for us and one well worth paying attention to.
“My refusal to put the basket down showed that I had already learned to act the way I believed others needed me to in order to be accepted and ‘do the right thing’.” How quickly we learn to behave in a way that does not support us, we would rather endure pain than admit that what we are doing is not loving or caring towards ourselves. It is amazing how early on in life we learn to conform to what we think will be seen as being accepted as the right thing to do.
And in many cases, years later realising, that no one actually asked us to do what we thought they wanted us to do. We feel everything as children, and if we were supported to read it more and observe without taking it on, then we would see that all we need to do is stay true to ourselves which supports everyone else around us.
A beautiful blog, and one that invites to look again at ourselves in the here and now with more honesty.
As children we are often not supported to build a loving relationship with ourselves and our bodies, everything centres on how we are with other people. Patterns designed to please others at the expense of ourselves are cultivated early. Choosing to live responsibly and honestly supports us to live again fully appreciating who we are and what we bring to the world.
Leonne, you expose the biggest lie, the belief that lying is something done to others. Whereas you show powerfully that what causes most harm is lying to ourselves.
‘I now know that the most damaging lies are the ones I tell myself.’ So true Leonne, exposing any lies we live in life can feel very empowering and allows us to uncover more false ways we are living that are not serving us or anyone else. To bring this level of responsibility and truth to our lives allows us to build a more solid foundation of love that allows us to blossom and evolve.
Lying is an interesting one. It is not necessarily something we do to others although this is a possibility. It is not necessarily about something we did wrong and want to hide. It could also be about something good that happened to us. It could also be something that never happened that we wish it had happened. None of these scenarios is better than another one. Lies never can provide a foundation to really move forward in life.
‘Each day I live this truth is a new before and after.’ This is what is so lovely about living a life of love, truth and responsibility – life constantly expands and evolves when our choices truly support us.