I recently returned home from a retreat held in Vietnam where Serge Benhayon was presenting on “The Process of Evolution – The Living Sciences of Human Life.” It was an expansive topic and truly revelatory. It was presented that we are all part of a living science and Universal order where we can either choose to align with the evolutionary pull towards a one unifying way, working together in co-creation, or we can – by our own free will – choose to resist this natural pull.
Simply put, life in self-made creation (in contrast to co-creation) is one where we are immersed in all the attractions, distractions and emotional highs and lows of our physical life. It can be difficult to clearly see for our ‘vision’ is limited by the very consciousness or quality of our chosen thoughts and beliefs, which then become our life, and therefore our reality.
As my awareness continues to expand, more is unfolding and coming to light around this understanding.
I took this photo in Vietnam before the retreat officially began and it was reflecting to me all that was to unfold. In all its beauty, the lotus flower is still within the consciousness of creation.
It is however, often used to represent the state of liberation in Buddhist philosophy, rooted in the mud, while its flowers blossom well above the waterline, unaffected by the muddy waters of attachment. This was often seen as the final goal, but this is actually where it begins – the beginning of a Way of Living, free from the imprisonment of our self-made creation.
When I was young I felt like we were only being told part of the story of life; it just wasn’t right that we were born, we lived and we departed. I knew that there was much more to human life than that, and this led me to investigate many spiritual ideas and beliefs over many years. I believed at that time I was seeking to be liberated from this limited life, and to reach an enlightenment of some sort. I spent many hours in meditation trying to reach this elusive place of understanding I was seeking.
On reflection though, I question what did I want to be liberated from, and what or where to then?
It was not true liberation I was seeking, it was actually life I was looking to escape from; the harsh reality of what I felt overall was a loveless world, where we were living so much less than I knew to be possible.
In truth I was looking to re-connect with my Soul, and it is through the grace of my Soul’s light, and my loving dedication and acceptance of my responsibility, that I began to see clearly through the grand illusion I was held in, the deception of right and wrong, the highest ‘good’, and the illusion of false enlightenment.
What I didn’t see then was that we are all in this together and we can only truly evolve and be free of this way of life, with its limits of our self made creation, when we are working together towards our return to a one unified way of being. The tension we can often feel is because we don’t live this way, and we are constantly being pulled to this awareness while shattering the illusion of the individual separated life.
Our Soul is constantly communicating our oneness with us.
I was discussing this awareness with a friend of mine and she beautifully expressed it this way: “If we see a macadamia nut fallen from the tree we may crack the hard shell and experience the enjoyment of the taste of the nut, but if we stop at this, we are forgetting that single nut comes from a huge tree with many other nuts and the possibility is there for each to flourish into many more fruit bearing trees, ever expanding.”
In my experience trying to understand life and my place in the greater plan from a dimension that can only see its own creation was futile. This is why it never made complete sense to me, as I was caught in the web of it. It was like being in a lift and getting out on the fourth floor so to speak, and that becomes my reality, that’s all that I can see. However, as I stay open to the possibility, and now a knowing that there is a fifth floor and beyond, a greater awareness is unfolding, becoming available, and so much more is being revealed.
I have a new appreciation of the truth of ever expanding Evolution.
The Lotus flower now represents to me the liberation from the limits of self imposed creation and the beginning of an Age Old Way of Living, a One Unified Way in co-creation that is ever evolving – a way that is ours to choose.
By Victoria Picone
Further Reading:
~ The Kingly Body – Building a Connection With Your Soul
~ The Inner Voice: the Voice of the Soul
~ Spirit or Soul? Learning The Difference Through Serge Benhayon
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
‘It was not true liberation I was seeking, it was actually life I was looking to escape from’ when I read this, I thought of the countless times I used meditation to escape from the world and shut everything out. Did it make life any better? No, if anything it made it worse because as soon as I opened my eyes it was still there staring at my face.
Its only when I started to connect with myself I could feel the difference and then it became apparent meditation was about me connecting to me and who I am with the world.
I see the world differently and my purpose is to reflect this to whoever is open to it.
Yes, I once had a friend ask me how meditating for hours a day truly helped humanity and I never forgot that, it exposed the self indulgence that meditation can be if used to escape. One can connect in a moment.
“a way that is ours to choose” There is a Divine freedom and a responsibility in the choices we make in the way we live that affects not only ourselves but also everyone and everything around us.
Our Soul is in constant communication with us and in that we have to understand that life is so much more that the three dimensional life we all together think life is and this communication from our Soul is proof of that. When we all do come to this understanding, the idea of life being only three dimensional will come to an end and the multi dimensionallity of life will become our normal way.
Yes Nico. Learning to live in this connection to our soul is probably the most valuable and precious thing we can ever do for ourselves.
And once we have learned it, we cannot but bring this livingness back to the world providing space for everybody to experience the same.
Yes and we go around and around and around again until we are prepared to see outside of the bubble of our own making. As more awareness is allowed so does our view become more encompassing of the all we are a part of.
And as we open up to more awareness, we also allow ourselves to feel the grandness and love that is inside us, all around us and beyond.
” It can be difficult to clearly see for our ‘vision’ is limited by the very consciousness or quality of our chosen thoughts and beliefs, which then become our life, and therefore our reality. ” This is very true and then we make a picture of how things should be for us personally ,our family or friends. Or we are given pictures to live up to or tin plates and we then fill in the rest to our flavour , but there is no free choice in this process so no evolution just creating more of the same just difference colours and flavours but evolving no where just going around in circles.
It becomes clear how it is we reduce ourselves through the ‘pictures’ we hang onto. We circle around and around and the stage has been set. There is not space for expansion if we do not shift the setting.
Co-creation is feeling the all and wholeheartedly dipping all toes in, the whole body, with no self (individuality), responding and then giving it your personal all. Because there is a physical body, I personally sometimes feel limited by the pain or discomfort in my body and self (individuality) comes in. I roll over and not bring my all or self-criticise how I have been because of my pain. Feeling the all is sometimes too much to feel.
By feeling the all, and by tenderly moving in honouring the pain or discomfort is responding to how to reimprint a way that is with the body in movement and action. It’s more supportive this way then to go into individuality to ‘try’ and deal with it or work out the pain. By continually feeling and tenderly holding my body in the love that is the all I am given how to be with the all.
We need to have our feet on the ground – to live fully in the realm we are in, but also move with the understanding and wisdom held within us that we are universal, divine beings of Light enhoused in a physical body. This way we can fully honour our incarnation whilst at the same time not get invested in it.
We get hurt when we invest and attach, to things, concepts or people.
The analogy you give of a specific floor and that being our reality captures it so clearly, we’re actually part of a larger building but immersed in the world of our floor forgetting that floor 4 is built on top of others and provides support for those above, so in fact it’s all interconnected; this has two aspects, we are so much more than we allow, not just a floor but a building and who knows what in a wider context, and everything we do impacts that wider world, so what goes on in our floor affects all. This is the craziness of how we live in creation enhoused in co-creation and we will never see beyond creation (our floor) unless we’re willing to be aware of the wider co-creation.
I have ended up back at this article again today reading it again. We are unaware of how our perception of how things are and our movement in this then controls how and what we see. Like the article presents, I remember being young and then at different points in my life where I realised there was more to what was going on or where I had the feeling of this is not it. It was like at those points when you question your head would come up to look around to find the next thing to see if that was ‘it’. I had no time or didn’t make the choice to truly feel anything it was more just bouncing between things. When I truly stopped then Universal Medicine came up and from there I can now see that by what I allow, how I choose to be and move, this ‘controls’ or more dictates what then I can see in my next movement. Rush around and you blank a lot, while hold yourself and be aware of each movement and more and more of the veil is lifted.
I guess creation wants to limit our quest for a true life to that which may be comfortable but still within its bounds. The fact that life could be even greater is rarely considered but much less sought and even resisted.
Yes it takes a realignment to be able to see through creations ways; we can limit what is available to us when we settle for less than we truly are.
I love the fact that it is not about ‘the New Age’ but rather that it is about re-discovering an ‘Age Old Way’ of living. The re-descovery simply says to us that we already know it and it is about coming back to what we already know rather than having to learn something totally new.
There is something so familiar with just getting out on the 4th floor and closing our eyes to anything that tells us there is more. It doesn’t challenge us except, there is a constant tension that there is more. The tension only eases when you allow yourself to see, feel and live aware that there is so much more to us and to life than what we have created.
Yes, there is actually such a joyful expansion in this, and it is very natural to feel the pull to be more of us. Everything in life is ever-expanding and evolving and we are part of that too.
Creation seems like the pinnacle when we are choosing to live unaware and unawakened to infinite magnificence and majesty of co-creation.
I loved the analogy of the lift and getting out at a certain floor and that is all you see. It makes complete sense to many things and how I have seen time and time again things feel out of place but accepting them as ‘well that’s just how life is’ etc in place of realising that you may have just caught a glimpse that you are just on one floor of what is a multi story building and you open up to the possibility that you have been sold only one floor. The openness to the possibilities of what you are truly seeing is a great way to stay open to other ‘floors’ otherwise you are sold deep and never will you choose to see anything other then where you stand.
Our nature is ever expanding and when we surrender to this fact we begin to see what we have often felt… that in truth cannot be framed. We are multidimensional beings.
This is true and we are that powerful that we are able to bring ourselves from “multidimensional” to a dimension like we are saying about only being on one floor of a “multidimensional” building. It takes a lot of work and energy to make something so grand so small but we do it and it hurts us, it hurts us all. When we say “surrender” this is an action to let go of all that focus to make us small and allow ourselves to naturally grow or expand back to the truth of who we are. Not the perceived truth in our dimension but the truth of the grandness.
Liberation and escape may sound like synonyms but they are not. Both are meant to leave something behind. Yet, the path of truth has no escape in its menu. There is no way to escape the energy you are choosing to align to.
True Eduardo. On the ‘path of truth’ we are returning.
The tension we feel is the knowing that there is more to life but this knowing is less confirmed and completely scattered in amongst the bombardments we see and also feel in daily life.
Yes and there will always be a tension when we are living against our nature, which is always calling us back to our oneness.
Thank you for sharing the macadamia nut story… This is beautiful capturing the big picture beyond what we just immediately see in front of our eyes.
When separated from our soul we feel separated to everyone, when we connect to our soul we are connected to all by the innate love that resides within.
How true and simple it can be. We are unified by nature.
It is like we are squashing ourselves into this box and telling ourselves it is our reality when there is no way it is, no way it could be, yet we keep telling ourselves it is. We are multidimensional beings and without knowing that we will always feel a tension.
Yes the tension we can feel is because we do know, we know we are much more than we may have been living or see around us being lived. We know what isn’t love and truth because we know what love and truth is.
And that is where the beating up and the blame has to stop – because we are from love and truth so to not live that is a constant choice to live something else which is what has become familiar…groundhog day!
There is so much to be inspired by when we let ourselves be, with eyes and hearts open to receiving.
Creation is so alluring, I guess it’s designed that way to make sure we don’t bother to look past our individual worlds. But as the awareness grows and we begin to question what life is all about, the cracks become exposed and we start to feel just how deep a mess we have got ourselves into.
It may be ‘self’ sustaining, as in keeping the self or individuality entertained, yet as we are seeing it is not sustaining in truth… we are part of a collective and our nature is to move as one.
The beauty of nature is here to reflect to us the wonders and the magic of God, that also resides in us, but creation is not our true home it is our class room where in we learn to return to who we truly are so that we all can arise out of here to our next plane of life.
Yes, there is beauty in it and it serves its purpose, yet it is not our resting place. We are on our evolutionarily path back home.
I have always found the Lotus flower interesting, almost too perfect, a little fake looking but it also reminder me of a movie set or a make believe world, I was not aware of the Buddhist meaning and like the spin you have put on the new meaning. I definitely feel the tension from the natural pull and sadly that is because I resist it so often but there comes a time of everyone, when our soul communicates to us through our body and the pain of pulling away forces a type of surrender. I am hoping to learn this alignment before my soul has to step in and give me a wake up call.
It’s so easy to see ourselves as having escaped and being above the mud when we consider the lotus flower, it’s beautiful, it’s above the fray but that’s only the start … it’s still part of the mud and until we’re willing to see beyond creation as you note here Victoria, we are still caught in it. It’s about being willing to keep going to let go creation and understand that life if broader and wider than we can sometimes see, it’s about evolution and always being willing to take that next step back to the truth of our soul.
I love the image of the lotus flower being just the beginning of our awakening from the illusion, not the end.
When I don’t live in connection to this deeper part of me life becomes somewhat of a struggle, when I do connect back to this- life becomes more simple, more beautiful and I am able to see more.
We are here to return to who we truly are and then to get out of here. The irony is that the only way we can do this is to commit even more deeply to life and ourselves.
If we are aiming for enlightenment and to rise above the trials of day to day life, we are further diving into the illusion of creation and so that is our reality. It is no wonder then that there is so much despair and given-upness in the world, for we are trying to ‘fix’ something that cannot be fixed – get to somewhere which is just a different place in the same creation that we are trying to fix or escape from.
It is easy to stop at the beauty, amazing though it is, but if it’s part of the creation and we just stop there we miss out on the wider piece, like you say Victoria, it’s like seeing that nut and failing to understand that it can become a tree and beget many more. It’s the starting point and if we’re willing and open to go beyond that and understand that we are in effect on the same floor but that there’s others and a wider building we begin the true journey of coming back to co-creation where we are all from.
Nature is an absolutely awesome reflection of the beauty that we hold within, and the reflections are there like blessings and reminders that confirm of all we are. This is our nature.
And so it is, that the choice is always ours. A beautiful sharing Victoria, thank you.
“we can either choose to align with the evolutionary pull towards a one unifying way, working together in co-creation, or we can – by our own free will – choose to resist this natural pull”.
Considered in this light, the thought of ‘creating’ something becomes repugnant, self-indulgent. What value is there in losing oneself in a ‘creative process’ that is purely for recognition of some kind? Co-creating – creating in conjunction with one’s soul and the divine for a purpose other than the meeting of a personal whim – now that feels different and super-evolving for everyone.
Agree Victoria, and asking the question what is the purpose can be illuminating.
The world we have created today is messy with emotions and reactions which can prevent us from seeing beyond that overwhelm and clearly understanding the futility that we are merely going around and around and indulging in.
Working together life becomes so much easier. I have noticed recently how I have been allowing an openess and willing to express what was coming up for me. This hasn’t always been the case as there was a stubborn attitude to ‘go it alone’ but what I realised was how invaluable it is to connect and share with another allowing for connection or for want of a better word intimacy into my life.
I’ve always had a sense that the world wasn’t right and that there was something really missing with how we all related to eachother. I knew there was another way and I knew that simply accepting that the world ‘wasn’t perfect’ was just an excuse that allowed us to continue in what I now know as creation.
Such a depth in what you have shared with us and it represents the depth of which is on offer to us as a human race – which is a key learning of what I have learned from the presentations of Universal Medicine.
There is so much more to life that what we have been sold/told.
‘It can be difficult to clearly see for our ‘vision’ is limited by the very consciousness or quality of our chosen thoughts and beliefs, which then become our life, and therefore our reality.’ When we are willing to see and feel this truth about our quality and that we have a choice, our body can open up, what our purpose is can become clear and this is ‘the beginning of an Age Old Way of Living, a One Unified Way in co-creation that is ever evolving – a way that is ours to choose.’
The reductionism of life as most of us live it leaves us running empty and in need of habitual crutches to fill the void. But, those patterns and bahaviours will never quell the insatiable thirst – only reconnecting to the truth, the wholeness of our being and understanding life as energy will bring through the fullness we so desperately seek.
Beautifully said Rachael.
yes the ‘eternal unsettlement’ and the longing for something more… communion with the divine has long been voiced through the ages, yet often we have not seen that it is we who are standing in the way of that reunion.
The trick seems to be being 100% in the world and committed AND simultaneously recognising we are not of it.
When we live with the light of the soul, creation automatically becomes co-creation.
Beautifully said Victoria.
‘It was not true liberation I was seeking, it was actually life I was looking to escape from;’ I can so relate to this and can see this so clearly now although for many years I too was looking for enlightenment and to better myself and make the world a better place. It is no coincidence that when I started to deeply question the difference between soul and spirit and to choose a way to be in life that was very simple and founded on a gentle breath that I met Serge Benhayon and the teachings and modalities that are presented by Universal Medicine. Far from being the end of the road this is ‘the beginning of an Age Old Way of Living, a One Unified Way in co-creation that is ever evolving – a way that is ours to choose.’
“It was not true liberation I was seeking, it was actually life I was looking to escape from”. This, I feel, applies to the vast majority of people at present seeking liberation, it certainly did for me. Discovering that evolution is found through renouncing creation for co-creation as presented by Serge Benhayon and The Way of The Livingness I now know that I truly am on the Path of Evolution while before there always felt to be something missing.
…and in the renouncing of creation, as you put it, for co-creation, we in fact are more engaged in life and with one another knowing there is a purpose in our coming together and evolving way.
I find the analogy of the lift so apt. If we only go up and down up to the same floor we will start to believe that that is all there is. Especially if we have something to do with creating it and making sure that there are no signposts to tell us otherwise! This is where those among us who have actually travelled a bit further than the floor we have travelled to come in. It is a pure joy, immensely inspiring and a true gift to hear and witness Serge Benhayon who by example express that there is far more.
Having felt the love and support of being one with all others, I know that there is no other way to be. When I picture a group of people taking each other’s hand and holding each other – their reflection of the love and strength this brings is beautiful. There is no other true way of being. Thank you Victoria for bringing this expansive, loving and connecting blog.
Thank God for Serge Benhayon who has inspired me to look deeper and expose past hurts and attachments to discontinue glorifying the individual. The more surrender of the old controlling ways, the more open The Way to return to a one unified way of being.
“…we can only truly evolve and be free of this way of life, with its limits of our self made creation, when we are working together towards our return to a one unified way of being. The tension we can often feel is because we don’t live this way, and we are constantly being pulled to this awareness while shattering the illusion of the individual separated life”.
‘a way that is ours to choose’ yes it is Victoria. I love that image of the macadamia tree you share, how if we see the nut but ignore the wider context of where it comes from (the tree), we miss so much and so it is indeed with us, we develop and evolve but always within the context of the wider world of God, humanity and the Universe around us, We evolve and expand together.
When our movements, our expression is aligned to the greater whole we are a part of we expand and evolve together. Yes monicag2 we live in a multidimensional world and are reminded of this everyday if we are open to seeing that.
Thank you for a great sharing Victoria. To co-create with God is what we are meant to do to grow ourselves out of this predicament we find ourselves in here now in this World and back to where we truly belong.
Life tricks us in many different fronts telling us, you have made it!!! Congratulations!! These, however, are not real final destinations but only one step in a path of permanent unfoldment back to God. The problem is that they make us believe that this is it or that this is as far as we can go or that the direction. to keep growing is the wrong one. The result is the same, we plateau while convinced that we made it.
To understand how we can be ‘tricked’ by life we need to see it for what it is, to not let ourselves become enmeshed within it, while being fully committed in life. We pass through life on our return.. it is not our settling place or true home. All the while though there is so much to appreciate and enjoy along the way.
I love the analogy of the macadamia nut and creation. Simply asking if we live just for ourselves and momentary pleasure or to expand and grow for and with everyone which ultimately brings eternal joy?
There is no end or cap on how much we can evolve, for there is always more love to express, but where we all differ is in our choices of the pace we choose to travel in our return journey to our Soul.
Thank you for exploring the difference between escaping and true liberation. I too spent years trying to escape into meditation and other spiritual pursuits that only buried my awareness and discontent deeper. i love the Universal Medicine retreats because they offer the opportunity to feel and experience the expansiveness of co-creation and liberation from the trap of creation with its myriad of enticing but empty ways to stay stuck in the rut of trying to better my life at the expense of others. True liberation is when we release our self imposed shackles and accept the divinity of our inner essence.
The Universal Medicine ‘retreats’ offer quite the opposite to what we understand that word to mean; there is total commitment and engagement with others to the process of evolution. As you say they are very expansive.