Recently, when browsing at a local bookshop, I purchased the “Little Book of Elvis in the Movies,” a book covering Elvis Presley’s very successful career in films. This led me on an investigative mission to try and understand the legend, the man, and finally, in his last quarter, you could say the tortured soul, who died in such a poor way, in total contrast to the charismatic, handsome, energetic, beautiful man that was seen and witnessed in his many years of movies and public performances. He was not named ‘The King’ without reason, and he definitely changed the shape of music with his cool dance moves on stage. “A white man that could sing and dance like a black man,” as quoted by media at the time.
So what leads Elvis, or any of us for that matter, to a path of disregard, self-abuse and into a place of no return?
We have seen so many successful stars not able to handle their light and power, and then make choices that eventually lead to their demise. The most obvious choices often relate to substance abuse through drugs, alcohol and food, but are they any different to many of us who rely on coffee to get through our day or who eat to hide, numb or bury our emptiness, sadness or unresolved hurts?
Are they any different to many of us who consider ourselves responsible providers, who drink at night to console, reward or numb ourselves after another long day at work providing for our family? Haven’t we all been there in some way or can relate to this?
Binge eating was something I started doing from a young age as a way of stopping myself from feeling. Feeling what, you may say? Feeling my sadness of not being met, feeling my fragility and tenderness as a boy, then as a man, in a world that left, or felt like it left, no space for this part of me, especially once I was corralled into the educational system. Not feeling safe to be myself, the sensitive soul, in case I was attacked. bullied or criticised at home or school. Feeling the tension of living in a world that didn’t feel right.
I remember as a child waking up and feeling so warm, full of me, yummy and safe in my warm bed and desperately wanting to be able to go everywhere in the safety of my bed. Then feeling the dread of having to leave this safe space to go out into the world and negotiate my way through the harshness, disconnection and loveless routines that were daily life. I was particularly sensitive to the way people acted and I could feel where people and l were at. This in turn caused me to harden and become quick and sharp with my tongue, to attack or be on the defensive so as to avoid attack. I also learned to not speak up, to keep my head down and calibrate what I said/did so as not to get the attention of judgment, jealousy or contempt.
Basically, I was always measuring what was safe to express. Therefore there was this lack of true expression or being able to show the real me that created tension in my body, to shut down and to calibrate myself to the situation, instead of being able to hold myself in joy and love in my body, regardless of what was happening out there.
So when it came to meal times, mainly at home where I could eat more (the little skinny dude), I would on purpose choose to overeat to the point of feeling stuffed or bloated. That way I wouldn’t feel any tension, or anything for that matter. Drugged and pacified, I would then proceed to go into comfort/relax mode. Before school, I would at times eat 6 -12 Weetbix to try and bloat or numb down tension or reaction. I also remember going to “all you can eat buffets” and just stuffing myself, and as an adult I would eat up to 7 plates of food. Pacified and numb, I would then have to lie down for hours with my body under load, trying to digest the gluttonous affair. It’s crazy looking back at what I did to not feel life.
As I became an adult, I then followed on with drugs and alcohol as a way to numb myself on a daily basis after a day of work in the world.
So why is it that, we as a society who have often loved so much the life and times of people like Elvis Presley, not to mention many other stars and individuals who have died due to suicide, don’t take heed and do a forensic study into what happened with them?
Why have they chosen to end their lives so prematurely in a way that is often in total contrast to what they, whether as stars or not, were portraying earlier on? It just doesn’t make sense, hence the need for all of us to dig deeper into why this is a regular occurrence with stars in particular, but also with everyday people. Saying “the person had depression,” is not a good enough reason to me because it says nothing and offers no insight into what may have been going on.
From what I have learnt from myself and, after slowly trying to go deeper, it is our hurts, or us in reaction to our hurts, that compounds the problem. The bits that we don’t want to look at, left unresolved, can then come back to bite us as manifested negative and self-harming behaviours.
The presentations and the healing courses from Universal Medicine, working with others in group work in a supported environment of like-minded people, not judging each other, have been very helpful for me in learning to understand that we are not our hurts and that it is a choice that we make to go into them, and then to act or live out our lives through our hurts. Most of us have been hurt and carry the scars from being abused – from the smallest incident to the most hideous cases like bashings, rape etc. And so the vast majority of us are all carrying hurts of some kind. The funny thing is, neither the world nor the people in it are perfect. Most of the time, most of us are acting out of our hurts so we then have the tendency to go around hurting each other without even being aware that we are doing it!
Now bring in our beliefs and ideals, our quality of connection to our selves/others and responsibility – the game changer that shows us that it is always a choice how we act toward another. I am learning that if another didn’t help to create a hurt we are carrying, why meet them or come at them carrying or wielding a hurt? This only creates more hurt and disharmony between us.
I feel blessed and have to pinch myself at times for choosing the journey back to love, to my innermost, and for making the choice to reconnect with the Ancient Wisdom as presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine as, like Elvis, I could have easily chosen to go the other way many years ago.
I was at a serious crossroads, lonely and in my hurts from a relationship breakdown and in reaction, ready to re-invent myself, put on my old blue suede shoes for another round of the glamour and illusion of sex, drugs and rock and roll. This would have, no doubt, led to my demise or to a lesser, more lost version of myself as the outcome. This time around I chose a less glamorous, but far more fulfilling, healing journey – to come back to me. It started with Esoteric Healing sessions and reading the Esoteric Ancient Wisdom books (the ‘purple books’ by Serge Benhayon). They were like a life raft in a stormy sea.
Although far from perfect, my life became a wonderful unfoldment with always so much more to learn, as long as I stayed open and allowed myself to feel my way. So it is choice by choice, day by day that I am bringing myself back.
I am forever the student of my own livingness, which encompasses not only myself, but all people everywhere – including stars like Elvis.
Written in appreciation of what has been presented by life, by Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine and the practitioners and Universal Medicine student body for all their evolving love and light.
By Greg, Australia
Related Reading:
Relationships – why we should come clean about our deepest hurts
We are not our hurts
Loving Daily Choices and Healing Hurts
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Everything you have written in this blog is the reality of life. Society accepts alcohol and drugs the culprits as a turn to vice but seldom question why people turn to these things in the first place. Yet it’s occurring all around us. I returned to my home town in the UK and in the year since my last visit, the increase in food outlets is either double or tripled and these places are busy – an accepted substance abuse.
Following meeting Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, I experimented with how my body and I am with certain foods, and I clocked what was going on for me. It is a personal journey but in all honesty, I didn’t need Serge Benhayon or Universal Medicine to high light the reactions or responses of food and my body (this is just a example). My body had already been expressing this many years before, I just did not listen or take heed of its expression.
The signs are already there, its what we do with this, that’s the question.
it is great to bring awareness as to what lies beneath our self destructive behaviours, to bring understanding and sensitivity. We can only truly heal when we are willing to be transparent, and it is a blessing for others too. Thank you for sharing.
“From what I have learnt from myself and, after slowly trying to go deeper, it is our hurts, or us in reaction to our hurts, that compounds the problem.” I totally agree Greg when we protect ourselves from our hurts we are living further and further away from who we truly are.
As the saying — almost – says ‘There but for the grace of my choice to take heed of the words of Universal Medicine go I.
This is so relatable, as so many of us can put on a protective armour to not feel how we truly are and what is going on around us … we experience tension but often rather than being with that tension we relieve it by eating, drinking or distracting ourselves in our own chosen way. What if we learned to be with that tension and notice and observe it?
Such a big smile reading this today. We do so have a choice to leave ourselves or to come back to ourselves. And like you, I have found that Universal Medicine supports me to come back to me, and to know who I am. A Son of God, a divine universal being that is both human and of this universe.
We have the example of Elvis and others with their dramatic and tragic decline who demonstrate how it is not possible to continually bury our hurts without a reckoning. Enticing as it may be at times to choose a behaviour that numbs us out then we have to endure the realisation that nothing has changed and we have to do it all again. I repeated this cycle many times before attending Universal Medicine presentations and choosing to address my hurts and whilst it has not always been a smooth path I am no longer consumed by anxiety and the need to go to food etc to numb myself from the reality I see around me.
It is crazy how we enter relationships of any sort, wielding our hurts and thus creating disharmony for ourselves and others. If we choose the path of return we are supported to address our many hurts and deepen our level of intimacy with those around us and thus become able to enter relationships without our many layers of protection needing to be constantly maintained and reinforced, which is so draining.
I totally agree with you when you say
‘Saying “the person had depression,” is not a good enough reason to me because it says nothing and offers no insight into what may have been going on.”
But this is how we are with each other as it seems no one has the time to talk and discuss what is going on in their lives. The medical system is over stretched and having a few sessions with a counselor may not be the answer either. I spent years going to see a Psychologist/ Psychotherapist and this didn’t work it just activates the mind and isolates the body. I have discovered it’s the body that holds the key as it carries the energetic imprint of the hurt that caused the depression in the first place.
Watching another go to the lengths of self destruction that we so often witness posses a question. Why do we watch and not communicate, connect and offer all of our love when we see someone in such torment?
Not feeling safe to be myself, I am sure you speak for us all Greg. I too used food to overeat so that I would feel less tension and not to feel everything that was going on in my family.
Great point. The stars we see self harm like Elvis Presley do need to be studied and understood, as they are role models to our world, so if we are going to model our lives on such stars, we need to understand what it is we are following and how to live so that such deep saddness and despair does not become our way.
Tenderness and fragility are neither encouraged nor nurtured, especially not in boys. They are told to suck it up and get on with it, not be a sissy or worse. Is it any wonder that we end up with hardened, tough and seemingly ‘insensitive’ males who have buried their true qualities so deeply that all they show is the fortress, the facade, the wall and the accompanying lifestyle choices.
It is our unresolved hurts that block love from flowing, which creates all the struggle and complication until the day comes when we can feel and also ready to face them, and what I found was that there was so much support available.
“I was always measuring what was safe to express” – this is a very common thing and I find it deeply sad that this is the world we live in.
Greg you have written a very beautiful account of a man coming into himself, expressing more from the tender place within him and being in more of his strength of delicacy and power. It is very gorgeous to see that there are men like you in the world reflecting another way to be.
Being clear about what hurts us and just honestly expressing it does not create blame for anyone.
I can completely relater to the over-eating thing – I did that a lot when I was younger as well and I thought I was getting away with it because I never put on much weight. It is very interesting to look back and realise why I was eating way more than my body actually needed to be healthy – I can remember the dull haze and relief I would get after eating a lot or certain foods and I can definitely say it was a form of tranquilliser to help me cope with life and the tensions I felt in my body. As these tensions have lessened in recent years, so has my over-eating habit.
It’s exhausting measuring or calibrating our expression according to what we think will be accepted by others, or to meet a picture that we think we need to live up to, rather than simply being true to who we are and what we feel or know from inside of us…
The propensity to want to overeat to dull what we do not want to feel is pretty common for most of us. There is much to learn from our role models who also do this to great excess and it would be wise to learn from the choices of others and our own.
Beautiful to read ogf your journey back to love Greg. “my life became a wonderful unfoldment with always so much more to learn, as long as I stayed open and allowed myself to feel my way. So it is choice by choice, day by day that I am bringing myself back.” Step by step we can all make our way back to love.
I agree Linda and have found the greatest opportunities to learn come from those moments where we feel hurt. Those are the raw moments to just pay attention to what we do with that hurt – do we lash out, run away, eat, smoke, drink? We may not be able to change the situation but bringing an awareness to what we do in those situations changes the situation without a direct focus because we are more aware of our part in it.
“The bits that we don’t want to look at, left unresolved, can then come back to bite us as manifested negative and self-harming behaviours.” This should be something we talk about and live as a given. It would give each and every one of us the opportunity to change our patterns of behaviour that are self-harming even though they look like free will and an ‘innocent’ indulgence.
When one relies on and is recognised and appreciated only for one’s material accomplishments one eventually comes to realise that there is an emptiness, a hollowness to life which is never filled no matter how much recognition and wealth one gains. That emptiness is only fulfilled by love and appreciation of oneself for oneself and not for what one does.
Your sharing makes me realise how choosing love would be the most direct, simplest answer to everything. We often choose to take a detour and indulge in hurt instead and call that life, but there is another way to live, not in illusion, but in truth.
“Most of the time, most of us are acting out of our hurts so we then have the tendency to go around hurting each other without even being aware that we are doing it!” This is when we need to set a standard and solid foundation of decency and respect and resolve to never, ever drop below it no matter what.
For so many of us who were hellbent on a path of destruction and desolation the gratitude for meeting someone with enough love to mirror what is actually possible in this life is beyond words
Listening to Elvis songs growing up used to keep me going. The messages were simple and made sense to me . Sadly the burden of life as he saw it was too much. It’s great Greg that you did not make that choice but chose healing ” healing journey ” and re-connected with the Ageless Wisdom as presented by Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon. Thanks for sharing.
It’s very significant what you share here Greg, about the way we use to numb ourselves to not feel and keep going in a world that doesn’t receive us for what we are. A continuous withdrawal that needs to be activated again and again, because our soul is always knocking the door for us to come back to our divine essence. Your experience is an example that shows it’s possible and worthy to walk this returning path. Thank you for sharing it.
If we don’t allow our hurts to come up for us to feel then no healing can take place, it is in a willingness to be honest and take responsibility for all our choices that healing can take place so that more of who we naturally are can be lived.
Embodying the fact, that I am not my hurts, is an unfolding path that I continue to walk. No matter how challenging I am determine to live my life holding this at the fore front.
This blog exposes that even when we try to change the outside if we don’t deal with what is going on underneath then nothing truly changes.
Thank you for this blog, what strikes very strongly in what you say is that we hold others to account for hurts they have not caused us, so we walk around with this giant chip on our shoulders about how people have hurt us, and because of those who have hurt us we keep everyone away … crazy really and yet many of us do this in some form or other. I can feel the responsibility we all carry to address our hurts and not tar the world and those in it , otherwise we just continue and perpetuate the cycle of hurt.
It struck me reading your experiences of growing up about how sensitive we all are and how little this world is set up for people to express this sensitivity.
Thank you Greg! I agree that there is much in your sharing .I would say that without having met with Serge Benhayon and listened to his presentations of The Ageless Wisdom I would be looking for that elusive something that was missing in my Life.
We are all the same, we may have different issues to deal with, but deep down we are all yearning to be loved and love.
It is amazing how many ways we can numb and dull the natural light that shines within us so as not to be, and live our gloriousness. When the willingness is there to be honest and truly feel and deal with the why’s of our behaviours the discarding begins.
If we do ask the deeper questions about ourselves and our behaviours there comes a time where we see it is our responsibility to do so. The ripple effect of our choices affects the whole of us.
I can relate to being skinny but able to eat like a horse when I was younger to quell the awareness of the tension of reacting to my feelings. But phrases such as ‘clean your plate’ ‘growing boys need food’ ‘having a large appetite is a good thing’ ‘your lucky you can eat whatever and stay skinny’ all get me wondering that under these notions we don’t see the stress and tension the person is experiencing. For years I used this as a cry for help that went unnoticed until I started to stop and feel my own inner tension and with self-love feel my feelings. In this the intense binging has become less and less.
There is so much in your blog Greg, so much that unpeels layers and patterns of behaviour that are clearly dysfunctional and self-abusive. “I am learning that if another didn’t help to create a hurt we are carrying, why meet them or come at them carrying or wielding a hurt?” That hurts both them and us and never addresses the cause.
There is no greater medicine to healing the unresolved hurts and to commit to life in full than the Esoteric Healing Modalities and The Way of The Livingness.
When we live a measured life and we calibrate to the imperfect world around us and not to our potential the whole world misses out – for our potential is and will always be way beyond measure.
The idolisation of people like Elvis, Prince and the many other famous and hugely ‘successful’ people in the world who have come to a sad end has been a really powerful reflection for us all which the vast majority have chosen to turn away from. If we did examine and read what happened in their lives that led them to make the devastating choices they did, we would as you say Greg realise we are doing the same ourselves in order not to feel our hurts,
Feeling the tension living in a world that does not feel right causes so any hurts, that harm and debilitate us in so many different ways. However we do have a choice to observe the ills of the world and not to absorb them; challenging as this might be at times. What you have expressed here Greg is the key and is simple and inspirational;
“So it is choice by choice, day by day that I am bringing myself back.”
It is like you share how important it is to look at why and how people end up so far from their initial beginnings. When we look at and feel a new born infant the absolute love that they are stops us all in our tracks. Yet it is not long after that, may be a few years, that a sense of absoluteness of expressing love in full is not so absolute. What we do to survive really is a bad choice as it never protects us in the way we believe it will, rather it hides and dulls down the love we are. What is presented by Serge Benhayon is that love never is reduced and can be reconnected to. Beautiful.
Until I encountered Universal Medicine I had no idea that I was holding the entire world to ransom because of the hurts I was not letting go. There’s so many things we can numb ourselves with we don’t realise how much we are actually withdrawing from life. I thought I had worked out a way to manage life, but really it was just that – managing – I had figured out what/who to avoid and only hang out where my reaction would be tolerated. Learning to come back to myself to be me in full in the world has been an amazing journey and I too pinch myself sometimes for having discovered Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon.
“I had figured out what/who to avoid and only hang out where my reaction would be tolerated.” Ain’t that the truth Fumiyo! – we are masters at calculation and avoidance so we can stay in the comfort and control of being around people and in situations where we don’t push any buttons. It’s a stagnant and retarding place to live.
‘Although far from perfect, my life became a wonderful unfoldment with always so much more to learn, as long as I stayed open and allowed myself to feel my way. So it is choice by choice, day by day that I am bringing myself back’. And our earth school is a wonderful playground to ‘feel our way’, back to our true essence.
No matter who we are, we face many choices in life, to bury the pain we feel from our past hurts, or to openly accept them within and live free of what often binds us to making choices to numb and distract ourselves, from drugs, alcohol, coffee, or anything that takes us away from our own connection. I have found that every single moment is a choice to expand or contract, and the choice is always ours.
I think it is a loving and honest thing to ‘dig-deeper’ and be willing to take a closer look at what is going on energetically in our own lives and those of celebrities and anyone we know to bring greater understanding (not judgement) to the choices we make and with that be more aware of the choices we are making all the time..
This is such a beautiful and honest sharing Greg and how we can either choose to let our hurts control us and lead us further away from love or choose to let our hurts go and walk through life willing to embrace love and truth that is on offer. It has been a blessing meeting Serge Benhayon who has been a true inspiration and support for thousands of people to make this loving choice and to re-connect back to our true essence.
It is a huge thing to appreciate all that has been given by Universal Medicine. But just in this one journey, where we can see the turn-around of someone’s life, it is clear that what Universal Medicine offers, is profoundly important and relevant for everyday life.
Thank you Greg for such an honest sharing of your journey back to your own love “choice by choice and day by day”
I have found that the greatest gift we have is to use our power of choice. It is in this choice that we can either look at our lives, past hurts and issues and discover why we may act or move in a certain way that is no longer serving us and making us unhappy. When we are able to see why we do things at certain times in our lives then we can begin to move through them to come to a greater understanding of who we are and the many opportunities of love and learning available to us. Thank you Greg for sharing.
“So it is choice by choice, day by day that I am bringing myself back.” So true Greg; choice by choice bringing myself back to love.
thank you Greg , for being so honest with us.. and truly observe the path you have now chosen and the previous path that would have possibly made you so unhappy and who knows would have let to thinking about suicide too. I am so glad we can just share honestly about this subject and actually be honest about how we have behaved in life, what we have been withdrawn from that has us now brought into the possitions of facing terrible deaths and traggic, lonely and separtive ways of living. Even with glamour or illusion – they are just a portray!
Appreciating that we are not our hurts enables one to ‘observe them’ rather than trying to understand them ‘from within’ and so gain an objective perspective of their causes. By doing so one can disentangle oneself from the emotions, identify the cause of the hurt and learn the lesson from it, as you share Greg. This is true healing, which is liberating and empowering.
Thanks Greg, a lot of insightful things here for me to take with me.
This is a very cool blog Greg, you ask some great questions. I laughed when you talked about the crossroads, the choice to glamorously drown your sorrows or face your demons and truly heal. I am having a moment this week where I have been quite enticed by the glamor of my blue suede shoes, I haven’t put them on or anything but have been thinking how much easier things would be if I didn’t have so much responsibility all the time. This allure is what leads us down the rabbit hole, it has been a long time since I have been drawn in this way to burry my issues but I came to this blog for a reason, to remind me of what happens, if you choose light or darkness. Not to say one is good or bad, it’s just that every action or move we make, does in fact have a counter and therefore lack of responsibility does not mean things stop affecting other things, it just feels that way because your eyes are too foggy to see the damage.
Something I learned about celebrities today is that we often see them for their roles and successes, but rarely do we see the real them behind the scenes, and they may be different to what we see in the media.
Great stuff, Greg. A majority of the world doesn’t want to go where you go and ask/answer the underlying questions about how people like Elvis ended up the way they did. You shed light on the situation and this is felt as you are living in a way that makes it possible to understand. Thanks for taking us, the reader, there to a place of greater understanding.
It is very true that the majority of people do not ‘want to go where you go’ and it is because of this the world is in the mess it is.
Until I embraced the work presented by Universal Medicine, I was in complete denial of tension I had been living in, too busy living in reaction, burying old hurts with new hurts, and what I refused to accept the most was the fact that I was actually love. I am eternally grateful for what Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon present.
It is very empowering to know that our hurts are not us and even more empowering when we learn to let them go and to feel the expansion and lightness in our bodies when we make this loving choice.
“And so the vast majority of us are all carrying hurts of some kind”…. since coming to the work of Universal Medicine I have realised how many hurts I have been carrying and doing some of the healing courses, I can see that many others have too. So I am pretty confident that your statement here is quite accurate. But before coming to Universal Medicine, I dont think I would have been able to ‘own up’ to that statement. I think I felt too owned by the hurts and I had buried too many of them to admit to having them and that many of us do as well.
But we do and they are vastly effecting the world and how we are living today. We just need to pick one person – as you have here today with Elvis – and look closely at their lives to see that there are hurts playing out. We can also pick ourselves too. The key to seeing them, which I loved discovering at these courses, is that they are not us. We have taken them on so they get in us but they are not us. We can let them go with some love, insight and willingness.
Well said Sarah.It interesting how we can bury our hurts so deeply that we dont even realise that we have them.Its a bit like peeling back the layers of an onion ,once we start to begin the journey back to being more gentle and sensitive or able to feel more ,we can be open to heal old hurts ,that like you say we have taken on and stored in our bodies and minds.
Hi Sarah, Well said.
It interesting how we can bury our hurts so deeply that we don’t even realise that we have them. It’s a bit like peeling back the layers of an onion, once we start to begin the journey back to being more gentle and sensitive or able to feel more, we can be open to healing old hurts, that like you say, we have taken on and stored in our bodies and minds.
Such an inspirational story Greg; thank you for sharing your experiences and your wisdom. I so appreciate and admire the choices you have made to transform your life; like you I am a forever student of my own livingness and the Ageless Wisdom teachings as presented by Serge Benhayon.
I can relate to this, I think I lived most of my life with food in my mouth to attempt to appease the uncomfortableness and anxiousness I had with life.
It is important to understand why people behave as they do, ‘So what leads Elvis, or any of us for that matter, to a path of disregard, self-abuse and into a place of no return?’ I am sure we could learn a lot by examining peoples’ lives and choices.
I too learnt to live a measured life, knowing that my expression was enough not to open up too much, in order not to get hurt, yet I was hardening my body and holding back on truth. Now I live more openly from my heart and less from my mind, I feel the joy from within and all around.
The teachings of Universal Medicine offer us a truer way forward to come back to our essence and the blessings abound from there for all.
We are all so sensitive in truth. It is amazing how often behind the sharpest tongue or the toughest exterior is the most sensitive being. We have developed so many false protections that really only keep us separate from the thing we want most, to be and be open to the love we are and share that love with others.
Yes indeed Victoria, behind every facade, bar none, is a sensitive soul. The trick is to not fall for the exterior but to see the sensitive soul behind the words, the costume and the behaviour.
“This time around I chose a less glamorous, but far more fulfilling, healing journey – to come back to me.” Great choice Greg, when you look beneath the surface of glamour and ‘sparkle’ it is an illusion that seemingly promises much but looking at the reality it is not the case. Without the love and connection with ourselves we have nothing.
Thank you Greg for sharing your healing journey back to you. Realising that we are not our hurts is such a profound realisation and as you say, “I am learning that if another didn’t help to create a hurt we are carrying, why meet them or come at them carrying or wielding a hurt?” is a total game-changer.
If we hold onto our hurts and bury them eventually they rise to the surface and can cause us to act in many ways contrary to our true selves. Building a foundation of love for ourselves supports us at these times to not fall down but to deal with our hurts and bring true healing to the body.
We can escape only for so long before we hit a point that asks us to come back to ourselves. We always have a choice and thus the responsibility for what we choose and so we have to deal with the consequences, unavoidably. Although crisis often is chosen before true change is made we don´t need to wait before we turn towards love. Making love one´s first choice guarantees the way forward to be love filled and one of healing.
I too feel blessed that i have chosen, ‘the journey back to love, to my innermost, and for making the choice to reconnect with the Ancient Wisdom as presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine’.
Calibrating what we can say and how we can be to avoid jealousy, comparison, attention etc. is a serious reduction of who we are. The world misses out when we do this, and the contraction can cause us to live protected, hard, tense and thus eventually lead to illness or dis-ease by way of how we’ve held our bodies.
Hurt definitely creates disharmony within ourselves and also between others. It is absolutely worth committing to addressing these hurts lovingly so that we are free to express from the truth of who we are rather than from a reaction.
Hello Greg, and I can relate to the details of this, “I also learned to not speak up, to keep my head down and calibrate what I said/did so as not to get the attention of judgment, jealousy, or contempt.” I can see how I still do this in parts. Constantly looking at what the reactions of people are and are going to be, to then speak differently. It’s not that you even really know what the other person is doing because of where you are looking from. It would seem at the time you are creating the whole scenario yourself and then blaming the other person. The more and more I settle and speak truly from what I feel then all else is taken care of. What is the only way I know what to say? From feeling first and then speaking, no matter what is going on outside of me.
We see people struggling with disconnection from themselves and from others. I often wondered how to help, how to get them to feel connected. Now I know that the disconnection starts from within ourselves. We don’t want to feel the pain that we feel with the world and so we do all those numbing things. The problem is that we disconnect from ourselves by doing this. I did many of those numbing things too, and I didn’t know why I felt so adrift. Numbing makes everything so much worse. It is so unhelpful.
It is all too common to see gorgeous young people grow and develop and struggle with life. As time goes on alcohol, drugs, food, work, exercise can get taken to the extreme. Sometime they only get taken to the social acceptable point, yet the effect is still the same – the tender, gorgeous person seemingly gets lost in there somewhere and harder to access. Society plays a huge part in this. The expectation placed on children is huge. What if we were to give kids the space to be themselves instead of trying to mould them into something? Or adults for that matter, what if we dropped judgement and expectation?
You are very right when you say that just saying somebody had depression, as in the case of Elvis Presley, doesn’t cut it, leaves us all very short of the real reason why we might choose drugs, alcohol, violence, over – or under eating and the many other behaviours that are available and rob us of our joy and quality of life.
Greg you make some great points in your blog, I particularly liked reflecting back on someone else’s life and the reason these things happen because it can give us a great insight into our own lives too, there is a lot to learn through observation of ourselves and others.
Greg thank you for sharing I smiled as I read your words ‘I remember as a child waking up and feeling so warm, full of me, yummy and safe in my warm bed and desperately wanting to be able to go everywhere in the safety of my bed.’ It reminded me of how even as an adult when things didn’t go right I would take myself off to bed.
A beautiful blog, Greg….Elvis movies and I go way back and I love to celebrate his light and power whenever possible. Yet you have nailed it here, none of us are any different and the choices we make to self-abuse and hide our light, to stay in the cosiness of our own warmth (I so relate to this!) rather than simply shining as we naturally are before the hurts took over, is something well worth exploring. I, too, cannot appreciate enough the return to myself via the teachings and workshops of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for I know now that being me is vital – for all of us.
‘Once bitten, twice shy’ the old saying goes. Bringing the old reaction to each new interaction and colouring it with that, instead of bringing an openness to see what is actually there. No wonder we get in a pickle.
Food is so over used to cover up feelings either of tension of hurts or even the tension of feeling amazing in a world that does not match that feeling, we then focus on the food as if that is the issue rather than seeing it a symptom or tool that is being used to relieve us of the ill motion in our bodies. Fascinating.
Yes it is a real testament to the fact that living your life from the outside in does not hold weight as so many stars are suicidal, excessive, depressed etc yet ask any young person and a standard answer will be that they want to be famous. It seems we hold so much weight in the outside success even when it does not add up. I too feel blessed Greg that I found Universal Medicine and now live my life connecting more inward and taking that out to the world not for anything other than that is the most natural thing to do.
Bringing in more awareness and understanding helps us see the truth of ‘our hurts’, healing these and letting them go is an essential part of our evolution, ‘Most of the time, most of us are acting out of our hurts so we then have the tendency to go around hurting each other without even being aware that we are doing it!’
We measure what we feel safe to say, or share, so we are holding back, and this harms ourselves and others. I am choosing to not hold back now, but can see this ‘measuring’ can be very subtle and creep in under the radar.
For years I’ve blamed the world for being too scary for me to show the true me but this is a lie I hid/hide behind when it suits me. It’s not to be hard on myself but to be honest and understanding and feel any fear and reconnect to let it go. It’s to be honest about the tension that not expressing from my essence brings to my body and how I complicate my life to distract myself. So your words, ‘…being able to hold myself in joy and love in my body, regardless of what was happening out there.’ inspire a way of living whose reflection the world needs to feel and see because it is the truth of who we are.
You could say that it has become ‘normal’ to only express when we deem it ‘safe to do so’ as so many of us only speak up when we don’t think others will react to us, become jealous, frustrated, uncomfortable and so forth. It seems absurd to limit and reduce our expression based on the potential that others will have issues with it, and the conversation definitely needs to be started about these things so that we can expose the contracted manner in which a large proportion of humanity unnecessarily live in, and find another way of living where what we feel to be true doesn’t need to be reduced when we express it.
Greg, this is a great blog. Lately I remembered my childhood and how fragile, open and joyful I was and how this changed over the years. I asked myself how this could happen and what I see is that I often gave my power away and did not appreciate me. Slowly I change this where I am aware and gain myself back.
How true Greg it is in what you are calling out. We revere these film and pop stars, especially when they have passed away, most of the time overlooking what was it that allowed them to end up the way they do, usually on some kind of drugs and alcohol binges, along with food as in the case of Elvis. Yet we do this to ourselves also, but so many stories mirror Elvis’s and yours for that matter, until we do learn that there is another way. To actually feel our hurts, not to bury them. That is courageous, but essential for true healing and your story is a testament to that.
The more I read your blog today the more I asked myself why would we want to stick our head in the sand when there is such a great opportunity being given to us right now, there is so much to see and feel, yet it is easy to dull our awareness and carry on because we give into the demands of life, how amazing it is when we allow ourselves to feel the connection between ourselves and our body.
Whenever we start to feel the power of our light it sometimes feels easier to dull and extinguish our light so we do not have to deal with the many more loving choices that are being asked of us.
You call out what so many of us have felt in childhood and life generally here Greg, I certainly can relate with this, ‘Not feeling safe to be myself, the sensitive soul, in case I was attacked. bullied or criticised at home or school.’ I am now choosing to re-connect back to my essence and my love.
More and more I am seeing life is not what I have made it out to be nor what I pictured it to be. It’s a moment by moment step into the connection to whatever is next. I had many pictures to life and tried to live towards those and nearly all of the time it didn’t work out and I was disappointed to varying levels and then confused and lost. Now there is a more self reflective part, a self responsibility to how I am and what I’m feeling. In this there are no pictures held off in the future to get to, it’s more just a step by step dedication to the next moment and then feeling the next step.
Hurts are not real and it is only when we hold onto ideals, beliefs and have an attachment of how another needs to be with us that we get hurt. Living in connection with our bodies and inner hearts allows us the awareness, understanding and space needed in our own evolution.
You make a great point about how we have a habit of holding completely innocent people to ransom for our own hurts and reminds us that harbouring a hurt, which isn’t really who we are, just something collected on the way, is a purely personal choice and as a consequence all our choices are our very own responsibility. It’s this that can set us on the road to freedom from those aspects of ourselves that have been holding us back.
Thank you Greg. Love how you describe how the ‘Esoteric Healing sessions and the Esoteric Ancient Wisdom books (the ‘purple books’ by Serge Benhayon). They were like a life raft in a stormy sea.’
We are naturally loving, fair and genuine race of people, but for some reason(s) this gets degenerated and this natural way of being changes into competitiveness, judgment, protectiveness, suspicion and abuse, all which can lead to atrocious acts of behaviour, towards ourselves and towards another. You are correct Greg here in suggesting to … “do a forensic study into what happened…” To untangle the knot of complexity that leads to such self destructive choices and events.
The development and understanding of true psychology ,that exposes the underlying causes of why we as a race continue to make choices in and against our selves and evolution is what needs so much more to be discussed .As we are born so beautiful and innocent as babies and then children and as “This gets degenerated and this natural way of being changes into competitiveness, judgment, protectiveness, suspicion and abuse, all which can lead to atrocious acts of behaviour, towards ourselves and towards another .”
You have raised something really important here Greg. We were witness to the downward spiral of a supremely gifted, generous and beautiful sensitive man – we can wonder how could this have happened, what was hurting someone so much to go down the path he did. . . and how many thousands, perhaps millions more go down the same way, those not in the spotlight, but suffering all the same.
I always ate to numb what I was feeling, we call it ‘comfort’ eating because numbness, i.e. feeling nothing at all or being racy from sugar was more comfortable that feeling the tension in my body. Even now, I start to do something then feel an urge to eat – sometimes I give way to the urge, but I am working on resisting that and allowing myself to feel what is going on. It is opening up a whole new world of feeling I have spent the last 66 years avoiding – and probably lifetimes before that. I know that underneath the discomfort and the tension is a beautiful level of stillness which I have not felt for aeons and I am allowing that more and more, which feels lovely.
It seems apparent in our present day society, from expressions on social media to the way MP’s and presidential candidates conduct themselves with each other, that abuse is rife. Just recently in the UK a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party stood down citing the amount of abuse she had received from colleagues as a reason. These are people who are leaders in our world and who accept that being abused is part of the job. I agree with what is asserted here in this blog, that all too often we act and express from our hurts and this is revealed in what is said. What I do not accept is that we are by nature abusive and therefore something has perverted our innateness into a deviant way of being and living with each other. We do not have to remain victim to our hurts but can choose to heal and return to the naturally loving essence we all have within. Surely this makes more sense than continuing to perpetuate the abuse in our society we are currently witnessing.
In talking about Elvis, I am always curious about the mass hysteria that followed him fuelled by the uncontrollable desires of girls being unleashed upon him. This must have been very difficult for Elvis to deal with, as much as I am sure that in part he enjoyed it, but essentially I am sure it was also very imposing and without techniques or practical life skills in how to deal with such a force I can see how anyone would quickly become dismantled and start to fall apart. We often look at the celebrity lives and judge or question their value, but not so often do we look at ourselves and see our part in their demise.
Why does a man who apparently has everything the world can offer – the wealth, the fame, the beautiful wife, the children et al – choose to numb himself to the point of death, as in the case of Elvis. It is a reflection I have often pondered and feel that everything the world has to offer was not enough to heal the emptiness he felt within his own heart. Only that reconnection to his own being could heal that and so the world of glamour – which he experienced in its fullness – was exposed to him as devoid of love. To me the life of Elvis Presley offers us all an important awareness. Look within for what we seek, it already within us – and it is not out there in the world.
Well said Richard “To me the life of Elvis Presley offers us all an important awareness. Look within for what we seek, it already within us – and it is not out there in the world.” It definitely is not out there as it is only momentary bliss, comfort and distraction, whilst deepening our connection with ourselves brings with it the warmth of God.
‘We have seen so many successful stars not able to handle their light and power, and then make choices that eventually lead to their demise.’ We do seem to glorify these stars don’t we despite the choices they make? Is it their need to be loved by others that fuel their career aspirations only to find once they make it there was no real fulfilment in this after all…so they seek all manner of ways to cope with their feeling of emptiness?
‘Most of the time, most of us are acting out of our hurts so we then have the tendency to go around hurting each other without even being aware that we are doing it!’ I can relate to this deeply as before I dealt with my hurts they were silently influencing my thoughts and reactions to others. I was overtaken with emotion most of the time, and unknowingly very self-centred and feeling like a victim. The process of healing was gradual but steady and has made space for an enormous changes in my life and relationships – and I have the esoteric healing modalities to thank for that.
What if, those who embraced and openly shared their joy and powerful presence such as Elvis, actually lived sustaining, vital and meaningful lives – right to the end?
It’s astounding just how many role models in our society run themselves down, often with tragic end. Not to say that all are what I would call ‘true’ role models, who hold a purpose in life that is far beyond self-aggrandisement and gain. But clearly there is a deep need and call to show a way of living that truly makes sense and is sustainable – and for others to see this as real and lived (without the ‘demise’ factor).
I’d dance with you in blue suede shoes anyway Greg. Bring on the role model that you are 🙂
The funny thing here is Victoria ,I did actually have a set of blue suede and rare Doc Martins and I used to strut my stuff in my early 20’s hehe (:
Love it! I had some purple suede boots… No holding back when Joy can be lived and walked right down to our feet 🙂
We all need to look beyond the veneer to what may truly be going on for ourselves or another. Thank-you for taking us there Greg, and demonstrating from your own life choices, that a spiralling road ‘down’ needn’t be the way, if we address ourselves tenderly and truly acknowledge what is going on.
There is a plethora of true support out there also, when we choose to do this, as you’ve found and chosen to embrace in your life – nothing need be done in isolation and none of us need ever feel we are so isolated that we are beyond stepping out of any apparent ‘mess’ or crisis that we are in.
This is such a poignant weaving of your own observations Greg, and your healing journey and rediscovery of ‘you’. Thank-you for sharing so openly here.
‘It’s crazy looking back at what I did to not feel life.’ – Look at what we as humanity are doing to not feel life – crazy indeed. For a major part of my life, the first thing I used to do in the morning and the last thing at night was to smoke cigarettes and drink buckets of coffee, I stubbornly refused to see how much it affected my health and well-being.
Great blog Greg and one that I could so relate to. Having reached a weight of 27 and a half stone (174kg), I know full well the feeling of indulging in food and alcohol and although I never took drugs, my drug of sorts would have been checking out in front of the TV or participating in sports – in fact anything to not have to feel how empty my life was. With the presentations of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I was given the understanding of why I was doing what I was doing, and then had the choice to make changes. Like you I feel very blessed to have found my way back to the truth because the path I was on would have had only one outcome. Thanks to Serge Benhayon, my life today is one of joy and has something that I had never had before – meaning and purpose.
Hi Tim , that is an incredible testimony to the power of reconnecting back to the original Tim, through igniting the spark and the fire within, through the Ageless wisdom teachings. It also proves we can numb, dull down and check out using a myriad of different things, because when we don’t want to feel stuff we just have to reach into the so called prop cupboard for something to numb or dumb ourselves down. It also doesn’t help in a world where that is also encouraged, with culture and advertising, i.e. nothing that a beer or a stiff drink won’t fix, and have a coffee and a cigarette, a soft drink, your favourite cake or a tim tam perhaps, or more hip/underground perhaps, nothing that a joint, or a line, or a pill, or a bong won’t fix. Its funny when we can be honest and see all the different ways that we use to not feel.
‘I feel blessed and have to pinch myself at times for choosing the journey back to love’ – spot on Greg. When you strike gold, and you find a rich seam that is so tangible and within easy reach (for each and every one of us) then I cannot help but appreciate how lucky I am.
To look at self-abusive behaviors is not the easiest task ever… There are 100’s of modalities out there that pretend to support this process whereas in truth they only support to bury the issues deeper. Discernment and absolute honesty are needed prerequisites to find a true modality like Universal Medicine Therapies.
Sacred Esoteric Healing is like a ‘raft in a stormy sea’. You are so right Greg! I will never forget my very first session. Apart from the amazing experience of Love and joy, that night I slept like a baby and woke up feeling completely at rest for the first time in many years.
Its funny how we can look at celebrities and be quick to judge when they falter – they could get fat, turn to drugs, have an outburst, say the wrong thing in public – and all of sudden the camera is on them and we can focus on their faults – but as is said here – it is no different to us choosing what is not loving, Perhaps the spotlight is not on us, but the fact is we are constantly responsible for the way we choose to live. To really be with ourselves is extremely healing, to build a relationship with ourselves that is honouring and inline with the body. That in reflection is the potential the world has to change from judging everyone to actually learning from each other and being true role models.
I have also benefited hugely from doing group work at Universal Medicine events. There really is something quite special about talking through life events in the supportive environment of the small groups that are made up. It allows others to give their perspective and just talking through experiences is a deeply healing process.
It is such a great point you make, Greg, that saying the cause of someone’s demise is from depression is not enough. By doing so no lesson is learnt to help others from copying that behaviour. What a potential difference it would make that if the true causes are exposed and that choosing the “less glamorous, but far more fulfilling, healing journey – to come back to me” was publicised.
It is lovely to read “This time around I chose a less glamorous, but far more fulfilling, healing journey – to come back to me.” I have also embarked on this journey of coming back to me, and have been finding the only time anything activity and objective remains fulfilling is when it starts off and continues honouring that sensitivity and awareness, you mentioned you recalled having when young and that we all have deep within us still as adults. But whenever I reach out for something that ignores this essence within me or within others, it doesn’t matter what bells whistle or glamour are offered, after a while it all starts feeling unsatisfying and a chore.
So much of society is set up so that individuals compare themselves to and try to match up to how the superstars live. Yet as you say we have the evidence that theirs is not a truly fulfilling as it seems when there are so many cases of suicide and excess drug/alcohol/behaviours that you would not get into if you were truly loving and valuing your life.
Greg, I was struck by your observation about how we don’t dig deeper and ask what is going on – that is so true. The more aware I choose to be the more aware I become of how much more there is to be aware of and how for some strange reason we avoid going there and yet it is so incredibly freeing when we do.
Yes, that memory from childhood of how amazing it felt to be connected to yourself and loving being in your own skin, only to find no-one else was quite so enthusiastic about how you shone so bright. Trying to stay with that but everything in the world does not support that, so we end up choosing to leave our amazing and enjoin so we won’t be left out. This can lead to huge frustration and resentment down the track as adults. Thank-fully I met Serge Benhayon, and are claiming back that natural part of me that exists so gorgeously, in every cell of my body, as this I now know is my responsibility to be the real me.
Returning to the truth of love and learning to live that once more – is changing everything – and yet remembering that it was once naturally there as a young child, we can see that it is our natural birthright – so then we have to ask – how far astray and lost has the world become, that there is almost nothing in how we live today that supports us to reconnect to that truth.
It is tragic that such a massive illusion is holding the world in its sway – the cult of celebrity, and superstars.. what pressure does this put on normal everyday people who dream of such achievement – if we are empty and dream of the ‘fulfillment’ this recognition this would bring then there is only misery if it doesn’t happen and double misery if it does. It keeps a world in the seeking of something outside of themselves for validation, which can never be satisfied. Connecting to the truth within and the re-awakening to ourselves, to who we truly are and we realise that we are a part of the all, and have everything we need within, and the need for seeking outside dissolves as we are full of everything that we are..
So many of us keep our heads down to keep safe. In fact the whole of the education system is about safety and security and we have bought that ‘sell’ hook line and sinker. I know that one of the reasons I got a PhD was so that I would be ‘safe’ from criticism directed towards me as a woman in academia. It wasn’t only about that as I actually enjoyed writing it but it was also like a fortress that would keep me safe from attack.
The feeling blessed (and proud actually) of having chosen to return to love is built on the appreciation that has turned my life around.
Every time I calibrate I hurt myself. It is abuse to my body. Allowing myself to feel everything no matter how uncomfortable it may be is a big one but it is a deeply loving choice not only supporting myself but everyone.
Replace the word boy with girl, and the word man with woman and I can totally relate to this paragraph on holding back feelings and becoming more separated from my body every passing day, by stuffing feelings firmly down. These were too scary to even consider visiting – until attending presentations by Serge Benhayon and new choices were inspired to make deep healing changes.
“Feeling my sadness of not being met, feeling my fragility and tenderness as a boy, then as a man, in a world that left, or felt like it left, no space for this part of me, especially once I was corralled into the educational system. Not feeling safe to be myself, the sensitive soul, in case I was attacked. bullied or criticised at home or school. Feeling the tension of living in a world that didn’t feel right”.
Some great questions in regard to Elvis and others….do we really have it all if we leave the Truth of us behind?
It is true that we are all the same – we begin shiny, whole and complete and yet our choices can take us off kilter and on another course altogether.
I particularly like your honesty that we can go another few rounds using any means of numbing ourselves and burying our hurt or we can choose to feel these hurts once and for all, heal them and move on unencumbered without them.
Great article Greg. If you invest your all into something, be it music or sport, and reach the pinnacle of success only to find it does not end up being the path to the promised land you thought it would be, where does that leave you? If you have no foundation of self to begin with beyond your achievements or talents, then it leaves you at the end of the road, quite often leading to depression.
As people we have the same hurts and vulnerabilities. The impact we can make is a lot to fathom whether we take steps towards or away from the love that we are.
It would be intriguing to hear more about Elvis. What made him successful? Was it that he was just being himself and he knew what a difference this made? He owned it by connecting to more of what he felt. Yes, a forensic study is required why he ended up in a mess and also research on the success and what that really means.
I agree Greg and there is no support or real tools out there to deal with your hurts or reaction to our hurts and, in truth change the energy of why we are so drawn to our hurts and reactions first before simply responding to heal them. “The bits that we don’t want to look at, left unresolved, can then come back to bite us as manifested negative and self-harming behaviours.” And bite it does – it can lead to the worse of acts like divorcing your wife and loosing a job. This all could be prevented by acting on the front foot. Universal Medicine was that for me through all its teachings, and this is ongoing journey, to heal all that is not me.
The ‘high life’ offers much to entice – yet, we know it isn’t everything deep down; as is evident in the desperation of those who live it.
It’s scary how far away from ourselves we can go, or what we will implement to not ‘feel’ life. Choosing to return to yourself can be confronting, but is worth every moment and more.
Elvis highlighted for us all very publicly the struggle that happens when the world in it’s coldness does not meet what we feel is true within and that the appearance that we have everything – adoration, recognition, money, family, friends is not what sustains and holds us through life. We have to make the choice to back ourselves and claim the love we are and know that this is enough. It is up to us as every choice we make has an outcome and whilst the outcome is for all of Humanity and the healing reflection it brings – it is still up to us make this choice for ourselves, to know and live from the Son’s of God we are.
Choosing simplicity and truth over glamour in a world where glamour is exalted, worshipped and applauded and simplicity takes a backseat to everything else. My choice is simplicity and as it is for you, Greg, it is a gradual unfolding for me.
Making the choice to make life about love once again, exposing and healing our hurts which have been affecting us is a choice long overdue for us all.
What I also find fascinating is how we as a society herald and laud these figures. Turning a total blind eye to the car crashes that their private lives are, allowing the often intense abuse that they are doing to themselves or others. I mean – what kind of example are these people setting and what kind of example are we setting by so actively enabling and promoting their abusive behaviours? We have to start seeing and telling the truth of what is actually going on here.
I recently was doing lot of similar research on Marlene Dietrich. Same story as Elvis and so many others. She spent the last ten years of life, alone in an apartment in Paris, unable to walk because her legs were so whithered and broken from the dancing, cooking german sausages on a gas cooker and doing her personal business into buckets. She never left and only saw one person (her manager) in those last end years. And she spent her time writing letters and sending old photos to fans – trying to maintain the long-gone image of beauty and glamour. A broken lady whose life of utter disregard caught up with her.
Wow. Incredible insight into the devastation that goes on behind closed doors that we pretend we do not see, feel or know. Thank you for sharing this, Otto.
Thanks for sharing that Otto, a very sad but also interesting story. It makes no sense that we can spend so much time looking outwards to the illusion of glamour and wanting others to love and admire us yet not build that within our own bodies so as to live in the presence of our glory . There have been so many stories like this also within the sporting realm with many Olympic gold medalists suffering depression and substance abuse after their hey day of sporting prowess has ended or declined. Proving once again the search outwards is not as important as our inner journey back to a deeper connection to god and love. Learning to self love ,care and appreciate ourselves a huge part of the journey.
If the world were to see the true lives of celebrities, film stars, sporting heroes and the like, then we would not spend the hours and hours and miles of newspaper column inches lauding these people. I have had a glimpse behind the doors of one or two of these people and it is not a pretty sight. But – here’s a question – is it possible that actually we can see this and we just avoid looking? Is it possible that actually we can all feel and tell that these people aren’t truly joyful, that their lives are a mess and that they love in abject disregard? My sense is that we know way more than we pretend, but that we pretend not to know to allow us to indulge in the escape. We are actually choosing to be pulled even further from ourselves by aspiring to be like them.
It is a great question to ask are they different to any of us it is so tempting to point the finger and ridicule and judge reflections that expose some of the choices that we make. In order to distract us form taking responsibility in our own backyards.
This is exactly what I do and have done for most of my life – calibrate myself to others and what is going on around me. From reading Greg’s account as to why he was always measuring himself what was safe to express, it deepens my awareness of the sensitivity within me and to not be overwhelmed but to deeply appreciate this quality within me.
I agree with you, just saying that someone has depression doesn’t really mean much and is just another label. We need to dig deeper and be honest about what is really going on, how out of control life can seem and how much we are under the influence of our unresolved hurts.
I used to love listening to Elvis’s romantic, sweet songs and watch his movies- he was suave, very sexy, tender and cool. There was an openness and lightness to him. But as fame seemed to take a toll, and he was drinking and taking drugs his whole persona and looks changed – he became overweight, had bags under his eyes, and he just wasn’t himself. What happened to the real Elvis we all knew and loved?
It’s interesting how we tend to look starry eyed at hero’s or superstars and only see the good bits but totally overlook the areas of obvious sadness and desperation. My mother always used to say to me about famous people “Yes, but are they happy?” She could feel that fame was not it and she always invited me to consider how people were feeling. She helped me see through the illusion at an early age. As with all of us it’s so important to allow ourselves the humbleness and vulnerability required in order to be honest about how we feel. Without that we are literally living like a puppet on a stage only showing the world our outer shell.
Love is so much more beautiful than glamour. Less exciting but otherwise…
Thanks so much Greg for your wonderful blog. Relationships, as always, seem to be at the core of everything – our relationship with God, with ourselves and with others. If we were to come back to the simplicity of the religion of the way of loving relationship and knowing how magnificent we all are, would we be part of the energy force-field that makes the type of demands that are currently made on a performer? The greedy entrepreneur who wants to ring the singer dry and make every last ounce of publicity and money out of them would not be able to do that if we didn’t demand that our needs be satisfied by the performer’s output to substitute for our own connection. We could instead not USE the performer but celebrate the beauty that the performer brings. Would they then he held lovingly and not pressured to such extremes – not forgetting that that the singer also has their choice in this.
I feel like you Greg – blessed that I reconnected with the Ageless Wisdom as re-presented by Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon – truths we have always known but have long-since forgotten… and that are almost impossible to reawaken without a lot of support and inspiration, such is the weight of the world that we live in which is designed to keep us in the dark.
‘I was particularly sensitive to the way people acted and I could feel where people and l were at. This in turn caused me to harden and become quick and sharp with my tongue, to attack or be on the defensive so as to avoid attack. I also learned to not speak up, to keep my head down and calibrate what I said/did so as not to get the attention of judgment, jealousy or contempt.’ I love your description Greg of how you felt as a boy – it proves all over again that boys are every inch as sensitive as girls and that the bravado of being ‘tough’ is a behaviour boys learn in order to conceal their true natures which, for some reason, have been deemed socially inappropriate.
‘I am learning that if another didn’t help to create a hurt we are carrying, why meet them or come at them carrying or wielding a hurt?’ Another great observation, this time about our failure to take responsibility for the hurts we carry, and our tendency to inflict them on others to relieve the pain we are avoiding feeling for ourselves.
‘I would on purpose choose to overeat to the point of feeling stuffed or bloated. That way I wouldn’t feel any tension, or anything for that matter. Drugged and pacified, I would then proceed to go into comfort/relax mode… It’s crazy looking back at what I did to not feel life.’ Great description Greg of how over-eating works and one I can very much relate to as a life-long tendency. I find myself re-visiting it all over again now as I further refine my relationship with food – or should I say, my relationship with life, tension and feeling.
The self destruction begins whenever we look outside ourselves for recognition or validation instead of connecting to the innermost part of ourselves, knowing and understanding that we come from the Divine.
Greg it was powerful how you connected the seeming incongruity of ‘stars’ falling into tragic circumstances with a very personal account which showed that we are all human and that almost all do experience issues with handling greatness.
Greg you raise a great point about studying what is going wrong in people’s lives and going beyond the surface of labels such as depression. When we allow ourselves to think that we are an isolated case, we can easily stay in a cycle of self blame, critique and harm and not see there is something much larger in the world going on. If lifestyle illness has become the number one killer in the world, self abuse is at epidemic proportions and abuse of others is an obvious consequence. It is not that we want to study tragic circumstances such as suicide to indulge but to learn and come to a very sober understanding of our reality, without which we never come to a responsible approach to living, as you have shared, where we see we are all in this together and that there is a different way to live and celebrate life.
Could it be that a life of glamour and or fame could be chosen as a way to avoid looking at what is really going on in someones life? And although there may not be an awareness of this on a mental level when the choice is made, could it be that there is something within people who choose this way of life, or indeed in any one of us who choose to dis engage from living life to their full potential, that does know exactly what it is choosing?
Is it not interesting that we watch many of our so called beloved stars go down and yet the industry that takes them there is never questioned? We mourn for a day and then move on to the next famous person of our liking.
Today, with all the ‘become a star’ shows on TV, many children now answer the question of what they want to become, with ‘famous’. The glitter and glamour, and the seeming love of the public is very appealing and reveals the emptiness that is already in many of our children at a young age. We expose them to the shiny side of the coin while ignoring the dark of those who get spat out and forgotten after their 15 minutes of fame or after being exploited to the max. It is a reflection of the superficiality we are allowing in our lives without being willing to see the enormous damage it causes.
It was a pivotal moment for me too Greg when I realised I am not my hurts, and could truly feel this. This helped me hugely in seeing my patterns and behaviours and looking at what’s behind them. A life changer.
It’s interesting to see a man like Elvis a man that could sing and dance and looked to have everything. Yet he at the end seemed so so unhappy and depressed. To start out so fresh faced and light but to end to dark and heavy begs the question what happened? What changed along the way and why. It seems a shame that such an amazing start to a life appeared to be wasted.
Thank you Greg for exposing that we are in fact all the same, whatever walk of life we are in – people who are celebrities and appear to have it all and are thought of as highly successful in their life (money, accolades and fame etc) are as vulnerable as the ‘ordinary man’ on the street working hard to make ends meet and support their families. We are all open to getting caught up and even lost in the numbing emotions and distractions that are available to prevent us feeling the truth of who we are – Sons of God.
It’s important that we address the underlying causes of habits or behaviours such as binge drinking, drug use, alcohol addiction and so forth as this means we can learn WHY it’s happening and focus on truly changing that rather than band-aiding the problem. If we really looked at the ‘WHY’ in cases such as Elvis Presley I think that we as a society could learn a lot from his life and the choices he made even though he ‘had it all’.
I think many people do not want to feel what is truly going on in the lives of the artist and stars we look up to. If we would do that it would become clear that their lives are actually not that glamorous or admirable as they are often full of disregard and drug abuse. The pressure that is on them to perform is huge and the effects of this often can be seen in their way of dying suddenly.
What’s also beautiful about the process of dealing with your stuff and letting go of your hurts is that it’s an ongoing process: the deeper you go with dealing with things, the more the layers of stuff you’ve been holding on to come up to be let go of. This doesn’t mean you’re in constant dealing with your stuff mode because at the same time there’s a deeper connection you’re building with yourself and with others around you, and a steadiness and a stillness that comes from knowing and honouring yourself on a much more foundational level.
‘This time around I chose a less glamorous, but far more fulfilling, healing journey – to come back to me.’ – love this line Greg, and I relate to it a lot. Coming back to yourself, to understand who you truly are instead of who you thought you should be, or perhaps wanted to be, to fit in and be accepted, is no picnic in the park, but so worthwhile. Although it’s been stormy at times as I’ve unraveled all the pictures and ideals I held about myself, and all the investments in the ways I’ve wanted the world, and other people, to be for me (so that I can feel okay), what’s been amazing is how it’s all unfolded: the people that have shown up in my life to support me along the way, the conversations I’ve had, the deepening relationships with all those around me, and how much more committed I am to life. Not glamorous, but deeply fulfilling and expansive.
Reading your article, Greg, I realize even more how I use work and busyness to numb myself and get recognition. And within the work there is so much competition going on. The more effort the more recognition. So the world is set up like this and as long as I use this pattern to numb myself I add to the lovelessness which is going on in society.
When I read your article I started to feel how I numb myself with work and busyness.
It is all about work and doing and like this I feel recognized and accepted. And within this work there is going on a lot of competition, who gets recognized more concerning the effort taken.
It is interesting to notice that there is a point in most people’s lives where the relationship we have with ourselves and with life does take a turn, and from there, all choices relate to this… It certainly is worth a “forensic study” to understand what caused this de-railment.
The life of glamour, image and illusion is often a very sad and lonely one, which exposes the fact this is not where our true fulfillment lies.
Thank you Greg for sharing a very real account of how we always have a choice, we can react to our sensitivity or embrace this quality for all it truly offers.
Using food like a drug is a prolific behaviour for the majority of us! One that we have normalised to our detriment.. Thank you Greg for opening up and sharing what was going on for you underneath or behind this behaviour and how it has changed, it’s a great inspiration and raises awareness of how we can make change and bring back a more healthy relationship with food, a new normal.
I appreciate what you have shared here Greg about us all being much more than our hurts that we can focus on all too much. The game changer for me was when I learned from a Universal Medicine presentation how are issues are really created by ourselves to avoid the responsibility of being our true self in full and sharing that with the world without hesitation. In other words, we use emotional issues and hurts to check out from life as an excuse, instead of letting the beautiful light that is inside us all to come out. This is a huge lesson for us all, and one that helps me remember my true power, but I can understand how someone like Elvis, who initially shared this with the world, felt like it was too exposing and went into behaviours to numb and hide that great light, as the world tends to not always honour and accept it.
Greg, several years ago I also studied a bit about Elvis, mostly because I wanted to know what happened in his later years leading up to his death. What I found about that time in his life was not very revealing, in my opinion, but I did find a goldmine of information and quotes from him from his earlier years. He was a beautiful man. One look in his eyes could inspire many people. Perhaps that was the true reason so many people loved him, and not just for his awesome dance moves which are still so cool today!
I was a sugar addict/junk food addict as a kid and into adulthood and gosh at times it feels amazing that I am still here, do not have diabetes and still have all of my teeth!
There’s an irony in the fact that I am much healthier now at age 44 than I was as a kid. It’s crazy really what we put our bodies through and also equally beautiful the ways in which the body talks to us, even when we do not want to listen.
Substance abuse as you have broken it down sadly is very common. If we felt more content and settled within ourselves perhaps this wouldn’t be as prevelant as it is.
The ‘crossroad moments’ in our lives are so significant and can define our path in life. When we don’t want to deal with our hurts or take any responsibility, it is like we roll the dice and slide down a snake on a snakes and ladders board. Whereas if we accept there may be more to the situation and how we can respond, through our willingness we can go up a ladder instead!
Trying to create safety in your life is a double-edged sword. The need to feel safe makes you feel unsafe and unsure, always looking outside and being on edge for what is coming next. The measures we use to ‘be safe’ are like a self-created prison. Not being able to express yourself as you would have naturally as an exuberant child, is far worse than any perceived benefits gained by playing safe.
The problem seems to be that we don’t know what we don’t want to know at the time. I never used to think about why I was drinking 6 cups of coffee a day, until I stopped drinking them, and realised how much I needed them as a milky, sweet warm reward and for the caffeine. I feel this is where we need to share with others when they ask what we have found out about coffee, alcohol, food etc. It can be as simple as a person hearing this different perspective to allow the veil of unawareness to lift.
I would have to agree that there really is little or no differences between addictions to drugs and alcohol and all the other addictions we have that just appear to be a bit nicer or more palatable. At least people with these obvious addictions know they are harming themselves, unlike people like me who up until the last 10 years thought nothing of indulging in TV shows, emotional dramas or binge sessions on chocolate or other treats. Now I am aware of that feeling of addiction, being pulled to do something from an old pattern or need.
That right Fiona ,there is little or no difference between all the addictions that we can have , just our level of awareness about what they may be doing to us . That said humans are good at hiding ,covering up or normalising certain behaviours when many people start doing certain things then the group consciousness dictates that it is normal . The normalisation of abnormal behaviours.
“I remember as a child waking up and feeling so warm, full of me, yummy and safe in my warm bed and desperately wanting to be able to go everywhere in the safety of my bed. Then feeling the dread of having to leave this safe space to go out into the world and negotiate my way through the harshness, disconnection and loveless routines that were daily life.” I remember this totally too, especially on certain school days where I could feel the day ahead, feel the hardness of school and the lack of true connection within it. That said this was also a reflection of the hardness and lack of connection within me and I could feel my sense of given upness.
Greg, beautifully written, and so true ‘The bits that we don’t want to look at, left unresolved, can then come back to bite us as manifested negative and self-harming behaviours.’ It is amazing how we can seemingly have it all, have everything yet then destroy our lives because we have left something undealt with from our past.
I like this blog for how it shows that when we are at a crossroads, there is always a choice. We do not have to be governed by our hurts, we can in fact choose to heal them instead. How empowering and so very important for life today.
I feel blessed and inspired reading your blog Greg; a beautiful gentle reminder to consistently and responsibly choose self-love which ripples out into love for all, equally so;
“I feel blessed and have to pinch myself at times for choosing the journey back to love, to my innermost, and for making the choice to reconnect with the Ancient Wisdom as presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine as, like Elvis, I could have easily chosen to go the other way many years ago”. Thank you Greg.
If we get very successful it is very hard not to get caught, it could well be impossible and we would need support.
Rockstar, celebrity, the person living on the street or mainstream people, we all seek recognition and confirmation from the outside when we are not accepting and connecting to our own beauty we hold within ourselves. Celebrities ‘bigger than life’ lives are simply a magnification of these human behaviours and conditions we all take on when we seek love from the outside and not connect to our own unique loveliness.
Serge Benhayon has given us the true understanding and modelled the way to live a life that leads us out of the mess you have described Greg. I am ever appreciative of his presence and support. I can choose another way…one that is first self loving and then committed to living that loving way.
‘…we are not our hurts and that it is a choice that we make to go into them, and then to act or live out our lives through our hurts.’ This is key for me Greg. What a brilliant blog and I love the way you have gone deeper into understanding your own life Greg and offered that as a reflection for us all. Thank you.
‘So it is choice by choice, day by day that I am bringing myself back.’ This is so true for me also, choice by choice, and I certainly don’t always make loving choices and feel the consequence of my irresponsible choices which brings me to a stop and an opportunity to make a more loving choice. The more I deepen my love for myself the more sensitive I become to feeling when I am in reaction to my hurts and have the choice to stop and let go of the hurts, and reconnect with my true self and express from the love that I am.
Elvis is no different in being taken in by the Devil in Disguise” as he thought he was in Heaven as the lyrics go ” but I got wise’ which is busting the illusion, but from there it went down hill for Elvis. He was obviously a deeply sensitive man that wasn’t being met, and nothing could fulfil the emptiness. Which brings me to the appreciation of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon for reflecting the love I am, and the opportunity to take on my life with the responsibility of being me in full.
We are in essence, delicate, divine beings. What makes it ‘normal’ to harden and abuse ourselves with over-eating, alcohol, and disconnection? True normal is to honour our sensitivity and to feel all that is happening in and around us, without going into protection.
“So what leads Elvis, or any of us for that matter, to a path of disregard, self-abuse and into a place of no return? “. Interesting really because most of us have walked a similiar path away from ourselves, having not been met as little children we soon hide our light as we feel we don’t belong.
We spend the rest of our lives fitting in at the ‘heart break hotel’ feeling so lonely …. Until such time as we find out this world is not set up to meet us and the love we are and we step into the responsibility of claiming deeply our love, truth, stillness, harmony and Wisdom for ourselves and reflecting it to our brothers.
Absolutely Greg, Elvis’s life is great case study for the simple fact that fame, fortune and ‘having it all’ is not actually the all we all look for. There is something deeper, unresolved still that leads someone like him to overeat and escape. From your experience we can see there is another route, a place where we come to see we all are ‘the King’, we all are stars in our own right in our everyday lives, there is a beauty we are and we bring. Imagine if Elvis had been able to appreciate the tender-hearted man he was and just what he was here to truly do. Then perhaps he may have chosen a route more similar to you.
Thanks Joseph this is gold “From your experience we can see there is another route, a place where we come to see we all are ‘the King’, we all are stars in our own right in our everyday lives, there is a beauty we are and we bring. Imagine if Elvis had been able to appreciate the tender-hearted man he was and just what he was here to truly do. Then perhaps he may have chosen a route more similar to you.”
Learning to love and cherish our selves and built on our own self love and connection is so much a more clearer and more fulfilling way to go. Rather than trying to please and do things for recognition fame and fortune as the later foundation holds no true love and doesn’t hold us but leaves with our own emptiness at the end of the show or performance
I agree Greg – we are not our hurts, far from it in fact. We are so much more than what most of us realise and the hurts that we choose to accumulate and at times blame the world for are just road blocks in the way of us feeling and discovering our true potential as human beings. We are capable of loving beyond measure, and expressing who we are in the uniqueness that each of us bring.
Thanks Rachel ,yes so true just small road blocks trying to get in the way. It is funny that our hurts are usually so small in comparison to the hugeness of the awesomeness that we are ,but we allow ourselves to be lessor but holding onto and therefore amplifying our hurts . Even the the simple act of nominating or realising that we have a hurt about something ,through our reactions or behaviours has a strong effect of weakening the strength the hurt holds over us I have found
‘…are they any different to many of us who rely on coffee to get through our day or who eat to hide, numb or bury our emptiness, sadness or unresolved hurts?’ No they are not, their lives are simply ours’ writ large and perhaps somewhat more challenged by their wealth and or fame. Sad that we fail to see the lessons, following along only for so much entertainment.
I love what you describe Greg about the feeling of safety and snuggle-y yumminess you felt in your bed as boy. I can relate to that and it is a feeling I too have sought to internalise over the years – to take out into the world with me in the form of my teddy bear as a child, and today by connecting to my essence. But in between was a similar form of external comfort-seeking through food and other abuses: another way to try and create that internal sense of OK-ness. Until Universal Medicine, I too did not understand how to be with myself in any meaningful sort of way – I was long reliant on external props and indulgences… just like Elvis.
We follow the lives of celebrities like we’re watching a train wreck but, as Greg says, where is the forensic analysis? As in where and what is the learning? Rather we use these incidents for entertainment, all faithfully recorded in gossip magazines, websites and TV shows for our consumption, ready for bingeing on just like the food, alcohol and other drugs we consume to check out from our feelings and life.
Hi Victoria , I love the analogy of watching a train wreck and also many popped somehow getting off on the excitement and sensationalism of watching a train wreck in slow motion ,but not saying or doing much to support , call out or offer/ reflect a different way . So it is very sad that we have to witness so many train wrecks ,with lots of observers but not many drivers holding steady to the path .
The lifestyles of the rich and famous are not all what they cracked up to be. Due to them being in the public eye, I feel celebrities actually hold a very real responsibility, which most of them do not really celebrate. Sure, some are into activism, charities and peoples rights, but what is their livingness like? How do they live and express with fellow celebrities, fans and their families?
It interesting to actually observe what happens when we react towards each other and you can see that all we are doing is reacting to an old hurt and going into protection. This happened yesterday for me to observe and ponder on. Although I have to admit I did take that hurt and that reaction to bed and it’s not pleasant to wake up with that either. What’s fascinating for me to observe is that I have kept it at the level of the apparent issue, look for blame (even if it is blaming myself), avoid what I need to learn and where I need to go to take the learning to a deeper level and then due to the frustration of not dealing with whatever has come up, I eat and overeat to not feel all that I have been feeling. What I am observing now however is that no matter how much I eat, I can’t bury anything anymore. So it actually makes sense to deal with the hurt, as uncomfortable as it is, but not as uncomfortable as a lifetime of not dealing with any hurts and the illness and disease that presents as a result.
Our body can either be the point of expression for the beauty of us all, or a dumping ground for the hurt that we feel.
A beautiful, beautiful blog Greg. I keep coming back to read your open, hugely inspiring and deeply honest sharing of your journey as I too can relate to it so well. I feel that we all suffer from the same things in life, we feel the same things and even act and behave in very similar ways. In appreciation for all the choices you have made, the world gets to see the gorgeous man that you are. We are blessed to have people like you Greg who are making loving choices, inspiring others along the way and sharing all of who you are, no longer hiding the tender, sensitive and loving being that you are but choosing to share with humanity.
There is so much to learn from the obvious downward spiral of celebrities – those who we hold up above the rest as having it all, and yet they suffer just as much from depression, suicide, over dosing – rather than saying it is their extravagant life style, is it possible that in fact, as you have suggested, there is an unresolved hurt driving the issue.
“I would on purpose choose to overeat to the point of feeling stuffed or bloated. That way I wouldn’t feel any tension, or anything for that matter. Drugged and pacified, I would then proceed to go into comfort/relax mode.” I wonder how much of the world’s population does this in varying degrees? I know that food is the first comfort I go to when feeling tension or emotional only to feel the discomfort in my body from having over eaten.
“Saying “the person had depression,” is not a good enough reason to me because it says nothing and offers no insight into what may have been going on.” Well said. It’s a convenient way of covering up the root cause of the devastation so many (if not all) of us feel and try to numb in some way. If we can name someone elses devastation as depression, or anorexia, bulimia, drug addiction, workalholism…..etc. then we don’t have to be honest with ourselves about our own if we are trying not to feel it in a different way eg. tv, excessive exercise…..
‘Feeling the tension of living in a world that didn’t feel right.’ – It is quite common to hold the world to ransom for not feeling seen, not met or not ‘right’. You have shared how it is absolutely possible to choose to not be a victim of the circumstances and claim a different, responsible and truly loving way of life.
‘So it is choice by choice, day by day that I am bringing myself back.’ I love this line as I am also making choices each day to bring myself back, to come back to myself. I can’t thank Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon enough for always holding me in love and thus giving me a reflection of what it looks like to return to oneself.
Suddenly the life of a rockstar doesn’t seem as glamorous as one could imagine.
Yes, it is quite shocking to consider what would my body be like if it would have developed the way it developed until 12 years ago.
A very real and informative account of life and the way we live it from our hurts and the depressive outcomes of this. The reality to take responsibility for our choices and hurts and to start to heal them as we live is reflected to us by Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon is an amazing gift to us all to choose. Many people are now starting to make these loving choices and heal their lives and the results are remarkable and a joy to feel.
Very exposing and much needed questions you have posed throughout your blog Greg. What is going on in the world when we are not dealing with our hurts and thus not taking responsibility for our part and hand in our own lives.. We can look around at the world and often get a sense of overwhelm for what is happening but the truth is that understanding and change first begin in our own homes and within our very own bodies, from our relearning to be the “full, yummy and safe” beings that we are when we are nurtured and cherished by ourselves, we bring a much greater understanding to the world and life.
One of the great myths around is that One person is more sensitive than another, if we are all equal then it is whether or not we allow ourselves to connect to that sensitivity and live in a way that allows ourselves to feel both the delicateness and the power. Food is a great way to dull and numb ourselves, most of humanity are masters at it.
This is such a wise question to ask: “So what leads Elvis, or any of us for that matter, to a path of disregard, self-abuse and into a place of no return?”
So many of us have so much to offer, so why then do we hide it from the world? Why then do we turn it around and not treasure it for all that it is? Why then do we bury it and hide it in the deepest recesses and deny its very existence?
Could it be that we struggle to accept how amazing we are and yet how we and so many of us are not living that amazingness? Is this not one of the most painful things to feel – an unlived and un-tapped potential? Perhaps the gap between who we are and how we live can be too big and too painful to fathom…
“. . .we are not our hurts”. Once we no longer identify ourselves with our hurts we are able to face them and deal with them and no longer blame anyone else.
Greg, it’s lovely how you share the tender side of you which helps us to realize that we are all sensitive beings who have been hurt and if we see ourselves and others I the light of this understanding then we are less likely to go out in the world with our shields up and daggers poised.
‘I also learned to not speak up, to keep my head down and calibrate what I said/did so as not to get the attention of judgment, jealousy or contempt’ – I would say that everyone in the whole world has learnt how to live this way and somewhat engage in the world without sparking reactions of judgement or jealousy from others. It’s a very imprisoning way to be, and if we did begin to break this mould and express ourselves without any filter or calibration then this could start a chain reaction of inspiring others to break through the mould too and be who they are.
Perhaps the great number of famous people who suicide and self destruct occurs because they know that the life they are leading is not what it is all about. And you don’t need to be a star to feel this way, anyone who is on a path that avoids dealing with hurts and issues will have such feelings of being lost arise. I feel it is great to question what the point of life is and I know that having come to study Universal Medicine that is has become much clearer to me what that point is.
What is so beautiful is how you describe how we do have that connection to ourselves as young children as okay and lovable.
It is a choice to deal with our hurts and reactions in life and then to keep taking risks in letting others in.
You have described so clearly Greg how a lot of society resort to overeating or binge eating to numb ourselves because we can not handle the tension of being in life or our feelings of hurt or rejection.
I wonder what affect it had on Elvis to be constrained to acting in all those movies towards the end and whether this contributed to his unhappiness and contraction. I certainly know that when I must limit my expression that it is a contraction felt in my whole body and a form of giving up that can lead to depression.
“Most of the time, most of us are acting out of our hurts so we then have the tendency to go around hurting each other without even being aware that we are doing it!” This is so true Greg. We get so caught up in our lives and the things we use to distract us from feeling the hurts that we are holding onto, that we are often totally oblivous to what is really going on. It is not until something goes wrong that we begin to even consider that there may be something more than just our physical body that is playing out the consequences of how we have been living our lives.
By choosing to not deal with our hurts we go around hurting another and I agree that most of us are not even aware that we are doing it. As I let go of the hurts that I have created and become more aware of what is going on around me, I am learning to not judge another for the choices they are making. If they choose to hold on to their hurts and make excuses to justify, then it is their choice. It is my responsibility and self loving to observe what is truly going on as to not get affected by the choices another makes.
“Basically, I was always measuring what was safe to express.” I can really feel how as children, we put a Straight Jacket on ourselves as we calibrate to the unloving world around us. How amazing is it as an adult to be peeling off this jacket and freeing your true expression with the awesome support, healing and wise guidance perpetually delivered by Universal Medicine, meeting the world with an open heart and establishing Love as the guiding light in our lives once more.
My behaviour to not feel the hurts was to withdraw from life. I remember too feeling gorgeous inside and getting confused because I wasn’t being met in the same quality. I simply couldn’t understand this as a child and preferred to be in my own company especially in nature and when I sat down to draw and paint. We seem to find our own way of coping in life whether it is overeating, alcohol, withdrawing from life or something else to avoid feeling the emptiness within but in every movement we make a choice. It is a choice as to whether we carry on in the ignorance or a choice to be honest with ourselves and go deeper as to what is truly going on.
When people such as Elvis press the self destruct button, and their behaviour is rationalised as ‘depression’, it proves that society still has little true sense of mental health. It is not a science like studying cancer cells, and the medical world struggles to cope with something that can’t be diagnosed and put into a neat little box. That is because everyone is reacting from their own plethora of hurts and is therefore unique. Universal Medicine is the only approach that makes sense of mental illness, because it brings the responsibility back to the individual to address every single hurt so as not to be ruled by them, creating space for who they are in their essence to re-emerge. This is true healing.
There are not ‘places of no return’ only those of delaying it.
This is news paper worthy – Everyone in the World needs to read this blog and ask themselves the same questions – Why is that people including ourselves can’t cope with life and in some way or another find a way to numb ourselves and hide? In this hiding we think that we are ok but truly we know that this is not it. Bringing the Universal Medicine teachings and revelations into my life I have looked at many hurts that I had no idea I was carrying. Still I can feel there are some that I am holding onto but in every moment in reaction to these hurts I keep reminding myself that the hurts are not me I am only identifying myself by them. Letting go of these behaviours and hurts is becoming easier and easier and I feel how truly Glorious I am.
Your childhood experiences must ring bells with so many Greg, as we grapple and struggle in life with our hurts. It feels important to realise that ‘it is a choice that we make to go into them’ as so often I feel we hold on to them in some kind of identity seeking way – and then become our hurts. It feels like an amazing release when we realise that we no longer have to choose life to be this way and begin to come back to the essence of who we inevitable all are.
It seems the craziest thing in the world to purposefully numb ourselves or dull our light but most of us do and by choice feel less. I chose this feeling less so much and dulled myself so much it has been a slow road back but better late than never.
Liberating ourselves from old patterns of behaviour set up as a result of perceived injustices and hurts is a great way to take responsibility.
You have said it here a number of times – a behaviour we adopt (food, alcohol, drugs) to not feel what we do feel because to do so would require us to step out of the crowd (comfort of numbers) and take responsibility. What stops me in my tracks these days is realising what an incredible blessing responsibility is – understanding and appreciating the impact of all of our choices, beyond the end of our noses, our homes, our communities… and that it really is a something to embrace.
To me that was also the case when I came across Universal Medicine some 10 years ago. I was carving a life based on my hurts and was disappointed in life as it did not brought me that what I expected of it and in order to not feel all of that I was numbing myself with food, the daily alcohol dose and use of drugs on a regular basis. Now I can see that I was just repeating a very old pattern that my parents lived and many other people around me, a pattern that is void of self love and that is reliant on things to be solved on the outside, but never anything on the inside, looking after my hurts for instance, that was simply not there.
What I love and appreciate in this blog is how it shows that there is so much to see and learn in everything we do – the choice to be more open and aware is always there.
You have hit the nail on the head here Greg “Most of the time, most of us are acting out of our hurts so we then have the tendency to go around hurting each other without even being aware that we are doing it!”
“So what leads Elvis, or any of us for that matter, to a path of disregard, self-abuse and into a place of no return?” An underlying lack of self worth is the common denominator.
There are many examples in our world of what may happen if the road to love is resisted. Elvis being a public example of a light that wasn’t feed all the love it needed to keep shining. It just made me see how this world needs far more example of another way to live, a way that inspires all to live the love they are and shine as bright as stars.
Beautiful Mary, the truth that’s offered continuously if we are willing to see.
Dear Greg, all in all you’re offering us a simple way out of the misery through choosing simplicity, sensitivity, support (which in itself is huge for men) and more and more responsible choices. Life is meant to be lived from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. Thank you. That this honest sharing will inspire many, many men (and possibly women).
The fork in the road is a place that I have come to many times in my life. Always tethering on the edge of which way to turn. Your blog Greg, brought up for me the deep appreciation that is needed to choose the path of love and soul, the path of the Ageless Wisdom.
Thank you Greg, you have exposed much of the ways that as a society tend to manage life never looking deeper into why we do what we do, especially with celebrities who choose to destroy themselves through the abuse of drugs and alcohol. We can numb ourselves so far until our bodies breakdown giving us an opportunity to stop, be responsible and heal hurts which have been weighing us down so we reconnect to the light within us all.
A great blog exposing the choices we make and why. It also shows how we are all the same and that even celebrities all carry and face the same hurts inside if they do not choose to heal themselves. Even when they are in the limelight thinking this tension will go away, they soon realise it does not and understandably have to ‘up’ their chosen vice. Inevitably for some this does not have a pleasant ending. Thank you Greg for your honest and open expression which is relatable for many, myself included.
I expect, if you are in the limelight, the tension is much, much stronger and more difficult to deal with.
I know I’ve been a master at dulling my awareness of the world just enough that I still function and seem relatively responsible but also that I don’t feel how irresponsible I’ve been and the effects on myself and others. I am a master of how much awareness I allow. It is definitely a choice.
This is a beautiful blog Greg, it is so true that living from our hurts is holding us back from true connection. And brings us in a way lesser state than we could be when we choose to deal with the hurts, and not take them with us to others.
’Most of the time, most of us are acting out of our hurts so we then have the tendency to go around hurting each other without even being aware that we are doing it!’ – This is a sentence everyone ought to ponder deeply on – we need to remember this in our day to day living and not take things that come at us personally.
It seems most people are living in their own little bubble, each behind their own facades – I know I have in the past. How on earth can we truly connect with anyone when no one is prepared to show who they truly are. It is all such a game.
’The bits that we don’t want to look at, left unresolved, can then come back to bite us as manifested negative and self-harming behaviours.’ – Indeed they do, my experience is that whenever I have attempted to ignore an inner hurt, it keeps coming back to me again and again, and if I still keep ignoring it, I know it will eventually end up as illness or disease. This is super important to know and I would say it is the answer to why people’s general health is getting rapidly worse everywhere. We live reckless lifestyles to avoid feeling our hurts.
Yes, Eva, and in this recklessness our behaviour is wayward and irresponsible, compounding the chaos and ill-health we live with and accept, simply because it is statistically common (the false comfort of safety in numbers).
‘So what leads Elvis, or any of us for that matter, to a path of disregard, self-abuse and into a place of no return?’ A great question to ask and you have answered it brilliantly by sharing your own experiences. The beauty is that you have shared what inspired you to make the change. You are an inspiration Greg for those who wish to return and have mapped a starting point.
A hugely powerful blog Greg which opens up and shines a light on so many areas that we often choose to sweep under the carpet.
Your description of how you shut down as a child is beautifully described Greg, i can relate to much of it and will certainly be reading & discussing your blog with my three children.
“Saying “the person had depression,” is not a good enough reason to me because it says nothing and offers no insight into what may have been going on.” So true Greg how people are happy to settle for these labels and not dig deeper – Unfortunately many today will not dig deeper until illness reaches their own door and we are forced into caring and looking at the lifestyle that got us there. Thank-you for digging deeper and exposing the disregard. the lovelessness that pervades no matter how big or small – for much of it comes from the same route cause; separation.
Celebrities like the rest of us are all desperately looking for love, I imagine when the fame, fortune and adulation does not fill the emptiness as expected/assumed, they like the rest of us, need to fill themselves and numb the pain with something, so hence the over indulgence in food, sex and drugs, and perhaps as they have been held up so high they have further to fall, and often, so it seems, fall very hard.
This progression is something I have seen so often in people I have known since they were young, and in growing up they become someone almost unrecognisable – can this simply be put down to puberty and growing up, or as you have shared do our hurts play a part in shaping us when we don’t learn to deal with them. The sweetest of kids become the hardest, angriest of adults, the quietest and more innocent become the wild party animals – we don’t foster our kids to hold on to these qualities in the world.
We prop stars up, in some cases we even think we ‘love’ them, in truth we idolise them, even obsess over them but when they start crumbling down we don’t reflect and ask the real questions of WHY these tragedies are happening amongst our fellow brothers?
Instead we hide behind a concept that some famous people just can’t handle their own fame…but let’s get real, the way we are as a society with fame is weird.
What if these Hollywood ‘mess ups’ are simply magnifying the mess we are all living? What if, just like how they are larger than life on screen thus is their representation of the mess we are in off screen, it just plays out more extreme….we need to stop thinking we are separate and look in our own back yard for the answers.
The crossroads aren’t the mystery but returning to our home with a blind eye can be a challenge.
“So why is it that, we as a society who have often loved so much the life and times of people like Elvis Presley…” – it is also a way numbing, a distraction away from what we don´t like to look at in ourselves, in our lives and so no wonder that the way we see celebrities etc is tainted with our denial and ignorance. Thereby we contribute also to the demise of others as we confirm them in the ill we overlook – it is a vicious cycle of confirming that what is harming us.
What makes the difference in people’s behavior and habits is the way each of us is dealing with our hurts. Why do we focus on this outer differences and define people by it instead of understanding our true essence and deeply appreciate who we truly are?
We are not our hurts! Those simple words are profound once understood and lived. We can have hurts that, much like a pimple or rash is visible, are uncomfortable, but definitely a sign that toxins are coming to the surface to heal, but that is just a part of us, we are never defined by our hurts unless we choose it so. After many years of choosing to identify with my hurts, a lifetime in fact, I now know better and it is the most freeing feeling, but one that puts the responsibility for the quality of my life in my choices.
‘Emotional eating’ should be a subject already in kindergarten but instead, kids learn and are confirmed in using food for numbing and dulling from early on. Obviously, it is us as adults who have to change first before we can reflect something else to those who otherwise imitate and accept as normal what is actually harming.
Well said Alex and so correct about Emotional eating , and it defineltly needs to be taught at kindergarten.Unfortunately instead I see many parents are constantly numbing down there children by over feeding them ,with poor food choices at any sign of emotional disturbance or as a reward .
Exposing that food can be dulling and numbing would be a revelation for the kids and possibly slightly embarrassing for the educators themselves…
This is so revealing Greg in your attempt to shut down your sensitivity. I feel like we have all done this, I know I have, in some obvious and some less obvious ways. I am inspired to reexamine the more subtle behaviours I have that ultimately have the same result on my sensitivity as binging.
Thank you Greg for sharing so openly – there is much to ponder here. Discovering, through Universal Medicine presentations, that ‘we are not our hurts’ is such a game-changer. From this discovery it changes the whole approach to healing. It changes the focus from the hurts themselves, which gains management techniques to limit future hurts but only results in burying the cause deeper, to instead what lies behind the hurt and by doing so identify the cause and resolve it.
“So what leads Elvis, or any of us for that matter, to a path of disregard, self-abuse and into a place of no return?” This is such a great question Greg, and one that many would do well to ponder on. It becomes easy to blame the outside world when things begin to go wrong in our lives, but could it be that we need to start delving a bit deeper into our own lives, and start to be honest about where we have been hurt along the line, and how much of these hurts we are still holding onto. I know for myself, the more hurts I uncover, the more I discover there are still much more subtle ones to be discovered and healed.
I used to love reading books on outrageous celebrities. After years of doing this, I began to notice how I would get a kick out of reading the really full on stuff, particularly about serious drug taking. I could feel how a part of me was stimulated by reading these parts and often I would read these sections twice. It got to the point that I ended up reading a book on crack houses, which was by far the most intense book I have ever read. I realised whist reading it that there were similarities between me and the addicts, in that I needed to keep upping the intensity of what I was reading. Once I fully understood what I was doing and why, I was able to choose not to read those kind of books anymore.
In the past I would also love to read heavy stories of peoples lives, and even used to go into the character of the person wanting to feel all the pain and suffering that went on. Thanks Alexis, your comment has opened up the possibility that I used this as another way to hide, or delay from connecting back to the love that is our true make up. This explains a lot about the world we have created where cruelty, abuse and self abuse have been common occurrences, with these imprints, or old patterns then holding us back from evolving.
Greg when I read ‘We have seen so many successful stars not able to handle their light and power’ it did make me wonder if it was their true light and power that they were experiencing. I would say that the light and power that many celebrities have felt are not the qualities that come from the soul but rather the one dimensional light and power that comes from a part of us that seeks to keep us in separation from our soul. Sure it offers us glittery prizes but geeze the shine fades very fast. If it were the light and power as delivered by the soul then there would be no question as to whether they could handle it or not, as our light and power are always in keeping with what we can handle.
‘Most of the time, most of us are acting out of our hurts so we then have the tendency to go around hurting each other without even being aware that we are doing it!’ Greg this line shines a much needed light on the primary cause of many of the world’s struggles (past, present and future) and as you so rightly point out, we don’t actually know we’re doing it. If we were able to actually see our hurts then we would all be dragging fractured limbs, gaping head injuries, festering sores as well as all manner of deformities around and would be able to make much more sense of why things are so difficult for most of us.
Greg you share with us a depth of caring that we should all be taking, the will and furtherance to explore what leads people to take their own lives through whatever lifestyle choice, and then set out to heal that so no one else goes through the same thing. Yet as you say, doing so would bring up much hurt in us, to realise we are living levels of the same discontentment with life and that the path we are on is not the picture we pretend it to be. The simplicity of the fact it’s about dealing with our hurts is also something that can be hard to grasp, yet what society is showing us is the outplay of not, and in that sense what irresponsibility looks like.
I have been at that crossroads too Greg and each time I would be unsure of which way to turn, so I would often fall back into my old patterns. Things might change for a while but it was not true change, just a different variation of the same thing. There was nothing I could see in the world that really offered what I was looking for, that was until I met Serge Benhayon, then life began to make sense as there was now a true reflection that was felt with every cell of my body.
Thanks Greg for your honest look at life. I was really struck by your comment on depression, for it is so true that we rarely delve into the deeper and more meaningful exploration of the ‘why’ when it comes to depression. It isn’t enough to just say someone is depressed and place them on some numbing medication. We must be more open to really look at what has gone on, what is going on, and in this regard Universal Medicine is able to support people to dissect this like no other organisation I have ever met. You are so right to highlight the supportive environment, as it is a great way to look at what is happening in our lives with the most incredible in depth support of Serge Benhayon and the many practitioners and students of the Way of the Livingness.
So important for boys and men to hear here what you say Greg, the question and answers you give about what you feel inside and what you experience outside and how this impacts on you as a growing child are really clear. You have helped me more deeply appreciate the tender and sensitive nature of boys and men. Thank you.
“I remember as a child waking up and feeling so warm, full of me, yummy and safe in my warm bed and desperately wanting to be able to go everywhere in the safety of my bed.” I can definitely relate to this Greg. I remember dreading leaving the house every day because of the harshness of the world. If we do not have ways of dealing with it it is no wonder that we want to numb ourselves from it and slip into behaviours that affect our health.
Thank you, Greg. Universal Medicine has always made it clear that until we address our hurts we will be at the mercy of them, allowing energy into our bodies through emotional reactions. I feel that true responsibility involves being honest about these openings so that we can heal them, and also in reflecting to others when they respond from a hurt rather than the truth we all know inside. In this way we can offer real support to one another.
Carrying our hurts around with us and acting out life in those hurts, it is easy to see why there is so much distrust in the world when all of this is in-between our relationships. How different our encounters with others would be if every one recognised that they were either being encouraged by their hurts or connected to their soul.
Beautiful Greg, what you have shared is wonderful and helps me make sense of what happens to us in life, when we start off so full of ourselves as children and then as adults often disconnecting to our natural confidence and joy, it is very inspiring to read this, ‘So it is choice by choice, day by day that I am bringing myself back.’
I can well remember feeling the same Greg, a deep safety when in my bed and a massive reluctance to leave it in order to wade through all the disharmonious and very un-loving ways of daily life, a life that constantly reflected back the same behaviour every where I looked. And then one day I met a completely new mirror that showed me without exception that there is a very loving, joyful and harmonious way to live and this mirror is Universal Medicine. It meant taking responsibility for everything I have experienced, for all the un-love in my life but and this is the big BUT, I was deeply empowered to expose, heal and make new choices because this new mirror reflected back to me something that had never been broken, just hidden from view – it reflected my exquisite divine essence. This is the true gift of Universal Medicine, enabling us to see who we really are, to make life about Love and live this to the best of our ability, so that we too can reflect to the world there is a different way to live, a way that comes directly from our hearts that makes everyday consistently loving, honest, joyful and harmonious, proving that living a loving life is not a pipe dream, it is a very solid reality.
There is so much to ponder in your article Greg. I have read it this morning and am touched and woken up by it and will re-visit soon. Thank you.
Dealing with our hurts is a major thing and there are many reasons people take to numbing themselves with food, drugs and alcohol. Some stars start out as tortured souls, while others can’t handle the fame and being hounded by the paparazzi, but no matter what, if we don’t deal with our hurts or we are looking outside ourselves for fulfilment we will tend to need more and more distractions or numbing.
Wow, Greg, what an awesome blog! This really shows how we can as children already feel and know ourselves so completely, yet when the world does not support our expression we dull it down, put a lid on it and try to hide it. Yet all along it is busting to come out and so we find ways to fight it and keep it hidden, such as overeating or as Elvis did, turning towards drugs and alcohol. How beautiful Greg that you found yourself with the right support to allow yourself to unfold and to keep unfolding! What a blessing to have encountered Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon! What a blessing that you are who you are and are here now to reflect that to us and remind us too that we can feel safe in just being us even outside of our warm and cozy beds.
What a brilliant trail you have blazed Greg, not succumbing to being devastated by the world but instead turning your life around with the magnificent aid of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. This is a choice for LIFE, and not ‘death in life’ which so many have chosen.
This is such a great question Greg (below) about why so many stars who ‘had it all’ choose to end their lives in suicide. Everyone knows that the stars are under immense manipulation and control, under pressure to perform, to keep coming up with the ‘goods’ every night no matter what is going on for them, also about the way they are often treated (as a commodity), and the sexual pressure often put upon them . . . plus the instability of lives where they have to travel a lot without a regular rhythm. But not many have suggested a good ‘forensic’ study of why the choice of suicide. ‘Why have they chosen to end their lives so prematurely in a way that is often in total contrast to what they, whether as stars or not, were portraying earlier on? It just doesn’t make sense, hence the need for all of us to dig deeper into why this is a regular occurrence with stars in particular, but also with everyday people. Saying “the person had depression,” is not a good enough reason to me because it says nothing and offers no insight into what may have been going on’.
When we glorify someone solely for their talent, we can easily dismiss them, and blind ourselves to see, ask or even consider how they are really going.
This is one of the best descriptions of why many people overeat and stuff themselves with food Greg. Somehow the picture you have painted of the sensitive little boy out in the jungle of the world and how binge eating helped to numb you out. The way we all do this to some degree is becoming clearer and clearer. And your blog has helped earth it for me even more.
Yes… just imagine if Elvis had the opportunity that we do now in this era, when heaven is so extraordinarily accessible to each and every person, just imagine the music that he would have put forth, and the life he would have lived, if he had been able to connect to that deep inner knowing. … Well bless my soul indeed ☺
It just occurred to me that being depressed is becoming an accepted condition, as if it is just one of the “normal” illnesses that we are exposed to. It probably is on the list of being “proven” to have something to do with Genes, like heart disease, cancer, diabetes etc. Then the pharmaceutical industry gets busy with developing more and better pills to treat it (not heal but manage it) and a real observation of what’s going on is not on the agenda.
Thank God for Universal Medicine, where all the people, who are feeling the pain of their depression, will be heard and met, and supported to see what’s going on in them and heal.
‘I am learning that if another didn’t help to create a hurt we are carrying, why meet them or come at them carrying or wielding a hurt? This only creates more hurt and disharmony between us.’ It is so easy to go through life carrying our hurts and projecting them onto other people when instead we can feeling what/who is truly there in front of us, and appreciate each new encounter as an opportunity to reflect and learn.
Thank you for your thought provoking article Greg. As you make so clear, we all have sensitivities to this crazy world we are living in and we all have “issues” of hurt, rejection, feelings of not being enough, no matter how good we are. This is true for the average person on the street and world famous celebrities. For most people it is all “too much” and so they turn to something to relieve the tension. Many choose drugs or alcohol but for a small but growing number of us we are choosing to relieve the tension by living the life that the Ageless Wisdom offers. The Ageless or Ancient Wisdom is brought to us in this era through the ‘purple books of Serge Benhayon.’ I was pondering… Why wouldn’t everyone choose the purple books over abusive substances? Oh yes, the Ancient Wisdom requires us to take responsibility for ourselves and others and substances do not.
I’ve always wondered about the people who are so successful that they are considered to have unstuck because they are said to not handle fame. All that they had hoped fame and success would bring still left them cold and feeling empty. I spent much of my life with a strap line of, if only I had… if only …. then I’d be … I’ve spent all my life chasing empty dreams without connection with myself (and God); surrendering to that connection is what brings true success.
Attributing the demise of a person as depressed or whatever mental health label will fit and pretending this is a satisfactory explanation acts as a barrier to further inquiry. It’s like an unwritten rule one should not cross – let the sleeping dogs lie. But that’s only because, if we were to go deeper then we would see that this coping with the world is done by nearly everyone on the planet. A collective collusion that says let’s not go there and if you dare to you will most certainly not be thanked. But turning a blind eye reaps more hurt and pain and the cycle goes around. What if just being honest and seeing things as they are, accepting we choose what we choose but we are free to choose differently, we no longer have to hide in self-harming behaviours but are free to stand by responsibility?
It is all about choices. We can choose to hang onto our hurts as if they were some form of currency, and have these hurts colour our lives and spin us a long way from our true selves or we can work on healing ourselves and live life from love, feeling what is true and knowing that if we don’t change the way we are with the world, who will?
We all start out life shining brightly as the little stars we are in essence. We then react to the harsh aspects of life, become hurt, and begin our own process of learning to cope and numb ourselves. We may then find ourselves feeling alone, empty, propped up with whatever our from of “medication” is, and living separated to our essence and the brightness we truly are. We are all here to rock the world, yet most of us live rocked by the world and how it is.
It is super awesome to read your blog again Greg, I can relate to the overeating and holding onto hurts, I used to numb myself and over eat for comfort. It is amazing to appreciate how far you’ve come as you have turned your life around with the choices you’ve made and you are deeply inspiring us all. You show us that there is another way to live, choices to make to support us to stay open, be loving, and be who we are without holding back. Day by day choosing to return and reconnect to ourselves without perfection but a consistent willingness to learn and expand.
I love how you bring all of us together. There is no difference between you and me, famous or not, we all live in the same world and have to deal with the same things. And we all crave love innately so and being treated, loved and cherished for who we are.
” This time around I chose a less glamorous, but far more fulfilling, healing journey – to come back to me.” Most beautifully expressed and the best journey we can possibly choose as any other journey thereafter will be taken with our full self wherever we go, whatever we do.
Thank you Greg for this deeper look in and the questioning of why we have so many people, famous or not, suicide. We cannot take them as normal nor should we seal them with a simple diagnosis, suicide, intentional or not, is a reflection of how we feel as human beings in society and how we cope or rather not cope with life. So we need to look deeper and ask ourselves what our values and ethics are and how we live as a society that some of us cannot take it anymore and end their lives.
I love that you say that you feel blessed to have chosen the way back to love. It is indeed a blessing and a beautiful learning that we can take our life in our hands with every choice we make.
Calibrating our expression to what we think is needed to fit in or stand out even is something that the majority of us, humanity, do or have done to one degree or another. And because we get so used to doing it it can even become unconscious or accepted as normal but all the while the tension of not being true to who we are grows… Having the support of Serge Benhayon raising the awareness of this tension and the source of it is medicine for us all.
Reading your blog is like reading my own biography Greg and it made me think how ingrained this decision, that started as a child, to not feel is. Still today, 17 years down the track of studying with Universal Medicine, I am finding the urge to numb myself against feeling certain things like judgement, comparison and jealousy arise. It is only through knowing that the love I sought as a child from others must come from ourself first and foremost no matter what anyone else is doing or saying, that our own love for ourself is what buffers us against the impact of lovelessness in others. It is not and never will be food, sex, movies or any other agents of numbing and distraction.
This kind of discussion is super important; as basically I feel every person is struggling or suffering under the surface. For many it does not feel safe to just Be our selves in the world. Lets speak up and share what is going on for us so we know we dont have to keep pushing our hurts go away.
It’s pretty amazing what’s possible. When we’re stuck in the vortex of our hurts, it can feel impossible to get out of, but the truth is it is never ever too late to make a different choice , and what I keep being reminded is that there is ALWAYS support when you need it. We will never ever be alone.
Every day I feel the opportunity I have to become aware of how and where I act from a hurt. I’ve been amazed to see how much the tiniest of undealt with hurt becomes a large opening that leads me to act in a way that is not truly me. Any opening is now seen as a door way to complication, sadness, frustration and even depression or misery. I also see that I am the only person with a key to shut and lock the door, which is done by truly looking at and dealing with any hurts that are currently being hidden.
It really is incredible that the way we think is the best way to care for ourselves in a situation where there is no caring is to tense and harden our bodies. It takes a while of living like this to come to the realisation that hardening and tension just brings more of the same – for me when the body screams in pain is when I started become truly aware of the way I am choosing to manage is not helping. What truly supports our bodies is to return to the tenderness and sensitive souls we innately are.
The tension with life increases incrementally with the degree of light and power we allow ourselves to feel, live and reflect as the contrast to the disharmony and density, numbness and ignorance gets bigger, obvious and painful. Not reacting to the tension but deepening one´s connection and expression are key to be ‘detached’ and ‘untouchable’ in the sense of not being pulled in or down but quite the opposite to offer the world (and that is people) a reflection of how to live differently, fully engaged with life but from one´s own inner quality of love, truth, integrity, harmony, consistency, equality….
Learning to deal with the tension of life in a healthy way is on everyone´s schedule in this school of life. Like Greg, the approach offered by Universal Medicine has inspired me like nothing else before and allowed me to make true and lasting changes so that I can say today my life is better than I could ever imagine as I already had settled for less.
Reading your blog I feel that I just had gone into a hurt in reaction to someone simply exposing one of my behaviours. I can definitely say that this person didn´t hurt me at all, just asking me a simple and reasonable question. Being exposed brings up the pain of having done something wrong, a hurt I carry with me for as long as I can remember. Inspired by your explanation I have come to accept instead of trying to avoid by justification to feel what I feel and admit to my hurt being my responsibility and creation alone. Now it is just about learning the lesson and make a true, healing and responsible choice of how to move forward without holding on to and repeating the old pattern.
You are so right, we are not our hurts. I however always thought I was my hurts, that my hurts shaped me and how I could be in life. I let my hurts own me. Sacred Esoteric Healing allows us to feel what is true within our bodies and the healing techniques help (with our honesty, openess to heal and willingness) clear away all that is held in the body from false ideals, beliefs, behaviours, patterns, hurts to leave what is truly us. I have never felt more solid, practical, sensible and joy-full than I do now and this is largely to do with having Sacred Esoteric Healing. What I also love here is your openess and honesty to talk about past food issues, currently it seems these are not talked about with regards to men; which in turn could make boys and men feel alienated and not able to share what is going on for them, but it is happening quite a lot and the sensitivity, vulnerability and awareness needs to be honoured.
A totally beautiful blog Greg – it really is an amazingly common patterns – easily seen in the highly public lives of celebrities, but also happening all over the world to many other people, where we live with behaviours that don’t make sense for intelligent human beings to be making, and yet factor in the driving force of our hurts – be it expressing from them or not wanting to feel them, and it makes perfect sense.
Thanks Greg and it’s interesting to use a man like Elvis during your blog. A man that still has such an impact on people long after his death. As you are saying look at how he came on the scene, how he was and look at the way he ended up. There is a sharp contrast to these ‘two’ Elvis’s and it’s interesting to look a little deeper to why. As you are saying we collectively aren’t truly supported in the world and therefore the choice to support yourself as you have done is wise.
It’s great that you were willing to go deeper with your questioning to get to the root of why when we supposedly have it all, we can end up still feeling such despair. We would all benefit from being curious students of our behaviours.
Obesity is on the rise at an alarming rate, and even for those that are not obese, many of us use food to medicate ourselves. I hear it all the time. At work if someone is upset or stressed it is not long before a chocolate or cake is offered.
We still chase fame and fortune, but all around us those that have it are clearly showing that its no guarantee of contentment and feeling at ease within.
Great observations Greg about how holding back creates tension in the body. I have noticed that too. If we have been doing that for decades its not hard to see how this can lead to illness and disease.
This is a great and exposing blog Greg of how things can go so wrong for us in life. As a teenager, I used to get quite depressed but didn’t really know why. I would just have times when I would feel really low, and nobody really questioned it and just put it down to ‘one of Sandra’s moods’. But I would use food, alcohol and cigarettes to stop myself feeling so low, and consequently put on lots of weight and then got more depressed as I was overweight as a young adult and became very self conscious about what I would be willing to do. These unresolved hurts always do manifest in ways that we eventually pay for in one way or another, and its not just us as individauls that this affects, but all those around us as well.
As you say, it is never about perfection, but a forever learning and unfoldment into a truthful and truly loving relationship with ourselves and everyone else. I too am a forever student of The Way of The Livingness, there is always more to learn and understand about myself and the world around me if I am willing to go there.
’From what I have learnt from myself and, after slowly trying to go deeper, it is our hurts, or us in reaction to our hurts, that compounds the problem.’ – This is what the world needs to know, your blog needs to be distributed – to have this basic understanding is the key to turn the turmoil and distress around.
’Basically, I was always measuring what was safe to express.’ – This was me my entire life, now, after having studied with Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon, I am in a forever developing process of finding my true expression.
This is a cracker of a blog Greg – I have to say you hit the nail on the head with how you describe today’s despair and unsettlement in society, how driven we are by our hurts without even knowing it, and the thing is, it has become the norm to such extent that we hardly blink when we hear of another personal tragedy, especially within the media and show biz.
Thank you Greg, for sharing your own journey with such honesty, an all too familiar journey for so many people, self included. I too bless the day I met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. In just one weekend I was introduced to so many very accessible and powerful tools with which to begin to decipher what was a Hurt and what was the real Me. As you say, the self destructive path that the great and famous take is no different to the average person in the street, it’s just more in the public eye. We all look for rewards to recognise ourselves by and attempt to escape what we cannot handle inside us and we use food, sex, drugs, alcohol, people and so, often to excess in order to smother the inner pain and emptiness. And then you meet Universal Medicine and so much of what you couldn’t make sense becomes clearer and clearer and life becomes more and more simple as a consequence. There is a way to turn our troubles and turmoil around, a little less glamorous but much more interesting, challenging, healing and evolving then treading the same old floor boards in search of answer.
What you have shared Greg offers us all an opportunity to consider that there is another way to live with each other that brings love and light to our all interactions. Through being honest and expressing the truth of what we feel we will rebuild the trust between us, rather than sharing interactions that are based on protection, fear and reaction stemming from the hurts we are avoiding to feel and heal and let go of.
That is so true by expressing our truth it allows others to feel it’s safe to also express their truth, otherwise we are just bouncing off each other in our own bubbles of hurts, which can be abusive and only creating more separation and mistrust .
A beautiful enquiry Greg, of understanding and exploring how any of us can lose our way if we do not get confirmed when young of what we truly feel inside, and in shutting down that precious part of us, we lose the true inbuilt guidance that holds steady for us no matter what happens in life.
Famous people live under the constant pull to be responsible in all we do, as we all do really. I have always found it interesting how under the glorification of ‘stardom’ we actually more often than not glorify behaviours that would otherwise raise immense concerns if a close loved one were to act the same why. I’m talking drugs, promiscuity, domestic violence etc. etc.
I agree Greg, saying someone had depression does not cut it, as if that’s another one to just add to the long list of celebrities who have committed suicide – it’s as though we have become used to it and almost expect it.
The full impact of drugs including alcohol is yet to see the light of day. Every aspect drug abuse needs to be shared; as you have so well portrayed Greg, society can see there is a different way.
Thank you Greg. The way you share is incredibly sweet, tender and true. I especially loved this line “I am learning that if another didn’t help to create a hurt we are carrying, why meet them or come at them carrying or wielding a hurt? This only creates more hurt and disharmony between us.” When I first read this line I thought but what about the person that actually hurt you and then it dawned on me, we are the only ones responsible for our hurts, there is no one to blame but plenty of people to love, starting with ourselves first.
He was surrounded by yes people pandering to his ego, saying what they thought he wanted to hear, interviews suggest he really missed honest conversation. Honesty is fundamental to good health both mental and physical.
Greg I also shared this way of being ‘This in turn caused me to harden and become quick and sharp with my tongue, to attack or be on the defensive so as to avoid attack’. It was only whilst doing courses with Universal Medicine that I got to truly understand that I had had a poisonous tongue not out of nastiness but out of self protection. I came to clearly see that by disarming people by cutting them down as soon as I met them, I basically ensured that I would be left alone, and alone I was.
Hi Alexis , It is very empowering to see that a sharp tongue is really about protection and about sensitivity, and allowing ourselves to be tender and sensitive or surrendering helps to curb the reaction
This is a great sharing Greg – and really brings to my attention how easy it is to look at the lives of burnt out celebs who overdose or overeat – you just have to pick up a magazine to see how these people are constantly under scrutiny for how they look in a swimsuit, what they eat, how much they drink etc. But the fact is we need to be honest with ourselves – what choices are we making to not be aware of what is there to feel. Why are we avoiding our sensitivity? It is so important we start to be honest about this, as if not we’re just walking into a slow numbing death.
Thank you Greg, what you write here shows that we are all the same underneath, we all start out the same, sweetly innocent, playful and interested in life. The choices we each make and how we deal with our hurts are what shape us as we age.
Greg, in answer to your question about Elvis’s behaviour, ‘Haven’t we all been there in some way or can relate to this?’, I would say ‘sure, yep I can relate to musicians extreme self abusive behaviour, because as you say most of us have had a smorgasbord of self abusive behaviours’. I feel that the starting point of all our self harming ways is the fact that we have separated from ourselves. If we were to keep being the real us then there would be no gap for any negative ways of being to come in.
I have a photo of Elvis in his very early days and there is a beauty and gentleness and innocence to him that is almost mesmerising. He was a genuinely gentle soul who became moulded by the demands of others. I love how you have related it to your life Greg because it makes us aware of our own vulnerability and our own sensitivities and how we can let our hurts change us from being the naturally sensitive loving people we are born to be.
Greg you write in such a casually accessible and real way that I feel like we’ve just been sitting on the settee chatting.
Thank you, Greg, for such a great explanation of how and why things can go so badly wrong for us when we are not loved and cherished for who we are as children. All kids want is to be met for who they are, nothing else much matters. We all carry hurts, the only difference is that some of us deal with them and some continue to bury them.
This brings to our attention and explains the importance of looking at the bits that we don’t want to look at. Our hurts that are left unresolved will affect affect the way we react and behave, love your phrase to explain this Greg, that they “can then come back to bite us as manifested negative and self-harming behaviours.”
“We have seen so many successful stars not able to handle their light and power, and then make choices that eventually lead to their demise.”
That is a very interesting fact that you are bringing to our awareness here Greg, and I can certainly relate to that, as it applies to all of us and it begs the question, why is it so hard to handle our light and power? Another question worth exploring further.
It is a well known fact that Elvis was not depressed in his earlier life, due to reports of his then wife and friends he was a very alive, joyful, adventurous and vibrant man who loved to joke and play… so how come that “life happens” and this life takes all of that away from us and makes us depressed – that shows something is wrong in the way we live life.
We have many behaviours that we take for granted but would serve us well to deeper investigate. The old ‘I just like it’ reply just does not cut it and won’t support us in the change we all, on some level, want to make. To discover and understand what is making us choose these behaviours is deeply healing and part of our personal evolution.
There is a great video about food and our relationship with it on the website “The school of the Livingness” (to see on the website itself http://bit.ly/29LklmM ). Reveal the truth about food and how w use it to stop us from evolution. Taking responsibility is such a big thing for us…we have the tendency to make it a burden, thereby it is so much fun if done in its true meaning. Much more fun than to eat ;).
Great points you are raising here Greg! We should never stop questioning “why” and become so complacent that we accept labels like, “the person had depression,..”. as there are reasons why someone has depression…. causes you are starting to explore in your blog, which are really worth investigating further.
http://www.unimedliving.com/mental-health/mental-health/depression-a-reframe.html
Most of the world tends to use food to drown out what they feel, including myself. It’s a completely normalised thing to an extent. I wonder what would happen if this was different ?
“I feel blessed and have to pinch myself at times for choosing the journey back to love, to my innermost, and for making the choice to reconnect with the Ancient Wisdom as presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine as, like Elvis, I could have easily chosen to go the other way many years ago.” I also feel truly blessed. Even though it has been my choice to deepen my own awareness and to live a more loving life I still can’t help but feel enormously appreciative of the opportunities that have come my way to learn how to do this..
“It just doesn’t make sense, hence the need for all of us to dig deeper into why this is a regular occurrence with stars in particular, but also with everyday people” your completely right Greg, we seem to take this on the cheek rather then trying to understand and change how lives can lead to this.
Thank you for sharing the important fact that we always have a choice, all of us! And that it is not worth it to give up on that choice, even though it may seem hard at times, because what awaits us at the other end is better than any glamorous life – it is a glorious life.
“We are not our hurts and that it is a choice that we make to go into them, and then to act or live out our lives through our hurts” A very profound statement to have made. I also love how you point out that because we live out our hurts we often hurt others that had nothing to do with creating those hurts in the first place, and so we keep going round in the same circles perpetuating them for ourselves and others..
Greg you start your blog with an interesting question in which you propose that our everyday choices are really not that far of from the abuse we see in certain celebrities. I ful-heartedly agree but can hear all those who would say No to this as they feel they do not abuse, and that if we use substances in a ‘controlled way’ there is no harm in it. This is the myth and the very hard-fought lie that needs to be broken because i reality it is all the same, excess or not.
I can not just relate to what you wrote about overeating – I wrote an article about it – to find on UnimedLiving.com (http://bit.ly/1qavDaY). We can change our foods (or drugs) but as long as we do not bring a change into our relationship with food, or ‘how we go through life’ there will not come a true change, no true joy.
It is my understanding that the suicide rate, especially amongst young people, seems to be on rise. And we can acknowledge that illness, disease, alcoholism, drugs addictions, paedophilia and abuse of many kinds is still prevalent in the world, and also getting worse. What is going on in the world? The world can be a horrible, tortuous place to some, but as you have shared, there is another way out, a way to live and heal our hurts, there is no need to struggle or be in pain. If we only just got real and honest and all put our hands up and admitted that this world wasn’t working then maybe we would begin to heal, and I am also deeply grateful for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for showing me the way home and that we can heal our hurts and transform our lives back to the love that we are.
When you described yourself as a little boy and how sensitive you been I remembered Elvis in his younger years…he was so sensitive and tender…. not so easy this days to hold this quality and way of living in a society that champion the ‘winner’ and the so the living against each other. But to dull ourselves – be it with drugs or food – does not bring any changes here. We become maybe a bit less aware of it, that we signed the contract of selling our connection to our soul and so to God, but we do not less suffer. The opposed is the case.
“So why is it that, we as a society who have often loved so much the life and times of people like Elvis Presley, not to mention many other stars and individuals who have died due to suicide, don’t take heed and do a forensic study into what happened with them?” It seems we can’t get past the idolisation and then the sense of loss. Is it possible that we don’t ask this leading question as we would have to look at our own choices and way of living and that would simply be too uncomfortable?
Awesome blog Greg- highlighting you don’t have to be famous, or be a celebrity in music, TV, sport to have undealt emotional issues buried in your body which if undealt with lead to disregard and ill health e.g. depression, drug overdose, alcohol abuse, binge eating/ obesity, suicide.
Wonderful to see how you positively took responsibility for your hurts and was able to truly heal them, with the help and support of Universal Medicine.
It is interesting how we decide to make ‘stars’ to something special and actually to role models – thereby they are like everyone of us dealing with their un-perfection, trying to get through life happily…with the same lack of success in this topic. Being popular this days does not mean you are higher evolved in any way or inspiring to unfold more of our wisdom. Interesting how and who we choose to be our models….says a lot about us.
The more public my life becomes the more obvious it is how vulnerable I am. Attacks are always there, but they are more obvious when living a public life. It is a choice indeed to appreciate the vulnerability or to harden.
It’s really important what you’ve touched on Greg regarding how for celebrity stars such as Elvis, because of the glamorous and successful face they have set up on the outside, people don’t see what’s really going on for him as a person and the fact that he was unhappy on the inside. I would say that quite a large percentage of people do this too at varying degrees – when we don’t feel good in ourselves it’s very common to try and ‘polish’ the area of our lives that other people see to mask how it’s truly going.
Greg the sensitivity and tenderness you write with is something that can be felt so strongly, the care and commitment to humanity is also clearly felt, especially in the question of why don’t we do a forensic analysis. Its seems obvious now you’ve asked it, yet was never on the mind prior to that. If we can see something has gone wrong, why don’t we truly come together, explore what it was and then be able to heal it and move forward not to repeat it again – both us and our fellow human beings? As you say it hurts, it hurts because we are often living in the same way albeit with different vices to cover up what we don’t want to feel.
The dismiss of stars is dramatised and made into stories that we can all buy into and feel sad about and yet it is happening all around us everyday, people are giving up and leaning on substances to get through life and not feel their hurts. It may not be a big dramatic blow out, as some celebrities experience, it maybe a more steady and subtle decline, but it can be seen and felt, if we are willing to do so. Society normalises decline in health, age is normal, not a decline in health. There is a collusion in what we call normal so as to not expose the fact that we could be making very different choices about how we care for ourselves.
There is something wonderful to learn from every person we meet and encounter, it could be Elvis or our next door neighbour, they hold something unique, that l not express and when we are open to feel and learn this quality we are more connected with each other.
What happened with Elvis, is something I have seen play-out many times in life and I was heading that way until 10 years ago, when I began to realise, that I had a choice and that inside I am essentially full of love and not broken. As I grow into middle age, I see people in my life that I have known for a long time making chooses to numb, checkout, abuse their bodies and feel overwhelmed by life. I spent alot of my adult life also doing so, until I began to become aware of the power of choice…and that I could choose different! People of a similar age to me, early 40’s are starting to talk about ageing, weight gain, health issues, bloating, and reliance on alcohol and ‘treat’ foods etc like they are an inevitable part of life. The hardness, bloating and tiredness reflected their bodies is not inevitable, they where once glowing, illuminated young people, flexible, joyful and enthusiastic to meet the world, there is no reason why this wuold ever need to change, unless we allow our hurts to being come dominate.
Wow Greg, always amazing to read someone’s story and hear what life has really been like. Thanks for the beautiful honesty, so refreshing and powerful to hear a man speak up in this way.
Your description of wanting to take the safety of our bed with you, is something I relate to. Used spend a lot of time hiding from the world in bed. I used to call them ‘duvet days’ when I would sleep such long time or just snooze or hangout, as along as i didn’t have to face the world and lie ins were a regular occurrence. I now say yes to life so much more, and I feel a safety and trust within me where ever I go, because I feel I have a connection, and inner connection that has a quality of truth and love, so no need to hide like I once did….I still do and there is more to express, but the change thus far have been remarkable.
“So what leads Elvis, or any of us for that matter, to a path of disregard, self-abuse and into a place of no return?” This is a really important question you raise, Greg. What is also significant we do not have to wait to reach ‘the place of no return’ to ask and find the answer to this question for ourselves.
The normalization of abuse has become common lifestyle and the glorification of it is the true evil we live with on a daily basis.
Greg this is a great testimony of self-empowerment supported by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. To know and live with responsibility our daily choices, always impulsed by the universal order!
It’s a good point that we often look at the lives of famous people through rose tinted glasses, even when they go off the rails. But we can witness them going through the same things as everyday people with the same hurts and the same desire to numb. The only difference is that they are in the spotlight.
Great blog Greg! What you share makes such simple sense yet it is also very confrounding to feel that such simplicity is in fact just a choice, available to us even in the darkest of moments. We have chosen to perpetuate such a life and hence the power and importance of honesty.
Even when a person has it all they can still go down that self destructive route, this has happened time and time again and we see it in those who are in the public spotlight. Rather than solely being focused on their talents or skills what you’ve shared here Greg is – what if they are teaching something for us to learn here? We all learn from each other and what this shows is having fame and fortune doesn’t work. To have love in our lives it doesn’t require attention from others or materials from outside and around us. From Universal Medicine’s presentations and the Esoteric modalities I have learnt that what we are truly craving, the love that we are, is an inside job – that is, feeling the love already within us and not waiting or expecting it to come from outside of us.
Thank you for your awesome sharing, Greg. It’s interesting how when we’re feeling stressed or unable to cope, we so often choose to simply take that feeling away by numbing ourselves with drugs, alcohol, food etc, rather than choosing to look at what’s really going on and supporting ourselves to understand what’s feeding the angst so we can seal the gap and prevent the same thing from happening again. Until we deal with our hurts they will continue to bubble away, affecting our expression in all that we do and and say, ultimately adding to our dis-ease.
Love your blog Greg, you clearly express why we and others choose to destroy ourselves and our lives when we seemingly have everything and every-one we could possibly want.
Growing up it was just the norm to stuff ourselves with food and treats and go to bed feeling bloated and uncomfortable. This was only normal because it was the quickest and easiest way to push down the feelings we didn’t want to feel… and it was easily accessible. This is a major issue that is often overlooked because its not as extreme as drugs and self-harming but it’s affects are widespread.
‘Saying ‘”the person had depression,” is not a good enough reason to me because it says nothing and offers no insight into what may have been going on.” I absolutely agree Greg; it is as if no one has any real answers, so the blanket diagnosis of depression is used. But there is always something behind the depression, something that has brought this person to the place where life seems way too hard and dark, and to keep on going is simply too exhausting. There is always an answer, it is just that often it takes a while and lots of support to uncover it, and that’s where, for you, me and many others, Universal Medicine and the Ageless Wisdom teachings have played such a huge and life changing part in doing so.
Greg you have really take this crossroad very wise this time – what an inspiration you are.
‘We are not our hurts’. So true, yet so many of our interactions come from them. Dealing with our hurts – which we all have to some degree – is a responsible and self- loving act; a choice that can turn our lives around.
The choice to constantly calibrate our expression is so exhausting and brings in so many other negative behaviours in an attempt to try and maintain the false facade that we erroneously feel is protecting us from getting hurt. Making the choice to start expressing from a place of truth seems scary at first but allows for the whole person to be known and as nothing is kept hidden true relationships are nurtured and there is no need to go into the protective behaviours whether they be illicit drugs or food etc.
‘So what leads Elvis, or any of us for that matter, to a path of disregard, self-abuse and into a place of no return?’ The way that stars like Elvis have chosen to numb themselves is a very full-on reflection of the myriad of ways that so many chose to numb themselves. We would do well to ask the question ‘Why?’ and pay more attention to the practical tools presented by Universal Medicine for re-connecting to ourselves and living a simple but true life.
” The bits that we don’t want to look at, left unresolved, can then come back to bite us as manifested negative and self-harming behaviours.” This bit wasn’t highlighted, however l feel it’s a key point to ponder because how many of us go by the saying, ‘out of sight, out of mind?’ Then to realise it’s still affecting us energetically through self-harming behaviours.
“Feeling the tension of living in a world that didn’t feel right.” We all feel this tension it’s what we do next that makes or breaks us. When we live gently our choices will reflect this.
When we make people stars and put them on a pedestal of adulation we are complicit in their hurts as they continually strive to hide from the world the inner turmoil of their lives. A true star is someone who inspires others to also shine their light, heal their hurts and return to who they truly are.
” So why is it that, we as a society who have often loved so much the life and times of people like Elvis Presley, not to mention many other stars and individuals who have died due to suicide, don’t take heed and do a forensic study into what happened with them? That would mean having to take an honest look at ourselves.
As I have said many times, I would hate to see where I would be in life and how I would look if I hadn’t come across ‘the life raft in the middle of the stormy sea’. I too was a sensitive child like us all and found at a very young age,that although it made me sick, alcohol totally numbed me from feeling. By this stage I thought being sensitive was a bad thing and would do anything to prove I was a man, a hard man. Isn’t it just so weird that we try to destroy the best asset we are born with, the thing that can best help us through life and that is numbing how we feel.
Celebrities are magnifying what is going on in many homes but it’s often made out to be strange or different because somehow ‘they’ are different because they are in the spotlight. There is no real difference, living by and with our hurts is the same dis-ease and tension for us all… whether we are in the spotlight or not. We often don’t realise that we are in the spotlight to our work colleagues, family, friends, neighbours and any one we communicate with…and like when we were little, we all, even if we say we don’t, feel everything.
“being able to hold myself in joy and love in my body, regardless of what was happening out there.” One of our greatest challenges as humans.
Beautiful Greg. There are reflections offered everywhere if we stop to take note of them. From the people around us, to Elvis and to people such as yourself Greg, who have the courage to share their amazing stories of transformation. I love reading these blogs, they always offer me something to ponder on and a different lens with which to view my life.
Great topic, Greg. It is interesting how we allow one another and those in the public eye to self-destruct and just put it down ‘depression’. The rise in mental health cases across the globe confirms that as a society we are really not dealing with our unresolved emotions. Universal Medicine is the only set of teachings I have ever come across, that gets underneath our hurts to truly heal them.
Beautiful blog Greg, it is important that we start to see that it is not normal that ‘celebrates’ who for a reason where called ‘The King’ or anything like that, die in a poor way. And in line with that we all equally are that ‘King’ or star but what we during our life are discarding more and more of through all kind of vices we actually know are not good or supportive to us but in fact numb us away from feeling who we truly are and in potential are capable off.
I love your question Greg of what happened to Elvis, why he would take his life even though being so successful and apparently having a great life.
The entertainment industry is very cruel. It just eats you up and spits you out when it is done – in a binge eat that suits its own careless and devastating ways. Not that many industries are free of that! My butchers were talking to me about the cruelty of the apprenticeship in butchery and how they had vowed to set up a shop which did not out apprentices through such a system of cruel training. But coming back to entertainment, the most sensitive of people bring themselves and their artistic talent into and situation which will exploit them, manipulate ad control them and destroy them because of its lovelessness. It would take an extremely high level of awareness, consciousness, presence to observe and withstand such a thing – but it is surely possible.
Thanks Lyndy , Us evolving is all-out how we treat our selves and others building stronger and more clear and true platforms that hold the love that we are and allow us all to express this divine fact of our true nature ,not just the butcher shop of humanity with its abuse and harshness putting profits and creation before the hearts souls of the men ,woman and children that live on it, like a big sausage grinding machine , pulverising us into a sleeve of ill expression. Thank God that our particles are from the original source of divinity so we can come back by choice and relearn to live in way that supports others to do the same.
What a beautiful blog Greg. I had tears in my eyes feeling the tenderness at the beginning where you were talking about the sensitive young man you were and what that was like…’ Binge eating was something I started doing from a young age as a way of stopping myself from feeling. Feeling what, you may say? Feeling my sadness of not being met, feeling my fragility and tenderness as a boy, then as a man, in a world that left, or felt like it left, no space for this part of me, especially once I was corralled into the educational system. Not feeling safe to be myself, the sensitive soul, in case I was attacked. bullied or criticised at home or school. Feeling the tension of living in a world that didn’t feel right.’ Now, living in a manner called The Way of The Livingness we will be very different next time around. We will hold our sensitive-ness, our tenderness and we will not be coerced into contracting, hiding and numbing ourselves with food or whatever comes to hand.
There are so many things available that are designed to numb and bury our hurts and I certainly didn’t know how disconnected I was from my feelings for a very long time. As far as I was concerned, my life was normal – nothing spectacular, but not too bad. We are so good at devising our own plan of actions to achieve that. But really it’s a very thin and wobbly tight rope and rarely any of us makes it to the other end without falling.
Elvis, ‘The King’ – indeed, how the loveliness and tenderness of a person can then become the very opposite when consumed by hurts, and perhaps not knowing how to deal with them in truth. You’re right Greg, such demise is happening to all of us to some level, and celebrities/high noted people in society/business worlds for example have it more exposed because of their public position, and perhaps more pressure as a result of the media exposure. Yet underneath, they are the same as any other person. They are no ‘king’ or ‘queen’, just an expression of light expressing, and equal to another’s. Re-connecting to this takes the pressure off and restores the joy there is in brotherhood, something i’ve been learning and continue to deepen with Universal Medicine.
Superb post Greg, love everything you share. Especially this bit: “I am learning that if another didn’t help to create a hurt we are carrying, why meet them or come at them carrying or wielding a hurt? This only creates more hurt and disharmony between us” – put like this, it’s got me really thinking how much i/we really do harbour and lash out on others that have nothing to do with our hurt creation that we’ve incubated, though they may expose it through their actions/a word etc…. though it is not them, but us. Always.
When I was a teenager, I had a bit of fascination about dying young – not suicide, but living thick and fast – and those famous people who died young were so glorified and I never saw them as a human being just like me who got hurt and upset.
Looking at and healing hurts – I have tried many thing but no one was able to explain it in full for me to come to a total reconciliation until I encountered Universal Medicine. Like, I had no idea that it was possible to come to a place where I didn’t have to blame anyone – others/myself, and there’s no guilt or shame, and I don’t have to convince myself mentally by affirmations, yet nothing is nothing, and on top of that in fact I really had no issue to begin with. What Serge Benhayon presents has helped me understand life, people, the world, me as a whole, nothing being left out – and I do pinch myself sometimes too for having found it in this life time.
For someone who supposedly “had it all ” we saw such destruction of the body with Elvis in his later days (really only in his 40s}! Fame is often what we want in life, someone to put us up on a pedestal and adore us because we fail to love ourselves, but as this crumbles we have nothing tangible to hang on to and become a mere shadow of the truth of who we are which is Love.
Hi All , after reading this blog live this morning and the follow up comments I was brought to tears ,these tears were in appreciation of the love and support as felt through the comments . Also in love and appreciation of how far I have come in my own life in regards to some of the self abusive behaviours of the past .This moment of true surrender allowed me to feel deeper into the power of love and brotherhood .
I take my hat off , and a big heart felt hug to you all .
As we can learn to open up and trust when we feel the solidness of truth and love, many more people can feel safe and supported to unravel there own hurts.
What came to my mind when I read your sharing Greg was, “There but for the Grace of God go I”. This shows that it is all about the choices, with the same destruction of our lives. I too am so very grateful for connecting to Universal Medicine and the teachings of Serge Benhayon, and the learning that is offered to us all!
Brilliant blog Greg, it highlights to me that we are all very similar, we carry hurts, choose similar behaviours as coping mechanism to numb our hurts as we are often not encouraged to talk about them and heal them. No matter how glamorous, famous and well liked we are by others, disconnection from our soul is what hurts us the deepest. I feel the richness of life is not based on what we have achieved but how deep are we willing to evolve back to love, to our soul and to God.
There is a responsibility to observe ourselves, our behaviours and way of living, and in sharing this openly and in a transparent way we all learn and grow together… we have so much to learn from each other.
Inspiring words Greg…”my life became a wonderful unfoldment with always so much more to learn, as long as I stayed open and allowed myself to feel my way. So it is choice by choice, day by day that I am bringing myself back.” Life and love is a gentle evolving process, and the key is to remain open to whatever is being offered us.
Perfection is such an insidious ideal – as is the belief that we should be perfect, both creating unrealistic expectations in a world that isn’t perfect and never will be!
Serge Benhayon has inspired so many people to return back to love – he stands with unwavering patience and understanding that humanity is capable of so much more than it is living right now.
Spot on nicolesjardin “…unwavering patience…”, the consistency that Serge Benhayon walks, lives and talks along with others alongside him, is what has enabled me to trust in myself and humanity once again.
I agree that we should observe and learn from the lives of those we love and those like Elvis; and equally study and observe our own lives from a deeper perspective.
I imagine that no one would have questioned your overeating Greg, because, as you say, you were a ‘skinny dude’ and could ‘get away with it’. But do we ever get away from our destructive behaviours? Especially the ones we keep hidden behind closed doors? At the end of the day, we live in the body of our choices.
Thanks Kylie , I am amazed air how much more is being brought to the table in this platform of blogs and and the amazing angles that people are expressing from .And that is exactly right I though and looked like I could get away with overeating at the time but it then morphed into other behaviours drug and alcohol abuse as an adult to dull down,or dumb down life and try to not feel the tension .Learning to be honest and feel and then nominate what I’m feeling or whats going on even if I dont know what it is and then asking my soul to reveal the issue of hurt over the years has helped ,to stop or reduce destructive behaviors and hurts controlling the game. Also for me and like many others it was always behind closed doors that the worst self destructive acts took place .
‘I am learning that if another didn’t help to create a hurt we are carrying, why meet them or come at them carrying or wielding a hurt?’ – Great question Greg. Reflecting on life and the relationships around me I am aware that many have not connected to the fact that they are being driven by unresolved hurts and that these hurts are the result of the pictures, images, ideals and beliefs they are holding of which are not ‘truth’. This feels like the old saying ‘the blind leading the blind’. The choice to investigate a little deeper has allowed more awareness and an open heart to support you to unfold more truth in your livingness. The choices we make created the quality of life we live and it is so empowering and loving to know if we love ourselves deeply then this is the life we will experience.
I can feel that we don’t question this because then we don’t have to question how we are living. We can turn a blind eye when people are not doing well because this has become norm in society so know, this is crazy, but it almost seems rude to break through this and start to ask how someone really is- which is actually a very loving thing to do. I recently had someone mention to me that I appeared more bloated recently, this was awesome as it allowed me to stop and look at my choices.
Greg, you capture it so well, what we do, how we pacify and numb ourselves, and how we use that to relieve the tension we feel of not being us. And it doesn’t work and we know it, yet we often keep giving it a go, and the question I’m asking now, is why I’m so dogged in my determination to try all new ways to pacify and what would happen if I applied the same dedication to love; and to know that we are dedicated, but it’s checking with ourselves to what are we dedicated? Love or not?
I visit a place that has on every wall pictures of film idols and musicians almost all of whom have died,from addictions, drug or alcohol overdoses or suicides. It intrigues me that when we remember artists, we often choose to focus on musical and artistic talent and ignore their emotional pain and personal tragedy they experienced and in some cases this is glamourised. When I walk past these images, I feel pain and anguish of lives lived without true love. We are blessed to have access to the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom and have chosen to practice ‘The Way of the Livingness’ as taught by Universal Medicine.
There is an amazing article in the Music Sphere about just what you are saying here: http://www.unimedliving.com/music/music-society/the-train-wreck-we-call-art-music-and-our-responsibility-as-a-global-family.html
Thank you Lyndy for the link. A powerful article, that really exposes the toxic relationship many have with music and artists. It confirms how blind dedication to music or art can be at the expense of truly feeling the pain and suffering of the human being.
Yes, so well said Kehinde
The safety you describe waking up in your bed, away from the world is something I distinctly remember. I recall the world feeling unloving and felt unsafe, a place I wanted to stear clear of. I was also very sensitive and so in order not to feel I first started to numb myself with food, then caffeine, then drink, smoking and finally drugs.
Thanks Fiona,for sharing how you remember the safely of not wanting to leave the bed ,and having to face the world in its lovelessness and harshness .Its interesting to understand that a lot of people who choose drugs as away to numb and fragment are often some of the most sensitive beings who struggle with accepting life as it is. Isn’t it crazy the lengths we go to not wanting to feel and shield or try and protect through contraction and lessen ,weaken and compromise our power ,light, responsibility by those choices.
I love what you have shared here Greg and it shows that we all have patterns or long held beliefs that if not looked at and uncovered can cause us to make choices that can send us on a completely different life path. When we make a new choice to stop and look at our lives and how we have been living we begin to uncover a web of patterns and situations that can be healed and bring us back to the true essence of who we are.
Thankyou Greg for this humble and wise peer beneath the curtain… We are so much more than the hurt that we feel but this hurt can seem so insurmountable at times, we begin to identify with it. To compound this, we have mistaken ‘glamour’ for beauty and therefore are led to believe those that live glamorous lives are successful because they have the adoration of the world, or so it seems. When really the truth is that glamour is a force that blinds and has us forever seeking outward for an identity and gratification that can never truly satisfy for it comes void of the inner knowing that we are already enough as we are, we only need to live and share it with the world, from the inside out.
So true Liane , Glamour is a force that truly blinds us and leaves us searching outwards in emptiness for the salvation of true connection and love ,which alas can only be found within.
What I love about this Greg is the lack of judgement and the way you show that we are no different from the music and movie artists who fall from grace. We, like them when driven by hurt can fall victim of addictions, abusive behaviour and self disregard. To be shown that we are not our hurts, can heal, move on and re-build our lives comes from the dedication and love brought to us by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
As hard as it may be to fathom, no one in this world has ever hurt us, we have only hurt ourselves by not expressing the fullness of our love when abuse comes our way. This does not mean we condone abuse, but there is a way to stand tall in the face of it, full of ourselves in the truest sense so that our love becomes the ‘forcefield’ and the poison coming from another very hurt individual cannot enter our kingdom. Thus, it is we who need to reclaim the throne within our hearts where love sits and reigns over its true domain.
‘They were like a life raft in a stormy sea.’ I love this sentence as it sums up beautifully how I felt when I discovered esoteric healing sessions. My safe life raft in the vast ocean of turmoil that surrounded me.
Greg you raise some really interesting points here. It seems as though it is becoming more common for big name stars to end their lives. Prince, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledge, Robyn WIliams just to name a few off the top off my head. And this is just the people we hear about. What about the thousands of others who we don’t hear? What this highlights and as you have shared in this blog is that unless we deal with our hurts, those feelings that we have buried deep down, they can consume us to the point of seeking distraction so as not to have to feel. We are all sensitive beings and the more we honour and express what we feel, truly meet each other in love by first learning to meet ourselves, then there is less need for distraction and less need for numbing.
Hi Donna , You nailed it with your last sentence as quoted “We are all sensitive beings and the more we honour and express what we feel, truly meet each other in love by first learning to meet ourselves, then there is less need for distraction and less need for numbing.”
Unless we learn to expose and deal with i.e. make sense or peace or should I really say heal our hurts individually , we are just puppets or cannon fodder to a world that thrives or should I say feeds on emotion and abuse by the evil that mankind allows to dominate . For their are myriads of ways we can abuse ourselves if we dont choose to take responsibility for ourselves in a world that supports all the different types of behaviors of indulgence by the glamour and illusion of falsity and ill or mistruth ,the state of our health epidemic is testimony to that fact.
A great exploration of the truth of what we so often describe as the ‘tragedies of celebrity’. But the truth is that these are ways that we choose to manage the things we come across in life which hurt, and we are not equipped to deal with them in a way which does not compound the pain.
This is a really important topic in many ways. We almost expect that there is some form of dysfunction with stars – drugs, abuse, divorce, drama etc…. and as a society we feed off it in many ways (masses of websites and publications make millions from it) – but we rarely stop to ask why and look at what is happening underneath. And it is important because we often do not look to ourselves as to what abusive behaviour is happening in our lives and where we are holding ourselves in disregard and what maybe causing that. And you are so on the money, we are carrying around so much hurts. And that is what hurts us, is our hurts and our reactions to these hurts. I too am appreciative of Serge Benhayon who is showing us that we are not these hurts and that there are ways to heal these hurts that don’t involve lifetimes of therapy. Thank you Greg for writing this.
When we feel our love, we have an urge to express it. Most of us then experience a backlash from those around us, so we work hard on not feeling our love, which includes overeating.
On the other hand, when we channel an enormous force like many stars in entertainment, that force hurts so much, especially when that force stops being expressed, that we then also numb ourselves.
‘We are not our hurts’ – this is such a powerful revelation Greg. However when we realise that avoiding our hurts is a choice that we make that serves only to distance ourselves from our connection to who we are, we will then learn to embrace truth and honesty through which we can heal and let go of that which hold us back and instead allow the true quality of who we are emerge and be lived in greater fullness.
We have become a society that has mastered the art of avoiding the truth at all costs. Yet time and time again we are witness to the fact that the greatest cost of all is our well-being, vitality and our connection to who we are.
I really can relate to this blog and eating to numb myself from feeling. It takes responsibility to make the choices which support us to change how we live and become more able to feel. Thanks for an inspiring blog Greg.
Thank you Greg – great call, and beautiful example of Elvis, who also represents many others… As the depression rates hit the roof, almost everyone has experienced some type of depression in their lives. And so we must not just focus on ‘ah it was depression’ that’s why someone suicide or even killed someone.. Like you shared, we need to look across and deeper and find what is the true cause of this ill behavior.. If we truly treat the cause, the consequences will be automatically different. The other way around does not work.
It is very revealing and sobering how you have highlighted how we use food to ‘drug’ ourselves at a very young age. And as we grow older we seek harder or stronger substances to achieve the same results such as alcohol and drugs all of which, including food indulgences, are now socially accepted as normal. Yet seldom do we ask ‘how are you feeling’ or ‘what is going on that you feel the need to self-abuse, numb and check out from the truth you feel’, instead we condone these behaviours and avoid sharing the truth of what we feel.
We do need to be willing to see beyond our own or another’s behaviour to see what is driving it.. With that clarity and understanding we have the potential for true change and not just writing off someone as having a certain condition or thinking that we can’t change ourselves.
I personally relate to so very much of what you have shared Greg and the overeating to numb the hurts. It seems we all have hurts as long as we react to anything that we see in the world that is not of love and there is plenty of it, whether directed at us or others. Thank God, Serge Benhayon has shared with us the tools to bring greater understanding to ourselves and the world, to observe and not react and to live a truly loving life so that we provide a different reflection, show there is another way and do not add to the hurts everyone is reacting to.
Greg I was deeply touched by what you have written and the tenderness, truth and love you have written it in – as Elvis sang “Love me Tender” if only he could have met you and Serge and Benhayon his life may well have been very different.
As the years go by I feel like I have become more tenderrised ,even though at times I resist the process ,Its usually just an old hurt and an image coming up blinding me form the truth .
I know what you mean about stuffing yourself with food, and then having to lie on the couch and not move. In a food induced coma. When I was young, I didn’t seem to do this but then as a teenager I got into the smoking and drinking to not feel and since giving that up, I now have to be careful as I can use food in the exact same way to not feel. I know which foods make me feel a certain way and at times, I feel like I just can’t stop eating. Their seems to be a persistent voice demanding I eat more even though I know full well that I am not hungry. At times, I let it get the best of me, and at other times, I take myself for a walk, re-connect and ask myself what is going on that I really don’t want to feel.
Awesome blog Greg, I can so relate to this part and still do it at times today.
“Basically, I was always measuring what was safe to express. Therefore there was this lack of true expression or being able to show the real me that created tension in my body, to shut down and to calibrate myself to the situation, instead of being able to hold myself in joy and love in my body, regardless of what was happening out there.”
The shutting down, the not saying it all incase someone else reacts or doesn’t feel comfortable if I expose what I am feeling. I wonder how many of us have held back, not shared, kept quiet to keep the peace…. but are we really keeping the peace or are we just creating a volcano that will erupt one day with all the unexpressed hurts and all?
Our hurts can hold huge power over us. Something that happened as a child can shape our behaviour for ever after. The weight and pain of carrying our hurts for so long is a huge burden, not to mention a very heavy load. Going back, revisiting them and making the choice to let them go, can be quite a shock. I have realised behaviours I thought were me and part of who I was, were really only because of a reaction and were not the true me at all. Letting them go releases this heavy burden and strips away the weight we have piled on top of ourselves. We can then get back to the lightness being or the being of light that we are.
Heavy drug and alcohol use are very clear signals that something is not right. Yet there are many sneaky and socially acceptable ways that we can achieve a similar effect as drugs and alcohol, but one that we can go on years or even a lifetime doing, with very little concern from others or even ourselves. Food is a major one and is something that can rule our life.
“tell me about it” she says after having overeaten last night!! Yes, it is certainly easy to see how we can use food to numb, stimulate, distract, protect, dull ourselves etc. whether it be overeating, undereating, or even fantasy eating with our eyes and mind!!!… We can also use over work, under work, thoughts, emotions – basically there are almost unlimited options available for us to avoid being with what is really going on.
The funny (but not ha ha) thing is that it is not only our hurts that we avoid but our glory. We just as often use substances, food, thoughts, movement etc to make ourselves less because we are not comfortable with our greatness.
Gorgeous blog Greg. Many people I have met via Universal Medicine have turned around their lives after heading towards an Elvis like demise. And many others I have met who simply stopped the continual numbing. And then there are those that still choose to numb, but are far more aware of it. With the support of talking and being open about our habits, why it is we choose them, and the root causes, these habit have a lesser grip on our lives and pave the way to see many more habits that we may have once considered benign.
Reading about Elvis’s life, things seemed to change when his Mum who he doted on died. It is like he had put all his safety, all his love into one relationship and so he was hurt and not able to cope when she died. It is an amazing juxtaposition you highlight Greg that someone like Elvis can be so universally adored and yet be so lonely and hurt inside. It just goes to show that when we start to truly love ourselves, the jailhouse we have been living in is truly rocked and there’s no way we can ever end up at heartbreak hotel again.
Haha, here’s to rockin’ the jailhouse, Joseph. I was so imprisoned by my hurts, until slowly over time the consistent love and support of Universal Medicine opened up my heart again.
Often we act like the whole world has hurt us, we act it out on everyone we meet. In truth we hold so many people accountable for something they didn’t play any part in.
You emphasize the crucial importance of dealing with our hurts: “From what I have learnt from myself and, after slowly trying to go deeper, it is our hurts, or us in reaction to our hurts, that compounds the problem. The bits that we don’t want to look at, left unresolved, can then come back to bite us as manifested negative and self-harming behaviours.” I would add the absolute need for appreciating yourself for who you are: a son of God, a divine being even if it doesn’t feel like that at times.
“Basically, I was always measuring what was safe to express. Therefore there was this lack of true expression or being able to show the real me that created tension in my body, to shut down and to calibrate myself to the situation, instead of being able to hold myself in joy and love in my body, regardless of what was happening out there.” A very familiar situation for me. It is indeed crazy what we do to not feel and eating too much is a perfect way to not be responsible.
Greg, as you have beautifully shared our paths in life are determined by the choices we make along the way. I can feel your unfolding and it feels very healing for you as you take each step at a time in your re-connection back to you.
Greg, you explain in one hit why we choose to do what we do in life to numb and distract us from our hurts, from over eating, alcohol abuse to drug taking. What an amazing sharing of your experiences. Inspired by the teachings of Serge Benhayon you map and navigate a route through the pain and choices of our lives to a far more enriched destination.
The poison of striving for perfection, being good, being nice, holding back expression is like the hamster syndrome of going round and round continuously, on the the never-ending circuit on the wheel in their cage.
‘The funny thing is, neither the world nor the people in it are perfect. Most of the time, most of us are acting out of our hurts so we then have the tendency to go around hurting each other without even being aware that we are doing it!’
“So why is it that, we as a society who have often loved so much the life and times of people like Elvis Presley, not to mention many other stars and individuals who have died due to suicide, don’t take heed and do a forensic study into what happened with them?”
A much needed question being raised here Greg – why indeed, is there no study on the deeper causes that cause severe self abuse and even leading to suicide. Studying the living way that Serge Benhayon and his family live joyfully 24/7, would bring much awareness to the true answers to this world wide dilemma.
What an honest and inspiring blog to read Greg. I can totally relate to the previous way of eating way too much food, which began in early childhood years (my parents used to say I had eyes bigger than my belly) and this continued in order to be literally stuffing down and covering over any form of emotion or feeling in my body. Thankfully, attending Universal Medicine presentations inspired me to make different choices and food is no longer used in the old way of self abuse.
It is incredible the lengths we will go to numb ourselves from feeling our hurts. The irony is that the more we protect our hurts, the more hurt we feel. Thank goodness for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for showing us that by healing our hurts we can then feel safe to be in this world in our tenderness, in our delicateness to fully be ourselves – no walls of protection needed.
“Saying “the person had depression,” is not a good enough reason to me because it says nothing and offers no insight into what may have been going on.” Awesome Greg, testament to the fact that we know what’s going on, but choose not to express more or look deeper into things because it would be far too exposing of what we accept as normal.
Definitely, Harry – people just don’t want to go there. But so cool that Greg and others do. There is a deeper meaning to everything in life, but how ready are we to go there.
Beautiful blog Greg! So many of us find ourselves at this “crossroad” that you speak of. Choosing to let go of the glamour, the trying and the facades has its own reward, we come back to ourselves!
Awesome blog. And it’s true all our reactions come from our hurts, all the various ways we seek to protect ourselves whether it be over eating or starving ourselves, escaping into and drowning ourselves in work, leisure and entertainment or just going hard to cope with what we perceive as a threat however small. It seems no one is immune and yet everyone is free to make a different choice and begin the journey back to health and wholesomeness. Thank you for sharing the beginning of your journey and in appreciation too of Serge Benhayon and the Universal Medicine Student Body that support us to unfold and reconnect to the Light and Love that we are.
Your blog shows to me that we are the result of all our choices, Greg, whether it’s Elvis, you, or me. We choose the disregard when we get overwhelmed, I too have chosen to binge eat many times in my life rather than feel the tension. But our saving grace ( literally) for us all is to know there is another way, through the presentations of Universal Medicine so we don’t have to repeat any of those patterns again.
Greg, this opens a great topic for discussion around many high profile stars who on the outside ‘seem to have it all’ and who yet often end up abusing substances such as alcohol and drugs and / or taking their own lives. Of course, although it’s generally only stars that make media headlines with stories like this, this issue is certainly far more widespread than perhaps we want to consider. It also confirms that true well-being and self-worth etc. does not lie in money, social status, popularity or success – but as you say ‘comes back to me’ (the ‘true’ me’).
What an awesome expression, Greg – thank you. I love the mix of personal anecdote and experience and then the allusion to how this is exactly the same that occurs with stars and celebrities – we all experience disregard, whether that be in a public forum or in our own homes, behind closed doors. Only re connecting with ourselves leads us off this path of fast or slow self destruction.