622 thoughts on “I Wanted to Belong to Life”

1. Everything around us is about belonging to something or someone. There is nothing that is about being with us.
   If we look at businesses, are there any or many companies that endorses us to be who we truly are and serve from this? Where I work I see none of this and it is about being like them, driving and striving.
   Allow people to be who they truly are then see how the world becomes a different place to be in.

2. Just looking at the word ‘belong’ in light of what is shared in this piece and it has just come to me that we are so caught up in the doing of life that we have forsaken how to just ‘be’. Furthermore, as the essence of our beingness is love, we have forgotten how to simply ‘be love’ and this creates a seeming emptiness within us where we crave to ‘belong’, whereas the truth is – we simply ‘long to be’.

3. Feeling that we belong with others is very tempting. It confirms us in a way in our choices. To feel the energy of US is very moving. But, before belonging to life, we belong to the universe. If feeling the energy of US is very moving, feeling the universe and how we belong to it is the most wonderful experience ever that makes you feel also that the true you is eternal, very powerful and incredibly beautiful.

4. I love this. Who would have thought that all the things we strive for and want to belong to, in truth we do not need any of them, and that we have everything already just waiting inside for us to connect to. It certainly takes away the trying.

   1. Exactly. It is very hard to try and be something we already are – love.

5. Very true Joel, the fine message here is that wherever we look around will not be enough, because we know that forever depth of love that we come from — and this is found and embraced within us, when we choose to connect.

6. We can often feel lost in life when we lose the connection with who we are and this is when we are more likely to seek to belong to something out side of us. But what we miss the most is the connection to our essence and our soul.

7. ‘I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.’ There is such power in this statement. When we connect to this place within and continually reconnect until it feels more normal to be there than anywhere else, then we have a stability and can really be the author of our own lives and live that authority. Very inspiring. Thank you Joel

8. I was asked last night if I ever get lonely, and reflecting on that I could see that for many years there was a restlessness in me that I often attributed to loneliness. Like you I often ‘belonged to other things’ but rarely to me. Thanks to Universal Medicine, I have been starting to belong to me, more and more and more, and that restlessness is lessening as I connect to me and to God.

   1. Same here Sarah, I also felt the restlessness in my body and so often dislike being on my own because it felt lonely. Now, I have no problems being on my own because I have developed a deeper connection with myself and I feel more connected to people. So, even when I am not with people I know I am still connected to everyone and everything.

9. Joel what you have uncovered here is where the majority of humanity is at, wanting to belong somewhere in life and its never enough. What we search for is never outside but always within and this is what I’m refining without perfection and this wouldn’t have occurred if I hadn’t met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.

10. Joel, your blogs are always deeply inspiring to read. There are so many distractions continually on offer outside of ourselves designed to keep us away from re-connecting to the Divine Essence within. Universal Medicine offers a return to, rather than, a separation from love.

11. Joel, I love the power in what you share here, how through everything we want to belong and we think its belonging to all these things that are in the world and yet the depth of truth is that its belonging to us that is what we really truly want.

12. What is profound : that we are so lost that the demands of life are somehow satisfactionary, but when we actually start to unravel the lies we can see that belonging to life is not it.. There is more, so much more, and this is what Universal Medicine represents. Powerfully so. Thank You. As I am so inspired by that. From now onwards forever..

13. When we care for ourselves we begin the journey of belonging to ourselves.

14. I find it incredibly inspiring to consider myself as being on equal terms with God, as being “…on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.” It’s not a responsibility I feel I step up to in every moment but it is for sure something that I am working on making much more consistent in my life.

15. I love this and all of your writing Joel, it calls us all to something that we know deep within.

16. The things we do to our body, because we want to belong are quite harming. This actually gives away that it is not of truth, because the truth would never damage our body.

17. Great blog Joel, I could so feel the need we have to be accepted and belong, yet the cycle continues because we are always searching, and through Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I have found my inner essence which is who I am and where I belong.

18. This is a before and after in its written form. I have seen the photos too that show the changes from that frustrated and very tired person you describe here, who made changes where I now know the committed and deeply religious man you are.

19. To be me thus to belong to me, is one of the greatest gifts and teachings inspired through Universal Medicine. I’m finding how the continuance of self-possession really is the key to a healthy and purposeful life.

20. There are so many things outside of us that seek to ‘grab’ us in some way, and because we as human beings seek to belong in some way, in fact we yearn for this and hence we can fall hook line and sinker for these outside distractions. However, these will always remain as the ‘outside’ distractions and nothing more or less. And as Joel has so beautifully shared here, it is all about returning to our relationship with ourselves first and foremost, and this is the foundation of our relationship with our Soul and with God, and hence our true home is to belong first and foremost to ourselves.

21. What a sweet, poignant and touching blog, Joel – I cannot believe that this one has escaped by blog reading frenzies! 🙂 Absolutely love it, and it has hit home for me – so beautiful to be reminded of how important we are and how important our relationship is with ourselves as this is what truly brings the meaning to life and all interactions around us.

22. We make fitting into life so important, but what kind of life are we fitting into? When I recognise that I belong to myself and that my choices determine the quality of my life, it becomes truly extraordinary.

23. It is beautiful how you share, your search to belong to things and others, when in truth you wanted to belong to you. I know how this feels as I was on this search for along time too, and was always tired. Now and again I loose this focus and find myself tired. As soon as I connect back to myself, the tiredness fades.

24. To belong to me, means I can drop all that striving to belong to a spiritual group that holds a version of the truth of who I am. Conversely, to feel the truth of who I am within my inner heart relieves the need to look outside of myself.

25. Beautiful Joel and now when we meet you we meet who you are and not all the ‘things’ you were attached to.

26. Yes, wanting to belong is something well known to me and it took me years and years to come to what you have shared here, that the only thing I really wanted was to belong to me, to reconnect to who I am.

    1. Yes, I can relate to this too Annelies. Now I know how to reconnect to who I am and feel I belong to me. That sense of feeling lost is no longer present and the need to search for things to fill the gaps are no longer there either, this shift has been huge and it is thanks to Universal Medicine that I now have the tools to reconnect to who I am.

27. I love your way of saying it Elizabeth, to hang out with who we are in essence. The more i get to know myself the more i love to hang out with me, the true me.

28. Thank you Joel, touching true and loving.. It is so true, we only get very tired if we avoid living why we are here — to be our unique expression and take responsibility for the energy we live, either love or non-love.

29. Once we connect to our inner sense of belonging we have no need to belong to other cultural organisations that fulfil this need for so many. Once we can let go of this neediness we can share our joy and sense of lightness with everyone else.

    1. Helen, so true letting go of this neediness frees us to stay connected to the joy we truly are and the sense of lightness in our bodies.

    2. Beautifully said Helen, and in my experience this is a gradual process that is on-going…an incremental unfolding that in each step reveals another layer of freedom from a need, and hence a showing of my true colours to share with the world, as opposed to a sense of seeking to belong to something external.

30. The craving to belong leads us down many blind alleys until we are introduced to the person we have been missing all along – ourselves! Love the way you have expressed this Joel and brought such a clarity to a painful subject.

    1. Its crazy that we are on a search to find someone, when that someone is ourselves.

31. It is the most amazing feeling when we finally return to ourselves and let go of the search to belong to things outside of us. Also, it is interesting to reflect how many things in our world are constantly enticing us to join them, as a way to distract us from returning to the connection with ourselves.

32. I am humbled by the depth of awareness you share Joel – of how we give our power away to people, events, organisations etc through joining them in various events but not taught how to remain in connection to our innermost essence and belong to ourselves and be with God.

33. Reading this made me think how we can sometimes join a group as a result of seeking an identity, a way of defining who we are as an individual, so somewhat ironically enjoining a group to delineate who we are as an individual… And I really get what you mean about coming home to yourself, re-connecting with your innermost essence and from there feeling a fullness that doesn’t need to belong to something outside of you, but is open to sharing that essence.

    1. Wow Fiona, yes to that. We want to belong and belong and belong, but rarely consider that what we miss is ourselves, our truth, our love, our expansion and power.

34. Thank you Joel. I Iove the simplicity and intimacy with which you write and the truth you are willing to share.

35. Another powerful and insightful blog Joel that resonates deep within my body as I re-read the truth of your words. Thank you!
    “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always”.

36. It can be hard to remember that we belong to ourselves, particularly when life gets too close and we feel there is no space for us. But in those times, if we just take a moment to appreciate one tiny thing, this brings in the space we need to feel ourselves again.

    1. Lucy love the reminder to appreciate that one thing that brings in the space we need to feel ourselves again.

37. Enjoining another in what they are doing or saying does not necessarily mean there is any true connection there; connection is something that starts within us first that we can then share with another. Universal Medicine truly offers tools and guidance on how we can simply re-connect with our inner-most and bring that quality back out into all our relationships.

38. Exhaustion is surely inevitable any time we are investing in a way of life that keeps our inner connection from being met, but instead looks outwardly for confirmation or acceptance.

39. ” I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always. ”
    What a learning thank you for sharing Joel.

40. We all want to belong.

    1. Yes we all do want to belong, when we loose sight of our connection we end on a search. Bringing it back to our own connection brings it back.

       1. Whilst we live in separation (to ourselves and God) we’ll be searching.

41. ‘I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.’ Wow I love reading this. It evaporates all victim and blame stuff instantly and brings a responsibility to me that is based on God knowing who I truly am and that I can be trusted despite any of my man-made self-doubt. Feeling the trust placed in me, this knowing ,is very confirming of who I am, like we all are and how stark the irresponsibility most live is so obvious.

42. I belong to me. And with this knowing I also honour the fact that this ‘me’ is not an isolated fragment existing on its own, but rather is part of a stupendous All we each make up an important piece of.

43. This is such a profound sharing – wanting to belong comes up in so many ways, and the more I have thought about it, the more I have felt the need at times. Surrendering to the feeling and being ok with it, is far more settling than resisting and trying to talk myself out of what I have felt. And like a miracle, things shift – feeling what we are avoiding is like magic, yet it is a choice, one that gets confirmed as we accept who we are as we are.

    1. I agree Sandra – if I am in to resistance to something it becomes even more of a battle with the mind and my body just gets more contracted. Surrendering deeper to whatever is presented is like a miracle and a deeper level of healing is experienced.

44. I used to think that belonging to something and identifying with a certain lifestyle, was obligatory and I struggled with this but thanks to Universal Medicine and as I become more aware of energy and how it plays out i become steadier in myself and realise that, in truth the quality of the true me is central to everything and as you say belonging to me is all that really matters, from there on in all else falls into place.

45. The need to belong can own us if we are not prepared to stand as who we are and not change for anyone. It’s definitely something I’m still learning. What I find is that joining someone, rather than maintaining the integrity, steadiness and strength of who I am, is almost a game of hide and seek, like a chameleon blending in, it’s the ultimate form protection. But what in truth is compromised in this situation? And is it ever worth it?

46. ” I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.” lovely Joel and l love the photo it verifies what’s said here. Thank you.

47. So many seek to fill a void, a lack within themselves, and seek to do so by taking up one or many of the identities life so tantalisingly presents. This is all part of feeding an endless cycle of seeking from outside us, because we a not and never will be our identities. We are who we are, beautiful delicious and deeply loving beings. All we need to do is live it.

48. When we try to belong to something because we feel empty inside we often are willing to just let go of what we feel is true just to belong and be liked. When we love ourselves this tendency gets much less and then we can truly be with others in our fullness.

    1. Beautiful reminder when we love ourselves then we can truly be with others in our fullness. We are no longer wanting to belong.

49. I used to feel that I was looking through the window at a party I desperately wanted to go when the door was open all along. No longer – I am a bystander waiting for life to begin, I have claimed it and live it without perfection and love every moment. Thank you Serge Benhayon.

50. What an amazing blog. We all want to belong and I know the efforts I’d made to do so are so tiring. It’s like I started off with the premise that I don’t belong when actually what if I do?!

    So all the efforts I’ve put into friendships (which has sometimes felt like a chore even!) have come from a place of trying to belong because part of belonging I’ve seen is having friends.But trying to be a friend and make the effort to be liked is not a relationship based on a quality that is true or loving. I’ve been inspired by people who are simply themselves and people who appreciate their quality love being around them – there’s not been a trying bone to be seen, only joy.

    And it’s not about me not being with people it’s about me feeling inspired to be with others, and also when to be with myself quietly. It’s about me being there for me, not worried about being by myself. I used to use people’s company just so I would be by myself with me. This is no basis for any relationship. Coming back to me is the belonging I have searched for.

51. There is nothing like standing there knowing who you are and that you are enough. There is no need to be anything or act in a certain way – just be you, and that’s ok because at that moment you have everything and you want nothing.

52. That wanting to belong is something that so many of us have, its something that we can think there is an easy answer for but until I came to Universal Medicine I never considered I had to first belong to me, to connect to me and then I am part of the all and that need to belong is no longer there as we all belong to the all.

53. In my experience the depth of connection that we can feel or have with another comes from the depth of connection we have first with ourself and our willingness to then be open and share that with another.

    1. Yes the depth of connection starts with self, if we don’t have it with self, how can we have with another.

54. When we live in separation to our true self, we live in separation to all others also. In this space, the ache of the ‘loss’ will leave us craving to ‘belong’ and thus weak to the call of all that seeks to fill us with an external source void of the love that we are.

    1. So simply explained and so supportive to keep hearing. When we start seeking outside of ourselves we just need to make a U-Turn back to who we are.

55. I feel like this is exactly what we allll want! We don’t want to feel like we have to do something to feel something, that’s why we’re all so exhausted, because we are trying so hard allllll the time. We’re so clouded by all the stuff in our faces pulling us in several directions. It appears, there is another way to go about it…and whilst it might feel like a secret, it’s the thing staring us in the face!

56. I love the feeling of belonging to myself. It is something to be cherished.

57. Missing ourselves is the greatest grief but coming back to ourselves is the greatest joy.

58. Love what you have shared Joel, as I was one who Loved what Universal Medicine presented from day one. Then I started to understand that there was more to life than meets the eye and released changes were a-foot. “Universal Medicine presented it was important to care about me, it said to consider belonging to me before I could really feel belonging with others.” So after nearly 15 years I am still on a learning curve but at-least now I am starting to get a deeper understanding of what and how a True relationship with self is all about.

59. I know that feeling of wanting to belong to something, I did search high and low, always looking outside of myself. The ache that it caused me within my body in doing so felt like it would never go away. It only did when I found how to connect deeply within myself.

60. Beautiful Joel, when you look at it this way life can be like a stream of arrangements we get comfort from. Whether it’s sporting teams, countries or jobs, we have labels we can hide behind. All of this is a distraction from the true group we are in – being a Son of God. As long as we forget that this is who we are, we’ll fall and be sucked in to pale substitutes because we know deep down that we belong to a much bigger whole.

61. “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.” This is beautiful Joel – and it shows, that you belong to you.

62. At the end of the day, there is not one thing in this world that can substitute the fulfillment and enrichment of living in connection to who we are within, where our relationship with God, the universe and all is one and the same, very much alive and known as our natural way of being.

63. There’s nothing like having a sense of yourself that is absolute in every way. Belonging to yourself is a vital step towards knowing who you are.

64. We do need to belong to ourselves first! The way you describe your journey to come to this point is done with your wonderful humour and insight. Thank you Joel.

65. ‘Belonging to me’ sounds simple but as you show Joel we are brought up from young to belong to everyone and everything but ourselves. Without this understanding we can so easily loose ourselves and think we are doing well in life but without commitment and a constant willingness to look at how we are living we can fall for the hooks that make us look like we belong. As you say being with the family has more value than any food we eat and the quality we work in has more value than any pay cheque we receive.

66. What this highlights for me that there is so much beauty in not only being ourself but being with people. We make life so much about doing and achieving that we forget to feel the joy being and working together brings.

67. I can so resonate with this wanting to belong. And a funny thing is, while I am at it, I kept denying what I truly belonged to.

68. This is a lovely read thank you. “I was tired to my bones, tied to a place that all of my efforts amounted to naught and all I was left with were the things that “took the edge off.” This is so true we are exhausted by what the world wants us to be, its agenda is to distract us from been who we are in truth and true way of living.” I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.”

69. Life offers us all the time the possibility of feeling we belong to something. This gives us a sense of where we are and identity. In other words, we are offered to engage in movements that are not natural to us and then walk as if it were ours. And this is what we do until we discover what Universal Medicine offers: devolving you and your movements onto you by way of being able to feel that what you have called you was not really you but the version of you submitting to life based on a need: the need to feel you belong; a need that arises out of feeling emptiness inside.

70. When our needs are replaced by beingness, when our desires are replaced by a livingness, we start to live a life that is all that it can be and all that we are.

71. I love this, and the lure of those clubs, belief systems, family and friends is so strong and appealing, but alas none of them can deliver us anything – I know I’ve tried. Two years before finding Universal Medicine I was involved with so many different churches, hobbies, and other peoples drama, and then one day out of the blue I renounced everything that I could feel was not the truth – went cold turkey. Although I did not have the words for it at that time, I just knew that nothing was working. But at the same time I knew something was heading my way, and it did in the form of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, and as they say ‘Everything else is history’.

72. I am learning more and more to belong to myself and the joy that this brings is so fulfilling that slowly the need to belong to others is fading away.

    1. This is a gorgeous reflection Elizabeth. Our need to belong to others certainly does highlight that lack of belonging or love we feel for ourselves, presenting an opportunity to deepen our loving relationship with who we are, our love within, where we innately belong.

73. Whenever there is tension felt, I want to deepen the belonging/relationship with myself. Sometimes I want others to come with me, but the true fact is I can only go there on my own first and allow others to choose if they want to come or not.

74. What do all these various groups and communities get if we do not belong to us before we join them, and of course once we do that we then need to find those things to take the edge off as we can feel our own emptiness as we have abandoned us to join all those things.

75. If we do not belong first to ourselves we will seek to belong to everything and anything that promises to ‘fill’ the void we create when we do not live true to the love that we are.

76. What a beautiful sharing Joel with such understanding of the wanting to belong and life and the finding it with yourself inside with the love and support of Universal Medicine. Very Inspiring.

77. Whatever ‘join me’ that we could find in the outside that doesn’t contemplate the first and foremost ‘join me’ in the inside, it’s not a join but a distraction from ourselves.

78. Even in the simplest group conversation you can notice a dynamic where others energetically ask you to ‘join in’, to moan about a situation, person, event or circumstance, to ‘be with them’. So much of what we call ‘connection’ is to me, made up of these arrangements to correspond and coalesce, ‘great you feel the same as me’, we seem to say. This point of similarity offers us a comfort, a temporary shelter from the standing out – but it isn’t true, it’s just a raft we cling onto in the storm of life. But all this does in the long term is perpetuate what makes us suffer. Thank you Joel for this reminder that I don’t need to join in.

79. Funny how we can try very hard to belong and when the true belonging is presented there is a bit of squirming to be felt. Once the squirming is over the magic commences.

80. I wanted to forget life and only belong to God, but that did not work because there was no God out there and no me to belong to. I am now developing a relationship with me the true me, belonging to the love I am and hold deep within; there is no need to belong to anything or anyone outside of me for I have it all living within.

81. I’ve always had a dichotomy (I hope that’s the right word) – I’ve wanted, even craved, to belong to life even though I’ve always known something wasn’t quite right, but I’ve also always felt we belonged to something so much grander than our human eyes could see, you could say the truth of who we are. I still get caught in this choice, but as life has gone on I’ve realised that nothing in this world compares to committing and living the truth of who we are – even if that means right now I will not belong to any group or conversation or things may not be as comfortable as they could be.

82. I agree Joel and its funny, when we feel a sense of wanting to belong, there are plenty of outer “belongings” on offer. Outer activities might feel like they fill the void for a time but the cracks always show in the end. For example, the sports club is great until you injure yourself and end up in a wheel chair, the parties are great until your health starts to slip or you sleep with your best friend’s husband, the Religion is great until you want to marry someone who is the same sex as you and you are frowned upon, the fiction writing is stimulating until you run out of ideas and start doing out of character stuff in order to be “inspired” and you end up using people as muses.
    These are but a few of the cracks when you chase belonging “out there”. The thing about belonging from the inside out, is you can be involved in many community based activities, have lots of rich relationships but everything is done in a quality. You are in the water but you’re not wet, you are involved but not from a need to belong, you belong and there for you choose to be involved.

83. ‘Join me’ said the close harmony singing group – and for a while I thought I had found true harmony. But it was only when I learned to connect to the innate harmony within that I truly felt the fullness that it really can be.

84. What a beautiful inspiring blog Joel. I just love what you have expressed here;
    “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always”.

85. I can so relate to this- of just wanting to fit in and be accepted by others but when I forgo myself in this way it feels empty and like I am robbing myself of something when I contort myself to fit in with what I think will be accepted. I have done this many times and nothing compares to truly loving and accepting myself.

86. “I can meet with family and friends and that meeting is what I appreciate more than any food we eat. I can work with clients and the quality of the work can mean more than any pay cheque.” This is truly beautiful, a way of living where being with ourselves and others is all the joy we need. We have made life so much about food and money and distraction that we need to relearn how to be with ourselves and truly be with others. And when we do we will step by step realise that what you say is true and very possible.

87. What a beautiful story of self-realisation Joel, thank-you.
    You know, we do all essentially ‘belong’ to all – but not in the sense that we need ever give one iota of ourselves, our integrity and indeed our power away to another. When we are fully self-claimed, we know without a doubt, that we are here for all, and nothing less.
    I love how you’ve delineated here, that seeking to belong out of personal need, will not ever require nor satiate the longing within that actually seeks re-union with oneself and God, yet avoids this by attempting to fill the void with something lesser.

88. It seems apparent to me that whatever we long for in life, is something we need to be in ourselves first – otherwise life will simply reflect our longing back to us.

89. Belonging or identifying with something only separates us from our essence and the essence that connects us to all. Learning and understanding the wisdom and clarity for life is found within, not only connects us with a far greater intelligence than we ever thought possible, but also then connects us to a far greater sense of love that supports us to continue to deepen our relationships and connections and the need for belonging simply melts away.

90. The seeking to belong ceased when I chose to reconnect to my essence and embraced the teachings of Universal Medicine. Reading your list of ‘join me’… Joel really felt eerie and alluring, the way you expressed this really captures how cold and sinister these setups are in our society.

91. So beautiful I am re reading this blog today ‘I wanted to belong to life but got stuck along the way. I felt frustrated and tired – very tired; I was tired to my bones, tired to a place that all of my efforts amounted to naught and all I was left with were the things that “took the edge off.”’ This really touched me as I recently have been diagnosed with osteoporosis. My body tells me how I have been living, trying to belong with no care for my body and Yes, avoiding to live my power. Once more I am offered the choice to take responsibility for myself and the world and live from the love that is inside me.

92. This is such a beautiful statement and one that makes my whole body light up in joy and appreciative of its truth – “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.” Placing God and ourselves in equal footing is the beginning of a marriage made in heaven.

93. Our current way of life is so set up to distract us from the very core of our being and the fact that we ARE beings before we are human and belong to the universe. Yet, all around us our human-ness is confirmed, our form is confirmed and our five senses tantalised. There is not much that confirms our divinity – so this, we much connect to and bring to the world who is in truth in desperate search of more.

94. Especially as teenagers, we try to fit in and find our niche and everything we think is going to define us, make us stand out and be noticed. Because education does not yet cover the true truths of life, this can lead to many years if not decades of being lost in the desert of the outer offerings – and there are many and ever more.

95. Belonging to me before belonging to others is a work in progress and the work will never end – but boy oh boy it’s so worth the commitment.

    1. I agree Lucy, this is a working progress for me too and this journey is certainly worth it in every way. Where I am now and how I view the world is so much more loving, making it a joy to live life without the ups and downs but a steady appreciation of how amazing life really is.

96. This is so absolutely relatable – thank you for telling your story Joel. The key for me was the incredible tiredness, this is when I knew I could no longer continue with past choices to belong and fit in. Universal Medicine was the first (after many other tried, tested and unsuccessful techniques, and treatments) to offer insight into where to look for and truly understand the source of my depletion and how to restore vitality. As you share – belonging to me is where my true connection to humanity comes from.

97. Through the appreciation and confirmation of our beingness, we get to know our interconnectedness with everything there is and it is then simply a choice to surrender our bodies and accept what is already within.

98. How much time do we waste looking outside ourselves to belong to some external force when ironically it is our own heart that is our home and what actually connects us to all that is outside of us from a quality that is totally loving, solid and true.

99. When we belong to ourselves, we are with ourselves. And when we are with ourselves, we are much more steady and can see more clearly what is going on around us, and can be less knocked about by what happens. And we can be more of our natural selves – tender, warm, open, joyful, playful, sexy, sacred, and power-full. And when we resist that, oh my, how tired we can be. It takes a lot of energy to resist our natural selves. Think about a bad mood you have been in and when that finally shifts, you let go and relax. It takes a lot less energy to be you than in a bad mood for example.

100. When we are our own best friend it removes any need to belong to anything away. I still fall out with myself quite regularly, but have felt the absoluteness and unconditionalness (new word!) of my love for myself and this is something I am treasuring and valuing more each day.

101. ‘I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.’ Wow, this takes all the miss-interpretation of waiting for God’s saviour to come save us and places us back on our equal footing with all that we are.

102. I want to belong to life to Joel; what you have expressed here is powerful and inspiring;
     “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world”.

103. Whether we realise it or not as long as we see the world as a collection of separate things and live our life governed by our head, well then we belong to the biggest club of all – the community of disconnected human beings. When we live connected our breath, to our body we are naturally conennect to all. When this occurs you don’t need any badge or certificate – you just get to feel and be aware of everything. This is the only club for me. Thank you Joel for this blog.

104. In order to fill up the emptiness within from not embracing who we are, we rely on distractions that offer us temporary relief but nothing compares to the joy, love, and power we can connect to when we finally accept and appreciate our beingness.

105. Thank you Joel for your blog. You pull things together for us and nothing is lost in the telling!

106. Join me said my Soul and remember the love you innately are and the eternal connection with the essence of all that is found in your inner-most 🙂

107. This sense of wanting to belong outside of ourselves is very strong, I have found anyway. I put it down to a false sense of brotherhood which we all innately know is the core of our existence, in this false brotherhood we do away with ourselves in order to belong to the group and what the group want. It really is the most limited version of brotherhood. Where as what you share here Joel is how we can be ourselves, take care of ourselves, know ourselves and in that join with others in union, and from there we are one with the divinity of the universe and all the glory that is.

108. Although we find it sometimes confronting to hear what Universal Medicine presents and you go as far as you hated it, we feel the truth in every presentation. How amazing is it you can now state at the end of your blog; ‘I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.’

109. I wouldn’t go that far to say that I hated what Universal Medicine presented, but I can feel how what gets presented was so obviously true and there was a definitive feeling that I had known it all along but I had been trying to avoid and find a way without having to go there, and I did find it a bit annoying because my suspicion that there’s no other way but embrace this kept being confirmed.

110. This wanting to belong is our separation from this one life force. The spirit within me does unify with the spirit in all people, I am learning to overlook everything else. Thanks for sharing your spirit.

111. I wanted to belong outside of us is very exhausting like you say Joel, your not the only one who has felt this, it is many of us in the same boat wanting that belonging. Universal Medicine has been amazing in how it presents to us a way that we can choose to connect to that place within our selves, what a life changer it is.

112. What a perfect blog to read and connect with this morning. The longing to belong is exhausting till we value and build belonging with ourselves and develop that relationship before all others. It is such a gift because it is so much less imposing on others and the world. I will have to read this one at the end of my day today I feel 🙂

     1. Great point Lucy – that the wanting to belong is very imposing and then counter productive to the want to belong. It is fascinating to observe the longing sets up the experience of separation and isolation.

113. “I wanted to belong to life” I can so relate to this…..I felt like I was not participating the way that I could, I did not join clubs, but I did invest in family, friends and work; so different but the same, groups, hoping to belong and be seen for me. I am realising that this commit to life and belonging begins with me from the inside out and looking outside to belong will always result in feeling lonely.

114. Our need to belong, which comes from our true and deep knowing of brotherhood and oneness, is what causes the tiredness, the empty feeling and seeking of belonging in the wrong direction. Everything we could ever want to belong to is inside us already. We can but belong to God and each other when we first honour our relationship with ourselves.

     1. Absolutely Fiona, it feel like a surrendering to ourselves, to our heart, to the impulse that comes from the connection to all that is divine and holds us all as equals.

115. In order to truly belong to ourselves once again we must first renounce all that we have come to let stand in the way of our truth, our beauty and our love. We also need to be really, really honest with ourselves how much comfort we have found dwelling in such shadow. When these hindrances are removed, we cannot but shine the light of our true making. Divinity restored.

     1. To be free of the pull towards the false and the fillers in life, we must see them for what they are, in order to set our true nature free.

116. Have you ever felt like you do not want to be a follower of something in life as in at the whim of someone else’s wishes instead of your own? Most have and we then seek to live our own lives under the illusion we are following no one but our own will. But even if we say we are not following something unless we are living from our inner heart in life and truly connected and surrendered to ourselves we will always be at the whim of others. Be it taking on their ills and issues to taking on their ideals and wishes.

117. Beautiful Joel, we miss that connection with ourselves and feel the inner pain of that and then we assume that the ‘something missing’ in life is out there somewhere. Like you I went on an endless and fruitless search for this missing piece for most of my life, until Universal Medicine came along and showed me that it was inside of me all along.

118. We search high and low for anything that is going to make us feel like we belong, we are willing to compromise ourselves and even accept to be in abusive relationships when everything is within us just waiting to be reignited to the love we all belong to.

119. It’s crazy how much we exhaust ourselves constantly looking outside ourselves for the answers – when all we really need to do is stop and be still – and then we will feel inside of us the answers to everything we want and the love we’ve been looking for all along.

120. At the core of it we all want to love and be loved but it seems we have lost connection with that love and instead seek acceptance and recognition instead – a false kind of brotherhood. Universal Medicine shows us the way home to the connection inside of us where we can feel the endless love that is there and re-learn to bring this to life instead of hurts or needs.

121. The more we connect to ourselves and be who we truly are we feel the power and joy that comes with this choice and the beautiful flow on effect that inspires and supports others to also make this loving choice.

122. I loved your blog Joel, the only place we belong to is our own inner heart where there is no longing, just a beingness with ourselves, life and all others.

123. “I wanted to belong to life but really, really, really wanted, and now belong, to me.” To discover that what one has been searching for all one’s life has, and is, actually always with one and never not been is such a beautiful thing to discover. Thank you Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for being such a glorious mirror.

124. You present the ultimate trap we all fall into, we try to find belonging out there, and it seems to work but all along we know it’s not true, as we’ve left ourselves at the door. The truth is the biggest thing we bring to anything is us, and without us the world loses.

125. When we belong to any group outside of ourselves we can feel owned by the group but when we connect to our inner being we are free to be who we truly are with everyone.

126. If we don’t have a true connection to our self we will always feel that we don’t belong.

127. Simply said Joel. Try as we might, if we don’t come first, then we spend our lives forever looking to belong.

128. True belonging is coming home.

129. It’s learning to let go of needs that is the key to commit to life in full and be full of yourself.

130. Hi Joel, What I read here was ,I wanted to belong’ and before I read any further it tweaked something – a memory of how I have constantly searched for the wanting to belong to something, anything to avoid the feeling I had inside of not belonging to myself. Such a great blog, thank you. Belonging to me and sharing that with others that loving connection is truly beautiful.

131. Thank you Joel for a great read, we all have this longing to belong to something and spend most of our life time looking outside of ourselves which never quenches the longing, until we find that it is within us that which we are longing for and when we connect to our inner essence we have at last come home.

132. Thank you Joel – a beautiful insight.

133. Belonging is identifying ourselves through a belief, picture or pattern to feel like you are apart of something, but in truth the only way to belong is to connect with our hearts and bodies and feel the love that connects us all.

134. Beautiful – coming home to ourselves. We do not belong to ideas, rules, beliefs, groups, ideals, images or anything else. We come from God, which is absolute majesty in formlessness, nothing we can think or create here in the physical realm could ever meet or be better than that, so why not surrender to all we already come from and bring that here? It’s such an act of true humility to be who we truly are.

135. That is quite a turn-around Joel to go from trying to take the edge off with everything and anything, to appreciating connection to others above the food in a meal, or the quality of you instead of the amount of work you do. A true joyful way to live, simply from building a loving relationship with ourselves.

136. I have spent my life enjoying all the amazing things our world has to offer. But it never seemed like enough, I always needed more. After 50 years of this and a totally exhausted body I said ” I am missing something important here!”
     With support from Simple-Living Global and Universal Medicine I realized that I was missing myself. I was looking outside of myself for connection, but I need to connect to myself first. Now I can truly appreciate all the wonders of our world without needing them.

137. I can relate to trying to belong and searching for it in all the wrong places as well, I ended up feeling pretty exhausted always chasing the impossible. When we feel connected to ourselves life does feel different – more simple, more joyful and a whole lot lighter.

138. Thank you Joel for highlighting the main factor contributing to society’s unrest at the moment… the discontentment in the body will never let us rest.

     1. There is an unsettled feeling within that I spend a long time trying to ignore, yet each time I accept it, it shows me a sense of belonging and being I never though possible, yet know feels absolutely familiar

139. All those times of joining something just to feel like I belonged somewhere was exhausting, and it never ended up with me feeling like I belonged anywhere. But to then come to realise, from the presentations by Universal Medicine, that just as exhausting is me “avoiding my power”; this made so much sense of the continual tiredness that I lived with, that I had made my normal way of living. Like you Joel, it was very hard to hear this, but there was something inside me faintly acknowledging the truth of what I was being presented, so I began to listen and finally as I let down the walls of protection that I had built, I knew that yes, what I was being presented was indeed the truth. That was the moment that I knew exactly where I belonged.

140. Its great to see how there are many things beckoning one to join into, like parenthood, academia, corporate job positions etc, but yet there is always a calling from within to return back to …”a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always…”

141. “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always”. So beautifully expressed Joel; if we belong to ourselves first and foremost we inevitably do belong to life and can share life equally, without judgement or imposition but in harmony and love.

142. We often try to fit in with others before we actually honour what it is we feel, this may be subtle and we may not realise how much we do this. I watched a video recently that was an experiment in a waiting room that every time a buzzer sounded some actors would stand up, when others entered the waiting room and saw this but didn’t know why people were standing up they started to stand up too when they heard the buzzer- it was fascinating to watch that people did this without knowing why.

143. Quite super honest and a good show of how we are offered to join life and how used we are (almost trained) to be that. But when I met Universal Medicine I was offered that there was a Way to join me, myself and so actually me being in life, instead of life living me.. Very cool and astonishing. I am still learning everyday how to let go of all the investments I had made in my life to be more important than me (who I am). And so the life of contraction and playing small is fading away.. Thank God.

144. “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world” . . . .This is a massive statement that sadly not many people could or would make claim to.

145. Belonging to yourself, what a concept! We can spend our whole lives trying to fit in to a group and wanting to be recognised for being ‘something’ .. and all the while we were ‘everything’ for ourselves all along.

146. Finding ‘me’ has been such a turning point in my life. I have found focus, purpose, responsibility, power and ‘now I belong, to me’. In all honesty I love the choices that I am now making in my life for me. Like all things worthwhile life has become simpler and there is much to learn on the path of return.

     1. So great that you are so happy with your choices and that you can call them yours. This is true empowerment.

147. Yes, what Universal Medicine presents can initially be daunting to accept and not something one wants to hear because it means taking responsibility for those things one has been avoiding. However, it is SO worth persevering as what is presented are the reasons why one has been avoiding the things we do not like, tools to make changes and to take responsibility. Although the tensions in life are not removed, the result is a whole new way of living life that is so much more enhancing, enriching and joyful.

148. Joel, I always love what you write and share, you have a real knack of captivating your readers. Awesome.

149. What I have come to realise we can never belong by trying to fit in with others without losing ourselves in the process. It is no wonder so many people can be so easily fooled when they are not living themselves but ‘dancing to an others tune’. Getting to come back to truly knowing myself has come from accepting and caring for myself and through this I have began my journey back home to me and from this inner place I can bring all of me and the love I am to everything I do.

     1. It’s true Deidre, belonging start with self and then you have something to offer others. If not we are simply filling up a whole within, with something that is anything but us.

150. We feel a longing to belong and we are constantly searching for it always in the wrong places because if we were to truly connect and honour our bodies we will find everything we have been looking all along and much more in the depth of our hearts.

151. The more we enjoin in life the further away we move from ourselves. Having spent years of playing sport in order to fit into life and not feel the separation within myself, I have made more loving choices to connect to my essence and now live life from the inside out.

152. We all long to belong to what we already belong to but have lost connection with. In that sense, we are on the path of re-turn, re-connection, re-joining with every true step we move forward back to where we come from. We may lose the direct path again and again by joining what does not belong to us but never do we lose the innate knowing that we belong and it cannot leave us until we have re-joined where we belong in truth.

153. It is amazing how we all have a sense that there is more that we belong to, and yet we always looks outside of ourselves to try to fit in, make do with what is on offer and settle for less. This always leaves us feeling unsettled, needing to seek for more and all the while all that we belong to is within us. A kingdom where we are equal, where love reigns supreme and truth of all is known as we are all the equal Sons of God, and it is from here that we can live this together as Brotherhood.

154. It is interesting in our searching to belong somewhere and then when we find the group to ‘belong’ to that after a time we still feel alone. Caring for ourselves first and feeling welcome and at home in our own body means we then belong wherever we go as we are with ourselves first and not expecting something or someone else to fill us with this sense of belonging.

155. I love Sarah’s comment above as this is so true. In my experience when I really accept and appreciate myself than my life is so much grander and from there I am more able to embrace and appreciate others in my life as you feel that we are actually all the same.

156. Ironically when we belong to our true self first and foremost, we do belong to life and community more than you ever thought possible because you actually have the energy to embrace it in full.

     1. so true, so simple and so all encompassing…yet for some reason it is a concept that is obscured from our awareness

157. When we belong to ourselves, we can truly see how things are meant to be in brotherhood, and the many forms which we have made like sporting clubs and religions look like the truth but they don’t represent the real essence of brotherhood.

158. So true Joel. I have wanted to belong to everything outside of me and avoiding really accepting and loving myself- I am learning to do this now.

159. This blog resonated with every cell in my body. We have forever been subscribing to that which does not suit, for one reason or another. If Universal Medicine does support with at least one aspect, which it does and so much more, it is that it allows you to learn how to truly nurture yourself – not for the purpose of living comfortably – but to give back to humanity as a whole and reflect that way of living back to 7+Billion people

160. Great blog Joel. What are your hobbies and interests? Didn’t you hate these kind of questions? I now know why, as all hobbies, interests, and even relationships felt empty and futile, for all I ever was really looking for was to belong and be fully with myself wherever I may be.

161. What you present here is so recognizable, there is an unfathomable need to belong to ourself, but we don’t dare to go there in the knowingness of the power that is within.

162. It is so amazing that sense of wanting to belong is so strong that we will do things that harm us just to fit in and belong. It is something I have done in many ways my whole life and still struggle with any feelings of not fitting in or being ‘left out’ it is much less the feelings of worthlessness but they are still there. We are very much told from every angle to fit in at all costs. It is so worthwhile to spend time with yourself and place importance in reconnection to your essence as the more you know this the more you can be willing to say no to what ever is the thing that ‘everyone’ is doing and remain true to you.

163. Awesome blog Joel. Doesn’t everyone ….. just want to belong to themselves? To know we are all okay? To be loved? Yet the world is currently set up for this to be the complete opposite starting at a very young age even in nursery schools in what must we do to ‘please’ others or show that we are doing ‘well’. It does not confirm the loveliness we are. I know this so well ‘I was tired to my bones, tired to a place that all of my efforts amounted to naught’ or should I say I knew this so well. Since knowing Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine and making loving changes and choices to my life this is no longer the case ✨ The greatest belonging is the true belonging to ourselves and the divine love within .. in turn we then feel we belong everywhere 💕

164. I like the title as it illustrates something we all somehow try to do, to fit into the world. But as you unravel no matter what we try from what is on offer we stay wanting until we find that we do not have to go anywhere but turn towards ourself and settle with what we find deep within.

165. This is beautiful Joel, belonging to me, ‘I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.’

166. I spent most of my life trying to belong and fit in and I too ended up feeling exhausted and discouraged as nothing I did ever felt true. Your experience Joel echoes mine in many ways and the return back to the real me has been a joyful discovery worth committing to in every way. Your line here is a beautiful reminder of this ‘I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.’

167. I also make a choice to ‘belong to me’ but sometimes the old me, the unruly one, takes over and the sooner I get back to the real me, which is my Soul, the better!

168. A beautiful reminder of what is really important beyond anything the world could ever offer us.

169. So true Joel we try so hard to join life, to be part of the ‘in’ crowd, but however hard we try it always feels like there is something missing, and that something missing is us. Going outside of ourselves to be part of the ‘join me’ club just doesn’t work, it just starts the endless search for looking for something, a constant drive and a constant need, yet that ‘something’ is already within us, just waiting for us to connect to.

170. I really get how taking care of ourselves or belonging to ‘me’ has no appeal and sounds unattractive when that is the last place we want to go and we instead want everything to be because of what is out there, and not seeing it as our choice. But really, truly, that is the place we want to be claiming first and foremost.

171. Belonging to ‘me’ is the greatest club to be a member of and what Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine presents is the widest door there is through which to enter.

172. We want to belong and we look out there for that belonging and each say yes, come here we will fill the gap you feel, yet few actually put it back to us and say first you must belong to yourself. This is hard to hear but the truth we all need to live and know and thankfully there are those like Universal Medicine who will tell us so.

173. This “join me” culture is huge in schools all over the world.. Different social groups are all asking us to ‘join them’ to fit in, we are offered the option to engage with the so called ‘successes’ of being a good academic and losing ourselves to the system, or the reductionism of being a failure. We need to develop a society where from young we feel we can be true to ourselves rather than ‘joining’ one of these things or what you’ve listed in your blog.

174. I wanted to belong to everything I saw that looked good. But that is constantly looking different for me depending on where I was. With support from Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I have come to understand that if I can feel connected to self then i belong to everything.
     The feeling of not belonging came from me not being connected to me.

175. “…I wanted to belong to life but really, really, really wanted, and now belong, to me…” and when one takes the steps inward, to return back to oneself, there comes an inseparable belonging (a connection) to everything that life and nature offers.

176. The truth is we know that we belong to something so much grander than we can see, feel or touch here. We know we come from brotherhood so naturally we want to ‘belong’, but instead of committing to ourselves and taking that true belonging out to other people we seek to ‘belong’ to groups, relationships, hobbies outside of us… and this is historically proven that it never works.

177. ‘the power is in you but that tiredness you feel is the result of avoiding that power . . .’ I needed to read this Joel, thank you for presenting it so clearly.

178. Joel you make a great point of how we can so easily get drained by choosing all those things outside of yourself to ‘belong’ – we seem to come into this world claiming who we are as babies and then soon enough losing this because we want to ‘do’ or ‘please’ or ‘fit in’ rather than stay true to who we are. When what an amazing opportunity Universal Medicine provides us to join ourselves and come back to who we are.

179. In the past I would not have considered that I didn’t belong to myself, but I know now that in fact it was the opposite! I followed rules and listened to others thinking they knew more than I did. Not having the self confidence to trust myself to make the right decisions. I am aware now of my inner voice and the wisdom that we all have thanks to the teachings of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.

180. There is a deep yearning in us humans to belong and there are, as you point out, so many tantalising offers; but do they leave an emptiness until we truly and solidly belong to ourselves first, the needed bedrock of our further forays?

181. “Join me” said the fringes of society and the rebels…When we choose anything other than ourselves we are enjoining in something.

182. In surrender we discover that we belong to something so universal, and so magnificent, that it belies any attachment we may have to any other sense of belonging that we may otherwise cling to in order to pass the time of day.

183. We will sign up for any club under the sun, yet perpetually resist our ongoing life membership to club Love. We try as best as we can to hand in our card to team humanity. We attempt to resign from the board of bortherhood but no matter what we do we cannot. How beautiful Joel that despite what we think we will always be part of the one universal family.

184. It’s funny how far we will go to belong to something and all that we ever truly want is to belong and know ourselves. Love truly is one of the most patient allies in life today and is there to embrace us anytime we stray.

185. Well summed up Ariana and in agreement, it is exquisite.

186. Gorgeous to read and feel Joel. I have always felt I did not belong anywhere and even though I tried hard to ‘fit in’, I just didn’t, and so I withdrew from life and thus began my lack of commitment issues. Through The Way of The Livingness I have walked back all the steps I made that took me away from my being, to also belong to myself.

187. It’s so easy to get pulled out of ourselves towards anything that can make us feel like we belong. But ultimately we cannot belong to anything unless we belong to ourselves first. Without a connection to ourselves, what are we bringing with us into situations or relationships?

188. When we connect to the sacredness within us all we realise that there is so much more than self, we get to feel a level of multidimensionality where we are part of something bigger and we all play a key part in it in reflecting our unique qualities to each other and working in harmony and the benefit of the all.

189. What you have presented here is huge Joel. That we first need to know ourselves and belong to ourselves before we can be part of anything else is groundbreaking. As you have shared, we often try to belong to different groups or activities to ‘find ourselves’ or find the place where we belong, without every truly connecting to who we are. Once we connect to who we are we can then take this to all that we do.

190. Just love the blog Joel, it describes just how it is.

191. “I belong to myself” is such a great thing to claim for ourselves. We have to back ourselves no matter what and stop this age-old behaviour that many of us have of giving our power away to others.

192. When we belong to ourselves first of all, we come to realise that in fact we belong to the whole, that we are much grander than our individual selves and that our particles belong to the universe.

193. I was desperate to belong but was scared by how strong this need was in me. I knew my need to belong was misplaced when I looked to what was around me. I knew all that was on offer wasn’t it though I tried hard to ignore this and the emptiness underlying my attempts to belong. Now it’s time to be honest and belong to me because that’s a treasure only I can connect with.

194. It is natural to want to belong – but belong to what is the question? In our quest to belong, we often fall for the familiarity and comfort of going along with the status quo, that more often than not is not true to our natural state of being.

195. ‘I can work with clients and the quality of the work can mean more than any pay cheque.’

     This is the key to enjoy work, and working in a way that is fulfilling and rejuvenating. This doesn’t mean that high earning can’t be made, but when we make any job about the quality of our work we begin to actually want to be at work.

196. Having tried and tried to fit in to many different groups only to find that I had to change myself to be accepted never quite gelled with me, it always seemed such an effort. When you belong to yourself there is no effort required.

197. Brotherhood is a beautiful impulse and many of us are looking for it. It is great when true brotherhood then happens.

198. Without that foundation of belonging to ourselves first, we are just chasing this ideal of how we imagine things are better somewhere else. This is a great blog Joel. It shows us how we have chased that ideal if we have not solidly laid the foundation of belonging to ourselves first. Our first duty is that deep love and care of ourselves.

199. Beautiful Joel, it is what we all want, belonging to our self, to the life we choose to live. Not the life that is imposed on us by all external forces to not feel the separation from the life we are supposed to live.

200. Belonging to life, belonging to me, great connection and commitment Joel.

201. This beautifully highlights that belonging to yourself, that is your true self by simply honouring what is true of you and your body, is naturally a way of belong with God.

202. I can say I too fought what Universal Medicine presented – because
     I was being asked to take responsibility for my choices and how I was living, and no group or person or arrangement I could join was going to truly change life as I knew it and the possibility of what I now know to be a constantly evolving life.

203. Yes, I just want to belong to something when I disconnected from who I am. We are always belonging to God and so as well to our brothers and sisters here on earth. If we do not feel this, we off cause miss it, but it is our choice to be with the truth – or create an illusionary need by disconnecting to truth and than looking for a solution.

204. ‘Belonging to me’ as my first responsible ‘membership’ has meant that I can then start to belong in humanity and whatever my days/work/relationships offer up.

205. So true, Joel. The greatest gift in the world is to commit to a relationship with ourselves, only to discover that by loving ourselves we re-connect back to a love that has always been within us because we are intrinsically a part of God. Then and only then can we truly love others, and it comes naturally to us because we see and feel them as part of the same stupendous love that we come from.

     1. Hear! Hear!
        This is the foundation for true freedom in relationships, hence not based on a need but on the fullness of one’s own connection.

     2. Yes, then it is a joy to meet people.

206. As the temptation to fit in and join up to various social ‘clubs’ to comply, has diminished, my life has expanded beyond these confines to see a much bigger picture that not only supports me from the inside out, but has also opened me up to relating to and understanding the world.

207. This sentence just brings it on home Joel ‘I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.’ – this is what makes complete and utter sense and all the things that we have joined along the way to find truth simple cannot exist in this equalises. When I stop and consider the grandness of God and what he is responsible for and then I reflect on me and how I Am a Son of God. Really there is no excuse what so ever for us not to be equal and sharing the Divine Light that we are for All.

208. Kids know what you write about Joel because they live like they belong to themselves. Ever watch a young child playing with themselves? They are content because they have themselves to play with and then whatever imaginary world they create – but they are with themselves first and foremost. They belong to themselves. But slowly we lose that connection and we start wanting to fit in, the find that sense of belonging. And then we forget that we had that connection in the first place and we look for it everywhere else and in everything else.

     It is now only through the presentations of Serge Benhayon are we re-learning that connection to ourselves is the foundation on which to live life. To belong to ourselves, first and foremost. And from that connection we go out to the world. And you want to know how to re-build that connection? Start taking care of yourself, great care…..like you would take care of a baby. And watch the magic that can occur when you live a life in connection and belonging to yourself.

209. Another creative article that’s full of wisdom, thanks Joel

210. Love re-visiting this blog Joel. A beautiful reminder that our truest and constant friend is always within and we have ‘no need to belong’ as we are already there, even if unrealised at the time.
     “I wanted to belong to life but really, really, really wanted, and now belong, to me”.

211. Belonging to something outside ourself does not work in my experience, it is about connecting with ourself and what is within, from here we can connect with everyone and everything.

212. ‘Needing to belong’ is the phrase that struck me whilst reading your blog Joel. As you have so wisely pointed out finding a place within ones-self is the key thus connecting to our essence, love and inner wisdom.

213. Exhaustion is a huge factor amongst people – and the sales in coffee is a pretty clear indicator that we are very tired. To me, the searching and seeking for love or something outside of ourselves is a very tiresome journey and one that only brings back to where you started. Perhaps this is the reason for our exhaustion.

214. I too have spent a long time trying to belong with friends, family and pretty much anyone. I thought belonging was being liked by people and I did anything I possibly could for that to occur and be a reality. But, the reality is, that of course I was wanting to belong to myself and be content knowing who I am. This has totally taken the ‘trying’ out of life for me and all I need to do now is surrender to the fact that I belong to so much more then I realise; like the stars, the universe, and the world wide family here on earth. When we are connected we can feel it all – and the all meaning everything that we are connected to.

215. The “join me “ energy is very enticing hooking us into a false sense of belonging, never truly satisfying the need to belong. Without a solid foundation of self-love and self-worth we often seek a sense of belonging outside of us when true connection with ourselves is missing.

216. Another wonderful blog thank you Joel, and I love that you have now established ‘A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.’

217. This blog talks about the inner dynamics of wanting to fit in and belong and what we loose when we do this.

218. “consider belonging to me before I could really feel belonging with others.” There’s the rub!

219. Trying to fit in at school was excessively painful for me. It never felt easy. I never accepted myself, that was the issue.

220. I felt left out of the group, as a child, in adult life I realised it was I who put myself there because it suited me to make myself feel small. If I was small nothing would be expected of me, I wouldn’t have to take responsibility.

221. Join me said God, but we walked away and are now feeling that separation from the divine love we come from. Re-connecting back to my essence is joining me in full, this is still a work in progress. After 12 years of being a student of The Livingness, as I deepen my connection with God my understanding is that I am re-joining him.

222. It is so interesting to reconnect to me, and it is so simple but after 12 years of being a student of The Way of The Livingness my relationship with myself is still a work in progress.

223. Isn’t it interesting how its possible to react so strongly to a way of living and a teaching that is simply asking you to be yourself (Universal Medicine). And yet we are so willing to join all these things that ask us to be something else?!

224. Longing to belong is a sure sign we are missing our connection to God.

225. The constant fatigue that plaques society tells us that something is not natural about the way we are living.

226. The belong and the won’t belong in life. I watch myself at different points of life and see that I can say I don’t belong to this club for this reason and I don’t belong to this group for that reason etc. What I find is that there are all these subtle ‘belongs’ or contracts you could say in almost every conversation or even look. What I am talking or looking at someone for, am I after them to like me, talk to me, see me, ignore me etc etc. There is a way to speak, look and live that is void of these belongs or contracts but that doesn’t mean they disappear, they are still there but you just see them and don’t go into them. More and more I am seeing the little ‘belongs’ I set up around me to make myself better or worse depending on the flavour. What I come back to is leaving the world outside and not bringing it into me to make me different and then answer from there. The world needs to hear what I feel and my dedication is to feeling what is me and feeling what is not.

227. Joel – I too had been searching to belong to life believing it was outside of myself, in the doing. However, this just resulted in me feeling exhausted, empty inside and disillusioned in life.
     But this all changed once I learnt that it is in the connection to ourselves first and God that makes all the difference to our life and relationships. The search is now over as I have found me within.

     1. I’ll join you in that !!

228. It is so interesting to look back over my life at all the things I denied about myself, or what felt true to me, simply in an attempt to belong to something. It is so amazing to now feel that I belong to me, first and foremost, that I am true to me, and therefore I no longer long to belong. Simple.

229. It is interesting for read this line – ‘I was tired to my bones, tired to a place that all of my efforts amounted to naught and all I was left with were the things that “took the edge off.”’I know so many times in the past pre Universal Medicine I would been exhausted; so once making choices that were going to support this connection with yourself and Life this is where I got to feel how incredible we actually are.

230. I have tried to belong to all those things as well, Joel, and there was always an emptiness in what I was doing as none of those things actually connected to my innermost part nor that of any of the other participants I suspect. The searching is such a distraction especially when we realise that it was right here all along!

231. The most painful thing when you are asked to consider belonging to you is to realise how far away you are from that point, it is enough to walk away again.

232. Seeking to belong seems to come from an innate knowing that we are all actually part of something together, but that we have lost the connection to that oneness, and instead try to make up a poor substitute echoed in tribes, clans, sporting clubs, nationalism, and religious insitutions. This however only entrenches the sense of separation that we live or rather exist and survive under. It has never worked for mankind. But here we have the opportunity to once more connect to that which we have inside that is inclusive of all, and beholding of all – and in that we get to know who we truly are.

233. This is such a gorgeous line Joel, ‘I wanted to belong to life but really, really, really wanted, and now belong, to me’… If what underlies the common desires to fit in and ‘belong to life’ is actually the desire to belong to ourselves, then perhaps instead of getting caught up in trying to address issues, attachments or addictions on a surface level we should look at why we are wanting to join that consciousness rather than connect to ourselves.

234. I have belonged to sports clubs, teams, and various groups, I was always looking for that feeling of belonging, but nothing really made me feel like I truly belonged, it was good for recognition and acceptance and getting to know people on a superficial level. Now through Universal Medicine I have found a way of life that doesn’t rely on recognition or acceptance and the only thing I need to be is myself.

235. Joel I loved reading this blog, it rang so true for me too. I now know that when we seek to belong we are allowing ourselves to be owned by others or an organisation, now I am just being me with no need to belong anywhere else.

236. All of these things we join to complete ourselves is like a puzzle with a thousand pieces. We get down to the last piece to complete and find it is missing. We search everywhere; we look in other puzzles we have done before. At times we find a piece that looks right and almost fits but is just not the one. In the end, when we find the missing piece…it was always staring at us from the mirror.

237. I know that sense of wanting to belong. It comes from a deeply insecure place that is yearning for recognition and love. I was never part of the ‘in’ crowd, therefore I never felt that I ‘belonged’. It was a blessing that led me to get to know myself better and learn how to feel ok with myself without belonging. Ironically, deepening my connection with myself has enabled me to feel that I belong. I belong to me, I belong to my soul, I belong to humanity. It is all within me, and there is no need to go searching for that sense of belonging.

238. Belonging to life removes all wanting.

239. If we are looking to belong, to be liked, to be accepted, there are many solutions out there, but none of them are true or bring what we really want. When we start with loving, honouring and accepting ourselves, we have a joyful foundation to live from that doesn’t need recognition from others.

240. Belonging is in interesting word to ponder on. I know throughout life, similar to you Joel, I sought to feel like I belonged somewhere. In careers, to groups and to other people. What I have found is that, when I live from my soul, I have always belonged. That is my eternal connection to everything and everyone. When I live this and feel this I know that this has always been this way. When I feel like I don’t belong I feel empty and lonely. I know now that if I feel this way then I am off track and not myself and that I have been making choices that have allowed that. It’s a great learning and something that I am constantly working with. But having this awareness is gold in my pocket.

241. Aspects of life are forever asking us to ‘join’ in in some way. But this ‘joining’ is often not a union or relationship that evolves, but rather, an enjoining to avoid evolution.

242. Universal Medicine Teachings presents truth to the very core and that can be exposing if we have lived our lives in protection and emptiness from not dealing with our hurts and presenting to the world something that just ticks the boxes. Accepting and living our own quality is the only way forth, it is nothing about being perfect but just being responsible for our bodies and the quality of relationship we have with ourselves and others around us.

243. When it feels like everything is spinning out of control and sometimes it is, I now know I can come back to me, connect and see what reflections are being offered. I don’t need to join anything anymore. And because of that I can be part of everything.

244. The endless diversions and distractions we allow to be fostered and lusted after don’t seem to make us sustainably happy- the emptiness remains within.

245. I remember looking for truth in life in all the wrong places. eventually I found everything I was looking for in me.

246. Belonging to life comes at one huge cost. Our whole body and being is the only place we truly feel like we belong.

247. We have by all means all the wisdom that we need to break out of our cultural, familiar and religious prisons. We built them ourselves so we know the escape route by heart.

248. You sum up the human condition – constantly barking up the wrong tree, searching for that elusive thing that will make us feel at home, with a sense of true belonging, when in fact it’s within us all along and starts with simply being Me.

249. ‘I was tired to my bones, tired to a place that all of my efforts amounted to naught…’ Not being ourselves is tiring – I have found it to be so as well. It takes A LOT of energy to deviate from our natural selves.

250. ‘…all I was left with were the things that “took the edge off.’ We head to all substances and activities that (supposedly) make life bearable: tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, food, TV, sex, busy-ness, relationships, drama and so on (the activities associated with having ‘enjoined’ something included) – anything we can draw on to distract, dull, entertain. Yet in the end we discover these diversions are not ‘it’ either.

251. Those words “Join me” are plenty powerful – I can feel the allure of satisfying the need to belong, to feel part of the pack or the crowd… None of which, as you say Joel, has anything to do with “belonging to me” first and foremost. It explains the popularity of clubs, institutions, associations and groups of all and many kinds, and why we flock to things en masse in seeming solidarity, such as sporting events. Yet without a solid platform of self-worth and love from which to spring, these things can only ever be panaceas for what really ails us – the missing connection with ourselves.

252. There won’t be many who can honestly say that at first, there was not one iota of doubting or feeling uncomfortable with the message presented by Serge Benhayon. This only reflects the attachment to a way of life that Joel describes so well. Yet at the same time if that doubt or discomfort can be put to one side and the wisdom felt for what it is, we can feel how it immediately speaks to the core of who we are, feels confirming of something deeply known and reawakens the potential of how life can be lived for all. Some may grab this with both hands and fly with it, some with one hand and be pulled along, and others may let go and even abjectly and profusely reject that knowing because of the hurt it triggered of not claiming it and living it up until that point. But all these choices can be clearly and simply understood as acceptance or rejection of oneself first and foremost – not the message or the messenger.

253. That which is offered in the energy of “join me” is never going to allow us to truly belong as it comes from separation to begin with. True belonging only ever comes from feeling whole.

254. I know that feeling of wanting to belong to something and I searched high and low and my ache for it didn’t ever wain until I found how to connect deeply within myself. As you say Joel, we belong to us.

255. ‘I wanted to belong to life but really, really, really wanted, and now belong, to me.’ So beautifully said Joel. What a long winding road it is back home to ourselves, when we were here all along.

256. We want our cake and to eat it too, but this way of being is just not true. Our whole life is set up to substitute the connection we naturally have where we belong to everything in this world. This connection is there and available, free of change yet we fight against this way every day. Funny how we have this picture Joel that Love will make everything easy for us. Yet it actually does, but our spirit is so keen to go the other way.

257. ’I wanted to belong to life so I looked around at what was on offer.’ – Put like that, it makes me realise that we ’shop’ around whatever is on offer. If we started to list every thing that is on offer like you exemplified so brilliantly here, the list would not ever stop. There is always something on offer that is ready to take us away from ourselves – crazy, when we know that THAT is what we truly want to belong to.

258. ’It has been challenging at times, it has taken commitment, my life is not and will never be perfect, but I can meet with family and friends and that meeting is what I appreciate more than any food we eat. I can work with clients and the quality of the work can mean more than any pay cheque.’ – I couldn’t agree more Joel, I too am consistently learning to value the quality of the connections that I have in my life, no difference if it is private or work related.

259. Stunning blog Joel. It highlights how most of humanity are searching for something to belong to whether it be for the good of others or not. But when we’re searching outside we are missing what is right under our nose – us.

260. Like you Joel I was always searching outside of myself to find fulfilment without realising that I already had all the answers. When we seek in distraction we can’t see the wood for the trees, but as soon as we connect we become more settled in our body and aware of the wisdom within. To come home to ourselves is indeed a blessing.

261. We are universal and belong to this, the all that encompasses us all equally as one.

262. Beautiful Joel, living is about responsibility to ourselves and in that to all others equally – and if we make that choice to connect to ourselves and live from that place, then we realise that we naturally belong to the all.

263. How interesting is it how many things we want to belong to in order to feel community but lack the awareness of the depths those connections can go to when we first have that connection with ourselves.

264. The tiredness you describe Joel is an epidemic in society today. Everyone is tired and at the same time considering this to be normal — people have resigned themselves to believing this is a normal way to be. When we choose to belong to ourselves first, not to give ourselves away to the demands and expectations of another, to the ideals and beliefs we are asked from young to subscribe to, we are nourished from within us like nothing else. Instead of feeling tired and drained we are replenished from the inside out in an amazing way.

265. Knowing we come from oneness but settling for belonging creates that deep tiredness and life weariness that Joel speaks of. We know in every cell of our body that belonging isn’t ‘it’, so it takes an enormous effort to play the game and pretend to ourselves and others that belonging is enough.

266. Belonging is one of the strongest selling points of all the major religions. Without that sense of community, I feel many people would find little in the organized religions that actually activates and nurtures their relationship with God.

267. I noticed at a resilience training recently that there is a big focus on connection and belonging. It was proposed that if you are struggling in life, that one of the solutions is to join something, be it a sports club, community or hobby group, any one of the groups that Joel has listed in this blog. However as Joel has so beautifully shown, without the connection with our self first, these groups will only be distractions and the ache to connect within will remain.

268. What a gorgeous blog. The subject of belonging goes deep for all of us, even those who appear to reject belonging. To me it is a cheap substitute for oneness, the natural feeling of being one with other people, the environment, God and the universe. Most of us live unaware and disconnected from this oneness, thinking that we are an individual ant running around the ant farm of life. This creates an ache inside, as we cannot be other than oneness without feeling a huge loss.

269. I am learning this too and can feel the difference it makes in my day of not trying to fit in or please but just of being me. I find I am less tired at the end of the day as I haven’t left myself throughout the day.

270. Connecting to our essential nature, a place where we are all equal and naturally in union and brotherhood is the true home we are searching for.

271. I too find that it is immensely exhausting to be continuously chasing out of needs and trying to wear the mantle of myriads of things we have decided to belong to. In comparison when there is that connection with that “place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always” I feel more and more alive and vital which I can naturally share with everyone.

272. We do each belong to life and are innately connected to everyone within it, it is when we forget this and think we are operating alone that we feel empty or alone, and we go searching for a ‘belonging’ outside of ourselves.

273. The Way of The Livingness is the only religion I know that places God equal to us – hence God’s responsibility equal to ours.

274. The odd thing is that when we choose to belong to ourselves and express from that belonging, that there’s a completely different relationship with the communities / clubs we belonged to. The relationship might deepen, but often will fall apart as in the light of truth, all falsenesses are exposed.

275. Joel, I can so relate to this, ‘ I wanted to belong to life so I looked around at what was on offer.’ I can remember choosing certain things to belong to; clubs, certain friendship groups, I tried lots of different hobbies – all wanting to belong, but I always felt lost and empty and never that I really found anything satisfying or fulfilling, that was until I came across Universal Medicine and realised that what I was looking for all along was inside me, I was already complete and had all the answers myself, I just needed to re-connect to my innermost and to live from here and so my journey began, this time inwardly rather than searching outside of myself and it has been amazing and beautiful, a return to me and my natural joy, wisdom and loveliness.

276. “I did not belong to me”. When I reflect back on my life before meeting Serge Benhayon I can definitely make this statement too. I tried to belong in so many ways, but always felt like an outsider and felt very sad as a result.. In having learned what it means to live connected to myself and to begin deeply to appreciate what is there I can now finally claim that I belong to myself too with less and less need for anything outside to fill the love that I wasn’t giving myself…

277. Life teaches us to always look outside of answers – the latest diet, make up, clothes, skin care, car, technology etc. What is beautiful is discovering that everything is there within you and nothing else is needed.

278. Everything falls into place when we belong to ourselves first and foremost.

279. We look outside for all the things we can belong to, in attempts to feel a connection back to ourselves. Universal Medicine teachings completely and clearly change our understanding that, in truth, all we are really missing is what’s already inside us, sitting waiting for us to come back to it.

280. “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.” How wonderful Joel to have found that place exists within you, as it does within all of us, and that we all have access to it if we so choose.

281. What a beautiful blog and unfolding learning simply to belong to Me I love it. So true and real and a way of living that encompasses us all that is True Religion, `Universal Medicine is leading the way to God ourselves and humanity as a whole with true health, vitality, wellness, honesty and love that we all are.

282. Ones own religious way of life provides a belonging that no other institution, club, group or society can provide for us. This way of life leads us to the true sense of belonging, the bigger picture and towards brotherhood with each other.

283. Joel one of the most empowering and challenging things i faced when first re-connecting with the work of Universal Medicine was around relationships, as you say “I joined and belonged to the relationship – but not to me.” For my entire life I had never belonged to me, yet had made my life about belonging to relationships. If they did not work I was devastated, and I came to understand that was because there was no “me”, no relationship with myself which meant the relationships with others were bound to fail as I was seeking what I was missing in another. I read so many books saying how thats what relationships were about and it was only after a chat with Serge Benhayon did I start to consider anything different. Yet it makes complete sense, that you have to first belong to you before anything.

284. This is something to really appreciate – I had always a ‘need to belong’ and I no longer do, because I have a connection and honouring of a sacredness, stillness and knowing of my essence, soul and God within me. The search is over, and it was with me all along. And so now I live religiously, and am committed to working through the layers I have accumulated in the false search and the imagined hurts of losing this connection that has never been lost.

285. And by the way, Serge Benhayon has never, ever, ever said “Join me”!!

286. This is the nub of it ALL. Which is why our spirits have created a world so perfectly and expertly designed to do any and everything possible to stop us from belonging to ourselves. The list of things that I have tried or wanted to belong to is almost endless…to have been inspired to walk away from all of this by Universal Medicine and to see, feel and know the truth of belonging to me and the purpose of then taking that out to the world has rendered almost all (not yet all!) of that list now seem like such futile and facile distractions. It is, as a small example, amazing to sit on a plane and flick through an in-flight magazine that sells lush holidays, fancy cars, swanky clothes, genius gizmos and all sorts…and not feel any pull, pang or desire. I thank first Universal Medicine and then myself. I also thank you Joel for expressing with such clarity, conviction and honesty.

287. Joel, your articles are inspirational, joy and commitment shines out from them. I can feel them waking up and inspiring a fullness of expression and commitment in my own knowing of God through your words and sharing.

288. I have been reflecting on that place ‘inside’ I am familiar with it now and it can not be taken away or reinterpreted by anyone else, it is what it is, a connection with my essence, a religious knowing and living. What is also beautiful about it, is that I have always known it, in some way. When I reflect, the way I live now, religiously is the choice to take the layers off that have hidden the shine, but my connection has always been there.

289. I was challenged when I encountered Universal Medicine, “Universal Medicine presented it was important to care about me, it said to consider belonging to me before I could really feel belonging with others.” I became aware that the fury I was feeling at this wonderful refection being offered was my own self fury of not living as I could live. It is confronting to know and feel that all I needed is within. I feel it and know it for myself and I know that Universal Medicine shined a light that I responded to.

290. Gosh this blog really brings it home of the many ways we try to belong and desperately try to connect to each other, but without realising that the most vital ingredient is our own connection first. I suppose this is why many people can still feel lonely in a crowd or even within a marriage, because the connection is missing with themselves first and other people second.

291. “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.” What a powerful statement of claiming oneself, responsibility and of belonging to life. I do not feel it could be said with any greater conviction.

292. It is interesting that so many of those things which ask us to join them in order to have a sense of belonging are opposed to those things that others will join such as religions, sports teams, political parties etc. This is the direct opposite of that which we truly come from, is our natural way of being – Brotherhood. It is no coincidence that opposition, separation and ultimately conflict arise from the desire to belong to something other than our own nature and that the options of how to achieve this are so readily available in our society.

293. And may I add that your photo emanates love and joy – and that was truly felt.

294. Well Joel, that’s just beautifully said. Like so many people, I sought things outside of myself to ‘find myself’. And that will be an endless search. Amazing that it’s within you the whole time. I really like how you expressed it in such a tangible way, awesome.

295. “Universal Medicine presented it was important to care about me, it said to consider belonging to me before I could really feel belonging with others.” This was such a revelation for me Joel, a real life changing moment. We are raised with such strong indoctrinations of putting others first before our own needs and that this is the right way to live. Yet all that happens is we lose touch with our selves and because we miss this nurturing inner connection, we then expend a great deal of energy searching for it in the outside world. Universal Medicine brings us home to the fact that until we have built a strong loving relationship with ourselves, then we will never truly build that with anyone else. And not only does Universal Medicine offer us this immutable wisdom, it then provides us all the tools and support we need in order to heal, re-build and then deepen our connection so that the love we offer other people arises from a living source of genuine respect, nurture and love.

296. Wanting to belong can be the impulse for true brotherhood and we accept what is available, even when it is far from true brotherhood, like drinking buddies.

297. Wanting to belong is the driving force behind much of life. It drives everything from fashion to culture, and explains a great deal why as a society we do not speak out more often against that which is not true.

298. The “join me” scenario that I know well. Feeling that empty, strange almost panic of being alone in a group of people and so I kept joining and joining until my wallet was full of membership cards. Then the feeling would come again, almost a pain and you would need something else. This feeling was never settled until I turned back to have a look at what it was about, inspired by Universal Medicine. Now I “join me” differently because I don’t need to join but instead choose to join and when I walk away I feel the same, steady and just enjoying wherever I am. Life is a lot more personal than we make it, in fact you could say it’s all of me or you and what we feel and what we choose. Thanks Joel.

299. ‘tiredness you feel is the result of avoiding that power’ I can relate to resisting the truth of this but what a truth to comprehend! All my best efforts to succeed in life according to the mental images, ideals and beliefs I was chasing amounted to nothing. Why not admit this and let go and allow my natural power to unfold and express? All my old ways have only undermined who I am. Why not return me to me?

300. I love this blog Joel. We all have that need of ‘wanting to belong’ to something, whether it is in a realtionship, a family, a group of friends, being in a sports team, a band or simply feeling generally accepted in life. But what you are sharing here is so true, that what we really want is to belong to ourselves, and way too often do we dismiss the fact that this is even a possibility. It is with great and deep appreciation that I too eventually came to understand this through the teachings of Universal Medicine, and although there is more to uncover, I am accepting that I do belong to me first and foremost, and I no longer feel there is something missing in my life.

301. True religion and a religious way of life is belonging to ourselves first of all, honouring and living in a way where we deeply care for who we are. We then soon discover that God is not outside of ourselves, he is found within and that there is no need for a search outwardly to find that which dwells within our inner-heart.

302. Reading this blog for the third time I realise how much I also love my connections to other people and to life. I can also feel that there’s a stubbornness in me, trying to make me think that this is actually the opposite. But boy oh boy do I love people, the more people I let in, the more I can feel the differences in the Love they carry. In everyone’s love, but it’s up to me to connect to this love. And surrender to the fact that I love to love. That I’m naturally a very loving man.

303. When we make our belonging to not be about that which is external to us, we discover the Kingdom that lies within and when we connect with this we cannot help but belong to the All.

304. Finding that place with-in me that no one else can touch or question is one of the amazing understandings that Universal Medicine has presented. This really does turn any need to belong on its head.

305. I remember on sunny summer British days when the whole world was out and about and I didn’t have anything planned, or friends to be with. I had an overwhelming sense of missing out and not knowing what to do with myself. I was constantly looking outside of myself for something more to fill my inner gap. Then came Universal Medicine and all I needed was to connect to me on the inside…then I found such a precious belonging, by belonging to me, that I no longer had to search for ‘the more’ elsewhere!

306. I love your style of writing/expressing Joel. Your words are full of sparkling gold dust reflecting a warm glow back to my inner heart. Simply exquisite to read, like a masterpiece of art waiting for humanity to hang on their wall to remind us where we belong, to ourselves our inner most.

307. We need to commit to life but never forget that we belong to the divine, when we lose that connection life becomes empty and a rat race, a survival, which can become quite ugly at times and which we experience more and more in the world.

308. This blog has brought up an old memory from childhood, Joel, when I desperately wanted friends to join my club. I used to read ‘Secret Seven’ and Famous Five’ books about exclusive little groups of children who didn’t let others into their group and had adventures together. Now I know it was because I had lost my connection to myself that I really wanted to belong in the group, feeling this now gives me a great release from old sadness thank you.

309. “… a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.” This is gorgeous Joel. I can feel the self love, joy, warmth and nurturing in the last 5 words very palpably. In loving being with you you invite all others to love your company too and to love themselves in the same way.

310. “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.” True power claimed – awesome Joel!

311. Another corker Joel. Super profound but delivered in utter simplicity. I wanted to belong to me too but kept thinking the answer lay out there! Coming home to myself has been a challenge at times too but enormously worth it as I realise just how beautiful, delicate and gorgeous I am. Knowing this to the bone and learning to live this claimed has turned things around.

312. To belong to yourself – a powerful choice in a world where everyone wants to belong to everyone else – if we are all fitting in, what are we fitting in to? Knowing first and foremost who you are in the world, sets you up to handle all aspects of life.

313. Joel- I love the way you have highlighted life with the never-ending calls of “Join Me”- I can definitely relate wanting to belong and be accepted – at home, being the 4th sibling I was often not taken notice of; friendship groups, aerobic group, walking group, church, church choir, spiritual groups and list goes on.. all seeking outside of myself what I eventually realised was within me all the time.

314. Ah Mary you have hit the nail square on the head when you say that ‘By tuning into our bodies rather than our minds connects us back to the divine oneness we all come from and actually all yearn to be once again’, which then begs the question, how is it that the world seems to be set up to deliberately keep us in our heads and away from our bodies? When I look around it’s hardly possible to imagine that the world could be orchestrated any more than it already is to keep us in separation from who we innately are.

     1. What you have written Mary and Alexis is so true. With the world so strongly structured to keep us in our minds it can be difficult to accept that there is a different way: that true intelligence and wisdom is found through our body

315. “I wanted to belong to life..” but you discovered that it’s belonging to your innermost …”a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always…” Brilliant! Stop, Connect and you are home, no more looking out to ‘life’ to feel that sense of belonging.

316. It seems we have to accept ourselves before anything, if we accept our selves we can belong to ourselves.

317. We are not taught that we already are everything we need to be and that the most important thing is for us to connect with and treasure our gorgeous selves, from this appreciation and joy, we get to treasure everyone else, equally so. How different the world will be when this is reinforced from birth, because we do know this when we come into this world, but everything is set up to take us away from this knowing-ness.

318. When I enjoy being in my own skin I feel so much more confident and prepared to handle any situation.

319. Isn’t it fascinating that what Universal Medicine offers and presents is the greatest gift, the thing we all long for ever so deeply, but that there will be those who attack and throw the worst type of accusations and abuse towards Universal Medicine and its philosophy, religion and science. It is the attack on ourselves, on humanity, the attack on the very essence of who we are. We will defend to the hilt the meagre existence we have crafted — anything not to feel the devastating pain of leaving our inner glory, what we so deeply miss, in the first place.

320. I love this Joel. “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question.”
     Something to celebrate for sure, I am with you.

321. Joel, the line you share about being equal to God and equal to the responsibility of being this light, jumped out at me. Too many years of not living I have played the lesser than card, and can feel the strong hold that it can have over me so I don’t have to take responsibility and stay in my comfort easy way of life. Universal Medicine inspires us to Be All of who we Are and live the fullness of this Light and not to dull it. The switch that keeps going on and off like a techno rave is starting to shift and the Light is getting steadier and brighter.

322. Divine Joel. I can feel so much warmth in your comment about your equalness to God and I felt you held all of us equally there, no one less.

323. I belong to me. It was so much easier to choose to belong to something else when I did not like myself but now that I do, I do not need the confirmation from all these other things in life to confirm who I am.

324. True Joel, there is ‘belonging’ and then there is Belonging. It’s not about the group or the membership, but about a religious way of life that confirms we belong to something far greater.

325. The only difference between the distractions of drugs, alcohol, partying etc. and getting lost in the ‘family life’, being a good academic or successful business person is how they dress up their ‘join me’s. In essence, if we use something for checking out, or if its purpose is to take us away from ourselves, then it is an illusion, and it’s so important to start speaking up and exposing the illusions that dress themselves up in nice wrapping and ribbons, as they are the most sinister and easy to get caught up in.

326. The greatest barrier for me has been to truly, really, deeply, lovingly take care of myself but until I did (an ongoing deepening project by the way) I was completely unfit for all that I did do, however grand the intention.

327. As we are in fact belonging to the Universe the stars do not have to call “Join me” because they know that it is so. Our bodies, which can’t deny our connection to the Universe, reflect us very well when we are not living this connection/belonging, when we live against our belonging…. We are looking so hard for our belonging and thereby ignore, or even trample under foot, the expressed belonging from our bodies.

328. Me too, I tried it this way, to find me in the belonging to my friends, family or whoever. but found that by the connection to me and my evolving first, I am naturally connected to all others because we are all connected (when we are connected 😉 ).

329. Why do we look out side of ourselves, especially when over the years we can see time and again that the constant searching, the constant trying to be something other is exhausting. It gets into all sorts of awkward situations. It is not as complicated as its made out to be, which is why we see kids naturally being themselves, and we simply have to remember to do just that… be ourselves.

330. I can feel that the ‘wanting’ to belong to life comes from a need to belong to something from not being in touch with our true way of being. Once reconnected to there is no need.

331. There’s an amazing feeling of freedom and joy in finding a sense of belonging within ourselves. It puts an end to the constant searching for that elusive something ‘out there’.

332. The majority of people on this planet totally belong to one consciousness or another, whether it be sport or religion, although sport is a lot of people’s religion, so the concept of belonging to oneself first is something that totally has to be shared along with having a religious way of life that places God and us on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of ourselves and the world

     1. Gosh yes! What about the consciousnesses we belong to! And I would say with most of these it is not done with absolute awareness of what we are doing. This takes it to a whole other level and helps us to see there is so much at ‘play’ here than what we currently choose to feel and see.

333. Reading the headline, I posed myself the question do I belong to life or do I belong to me? I realized that often I live like I would belong to me, instead of truly appreciating me with everything that I bring to life. This is a great reminder to put the focus even more on how I am living, what I am thinking, in which quality I am expressing myself.

334. Universal Medicine has taught me that any kind of taste is worth to be discerned. Does the taste serve to lose myself in distraction or does it serve to reconnect deeper to my Soul? The tastes, you describe Joel, are so familiar to many of us: sport, friends, family, institutionalized religion… but for most they serve the outer, not the inner.

335. I just love reading your blogs, Joel, the way you share is so colourful, vibrant and real.
     ‘I wanted to belong to life but really, really, really wanted, and now belong, to me.’ ….. me too.

336. How I have longed to belong in life – and how I have thought that somehow all those things – the clubs and groups, the hobbies and interests, the partners and fitting the picture of the perfect life would deliver me the settlement and belonging I was seeking. What I have discovered is that it becomes an endless cycle of seeking until such a time that we choose to look within and find that all we needed was there all along.

337. ‘I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.’ The cheek of it all – fancy putting yourself on an equal footing with God!! Seriously though, what a great reclaiming this is. Many institutionalised religions would see us as lesser beings, and, while it is true we often behave in ways that demonstrate our lesser, human ways, we are in truth no less that God. Our task is to return to that Godliness.

338. ‘It presented the power is in you but that tiredness you feel is the result of avoiding that power…’. Joel this is a critical point you share and thank you for doing so. My understanding is that avoiding our own power can have quite damaging consequences for the body, tiredness being just the start point or marker; adrenal exhaustion and or auto-immune conditions the potential end result.

339. ‘I wanted to belong to life and to begin with, hated what Universal Medicine presented.’ Love your honesty here Joel! It didn’t work that way for me but I know it did for many others upon happening on Universal Medicine. What Universal Medicine presents can challenge everything we’ve ever known or believed or thought to be true… often our entire basis for life. My feeling is it’s important to examine those ‘ways we do things around here’ because they might not be ways that support us on any level – they might just be received and societally or culturally sanctified ideals and beliefs.

     1. It didn’t quite work for me that way either, however, I’ve definitely found myself reacting to quite a lot of what has been presented by Universal Medicine over the years and what I’ve learnt in that is the importance of understanding why I’m reacting and what exactly I’m reacting too. I would not have a reaction at all unless there was truth being presented to me. So it’s all great learning if I’m willing to be honest.

340. Wanting to belong is so appealing because it is innate in us to belong, its natural. When we are truly connected, aligned to our hearts, we know we belong to something much bigger than our local footy team.
     One problem is that our mind perceives this belonging as something that we get from the outside, husband, being a mother, church and thus the seeker, and the one that is forever trying to belong is born.

     What’s brilliant is when someone realises that they are in “The Matrix” and calls out the lie of this false belonging, in this revolutionary state, all that look on have a choice to free themselves too, or turn the other cheek, this blog is a “Matrix” moment and I appreciate that you take the time to share your pearls with us.

341. I have often been told not to use the word hate. It is such a harsh word, so strong! So Joel, I love that you used it, because I can totally understand. When I first heard a few of the presentations by Serge Benhayon I fully reacted and didn’t like what I heard, solely because it shook so many of the ideals and beliefs that I had. It inspired me to feel all the choices I had made and many were not so pretty, but boy oh boy am I glad I had the chance to get the wake up call, the reaction and the opportunity to see through so many ideals and beliefs that I had been living in without ever questioning.

342. So many of us I am sure can relate to that wanting to belong to something and not be left out. I realised that this has been the case for me, and because I was afraid I would be rejected I never let myself be a part of any group, I held myself back to a certain degree and that was due to the fact that I had never really accepted myself, appreciated my self and most of all loved myself. So for about 30 years of my life I was not loving me or even realising that I was part of the picture, I was always focused on others instead of seeing me and my role in the whole. Now, thanks to Universal Medicine, Serge Benhayon and the Ancient Wisdom teachings I can understand the bigger picture and how my relationship with me is where it all begins, and how I am with me is then how I can be with others. If I hold back or am shut down with myself, this is then how I am or should I say, how I was with others.

343. We all want to belong and we all want connection. Sometimes, if not most often, we are misguided into what we want to belong and connect to.

344. Gorgeous Joel. Once upon a time I thought that the concept of “belonging to me” or in fact doing anything for me was selfish. I thought we had to make ourselves available for others. In part that is true in that we are here in service, for the service of humanity. Yet I am not able to offer the service humanity is worthy of and needs unless I belong to me, know who I am and care for myself deeply.

345. Great point Joel, about meeting with family and friends and the appreciation of being together outweighing the food. That fills me with inspiration, as I know when I make it about the food there is a huge tension in me from disconnect and wanting the food over intimacy with another. I can feel the potential of meeting with family for that exact purpose – to meet them in full and not make it all about what and where we eat. Food just becomes the distraction.

346. We all want to belong and be accepted in life but the magic happens only until we can accept who we truly are without any holding back or compromising our quality within.

347. I think this blog responds to a deep yearning in us all. I’ve always wanted to belong to my family, to friends, to nature and pretty much anything outside of me. But that’s the trick isn’t it..? The eternal seeking for which is already within and has been all along, waiting patiently for us to realise.

348. ‘I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.’ I want this quote on my fridge as it sings to me the purpose of which we are here to walk with each and every step of the way. A big WOW to how you expressed the way you know God now Joel and the relationship you have with the equal-ness that knowing provides.

349. “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.” – This is beautiful, I love it, no shying away from holding yourself as an equal with God and everyone nor shunning the responsibility that comes with that.

     1. This is beautiful Fiona, when we sit with God, we know it can be no other way. Equality holds all equal in love and truth, all parts of the whole.

350. Inspiring to feel the commitment you have brought to living as you feel Joel and the changes in your life. It feels too that consistency without expectation or judgments is important to take such steps.

351. This is a great blog Joel. A lot of things in life seems to be tempting us with, ‘join me’, ‘join me’, but it’s interesting that we choose to hear these calls rather than the loudest ‘join me’ of them all – coming from ourselves and our bodies asking us to reconnect to everything we already are.

352. funny how being happy with what is within and not dependent on what we are seen to be doing brings us the greatest joy.

353. I can feel the agony of wanting to belong to life that I suffered too Joel. I couldn’t find my own path in life always hopping from one thing to another because exactly like you I was looking for me outside myself in all manner of activities. Also like you, when Universal Medicine helped me find my way back to me and my life has changed in incredible ways – its’s not always a bed of roses – but it’s always evolutionary.

354. So in order to belong to life and to myself I can’t be part of a group that isn’t connected to the whole. I’m part of the whole so to belong to the whole I’m to express me in connection to the whole.

355. This is beautiful Joel – a real good example of all the things we are offered in life – to so called ‘ sustain ‘ this feeling of ‘belonging’ and fill it up with sports, family, relationships, alcohol, party, occupation. Whilst actually – we are who we are, who we know as a child and we should never drop that . So well said Joel – all we actually look for is being us, being our true selves with no agenda – just absolute beingness , from love and truth (connection).

356. I still sometimes feel left out or I don’t belong in social settings but then realise that I am only leaving myself out by not being in connection to me. I want to be connected with those around me but that’s not always possible if others aren’t choosing their own connection to themselves but to be so with me is always possible for I always belong to me and everything.

357. Beautiful, thank you Joel. I like your honest reflection of life and where you stood and stand.

358. I’ve often felt in my life that I was an observer – watching life going on through a window, desperately wanting to be a part of it but not knowing how to join in. Since I have been working on reconnecting to the ‘party’ going on within my body – to the love, the joy, the power and divinity of me, I have been teleported into life without even trying. Life is a connection with ourselves and expressing from there. Nothing we do will ever be able to be a substitute for this – no matter how many things we join to try to feel we belong.

359. We have created so many societal norms that we know are not truly honouring of who we are. This is why we make issue from even the idea of living in complete honour of our body, because we know it will go against everything we have created.

360. It is so exposing that we gloss over ourselves in our efforts to belong. Why do we hold such little regard for ourselves? Why do we put ourselves out, not be who we truly are, in order to belong? What is it that we truly feel about ourselves that we are all too willing to be anything but ourselves just to belong? And then, when someone comes along and says that we need to take care of ourselves and be true to ourselves, we react to them. This is so crazy, yet I have done this time and time again, not truly appreciating who I am.

361. I want to belong to me and I found it hard to realise and accept that some of the things I loved to do were things to numb me out and use to avoid really being the powerful me. I missed the things I used and realised that I hadn’t really taken responsibility. This is a huge learning moment because truly taking responsibility for myself and my situation means the weight of resistance is lifted. Also, cynicism is the opposite to love so it’s easy to see where we are coming from if we really want to be truthful about it.

362. Gosh if we have all this power within us, no wonder we get so tired and drained from holding it all back!

363. I recall a period in my life when I was obsessed with getting one qualification after another. Ages later I realised that the drive was not connected to an actual requirement for qualifications, but the lack of appreciation and self-worth I was holding myself in. I can see how our need and attraction to ‘join’ this and that can be carried out in the same folly, as it offers a band-aid to cover the pain and discontent from not feeling the joy of deeply connecting to ourself and therefore to the world. It is always the underlying cause which is worth addressing otherwise we end up on a merry-go-round of gathering more and more band-aids!

364. ‘ I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.’ This indeed is a cause for celebration. I have found that the desire to belong can bring all sorts of complications with it. Thank you Joel for spelling out how it is and how simple it can be.

365. There is such a longing to belong Joel, you have captured this so well, but deeper than that longing is a yearning to be connected with our essence. Only in the absence of the latter, so we long for the former. Thanks again for another corker of a blog, thoroughly enjoyed it!

366. Making life about people first changes everything in the way we are with one another and how we go about our day. I am beginning to get an understanding of this way of being in my work on the family farm and Joel’s inspiration has taken it deeper through the quality of his livingness. Thank you Joel for sharing yet again another glorious blog.

367. Searching outside of ourselves for the answers and wanting to belong is something every single person has in common, but unfortunately we get lost along the way as we allow ourselves to get pulled into activities which can have us lost for many lifetimes. The irony is we have never needed to search outside of ourselves to belong to anything or search to connect to people, as we have everything and more already within each and every one of us just waiting for us to connect to it.

368. Recently I have been feeling more tired than usual. After reading this blog yesterday morning I took myself on a walk. I began to look at what was going on in my life and what I was avoiding. ‘Accept all of you’ came to me as I walked gently on the lane, including my power and my light. I surrendered and could feel the changes taking place in my body. I felt different and I certainly had a lot more energy throughout the rest of the day.

369. What I realised this morning on re-visiting this blog is that I have had a look at joining quite a few religious groups throughout my life but somehow none of their philosophies really rang true for me, there was always something that didn’t quite make sense. Consequently I can identify some very major differences with Universal Medicine and the first one is you don’t have to join it, there is no membership, you just turn up to the events or not and apply the wisdoms as much or as little as you feel to your life. The second is that everything about it makes sense, utter, complete and absolute sense backed up to the hilt by the living quality with which all is presented. And so without joining anything I know I belong, to myself and to The Way of the Livingness, a religion, a science and a philosophy that I make my Living Way to the best of my ability every day of my life.

370. We all know deep within that there is something far greater than what is regarded as the ‘norm’. I can remember feeling this way. I knew that what was going on around me was not it. I began pondering about life from a young age but didn’t get very far. I got exhausted and gave up on life until one day after a long story, I met Serge Benhayon. That first meeting changed my life. I came to realise without a shadow of a doubt that what I was missing the most was the belonging to myself.

371. I love reading this Joel, it is so beautifully and simply written, I can make these ‘join me’ lists, they would involve some similar and some slightly different things, but with the same energy – looking outside of myself, wanting to be part of something, now I have re-connected with me and am deepening the relationship I have with myself everyday – this feels very settling and lovely and gives me the confidence and steadiness to be out in the world enjoying being part of life and supporting others.

372. A great title Joel because it got me pondering if I really ever wanted to belong to life and from your question I don’t feel I did, it was only through Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon and the reflections Serge offered that I got to see that life was so much more enjoyable when I chose to participate in life and not sit on the side lines wanting things to change.

373. Joel Levin touches here on a very human trait that I can certainly relate to very well – much credit to Joel’s writing for this. Having a need to belong to some outer group or experience because of a feeling of emptiness which is in fact a result or a consequence of missing the relationship with yourself that is tender, playful and naturally intimate.

374. Belonging…this is such a potent and evocative word and something universally desired. And yet most of us have searched under every rock and stone for it, changed our shape in the hope of achieving it, and sold out the truth we feel inside. If we were brought up knowing that there was a deep sense of belonging to be felt within ourselves, the world would be a very different place.

375. There is so much in this world that offers us a sense of belonging, but how often do we throughly consider or study what we are “belonging” ourselves too.

376. Belonging to oneself establishes confidence

377. So beautifully said and claimed Joel- “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.”

378. It is so true to me what you present here Joel, on that “the power is in you but that tiredness you feel is the result of avoiding that power.” I do recognise all the effort I have to put in place to avoid living the power that I have in me. While I know how to be or what to do in any situation I avoid to allow that knowing to be my guide and instead I tend to compromise myself to what people want to see from me and in that I am holding back my true expression and with that the power that resides in me.

379. It is amazing that we want to belong to everything else, but to ourselves, could it be that it is our light and the responsibility that comes with a acknowledging it, that we are avoiding.

380. The pulls of life are accepted as being normal, and allowing ourselves to be pulled this way and that like the tides is considered having a full life. Rarely is it exposed that even the things that we think we have control over, and make a conscious choice about are determined by those pulls, and not the connection to ourself.

381. ” I wanted to belong to life but got stuck along the way.” I can relate to your feelings of frustration with not feeling you ‘fit in’ and constantly looking outside of myself for something to fill the void I was feeling, when all the time it was about connecting to, and deepening the relationship with myself. Beautiful blog Joel.

382. This wanting to belong is a strange one because we already do all belong and already are all connected, it is just we are disconnected from feeling or being aware of the connection and therefore search for it on the outside in some group or other. Once we connect to our essence, our true selves we discover that we are all in the one all-encompassing group of humanity and a part of the Universe. Certainly, many other members of the group are still in disconnection, but whether we or they are aware or not of the connection does not stop it from being there eternally so.

383. We avoid belonging to ourselves, fearing we won’t belong to the world if we do.

     1. So true Kylie, our fear is such a learnt mechanism that runs as an undercurrent in so many situations.

384. True belonging will only ever be felt in surrendering to all that we are, and not on the circumstances or scenery around us.

385. Well said Joel, first we need to connect to our true selves and from there we can participate in any group from a space of fullness where we truly have something to share, and not from a place of abandonment or needing to be filled up by something outside of ourselves.

386. Another group is the “Join me”… said the anti-group group we are a group that thinks we are better than other groups as we do not join groups.

387. It’s like the phone call we don’t want to make, picking up the receiver and connecting to ourselves. We try to connect to everything that exists outside of ourselves, but that true settled feeling only comes from our relationship with ourselves.

388. This highlights for me the fact that we hold a picture of what ‘belonging’ to life looks like thus separating ourselves out from others only to look to ‘Belong’ – Crazy. We belong and have always belonged and it is up to us to claim that connection.

389. ” I wanted to belong to life but when you are tired, when you are sceptical, this is not what you want to hear. ” I resisted for a while until I realised this was the source of my sadness, my disconnection, the empty feeling that was a drag and constantly with me. When I felt the return it was like a home coming, I finally connected and felt my place in belonging to life.

390. This seeking out to find something that is going to make you feel complete and worth being here in life is an illusion that from a very young age we have been chasing its tail. Like a cat going round and round and never getting to what it is we so desperately seek. This suddenly stops once you understand with the clarity and wisdom that Serge Benhayon presents with Universal Medicine as to why there is chase and the illusion. That we have been feed is a lie and we have chosen to go with it. Learning to make it about the connection with our Soul first and foremost and then bring this to world is one that I am still embracing fully but boy oh boy does it feel very amazing – I feel complete, confident, steady and worth of everything and everyone. A far cry to how I use to feel.

391. This is beautiful. Our life is completely transformed when we know who we are.

392. The fact that it is so exhausting to attempt connection through joining various ‘clubs’ (as Joel has described so well) proves how we have to actually work very hard to not simply be ourselves, and that energy expenditure and drainage is what exhausts us. What this exposes to me is how much I have complicated my life and went from one hobby, sport, or interest to another in order to distract myself from the responsibility to just be me in everything I do, instead of looking outward for acceptance from other people, especially during my school years.

393. It’s rather bizarre, ignoring the body and the connection to our Soul, our natural way of being. Instead we create a life searching for meaning in joining, in doing, in being a certain way, which causes a whole lot of pain and disconnection, going against the flow of every particle in our body. Until such time as we discover our true relationship with the power within which deepens and confirms our oneness we share with everyone already.

394. How awesome would it be for children to be encouraged and supported in this from a young age… to hold that connection with themselves they so naturally have, and to take that out into the world – our world would be a very different place with everyone coming from a place of truth, joy and loving care.

395. So true Joel… we crave to belong to something or someone, when in truth we crave belonging to ourselves.

396. To join ourselves is the most power-full thing we can do because by joining ourselves, by re-connecting to ourselves, we are who we innately truly are – and we bring inspiration to everyone.

     1. Paula I agree with what you have shared. As crazy as it sounds nearly everyone has forgotten who they are, it’s as if we have been asleep for eons. When we meet someone who is connected to who they are in truth, it stirs a long forgotten memory as to who we all are. Slowly, slowly we are beginning to wake, to sit up and rub the sleep from our eyes.

        1. As we rub the sleep from our eyes we realise…“I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.” A truly profound place. It is reachable with the tools that Universal Medicine presents.

397. “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.” This is a rare and profound statement. To see ourselves equal to God in terms of responsibility for wellbeing of ourselves and the world is a true partnership. That it is all of our responsibility to bring our own wellbeing and in turn that supports the true wellbeing of the world. It is not God’s alone nor is it ours alone. For this to work, we all need to be in it together.

398. I can so relate to the tiredness you share here Joel… all the effort put into striving, pushing through, to get ‘somewhere’, to achieve some kind of goal, but its always outside of ourselves. So much energy put into seeking outside of ourselves when we can put that energy into deepening our relationship with ourselves… and then our relationship with the outer world changes because of this – instead of seeking, we are being us in the world, which increases our vitality.

399. I too joined many ‘clubs’ what I realised was that I was often chasing a false brotherhood which I naturally wanted but was seeking through the different activities. When we access the innate wisdom and love within we are in the best club in the world and its free!

400. Yesterday I discovered something about my want and searching to belong to life. The reason it hasn’t been so successful and I have always remained still a little left out is because I have been missing a true commitment from me. Based on what I have perceived to be hurts from experiences I have been holding people back in a form of protection. This protection is now revealed as an excuse I’ve used to actually not take full responsibility for my part in the bigger picture of living and caring for humanity as a whole. Thanks to the forever committed presentations by Serge Benhayon and the commitment of fellow Students.

401. Belonging to a group often also comes from us wanting to please and to be liked. The moment we go into pleasing another or wanting to be liked, we put as secondary our connection to self and what is our most valued connection and relationship to self and our divine nature. Pleasing another comes from us already living from a space outside of what is sacred, for if we truly felt the connection, the pleasing another would not even register as an option. Just to clarify, I am not here suggesting that people become selfish and think only of themselves and never accomodate for another – there is a way of being where we develop a deep and honouring relationship with ourselves that extends and holds all those around us too.

402. My first thought after reading this blog is ‘I want what he’s having’ – I want to be me. Looking at the things we align to that then own us in our lives as a key step back to our true selves and you share a very solid and inspiring example of this. I have to agree with what’s shared above – it is great to raise awareness around this.

403. So many of us seek to belong. More often than not we seek to belong by conforming to what others want us to do or to be. We can be quick to give up what we know is true in order to belong in a group and not feel lonely and isolated. But as Joel has so beautifully presented here, our first and foremost belonging really lies within ourselves, to the deepest and most sacred part of ourselves. It is only once we have developed a relationship with ourselves, a relationship that is solid and unwavering, one that holds us deeply and dearly and consistently so, that we are less sway to the outer influences, less likely to give up what we know to be true for something that does not last. Thank you Joel for this exquisite reminder that what we hold within is so precious and well worth developing.

404. Your list is both amusing and sad Joel, because in truth so many of us are searching for the feeling of belonging to something, not realising that we are born into a club that we can never leave, its called Humanity. I spent many years of my life attempting to leave it, but with the perpetually wise ongoing support and deeply powerful healing modalities of Universal Medicine, I have healed my resentment and hurts and re-connected to the immutable fact that I belong to me and I belong to Humanity and now at last am thoroughly appreciating this incredible life long membership.

405. There are moments when you just don’t want to hear that you yourself are responsible for everything. But then again, if this is true, then I have the power to change everything.

406. We’ve spent so much time and energy on trying to fit in, trying to be liked, be seen, be loved, be popular and be appreciated and accepted. We feel shattered that the world and not even our parents see us, love us or truly appreciate and meet us. The truth is it’s not the lack of love from the world that shatters us, it’s the fact that the world and our parents could not truly accept us, because it was not the real us we were bringing to them in the first place. We need to meet the real us first ourselves, love, accept, respect and adore, knowing we fit in with God and the universe and we don’t need to fit in with others. When we meet this and bring this there is nothing that can hurt or shatter us and no need to fit in.

407. How wonderful that you went through a process which brought you to yourself and supports you to be in life with all of you.

408. Beautifully simple blog – even reading it I got to feel in me that residual desire and ache to want to belong – to be a part, to have my place, and yet as you so simply presented we can only find that within ourselves.

409. I have been looking outside myself for far too long – the only answer is to come home, to my heart where I know myself and I belong.

410. The needs we run with tend to result in us putting up with things that we can feel deep down don’t in whole feel right, yet they will do to fill the ache of the need. It is awesome to reach a point where those needs do not call the shots, “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.” Wonderful.

411. That what we belong to never ceases, we are part of it, in it, imbued with it, actually there is no separation possible in truth, but we can and most do experience being in separation, ie. not feeling at one with life, God, the Universe, humanity to the point that it is the norm to not feel connected although we are ceaselessly interconnected. So there must be something in us, our perception, our way of living that creates an artificial dissociation we make our very agreed upon reality. Thus re-connection and then consistently lived connection to the one source is key to expose the illusion and return to our natural way of being.

412. The Way of The Livingness beautiful captured and how we avoid it because we want to belong to life in this world but truly we belong to God and all that is needed is to not hold back on that and express it forth.

413. When being disconnected and seeking to belong to whatever that might be we can be so occupied by it that the very foundational question of what we are essentially disconnected from doesn´t even come up, exposing the depth of disconnection we have lost ourselves in and thus we are set to up to seek everywhere but not to turn towards the very place we innately and can never not belong to. This explains the extent of lostness humanity is struggling with on a global as well an individual level.

414. ‘I wanted to belong to life but when you are tired, when you are sceptical, this is not what you want to hear.’ I did not wanted to hear that my life was based on illusion, that non of what I had lived upon this point was true.

415. I too have a religious way of life Joel, and I could only say that because I found a religion, The Way of The Livingness, that didn’t ask me to attend a church or worship a god, but instead asks me to know myself, build a relationship with God if I choose, and then from that be amongst people and ask what I can do for them all. Religion for me must be practical and the strength of this is found in how well I am willing to know who I am and take ownership of the life I live, and ultimately that we are all from the same source and to separate through any man made construct is just counter intuitive and against the natural intelligence that is ours to live.

416. Gosh Joel I feel this blog speaks for everyone! How often do we want to be part of something or belong to a group, but not actual give the true time and love for or to ourselves? Belonging first to ourselves and continually building this relationship is the only way to go. And beautifully as we start to do this the rest naturally unfolds, relationships, partnerships, friendships ….

417. The world promises connection from all angles but it has never been the true communion that I felt since being introduced to Universal Medicine….”that tiredness you feel is the result of avoiding that power” – what Universal Medicine offered me too Joel was the understanding of who I am and that true connection is the most powerful way to be.

418. Joel, another beautifully written simply put blog. So much effort and searching looking out in the world for what we can find within, through loving ourselves. Thanks to Universal Medicine I now know this too and continually work to deepen this in my life, with no perfection, and so take this and share with others I meet.

419. It’s a natural feeling for us to want to belong to something, but there are so many things out there beckoning to us that actually take us further away from what we are actually looking for. We can identify with groups of people who do certain things, but this doesn’t lead us any closer to our own inner connection. I find that when I am connected to myself I feel more connected to others, and actually feel like I naturally belong to humanity. This is what I belong to.

420. Nothing can beat feeling content and at ease in your own skin.

421. Great blog Joel in exposing the fact that most of what we do in life is for other people’s benefit and will be until we make ourselves just as important. The presentations of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon have highlighted to me the importance of true self-love, self-care and self-worth. When you have all of those you know you are no more or no less than any other person.

422. The best gift we can give to ourselves is to belong to our self, when we belong to our self we also belong to the all, given we are all from the one source.

423. The moment I start to fit in or join in I am saying that my relationship to God comes behind my desire to be accepted. The thing is the moment I place my Relationship with God as second, I equally place all my relationships there too.

424. I was never taught that belonging to myself was so important before I belonged to my family, friends, work and religion. I now know this to be true and from there can be part of everything else with more of me in it.

425. Yes the truth is something we might not like at all at the start but it is something we love as well just because, as you said, it is so so tiring to live a lie.

426. We want so much to belong and be accepted by something to be recognised as what we are not rather than connecting more deeply a realising who we truly are and the all of which we are always a part.

427. What a blog Joel! I feel still the resistance and stubbornness of that power and now reading and knowing that this is what makes me tired and frustrated, that just clicked. Thank You so much for sharing and being so so honest.

428. It seems so many of us are searching for something and might not even realise it – we want to have hobbies and activities and groups that we’re part of – we constantly want to be part of something – a business, a family, a club ect. But perhaps what we really want, underneath it all, is to be part of ourselves connected, re-joined. Joel this is such a gorgeous blog to show the importance of coming back to us.

429. When we have found home, the connection to ourselves, we are content. There is no yearning for something outside of us, nothing, but a joyful knowing of being at one with ourselves and with everyone and everything. It is my responsibility to deeply honour, nurture, appreciate and commit to this connection to myself.

430. “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.” So beautifully expressed Joel, what is there within us is so absolutely precious, why would we need others for us to feel we belong. We belong to ourselves, that which is so special in us, and any neediness that we may have felt to belong to others just dissipates because nothing else in the world can surpass this wonderful feeling of belonging to ourselves. When we are connected deeply to this place within, we can feel the sacredness that is there, such a beautiful feeling, and this becomes even more powerful, the more consistent we are with this connection.

431. We naturally all want to belong in life and think it is something we have to do and fit in with others and that we have join and our left out otherwise. It is often something we rebel against also and don’t want to belong in reaction to this also. But what you reveal here so beautifully is that in connection to ourselves we are naturally in connection to everyone and the all as we all are in a oneness together and are part of and belong to this naturally so. Ironic and something we are fooled by in our loss of connection to ourselves as we grow up and look outside by the reflections we are given. This all changes with the knowing we all belong naturally and the teaching s offered to us by Universal Medicine, the Ancient Wisdom of The Way of The Livingness.

432. I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing…
     “Join you” . . . said the worlds greatest medicine

433. “I was tired to my bones, tired to a place that all of my efforts amounted to naught and all I was left with were the things that “took the edge off.” Oh the promise of a holiday, a shopping trip, a weekend away, another party, the booze, the drugs, the rock and roll but always to arrive right back where i began, a niggling emptiness, a feeling of being blind yet able to see.

434. It seems that the entire world is setup to “Join Me” even the practices that are claiming to be about connecting to oneself are mostly about joining something else and not truly about that inner connection to our untouched divinity. No wonder we think its about joining something else instead of re-joining ourself. A great reminder Joel.

435. In the beginning I too really struggled with what Universal medicine presented, it seemed that i had “love thy neighbour” so embedded in my consciousness that the idea of turning my focus to me, brought up feelings of guilt and great resistance.

436. When we are still we can feel so much more – this constantly searching outside of ourselves for who we are is achieving nothing, we already belong to the human race – and the more we allow ourselves to interact and feel, the more in brotherhood we are.

437. Joel there is so much that i appreciate about the words you choose, indeed the profound simplicity is testament to the settlement you have found within.

438. “BUT . . . I wanted to belong to life and to begin with, hated what Universal Medicine presented.

     Universal Medicine presented it was important to care about me, it said to consider belonging to me before I could really feel belonging with others. It presented the power is in you but that tiredness you feel is the result of avoiding that power . . . I wanted to belong to life but when you are tired, when you are sceptical, this is not what you want to hear.” – After over 13 years of taking much more care of myself, I still am quite nervous to let myself be seen and heard in the world. There’s nothing that I grave more, love myself to the bone, yet abondon that love – which makes me feel tired – at times in total disregard of myself. Yet, the truth is that I am a very loving, tender, caring, delicate, sensitive, humerous men and Soul. Just like everyone else. Ans as Joel’s sharing, being able to connect to people and understand them deeply is something more worth then anything else!

439. By taking responsibility for our connection to ourselves we then have the resources to truly belong to life and share in a unifying way not out of a feeling of neediness. I have lost myself in so many relationships and then blamed the other person/s but since I have been willing to work on my connection to myself all my other relationships have vastly improved because I am not looking others to fix me.

440. The pull to feel connected is so strong that we constantly search for it outside of ourselves to the point of total depletion and disillusion when if only we shone a light inside we would find our true connection deep within and the more we nurture that the more we feel connected to others.

441. Wanting to belong – as if attaching ourselves to something is going to fulfill us and stem the yearning from inside. That yearning comes from inside and can only truly be filled from the inside, and from aligning to what is true.. We may have lived for so long making choices without truly discerning how we are making those choices and what is running our decision making process. As we become more aware we can’t help but wisen up and realise that our whole body acts as a kind of radar and as we allow the quality of our body to become clearer and more refined the more able we are to feel our own sense of belonging – that’s if we pay attention to the whole body and stay honest with what we are feeling and not follow any thought that comes into our head

442. We join so much just to ‘ fit in’ and belong and in the process lose ourselves. When all along all we had to do was re-join and reconnect with our naturally divine essence – our Soul. It can be challenging facing ourselves and our past choices, but so lovingly worth it to return to that which we abandoned – the love of self and living in brotherhood with all others.

     1. Jacquie when I read ‘living in brotherhood with all others’ it really struck me just how far removed our current way of life is from that. Not only that but it really stands out that in order to live so separately from one another we all have to apply an enormous amount of effort to continuously keep ourselves from being in brotherhood naturally.

443. When we do not live in the service of, or for, a higher being is when we evolve. As you have expressed Joel, we are here to work with God to bring what shines within us all for ourselves and others to re-connect to who we have any ways been, but just lost our way.

444. Joel, I can relate to what you said about trying to and wanting to fit in, it is something I tried all my life. At school I was a part of pretty much every group as I wanted desperately to fit in but no group actually fulfilled what I was looking for. Universal Medicine has shown me the strength I have within and that I do not need to be anything for anyone rather by simply being myself and expressing my truth then I feel settlement within my body rather than the anxiousness of wanting and needing to fit in.

445. Joel I too looked for that connection outside of myself for years, not once considering to look for it within. Then I was introduce to Serge Benhayon and though I felt the truth of what he shared, I resisted for a while but thankfully never gave up until I found my own sense of belonging first within myself and then with the whole of humanity.

446. It’s funny or not so, that we think we know what we have to do to fit in, and quite often that means changing who we are so that others will not be put out but all of these changes just come from our heads, and have us living a lesser life. The irony is everyone is doing the same thing and we never even give it any thought that a person is not living to their true or fullest potential. One thing is true though, if we don’t know ourselves first no group will ever be able to give us anything of true value.

447. The feeling of belonging seems to be so strong, yet as you have shown here Joel, often we lose ourselves in our striving to belong. I have decided that being true to who I am is far greater than belonging to something I am not.

448. Joel, the joy of finding you where you belong that no one else can touch or call into question is very profound. Knowing the place where we know ourselves is true knowledge that no-one can take away from us, no more belonging to anything else is needed .

449. The message “join me” and the strategic marketing blurb that sells the attractiveness of what I should join is something I have been used to throughout life. That was until I came across Universal Medicine. There was no invitation to join, to follow, no marketing blurb, nothing other than a reminder that all is within me and a deep connection to that is my starting point. Quite remarkable.

450. It’s like all of life that we currently know it, is set up to keep us away from belonging to ourselves, even though it is all that we want and desperately search for, as you so eloquently put it Joel (as always)

451. Joel after reading your powerful blog the only thing I want to do is to be with me all of the time and never ever will I look outside again!

452. Thank you, Joel. The longing for belonging is so strong in most of us, because we know it deep inside. I too have found that the more I let go of the outer needs and wants to come back to myself, the more connected I feel to something very powerful within. It feels like a home coming, but it also allows me to feel God and the whole as something I am and have always been a part of… a true belonging.

453. “Join me” says my Soul, I’m here within you when you choose to reconnect to who you truly are. All our relationships with others, and ourselves, are enriched when we reconnect to our inner-heart first.

454. Joel you always hone in on the truth! What you have shared is so much the story of many of our lives including mine. I remember thinking I would like to belong to a group of like minded people and really feel at home with them, but most of the time to my disappointment that didn’t quite work out as I had hoped. It wasn’t until I connected to Universal Medicine that I felt at home.
     Even though I have held myself back in many ways I am aware now of the responsibility I have to myself to make the first move to more friendships and true connections by loving me.

455. All these things we want to join and be part of are just a poor substitute for the true brotherhood that we are missing and the only way to join that is connect and belong to ourselves and life first.

456. “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.” I find this hugely profound not just because there is a lack of inequality between God and us, but because it very absolutely claims that we hold a level of power and responsibility in any and every area of life that can not be denied.

457. How enticing and alluring that ‘Join me’ can be when we are feeling disconnected and lost. What I am feeling is that with that feeling of belonging, or a sense of purpose – when they are not of our inner-most, we are giving our power away – it is an exchange, we are making a deal.

458. Our way back to unity is found in the depth of our own connection. That is very cool. Thank you Joel.

459. I love how you describe Joel that the need to belong dissipates when we claim that we belong to ourselves and God first. I am beginning to understand how often my needs for acceptance, recognition and approval arise from a lack of self love, care and acceptance.

460. There are indeed so many pictures in life which offer the promise of acceptance and belonging and yet we ultimately are dissatisfied when life does not deliver them in the way we imagine or we discover that they are empty of the love that we seek.

461. Joel you have nailed it on the head for me, we all want to belong and feel accepted and yet we don’t start with self acceptance and self care.

462. I think the strong yearning to belong reflects how we have separated not only from our true selves but from the knowing that we are all interdependent and from the all.

463. The biggest smile came across my body when I read this – “I wanted to belong to life but really, really, really wanted, and now belong, to me.” How gorgeous to read – I think it is what we all want, is to belong to ourselves. It is who we miss the most.

464. “it said to consider belonging to me before I could really feel belonging with others.” This is so true what you share here Joel. We cannot really belong to others until we belong to ourselves. Since coming back to me and bringing that sense of belonging to me (which kids have in spades), I can feel a real sense of belonging with others that I never had before. It is what must come first.

465. The search for belonging will always keep us away from truly belonging.

466. This is so common for many of us – we yearn to belong so we search high and low as to how and where we can belong. Yet the answer lies within, it is where our true home and settlement is, in our inner-heart. When we reconnect to our inner-heart by the choices that we make to live lovingly and in honour of our body we discover that there is nothing outside of oursevles to belong to – we discover we already belong and have been all along.

467. That longing to belong was with me for such a long time, it was like an ache inside that no matter how many people I had around me I still always felt alone. Now I know it was me wanting my own connection.

468. That need to belong is big and has a push that can take us in many different directions but deep down there was always a price I could not pay. The truth of who we are is always there and when we are asked to undermine this, the level of tension and discomfort sounds alarms that cannot be overlooked without consequence. I love having joined me and the steady foundation it offers.

469. Living me … is to fill the void I always felt with in, I feel such stillness now that the search is over I have found me and thus I can truely bring that connection to everyone.

470. Love your writing Joel- I can relate to all you have shared though what I chose to belong to was a little different to some of your choices however the outcome was still the same- I didn’t know myself and was wanting to fit in and be accepted by the outside- I have learnt whatever happens nothing from outside can ever fill this as it can only ever come from a knowingness within.

471. Absolutely stunning Joel. written from the depth and sacredness of your connection — how deeply and beautifully I can relate to what you have shared here.

472. It’s so easy to check all the boxes. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t given your former approach to belonging, a go, myself included. But, like you I have allowed the possibility of another way into my life and it’s clearly making a much more profound difference.

473. I tried so hard to belong in life. At school, with friends, at work, with sports- wherever. Nothing equals the belonging you always feel when connected to god and yourself 🙂

474. Every time I see your photo, it speaks a thousand words Joel. The joy that emanates from it is quite extraordinary!

475. “that tiredness you feel is the result of avoiding that power”… Which we all have, and I experience many people feeling tired and exhausted too.

476. “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.
     I wanted to belong to life but really, really, really wanted, and now belong, to me.”
     Joel this is absolutely beautiful! thank you for this gorgeous read, and how inspiring and freeing it is to be reminded that we don’t need to give up on ourselves every, but on the contrary, the more we foster and hold the connection with ourselves, the more we can bring of us and who we are to all that we do and all that we are involved in in everyday life.

477. ‘I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.’ – so deeply gorgeous Joel. This entire blog should be a book for us all, one that is accessible to all. As this is the sort of education that our children need to be supported with so they know the connection to their essence is everything as they grow and develop and explore how to live in connection to who they through their every day.

478. I can so relate to feeling ‘tired to my bones’ of the incessant search for ‘something’ that only led to nothingness. This led me to a sense of giving up-ness knowing deep down that there was more to life that I was unable to discover in the outer world I was existing in. When I came across Universal Medicine I discovered the truth that I was seeking, that what I was in search for was the Love I am within. I could feel this was the truth in my heart, my body (and my bones) to my core and it all made sense. How can we live a life of Love if we have not connected to the Love we are within first?

479. When we are willing to be honest with ourselves with why and what we are in truth seeking, with how this feels in our bodies, we will be open to discovering that there is no greater sense of belonging than that of our connection to our Soul, and the oneness that we are all embraced by through the grace of God’s Love.

480. It is so true Joel, this s so brilliantly expressed. We are enticed from every angle to join in to the ideals and beliefs of the world so that we seemingly gain a sense of belonging that never fulfills and as such is only desperately attractive when we have lost our sense of connection ourselves, our Soul.

481. I could very much relate to this Joel searching the globe for something that would make sense to me, that would feel right. Each time I thought I had found something that seemed to be the answer it became obvious after a while that something whether it was a book or a course was not it, and so I would try something new and different only to be disappointed yet again. In truth I had given up on life by the time I reached 45 and was looking for away to get by and was slowly withdrawing and no longer participating in life. Thank God for Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon for without their support I know my life would not have the richness it has today.

482. Great reminder of the many ways we try to belong and fit in, be part of something but lose ourselves and the connection to ourselves in the pursuit of this longing that in truth never satisfies.

483. What an outstanding blog Joel, another one. I enjoyed reading it from the first to the last word. And do relate to everything you’ve shared. I’ve sold out so much to life around me, that I didn’t even know that how I lived life wasn’t actually me. If you would have told me years ago that there’s a possibility, if not a responsibility to live with me all of the time, I would have gone into a discussion, fighting every word. But now I know that there’s a deeper, sacred place within, a place that will forever remain untouched. I can choose to connect to it and when I do, I belong. Belong to me, belong to others, belong to life. And the joy is huge. Thank you Joel. We do belong.

484. Love this, we are trying so hard in life to belong, but it never truly is benefitting us. We get tired and used up by the constant need that is being fed. We are the ones we need to belong to, we belong in our inner heart the place that gives us steadiness and the source of love.

485. Wanting to belong, the feeling of being on the outside looking in, comprising what I felt was true to fit in, hiding the sides of me I thought other’s would shun – all this and loads more in a constant attempt to belong; missing the irony that all these attempts were taking me further from knowing who I am.

486. Thank you Joel. Life is so much more when we begin with the connection to ourselves.

487. That connection that you’ve rediscovered Joel is priceless and I know for myself I looked around for it in many places before realising that it is found first from within. It’s so natural and innate the pull for us to want to be in brotherhood and unity but for that to truly be there it has to come with connection and not just being in a group per se.

488. Thank you Joel, so simple and probably what every human being on this planet searches for – to belong. Realising this and reconnecting to ourselves is what dissipates the longing.

489. You sum up brilliantly Joel how much we all yearn for connection and unity, yet truthfully it does not live in any of the things we seek it in. It doesn’t matter which club you are in if you haven’t connected to your body. Wow you’ve clarified to me how we all go off track right at square one, because when you connect to who you are, you cannot help but feel that you are part of everything and everyone.

     1. Joseph I agree with you ‘because when you connect to who you are, you cannot help but feel that you are part of everything and everyone’ and would add that once you’ve connected back to who you are in truth then the thought of joining any club or taking up a hobby seems absolutely futile!

490. The wish or need to belong basically reveals that we have lost connection with that we cannot but belong to as we are immutably part of the greater whole. Therefore it is all about re-connecting, re-aligning to who we are and where we come from, thus evolution is a movement of return to the source we once turned away from – the Soul, God.

     1. ‘ Love your comment Alex and totally agree; evolution is a movement of return to the source we once turned away from – the Soul, God’.

491. So beautifully shared, Joel. The thing we want the most we spend the most time running away from. It does not make sense.

492. I love this Joel. Reading it reminded me of how much we want to belong, belong to ourselves that is. When we are invited to belong to so many things outside of ourselves then we can easily avoid ourselves and our own power. I can really relate to that tiredness of avoiding our own power when it is right here in front of us. You bring such a clear understanding of human behaviour and why we do what we do, but show that the behaviours are not where the answer is and there is so much more to us than our behaviours.

493. We want to belong because we know that we belong – but we have lost connection with what we belong to and hence seek for it but all too often in the wrong places until we have accumulated pain and disappointment to a degree of resignation. When finally the real thing is met again we may not be able to recognise it for what it is due to the emotional and mental build up that tends to keep us blind through mistrust and scepticism. But our inner knows and always recognises itself when it is met and reflected by another.

494. A gem of a blog Joel, we get so caught up in wanted to belong to life and groups we forget to belong to us. We have been so lucky that Universal Medicine has show us how to find our way back to ourselves and belong to our selves.

495. Indeed, we want to belong but often do not fully understand what we are actually missing and hence looking outside of us for everything that offers something seemingly close to what we are longing for. In the end, it is found within and that is what Universal Medicine presents: coming back to one´s innermost, one self, who we are before we have lost ourselves in the outer – that is the esoteric way of life.

496. Joel – what you write here really connects with people, and as always, you have made such a relevant point on the state of the world, how we create our lives to be part of so many different things, and yet what we all want is to belong to ourselves – to truly know who we are, our purpose, our responsibility. Your journey back to you is very familiar, and it shows me that what is important, in the end, is the relationship we have with ourselves and how much we are willing to look at everything we are and everything we are not.

497. “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing…” – what a powerful and deeply fulfilling statement that resonates in my body through the sincereness you live.

498. Belonging is often confused with having an identity. When we live from our true belonging no identity is needed.

499. The desire to belong is so deep as we have forgotten or we chose to not know anymore our true belonging. When I realized that I belong to the universe and that I only express the whole as a part I felt having come home.

500. Simple, honest and inspiring truth about returning to love and living this love we all have within… What a religion!

501. Terrific bit of writing Joel, I have belonged to many hobbies and pastimes and none of them made me satisfied in the way I can feel satisfaction now when I appreciate the fact of who I am, and that I don’t need to be recognised to love being me. It is still a work in progress where I am concerned but what a different world we create without the need for recognition. To need recognition is like a prison that stops us from really living our lives as we are made to be.

502. You’ve hit the crux of what we all do, that we want to desperately belong to life, to everything, but not to us, and yet we cannot belong to life if we do not first belong to us, and so all that belonging out there is a distraction from the truth that our first belonging is to us.

503. I know this feeling of enjoining and yet feeling like I did not truly belong. It has always felt very unnatural to me but I never understood why. This made me feel as if something was wrong with me but I now understand that there was nothing wrong with me, I was just choosing something that was not true to who I am. We leave who we are behind in order to feel we belong and yet it is this leaving ourselves behind that makes us crave it even more.

504. The feeling of wanting to belong comes from the the sense of missing connection. However it is the connection within and from there with God that we are craving. The most glorious thing is that once we reconnect within we immediately are a part of the whole, without having to enjoin anything that is not true to who we are.

505. As life unfolds for ‘me’ it becomes more expansive and so to do the connection to others. This is a unification or joining within me that is all encompassing and it is a feeling like we are all as one unified family! On the outside world you might say how is this possible but from the inside if we are to be honest we are all the same!

506. ‘I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question.’ This is beautiful Joel and I have found this too…a true settling in my own skin, a self-knowing than cannot be broken by anyone save myself.

507. Another one of your absolute gems, Joel, I love it, especially “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world”. I love how you expressed that Joel, it says so much. Taking responsibility for ourselves in how we live in this world in all of its aspects is so very important for us and for the world. It is up to us to live that way as a reflection to be offered to all others that we meet in our lives, as a possibility for us all. I too lead that religious way of life now, and my life has been transformed and yes, I agree with all you have expressed here.

508. I’ve wanted to find my place and identity in church, the arts, the new age, social justice, travel, eastern philosophy, culture, music, photography, martial arts, environmentalism and more. It came with much trying and thinking of who I could create myself to be. I know more and more that who I am is not what is out there but I am Me, already perfect and complete; now it is just allowing me to unfold.

509. Brilliant blog Joel, it is so relatable especially the part about being tired to the bone. As I was reading this part it felt like it was life times of exhaustion accumulated from avoiding living in my power.

510. Thank you Joel. You show that we do not need to belong to connect – in fact the truth is we can only connect with others once we have connected to ourselves.

511. This is such a great blog. My whole life I wanted to belong to me and through the support of Universal Medicine, I now do. When I look back at my life now and see how I wanted others to like me or accept me really what I was looking for was a place to belong. Belonging to something outside of ourselves, however, will never work, how can it if you do not even have our true you to bring in the first place?

512. Thank you Joel for sharing the simplicity of belonging we all seem to be searching for and there it was within us all along.

513. Thank you Joel, another great anecdote of simple yet universal truth. Universal Medicine constantly reminds us that the gold we have been looking for under every rock, is already there within us. Nothing compares to the ever deepening connection we can have with our inner heart, and it is from there that we commune with God.

514. Your blogs are so inspiring Joel, you nail it every time…another gem, Thankyou

515. My quest through out my life was to belong also, always to something outside myself, which led me up and down many garden paths to no avail, until I became a Student of the Way of the Livingness. I then realized that I have always belonged: to my self , I just needed to re-connect.

516. very touching blog Joel, as always.

517. Yes, yes, and yes. Very powerful words for every one of us.Thank you again Joel.

518. The wish to belong to life and to align to others that also want the same is in great part responsible for the segmented and rather restricted style of relationships we tend to have.

519. “I wanted to belong to life but when you are tired, […] you are sceptical”. It is fascinating the amount of things that calls us as the Sirens did to Ulysses only to discover that it was not it either. We end up being sceptics and moving in total disconnection to our own body.

520. The want / need to belong in a group situation can be the reason behind why we can become silent bystanders of abuse.

521. It is a blessing to have come along Universal Medicine and its basic teachings of living a loving connected life, but also with its teachings about that we are all equal to God. I now know too I do not need to belong somewhere and I know who I am even though just as you Joel I am not perfect. It is always great to observe the changes and appreciate them.

522. Youth clubs, choirs, squash clubs, engineering societies, so many things we can belong to but, if there is no ‘me’ in any of that then there is only emptiness. ‘Me first’ is not how we are brought up and yet, it is putting ourselves first that enables us to truly serve others.

523. My gosh this is powerful Joel. Belonging to something is a massive belief in itself, driven by an emptiness of choosing to not be ourselves. It feels very tiring and very exhausting, so it is no wonder so many are needing sugar and more energy drinks than ever before.

524. Joel, as always, you strike a chord with humanity, a cord with your fellow brothers, it is what we all earn for, to belong but we seem get tricked into thinking that this belonging can come from outside, thank you for the reminder that we all possess the key to our own belonging.

525. As always it is a pleasure to read Joel’s writings… this one in particular I found particularly powerful as it seems to sum up humanity’s desperate search to belong , which was also my main driving force in my early years, and finishes with God and us on an equal footing …. Now that is New Revelations 1:1

526. “Join me” . . . said my friends, we will drink together, party together, have meals at fancy restaurants and get up to mischief in the small hours of the morning, so I joined and belonged with my friends – but not with me. I realise now that when I joined my friends to party into the small hours I had to harden and disconnect completely from any shred of true sexy or sacredness. I literally shut down me, blocked out what I didn’t want to feel and used drink to show me I was having a good time.

527. I can easily relate to how at first you did not like to hear what Universal Medicine was presenting, there were times when I was extremely sceptical. Thankfully I chose to put into practice (over time) what was being presented and now my life looks completely different and I feel like the gap between unloving choices and loving choices is gradually disappearing.

528. I love that when I start reading your blogs Joel I just know they are written by you, they have a rhythm and a flow which is consistent, they are a joy to read.

529. Oh my goodness, Joel, you have nailed it again. A gorgeous piece of writing – playful, huge and totally accessible. Thank you.

530. I also wanted to belong to everything and missed out on me, missed out on what I was really truly wanting that was the feeling of inner contentment and then the purpose of life. Today I have those, but it was not without the challenges and inspiration of Universal Medicine that I’m where i am today.

531. As Serge Benhayon has so rightly expressed everything is either harmful to us or it is healing. Any-thing that takes us away from ourselves is harmful and anything that takes us towards ourselves is healing but buyer beware of things that mascarade as taking us towards ourselves, such as yoga and meditation because although these things can and do take us towards ourselves when they are borne from the right energetic source,they also have counterfeit versions that take us away from ourselves.

532. We’ve become so bamboozled by the razzmatazz of clubs, associations, pubs, hobby groups, study groups, sporting clubs and any other collective that has structure, ritual, uniform, equipment, figureheads as it’s beacons with which to lure people who are searching for of themselves onto the rocks of disillusion.

533. Wanting to belong to anything or anyone is a sign that we are longing to belong to ourselves.

534. We are all desperately longing to belong and the ridiculous thing is we can’t not belong, we can only pretend that we don’t, for we are all equal parts of the whole.

535. IW OH
     Reblogged this on vivvybutler and commented:
     Oh what a joy to read another wonderful truthful writing from you ,Joel . Thankyou for always warming my heart with the beautiful way you express these truths in such a simple accessible way with gentleness and wisdom.

536. I never believed there was much mileage in looking after myself. What I valued more were the things I did that got me recognised. Looking back it shows I was at the bottom of my priority list. When I finally decided to try self-care, it amazed me that the knock on effect was that I had more interest in life, and was more caring towards others. My relationships improved and my life changed. Looking after myself and getting to know me was one of the best decisions I ever made.

537. Absolutely agree Joel. Belonging to me has been like coming back home – nothing ‘out there’ compares.

538. Another corker of a blog Joel. I love how you bring us a story that makes it so simple to understand.

539. Ah Joel, another one of your own stories that is so powerful. Belonging to myself is the thing I missed for much of my life and like you, I did not like what Universal Medicine presented at first, but I decided to give it a go because I too had tried belonging to so many other things that left me weary but still empty. I am glad I did and this line sums it up – ‘I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question.’

540. Thank you Joel as always for your writing. We are a part of life and when we look out and around to belong we forget that we are already in life, we are a part and our words and actions do make waves in life.

541. The biggest ‘Join Me’ has always been the one we have always dismissed and never considered, our self! I have found as you Joel and many others the best club ever to belong to is, us and humanity.

542. Another beautiful and profound article, Joel. “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.”

543. You make a great point here Joel about searching outside of ourselves and how that then becomes exhausting. Universal Medicine has shown many what it means to know yourself first before taking part in all of these everyday interactions we call life.

544. Another fabulous blog Joel and yes, have ticked a very similar list looking to belong to somewhere, to someone or to something. Universal Medicine opens the door to a very straight forward journey back to us, a path that requires us to sober up, smarten up and get on with it. Once we have connected to that “place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question” then the need to belong to anything else just dissolves and in its place lays a rich opportunity for connection, intimacy and relationship, with self, with God and with every one.

545. ‘I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always’. Beautifully said Joel, coming home to ourselves means we can be at home anywhere.

546. I belong to me, can you imagine if we would all belong to ourselves, what a world this would be!

547. Joel, this is profound. Much expressed in few words. This stood out for me this morning ‘ I can meet with family and friends and that meeting is what I appreciate more than any food we eat’.

548. This feels amazing, how you made the choice over and over again to belong to you until you were able to live this truth more.

549. This is beautiful Joel, I love your writing. It is so easy to belong to so many different clubs, associations groups etc. constantly searching for belonging, but never really connecting to who we truly are. Universal Medicine has presented a different approach for me that starts with my connection to me and knowing of who I truly am.

550. When we start to live from the inside, outwardly, it takes a lot of commitment and loving will, as we let go of our investments in what we’ve previously used to define ourselves and give our lives meaning and build the connection to ourselves first, before bringing that to the outside. But when we do, our connections with others are so much stronger and actually quite beautiful, because they come from who we truly are and not a place of neediness or expectation.

551. Simply beautiful Joel! In wanting to belong to things, I always felt that I didn’t, and certainly didn’t feel like I entirely fitted in with the sports club or the church or whatever, until Universal Medicine made it OK to belong to myself first then the need to belong to something doesn’t matter anymore.

552. Yet another pearler Joel – thank you. I was lie rally three lines in and knew that this blog had been written by you. I love how you bring the practicalities of life, love of self, God and people, philosophy and a religious loving way of living to all your work.

553. Another stand out blog Joel exposing the distraction away from ourselves in needing to belong and join something outside of ourselves. I’ve been yo-yoing with this with living in another country away from extended family and longtime friends, thinking I need to belong to something where I am or find my group per se. Your blog is like a breath of fresh air that I can now see these thoughts for what they are.

554. Brilliant – it is possible to walk the steps through daily life, that render yourself back to you.

555. All we ever want is ‘right there all along’…that could be a song!

556. “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world” – Wow. This felt like a thunderbolt.

557. “It presented the power is in you but that tiredness you feel is the result of avoiding that power . . . I wanted to belong to life but when you are tired, when you are sceptical, this is not what you want to hear” – this is the life’s conundrum – life feels too much, too overwhelming and we want to run away from it and instead fill ourselves with all the numbing/distracting devices not realizing that is the exact cause of our exhaustion – not living who we are is the most efforting thing we can do.

558. When truly committed to life then there is no need to be different or belong to anything anymore and as you say Joel, we are always with ourselves in the first place.

559. There is a never ceasing tension in life to want to belong to something. Even those who sit on the outskirts of society and proclaim they own allegiance to nothing still subscribe to an ideal or way of being that is born out of reaction. Of course, to want to belong is natural – if you look at human nature. There is something innately in us calling us to connect to each other. A path of solitude rarely ends well. The truth is, however, without being comfortable in the solitude of our own company, we cannot bring our true selves to society, and instead will tend to fall for “trying to fit in” with what society asks us to be.

560. Realising the importance of oneself irrespective of anything else outside brings deeper care, natural value and worth, and also what you share too in this particular line with relationship to responsibility: “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world”.

561. Gorgeous and such pithy writing Joel, love it, and love how you display all aspects of life that we get hooked by… and how they are all designed to take away the natural authority of ourselves and place it elsewhere.. because of the thirsts for belonging, to feel accepted, and also recognised. Belonging, recognising and accepting oneself is therefore the greatest part and greatest gift in life.

562. Superb Joel… a beautiful reminder that everything we seek in life is first found within, and if not, it will not ultimately satisfy the deeper ache to be with ourselves.

563. “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.” I look forward to the day when I can say these words because I am living them.

564. I took to Universal Medicine instantly – like a duck to water, as the saying goes, but it did not take long before my old patterns and ideals and beliefs raised their persistent ‘pesky’ heads raising some doubts and scepticism, particularly when my comfort zone was being exposed and challenged by the constant spotlight on the ‘R’ word (Responsibility). I thought I knew the meaning of responsibility but Serge Benhayon took it to a whole new level – off the Richter scale! Fortunately, Serge’s consistent and immense love and wisdom shared freely and equally with all never waivered which confirmed to me that I had finally found the path that I had always been seeking – the path back home. Not saying for one minute that this path doesn’t have it’s fair share of challenges (far from it!) but just knowing and trusting that I am on the right track is beyond words and that, ultimately, it is my Responsibility to keep going and not get distracted or lost along the way.

565. Isn’t it odd how we crave to belong but do not want to put in the effort required to return to that which we separated from? This is a clue as to how we as humans have become so waylaid in our journey home back to the love that we are and thus fall for all that is offered that panders to us when we let ourselves think that we are ‘lost’ and need ‘saving’. If we feel an empty thirst then the answer is not to seek to quench it with all the outer realm offers, but rather to dig deep and live from the fullness of who we already are and let this fill the cup that we then sip from.

566. This is a great sharing Joel – so simple yet truthful. We all “want to belong” and yet no one (except Universal Medicine) tells us that is is ourselves we are longing to belong to so we keep searching outside of ourselves which is so exhausting. I too am surrendering to belonging to me and my own equal divinity.

567. There is nothing greater than belonging to yourself.

568. ‘Belonging’ is something we all seek and crave, and will do almost anything to achieve. Yet, unless we belong to ourselves, it will always be at our expense.

569. of all the factions of society we can choose to identify with, be it religion, sport, entertainment, food, culture etc.. if we are missing ourselves and our Soul, none of that will be fulfilling.

570. “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.”

     A true Son of God knows that he is the greatness and grandness of that which he was born from and is willing to live it. We are all equally and magnificently the many Sons of God, we are just not all living it.

571. Excellent Joel! We can belong to so many things and identify with so many normal things like being able to re-call the sporting match, talking about TV shows and books, and creating interests and hobbies, but if we aren’t connected with ourselves and don’t feel amazing for being us, whats the point?

572. “I wanted to belong to life but got stuck along the way. I felt frustrated and tired – very tired; I was tired to my bones, tired to a place that all of my efforts amounted to naught and all I was left with were the things that “took the edge off.” I remember feeling like this and saying to myself “Stop the world, I want to get off!”

573. Deeply gorgeous Joel. Our need to belong to ‘something’ is fuelled by fact we separated from everything – the Oneness we innately are and are thus returning to. A religion that is truly Universal (unifying for all) will tell you this, while one that is not, will not for it cannot see the seed of such separation is in our hands and thus the return from such isolation is also. The ‘wait’ is over, not only do we save ourselves, we are also the love we so desperately search for.

     1. Beautifully said Liane..When we can finally accept ourselves we can accept others and the world we live in. Then we feel one with all and there is no separation.

574. You have absolutely nailed it Joel – your blog speaks for me and, without a shadow of a doubt, for almost every human on the planet.

575. Another awesome example of the power of The Way of The Livingness and the Power, Love and Inspiration offered to others by belonging to no-one or no-thing else, other than belonging to ‘me’…

576. Being truly in the world has no need to fit in, what we belong to is the truth within us, the intact and intimate relationship with ourselves.

577. I have always wanted to not be a part of life, I did not want to join anything, but what I did not want to was also being with me. I wanted to find someone to join me, but I was not with myself, so it was not truly me that they joined. One day I wanted to truly belong to life, so I had to find my way back to myself, as when I am with me, I do not need to belong any more because I am with you all; when I am with me, if you feel to join me, it is truly me that you will be with.

578. I loved this blog Joel as it tells it as it is. It is very universal. . . . many could relate to what you have shared.

579. Belonging is something everyone craves and yet it is always a path that is seemingly thought to be found outside of ourselves. When we discover the path home resides within us our life flourishes and we can truly meet and connect with people and not enjoin with them which takes us away from our true power.

580. This is GOLD “I have a religious way of life that places God and me on equal footing in terms of light and responsibility for the wellbeing of myself and the world.” Wow! I agree – that place within was everything that was missing for me.

581. Joel, I just love how you cut ever so cleanly through the miasma of illusion that we in this world have come to consider normal; the way you share is so refreshing, and the wisdom so priceless. It is so obvious that all any of as human beings want is to belong, but we spend so much time and effort into trying to belong to something that is outside of us, all the while failing to see that where we need to begin our search is within, by belonging to ourself first.

582. I love this “I can work with clients and the quality of the work can mean more than any pay cheque.” = owned it, and that goes for not only clients, but friends, family, work colleagues, and especially with you – the quality you bring to yourself.

583. Very beautiful Joel , it shows indeed that we can try to outwardly belong to all sorts of things but that at the end.. What we miss is being us, being really ourselves all of the time. No sport, partner, business, family can give that to you but yourself and so there is no need for desire other then the choice to return, back to who we are – all of the time. By connecting so, to ourselves and eachother..

584. Spot on Joel, isn’t this what we all want? But where do we look? Usually to the outside, to the world, to sport, religion, work, family, etc. but they all seem like empty shells until we bring our whole and fully connected self to everything and everywhere.

585. Morning Joel and it’s great to read from you again. This is, well it just is, “I have found a place within where I belong that no one else can touch or call into question. A place of humility, a place of sacredness and a place from which I no longer NEED to belong because I am with me always.” Thank you.

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