When I was 20 years old I got a job in a big bank. I worked as Head of Department and every year I was being promoted to a higher position. I was very good with money and finances and my career was settled.
After ten years I wanted something else. I wanted to ‘deepen’ my life and so for four years I studied to become a holistic massage therapist. I started my own practice and it became successful in such a way that I earned my living from this new career path. For years I worked together with doctors in a medical clinic where they would refer clients to me.
I decided to do more studies on energetic healing and did so many modalities that it is hard to find any that I didn’t do, and I can’t remember all the names, but I became a so-called Reiki master and an Awakening Your Light body master as examples. I studied with gurus and started to present meditation classes. I was teaching third eye travelling, crystal and sound healing and palm reading. I gave sessions in Journey therapy and learned many shamanistic ways to treat people. I went with the American Indians, sat with so-called enlightened ones and various gurus, and my sessions and meditation groups became ever more popular – I even had waiting lists for clients. I was great in ‘manipulating’ energies. If clients came with chronic pain they often left without any pain or at least with much less pain. People called me ‘a great healer’.
Was I truly a great healer? What was I really bringing to my clients?
There was always a nagging feeling within of living a lie that something much deeper was missing, in my connection with myself and God, and in what I brought to my clients.
Looking back, I can now clearly see that I was denying that because I was addicted to the recognition I received through my work. Deep down I knew I was living in a fake way, but I just went on. Interestingly, all those so-called healings never brought to my own life any true healing, and this was reflected in the fact that my relationships with partners, family and colleagues were not loving; they were disharmonious and this did not change at all during the years I was doing all those training courses and so-called ‘healings’.
What I can see now – looking back with honesty – is that I became more and more focussed on what was ‘wrong’ with people and a spiritual arrogance crept in, thinking that I was superior as I ‘knew about life’ and they didn’t. This arrogance created separation between them and me, especially with my family. I didn’t embrace others with love but judged them for behaving stupidly, even though this was mostly unspoken, but as all is felt, they reacted to me and we had arguments. I blamed other people for my issues and for the past I had experienced, instead of truly dealing with my own hurts.
I did my work well but was never really good at being with people. I lived in my own separate world, even though I was behaving like I was open to everyone.
With partners I was often fighting and wanting them to work on their issues, instead of me opening up to truly feel my own hurts and be with them and hold them in love to be able to do the same. The fights became more frequent and intense as all the courses I did buried me deeper into my emotions and an attitude of ‘I know better.’ I hardly had time for my partner or the things he wanted to share because I was always busy with clients. Looking back I feel that I had an attitude that I was more important, so we talked mostly about me. Basically my life was about me, even if it looked like I took care of everybody else. It was all for me, to satisfy myself and my need to be recognised and needed.
It wasn’t until I started to participate in the workshops presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine that I started to be that honest; to see that there was not one ounce of love more in me or towards others despite all the courses I had done or modalities I had practised before.
More and more I felt that I no longer wanted to play with energies directed by my mind from a source I did not know. I started to wonder how it would be to connect from my heart with people. Then someone I knew died of breast cancer and her husband wondered out loud how it was possible for her to die. He said that it was not fair, that she was a great healer, always there to help others. I asked him if she was also able to love herself and his answer was clear, “No, it was very hard for her to love herself.” We both felt there was an answer in that response.
Meeting Serge Benhayon
Not long after this death I heard about Serge Benhayon and boarded a plane the very next day to meet him. I felt a clear YES in my body to meet this man. That decision was the best decision I had ever made, although quite possibly the most confronting gift at the same time. Serge Benhayon offered me the biggest wake-up call I could have ever imagined, just from observing the way he is and by feeling his unconditional love.
Serge spoke such clear words of wisdom – they were completely resonating with the truth I felt in my body. He never told me what to do, but just by listening to his presentations I became aware of the truth about how I was living. He reflected so much lived true love, a love that I could feel touching that same quality held within myself, a love that I just was not used to living myself anymore. This was shocking to feel and I even felt embarrassed as I could feel the arrogance with which I had lived for so long, pretending that I knew it all and loved all; that I was a great healer.
Serge invited us to become more aware about energy first. He presented that life offers two energies to choose from: one energy being Fiery energy, which we experience as unconditional love, and the other being astral energy, which is all the energy we use when we don’t come from love. This energy is also called Prana.
I started to feel how much I was not living from true love, how I was not connected with myself. And questions were rising to the surface as in – “How could I ever bring true healing to others if I was not living that myself? How could I ever bring healing and true service if I was not loving myself first?” When I realised this, I closed my healing practice and explained the reason why to my clients. This was a brave and very honest decision where my true healing started.
During the Universal Medicine courses I started to learn to connect with my inner-heart and from there with the fiery true energy and, when I learnt the Esoteric Healing modalities, I was confronted with the way I had actually worked with people and their bodies for so many years. I had touched them from the connection with astral energy. Many times it had felt as though it was ‘good’ energy but I started to realise that deep down I had always known that it was false ‘good’ energy – I just had not wanted to know. I started to see that ‘false’ energy could suppress symptoms of the body (pains) and bury those issues deeper into the body, which then gave the client a feeling as if they were gone.
I started to see that pains and illnesses are important messages from our soul – an opportunity to become aware that there are more loving choices to make. We are offered to see how ‘ill’ behaviours lead to ‘illness’.
I had to honestly ask myself these questions:
- How healing had it really been when I connected with astral energy and touched people’s bodies and from there made pain ‘disappear’?
- Or did the pain just go hiding deeper in the body, making it harder for people to feel what is really going on in their lives and the consequences their often unloving choices have had on their bodies?
- How was it for the bodies I treated while being connected with the astral source?
- Can it be that attending all those courses, where our hurts get addressed with pranic energy, only make us dwell more and more in emotions?
I started to be honest about the fact that I had always known that the astral energy I had aligned to was not one that felt loving nor true; it felt like black energy even if many times the energy showed itself as beautiful white energy. This was and is the tricky thing for many people to come to terms with, that they (including myself) allow themselves to be fooled by those colours and the apparently ‘enlightened’ feelings of ‘bliss’.
Serge Benhayon taught me how to just trust what I feel in my body again. No one can fool a person when they are listening to their body instead of believing the stories of the mind.
I was always looking for the truth – I love Truth, I love Love. I always carried within me a love for people and a willingness to offer others the chance for true healing. I just had to feel again that I am that love myself and live that love.
I have always loved God and always felt that part in me that was the same spark of light connecting me with God as a part of the whole; I was just very lost and looking everywhere for the answer, searching for something outside of me that would make me feel better, more whole.
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I am deeply touched that in this life I was able to find my way back to myself, to discover that only in that connection I can feel God, the divine beauty within me and in everybody else. Now I know and feel that true love is loving all – and that it starts with loving myself first.
By Sylvia Brinkman, gorgeous lovely playful woman, mother and partner, General Object Manager, practitioner of the Esoteric Healing Modalities, organizer of women support events, working with Refugees families, Amstelveen, The Netherlands)
Related Reading:
To Heal is not the Same as Cure
The Real Meaning of Healing
Sacred Esoteric Healing as a way of Life
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
I am at last opening up to being aware of energies and how they play out having tried to ignore them for most of my life. I felt that if I didn’t feel the energy they couldn’t feel me or would leave me alone. But of course we are never left alone and there is a certain negative energy that does not want be exposed but at the same time is controlling our lives and how we live, this energy caps us from knowing who we truly are because when we eventually wake up and we will it will no longer have the domination it has had over us all for aeons.
Very true Mary.
This week I got a leg massage from my partner and I could feel suddenly how much control I kept in my right leg. I asked him to bring his full attention to this part, my upper leg. Hugely controlling energy stuck in my leg. I wondered on that moment why and started to feel the beauty of myself behind it, the sacredness within which is one with heaven. I controlled my life and lives for so long to just hide the true me. But the worse thing was that I felt also how that control I felt was not in true me controlling but me letting in an energy that controlled me on a continuous basis. I felt a deep sadness arising and then so many tears came out. Tears of how I missed to feel and live this beauty I am. And shocking to see how huge is the control of forces on us if we call in energies of control.
‘I thought I was………….’ we all think that we are so many things but it is only our body that truly knows who we all are.
and I like to add….it is through our body that we will feel again who we truly are. We need to be in the body again to feel to where we belong and are part of equally so.
It is not easy for us to admit that we have got it wrong, like we can be really stubborn in doing this and try everything from denial to arrogance which is why I can appreciate and value where you were at to start to be honest with yourself and seeing that what you were doing, no matter how successful you were, was not it. Awesome that you found the true light. Very cool.
Being honest is a great starting point, ‘Basically my life was about me, even if it looked like I took care of everybody else. It was all for me, to satisfy myself and my need to be recognised and needed.’
When we separate from our true essence, our soul, perhaps from the hurt of not being met for who we truly are as gorgeous and loving beings, we then operate from a consciousness that is anything but love. I know in my life it led to behaviours of wanting to do things for others and believing that was my value, recognition being a poor substitute for the unconditional love and acceptance of me simply being me. When we are out of our being and the divine quality it brings it’s then all about the doing.
Recognition can keep us chasing for the elusive something, keep us in the doing, and so not allowing settlement and surrender.
‘How could I ever bring true healing to others if I was not living that myself?’. This is a great question for anyone in this day and age let alone those in the healthcare industry and anyone who considers themselves healers.
This is such a beautiful and touching article to read. The depths of honesty that you write with is inspiring. I especially love this part about colourful lights, because I find that this is rarely talked about – as most places that teach healing will introduce light but never teach how to discern the different qualities of the many lights that are available.
The two pictures really highlight what you’ve shared in your words Sylvia. In the first one you look under the influence of something and I have witnessed this in myself and others that we can be taken over by energy. In the second photo it’s much more the raw you without being colored or altered.
When we seek recognition and success we become blind to the truth and what is really happening even though deep down we know something is not right.
Beautiful, Sylvia. It takes much honesty to question our ‘success’ when it is seemingly bringing a desired outcome for others.
Having worked with alternative therapies for many years, prior to meeting Serge Benhayon in 2008, something very significant that was missing is that not one of the alternative training courses attended ever mentioned about the energies of spirit & soul, prana & fire, as was introduced by Serge Benhayon at the first course I ever attended with him. This understanding is a foundation to be discerning of energies that run through us all of the time.
Serge invited us to become more aware about energy first. He presented that life offers two energies to choose from: one energy being Fiery energy, which we experience as unconditional love, and the other being astral energy, which is all the energy we use when we don’t come from love. This energy is also called Prana.
What stands out for me reading the blog and the comments that follow, is that Serge Benhayon invites those people that attend the workshops and presentations to consider something different. It’s an invitation and the choice is always left to everyone to discern for themselves. This way of presenting is totally different from any other presentation I have attended.
True, Serge is the first person to talk about the different energies that run us, and yet that is such a fundamental part of life, to know which energy you are aligned to, which energy is running you.
There are many people I know who have also embarked on the path of becoming a spiritual healer, and for most this has been a fruitful venture, with many clients and feelings of success coming their way. But the point that you make here is simple and delightful really, as true success surely must come from every aspect of life and not just how many people know your name or pay you money.
Yes, the one life, healing in one’s own life, and all relationships, is all part of ‘success’, ‘With partners I was often fighting and wanting them to work on their issues, instead of me opening up to truly feel my own hurts and be with them and hold them in love to be able to do the same.’
I couldn’t agree more Sylvia, pains and illnesses are messages from our body to be understood and heeded. Rather than push the messages back into the body, my experience is that when I have addressed the energetic root causes of aches and pain, the symptoms no longer need to be, nor can be there.
It’s interesting that we know when we’re living a fake life, but yet aren’t willing to be so honest about it in order to make the changes we know we need to make. We have a choice to get real and honest about what we know we need to change to live more fully as ourselves, more openly and honestly- or delay until the body forces us to make those changes.
I lived a ‘fake’ life for most of my adult life without having any conscious awareness that that was what I was doing. In fact so embroiled was I in the illusion of life that I actually believed that I was one of the ones who was living with honesty and purpose! And that is perhaps the biggest barrier to truth; the fact that when we have an energy that is not truthful coursing through our bodies it consumes us to the point that we believe whole heartedly in whatever guise it is that we have adopted at the time.
Honesty is a great start, calling out what we know is not true, ‘He reflected so much lived true love, a love that I could feel touching that same quality held within myself, a love that I just was not used to living myself anymore.’
The placebo effect is very powerful and it can be difficult to discern any healing effect in addition to the healing that comes from a person being ready to heal and a practitioner being ready to support. This discernment can be pushed to excess but it is important to understand what the value of the intervention actually is.
When someone speaks the truth it can be felt in every cell of the body. This is why it is easy to know who is telling the truth and who is lying.
I totally agree Elizabeth, someone was being ‘nice’ to me the other day, but their ‘niceness’ was dripping with sarcasm and contempt. As we become more aware it is so easy to read the energy coming through people and because we can read the energy it doesn’t affect us. It is like water of a ducks back. This is so freeing.
Serge Benhayon always speaks truth, no matter what, such an amazingly inspirational man.
When we bring energetic responsibility and quality to what we do, we can feel the difference between thinking and feeling in what we offer as healing practitioners.
We cannot love another until we love ourselves first, equally we have to start healing ourselves first before we are able to support another.
I have met many people who have been “addicted to the recognition” they receive through what they do, so much so that they have developed an arrogance and an aloofness that has them placing themselves above others. But I am sure that not many of them have ever come to the honesty that you have Sylvia, with the acknowledging that it has been a total illusion, that was all to feed a need to be recognised. So many of us have this need and it is only through being honest with ourselves that we will be able to begin the healing process.
Thank you for sharing this honest testimonial to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, claiming that the changes you have made in your life is something that needs to be shared with others.
Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine offer an ever deepening understanding of energy and how energy effects everything.
And that seems to be the missing part.
Yes you can really feel the old in the new age, and the hooks to ensure you are constantly searching because you will never be enough. Yet in our essence we are all we will ever be or could want to be because we are made from Love and the only place we can go to is back to Love!
One of the most powerful and life changing teachings that Serge Benhayon ever taught me, was the truth about the two sources of energy being either from love or from pranic energy. Thank you Sylvia for such a beautifully honest blog about your journey in meeting Serge Benhayon and discovering what healing and love truly was.
Also of note is that often, the tell that really gets our attention is the common denominator in issues. If our relationships are not loving then we have an opportunity to go deeper with the loving relationship with ourselves. From there all relationships are much clearer.
Love is foundational, such a wise move to start loving ourselves, and build a strong relationship of love with self first.
It is really amazing to be able to write here “There was always a nagging feeling within of living a lie” because so many people have this nag and can’t put their finger on why or what it is about, they just know that it nags away. Working with the Esoteric was the first time I stopped running from that tension and turned around to look at what it was sharing with me. This is the greatest gift we can offer ourselves and others, an honesty about what is not working and a willingness to be part of the change in our own lives and therefore in the world.
It can be a painful realisation to admit that we are harming others more than healing, our need for recognition is a deep trap that can hold us for lifetimes.
Sylvia, the world is enriched because you chose to heal your hurts. It is outstanding to see your before and after photos.
You can offer to others what you can offer, what you have said yes to. No less no more. Realizing that there is more to say yes to and going for it, opens up amazing avenues to explore life and us in it.
Sylvia, the honesty with which you have shared is so raw, honest and so refreshing. I have come across so many healers over the years who stubbornly justify the truth of what they do and to be open to the fact that maybe they have got it all ‘wrong’ does not even come into consideration. But how wonderful you were able to let go of the healing ways of old and with the support of Serge Benhayon you were able to embrace a new way, a true way of healing. The world has definitely benefited in many ways.
This article brilliantly exposes the industry of spiritual-healing.
‘Serge Benhayon taught me how to just trust what I feel in my body again. No one can fool a person when they are listening to their body instead of believing the stories of the mind’ when we live in connection to our body, our whole life changes as we are no longer hostage to our mind.
Our body conveys so much wisdom to us, ‘I started to see that pains and illnesses are important messages from our soul – an opportunity to become aware that there are more loving choices to make. We are offered to see how ‘ill’ behaviours lead to ‘illness’.’
Our body conveys so much wisdom to us, ‘I started to see that pains and illnesses are important messages from our soul – an opportunity to become aware that there are more loving choices to make. We are offered to see how ‘ill’ behaviours lead to ‘illness’.’
‘ “How could I ever bring true healing to others if I was not living that myself? How could I ever bring healing and true service if I was not loving myself first?”’ Well said, this is the key Syliva and makes total sense.
There isn’t an I in healing. When we try to bring it in, it couldn’t be further from true healing.
Our life being about ourselves is common and it is okay to be honest about it.
Serge Benhayon ignites the truth in us and invites us to live with the responsibility of that truth.
When we start to consider what we bring to life and others we learn that our energetic quality is what is most important.
Many of us have been sold the lie, and swallowed it, that life is about what we do. Life has nothing to do with what we do. The doing is only the means to bring the being into form.
The lies have certainly been sold to many, in more ways than one.
There is nothing as humbling as the communication of our bodies, and even then sometimes we do not listen because we are so identified by the stories of the mind.
I sometimes wonder why doctors, who use interventions that work, do not consider themselves healers?
Sylvia a deeply honest blog, we can be very arrogant over what we think we know when we come from knowledge or when we allow our mind to have free run, yet when we stop and allow the body to take the lead, the deeper we connect to our inner wisdom.
Indeed so Sally and it gives us back our freedom to just be ourselves, no acts no nothing, just to be ourselves.
Our perception (or lack of it) of energy in our everyday lives, its place in everything is so limited that we are missing enormous opportunities for understanding.
That is quite true even though many people in business and other areas are quite aware of energy.
Searching the different modalities is also familiar to me, but now I realise that it was a complete waste of time and money. Many of the healers I went to made absolutely no difference to my health and now I am thankful that they didn’t because I would have hung around even longer, instead of saying no to everything I was involved in.
This blows me away every time I read it. What a complete turnaround, and what an incredible amount of honesty and responsibility you have chosen. Very inspiring.