I was born into the institutionalised religion of Catholicism. At the tender age of 7, my classmates and I all underwent the training, practices and rituals that would allow us to make our first confession – currently called reconciliation. After confession we became eligible for ‘Holy Communion,’ the act which, according to Catholicism, symbolically unites one with God.
Central to the rite of confession is the concept of sin and the notion that we are all sinners with different levels of severity. There were lesser or venial sins, like calling someone names or taking a biscuit without Mum’s permission – these were the sins of childhood we were advised. Then there were the very heavy feeling mortal sins like adultery and murder that some adults engaged in, to the detriment of their ‘Souls’.
It was understood that the greater the severity of the sin, the deeper the guilt one should feel and hence the more intense the penance to be done. The type and quality of penance was ordained by a priest in a confessional box, a place I experienced as a child as having a suffocating quality and a rancid smell, which left me feeling nauseous.
I had problems with this notion of sin from Day 1… and this was not only attributable to the smell of the confessional box.
I was a gentle and obedient child and couldn’t relate to any of the ‘sample sins’ presented to us. I didn’t call people names and my Mum kept a lock on the biscuit box; I never hit my brothers, sisters or friends. Asking adults what I could confess to the priest, as I was worried about the quality of our conversation, I was advised to just make up a couple. Ultimately, my only sin was following this advice and lying to the priest that I had committed sins that I hadn’t! So I was guilty of lying to keep people and the church happy. I noted that as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.
Much later in life, and with the true blessing and grace of the Ageless Wisdom, I felt to revisit this experience and review it from the perspective of what I feel to be universal truth.
Firstly, for me true religion is about the inner connection with Soul, my innermost essence, which allows me to re-connect with Divine energy. This connection with Soul allows me to connect with God through feeling. It is not possible for me to connect with God through consuming a piece of white wafer or by taking a sip of wine.
Secondly, what removes me from God is choosing an energy that God is not – that is, a non-Soulful energy, or a spiritual energy. Re-connecting with Soul, by re-choosing the quality of the energy in which I move, is what is required to re-establish my relationship with Our Father and the Divine energy that God is. Nominating and renouncing the other false, spiritual energy – the energy that is not who I really am – supports me in choosing the energy of Our Father with greater consistency. This is all accomplished by my own awareness and does not need a priest to hear and/or to absolve what I have done, nor to administer a penance.
Thirdly, my personal experience of guilt is that it is a false, emotional energy that is not of the energetic quality of God Our Father. It does not serve to reconnect us. In fact, in operation, it serves to disconnect us and to place us in a heavy energy that separates us further from God.
The true religion I now live, The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy, so that eventually we will not live on this earth at all, but return to our original Divine Soul Plane. The catholic religion of my childhood taught that I was born a sinner and could achieve salvation only through compliance to its tenets.
The Way of The Livingness presents that all children are born with a Divine potential within and that, with energetic integrity and responsibility, by choosing to align with this energy, our Soul, we start to discard all that is not of our true essence quite naturally. Neither the confessional box, nor any of the other rites, is ever needed for this.
By Coleen
Related Reading:
Catholic Religion Today – is it a Healthy Option?
God’s Waiting Room
Religion and The Way of The Livingness – Audio
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Imagine holding a baby in our arms and thinking they are sinners?. This just exposes the fact that the concept of sin is pure evil and has nothing to do with religion or God.
“The true religion I now live, The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy,” A way of living where you feel the love of God in, through and all around you.
When we are in connection to our Soul, we are in connection to God in which we are always in relationship with. With this connection our every move is a religious one, naturally so guided by this connection. It is only in our separation to our essence that we are moved by lovelessness, by evil, as in our essence we are as we are born, the innate Sons of God, absolute love personified which is far from sinners or needing any institutionalised religion to tell us who we are and what we need to know God.
How much of my life was I caught up in the whole Sin and confession? Most of it, its like it was what I understood the truth to be and yet as a kid it never made sense – what had I done wrong, it made me not want to speak the truth in case I was wrong and then ended up having to confess my sins. Anyway to cut a long story short its great to have the support of Universal Medicine to start to let go of the whole “I am a sinner” concept.. on the surface its all gone but I still notice a few of the ways I do things are trapped and held by that way of thinking.
I strongly disagree with this religious dogma about Children and sinning. I was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith and I have found it is very difficult to extract oneself from it as this particular consciousness is very invasive within my body.
What an extraordinary concept to lay upon humanity… Sin… If this was introduced now it would be absolutely derided. It is really extraordinary how blinkered we have become when such a truly awful concept is still accepted and actually lived by.
Reading this I get a real sense of the compressing weight of a rite that constantly negates our innate Divinity, purity, and Godly essence. We are untainted and divine in essence and if we are supported to appreciate that then we give ourselves a true foundation from which we can then be honest and observe and take responsibility in our life for where we aren’t living that, but from a knowing of who we are first, not from being made to feel less or a ‘sinner’.
Making us feel guilty is indeed false, it’s only there to make us feel smaller and a sinner, there is not an ounce of love in it and will never bring us back to the divine essence we are.
It is interesting to consider when we lie to another to keep them happy how do we disconnect from our own relationship with ourselves?
When do we begin to ask the question why so many in the world prefer to live with out, or with a lessened level of decency and respect than what, deep down, they know is not their truth?
This article simply exposes just how false institutionalised religions are, to promote guilt, when the truth is to accept the choices we make and to take responsibility to acknowledge where and how in our life we are not living with decency and respect. As to go to church to have ones sins absolved, only to repeat the same sins next week is not a foundation of accepting responsibility and adjusting how one lives to forever deepen ones level of decency and respect.
I remember hating confession with a passion, it was horrid and unnecessary. Dressing little girls up as brides considering the church’s role as a breeding ground for paedophiles is something that should be abolished.
“I noted that as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.” Wow this is incredible! Instead of celebrating and appreciating a child for their honesty and integrity, you were encouraged to lie in order to keep the status quo intact. The reflection of innocence and integrity is too much, so it is squashed and corrupted so everyone else can continue to stay comfortable.
Thank you Coleen, I have always found it interesting that certain religions require you to confess your sins, because if we work from the fact that God does not judge us, there is nothing to confess. The Way of the Livingness has taught me that it is through my connection to my body and soul, that brings me my true connection to God.
I always used the 2 same ‘sample sins’ every week when I went to confession and received the same amount of prayers that I had to say to make up for sins I did not even commit. The whole thing was a set up to make you think that you were a bad person and you would continue to be this, there was never a mention, nor appreciation of any aspect of you, only that God, if you were ‘good enough’ would forgive your sins.
Whereas The Way of The Livingness confirms we are from the same source as God and we are innately divine and that we will all eventually return to being the Gods we are, we simply need to re-connect to ourselves and keep letting go of whatever is not our true essence…
Coleen what you are sharing is huge that it is seemingly more important to lie about something to keep the self -perpetuating system in place, than to tell the truth and question the church and its relationship with God. Which to me is built on a false foundation to keep people suppressed and under it’s control. I remember reading in the ‘National Geographic’ magazine that the Roman Catholic Church has a Library full of illustrated documents that showed just how they tortured and persecuted people in order to bring them into line with what they considered was the truth, their version of God.
” Secondly, what removes me from God is choosing an energy that God is not ”
This is so simple and practical and makes sense. Being un- Godly would have to remove one from God.
This is a powerful and gorgeous blog to re-read Coleen. On reading this sentence tonight there is a sense of exquisite delicateness within my being and an amazing blessing deep inside of me. Thank you.
“Re-connecting with Soul, by re-choosing the quality of the energy in which I move, is what is required to re-establish my relationship with Our Father and the Divine energy that God is”.
To have a ritual like ‘Holy Communion’ that is said to symbolically unite one with God implies that we aren’t innately connected with him but to me it is clear that we are all connected with God in our innate essence and that true Holy Communion comes from the quality of our living way, the expression of this essence, and not a wafer and wine!
Thank you Coleen – you state it so beautifully – to align with our Soul, we have the Living Way of The Livingness to naturally discard that which is false and not of Love. No disempowering intermediary or rites required.
“The Way of The Livingness presents that all children are born with a Divine potential within and that, with energetic integrity and responsibility, by choosing to align with this energy, our Soul, we start to discard all that is not of our true essence quite naturally. Neither the confessional box, nor any of the other rites, is ever needed for this.”.
In reading this article looking at aspects of the Catholic Religion and The Way of The Livingness, I hands down choose to be a student of The Way of The Livingness.
Organised religion has a lot to answer for…. I also remember worrying about my first confession, maybe all children do…. Organised religion only as the power it does because we as a humanity give it power/time/space to control us.
Agree Toni it was all set up to disempower you not to support you to know that you are as powerful as God
That’s awesome Coleen. Amazing how hypocritical organised religions can be. It’s really quite shocking what we allow ourselves to believe and fall in line with. It does the very thing the religion claims to protect us from – separation.
Being told that we are sinners is pure abuse and really an insult to the glorious beings that we are..
It certainly isn’t inspiring either, and in fact quite devastating in the way it totally undermines a person.
I’ve always had a problem with confessional boxes too, how can it be ok to do whatever you want, confess then you be free of it – to me that removes the need for integrity and the ultimate responsibility for all our actions, the whole process seems completely removed from any understanding of how life works and the understanding that everything we do, whether it be godly or ungodly, has consequences.
Yes it makes no real sense to me either, and negates us really learning from our mistakes/ wayward ways and responsibly putting that learning into action… And is very dis-empowering to say that that we need another to ‘forgive us’ on God’s behalf when God never judges in the first place! The whole judgement thing just seems like a big distraction from us having clarity on what we really chose and why and how we then choose to move on from that.
There is no ‘get out of jail free’ card in life. We cannot ‘commit a sin’ and then ‘confess’ and be ‘free’. It absolves personal responsibility, which is something that the world is crying out for at the moment.
Absolutely, confession does not change the facts of what happened or give us a “get out of jail free card”, it doesn’t matter that we made a mistake but we do need to take responsibility for our actions.
“… true religion is about the inner connection with Soul, my innermost essence, which allows me to re-connect with Divine energy.” Yes to this. No religious institution can make up for this inner knowing of the divine.
To me we are all innately united with God in our essence, something that is there within us inherently and so to say that we need a specific ritual or ceremony to symbolically unite us with God, is like denying the connection that is already within us, rather than simply honouring what is already there and expressing from that connection.
It really is extraordinary how some institutions are specifically designed to keep humans subjugated, whereas some organisations are there to foster true brotherhood, and reconnection in its best possible way.
“Re-connecting with Soul, by re-choosing the quality of the energy in which I move, is what is required to re-establish my relationship with Our Father and the Divine energy that God is.” Having always seen God to be something separate from myself always left me feeling like something was missing, but to now know that what I felt from within is that God is the connection to our very essence and how we move throughout our daily lives brings a great deal of ease, joy and connection to the all it makes so much more sense and religion becomes more tangible as it is lived, felt and expressed from who we are and that is truly awesome.
It is through our connection to our Soul that we realise our relationship with God is in fact immanent and inseparable. We either live or in surrender or in resistance to this this relationship, which is personified and made manifest through our bodies, our breath and our every movement. Living our everyday lives with awareness and in connection to this divine relationship is what reflects true religion, one that represents and embraces the true qualities of us all.
The Catholic Church utilizes guilt as a way of controlling people, it is an insidious energy that taints our relationships with others making you feel dirty and not worth of receiving and embracing the abundant love that is all around us.
Guilt is an energy that removes us further from our connection with God. It’s so misguided then that when we do something we know is not in the quality of God because it does not match who we are inside, that then to choose a path of penance further cements our steps away from God. Being sold this lie is evil as it takes us away from ourselves and God.
I like how you describe guilt here. It is a rather useless thing, isn’t it? As you say, it is a heavy burden, and we voluntarily pick up and carry to make it even more difficult to move forward. It’s a fantastic alibi we create when we are choosing not to evolve.
I see guilt like a cloak that we choose to hide in.
So very true Fumiyo, to live guilt is to completely shun responsibility.
I personally have never entered a confessional box, but what is shared here has allowed me to feel the heavy dark energy that is left within them by each person who enters. For not only is there the honest person confessing, but as is shared here many who lie, maybe not for the reasons Colleen did, but for a myriad of reasons. How can true society ever be built on lies? This simple fact exposes to me the deeply harming entity that the Catholic Church is.
We don’t need to be anywhere in particular to connect with God. We don’t need to be in a church or on our own, or on a mountain. These rituals and used objects only expose the deep lie that we have to reach outward to find God. The truth is there is we just have to connect within, he is there and always has been, waiting patiently and loving us all the while.
We don’t need to wallow in guilt in order to take responsibility for ourselves – that just keeps us stuck from truly changing and moving on with greater commitment to life.
It blows my mind that we are taught what we are taught. And we don’t question it, we know something doesn’t feel right, but when we see a heard of sheep all going in the same direction we immediately assume they must know what they are doing. Thank god for Universal Medicine reminding us to connect to our inner wisdom and not that of a bastardised regurgitation.
Coleen I can very much relate to all you share here, having also been bought up Catholic I can remember having to make up something for confession even though I knew there was nothing at all wrong with the way I behaved. It is obvious that this Religion is miles away from true Religion and inspiring people to live a life of truth, love, integrity and joy.
‘Religion is pure love with no judgement or condemnation of any kind, irrespective of the act committed…’
Yes, only when we get rid of those concepts as guilt, condemnation, fear, etc. we can find the simple and deep connection we already have with God.
In this simple story so much of our normal and accepted religious ways are exposed for the control and manipulation activity that actually goes on… Perfect example of a child pretending to have sinned to please the priest! This says it all – that we have to be told and learn that there is something wrong with us as that is not a true reality.
Thank you Colleen, for this is a great insight into the so-called religious ways of the church, and thank God I also found The Way of The Livingness as a religious way of living. I could never get all that other so-called religious mumbo jumbo that was presented it never felt true for me. When I hear the word religion I feel the original meaning, which is to return or re-connect with God.
The connection to God definitely does not come through a wafer or a sip of wine! Yet as I write that I can feel how caught I was in that belief for so many years. Today I can feel it in my movements, which feed my the space from which I make a decision. Is it love, or is it not, if it is not love then it is not from God.
A great article Coleen ” these words really struck me today “Thirdly, my personal experience of guilt is that it is a false, emotional energy that is not of the energetic quality of God Our Father. ” I was brought up in the Catholic system and the getting it right has stayed with me most of my life, I am realising now it is the guilt that I am feeling that feels yucky in my body, which I have no need to feel, now knowing that I am no sinner for I am a Divine son of God.
The notion that we have to go to an intermediary to confess marks a fraudulent religion designed to disempower and prevent us from experiencing true and direct connection with the living God within each one of us.
Thank you, Coleen, I love what you say about guilt ” It does not serve to reconnect us ” that’s for sure, it does the opposite, it gives us the feeling that we are not worthy to live the divinity that we are as Jesus did.
The religion I also live is, “The Way of The Livingness”. It is knowing that the way I live brings me closer to my divinity or further away from my divinity.
We will look back, in the not so distant future, at today’s so-called religions in the same way as we now look back on whole nations being afraid of thunder, and letting just this rule their lives.
Confession box, what an interesting thing to be made to do as a child. It almost solidifies you into believing what ever your “sins” are because you are consistently repeating them or in your case, making them up. It feels like an effective way to ensure people are disempowered. For if the congregation is constantly struggling with feelings of guilt and failure then they are less likely to question the Priest in the box that is dishing out pennants.
‘…what removes me from God is choosing an energy that God is not…’ – WOW I love this sharing – I chose to remove myself from God for a long time because I associated God with constructed religion – but in that I missed the fact that God is within and it is just my own choices that either connect me or disconnect me.
How controlling are some Religions? I can see that the Anglican Church controlled us by guilt ! l love the fact that The Way of The Livingness as presented by Serge Benhayon sees us as all equal Sons of a Loving God and responsible only to ourselves for the decisions and way of life we lead..
Thank you Coleen for shinning light into the lies of what we have been made to believe religion is, as in truth The Way of The Livingness is the only way to connect to that which is within us and in direct contact with divinity and the universe around us.
There are many times I have been in the energy of confession without even going to church – so great to know what that feels like in my body and to clock it as not being me.
You lay it out so starkly, one assumes you are flawed and in need of redemption and you are expected to comply with their ways to be redeemed, the other says you are from God, from love and you have ways that keep you away from that so it’s about dropping those and living the love you – simple really I choose the second a religion called The Way of The Livingness which confirms me in the divinity I am while always asking that I live connected to that divinity, for as you so gorgeously say it, Coleen, ‘what removes me from God is choosing an energy that God is not’.
The thing is, the priest probably didn’t know you were lying, such is the disconnection of Mainstream religions and their ‘holy ways’ of what is actually going on for people.
Excellent point Harry – this exposes the churches ‘people in power’ for the intention behind what they do. It’s not about people, relationships, love or even care – it’s about wanting people to think they are broken and cannot communicate with God themselves and need to rely on another to get there.
Great blog exposing how much the truth has been bastardised and how holy communion has become a ritual that is anything but a holy communion and in fact takes you further away from God rather than showing you your own divinity and innate connection to Thy father.
“I noted that as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.” – It’s such an absurd system when you expose it like this! Guilt can be such a heavy blanket to carry energetically and only serves to keep us dis-connected from our essence and from God – the opposite to what true religion is about in my view…
I agree Coleen, to make up sins for the sake of confessing something to a priest in the confessional box is a sin itself.
Such a simple and purposeful recipe for living Coleen, thank you for sharing;
“The true religion I now live, The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy.”
The true sin of Catholic sins is that given in real human life we all make mistakes, and none of us are perfect, so if we listen to Catholicism the fact that as humans we will never be perfect is turned into a self-flagellation of knowing how unworthy we are. There can be no love in any religion that takes something every human experiences and turns it into self abuse.
“I noted that as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.” What a set up this is and an absolute lie that attempts to control and manipulate the truth and natural godliness within us.
The fact that you had to confess something to be accepted by the church shows that there was no true openness to people being truly honest, loving and caring which is a bit contradictory as the church does preach to be loving, caring and honest…
One amazing thing I have learnt from Serge Benhayon is that God doesn’t forgive and that is because he doesn’t judge in the first place, this just feels so true to me, and so if God doesn’t forgive or judge what place does the confessional really have?
Guilt is a heavy and insidious burden that the powers that be, in this case the catholic religion, burdens the followers with so that power over them is assured and hardly ever questioned. But it makes a mockery of God and has nothing at all to do with His beholding light.
Guilt is a powerful force in the world that is used continuously to manipulate, and this occurs from the interpersonal to the international, and yet, when held up to the light , it contains no power at all.
Coleen, this is a great article, it really exposes how untrue the teachings about sin from the Catholic church are; how crippling it is to tell people they are sinners and to hold back the truth that we are all born divine, the Catholic teachings are the opposite to what is true and serve to keep people small and disconnected.
The idea of ‘sins’ is a great way to control children and make it seem like there is something wrong with them. The control comes in because if children think there is something wrong with them then they will, from a young age, seek to fix or perfect themselves through whatever means possible on the outside. To me, this is an act of crime, as there is nothing wrong with us. The purity within can always be accessed and lived.
I absolutely love how you defined both ‘religions’ here Colleen. It’s an absolute wonder how Catholicism is still in such huge operation today. The contrast in the foundations of The Way of The Livingness and Catholicism is incredible.
There just seems to me so many things on this earthly plane that are designed to keep us from connecting to our souls and God. I remember the old Catholic guilt; it took me a while to shake that one, and being born a sinner? What’s that all about?
All of that, being born a sinner etc is so evil.
The Way of The Livingness allows us to understand that true religion is in everything that we do, whenever our movements reflect the fullness of who we are, no holding back or playing small, we are living as a true Son of God.
If false rules of what God is are a prison, a box we can get trapped in, then sin and shame are the padlock and the key that keep us trapped and mired in this for so much of our life. All of the ideas of sin are mentioned in Gods name yet when you turn even the smallest microscope to these behaviours and attitudes we entertain it’s easy to see they have absolutely nothing to do with divinity or Love. So as you have done Coleen, let’s bring our care and attention to what we think and say and one by one root out the sin from our everyday.
Confession is now called reconciliation? When did that change?
That is news to me also, and it very exposing in itself…. making something sound or appear more acceptable does not change the original intent.
Our Souls, a spark of God no less, are a quality that remains true and pure, and can in fact never be affected by evil, ‘sins’ or otherwise. It is only that we live in disconnection to our Divine essence within that we ‘fall from grace’ so to speak and live less than the Soul-fullness that we already are. The Ageless Wisdom Teachings holds the truth of our Divinity are the core of all its teachings as such The Way of The Livingness is a true religion that allows us to live these teachings as best we can through our everyday lives, so that our Soul-fullness is our natural way of being as is our intimate relationship with God.
This word ‘reconciliation’ jumped out of the page at me because I am not entirely sure I understand what it means in the context of the catholic church. So I looked it up in the dictionary which says that reconciliation is “the action of making one view or belief compatible with another: any possibility of reconciliation between such clearly opposed positions.” Which is interesting because I can see how on the one hand religious reconciliation in the catholic church would be a very special event for someone who feels very strongly about their chosen religion or religious beliefs because it would be a confirmation that they are in line with what the church also believes. But for someone who this is not their truth, this would be a very imposing experience. The words that come to mind are ‘live and let live’. Surely everyone should have the right to choose what religion they belong to and to have that confirmed in whatever way they deem appropriate – as long as no harm is coming to any one else – and never should one religion be imposed on to another person. Isn’t it so that at the end of the day we all need to listen to our inner-hearts and let that place of truth lead the way on what religion is and how it can be lived? Which may be different for many people, but again, as long as there is no harm what-so-ever being caused to another person, then freedom to religious practise is a very precious thing.
It is very powerful when we nominate and renounce that which is not true and the more I become aware of the false energy the more comes my way to call out as it is a path of unfolding to return home to God and to that who I truly am, a son of God.
Most religions are just so far removed from the true religion that will evolve us. It seems like they are specifically designed to keep us from connecting with ourselves and then to God by telling us that we are not worthy or we are born sinners and guilt and confession are a necessary thing. I can thankfully say that is a thing of the past for me thanks to The Way of The Livingness.
The Way of The Livingness is love, harmony truth, joy and stillness in a loved expression. It brings us home to who we are far greater than connecting to anything outside of ourselves.
‘Central to the rite of confession is the concept of sin and the notion that we are all sinners with different levels of severity.’ I have been raised with a weekly visit to the Catholic Church and placing God and Jesus far above myself. Confession in the church we went to was something you could choose to do, so only the older people did this and I have never once tried it. It was something I was curious about but it did not feel as the truth to me but although I did not need to confess but there was this ‘being a lesser person’ within me fed by the dominance of the priests and the whole organisation of the church. Since I live The Way of The Livingness, my body in connection with God, I am back home in myself and know we are divine and are here to return to this divinity.
I remember as a child being told that we are born sinners and we are all sinners and we are not worthy and finding it really hard to get my head around because what the hell had I done. Then I went to school only to be punished for stuff all the time that I hadn’t done or for trying to express myself, so I decided I might as well play up because you get punished regardless. So now that I know I wasn’t born bad I can just get on with what feels right and that doesn’t usually get me into trouble.
Having been brought up to believe that we cannot connect directly with God it seems incredible to consider that it is possible. Yet doesn’t this expose the possibility that we must challenge our beliefs to see whether they are true or not? What better way for evil to flourish than to tell us that our deepest truth is in fact a lie, that Our Father is distant and aloof when he is innate and present? Surely it is wise to ponder what beliefs and ideals evil would have us live by and then feel within what is actually true.
It is a great theological question, isn’t it? Are we inherently evil, or good? For my mind, one needs only to turn to a newborn babe or small child to know the answer and see the absolute open-ness in every human being at such a small age. Thus, evil has to be something extrinsic or imposed upon us in some way or form in order to it to become part of our nature later in life.
Sometimes I wonder about the rites and rituals of the catholic church and where they originate from and, if it has been forgotten that they must have been developed by people a very long time ago and changed over time, but essentially they are not from God because his is a beholding light that holds everyone equally – a factor that is not present in the catholic church.
“Secondly, what removes me from God is choosing an energy that God is not ” it is that simple and choosing guilt is one of the emotional energies that guarantees we will stay separate to God and this is why so many religion use guilt to punish those that have in their eyes sinned.
The confessional box was a place I remember well. I hated it but what I can reflect on was that the real evil of this process was not only the massive imposition it placed on me, not to mention the absolute lie that it was founded on, but more so the fact that it prompted me to want to seek to be living the “right” and “true”, life being the good boy and not the trouble maker! The “good” boy is not truly all that good at all and is, in fact, one that is very good at pleasing others but not so good at truly expressing truth and honesty.
I am horrified but not surprised that not only is the false idea that we are all sinners plays such a fundamental part of institutionalised religions, but that children can be forced into actively making up stories of doing wrong in order to tick the required box! It shows what a self preserving and demanding entity many of these institutions have become.
Keeping humanity in guilt, and then declaring they have one and only key to absolve it is the position of many religions. What an easy way to suppress and control the masses, we have fallen for it for centuries. But now we have The Way of The Livingness which confirms us in the fact that we are already Divine in essence… and all we need to do is live that eternal divinity.
The idea of sin is such a bastardisation of the truth of a person needing to take responsibility for their ill choices. The idea of sins and someone taking them away from us is ridiculous. We have a responsibility to clean up our own mess and not think that someone else is going to do it for us.
I remember crying one sleep over night I shared with a close friend as a child, because she said I was going to go to hell, because I was not christened…I did not cry because I was scared of going to hell, I was sad to feel that she was in so much fear of it for me. I do feel there is karma and there are consequences, but anything close to hell is lived here on earth, when we deny our true loving, and divine origins. I know from my body that children are born with a divine spark and potential, not going to hell because of not being christened (I feel)…just look in their eyes…
Thank you Colleen for sharing and expressing so clearly about your experiences of the Catholic Religion which are so similar to mine and captures so accurately what we have been through as opposed to the true way of knowing God within us all. “Re-connecting with Soul, by re-choosing the quality of the energy in which I move, is what is required to re-establish my relationship with Our Father and the Divine energy that God is.”
The gift of Serge Benhayon and the Ancient Wisdom with Universal Medicine is changing everything, and is an amazing reflection and inspiration. I too endorse; “The true religion I now live, The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy, so that eventually we will not live on this earth at all, but return to our original Divine Soul Plane.” Thank you.
Thank you Coleen, sharing that religion, which comes from the connection with God, is never ever based on do or dont’s (right or wrongs and confessions and sins) but actually the confirmation of who we are and living by that. All the illusions are hereby exposed to its max. And the arrogance drops. We have played smart, or not that smart after all.
Are we not all tired of being judged to not be good enough? Mostly we do it ourselves, no help needed, but we only learned from not being seen and accepted as who we innately are and then trying to fit in. So it is us stopping the self-judgement (blame of sin) that restores our natural being of self where we know to be complete and loved for who we are. There more we develop such self-loving and self-honouring attitude the less we are receptive or reactive to judgment from others.
These are words of wisdom Alex, thank you.
We are born with a divine essence, we have it always, and it’s about if we choose the energy of our soul which aligns us to it, and through that natural alignment all that is not divine in previous choices we’ve made is addressed – this does indeed capture what true religion is. No need for any guilt and in fact guilt is just another form of control. The whole premise of catholicism is that you in yourself are not worthy or capable of being with God without the aid of the church (completely untrue), and anything which allows you to claim and connect to the natural essence you are is discouraged, so as you note Coleen, you were asked to fit in, in making up sins and ‘as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.’ It’s like a form of gang hazing, less extreme physically for sure, but no less brutal energetically; you are asked to comply, to hand yourself over, there is nothing loving or true in any of this, it’s designed to keep its adherents trapped in guilt, emotion and the feeling of being wrong. How can this possibly be of God – it can’t, and it isn’t.
Guilt is not a natural expression for us. Try making a very small child feel guilty…. if they make a mistake, they have let it go by the next moment and guilt therefore is something that has to be learned – through being imposed upon by outer beliefs.
Brilliant sharing Coleen. I love how you expose the falseness of how Catholicism did not represent the reconnecting and love of God. It is actually used to control.
The Way of The Livingness as beautifully presented in your blog resonates deeply with every part of me as it is a way in line with our soul.
A religion that sustains itself by keeping its followers in a perpetual state of guilt and contraction does not feel loving–but Love is what God is–conflicting, no? A religion that is built upon the foundation of conflict, what is this religion then truly professing?
Rather than presenting we are all sinners and born tainted, The Way of The Livingness presents we are already whole, all equally divine Sons of God and that we are here to re-learn this by way of soulful expression on Earth. This simply means living from our inner knowing rather then head filled knowledge… here in lies the challenge.
‘Thirdly, my personal experience of guilt is that it is a false, emotional energy that is not of the energetic quality of God Our Father.’ Guilt is a sure way of remaining disempowered and ‘not good enough’, thus never in true equality with God.
The fact that we can re-connect with God ourselves, not needing any particular place or person to make it happen is incredibly sweet and simple. Especially as this stands in reflection to the many overly complicated versions of organised and institutionalised religion that we have today.
Thank you Coleen for an insight into the inner beliefs and workings of Catholicism as I have little knowledge on how it is and I can see the very real difference between how it would be to be told you are a sinner seeking salvation or a child with divine potential to reconnect, live that reconnection and return to who we truly are. An enlightening blog.
The guilt inflicted and perpetuated by institutionalised religions is a heavy burden indeed and very confusing for children; it gets no less confusing as we get older, but a lot of people just accept it together with the chasm between God and them that guilt creates – and thus the need for a mediator, a man of the cloth. What a set-up.
The extent of the imposition placed on children in the name of God is starting to unravel, great article Colleen to support the return to truth.
Yes – how did organised religion get is so wrong proclaiming jesus was the only Son of God – it makes no sense and effectively shuts down every single person who swallows this line from reclaiming their true heritage and birthright as an equal Son of God with all.
This is a brilliant blog Coleen exposing the many false beliefs and lies that religion uses to control the masses, thank goodness for The Way of The Livingness a true religion founded on the principles of love, truth, brotherhood, joy and many other beautiful qualities that connect us to the grandness of God and to ourselves.
I also remember having to make up sins sometimes to avoid getting into further trouble. I never felt absolution after confession So for me, it also became something was needed to be done to be seen to be doing the right thing.
The beliefs that we are born with sin and that our whole life is about repenting our sins and trying to do good is so cruel and harsh and totally takes away from us our inherent divinity, love and knowing. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine is presenting the truth of true religion the way we live with all we are in connection and the moment this is felt it is known again. It is up to us to allow this love as who we are to come out again and play. Thank you, Coleen, for exposing so much here so simply and powerfully.
I love this, and I feel it to be absolute truth, meet any child and you will know this to be so…”The Way of The Livingness presents that all children are born with a Divine potential within and that, with energetic integrity and responsibility, by choosing to align with this energy, our Soul, we start to discard all that is not of our true essence quite naturally.” We all have the power ability to make choices to re-imprint, evolve how we live and we do not need to feel broken, sinful, not good enough. I was not brought up in a religious family and I felt all these of these things. My children know that they are born with a pure essence, they have unadulterated love within and without perfection they can choose this love in their life as they grow. And it is something that I know is my truth,every day I know I have stuff to heal, but I am not broken and I never was. Beautiful.
” Firstly for me religion is for me to connect me with soul” It is quite a challenge to expose the spiritual and emotional energy in oneself in order to come to the delicate, raw, open and deeply loving energy of the soul, but it is worth it. It is my way to reconnect back to God.
I absolutely agree Coleen, when we choose to connect to our soul, everything that is not who we are is easily discarded, no guilt, judgment, jealousy, comparison, etc, leaving us free to be naturally who we are – love.
The Ageless Wisdom teaches us we are all born as divine beings, therefore we have no need to confess, repent or feel guilt for our wrongdoings. We simply have to let that all go and return to being love in our gorgeous divine selves. That feels very powerful, thank you Coleen for exposing all those archaic old beliefs.
“The true religion I now live, The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy, so that eventually we will not live on this earth at all, but return to our original Divine Soul Plane. ” it is very beautiful to read and feel the magic of God and what true religion actually is, it is so vastly different to what I grew up understand religion was about and instead makes me feel completely at ease with myself and life.
I really appreciate this honest exposure of the insanity of the concept of confessional – first and foremost it attempts to strip us of the fact that our very essence is a pure, unsulliable relationship with God and then sets up a cycle of guilt, shame and lack of self-worth that can perpetuate for life times. Freeing myself of the weight of this consciousness has been one of the greatest liberations and responsibilities in my life.
Confession of our sins is something we have grown up believing that we have to do. It creates guilt and shame and means that we view ourselves as less. This does nothing to help us grow and learn. We just confess, and go back to how we were and repeat the same behaviour again and again. What I have discovered is that the way to grow and change is to simply be honest with myself about the true reason behind my behaviour. By providing myself with this level of understanding I am not condemning myself or looking to someone else to judge or forgive me. The understanding is an act of love that then allows for transformation.
Hear, hear Rebecca, brilliant comment. To be aware of what is truly going on is a great opportunity for us to wake up to what is not true and not serving humanity. We are then more supported to live from what we all know, the absolute truth and love that is deep within us all.
“what removes me from God is choosing an energy that God is not”. Yes Coleen, it really is as simple as that. We can either choose to connect to God, or not, and if we dont choose God we are choosing an energy that is at play 24/7, trying to entice us away from what we know to be true and who we truly are.
‘The Way of The Livingness presents that all children are born with a Divine potential within and that, with energetic integrity and responsibility, by choosing to align with this energy, our Soul, we start to discard all that is not of our true essence quite naturally. Neither the confessional box, nor any of the other rites, is ever needed for this.’ Well said Coleen, we only need connection to our inner heart.
Guilt is such a horrible illusion that keeps us in separation and its a perfect tool for certain religions to use to keep us in that state. Being taught from a young age that we are already divine instead of being born already sinners would give us such a better start on our road back home.
“Ultimately, my only sin was following this advice and lying to the priest that I had committed sins that I hadn’t! So I was guilty of lying to keep people and the church happy.”
The way to keep people happy in denying myself is familiar to me. The hurtful thing is that I kept people out through this unloving way of acting and expressing nontruth. Only in expressing truth is my heart is open to everyone.
“for me true religion is about the inner connection with Soul, my innermost essence” today I also hold this as a what true religion is, from this knowing of religion and from the fact that each day I get to deepen and understand what religion is by the way I live life it allows me some space to observe that what I thought and was told religion was, was not in fact true one of the reasons I was so put off from the term “religion” before.
The concept of sin is just another corruption of truth to ensure we are kept further away from the reconnection to our own natural, innate understanding and knowing of that truth.
It seems to me, that if we teach our children to worship God as an outside source that needs repentance, this only serves to guarantee an adult community of people who do not know the love that they innately are, and can express. This love, therefore, is not something we have to work for or prove ourselves worthy of, it simply is, and it is for everyone because it comes from deep inside our inner-hearts – a place where no wafer or wine needs to be, just the presence and the truth of who you are.
An amazingly powerful part of The Way of The Livingness and it’s philosophy is the understanding that in this world, everything is energy and everything occurs because of it too. And when we understand there are two types of energy that we can choose from, this makes the corruption and abuse that we see much more easier to comprehend. Not that it harms any less but we will never ever be fooled again into thinking that we are ‘bad’ ‘wicked’ or born unkind. No, as you say Coleen, we are all divine.
Joseph that was for me such a turning point, to appreciate that life is first about energy and then everything that happens is secondary to that energy, changes how we are with religion and exposes what religion is true and what is not. I’ve deeply appreciated the awareness and the evolution that The Way of The Livingness provides. Something that deepens each day based on my choices in how I live.
Great article that describes the place of confession very well. I remember most of the time walking into confession at school where you had discussed what to say with your friends and teacher. The priest if he truly listened at all would give you some ‘hale mary’s’ to say and off you would go. I remember as children we all smiled at each other as we came and went into the confessional box because we always wondered if we were going to get away with telling the priest these stories. We were never questioned or had to qualify anything we said it was like as long as you played along with the process everything was going to be alright. It became the same game every week and I still remember it very well, walking around the church giggling and getting in trouble from the teacher and priest for making noise. You would feel pressure when you were walking to the church, almost a mild panic that you didn’t know what to say. We would all discuss it and make up a few things to say and I’m pretty sure we would all say the same thing. We knew which ones to say that would give us the key to get out of the confessional box. Looking back it was such a strange behaviour and it still goes on, which when you look at what a lot of adult say now about it that makes it stranger still.
Yes, Coleen. The idea that we need another person to absolve us of our sins implies or rather imposes the belief that we do not have our own connection to our Father, and are incapable therefore of finding our own way home. How much further from the truth could this actually be?
I wasn’t brought up in an organised religion as a child but upon reflection ‘sin’ was an issue in my life and not something that you could be freed of by a few ‘hail mary’s’, but I thought somehow I was tainted, through the experiences I had and life I had lived. I was broken to some degree and not fixable….I have worked through this surface layer of hurts and still continue to do so, but through this inner reflection I have uncovered something, unbreakable, my essence, soul, inner heart, it has been there all along shining bright like a diamond, and I have begun to polish and nurture it. I now do not feel broken and I now know I never was….
Its quite the claim to make – to say one knows the true religion. What I would suggest is that everybody, regardless of their religious affiliation, actually has a true relationship with religion. You can hardly avoid it, and even if you deny your connection to divinity, that is in truth still a relationship with religion. The fact that we might not be aware of or know the existence of God or otherwise, does not stop us having a relationship with whatever lies just beyond our doorstep of awareness. In that way, it is no different to gravity. We have a relationship with gravity. It is unavoidable, whether we like to believe in it or not. Our relationship with what happens after our death is exactly the same. Whatever the greater truth is, it affects us all. All we can do is argue about the detail. By arguing is pointless. It is better we create a society instead whereby freedom of religious exploration is encouraged. After all, someone has to have the truth in the palm of their hands.
The pain caused by religion is so deep. I have been feeling into my connection with God over the past couple of days, and have come to realise that as I grew up I felt so disconnected and hurt by what “religion” does in our world – all the wars, the harassment of children, women, and men – just so so sad.
“The Way of The Livingness presents that all children are born with a Divine potential…” We all are and have this innately in us. To reconnect to this wisdom will change our lives in truly feeling and accepting that we are coming from love and that we are this love.
The concept of sin and guilt, as you have pointed out Coleen, is so debilitating. Being freed from this, by the teachings of The Ageless Wisdom and The Way of The Livingness, has been a divine blessing.
Institutionalised religion is simply not needed. The confessional box charade exposes the absurdity of such a system – a system that surely exists to prop up a long-held power structure that keeps people in fear and away from God and the truth of their soul.
Coleen I love what you and the comments are bringing to the table. Religion and what is being discussed raises some amazing points about life and our choices that need to deeply reflect on. Looking at our choices in the past and the way in which we can now choose to be divine in all we do to the best of our ability is part of the simple presentation of The Way of The Livingness.
It is incredible when I even just read about the way institutionalised religions impose their limiting and constricted way of relating to God, to religion and to our own wisdom I can feel my chest contract. This is such a big contrast to the expansion, empowerment, and deep love within my heart I feel in relation to the Ageless Wisdom.
Its a strange concept sin, not to mention being born a sinner and asking for Gods forgiveness. I remember going to confession as a child and never felt any different from going and only did it because I wanted to please and do the right and good thing. Why do we think that God needs to forgive us? We may make mistakes but we are never wrong. We may wrong in our own mind and for some in our actions. But all of our actions are of our own choosing, so therefore it is for ourselves to make our own changes to put ourselves back on the correct path. Either way God walks with us. But the more we walk with God, the more we understand ourselves and each other.
I agree Coleen that it seems this notion of sinning and needing to be forgiven is a reinterpreted version of the universal responsibility that we all feel and know to be important. Yes we need to understand that everything we do, think or say effects everything and either adds or takes away to the collective whole, but feeling guilt or remorse or self-judgement (or allowing ourselves to be judged by others) only adds more ill energy to the pool that caused the irresponsible act in the first place.
I still find it gobsmacking that a ‘union with God’ can be symbolically founded in one’s life (for life) by the drinking of wine (which alters our ability to be ourselves, which means it alters our ability to be connected to the essence of who we are) and the placing of bread (wafer) in the mouth… also symbolic of comfort and numbness. That says it all really… it is as messed up as the notion of sin and confession… which as a 7 year old child you were capable of debunking by staying true to your own feelings.
The energy of guilt is used a form of manipulation, which totally separates and disconnects you from the true source of where we come from.
Why do you need any ritual to connect you with God, when we are all born as equal sons of God?
This is a much needed blog allowing a platform for the truth of religion to be exposed from within every one of us and our inner knowing and experiences rather than the beliefs and ideals that are imposed on us . It allows a freeing to be the divinity we all are and know, I love it . ” for me true religion is about the inner connection with Soul, my innermost essence, which allows me to re-connect with Divine energy. This connection with Soul allows me to connect with God through feeling.” honest and deeply magical.
What a great unravelling blog Coleen – I could feel it unpacking me! This line in particular hit a nerve “we are all sinners with different levels of severity” This is such a curse to walk through life with.
This feels like a very timely exploration of religion and our relationships with it. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to get more honest with how I respond to the word and all my associations with it.
These concepts of ‘sin’ and ‘guilt’ are to me nothing more than a fancy dress game we play. It might be dramatic to go along with the whole idea you have done something ‘wrong’ but ultimately we all come to see that it’s simply energy that comes through us when we check out. To pursue this idea that it was actually us is just a big distracting fuss. Thank you Coleen for sharing your journey back to the simplicity of true Love.
I clearly noticed how the difference between spiritual and Soulful energy is explained. Never have I realised so clearly that if I’m choosing the energy of my Soul, I’m actually connected to spiritual energy. Only because I didn’t choose my Soulful energy. So could it be that in the end it is about choosing to connect to the energy of Soul, as much as possible. Without perfection of course.
The more I allow myself to deepen my connection with my body the more I can feel my connection to God. What is becoming clearer and clearer is that God is felt through my body, my inner heart, a sense of spaciousness and feeling harmonious with-in me. None of this comes from the mind, no thinking or pictures of should and should not, no imposition and sense of constriction.
I am so proud of my ability to see through the hypocrisy of the catholic rituals.
Because religion was one of those boxes that were required for being educated when growing up, Lutheran was my box that was ticked. It was one of those freedom choice things… that your parents got to pick for you. As a religion, it was more laid back compared to the Catholics. The few times I had been in a Catholic church was for viewing baptisms and weddings. It was a stoic, dense atmosphere and it felt imposing. As you have said, Vanessa, today it is even easier to feel the rot that has crept in over the centuries.
How empowering and inspiring is true religion Coleen? A traditional religious upbringing could not have been further from the truth it espoused. Being confirmed for what I always truly felt has been life changing for me.
I too can feel the truth about the religion of The Way of The Livingness, Coleen. I know I’ve known it before, and I know I’d lost it, but I’m hanging on to it this time. It makes complete sense reconnecting to the Divine Wisdom and God within every one of us.
The Way of The Livingness offers us freedom and at the same time a sense of true responsibility and commitment. It allows us to expand our relationship with God as we meet him on an equal footing that is both respectful and dignified and in no way asks us to grovel or demean ourselves – just to be honest and truly loving.
What you describe here Coleen shows so clearly how we just follow the system even though it does not make sense to us. We need to understand that we are the system or more so that the system is nothing without us. So every step we take towards our truth, and by not simply conforming and giving in to what life is demanding from us, we bring an aspect of truth to the world and thus the systems will gradually change.
Yes I love and appreciate this Esther, we are to be the change we want to see in the world, religion will be from the inside out.
The way of the livingness is true religion at its very essence with love, stillness, truth, harmony, joy and the oneness of us all . Finding and living this way as our pure divinity honouring who we all innately are is magical and allows our true evolution and the responsibility we all have with this.
I was never taught that some sins were lesser than others! I am sure I wouldn’t have been so condemning of myself as a young girl had I known this. Supporting people to feel guilty is not loving.
Yes, Coleen, guilt does nothing to re-connect us to who we truly are, but rather dis-connect us and guarantees that we will feel unworthy of God’s love.
‘So I was guilty of lying to keep people and the church happy.’ This reflects the very nature of what keeps ‘the church’ going, it relies on emotional outplays from those invested in its basterdised version of the truth. True religions comes from an original source and needs no such investment – simply connection.
So we are perpetuating the existence of the mutated versions of religion by our compliance, investment and fear of them.
Ah, if only I had known that way back when. I remember having to think of something really fast so I could at least please the priest! What a way to start my education in life and a relationship with God, feeling like a permanent sinner – bizarre as it was so opposite to how I felt. The connection we have as children is one to be nurtured from the inside out as you so simply state
I grew up with friends that were Catholics, and they expressed it was great! It was like a free get out of jail card for anything you did. The cost of admission was with some time in the box, a few Hail Mary’s and you were out on the street to sin again, we thought what a bargain! We are spherical with God within all of us! Why would we try and be less, by trying to fit our soul in a box?
“The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy” and so the true qualities of God are returned to us, and we are supported to return to them, to reclaim what is inherent within us. We are naturally such graceful and loving beings, it takes a concerted effort to turn us into ‘bad people’, its not who we truly are.
To call someone a sinner is steeped in judgement and who’s to say that in the make believe world of sins and sinners that judgement isn’t a sin?
True religion never has to keep up with where humanity’s at because in truth Humanity is always folding itself back towards true religion.
When it was re-confirmed to me what true religion was I realised I had known it all along. My favourite moments in life had always been when I was still and quiet, allowing myself to deeply feel, ponder, reflect and appreciate. I realise I was always more religious away from church than I was in it. As a child i was always conscious of playing a role on Sundays but was much more myself for the rest of the week!
Institutionalized religion has told (sold, imposed on) us that our relationship with others is more important than the relationship with ourselves; that God, priests and basically everything and everybody in life are more important than ourselves. Where, how is it possible that we are less important than anything else in life? We are crucially important. And the more we listen to ourselves, the more we are able to (truly) listen to others. This is Divine Magic at play. God is in absolute awe with himself and in that joyfully taking responsibility for holding us all. Could it be that he’s actually reflecting this love consistently so, in the end, we cannot but surrender to the fact that we are indeed amazing!
What is commonly known as religion takes us further away from God, rather than reconnecting us to God and the Divinity within. No wonder atrocities can be committed and wars fought over religion.
The notion that guilt is strong in the Catholic Church and often taints even ex Catholics as adults. If you sin, how does feeling guilty help? This emotion shuts down and weighs heavily on the heart, the part of us that can support us to return to God and avoid choosing ‘sin’ in the future.
It doesn’t make sense to me that you need to wait until you have been given communion, to have union with God. Would God really leave children stranded for the first 10 or so years of their life if this was actually the case?
Great point Fiona – God wouldn’t leave anybody stranded at any point in time. But there is a source of energy that does and this is what plays out through many people in the name of religion. This is what puts people off the words God and religion.
Awesome Fiona – The illusion of institutionalised religion exposed in the light of truth.
It’s true what you share Coleen about guilt…”It does not serve to reconnect us. In fact, in operation, it serves to disconnect us and to place us in a heavy energy that separates us further from God.” As a brought up Catholic I can honestly say that laying on the guilt trip was enormous and it did not allow for true connection to God.
Confession makes people feel like they have sinned. There is often shame, guilt and self loathing that comes with it. There is no healing in this, and it only buries anything a person may have done that needs true healing in the person’s body. A very powerful tool I’ve learnt from Universal Medicine, is to nominate something that needs to change but it is done with love and understanding and a commitment to change something in the way we live and the quality we live in so as to not repeat the behaviour. And if this is done with a practitioner of the esoteric healing modalities, they too bring love, understanding and are able to support the person in their healing.
Words mean nothing unless they come with the lived wisdom of our bodies. We can speak all the right words from our minds but unless the understanding comes from our bodies, where we have deeply felt our choices and the innate wisdom that lies within, then our words will have no power or authority.
Confessing what we perceive as wrong or bad, doesn’t take us to the root cause of why we made that choice, and therefore there is no responsibility taken for our actions, and those choices continue to perpetuate – until there comes a time when we choose to deeply look at what is truly going on in our lives, and to take full responsibility for our choices.
Life is really quite simple and not the complicated way current religions would have us believe. As presented by The Ageless Wisdom, in every moment we have a choice – we can choose the spiritual energy that is not who we are… or… we can choose our Soul energy, our Divine essence – and all else in our lives follows from this – very simple.
To teach a child that they are born a sinner is utter cruelty and a lie. Look into the eyes of a baby or young child and you can see divinity – pure and simple.
There is no love in the Catholic Church, only a bastardised version of the word. The Love of God as I am coming to understand it now is so vast and deep we cannot possibly have a true understanding of it, but it includes everybody, tall, short, fat, thin, black, white, red, yellow, rich, poor, because if you strip away all the outer identifiers, we are all the same, equal Sons of God. What has been created here on Earth for our reflection and return, what is allowed in terms of our free will to choose the energy we align with, the endless patience whilst we make choices that do not serve anybody except our individual selves, this is is infinite.
I can feel the authority with which you write, Carmel. It is an amazing service to call out the harm of the catholic church as one religion of many in the world that is responsible for great ills.
Calling moments of irresponsibility a ‘sin’ rather than simply what it is, and selling the idea that somebody or some mechanism outside of us will magically wipe it clean does not serve anyone. It is completely a different story to be supported to build deep love and appreciation of ourself as well as understanding the dynamics that propel us away from our divine essence and taking responsibility for our choices that lead to our irresponsible and unloving actions. Can you imagine children who are in the habit of bullying at school not receiving any help and support to understand and change their behavior, but being told if they go to the head master and recite what they have done that will make it all okay?
“I had problems with this notion of sin from Day 1… and this was not only attributable to the smell of the confessional box.” now this is an interesting point, why is it that there is a certain “smell” about the confessional boxes, I noticed this since i was young and to me its the feel and smell combined that is the least appealing, loving or caring of environments. But that is no surprise given how we are expected to go in “feeling” sinful and wanting to be forgiven.
‘for me true religion is about the inner connection with Soul, my innermost essence, which allows me to re-connect with Divine energy.’ – I don’t have a religious past or background, however I always had a feeling of being a bit lost. What I understand today is that I missed the connection with myself as well as my natural connection to God through my own Soul.
‘It is not possible for me to connect with God through consuming a piece of white wafer or by taking a sip of wine’ – It’s a great question to ask ourselves when we’re indecisive or unsure about making a choice to do or not do something; will we still be able to maintain our connection to what we consider divine, true and universal, or will this choice make us feel more dense?
Brilliant, Susie. Do the choices I make enhance my natural connection to God or interfere with it? What a great test question for each and every one of my decisions.
I still have a relationship with guilt today based on an upbringing of sinning and repentance. It’s interesting to see how it can creep in when I’m either not with myself or giving myself a hard time about something. At the same time, it feels incredibly liberating to know that there is no sin, just a relationship for me to have with my responsibility as well as my karma. When the fear is removed space is made to feel the real responsibility.
Nick, I love how you have used the word ‘space’ to describe the feeling when fear is removed. I feel this is very relevant as guilt closes us down, thus reduces the space within us. I feel that in time we will understand that space is not empty, on the contrary it is full of intelligence and therefore when we contract in any way, we reduce our ability to access information. The very information that will support us out of whatever predicament that we are in.
In essence we are all the same.
The Way of The Livingness is the 21st century name for the very ancient and wise living relationship with self and God. This is why it feels a so very normal and true religion.
“Ultimately, my only sin was following this advice and lying to the priest that I had committed sins that I hadn’t! So I was guilty of lying to keep people and the church happy.” This shows the ridiculousness of the Catholic Church that lying is ok and keeps the priest happy and in a job. No wonder we get confused in life in what is a lie and what is not and what we are willing to turn a blind eye to.
I went to Catholic schools and was taught by nuns who totally turned me into a bad kid. I was forever getting punished when I hadn’t actually done anything wrong, so I remember making a conscious decision, well if I am to be punished I might as well be naughty.
If punishment is dealt out for the sake of ministering punishment, that says a lot about the approach to life from a Catholic perspective.
With the authority of lived experience and gently and respectfully so, you have exposed the dysfunction and cruelty of the Catholic Church. To make a child believe they are innately sinful rather than support them to know their innate divinity is an ongoing abuse that needs to unveiled.
It is so simple as you say Dianne – “what removes me from God is choosing an energy that God is not”. We have the free will to make that choice, and the free will to to make the choice to return in any moment.
If we were naturally sinners, or evil, and that was all we were, and as such we required salvation in order to arise out of our basal nature, then how would we know love when it came across our doorstep? In other words, the fact we can recognise love when it is bestowed upon us means that it must be in us also in order to recognise what it is. After all, no one ever had to ‘learn’ what love was. They can say they never received it, yes, and as a result suggest that their behaviours were as a result of having no love in their love from very young, but even then, by the admission that they recognised that there was no love once again means that they innately knew love from birth. Otherwise they would not recognise its absence.
Guilt is such a toxic emotion. I’ve had many people say how guilty they feel about this or that. What I observe from this is that this guilt keeps them away from feeling their beauty within which, if reconnected to, they’ll feel the beautiful truth of who they are and know, without doubt, that simply coming back to love and living from this is what clears any ill energy they may have previously chosen – something I too can live.
I love that I now feel totally ok with saying I am religious whereas before I knew that the word had been bastardised I totally rejected religion.
Feeling guilty is a very good way to separate us from God, to make us feel lesser and dependent on others to show us the way. But the reality is that we are all here to learn, to grow from our mistakes, to expand our awareness and resume our one-to-one relationship with the Almighty, strong in our inner knowing of the divine and proper way to live and never needy of another person to act as an intermediary.
The whole notion of sin and confession in the Catholic church is a farce and a manipulation of the truth that deceives and dis-honours who we truely are; manipulation breeds manipulation. On the other hand Coleen what you have presented here is truth, and divine;
‘Re-connecting with Soul, by re-choosing the quality of the energy in which I move, is what is required to re-establish my relationship with Our Father and the Divine energy that God is’.
“Central to the rite of confession is the concept of sin and the notion that we are all sinners with different levels of severity.” We ‘are’ all sinners. To me, herein lies the evil. As everything we do that isn’t loving is in fact not us. Nevertheless are we responsible for allowing the unloving acts that come through us. But the key point is that we are love and that we’ve made loving choices to a varying degree. This is the complete opposite and so crucially important. As a world we’re to let go of this strong imposed belief that we’re bad people. We are not, we’re beautiful and lovely! And have an enormous potential to grow this love within us and so reflect to others that even within a world that’s not acting so loving, you can still choose love.
The notion of confession assumes that we are guilty of having committed a sin, and the idea that we need a priest to absolve our sins supports us to give our power away and not take responsibility for what we have done. Nomination, on the other hand, highlights an awareness, and shows us where we need to take further responsibility. We don’t need forgiveness, we just need awareness and willingness.
‘…as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.’ Wow, Coleen, this exposes for me the insidiousness of guilt. We are led to believe that God is going to punish us for our sins and we plead guilty and then set about correcting ourselves from this imprint which means that whatever we do is coloured by the guilt and will not therefore be reharmonising – it just perpetuates the cycle of sin for we do not get to see that we did what we did because we separated from love. If we are impulsed by love instead of guilt we set about reharmonising ourselves from a knowing that this is for humanity not just to better our own life.
Connecting to and being one with God is so simple when we make it about our everyday lives. It makes sense, and thanks to Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon, it is now a reality for me. I never felt connected to or understood God’s role with what I was presented with at school because it was never about how we live, move, walk, talk, act, love, not love and ultimately our choice to choose.
Nothing is designed more so to keep us away from our truth than institutionalised religions.
Coleen, yesterday i was meeting with some fellow mothers at my children’s school, we were discussing how our schools had implemented boundaries; rules and punishments. This lady told me that she went to a convent school where half the staff were nuns, she said that the standard consequence for bad behaviour was a smack across the knuckles with a ruler – she was so dismayed by this that she wrote a list of all the times it happened and took it home to her mother. Where upon her mother went back into the school to say that this was not an acceptable way to discipline any child. The ruler smacking stopped, but some weeks later apparently some of the nuns decided that clipping the children’s ears was a necessary alternative!
If this is a child’s experience of religion, of God of Truth it is no wonder they turn away.
However much someone else might tell me that I am amazing and my mistake or unloving action is ok, unless I accept it and have an understanding of it within myself it means nothing. Being told that a verbal utterance of an action in a box makes it all disappear is ridiculously untrue, as the impact of the action and my own judgment of myself remain intact in my body. Confessionals may trick our mind, but they leave us even more disconnected and devastated within.
One of the things I have learnt from the ageless wisdom is how deeply joyful we are designed to be, live and experience everyday. Here we in bodies that belong to the universe and all its order with access (through our connection with soul) a level of understanding beyond measure, yet when you look at humanity as a whole we are not living this.
Agreed Abby – humanity at large are somewhat leaving the body behind and living life from desire and thought and also condemning the body for its limitations and honesty. Learning to connect to the body and live life from this connection is one thing, but to know the body is divine and of the Universe, brings so much purpose to that connection – it’s hard not to be jumping for Joy.
The fact that you were advised to make up a couple of sins to tell the Priest in the confession box exposes the whole process as the farce that it actually is. Even more farcical to me is the reputation the catholic church has for sexual abuse. Why would we place our trust in the hands of those who abuse others?
Is it really God’s will to indoctrinate children to believe they have to be a certain way and comply to rules that take them away from who the truly and innately are ? To cherish, nature and allow children to connect, express their essence and grow knowing who they are and that that is enough seems to me what God’s will would be.
Institutionalised religion of _______, you can fill in the blank from the list of the top 10 largest religions in the world, and to that, we can add long-term inmates from everywhere, they all are having their life controlled by something outside of them! The Ageless Wisdom is something we choose! And, as you have succinctly stated Coleen, living the qualities of God on earth every day is our choice!
The religion of the Ageless Wisdom does not need us to chant meaningless statements, attend specific places or control us. It shows us how we can live our lives because God is already here within us, and we are all equal. So beautifully simple.
Re-connecting to our soul energy and, therefore, to God is something we are impulsed to do for ourselves, for a ‘priest to hear and/or to absolve’ what we have done is a judgment and is actually taking us further away from God. It’s scary how our perception of how things are can be so opposite to how things truly are, hence the importance of understanding energy first and allowing ourselves to feel what is going on energetically, irrespective of what we may have been told by others. Learning to trust in our own soul-full wisdom.
Re-reading this blog, I am realising the importance of allowing myself to bring true religion to ALL aspects of my life and ALL relationships. I can feel how there are areas where I can go into ‘patterns’ – feels awesome to expose this.
Exactly Shirly-Ann, the institutionalised religions do in fact only take us further away from our connection with God through the bastardised and half truths they represent, like the point of guilt for instance, that in fact does not exist in God but is a pure human creation.
Religion is not that what the institutionalised religions have made of it as it is not about any human made rule but is according universal laws and can only be experienced by deeply connecting to ones essence, that part that is direct connection with the universe, the All, with God.
When you look into it, the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom have been our saving grace through every very intense period we have experienced. What would happen if we embraced these loving principles and integrated them more into our lives.
I’ve never understood what a white wafer has to do with God, and how it in any way makes us more connected to God. After all surely the point of believing there is a God would be to become closer to the grandness that God represents. And if that is the case, does that not expose the nonsense that is fed to us in so many of these scriptures and acts?
Confession is a deep ingrained pattern in our society. We’re to be honest as a child, but honest in a way that we’re to excuse why we do what we do. As if we’re to confess that we’ve done things wrong, even when we don’t feel that we did anything ‘wrong’. For me personally this means that I’ve told myself that I always have to be honest to the ‘outside world’. Even when it actually isn’t true. These choices have made me feel quite restless and insecure. Now I’m learning that I never have to confess or excuse myself. Which is a very different way of being with myself. And in this I’m developing a much more loving way with myself within the world. A much more observing way.
How did the truth get so bastardised! It is shocking that as a young child you were not cherished and confirmed in the gorgeousness you are but instead encourage to lie about something you did not do so you could be cleared of guilt! It is just baffling! I used to go to church when I was younger and it all felt so wrong to me the concept of heaven and hell and the building as you said smelt stagnant no joy or true love flowing through it. What Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine present and teach confirmed the truth to me that I knew within. We are all equal and have the same access to God/the divine than anyone else.
Thank you Coleen for such a powerful blog, I can relate very well to your sharing as I too was bought up in the catholic church and had a similar experience to confession as you did. No wonder I turned my back on religion when I was a teenager I could no longer be a part of the lie we were being sold about being sinners etc. Being introduced to The Way of The Livingness I was a little cautious at first but it was clear this religion was completely different to anything I had experienced as it was based on true qualities such as love, a deep connection with God, brotherhood, truth, integrity – such a blessing to be a part of this religion.
‘It does not serve to reconnect us. In fact, in operation, it serves to disconnect us and to place us in a heavy energy that separates us further from God’. Reflecting on the belief of the Catholic Church that from the beginning we are sinners immediately puts us as not worthy and full of guilt and it goes on to further separate us from our innate Divinity that we were born with. This served the purposes of this system as it shifted control and manipulation further away to outside of us. Once we claim the innate Divinity we were born with and truly are, our way in the world is clear and the joy, stillness and love, our connection to God is lived.
I love the absolute truth being presented here, we are part of ‘ the all’ being God. We can never be separate and it’s an illusion if we think we are in control, especially when we give our power away to a religion that uses our vulnerability to its advantage, and uses fear to control.
Religion has always been a big deal for humanity and always will be.
I feel this is because we all feel that true religion does exists and is highly important but we have greatly forgotten what it is and what it feels like… True religion can not be the following of any doctrine or set of beliefs (this is why that has never worked); true religion is the study of who we truly are and the commitment to return to a way of grace and unity that is true and good for all equally so.
Ironically the worlds religions have been much more a product of our lostness (disconnection from our essence or soul) than an inspiration from our soul to return to soul.
If we stop giving our power away and seek the truth we already are we can re-find true guidance which comes not from another lost human being (out-side of us) but from our very essence (in-side of us) which is never distorted or destroyed, only disconnected from.
Our only sin if we wanna call it like this is disconnecting from what we hold as our eternal inner knowing, ie separating from the divine within; thereafter all kinds of unloving and horrendous acts are possible. Thus causing or furthering any separation from one´s inner essence by imposing shame and guilt, ideals and beliefs is a sin, promising forgiveness or absolution likewise.
Turning things on its head like this Alex helps us to really see things for what they are. No different from looking at moving images upside down to strip away that which we ‘expect’, and offer a different way to observe and understand.
When we are instructed to trust the priest, to do as we are told, then we lose our natural sensitivity to what is right and wrong – it becomes a mental list of ‘must do’ or ‘must not do’ so that we do not become ‘sinners’. Looking back from the outside I can see how the Catholic religion and its dogmas insinuated itself into my psyche and dominated my life, even though I left the Church when I was 18. It is a very damaging thing to experience that affects our confidence, our ability to connect with other people, and our ability to be truly honest, because we are governed by guilt and fear.
So true Carmel, its horrifying really when we touch upon how entrenched & destructive these reinterpretations of religion truly are.
When the central tenets of Catholicism are shared and then juxtaposed with the innocence of a child they simply make no sense at all, and yet it is interesting how so many of us adopt them as beliefs regardless. The Way of The Livingness however makes complete sense and is completely non imposing.
The real sin is saying we are all born sinners when we are in truth all amazing divine beings and sons of God and the knowing of this is deep inside us all. Thank you Coleen for this great expose.
Considering sin, judgment and punishment, it seems like all this has us starting out as wrong and we have to prove our innocence. Don’t many of us live in a society where we are innocent until proven otherwise? And this only applies to man-made laws – not god’s law. No way does god say you’re sinners for your imperfections.
This is so revealing, Coleen – “as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.” How invested must we be in such fixed and rigid dogmas, to not be able to see the ridiculousness of the situation you describe? The dominance of this consciousness has for thousands of years been hell-bent on squashing the naturally loving and joyful child of God who does not feel the shackles of guilt.
Beautifully said Janet, having to invent sins so that we feel obligingly guilty is quite ridiculous. How can a dogma that essentially insists on making its congregation feel depressed claim to be a religion, when the very word itself means re-aligning to the joy, harmony, innocence and the all-encompassing Love of God?
The beauty of the teachings of The Way of The Livingness is that we are all equal Sons of God no matter skin colour, nationality, religion, creed or culture and that we are here to return to this expression in full. It’s a whole different platform to be standing on compared to being born a sinner and being tainted.
I now realise how my past experiences of what I thought was connecting to God was false, spiritual and emotional and I was choosing an energy that God is not. I love this understanding you describe Coleen, now I have felt this re-connecting with my Soul, I am developing my true relationship with the Divine energy that God is.
The Way of The Livingness is inclusive in its very essence – each and every one of us can choose to live in relationship with our soul. I’ve found it to be a religion that by its lived way of love, needs no dogma, uses no fear, or asks anymore of anyone than to be themselves. And by this, finds a congregation that is loving, responsible and equal.
Absoultely Rosanna. The religion of The Way of The Livingness is unique in the way that people come to it of their own accord, and all that is asked is that they be themselves with no bells or whistles. It is simple, deeply honest and loving. I have never come across a religion such as this, which sees me as an equal regardless of what I do, how I look, or my financial status, but that justs accepts me for who I am.
“The true religion I now live, The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy.” Qualities that keep us focused on our true nature and inherent essence, of who we are, not on what we are not.
Absolutely Rowena, this is the game changer – no where else have i encountered a way of life, a way of being that constantly brings us back to the true grandness of all that we naturally are.
Has the bastardization of the religions always been about control? Attempting to make you feel less without the something only they can provide? Or, are they afraid you will find that everything we need, is already inside of us all? We are all the temples of where God resides, always has and always will be!
It is our responsibility to live the divinity we are. Going to confessional is a way of trying to skirt that responsibility.
Great point Otto. It is very misleading for a person to think that by confessing their supposed ‘sins’ that this in some way takes care of them. The only true way to take care of the ways of being that do not support us, is to change the energy that sets them in motion because unless we arrest the energy that has set something in motion then it will continue to feed our movements and nothing will change.
With wisdom like that perhaps you should be sitting behind the curtain in the confessional box!! In jest. You are so right Alexis, it is the steps we take 10 steps before the ‘sin’ that enable the ‘sin’ to be happen.
When we stand in the divine light that emanates from our inner-most hearts, there is no need for confession because there is no sin.
There are no props needed to connect with God. These ‘go to’ behaviours, rituals and used objects only expose the deep lie that we have to reach outward to find God. The truth is there is nowhere to go at all but simply return to the love that we are and we find he is there and always has been, waiting patiently and loving us all the while.
One of the many things I love about The Way of the Livingness is that it doesn’t focus on what we have done, rather on the here and now and how our choices now are affecting our next moments and by default, the next moments for everyone else also. When we feel we have been unloving, it’s about showing we are sorry through our evolution in never choosing to make that same choice again. We all make mistakes, we are not perfect, but it’s about learning from those mistakes and taking responsibility for the way we live, always.
Coleen, when I read your comment about guilt … ‘In fact, in operation, it serves to disconnect us and to place us in a heavy energy that separates us further from God.’ I began pondering whether the Catholic church is aware of the deception it creates within it’s parishioners, that the guilt confession breeds in it’s supposed ‘sinners’ isn’t bringing them closer to God, it’s taking them further away in it’s false, unloving, energy. It’s astounding the extent to which we can choose to blind ourselves from the truth, for our own self preservation.
I feel similar feelings of unease when I visit Buddhist temples as well as listen to traditional chinese readings on how our life is destined to be. The unease comes from a knowing within that it is not true to look at human life from a viewpoint of sin or punishment, lack or contraction, that there is nothing we can change about our lives when we are born into it, what is not true is a feeling of withdrawal and irresponsibility then to not empower ourselves, what is also not true is that human life is individualized and whatever choice we make it is only about ourselves. It is true that we have ingrained tendencies and momentums that govern us, much like a prison, but the force of that is not greater than our power of living self-love.
Coleen, thank you for sharing so honestly your experience of the roman catholic indoctrination. I could go on about my own non-catholic bigoted upbringing, and the fact that I chose to marry the man I loved who was indeed a confessing catholic, but the truth is none of that seems to matter any more as I know who I am and I do not have to bow /genuflect and confess to anyone, thanks and glory be to God for The Way of The Livingness and Serge Benhayon. p.s. I can only imagine the stench and emotional energy within the confessional box – must have been quite a frightening experience for a sensitive child.
True religion is our natural way.
and our natural way is true religion 🙂
The Way of The Livingness is my guide to living life in full relationship to my soul, it is without walls or dogma but rather lived love and connection to the all.
I was born into christianity, not as a catholic, but when following an institutionalised religion, I always felt I was doomed to fail, because as humans , we make mistakes. So the whole idea of being sinners can make us feel bad about ourselves and feel guilty, whether we have confessed or not. With the true religion, The Way of The Livingness through the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom, we know we are all divine within, and from our inner essence we find our connection to our soul.
I can’t remember what ‘sins’ I committed as a child but I always had a few to ‘confess’. The feeling of guilt and being somehow ‘wrong’ stayed with me well into adulthood and is still around today even though I’m in my 60s. I’m learning now that everything we do is impulsed by an energy and our only mistake is in choosing to align to the ‘wrong’ energy that then governs our choices and expressions thereafter. In my twenties and thirties I engaged in a few activities I am ashamed of (adultery) but that is not who I am now and wasn’t then, it was a way of coping with feeling unloved. Working on self love makes a difference.
What if Religion actually means being in relationship with each other and with all aspects of life knowing that we’re deeply loving beings and in fact not from here.
Life offers us constant opportunities to learn from our choices and evolve. Would we call the stumbles and falls of a toddler a ‘sin’? Would we call buying something we thought was a great idea then realising it was a big mistake a ‘sin’? Would we call the actions of a child who is upset, doesn’t know how to deal with it and ends up misbehaving a ‘sin’? I doubt it. So why have we allowed religious institutions to coin this word and paint us with it?
‘Ultimately, my only sin was following this advice and lying to the priest that I had committed sins that I hadn’t! So I was guilty of lying to keep people and the church happy.’ – This sentence really stood out Coleen, how crazy is this, for a child to learn to have to make up lies that she has been behaving badly and sinfully, to be seen as a worthy member of a church/religion. This really says it all.
True religion is from the inside out and never from the outside in. Guilt and shame are not part of our innermost and can only be introduced from outside by imposition and thereby breaking one´s inner knowing.
What the Way of the Livingness is presenting is a beautiful and divine honouring of every child that is born, a heavenly reminder of where it is from. What a stark contrast the catholic religion dictates.
I wonder how many people in the Catholic Church make up lies in the confessional box to keep the priest happy. This makes a mockery of the whole system, rightly so.
Penance does not change anything. Taking Responsibility does.
I have never heard of a religion, or experienced a religion that places equality and equal-ness for all like The Way of The Livingness. No other religion in my experience has shown the way forward with taking responsibility and energetic responsibility whist considering the all. No other religion in my experience has promoted such deep understanding of life and of individuals. No other religion in my experience has brought so much awareness to food, movement and a way of living that supports the body to vital, healthy, harmonious, still and joyful. No other religion in my experience has brought the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. No other religion in my experience has explained how simple and easy it is to connect with God and understand how God communicates with us all (equally so) and no other religion has explained so clearly what is in existence beyond this planet of ours. I have no words to express the deepest blessing I feel for being part of The Way of The Livingness and making this my way of living.
At the age of 7 children learn through the church how to absolve themselves from blame but this means they will live with a lot of guilt. It is a really strange arrangement and the smell in the confession box is an interesting signal. It can’t be good for the priest to constantly be confronted by the worst that humanity has to offer.
“It is not possible for me to connect with God through consuming a piece of white wafer or by taking a sip of wine.” When I view this ritual from the awareness that I have now about reconnecting to my inner divine energy, I wonder how we ever cooked this one up! The choice to relinquish all alcohol and bread, rather than diminishing my connection with God, has immensely enriched it. Therefore to me this ritualistic act seems to be the very thing that would prevent us from connecting to the immense tender, powerful loving energy that resides in us all.
We by nature, and our freewill, are meant to allow us to evolve. There have been past and present religions that demand control over our freewill and have attempted to force their beliefs on others. The Way of The Livingness only asks you to connect to yourself and as you have said Coleen, ‘the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy’ is all we need!
“This is all accomplished by my own awareness and does not need a priest to hear and/or to absolve what I have done, nor to administer a penance.” Now for me this stood out when I first came to The Way of The Livingness religion, it was the first truly personal yet universal religion that I had come across. To expand, I felt like what was being offered was the choice to build a personal relationship with myself and my Soul, to deepen my awareness on life and that no-one was going to, needed to or could, do this for me. That fundamental shift is deeply empowering.
When I gaze upon a small baby not for one minute can I comprehend considering that this beautiful being was born a sinner; in fact this concept that the Catholic Church has set out to convince its followers this is the truth, is so far from the truth it’s ridiculous. And then to continue to program this child into believing it is a sinner comes the day of their first confession and what confronts them, as you have conveyed to us so clearly Coleen. No wonder so many in this world of ours have grown to accept that lying is normal; this is one abhorrent ‘normal’ that is way past its ‘use by date’.
Look at all babies and we instantly know that we’re no sinners. It is life that is teaching / imposing on us all these beliefs and ideals. We’re responsible to take them on, yet it is quite difficult not to if all the people close to us are chosing the same. However, no one’s to blame. We all have to come to our own true senses and claim who we truly are: a deeply caring and nurturing being that is deeply held by our Father in Heaven. Not the dude from the bible, but a being that simply has made so much loving choices that he’s able to hold us all in his beholding love.
‘The true religion I now live, The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy’, me too, Coleen. A religion that feels so real and true, confirming us all in who we already are, inviting us to share our divine love and joy with everyone, always. Through living our truth, we may inspire others to feel that they are also equally divine.
This blog shows, so very powerfully, how important it is to always feel the energy in everything first, there we find the truth of what is really going on. There are so many comments here about how suffocatingly oppressive it was to sit in confession, bodies calling out loud and clear that they did not want to be there. How confronting to have such a mis-match in the body, to feel so strongly that something is wrong, when we have been conditioned to believe we are in the ‘house of God’. Things are not always as they seem, we should always allow the space to decide for ourselves if something feel true, or not and trust in the wisdom of our soul.
I too remember the confessional I had certain set “sins’ that I would confess every time, then go off and do my penance and that was that, but the guilt that that religion instills within a child lives with them most of their live with a deep sense of not being good enough. Not until I found true religion in The Way of The Livingness was this guilt healed and I could embrace myself as a worthy loving son of God just as i am, no guilt and no penance needed.
When we begin with defining us as being sinners we are condemned to become something we are not yet and only can achieve by someone´s grace and forgiveness, in other words, we are powerless and only responsible to a certain degree. When we begin with the knowing of being sons of God who have lost their way we are empowered and 100% responsible for returning to who we originally are. Every fibre of our being knows which version is the truth.
Thats true. I can feel that call in my body. To walk upright again. To claim my authority. To reflect the power and beauty I am.
There has been no previous religious experience that I can re-call that has offered truth, love, wisdom, joy, harmony and stillness as it’s foundation without one ounce of judgment, guilt, shame or imposition. The Way of The Livingness for me is offering that these qualities are with-in me, I have a choice to re-connect to all that I already am and equal to the divine. This is religion equal with the love of God.
Yes, the very idea of confession is absurd in The Way of The Livingness.
Having read this blog several times now, I’ve just remembered being in a catholic church when I was quite young. I don’t recall if it was for a family wedding or funeral now, but I distinctly remember everyone lining up to have communion. I remember feeling confused as to why this would be happening when a lot of people present weren’t catholic and wouldn’t be joining the line. Looking back I could also feel the superiority in that but didnt know thats what I was feeling at the time. I also remember starting to feel like maybe I should join the line, would it be ok for a non-catholic to do that, and started feeling guilty for not! I do recall being very glad to get outside – everyone was so much more relaxed out there! Both your sharing Coleen, and this experience, really does expose how much we innately know, understand and pick up as children.
Not being brought up in catholicism, I often wondered what the whole confessional box thing was truly like – it always seemed so cloistered and mysterious in the movies, and holy communion seemed to be this huge thing that looked very serious but felt fake to me. Thank you for sharing Coleen as it brings a truth and a reality to what is actually playing out.
Guilt can be a very crippling thing – like a disease or poison it creeps into our lives and our bodies, it warps our perception of ourselves and our worth – it changes how we walk or talk, how we hold ourselves in relationships – it can undermine our confidence and change our very life choices.
What you have shared here Rebecca is so very true; I know it too well. And yes it does change everything about us, from the way we walk, the way we talk, and the way we interact with others. It is like a huge weight that is being carried around, serving no purpose at all but to hold us back from living who we are to the fullest, and so everyone misses out on the amazing person we actually are.
It is a weight – a ball and chain or something similar. And as you say, what purpose is their in weighing us down other than to give us all the excuse we need to to take that step towards realising we are equally sons of God
Agreed. And spoken with the authority of experience, guilt is an emotion that cripples people and serves no-one.
I can really relate to this blog Coleen because I had a similar experience with the heavy oppressing energy of the catholic way. It felt like we were being made to feel guilty for being a born sinner. I deeply wanted to be closer to god so I followed the rituals diligently. I listened intently but found living the catholic way was quite miserable and did not seem to work well in public or private life. This went for myself as well as others around me. To be honest it did not feel like any of us were getting closer to god.
The Way of The Livingness on the other hand is helpful and relatable every minute of the day. My life is much richer and I understand people. I feel like as I go through everyday life I am learning how to be more loving to myself and others. I feel like living this way as a student of life is bringing me closer to god.
For me anything that creates a slight dis ease in my body is an indication that I am moving away from true Religion, which is as you have beautifully written coleen, ‘based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy, so that eventually we will not live on this earth at all, but return to our original Divine Soul Plane’.
Sins are an interesting thing – on the one hand they make you feel guilty and shameful for being here, as though you are broken and need to be fixed to be worthy of the love of God. On the other, they are also a convenient way to get out of responsibility – confess, repent and your soul is clear.
This is a great example Coleen of how our systems stay in place and little changes… “I noted that as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.” To be told to make something up also shows the apathy that comes when we choose to align to these systems and not take responsibility for the truth we innately know – of equality and brotherhood.
I was raised under the Catholic religion and also remember as child preparing for confession feeling this sense of anguish of what to tell the priest my sins were, it felt awful and looking back it instigated the sense of guilt in me from a young age which created a lot of harm in my adult life instead of growing up learning from my mistakes with an open heart.
No other religion I know except for The Way of The Livingness answers all my questions about life, about people and about God. Its teachings makes absolute sense to me because it is so simple, they are always about love and truth first and that we are all born divine Sons of God. No one is more connected to God than another, we are all equally loved and have the same access to God’s love but it is always up to us how much we choose to align, connect and embrace His divine love. I feel that God’s love is never judgmental or imposing, we always have a choice to connect to God or not. This to me feels empowering and highlights that each of our relationships with God is very intimate and personal, therefore no comparison or judgement is possible when we truly embrace our path in God’s love.
I can feel the effect feeling guilt has on our connection with the one unified whole that is god, it is holding us barred to go to this connection, and is far from truly living the potential of love that we all have within. It is interesting to see the tactics the church uses energetically to manipulate us, to not truly connect to the god that we all innately know, but moving us away from it leaving ourselves to be as human as we can be, disconnected through a false belief of our purpose here on earth.
How we have walked away with such a simple word like Religion. As I’ve been able to see now, if you look back at its origins there is a much simpler meaning and way the word was used and indeed lived. I grew up thinking Religion was a place, somewhere you visited and that you needed it to be someone or at least a good or worthy person. It wasn’t until Universal Medicine that I got some clarity around the word and the whole religion thing. A few years ago if you said the word to me I had a picture of what it meant and that picture didn’t include me. Now when I hear the word religion it is very person, a person relationship with the way and quality I live.
I’ve never had to go go to confession but I have always questioned certain practices within the religion I grew up with. The fact that they felt false or pointless now simply confirms for me, that we come into this life knowing God and Love – even if at a later date we choose to put aside what we have known to be true.
‘The Way of The Livingness presents that all children are born with a Divine potential within and that, with energetic integrity and responsibility, by choosing to align with this energy, our Soul, we start to discard all that is not of our true essence quite naturally.’ Working with children and teenagers I can so see in them their divine potential. Supporting them to know just how awesome they really are is a joy for me, but also because I am surrounded by divinity feeling it acutely, even if they can’t see it for themselves or behave in a way that reflects this!
Yes, it is important to be really honest with ourselves, however, if we are committed to living a loving life which is true religion, we must learn how to let go of the fighting and judgements we impose first on ourselves and then others. There is no judgement in love.
Hi Coleen, thanks for the article and I wish to say the rituals played out by the catholic church I find quite comical
The affects of indoctrination by religion either through institutions such as schools or through our families and friends has devastating consequences, robbing us of the true connection that naturally resides in us all and can be reconnected to through simple love and care for ourselves, a turning inward to the truth just as we did as a child.
Elaine I wonder if the simple truth that you have shared here ‘the true connection that naturally resides in us all’ is actually a perfect description of true religion.
Imagine having to make up sins as a young child just to appease a religious order. It really shows up the nonsense we have come to normalise, and exposes a depth of harm in organised religion that is far from the love it should encompass.
I agree Coleen that there is a fundamental philosophical difference between starting out life viewing yourself as a broken, tainted sinner who has to constantly make it up to God and the world, and understanding yourself to already be a divine equal offspring of God who simply needs to remove the obstacles to rediscover the fact.
Guilt should perhaps serve one purpose – to reflect back to us that we have chosen to be less than the everything that we are and then for us to choose again. Other than this, I find guilt a negative and destructive belief system and pattern of thinking that only serves to keep us apart from our true essence.
I keep coming back to this sentence – “what removes me from God is choosing an energy that God is not”. There is something very powerful expressed here, because it is so simple and yet it pulls back the veil to reveal another way of being, a oneness with God – this is The Way of The Livingness.
Coleen you have expressed so well the experiences that many young people had in relation to attending a church. The Christian religion has a lot to answer for even though much has come to light about abuse of the young! I am sure much more will be discovered in the future. Thank you for sharing your own experiences.
‘ So I was guilty of lying to keep people and the church happy. I noted that as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.’ Such a revealing experience Coleen, says it all about the control of the church and accompanying religion.
I agree Jenny. It also teaches us to fear God through these subtle ways of control. To me, this does not reflect God’s love or who He is. It diverts our attention away from true connection with God, leaving us with a false version of who God is.
Gosh, a lock on the biscuit box would not have worked in our house growing up, we would have had it smashed open in no time.
“It was understood that the greater the severity of the sin, the deeper the guilt one should feel and hence the more intense the penance to be done.” And so we venture down the road of self-loathing, guilt and complete separation from God and the innate love we are. When we teach a child about energy and energetic discernment, we enable him or her to choose a quality of energy that will naturally allow their love, inner knowing and wisdom to flourish, inherent qualities that will never lead us astray.
Messing up is a part of life and how we learn! Place guilt on our ill choices as you have said doesn’t allow us to evolve.
Asking children to lie, what type of truth is that – it’s not at all, and it exposes the absolute falseness at the heart of catholicism. Ultimately this religion is about control and ensuring that those involved even young children adhere to it’s tenets, even if they have to lie to do so. Thank God for the Way of the Livingness, true religion which honours the divinity in all of us, through it I now know my way back to living fully in connection to the Soul I am and the Divinity I come from.
What I love about true religion is how it empowers us to appreciate and nurture what is already there, and through our connection to the love that we all are, we can feel how we are in relationship with ourselves, with God, with everyone else, with the Universe, with the whole. It is exquisitely divine. This is always there for us, and always has been, we are a part of the whole, it’s us who make the choice to dis-connect. The beautiful truth is, as quickly as we can choose to dis-connect, we can also choose to re-connect.
The whole concept of confession and penance seems to be a way of ‘controlling’ our access to God’s love, making the catholic church the gateway to God, the regulator, judging how deserving we are of God’s love and instructing us on what we need to do to redeem ourselves. No wonder it feels suffocating. We are God’s love and always will be, even writing these words feels so liberating and spacious after the oppressive feeling I had writing the start of my comment.
We have been sold an absolute lie in such false religion that has masqueraded for aeons as the real deal, when it is anything but. Yes, it is we, society that has been willing to swallow and adopt such ideals and in doing so, settle for a deeply harmful less.
It is true that there is no truth in guilt and yet guilt abounds within society, perpetuated by such religious ideals, serving only to keep us disconnected from our true essence.
Anything that is so open to individual interpretation, like the notion of sin, can not come from truth because truth is absolute and therefore not open to interpretation.
“…The catholic religion of my childhood taught that I was born a sinner and could achieve salvation only through compliance to its tenets….The Way of The Livingness presents that all children are born with a Divine potential within … our Soul…” What a difference between the two! …
Imagine a dog that tried to get rid of its own leg, that hated its tail and wanted to remove it’s own head – well this is the absurdity of judging other people and ourselves. For if we are all one and the same, surely to continue on seeing life as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is just insane? What would life actually be like if we accepted the fact you offer us here Coleen – there is just the truth and no need for shame.
I hated confession and also used to make up stories to have something to say, it is a strange practice to impose on children.
How ironic, you “sinned” in order to get closer to God…
How is it that we actually believe that holy communion actually contributes to our (re)union with God? It is in fact a very uncomfortable ritual for most (if not all) children. I never actually had a close look at it. How can such an act by a priest empower us when we’re not taking any responsibility ourselves? If we look at it from a clear view, this cannot be true. Whether we believe it or not. There’s much more to life, isn’t there? We’re deeply profound beings. Very loving, very caring, yet having given our power away to life, rather than being and living with life. We’re life, life should never ever tell us who we are or what to do.
Institutionalized religions have devasted us for ages and we carry the wounds even after we have renounced being part of such religions. As they have robbed us in some way or another of our real selves it is by restoring the relationship with our-selves through love and care that we expose and discard the false ideals and beliefs that otherwise continue to interfere with our direct relationship with God.
“Re-connecting with Soul, by re-choosing the quality of the energy in which I move, is what is required to re-establish my relationship with Our Father and the Divine energy that God is.” And nothing else. No person can act as an intermediary in this process it is a perpetual individual choice. With immense thanks to Serge Benhayon and The Way of The Livingness, this is a choice that is being made available to humanity once again, the ageless, ancient choice that we have always had, one which is now more accessible than at any other time in our long, long history, to move in alignment with God and express the divine in every aspect of our lives.
It is both spooky and scary how institutionalised religion gained so much momentum and how we allowed our lives to be governed, taken over by the system and structures it established. Now we know that religion is the divine connection we all have equally within ourselves, institutionalised forms of religion must be understood for what they are – establishments that in fact keep us separated from ourselves because the emphasis is always on serving something outside of us. I can feel the deliberate intention for it to be this way.
Though I wasn’t brought up a Catholic, I realise that this concept of ‘sin’ was instilled in me as a child to the point that I felt that there must something wrong with me because I felt so joyous. The reflection I got from people around me was that life was hard and serious and if you are enjoying being yourself you are lazy and should be doing something. You had to work to get to heaven and only the ‘good ones’ made it. But ‘good’ always seemed too hard because it was a model that I had to squeeze into which denied how I truly felt but then I would feel guilty for being that. ‘The concept of ‘sin’ is insidious and colours our culture so that we do not even know how much we are affected by it. Now, thanks to Serge Benhayon, I have reconnected with the knowing that we are all ‘born with a Divine potential within’ and as you say Coleen, ‘by choosing to align with this energy, our Soul, we start to discard all that is not of our true essence quite naturally.’
“…The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy…” – living the qualities of God on earth is true religion.
I love this truth Coleen, ‘true religion is about the inner connection with Soul, my innermost essence’ and our connection with God. Nothing else needed.
“I noted that as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.” this alone shows the irony in the Catholic religion. That acting in disharmony is sort of ‘celebrated’ or ‘rewarded’ and necessary when we at least confess it. Otherwise you stand out.
What a polar opposite it is being told that you are by nature a sinner, to the actual fact that we are all by nature divine, loving, joyful, sensitive, wise and deeply caring Sons of God.
‘I had problems with this notion of sin from Day 1…’ – It is amazing to hear that in the middle of all this, deep down you knew this was not true and certainly not love – and that this knowing was never really crushed in you, which enabled you to recognise true love and truth when it came your way.
Growing up with atheist parents I was well and truly indoctrinated against most formalised religions, in fact against the idea there was even a God. From this viewpoint nothing of the Catholic ideology made the slightest bit of sense and I felt nothing in it’s presence other than repulsion. When I heard Serge Benhayon speak of religion, God, karma, reincarnation and other things I relate to religion, my body registered something that felt alive for the first time. Without an ounce of resistance to what I could so clearly feel was true, I now consider myself to be deeply religious.
It is interesting how the Catholic Church start their indoctrination at the tender age of seven, before the children have really had an opportunity to make decisions for themselves. It feels very imposing and I feel this is why I was never drawn to the church. It felt like you had to go through a process of being accepted and anointed before you could enter the church which to me felt all wrong and I knew this was not something God would demand or expect.
There is sooo much focus on sins in catholism – this obsessive and guilt ridden approach actually perpetuates the behaviour this religion tries so hard to control. I used to attend a Roman Catholic religion class weekly in primary school as this was the religion my parents nominated for me. We were taught by an old nun – in fact this was the same nun that taught my mother in high school. I would have been in year 5 (maybe 4) in primary school when this lady (unbeknowing to her) taught me about masturbation. Before these classes I had never even thought about this before. One of the repetitive things this sister would say is to never touch yourself. We asked her to explain what she meant one day – and that was the way how a room full of young girls (the boys had their own class) learnt about Masturbation. This ‘teaching’ came with an enormous amount of judgement and shame.. and this lingered.
My family never practised any religious beliefs and were certainly not catholic. However, reading this it occurs to me that the religious consciousness around sin, guilt and all those other abominations is so strong that we are all affected by it even if not catholic or overtly brought up with these kind of evil religious beliefs and indoctrinations. I use evil in the true energetic meaning of the word as described in Unimedpedia Evil: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-evil.html
I recall going to confession as a young girl and having the same ‘sins’ every week. You know I didn’t even know what a sin is. Is it breaking one of the man made church rules? Is it breaking the law? Is it about being a ‘bad person’ and who decides who that ‘bad person’ is? “We are all sinners” Gosh the beliefs that would come from those 4 words – I am not worthy, i am wrong, I am not good enough, I am evil and this was all delivered to small children making their communion. None of this made sense to me as I could see that everyone was inherently lovely and believing that we begin life carrying a mortal sin didn’t sit well. Especially when you look at a baby, all perfectly delicious and totally gorgeous, so gorgeous that they bring our the tenderness, joy and playfulness in each and everyone of us. If the church call that moral sin, then perhaps it is fueled by jealousy.
The danger of a religion like the Catholic Religion is that it encourages us to try to be good instead of simply feeling what is appropriate to do or not do, then we adapt our behaviour according to our level of fear, not our level of awareness.
Finding true Religion with The Way of The Livingness and that we have always known it inside, is like coming home to ourselves, to God and all we know and are, and is so deeply beautiful to feel in our bodies and allows a real sense of settlement contentment, knowing and love. It is this stillness that is our connection with the all and something we are all part of and deeply miss. Having been brought up in the Roman Catholic religion described above, I felt everything in life I was told I had to believe although it did not resonate with my body at all but this living way with God beside me I absolutely knew.
Religion for me also concerns the inner connection with Soul, and so the expression of it. In this it cannot be unadulterated by anyone else / anything else…. Pure Connection with Soul and God.
“the greater the severity of the sin, the deeper the guilt one should feel and hence the more intense the penance to be done.” The whole setup of sin and redemption keeps the believer in a perpetual cycle of emotion, never are they reflected the love of God, nor offered the reflection of his stillness that they can know they are more than sinful human beings.
If you look at our history, Religion over the years has been used to manipulate and to control the masses, it has not been about confirming we are all Sons of God, it has often been about giving our power away. Guilt has been an emotion used to keep people small.
Absolutely – most of the false ideals that have become part and parcel of daily life have their roots within religion – adding shame, guilt, comparison, giving power away, being less, sin, pity, sympathy and the list goes on…
“The Way of The Livingness presents that all children are born with a Divine potential within and that, with energetic integrity and responsibility, by choosing to align with this energy, our Soul, we start to discard all that is not of our true essence quite naturally. Neither the confessional box, nor any of the other rites, is ever needed for this.” What a beautiful sum up and shows the real depth of love of what a True Religion actually is and offers all of humanity equally so. Something where life is not about trying to be something we are not, but allowing ourselves to be all that we already are.
The Catholic church has a strong emphasis on sin and guilt. I wonder what would happen if confession became an opportunity to tell the priest what you have achieved and how beautiful you have been since your last confession?
Love this idea Christoph.. as with such a meeting could too allow for the priest to also consider his own beauty.
Since connecting with The Way of The Livingness my understanding of and connection to God has completely changed. It feels real and not a concept.
These are great questions that you raise Coleen. I wonder – with all of these rituals like eating white wafer, drinking red wine, confessing, and listening to sermons in Church, do we ever feel any closer to God or do we feel more ingrained in the ‘way’ that is promoted by the catholic church and all of its associated things?
I love it – renouncing the Catholic church to be in true religion.
I always felt a bit suffocated as a child attending the ceremonies and rituals of the church and remember sneaking out to feel how good it felt outside. The Way of The Livingness is certainly the true one for me also.
In my youth, all I felt was the outside pressure to believe in something I could not see that also shut down all the other senses. As you, I and many others have found through the Ageless Wisdom and the real definition of religion, it has always been with us and is tangible. We had just forgotten what it was we were feeling!
There are many things about ‘traditional religion’ that don’t feel right. One thing that has always felt off is the teaching that unless you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ then you won’t get into Heaven. We are all equal sons of God already, we don’t need to be accepted because we are already made from God’s body, there is no door to get into, no set of rules to adhere to and that is perhaps the biggest trap of false religion, the teaching that we have to act in a certain way in order to win God’s love. GOD’S LOVE IS WHO WE ARE!
This is very telling of the evil of intitutionalised religion – from early childhood being conditioned to have something wrong with you, to be full of sin and therefore seek the illusion of god’s salvation from outside of you, stepping further and further away from the divinity you are and have within.
You raise a very interesting observation of sin – as a child and looking back as an adult. The fact that we can be told that the act of simply having be born is a sin for which you must repent, and almost every action thereafter, leaves you not only debased and lacking but constantly anxious as to what to do and not do and the guilt and shame associated with ‘doing wrong’. How can we look at a child, so precious and pure and say that they are a sinner – that they cannot be with God until they perform a ritual?
The feeling of guilt is one that many Catholics will recognise, it is very destructive, encourages self criticism and no appreciation. When we do something that is energetically irresponsible, it comes back to us as Karma until such time as we learn not to do it. There is no need to confess our sins, because no sins are committed, just poor choices!
Very well put Carmel. “There is no need to confess our sins, because no sins are committed, just poor choices!” and these are shown through the consequences of our actions which are there for us to experience and learn from. There is nothing sinful about this.
‘Ultimately, my only sin was following this advice and lying to the priest that I had committed sins that I hadn’t! So I was guilty of lying to keep people and the church happy.’
As I allowed myself to feel the consequences of this statement more deeply, I felt outrage at the harm caused, in the name of God. To intimidate children to the extent that they feel they need to lie and betray the naturally loving, truth-full beings that they are, to appease a priest, seems criminal. As I sat with this, I realised that when I am not choosing to live in the fullness of all that I am, when I choose to hold anything back, maybe that is equally criminal, as to do so, I am not choosing love first.
Your description of guilt is so on the money and it exposes how indulgent it is to beat ourselves up for the mistakes we make.
When we make the focus about our ‘sins’ it is like nit picking on the tiny imperfections of the grandness that we all are and come from and we make the ‘sins’ the predominating factor. The word ‘sins’ also comes loaded and has with it judgement about choices we have made. This is not a loving way to approach how we live, as the focus needs to be on who we truly are first and foremost. This is not to say we should ignore and not address any choices we have made that are not loving, but it is about honouring all of who we are first and then from there looking at the choices we have made and are living.
Just like our relationship with the Sun, with the cycles of nature and with breathing, our relationship with God is constant. It is not dependent on thoughts, beliefs or actions. There is a bond and a one-ness that no thing or no person is able to alter. I wonder how so many religious institutions ended up feeding people a completely different story, and how come we all actively or passively accepted it?
“The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy”, what a beautiful choice to make for ourselves. No need for a ‘middle man’ giving imposed personal interpretations of God’s Living Way.
It amazes me how similar the stories are about being raised a Catholic! I was right there with you Coleen! The sin committed was the lie that God was outside of us – something to be attained by acting in ways that did not make sense. I definitely have had PTSD from Catholicism, now having the opportunity to heal through connecting to the truth that God is within; essentially a part of me and the opposite to fear and indoctrination.
I was not raised in the Catholic religion and when I first heard about confession the concept of it didn’t make sense. My understanding was it seemed to rid people of taking any responsibility for their choices and actions. It was a strange concept for me and I didn’t feel drawn to Catholicism because their teachings didn’t feel loving or true, and a lot of it simply didn’t make sense.
‘It was understood that the greater the severity of the sin, the deeper the guilt one should feel and hence the more intense the penance to be done. The type and quality of penance was ordained by a priest in a confessional box, a place I experienced as a child as having a suffocating quality and a rancid smell, which left me feeling nauseous.’ – I cannot begin to comprehend what this must be doing to a child, it sounds horrific and aimed at destroying the childs natural joy.
When I read the methods of the catholic church that you describe, it sounds and feels like torture.
Great point Harry, I agree.
There is only a place for guilt in a world when we ‘feel bad’ for behaviours, but seek not to change the energy behind them. ‘Religion’ fosters this lack of responsibility by promoting that ‘forgiveness’ is something to be given from ‘greater powers’ above, thus annihilating the empowerment that comes from making true and lasting energetic shifts within oneself towards a more loving way of being in equalness with God.
Thank you Colleen for sharing your re-discovery of a new way to experience religion
Knowing that God doesn’t forgive because he doesn’t judge in the first place shows the audacity of man to think he can.
I had friends who were raised as Catholics and I saw the hypocrisy of this religion first hand when they would drink and sleep around, and then confess ‘their sins’ at church. I looked at this through the eyes of an innocent teenager not knowing much about religion as I’d never felt compelled to go to church, and knowing inside of me that there was something wrong with this picture, and that simply ‘confessing’ didn’t make what you were doing ok, or that it wiped the slate clean to go and do it all again.
I remember learning about sins and then dwelling on how ‘bad’ I was. I was a beautiful young girl with a genuine heart yet, the more I picked on myself for everything ‘bad’ I did the less I would confirm and recognise the gorgeousness of who I truly was.. and so this focus on sins created a monster. To this day I am still addressing the momentum I created that devalues who I am by picking on every slip up or imperfection so to speak.
Abby, what you describe is very harmful. Who would devise such a system? Why?
I too find that my connection with God and Soul is found inside of me – a connection that lives inside us all ever there to be re-awakened and brought out into life and our daily activities and relationships, not something that is granted to us by guilt, wine or by consuming any specific foodstuff.
This article helps make sense of a passing comment my daughter’s reception class teacher made to me one day, along the lines that; all children were sinful and that we had to teach them how to be good. This, all those twenty odd years ago, sounded so out and off to me, that here was a person whose daily responsibility was to nurture these precious little beings through their education. I now see there was this type of indoctrination at play, that blinded her to the joy, love and sensitivity of the little ones she worked with day in, day out. It can indeed have a strong hold until we choose to know differently.
To ask a child to lie, to leave it’s own innate being and tender way, to fit in with the expectations of a religion is quite shocking. A stark difference from the support received from The Way Of The Livingness to connect and blossom from these inner qualities.
“The catholic religion of my childhood taught that I was born a sinner and could achieve salvation only through compliance to its tenets.” Being taught this is a sin in itself, I realise now having been through the same thing. The true divinity we all are and the simplicity of our childhood knowing of this is very real and The Way of The Livingness presents this in every way for us to return to who we are and live it naturally in joy, harmony and flow with God and the Universe as one with our very livingness.
I love your description of true religion and the Ageless Wisdom Colleen. When we know that as children, we are born with the Divine potential within, we can choose to re-connect and re-align with this energy, our Soul at any time in our lives. The Way of The Livingness is the way for us all.
I have always found guilt to be an interesting concept, and even as a child I could feel that it was an entrapment into something of the past that had no relevance to what was happening today – so I could not see any point in it.
Ah the guilt… I agree in full Coleen, that to cling to guilt and let it fill our being does nought for us whatsoever. It actually retards us enormously… Accepting that divinity is our essential, true nature offers a completely different foundation upon which to heal where we may have strayed or hurts we harbour in life. The Way of The Livingness speaks true religion and nothing but in this light and all that it presents – it is a Way of return to the glory that we naturally and essentially are, holding in the deepest of understanding, all that we may meet within ourselves as we walk this path of return. It makes no sense to me at all, that God would not hold us in such love, from the very outset.
Reading such a description of the confessional, one can’t help but feel that this space feels akin to a medieval torture chamber – the stench, the heaviness, the purging of apparent ‘wrong-doing’ and ‘sins’… Is it really any different? And why oh why, and how, have we continued to allow such imposition upon us in this day and age?
The more children such as yourself that wake up Coleen, the better in my books. As for the rest of us who weren’t raised in such a ‘chamber’, we do well to look at how such beliefs as being born a sinner influence the whole of our society yet heavily today…
It is really interesting how different religions have different priorities and tasks/activities you are expected or have to do if you want to remain a part of the religion, such as confessing your sins, going to church every Sunday, praying etc. What strikes me about the Ageless Wisdom is that there is none of that, and you can choose to engage with as much or as little of events, presentations on stage or through books etc. as you wish to because the number 1 priority is livingness and how we live in our own lives.
I love the fact that the Ageless Wisdom teaches us to live with energetic integrity and responsibility. To focus on how WE are living, not to hold anything back. It always struck me as very bizarre the way people in my village would ‘religiously’ attend church each Sunday morning, sometimes more often, feeling very Christian, and judging others for not attending, and then go on to behave in the most ‘unchristian’ way. It seemed to me like such a sham, our livingness is the ultimate expression, reflecting the truth of how we are choosing to live.
“The catholic religion of my childhood taught that I was born a sinner and could achieve salvation only through compliance to its tenets.” How is it that this has been and still is accepted as being ok, in a world that is seemingly so advanced in so many other ways. For you to now know that this is not true, and that God is not asking you to be anything other than be who you are in order to know him, is so far removed from what you were brought up to believe.
“Re-connecting with Soul, by re-choosing the quality of the energy in which I move, is what is required to re-establish my relationship with Our Father and the Divine energy that God is.” now this says so much and yet when I read it I imagine how against this certain religious institutional leaders would be, it is both deeply empowering to ourselves to hear this and know that it is our choice to re-connect at any time but it also exposes the whole concept of confession as not being true or supportive.
The contrast between your early experience of religion and what you know now through The Way of The Livingness clearly shows the absolute difference between the truth of the love of God and how this has been manipulated to the institutionalised form of religion which is then devoid of God’s love.
I too was born into the institutionalised religion of Catholicism and relate to all you share. I walked away from this Catholicism when I was old enough to decide for myself and like you, many years later I too found my way to The Way of The Livingness presented by Serge Benhayon and have healed and released so much of what I allowed in that was not truly me and not my true path.
Thank you Coleen for your sharing. Like so many others I too suffered at the hands of Religion (Anglican)and it took much searching over a period of many years before I became aware of the truth of The Way of The Livingness. At no time did I close the door on God but I did close it on those of the Church and the detrimental teachings offered there.
I remember being told we cannot connect with God directly and that we must go through a ‘go-between’. In the Christian religion, Jesus is the ‘go-between’. This never rang true with me. Whilst it is for certain that Jesus is a Divine being, I could not get the sense that we cannot make direct contact with God and I could not conceive of a place where we are so far removed that God cannot be. It may be the case that we can create the illusion (ideas and beliefs) of such a separation from God, but in reality – and when we trust the innate knowing of our innermost hearts, this apparent separation can be seen for what it is and we can make a direct connection with Him with no need for any other to be our ‘bridge’.
Being young and experiencing religion and the buildings were scary places. God will punish you and are always watched is like the plot of most horror movies. The whole God thing was stoic without a lot of Joy until you die and go to heaven! With age you got to choose your own beliefs and decided not to put any effort into that old, I felt pompous, belief system. Fast forward and the rediscovery of what true religion is, and it is not in some ancient ritual, but it is ancient, we have just forgotten that God has and will always be within us and how amazing life is when we live with the Ageless Wisdom that resides with us.
‘my personal experience of guilt is that it is a false, emotional energy that is not of the energetic quality of God Our Father. It does not serve to reconnect us. In fact, in operation, it serves to disconnect us and to place us in a heavy energy that separates us further from God.’ This is my experience also. Within this guilt ridden culture there is a false identification with the religion and group rather than a focus on a loving and equal relationship with God and that fact that our group is the whole of humanity in brotherhood = regardless of skin colour, where we were born or what we have chosen to identify with.
Traditional religion has produced exponentially more fear than it has real love.
Traditional religion can sit like an immoveable wedge between a person and God.
Bringing kids up with ‘Traditional religion’ can have the same effect as throwing them into leg irons.
It is a ridiculously false notion that God forgives us, as he doesn’t judge us in the first place and if there is no judgement then there is no need for forgiveness.
It is funny how I just had the memory of deciding to go to confession when I was about 13 in the Catholic school I was at, so I did not have to go to evening classes in the Church of England! Then the monk asked me to confess something and I made it up – as I did not really know what to say! It makes a mockery of the whole process and kind of taught me, well showed me that I can do whatever I want and get away with it with no consequences, which definitely is not love.
Coleen, this feels very true, ‘The true religion I now live, The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy’, this is a beautiful way to live and is polar opposite to living thinking we are wrong and are sinners and have to follow rules to gain God’s love.
I can relate to all you have shared here Coleen and have felt little joy, love, harmony or stillness in the many church teachings and activities I took part in. I know what I am living now is true, and that God lives within me in loving way and is part of my life in such a practical and awesome way.
When we allow emotional energies running through our bodies how do they make us feel? Guilt and shame are emotions I have felt in my body simply because I did not live up to the expectations, namely the Ten Commandments, which I had allowed and placed on myself. These emotions made me feel small, drained and very needy. If there is a God and in my opinion, there is surely he would not want us to feel and live our lives in emotion but rather in connection to him. From experiencing both feelings which are poles apart there is no question that when I am connected to God I feel myself – expansive and light and I have come to accept after letting go of energies that are not true to find that all emotions running through my body are not who I am.
There is a total reversal in these two different approaches – one asks us to focus on the guilt, of not been good enough or worthy and then doing penance for it. The other approach reminds us that God lives in us at all times and encourages us to reconnect with that divinity, to feel it and share it with the world. Hmmm, choices choices!
“I noted that as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.” Seems like a superb way to dampen down our natural innocence, exerburance and joy by making us feel guility about something, even when we haven’t committed a sin in the first place. It feels like a very subtle ploy to separate us from God, rather than unite us with our divine qualities. I love how Universal Medicine invites us to return to our joy, to nurture and cherish our inner relationship with God, innate within us all without question, sins or not.
As a child born into the Catholic faith I never understood how a few “Hail Mary’s” recited after a confessional took away the action of an ill deed and made everything ok again! There was no accountability for what was chosen and I never felt any clearer or lighter because of my supposed sins being forgiven me. The dreaded confessional was only something I probably did 3 times in my life and I avoided it like the plague…there was something also really creepy about the whole experience. Ultimately I only went to Church to please my Dad, but by the age of 15, I really felt it was time to park and leave behind the whole thing.
Being encouraged to lie as a child in order to have something to confess is so ironic and such a reflection of the foundation of the Catholic Church.
A great science awaits Humanity should we open our eyes and adhere to our natural impulses….for in connecting to our inner-most truth and moving in our true flow, we are connected to the entire Universe and unending wisdom.
The Church and the beliefs that it has perpetrated, for example, that only Jesus was the son of God and not everyone else, will last for a very long time, and will only disappear because we as a ‘congregation’ say no to the abuse, hurt, shame, guilt, and there damaging ways of being that we have bought into. When we say ‘yes’ to our truth and inner magnificence , there will be no more Catholic Church, or any other Church.
Interesting Coleen about the confessional box. I went in there just once as a young child at school and felt so awkward, false and such a pretender that I never returned. I also remember racking my brains as to what to tell the priest and my voice going funny as I couldn’t really express myself. It was not a place that was beholding in any love, but more a place of shaming is how I saw and experienced it.
Coleen you have exposed the weirdness of the catholic rituals, your experience of confession shared by many including myself, feeling sick and afraid every time that I went to confession as a child. Making up lies was the solution, and how horrible did that feel? Choosing to be love not guilt aligns us to God in a way that supports us in every moment.
Connecting to my Soul feels simply amazing. That is, very loving, caring, holding, warm,exquisite and so much more. I am feeling in fact me. And although I’m still learning to be with the true me, there’s no doubt that this is the true way. The complete opposite of the man I actually have tried to live for a long time.
It is interesting how we think or are taught something can ‘unite’ us with God like a so called religious practice. In truth we already are united with God our innate relationship has, is and will always be there and it is religions such as Catholicism that actually take us further away from this not closer especially in giving our power away to others in that only certain people can help us with this or have access to God! Universal Medicine is the first body for me in this life that has actually not only presented the truth that the Kingdom of God is within us all equally so but also reflects a way of how to reconnect with this, through how we live … our livingness. It is an absolute God send to have this truth solidly reignited in the world today and forever more.
It’s hideously evil to state that people are sinners in the name of God, making people feel like they have failed before they have even started in life, to focus on what they are not rather than what they are and shackle them with the heavy burden of guilt. Thank goodness for Universal Medicine and the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom for enabling us all to know the truth – that we are all innately love.
Is it any wonder there is an aversion or cynicism by many people when the word religion is brought into discussion, when there appears to be so much hypocrisy, division and inequality within many of the religious denominations. God is love, love doesn’t judge, we all come from that love and know deep within what is true and what is not. The Way of The Livingness religion represents a way of living that is honest and true knowing that what we do isn’t who we are, that there is no division, no us or them, for we are all equally Sons of God.
The whole concept of confession/reconciliation is so manipulative, Catholicism is creating a ‘need’, telling people that they are sinners and the church will hear their confessions to absolve them of their sins. As children of God, we have no sins, we do not need confession, it’s a fabrication of the Catholic religion to make people dependant on them, so they will feel the need to come to church. There is no truth here and certainly no evolution.
How ridiculous or even hypocritical to have to make up a ‘sin’ to confess to which wasn’t even committed. I guess then you could confess to telling a lie. What is being taught to children when they are encouraged to be dishonest in this way?
True religion is definitely the ageless wisdom, how amazing to be apart of this return.
Hi Coleen, I went to High Anglican Church, almost more Catholic than some Catholic. In my first confession I couldn’t think of any sins either, but agreed to quite a few. But when the Priest got to asking me if I was lazy I felt I couldn’t agree with them all so I said “no”. The Priest pressed me and pressed me, insisting on asking me again and again. But once I’d said no I couldn’t change my mind. It was all so confusing. At last he sighed deeply and heavily and absolved me and let me go. The control and influence of this over the lives of young girls is totally abusive, even when the iron hand comes in a velvet glove. That incident contributed to an increasing sense of being sinful and inferior to men, despite never going to confession or mass again.
I went on a date with a lovely young irishman in Northern Ireland many years ago. At some point we very naturally kissed each other. Soon after he got a bit agitated and miserable. When I asked him what the matter was he had gone into guilt about kissing me, not only was I a non catholic but that he was bad because he had ‘sinned’ and was therefore impure. I admit I was quite shocked. How could an innocent kiss between two young people be sinful? This really saddened me. I had always felt that a relationship with God didn’t require a ‘middle man’, and having other human beings poisoning innocent young people to believe that they are sinners, wrong and bad is a far greater damage, a sin in itself.
I had similar problems around the catholic establishment of confession – I embraced it and really wanted to give it my best, started embellishing what had happened and then tried to keep this apparently sin-free pure state as long as possible; touching oneself was one of the items in the catalogue of sins to be confessed. And this used to really confuse me; how on earth and in the bath water do you get clean without touching yourself?
I remember so clearly also, not having any sins to share and so had to make something up. It is interesting that this is a training camp for ‘how to be a liar’. Catholicism served to separate one from God and The Way of The Livingness re-connects us to God, God that is present in all that we are, that is love, stillness and Harmony. Thank you Coleen for exposing the subtle pathways to guilt that the Catholic Church operate in.
Christine, I find this so funny to consider that people have lied in order to invent sins so that they would have something to say in the confessional box…It defeats the whole purpose and actually totally exposes how driven catholicism is in putting down its followers. I love what you have said here about The Way of The Livingness and how it offers us back the opportunity to re-connect to God again…a true blessing indeed for all.
Coleen, thank you, well spoken. It is true, a connection to God that is not reliable on mistakes is true. Why would God want us to punish or pray for our sins? This is why it is very deceitfull and misplaced. And especially because we have put people in the box who are not doing it! So, when we come back to our heart and Soul we must feel what is required, not coming from an energy that is God-less and act upon it.
I had lots of catholic friends and as young adults they would sometimes do silly things, then go to confession on Sunday and be ‘let off the hook’ so to speak, only to repeat their behaviours the next week. Or if they were ‘good’ they would make up something. I have to say this never made sense to me nor did it feel right either.
There is so much focus in our current religions on sin, sinners and guilt, when in fact none of these are a part of God’s love which is naturally and innately within each and every one of us.
Thank you for sharing your experiences of Catholicism Coleen… not having been brought up in this religion it is great to get an understanding for those who were. Although the theme of what you share runs through all religions, i.e. sins and sinners and the ensuing guilt trip, the ingrained rituals of Catholicism and the indoctrination that comes with it seems to deeply affect all those brought up in this religion.
What a difference the two views are – Catholicism says ‘you’re a sinner and you’re never going to be good enough’ while The Way of The Livingness says ‘you are divine, never forget that and the stuff that you do that is not you, can be discarded’.
The focus on sinning is a focus on what you are not. Universal Medicine has a focus on the fact that you are already everything. One focus takes you away from yourself and the other leads you home – to your soul and to your innate connection to God. I find it hard to comprehend that they both come under the same word religion as clearly they are not the same and one does not fit the true definition of religion.
Gosh reading what you were told about sin as a child is pure evil in the true meaning of the word as described here: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-evil.html – in Unimedpedia Evil.
‘Sins of childhood’ feels no different to the lies told by a paedophile.
A clear sign of falsehood in major religions is the fear-based-god that people are imposed upon with. In truth, we know God. And in truth, we know him to be beholding in Love and Truth.
My experience as a child around the procedures of ‘Holy Communion’ are quite similar, I also made up some ‘sins’, simply because I didn’t feel guilty for anything, neither the amounts of sweets we could anyway consume at home without limits nor the quarrels with my brother or anything else, but I felt obliged to offer something for confession. This is blatantly absurd and ridiculous nevertheless it did the job of contributing to the sense of guilt, not being enough, actually never being good enough, not being worthy to be unconditionally loved by God as his equal son. The very concept of sin and asking for absolution is as godless as it can get, really self-exposing of the emptiness and falseness this kind of institutionalized religion is fostering.
Being told one is sinful is a very clever way of keeping people in the cycle of guilt and doing what we know is not true. Who dares go beneath the behaviour if there is the possible discovery of ourselves as a sinner? There’s even been an effort to do what doesn’t feel true to confirm this belief that I’m somehow defective sometimes accompanied by a lazy,”I can’t help it”.
But all this is untrue. If we were sinners at our core we wouldn’t know what doesn’t feel true. The issue is my not heeding what I know to be true and standing firm by it. It’s not that I’m a sinner, there is great tension not following what feels loving. But that I do need to look at what goes on, what I can do to support myself to voice, even to myself, what the tension is about. Perhaps Im too scared to say to someone how I feel, why is this? Etc. To say I’m a sinner takes away my responsibility for how I behave and the energy I choose. Bring in understanding and I give myself choices once again.
How messed up is it that as a little girl you felt you had to make up lies in order to please those around you, what an oppressive environment to grow up in. I am glad that you have found your way home, to know that guilt and lies are not what God is asking for, in fact he asks nothing, he simply is and when you connect to the quality that is offered, all you have to do to know God is to simply be.
The fact that the way we move is how we can connect to God is something that most people will not have heard of, connected to, or understand. But ultimately it is such a simple thing that when practiced can open a whole new world of understanding. We can move from our reactions, from our hurts or from our emotions, and keep life the way it always has been, or we can connect to our centre, our essence, our love, and choose to move from there. In this way we can literally build a life of love, as every movement magnifies the quality in which we are then going to live in. I find that it takes loving dedication and commitment to do this, and often I forget, but when I remember to live and move with love my whole life changes for the better and I can feel my connection to God.
We return to listen to the inner wisdom and stop giving away our power to others under the guise of their authority being more knowing on something we think we don’t have for ourselves.
The concept of Sin is the Church’s way to control the population, making them feel they are wrong, not worthy, unredeemable unless some magical figure comes to sacrifice himself to take away their sins – and make them feel more guilty about it – what if the truth is far far greater, what if it is deeply self-empowering, fully equalizing – to recognise that we are in fact an equal Son of God with all – then no creed or dogma, no belief system could ever manipulate or take hold over us ever again – as we gain back our full awareness of the truth that is all around us, we will discern the lies that seek to destroy it.
What I love about Serge Benhayon and the Ageless Wisdom is that it has something that can be applied to all facets of life, never have I heard this religion or Serge, not commit to speaking about human life in full.
with the imposition of sin and guilt upon children – who then become the adults carrying this heavy burden, guarantees them to be in separation from the Divinity they are naturally from as their birthright. Once we are in separation to who we are, all manner of energies can come in and shape us, and manipulate, leaving a generation seeking solace in drugs, alcohol, tv, computer games, to constantly numb the misery guilt and emptiness – far better to raise our children knowing who they are and what they have access to within, and then the external plays will simply not be able to gain traction. Let’s not deal with the consequences of the outplay of the former, but rather hold our children and all equally in the truth of who they are.
Most churches do not feel very nice and I have never experienced any feelings of joy from being in them. If God is love, I don’t think he is in many churches. And the feelings of guilt permeate so much of life – something which takes me away from my connection to God.
I have also felt The Way of The Livingness presentations on God, religion and a way of living so completely supportive of life in a way, that for me being brought up as a Catholic, is diametrically different.
Haha . . . I also made up sins to confess in the confessional box. I had the same 2 every time. According to the catholic religion we were born sinners and sinning even before we knew what a sin was. I remember when I first went to school at 4 1/2 thinking “now they tell me about sin, how am I ever going to get to heaven . . . I must of sinned right up till now without even knowing.” . . . as every sin was a strike against your chances of getting to heaven. This is a far cry from The Way of The Livingness where the starting point is our Divinity and all we need to do is to reconnect to this by connecting to our divine essence within; living in a way that accepts who we truly are and takes full responsibility for our thoughts, words and deeds; knowing that everything is everything all of the time and that our movements affect the All.
It is very interesting to read about your experience Kathleen. It seems that the concept of confession in a way encourages children to make up lies because of the belief that we are born sinners. So, what message is this presenting to children and how does confession connect us to God when truth is absent?
Great to free ourselves from past impositions and to see the impositions we have put upon ourselves and gradually let every trace of them go too.
It seems like the ability to “confess your sins” is basically the ultimate excuse to be able to do whatever you like and essentially get away with it, it completely negates the fact that you are always responsible for your actions and that what you put out comes back to you – without fail.
How messed up is it when children are encouraged to find something wrong with them and then feel guilty and seek forgiveness, and then do this for the rest of their lives. I know many people choose in adult life to have less contact or limited contact with the Catholic church as they get older but inside they still carry the energy and beliefs instilled in them when young, so it makes you wonder how much of an influence does this energy still have in their day to day even if they are not devout Catholics.
To come through the catholic religion and into The Way of The Livingness at which point all that you felt was true is confirmed in your body as being true, is something to deeply appreciate. I know for me this experience/feeling has been life changing.
“What removes me from God is choosing an energy that God is not” – a beautifully simple yet profound principle which can support every one of us, if we are willing to be live according to what we know to be true.
I rarely went to church but I can feel how the guilt that is imposed by the catholic church is still in my body from previous lives. Guilt in truth does not make sense and yet we can carry it around with us especially when we feel we have done something wrong. In God’s eyes there is no right or wrong only love or not love which feels totally different in the body.
It’s incredible at such a young age how we can feel guilty for not pleasing other people – or keeping other people happy – even if it goes against everything we feel – which also comes from how we are brought up in educational establishments – to be nice, good, polite, quiet, please the teacher or other adults around us and be rewarded for it.
This part about encouraging a child to lie in order to keep up the tenants of the church is startling.
I was brought up in an Anglican family rather than Catholic – but the fundamental message of our sinful nature is pretty much the same. I would also say that it seems that this religious consciousness has pervaded thinking whether we were directly raised with it or not. Even though one of the fundamental rudiments of our laws is ‘innocent until proven guilty’, the feelings in society are more that we are all basically flawed in some way and have to work on improvement and betterment. It is rare to meet a person who has a wholesome amount of self-love in my experience – at least it was until I met Serge Benhayon and found ‘The Way of The Livingness’. Understanding that our relationship with ourselves is at the heart of the way we live is a wonderful truth to embrace. We are responsible for being the love in this world and it is a responsibility that is a joy to accept and live – especially having lived the alternative for such a long time.
Catholicism has a lot to answer for, over its history! It is the perfect example of greed today in a large corporation! The golden rule is, the one with all the gold makes all the rules, comes to mind for both. The Way of The Livingness is about the gold that lies within us all!
It’s totally ridiculous to be told we are born sinners and the first chance they get is to wet the babies head, a symbol to wash away original sin. I far prefer the truth that we are love first.
Coleen, reading this I can feel how utterly untrue this ritual feels; ‘It is not possible for me to connect with God through consuming a piece of white wafer or by taking a sip of wine.’ Attending church occasionally as a child and later an adult I didn’t ever feel love, harmony, truth or beauty, what I experienced felt cold, complicated, unloving and didn’t really make any sense. Now being a student of The Way of The Livingness, this religion feels loving, simple and makes sense, does not have the strange rituals, the two couldn’t be more different.
“I was a gentle and obedient child and couldn’t relate to any of the ‘sample sins’ presented to us.” Surely this is a huge sign that we are born without sin, if we are unable to relate to the notion of it in our childhood years. This for me just re-confirms the knowing that we are all born divine and when raised in and with this awareness, the idea of sin becomes even more obscure, because it is not an inherent part of our sacred essence.
So true – the notion of good, bad, sinner or such simply does not exist when we are connected to our inner-most essence -Love, true brotherhood
Life has changed so much to me by the understanding that we do not belong to this planet Earth but that this is a place where we get the opportunity to return to the divine being we actually are and from there will move on to another planet. How different is that in relation to how we are living our lives now? We are trying to better our lives but without success as making our lives better is not our purpose here on earth.
The reflected beauty, simplicity and inner knowing of God of the young child in the face of institutionalised religion, reveals the ease of the true relationship with God that is there for all, no bells, smells or confessions of what we are not, needed.
There are so many things we humans create to make us feel that we are doing the “right” thing. Often because we’ve lost the connection to our own divinity, so we make something up instead of admitting that we’ve lost our way. Confessing that you’ve sinned doesn’t clear you from what you’ve done, realising that you are enough as it is however does.
The whole ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ theme comes up – yet I have found that both are inherently the same, as neither are love.
As children often we have a sense of how we all are connected and that there can be only one God. During our process of becoming an adult we often are educated differently. And thus separation starts in believing the outside world more than sticking to our own innate truth.
Thank you, Coleen, for writing this. I always wondered about those confession business that I have only seen on films, and it is quite shocking to know how that system is upheld by establishing one’s notion of being guilty.
It is somehow hilarious though at the same time quite sad that the whole system of guilt demands that you behave in a very unusual way and, if you actually behave that way, then you have to pretend that you don’t. There does not seem to be any celebrating of a truly ‘pure’ person which seems quite strange on the surface of it.
We know when we have left the love that we are and chosen to do something ‘unloving’, we can instantly feel the tension in our body. At that point, we have a choice, to acknowledge that what we did was wrong and not repeat that behaviour because it feels awful, or to turn a blind eye and convince ourselves that it is ok, because other people are doing far worse things, we normalise it. Only we can choose how we behave and whether we take responsibility for the way we live, knowing that every choice we make has an effect on us and everyone else, energetically. We are either choosing love or not. It seems to me that confessing to someone in church and being given a punishment takes away the responsibility that we all have to ourselves and to everyone else, to live with energetic integrity and responsibility. It’s like getting a ‘get out of jail free’ card. What is the learning in this?
Great blog, Coleen, thank you for sharing how we can all access true religion through connecting with our inner essence, and for calling out the falsity in what we have been brought up to believe religion is. God is love, there is no judgment in love. Maybe the reason there was and is so much pressure to ‘have’ sins to confess, even if you have to make them up, is because by being honest and sharing that you have no sins, is challenging the foundation of Catholicism, exposing the fact that it is not true. To present to confession in the fullness of who you are, with God, would infuriate the priest sitting there as it’s making a mockery of everything he stands for. As God does not judge, there is no such thing as sin, in the eyes of God.
How can we be sinners if we are sons of God? It just does not add up. I’ve never been to a confessional or to a church other than weddings or funerals. I could never understand why some put priests up on pedestals and followed everything they said, including that they were sinners or needed to feel guilty. There is an arrogance with this because it sets up for some that they can do anything and go to confession on Sunday and confess. Does this not promote irresponsibility and dependence? Being aware of what we have taken on and let in to our bodies is so important so that we see through any outer influences that try and convince that we are anything but divine.
“The Way of The Livingness presents that all children are born with a Divine potential within” – bit different than we are all born sinners or at least become one. I know which one I’d rather align to.
And it is us that should take responsibility for what we choose. Which the catholics view of god totally deminish, as god is the allmighty father, who determines our faith. Which is very far from the truth.
It is our creation that has brought us “sins” as in truth they don’t exist. We are all the end result of our choices, and nothing else.
‘The Way of The Livingness presents that all children are born with a Divine potential within and that, with energetic integrity and responsibility, by choosing to align with this energy, our Soul, we start to discard all that is not of our true essence quite naturally.’ How well said and true this feels. Why on earth would we choose to believe we were born sinners, it’s horrifying.
How untrue to be indoctrinated as a sinner from birth according to the Catholic religion. It is a complete set up that can interfere with us feeling our natural divinity, and if subscribed to will have us left feeling unworthy or guilty and in need of absolution. Then practices such as confession foster these false beliefs. It is crazy. Thank you Coleen for the truth you present here.
The feeling of what you describe Coleen as your early experience of religion is so oppressive, joyless, empty and loveless. I felt exactly the same growing up and attending church. I would think what was all the fuss about? The Way of The Livingness feels so much truer, it’s authentic and absolutely beholding of humanity. We learn the true meaning of love and there is no guilt just responsibility.
The discarding of ideals and beliefs around religion is a big one. Even if we didn’t grow up with an obvious ‘religious’ influence I’m discovering there are many subtle ways it can still infiltrate and have our thoughts configure in a way that influence can still be imposed. Subtle, sneaky and not the true love of what is divinely available and accessible through our own connection with God.
I clearly remember a friend of mine making up a confession for the confession box because she didn’t know what to confess and then feeling relieved the next time she went to confession because this time she knew exactly what to say because she could confess that she had lied in the confessional box.
This is so absurd – then after that perhaps she could confess the greater truth that she is in truth a glorious Divine being.
The part about making up a lie to keep adults happy stuck with me. We hold onto and create issues and problems because if we didn’t we’d feel the lightness and love that we are. And we’d also feel how others and ourselves have fought such but as I am learning it was a choice to separate and feel sad and a choice to feel light again.
I find it interesting how there were adults who recommended that you as a child ‘just make up’ a few sins! It’s like as you say avoiding putting the system into question and not wanting to take a deeper look at what really it was propagating…
So many memories of confusion and awful smells from needless rituals – too many to recount. You made me laugh with making up sins, hilarious and utterly ridiculous. God does not reside inside churches he is within.
“…..for me true religion is about the inner connection with Soul, my innermost essence, which allows me to re-connect with Divine energy. This connection with Soul allows me to connect with God through feeling. It is not possible for me to connect with God through consuming a piece of white wafer or by taking a sip of wine.” Yes Coleen, it does seem absurd that there is a belief system that dictates that we can only connect to God through consuming a piece of rice paper and a sip of wine, when we actually all already have a deep connection to God within us.
This concept of sin is one that sets up a perpetual chase to be ‘better’ or ‘save yourself’. Like a hamster in a wheel, it is a never ending cycle or pursuing the unattainable. It makes no sense to me whatsoever that this world of lack and deprivation is what God is about. Like you say Coleen, this way of worship seems like a distraction from knowing God is with us in every moment of life.
I can so relate to the irony of this. Here we have, apparently a ‘man’ representing God and instead of connecting to the essence of the child and supporting them to know the God within- the aim of the confession is to separate the child from this inner knowing and tell them they are not it because they are sinful.
As a child I found it very confronting to go into my first confession. I was a decent kid, yeah I made some mistakes but I knew they weren’t sins as I never had an intention to hurt others.
I can remember making stuff up to tell the priest and could then feel his fury and judgment towards me for what I shared (which wasn’t even true). It was very far from the God that I knew. I never trusted Catholicism after that.
Guilt is a burden that dulls and separates us from God, as guilt is not an aspect of God.
Coleen I had similar experiences to you when growing up a Catholic. At the age of six or seven when preparing for my first holy communion I had to do my 1st confession… inwardly I always protested about being a sinner as I knew I had done nothing wrong and was a “good” girl. In a bit of a panic when having to confess my sins to the priest (in a creepy cupboard who was behind a screen and I could only see the shadow of) I couldn’t think of any, so told my first conscious lie that I had taken 5p from my mum’s purse. The irony of the situation stuck me even then, although I didn’t know the word irony.
If God is love then God does not judge. No need for a confession box.
Coleen, this is hilarious how you had to invent something ‘sinful’ that you had done just so you could play the confessional game! Thank you for sharing this!
Yes connecting to God is never done by simply doing things as eating a wafer or doing confessions of our ‘sins’. It is done through connecting with the energy and living way of God that is equally within us all.
I grew up participating in the catholic rituals. It was disempowering feeling guilty for just being yourself! I too carried the beliefs to look at things in me how I was wrong in comparison to the so called ‘good’. It was not being true to me. I was never met with ‘I am already perfect’, instead my journey began to strive for perfection.
I cannot remember any moment before I was 30 that I was truly met for just being myself. Nothing empowered me to know and feel I was a Son of God, the One, until I met Serge Benhayon. That was the end of my story of existence and the start of living my glorious life as a Son of God does.
We are in fact all born as the equal Sons of God, rightfully all here to live all that we are, to return to live in connection to Soul. This is our purpose as God’s children, to learn to live in the power of who we are and as such reimprint our Divine way here on earth with all. Sinners we are not. The only fall from grace for us is when we choose to not embrace our divinity – God’s love that we are, for it is through this choice that lovelessness exists. However, through self-honesty we return to know the truth of who we are through which we can live the light of our Soul, as is our natural and Divine way. The Way of The Livingness represents a living quality that is possible for all, when we recognise that we are held by God as His equal sons in the equal light that we already are, and offers us the way we can live and move in connection to our light within and through our everyday, with all.
I can see many of us grew up in the same way under a Catholic faith. The sinner thing never made sense and was just a process to do because you had to. Many times you made up sins to get it over and done with and most of us found it impossible to be serious inside the church, naturally you wanted to play and run around. We had to be quiet and not smile or really do anything. The church part never made sense either and now from where I stand it isn’t made from God or made with his love, it’s more man made and created for some. The Way of The Livingness is the way forward and makes sense where others add more questions.
Thank you Coleen, you remind me of the one time I begged my parents to let me attend Sunday School, because some of my friends went, only to return completely uninspired to ever attend again. I recall nothing of any content or particular experience, only that something felt so wrong and at odds with me that I never wanted to go back. I only came to understand this once I learnt about energy, the fact of the Soul and the fact we feel everything at an energetic level. It has been the exact opposite experience attending The Way of The Livingness sermons and days with Universal Medicine, and I can now echo your experience in understanding what a connection to God means as a real and tangibly felt-thing.
Sin, and the ensuing guilt, are a great way to keep people focusing on themselves and their situation, rather than life being all about true brotherhood.
Yes, Coleen, it is so true that we naturally re-align to a divine and soulful way of being once we start discarding the ideals and beliefs we adopted to keep us identified with being merely human.
I only read the first paragraph and thought whoa, you have to be connected to god by a ritual. This seems crazy to me because we are all born the same and we are already connected so why would we then need a ritual to get there? And then what happens to those that don’t? Are we seen as a lesser person or less Godly?
I too have always felt uneasy with most religions treating people like incompetent beings without a clue about how to connect with God and that we need someone else to dictate to us how to do it. Not only that but those same people are the ones to tell us what God’s word actually is and what it means even when it does not make sense to us. I have similar unease with the clever advertising in our world where our weaknesses and doubts are preyed upon and magnified so that people feel disempowered and anxious, then we are sold a promise that some spurious product and service will make us feel okay about ourselves again. Both situations feel false, and a way to manipulate and control for self gain. The Way of The Livingness has been a breath of fresh air for me bringing integrity and sense back to the word religion once again.
Thank you Coleen, awesome, awesome blog. I love how you’ve exposed the falseness of confession and what is being taught to people about who we are. When I first heard the Catholic and Christian religion claiming that we are all born sinners, I remember a sense of heaviness, unworthiness and guilt wash over me when I started to contemplate that this might be true. After a while I felt that this claim just didn’t make any sense and wasn’t true for me at all.
It seems to me that the Catholic religion is precisely and perfectly designed to keep us separated from God. And there is a reason – if we feel separated from God then we will look to religion to guide us back, so from a business/consumer point of view, it’s the best ever design – because it makes us want/need more and so it stays in business. Pure evil in it’s ‘perfect’ construct.
Great sharing Colleen and thank you for bringing this truth to the table. We all need to hear this as the way this is being done is very degrading and disregarding of the true divine qualities that make us all up
The ironic thing is, there is no such thing as sin in God’s eyes.
Sin was created by the church. No way would God ever judge like that.
The energy of the catholic church is sooo very insidious. The insipidness is thick, dense and I can feel the really yukkiness of this energetically. I can also feel that we have allowed this by not living our truth no matter what. What Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine present is that our natural innate essence of connection with the Divine/God is forever there. It is that simple, no trying, not pushing, no ‘sins or sinners’ and certainly no guilt.
It is by devious design that something that restricts people’s access to true religion describes itself as religion. And this false religion comes from the false energy that you have so rightly outed Coleen.
Coleen when I hear about religion described in the way that you experienced it as a child it feels like a lead overcoat and one that many millions of people wear for life.
A profound blog Coleen, one that exposes the evil lie that we are born sinners. – ‘…my personal experience of guilt is that it is a false, emotional energy that is not of the energetic quality of God Our Father. It does not serve to reconnect us. In fact, in operation, it serves to disconnect us and to place us in a heavy energy that separates us further from God.’ – How true, the energetic quality of God is as you have listed, love, joy, stillness, harmony and truth, NEVER is it blame and condemnation.
When I was young and all through my life I never understood why you needed a priest or a building to find God but at the same time I didn’t know how to connect to God. I could feel the church left me cold and empty so when I started to search for answers, in my 40’s I turned to spirituality and all its tantalising hooks of enlightenment and connection to the spiritual world. I can feel that we are set up, with all sides covered to make sure we don’t ever feel that God is within and that we don’t need to search or go anywhere. Thank God for Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon if not for them I would still be on my endless search for the feeling that something was missing in my life, and never realising what that was.
I remember Serge talking about symbology, he spoke about the history of the cross and how this symbol was originally equilateral but then the church came along and extended the bottom with the symbol of Christ on the cross, this symbolises the churches intention to keep religion routed to the ground, representing how we no longer are connected to our divinity, our universality, our origins. Like the cross, the guilt you describe is the church’s way of keeping humanity from the truth.
Oh my goodness that brings back memories – the confessional box and being told to say three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers and all our sins would be absolved. The fact that we could attend confession every week meant we were at liberty to sin again and again and again and each time we would be forgiven. No evolution there!
I also remember the pressure to go to confession and be absolved of my sins. I was not sure if anything magical happened but it was a ritual we were told we had to do as children to be considered worthy of God. We were apparently all sinners and needed this absolution in order to clear away our wrong doings. I am well aware now that God is no longer a lofty figure somewhere beyond the clouds, God is living within every single one of us, and is just waiting for us to connect with ourselves in order to know this more deeply.
It’s amazing how the notion of sin and its according amount of guilt to match keeps one in the perpetual cycle of energy that is not love or a connection with God. I was a great practiser of enhancing and the guilt I associated with not doing penance when I thought I should!
It’s awesome to see how self destructive and poisonous this is for humanity. When I am feeling bad about myself, an often unnamed guilt, I’d feel I was far from an inspiring light but more of a drain. The people who’ve changed my life are those who take responsibility for the quality of energy that flows through them and show me I too can choose, whatever my past choices have been, which energy I want to choose – love or that which tries to work against love and God.
Coleen, the shift in feeling half way through – after the recount of those Catholic rituals and when you got to the point of; “Firstly, for me true religion is about the inner connection with Soul,” was super powerful. To claim the truth and express it, can be felt by us all.
Thank you very much for sharing Coleen.
A great contrast indeed – it is a great blessing to understand that we are already everything, Godly, divine and without taint and therein, the falsity that has been presented as Religion without a true connection to the energetic quality that makes True Religion so, is exposed.
A great contrast indeed – it is a great blessing to understand that we are already everything, Godly, divine and without taint and therein, the falsity that has been presented as Religion without a true connection to the energetic quality that makes True Region so, is exposed.
Re-connecting to God and my Soul through my divine essence is an experience I have only had in the past few years and that I never found after decades of church going. I am forever grateful for the true blessing and grace of the Ageless Wisdom as presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine which teaches this true religion.
It’s interesting how we can feel guilt or it can follow us or stay with us over lifetimes, even though we have never sat in a confession box or been part of the Catholic Church in our recent current lifetime.
So true Gyl. The guilt and shame that we can carry from our religious past can be enormous and can taint so many of our beliefs, particualrly about ourselves and our self worth, even though we may not have experienced this directly in our current lifetime.
I can relate to much of what you say here. I found the ‘guilt of sinning’ to be a heavy, almost ever-present thing that constantly reminded me I wasn’t good enough for being me. When I left Catholic school and went to Uni, I stopped calling myself a Christian and a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. No matter what religion, colour, creed, nationality or belief we hold, we are all the same – all created equally and with a Soul just waiting for us to choose connection.
A great and powerful statement you are making Coleen and I can agree full heartedly. The concept that we are sinners and need another person to save us is setting us up to give our power away to an authority, that in turn can then rule over people and abuse every rule in the book, which we know has been done by the Catholic Church a million times. How is the history of the Catholic Church in any way related to God, divinity and love? – I cannot detect an ounce of it.
Thank you Coleen. I was stunned to read that people wanted you to make up sins to confess. I know very little about Catholicism but I must say this really surprised me. Your comment that people seemed happy as long as you seemed guilty about something was very eye opening and helped me understand that what you experienced was actually just an attempt to disconnect you from God, your divine birthright and your connection.
I can also see how I have played at ‘confession’ in my own way, believing that I must bash myself with abusive thoughts if I make a mistake or get it ‘wrong’. You remind me that choosing and allowing abusive thoughts is an indulgence and a very harming one at that.
‘Ultimately, my only sin was following this advice and lying to the priest that I had committed sins that I hadn’t! So I was guilty of lying to keep people and the church happy.’ Coleen, I had to smile as I read this as I felt I had to do the same thing. I wanted to please and so did the whole confession thing and played along. There was no room in the experience to claim that you hadn’t sinned or were not a sinner, so I confessed to stealing 10p which I hadn’t, felt uncomfortable that I was lying but also relieved to have the experience over with – said my two ‘Hail Mary’s’ and couldn’t wait to get out fast. That said, there was an element also running in me that said I now belonged to a club and that I had something to identify with and something that paid me attention, even if it was only for 2 minutes in a confessional box!
We might have never been part of a religion, but so many of us it seems to me confuse honesty with a guilty confession. We hold on to so many things we feel ‘bad’ about and occasionally come clean. Yet what if we had nothing to be ashamed about in reality? What if guilt is part of a relentless cyclical game where we put ourselves under constant judgment? Surely real honesty would be that as you say Coleen, that we are amazing, powerful and perfectly equipped loving beings.
I completely agree with you Joseph, we are taught guilt and have accepted it into or lives, but actually it does not belong to us as we are only using it to not allow ourselves to be the amazing powerful beings we actually are.
Thank you for sharing Coleen, for me one of the tenants of the Catholic Church, something I was brought up in at school, was that we are essentially all sinners and need to therefore repent our sins. Fast forward to The Way of The Livingness and we are all love, and it is only when we step away from the love that we are that we make unloving choices. No one is an inherently bad or evil person, in fact we are all the opposite – surrendering to this fact and accepting it more and more becomes true freedom and, at least for me, does not tie me down to thinking I need to prove anything or prove that I am free from sin.
Spot on James – it is a bit like Alcoholics Anonymous where the focus is to state one is an Alcoholic first and foremost. And the focus is on the sins of drinking…
We all make mistakes in life, and it is important of course to look at our choices and learn from them, but if we focus on being our mistakes then there is no learning, there is only a way of being ingrained in beating oneself up and never learning and growing. Universal Medicine and the Ageless Wisdom as you have so beautifully said James, starts with the premise that we are love first and foremost (not sinners or alcoholics etc), and hence from here we can feel the truth and then make choices that support that connection with the essence. Or we can make choices that are not supportive, and hence we get to feel that, learn from it and then when the opportunity presents again, we can choose differently.
Beautifully said Henrietta, something I love about Universal Medicine and the Ageless Wisdom is that there is never any judgement, rather and always, an opportunity to evolve and deepen our love no matter what choices we have made – the love is there regardless.
Thank you for this Coleen, this really highlights how straight from the word go everyone is considered to be faulty, wrong, a sinner, lesser than, not good enough – is it not surprising that people who follow the Catholic religion feel guilty.
Yes it is the number one playing card of the church to keep everyone invested in being absolved!
Yes it’s a very flawed starting point Julie I agree. Start from a place of knowing we are an equal Son of God, and that our essence is already everything allows for the connection to that part of us… which is where we find the Soul, God, one-ness and the connection to everything and everyone.
I loved this Coleen – and how you shared the experience of how Catholic faith has essentially boxed us and it is all about what we do rather than who we are. I love what you share about what religion is to you now: ‘…true religion is about the inner connection with Soul, my innermost essence, which allows me to re-connect with Divine energy. This connection with Soul allows me to connect with God through feeling….’ – This just resonates in my body as someone who really has not sat well with the word religion.
Guilt being a ‘false, emotional energy’, is spot on. We tend to feel anger, sadness, frustration etc from within, that is, emotions that erupt from us because of hurts we have buried deep in our bodies. Guilt is an intellectual emotion which is imposed on us from the outside. We are told that something is wrong and therefore we should feel guilty about it, so it’s something we have to agree to – to accept and practice. It promotes separation from ourselves and others – the highest form of evil.
Coleen I really appreciate what you have shared here, as I also grew up around and in the catholic religion but was not “christened” catholic so missed out on confession, although as a result I felt like i was excluded and not “part of the family” whilst at boarding school. In any case I never could understand what confession was all about, or the fact we were born sinners – if that were the case then we were doomed from the start and I as a baby and child never looked like “a sinner”. Looking at a baby today you can see clearly the divine quality they are and it is our role to support them to maintain that.
How crazy that you had to commit a sin in order to comply with the requirements of a religion that further cements our separation from God! It is interesting that it is currently called reconciliation like the balance sheet in accounting practice as if there will be a day of reckoning when all your sins are added up and if the amount of penances you have performed balances out you will be OK? When all that is needed is to choose to re-connect to our Soul and move in that energy and take responsibility for our movements and choices not wait for someone else to pass judgement on them. I am struck by the out-sourcing of responsibility and the power that is then wielded by those you dictate what is acceptable or not, there can be no equality when we allow others to decide our fate and it is a system that is wide open to abuse as has increasingly been exposed.
The truth is that shame stops you from taking true responsibility. Yes, it might give you cause to say you won’t ever do such thing again, but rarely if ever does such an affirmation work. And that is because it is not steeped in the understanding of what actually happened. Shame stops you from arising out of the issue you find yourself caught in by preventing you from earnestly assessing what happened with a clear mind and clear conscience, thereby robbing you of the opportunity to gain a true understanding of the situation. And without understanding as to what really went on, you cannot take responsibility for what happened, because without understanding, you don’t really know what happened and why. When you know why, and how, then you can take responsibility, for you have the means to ensure such a thing does not happen again.
I agree. I have felt the debilitating effect of shame for many years and it is still there. Time to let shame go.
Pure gold. Thanks Adam.
There are so many aspects of society where unless you ‘fit in’ you’re deemed inadequate and unsatisfactory, ‘weird’ or of little value, and it’s interesting that even what’s advertised as ‘religion’ has these same conditions that ask us to tick certain boxes in order to gain ‘membership’ or be a part of the group, which is presented as a special achievement… And when you DON’T tick these boxes it’s presented that you are forever a ‘sinner’ because God does not forgive you – quite an encouragement to put the effort in and conform…
We have changed so many words that no longer have their true meaning. Religion no longer requires God to be part of the word. We can religiously go to the gym, follow a football team and the list goes on! All of this just to fit in, but in Gods eyes, we are always part of the whole.
This is so honest and freeing to read and relatable to having been at a Roman Catholic boarding school for most of my childhood. The repression, sin,confession and punishment was such a major domineering part of my life then and has always been in how I held myself tightly protected and repressed. The absolute knowing and love felt when meeting Serge Benhayon has been life changing, honest, beautiful and has allowed my growing and consistent reconnection with God and myself as one and claiming the love I am with an absolute knowing of truth and the way of living with this honesty, self care, love and our divinity and responsibility as the oneness of humanity.
When I call something I have done a sin I am depending on a mercy from a higher position, but when I take it as something I can learn from, something I can grow on – my life becomes graceful.
What great blog about true religion!
There is no sin – just responsibility. The pictures we are sold of ‘right and wrong’ and the way we are with these pictures – to confirm or fight against them – are holding us in the illusion of being individual humans. But in fact we are energetic beings and all one.
And even though I did not grow up under the catholic church, I often feel guilty. For example I feel guilty when I become ill, because I think I have done something wrong, I failed. I even can tell me I take responsibility about my illness, by looking at what have I done wrong. But this is all evil as it takes me away from true responsibility. An illness is a clearing and I can read why it is there and what there is to clear. An illness is a reflection of our divine-connected bodies which are detoxing energy which does not belong to it in truth. And so every illness is a blessing, a reflection. I can be thankful for it and learn out of it. Because that’s why I am here: to learn to live again the divine being I am originally. No ‘God’ can forgive me – as I must have been judged before. But judgement is like a cut down, a stop. Whereby we are always moving….around the sun, within our bodies and so on. There is a flow (let’s call it love & truth) and we can be with it or try to swim against it. But the flow is strong and will lead us back to our unity again. There is a way to learn to surrender to the flow again and it is called The Way Of The Livingness.
Beautiful what you share about living the qualities of God on this planet, this is it so simply and I understand why I would feel the hypocrisy of organised religion. The Way of The Livingness is profound in its simplicity and alignment to universal law.
Hearing Serge Benhayon present on The Way of The Livingness is one of those real ‘aha!’ moments in life. At least it was for me. With all that I am I felt – and feel – ‘yes, this is what true religion is like’, based on the Divine essential nature of all beings, the absolute equalness of every one of us, a complete absence of judgment and a beholding unconditional love that never wavers, no matter what choices we make. After all, it would be a pretty loveless God that would give his children free-will only to punish them for using it.
If we are God’s children, created or born of God, then it seems much more likely to me that we are Divine in our origins rather than sinful. What is even more relevant is that when I feel into the difference, my whole being confirms that I am innately connected to God and I don’t need any ‘go-between’ to do so, that I don’t need to spend endless years in repentance or guilt – but just make the choice that Coleen is outlining here. Choose the energy of love, joy, stillness, truth and harmony. After all, if God also gave his children free-will, then our power is in our ability to choose.
Thank you Coleen – Another profound blog delivered with a clarity of knowing the truth from within. Your descriptions of the old ideals and belief of religion that were imposed upon you as a child and The Way of The Livingness you now live, opens the door for much needed discussion
“The true religion I now live, The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy, so that eventually we will not live on this earth at all, but return to our original Divine Soul Plane”.
Guilt is behind so much of the religious activity for the Catholic Church that it is no surprise that where it does not exist, as was the case for you Coleen when you were a child, it quickly seeks to create a situation where this is present.
“The true religion I now live, The Way of The Livingness, is based on living the qualities of God on this earth, the qualities of Stillness, Love, Truth, Harmony and Joy, so that eventually we will not live on this earth at all, but return to our original Divine Soul Plane.” Here, here Coleen and thank you for presenting the truth of The Way of The Livingness so clearly. Surely all religions should be focused on this, living the qualities of God on earth, rather than mis-leading us with false images of what we are not. We are Sons of God, immensely wise, loving and very powerful, faced with a constant choice of which energy we can choose to live by, God’s Still-and-All-Encompassing-Love or a poor imitation of it. The Way of The Livingness holds these tenets central to its teachings, which continually bring us home to these immutable facts, how to re-connect to and live this enormous live changing Truth, inclusive of everyone on the planet, in order to fully evolve.
Thank you Coleen for exposing so clearly what is not obviously Love. The idea of confessing sins to a man in a box feels really creepy to me. If we are really honest with ourselves we know what is true and what is not and when we bring light and awareness to the actions that are not us we begin to heal what it is that stops us knowing we are all sons of God.
I wasn’t raised in the Catholic faith but I learnt to lie – oh those little ‘white lies – at an early age, and I also carried the weight of guilt for a very long time, all of this helping to separate me from a God I always knew, but bore no resemblance to the God I saw presented all around me. Like you I have come to live in a way in which I am supported to know God and to know myself once again; this is The Way of The Livingness, a way of living that has no dogma, no rules, no demands of allegiance and definitely no lies and no guilt.
“So I was guilty of lying to keep people and the church happy. I noted that as long as my guilt about something was assured, everyone was content and the self-perpetuating system was upheld.” This seems crackers to me! Knowing very little about the catholic religion it seems that so many religions are about holding power within their church, in the hands of the few – not allowing the general public to feel they can have an intimate relationship with their God, without any intermediary.
I remember the confessional only too well, I can’t remember how it smelt but it was a very scary place especially the first time. I probably told more lies in there than I did in life in general because I felt the things that maybe the church would consider were sins I was probably going to do again so I wouldn’t confess them. Looking back I find it the most bizarre thing that we are fooled into thinking that a man going by the title of a priest can absolve us from our so-called sins in the first place.
Being held or being judgemental is always at the expense of self or another. Never does it delivery us to a true end either.
The oppressive judgement and guilt is very strong at the start of this article. The religion of The Way of The Livingness is a joyful, harmonious and loving re-connection to the Divine essence of who we all are as equal Sons of God.
The shackles of institutional religion began from being baptised to wash away our sins when we are only a few months old! When have we had time to do all of these heinous things from being born till the day some scary guy with a funny hat washes our face badly and then sprinkles water on us?
Thanks for sharing your understanding and reconnection back to true religion through the teachings of the ancient wisdom . I like this particularly ” Firstly, for me true religion is about the inner connection with Soul, my innermost essence, which allows me to re-connect with Divine energy. This connection with Soul allows me to connect with God through feeling. It is not possible for me to connect with God through consuming a piece of white wafer or by taking a sip of wine.”
I feel we are all sons of god and it is only our connection that is missing when we stray from our path, through ill choices .
As a child I also questioned why god was supposed to be found more in the man made buildings of churches than always around us and with us always. The control or ownership of god through the passages of rite such as baptism and communion, has always not made any sense to me. As a child it always felt not to be the true work of an all encompassing and loving god, but more the reinterpretation and manipulation of man for control or gain. Fancy trying to make young children carry the energy of sin and guilt, it just doesn’t feel natural or loving and truly caring to me.
May people learn to feel the magic of god all around them and within themselves as the begin to heal hurts, open up and realise that we all in this boat together, and meant to working together and not against each other and god.
So many practices that we have created are not at all in line with the tender, delicate and precious beings that we are. When we look at a baby nobody would say that this being is a sinner and yet we let it grow up in a world where it is made to believe that it is. What you describe here Coleen, shows so clearly how we make ourselves into something that we are not, how we have created a world that is alike to a board game where we play characters while our true being is muffled, suppressed and not made to count, nor heard.
It really is quite disconcerting when we realise the emotion of guilt is used to keep us separate. What this brings for consideration is how much does this impact our lives and how often do we choose to drop into or call on guilt in our everyday life? And being willing to see how and why we do and giving ourselves the grace to surrender through the guilt to the truth of the situation, and then the ability to accept it and let it be as it was. With this new understanding we are better equipped for any similar situations that we come across in our lives. In my experience less and less guilt is felt and in its place true responsibility begins to be lived.
Knowing God is within and my body is my temple liberated me from beliefs and practices of imposter religions.
‘what removes me from God is choosing an energy that God is not – that is, a non-Soulful energy, or a spiritual energy.’ I agree Coleen and understanding we have the power within us to choose Soulful energy in each and every movement brings responsibility very close to home.
When we allow guilt into our lives we do separate form the glory we are as in fact there is no guilt or anything like that when we connect to that inner source, our Soul. We are love to begin with and because we have not lived this for many lives we have accepted the image of guilt and of being wrong, because we have walked away from that glory we are from. But the fact is that we are all one and the same and that there is no right and there is no wrong as we all are learning our lessons in practical life in our return to Soul and in that there is no perfection asked from us.
Coleen your words help to dispel the illusion that has masked our true knowing of God, Thy Father, who lives and breathes within us all, as do we live and breathe within his body, the Universe we belong to. No temple is needed other than the physical form we are enhoused in and this is why in order to hear the voice of God once more, as we all did as children, we must learn to live and move in a way that honours our body as a sacred vessel through which such divine communion is possible. The Way of The Livingness is the only religion I know of that does not shy away from presenting this truth so that we are each truly free to choose which energy we will align to.
Hear hear Liane, brilliantly expressed. I feel exactly the same. The Way of The Livingness is the only religion I have come across that feels absolutely true and presents the truth of who we are, Sons of God, totally Divine from birth.
This is due divinity expressed from God’s body.
The Way of The Livingness shows us a gentle but powerful way to reconnect to our true essence, which is of God. Being raised a protestant the confessional never made sense to me, but I wished it were true because I internalised guilt from my self-proclaimed imperfections as a child. The Way of The Livingness is to love oneself deeply so that one may bring that same level of love to others. I realise now how dis-empowering it is to carry guilt, remorse and to be self-critical. Now I see life is about addressing what needs to be addressed and live a loving life that serves the whole community, to the best of one’s ability, without perfection.
When I first heard Serge Benhayon present about the importance of the energetic quality of how we move and how much that can have an effect on us, I was like OK…I think I get what you are saying. And the more and more I listen to them, I get it more and more and more. And like all of his presentations, it is if/when you choose to try them out in your own life, that you can get what he shares on a body level when you start to live it and see how it feels.
So when I read this -“Re-connecting with Soul, by re-choosing the quality of the energy in which I move, is what is required to re-establish my relationship with Our Father and the Divine energy that God is”, my body had a little nod. Because I have been working with the quality of energy in which I move, and I can feel when I move in accordance the the divine energy and when I move against it.
Lying about having a sin when there is none to keep everyone happy and to be accepted by the Church exposes the need that we want to fit in, and in that we have compromised what is truth, with the understanding that when we have needs, we have forsaken what is love within ourselves and the connection we have with our Soul.
Listening to what does not feel true in my body has become a way of living that is easily felt. Just the mention of the word sin sets of alarm bells and always has and it is these bells that I am learning to read thanks to the deepening connection to my sixth sense or innermost are becoming simpler to read.
Thanks for sharing your experience of Catholicism Coleen. Im sure with so many similar stories of the like and all of the news of corruption and padophilia in the church we could be asking, why? why is an outdated and suppressive institution being allowed to run and influence mainstream society?
Because we are allowing it. We all have free choice, the more society connects to the truth within themselves and, therefore, with God, we may well see a natural attrition from mainstream religion as people recognise for themselves that they do not ‘need’ it. Things only exist if there is a need for them. When that need is false, those with the need have to recognise that ‘falseness’ for themselves.
Spot on Coleen, the need for confession and the heaviness of feeling to be a sinner, moves us further from connection to God. It couldn’t be simpler than this, and exposes the lie that catholicism in any way betters people, when in fact it is so repressive and joyless.
Thank you Coleen for this blog. I had a very similar background to you in terms of being brought up in the catholic religion. At about the age of 14 I went to a confessional and told the priest that I did not have any sins. He became enraged and yelled at me and I walked out and never went to another confessional again. There was a real investment in the priest that we are all sinners. What I love about The Way of The Livingness is that it presents first up that we are Sons of God and as such are pure divinity. This totally confirmed what I knew but had deeply buried under the dogma of Catholicism.
That is brilliant Elizabeth, what a defining moment when you trusted yourself and said no to being branded a ‘sinner’.
Elizabeth, I love your conviction to walk out and not go back. Your experience shows the vast difference between Catholicism and The Way of The Livingness.
Very invested in the belief we are sinners… could it be that what he reacted to the most was that you claimed yourself and who you are, and it asked him to look at what he believed?