My confusion about religion and God began at a very early age, probably from day one. My father didn’t believe there was a God but that there was a logical explanation for everything in the Universe.
His own father had been raised in the Catholic faith and from very early on was expected to be the priest in the family, but at 17 this pressure turned him away from the Catholic religion and he ran away to sea. He later discovered Rationalism and when he became a father himself he brought his own children up, including my father, in this belief.
I never had really understood what Rationalism was all about, but my readings since have presented that it is a branch of philosophy where an idea is validated by logic rather than religious means such as revelations, meditation or emotions. A Rationalist is said to believe that all knowledge can be understood through a process of reasoning without any external sources, particularly without the need for a God. But the few times my father voiced that there was no God, it didn’t make sense to me as I could feel so clearly inside that there was. My confusion grew even stronger as my father was totally connected to nature and the Universe and their cycles; I felt he loved and honoured people for who they were, never judging anyone and treating everyone as an equal. To me the way he lived felt so aligned to God and in fact as I grew older I used to say that he was living how I felt a true Christian would live. But of course in my mind that clashed with what I came to understand were his beliefs… beliefs that I chose not to question.
Then on the other side, my mother was raised as a Swedish Lutheran; she spoke little about her religious beliefs and she appeared to only go to church when someone had died or for weddings. It took me a while to realise that she had put aside her beliefs and in part aligned herself with my father’s views, although he never forced them on anyone.
So this was the scene that was set for the early years of my life. As a young child I would have unexplained experiences that I would share with my mother; for example, that I knew that there was no real death but that we would ‘wake up’ again just like when we went to sleep, but she would instantly tell me that my father didn’t believe in that, and so I learned to hold back from sharing these inner knowings with him. I chose instead to defer to what I perceived to be his greater wisdom and began to align to his beliefs as my mother had done, shutting down all that I naturally knew and felt. He was such a wonderful and seemingly wise man, so it was obviously very easy to accept that he must be right and what I felt and experienced at times, must be wrong. So onto the pedestal he went and as a result, down went my trust in what I could feel and innately knew. Sadly I never had the conversation with him about religion that I now would dearly like to have, and I know that if he had known how I had shut myself down, he would have been horrified.
My father never pushed his beliefs onto others as he respected their views, so when I decided I wanted to attend Sunday School he did not try to convince me not to go, and off I went for my first ‘religious’ experience. So it was at about age 8 that I slowly began to garner some insight into what religion was about, but interestingly I can’t even remember what religion it was. A year later when I chose to start Bible studies something inside me woke up and I could feel so clearly that what was being presented to me did not feel true, and I left, never to return.
As the years rolled on by and I began to read about certain religions from Catholicism to Buddhism, I began to feel like I did in Bible studies – that there was little or no truth in what I was reading. But when I read about the teachers that these religions were named for, I felt something very different; that these men did bring truth to the world. So the question naturally arose; what happened to their teachings?
I came to the conclusion that they had been bastardised and used simply for power and control of the masses, and in doing so the truth presented by these wonderfully wise men was distorted for the purpose of keeping the people in separation; from themselves, from others, from the truth and from God, and not to bring them together in love, equality and brotherhood as had been presented as the way forward for mankind.
The stories of wars, atrocities and genocide in the name of religion continued to confuse and at times horrified me, and slowly I began to distance myself further and further from religion and God until the point when I could not say the words without squirming, at times avoiding saying them altogether. But when someone asked me what religion I followed I would say that I was an agnostic as claiming to be an atheist just didn’t sit right. It was like there was a part of me that was keeping my religious options open just in case.
And I am so pleased that I did because as a result of leaving that door open, the confusion that I lived with for nearly 60 years is now finally dissipating and my clarity about what religion truly is grows every day. This most welcome change to my understanding of religion has come about as a result of connecting with Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine 12 years ago. When I attended my first ever workshop with Serge, I felt with every part of me that I had finally found what I had been looking for all of my life and that I was finally returning home, even though at that stage I did not know where home was and what was waiting for me there. From the workshops and other presentations by this very wise man I began to reconnect to the real me, who I had buried under the mountain of the many ill ideals and beliefs I had chosen to take on, including my ones about religion.
The day Serge Benhayon first mentioned the word religion I began to squirm once again and all the old religious ideals and beliefs came pouring back in, and there was a voice yelling, “No, this can’t be a religion!” But even though there was a part of me that wanted to run, there was an even stronger part that was saying stop, here is the opportunity you have been waiting for, to finally understand what religion actually is, to get to know the God that you knew as a child and to make sense of a world that most of the time hasn’t made sense.
So stop I did and I began to listen to what Serge was presenting and with the common sense and truth that I knew he was offering, slowly the walls I had built began tumbling down, especially when he presented the true meaning of the word religion. When he shared that the word has its origins in the Latin words, ‘re-ligare’ and ‘re-ligio’, meaning to re-bind, to re-connect, I could feel that this is what I had felt at the first Universal Medicine workshop I attended; that I was re-connecting to something that I had always known but that I had buried for a very long time, probably for many lifetimes.
As Serge Benhayon continues to share this Ageless Wisdom with us I have come to realise that so much of what I had felt and had known was true; that Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha and the other wise messengers had offered humanity the truth; that their message was bastardised; that they did not ask for buildings to be erected in their name; that they did not want their teachings to be used for power and control and definitely not the reason to go to war; nor for God to be portrayed as a judgmental being totally removed from people’s lives, sitting on his throne in the sky.
They actually shared that it is in connection with our innermost, our inner heart, that we can feel and know God, wherever we are and whatever we are doing; it is in our livingness, and that in coming together to live this way in Brotherhood is a way we have known before and once chosen we will naturally live again. It is in the way we live in every moment as presented by The Way of The Livingness that we can build this connection to ourselves, and from this inner connection we can connect to others, to God, to nature and to the Universe. We are divine beings who are here to once again reclaim the true essence of love and remember that religion is in everything that we do and everything we express.
“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.”
(Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations, p. 46)
I have come to know that my religion is the stars in the sky that shine down upon me in the dark of the night; it is in the delicate bud of a flower that gently opens to the warmth of the sun; it is in the voice that whispered to me that what was presented in that Bible Studies class wasn’t the truth and that in connection to myself I will naturally connect to God and come to know him again as I did as the innocent and beautiful Son of God that I was as a child, and that I always have been.
Published with permission of family.
By Ingrid Ward, West Auckland, New Zealand
Related Reading:
Images of God
Waiting for God…
World Religion Day – but do we know what Religion is?
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Those that make the dichotomy God vs logic, discount that there is a profound logic behind God’s decisions but only because they cannot see it and even if the logic is revealed to them, they see God through a human’s eye.
Reading your comment was a reminder of the logic my father presented his denial of God to me, but that is where my confusion began because it was at total odds with how he lived in this world. How I would love to have a conversation with him now I have reconnected to the God I have always known through the presentations of Serge Benhayon and from making The Way of The Livingness my religion; my way.
Serge Benhayon shares the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom and offers an opportunity to reconnect to truth that is felt in every particle of your body.
There are lots of beliefs and ideals about God and how he his and how religion should be that can be really off putting and repulsive in my experience but I also know that there is a true beauty to be found in religion when it comes from our innermost connection and this is something that Serge Benhayon presents with sincere and great clarity.
I was speaking to a young man recently and we were chatting very openly about God. Even though he was unsure about God’s existence I detected a deep seated, very old hurt that he had denounced God because of the way religion had been twisted, changed and bastardised for so many centuries. Yet, he had a deep sensitivity and a wise inner knowing about life, the world, equality for all and a connection to true religion.
This is such a beautiful observation Rachel, and I feel that there will be so many within society who have experienced the exact same thing. Religion as it has been presented for so long, and in a very distorted way, is at the root of so many ill-behaviours that many of us live with. As far as I am concerned institutionalised religion has inflicted more harm on its followers than any truth it may have possibly been presenting.
I have never understood how people can call themselves religious because they attend church, or saying they are deeply religious because they are regular church goers. For me religion is a way of life, with absolutely no need to attend a church or place of worship, I can choose to connect to God at any time, and any place.
Someone I knew many years ago and whose father was a minister in the Presbyterian church, shared with me that he noticed his father preaching one way and living another. When he asked him why, his father replied – “I am only giving the people what they want”. And it seems to me that many who attend church on Sunday only accord importance to their religion on that one day, as they choose to live in a very different way, a non-religious way for the rest of the week. This is one pattern that felt so hypocritical to me, one that served to turn me away from religion as it was then.
It is deeply humbling to feel that we know true religion, for many of us, this knowing is from childhood and permeates our whole life. In my experience, it was knowing deeply what truth was, but not being able to allow myself to live it that caused great discontent and unrest in my life.
Thank you Ingrid for this powerful blog. I love what you have shared here with the simplicity of being in connection with grandness of nature as true religion.
“I have come to know that my religion is the stars in the sky that shine down upon me in the dark of the night; it is in the delicate bud of a flower that gently opens to the warmth of the sun”
To stop and simply BE with God is living religion.
Yes, it is actually that simple Stephanie but why do many of us make it so complicated? As the days go by and with my commitment to truly know God I can feel that slowly but surely, I am learning this and starting to live it. I am understanding that there is no doing in religion but a way of being where we naturally re-connect with God and so, are held lovingly and unconditionally within his magnificent being.
When we live in connection to our inner heart and move with its impulses, everything we do, say ,or think is living true religion.
Growing up with all of these conflicting views on religion is indeed very confusing and the relationship our parents have with religion and God really stand out when we are young and can feel God for ourselves. In our house, there was a mix between my mother who was baptised in water as a Baptist and my father who renounced the High Church of England and went into Spiritualism. My father always believed in God but knew that the church did not have the answers he was looking for, and often said, that he did not need to go to church to find God.
For ages I thought I did not want to have anything to do with God, although I loved observing nature, was fascinated with the flow of life and in awe of the order in the universe.
It took me a while to figure out that this was all part of my relationship with God, and that I did not want to have anything to do with was not God himself, but the imposed misinterpretation of him!
I felt similarly Ingrid – ‘that I was re-connecting to something that I had always known but that I had buried for a very long time, probably for many lifetimes.’ I never gave up searching for the truth as i too had attended Sunday school as a child – and even taught in one for a few years before I left home at 18. I returned to religion when pregnant, but always found the hypocrisy in church stifling. When I came to find the true meaning of religion through the presentations of The Ageless Wisdom via Serge Benhayon I knew I had come home. My search was over.
Ideals and beliefs are the background programs that essentially run a person’s whole way of being.We may assume they are true however perhaps this is not wise, given the influence they have on our lives…
Our relationship with God is deeply personal and some may refuse to use the word God but we all know Him otherwise how do we know to react when the lies are presented.
I recall for many years calling myself an Atheist yet I also never felt comfortable with the word, I had turned my back on the Catholic religion as I could no longer stand the hypocrisy and lies this religion stood for. I realised that is was not religion I was reacting to but the bastardisation and reinterpretation of God, and the fact no one was living in a truly religious way. Because of my past experiences with religion, at first I was a little cautious when I was introduced to The Way of The Livingness, but this didn’t last long as I could feel the truth of this religion, and this allowed me to deeply heal and be inspired to re-connect back to God and a religious way of life.
I too was never comfortable calling myself an Atheist and now I realise that somewhere inside of me I knew that wasn’t true, that I did know God so therefore I couldn’t deny this knowing. Returning to my relationship with God has been a most profound but also very enjoyable experience, one that I am so delighted that I did not turn away from when The Way of The Livingness was first presented by Serge Benhayon. Yes, I did a lot of squirming and there were times I wanted to run, but the inner knowing was still there, saying ‘stop and feel, you do know the truth, and always have’. So I stopped and there was the truth waiting for me,
We can take on beliefs from others at a very early age. We have a tendency to take on all that is shown to us and reflected to us about religion and God from our family and culture. This can be very hard to change or move away from, so we have to bring a lot of understanding to where others are at and their choices.
The more I connect with myself, the rhythms and cycles of my body, I can’t help but feel that this is a religious way of living and being and that is what I choose to live, not what anyone else tells me to.
We need to stop feeling, to align ourselves to Rationalism or any other fabricated religion. Is this the purpose of their existence or their consequence? In any case, if we stop feeling we disconnect ourselves from our inner wisdom and our own intimate connection with God.
We cannot use the mind alone to explain the vastness of space that we belong to. To do so in an attempt to ‘shrink’ space (Universal Intelligence) in order to get it to fit into a predefined area that we can then say we own and thus have a hold of. Our innate divinity cannot go away simply because we ignore it. It always remains deep within us unpolluted and untainted while we simply layer over the top of it a lesser way to be and accept such reduction as our seeming norm.
Rationalism was the conceptual foundation of massive experiments that took place during the XX (20th) century to create social/economic/political orders from above in the name of wellbeing and happiness in which individuals entered the equation as mere executors of a precise movement within a more comprehensive one. These experiments and the narratives that supported them were a clear path of competition with religion as provider of the answers and the way. Then we had other kind of experiments in which ‘religion’ operated as the foundation of political/social/economic orders. Either scenario of the attempt to build ‘Heaven on Earth’ shows a clear sub-ordination of the individual to the collective, a very clear mistrust and open war with free will and a clear incapacity to help people to build wellbeing in their bodies.
I am so clear in my knowing and acceptance that there is a God that when another dismisses there is a God I am steady and do not react. Even when I am not myself and disconnected I know there is a God and when I am connected to myself, to who I truly am I know and am aware that everyone else too can feel God in the sense that he is within and within everything too. It is impossible to dismiss God. Dismissing God clearly shows me the ill energies at play that are outside of who we truly are that we can take on.
True religion is our willingness to embrace The Livingness as a daily way of life where the quality of our movements reflect our interconnection with the universe and everything there is.
Thank you Ingrid – a blog that leaves you with a stop – to feel your relationship with religion so far and what you have put aside or between you and the truth.
Agnostics, Lutherans, Catholics, spirtualists… take your pick…. Where there is ignorance, many weeds will grow .
I love this excerpt “If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.”
(Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations, p. 46)”
It takes away any stigma about what Religion actually means, it invites an open mind and frees up the body as you read it.
I found it so interesting hearing about your upbringing, we all come from such different backgrounds but we seem to all have one thing in common and that is an inner knowing that there is more to this life than meets the eye.
That is so true Sarah that everything is religion, and something that occurred to me after reading that quote is that literally everything that happens to us during the day is an offering for us to learn from and evolve back to our original source (to re-connect). It’s just a matter of staying aware and responding to these things as they arise.
I too can’t “imagine living without this awareness”; it feels so natural in stark contrast to the way I used to live. It is very hard, near impossible, to live in connection to others, to nature and to the Universe when you are living in disconnection from yourself.
I haven’t seen that quote about religion being in everything but, as you have so beautiful illustrated, it is. It is in our connection to each other, to nature, to the unseen. It is in our thoughts and our actions. I cannot imagine living without this awareness now and yet, if I had subscribed to what I took on as religion to be about, I too would have remained an agnostic.
Its so wonderful you have re-connected with your religion . What you have shared in you writing sounds so graceful, thank you.
This proves how damaging ideals, beliefs and pictures can be to our innate and natural sense of knowing.
I love the idea of rationalism – that things should be looked at with discernment and intelligently, but can’t help but think there is an underlying hurt or contraction that stops that person at looking at the unfathomable or unexplainable with the same rational discernment. There is plainly an energy, or a guiding force at play in the world – and that is worth some serious rational consideration!
If we do not understand the true meaning of the word religion how can we ever hope to understand the concept of living religiously and how it supports us in our everyday.
When the true meaning of the word religion is shared and understood as our own re-connection back to ourselves, the word simply settles in my body.
The experience of religion so many of us have had in our younger lives has turned us away from that so called religion, and as we grow into adults with our own choices and thinking, it is very easy to see the corruption, misadventure, abuse and downright lies associated with religion. The real deceit though is that what we were told was religion, is not religion. Thank God for Universal Medicine introducing true religion to the world.
And that deceit is playing out on a world scale currently. We all have a responsibility to claim and live true religion in our everyday to offer another way.
Absolutely Brendan – and that’s the very point of rationalism – to ignore the rest of the universe.
I can understand why someone who has been hurt by the reinterpretation of religion would decide to leave God out of their religious beliefs and practices, however that is really just ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. God is within us all so to deny this is to turn away from the deep connection we have with ourselves, leaving us at the mercy of whatever is outside of us. Beliefs then become super important because they are the only way in which we can stay relatively steady in the chaos of the world we have all created.
So true Lucy, we need the beliefs to make sense of the chaos, yet when you connect to the All that is within, there is no chaos but a stillness and an understanding of how everything makes sense.
I had a chat with somebody about religion yesterday, they were so certain in their knowledge of everything they had read and everything that has been bastardised that they have completely renounced religion from their life. Even though I know that I haven’t completely embodied the real meaning of the word, I feel absolutely blessed to be open to the possibility of a true religious life.
Learning about the different religions and even now interacting with people from many different faiths I am at times asked if I am religious and I say yes without hesitation. Which is beautiful because previously I too would hide away from claiming that I am religious as to associate with something that didn’t make any sense nor did I want to be seen as a looney or as a sheep in the mind of another; judgements I had previously pinned onto those following a religion. The way Serge Benhayon presents religion makes so much sense in that it’s about being in relationships, which we are constantly in and can’t escape from, and there is more to us and life that is physical and we can and do have a relationship with this.
The Way of The Livingness is the living way in connection to the all and so amazing and refreshing to discover in side us and is in marked contrasted to the confusion dogma and imposed beliefs of organised religions of the world. The grace and joy of living who we are in connection with our bodies and all that is around us that we feel and see in the beauty, grace, flow and discipline of God.
“….in connection to myself I will naturally connect to God”. Beautifully and simply expressed, thankyou Ingrid. I love the quote from Serge Benhayon – “if you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.” Yes.
We know truth, love and what religion truly means as children yet we are bombarded with so many beliefs and ideals from the outside that it is no surprise that we shut down. My children have been told in school who God is but all three of them have come home and questioned the teachings. I know my kids know God and even though they too are getting different messages about God from the outside I don’t feel the need to preach to them who or what God is. I know through choice it is the way I live that truly inspires them; the way I am with myself that sets the foundation for all my relationships including my relationship with God.
How far have we strayed from the true meaning of the word ‘Religion’ when it simply means to ‘re-connect’? And then you feel something familiar, perhaps there is no words you can find to describe it, but you know this quality… How simple and uncomplicated compared to the confusion, control and fractious nature that has been caused in history by manipulation of this word.
Reconnecting to what is innately within us is a personal journey but none the less we all come from the same divine spark so when all connected to this divine source, God, we will be equal and emanating the Love that we all are.
It’s it interesting how we always know exactly what religion is not. Therefore no matter what we say, we must also know what religion is.
Simply beautiful Gyl and very true.
Connection to God is not about going to a certain building or saying a certain prayer or sitting on your knees for a long time or clearing your mind and saying OMs…
Connection to God happens in our body, though our deepest heart when we let go of all the barriers that we hold as seeming protections from each other, when we allow ourselves to be seen by the world and allow the world to see us completely, openly. As you have so beautifully said Ingrid: “religion is in everything that we do and everything we express”…now this allows us a breather and allows us to see that religion is far more than we realise, that we do not have to be constrained by the current common definitions of religion itself!
“When I attended my first ever workshop with Serge, I felt with every part of me that I had finally found what I had been looking for all of my life and that I was finally returning home, even though at that stage I did not know where home was and what was waiting for me there.” I can relate to this Ingird, and felt the same kind of homecoming when I attended my first workshop with Serge Benhayon. It has and continues to be a revelation to me that everything I have always known is continually being confirmed as I deepen my connection to the divine that has always been within me.
The Ageless Wisdom is not something for the select few, it is available to everyone equally. Question is, do we acknowledge it?
The Ageless Wisdom has been presented through Serge Benhayon in a way that makes sense in the modern world. Mostly the teaching are based on simple and logical principles that it is a reflection of how convoluted and crazy humanity has become so far from accepting responsibility.
When Serge Benhayon first introduced to the Student Body of Universal Medicine that The Way of The Livingness was a religion I was initially reluctant to consider myself religious because of the associations I had gathered over the years regarding religion. However, however much I was reluctant it felt true and as I came to understand and appreciate what religion truly means, so I am now proud to say “I am religious and I practice the religion The Way of The Livingness”.
It seems as though the surest way to dismiss and deny the truth is not to argue or say horrible things, but to put out and promote a slightly altered version of what is really there to distract and discourage people. If every apple you were ever given was rotten, after a while you would surely stop trying. This is how I have felt with traditional Religion and life, so thanks for this reminder Ingrid that our connection to divinity is naturally written in everything.
As a young person growing up I could never understand the contradictions such as, ‘Love thy neighbour as yourself’ and then it was OK to have a war because ‘God was on our side’ but the other side also claimed God was on theirs? And so the contradictions went on. It is such an amazing joy to know The Way of The Livingness and there be no contradictions
Great examples of contradictions jstewart. The other contradiction that really stood out for me was the person that was a ‘church goer’ one day a week and for the rest of the week lived in a way that to me was nothing like what I felt a religious person would live; it always felt so hypocritical. This was really brought home to me a while ago when I met a business man who repeatedly told everyone that he was a Christian but to me some of the business practices that he undertook didn’t have one ounce of what I feel Christianity is, in them; he certainly wasn’t walking his talk – but sadly he is not alone in this.
One of the key insights is that science is a way of accessing truth but science itself knows that its approach can only access a limited amount of truth. Therefore any method or tool or way to access a bigger set of true statements or skills would be very helpful and, if it existed, could well be named ‘true religion’. Would anybody have a better name?
Even after all these years I still can get a sense of the “connection and understanding of life” that I held as child. Having this natural knowing I can now understand why I struggled to make sense of the world I saw around me because it didn’t reflect what I could feel inside. Sadly what I felt on the outside began to burrow its way into the inside burying the truth that I naturally knew underneath it. This is why we as adults have a huge responsibility to support all our children to retain this inner wisdom so that they may carry it with them as they grow – into wise adults
Children hold such a deep connection and understanding of life, as kids we are much more connected to what we feel and there is such a beauty in this yet often we lose sight of this as we grow up and take on pictures, beliefs and get influenced by what is outside of us.
Serge Benhayon offers the world the true understanding of the religious confusion out there by bringing back the simplicity we all know inside us .” it is in connection with our innermost, our inner heart, that we can feel and know God, wherever we are and whatever we are doing;” It brings us back to the knowing and love inside us all and not outside of us unattainable and distant and of many different interpretations. Thank you for a great blog and sharing.
Yes, it is quite a message to say that every human being has themselves access to a much larger volume of truth than they thought and then to show everyone how to access that larger volume.
Re-reading your great blog Ingrid it is very clear that the process of education has not been about accumulating more knowledge and data but rather seeing through our false positions, reconnecting to the truth, letting the walls tumble down and realising that you can trust what you feel and live that. It is a process of letting go all that is not true to find that the shining jewel of wisdom was always there – you and God.
Growing up a Catholic I was under the impression, (hey I might have got this wrong) but I was under the impression that if you weren’t Catholic and went to church on Sunday, well you were going to hell, and this I found weird as I knew some people that felt better than a lot in that church and I couldn’t believe that they would burn for eternity because they didn’t come to a place to worship God when I couldn’t even feel God in that place. Anyway The Way of The Livingness is the only religion that I have come across that has no prejudices or boundaries and recognises that we are all part of the all and definitely no one is to burn for eternity on the Lake of Fire.
Now having a relationship with God that is of equality and having deep appreciation of the divine source I have been created from my understanding of what religion really is has changed dramatically from being brought up catholic. Returning back to my true origins and celebrating this feels amazing.
It’s great you have explored many routes knowing that there was a true religion but then coming to the realisation that religion is actually how we are with everything – it is the connection we have to our bodies and to the all.
“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.” and this clearly exposes anything that claims itself to be religion whilst causing separation within the everything.
It seems that very many of us have a sense of the discrepancies and falsehood in our current interpretation of religion and that working with the true religion, The Way of The Livingness, is simply a coming home to what we have always known.
Thank you for sharing Ingrid, for me one of the reasons why religion has been used to mean so many different things is because when we use it in its true meaning it is a very powerful and natural word for us all to use and claim. So to change its meaning and then put people off it is a very clever trick to essentially keep us away from connecting to ourselves, to the love that we are.
It is interesting how you describe a pull towards the great world teachers who have graced our earth but not the writings about them. I too remember feeling confused and frustrated because I wanted to learn about these great people and what they truly brought to humanity, but would often find that what was written about them gave me little to no sense of who they really were as people and the lives they lead or the relationships they had, that is, they had become almost fictitious and seemed to disappear in to a state of myth or legend.
Yes Shami, the connection to the world teachers who had been with us in the past was always very strong and could not be ignored, but the confusion began when often what was written about them didn’t make sense; I continually had this feeling that the truth of what I felt was being hidden and in the process the truth of these teachers, as you say, “had become almost fictitious and seemed to disappear into a state of myth or legend.” Now finally we have a world teacher in Serge Benhayon who is definitely not going to disappear without trace as everything he is presenting is being documented in great detail for those to come.
The simple truth of religion is written here for all to read “ it is in connection with our innermost, our inner heart, that we can feel and know God, wherever we are and whatever we are doing; it is in our livingness.” For me there has never been anything more true written.
Ingrid what stands out for me today is the fact that your “religious confusion started from day one” now this is something that I can relate to and I am sure many millions around the world, yet the more I understand true religion the more it makes no sense why we are confused. Let me explain, as True Religion is a natural part of our way of living as a baby then we innately know and are religious. It is of course no coincidence we are confused, even though it makes no true sense, as we are then raised byt that religion that is nothing like what we naturally feel it to be.
I love the fact that the truth has no gaps, no contradictions and simply makes sense. It is known from deep within and has been lived before by us all.
Religion is our very essence, hence why no theory can capture it.
A truly religious relationship should be rational in terms of its observations. The problem with the approach of rationalism however is that it asks life to be understand purely from the ponderings of the mind alone, and God cannot be understood in this way. True religion can only be understood by movement and vibration, in other words understanding that everything actually has a quality of vibration, or energetic state of being. And yes, we actually are equipped to register such things, but that requires a dedication to resurrecting our true senses, which can in turn only be achieved by developing a body that is sensitive and in tune to such things. Thus it requires a certain livingness that cannot be achieved simply through the feeble pondering of the mind, which is limited in its assessment of the world by what it can see based on its interpretation of what we feel through the 5 senses.
Growing up enjoying bible studies, but so much of it did not make sense but I felt compelled to find the answers to life, and everyone seemed to go to the bible for the answers and then later on in life I discovered other religions which were saying they knew the truth. Then along came the spiritual new age and more confusing information – thank God for Serge Benhayon who was the first person who I could trust knew what he was on about, and has been consistent in his delivery for ten years.
What a great scenario to incarnate into Ingrid! You were given the space to see the true colours of religion and not have that bind put upon you. And then you had the further refinement of seeing that rationalism and humanism, as appealing as that can be, is not it either. To quite a large extent you had the space to see through any subtle illusion without having the grind of a punishing consciousness imposed on you. Having sussed all that out made way for true religion. The beauty of The Way of The Livingness is beyond compare!
I agree Lyndy that my upbringing gave me such a wide perspective on religion and even though I made the choice to shut down what I knew to be true this knowing didn’t leave me forever. The key to opening the door back to this inner knowing was offered to me by Serge Benhayon and I took it willingly with both hands and now live it, without perfection, through The Way of The Livingness, a religion as you say “is beyond compare”.
Many Christians, atheists, agnostics I have come into contact with feel they truly know what true religion is. But the movements and expression they choose in life do not reflect this truth they know in full. To live in this constant conflict requires a shut down to what our body feels and to our awareness, and that is to shut down the greatest gift life has given us. Similarly, someone who knows the living, breathing way of true religion, if we choose not to live in our fullness, when we shut down or hide expressing what true religion means to us in our movements, we are encouraging what is religion to continue to create deep tension in our bodies.
its a great point you make Ingrid, that when we connect to the great sages that institutialised religions are named after, we connect to the grandness and truth that they lived. But institutionalized religion is a rape of this truth. It strips us of this divine knowing – there is nothing innocent about this. Institutionalized religion has the intent of cutting down our access to divinity so that the powers that be remain.
God is everywhere and in everything even when we are acting in a way that is against the simple love that God is. Losing our relationship with religion and with God has been one of the greatest crimes against humanity. We only need to look at what the bastardisation of this has done of the last however many thousands of years. I watch at present the way the we target groups who have particular beliefs it just drives further a wedge between us, when religion in its truth ‘re-binds’ us together because it reminds us of who we are, which is so much more when we are unified together.
Serge Benhayon makes religion so meaningful, real and personal, cutting through all the contradictions of institutional religions.
So very true jstewart. It was by Serge Benhayon presenting the true meaning of religion that I finally realised that, yes it is “meaningful, real and personal” and that it is something that I have always actually known but chose to bury under the confusion created by what I had observed from the so-called accepted religions. By Serge returning the truth of religion back to humanity, it has opened the doorway to those like me who have lived in a very confused religious state, to now know what true religion is and that it all begins within each and every one of us.
What an in depth and very exposing understanding of religion and what it truly is Ingrid beautiful thank you. From Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine “They actually shared that it is in connection with our innermost, our inner heart, that we can feel and know God, wherever we are and whatever we are doing; it is in our livingness, and that in coming together to live this way in Brotherhood is a way we have known before and once chosen we will naturally live again. Beautiful.
It is amazing how as a child we often are totally connected to truth and how we choose to leave this because of our education from parents and society. Actually this is showing to me that we must have more lifes where we had left our truth many times so that in this life we have no foundation to built on. With the ageless wisdom Serge Benhayon is presenting I was able to reconnect what I already had felt as a child and now am able to built a foundation on truth.
I appreciate coming to know true religion as presented by Serge Benhayon and the Ageless Wisdom, where religion means a reconnection with God through our innermost, bringing that love out in a loving connection to nature humanity and all around us, understanding that we all are one and love is who we truly are.
There has been a lot of confusion around me and within me in my earlier life with many contradictions with thoughts and teachings too Ingrid. To feel I know there is a true religion with the Ageless Wisdom and the teachings of Serge Benhayon is to feel I have come home at last. There is no need to search any more, the answers are all here for everyone.
It has been in taking notice of the words used in religious ceremonies and script that makes it sound as if God is ‘out there’ and that we are beneath him, and ‘less than’ which creates an immediate separation between God and man. But when we simply reconnect with our body, through our breath, God / Love is there instantly. Not ‘out there’, but in there. within our body. It then confirmed to me how religion attempts to control and disempower the masses. True religion is simply about reconnecting with your breath and then you are in connection with the body of God. Simple. No rules. Equality.
This is a great point that you raise here Johanne about the words used in various religions making it sound like “God is ‘out there’”, and I am sure that if children hear these words repeated to them from very young it will naturally follow that that is where they believe God to be as well. How amazing it would be if instead every child was raised to know God is with us in every moment, not out there, but inside each and every one of us, always.
Feeling, listening, deepening, and connecting to every detail my body senses and observes, and learning to honour that without reinterpreting it with my mind is an incredible ongoing education and development.
The deeper I connect with myself, the rhythms and cycles of my body, life and the universe I can’t help but feel that this is a religious way of living and being.
Rationalism was said to have emerged during the Renaissance. It has been claimed that it was fundamentally what the Renaissance was about, discounting the fact that the Renaissance was actually a freeing up of thought, no longer restricted by the oppressive dogma of the Catholic Church.
Thank you, Adam. It feels like you are freeing the word Renaissance again.
The Ageless Wisdoms presented by Serge Benhayon, stripping back the impositions of centuries of untrue translations has awoken me to the wonder and beauty I am. It is a development that stays with me every day, learning to be who I am in my life today with the knowing that I (and us all) come from a place that is divine.
There can be no confusion if we simply reconnect to the Divinity that we already are by Essence – as this is true religion.
I can relate here to having great awareness and wisdom as a child but over-riding this wisdom due to what I experienced around me as a child. Now as an adult I am slowly reclaiming that natural wisdom and connection with religion and my soul that we all have available to us.
Whenever I have been in church and the minister has talked about Jesus saving us and how we in the congregation must put him on a pedestal and thank him I have often thought about what Jesus would think of this if he were alive today. To me this is the complete opposite to his teachings in that we are all equal. If there is a God, and I know there is, then how can God love one human being more than another?… it is impossible. Jesus walks by my side, he is my friend and will always be.
One of the greatest teachings of The Way of The Livingness is that to know truth we must be present in our physical body and not deny its input. This was revolutionary to my ears as I had heard a lot about denying the body its appetites! Of course connecting to and living in the body does not mean that one indulges the appetites. It simply means connect with and occupy your body so that nothing else can come in and occupy it. Being in confusion about anything means that one is living from the head, disconnected to the body, and so inevitably there can be no true connection to God. How fortunate that Serge Benhayon has shared the wisdom with the world that the physical body and our connection to it will bring back true religion for all..
It’s a great point you make here Lyndy; “Being in confusion about anything means that one is living from the head, disconnected to the body, and so inevitably there can be no true connection to God”. That makes total sense of not only the confusion that often envelops us but also the complication that then ensues. Reconnecting to ourselves and to God provides us with the space to let go of all that is confusing us, from there the complication falls away and is replaced by the stillness of simplicity, a much more welcome and truly religious way to live.
Very beautiful Ingrid.
Sometimes when we feel like we are so far away from God, He is the one actually closer to us than we realise. In our hardest times, he is the one carrying us, just like the story with the footsteps in the sand when we think we have been abandoned upon seeing only one imprint of footsteps in the sand…how we can fool ourselves, only to realise that there was no need to panic, that He was and is there all of the time, and with every single one of us.
As a student of history, I recall how lectures and books were saturated with accounts of religious wars in every continent and age. Massacre, persecution, war, torture, execution, rape, pillage and death routinely and clinically discussed and written about without any critique of the vileness of it all and inherent contradiction of religion and war. I was part of this – and ask myself did I question enough what was taught and If I didn’t, where was I? It is important, at every opportunity to challenge and expose the bastardisation of religion. And for me today the best way to do this, is by commenting on Universal Medicine blog sites and living in a way that reflects true religion.
It is a blessing to finally know who I am, why I’m here by deepening my connection with divinity within. There is no more confusion, doubt or searching, I learning to surrender to universal consciousness and let that be my guide.
The religion from the heart is bringing us back to where we belong, in connection with the all, the universe and with God, something that for a long time has been claimed to be the privilege of the institutionalised religions but is actually available to us all for free if we choose so, without the need to becoming part of any institution whatsoever.
“From Religious Confusion to Religious Truth” – yes Ingrid, confusion happens only when clarity or perspective aren’t there…introduce these two and the understanding that happens allows the seeing and feeling of things as they truly are.
‘A Rationalist is said to believe that all knowledge can be understood through a process of reasoning without any external sources, particularly without the need for a God.’ I have never really heard of this way of living before but it feels cold in terms of using the head to shut out what the body is feeling. In the past when I have turned to logic for answers I have dismissed what I have been feeling. Whilst on the surface it seems to make sense (after all logic makes sense), underneath it feels like there is a shutting down, a burying or a denial of hurts.
I do know that too michelle819. In my search for the truth of life I found I could not trust the institutionalised religions but instead I tried to rationally explain life. But as you say, it left me unsatisfied as in fact we do know from our inner heart that we belong to so much more, that our life is not limited to this three dimensional world. This inner conflict, which I did not clearly understand, made me eventually wander off into many of the new age modalities that were presented to me at that time, which in fact took me even further away from my inner knowing. This went on until one day I met Serge Benhayon, who by way of presenting himself to me helped me to reconnect with my inner heart, that place where I have found my connection with the true purpose of life and the fact that I am a religious man from origin.
So-called religion has us estranged us from God and true religion more than any atheism ever could.
It is funny how a logical explanation precludes there being a God. It is just that those who state there is a God tended not to be ‘logical’ about there being a God. One of the issues logic has is that our universe is very unlikely to be in existence – a lot of physical constants like the fine structure constant could be any value but they are within an exquisitely narrow range that allows the stars and planets and life to exist. The fine structure constant is an obscure but very important constant used in physics to show how a charged particle interacts with an electromagnetic field, (another example is a quote from Stephen Hawking saying that if the rate of expansion of the universe one second into the Big Bang would have been smaller by one part in a hundred thousand million million, then the universe would have recollapsed long before now). One logical explanation that is popular in science (the ‘many universes theory’) but that sounds strange to me is that there is not just our universe but 10 to the power of 170 universes, which is an unfathomably large number of universes with only a few of them supporting life and this seems just a touch wasteful.
I am not sure I understood much of what you wrote here Christoph, but I get what you are saying about logic getting in the way of the heart and our true relationship with the Universe. When things make sense it does not have to be logical!
Simply connecting with me, and it was always there – that familiar warmth was the fire of divine essence through my body. It was like the sun shining inside .. my Soul. Thank you Serge Benhayon for inspiring me to come to know myself.
This is a great blog Ingrid as it clearly demonstrates how each member of your family reacted to what they felt was not true in religion; from your grandfather escaping priesthood to your father’s Rationalisation to your mother’s abandonment of the religion she was brought up in, to your own explorations of different so called religions. In sounded like you were all on the same page and that they all would have embraced The Way of The Livingness as you have if given the opportunity. The beautiful thing is that you have in fact brought it to them even though they have possibly past over by now as it is after all one life. This says it all . . .”“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.”(Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations, p. 46)
I just love what you have written here Kathleen, it truly touched me and it has offered me a whole new way of seeing my family. And yes I have a feeling that they would have “embraced The Way of The Livingness just as I have done, but how wonderful it is to know that even though they have passed from this life The Way I choose to live now has naturally brought it to them.
When it comes to religion, we have to ask if this religion is lead by the mind or lead by the heart.
The fact that our religion is between us and God seems to have been missed by organised religion. Thanks to the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom as presented by Universal Medicine, I have my knowing of religion and it is a religion that is personal to me.
What a set up and how ironic that we can be deeply religious and have a strong awareness and connection with God, nature and the universal order of things but due to a reaction to the reinterpreted harmful versions of these words, at the same time we would deny all knowledge or connection with religion or God.
Yes Ingrid, no doubt there are countless others like your father, who naturally live with a deep care for others but have been put off organised religion and won’t have anything to do with it. Thank God for Universal Medicine in setting the record straight about what true religion is, so that we can live once again in the joy of it.
Beautiful statement made here about walking in to a Universal Medicine presentation and feeling the Religious Re-Connection that is available. And what is as beautiful still, is then being at home with family or fiends, or being at work, or out at the shops, and carrying this connection everywhere we go, in constant communication with the Soul.
I too can remember being confused by religion, as what I was being told and what I was hearing and seeing seemed to be very contradictory. Nothing really made sense. It wasn’t until I found Universal Medicine and heard Serge Benhayon explain what true religion was/is that I was able to understand the true meaning of it, and then everything fell into place like the pieces of a jigsaw. And it has been from here that I have been able to reconnect to who I truly am, and that has been something to celebrate.
The moment we left ourselves and thus our connection with God we ended up in the confusion of what religion is all about. Coming back to the truth of religion is equivalent to coming back to oneself.
That is true. Logic is only a small part of truth and logic knows that.
Humanity has become so used to pigeon-holing everything which tends to mean reducing elements of the whole into separate parts. Similar to your father most of my life I had an awareness of the precise rhythm and order of the Universe, and even if I could not see an explanation of anything, I had a sense that I could just not see it and needed to look harder. And I had no interest in anything which did not make sense like the inconsistent and hypocritical doctrine of religions I witnessed around me. I thought I was interested in one topic and not the other.
It has been a true gift thanks to Universal Medicine to start seeing the whole picture once again and realize my deep connection with and appreciation of the splendor of the Universe is part and parcel of religion, and to find that there is nothing hypocritical or inconsistent in true religion. Everything makes absolute sense.
Your description of the clashing of the different religions Ingrid is so beautifully clear Ingrid and totally exposes how we have misunderstood what true religion is. Serge Benhayon completely clarifies how all of life is religion when we understand it ..”If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.”
Your father obviously had a love for humanity the way you described how he saw other people as equal and loved them for who they were. This is how we all are in essence so I can easily see how you would align to that, even though you felt as a child there was a connection and relationship with god, whether it was admitted, or denied it was always there. We Idolize people who have strength and conviction but because we feel their love is the same as ours we ‘turn a blind eye’ to what does not feel right. We must be very discerning when people are coming from their natural connection to god, or coming from a hurt that is getting in the way of that very connection.
The moment there is separation in the name of ‘religion’ it is clearly not ‘religion’ we are dealing with, but with the evil that guises itself as ‘religion’ and is in fact not religion at all.
You got it Kylie, powerful and succinct. An organization might call itself religion but if there is separation to the rest of humanity it is a giveaway that they are leading people further from god.
I was always drawn to the Christian Church when I was growing up because of the feeling of the connection to something unseen that existed beyond my temporal life, and the community feeling it offered, but although as I became adult I still hung on for a long time around the fringes of various denominations, I never fully believed or committed. This also led to a huge interest in comparative world religions, yet none of them truly felt completely true. One breaking away point came, when being encouraged by a Jesuit priest friend to become more deeply involved in worship in a church, and I was sitting on the bank of the River Hudson and felt the whole expanse of the Universe around me, no roof, no false decoration, no enclosure, no tedious psalms and religious texts stuck in time asking me to repent my sins, no piety, but rather the spontaneity and rhythms and cycles and endless evolving of nature and the billions of spheres together. When I first heard Serge Benhayon speak he was expressing what I knew inside myself but not been able to formulate. It was like a shining light, an opening up to the illusion of humankind’s creation, a call to responsibility to live my life from this other way of being, not for myself but for all, that all that is contained within the ALL of our spherical universe we are an integral part of. There is no roof or walls only eternal movement.
I often return to the first day, the first moment in fact, that I met Serge Benhayon. Standing there in the room I had no idea what was going to happen next, all I knew, and had known for several months, is that was exactly where I needed to be on that day in 2005. There were many impulses in my life that I chose to ignore, but I celebrate every day that the impulse to meet Serge was not one of those cast onto the discarded impulse pile as the light he shone on my life and the world that day was the light that I had been waiting for, for what seemed an eternity.
To understand the true meaning of religion has been a journey that I have enjoyed and when I do have a connection or re-connection the feeling of that connection is undeniable. To be religious is to re-bind and it feels amazing to have that inner knowing of who I am within my body.
That is what I love about The Way of The Livingness – that it is never presenting anything I do not already know and actually lived very clearly when I was a young child
We have made religion something outside of us, a faith, dogma, congregation, building, institution or else. The moment we realize that religion is a very personal affair living within first and then being expressed with the world all the false versions of religion are seen for what they are, ie a bastardization and separation away from the original lived impress.
Yes Alex I agree that “we have made religion something outside of us” and in doing so have placed it in a church, a mosque or a temple, and in the hands of others who profess to be the conduit to the God we seek. But in placing it outside of ourselves we have left a void, a huge empty space that we have then attempted to fill with everything that is not of love and not of God, leaving ourselves vulnerable to the bastardisation of what was originally true religion as presented by the world teachers who at times have graced our planet.
This is beautiful Ingrid and I especially love what you say about religion being in everything. I hadn’t thought of it quite in that way before. Thank you for opening my eyes and my heart.
I really like that you call religion and rationalism both a belief. As presented by Serge Benhayon and eventually experienced and realized by myself religion is not a belief or a faith but a connection and inner knowing.
I have often found that those who had been given an open door to religions or any type of belief, have a much healthier relationship with them compared to those who have been forced into a subscription.
Great point and a bit of a top tip for parents!
“We are divine beings who are here to once again reclaim the true essence of love and remember that religion is in everything that we do and everything we express.” These are beautiful words Ingrid. I had similar confusing experiences as a child going to the Sunday schools of whatever religion was handy wherever we moved, though my parents did not go to church. Like you I had a knowing about God as a child, lost it as I grew up, or thought I did, only to re-find, re-bind, re-turn and re-connect in my latter years. Serge Benhayon has been instrumental in this for me too, paving the way for clarity and truth to be restored back to the words religion and God.
“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.” – I absolutely love that quote. How rich and beautiful our life becomes when we make it truly religious. It becomes a life lived in devotion to the All, in communion and ceremony with yourself, humanity and the entire universe that we realise is within our bodies just as much as it is without.
Beautiful Ingrid, you have taken me on a journey through my confused childhood and back out to the point I’m at now, claiming that yes, I am religious and it’s everything I had always felt it was within.
I really enjoyed reading this blog and could relate to much of what was shared. Like most of us, I also had mixed messages growing up about religion. I was presented with conflicting views and behaviours. I was sent to Sunday school despite the fact that no one else went to church. I also felt all the hurt that religious beliefs had caused to people in their childhoods. I too drifted away from my strong knowing of God as a child, until I became an agnostic. I am so glad I have found my way back to the exquisite knowing of myself as divine, without any middle man or reinterpretation involved.
Religion—the word feels absolutely encompassing—religion is in everything and everywhere, and everything is religion.
‘They actually shared that it is in connection with our innermost, our inner heart, that we can feel and know God, wherever we are and whatever we are doing; it is in our livingness, and that in coming together to live this way in Brotherhood is a way we have known before and once chosen we will naturally live again.’ If this is what we were taught at school by others living this way or open to it than our experience and perception of religion would be in an entirely different and true light to that of our developed culture and societies.
“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.” How utterly true. There is no separation between philosophy, religion, science and medicine – only a different expression of the one being, the one truth, the one love.
There are many instances when a child has opened up to me about their feelings with regard to religion and our origins that at the time did not fit my chosen belief, and so I paid them little heed, and as I look back now at these exchanges I can see that child was calling out for confirmation of something they knew innately but which did not match what they saw all around them. How crucial it is for us to know our own connection that these questions get met with a shared truth.
I totally agree Rosanna, that it is so very important to answer questions from our children with total honesty. And it follows that if we are living in a way that respects all of humanity, that we have equal love for all and that we know that we are innately religious, then what we reflect to our children and what we share with them comes with this lived wisdom, so honouring them for the wise beings that they naturally are.
This is very beautiful, there is such delicacy in this relationship: “we know that we are innately religious, then what we reflect to our children and what we share with them comes with this lived wisdom, so honouring them for the wise beings that they naturally are.”
“But of course in my mind that clashed with what I came to understand were his beliefs… beliefs that I chose not to question.” As I am letting go of many beliefs I am starting to see how many beliefs we take on in every part of our life without questioning them. For instance the belief of being a teenager where we are not interested in anything except eating, sleeping long and what we have to do like school. Is this really the way we want to live? If we would ask ourselves this as a teenager we probably would say no yet we don’t even think it! The same with religion, most people don’t like most religions but no one questions (including myself for long) if this is religion or just a bastardisation of it…
When I began to look honestly at all the beliefs that I had grown up and lived with for so many years I was horrified as I seemed to be living every one else’s take on life and not my own. I can see how a belief can easily be taken on and made your own without any questioning at all when it comes from someone who you are close to, someone who as a child you consider to be much wiser than you.
Is it any wonder that people turn away when the words God and Religion are mentioned, given our history of Religious wars and ill deeds done in the name of Religion – thank God for Serge Benhayon’s ability to break down those barriers and see the truth behind the words.
No it’s no wonder but the truth is that all of that is not religion and it’s not love. So we could ask – where are we at to no recognise that and fall for that lie. This quote sums it up.
‘I had felt and had known was true; that Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha and the other wise messengers had offered humanity the truth; that their message was bastardised’
We have had true messengers and their messages still hold true however when we take the layers man for self has put on and around this truth as the truth then we are also swallowing the lie. And this is something through not being in connection with my innate wisdom I once did as I was not as diserning as I am capable of being. In truth we should be able to feel (if in connection) that this part is true and this is the barstardised part – do from there are able to reject the package or reinterpretation as a whole and see it for what it is.
A gentle loving connection with ourselves is key to our connection to God, super simple and not an ounce of self or external imposition that we are anything less than equal to all the love that God is.
‘I have come to realise that so much of what I had felt and had known was true; that Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha and the other wise messengers had offered humanity the truth; that their message was bastardised; that they did not ask for buildings to be erected in their name; that they did not want their teachings to be used for power and control and definitely not the reason to go to war; nor for God to be portrayed as a judgmental being totally removed from people’s lives, sitting on his throne in the sky.’ I was always confused by this contradiction to what I felt to be true too. I find it fascinating that here we are with all these amazing children who know truth, who feel it very keenly and yet who are not given the opportunity to express it or are encouraged to claim what they know to be valid. As a parent and teacher I feel it is so important to support our children with the expression of how they feel so that they don’t dismiss what they know, but can feel confident to share their wisdom empowering both themselves and others.
When I was a child I didn’t think the words; “I feel and know God” – there was just no question about me being intrinsically part of a whole that included God. I imagine if anyone asked me if I believed in God I would have been just as someone asking “do you believe in breath”. How can you label something that you simply live with every part of your being ‘a belief’?
But as I grew older a belief is exactly what God and religion did turn to at some stage. Thank goodness that the Ageless Wisdom has been presented through Serge Benhayon in a way that makes sense in the modern world. A welcome support to re-connect to the natural awareness and inner knowing of the heart and applying it the daily responsibilities faced as an adult.
It is so common for a child to feel what is not true but told otherwise, and left to conclude that “I must be wrong”. And as adults we often continue this giving away of our power and inner wisdom. Thank God for Universal Medicine and the blessing of re-connecting back to what has always been known.
“A Rationalist is said to believe that all knowledge can be understood through a process of reasoning without any external sources, particularly without the need for a God. ” This is a beautiful summary. The interesting part is the word ‘belief’ here which ostensibly has no place in rationalism, except when it comes to what rationalism is. The second point is that rational thought inevitably leads to the rational conclusion that not all knowledge can be understood through a process of reasoning and that the amount of knowledge that cannot be understood that way may be vastly larger than the amount that could be understood that way.
Its interesting that we can say we don’t believe in one religion or another because there is no love or truth in it… however to know there is no love or truth in what is presented, we have to know love and truth!…and we do – naturally and innately every one of us knows.
It’s interesting how institutional religion today is one of the greatest causes of war, separation and disharmony around the world yet in its truth, true religion is one thing that has the power to unite everyone equally so. Its natural, its innate and it requires no belief outside oneself. For myself to even connect with and relate to this in its true sense shows the incredible blessing I’ve received by being part of Universal Medicine.
Life’s full of opinions, a lot of them coming from millions of beliefs and ideals. And all of these don’t come from love, as love doesn’t contain any belief or ideal. So rationalism or an institutionalized religion are all adding to separation as they are based on beliefs and ideals. True religion is based on what we feel and allow others to contribute from what they feel. And so together we’re adding our love that lives inside to a more loving life. Not as a goal, but this will simply be the result when more and more people express lovingly. I used to be a non-believer, but nowadays the amazingness inside of me, a wisdom that I can’t describe in words, but is available at any given moment that its needed. True religion!
As I read the opening paragraph to this blog I feel that perhaps one day we might realise that God is the most logical explanation for everything in the universe. There is incomprehensible beauty and harmony that we may just equate to a ‘higher being’. Knowing God could just be pure rationalism and common sense.
“… they did not want their teachings to be used for power and control and definitely not the reason to go to war;” It is truly jaw dropping when we really stop to consider just how much we have twisted the teachings of all these divine messengers into doctrines and beliefs that justify our desire to go to war, rape, and torture each other and create utter devastation. Most definitely not the message of God and nowhere near the true representation of the immense love we are from and are held in.
I understand what you mean about your mother aligning to your fathers beliefs, and I find this is a quite common phenomena, we adjust to fit in rather than discerning what feels true for ourselves and consequently honour it.
I agree and this includes the father aligning to his father’s beliefs.
Thank you Ingrid for sharing your experience with religion. It is very much needed as the word religion has to be freed from all the bastardization so that it can be use again without squirming or reacting. Imagine no one would have a picture or a believe or an ideal around this word – I am sure there were less or perhaps even no war needed in this world.
Ingrid, you have revealed the purpose of bastardised religion here: “I came to the conclusion that they had been bastardised and used simply for power and control of the masses, and in doing so the truth presented by these wonderfully wise men was distorted for the purpose of keeping the people in separation; from themselves, from others, from the truth and from God, and not to bring them together in love, equality and brotherhood as had been presented as the way forward for mankind.” – For if we were to cotton on to the fact that we are actually are all One and in that such powerful divine beings, then the world would indeed be a completely different place…and hence it would be the end of the reign of certain energies. And now that this has been cleared…what are we waiting for?
The one thing rationalism can’t explain and conveniently ignores is the fact of consciousness, or life force. It is the white elephant in the room. Science cannot reproduce it, not explain it, and so it is conveniently ignored as an anomaly. Just like a free market economist must make up ridiculous assumptions that there is unlimited capital and a completely flexible workforce – assumptions that are clearly false, but without which they could not produce a one size fits all model from which they can attempt to explain all things – so has the rationalist conveniently ignored the fact of consciousness in order to understand life in a similarly reduced way. And therein lies the problem with evidence based science. We don’t like to acknowledge the limitations of its process, and when things become unexplainable, or too difficult to test, we simply write them off or ignore them in order to focus on those things we can explain and understand.
Yes, it makes so much more sense to connect to the essence of the various ‘wise messengers’ who have graced us over the centuries than the ill-institutions that have grown up around them. Strip away these edifices and you come back to a few, simple, universal truths that can be understood and lived by every one of us.
As a child I often used to feel that God was everywhere and that we didn’t need buildings to go to to connect with him nor an intermediary to tell us what they think we should think God is telling us, in particular anything that goes against the grain of love, eg separation of religions as in ‘our way not your way , wars and hatred, fighting in the name of God. God is right there in nature, in the steams and fields, the native forest we used to play in as children. Because I felt it in those I felt it in me. It was something innate and completely natural to me.
So interesting how your father’s non belief influenced your mother’s belief albeit just from holding that view. It seems that we impact greatly on each other even when not much is said – as has been shared countless times – everything is energy and everything is felt.
“that in connection to myself I will naturally connect to God and come to know him again”, the whispering voice that confirms for us that God is within us.
“But of course in my mind that clashed with what I came to understand were his beliefs… beliefs that I chose not to question.”
I know this from myself as well as I see it all around me. We’re taking in way too much ideals and beliefs that are imposed on us from the outside. Where it becomes very sad is where we stop expressing how we actually feel ourselves. It is like giving away our power. But to what or who? Especially around Religion and God there are so many beliefs and ideals sold (imposed on us) and at the same time very little truth around. God’s simply serving and holding us all of the time, There’s actually no fog or confusion around God once we start connecting to our feelings inside of us. In fact re-connect to ourselves. As we know these truths, we’re only fighting them strongly and constantly.
We have been graced on earth by the coming of some truly loving and wise messengers who have left a profound mark. Things being as they currently are the teachings of these messengers has been institutionalised and re-interpreted to suit the controlling, protective, contracted way of life men have got themselves lost in. This becomes known as ‘religion’ and the very word then comes to men something other than it true meaning and runs people right away from that area life, which in truth encompasses all life. As you have said Ingrid:’ Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha and the other wise messengers had offered humanity the truth; that their message was bastardised; that they did not ask for buildings to be erected in their name; that they did not want their teachings to be used for power and control and definitely not the reason to go to war’.
When I read this line -“he was such a wonderful and seemingly wise man, so it was obviously very easy to accept that he must be right and what I felt and experienced at times, must be wrong.” – it struck me how often we can do this. I know I have. That we put what we feel/want from a relationship before what our own experience is. And as you say, he would have been horrified if he knew so we even do this at times at the expense of ourselves and the other person does not even request it!
Thank you Ingrid, this made me feel alive again, reading the absoluteness of religion, and how all these false ways have simply not made any sense, ever. Your quote reveals its truth: ‘We are divine beings who are here to once again reclaim the true essence of love and remember that religion is in everything that we do and everything we express.’
So never ever think that you do not matter. You do. In all ways.
A wonderful reminder Ingrid of what the wise messengers of the past shared – that through reconnecting “..with our innermost, our inner heart, that we feel and know God, wherever we are and what ever we are doing..” and that God is constantly communicating with us if we are open to reading what is happening around us.
and what you have shared Peter is The Way of The Livingness as taught by Serge Benhayon. A systematic way of supporting others to re-connect to themselves and through that connection with themselves, God. And although I say ‘systematic’ I refer simply to the fact that Serge Benhayon has brought through an array of tools in order to support people to re-connect but that how each person uses those tools and chooses to re-connect is very personal and pertinent to them.
When I hear Serge Benhayon talking openly about the true religion of The Way The Livingness, it makes complete sense to me. Only this religion answers all my questions and queries with great understanding. Only this religion allows me to make my choices and live my life without imposing dogma on me. Only this religion is the Truth.
Have you noticed that all the so-called mystics of each organised religion begin from the same truth, that God is Love? In the Christian religion Julian of Norwich and Meister Echart, in the Moslem religion the Sufis, in Judaism the Essenes. The Way of The Livingness could well be The Way of the Lovingness, and in fact, my computer tried to write that first time! It is also a fact that many of those who were faithful to that root of their religion were judged and suffered at the hands of those who had bastardised and misinterpreted in order to control. The Way of The Livingness is no exception. All are committed to this way of Love and many are targeted or considered weird. For me, this reveals the truth of its teachings, for those who do not wish to face the truth are scared to accept the change in themselves that will unfold if they were to do so. It is easier to either refuse to talk about it or attack.
“I have come to know that my religion is the stars in the sky that shine down upon me in the dark of the night.” I love this line Ingrid as it perfectly sums up the divinity of God found in every little speck of detail found in nature all around us everyday. Just this afternoon I sat out on my hotel balcony watching the sunset over the Blue Mountains and said how truly blessed by God we are in every moment of our daily lives and that every moment we live can be a truly religious movement touched by divinity.
How beautiful Ingrid. It’s a wonder-full experience to be in the wonderment of God all around us. I can feel it now while flying in this plane – it’s so special.
What is also truly amazing is actually tangibly falling in love with any other (a stranger) connecting from essence to essence. I have especially felt this in Universal Medicine healing courses. It’s power-full to feel and experience this same love with different people.
The mind in separation to the heart operates completely differently to the mind in connection with the inner-heart. In separation the mind will always look for ways to prove or justify what has already been felt from the entire body.
Well said Abby – in separation the mind will take us astray from ourselves.
I love your take on Religion Ingrid, it is so far removed from the judgement and the bitterness that envelops the so called religious experience for so many and leaves so many as stricken followers, ruled by fear or hatred or anger or all the above and many more. Now more than ever it is important for religion to be reclaimed for what it really is, which is never in a building, but in our bodies, in our movements, our intention to love and treat everyone with deep care and compassion. That for us as a society is a quantum leap, but really it is just a return to the rebinding, reconnected way of living we all come from.
The enormous amount of Confusion and misunderstanding created by the different interpretations of Religion is such a complication and distraction in their separation of humanity that all the true love and oneness is lost and fighting and isolation is the result. The actual simplicity of the true meaning of religion is so beautiful and real and allows us to be who we really are with no imposition only love as the pure divinity we are. Thank you Ingrid for such a great sharing of the truth of what is really going on.
Ingrid your amazing sharing here on true religion comes across with so much strength and knowing and an authority that is beautiful to feel and resonates deeply inside.” it is in connection with our innermost, our inner heart, that we can feel and know God, wherever we are and whatever we are doing; it is in our livingness, and that in coming together to live this way in Brotherhood is a way we have known before and once chosen we will naturally live again.”
Yes Ingrid, it is life-changing to finally feel that you have come home to the truth you have always known inside, and that it is not a place but a return to a state of being that is one with God.
Ingrid I love what you share here in this experience “The day Serge Benhayon first mentioned the word religion I began to squirm once again and all the old religious ideals and beliefs came pouring back in” it is one that i so relate to and I had to go on a journey in myself of breaking down all the hurts and ideals that the word Religion came charged with until I could see through that fog and feel the truth of what was being presented, then I could not understand why I had not embraced true religion before and why I had any issue with the word.
Thankyou Ingrid for reminding us of this: “We are divine beings who are here to once again reclaim the true essence of love and remember that religion is in everything that we do and everything we express.” Such a simple truth that we all have access to.
Yes. Truth was presented to us many times and and it is presented right now by Serge Benhayon. But to live truth on earth is a challenge, as we want to stay here and not truly want to return to God. We want to be our own creater’s. And so we bastardise by and by what is given to us to make it fit in to our needs and intentions. Great to realize and to see what we do. And still we can have this inner knowing of what is true. And deep in, we are longing for it. To be religion, to re-connect is a choice. A choice to live in a way that opens up to discovering our creations and let go of them.
I can see how Rationalism would be a very attractive option given the history of organised religion. To keep everything logical and understood by the mind keeps everything under control and leaves nothing unexplained. But with this approach and belief you miss out on the magic of God – the mystery and the wonder and the unexplained. If you open to the magic of God you need to let go of control and the need to know. There is a greater force at play than simply what the mind can know. If we let go to it and allow it, life has an extra element and dimension that is simply divine.
Ingrid the way you sum up religion at the end of your blog is beautiful and resonates with me. I have had a similar journey with religion. As a child I felt my connection to God deeply but found church and Sunday School cold, detached and nonsensical to what I felt inside. I then turned my back on religion and called myself an atheist for a few years, later changing to agnostic. I too have now realigned and connected to that feeling I had as a child.
Another great blog about religion and I love the last paragraph which opens up the fact that everything is in truth religion for us to feel.
We have all experienced the game where we sit in a circle and pass a simple message by whispering it to the person next to us till the last person receives the message. The changes that happen in a short time can be miles away from the original message. What chance does religion have after a few thousand years of being embellished! But, true religion has never changed within us when we listen with our hearts and not our ears.
It’s fascinating, if not deeply exploratory and exposing, for us all to reflect on the place that God held in our family of upbringing and the society and culture we encountered… And with this, where those of us who felt very close to Him, felt we had the opportunity and space to express about all that we innately knew…
I remember my own family and their consideration of different religions, yet always feeling that when I might take the conversation deeper, it got stopped at the point that others felt comfortable with.
At times there is an openness with those around us, at times not – and it is for us to foster our connection, the relationship with God and the All that is true religion, that we are not deterred nor diminished by those who might see things another way. Knowing is knowing, and it cannot be broken unless we ourselves rescind…
So very much is conveyed here… about where we’ve strayed from the truth, and what we’ve allowed to stand in its place. The beauty in your final paragraph in particular Ingrid, brings it all, deeply, home… leaving me touched with the knowing I also hold deeply confirmed.
I would say that it’s not about you coming “to know Him again” – but rather that you do, now, know Him… or such words full of His magnificence could not be written from your pen.
Thank-you.
Thank you Victoria for offering me a moment to further deepen my understanding of my connection to God and the undeniable fact that, yes I do know Him and never have not.. Perhaps is that the path that I took which lead me so far away from Him that when I chose to return to the truth convinced me that I was actually getting to know him again.
Truth is, we all know God. Your sharing here is a great example (and we all have them), of how the denial of our inner knowing is so disconcerting to the nature of who we are, and at the deepest level. Is it a wonder that anxiety is so endemic?
I also can’t but feel how when we say ‘yes’ once again to all that we DO know, and we actually choose to cultivate and foster our relationship (of knowing) with God in His living presence throughout the whole of our lives… how all of our life is opened up, as if blood flows through arteries that have long lain dormant… Thank-you again for your words here Ingrid, they touched me deeply, as I’m sure they will many.
Ingrid, thank you. I now have a deeper feeling of what religion is, that it’s in everything I do, after all when I do reconnect / rebind as religion means then how can I not bring it to everything.
It has been amazing after many years of seeing the world as disjointed parts where it had to be an either or, God or science, metaphysical realm or the physical plane, mind or the body, emotion or the intellect, to realise thanks to Universal Medicine that life is not segmented at all. It is whole and spherical. True religion, true philosophy and true science are in fact not separate. How could they be when they are each aspects of the same exquisite divine rhythm and order in the Universe. So the dots have started to join and everything has started to fall into place.
Such an important conversation to start on what is true religion, and how we’ve been led astray. Funnily enough your story is not uncommon, with so many people aware that they know what they’ve followed has been empty of true meaning and connection with God, which means we know exactly what it feels like TO have true religion.
“It is in the way we live in every moment as presented by The Way of The Livingness that we can build this connection to ourselves, and from this inner connection we can connect to others, to God, to nature and to the Universe’ – religion so beautifully encapsulated Ingrid, no handbook required, just a heart that’s allowed to be in its natural quality of openness.
Ingrid your last paragraph about what religion is to you has a quality that resonates as what religion is coming to mean for me, and it’s beautiful. I love reading it because it opens up my awareness of this quality. So, for example, driving home this afternoon I can appreciate religion in the sky I saw – the subtle pinks and pale blues of the sky with layers of different clouds and their blue/grey hues. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was and I wondered if others driving their cars were seeing this and feeling the divinity in its magnificence.
I too, Karin, often wonder if others can see the magnificence nature is reflecting to me in every moment, as most people seem to be in such a rush these days to get somewhere thereby missing out on the beauty all around them. But maybe the simple choice that we make to acknowledge this beauty will offer them the opportunity to see and feel it too.
I agree Karin, we are immersed in God’s love and everyday we are offered an opportunity to see and appreciate the Divine body of God we live within. True religion for me has brought me back to the simplicity of this fact and an honest attempt to align with the inescapable glory of God, perpetually reflecting who we are.
We are all born into a crucible of some kind where the specific ingredients are there to reflect our past choices back to us so that we have a choice of transforming the way we live. I like you Ingrid had a wise father who treated everyone equally, set up a non-competitive school, loved nature, was very loved by his students and everyone who knew him and was agnostic. I adored him. My mother was musical, sensitive, gave me books on angels when I was little, and was slightly religious, but was so in love with Dad that she did not follow it up. It was very lovely to be brought up in that home and yet it had a ceiling on it, and that was the glass ceiling that I was to break through. I had to learn the difference between the ‘good’ and the ‘true’. What a ride that has been – totally and gracefully facilitated by Serge Benhayon and the practitioners at the Universal Medicine clinic.
Would a mortar and pestle be a more apt description of what religions have done for us? They grind down who we truly are till we become something less than when we began?
Thank-you, thank-you, Ingrid for this glorious blog “…it is in the voice that whispered to me that what was presented in that Bible Studies class wasn’t the truth and that in connection to myself I will naturally connect to God and come to know him again as i did as the innocent and beautiful Son of God that I was as a child, and that I always have been.” I remember so clearly that voice when I was young and that over time I shut down, because I felt like a misfit and wanted to fit in with what appeared to be the normal, in both my religious upbringing and in my relationships with people, even though it always felt like there was something missing, which I now realise was me missing being the real me. How many of us do that I wonder. From Serge Benhayon and the Universal Medicine presentations I have once again come to trust what I have always known deep within my heart to be true.
And how lovely is it to hear that ‘whispering voice’ so clearly again, not just once in a while but in every moment, and we have Serge Benhayon to thank for the reminder that it never went away, we simply forgot how to listen.
If we take everything at face value, dissect it, analyse it and compute it, then rationally we should comprehend everything that life is. Yet this is evidently not the case – our maths and our sums do not add up, just look at our state of being and rates of disease. So to me it’s clear that there is a universal order to life and Love, but it’s not one we can understand just from our head – our senses and feelings access everything all at one time and it’s these as you show Ingrid that are truly divine.
We can’t find God only in words, only in a book, only in scriptures etc. God is to be felt. Which means Religion is to be felt. Which means relationships are to be felt. Which means we are to feel ourselves. Truth and love are one and the same thing and comes from our body. It’s with our own precious vehicle that we’re able to distinguish truth and no truth. So only by reconnecting to our lovely body, we’re to be able to feel true religion. It’s only at this moment that our confusion will end and in turn clears.
The key to organised religion as we know it is to never let us realise we are his equal in essence.
Ingrid, so beautiful to hear you share about how much your father held such care and integrity, how little he imposed on others, and how you ‘looked up’ to him. And yet you were still allowing yourself to feel how some things he presented did not add up for you when it came to religion. As a child (and as an adult) it is understandable then to discount or doubt what we feel when someone we know and trust feels differently – and this is the part where we can learn to stay strong and not let other factors influence how we truly feel about someone or about something etc. It takes a strong person to stand true to what they feel no matter what is said around them, but in so doing, we honour and respect where we are at and what we are feeling which only deepens our relationship with ourselves. It is not about perfection, and nor is it about right or wrong, but rather, it is about an honesty with where we are at, and a development of the sense of feeling, our clairsentience which has the capacity to open up so much for us in life.
‘We are divine beings who are here to once again reclaim the true essence of love and remember that religion is in everything that we do and everything we express’.- what I am realising is that everything is so intricately interwoven as one, nothing can be spoken of, lived or held in separation to all else. We are all that is, we are enough and to take this out into the world and just be in God’s plan is perfect.
Having abandoned God with leaving the Catholic religion at age 18, I struggled with Serge Benhayon presenting The Way of The Livingness as a religion and was embarrassed to talk about it, not wanting to be associated with any religion, or have people mock me for being ‘religious’. So I resisted for years, even though I loved what Serge presented about God, and kind of accepted it all as a fact, I still avoided talking about God and never really embodied what was being presented, that we are all within God – it’s a fact. Slowly though, as I refine my diet and come more into tune with my body, I can accept what is being presented and allow myself to feel the Divine that is within me.
There are so many religions we can choose from, but I noticed that there always was a knowing in me that knew a god that wasn’t anything like all religions present. It is in discovering the religion that is The Way of The Livingness that I found a way of relating to God that feels like I have always done.
I’ve heard of Rationalism but didn’t fully understand what it was about. Thank you Ingrid for this deeply inspiring blog. I feel that deep down we all can feel God’s love and know that He does exists but it is our choices to deny what we can innately feel and suppress this deep knowing, possibly due to our past hurts and hurts related to religion. Yet what hurts us the most is our choice to walk away from God, our essence and who we are.
it’s very easy to settle for the beliefs and religion of those around us, it’s a way for us to feel accepted, be part of a community, be unchallenged and have something in life around which our behaviours are expected and made. What does not work is when religion is used for control of these communities, ie it is a way to control behaviour – which at it’s very root, is the antithesis of brotherhood, and therefore, a million miles away from the truth of God.
In Norway where I live, it is most common to live a non-religious life, and you hardly ever hear anyone mention God. Most people live their daily lives like atheists yet ‘belong’ to a church, mainly Evangelical Lutheran (Protestant), where they go for baptisms, marriages, funerals etc. because ‘that’s what we do’. It is amazing to observe how we keep these traditions going seemingly without ever questioning why?
A great question is posed – why have these great teachers from the past been misrepresented, misquoted or their teachings trivialised and recorded inaccurately?
Why is it that we resist the greatest love and truth on earth that is equally available to each of us.
Why do we hold others as greater when we are equally great, just playing a convenient less?
I love this; “I have come to know that my religion is the stars in the sky that shine down upon me in the dark of the night; it is in the delicate bud of a flower that gently opens to the warmth of the sun; it is in the voice that whispered to me that what was presented in that Bible Studies class wasn’t the truth.” This is what religion is for me too, it’s the little moments of immense grandness where I know beyond doubt that I am a small but important part of something magnificent.
This is beautiful Meg. I too can feel the grandness, magnificence and God’s love when I am connected to my essence. This naturally connects me to people, to nature and to everything around me.
It’s true! When you are connected to yourself, you’re naturally connected to everyone and everything around you, it’s like you click back into the gigantic web of the universe, rather than floating in-between.
The word God has been confused to mean so much by various religions and traditions in history, but we deny the very loving qualities which people naturally have and don’t associate them with God, when in fact it is God and the re-interpreted meaning that has turned us off claiming that connection with divinity.
Whatever our belief system we must respect that of others, but what we must not do is stand by and accept forms of religion that practice hate, for too long we have accepted forms of religion that have no affinity with God or the Universe, the essence of where we all come from.
Rationalism is attractive on the surface but has no real foundation. It uses the mind and logic but logic always has to start from assumptions (axioms) and one logically proven statement says that logic can never prove all statements that are actually true (Goedels paradox or incompleteness theorem). So logic, even using just pure logic, can only explain part of the world.
Yes, Ingrid. I too grew up with a lot of religious confusion, in the midst of ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland, where two parts of the same religion were determined to wipe each other out. Nothing made sense to me until I came across The Way of The Livingness, when too felt that I had come home.
If the origins of the word religion, is to ‘re-connect’, then surely we must at all points ask – what are we re-connecting to? And to discern the quality of that re-connection and what it is offering. Because there are many offerings in this world that promise many things – such as re-connection – but only by reading the energy and then being honest about what is there to be read/felt, can we truly discern what is being offered – and question, is this a practise that is from the soul plane or from a spirit who seeks identification? And from here we can find religious truth, which is the truth of life itself.
It is interesting how we take on ideals and beliefs from our parents and then later from our partners and loved ones but when we are presented with truth it really does offer us a moment to reflect and question what is actually true and has always been true. I have realised that becoming attached to ideals and beliefs I have caused great harm towards others, saying I was a Christian belonging to an institutionalised religion yet I certainly was not living in connection to myself and therefore to God. Having this understanding without being judgemental on myself and others has re-opened the door to developing a true relationship with myself and to God, and it has given me an opportunity to learn once again what it feels like to be a Christian and religious, in the true sense of the words.
Interesting how we are so quick to give our power away to others when we are small dismissing what we know to be true in favour of those we believe are wiser or who we think know more. This confirms to me how important it is when we are raising children to confirm them in who they are and to get them to express their thoughts and feelings, constantly so that they learn to trust what they are feeling.
The teachings of Universal Medicine have restored true order to my understanding, appreciation and acceptance of True Religion, an inherent quality within us all to be lived everyday. Everyday is full of religious ritual and celebration of the Divine, practiced in the simplest tasks and expressed in every relationship we have, no bells or whistles, just the perpetual journey of re-claiming our innate qualities of Love, Harmony and Joy.
How easy do we negate what we feel is true inside in favour of allowing someone else’s beliefs to be of more seeming value…the impact this has on our self-worth is huge.
As a child I saw people at church looking so pious or holy, on their knees praying to God, only to see them in normal daily life behaving what I can only describe as in a horrible way. It didn’t make sense the contradiction I was seeing. Religion for me is also being in rhythm with nature and all around including everyone, no matter what religion is to them. We may all have different ideas about religion but the fact is we are all on our way back home to oneness and truly re-aligning.
‘…we can feel and know God…’ Somewhere and some how it seems we have learned to doubt our right and our ability to connect directly with God – but now I know this to be true. We can ‘know and feel God’ – every one of us – and this is true religion.
How can the history of religions and the things that have been done in the name of God, not turn people away? The door may have been shut, left ajar or just forgotten about… but the door is always there, within, for us to re-enter when we feel the pull to return!
“I was re-connecting to something that I had always known but that I had buried for a very long time, probably for many lifetimes.” I share this feeling whenever I listen to teachings and presentations by Serge Benhayon and the religion The Way of The Livingness.
Whilst I was also exploring my way through life and the various religions I too found none of them to ring true, but could never quite claim myself to be an atheist. Something inside of me always knew God.
Religion for me is simplicity in living the love we are.
Reading this blog and others on this site about religion, it is almost incomprehensible that the subject being discussed is the same as that which has caused do much devastation to humanity. This in itself proves how totally and utterly the truth of religion has been bastardised. On these pages I can read stories, messages and experiences of those that have found their true selves through religion and are learning to live with love, purpose, equality, transparency and brotherhood. And then I can flick to the news pages and read stories of rape, murder, war, brutality, separation and destruction – all happening under the banner of the same word, ‘religion’. Something has gone very awry.
It is in fact so freeing to call myself a religious man as up to a few years ago I was in denial about that fact because of all the bastardised religious institutions that are claiming the word religion of which I did not felt any of them to be real.
“I have come to know that my religion is the stars in the sky that shine down upon me in the dark of the night; it is in the delicate bud of a flower that gently opens to the warmth of the sun; it is in the voice that whispered to me that what was presented in that Bible Studies class wasn’t the truth and that in connection to myself I will naturally connect to God and come to know him again as I did as the innocent and beautiful Son of God that I was as a child, and that I always have been.” I love this refreshing truth expressed here. This feels like an oasis in the desert of lies that exist about God and Religion. There is much to ponder here.
Thank you.
“… If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion (Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations, p. 46)… ” What a cracker of a statement that delivers you to the awareness of the fact that we either live with connection or in disconnection, everything does matter.
And then to remember that almost everything in our societies is in this disconnection from the reality that we are religious beings in the first place. A complete denial of our true way of being and of our heritage.
True – it really is as simple as the Will to connect or to resist.
“religion is in everything that we do and everything we express” – so true Ingrid, and when you stop to really think about this, there is not anything we’re not in religion with, purely because of being in connection with whatever it is that we’re doing – speaking, cooking, typing, cleaning, working, exercising etc. Thus in knowing that everything is religion, is then a question of quality and how much of that quality is towards living a universality or an interconnected way of life with heaven/divinity, and earth/temporal as one life.
Today I walked outside and suddenly felt how loving one of our children is. When I felt this I became aware that the difference between all the ideals and beliefs and love is the choice to feel. I can’t distinguish love from not love when I choose to not be in my heart. This re-connection process is beautiful and presents one by one all the non-loving choices we’ve made as well as all the loving ones. We’re truly loving and amazing, and it’s only through The Way of The Livingness that we’ll find ourselves and each other. Re-ligion in its purest form (and only form).
I agree. I find it amazing how often and in how many contexts I choose not to feel but to think.
‘They did not want their teachings to be used for power and control’ this sentence made me sit up and feel how far from the truth mainstream religion has become with all the evil that dwells behind the power and control of organised religion.
Yes, yes and yes again Fiona. The most evil is the system that pretends to be there to support you but in fact is only interested in controlling and owning you. We are all the equal sons of God, so how on earth can anyone of us be better or more important than another?
“Leaving the door open’ seems like it equals leaving our hearts open, essential for allowing ourselves to know truth.
Ingrid, so beautiful to read about your father, how he didn’t impose his beliefs onto you and allowed you to attend bible studies. You were allowed to make your own choices which was very loving and I can feel the love and respect you have towards your father.
Thank you Chan. It was very easy to love and respect him as he was a very beautiful human being who cared so deeply for this planet and its people. In all the years I never heard one person saying anything bad about him, in fact always the opposite. That’s why is was so easy for me to give up a lot of what I innately knew and instead chose to take on, not only what he believed, but also how he lived.
How incredibly clever and cunning of ‘the other side’ i.e. the astral plane to create something that purports to be about God, namely traditional religion and yet in truth it contains not an ounce of God. Not only that but it’s falseness, it’s violent acts, it’s absolutely abhorrent abuse of children etc etc actively turn millions of people away from religion. A cunning cowardly act of the the astral plane.
Alexis the “versions” of god certainly put me off for wanting to talk about or connect with God, even though God is in and through everything I am and all around me. I have come to understand that by creating false versions of what something is we can create the greatest separation and divide as we think we know what something is when in fact we are simply not likely an untrue version of the truth.
MA what you have described is absolutely my lived experience and although I have many examples, the one that stands out for me is ‘relationships’. I have held a false idea of what relationships are and that ‘idea’ has consistently kept me from the truth of what they are.
It is fascinating that something that is supposed to be about unity, love, brotherhood and oneness has sooo many different versions all being completely different! I have heard of atheist but never heard of agnostic or Swedish Lutheran. In looking it up I read ‘Once upon a time in Sweden, those who rejected the new Lutheran faith were punished with deportation or death’. And it is exactly because of things like this that in the past I rejected or had an aversion to the word religion .. for if you are religious how can you kill another just because they do not believe or do the same as you? However, I like you felt exactly the same when I first met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine ‘as a result of connecting with Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine 12 years ago. When I attended my first ever workshop with Serge, I felt with every part of me that I had finally found what I had been looking for all of my life and that I was finally returning home, even though at that stage I did not know where home was and what was waiting for me there.’ And I felt the same that when Serge presented the word religion I squirmed and did not like it but now I see this for the blessing it truly is as we are given an opportunity to re-claim the word religion and what it truly means and as a few people start to do this energetically it sends out a gentle and loving ripple allowing others to re-exam and re-claim the truth of this for themselves.
There is a rumbling common theme of the first time people heard Serge present Religion, the wave of sudden contraction of the whole room that could be felt. What if it is greater than coming home? The realization of lifetimes of having turned our backs on something that was always within us, coming home doesn’t fully come close to describe the feeling of reconnecting to ourselves after all those years.
I absolutely love this Unimedpedia about God – http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-god.html – there is a great one on Religion too. Another beautiful reconnection.
It is absolutely true that we have had many people walk this earth in a way that is in total alignment and harmony to the Universe and therefore to me that means to God. Yet us being individuals love to identify with ideals so we have all bags’ed one messenger and made them the ‘one’ and therefore condemning of any others. What I love about The Way of The Livingness is that everyone is the one, as we are all from the same universal particles, we vibrate to the same frequency as God. We fight it, we deny it, we bury it, we fight about it but when it all comes down to the wire we all know love and we all know God. Simple.
I love this description of religion Ingrid. . .”that it is in connection with our innermost, our inner heart, that we can feel and know God, wherever we are and whatever we are doing;” . . . It is a far cry from the cold morning kneeling on wooden planks in old churches of my childhood.
It’s so gorgeous to read and feel what religion truly is. All the cells in my body feel an ease, a harmony that is natural and universal. Writing this I feel I do not have to choose to align to anything that causes a disturbance.
So I too had the confusion growing up about God and religion and took the path of huge reaction and condemed religion and God little knowing that I, we all do, know what both are in truth. Since feeling for myself the truth of what Serge Benhayon presents I now can observe how much those who bastardise God and religion, is from who they are as people,so there is no confusion.
It’s interesting how we look to categorise oursleves into a ‘religion’ be it catholic, agnostic, buddhist etc.. and yet, when you actually discover the true meaning of the word religon it is innate within is all as our religion is how we each relate to every single aspect of life.
Ingrid, it’s lovely to feel your innate knowing of God and how it was rekindled and inspired by Serge Benhayon. I too had a deep connection with God and I looked at many different religions but did not find God in the church, the synagogue or the mosque. I realized that we do not need such structures or institutions to connect with God but I threw out all religion until Serge started speaking about it and it took me a while to be able to embrace the fact that the Way of The Livingness is a religion – a true religion. And how amazing it is to be reinstating true religion on earth.
I agree Sandra that we do not need a building in which to find God, or to be with someone who has convinced you that they are the only way to God – you have to go through them to do so! I can remember standing in a huge cathedral in England and all I could see was the amazing feat that was undertaken to erect this building in a time where there were no cranes, no metal scaffolding, in fact none of the amazing building tools of today. I could feel the huge disregard the builders would have had to put themselves into, the deaths and injuries that would have been inevitable in those times, and all for the purpose of building a bigger and better church than the one up the road; the higher the steeple, the closer to Heaven! And of course then there was the money that the church goers were expected to pay towards it even though most couldn’t afford to do so. I could feel all these things and more, but what I couldn’t feel was the love, the truth and the connection to God that I have come to know is the absolutely necessary foundation of a true religion.
Wow I love the title of this blog “From Religious Confusion to Religious Truth” if I go back through my life and with all those I know I would say nearly everyone has had “Religious Confusion” yet that would be normal and its not until we know and feel within us what Religious Truth is that all the Religious confusion goes away.
During my younger years I casually bounced around religions, from Jewish to Church of England to Buddhism, claiming them as my own, but not practising any rituals or beliefs. Then I settled on The Way of the Livingness, the least known of all my forays however, certainly the most powerful, true and loving one ever to cross my horizon.
Thank you Ingrid – your words echo what many have said and the truth they have come to know from deep within. Your blog also exposes the force that comes through to divert us from our truth but never to despair as you have proven the ‘return’ always awaits.
A stunning blog Ingrid, thank you. I love this quote by Serge Benhayon ““If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.”
Yes, Ingrid, it is super important and empowering to confirm within ourselves, that true religion is a way of living and not in following a set of man made principles.
It sounds like your father’s choice to be a rationalist was in reaction to what was expected of him from his father. It’s interesting how he went on to live a life that resembled someone of religious faith but without the God that he had otherwise rejected. He had an innate sense of what was true and was obviously a loving man. He was probably more religious than he thought!
The wisdom and knowing of a child that adults so often dismiss as ridiculous or unacceptable plays a big part in the beginning of children holding back expression of what is true, to not ‘rock the boat’ and upset others. Thus, a self-made-prison-of-protection is felt to be safer than expressing truth.
“As a young child I would have unexplained experiences that I would share with my mother; for example, that I knew that there was no real death but that we would ‘wake up’ again just like when we went to sleep but she would instantly tell me that my father didn’t believe in that, and so I learned to hold back from sharing these inner knowings with him.”
“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.” – I love this quote, and it’s so interesting how ‘religion’ today is seen as the opposite; someone’s private relationship to God, the only one who knows their ‘sins’ and the struggle to get into paradise/heaven at the end of life are all about us rather than everyone and the universe.
I Love this sharing of your relationship with religion Ingrid and how you have allowed this to unfold to return to a way which is known in Truth.
Putting others on pedestals is an interesting thing to look at. I have found that doing so goes against the innate understanding within me that we are all equal and hence I start to live in the denial of what I know within. Having observed this outplay in myself, I have seen that putting another onto a pedestal changes how I relate to them. I try to be more smart and more clever around them, rather than just be myself. It is only when I realise and honour myself as an equal to others that I can truly be me.
Thank you Ingrid, sharing your experience here as a child is very confirming for many adults who as children knew connection to God in essence, naturally and innately so, yet experienced all that does not support that relationship as they grow up.
Meeting Serge for me was like running into a wall of truth. If we could only be presented with that truth from birth so we wouldn’t have to shut down what we feel to be true and have to beat around the bush for so long before coming back. If we then choose (because we have free will), to stray that is down to us once again but truth in the first place should be our birthright.
“I have come to know that my religion is the stars in the sky that shine down upon me in the dark of the night”. If every child grew up with this as confirmation of God and the Sons of God we are, the world could be a different place. Thank you Ingrid for your sharing.
I too spent a good many years trying to make sense of what I always knew within me and what I saw reflected by other people who were supposed to be “religious”. Even in my darkest hours I knew there was a God. Where I went wrong was not putting myself into the equation and really understand and accept that I am, and we all are Sons of God. This is what I am finally allowing myself to embody through the teachings of Serge Benhayon because it is one thing to hear about it and it is a whole other thing to live it on a daily basis. I deeply appreciate the fact that we are all equally the Son of God, irrespective of our race, colour, gender, beliefs, ideals or anything else we might use to divide and separate us.
It’s interesting to read how all the qualities your father expressed feel to me very religious. The observation, logic, respect and appreciation of nature and people are all components of religion, just not ones that are necessarily promoted in our modern day versions. True religion does not ask us to follow blindly or accept the validity of information just because one person said it. It is a constant relationship that requires observation, honesty and the willingness to see truth, which then builds reliable personal experience and a knowing of the Divine order. To me true religion combines the arts of science, logical explanation; philosophy, pondering purpose and religion, appreciating and expressing God’s infinite love and vast wisdom. If we are asked to drop anyone of these expressions, how can we align to and express in full the vast magic of the Universe?
Thank you for your sharing Ingrid. I can relate to a lot of what you share about Religion and teachings at Sunday School and later Church proper. There was always doubt in my mind about the way we were taught and many double standards and elitist in the congregation. As I became a parent I often questioned Ministers of the Church about the way they interpreted the teachings of Jesus. It all just felt old and musty, so when I finally connected with Serge Benhayon and The Way of The Livingness it was a like a breath of fresh air and love. Coming home, as you also say.
‘It is in the way we live in every moment as presented by The Way of The Livingness that we can build this connection to ourselves, and from this inner connection we can connect to others, to God, to nature and to the Universe.’ The truth of it is very simple as is the application of it, if we but allow.
Wow Ingrid, this is so beautiful. As I read your blog I could clearly see that we do impose on others when we shut down to the truth whether we want to or not. When we open up again we can have it all and this leaves others truly free to choose.
I love the natural and easy way you describe what religion and God is to you Ingrid. Such a contrast to the dogma and doctrines so many of us have been exposed to. The way you describe true religion is so tangible and real, I’d love to read many books full of these kinds of words. Failing that as you show, all I need do is look at the sunset or in my partners eyes, for they say all this and more, in their own way.
It is sad that the ideals and beliefs,/ dogmas surrounding religion and even atheisim serve to crush the natural expression of the child such that they so often give up and align iwth something they know deep down is not true. How does it impact then as adults thus living their life knowing it is a lie.
There is a beautiful simplicity to what Ingrid has shared, that “religion is in everything”. Once we begin to connect again to ourselves and the beauty and truth we know innately as who we are, religion is everything.
Our connection with nature, the night sky and my connection with other people is where I find God. Not in a building, for me it cannot be contained.
Same for me too Lucy. Although the grandeur of a religious building may be impressive for some, I can honestly say I have never felt a true connection with God simply by walking into one. They have always seemed very empty places to me. When we live with a connection to God all the time, it doesn’t matter where we are or who we are with, we are confirmed in knowing that God is in and around us always.
So true Lucy; there is no building necessary when it comes to connecting with God, he is only a breath away no matter where we are and whatever we are doing; whether it be in nature, in the city, at sea or at work. Wherever we are, he is, always.
Ingrid this is a very beautiful sharing to read. I can relate in many ways. Thank you for your gorgeous expression.
Deep thanks Ingrid. All you have shared here speak multidimensional volumes to me. I am so touched by the blessing and clarity you have offered all to read about the true messengers, how precious words as religion, God and love have been bardsardisded for self gain and control of the masses. I love your innate knowing of how you felt connected to god, the All as a child and how now you are with that knowing and clarity once again. Like you I am in unending thanks to Serge (another true messenger) for reflecting who we all are. Your sharing is more than beautiful to read and I am sure we all have our own story of how we left behind that which we once knew as truth when we were young behind just to fit into what we thought was right. And one day each and everyone of us will once again re-turn to that just as you have. For that is the Divine Plan.
In the past whatever I did not feel truth in, I would want to have nothing to do with it. Now what I do not feel truth in, I want to open and know even more, to go deeper with why this is believed by some or most and to understand deeper of where we have compromised truth in. Religion feels to me as a connection to everything and everyone from the stars to every day life, something that connects every single cell, particle, heartbeat and pulse of the bloodstream, and in that, opening to it all is what Religion is about.
Knowing what the true meaning of ‘religion’ ( to re-connect) is, brings a halt to the contortion and loaded mis-representation that this word had previously and wrongly portrayed.
Very true johanne – just knowing the truth of the word itself exposes the way in which many have used religion to control others.
Many people have reaction/resistance to the word ‘religion’ because of what we have seen/read/experienced in/with what that word represents in our society and how that is contra to what we have felt and known within ourselves as a little child. Ageless Wisdom confirms what we have known all along, and The Way of The Livingness is the only ‘religion’ I know to represent what that word means in the truest sense.
Great contribution and I especially appreciate the love and warmth you express about your father. And I love the conclusion, the quote by Serge Benhayon:“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.”
If I take this to where it invites me to go and religion being about relationship, then one’s religion can be food, TV, roulette, rum or the footie, depending on personal preferences and passions – and that makes a lot of sense to me. And it is also a great question to ask of oneself: “What is my religion?”
A deep blessing it is to restore the true meaning of Religion on earth and for us to each live our innate connection to God and to or Soul.
Hear hear Deborah.
I absolutely agree Deborah. To bring back the true meaning of religion and live it every day.
“But even though there was a part of me that wanted to run, there was an even stronger part that was saying stop, here is the opportunity you have been waiting for, to finally understand what religion actually is…” wonderful and completely Ingrid, yes, there is no doubt with truth.
Hard core religious ideals and hard core scientific “rational” beliefs are just 2 sides of the same coin.
And that coin consisting of organised religion with ideals, belief and rules on one side and rationalist views and ideals on the other, will never be made of the knowing, the gold we truly are and are truly from.
You can’t have a sphere with two sides! One unified brotherhood is the only way forth.
Our family can definitely be a big influencer of our perceptions. I remember hearing so many horror stories about priests and the church from my parents, however because of the culture they were brought up in, they never even considered not being Christian. As a result of these mixed messages, I never really had an opinion on god. I always used to say that there’s something there, but to be honest, the reason I said that was because I didn’t want to be punished by god, just incase there was one. Thank god for Serge Benhayon, and Universal Medicine as through his support I have began a beautiful path of unfoldment and connection to God.
Religion certainly has some history, doesn’t it? For so many people in the world it means so many different things. And for so many people like me and you, Ingrid, it’s taken some time to get over the past definition(s) we’ve known about religion. It’s been awesome to learn – or re-learn – what we’ve known all along, that religion is that reconnection, nothing to do with anything outside of ourselves.
‘The day Serge Benhayon first mentioned the word religion I began to squirm once again and all the old religious ideals and beliefs came pouring back in, and there was a voice yelling, “No, this can’t be a religion!” But even though there was a part of me that wanted to run, there was an even stronger part that was saying stop, here is the opportunity you have been waiting for, to finally understand what religion actually is, to get to know the God that you knew as a child and to make sense of a world that most of the time hasn’t made sense.’ I can so relate to what you have written here. The feeling of wanting to run and at the same time, the feeling of finally hearing something that felt so true and something that I had been looking for, for a very long time.
A great blog Ingrid. ‘ I could feel that this is what I had felt at the first Universal Medicine workshop I attended; that I was re-connecting to something that I had always known but that I had buried for a very long time, probably for many lifetimes.’ – This I can very much relate to myself, I had always known truth but at some stage I had sadly chosen to walk away from it.
One theme that runs throughout your sharing is that there was a part of you that always knew God, Love and Truth and that when you met Serge Benhayon that was reconnected to and reignited. I have had that same experience numerous times with Serge Benhayon in that what he shares is MY truth, the truth I have always known and deeply felt within but had never met anyone else express before. The great feeling of coming home with Serge is like a permission to be who I am and have always been and to discover that everyone else is the same.
And that part of Ingrid who knew God could easily see God in her father even when he didn’t know it himself. This is the beauty of being connected to our innate knowing – we can in fact then see that everyone is connected and equal to it even if they perhaps don’t honour, live, believe or consciously know it themselves.
Thank you for your beautiful comment Johanna and expressing what I knew but was unable to put into words; words that had me smiling and tear-full with joy, both at the same time.
very true!
So beautiful to read Ingrid, it was like being wrapped in a warm loving hug! I can very much relate to understanding the truth about God and religion as a child, which to me really strongly shows that religion is innate and indeed based on our own connection. Your words about the wise messengers we have had over the ages, and that they were here to bring humanity “together in love, equality and brotherhood” is very true – but boy, how far short has religion fallen in achieving this?
Religion and being religious were things I had avoided for many years. It just didn’t make sense to me and there was a clash between what I heard and saw and what I felt. It’s not that I could grab exactly what I felt but I knew what I was seeing didn’t sit right with me. So I just stayed away and thought the answer was to just get on with life. It’s funny now looking back and seeing that I was like a boat in the ocean in a storm, just getting bumped around by the waves and not really making a firm choice on where to go. I remember the first few presentations by Serge Benhayon just made sense and yet I was scared to let go and listen or trust everything in fear of being fooled. The more he spoke things that had happened in the past just made sense quietly while I was sitting in my seat. I could relate what he was presenting to many directly to me and my life. Religion was one of them and once I had broken through the initial reaction of just hearing the word I began to see what had happened and how I had been fooled. The support offered continually to me from Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon is beyond words and life makes sense more than at any other time in my life.
Ingrid reading your blog again this morning, it strikes me that there are many similarities between your father and both my mum and dad. Both my mum and my dad live in what I would deem to be actively religious ways and yet neither are what is commonly understood to be religious. I am in agreement with you, traditional religion has brought much confusion to the world.
Ingrid, thank you, this is a beautiful expose of how we are affected by the beliefs of others and how we hold back our own expression of what we truly feel because of not wanting to cause offence or disruption. I was brought up as a Catholic but when I was eighteen abandoned God for a long haul of not knowing, not wanting to know, trying all sorts of scientific approaches, new age approaches and, like you, none of it made sense until I met and listened to Serge Benhayon.
Isn’t it fascinating that your father, like so many, see’s God and the ‘logical explanation for everything in the Universe’ as mutually exclusive and yet I see them as one and the same thing.
There is a logical explanation for everything in the universe and that explanation is God, who IS the Universe. Void of this knowing we are left to stumble blind amongst the mess of ideals, beliefs and images we have been sold about who we are, where we come from and what exactly it is we are here to do. Religions as we have come to know them are great bastardisations of the teachings that are there to help us re-connect to who we truly are. Our bodies are exquisite instruments with incredible sensitivity that are designed to pick up communication from the our natural environment, be it the twinkle of a star, the movements of a cloud, the flap of a bird wing, a feather that falls before us, the presence and or call of an animal, insect or reptile that appears at precisely the right moment for us to receive a message from the Universe we live within which is the Body of God we belong to and are forever held by.
I loved hearing about your life Ingrid because it shows us that no matter how far we may seemingly stray from the true majesty of life and no matter how much we may layer what is true with the many reinterpretations that lead us astray, there is a part of us deep down that cannot ever let go of the divinity we innately know ourselves to be.
I have seen this comment for many, that coming to the presentations of Universal Medicine, is like coming home – even from the earliest of days when you are not sure what home is or 100% sure of all that is being presented. I can attest to this as well. I knew it in my bones that what was being presented was the truth – I then also resisted it and struggle with parts but deep down I knew it.
Same as for religion – I knew what had been presented to me growing up was not true and dabbled for years in various forms of spirituality – and until reconnecting to the Ageless Wisdom, I know that the it is the/my connection to the inner-most and how I choose to live that on a daily basis.
The wanting to say “No this can’t be a religion” is very familiar Ingrid and has a big smile coming up from within. I remember a very similar experience. As I had already been participating in presentations and course for a while Serge Benhayon I already had a very solid foundation that what was presented was very worth listening openly to. From there I can make my own choices based on what feels true for me. As it turns out as I now understand the true meaning of what it means and developing within what it feels like to live, religion is a word that describes the beauty of humanity being harmoniously as one.
And thank you Ingrid for sharing about Rationalism, as I had never really heard of that before! I can so understand why people would choose such a belief – as a sensitive individual, to see what is presented by some of the world’s leading religions, it is possible to feel the disillusion and hence by default to walk away from all religion may seem like the only way to handle this bastardisation of the word ‘religion’. However, in this process we also walk away from True religion, and from ourselves, which is a very sad state of affairs for us as a humanity to be in. What a blessing for those of us who have found The Way of The Livingness and who have embraced it for what it truly is.
“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.” This quote by Serge asks us to contemplate the true meaning of religion and our relationship with everything, every aspect, every thought, word and action;
Ingrid, this is a beautiful recollection and sharing, written with such love and respect for all, whilst at the same time honouring deeply how you felt in knowing that the religions and perspectives that you were introduced to as a child and growing up were not ones that you felt to align to. To feel the actual home-coming when you encountered Serge Benhayon and The Way of The Livingness was a confirmation in itself of the true religion that was waiting you. It is an honour and a joy to have found this religion too, and though a part of me still feels some unease in how some people choose to perceive this religion of The Way of The Livingness, I know that for me it is complete in itself, in other words the Truth of what is presented is something I will never walk away from because I can feel how deeply it resonates with what has always been within me since before the day I was born.
It’s great to read about so many people’s similar experience with religion and growing up. It further confirms just how much we already know when we are young and how important it is to trust our intuition.
It is indeed a shame that institutionalised religions are creating more confusion and closing people off towards religion than actually supporting them in their connection to God.
WoW Ingrid thank you for sharing your relationship with religion. As you did, I also grew up in a family that did not really do religion – but more and more I am coming to understand that everything naturally is religion. I remember Serge presenting that if someone is a regular drinker then their religion is alcohol for example – and that religion is all about a consistent relationship we are having. At that moment the penny dropped – and like you -I am seeing more and more how religion is in everything all around me – especially in nature. And how it has completely changed my old view on what I thought it was.
I love your sharing Ingrid, I can relate to the feeling of knowing that Jesus and the other wise teachers where religions are based on were true, it was just the story that was made up around it that did make me withdraw from them. It is great to acknowledge that we deep inside know what is true and what is not true, whatever we are told or choose to believe in our lives.
I didn’t grow up in any organised religion. What is interesting looking back is how much frustration, restriction and anger that would come up in me when I would see others in different religions controlling themselves and their families to live a certain way. What I could resonate with The Way of the Livingness was that it is about our livingness, no rules, no control and no beliefs and ideals. I’ve had an inner knowing that we are all sons of God, when we live from that we all naturally know we are equal and there can never truly be any lesser or greater than or separation. I’m re-learning to live this again.
Rationalism is the ultimate attempt to try to make sense of the world and control it through the mind. It confirms that the world is in our hands and can be moulded by will to fit reason. The funny thing is that as soon cements these beliefs, our own personal life ceases to be in our own hands. Life does not follow our mind and our mind does not really get life.
I love what you have written here Eduardo, that:”Rationalism is the ultimate attempt to try to make sense of the world and control it through the mind”. I have a growing sense that my grandfather simply replaced one religion with another; that Rationalism became his ‘religion’, for instead of handing over his power and his life to the Catholic church, he handed it over to this new way of thinking.
Thank you Ingrid, beautiful blog. True religion is coming back, and that’s what’s counts.
I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to read and feel what you have to share here Ingrid. Your father was in fact very connected and aware that the God that had been taught by most Religions, is not the true God that could be understood through the common sense of life and nature. Yet like most of humanity he had been deeply hurt by the false use of the very word he refused – religion. In many ways I would say your father was more connected with the world and more down to earth and real than most of the people that do claim to be religious and hold an arrogance about knowing of God and connecting with Him when they actually don’t. This shows we should never ever discount or judge what someone has to share and what their relationship with God and themselves is – we all come to the realisation one day that it is within us all along.
“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.” and in this understanding we are deeply confirmed in everything we have always known God and religion to be.
My father was also great at logical explanations about everything in the Universe whilst naturally living every quality that my heart craved to witness in all people. He never prescribed to any doctrines or claimed to be religious, yet many people who did claim to be religious said he was the most religious person they had ever seen.
He inspired many people and I too wished to live like him. But throughout most of my life I was unable to deal with the hurts received from a society that did not support this. I appreciate the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom that facilitate my understanding, awareness and ability to stay true to my inner knowing. This has been a huge support in my tender first steps of returning to living the religion of my heart, beautifully captured by The Way of The Livingness, in a world that mostly tries to crush that expression.
Wow stunning and powerful Ingrid, I am very moved by what you’ve shared and can relate to a great deal. Having religion as something so tangibly real and relatable is deeply touching for me… you are speaking very much for my own experiences too, although I didn’t seek so avidly as you, but tended to dismiss most of what I came across without delving into it at all. Coming across Serge Benhayon and the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom woke me up to… to say the least, and I now know myself to be a deeply religious person.
I didn’t know what was what with the things that were said to me when I was growing up. I could see that while both my parents spoke to me about how things were from a Catholic background they didn’t know or believe it either. This left me confused as there was from what I could see no one really believing or solid in what they were saying but it was like we were all settling for close enough and not the truth itself. I walked in and out of many things with the same feeling. It left me in life living not really knowing what the feelings were I was feeling. Once I came across Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon it ironed out all the corners I had walked around in growing up. Everything made sense and continues to make sense like nothing else before. I was lost in a world that didn’t support all I felt and couldn’t explain what was going on and instead kept just getting me to join in. All that has changed and I am still very very active in the world but I’m first aware of what I feel.
It is liberating to let go of old misconceptions and hurts we carry about religion and once again embrace our innate divine right to connect to the all.
I love you sharing Ingrid, thank-you. I never had much to do with religion whilst growing up, although there was always a deep yearning inside me that there must be more than this existence I was living in. My form of escape was to read science fiction books so I guess I was reaching out to the stars too, and I found myself doing this recently when I went outdoors and looked up at the night sky – the stars looked clearer and brighter than ever and I felt a part of the whole, and now when I look out at the sky during the day I remind myself that the stars are still there, twinkling back a reflection that I am a Son of God too and my religion is The Way of The Livingness, and although at times I struggle to claim my power and my glory, thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I know the truth.
What a testament to our inner knowing that cannot me contaminated. Truth can never be erased! I can feel that your father knew exactly who he was Ingrid a Son of God like each and every one of us!
When the point of the established institutionalised religions which we have today is actually to hide the truth and then to hold those seeking it in practice an ideology which takes them in the opposite direction to that they know within to be true The Way of The Livingness as presented by Serge Benhayon offer something for us all to feel into the truths which correspond to the feelings within us which we never have to believe because they can simply be known.
Religion is glorious in the Simplicity that it actually is. Thank you Ingrid for expressing this.
Beautiful Ingrid, words I will take away with me which felt so true ‘I have come to know that my religion is the stars in the sky that shine down upon me in the dark of the night; it is in the delicate bud of a flower that gently opens to the warmth of the sun’ as I read these I could feel such a confirmation in my body an opening, a lightness. Thank you
Beautiful, Ingrid. Thank you for sharing your homecoming story with us.
In truth religion is simple and natural, but most, if not all, religious organisations have made it something ‘out there’ or ‘up there’ and removed from who we innately are.
Ingrid there are so many parallels with your experience of religion and mine, one that really stands out is how I would avoid the word Religion but would never be able to deny there was a God or that religion was not, in some way true. The quote you share by Serge ““If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.”” helps me appreciate my inner knowing on that.
Absolutely beautiful blog. Although my childhood experience of religion was different, the outcome was the same – I rejected my inner-knowing of God and religion, and chose to seek outside of myself for the answers to the questions I was asking. The way you describe reconnecting to that inner-knowing has been my experience too. “When I attended my first ever workshop with Serge, I felt with every part of me that I had finally found what I had been looking for all of my life and that I was finally returning home, even though at that stage I did not know where home was and what was waiting for me there.”
A beautiful testament Ingrid to the true religion of The Way of The Livingness, and divinely wrapped up by the following quote from Serge Benhayon:
“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.”
(Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations, p. 46)
“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.” What a beautiful sharing so supportive and real bringing a story of growing up into the world of so called religion or not into the truth of the livingness of true Religion and connection to the all. Thank you for an amazing sharing of the depth of knowing of True Religion we carry inside us all waiting to be lived again.
Every single one of us has a journey with religion and if we stop and really become honest then we would start to appreciate that what has been presented as religion doesn’t feel true or really resonate with us. When I started to attended Universal Medicine and let go of my protection I started to feel the truth of what real religion is. This inner connection with myself is a direct relationship with God. There is an absolute equalness and that is Love is everywhere it’s just a choice to connect to it.
Ingrid when I read about how you put your beliefs aside and converted to what your father believed, it caused me to reflect on how, for a lot of my life, I have held the belief that men know better than women. It seems odd now but it is something that I never questioned or even thought about, I simply thought that it was true. As awful as it sounds to me now, it was based on another belief and that was that men were smarter than women. We layer beliefs on top of beliefs to form a very unstable and completely false platform. What I have found is that as I dissolve one belief then it seems to have the effect of loosening the footings of them all. in fact I can now see that all beliefs are false and offer nothing other than rotten footings.
“I came to the conclusion that they had been bastardised and used simply for power and control of the masses, and in doing so the truth presented by these wonderfully wise men was distorted for the purpose of keeping the people in separation” So profound Ingrid. I too tried to find a home in one of the religions of the world – but none felt true to me and I saw the hypocrisy in the ministers and priests. True religion, as presented by Serge Benhayon has been like a home-coming for me. My body said ‘yes’ immediately.
Ingrid, such a delicate and beautiful sharing of the truth, thank you.
I can very much relate to this Ingrid, coming from a very loose religious family (weddings, funerals and thats it) and attending church once a week in the school chapel the way religion is taught and lived en mass these days never made full sense to me. However The Way of The Livingness makes sense to every single cell in my body, it feels practical and applicable to daily life and yet it’s outward appearance does have similarities to others – sermons, congregation, prayer. It’s the energy, the feel and the intention behind it that makes this religion stand out. What I love about The Way of The Livingness is that it is not in a bubble like other religions feel, it is fully embracing and integrative in all of life.
The Way of The Livingness has restored what religion is in truth to me too. In every aspect it brings the equality of us all as Sons of God, no more or less than any other, and how we re-connect with God, our soul and divinity from our innermost not from the blessing of any other, no special building nor ceremony. We could say that ceremony and ritual can be throughout our life in the way that we live in connection with God and the universe in anything that we do.
When I read this I feel the infinite well wisdom of living religion from the body. We can feel the truth and we know innately what is bastardised and what is the truth. This article with grace, gentleness, steadiness and power reclaims what is true about what religion expressed on the earth feels like.
This is beautiful Ingrid. Thank you for sharing your story.
It is in the details of how we live that we build the connection with ourselves and thus with God and everything and everyone around us. Thank you for sharing your journey with this and your return to knowing the truth you felt as a child.
How many others have felt the same as you and turned their back on that what religion had become, no longer the simple true thing that it has always been? There are now thousands that have felt the coming home to the real meaning of what religion truly is.
I also found Serge Benhayon’s presentation on the word religion a fascinating one…’When he shared that the word has its origins in the Latin words, ‘re-ligare’ and ‘re-ligio’, meaning to re-bind, to re-connect,’ I also felt that this is what I had been offered from my first workshop – a reconnection back to myself and therefore a simple reconnection back to God. No fanfare, no epiphany nothing extraordinary, no ha ha moment… just a simple, quiet, understated connection that brought a settling to my body and a letting go of anxiousness. In the simplicity it wasn’t a big deal but it did feel natural.
I love your title Ingrid, there is so much confusion around religion and what is true or not. When we listen to our inner heart we do know what is true, as you felt as a child, but we don’t stay with this knowing, and this is the confusion we feel. This is why I love The way of The Livingness it confirms within us what we already know and its teachings allow the wisdom that is innate within us all to flourish and grow.
‘I have come to know that my religion is the stars in the sky that shine down upon me in the dark of the night’ – This is gorgeous Ingrid, thank you for sharing. Many people are put-off by the world ‘religion’ through personal experience and bastardisations similar to what you’ve shared, but our relationship to the universe and religion doesn’t need to look like how it’s presented through Christianity or other organised religions… It’s something very personal, and even if we don’t believe in God as such, similar to your dad many of us feel strongly connected to nature, people, the starts etc. in a divine and religious way.
Sometimes a rational explanation takes the magic to of life.
Beautifully expressed Ingrid Ward, thank you. One of the religious teachings I grew up with was that we cannot connect with God directly and that we have to go through another to do so. I recall my father telling me this but I found it very hard to accept feeling very strongly that God would not ‘require’ this ‘arrangement’. Today and through Serge Benhayon and The Way of The Livingness, I find that we can all make the choice to reconnect with God, directly, through our innermost hearts. What a great story it is for any evil force to create and pervert the truth of Love and hence deny this direct connection. Thankfully, when we learn to trust that inner knowing once again, it is possible to feel and know the truth of the matter once again. The direct line to God is fully open and available to all who would choose it.
“If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.” … this says it all.
‘They actually shared that it is in connection with our innermost, our inner heart, that we can feel and know God, wherever we are and whatever we are doing’ – I know this and have felt it very strongly. I can’t say it’s always with me, but I am committed to it being so until it becomes my everyday.
Thank you Ingrid. “If you understand what religion truly is, then everything is religion.” Serge Benhayon and his teachings are breaking down the barriers that so many of us have erected around religion due to how humanity has bastardised the teachings of all our wise and deeply loving prophets. Added to this is the way Serge unites the three important subjects of science, philosophy and religion, subjects that we tend to treat in isolation to our detriment. In this unification, all three aspects of knowing God allows us to explore once again the full expression of an Almighty Wise and Loving God and re-build our relationship with our Divine Father, through our hearts, body and soul, through nature, the stars and through one another.
Thanks for your great blog Ingrid. I can hardly believe how almost exactly your situation and circumstances parallel mine! I had an agnostic father and slightly religious mother who gave up all that because of Dad’s way of viewing life. Dad was a humanist, a socialist, a great lover of nature, rainforests and delicate birds and said we did not have to go to church to find God as religion has decimated millions of people, and that if there was a God we would find him in the forests and by the streams and down by the sea. So that is what we did on a Sunday – Nightcap range,Rocky Creek, Broken Head, Byron Bay, Lennox Head ! I also went to Sunday School and he was fine with that saying ‘good idea to get to know the tales of your tribe’. I went only a few times and was so tortured by the dry and lifeless sermonising I never went back. I had an inner relation of the existence of God when 16 but couldn’t find any religion that suited me – read about Buddhism and other religions. Discovered ‘energy’ and ‘healing’ and meandered until the momentous hour of meeting Serge Benhayon. Thank heavens is all I can say. Thank heavens for this coming of this man to earth to share the truth of the Ageless Wisdom with all.
it’s interesting the beliefs we take on from others at a very early age. i was speaking with a young child yesterday and I could tell what they were sharing was not their own beliefs of views about religion and God, but the family and culture they are growing up in. It felt very alien to hear a small child share in this way.
To me it is a sad thing that we have made religion separated from us while we all are naturally religious beings, in taking us away from that important part of us that connect us to the all and with that the true purpose of life. I would even call it evil in the sense of the harm it brings to humanity in fostering what the so called ‘good’ institutionalised religions say they bring to the world..
The feeling of ‘coming home’ that so many people experience, including myself, when encountering the Ageless Wisdom as presented by Serge Benhayon is like windows being opened in a dark and damp room letting in fresh air and sunlight to reveal treasures long forgotten.
What an awesome and very relatable blog Ingrid.
Yes, I also felt this same response of a powerful re-connection deep within, when I first heard the true meaning of the word Religion as presented by Serge Benhayon.
“When he (Serge Benhayon) shared that the word has its origins in the Latin words, ‘re-ligare’ and ‘re-ligio’, meaning to re-bind, to re-connect, I could feel that this is what I had felt at the first Universal Medicine workshop I attended; that I was re-connecting to something that I had always known but that I had buried for a very long time, probably for many lifetimes.”