I recall that as a little girl I used to feel a great sense of wonder, joy and magic in nature – in the sound of dry leaves under foot, the sound of the waves, the perfume of flowers, the beauty of a butterfly, the birds singing in the morning, the feeling of a gentle breeze on my skin and much more. In nature I could feel a connection to a grandness, to something more than just the physical world and more than just me. What I also recall as a little girl was that no one else, or at least the adults around me, seemed to experience the same level of wonder or sense of magic – or this was not expressed.
I did not know it then but this was me feeling and connecting to God through the magic of God that surrounds us all, and to this day I still feel a very strong connection to God through the reflections of nature. I’ve come to know that the grandness I felt and continue to feel so powerfully in nature, is simply and powerfully a reflection of the grandness of God within me. But as a child, I was presented with another picture of God.
As a young child, I don’t recall having any particular picture of God beyond that of an older bearded man with light all around him. I wasn’t raised within a religion and neither of my parents had strong religious backgrounds. I recall having conversations about ‘Christian’ values such as ‘treat others as you would treat yourself,’ and that the way you live every day and your relationships with others was more important than reading the Bible or attending Church every week. I seem to remember talking about the story of Jesus, and about religion in terms of the different faiths and the Church, but I don’t recall any conversations about God; who or what He actually was.
At the age of five or six I went to the occasional Sunday school session and so became more aware of religion and the teachings of the Church and while I was curious, they made no sense to me. What was presented was a very particular picture of God, along with ways of connecting to him, of earning his love, and of course how to return to him in heaven. All of a sudden I was being taught rules about ways to behave and it seemed you could only be connected to God if you read the Bible and/or went to Church to listen to someone else talk about God. None of this felt true to me, even then. There was no sense of wonder or joy in these experiences. God was reduced to a study in words – and I felt no magic.
I didn’t give God or religion any thought for many years and was strongly against any form of organised religion. Then I met Serge Benhayon who presents the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom, and based on these has introduced The Way of The Livingness, a true religion based on the simple principle that religion is about living in connection with your inner-most heart, with the divine part of ourselves, with our essence. It is this simple principle that has reignited my connection with God and the ongoing development of my own personal relationship with God. I can see how my opposition to organised religion kept me from questioning the role it plays in defining God and our relationship with God, which I now know is also our relationship with ourselves.
From what I can see, organised religion puts God in a box, and us along with him, shaping the way we see and relate to God, to other people and to other religions. Strong moral codes and beliefs within organised religion shape our behaviour and tend to focus our efforts in life on what happens when we die and bringing about a constant striving to be good enough to enter heaven. At the same time, wars have been fought in the name of religion for centuries, and groups or individuals who practise religion ‘outside of the box’ have been vilified, cast as deviant and evil and even wiped out by the dominant religion of the day. The Cathars and the later European witch hunts stand out as examples.
Our relationship to God has been complicated by organised religion as it offers a bastardised version of God and our relationship to Him. For some, as it was with myself, the reaction to religion keeps their backs turned to God. One could easily conclude that organised religion is a form of control, a formalised system that keeps us from knowing the truth about God.
I’ve come to know through The Way of The Livingness that true religion connects us back to the truth that “the Kingdom of God is within you,” reminding us that we are all equal Sons of God, and in that, God is not someone separate from us, or mightier than us, but the very essence of who we are. True religion is simply about our personal and ever evolving connection and relationship with God, with our own divinity and with humanity. In true religion there are no pictures or rules.
I am of God, as we all are, and in our hearts we know this to be true, but in the minds of mankind everything must have its place and so God has been put in a box. In our hearts there are no boxes, only the offering of an ever deepening connection with our essence, and therefore with God.
By Michelle, Social Science Researcher, Brisbane
Related Reading:
The Magic of God in Nature
Organised Religion versus True Religion
What is true religion?
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Opening our hearts to the religious teachings of Serge Benhayon has been the greatest wisdom we have been able to connect to and live for many life-times, so thank you God for this most divine plan.
I can feel how in past lives I have prostrated myself at the feet of an alter in the belief that I am unworthy or less than as a woman to know God and that God can only be accessed through a man/ priest/ higher authority. I can still feel this in my body while reading this blog. I find it fascinating what it is we energetically hold onto life after life and how the energy can still affected us if it is not healed as the energy is locked into our bodies until such a time that we become aware of it, as I have done today.
The consciousness of women being less than men is unfortunately still alive today, in varying degree dependant on where you live in the world, totally false and disgusting.
Living with the natural Joy and the flow on of the most loving appreciation of what God brings, which is in everything are values that we should all cherish…
It is true, we have been brought up to believe everything has its place, we compartmentalise our behaviour in different places and around different people. Yet, if we start to consider that we all live within a body of Love, then we cannot compartmentalise that, we have to know we are part of it and it runs through us. Time to start dating that relationship with Love.
A great point to consider, that we all live within a body of Love, or, a Field of Love; that we are held and supported to be that Love that we innately are.
There’s a freedom that comes with knowing God lives within and in the space around us and accessible to all whenever we’re ready to connect with him.
By imposing expectations on God it immediately separates us from the magic of God.
We could equally ask put people in a box, because this is what we do. To separate ourselves from God separates us from our fellow human beings and prevents us from seeing them as equal brothers.
I was talking to some young people, the topic was about separation, how we have made up so many different languages which is yet another way to keep us all in separation to each other and as you say kehinde2012 stops us from seeing each other as equal to God.
God and Love is within and all around us and our calling is to deeply feel the love we innately are. Much of life is designed to pull us away from stopping and feeling who we truly are from our inner heart and we must step outside of our addiction to worldliness to do so.
That is a very good question – ‘why do we put God in a box?’ It’s around us from the time we are born and the baton is passed on to us. Deep down all of us know that this is untrue, but will we sway from what has become the norm for many of us? For when we find our truth that is taking us out of box, then some people become uncomfortable with it.
I didn’t understand that God was all around us and most of all that he/she is within us all until I met Serge Benhayon. Now it is my truth, my belief, it is that simple. He is the one that lead me to it. What we do with it is our choice.
Me too Shushila, until I met Serge Benhayon and reconnected to the Ancient Wisdom teachings, I thought God was outside of me, I had the whole concept of God and Religion in a box – in the recycling box to be honest. To me it was all rubbish because I very rarely saw people who lived what they preached. Now I have a deep knowing of something inside of me, that I can feel inside all others that I meet. This, for me is Love, it is God, and I am developing my relationship with that one-ness every moment of every day.
Shushila, for me Serge Benhayon is the constant reminder that we are from the universe, yes we have a physical body but we are so much more than our physical bodies, there is a part of us that is multidimensional and is responsive to the universe. Our multidimensional aspect is our inbuilt homing device that will take us back to the stars which is where we all come from.
We are indeed so much more than human, we are multidimensional, ‘ we have a physical body but we are so much more than our physical bodies, there is a part of us that is multidimensional and is responsive to the universe.’ So beautiful.
I was reading this blog again and sat back to feel that God is with us, this is not something I have allowed myself to feel since I was a child. Like you Shushila I have come back to the truth because of the presentations of Serge Benhayon and the Ageless Wisdom teachings. We are all born into a lie which we can feel is untrue but learn to accept because life is set up to perpetuate the lie by the constant drenching of the lies. Serge Benhayon has exposed the lies of creation in such a way that we are all able to feel the truth of the words spoken, this allows space for another choice to be made. My heart sings with the joy of a different choice, the choice to return to God and to feel again his beholding love for us all.
What a blessing to have Serge Benhayon in our lives, so we start to be aware of the Truth, and the lies are more and more exposed, ‘I didn’t understand that God was all around us and most of all that he/she is within us all until I met Serge Benhayon.’
I agree with you. The more we deepen our own connection with ourselves, the clearer it becomes how so-called organized religions are the very thing that have been standing in the way of our connection to God from day one.
And is it possible that we have been sold a lie when it comes to all these so called organized religions we have blocked ourselves from knowing the truth of God by looking outside of ourselves rather than within where the truth of all things resides. As you say Fumiyo when we deepen our connection to ourselves we deepen our understanding and love of God.
The beauty is, when we truly find God we find ourselves.
From childhood we are ‘groomed’ by the church and family to believe in a false God separate from ourselves and then spend the rest of our lives in search of that inner essence that gives us a true sense of place and purpose. If the Kingdom of God resides within, we don’t have to search for it, simply connect to it.
To put God in a box prevents us from feeling his true magnificence and love. This is manipulation and control of the highest order, in other words evil. Instead of supporting people to directly access God, return to their own love within and heal, the Church stands in the way as gatekeeper, judge and executioner.
kehinde2012 the Roman Catholic Church certainly has blood on its collective hands as the executioner. We don’t have to go far back in history to read of the barbaric ways they used to coerce people into the religion. Today more and more priests are being exposed harming the community they are supposed to serve by interfering with children. The organisation is now so large and powerful it thinks itself above the law and can get away with such atrocious vile behaviour. Surely no institution, corporation, or political party should be above the common law? And yet these so called pillars of society put themselves above the common law and still centuries later control the masses, which means the common people.
The grown ups I remember with fondness from my childhood, are the ones that held that sense of wonder and magic and shared with me their joy, and likewise gave me the space to express my own.
It always comes back to the simple truth that we can not begin to fathom God and the love He is and in fact we all equally are unless we are living that love first ourselves.
It feels that by putting “God in a box” we prevent him from being accessible to all; if you don’t have the key to the box he obviously isn’t your God. As far as I am concerned there is no box big enough to hold God. But why would you even consider confining such a magnificent being, as God to me is here for us all, no matter what religion, race, nationality, gender or age, he is everyone’s God equally so; definitely time to burn all the boxes!
There’s a lot of theatrics and manipulation in evangelical Christian Church services. I remember once where the congregation, especially new members, in emotionally charged sermons were enticed and willed to submit to the Lord, by walking up to the alter and falling down to their knees. As a teenager, I didn’t know what to make of this. I was never moved to make the walk of submission and yet felt guilty because I stayed rooted to my seat. At the heart of this performance was the belief we were less, sinners who had to be saved, but all was in the hands of the preacher. Even as a young adult I couldn’t buy into this, because it felt false.
How cool is it that we inherently know, we can actually never be fooled if we honour that about ourselves. It is when we need to fit in, to not stand out that we are at risk of being manipulated.
kehinde2012 It feels to me that it’s the emotional stick we get beaten with, as using emotion keeps us in the stagnation of looking outside of ourselves for those emotional highs and lows that actually are so poisonous to our bodies. It’s like taking a hallucinogenic drug when we are under the influence of the drug we are unable to make a different choice, when we feel the effects of the drug lessen we top up the drug because we do not want to feel the emptiness or lack of connect to God. In just the same way we top up our caffeine intake to keep us in the motion of life because again it prevents us from feeling the stillness that is God within us. Our current way of living is set up for us all to not feel God even though she/he is with us always in the very air we breathe.
To embody the truth of God within is to become loving, fearless and equal to all others.
“In our hearts there are no boxes, only the offering of an ever deepening connection with our essence, and therefore with God.” Hear hear!! Remaining in your heart can give you a great sense of surrender to just be with and observe what is going on around and in you. When you do this you can look out at everything and read and nominate it for what it truly is.
Endless love and fathomless space is not so easy for the human mind to grasp if it is not fully surrendered to the pulsing of the inner heart and the love that breathes us forth. Hence why we put a measure on that which cannot ever be measured – the undying flame of God’s eternal love that lives deep within us all.
‘In true religion there are no pictures or rules.’ To have pictures and rules can give us the feeling of security but we end up like being in quicksand. Who we are more or less disappears and nothing is left of what we know is true.
We tend to want to blame God for things that go wrong in our life. Blaming God or anyone else for that matter has never been something that will heal our hurts.
Its difficult to put God in a box, when I realise that ‘I am from God’. Once that is realised, there is no pedestal, no rules.. just feeling what is naturally inside us.