602 thoughts on “Why do we put God in a Box? ”

1. 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.

2. 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.

   1. 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.

3. 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…

4. 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.

   1. 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.

5. 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.

6. By imposing expectations on God it immediately separates us from the magic of God.

7. 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.

   1. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

   1. 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.

   2. 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.

      1. 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.

   3. 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.

   4. 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.’

10. 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.

    1. 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.

11. The beauty is, when we truly find God we find ourselves.

12. 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.

13. 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.

    1. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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!

17. 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.

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

18. To embody the truth of God within is to become loving, fearless and equal to all others.

19. “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.

20. 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.

21. ‘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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. It is very interesting to consider how God has been defined by organised religions for thousands of years, and yet, God is ancient.

25. We put ourselves in a box to give us identity, from there it is normal to put anyone else in a box as well including God, or said differently, we are identified by ideals and beliefs. And so God is laced with pictures, stories, expectations, hopes, judgements…, a box of personal and collective interests and needs that blinds us from naturally knowing God from within.

    1. Yes Alex,to put ourselves in a box limits us. People are often compelled to place you by race, religion nationality or country of birth and if asked I will give them facts, but inside what I feel is my universality.

26. ‘God in a box’ is an illusion we can invest in to feel safe from feeling the God within, the godliness that we are. The moment we let ‘God’ out of the box we no longer can honestly pretend that we are less than divine and are ‘forced’ to take responsibility to let go of the falseness we have created and to embrace the truth we have abandoned.

    1. We have to take responsibility, and we can no longer give our power away to others who we think might be more Godly.

27. Thanks to Serge Benhayon of Universal Medicine, presenting the Ancient Wisdom Teachings, my innermost connection with God has been re-ignited and this relationship continues to deepen in my everyday life. This joy of re-union with God is also very evident in the Universal Medicine Student Community
    “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”.

28. Putting God and religion in a box is part of the consciousness that imposes normal on us so we are controlled by feeling bad for not complying or learn to doubt our natural inner knowing.

29. I loved what you have shared Michelle and totally agree that ‘our relationship to God has been complicated by organised religion as it offers a bastardised version of God and our relationship to Him’ and an ‘organised religion is a form of control’.

    If we are truly religious and love they neighbours, then why does one caste turn away a child from another caste? A family member took a good friend of her’s to our local Indian community hall, and she was asked who her lovely friend was. When they were informed, they homed onto the surname, their reaction was embarrassing and their whole body language clearly stated they were not happy for her to have entered their community hall.

    She was Indian but her surname identified she was from a different caste system and automatically judged. This is not true religion. Far as I’m concerned if we are are all Sons of God then we are from the one source – it is that simple.

    1. There is no caste system in the Kingdom of God. And in the secular world we still have caste systems: school, class, accent, race, colour, nationality, gender. Anything that separates one from another is not true religion.

    2. Shushila, you have just exposed the falseness of organised religion, they expose their true intent all the time and yet we still want to hang onto our false religious beliefs. We made these religions to keep us separated from God, How can we possibly be united if we are bickering or worse going to war over who has the true version of God.

30. In our heart there are no boxes, and so when we are looking to put anything in a box, it’s telling of how we’re being, the drive we’re in and how in fact we’ve left our connection to ourselves; for with that connection we are naturally connected to all around us, and God is there in all of that, naturally so and our relationship with this lays the foundation for our relationship with ourselves and all all others … it’s that connection to ourselves, it connects us to God and the all.

31. Many organised religions place God in a box and sell us a lie about the magnificence and truth about God. To know we are Sons of God changes everything and allows for a deeper and more true connection with God.

32. “sense of wonder” When we ponder on the magnificence of the Universe, Heaven and God it is impossible to contain the constant expansion in a box.

    1. Magnificence of the Universe; I too loved being in nature as a child, and still do, and I hadn’t realised then it was my way of connecting with God, ‘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.’

33. Our relationship with God is always and ever present. Our Souls are the sparks of His light in which we are held by His atmic love. It is only our willingness to surrender to our connection to Soul or resistance to it that governs the quality in which this relationship is embodied and lived. When we live in connection to our Soul, love is lived without compromise as such true religion is naturally lived.

34. Even as a child in church I wondered why we had taken God and essentially made him human, by giving him such low human traits such as judgement. It seemed crazy to belittle something so divine and something so grand and so incredible that our human intelligence can’t quite grasp it yet.

    1. The wonder of God reduced to rubble and base metal, is how I see it. The teachings of Sunday school and church killed the grandeur, beauty and glory of God’s (and our own) true essence and drove us away, not towards it.

       1. Very well said – if God was truly taught about we would be left with our sense of awe and wonder in tact, rather than feeling repelled as many of the current teachings provide.

35. Like everything, we can have an intellectual relationship with God or one based on what we feel and know, the later being much more nourishing.

    1. Yes, beautiful Abby. Nothing compares to the enrichment and power experienced through surrendering and embodying our inescapable relationship with God.

36. How can we have let our absolute knowing of God in our hearts be put in a box far away? For we are here, on this plane of life, going around in circles, where we know we don’t go anywhere until we come back to Power, Soul, God.

37. We cannot but feel energy. How unwilling to feel what we feel do we have to be to be able to withstand mainstream religion? How much shut down do we have to be to do so?

38. Rather than putting God in the box we tend to have this perception that we will end up in a box at the end of life and that is our lot. With the understanding that comes from being connected to our essence the box theory flies out the window and a deep understanding that our passing-over is simply another part of a cycle that we all live in. God has blessed these human vessels with the ability to reincarnate and that gives us all the opportunity to be responsible for all we do which takes all the boxing out of the ring.

39. Through The Way of the Livingness, and Ageless Wisdom teachings we learn all there is to know about true religion and feel again the wonder and magic of life.

    1. kehinde2012 absolutely the Ageless wisdom teachings have always been with us constantly reminding us of the greatness We all come from bringing us back to the wonder and magic of life. we are constantly fed that life is mundane and so we are always looking for something and while looking for something we actually miss out on the magic that is occurring under our very noses every minute of the day.

40. Our relationship with God is our relationship with Self. How simple and true this is and yet formal religions have overlaid this with complication, dogma, threats and control. Once we know truth we can never return to the lies and distortions perpetuated by conventional religions.

41. I can totally relate to the staid version of God and religion that was presented through Sunday school.. totally devoid of all joy (and not the happy-clappy joy-joy fake kind of joy, but deep contentment and feeling completely at ease and settled kind of joy) and magic. Re-connecting to religion now, I feel it not as something to strive for and be (no ‘being good’ to be worthy of being loved), but as a deepening connection to who I am, and through that, more deeply connected with everyone else, more understanding of how interconnected we all are with the universe, the bigger picture.

    1. Connecting with our essence, who we are in Truth, connecting with nature, with the Universe, all is connected, ‘In nature I could feel a connection to a grandness, to something more than just the physical world and more than just me.’

42. “earning his love” – This is interesting. If God is love, why would we think that we need to earn his love and how would we go about it, if we did? Maybe God loves us so much that he is patiently waiting for us to see that we are made of that very same love that He is.

43. Talk about making things complicated. We know as children that there is the magic of God in everything and then comes along organised religion which is so far removed from what we know to be the truth. Is it any wonder we grow up confused.

44. It feels absolutely wonderful to call out and claim that God is not greater or mightier than us. It is abusive, demeaning and degrading to treat myself as anything less than the essence of God within, but this has to come from my livingness and the way I choose to be with myself.

45. That is true Michelle, I too never tended to talk about God, about who and what he actually was. It was a kind of taboo as I were only allowed to believe what was presented to me by the religious institutions and when I tried to discuss it I was being told to be the apostate, the non believer, that put me in a position that was very uncomfortable.

46. “There was no sense of wonder or joy” There was certainly no sense of wonder or joy in all my ‘education’ about religion as I was growing up but today, with the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom presented by Serge Benhayon, my sense and feeling of wonder and joy know no bounds.

    1. I can vouch for this Mary, having known you for a few years now I can say that your vibrancy, your joy your openness, lightness and grace have blossomed a million fold. You are a true inspiration.

    2. Institutionalised religion has no joy, ‘organised religion is a form of control, a formalised system that keeps us from knowing the truth about God.’

47. I am understanding more and more we cannot put God in a box, or a structure, God is the body of love we live within. Our human brain tries to reduce the knowing of that into a shape we can tangibly understand and I cannot help but be aware there is a possibility that humans have chosen to use that need to understand to control through fear thereby encouraging the need for doctrines and books and rituals.

48. The god inside a religion feels so square and non inspiring but the god connected to everything feels expansive and whole. The difference is marked.

49. ‘Putting God in a box’ has been designed by institutionalised religions to divide and separate us from Truth and from the fact that we only need to look within to connect with God . . . with no middle man needed.

    1. Kathleenbaldwin this was one of the things that really bugged me as a child why did I need to go to see a priest to confess my misdemeanours? God was right there with me when I was stealing from a sweet shop or lying to my parents. The middlemen as you call them are no more than busy bodies interfering and controlling communities through the confessions they hear from the people who give their power away to the religious institution. It has never made sense to me why we do this? This is one way communities were destroyed in the past. One person in a community telling tales could wipe out a village or small town.

    2. Thank God that Serge Benhayon has supported us to understand the Truth of religion and 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.’

50. Yes Michelle, this is very true – God is not about boxes. It is about love and for us to embrace what this means back again.

51. Like the writer, I felt as a child and now once again feel joy, magic and wonder in nature – this is one of the ways I feel God. I don’t know that I appreciated how easily I was with God when I was young. The messages you get about God being outside of you and far greater than you could ever be, are with you from the start and call into doubt the natural relationship we have with God as kids. If this natural relationship was fostered, we would never have a world that allows organised religions to tell us who God is, or how we need to be in his presence. We would know we need no ‘middle-man’.

52. Images, effigies and buildings are creations to worship God. In my humble experience there is a true livingness that brings a re-connection with our body, our innate stillness and sacredness and this is The Way that thus re-connects us with the Divine Essence within every person equally so – that which is of the All and of God.

53. Why do we need rules and use them in all aspects of our life. We would immediately stop applying these rules if we knew how they are restricting us in bringing expression from the universal mind that otherwise would be available to us. You might say we need rules, and in a way that is true, but when living from the universal mind we live with the laws of the universe and naturally will obey these.

54. When we put god in a box we do so in ignorance of the fact hat that:
    1) It is not possible, so this will be a very intensive job that constantly needs to be reassured.
    2) Absolutely makes no sense and therefore needs that constant reconfirmation to make us believe that God is confined in a box while we all know better, as we are from God.
    And therefore to me it is better to let this concept go and trust in the knowing that lies in our inner hearts.

55. ‘Why do we put God in a box?’ Good question. Why? Because the human spirit likes to separate and compartmentalise, so that we can live a lie instead of living the fullness of the truth that we are.

56. By Putting God in a box, we not only put limitations to how much God gets involved in our lives, but with that we too imprison ourselves into a live void of God and we only have to look at the status of our current society to see what that way of relating with God has brought to us.

57. Institutionalised religions are designed to keep us way from our natural connection with God that simply lives within.

    1. Yes and I think they have forgotten this, or perhaps desperately want to turn that around, but are not prepared to see that if they do there will be no need for so many of the structures they have put in place, because our connection will be direct, all encompassing and all-knowing. How prepared are we really to let go of the control we have become so used to?

       1. Yes Lucy, by control we try to protect our creation and personalized version of God, and with that do justify our way of life. To let go of this control we have to let go our protection and become completely transparent in who we are and where we stand.

58. I suppose the thing to remember, is that no one can actually ever place you in a box of idealism and controlled values without you taking a step towards them in the first place. As, in my experience I have seen how there has to a openness to that way of being first in the person for the imposition to even get a foothold in your life, otherwise it will just pass you by and have no input at all into your way of living. The tough part is however, that it can only just be one step, perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps sympathy or whatever – but the force that comes like a torrent is equal to a million steps towards you and this is the unfair part of controlled ideals – they often do not let you just explore.

59. Beautifully written Michelle, it is impossible to put God in a box, or in a book, because he is so much bigger and wiser than we are brought up to know, and his spark is in all of us, we only need to choose to feel his magnificence.

60. When I was young, I loved the stories of Jesus and the disciples until that is my mother put up a very large tapestry of Jesus in our dining room. The eyes of this person would follow me all over the room, and I hated going in there. Then she had the bright idea to use it as a punishment room, so when I was naughty I would have to sit in the room with this man looking at me, and I hated it. There was a part of me that knew this man in the tapestry was not the Jesus I knew and that my mothers’ version of God was also not true, but it scared me all the same.

61. ” along with ways of connecting to him, of earning his love, ”
    Yes the false religion of man .

62. We are offered evolution and expansion of who we truly are by true religion “the Way f the Livingness”. false religion keeps us boxed up in falsehoods that we are sinners and this separates us from God and our own divine essence that lives within us.

63. Our need to define and control has infected how we perceive religion and God and in fact how we relate to ourselves … for if we are of God, then in ‘boxing’ God we also ‘box’ us and this we do by putting a lid on our own relationship with us and also with God.

64. What if we are not only Son of Gods but actually Gods ourselves ?

65. Ironically, even though modern day science and medicine does all it can to separate itself from religion and propose that it is the better way to understand life and the universe, it does the exact thing that Michelle has described in this blog, in that it puts Nature in a box as well. It does this by constantly reducing what it observes via various experiments into smaller and smaller facets of the whole of Nature and the Universe without considering how all these facets have effects on all the others. An example of this would be the current experiments at the large Hadron collider facility (CERN) where they are using a giant particle accelerator to find smaller and smaller quantum particles in search of the so-called ‘God’ particle. The funny thing is, all they would have to do would be to practice the Gentle Breath Meditation as taught by Serge Benhayon and they could feel all those God particles in the stillness of their own bodies.

66. The other day I had allowed myself to get caught up in a problem and as I walked to my office and looked up at the sky there was such clarity and brilliance there I felt appreciation and joy for being here, it was as if I were being reminded that that same clarity and brilliance is also who I am. It seems nature is always supporting us to see more clearly and come back to the truth.

67. I love your question, it describes exactly how we have made life to be, we categorise everything and think we can use and help ourselves to just what we need. All the while there is so much more to us. “In our hearts there are no boxes, only the offering of an ever deepening connection with our essence, and therefore with God.”

    1. It requires a lot of openness in you to not box something or someone into a known category. I will observe myself if and when I might be doing that also a little bit. Only a tiny bit of boxing someone in actually keeps them in the same picture they have chosen to hide, to not show themselves in full. We have a huge responsibility what we communicate to each other to support each other to show a different way.

       1. Yes, so true Stefanie even with the tiniest boxing in we deny ourselves to see another in their fullness, it is like we see the world through a very narrow lens. And I also like the point you are raising here that we actually like to hide in these boxes, so it is not only the perspective of the observer but the standpoint of both that determines how easily the box is being ticked. Yes, a huge responsibility for us all to help each other eliminate all these boxes.

68. ‘God is not someone separate from us, or mightier than us, but the very essence of who we are.’ How have we’ve been misled by manmade religion to believe we are less than God, to believe we need to do good to deserve a place in Heaven. The opposite is true, we are God and are on our way back to live this truth.

69. ‘God…is the very essence of who we are.’ When you put it like that- as in state the truth- then self -judgement and judgement of others falls away.

    1. God would never judge, as ultimate love does not compare or judge, but offers space. Judgement and self critic is a manmade game to keep us separate from the own divinity as it circulates and repeats to keep you in the loop of disconnection.

    2. Beautifully said Simone for when we go into judgment we immediately shut out true observation which provides the understanding and clarity of what is occurring before us.

70. So true thank you for letting us read and feel the truth of God and what we have made him to be by all our images, pictures, ideals and beliefs that keeps us only further away from living the absolute truth of who we are (Godliness).

71. “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 love this Michelle because I have always had this childlike way with nature around me and still to this day stop dead in my tracks when I see a butterfly or bird fly by. Yesterday I had a beautiful large sulphur crested cockatoo fly just over my head and rest in the tree branch above as he ate and we just admired each other. Nature is an incredible reflection for what we too hold within and that is exquisitely divine to appreciate.

72. Reading this I remember when I was a child where with the scent of blossom and with the morning song of the birds outside, each day felt like a fresh day .. a new opportunity similar to autumn with the crisp clear mornings. I felt the magic and in turn felt the joy and wonder of our life and purpose in my body .. connection to God. And on reflection as I grew up this sense of magic and joy started to dim as I could feel more and more what was being reflected back to me by adults, by life. The struggles, the same patterns, unspoken hurts or anger, the state of the country and world. This was years ago and as we all know just by reading or seeing the news things have intensified which makes me ask the question how do our younger generation feel now and what are we reflecting back to them in order that they too can feel and connect, consistently so, to the true magic, joy and love. We have a responsibility more than ever before to not only stay connected to the truth we know but also reflect and express it to others so they have a different marker to what they currently see in the world.

73. Everything has a purpose, and in this case the purpose is: offer something which brings individuality so that the ones can choose to remain blind to the fact that they are the many that make up the one.

74. Thank you Michelle for the reminder that the magic of God, thus a reflection of who we truly are is forever surrounding us.

75. “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.” Beautifully expressed Michelle. Following our hearts when we are connected – so opposite to how organised religion operates.

76. And if organised religion has been one of the most dominant forces on earth and in many ways remains so today in parts of the world, how extensive must we have sold out to lies as a race that have not truly served but rather extensively harmed? What if all the ill we complain about came first from lies. No ill has ever come from true love.

77. Yes God cannot be defined in the way we have done so to date, which we see in particular within the organised religions. Clearly this has not worked as history has shown, hence perhaps we ought to start afresh with truly open hearts as we begin re-developing our relationship with God once again.

78. I still love to be very playful with nature and I am aware of it a lot- it is a great way to expand and connect back to the innocence and freedom inside us. Interestingly when you do things, normally “adults” don´t do, you can feel sometimes a judgement or that they deride what you do, but deep down you can feel how much they long for being that playful aswell. We never loose this openess and joy, even though we grow up.

79. Truth is always simple- everything that is made compicated with conditions can´t be true truth.

80. I found that when I let go of the pictures of God or what I thought he was to be, I found my connection to the truth of God was clarified because I felt the grandness of his essence is what lies all around us and within us equally. Having always loved nature and the wonder of its movements, I found the reflections offered by nature an appreciation of God and how every movement, breath and word expressed is not only a conversation with the all but a union of what God truly means and that is truly magnificent.

81. Keeping God separate to us is a power play and set up to keep society in need of institutionalised religion. You don’t need to pay money to be close to God, or talk through someone to get to Him. God is available to all, equally so, it’s just a matter of who will humbly accept.

82. The tragedy about this realm of life is that it tries very hard to delineate and solidify formlessness into a form to identify with, and we forget words come only after what is.

83. The God of the religion I was a part of in my childhood made Jesus and the martyrs more important than God as they seemed more graspable and relatable – God was remote and only approachable in prostration and via fervent prayers for things to turn out better than could reasonably be expected. Never was there any hint of our own magnificence, quite on the contrary.

    1. A great point Gabriel it was Jesus that the church talked most about, especially around Christmas time, yet so much of what was spoken about Jesus never made sense to me it felt too unbelievable to be true, how could 1 person die on a cross to save us all I even wondered if he ever existed. As a child I don’t remember much spoken about God other than he was distant and unapproachable except for those who devoted their lives to him, so I dismissed him as unattainable and unable to help me. As for being magnificent ourselves this was not only scorned upon it would probably be seen as a sin in which there would be retribution.

84. This blog brings back the simplicity, the simplicity of what we miss living – connected to God, to who we truly are.
    And hence this sentence is capturing the reality and lies about – exposing them: ”One could easily conclude that organised religion is a form of control, a formalised system that keeps us from knowing the truth about God.”

    1. I could always sense this heaviness, when I was in church on Sundays. I can really connect to that control- the catholic church just loves to let people feel less than God. That you are the sinner. So that you are seemingly humble, but in fact it is a way of disempowerment. Like this they control & secure their religious way because no one would dare to stand up and say that something is wrong there.

85. I too was brought up with little influence of organised religion, so why is it that it’s false ways have so influenced my life? My feeling is that it’s code of live recklessly, but be good on the sabbath day is not confined to church, but has in many different ways become our way of life. For example, many live by the motto, I eat well all week, so I can lash out and indulge on weekends. How is that different to what the many religions dictate, and how truly harmful do we live?

86. It is a feeling, a feeling that cannot be contained just as love cannot be contained only denied.

87. How can you put something that is bigger than the starry sky into a tiny box (or a single book)? When I feel Him I can’t help but feel the bigness of our existence and what we are connected to.

88. This is a simple and very beautiful description of true religion Michelle, ‘True religion is simply about our personal and ever evolving connection and relationship with God, with our own divinity and with humanity.’

89. “In nature I could feel a connection to a grandness, to something more than just the physical world and more than just me.” I remember how much fun and joy I would feel playing in the garden and looking up into the sky. I always felt held by everything around me and I still feel that same interconnectedness today. Allowing our awe and appreciation of the natural world gives us great insight and honesty into how we live and how the world stands currently. Nature reflects all.

90. Beautifully shared Michelle, I can so relate to God in a box as I lived many years within a loveless religion, trying to obey and be good trying to please God, or should I say a false version of God. I knew these words from the Bible “the Kingdom of God is within you,” that God was somehow in our hearts but that was head stuff because there was no one who lived this and reflected this out to us, until one day I meet a man named Serge Benhayon who knew and lived and reflected this truth. Now I know and live this truth. God does not live in a box but is all around us, in nature, and in the inner heart of every human being.

91. God is a living experience that can’t be placed in a box. When this experience is reduced to an external image then we just lose the connection, which only can be within us in continual deepening and expansion

    1. Yes and we can’t think we know what size it is, because it is not understood from our brain, it is felt from our body and our heart.

92. Turning our back on God/religion or going to organised religion because we think that is what we should do, is one and the same I feel. They both have a picture or belief about God that is not coming from a true relationship with religion.

93. It is impossible to claim that we know God and have a relationship with God without first knowing our connection to God and to the all. It is not a belief or a set of rules to practice by but a knowingness from within that is claimed and lived.

94. I love to take walks in nature or on the beach – wide open spaces, as I always feel expanded and with the amazing reflection I am always reminded this is who we are.

95. We put God in a box as a means to own what can never be owned, only deeply surrendered to. Thus the ‘God in the box’ is a clever trick employed on behalf of the human spirit to delay our inevitable return to Soul – the divinity we each in essence are and come from.

96. Sometimes I can see that there is an overall want throughout human kind to connect with God, and in response there are many organisations which promise to provide just that. However, in my experience with Universal Medicine and The Way of The Livingness, the presence of God is felt the most with when we truly re-connect with ourselves and then with eachother.

97. It makes no sense really to have this connection, this feeling of God and to hand that off to be managed by someone else on our behalf, with that someone else defining what we need to do to access God. Yet this is what most of us do, we hand ourselves over to an institutionalised version of religion which robs us of our connection to God, and all the while God is there waiting and ready for us to connect at any time.

    1. Very true Monica, after reading this blog I realised going to someone or an institution to connect to God is no different to turning our back and walking away from God, as we are still allowing a separation between us and God.

98. In a box, or in a book. The best way will always be found in our bodies.

    1. Within our bodies is the truest marker.

99. It is interesting the extent to which people are open to different things. There are those who are open to feel something of grandness and those who cannot connect to anything that is related to the idea of grandness and for whom life is not easy.

    What are we open to, matters a great deal since this is what we walk and the direction to where we are heading towards.

100. I remember as a child going to a an evangelical christian meeting with a visiting preacher from the US. It was a big audience and he was whipping everyone up into a frenzy. People were running to the front and dropping to the floor with hysteria. Me? I fainted for the first time ever (interestingly the only other times were both at rock concerts with similar hysteria going on around me). I never went back – it really wasn’t for me, but the reason I’m telling you this story is that I find it interesting that ‘religious’ hysteria is seen to be a message from God, or somehow proof of his existence, but it is absolutely contra to true religion and God. Being taken out of yourself so much that you start babbling hysterically is possession by an entity. True connection with God brings us deeper into our bodies so we feel more ourselves and our connection to the unity of all things.

101. Reading your blog I have just realised something. I have never held a picture of God within my body despite the ill pictures, words and images I have been sold growing up of this ‘white man with a beard’. So that is cool but what I also realise is that I have not turned to and deepened my connection with the Love that I know is constantly and consistently there the whole time. It is great to ask myself the question why and feel this from my body, more to eventually, trustfully be able to deepen, hold and honour the connection that I know is there, which is equally there for every single person within the world.. we all have access to this no building or book is needed. I also feel using the word ‘God’ is even putting the truth of this being/source in a box so I have never liked using it, something has never felt right to me about this word but I have never nominated it until now. It is time we reclaimed back this truth and the true truth.

102. I get a sense of the grandness of God from your article -outside the box filling everywhere

     1. God is within us and we are within God.

103. We put God in a box because the tiny human mind cannot fathom the vastness and majesty it is (we are) a part of due to the fact that we only live a fraction of who and what we truly are by making the mind and not the heart the seat of intelligence that drives the human vehicle through life.

     1. Liane, as per usual you have explained it magnificently. My eyes have seen the light. In this place of small mindedness we need not take full responsibility.

104. While the Religion i belonged to put God in a box I allowed it to put me in a box also, leading me to live a very anxious controlled life full of rules to help me to be good enough to enter heaven. Now I know and live with God knowing the Kingdom of God is within me at all times and has never left me no matter what.

105. God is that which we all know , and we all know we left the connection with God and therefore put ” God in a box ” so as to think we are still living the connection with God .
     But truly we all know we are not for if we were the religions would not be in the mess they are.

106. Knowing the Kingdom of God is within me allows me to deepen my relationship with God and world of nature.

107. I have been in a huge amount of reaction to formalised Religion for the same reasons you mention in this detailed blog. I agree that God is not only accessible if you visit a certain building on a certain day… its a feeling that lives inside of us, a connection to a grandness that gives us purpose, not a thing we do that makes us whole. To quote you….
     “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.”

108. Yes we do put God in a box and organised religion encourages this since it fosters control and indeed other powers that be in society align to this the same reason, it doesn’t just keep God in a box, it keeps people in a box too. I never truly considered that in allowing God to be put in a box and denying the magic that is a relationship with God, we also put our relationships with ourselves and all others in a box, we all loose big time. And in fact we’re all part of God and it feels silly to deny this, so the question I now have is how I put God or any other including me in a box?

109. This is beautiful – “God is not someone separate from us, or mightier than us, but the very essence of who we are.”

110. Ah! So refreshing to be talking about God in a society where secularism rules. And it’s great to be able to return, via The Way of The Livingness, to the same sort innocent and innate understandings I had about God when I was a child.

111. God has formed all the life forms we see in nature around us. The fact is that nature has such a wonder and beauty that is beyond what any mind can fathom. As much as we try to understand nature through biology and all the other sciences, there is still a magic to it that can just simply not be explained by modern science alone. God is very real, as nature reflects back to us, but when we box Him or His creation up like modern science and organised religion do, we miss out on seeing the wow and awe factor that naturally exists with all of nature.

112. Thank you Michelle, but the humour of it all is that humans think and some believe that they can put GOD in a box, they think they can put GOD down to a book, the Bible or the Quran or the Torah and so on; oh how silly, are we humans.

113. In a box indeed, labelled and for many posted off to a corner of their experience that is reserved for hurt and judgement. I was like this about God in the past…this began to make no sense to me when I began to be open to what I felt within, the love, the warmth, the stillness, I sensed that this feeling was divine, it had no words, it was a feeling; I knew this to be God. I no longer box, life, God or anyone else; we are all one with the universe. Energy First.

114. I am aware that I was also like this as a young girl full of ‘wonder’ I was at one with everything, what was physical was not different from what was energetic..I am as an adult returning to this place and it feels like home, it is to come back to the arms of God, knowing that I am of God and with God.

115. With my understanding now, God in a box just seems so shut down, confined, contracted, controlled and restrictive; the exact opposite to who God truly is.

116. I agree the organised religion feels like a form of control. It’s no wonder so many turn their backs to it as they can feel the disharmony of it. The unfortunate thing is that in doing that we often close ourselves off to the possibility that there is another way to be religious in the true sense. A way that has no rules except to hold you accountable to being yourself in full.

117. Placing God in a box loaded with pictures is a ploy to keep us from knowing the truth about ourselves, and our grandness.

118. The ‘box’ is a symbol for our extreme need of security, and why do we have such an extreme need, a need which at base drives everything? Because we as a race have not been living in our essence, our truth, and the dire restlessness that we experience forces us to search for anything that will makes us feel safe. In reality he only true safety lies in ‘space’ not ‘boxed-on-ness’ – true safety is to abide in the truth and love of God and our own essence.

119. For the first time in many years I was lying on the grass, looking up into the blue sky with a few wispy clouds and considering the big, vast everything out there and just how astonishingly beautiful it was. Its something I used to do as a kid all the time – just marvel at how it all worked so perfectly…. how on earth (or in the stars) could we ever put this in a box?

120. So true Michelle, God does not belong in a box any more than we do as men or women. Our human minds cannot even begin to comprehend our own multidimensionality, so what hope do we have of ‘rationalising’ God. When we allow the intelligence of the body to be our guide and our measure, then we can begin to feel who He is, by feeling first who We are, as Sons of God.

121. Why do we put God in a box? Because we like to box everything, capture everything – some even capture butterflies and put them in a box. This, I feel, is a reaction to the stupendously beautiful flow of life that is naturally and universally a part of us all . . . but which many have forfeited in unwise choices. It takes some courage to surrender to the flow, but once experienced, there is nothing that comes close to it – certainly nothing we have kept in a box.

122. As children we are full of inquisitiveness and have a natural wonderment and appreciation of the world around us – as adults it would serve us all well to reconnect back to that joy.

123. Michelle I can very much relate to your story and how you understood and felt God as a child and couldn’t feel that same connection in a church or religion. This was the same for me and looking back into my childhood I can feel how innate our relationship with God is, it’s so natural to feel God. As we leave that beautiful essence of who we are as children not only do we lose our connection to ourselves so too do we lose that connection to God. Mind-made versions of God (in a box) that exist in words, buildings, and beliefs and images never can touch the real experience of connection to God. If we watch children (before the world imposes on them to be other than they naturally are) they are mighty little teachers of true religion as they are totally connected to the wonder and magic of living connected to God and themselves.

124. Why would God favour a particular person or group over anyone else or that each religion had their own version of God or Gods? This never made sense to me for all I could see was that we were all people with the same needs. It also never made sense that religions of those from God would do the things to each other that we have done for eons – abuse, fight, be violent, aggressive etc. I was at one stage caught up in the ‘religion is bad and if we got rid of religion it would all be better’, which was my own reaction to what I was seeing. Through what Serge Benhayon has presented I now understand much more deeply what is going on and because of this I now don’t blame religion, I have no need to do this.

125. This just goes to show how when we hold pictures about something it takes us away from the truth of what there is to feel and how in holding pictures (like pictures and images of what God is like) is a way of us wanting to control something supposedly outside of ourselves. The truth is, energy is flowing through us the whole time so having any form of ‘control’ is just an illusion. We cannot control the energy that passes through us consistently but we can choose what energy is flowing through us consistently by how we live, our movements and our choices. An incredibly valuable lesson for humanity brought through by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine that I am continually learning.

126. I’ve always found churches and religious buildings strange places to be as they felt cold empty and lacking of love, walking into a Universal Medicine presentation on The Way of The Livingness, the absolute opposite is true.

127. I love you concluding remark –”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”. Only the tiny minds of mankind could attempt to put the multi-dimensional nature of God in a box! The beauty of God is that his very nature lives within us so we have to look no further than the divine particles that our body is made up of to know the true nature of God. No amount of trying to figure out what or who God is can change that direct connection we have with God.

128. The way Religion was taught to me was very formal and distancing. The Way of The Livingness as presented by Serge Benhayon is completely opposite to this and our connection is as you say Michelle, in our inner heart.

     1. Yes, I can relate to that, religion at school was taught by the least inspiring teacher I had, it was dull flat and mundane probably because it was missing truth. The moment we bring the truth of religion and God to our lives we are naturally brought back to feeling joy, harmony and love within.

129. The one thing that did stand our to me when introduced to religion through school and church when young and over the years is “The Kingdom of God is with-in you”. This my body has always said yes to, while saying no to the organized religions, church gatherings and sermons.

130. We not only put God in a box we tend to frame everything in life so we can get an understanding on it and yet we are and there is so much more than the images, pictures and frames we can reduce ourselves to fit into. When we create ‘boxes’ we can only see what is within them, that is until we lift the lid and hop out.

131. It is fascinating. We feel the union with the all when we are in nature, we naturally know that we are with God and know the feeling in our body of this. Yet, when we are brought into any institutionalised religion we have to learn to override, deny and neglect what we know naturally regarding feeling God, and say yes to something that does not feel at all true, and that is not true. And, all of that to avoid disappointing our parents.

132. “but in the minds of mankind everything must have its place” – this ‘thinking’ has done humanity much harm and has reduced us to living in a much more reduced version of who we truly are when we come from the mind only and place such limitations on life. We are much grander than what we have been sold.

133. I really enjoyed this blog, it resonated with me on so many levels. I was not raised Religious but was strongly opposed to organised Religion as I viewed it as a way of exercising control over others. The fact that we all belonged and are apart of something much larger has always been very apparent to me and through nature, dreams and interactions. Becoming a student of The Way of The Liviningness I begun to discover a magic. This magic has always been known to me but I had been long forgotten.Its something that is a normal daily occurrence and its now known to me as the magic of God.

     1. It’s interesting Sarah that you talk about using your beliefs opposing organised religion as a way of exercising control over others. I feel the same about the rules imposed by religions on how people need to live to “find” God. Once we begin to let go of that control there is a much greater richness in everyday life that we begin to feel and connect to and feel that we all are so much more that what we could even possibly think or believe. I had an amazing conversation with a client yesterday who was talking about how we remain connected to the essence of someone even when they have died. To me being present in these conversations is deeply rich and a constant reminder that the magic of God is literally everywhere if we are open to truly seeing it. It turns the normal everyday into extraordinary everyday.

134. As a child I always knew that God was within and everywhere, but the world that I saw didn’t make sense to what I knew. I found a lot of what I saw in the name of God and religion very disturbing. The Way of The Livingness has supported me to make sense of all of that and confirm that what I had always felt was true and true for all.

135. We have got ourselves into a lot of trouble trying to package God and religion while losing our natural connection with our godly qualities along the way. As you say “In true religion there are no pictures or rules.”

136. As children it seems we have a natural and in-built connection to God and being in nature is a beautiful way of confirming this and consolidating this inner depth. Our true growth in essence occurs inwards, and yet what is interesting to observe is how we grow up from childhood into adults and the inner growth tends to be forgotten and our focus becomes the outer growth. But even as adults, nature seems to be the key trigger that supports us to remember this inner growth – there is an unwritten association between nature and the presence of God, and we can use this reflection and reminder to turn inwards again and feel our true origins and re-start the inward growth again. What a blessing!

     1. Deeply true, loving, consistent, steady support.

        1. So much Love awaits us around every corner when Loving imprints are left in all we do and this is to the best of our ability

137. Reducing God to be something that we can only be accessed through the written word takes away from the experience of living with Him.

     1. Yes, reconnecting with ourselves brings God back into our hearts , where God has always been.

138. God has changed my life thanks to Serge Benhayon, and what I feel about religion, is that it now brings a focus to the way I breathe, so I can be connected to my essence. I breathe, to the up-most of my ability, so I can have a true relationship with God.
     For more about breath go to;
     http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=BREATH

     1. You remind us all of the ‘ongoing’ importance of the breath here gregbarnes888.

        1. So true Irena, our breath is important to keep us feeling who we are as a “Son of God.”

139. It feels strange to make a bible-related comment but one of the statements in there is “The kingdom of God is inside you”, which seems hard to square with looking in a building for God.

140. Looking for things to be a certain way distracts us from receiving them as they are.

141. So much is lost if we are not encouraged to hold onto what we have got. It should be a natural way of being to be supported when we are young to hold the connection we have to God through nature and our natural way of feeling instead of the complete opposite. Obviously there is so much to be learnt from our parents and adults, its just a pity that a lot of it we have to then turn around and unlearn.

142. Why do we put God in a Box? Because we are masters of energy and have become masters of separation. Time to become masters of universality love and oneness.

143. We put God in a box because it means we can limit and reduce who we are to fit the box that has been created. Avoiding all responsibility of the fact that the same true and powerful God with all his magnificence is the same that resides in us. This freaks us out and it is much easier to be contained to a box so you know what is going on and have complete control over it. The beauty of a box is that you can rip, cut it or even burn it down and it is just a temporary wall that at some point will be removed because the might of our original divine source will call us back to be ALL OF WHO WE ARE.

144. Putting God in a box is a great analogy, how can we reduce a multi-dimensional intelligence, energetic truth and all encompassing love into a 3 dimensional individualised physicality and expect to understand it by the intelligence confined to this place of existence. It would make sense that the only way to know God is to connect to our own essence, our Soul, and the more we deepen and expand our awareness, the more we confirm the multi-dimensionality we too are part of, and in that re-awaken to our true innate connection to God that has been there all along.

145. We need to value such moments of inspiration as you have shared here, for this is the richest currency of life.

146. It seems that the limited perceptions of our separated minds cannot cope with the Universal nature of God and so, if we choose to perceive God within these limitations we have to create an image of him to relate to. The ‘box’ does not serve truth but just our choice to live in contraction from it.

147. It is true organised religion have robbed us of getting to know God, by fitting him into a box and imposing their own beliefs of who how and what God is. As a child we naturally connect to nature and to God, everything is spherical and can not be contained, but as we get older we loose this connection to conform to life’s demands and when we do this, we start to search for that connection again through organised religion, when all we have to do is connect to our inner most and we are back with God again.

148. “I am of God, as we all are, and in our hearts we know this to be true” When we dare to entertain this, and then feel it, and slowly, slowly grow to live this, then we know it as the truth.

149. The mere thought of believing we can box God or Love is laughable at best; that all-knowing, multidimensional beings can control or restrict the universe is absurd.

150. There are no boxes other than the ones we have constructed, for Love cannot be boxed nor we as vehicles of expression of God’s infinite Love.

151. You describe so eloquently the wonder and innate knowing of God we had as children. It is Glory. The thing is we get trained to not be with him and allow the seemingly unknowing adults to park our Glory up in the dusty back shed. I am starting to reveal to myself the fact that Love and Glory cannot be hidden or denied – we are what we are – Sons of God and here to inspire each and everyone else of this Fact.

152. What I find so beautiful about The Way of The Livingness is that it is based on the fact that God is already within us we don’t have to go out and try to “be” something we are not already are and have access to even if we are not always living it so. I makes life less about right and wrong and more about what is true.

153. We are from with-in all we ever need to be in any moment. Following the feelings that are offered through our bodies and heart is our connection with god. Thoughts from the mind lead to boxes full of all you mention, but don’t expand to include the magic of god.

154. You know how it is said that you can’t put a square peg in a round hole? Well, someone may need to point out to us that the reverse is also energetically true in the sense that you cannot add corners to a sphere just so it makes sense to a vastly truncated world view we may have adopted somewhere along the way. Although as a humanity we seem to be somewhat in collective agreement that the world is not flat, we are still not free of the mindset of this lineal way of thinking and as such we ‘put God in a box’ because we are yet to truly accept our spherical nature, which is simply our inner godliness or the Universality we each in essence are

155. This has been my experience of organised religion in the past too Michelle, ‘There was no sense of wonder or joy in these experiences. God was reduced to a study in words – and I felt no magic.’ As a child churches felt very cold and what was presented didn’t make sense and from what I heard and felt I certainly did not want to be religious, that was until I met Serge Benhayon and everything changed. I now consider myself religious and see and feel the magic of God in and around me.

     1. “There was no sense of wonder or joy in these experiences. God was reduced to a study in words – and I felt no magic.” It was the same for me too Rebecca. I never enjoyed going into churches, but always felt that I ‘should’ revere them as this is how religion had been portrayed to me. To be respectful of anyone and anything related to it. But like you, once I met Serge Benhayon my whole understanding of religion changed, and now I see the magic of God wherever I go, be it in a tiny white feather floating to the ground, or the beauty of knowing that I am enough just as I am, without needing a religion to identlfy me. My religion is now about how I live, with no worshipping of anything necessary.

156. It is interesting how we try to put things in a box and the same we do with God. We think we are able to control and judge life through this when in truth it emprisons us and disconnects us from our bodies.

157. When I feel back into the God I knew through religion when I was young, it was a God who would save me. I gave my power away, in the hope that he would make everything right. This kept me looking outside of myself for God and divinity. It also set us up to become disillusioned or resentful when all our hopes are not realised. The relationship I have now with God is so practical and normal, as it is felt through my body. I know I am held and loved beyond measure, enough to allow me free-will at all times.

158. Yes, Michelle, the thinking mind cannot know God and so endeavours to define and control what it can only conceptualise, whereas the heart feels and knows the truth that we live within God’s body, and can surrender to being a part of something that is ever expanding.

159. How true about the observation that when we allow ‘organised religion put God in a box and shape the way we see and relate to God, to other people and to other religions’ we are allowing ourself to be put in the box too. We in effect give up on the innate awareness of our connection and oneness with God, a relationship which is the deepest innate reflection of our true essence. We end up in a box, blind to the truth and the glory of who we are.

160. My relationship to God equals my relationship to myself and all others. If I keep ideals and beliefs concerning my relationship of God, if I think I have to be a certain way for God then I am also imprisoned by the thought that I have to be in a certain way for others or even for myself.

161. ‘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.’ This is so true and yet we are all evolving and expanding all of the time including our relationship with God and each other. And so the tension felt as we push against the sides of the boxes is enormous.

162. Spot on Michelle … “organised religion puts God in a box, and us along with him”. Not only is God made inaccessible by the way religion portrays Him, but we are definitely the lowly sinners, mere mortals who need to atone ourselves to be worthy of His grace, or be so ‘good’ throughout our lives that we are granted entry into so-called heaven. To connect with the truth of my relationship with God has been a very beautiful, empowering, graceful and stabilising process in life, not resembling anything organised religion has offered in my experience and observation.

163. ‘God was reduced to a study in words – and I felt no magic.’

     It is really something to feel how I, even after reading this blog many times, am only just starting to see how I’ve put God in a box. No matter how ‘correct’ my concept of God is, if He remains a concept then I’ve confined my whole life to a box.

     Your mention of magic and of your childhood memories of feeling the breeze on your skin reminded me I too know God and though I often allow this connection as I walk through the park of a lunchtime, I put God back in a box when I have to do life’s tasks – how boring is that!! I walk and feel the magic but then, like I did as a child, I notice how people aren’t also in the amazement of life so I think that’s unacceptable, not the done thing so I put all this magic back in a box and put all the tasks to be done ahead of any connection with God or true connection with myself or those around me.

     Taking God out of the box (is pure illusion as really it’s me who’s getting into a cramped and dark box by disconnecting with the All) doesn’t have to be just for special occasions – when times are hard, when I’m on a beautiful walk, but can be all of the time! I have lived as if being connected needs to be rationed in case it runs out – how crazy is that, when choosing to put limits on something that is naturally always expanding and evolving takes huge amounts of energy and harms ones health.

164. “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.” There are no rules or pictures and we are forever evolving, our relationship is deepening and growing with God, as with our selves.

165. When I look back at how I have put God in a box, I also discover the ultimatums and conditions I have put upon him – like he had to prove something to me. When really he is offering me all the love in the world and it is my choice whether I take it. He can’t make me take, I have to make that choice.

166. God in a box is a safe thing; like with everything we put in a box, we try to limit and control it. As God is as vast and unlimited and omnipresent like nothing we may be able to even imagine, putting him into a box denatures everything that God truly is. Great justification to also hold ourselves in a box and avoid our own grandness and glory.

167. I listened to a programme on religion the other day, and a scholar was saying part of the reason so many people become so zealot like is that they believe that their religion is true – with all their heart – and so impose their viewpoint on the world thinking that they are in the right. True religion is actually a very personal experience, and should be respected as such. Whilst we should challenge and question all religious constructs, including those we believe in, what we should do more of is to ponder, and to use our own life to test and validate that which we initially say we believe. Instead, too often, we use life outside us to validate our theories. And so, for many, they become disillusioned with religion because of the atrocities carried out in its name. Equally, and perhaps more importantly in some respects, many feel they need others to think and live like they do in order to validate their own belief. This is not only imposing, but also ultimately misleading. For what if everyone you look up to is living a lie? If your religion is true, then simply live it and allow that to be the defining marker by which you are assessed and by which you assess your own beliefs. Above all, be open to allowing your own livingness to be the testing ground for your theory on what you consider God to be. And be open to being proven wrong.

168. We all know God and whether we choose to accept the fact or deny it so, we cannot but know our father.

169. Love this Michelle, god has been put in a box for us to be confined, and it is for us to break out of this box and feel the true reflection of god, and the universe, we can bring here on earth.

170. I wanted God to fit in a box with clearly defined rules so that I did not have to take responsibility for my own choices and actions. That was then. Now I willingly accept, and am learning to live, that God is an ever presence and call to live the divinity, sweetness, and unity we naturally are.

171. “True religion is simply about our personal and ever evolving connection and relationship with God, with our own divinity and with humanity”- I agree Michelle, The “kingdom of God” is with us all, deep within our hearts, where there is no room for rules or images, only truth.

172. If God was only available to us when we were in a church (that is what I used to think) then we are clearly missing out! God is not exclusive when it comes to connection.

173. If we understand that the world works in reductionism – to rob us of the truth of who we are, then we can open up to the possibility of a greater dimension at play, one that cannot be found in the reductionist, linear form of existence that is so commonly lived today, and instead start to live the power of the multidimensional life we are actually from. Divinity can never be reduced, only we can expand out to meet it.

174. Understanding free will and the way it is applied so no judgement of another takes place is something for me that sets a level of integrity. I have also ‘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.’
     For more on religion go to;
     http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=religion

175. The term ‘being religious’ has been used inappropriately to describe those that attend church and live by the religion’s rules. That to me sounds like a dogma or obligation and doesn’t correlate to what the word religion means, which is along the lines of ‘to reconnect’. Therefore, you don’t need a church or any rules to reconnect with yourself and God.

176. Very true Michelle. When we put anything in a box we are closing it off from being with us. it is a way of saying ‘I have this thing, but I will keep it sealed out of my life’. God is all-encompassing and we have learnt very many ways to seal him off – through emotions, ideals, beliefs, judgments, thought paradigms, desires. All these energies swirl around us as we indulge in them, preventing the clear connection to God from being there . . an so blocking of the warm, strength and priceless love which is our own true nature.

     1. It is amazing to consider this… how much effort and energy we put into holding off what is innate, inevitable and totally natural: our relationship with God.

177. When I was a child, I used to always visualise God as this big white bearded man sitting on a throne with this big staff and overseeing the mess below (the world)…I used to imagine sitting on his knee and telling him my woes. For me he was never wrathful nor vengeful, just all understanding and holding and with such warmth. I know today this image is false, but the feeling of being held is true and solid… and this I still hold today. And I have come to feel that it is a quality that I hold deep within myself too and it is for me to share this and show this to myself as well as those around me.

178. The Way of the Livingness is The only religion I have experienced that actually matches my relationship with God – the sense of knowing that I have had always had.

179. The boxes we put ourselves and everything in in the world is so unnecessary and your sharing here shows this clearly as “In our hearts there are no boxes, only the offering of an ever deepening connection with our essence, and therefore with God.” This is simply beautiful thank you .

180. Not only have we put God in a box we have also put human beings in many boxes and forgotten our relationship with all that is light, for we all equally come from something so amazing, but it doesn’t look like it on earth.

     1. True – we seem to have created a box for just about everything – including of ourselves… all the while missing that we are attempting to squeeze an expanding sphere into a contained cube.

181. Michelle, I like what you have written about The way of The Livingness being a true religion based on simple principles of living in connection to our inner hearts and the divine aspects of ourselves which reunite us back to our relationship to God.
     It is so simple and yet we humans have complicated this as each different religion has tried to control the masses by using their version of God to keep everyone down and subservient. I feel there will come a time when we will naturally discard these old religions because we will reach a point where we will not accept our lesser lives; how can we accept lesser when we are all divine by essence.

182. Michelle, this is very beautiful to read, ‘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 can feel how God has been put into a box and how God can be seen as someone outside of us, who sits on a cloud in the sky and is unreachable, rather than God being all around and a part of us; I love this and it feels much more true and makes connecting with and being with God so much more simple and not unreachable.

183. “Why do we put God in a Box?” – as we put Him here, we have already put ourselves in one, our lives, and also all those we know too. Living in a box, is living in isolation, separation, convenience, occasional…I know that when i lived like this, my connection with God and understanding of Him was almost zero.. and that the moment i started to remove myself from the countless boxes, i felt spacious, alive, connected, real, myself, knowing, intuitive, open, warm, to find the knowingness of God the exact same beingness, and the ornamental box vanished.

     1. Beautiful to read your comment Zofia, and the expansiveness that is on offer when we drop the layers of protection, security, control and comfort of framing ourselves and others.

184. When we put God in a box we put limitations on everything we are divinely capable of.

185. Why do we put God in a box when he is so vast all encompassing and loving that there is no box able to contain his love, a love that is forever expanding. I know in the past I have kept him in box and only taken the lid off when life was not going to plan when I felt un-happy and unsure of life, It is an ongoing learning to accept that God is with me always and cannot be confined to a box or any religion, save that of our own inner heart.

186. Why is it as a child we marvel at the magic that we feel and sense all around us and then as we get older this is lost to many of us? Walking amongst and kicking the crunchy coloured autumn leaves was one of my favourite things to do as a child or jumping in puddles of water and seeing the droplets flying in every direction was another that gave me immense joy. Or I could spend hours studying the line of ants that were coming and going on their path. Such deep appreciation of the wonderment of nature I have only recently come back to as I have re-connected with my body and re-connected with nature and the magic of God and and all it offers.

     1. Yes, it is beautiful and satisfying to watch and be part of nature.

187. “In our hearts there are no boxes, only the offering of an ever deepening connection with our essence, and therefore with God.” A beautiful line Michelle and one that expands our expression to the divine and holds God as a living truth that resides within and can not be boxed in. God is a gift to us all and one that should be unwrapped and shared with all equally too.

188. The images and ideas we have been fed of what God is are truly evil. We have been sold a lie, accepted it and in doing so have shut ourselves off from divinity. Divinity and God surround us, yet for most people on the planet, we have no idea this is so.

189. God doesn’t fit in a box, nor a book; but lives deeply in our relationship with ourselves, the all, and thus him directly.

190. We are indeed fortunate that we have the reflection of nature, the Universe and the particles of our own bodies that forever remain connected to, in harmony with and aligned to our Soul, God and the Universe. This means we always have a reflection to guide us back to our true essence of God when we lose our way.

     Our thoughts however can come through our spirit as well as our Soul. And whilst we allow ourselves to run with the waywardness of the spirit, we are capable of all sorts of things that do not make sense, especially when we have in our childhood known so well the opposite – even as absurd as it is putting God in a box!

191. Anything seeking to box life, be that God or any aspect of how we live will never be true – for how can we fit the fullness and expansiveness of a sphere inside the confines of a cube?

192. Thanks, Michelle. I too can relate to the feeling of magic all around and within me as a child, and distinctly feeling the lack of magic when I started to go to church and Sunday school, which did not make sense to me at all. But I knew what I felt, so I searched for that magic all my life. I was finally reunited with a beautiful sense of wonder and joy through the teachings of Universal Medicine, as it brought me back home to what was within my inner heart so that I could re-connect to the love of God that had been there all along.

193. The Way of The Livingness offers meaning and relatable understanding to the saying “the kingdom of God is inside you”. I have not found that anywhere else.

194. Truly beautiful presentation Michelle.

195. Have we as a human race, lost sight of the truth of our divine origins and therefore our connection with God? And would it be fair to say that as any one person begins to re-connect with this once great past – they will in fact be setting themselves free from the boxes we have all placed ourselves and God in?

196. It strikes me that a lot of organised religions present that God is much greater and ‘holier than thou’, which is actually a big promotion of disempowerment and feeling lesser whereas what your blog reads is that we are all made FROM the Universe and God so should never play any less than that.

197. We have to open our eyes and truly see what the institutionalized religions actually are. Although there are people in it with good intentions, when looking to our history it hard to not see that all the wars that have and still are taking place are in fact held in the name of the principles and doctrines owned by these religious institutions and with that to remain or increasing their power. In these wars, when in the consciousness of the religions, we think we are fighting for the good, but in fact we are not, but actually destroying that what is real and truthfull to the nature of us human beings.

198. Because it’s better than keeping him in our shoe? I still feel there is a massive reaction to the word religion even though many say there are okay with it. We like to use institutionalised religion as a way to blame our waywardness and the fact we walked away from God.

199. It felt exactly like God was in a box to me when I learnt about religion in school or at church when I was young. How God was, in the box was as an ideal, teachings that had happened in the past, rather than related to our everyday lives. I felt no connection to myself or to God at the time, it was like a history lesson. Through The Way of The Livingness, we are connected to the magic that He is inside us, very real in every moment of our every living day.

200. I can see that it may seem easier to put ‘God in a box’ when the idea and word ‘God’ is difficult to comprehend and has so many misinterpreted meanings, however, when one ‘re-turns’ to developing that relationship within themselves more so, gradually it becomes clearer to see that God is everywhere – completely out of a box…

201. It seems to be a common experience for many, that we as children had a great sense of God and a connection to a oneness that we felt a part of, through nature or people. I deeply experienced this through both. Yet through the religious beliefs still existing today, we are soon taught that God is separate to us, and that our sense is not true, shutting down our intrinsic awareness and relationship to a greater quality of being within that is who we are in essence, and our relationship with God. We are indeed sparks of God, and it is through our connection to our Soul that we know and are guided to live who we truly already are. To truly know who we are is to truly know God, as you have shared – ‘..God is not someone separate from us, or mightier than us, but the very essence of who we are.’

202. We have been educated to look at life in parts, breaking things down and boxing them so as to understand them based on the way we have been taught to. But when we do this we miss out on seeing the beautiful interconnectedness of life and the deeper level of understanding offered when we view life as a whole rather than parts.

203. There is nothing that can contain the limitlessness of our relationship with the heavens when we re-connect to our true religious way.

204. The more I try and find God, the less he’s there and the more I try and live Godliness, the less Godly I feel. It’s when I surrender into myself and let go of everything – that’s when I find that not only God but the entire universe is waiting for me.

205. Cause it is better than leaving him in our shoe?

     Because we love to control things to suit our own agenda of individualism.

206. We cannot ever escape the magnificence we are or unending Love for we are of God

207. We reduce God to what we can manage, because we can’ – or don’t want to see – our own grandness, and that indeed,we are a spark of God.

208. There is no box big enough to contain the wonder of God you share in your first paragraph… an expansive, precious relationship with the true meaning of life that has not boundaries.

209. True religion is the simplicity, divinity and livingness that you have expressed here Michelle, very inspiring, thank you;
     “Religion is about living in connection with your inner-most heart, with the divine part of ourselves, with our essence”.

210. Why do we put God in a box? Quite literally so we can shelve our divinity for use at a later date – the ultimate game of delay as played by the human spirit that refuses to return to the one true light of the Soul from which it/we first departed.

211. Whenever we are truly connected with ourselves, we are in effect connected with God.

212. I absolutely loved being in nature when I was a child. I loved living on a farm where I was brought up and I loved picking wild flowers and hedge growth with my Dad and taking it to school. I realise now that I was feeling the presence of God, a very different presence to the one I felt when I went to Sunday school. I live on a farm today and although I know my place is on the farm I have not embraced and appreciated in full the fact that it supports me, like it did when I was a child, to connect to God.

213. We create dreams and ideals based on pictures of what we think optimizes a full or loving life etc.. this blog asks us to consider whether this process actually reduces or potentially controls the enormity and magic of what could otherwise be there.

214. The perfection that we can put God in a box implies that we have some control over him which after so many thousands of years of not living the truth of divinity means that we are not exposed in our arrogance and spiritual pride of these erroneous choices. All of course an illusion as God cannot be controlled like this – rather it is a control that we impose over ourselves under false beliefs.

215. Because it’s then easy for us to deny or play down his existence and the fact we are divine.

216. I agree in that I can feel a connection with God in nature and people which are everywhere and so to compartmentalise God into a certain building, ritual or even institution has never made sense to me either.

217. Religions of old kept building higher and higher churches to impress God and an attempt to get closer to him? Did this not impress on people how unattainable God was? Were Churches just keeping God for themselves, to be used as a tool to oppress the masses?

218. The reflection of God in the magic of nature is simply Divine and when we really allow ourselves to see such beauty is when we really allow ourselves to see and feel that equal beauty from within. The smallest detail can confirm the magnificence that we are.

     1. And the gorgeous thing about nature is that we cannot avoid it however hard we resist… our bodies, as part of nature, are always pulling us to see the divinity we are in.

219. Thank you Michele for sharing your experience, I was caught in the box of religion for many years, doing good, being good, all to be accepted by God, all of these lies about god and ourselves just serve to keep us separated from our true loving God and that part of ourselves that is the God within.

220. I was raised in the Catholic Church. Being good in life and obedient to the rules and commandments is seen as the path to God. As a child I loved it not so much for the ceremony, but because of how people came together and even now (not that I have been a regular church goer for some time) I can understand that this sense of community can be a source of inspiration for people. However in going to church each Sunday for 15 years of my life, willingly, I never felt it brought me closer to God. Others may have a different experience of that. But I has always felt that God was everywhere including within all of us. I also knew that we had a soul, but descriptions of our soul that I read did not resinate a truth. So when I came to The Way of the Livingness, I re-discovered that my relationship with God is my connection to my soul and it’s based on all of choices whether loving or not. Through this I have realised that I have always had a very deep connecting God, it always been there and always will be there, But my unloving choices separates me from that knowingness, so I am learning to undo all that is not love, which takes time, great patience, learning to surrender and deepening my self love.

221. Because he doesn’t fit in our back pocket? ( joke) because we lack responsibility and don’t want to evolve.

222. Companies, creatives, media people, inventors, business men are always trying to “think outside the box” to find the next money-making scheme that hasn’t yet been thought of. Ironic that we are then so resistant to looking wider than our narrow vision about the things that truly matter.

223. Putting God and ourselves in boxes ultimately will not work for we are all equally love and come from love. Once we feel this truth there can be no boundaries, lines or corners, only an ever deepening connection to our essence and an expansion of our love.

224. If we able able to accept that we are all God equally the richness that is avaible for reflection and evolution is immense.

225. Could it be that we put God in a box because we are simply scared of his power. And if we are scared of his power we are scared of our own power, as God is in us all equally.

226. “In our heart there are no boxes” – beautifully put. It occurred to me that a church or shrine or altar is also a box. We have created many constructs, built many edifices and erected many structures in the vain attempt to find or worship God or a deity and none of them come close, can come close. The beingness of God cannot be captured by anything that comes from the mind.

     1. Very true – we are searching for divinity and sacredness in all the wrong places, when all of the time these are qualities we all innately have, we only need to look within.

227. Isn’t it interesting how we often blame institutionalised religion for bastardising God, when really it’s man made and it’s actually us that have done it. Maybe that’s why we react so much?

228. Isn’t it funny how we don’t have any issues with God as a child – because we know him, we only have issues when we walk away from him, our innate knowing and ourselves.

229. It is true that there are no boxes in truth – how can we contain ever- expanding energy and Love?

230. This compartmentalising of our world, which puts god in a box, is part of giving us the chance to look at one thing and not concentrate on and feel what is the whole. It is our true nature that is connected to the whole, brought to the oneness that it is in the first place. It is looking at it from this oneness that we truly see what god and religion is about; connection and interrelationships with everyone and the all around us.

231. The magic of God always confirms the multidimensionality that we live within – pure science, pure love, pure magic, pure joy!

232. Yes indeed, nature is a constant reminder that there are cycles and rhythms constantly occurring which are so much grander than what our minds can register.

233. I never felt at ease or could relate to the constraints of organised religion. When I found Universal Medicine there were no constraints, instead the inspiration to feel truth and connect to my inner heart and to God, which is reflected daily to me by nature. Simple, All Inclusive and abundant in Joy.

234. How true is the fact that we never lose who we are when we are born? We grow and try and fit in the world and make compromises and can forget who we are. So, as you have presented Michelle when false religion is presented are we all just reacting to the falseness of what is being sold to us when we know deep inside of us, that is not true? The Way of The Livingness has a feeling of coming home.

235. Organised religion is based on confined definitions rather than the expanse of the universe that God is.

     1. Beautifully said, Vanessa. The Way of The Livingness is the only religion I have come across that does not restrict, modify, strangulate or reduce the sense of God I feel in me and see in others.

236. We can’t put God in a box – no box big enough not even the whole Universe. If we are putting something in a box it is not God.

237. As if we could possible contain God in a box! Only the mind could reduce God in this way. . . as for the Love, Joy, Harmony, Truth and Stillness that IS God way beyond any box the mind could conjure up it is more fitting to equate God with the Ever Expanding Universe.

238. When we understand the true meaning of the word religion, we realise religion is innate, we can not escape it.. even if we think we don’t believe in god, we can not deny that we have a relationship with everyone and everything around us.

239. We are given so much support from within us, around us, in the stars and the universe but we still box God into Sundays at church or study in the classroom. God is not something that is parked aside or brought out on special occasions. God is with us to connect to in our every moment, religion can be definitely redefined as a living experience in our daily lives,

240. Putting God in a box with all the restrictions, limitations and rules is a great description of how most religions have been able to suppress the truth whether by intent or by just following along without really feeling or questioning whether what is being taught is the real truth. This suppression creates separation, judgment and self-righteousness which is the total opposite of the roots of the meaning of the word religion. Thinking we can box God is an illusion, God is love and you can’t box love.

241. God seems to have nothing to do with organised religion. That revelation was a much welcomed one for me, for organised religion had turned me away from God, and as I now know, God is everything.

242. You can find God anywhere, in the way the breeze blows, in the smallest detail of the tiniest animal, in someone’s eyes, in the way a flower opens, in the delicate way we breathe… God is literally everywhere, you just have to look out for the magic of life.

243. “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.” I love this and this allows me to take myself out of the box as well.

244. “One could easily conclude that organised religion is a form of control, a formalised system that keeps us from knowing the truth about God.” And therefore the importance of always discerning if something that we see around us is representing what it says it is representing because just saying it does not mean that it is true as well.

245. I knew the rules of what society often says about God even though I was not brought up in a organised religion. These pictures of what we think we know rather than honouring what we feel is a huge issue for all of us.

246. We could just carry him around in our back pocket instead – joke! I don’t live it as yet but I do know absolute truth and this is that the kingdom of God is inside of me. I simply have to live it. There is no greater way to reflect and know God than to live it.

247. ‘The box’ separates us, one from another and is easier to control and manipulate those who step inside. Take down the walls of the box and we see, connect and relate to one another freely: we become our own masters.

248. ‘God is not someone separate from us, or mightier than us, but the very essence of who we are’. Simple and true, and yet for the majority of people not understood and therefore not lived.

249. We can only put God in a box when we have put our entire life experience in a box which tells us life is just what we see in the temporal world and that is all there is to it. We absolutely have to learn and commit to all that is in the temporal level of life, but with that we are to discover life is much more than this. We are made of light, the same essence that God is, if we accept the truth of God and religion, we will accept much more of who we truly are.

250. God can’t possibly be packaged and put in a box – for special days of the week, depending on your take on religion. Children know this. We all knew this, but institutionalised religions attempt to manipulate us and tell us we have to communicate with God via a priest, etc. No more boxes for me.

251. With any lack of joy in our day or in our life, we know we have lost touch with our deepest and most precious part of ourselves, our connection to God. It is a tell tale sign to look out for,

252. “…God has been put in a box.” literally so when you think of the confession boxes of the Catholic Church.

253. Nature too offers us the reflection of interconnectedness and spaciousness, patience and wonderment…there is no putting the livingness of nature in a box just as it is pointless to put ourselves, life or religion on a box for in doing so we are limiting grandness and seeking to diminish if not reduce its majesty into obscurity.

254. Yes, the message we have all received from the history of the Cathars is that you will be wiped out if you live differently to what is the accepted norm. And the crucifixion of Jesus also tells the tale that to stand up for love doesn’t end well either! These powerfully influential messages make us fearful of exploring our own intimate relationship with God our Father.

255. It is no wonder that God is never mentioned, spoken about unless you belong to an institutionalised religion and then the word God is said in a meaningless and empty manner. We all felt the connection to God when we were children. We all know God and know what it feels like to know God from our experiences when we were young yet we were told that God was in the sky looking down on us and we had to be good to gain his love. Some of us believed this to be true, I for one, and some of us reacted knowing this was not it and therefore turned their back on God, which I also did for some time. It is The Way of The Livingness that is rekindling my relationship with God, the relationship with myself, with others, with nature, with everything which I have always known to be true but ignored in favour of institutionalised religion, but as with all things truth comes to light; the way in which I choose to live has been reawakened as my religion and now it is my responsibility to live it to the best of my ability.

256. The teaching, ‘treat others as you would treat yourself’, has been made to be as to avoid the negatives in regard to you and in your relationship with others. Yet, avoiding the negatives covers a range of things (from the obvious to the subtle). Deepening the relationship with self is the starting point and this requires being able to review the negatives and to embrace the positives. From there everything is possible.

257. God is forever and expanding, God is Universal, how can God be put in the box…. is crazy how religions have put God in a box…… what God are they talking about?

258. Why do we put anything in a box? To 3 dimensionalise and reduce it.

259. “Do we put God in a box?” is such a very important question to ask ourselves, On asking this question I realise that God can be “boxed in” in a few ways. I have my version, I can take on others “boxed in view” and I can also judge another’s view. None of this brings the truth and love of God.

260. If we wouldn’t be love, what would we actually bother living. We are love, and we’re here to tick boxes or accept pictures of God or anyone. We’re precious, delicate, super sensitive beings that might have lost that connection, but never will life give up on us. We might give up on ourselves, but life will do whatever is needed to support us to come back to the truth and love we are.

261. Your blog clearly exposes the enormous harm and separation caused when things, such as organised religion, purport to be the truth, but are in fact, the complete opposite. Rather than empowering people to feel their own divinity, deepening their connection with themselves, with God and with each other, organised religion promotes judgment and separation by putting God in a box, only making him available if certain rules are followed. God is with us all, always, irrespective of whether we believe in him or not.

262. ‘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.’ – this is huge. If we choose to walk away from organised religion, if we are then not choosing to deepen our own relationship with God, whatever that may look like, and ourselves, aren’t we in turn walking away from ourselves.

263. As a child I would hear “God is all around” and if I asked how, I’d be fobbed off because let’s be honest, most of the time when those words are uttered, they are by rote, empty and mean nothing. Through reconnecting to myself, and therefore the Kingdom of God that is within me (and you too), I have come to understand “God is all around” in a very clear and practical way. All of nature, symbols, things that happen that are so-called coincidences, accidents etc. all of these things are God. The gentle breeze, the magical pink light of dawn, the amazing marraca-like sound of the pebbles on the beach being dragged back by the retreating waves – everything is a message from God to me. We talk all the time now – God is my best bud!

     1. Yes Lucy, knowing that we live within God’s body makes every breath and movement a choice whether to feel his love or not.

264. It is true, most organised religious groups do have God and what it means to be religious in a box – do this, don’t do – and see their religion as ‘it’. But what does this mean for the millions of people who don’t belong to that religion? Do they think that God looks down on them as being less? That sounds like a human trait and not something that an all knowing, all loving being would do.

265. Organised religion not only puts God in a box it makes us like a Jack-in-the-box that pops up when the lid is opened and we are squashed down into the box by the pictures and rules that we allow to manipulate us. ‘True religion is simply about our personal and ever evolving connection and relationship with God, with our own divinity and with humanity.’ It is simple and natural to us and it is lovely to congregate to share and celebrate this together.

266. Boxes, I used to collect them, put little treasures into them, look at these only occasionally and the rest of the time they were hidden. I realised how much we do this in life, hide and compartmentalise it, ourselves, each other, God. I have been gradually letting go of my boxes over the years far preferring a basket or two here and there, open, easily seen into, accessible. Beautiful symbolism of my own opening up and steeping out of the box.

267. What you share here is fundamental for us all in that religion is something we each must discover for ourselves.

268. God cannot be put in a box, God IS the box, all the particles in the box and everything around it, including us.

269. “God was reduced to a study in words – and I felt no magic.” The Magic of God is a constant living essence, held within our hearts, expressed everyday in the way we choose to live, connect, cherish and honour our selves and one another. The Way of The Livingness empowers us to study the Magic of God via every choice, word, movement and intention, restoring the true vibration of God to our lives once more.

270. “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.” its really interesting that so many of us hold this same picture, someone floating in the clouds. Where did these images come from? For me I think most of them came from stories I was told at kindergarten and onwards. I also think we end up putting things in boxes to try and own and make sense of them when the truth is far more universal,

271. Is not putting God in a box the same as putting a butterfly in a killing jar so we can mount it with a pin on display? Is God in a box just another way of ‘been there done that’ things on the list of things to do? Why would we separate something that is always within us and put it on display, when we are all that the same God?

272. Over the years, Universal Medicine has helped me to re-connect to the wonder and magic of nature and life, by reminding me that we live within God’s body and therefore are innately a part of the grand cycles and rhythms of His ever-expanding love.

273. It comes to my mind that a flower blossoms in fullness at one stage without holding back its joy.
     Do we live the same joy and in the same enjoyment of the beauty our life is able to deliver us everyday?

274. If religion reflected the truth then there would be a religious revolution . And there will be.

275. Live according to the tenets of your chosen philosophy or religion. Use your life as an ongoing experiment, and then you will know by way of how you live whether that philosophy or religion is actually true.

     1. Very well said and wise advice – ‘Live according to the tenets of your chosen philosophy or religion. Use your life as an ongoing experiment, and then you will know by way of how you live whether that philosophy or religion is actually true.’

276. It would seem that in so much of what has purported to represent God in our history (and current day), that there is a deliberate intent to have us remain disconnected from Him, forgetting that all have equal access to His Love… There can be no walls, structure, nor dogma that define or ‘permit’ this access, for He is far, far more than all of this.
     Great for us to remember, and not disempower ourselves in the face of what has been so falsely presented.

277. How could there be belief systems that ‘box’ and define God, when if one truly accepts His presence, He is known as being ever-expanding and embracing? It is we who expand our knowing of Him through such a relationship as you have so beautifully described Michelle – a relationship that has and cannot, by virtue of His very nature, have no end.

278. Nice one Michelle! I’m with you entirely on this matter and am also loving God ‘outside the box’ and in my inner heart – and everywhere. God is not a concept to be neatly packaged and sold but a being who embodies and holds for us a living way, available to all.

279. Very good summary Michelle of the relationship we do and could have with religion and god. What is most interesting to observe is the way each religion tries to shut the other one down, there is a fear and insecurity in their own religion that won’t allow for the other to even be recognised. We must wonder where this behaviour stems from, as it presents as very un-religious if truth be told. If god is love then religion can only be true when there is acceptance of everyone as they are, whatever choices they make.

280. Perhaps when we put God in a box we do not have to acknowledge the fact that the kingdom of God is available within each and everyone of us.

281. God’s communication in everyday life is very simple, very light, yet very precise and accurate at the same time. Today I was cleaning out a lot of my administration and when I went to the kitchen, a lizard was about to enter my kitchen. A lizard is quite uncommon in Holland and never in houses. At first I felt afraid, not knowing what it was. When I kneeled down and curiously looked at the lizard, it hardly moved. It felt like a joyous hello and a confirmation of the lightness I was bringing into my paperwork. How lovely!

282. Putting God in a box – that’s a great description of how we reduce and reinterpret what is not reducible and then pass judgement on the reinterpretation… instead of reconnecting to all that we naturally are and knowing the wonder of God by living it.

283. We feel and understand so much as children. When we get presented with the falsehoods and manipulated stories to encourage us to be and do something different from what we naturally know our mistrust of the world and ourselves begins.

284. God is everywhere and is so easily felt when a choice is made to look outside the box.

285. God is so much more than a guy with a beard. I love this blog because it expresses how God is in everything and everyone – all around us – God is like an energy that is everywhere. Therefore Religion can’t be confined to a group of people – it has to be universal.

286. The pictures of God we are fed diminish our acceptance of the fact that we are his equals.

287. As a child I naturally felt very understanding how natural it is to be loving with each other. Remembering this and seeing this ease within other children has been a tremendous support for me to return to as an adult.

288. God is in us, with us, and running through us all of the time. When we box God in any area, we are not feeling our connection to our own divinity.

289. For me God is the feeling I get when my body feels alive and warm from inside and tingling in every cell, very often from singing or doing The Gentle Breath Meditation, which is not a meditation to empty and lose ourselves, but to bring us closer to ourselves, a very intimate connection. From this place, opening my eyes, I feel and see wider, deeper, everything around me, God is in everything, nature, our bodies, every material thing, and our breath. He fills the space, he is the space – every particle is in his energy ever moving, vibrating. How far away from this is the concept from the mind that God is outside of us, separate. It has no livingness, it is dry and fixes things which prevent us from evolving.

290. Universal Medicine and the presentations of Serge have restored to me the Magic and Truth about God and religion in equal measure – and in this I mean the magic and truth I had known was there, but allowed to be buried under layers of deception and false light.

291. “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. ” Beautifully shared Michelle with a joy and the expansion of knowing God without the constraints and box fitting that he has been put into throughout time and history by our religious beliefs and ideals that cap us all to the simplicity, power and immensity that is all around us and we are part of by our very innate divinity.

292. “True religion is simply about our personal and ever evolving connection and relationship with God, with our own divinity and with humanity.” Once we can understand and accept this, we can appreciate that true religion is available to us all, all of the time, and that we don’t need to go anywhere or to be anything in order to know and connect to God.

293. At night, I love to look at the stars and all that space above us, I love to look at the constellation of O’Ryans belt. The beauty in the night sky is breathtakingly awesome and says so much about who we truly are and were we all come from. Difficult to put such grandness into words……

294. We live in such an awesome world, Mother Nature constantly reflecting to us all the wonders and wisdom of God. Who needs Sunday School when all the lessons of God are available to us every single day, in the giant classroom of everyday life.

295. The Christian teaching that got me most was that of needing to ‘earn’ God’s love. I adopted this with fervour, feeling that I had to earn every breath I took and this led to all sorts of self-abuse and complication. Living with The Way of The Livingness, has loved me back to the wonder you speak of as a child, when I felt and knew God and his unwavering, unconditional love in every pulse and breath of nature (of which we are part).

296. Thank God that blogs like this exist. The Way of The Livingness is a shining beacon for humanity and these conversations are the catalysts for people to start to unravel themselves from the mesh of ideals and beliefs and bastardisations that have blinded us from seeing and feeling the truth of God.

297. Is putting God in a transparent box, just a hologram of something religions what us to believe is the real deal? We can’t put the Sun in a box, and this is the closest thing we can compare him to, so a box?

298. I feel the same connection to nature as a reflection of the something more…something grand, beautifully balanced, harmonious that is reflecting the grand, balance, harmony and beauty within myself,

299. It’s not just God we put in a box, we separate every part of our lives, living differently in each part, whereas it is all one life and we need to be consistent within it.

300. In history and right up to today organised religions have certainly practiced ‘control’ and tried to keep those who aligned to the teachings/religion from doubting their faith and looking elsewhere for the meaning of God etc., but perhaps there is something very divine we can connect to from exploring the connection you’ve talked about in your blog that we feel to nature, magic and the ‘more’, and that this TRUE sense of religion is a threat to otherwise bastardised versions of control-looking-like-religion.

     1. Yes Susie, ‘control-looking-like-religion’ is a good description of how the masses have been dominated and threatened throughout history, by instilling fear that we are not worthy or deserving of God’s love and cannot possibly therefore have our own connection to Him with every breath.

301. One war is a war too many, so why is it that we continue to accept a bastardised form of religion when the fallout is so horrific?

302. ‘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.’ – Very true, and it seems like the schools and the education system has also taken on the task to make sure we keep questioning whether we are good enough.

303. Could it be that deep inside every one of us does know true religion?
     If we are from God or from a great Divine consciousness don’t we naturally, deep down, know God?

     Is it possible we are looking for what we know exists but do not take the responsibility to feel and trust this innate knowing and this is why so may go to church even though it does not feel right or sing to our heart in full?

     I have know so many people who have searched to find a religion they can bring up their children with… I too visited many of the worlds organized religions but nothing felt like the truth I knew in my heart and so much felt abhorrently wrong so I could not go along with it.

     The Way of The Livingness, however is brimming with Truth, clarity, Love and absolute inclusiveness which make wonderful sense down to my bone marrow. There is nothing in This Religion which elevates one or leaves another lessor and everything which naturally pulls us all toward Home to the beauty which I have always know we truly are.
     That is true religion if I ever felt it, and I have.

304. “I didn’t give God or religion any thought for many years and was strongly against any form of organised religion.” thats exactly how I was after growing up in the christian religion and feeling the depth of falsity, I turned my back on everything yet always knew that there was some truth about religion. Meeting Serge confirmed to me that feeling I had was true and whilst I had to challenge my way through undoing all the hurts I had built up over religion today it amazes me how fundamental and important it is in my life, yet how simple religion in truth is.

305. “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.” It is indeed very powerful to feel this inner connection that we all have access to with God, and it can be seen and felt in something as small as a butterfly or flower, to the magnificence of the skies or the ocean. It is all the same, and all a divine reminder of who we truly are and where we come from.

306. No wonder we have so much trouble trying to “find” God if our approach is to reduce God to something that we can control or manage, that is put in a box. The fact is that God is within each and every one of one and can be connected with in an instance.

     1. Is it that human desire to own knowledge? How do we not feel intimidated by something that can’t be measured and only felt, just put it in a box and label it God!

307. For me God is a being that I can connect to or not. What of who God is, is for now not completely clear to me. It is definitely not something outside of me or somebody or something that tells me what to do. I’ve always been quite offensive when people talk about rules, dogma’s, beliefs etc. But I am learning that these are just words. That I carry a lot of those beliefs myself, without being aware of it. It is very loving and freeing to let these go. God is grand and inside of us. And just like us, constantly pulled to be ‘more’ loving. He definitely is a holding energy in which we all are given the opportunity to surrender back into the love we all innately are. Eternally.

308. How important is it for us to realise that our images and pictures of things are not the truth of those things but a reinterpretation? Equally, how important is it for us to see that very often, we act upon our images rather than the truth?

309. I know this to be true …..”I am of God, as we all are, and in our hearts we know this to be true…” I can feel stillness, wisdom and love within me and I know I am connected to all from this, it is God and I am within God’s body. It is simple, humble and universal.

310. To even try to contain God or have any kind of ownership of God shows an arrogance…. after all the Universe is immense, we can only minutely understand it at best, let alone ourselves and the world we live in. If anything, religion could be based on wonderment, awe and an eternal openness. We are quite a small speck within it all, so there is always more to understand, and that openness and wonder could make for religion actually being a joyful experience! After all why be fearful of God when nature and our Universe reflect such beauty, majesty and grandness?

311. “… 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.” What a fallacy this is. How can we ever not be connected to God, we are living inside his body. The Way of The Livingness restores our true responsibility of treating our bodies as the holy temples they are and staying present and connected to the living warmth of God within us. Surely this should be the basis of all religious education.

312. I think to let go of our reactions towards the word religion is to take responsibility for the fact what we see in institutionalised religion we have allowed, allow and have been a part of. My feeling is once we accept we have been a part of this, then we can heal our hurts and move on from this with no judgment of others or the institutionalised religion itself, but be able to speak clear truth, have more understanding for people.

313. “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 felt this growing up in Northern Ireland, where religion was so clearly anything but being about love, brotherhood and connecting to our innate divine nature.

314. We are given pictures of God either as paintings, prints or as visual descriptions. We are given ways to ‘Worship’ God, but no-one in organised religions tells us how to feel God from within.

315. What do we do when we want to get more organised? We put things in boxes even things we can’t see.

316. Perhaps it is more convenient to put God in a box, rather than to regard him as an equal.

317. When I read this line “true religion is simply about our personal and ever evolving connection and relationship with God, with our own divinity and with humanity” – so much unnecessary junk/stuff drops away and I can feel the solidness and simplicity in my body.

318. It’s the third time I have gone to read your blog Michelle and each time the opening sentences reflects the wonder I felt as a child. The innocence of feeling part of the unity with nature was very nurturing and joyful. The simplicity of understanding that this is our union with the divine is something that can be a little re-configured by the thoughts and influences of other people’s experience. When I stay true to myself, my inner knowing, the wonder and connection I have, is my true relationship with God, nothing else is required.

319. I read your first paragraph and I remember knowing this as a young girl, and I still know it today and love the feeling of the breeze on my skin, the birds singing, the beautiful colours in the sky. These things make my day. I love what nature reflects to me. I have never let my connection to nature die or even rest.

320. And so our relationship with God is based on our relationship with ourselves.

321. I’ve often wondered where this striving to be good enough comes from. It’s something I feel is quite tangible in my anxiousness and striving but also so non specific it remains elusive and the question of am I hitting the mark creates more anxiety and questioning and takes me further from myself. It’s great to clock this game.

     So though my parents did not bring me up with an organised religion I have absorbed this drive to be good before I die from all those around me ( and the better start early to give myself a better chance of passing the mark and to give myself a harder time for knowing when I’ve failed). It seemed to me that no other place aside from organised religion even admitted the natural question of what happens when you die? Those who tell me when you die that’s it, never satisfied me but what if you’re wrong. So I’ve absorbed this ‘got to be good enough’ to hedge my bets having felt actually there is more to death than ‘that’s it’.

     But as I’m writing this I realise I have gone about responsibility and being in ways that take me further from living the love I am. Anything that takes me into worry or away from my connection with me, my knowing without doubt I am good enough, takes me away from allowing God’s love.

     This got to get through the gates of heaven with a foundation of we’re not good enough or even that we are fundamentally flawed is a monumental set up to not be love or feel God’s love.

     1. Yes, Karin- the catholic church’s ideals and beliefs have a lot to be accounted for. I grew up believing we were born a sinner, so therefore in order to be forgiven and go to heaven we must be “good”, otherwise we would go to hell when we died. I therefore lived with fear of not being good enough, needing to get it right, and not believing in myself, but needing validation from others, in all that I did.

        Yes, such a set up to not connect to who we truly are- Sons of God.

322. “True religion is simply about our personal and ever evolving connection and relationship with God, with our own divinity and with humanity.” Just shows you how far we have basterdised it – How could this definition commit mass murder and worse through crusades?

     1. I knew we were charging along a false path when I realised the number of deaths that are attributable to, and justified by, religion.

        1. Charging is a great adjective too, we push and push for something that just isn’t there, i.e. the answer to life within organised religion.

323. Michelle so true, control fuels this unrelating need for labels and definition which only serves to separate people by making them feel like they are required to fit in.

324. Yes I agree Michelle – it feels like God was put in a box to constrain him and disconnect from our daily livingness – to put him apart from our truly knowing him intimately. Of course, we are now realising that no one person can do this to us, as God is alive and vital and his presence is forever emanating and present in our day to day life. God is not meant to be set apart but an integral part of the way we breath and live.

325. For some it is convenient for God to be in a box as this does not ask them to look deeper into the own choices over many lifetimes.

326. Having just attended the 2017 Universal Medicine Vietnam Retreat – there is absolutely no doubt in any way, shape or form that God can be contained in a box, however hard we try to keep doing so – life would be simpler if humanity could accept the grandness of being Sons of God, which we naturally are.

     1. I agree Stephanie, however not only can most of us not ‘accept the grandness of being the Sons of God, which we naturally are’ but we actively reject the idea that there even is a God. And that reaction has so much to do with the fact that traditional religion has trussed God up and made him appear alien to everything that he actually is. It is beyond scandalous.

327. I feel God very strong in the way we’re all held and are offered exactly what we need in order to return to the love that we are. And we’re choosing, only then He can respond. And it’s done in a million different ways, sometimes very clear and obvious, sometimes it can only be felt through a word, a gesture, an eye-look etc.

328. The irony is, all religions seem to say that god is within you, yet we get so invested in creating him to be a certain way to the point that we forget the significance of connecting with our own body.

329. I really felt the wonder of nature, the magic of God reading these words and your final line said it all ‘In our hearts there are no boxes, only the offering of an ever deepening connection with our essence, and therefore with God.’. Simple and true.

330. I remember being in church at a very young age, it was a big old cold wooden building and I found it very scary and the absence of any sort of true love, was as obvious as the nose on your face,very confusing for a youngster when God was supposed to be about love.

     1. We come into the world knowing what God is, and therefore as children this discrepancy of what we feel and what we know is blatantly and sadly obvious.

     2. I went to church every week as a child and my recollection is similar. As I reflect on this I can feel how there was a lot of talk about love and of ‘going to Heaven’ – but not much, if any, about being love and being Heaven on Earth. Love was always something to be attained or sought after rather than lived and expressed. There was as a consequence little or no love actually present.

331. “One could easily conclude that organised religion is a form of control, a formalised system that keeps us from knowing the truth about God.” This is a great point Michelle. We can be so hood winked by something that has been deeply engrained in us such as religion, that we can loose any link we have to knowing the truth of something for ourselves, and our true connection to God is a perfect example of this.

332. A friend shared on social media the most detailed map of the Universe to date apparently, they show our Earth to be part of a super cluster which the scientists call Laniakea it is the most beautiful structure and when I saw it I was instantly reminded of a nerve synapse! Our universe is so breath taking and here we are in such turmoil with each other and we have forgotten to look to the stars and remember the sheer beauty that we come from and one day will return to.

333. “There was no sense of wonder or joy in these experiences.” I agree Michelle. If we are going to gather together to celebrate God surely this involves joy, harmony and appreciation, of God and of one another. I don’t recall feeling like that in Church or Sunday school when I was a kid.

334. Isn’t it the ultimate joke – that something so ubiquitous, ever present and expansive as God is dismissed and disregarded as not even being there? People describe things in life as being hidden in ‘plain sight’, and surely this is the greatest example. For when we see only the physical plane of life, our experience of existing can be very plain indeed. Thank you Michelle for making the huge truth about God clear to us all.

335. As children we experienced the pure joy and wonder of God as divinity living within us, in nature, the moon, sun and stars, without anyone telling us. How sad that ‘growing’ up meant losing this connection and moving from body space to head space.

336. If we ourselves are Divine that has huge consequences as there may be little need to look for God outside of ourselves.

337. When we make God “… a study in words…” this completely removes the magic, the grandness, the beholding of what otherwise naturally can be felt in stillness.

338. In nature I can marvel at the tiniest of detail of a bug or a flower and at the magnificence of the landscape or night sky. Both aspects reflect to us the absolute magic and order that we live within.

     1. Beautifully said, Rosanna. How could we ever consider trying to put the majesty of God in a box?

339. Nature has a rythm which works harmoniously together and is reflecting its natural rythm and harmony back to us. We as human beings and society are out of rythm and struggle through life no matter if we belong to an organized religion. Having been a member of an organized religion in the past, I never have been supported by this institution to come back to my natural rythm, which for me brings me closer into a connection with God.

340. Religion comes from within, it is a way of being, living and expressing, not what we say but how we say it, the quality of it. A Lived Way.

341. I always thought that the various religious beliefs about food were to help people in hot countries and I could justify it to myself, but when the Catholic Church tried to re-introduce Fish on Fridays except for the elderly it showed me how controlling their dogma actually is. On another life choice, I always ignored their ruling on birth control because that never made sense, especially now, in the light of all the unwanted babies whose bodies have recently been discovered in Ireland. It seems organised religions do not match the modern society or meet its needs, but cling to their own old fashioned beliefs instead of moving with the times.

342. Anything that reduces us to being less than God or less than Godly in essence is simply not true religion.

343. To put God in a box means you are only aware of his presence when you choose to go there, to feel God everywhere and in everything is heaven on earth and something available to us all. It’s our choice to allow ourselves to feel the divinity that we are all a part of.

344. ‘In nature I could feel a connection to a grandness, to something more than just the physical world and more than just me’ – that’s exactly what I feel is so magical about nature, the fact that you feel how you are a part of so much more, something truly divine. When we feel we are a part of the whole the world feels like a completely different place, compared to when we just see things from our perspective, as the individual.

345. Appreciating the wonder of life is confirming that our connection with god is alive and flourishing from within us.

346. It isn’t the texts that connect us to god, its our inner heart and then knowing of our divinity that truly connects us. It is religion in it’s most natural form, coming to terms with or Divine nature the ‘kingdom of god within’, which is a truly beautiful description of our connection.

347. I also remember Sunday school that had wasted my Sunday mornings, it was interfering with my playing in the woods time. It was just a box that was being ticked by our parents, that had been the same box ticking exercise when they were young. Most religions come with blinkers that narrow our view of the world. That was strange for teaching about a God that was all about someone that was all seeing. The Way of The Livingness is not new, it is just the original un-bastardised religion! God is within us all equally, all of the time!

348. Michelle, my feeling is that we put God in a box so that we don’t have to deal with the truth, so that we create a false version of God that means there is separation between Religion, Science, Philosophy when the three are interlinked and mutually supportive of the other.

349. Through The Way of The Livingness, a true religion I’ve been deepening with over these past years, i know that we are from God, from heaven, and so what we do to ourselves [boxing up or deepening to expand inter-connection], we also do to God and the divine.

350. “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.” So well put Michelle. We are conditioned from a very young age to think about God in this way, but how refreshingly inspiring it is to know, thanks to Serge Benhayon, that true Religion is the complete opposite of this, and that to know God is to truly know ourselves first.

351. I agree, our relationship with God has been complicated by organised religion, in fact the attempt is not really connection but separation; to seek, to worship something above and beyond us. We are part of God and part of the universe I doubt it not, to look outside is not it, to express outwardly from within, is to be with God.

352. If there is fight or right and wrong or rules – we can say there is limit. When there is limit there is no whole love. When there is no whole love, there is no love truly possible. Hence we actually separate ourselves from love, from God when we go into those roles, right or wrongs, fights and rules. Not the other way around. As God is God, he is love and will be only love.

353. The litmus test is that if there isn’t any sense of wonder or joy in God then it ain’t God.

354. “Christian’ values such as ‘treat others as you would treat yourself,’” – when I read this (which I have heard before) I was struck by the fact that we actually treat ourselves quite badly…we are hard on ourselves, we drive ourselves to exhaustion, we don’t look after ourselves – so in one way that is not such a ‘positive statement’ when you explore below the surface with it.

355. I agree Michelle, our heart has no boxes because when we connect to it, it is always open and loving. Putting things into a box comes from our head, our intellectual processes, and a way of over-complicating things and a way to reduce something from its grandness into tiny little parts in order to fit them into a box.

356. Putting God in a box provides a false sense of inclusiveness, of belonging… when in fact God is Universal, can never be contained and is for everyone equally so.

357. Many religions teach that God is ‘up there’, in the sky and beyond and so we grow up, or I did, thinking God was looking down on me and that I had to be ‘good enough’ to have his attention, or be in a really bad situation in order to pray for help. And so I didn’t have a good relationship with God. I used to sometimes say I didn’t believe in God until that was, I needed help, then I would pray. My relationship with God has changed a lot. I’m still a work in progress with it, but I see God in nature and shining through people’s eyes.

358. This is another amazing blog offering the truth about God as opposed to the organised and complicated religions that the world is full of denying our very truth and all we carry within ourselves that we are all part of by our innate Divinity. The Way of The Livingness is the living way and when connected to is beautiful and everything we know inside us and miss.

359. It is so true, Michelle, that in the minds of men there can be no true connection and openness to feeling the flow of the universe.

360. “The Kingdom of God is within you” is such a profound and powerful saying. Imagine if you knew the key to life was inside you – what would your next step be?

361. Boxes are predictable and can feel familar, secure and known but they will never deliver the depth of magic and joy we all deserve to live with everyday.

362. It is so great to be talking about God and the immenseness that is God not separate to us, but of us all. We are all connected and held in God’s love and so for ‘a’ religion to claim ownership of ‘the one God’ is an illusion. So great to be reading more and more about people claiming what they have always felt is true within them and blowing away the ‘what is not true’.

363. “In true religion there are no pictures or rules.” – and may I say, thank God! It is the rules that keep people controlled, and the pictures that create the wars because ‘my God says this and my God says that’ making those that feel differently the enemy which exposes it as not being of truth because love has no enemies.

364. God in a box is easy to handle as basically we reduce him to a comfortable size that won´t rock our boat of spiritual comfort. Being in relationship with God in the true nature of his beingness unavoidably will pull us up and out of what we have made life to be.

365. “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.” This is so true and something I had not considered. My family were atheists so there was very little religion in my family and yet I can feel how I didn’t go deeper with my own feelings about God and had no idea that my relationship with myself would affect my relationship with God. Organised religions have had a monopoly on God and they have preached far and wide that the only way to God is through their particular religion. I feel when we start thinking out of the box we can feel this is flawed and has no place in our connection with God. Thank God for Universal Medicine and The Way of The Livingness for showing us that God is all around us, that we are all Sons of God, and all we have to do is live in a way that connects us back to that which we know and have always known.

366. Michelle your reference, ‘earning God’s love’, as espoused by many religions feels particularly vulgar as it sets up many false and harmful ways of being in people. God doesn’t have any needs, including needing us to behave in a certain way. We have been given the freedom to act however we want for as long as we like, in the full knowledge that we will all eventually find our way home.

367. I have always loved to be in nature also and have often marvelled at the magic and wonder of it all.

368. For me it’s the most simple to connect to God and the Grandness of Him when I am outside early in the morning. The gigantic spaciousness and stillness that I am connecting to is Him. I also know my own stillness within. Now it’s up to me to be with my stillness within the stillness of God. So that we’re one. God isn’t a ‘thing’ or somebody telling us what to do or not to do. He simply breaths forth The Way of The Livingness, a way in which we are forever offered evolution. Not as a have to, but as an offering, a present because we actually asked for it, from deep inside.

369. As adults we can only shut down to the grandness of nature by first shutting down to the grandness of ourselves.

370. Great blog, reading this what came to me is that we are taught that Heaven and God is a place that we either go to or is far far away from us and not accessbile but in fact we can connect both to Heaven and God through our movements and expression with and through our body. Heaven is not something that is unobtainable to us and neither is God.

     1. I agree, Vicky. It makes little sense to think God is far away when we also hear that God is all around us.

     2. Vicky it’s a set up of the highest magnitude to continually trick the people into thinking not only that God and Heaven are somewhere else but that we (the common man) have no chance of getting to either of them. What a con and to think that it’s religion itself that is the perpetrator of it! The epitome of evil surely?

371. Although I have always loved being in nature and felt the quality that this reflects to us I have an even deeper appreciation of feeling God reflected in all around us and I have recognised this feeling within me. It’s amazing how quickly these reflections can restore our connection to this within when we stray.

372. That said, I have seen God in a box – a huge one, with all my kids!!!

373. What I also love for myself is how blogs like this make it all so normal. The word God conjures up so much for so many people that right from the get-go any conversations on religion are already infected with emotions and false beliefs. God should be one of the most frequently and openly used words in our daily vocabulary. Not the “big G” that it is for so many of us. Thus talking about it freely and openly is simply a great exercise and a great way to breakdown some of these ancient patterns in me. Thank you to all those that have contributed.

374. It is so incredible that as children we are so naturally aligned to God, we know his presence both within us and in the natural world around us. And then we begin the process of ‘growing up’, currently a process of being taught how to pigeon hole everything including God according to various imposed societal and religious ideals that separates us from the divine. The Way of The Livingness restores our connection to our innate inner knowing and the vibrant magic of God that we are immersed in, an awesome return to our natural innocence.

375. Love what you are saying here Jane. It’s fascinating to bring these conversations out and to have them in a forum like this; no agenda and no axes to grind. We all need to really open our hearts to seeing what’s at play here. No judgement, no sides being taken, just an open honest acceptance of the fact that religion is clearly are long, long way off course.

376. This is such a fascinating blog and just sitting with it, it’s so easy to feel the tension between what God feels like in my body and how it would never ‘fit in a box’. And yet, I still do try to squeeze it sometimes, or actually, it’s more a resistance to fully embrace the edge-less-ness of God.

377. Yes I too was reintroduced to God and my own deep connection through the living ways of Serge Benhayon – that was the greatest gift ever and it never stops deepening and expanding. I compiled some of Serge’s wonderful audios and quotes about God which can be found here: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-god.html

378. One box most of us end up in is a coffin. Do we ‘kill’ the truth about God when we put him in a box?

379. If you have a box, there will be things that go in the box and some that are left out. That doesn’t sound like God to me.

380. The contrast between nature and its beauty and then to sit in a religious instruction lesson can be quite stark.

381. The notion that we have to behave a particular way to know God is not true in my experience. To know God is something we can all do through our inner connection with Him and not earned via ‘good behaviours’. To me the lives of great teachers like Jesus have been showing us that life is first and foremost about who we are and not what we do. The doing may well change once we are reconnected to the truth of our being but this is a secondary effect not a primary one. For me, we are here to be love first and then allow that love to be our expression in life, not simply behave in accordance with a set of rules imposed on us from without.

382. “As a little girl I noticed no one around me had the same sense of wonder and joy” to be so clear and defined in this observation is remarkable, often I notice that when we are exuding joy and are full of life we recoil from the awareness this brings simply because it is very exposing of what is around.

383. This blog is really gorgeous, and you’ve opened the floor for everyone to discuss their connection to the ‘more’ which is usually a hushed and/or controlled topic!

384. Michelle thank you so much for calling out what you feel about true religion: “In true religion there are no pictures or rules.” I only can agree and because of all this pictures and rules most of us are not being able to see and feel what religion actually is – the re-connection to our inner most.

385. ‘God in a box’ just does not make sense when we know the expansiveness that is the universe.

386. Completely agree Jane. Today I can say I have boxed God and religion but before I reconnected to my inner qualities and the knowing the love of God and our soul can be lived in our physical body – I was not aware I was putting God in a box.

387. Michelle – with deep thanks for taking the time to write and share this with us all. It holds the truth of the words that have been so bastardised in society – love, God and religion. I felt like I was walking beside you with each sentence I read – very encompassing of the all.

388. The box that we put any-thing into is the energetic equivalent of a coffin.

389. When I was small at Catholic boarding school, God was my friend. In my teenage years I began to question who or what was God and then as an adult, God was an embarrassment. It was easier to say nothing about God to avoid being thought stupid or ‘religious’ which was not considered to be a Good Thing, especially for anyone with a science or engineering bent. I baulked when Serge Benhayon presented The Way of The Livingness as a religion, but he was using the true meaning of the word, as in ‘Reconnection’. We are returning to the beings we were through reconnecting to our innermost selves. That feels very different and makes sense in the light of everything else he has presented about God and The Universe.

390. Thank you for sharing the grandness you felt with nature and religion – and the contrary boxing of religion as you grew up. You are right – religion is boxed up for us – packaged up to appeal to certain people – but the truth is it is the same for everyone equally so and we lose the essence of religion as soon as we come at it from the head.

391. Michelle, I just loved reading how you describe nature; it’s so real, such a joy and alive in its truth…”The sound of dry leaves underfoot, 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” – the way of true religion or true connection.

392. It is time to claim the truth on God, and this is a wonderful and very appreciated opening up of this truth.

393. It’s no coincidence that the thoughts which lead us to seek an image of God are also coming from the place which does not want us to remember our true divinity.

394. ‘In our hearts there are no boxes, only the offering of an ever deepening connection with our essence, and therefore with God.’ How could we possibly put God in a box, and with that limiting ourselves and not live the grandness of who we are but a life by the manmade rules that are put in place by organised religion and other institutions based on culture, religion, nationality; to me this does not make sense.

395. It’s so exposing reading this. I realise I had put God being everything, everywhere but because I couldn’t put Him in a box he was out of my comprehension and therefore out of my reach – I’d put myself in a box that I couldn’t have a connection with God, that was only for others. At a time when not having met the age typical milestones of my age (more boxes we aspire to fit in), it seems very fitting to step outside of the containers and explore what is going. These feelings of disappointment and sadness may have little to do with not having had children for example and everything to do with how I’ve not stepped out to be with God and everyone equally, how I’ve not embraced who I am unreservedly or what each day offers.

396. My feeling is that God is put in a box by society, for to embrace God in full would dissolve the very construct we have in society. Yet as a kid we know God before we are born and feel God all around us and within us. The real problem is why we work so hard to crush this out of kids instead of all them to develop with their innate knowing.

397. It can at times feel easier to understand something when we box it in – but is it possible that in doing so we lose the fullness and truth of the subject.

     1. I say definitely Rebecca, because to fit anything into a box, it gets dissected into parts and is no longer whole and therefore we lose the fullness and truth of what it naturally reflects.

        1. I agree Chan – sometimes a wonder and an openness to not understand or more rightly, to not own information or understanding can allow us to take in the grandness of things like God or the universe.

398. Great image and deplorable fact in regards of what organised religions have done to how we perceive God: they have put Him in a box, to be taken out on special occasions, maybe. Equally important though is the fact that we have allowed it to happen, against our own inner knowing.

399. An old phrase of “putting the fear of god in you” can only be a controlling statement to nail you in the box you have allowed them to put you. If, you were lucky to escape the box when you were young does the fear, still, make you wary even with the mere mention of it? How messed up is that? Religions have a lot to answer for the damage they have caused over the centuries. The Way of The Livingness is the way back to true religion. How scary is God living inside of all of us, all the time, and offering only love?

400. There’s a lot of stillness reflected in nature. And as stillness is God, I am learning through nature about God. As well as my own relationship with God. God isn’t a doing, isn’t a thing, isn’t a manifestation but reflects himself in all kind of different forms. But to recognise God I am to observe life, feeling life, because if I try it to understand it with my head it’s empty and I am missing the wonderment that is so often just before and around me.

401. Spot on Michelle organised religions box us God and the organisation itself with the images, ideals and beliefs that they preach. Totally missing the magic.

402. I was interested in God and Religion when I was a child. I remember a Christmas time, one year, I made a little shoe box model of the baby in a manger scene. I was not raised with any organised Religious beliefs. What I find fascinating about it all is that if we lead a “normal life” and just do church things occasionally and don’t reflect any true Religion, it’s totally socially acceptable to be Religious….but if you take deep care of yourself and treat yourself as son of God, yet preach nothing, then heads start to turn and your Religion is questioned. Could it be that the true threat is someone asking us to be responsible and God is much more appealing if all you have to do is be good to go to heaven, not true, to nature, to your body and to one another? True requires dedication and good is just the other end of the bad seesaw, it’s an act, it’s easy.

403. It is true not many religions talk about who and what God is but box him/her by rules and guidelines for the followers to live like.

404. I liked your observation that organised religions spell out a lot of rules, including how to “earn his (God’s) love”. This is such a human re-interpretation of God’s love. It makes it as conditional as we can be in our relationships. God’s love is completely unconditional. It’s not directed at anyone or needs to get anything back, it just holds us all. The greatest love of all is allowing us free-will, to choose if we will, knowing we are equal to and held in that love, or live a lesser form of life and love.

405. These words are so very healing Michelle…”God is not someone separate from us, or mightier than us, but the very essence of who we are.” Imagine the ripple effect throughout the world if this was front page news everywhere!

406. If we build a relationship with the world around us, perhaps that is us building a relationship with god, and no-one need fear that this is going to put us in a box to be demonised, for it is entirely our own relationship, that we build on our own terms to the extent we feel able. No religion allows for that kind of flexibility. God is created falsely in so many religious bodies as a condemning character when in fact god can be a loving presence, which we can enjoy free from pictures of what this means.

407. One of the things I love about sunrise and sunset, is that people get connected to nature and the stillness of God. They regularly invite people to come and watch them, to revel in the beauty of nature and to take a moment to stop and be with what is happening.

408. We are naturally connected to people, to the wonders of nature and to God when we are born. But what is around us does not seem to support us to develop and deepen our connection as we grow up, and this simply shows how far away humanity is living from true connection to everything.

409. Even by referring to God as ‘him’ puts her in a box.

410. God is everything inside the box and everything outside the box, there is nothing God is not.

411. It was interesting reading this Michelle as I pondered on my own childhood and connection to God. I always thought I didn’t have a connection to God as I was not religious and neither was my family. God and religion was a non-event in our house and God was never talked about. I had put God in a box and thought he was some thing that came with religion. I didn’t think outside of religion you could have a connection to God or that God even existed. And I definitely didn’t associate looking up at the stars as a connection to God, I thought you had to go to church for that.

412. I felt that too Michelle, that in institutionalised religions, ‘There was no sense of wonder or joy in these experiences. God was reduced to a study in words. He became a remote concept which could be understood by the select few who interpreted the doctrines for us. With such beliefs we separated from our innate connection and gave our power to these pundits/priests. The Way of The Livingness is re-establishing true religion on earth by bringing us back to our connection with our inner heart and our innate divinity.

413. Michelle, you have shown us in your blog how accessible God is, and yet how inaccessible and separate from us are the pictures of God painted by organized religion. If God is love then we must be able to have a simple, joyous connection with Him, as you did as a child, and it need not be a painful striving to be perfect enough to reach heaven.

414. What you say here Michelle is what I have experienced as well and always felt to be true too, so simply and naturally expressed by you in such a way that it is not possible to not feel the truth of it.

415. Yes, you cannot fit God in a box – we know this as a child, it creates that wonder of the Universe, of our world, of animals, of discovery. It creates the discord with the rules we are told are our path to God, because we know, so clearly God is in our relationship with ourselves and everything around us. As an adult, I always admire that about a child, it is a wonder that I am inspired to live – the natural wisdom that comes from living in connection.

416. I agree Michelle organised religion is a form of control that actually keeps us from the potential of a true relationship with God, something l’ve also come to know through The Way of The Livingness.

     1. And this is a perfect indicator – if we feel control or confinement of dictation or rules then we can know that that is not of God, love or true religion. Organised religions have been created from rules and people. Those who watched true teachers but did not live the quality they lived then created what they thought was happening then the doctrine and indoctrination is open to take place. Centuries later we are left with what we have today and call organised religion which much atrocities have taken place because of. Hence the importance of us remaining with our inner quality and discerning everything around us – asking ourselves does it belong with the magic, the lightness, playfulness, equalness and love I feel with in or not? The quality we live is religion.

        1. Very true Johanna, there are some basic indicators that are really very simple to apply that expose the falsity of religion in all it’s currently accepted forms. You are spot on with regards control and confinement or dictation of rules. There is also the simplicity of whether something is encompassing of all, or whether it defines or isolates a particular group as being more special or elevated for their so-called religious alignment. We are all equal in the eyes of God, regardless of any outer ‘differences’ and so any true religion must reflect the fact.

417. This is so true Michelle, at best rules can bring us a sense of familiarity and limited understanding with others who also live by the same rules.

418. The way we attempt to navigate life, is by placing everything under a heading or label. That is ‘me’, there is the ‘table’, the ‘computer’, the ‘sun’. And on a practical human level you could say this way of communicating works. But as you beautifully show Michelle, the unregistered side effect is that we box everything off and say it is different, limited and segregated in some way. This goes completely against the natural way energy works in our life, that everything is connected and interrelated. It is high time we returned to these words and labels with the truth that we know – that God is in everything, with a divine flow.

419. Great point Michelle, not alone God will never fit in a box regarding its immensity, God is a livingness that cannot be fixed in any shape way or form. God is a forever expanding movement we all are part of and when we try to put this in a box, we have to reduce it to proportions that can be understood with our human minds and in doing that we remove it from its livingness and the continual expansion. So in fact we take a snapshot of God, frame it and put it in a box, an image of God that is only part of the whole and made into a fixture that is void of the actual livingness it is and will never bring us the full truth that is represents.

     1. And God is and will continue to be all he is continuously expanding no matter how much the limited human intellect tries to box him or religion or love.

420. Jane, it’s so true, we have forgotten to stop and take in what is around us, most of our lives are busier and faster as many race about often glued to a device of one sort or another. Children are missing out on the magic around them too as they are given screens to occupy and distract. Nature and the magic of God is all around us, wherever we live, it is up to us to take a moment to stop and observe the beauty and magic that surrounds us.

421. We all know God is everywhere and within, there is no box big enough!! Especially when we consider the size of the universe with its billions of galaxies like ours. We are surrounded by such immense beauty, constellation, power and harmony how could we ever walk away from knowing we are part of this.

     1. God is space. The space between everything.

422. ‘For some, as it was with myself, the reaction to religion keeps their backs turned to God.’ This was the case for me and was probably the catalyst to spending years lost in spirituality as I knew there was more, only I didn’t know where to find it.

423. “Why do we put God in a Box?” I would say: Because then we can ignore our responsibilities, excuse our behaviour and do what we like, because God isn’t everywhere, God is not all seeing, all encompassing and all knowing, he only lives in Churches, Mosques and the like, places where we can present a conforming attitude that is not backed up by a consistent way of life. When we truly face the reality that we are in fact living INSIDE God’s body wherever we are, we really have to smarten up our act. Making life one seamless expression of genuine love, truth, harmony and joy is our only option when we truly comes to terms with the fact that we can never not be seen by God, he knows everything about us, both inside and outside of the box.

424. I wonder if we put God in a box in an effort to control him – for otherwise he asks us to be more responsible than we are willing to accept. But when we do ‘box him up’ we do not have a true relationship with him, but we create a alternative ‘god’, one that we prefer and are more comfortable with.

425. Religion has become a strange entity of its own. It is the public expression of something very private and personal. The fact that there are many religions gives us something to talk about and something to fight each other with. Coming back to our intimate connection with God through nature and through our bodies there can be no fighting and nearly no conversation, just merely the experience of the feeling of being connected to God.

426. Great question. Why do we put God in a box? With all that beholding love, stillness, beauty, grace, power, delicacy, strength and so much more, why would we try and reduce it unless we were purposefully rejecting it for our own ends?

427. What you have written here is deeply touching
     “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.”
     The way of The livingness is so needed in todays world as we have given up on God and ourselves and seemingly in the ‘nick’ of time the Ancient Wisdom teachings are once again being presented on Earth to remind us that no matter what it may seem like, no matter our struggles with daily life we can never be separated from God we live inside his body, and our very particles that make up our bodies also make up the particles of God, so we are in essence the same as him, how cool is that!

428. “Our relationship to God has been complicated by organised religion as it offers a bastardised version of God and our relationship to Him.” A very apt description of the influence of organised religion opening the options for all the abuses under the name of religion to occur. The Way of The Livingness shows that true religion is not something learnt from a book or followed from a script but is something that has to be lived and the religion is what you live.

429. Michelle, I love how you describe God, this is very beautiful and helps me understand that God is inside us all and around us in nature, this explains to me why I can feel so grand, inspired and connected when I am in nature.

430. Organised religion did a fine job on making me turn my back on God, although some things made sense most did not, fighting wars in the name of God certainly didn’t, or torturing people or killing them for having different ideas about what or who God is certainly didn’t. The Way of The Livingness really does set the record straight.

431. “Organised religion is a form of control” such an obvious statement is one we perhaps should have reached long ago, and in spite of the guilt that is cast on those that choose to turn their back on religion, the fact is that those who do may in fact be closer to true religion than those who are practicing the interpreted scripts from a long time ago. Scripts that do not actually stand up to reason, nor reflect the love that was originally expressed.

432. A beautiful expression of what is true about all the complexities of how compartmentalised religion has tried to vilify and supress our true essence. Thank you Michelle.

433. I hear you loud and clear, Michelle – great writing, I can relate to what you say a great deal. The words religion and God stir a reaction in so many people, myself included – my upbringing and ultimate turning away from organised religion meant that I had a hard time coming to terms with my relationship with God and religion. The reality/truth is that there is nothing to fear, vilify, be concerned about for it is a beautiful relationship waiting for us.

434. We must be aware of our own self-imposed boxes that imprison and prevent us from being who we truly are.

435. Anything we put in a box limits us, can be controlled, manipulated and ultimately separates. Truth cannot be contained: it is ageless, infinite and universal.

436. It’s not just God we put in a box, it’s absolutely everything and everyone and the trouble is once we’ve put someone or something in a box we tend to close the lid, label it and rarely do we ever lift the lid to see if anything’s changed or indeed if our first assumption was in fact correct.

437. I love how you say there are no pictures of God, God simply is and the more I connect within to myself and to God the more magically everything is. There is no picture that could ever match the quality of love I feel within. The key I have found is starting with the love that I am rather than trying to get to love.

438. God is everything and by virtue of this fact, how can he ever be boxed?

439. ‘In our hearts there are no boxes’ – So true Michelle. If you put anything in a box, separate life into segments or treat anyone with more/less care than others then what you are expressing from this place is not love.

440. What a beautiful blog and a reminder that the magic of God we feel as children is always in us, it just gets pushed down when we feel no, or very little, of that magic reflected back to us in the people around us. We begin to lose our trust in it and search elsewhere. This search can take us down many roads and take us further from the truth of the magic of God and have us exploring many boxes. We can stay in the illusion for a long time. I also appreciate The Ancient Wisdom Teachings and The Way of The Livingness that confirm this magic for us and allow us the understanding and reality of the one unified truth.

441. This is awesome Michelle, as I too remember thinking why do adults not notice the joy of these wonderful things I notice. It feels so crazy to box God into theological areas instead of feeling and noticing the beautiful power of God in our everyday lives, God is in our cells, so is in every living experience.

442. I was so turned off by the bastardisation of true religion, as I now know orthodox religions to be. I know many people who feel similarly. Coming to the Ageless Wisdom has been a revelation for me. I now appreciate the amazingness of true religion.

443. I used to love the crunching of leaves, and playing around trees when I was smaller. I don’t think I particularly associated them with God, just knew it felt great to do. God in My Catholic upbringing was just as presented, and I don’t think I ever actually questioned it until I reached my later teenage years, then at 17 when I left school and went to University, I gave up on God altogether until the age of 55, when I first met Serge Benhayon. That’s a long time to be ignoring the Un-ignorable!

444. Awesome post Michelle, and loved your expression here – “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” – true religion blocks not, but reveals all.

445. With any kind of ‘striving’ – there is a push to do something for a particular outcome, in this case, a desire to get to heaven. Therein lies the insincerity – doing something purely to gain something in return. In truth, we do not need to try and secure a place with God, we are already with God, it’s up to each and every one of us to re-awaken this truth that is known inside us all.

446. I love the sheer simplicity of the last paragraph. For many years I know that I too could not find the image of God which felt true but this will always be the case when we start with looking outside of ourselves. The Way of The Livingness is a simple way to live and know God from within and then to appreciate the reflection of him all around us in nature.

447. I so agree that our relationship with God has been complicated by organized religions. We got pushed away from the simple truth that we all are the Sons of God, and our connection to Him is a given. It is our choice/responsibility to reclaim that truth – we have witnessed and experienced enough of the misery and suffering when we don’t.

448. ‘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.’ …. the strive to be ‘good’ feels quite insincere to me, something I found very off-putting. So different from our choice to live in connection with our inner heart, feeling the unity with everyone and everything, no striving needed as we are naturally bringing our love to each moment.

449. Michelle I had the same experience that ” you could only be connected to God if you read the Bible and/or went to Church” where as the power in what you share is that we are all sons of God and as God is in and through us we can be connected to God at any moment, when we really start to live that I love how we then become in constant Religion with God.

450. There are many pictures of who or what God is or isn’t and how we should or shouldn’t live in order to be ‘religious’ – beliefs and ideals that define and seek to control our relationship with divinity but the beauty and simplicity of The Way of The Livingness supports us to know God and all others as our absolute equals and to re-connect with the divinity inherently within us and all around us, to an energetic quality that we know deep inside, rather than a concept.

451. A very key point Michelle, that our relationship with God, is also our relationship with ourselves. This blew out the window the images of God and any belief that I had to work through any organised religion or beliefs to know God. The Way of The Livingness means I am able to develop my relationship with God unencumbered by any belief system, dogma or institution or religious hierarchy.

452. God doesn’t fit in any picture or box. We can talk or fight about who or what God is with words, but in the end we’re to discover the grandness of life ourselves. And by re-discovering life, we’ll learn and connect more and more to the relationship we have with both ourselves and God. How precious is life?

453. What a great testament to The Way of The Livingness! How many people such as you, myself and how many others have turned our backs on what was being sold as religion? What would happen if your blog was required reading in religious study classes in schools?

454. Thanks Michelle, for sharing your understanding of the forever holding kingdom of god that lays within us all. Fancy trying to put god in a box, way too big, grand and all-encompassing to be put under the control of institutions or man-made assemblies and reduced to empty words. We all have a deep connection with god and all are a part of the essence of god; we only need to connect by true surrender and an open heart.

455. Wow what a beautiful unfolding of God from the box that we as a society we have placed ourselves in – for in separating God as a concept we have separated from our very essence and made complicated the simplicity that we are.

456. Thank you Michelle! I feel early religious teachings such as Sunday School have a huge influence on us as children and I agree they take the joy out of our connection to God and the knowing that He is in everything including ourselves. The beauty of nature, the softness of the breeze on our faces as you mention, suddenly becomes about not being worthy of Gods Love, the need to see ourselves as sinners and that we need a Saviour or we are lost and cannot enter Heaven. Thanks to “The Way of The Livingness” presented by Serge Benhayon we know the truth that God is within us all no matter what our religion or Nationality, we are all equal Sons!

457. As humans we have an all ill-seeded desire to place things in boxes so as to give them a perceivable boundary so we can be in the illusion that we ‘own’ them. This is how we as a humanity have played ball with the evil of reductionism in a bid to play small to the true might and measureless majesty we in-truth otherwise are without these restrictions in place.

     1. Beautiful, thank you Liane. What I have noticed is that as young children we do not know how to place things in a box like the adults do. We tend to be very open, non-judgmental and loving. But along the way we learn from what we see around us, people choosing to reduce themselves, playing small and putting things in a box to perhaps avoid responsibility, love, truth and the list goes on.

458. God is by her very nature expansion; how on Earth can she be put in a box?

459. I felt the Magic of God reading this today. And a big slow smile came across my face.

460. By putting any-thing or any-one in a box we cut off their life supply and they become a static lifeless remnant of their actual self.

461. Michelle I felt like I was reading a detailed description of my life, in reading about yours. Such a well written article and you are so right, by reducing God to the space within a box we actually cut God out of the picture.

462. “the way you live every day and your relationships with others was more important than reading the Bible or attending Church every week” – Michelle, what you have shared here is very interesting as true religion in my experience also has more to do with how you are on a day to day basis with your family and with people, and the quality of relationship you hold with them, rather than the fact that one might attend church or read the bible.

463. Michelle, what I feel very strongly reading your blog today is how my relationship with God affects all my other relationships – as a child I too felt the magic all around it was just there, in trees and skies, and over time I fell into the straitjacket that is what a relationship with God is and became constricted and lost in that. And this has happened to many of us; we become what we think we should be and in that, we lose the magic we are and now I can see and feel how in fact that loss of my connection with me and with God affected how I’ve been in the world. And now as I come back to me more daily, I can feel and understand that in fact how I am with me and with God impacts everything,. I can allow myself to embrace God in my life in a way I’ve not done in a long time, there is no difference, I am me and I am of God.

464. As a young child I felt I had quite a connection to God then through formal religion I was encouraged to believe that I was a sinner and very far from God and he was something that only those in higher religious roles had closer access too. I fell for it to a degree though even as a child it never made sense to me because the leader of our church was a grumpy old guy who didn’t really like women- this was not what I felt God to be like- I felt we all have an equal connection to God.

465. I grew in a family that didn’t believe in God. I didn’t learn the word God until I was around 10 years old when I learnt to speak English. But I knew as a child before I learnt the word ‘God’ that there was a grandness and magic in our lives which I deeply felt and connected to. As I grew up the images of God I received seemed so foreign and didn’t make any sense. Also religion didn’t make sense to me either, so I just turned away from both God and religion because I felt something didn’t add up because the images I received didn’t match the grandness and magic I felt as a child. Now I have the same understanding as you Michelle about religion and who God is. I am learning to reconnect to my essence and to God without putting Him into a box because my connection to God has no limits.

466. The fact that we can react to the image of God and institutionalised religion means that we must know the truth of who God is. There would be no reaction if we knew no different.

     1. Rachael, this makes a lot of sense.

467. Michelle, I enjoyed reading your blog. The last paragraph felt like a prayer for humanity. God does live within equal for all.

468. Michelle this is a beautiful and heartfelt blog. I totally agree that 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.’ How reductionist is this and yet this is something we have accepted as normal for thousands of years!

469. What a wonderful expression of religion and God; in it I can observe how I try to control what both are any time I try to place a picture or a rule to them – how joyless this endeavour is! Organised religion is an apt description and this order I’ve subscribed to; even though I wasn’t brought up in a religious way I wanted the security of rules, the certainty they bring. I see this in life all around us, rules are everywhere, parenting courses, laws etc. And they’re needed because we are mostly out of control. But I’m starting to appreciate a higher order of life which I can begin to understand when I connect with my essence and the world at a deeper level. Letting go of the should’s and feeling the relationship with what presents itself in life opens up a whole new relationship with God.

470. “The Kingdom of God is within you “. When I first learned this I felt so liberated from the indoctrination of the Catholic Church, which tells people that they are all sinners. Knowing that we actually are made of the very same particles as God allows us to develop our potential to be all the glory and splendor that we are.

471. When we confine something as vast, grand and amazing as God and our relationship to him into a box, we reduce and diminsh the ways we can express and connect to God.

472. You just reawakened in me a sense of the magic that is with and from God; the sense of wonder and at the same time naturalness, the sense of order and purpose everything is constellated by, the harmonious loving flow of everything, the parts orchestrated vibrating together to make the greater whole in constant movement like the drops of water that make the ocean in the movement of the tides, waves and currents.

473. We are Sons of God and therefore come from God, so I agree Michelle we are part of Him and therefore innately know Him even though most of us have forgotten how to connect with ourselves and therefore with our innate knowing of God. We have learned instead to give our power away to some outside institution that claims to have all the answers for us, but they actually never add up. How refreshing to come across The Way of The Livingness and hear the presentations from Serge Benhayon that make so much sense in so many ways.

474. ‘In true religion there are no pictures or rules’. When I was reminded of this, it was then easy to subscribe to a religion that offered truth. Prior to this reminder, I too was in reaction to anything relating to God and to Religion, in fact the picture is so ingrained, that still to this day I am aware of it, despite finally finding something that made sense and also is able to smash that picture.

475. God was reduced to a study in words – and I felt no magic. Isn’t it interesting how many religions follow a set of rules or book rather than teach people to recognise a vibration, movement or expression that feels truly religious to them and thus dedicate themselves to exploring that divinity further? If organised religions were founded on the latter, there would not be the same ability to control groups of people based on what is written down or said by someone with supposed authority within that religion’s hierarchical structure.

476. The title of this blog tickled me, in the sense that only we (as a species) could take something so grand, and reduce the image to fit in a box.

477. Thank you a Michelle – this really shows me again how God is within us and all around us and in nature – a divine reflection back to us all of the time.

478. God is a living being that we can have a LIVING relationship with. This means one of joy, truth, love, stillness and harmony felt in every moment of our life. Religion as it has been taught for many many hundreds of years try’s to intellectualise God and understand His ways through dogma and belief and this simply does not work.

     1. I love this Joshua: ‘God is a living being’ and we can have a living relationship with him.

479. We have come to associate the word God with religion, churches, bibles and faiths or rules/ doctrines but are ignorant to the fact that we miss common decency and harmony amongst people, we live protected. If we were to come and let ourselves recognise the qualities which we love about people, and work with them, honour them then we would know a lot more about God, and would not fall for the mental versions which are void of the truth if God which is actually in a lot of these decent qualities we love about people.

480. What else can we do with God these days? He has been said to be so many things and yet all along he is just a simple connection away. We’ve been sold many versions and they still stand in the world today and yet none have really touched on who God truly is. The Way of The Livingness sets this all aside and brings us back to who God truly is and lights us up to be aware we are made in the same essence and so from there all we need to is truly connect and the rest is history. No more chasing anything else, just coming back home to ourselves. I remember growing up and even in later life always knowing there was more to the world then I was being told. Now I can see the ‘more’ and I didn’t need to move an inch. There have been many great teachers in the world that we have made to appear something more then they were. It’s not that they weren’t great but more what they were saying isn’t about the past, it directly applies to us now. They were speaking from a place, a true place of connection to God and Serge Benhayon and others connected in the same way are no different. It’s just that we don’t fully appreciate these people until they pass, we take them for granted.

481. ‘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.’ – Well said Michelle. It is time to claim ourselves back, along with the God that we know to be true – the God that is in nature, in the air that we breathe and that resides within each and every one of us equally.

482. The simplicity of what you have shared Michelle is beautiful and is so amazing that we all share in this amazingness that is God – the joy and expansiveness you experienced as a child.

483. I love how true religion is also something that interconnects every aspect of our lives through our daily living and that every movement can be a direct step made with divinity. How cool is that?

     1. Yes, very cool! I love the playfulness in what you share here. Religion can come across as serious and stuffy, something to not joke. Yet in fact I have found such playfulness in my relationship with God, and what I now see as true religion – one that is about building the relationship with myself and God.

        1. Absolutely Lucy. When we play and explore our movements we offer so much expansion and a greater awareness of how our body works and what feels supportive for our bodies. That is a true gift and a joy to have everyday.

484. Well captured in this blog is the fact that we actually diminish the enormity of love we may receive from others (by reflection) when we box them.

485. As a true religion, The Way of The Livingness is first and foremost placing everyone as absolutely equal. Then I feel we have to have all doubt removed about the reinterpretations of the word religion. The word religion in The Way of The Livingness is to rebind or reconnect to God through first becoming gentle on the way to love as it only possible to reach love from the place of self-love, which is after we have truly learnt how to be gentle. God is love and we are all returning to that love. There-fore true religion is returning to the love we all come from.

486. “In our hearts there are no boxes, only the offering of an ever deepening connection with our essence, and therefore with God.” Love has no boundaries, no limitations.

487. “I am of God, as we all are, and in our hearts we know this to be true…” We do know this to be true – as many question the religions that state ‘God is love’ then how can he have only one special son? We are all from God, and of God… therefore we are equal Sons of God.

488. ‘I am of God, as we all are’… so much beauty, power and grace in this expression.

489. ‘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.’ – beautifully said.
     Perhaps the fact that so many people have turned their back on organised religion is indeed confirmation that we have known the ‘boxed ‘version of God that we are being offered to be false.

     1. Yes indeed, deep down we all know.

490. ‘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 can completely relate to what you are sharing here, Michelle. I too felt a very strong connection to ‘God’, or the existence of something way grander than me, when I was outside in nature. Whilst I rejected organised religion, I always felt that there was something more, that this life was like being as school and there would be many lessons that I could either choose to learn from or not. I had thought that the aim was to progress to a higher form of being, thanks to The Way of the Livingness, I now know that in fact, we are here to re-claim who we already are.

491. Never put God in a box! There is no containing God.

     1. Yes, There is no box big enough for infinity!….

492. Trying to put God into a box is incompatible with the vastness of our hearts connection to God and the magic that is all around us. No wonder so many of us struggle with the pictures of religion that we have been fed growing up and choose to reject what doesn’t feel true. The Way of The Livingness religion simply supports us to build our connection with ourselves and God and thus with everyone else, a truly loving way to be that allows everyone to live outside the constraints of manmade boxes.

493. The Way of the Livingness brings us home to the irrefutable truth of our Inner Kingdom, a connection with a sacred essence that requires so special religious paraphernalia to connect with, just the simplicity of surrendering to an inner stillness, listening to our inner wisdom and deeply appreciating every aspect of our lives.

494. This is a beautiful summation “In true religion there are no pictures or rules.”…simply a deeper connection to ourselves, to God and to humanity.

495. Organised religion teaches people to not trust themselves and their relationship with God goes through them, the organisation. Whereas what is presented by the Ageless Wisdom is that the relationship is within and always equally there for all.

496. Acting from our minds is harmful, acting from our hearts is harmless. We’ve all learnt in life that if something is harmful or hurtful to close down our heart to turn off our feelings but in doing so we turn off from the truth behind the harm – someone acting not from their heart. This I feel is how we’ve allowed to have true relationships, like with God, to be twisted and perverted away from what it truly is. Organised religion tries to have that connection to divinity through the mind but what I’ve experienced is that God is within my heart and in my body, not only in my mind which does feel small like a box.

497. As a child I too shared in the magic of God in nature, As children we were always outside as much as possible playing in nature which is like being saturated with God’s essence. No matter what dramas were happening at home as soon as we got outside it all fell away, nothing seemed to matter once we got outside.
     And today as I write my comment the bedroom window is open to hear the Blackbird and Robin herald the day with their exquisite singing, There is no need to go to any Church to connect to God for he surrounds us all and constantly communicates through his grandness that we are part and parcel of his same grandness.

     1. Mary, I too recall a similar childhood experience, but more so, too as a child there was a natural ability to just be in the moment and enjoy what was being offered right then and there…so like you said, it is like once we got outside, everything else would ‘fall away’ and we would be free to just be again.

498. Your childhood experience of religion was very similar to my own, I remember asking my parents about religion and never getting much of an answer and certainly no conversations about God. I knew my mother wanted us to make up our own minds and that for her going to church was not necessary. I remember the magic of God and now looking back I understand why I would spend hours up early in nature before my parents woke in order to be in that connection, to be with God.

499. Michelle you bring words to something I have been feeling recently about religion not being about what we do but about who we are. Following a set of rules might produce good people but not necessarily loving beings. In my view, for this to happen we must make life about a connection to God and to love within ourselves first and then allow this love to be the Livingness of our deeds. Then we can be an active part of a truly loving race of men and women.

     1. God has no rules just pure and simple love. When we try to put God into a box we have lost the connection to God, it is impossible to try to contain such grandness that is forever expanding love.

500. Truly, deeply, beautiful. Every word you have written here is divine science being lived and expressed. Thank you dearly for this wonderful blog.

501. Michelle, this is really lovely to read, ‘God is not someone separate from us, or mightier than us, but the very essence of who we are.’ This helps me make sense of God, after many years growing up thinking of God as a man who sat on a cloud with a white beard, what you are presenting is very different and makes much more sense, it feels all encompassing and equal and feels loving, I felt I could never connect with this man who sat on a cloud, God always seemed so removed from reality and from me, it feels very simple and very lovely that God is inside us and around us in nature and that God is the essence of who we are and that connecting with God is simply connecting with our shelves -our sweet, tender, beautiful, loving selves.

502. I agree with your observation that adults very rarely express that joy and wonder of the simple things like feeling the breeze against their skin, etc. In some situations its judged as being a bit cheesy. At some point life becomes very serious for adults and we end up putting lots of things into boxes. Our lives feel disjointed and compartmentalised.

     1. So true, boxing our lives is such an imprisonment and takes all the joy away, no wonder there is so much substance abuse, addictive behaviours and gorging on food, we just don’t know how to cope with the emptiness we are left in when we give up our innate connection to divinity.

503. The interpretation of God as an individual demanding a religious obedience to a set of man-made rules with the lure of winning a place in Heaven where all will be lovely reduces life to competition, anxiousness and totally lacking in love. Universal Medicine presents the Ageless Wisdom that God is love, pure love, and our connection to Divine love is through connection to our own inner essence of love and this love is lived in The Way of The Livingness where the Magic of God is all around and through us and felt equally in all and in everything we are and do.

504. I wasn’t raised within any particular religion either and looking back I can see I felt similar to you Michelle. That I would learn about other religions but never really about God himself. I also remember that in a way I did not take them to serious and would have a deep feeling (unconsciously at that time) that it was not true completely. So this shows how we do know, innately, what true religion is and who God is which is beautiful to feel and acknowledge. It becomes then about studying this inner knowing instead of the religious books like the bible.

505. What I find interesting is that when we talk about institutionalised religion in the way we don’t like it, we talk about it as something separate to us, that we are not a part of, but have we accepted and nominated the fact we have been a part of institutionalised religion and had a part to play in what we don’t like.

     1. Yes Gyl – by holding back our permanent, real, and inescapable relationship with God as He truly is, we are not offering a point of difference to counter the separation created by institutionalised religion. Expressing God is expressing Oneness, and equality that lives and breathes within us all.

506. Your blog Michelle has reminded of a knowing I had as a child of feeling something grander and bigger that came with a very light and joyful presence, but when I looked at the adults around me I didn’t feel this in them and they didn’t seem to be feeling what I was feeling, so I thought there was something wrong with me and gradually pushed these feelings aside. I loved this feeling but the dismissal of others was enough for me to dismiss what I was feeling, and this is what I then continued to do for the rest of my life until Universal Medicine and The Way of The Livingness, true religion in every sense and one that has reunited me with God and the feelings I had as a child.

507. I like that you say we put God in a box, as it describes how we put him separate to us while in truth we are part of him and can find him within us by the mere fact that we part of this grand whole. It is beautiful to rediscover that the kingdom of God is within us and that there is no need for achieving in the outer but a connecting with in that brings me close to who I am.

508. The thing is we have been sold a lie over the ages of what or who God really is and through not feeling the truth or feeling the truth and getting bullied or persecuted away from the truth we have been misguided for eons. So it is amazingly refreshing to come back and have the light of truth shed on the subject and know that we can feel God in everything around us and put all those myths and superstitions to sleep once and for all.

509. A very beautiful blog Michelle, one that resonates with me in so many ways, as in your relationship with nature and the knowing that the magic of nature is God’s way of communicating with us. Unfortunately though the “pictures and rules” that we are presented by institutionalised religion are there only to control us and keep us away from knowing the truth of religion and of God.

510. “….God has been put in a box. In our hearts there are no boxes….” How true this is and how simple. For me to live in deep connection with my (inner-) heart is religion and it is a work in progress.

511. There is so much here to consider, for me I wonder if how we can compartmentalise our lives, bodies, relationships, work etc. all starts when we separate from our inner knowing, our essence that knows we are sons of God. I feel the fear that many organised religions incite and foster is a way to keep one from re-connecting to who they are and who we all are.

512. ‘There was no sense of wonder or joy in these experiences’ With True Religion we are awed by the infinite glory and magic of our own divinity and oneness with the natural world, universe, planets and stars.

513. I have a growing consciousness of how simple life is, if we let it and step away from the mainstream. Organised religions brought complication, control, impositions, rules and orders. We were deliberately sold a lie, led down a false trail, designed to serve religious leaders, governments and rulers. True religion brings our understanding of God home: it says ‘the kingdom of God lies within’ We have no need of intermediaries, clergy and prophets, all we need is openness, stillness and connection to our inner divinity.

514. Michelle, what a glorious blog on ‘coming out of imprisonment of the self imposed box’ of the consciousness that runs humanity and would prefer that we stay in it.

515. What a balanced, calm and uncomplicated description about ‘religion’… “…“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…”

     1. When the people remember that ‘The Kingdom of God is inside them’ it will revolutionise religion. Viva la revolution!

516. Stunning sharing Michelle. God cannot be put in a box any more than we can. How arrogant we are as a human race to believe this is even possible? I remember going to church as a teenager and hearing a christian sermon about the importance of attending church. The pastor made it blatantly clear that if you chose not to go to to church it was a one way ticket to hell. How is that for imposing? Of course it made me want to get out of there faster than ever but a small part of me was worried about what was being said. The seeds of doubt these lies plant affect us in many ways until we see them for the absolute falsity they are.

517. Very apt description of what we have allowed organised religion to do with our innate and very natural connection to God – we have put God in a box and ourselves in another box and peddled the story that there is somewhere or something to get to.

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