Most of us are familiar with the term ‘walking your talk.’
We usually take it to mean that what we talk, the principles we tell other people about, the way of living we endorse, the philosophies we hold and believe to be true and worthy, should be the way that we walk, i.e. the way that we live our life.
‘Walking your talk’ is very frequently used in areas of life such as business, sports, spirituality, health (particularly in the areas of weight loss, fitness and addiction), self-development, parenting, religion, education, and in fact any area of life where there is a perceived scale of goodness or worthiness against which we measure ourselves.
However I have seen most people, including myself, struggle with ‘walking their talk’ in practice. I once had a discussion with a group who were doing a lifestyle development process that focussed on remaining continuously mindful about how they were presenting themselves to the world. This covered posture, movement, style of speech, suppression of emotions, and general demeanour. They were very committed to this and paid a lot of money to do the course, promoting it to all their friends as well. But, and this is a big but, I could feel in those people an incredible tension of trying to constantly impose their philosophy onto their bodies according to their belief in what they thought was the right way. The effect was stilted speech, guarded demeanour, unresponsiveness to the energy or feeling of another person, second-guessing their own every word and move, and in effect living in a self-imposed ‘straitjacket’.
When it comes to gurus in many areas of life, I’ve noticed that the walking of the talk seems to be more difficult and more often unfulfilled for the guru than what is seen among the general mass of their followers (who usually reduce themselves and believe they are not good enough). An example is discovering that a spiritual guru who promotes a drug-free, ascetic, celibate life of mastery over desire, and constant presence and meditation, turns out to be indulgent, emotional, attention seeking, promiscuous, and revelling in power. I’ve noticed that the so-called advanced students of this guru (and it could apply to many gurus) are into drugs, all-night parties, pedophilia, multiple sexual partners and material opulence, while the face they present to the world, to their clients [in the case of practitioners] and to their communities, is one of serene, self-mastered enlightenment. Total hypocrisy!
I’ve noticed that many people who are great advocates of sport, fitness, physical body development, health and beauty, while presenting the face of their held beliefs to the world (‘talk’), behind the scenes live (‘walk’) the opposite. They eat lots of junk food, indulge in drugs, stay up late, party hard, overtrain, dishonour their relationships and compensate for the damage with health products, plastic surgery, top brand clothing and cars, psychotherapy, photoshopped images, etc. Again, hypocrisy.
And haven’t we all either experienced ourselves, or noticed others go through, the rollercoaster process of trying to lose weight and stay slim? Or get fit? Or be less angry? Or meet our ‘new year’s resolutions’?
What about churchgoing people? How often do we, or the ones we know, fail to live up to the ideal of living and worshipping according to our beliefs and then feel guilty and lesser for having failed to meet our own expectations and the expectations of our church?
Have you ever observed business leaders, lifestyle coaches, politicians, teachers, etc., who stand up and present (‘talk’) about ‘the best way to do it’ from the superior position of being a model of what they are talking, only to discover that in the day-to-day truth (‘walk’) of their private lives off stage, they do not live up to what they speak?
To be fair to people, we all have an inner sense of the true higher life, a feeling for what we could be if we were to live to the level of love, detachment, integrity, quality, commitment, compassion, service, and self-care that we believe to be a true path and worthy of walking. There is no doubt this is a true impulse toward our soul and our future life on earth. However, there is a big problem with the whole ‘walking your talk’ situation, and that is that we attempt to impose it upon ourselves from our thoughts based on a system of adopted beliefs in whatever arena of life we are considering.
The mind can take on any thoughts or system of belief and attempt to impose it on the body. Our minds can decide how we are to move, eat, speak, write, relate to others, etc. But if this is coming from outside of our bodies [and thoughts do indeed come from outside of our bodies, despite a deeply held belief among the majority of modern reductionist scientists], then what those thoughts are asking our body to do may be in contradiction to where our bodies are at and what they are capable of doing in their present state.
So if we are addicted to anything, be it drugs, sex, recognition, fame, work, victimhood, relationships, depression, wealth, being upbeat, looking cool, or whatever, then our bodies are energetically and physically configured to remain in that status quo and will have great difficulty rising above it – except in an occasional glorious moment of mastery and truly feeling the principle we strive to live constantly. But most of the time we struggle, not meeting our own expectations in the way we eat, sleep, exercise, walk, work, teach, parent, or relate.
What if by saying ‘walking our talk’ we have got it completely back to front? What if the truth is that the path to the higher life opens before us when we recognise that we are actually ‘talking our walk’ instead? That everything we say – our posture, our actions, all our expressions – are coming from the actual current state of our bodies?
This moves energy in the opposite direction from what we have been believing to be the way. What if the talking [i.e. our every expression] is coming from our bodies first, not our minds? What if we are in fact talking our walk in almost every moment of life? Another way to say this is that whatever state our body is really in, whatever the energy determining our choices, is what will govern what we say, how we look and how we behave.
That would certainly explain the difficulty we all have in ‘walking our talk’ – we are pushing against a great natural force with the inadequate counterforce of thoughts derived from somewhere else! And what if the difficulty of this leads to our applying an even greater counterforce of thought to try to overcome the momentum in our bodies? An example would be telling ourselves very sternly: “I absolutely will give up chocolate, I will not buy it, I will not even think about it,” only to find ourselves dreaming about it, obsessing over it, and pretty soon devouring it and feeling like a failure, which even spoils the indulgent saviour of comfort we were seeking? It doesn’t work because the thoughts are imposed onto the body in denial of where the body is at, the momentum the body is in. Moreover our bodies know this! Thus we feel the struggle.
While we go about ‘in love with’ our own thoughts, making plans, philosophising about how we will be, our body is sitting there being a part of the one universe and knowing in its every particle how to be in that universe. In effect, we are fighting against the flow when we try to walk our talk from a body that is in a momentum out of sync with the true flow of the all.
It has been a great revolution in my life to meet, come to know, observe and emulate as a great role model, a man who talks his walk. A man who expresses every word, thought, and action from the truth of his body. A man who continually commits to listening to his body and being guided by the truth it is expressing. So that if the body communicates (from universal knowing) that a food, a word, an action, or a movement feels to be out of alignment with the universe, he uses that awareness to make the next movement in the direction of alignment with the universe. Moment by moment, this builds a foundation from which the next thoughts and actions will come from the body, of a quality increasingly true. And what is the result of this commitment to awareness and being truthful about what is observed, with humility and yet with authority? The result is a man named Serge Benhayon.
This is not about worshipping an individual who has done something really cool that is difficult to impossible for most of us. This is about accepting and appreciating that someone, a fellow human, a brother, is talking his walk for all of us to see and to know that it is possible for all of us to do too. All we need do is open to the possibility that we have had it back to front all our lives, and that with this simple heartfelt commitment to listen to our bodies, to listen to our hearts, and to move in accordance with their communications (which come from the universe via our souls), then we too can walk and talk the joy-full life of grace, wisdom, harmony, brotherhood and unlimited love that we know is our true living way.
By Dianne Trussell, dedicated student of myself and humanity, scientist (BSc Hons), Goonellabah, Australia
Further Reading:
Self Care – ‘Walking the Talk’
Why Are We So Unquestioning?
Looking for Answers and a Game that No One Wins
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Surely everyone needs to know this from day one, what energy are we aligned to… ‘whatever state our body is really in, whatever the energy determining our choices, is what will govern what we say, how we look and how we behave.’
Dianne you mention churchgoing people in your blog, when l was a teenager I lived with a family to look after their young daughter. The husband went every Sunday to church, and it seemed to me that these churchgoing people go to confessions to clear their sins or consciousness so they can repeat the same situation over and over again. This takes away all responsibility for their actions and behaviour as the priest will absolve them of their sins for the price of a donation to the church. This made no sense to me whatsoever. It seemed to me the husband had been given a ‘get out of jail’ free card. Years later, I now understand why there is so much irresponsibility in the world.
We live under a consciousness that doesn’t want anyone to ‘walk their walk’, so it makes complete sense that many of us struggle to live in a way that truly expresses the magnificence of who we are. So when someone, male or female, can walk in a way that reflects a different way of being, we should all sit up and take notice because they are living in a way that is in direct contradiction to our current way of life that does not want to be exposed. So, our question has to be why doesn’t this consciousness want to be exposed and what has it got to lose by humanity choosing a different way of being?
We can live our life like a picture framed on the wall with one for each room and we align our life to the frame we thing fit that space, or we can simply apply the teaching of Truth and un-frame our life from the constructs that keep us from being able to walk in the way we live or as you have shared Dianne, live the way we walk.
It’s a completely different way of approaching how we live, we have in recent times given all of our power to intellectual mind-based intelligence and not considered that the whole body is intelligent, and when we take loving care of the body we can express and live something much greater than what the mind on its own can offer, as we can then allow in the soul.
And the way we walk is confirming our Soul-full presence. Opening us to be able to talk our walk from our whole body intelligence as you have shared Melinda.
Melinda I agree with you when you say
“we have in recent times given all of our power to intellectual mind-based intelligence and not considered that the whole body is intelligent, and when we take loving care of the body we can express and live something much greater than what the mind on its own can offer, as we can then allow in the soul.”
I was having a conversation with a friend recently and it was interesting to observe how they were relying on the intelligence of others to formulate their opinions based on what others say. If the opinions are coming from a scientist, Judge, Politician, Professor etc., we tend to believe what they say because they have been ‘educated’ so they must know more than us because they have gone to universities to study. But what if, what they have studied is regurgitated information? What if we listened to our bodies over what our minds dictate to us. What if there is an intelligence greater than what the mind can ever know that we can all tap into, but is being suppressed by the arrogance of our mind that doesn’t want to relinquish the hold it currently has over our bodies. What if we allowed our soul to have its say, what then?
It is seen in many ways as Dianne has highlighted that mind based intelligence never works, ‘there is a big problem with the whole ‘walking your talk’ situation, and that is that we attempt to impose it upon ourselves from our thoughts based on a system of adopted beliefs in whatever arena of life we are considering.’
Exactly, it is life changing, and if you are not ready for that reflection then feel free to look the other way because there is no need to throw stones. We have surely learnt that doesn’t get rid of any of the tension we are feeling from not liking the reflection.
Even if we do not understand what you have shared here, if we take a pause, speak less and deepen the relationship we have with ourselves, we will discover the magic of our body and its communication.
It hurts to be trying constantly, imagine how difficult life would have been for the sister of Cinderella with the big foot if the prince decided to marry her? She would have spent her whole life in blisters…
If you don’t walk your talk your words will always be empty.
If we don’t walk our talk this emptiness breeds distrust and given-up-ness. When we are empty and are looking for answers or something to trust we get very disillusioned if we feel we have found it only to discover the foundation of it is made on quicksand. There are so many people out there who say they have the answers and yet when you look at their lives they are not love filled. It is only through the consistency of one who does walk their talk that we can begin to break down those barriers to show that love can be a lived reality for all.
Michelle819 I agree it is the emptiness we all can feel even if we never admit this or express it, that has us all searching, as you say
“we are all looking for answers or something to trust we get very disillusioned if we feel we have found it only to discover the foundation of it is made on quicksand.”
Then we give up and live in the given-up-ness which keeps us in the cycle of the emptiness.
What Serge Benhayon through the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom offers humanity is a way to break the cycle of our empty lives and live instead a fulfilling life full of joy.
What you have explored here Dianne, makes so much sense and the more I contemplate it, the more sense it makes. When you understand that when we open our mouths to speak everything we have done, everything we have felt and even have thought, comes with those words, it makes sense that in that moment, we are talking everything we have been ‘walking’. Nothing can be hidden when we express, as we have already lived it and now we are walking it.
This really explains the truth to that phrase ” Expression is Everything”
Yes, makes total sense to me. When we want to change something we have to start with our body and how we are with it instead of imposing an ideal on the body from the head whilst the body is possibly anxious, nervous, tensed and so on. If we first be with our body and care for it in a way that it will be at ease, warm, surrendered change often occurred naturally.
Beautifully shared Lieke, thank you, it’s a return to a self loving and simple way of being with ourselves.
Imposing ideals on our body from the head do not work, ‘then what those thoughts are asking our body to do may be in contradiction to where our bodies are at and what they are capable of doing in their present state.’
I am deepening my understanding of how our minds can totally deceive us as it wants to control our bodies no matter what the cost in ill health and disease to it. We are actually taught from young to rely on our minds, when it is our bodies we should be listening to. How come we have got this so mixed up?
Great question Mary – “how come we got this so mixed up?” I was convinced, by all I saw around me and what I was taught, that my mind was the wise one, and so made my many decisions from this societally accepted seat of intelligence, and then wondered why I used to ‘mess up” so often. It never made sense; in fact it was downright confusing. Coming to understand what an un-caring trickster the mind is, has changed the way I consider decisions and how I approach life, and as a result I am definitely not ‘messing up’ so much these days.
Yes we are taught that our mind is so smart, and that we get educated to make it smarter. Yet how often do we meet people who are not classed as smart but have an innate wisdom that blows us away – also known as the wisdom of children?
Yes, it is our bodies that have and share the wisdom, why do so many people believe their minds have all the answers, when clearly ‘these’ answers never work.
We get pretty upset and feel almost betrayed when we see hypocrisy where someone gets exposed for not walking the talk, but I wonder how the whole thing really works. Because when it comes to discerning whether someone is telling a lie or not, we as a species have not always been successful. We sometimes hear only what we want to hear and very conveniently interpret its meaning to suit our own personal agenda. Likewise, even when someone is talking the walk, if our agenda is already set to say no, we would not have it in any other way.
Great comment Fumiyo, we as yet are not able to fully discern if someone has absolute integrity, if someone is telling the truth or not, and at times our agenda gets in the way of what we hear/want to hear!
This totally exposes the back-to-front, head-first dishonesty we unwittingly fall into when we even attempt to walk the talk as we would already be walking before we start talking. When they match, we call that honesty. And whatever we walk speaks louder that the words we utter.
What we walk speaks louder than the words, ‘What if the talking [i.e. our every expression] is coming from our bodies first, not our minds? What if we are in fact talking our walk in almost every moment of life? ‘
I agree with everything you say Dianne, we have no idea that our bodies are configured by an energy that completely dominates our movements so that every move we make is compounded in the energy of that move. Most of us are completely unaware of any kind of energy and how it flows through our bodies. I have only heard Serge Benhayon give an explanation of the two sources of energy available to us. Waking up to the fact that the majority of us are completely dominated by a negative energy that we then compound through our movements so that we are totally controlled by our movements and the thoughts that come with such movements. The only way out of this domination is via our inner heart the more we connect back to this the more chance we have to free ourselves from such negative movements that are imposed upon us through our lack of awareness.
Having attended some Walking Therapies with Serge Benhayon I now see more and more how it is the way we walk and move which affects the way we are in life and then what we say and express. The more I express from and with my body the more I find the words come naturally and are what the other person or people need to hear. So out with all the calculation and trying to please others and in with the truth and nothing but the truth!!
“I’ve noticed that many people who are great advocates of sport, fitness, physical body development, health and beauty, while presenting the face of their held beliefs to the world (‘talk’), behind the scenes live (‘walk’) the opposite.” Yes I witnessed so many of these people when I used to devour various spiritual courses. Over twenty years I got disillusioned with every one on account of the lack of integrity. Finding Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine was like a breath of fresh air. For thirteen years now I have never once become disillusioned. This man does walk his talk, treats everyone equally and has great love for humanity. Impressive…
So true, time has been a great testament to the consistency of the way he lives and the love he offers. It is very clear he talks what he walks.
Same, witnessing many spiritual presenters having a lack of integrity, made me very disillusioned with what was out there. To finally find someone, Serge Benhayon, who actually lives and embodies what he speaks is restoring my trust in humanity.
You can feel – on some level – when people are saying something but living another.You may not be able to put your finger on it, but often something does not feel quite right. But on the other hand, when someone lives something and then says something, it can feel super solid. You may not agree or completely understand it, but the truth is there, to be felt for all.
So true. That’s what I felt when I heard Serge Benhayon – super solid. I just knew from deep inside here was worth something holding on to and learn to live for myself. Integrity is so important.
Trying our hardest to be a certain way doesn’t last long term, that’s why many of us relapse into our old habits but when you come across a man like Serge Benhayon who walks his talk without an ounce of effort you can feel the difference of his presence just being near him. He’s not bigheaded, boastful or pretentious; he’s just being himself and loves deeply.
Serge Benhayon is an inspiring man, a man who walks his talk, ‘A man who expresses every word, thought, and action from the truth of his body. A man who continually commits to listening to his body and being guided by the truth it is expressing. ‘
The straightjacketed way of living that you have described is very accurate for what I have seen in many people who take on a belief for a way of living. Which is why the Esoteric Way of Life is so beautiful, because it has the potential to unlock a person simply by the process of re-connection with the soul ~ a process that can not be dictated to by any outer source. You are therefore your own master, and by this deep and meaningful relationship, the soul becomes home.
I’ve met many teachers and gurus. I was always looking for love and truth.
When I met Serge Benhayon I definitely knew this was different. This was serious, here was truth. Every cell in my whole body, knew that what Serge teaches came from heaven’s source.
It’s not always easy to get the truth revealed as we keep so much around us and in our lives. This can be very confronting but also very loving.
I feel Gurus are attracting people who are looking for distractions from the truth.
Very true Dianne what you write About Serge. The world is not realising yet how big his support is for walking his talk here with us on earth.
This really blows the idea of mind driven actions out of the water and explains so much about why for all our best intentions we don’t do the thing we say we will and why for example diets never work! Making it real and bringing it back to the body is sobering for often we do not want to feel what the body shows us but it’s the way back to living truth in a way that our mind driven ideals can never match.
Exactly, why diets don’t work, why giving up chocolate does not work long term, ‘the thoughts are imposed onto the body in denial of where the body is at, the momentum the body is in.’
Changing our walk is much easier than changing our thoughts. Fighting thoughts, emptying our mind and so on does not consistently work, but changing our movements is simple as we can make them in a quality we choose like gentleness or delicate ness for instance and this can change everything from how we feel to how think.
Yes, movements are super important these days. Walking with conscious presence, to the best if my ability, is supporting me to change my thoughts. A no-brainer!
It sure is Lieke, it seems to simple to comprehend that by changing the way we move and walk changes our thoughts but it does. I have tried countless times to think my way out of something now have been shown and seen that if I change the way I move what I thought was imprisoning me now no longer has any hold over me and I can clearly see it for what it was.
Movements can and do affect our thoughts, so how important are the quality of our movements.
Love the turn around Dianne, indeed if we just simply talk from how we actually live life would be at least honest.
The way Serge Benhayon absolutely without question walks his talk, is the only reason that has confirmed to me that he is presenting a truth that cannot be likened to anything else. The Ageless Wisdom has depths that are beyond our comprehension, yet what Serge is a master at is making it everyday, hence The Way of The Livingness.
It is a simple motto: Talk what you walk and walk what you talk. At least that would be honest and authentic and can be accepted as a process of developing transparency. But then there is still the crucial matter of quality we need to start with as it is the energetic quality we choose that will be expressed in movement and words. What true good does authenticity when the quality of what is expressed lacks love for people, is void of harmony and or is less than the truth we all can recognize to be the one truth?
It is the crucial quality – that’s when we deepen everything to align to God’s loving pulse.
After a presentation by Natalie Benhayon today the walking and talking side of things got highlighted in the sense of whenever we are going to say something the quality of what comes out of our mouth is based on the movements that have led to this point in time. We could say that the talk was walked before even a word was articulated and in the same way the quality in which we talked will imprint the quality of the walk thereafter. In other words, walking and talking and walking are a continuum and nothing separate.
What you have said makes sense Alexander Braun, Twice a week there is a sales meeting of the ‘local team’ at the start of the working day and every time a particular person speaks they give themselves away to be in a depressed state even though they may say they are fine, maybe just a bit tired. The way they articulate their voice gives them away. We can fool ourselves and we do constantly but our bodies whether through movement or voice will give us away every time. There is a science that we do not take into consideration and that is as you say Alexander the talk was walked before even a word was articulated.
Unfortunately there have been many lies spread about Serge Benhayon but in the 13 years since I met him I cannot see any truth in the allegations made against him. In fact there is more integrity and decency in him and his standards are way higher than other body work organisations I have visited or been involved with.