668 thoughts on “The Catholic Church and Sexual Repression”

1. Claiming a true intimacy and integrity within your own body is felt by others.

2. Everyone is innately delicate and beautiful. Even the most horrible people you can think of weren’t that way when they were days old. It’s systems like these that are designed to crush our sensitive, loving nature. If left to be, those gaining from such supremacy would have nothing..

3. A religion that doesn’t talk about relationships is not a religion because religion is about relationship! We are in relationship with everything and everyone around us, so it is actually impossible not to be religious. However, when we have a world that makes religion about ‘my way or the high way’ then no wonder there are so many of us who would or have found it very difficult to say they have a religion or are religious.

4. The Catholic Churches treatment of women and the child abuse that was accepted and hidden by the church, is this the tip of the iceberg?

   1. This is one of the reasons I find it so hard to accept religion, so much horror is played out in the name of religion that completely exposes the roots of the religion cannot be in Love because Love would never consider abusing another.

   2. I suspect there is a lot more that the Catholic Church is responsible for, that they are behind many less than loving situations.

5. Wow you nail this Carmel, excellent unfortunately you speak also for many other religions that have seemed to squash the natural innocent sexiness of a women.

6. The Catholic Church establish a way of living that is based on being celibate whereas it is an organization with numerous cases of sexual abuse towards children. This exposes the falseness and the lack of transparency in which some priests and nuns operates, allowing this to happen behind the scenes while words like ‘hope’, ‘faith’, ‘peace’ or ‘love’ are spoken in their celebrations. It simply makes no sense. I hate this kind of manipulation and I love having the reflection from Serge Benhayon and other presenters from Universal Medicine who live with integrity and walk their talks. In my experience every presentation makes sense to me, not because I believe what they say but because I can feel and discern from my body what is Truth. Every presentation is delivered with such care, transparency and from a place of true equality that makes me feel inspired, like an equal important part of the group. For me they are the teachers I’ve ever wanted, the ones who ignites my power and invites me to explore how my essence looks like as a woman.

   1. I am sure there has been a point in the life of every Catholic where they have questioned Catholicism and have had doubts as to the veracity of what they are being sold. I was brought up as a Catholic and was certainly in this camp. With the Ageless Wisdom there isn’t a smidgen of a doubt in my entire body!

      1. With the recent exposure of the corruption of the Catholic church with all the sex offending it is a wonder why there are still so many practicing Catholics. At some point we have to look at this corruption and honestly ask ourselves if this institution really does what is says it does on the box, or honestly admit that we have been hooked into something (the allowing of which is ours to look at responsibily) that never had our best interests at heart but was rather more self serving without any true connection to God and to the love of God.

      2. I like the question Carmel poses in this blog, ‘Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?’

   2. It is fantastic to finally have Truth presented by Serge Benhayon, from a man who lives with integrity, transparency and humbleness.

7. A woman who has reclaimed her sacredness within her body can’t ever be fooled. She knows very well what is and what is not. She doesn’t let anybody else tell her how she should or shouldn’t be and feel. There is more for us as women, we deserve to be living naturally in connection with our body, which is sacred and pure by nature. We don’t need to be apologetic or shameful because we love, enjoy and explore how our very essence looks . One of the things that inspires me most from Natalie Benhayon and many other women like you Carmel, is their permission to just be, free of any rules or impositions, the power and beauty you all emanate feels very precious and nurturing, thanks for sharing.

8. It never occurred to me that the nuns along with children would be a target for sexual abuse. Everything is coming to light and being outed.

   1. For lies to exist, they need energy to support them. It is estimated that the Vatican is worth $30 billion. Does money buy silence?

      1. Wow, what do they do with all that money?

   2. Yes Julie, it didn’t really occur to me either because no one has talked about it before. The shame these women must have been living with must have been acute for the conversation only to have started now. The rot is to the core of the institution and it certainly needs exposing.

   3. It is great that the lies are being exposed.

9. There’s this polarization when it comes to sexuality – repression or gratification, and it almost feels like there is this desperate effort to not hit the bull’s eye, as if we are having to make it into anything other than the simplest of what already is, by not accepting and appreciating ourselves for who we are.

   1. It’s interesting how no one can really define the difference between sex and making love. We can use sex as a distraction, a way of getting recognition, satisfying a need for intimacy or as a tool of relief, which is a far cry from the tender celebration of oneself that one brings to a partner, who in turn is celebrating of themselves. This union under this circumstance is absolute in its confirmation for the pair as one, with no need, repression or gratification in sight.

      1. Amazing michelle819, thank you. I can feel the difference between the two in my body when you share.

10. When I was reading this blog, I could feel many memories of sexual repression, or sexual ramifications/punishments for partaking in what is naturally with in us.

    If we look at the animal kingdom, they follow the cycles of the female, along comes a male and then months down the track, the litter etc. are born. There is no repression, there is no impositions, no beliefs, churches temples, synagogues, etc, it is innately in us. No one or thing bastardises it.

    Years ago, when I was a studying a pre-nursing course, I have never forgotten an experience when I visited a mental health hospital. In this place was a woman, who was probably in her 60’s or 70’s, had difficulty interacting / communicating. What was sad was the fact that she had been incarcerated for getting pregnant out of wedlock. The child, I believe was placed in an orphanage and she was placed in a mental institute from a very young age. So it was a no wonder this woman had no social skills, and was dependent on cigarettes. All I saw was this body walking around, and there was nothing in there.

    A sad state of affairs, when a human being can do this to another human being. A system can do this to a human being. A family that would allow this to happen, with their belief systems or ways of treating another human being.

    There is much to ponder and question with the state of this world, religion being one of them.

    1. As a society we have really allowed the beliefs that have come through the church’s teachings to have a number on us.. The cruelty we have inflicted on women, just because they are women and reproduce simply doesn’t make sense and yet as women we have aligned to the sexual repression, subscribed to the notion that we are lesser, have lived for eons unclaimed in our authority and true delicacy. Collectively we have chosen this and the fall out has been heavy on us all – not just for us but on the whole of society.

11. We the people have turned a blind eye to the sexual abuse the Catholic church is built on, otherwise, it wouldn’t have been able to continue for so long.

    1. By not speaking up, and expressing the Truth we allow the lies and abuse to continue.

12. When such preposterously false man-made ideals and sentiments are ascribed to God, it becomes clear that there is no aspect of any institutionalised religion that can or should be taken for granted as being true to what they purport to be conveying. Everything ought be discerned, and throughout history there have sure been plenty of lies and atrocities sold under the banner of “the will of God”.

    1. What I find preposterous is that not only are man-made ideals and sentiments about God made, they are be felt to be false, and then they attract so many followers!

    2. Institutionalised religion is responsible for turning people away from religion, and God, showing the importance of each of us discerning the quality of energy in everything , and calling out that which is not true.

13. Yes, the rebellion and the repression are two sides of the same coin – both are empty and devoid of truth. In the rebellion are we being any more honest than those who impose? To get under the hurt of the imposition we need to get really honest about what our own ideals and beliefs are and to take responsibility for our own choices and where we have been loveless too, especially towards ourselves.

14. “Why are we women not taught to honour and express how we feel? We have been encouraged to be martyrs, do ‘good deeds’ and to put everyone else’s needs before our own.” This is still so prevalent and as you go on to say our sacredness is denied. Time to reclaim it for ourselves.

    1. There is no-one more stunning, powerful, authoritative, playful or sexy than a woman who walks claimed in her sacredness.

15. “Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?” It is because the church is not about empowering people to be themselves. It is an institution whose priority is to maintain its authority, power and dominance at any cost – how they have covered up the sexual abuse within the church is living proof of this.

    1. The hypocrisy of the church is fully exposed when its claim that it represents the word of God and love is juxtaposed with its actions. The way the church operates and behaves is far, far from loving. I am incredulous that it still has a such a huge following and yet so it does. We may think we can accept some parts of it over another, but energetically we are getting the whole package. When we say yes to some of it we are in fact saying yes to it all, whether we like it or not. It is our responsibility to be aware of this and to understand what it is we are saying yes to.

16. Great blog Carmel. Thank you for raising the conversation. It’s interesting how women are not encouraged to feel the sacredness that comes from their bodies and to live from that connection.
    There are so many levels of suppression in our society to downplay and stop the absolute beauty and sacredness women hold, it’s almost at us from every angle. Billboards with cheap pictures, women’s magazines, media and also the social norms about what is ok with sexual abuse and what is not. I personally have found that even having a relationship with my feminine self has always been clouded by so much in every way. Even from being embarrassed about having periods, or feeling sexy and how I will be perceived.

    1. That is my experience of women who have been brought up as catholics, this is a huge consciousness, ‘My experience of the Catholic Church was that the teachings made all women feel unworthy, like second-class citizens’.

17. “Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?” This is a very pertinent question, and one that, if true, would potentially expose much controversy about the Catholic Church.

18. The word shame comes to me when I read about repression. There’s no understanding and no love in repression, only judgement and condemnation of not just the behaviour but who we are in essence. This is a great tool for controlling people- it’s dealing in the commodity of redemption in exchange for conformity and subservience. This is pretty disgusting.

    1. Karin, this is so clearly expressed. When we are owned by a consciousness it is really difficult to see the wood for the trees. The clarity you offer is testament to the fact that you have broken free of it and in your expression you present with authority that there is another way.

19. Just considering how suppression and oppression are one side of the coin with expression on the other.

20. When I consider the changes in my relationship with my body since working with Universal Medicine it is nothing short of a miracle. From loathing and disdain I now spend more time knowing the sassiness and sexiness that my body is and expresses, and that these qualities are part of the sacredness of every woman.

    1. This is amazing Matilda. I had such self-hatred for myself and my body prior to working with Universal Medicine and have now connected to a sacredness I never knew was possible. I also know the choices I’ve made that result in me not feeling this. This is very empowering whereas before I choose to remain blind to what I was choosing.

    2. Totally awesome Matilda. I have experienced the same where I have come from abject self loathing which manifested in lack of confidence, huge personal judgment and criticism of my body. Now I absolutely love being a woman and there isn’t one part of my body (which is ageing) that I would even consider criticising being much more accepting and in love with who I am and what I bring. To me, a miracle of healing and as such I couldn’t appreciate everything Universal Medicine has brought me more.

21. The Catholic Church has a lot to answer to in the way it has behaved towards others, especially around abuse. I get the feeling that it still thinks itself untouchable and unanswerable to the law. This is in every way shape and form completely unacceptable.

    1. The corruption within the Catholic church is ever so slowly getting exposed. Yes – it still has the pall of the medieval around it, of the dark ages, of the denial of responsibility it has to the people it professes to serve. It keeps them low so that it can manipulate and control and this corruption runs so deeply that it is not seen from within but is covered up with a piousness that professes to be love that is far from the truth.

       1. Yes the corruption and manipulation is being slowly exposed, as you say. The domination and power that the catholic church once held is diminishing. Truth will out.

    2. The Catholic Church need to be accountable for their actions, and abuse, just as any other person is.

22. I am married and when I am not feeling great about my body – then I do not enjoy making love. But when I honour myself then it is a totally different experience. This of course was never shared in my catholic education but something that is totally part of our everyday.

    1. What a simple concept and in it, we are given the keys to self-love and the sharing of that with others. The Catholic church has been set up to do precisely the opposite – to hinder that natural and innate expression – to debase the power we have, that as you say HM is not just our normal every day but our birthright.

    2. This is simple but profound statement, HM. How important is then, that we are all supported to feel great about ourselves and our bodies from young.

23. Within many religions, there is a huge implication of guilt around sex, love making and any form of physical intimacy but with the rebellion of this, it has pushed people into choosing behaviours of extreme sex and orgies etc. Neither is a true expression of how we are and can be with each other, and so remains for each of us to explore this true way and claim it for ourselves first before we can truly share that with another. Learning to love oneself without guilt and with full honouring is a work in progress.

24. It appears to me that sex is such a taboo topic in and with the Catholic religion, and yet when something natural is repressed it seeks to express itself in warped ways – perhaps this explains some of the behaviours that have been exposed within the Catholic church with all the pedophilia and more.

25. This blog is one that I have to keep coming back to. The enormity of what it is exposing is something that I truly appreciate. Having been caught up in the Catholic consciousness myself I am clear on how much gets suppressed, how much guilt, how much lack of self-worth, how much self-denial. How much ‘good’ that feels sickly and untrue is promoted and how damaging this is to the relationship with self and how life gets filtered through rules that are not only not true but warped.

26. I have never ever heard the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom dictate to do this or don’t do that. What has been offered consistently is greater understanding and awareness which naturally inspires me to deepen my love, care and responsibility. I know however much my mind might want to translate things into should and shouldn’t, God does not play that game and any such dictation assigned to him is simply not true.

    1. I appreciate your saying this, Golnaz, because, having been brought up with one set of rules, it was easy to exchange them for another set of rules but, as you say, the ageless Wisdom sets no rules, it simply states the Way It Is and that we need to discern, and we can do that by refining the way we live. It is our minds that create the rules and the self recriminations.

    2. When we are held in love that has no exceptions but knows deeply the truth of who we are and our potential, we can’t but help to be inspired. In this beholding we feel safe to look at our issues, hurts and behaviours that do not serve; to unravel the more of who we are as opposed to doggedly holding on to what we are not. The catholic church promotes the latter – the Ageless Wisdom just is.

27. Prior to Universal Medicine I had never heard about what making love is. Before it meant having sex slowly to some cheesy music. Since I admitted how horrible sex felt in my body, yet was something that was so sought after, I have given myself permission to never use or be used for gratification in that way, I have felt how honouring and beautiful, how respectful and divine making love could be. I still feel like I have more to let go of all the Catholic church stuff of feeling guilty that gets in the way.

    1. The guilt so many women and men feel around having sex/making love because of the teachings of the Catholic church is still very hidden. This guilt can lead to not expressing ourselves in full, which can then lead on to physical illness and disease in the body.

28. Avoiding truth is detrimental for every one of us.

    1. And very exhausting. Every moment that I simply allow truth to be felt and/or shared is like a great release, a breath of fresh air and everything makes so much more sense.

29. No matter what we try to hide, the truth will eventually come out.

    1. Agreed Paula, the problem comes when some people try so hard to make us think something is truth when it isn’t. Take the media as a prime example.

30. It is really pertinent to make the distinction between ‘naked expression’ and what we call physical intimacy. With physical intimacy, whilst we may be taking our clothes off, this doesn’t necessarily mean that our hearts are open and without an open heart we are simply servicing a need to fill the hole we generate by not having done so.

31. When we take on beliefs that involve fear or being controlled there is no love or true support.

32. I have been raised with the Catholic faith and it is very clear this has influenced my life in much more ways than I have been aware of. At the same time when I am honest i must have had at least one life in past history where I was involved myself and lived the celibate as the way to be connected to God.

    1. As with all religions, Catholicism is a consciousness and when we take it on because we like an element of it, or that element services a need, we don’t realise that we are taking on the whole show, getting saturated in the energetic fall out of having made that choice that can stay with us for lifetimes.

33. The separation between men and women in religious doctrines are not only contained in these religions, but from the strong fundamentals permeated deeply within the society.

34. If women were not suppressed in this way and lived in their sacredness all institutional religions would be quickly exposed as being false – no wonder they, and the Catholic church among them seek to not allow this and actively prevent this from being known.

    1. Has a part of religion always been about man’s way of controlling women? It is the 21st century, and there are still places where women are not allowed education. The awakening is coming, and the walls religion have built are crumbling.

       1. Great point, have the Catholic Church been trying to suppress and destroy women from living their natural sacredness, power, and wisdom.

35. Thank you Carmel. When you repress someone’s natural and innate expression it begins to come out in unnatural ways – for expression cannot be quelled completely. It is like trying to stop a river flowing in its natural course – it must be allowed to flow and the more you allow it to flow freely, the less damage it is likely to do. The natural and innate expression is always one that holds self and others with deep respect and care and this is something to appreciate and learn from.

    1. I really like the analogy you paint here Henrietta. Yes – if natural expression is thwarted it will become warped as it tries to find a way out, like a flower trying to seek the light in semi darkness it will grow withered and sick.

    2. When we repress anything, are we not creating interest to find out why? The old free will thing comes into play. But, when no clarity of why we should not do whatever, other than it is against God’s will, the bell rings, the gate pops open and the horses are away!

36. True intimacy explained: “I have since learned that intimacy is not just about being close in bed with a man or a woman, but about being deeply honest and sharing what we feel in all our relationships. That requires us to be deeply honest with ourselves first.” – if we feel we are lacking intimacy in a relationship, perhaps we ought to look at our relationship with ourselves first? There is always deeper levels we can go to.

37. Any feelings or emotions we repress come out in other ways so they are never truly hidden.

38. I am raised Catholic too and I can say that I have experienced the repression and with that, the secrecy of sexuality has influenced my sexual life. The sexual life which I found not to be free but repressed instead because all of the beliefs that have been fed to me by reflection from many angles, like at home, at school, in church, in society and at work, all based on the doctrine that was preached in the churches and from there permeated deeply in to our societies and individual lives.

    1. Indeed it has permeated all of society – outdated historical laws originally passed by religious influence on the politics of the day are still in place, quotes from the Bible have become everyday phrases, our so-called secular society is based on the fundamental principles of religion, us being born sinners, having to be punished for our sins, Judgement from above, with figures in authority playing or representing a judgemental God.

       1. All the rules that have been put in place from these doctrines have given our governments their power. Rules you have to be obedient to in for being accepted as an appreciated citizen of the society we live in.

    2. It’s really quite insidious the ideals and beliefs the church propagates. Having also been brought up a Catholic I am aware of how much it has influenced my life on many levels, subtle and unsubtle alike.

       1. It is not to blame the church as it can only exist on our common approval, otherwise, these religious institutions that do propagate this insidiousness would seize to exist.

39. The Catholic Church does make us to belief that a celibate life is needed to be dedicated to God. But I cannot imagine that God would ever ask something like that from us as to my experience he already lives within and supports me to live everything who I am to experience how to live as a god here on earth. Therefore a celibate life is not needed and would heavily interfere with living all of me as a god in the human form.

    1. Especially as it is only through the reflections provided in relationships that we can evolve back to God.

    2. Great confirmation, and claiming Nico, ‘he already lives within and supports me to live everything who I am to experience how to live as a god here on earth. Therefore a celibate life is not needed and would heavily interfere with living all of me as a god in the human form.’

40. I was talking yesterday about the Catholic church with someone and how as teenagers we could so thoroughly see through the hypocrisy of what it preached as opposed to how those who preached it lived – not only that but the hypocrisy of the congregations saying they were one thing, aligning to one thing for the hour they went to church, but going home and shouting at their families, or being dismissive or arrogant towards others etc.. There was an idea that if we did our duty and went to church, asked for forgiveness for our sins then we were free to do as we wished, under no obligation to practice a living way and that the job of being ‘good’ was done. When we are capped by the ideal of duty we fail to see that we are capping our own evolution

    1. I agree Michelle … the hypocrisy got me too. Although I wasn’t raised Catholic but had Anglican and Presbyterian influences at home … it seemed to me that all religions have this hypocrisy – people presenting a ‘feel good’ and piousness whilst attending, and living in abusive ways the rest of the time.

       1. It is no wonder why the vast majority are so given up and defeatist. When the organisations we look to, who claim to represent the truth when they clearly do not, offer no real steady platform or offer no real confirmation that as we are, we are rather awesome we are naturally going to feel inadequate. Until I came across Universal Medicine there was nothing out there that got close to confirming the truth I already knew.

       2. Hypocrisy and institutionalised religion, like the Catholic Church, go hand in hand.

41. Thank you Carmel. There is true inspiration and beauty when a woman embraces and honours herself in full, unveiling her sacredness, and yes, this is exactly what is needed to counter the repression of all of our sacredness (men and women alike).

    1. Yes, Matilda, Women embracing and honouring themselves in full, unveiling their sacredness, this is definitely what we need more of in the world.

42. I agree Carmel, if we are not love 24/7 then how can we expect an ‘act’ in the bedroom to be love.

43. It matters not whether you have sex or not because the real damage is in the evil of the word sex and the absense of true love in our relationships.

    1. The bastardisation of words is true evil, in the case of the word love, we have to add true to be clear we don’t mean the emotional love that has replaced the truth. And truth is another word that is complety reinterpreted so now we use the word absolute truth to indicate there is only one truth and not many.

44. ” Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?” The reality of this is something I am seeing more and more with the ramifications of this in all our lives worldwide and the harm of the absolute separation lived in the world from God as our true love of who we are as a result.

    1. It is the separation to the love we are from, the separation from God, that brings all the harm to this world which in fact is by our own doing from choosing to separate from this love in the first place.

       1. This is what is so astonishing that a religion that talks about the love of God does exactly the opposite

45. “Boys are only after one thing,” is such a negative indictment of boys and men and doesn’t support the true relationships we can have with one another. It’s a belief I certainly grew up with that hampered me being at ease with myself ( there were times when I wanted that kind of attention because I didn’t value myself and this was all I thought there was) and also hampered genuine, caring relationships with men because I’d projected this onto them and couldn’t connect outside of this.

    1. I agree Karin it is a horrible comment to have heard and been labelled by. And then when we do not want it we can be labeled or called gay. It is like in high school we can easily get caught in the trap of the pictures and images of how we should be and lose sense of the delicateness and love we innately are, not because we want to but because everyone is telling us that is how we need to be.

       1. Thank you James for putting forward the man’s perspective on this, it is important to know the impact on the men of these kinds of beliefs. We women can judge all men as potentially sleazy and that is not a good way to start any relationship, because we are always looking for proof of the evil label so we can say we are right as in, ‘See that’s exactly how it is!’

       2. Very true Carmel, it is interesting how much we can hold people in things they have either done in the past and no longer are them, or something they have not done but others have done to us. The more we just see and hold people for the love they are first and everything else second, the more we will get to truly see the depths of love we all are.

46. .. and what a reductionist way of living life it promotes! It really is no wonder we see such negative behaviours in reaction or rebellion against these teachings. Teach our children and ourselves that we are love and that in life we are simply making choices in alignment with this or not, then we have a whole different foundation to work with.

47. You have touched on a wonderful point here in this article, where you talk about intimacy and the lack of education with this beautiful part of our lives. Because intimacy has always been something I assumed we just had to learn through life experiences, but what if this subject was brought in to regular everyday life and education, with discussions and lessons on how to be loving and truly intimate in relationships.

48. It is such a negative way of thinking whereas we could be taught to truly love and appreciate everyone and everything around us including ourselves

49. Absolutely agree with this.

50. I find it rather interesting and not a coincidence that women are not taught to honour and express how they feel how they truly are. You can see and feel how, not only the Catholic region but many if not all, are diminishing of women and put them in a lesser rank then males. What is it as a collective that finds the thought of women in their power threatening?

    1. It has been such a clever rearrangement of consciousness that even women put themselves down with low self worth and develop a hardness that masks their true delicate nature, the same delicacy that can remind men of their tenderness.As a result none of us, men or women are living their true worth.

51. When things are not discussed openly and without judgement and blame, you can count on people talking about it or acting out behind the hushed veils.

    1. The trouble with people talking about it is that the truth gets bastardised.

52. “Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?” It would make sense that the Catholic Church would want to change the course of history if it did not suit their way of thinking and therefore bastardise the truth. Prior to the Catholic Church very little was written down so it was easy to convert the truth into a convenient lie that would then enable them to control the masses.

53. It is amazing how repressed sexually most people are and have been as a result of the dogma of the church, but not because we have had no choice or say rather we have allowed it because we have gotten something from it. I know for me the porn we see is not from people really wanting to go to the extremes rather originating from a deep sensitivity and love of people just having gotten warped into this animalistic act void of any sense of love.

    1. We are all incredibly sensitive and loving and it really hurts when this gets rejected. We all really crave intimacy when we try to deny this and the emptiness has to be filled with something.

       1. It sure does Michelle and it is scary at times the extremes we go to to fill this emptiness. It is interesting as well that I do not feel I have ever been rejected for being the love that I am, rather, rejected either for being lesser when I have tried to be something or someone, or when I have initially felt rejected, I have seen it is actually the other person rejecting themselves and not me, so it does not affect me.

       2. When we try to be someone or something, other than what we are, we first have to reject ‘the all that we are’.

       3. Very true and wise words.

54. When there is repression and oppression of people there will be the reactions either way. That is why we have the stereotype of the ‘naughty’ catholic girls and the prudish nun-like girls. This all suggests that the girls are not being allowed to grow up and flourish as the women they would be without imposition. This then has a huge, enduring ripple effect into marriages, social norms and parenting if our next generation women.

    1. The harm done to society as a result of religious norms and restrictions is far reaching – even if individuals are not ‘religious’ the country’s governments often are, and that affects schools, parks…

55. ‘We women need to reclaim our bodies for ourselves and then what we can offer our partner is a woman in her fullness: tender, precious and full of love, a woman who doesn’t want sex but who can be very sexy in her sacredness when she is truly making love.’ – Beautifully said Carmel, this is what eventually will change the world and bring harmony, due to true equality and mutual dignity between the genders.

    1. The other day someone was sharing how as a schoolboy when a teacher walked in in the energy of a mother he hated it. He shared that for him he would have been totally inspired by a woman if she had simply come in claimed in her fullness, in her sacredness. So very few of us manage to offer this inspiration,

56. ‘Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?’ the purpose of so much of what constitutes our beliefs is to ensure that we do not honour the sacredness women are born with and to purposefully attack this.

57. “I have always wanted men to see me for who I am, not just a sexy body, and I’m sure many women feel the same.” Absolutely Carmel … however we as women have to be true to ourselves and view ourselves as the gorgeous sacred beings we are too.

    1. Yes, we ourselves have the power to break the vicious cycle of unworthiness in women.

58. Any emotions or feelings that are repressed will come out eventually and often in ways that aren’t always seen as connected to those emotions… for example, if hurt isn’t expressed it can come out as anger; sexual repression can come out as aggression, control, etc.

    1. True, Paula, and it could possibly explain some of the more bizarre events happening world wide

59. The greatest thing we tend to repress is our own loving nature. From this point on, everything that comes is just a consequence of us choosing to be less.

60. Thank you, Carmel, for talking about the sacredness we are born with in our bodies. This is always always there. We tend to bury it with coping mechanisms we adopt for life, when all along this sacredness is all we need.

    1. It goes to show how insidious is the teaching and dogma of the Catholic Church when a woman in her late 60s is unable to truly understand the meaning of sacredness, has never understood its true meaning and is unable to truly connect within and feel what is there.

61. Gorgeous Carmel. I love this expose of how the Catholic Church reduce women, and how they teach women to be is nowhere near our truth as women.

62. When we honour ourselves with absoluteness in the moment we choose observation instead of reaction. We express what there is to say or not, whichever the case may be but when speaking, it is delivered with the absolute love; this way of being is everything that is needed for a relationship to grow facing and dealing with exactly and immediately what is needed in the moment.

63. It is interesting that in religious institutes women and men are not taught about their sacred origin. Instead they are taught that they are not worthy unless they devote themselves to the doctrines of the religion of their choice.

    1. One of many set ups that mislead us into thinking that we have to achieve something to be worth anything. The irony of the distortion, when all along everyone has sacredness, the very quality that the world needs, inside them.

       1. And it is because we are neglecting and denying this sacredness and is why we have lost this inner connection with it, that otherwise would be naturally there and tangible in every move we make. Not only a blessing for us individually, but for all the people we are and interact with.

64. As we can all experience in our own relationships, and in society in general, almost no one has true or free sexual relationships. For many, consciously or unconsciously, they are based on religious beliefs on how to relate to another, especially in intimate relationships. Most are not truly intimate at all, but a mere surrogate of what it can be when we truly surrender to the intimate relationship with ourselves first. As has been said before in this blog, we have never been taught how to be like that. It is rather the opposite where the inner relationship is being neglected and the emphasis is being placed on the external.

65. Any ideals or beliefs that we take on will repress our innate love, truth and harmony.

    1. So true, we do not need any ideal or belief as that makes us so much lesser than who we are. If someone asks me what my inner belief is, I tell them that I have none but that there is an inner knowing instead. That feels so much more powerful.

66. It is interesting how we can live life on the surface, ignoring much of what is going on underneath. When we delve a little deeper as we have in this conversation it is clear that the rot in life perpetuated by the consciousness of the Catholic church spreads far and deep.

67. Very true Shirley-Ann… and not just for sexual repression, but many ideals and beliefs run our lives without us even being aware our reactions to life are a result of these ‘outside influences’ we have taken on.

68. It it interesting that there has been a document found showing man’s editing of the King James bible – removing complete parts and doctoring others… it makes me wonder how much of the bible is actually true or has it been written for self-serving reasons from way back.

69. If there are rules without truth then we tend to rebel against what they are. Especially when it comes to religion and we can feel how religion has been used to control rather than to expand and confirm us.

70. Sexiness is a natural part of being human for both men and women and if this gets repressed or made something that needs to be secretive then it’s got to be de-stabilizing in the sense that it’s saying a true expression of who you are is wrong… And if instead things are open for discussion it’s supportive of learning and being more aware of what really feels right and honouring both for you and another.

    1. I agree. One of the best ways to dispel shame is to be open, honest and transparent… have the conversations and then the ill thoughts have no purchase.

       1. How true, the greatest remedy for shame is to put all the cards on the table.

71. The intimacy you talk of about sharing, and being deeply honest about where we are in all relationships has been one that I have really struggled with. I can see how this has been because I have not fully wanted to be deeply honest with myself. The more I am, the more I feel I can be this with others to.

72. Even with the best will, documents get distorted over the millenia but if you add in deliberate alteration and falsification there may be very little of the original voice left after such a long time.

    1. Indeed, but it is interesting how many of us know by feeling that what is preached isn’t on the money. Interesting also that many of us choose to swallow it anyway giving our power away to it.

73. “Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?” This is a great question Carmel, although to my knowledge Im not sure that this is a teaching in ANY Religion that I know of apart from The Way of the Livingness. And thank goodness for this all encompassing religion that sees everyone as an equal and has made so many aware of the divine sacredness that we all hold within.

    1. A bit of a sad indictment too that women are so disregarded, seen as unworthy/lesser and repressed!

74. “Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?” Having been brought up in the Roman Catholic Church with all the repression and judgement I felt, I am now knowing the truth and love we all are, with a simplicity, freedom and expansion of true love, and the bastardisation that has occurred.

    1. When we are caught up in the consciousness of this repression it can be hard to see the wood for the trees, but when simple truth is delivered it cuts through the what is not, exposing the rot and the lies for what they are.

75. Throughout time the church has tried to fence in its followers, but that action is like herding cats. Dogs are easier to train, but they have been known to, go astray. We are not meant to be reigned in, for we are all here to evolve. So, sexual repression was just another form of control.

76. I wasn’t brought up a Catholic but there are certain impressions I got from the world around me and a parent who was raised a Catholic and the other educated by nuns at convent school (I’m unsure if they were Catholic nuns). Sexual repression was always something I associated with the church, together with the woman either being seen as a good mother or being tarnished as a ‘whore’. There didn’t seem to be much room for anything else which I thought was incredibly restrictive. I got the strong message that if a woman were to enjoy physical intimacy, then she would be judged for having no morals and the capacity to corrupt men by her sinful ways. Men therefore had to be either forceful and impose their will and desires on the woman, so as not to be beguiled by her, or they were meek and spineless. Either way, there was no room for connection or love, just the duty of procreation at best, or sinful acts and corruption at worst. I was very angry about being subjected to judgement where neither gender was appreciated for the love and support they could offer one another.

    All this I picked up on and I was consciously not brought up as religious, let alone, Catholic by either parent. I would say society isn’t ostensibly religious in regard to organised religion, but I do suspect these seeds of fear still communicate through the media and entertainment because we still live by them without our being aware.

    1. Karin – I was raised a Catholic and went to a convent day school from the age of 11 to 16. What you have shared here is bang on the money. I resented the Catholic church very much too for its utter perversion of what felt natural, but I have learned that when we buy into a religion because we want to belong, or from a need for something fill our emptiness, we get the whole energetic package whether we like it or not. What you are sharing is the tendrils of centuries of this alignment and how it still has its hold, whether we feel we have subscribed to it or not.

77. Dating as a teenager I often found my Catholic friends to be over sexual in their thinking, sexually pushy boyfriends and a bit of twisted in how they thought about sexuality, like it was ‘bad’ but they wanted it so they resented women for ‘making’ them want to be bad…

    Later as a massage therapist I had numerous men make inappropriate sexual advances and these were more often from celibate men than anyone else. These advances also came with an attitude that as a massage therapist I was practically a prostitute so it was OK to ask for favors; is this about the body being so closely related to sexuality and evil?

    From my experiences I feel that the idea and practice of celebcy is harmful for people.
    I feel sure that statistics of sexual abuse by celibate men would prove this point.

    With celibacy there is a distortion and vilification of something innately natural and beautiful that is within us; our sexiness and sensitivities become ‘sexualized’ where, in my observation of those who grow up free to feel and express naturally this is not the case at all.

    1. I am not sure celibacy per se distorts perceptions of sex, it is simply the form of celibacy practised and idealised by the teachings of the church that warp perceptions of it. An ill energy creeps in when we are told that the body is sinful, especially when we crave intimacy from a feeling of being lesser. An inner tension is inevitably created, which ironically can only be released momentarily by having sex. A far cry from the natural and innate tenderness and delicacy we all hold and can express when making love.

78. As we get more and more disconnected the need and fear of real intimacy grows. Sexual repression has played its part in this but we need to add other factors into the mix I feel. When we look at the current ill trends in teenagers around sex and pornography for example, we can see that it’s not so much repression at play as not knowing how to really connect with self and others, misinformation and miseducation around sex and how each gender uses the other sexually for social acceptance within peer groups. Many teenagers get their sexual education through porn and by its very nature can be hooking and addictive.

79. “Why are we women not taught to honour and express how we feel?” Young boys too are taught to cover up their true feelings and pretend they are ok when they are hurting. ‘Be a man’ – ‘toughen up’ are words often used – especially in boarding school. So we all bury our feelings – could this have something to do with disease striking us later in life – the body has to express somehow……

    1. So true Sue… expression is super important for us all – expressing how we feel is expressing our truth.

80. “Why are we women not taught to honour and express how we feel?” The true power of the sacred would be too much for many?

81. Yes the pendulum usually swings from one extreme to another – until coming back into balance. Witness the far right now taking over in some countries of our world.

82. Thanks, Carmel. It is great to expose the many ways our naturally loving ways have been skewed, how we have allowed ourselves to be denatured and reduced to a version of human life so far removed from the grandness we originate from.

83. It effects even non-Catholics and sex still has a shame or stigma associated with it for many people.

84. I always wonder why we can follow something so blindly without questioning where the rules or beliefs come from. So much of what comes from religion’s like the Catholic Church and others is so obviously not the word of God as so many have been led to believe.

    1. And old manuscripts from the Bible that were edited out of history have recently come to light. Discerment of truth is vital.

       1. I agree, discernment is the key for without it we will continue to be lost especially in this age of false news and people writing and preaching stuff that they believe when they are so of track.

    2. Even the fact that God is portrayed as a judgemental God is affecting many of us today even though we think we left the religion years ago. According to the Catholic Faith we are all born sinners, with ‘original sin’ and continue to sin throughout our lives then we will be judged at the pearly gates of heaven. These pictures that we blindly accept are so far from the truth it shows how much the Catholic Church has bastardised the true teachings of Jeshua. We now have to learn to be more truly god-like and let go of judgement, letting everyone evolve in their own time.

       1. I remember hearing in church when I was very young that God was judgemental and jealous and angry and would punish us for our sins and we were all sinners whether we liked it or not and I thought at the time hang on a minute I’m not liking the sound of this god, then oh gosh that’s probably another sin. Crazy all this stuff when the only way to describe God is done with one word only and that is love.

       2. I never bothered with religion most of my life and when I did decide to look into it I heard exactly what Kevin has described: “that God was judgmental and jealous and angry and would punish us for our sins”. In fact he was watching our every move 24/7 and counting all our mistakes. I thought such a character sounded seriously scary and I did not want to have anything to do with him. Now ages later I look back & can laugh at it, but seriously it is astonishing what we can accept as real when we give our power of discernment to an external authority.

    3. It is surprising what we will accept in the need to belong. Catholicism, by its nature, further grows that emptiness by dressing up separation as godly, which keeps feeding that need.

    4. I wonder if we are really following it blindly but make a deliberate choice not to look into certain directions because we don’t want to be disturbed or behave responsibly or be at a level that we can be, i.e. the ‘blind following’ may actually be a very clear choice?

    5. You’re on the nail here Kev. And the question posed here is a great example of why this might be the case – “Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?”

85. There are a lot of very smart people in the Catholic church, yet they choose to participate in an environment where people cannot be at their best – including themselves. What is the benefit that overrides these downsides?

86. When we are met with these ideals and believes it is so important to not rebel and do the opposite because when we feel something is not true it is not always the case that the opposite is true. For instance with the ‘rule’ to not have sex before marriage; here it is not about per se having sex before marriage but to allow true freedom to do what feels true in the relationship. Again the same with the example drawn by that Catholic faith that Jesus was single (put aside if this was true or not); it is not about not being single but about feeling what is true for you in this moment in life. For some it is very loving to be single for others it is more loving to be in a relationship. The key here is feeling what is true instead of following rules.

87. The judgements I’ve held about men, believing that they have only one thing on their mind -sex, has really got in the way of being me and at ease in male company. Sometimes it was actually a relief if a man was overtly preoccupied with this as I could either react in objection, or I could simply just discount them and not be vulnerable. It suited me to think I was not seen for all my preciousness because then I could play tough and not admit I was living a harsh reality far from my delicateness. Now it’s about peeling off the layers of protection whatever is happening in the world because nothing is more painful than holding back who I am.

    1. Your comment makes me wonder just how many millions of men and women have had strained relationships because of the underpinning beliefs about each other instilled by their religious upbringing.

88. I knew nuns who were proud to be called ‘Brides of Christ’ but I take your point about only making true love being a true celebration. ‘Approved of’ might be a better word, as in a celibate life was approved of and indeed mandatory for priests and nuns, but probably in the olden days any relationships outside of a marriage didn’t count, rape didn’t count, paedophilia didn’t count up to and including the present day. So much evil has been done in the name of God and religion. I learned a new phrase today, ‘Spiritual Abuse’ that is, using the religion or the name of God to bully another.

89. It is very sad that we are not brought up to honour our innate sacredness and delicacy as women and feel treasured for simply being who we are. The joy in bringing up girls this way is deeply beautiful to see and feel and something that is being brought back again in our world to feel and is much needed as is reclaiming this for all women also.

    1. Just our understanding of the word ‘Sacred’ has been bastardised by the Catholic Church and yes, it is wonderful to see young girls being celebrated and inspired to honour themselves as young women.

90. There is fear of the sacredness and power a woman brings, a power that will not allow or condone any hint of abuse or derision and that is what the church fathers knew; consequently, women were demonised and denigrated, marked as witches, depicted as being unclean or tainted in some way. They were successful, no matter how ludicrous the original proposition and it is up to each and every woman to reclaim her sacredness and put an end to this nonsense and devastation.

    1. This is well explained, Gabriele, that the Church had to, at all costs, destroy anything or anyone who could in any way diminish their power and their hold over the general populace.

    2. It is interesting how we have blindly accepted this false view of women. As women, has it served us in some way to subscribe to a way of being that is lesser? We need to understand what we have got out of it as in its renunciation we are better able to connect to and claim with authority who we really are.

    3. And for the men to stop the repression as it harms them as well.

91. We are all deep down yearning to be seen for who we truly are, and so to not be measured based on our gender is equally important for men and women.

    1. Gender is a very superficial trait; the inner-most is the same, no matter who we are.

    2. Not to be measured for anything but simply appreciated for the qualities we bring regardless of our gender

    3. Agreed Eva, in societies across the world we take gender to be more important than the magic we bring and the quality we are. Time to change that up.

92. It is absolute madness and an indictment on society that we have to return to the sacredness of being a woman. I am making my way back from having had a disdainful, contemptuous and dismissive relationship with myself to emerging into the joy and sexiness of being a woman. This is great yes, but bonkers that this is the set up.

93. ‘Why are we women not taught to honour and express how we feel?’ – A great question, why? Could it be because we hold the answer to the loveless reality we as a humanity keep repeating and that we need to be ‘controlled’ at any cost?

94. It’s easy to sit outside the flock and point at the faithful who still observe, but consider how much we all repress what we sense inside and you can see just how much repression has impacted all our lives.

    1. I love the point you are making here. Yes we can judge Catholics for the beliefs they hold, but do we stop to ponder on the fact that whilst we don’t identify consciously with the ideology, that ideology still lives inside most of our bodies exposed through the shame, guilt and of feeling lesser that all of us experience, have experienced and continue to experience? These feelings all seed from the same root.

       1. The more we delve into the ideals and beliefs by which we run our lives, the more we can identify the subtle way Christian beliefs have affected our lives throughout the centuries. It is like a vein, a thread of control that is insidious, unconsciously adopted and embodied until we refine our way of living and develop our awareness

       2. Yes – we like to think we live in a modern age but we are still very much trapped in the consciousness that we have aligned to. If we care to see it we can admit that we haven’t really evolved that much at all.

    2. I haven’t really clocked just how much repression impacts us all. There are still so many times a day that I push a feeling aside, repress it, or repress an expression that I wanted to make in case I am rebuffed. I get the sense with repression we create our own invisible cages that we walk around in 24/7. With the vast majority of the population doing this we only get to see a masked version of everyone behind our self made bars. What would it look like, I wonder, if we lived free of this imposition?

       1. There is a beautiful reflection of what it would look like if we lived free of this imposition in our young children (before we squash it out of them); they are so joyful, in the moment, cheeky, playful and light. It is important that we learn to clock it and appreciate it, not just so that we don’t impose on our kids, but because they are teaching us where we could be if we were to let go of our hurts and guardedness.

95. Denying the body denies God because our body particles are divine.

96. The Catholic church has so much to answer for with the complete dishonouring of who we all innately are and the true living of love. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine are offering the truth with the ancient wisdom we all know inside and true love and religion as our living way.

97. “Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?” Anything is possible when people want power and control of the masses.

    1. Well said Paula. Everything is exposed when we are diligent enough to dig deeply into what the hidden impulses are within these organisations, people, movements…whatever…For example, is the Wienstein scandal in Hollywood surprising? Of course not, if you truly understand the history and initial impress of Hollywood.

       1. Hollywood – yes, we can admire the glamour that we see but not know the heartache and disempowerment of women that lies underneath – it is great that women are at last making a stand and even better that there are film directors like you, Otto, who work with absolute integrity and equality for all.

    2. We are blinded by our desire for power and control, yes.

    3. It sure is possible Paula, and goes to show how easy it can be to change events to suit the picture we want to paint even though they may be entirely based on fiction rather than fact.

98. I have heard many people say the same. Education should just be the simple passing on of experience, wisdom, knowledge…supporting the child to develop who they innately are. But clearly if they are taking on a specific identity that makes them recognisable as being from a specific school, then much, much more than the basics of education is going on. But it’s not just kids – we all do it, it happens to us all; in our work-place, peer groups, from our parents, at sports events….it takes a great deal of self-love, true support and appreciation to hold, nurture and expand the gold of who we already are. Not easy and it’s vital that we understand the hurdles of this journey, so that we are wise to them – for then they have less power over us.

99. “Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?” Great question Carmel and exposes the Catholic Church and any other religion that does not honour the sacredness that is within every woman. You only have to look back through the ages to see how women have been suppressed from expressing the one thing that could change the world and bring equality for both men and women.

100. It is interesting to see how much our education can divide us instead of uniting us as one humanity

101. Beautiful sharing Carmel, the more women truly honour their sacredness the more they ouze out the love they are. The catholic teachings also hinder boys and men as we are portrayed to be these sexual predators and so often then any action which could be interpreted as purely being about wanting sex even though it may not be is interpreted to be that way. I know this has been the case for me in my past relationships. It is fascinating how many past ideas and beliefs can taint the way we live and interact with each other.

     1. ‘so often then any action which could be interpreted as purely being about wanting sex even though it may not be is interpreted to be that way.’ Yes, this is true, and it may surprise us to know how many relationships are floundering as a result of just this fact. Women want to be loved for who they are not for how good they are in bed. Love is a 24/7 event, not just for the bedroom, and if we women don’t feel appreciated, we don’t feel sexy, it’s as simple as that. Of course the appreciation has to come from within us women, and we are not very good at self appreciation! It is well worth working on though.

        1. Very true Carmel. love is 24/7 and the more we love this the more everyone, our partners included, feel this and then we build from the platform of love so it is not then something we aspire to rather something we build from.

102. It is a game that is many different names, but the result is always the same. You form a circle and start by whispering a rumour to the person next to you and then everyone, in turn, passes it on the same way to the last person. Then you compare the original with the end. Wasn’t the Bible written some 400 years after the fact? What was the original?

     1. This is the modus operandi of so many of the world’s false ideals, beliefs and foundations. A mass consensus does not equal truth.

        1. I hate the way these false ideals and beliefs are so endemic in our society and have had such a harmful effect on all our lives. It’s very empowering to be exposing and nominating them so that we can see them for the un-truths that they are, and no longer feel beholden to them in any way.

     2. Great illustration of the way that truth becomes muddied until it is no longer truth but a man-made version.

        1. And the more it is spread around the more it is accepted until one day we then think it is truth because so many people have subscribed to it.

103. I also have used sex to make myself feel better about myself, but I can see and am starting to experience, that if I already deeply love me first and then share this love with another, then this making love together has no need and no expectation attached to it and feels deeply satisfying on a whole other level.

104. Instead of banning an activity that is natural and most people will sooner or later take part in, it would be so much wiser to support and foster a relationship of love, care and honouring with it.

     1. Yes good point, growing up in the Catholic religion I was led to believe that sex was a bad, sordid or dirty thing that should not be really enjoyed or celebrated, but I have come to realise it is a truly very beautiful and very natural way of expressing love between two people and should very much be celebrated.

        1. It feels like the Catholic religion has warped so much that is natural – the very antithesis of what it professes to be teaching.

        2. Yes, ‘Dirty’ is a horrible word to attach to what can be a truly loving act, such a clever way of bastardising a way of living to make sure that no-one experiences it.

        3. Agree Carmel. But actually the use of the word ‘dirty’ is an even more cunning bastardisation. As you have and Andrew have explained, it puts many people off….but then for some it becomes the holy grail and they pursue ‘dirty sex’, believing it to be the pinnacle of intimacy. And so the word ‘dirty’ suppresses some from having sex and then takes the others down entirely the wrong track. Win, win for an organisation whose foundations rely on us not finding ourselves so that we still need them.

105. “Why are we women not taught to honour and express what we feel?” Great question Carmel, could it be that in our true power women are unstoppable? Powerful women have been wooed from history, with a few exceptions. Powerful women get denigrated today, when their male equivalents get extolled. Time to redress the balance. We can be strong and powerful yet delicate and sacred.

     1. Once we understand that it is women in their full power who can change the current self-destruct path that humanity is on, then we can have no more excuses and no more self doubt as to how we could be living if we want to make a difference in the world.

106. It’s very interesting reading what you say about “men only wanting one thing”. That consciousness was very strong when I was growing up and what’s fascinating to reflect on now is how it affected us men too. I wasn’t one of those men, but at times I forced myself to be one. I never wanted one-night-stands…but I forced myself to try them a few times; each time feeling so empty and full of self-loathing…No judgement or criticism but just really interesting to see how these preconceptions are capable of deeply hurting the supersensitive men as well as the women.

     1. Great that you have shared this Otto. All those ideals and beliefs really get in the way of our natural and true expression. It is equally possible for men to feel self-loathing for the compromises they make to fit in, just as much as women.

        1. We only need to take a cursory look at the suicide rates of men to see how very true this is.

        2. The staggering statistics of male suicide (the most common killer of men between the age 20 and 49 in England and Wales) convey how desperate it must feel to not feel like you are living the truth of who you are and that indeed, it is men who feel this more keenly than women.

     2. It’s interesting how both men and women can go along with the crowd – bowing to peer pressure to try to fit in – whilst at the same time denying their (our) own super-sensitive true nature.

107. ‘These kinds of activities support the generalised belief that all men are only interested in sex.’ – what comes first – the chosen behaviour of another causing a belief to be born, or a widely held belief that then imposes itself on society and affects the way that we behave as there is already an acceptance that this is the ‘way we are’?

     1. When we ‘meet’ another person, there is a felt connection and we know the potential of that person, what feels important is that we honour that and understand that we all make choices that don’t reflect who we are at times. However, it’s very harming to then brand everyone as ‘being this way’ as it simply is not true.

        1. I agree, we shouldn’t brand anybody with generalisations, each individual is different in their expression and we need to use our clairsentience to feel what and who is in front of us with no judgement, just simple awareness.

108. No one is ever empowered to make a true and honouring choice through dictation and force. Through being supported to deepen our understanding and awareness about the various dynamics in life and the impact of our choices on the other hand, as does Universal Medicine, deeply honouring and transformational personal changes become a daily norm.

109. When you consider that the Catholic Church has considered Murder to be fully acceptable throughout its long history, it rather makes a mockery of the ten commandments, the supposed rules of how to live. The whole structure is a complete sham, from the lies about who wrote the gospels, the leaving out of reincarnation from its teachings, the editing of the gospels to suit the pagans of the day and keep the Roman Empire intact. It has never been truly about God and us in Brotherhood as absolute equals.

     1. Yes Carmel you pretty much sum it up here and as time passes the more this will be exposed and the less power it will have over a large portion of humanity.

     2. And they even have their own legal system (Canon law) which in their eyes makes them immune from the laws that govern all the rest of us. If that isn’t a sign of their innate arrogance and supremacy then I’m not sure what is.

110. “Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda? In my opinion, I would say yes very possible indeed, not however unusual, as it seems to be a trait of humanity to mis-represent the real historic facts in favour of many a corrupted and self-serving agenda.

     1. Yes, truth exposes the harm that has been perpetuated in the name of a few. As history shows, those who speak up and speak truth usually get shot down initially. Later, slowly after denial and justification for the status quo acceptance comes, and finally the truth is accepted by all. Today’s truth tellers experience the same treatment.

111. Any movement to shut down the true relationship women can have with their body is an assault on the natural way that we as women can live and breathe, and is the way out of this current planetary mess – Sacredness.

112. When you consider that the Catholic Church is actively working against our evolution by suppressing women it helps us to understand the bigger picture, the evil that is keeping us all small and the way the consciousness uses world religions specifically to manifest the delay.

113. ‘Whilst in the past I may have used sex with men to make me feel better about myself, these days I know that in order to make love, rather than have sex, I need to start off feeling good about myself.’ – This is a crucial point, to value ourselves just for who we naturally are and not the pictures we think we need to live up to.

114. Even if we are not brought us as Catholics, the rules of the religion have become so deeply embedded in our society they guide our parenting, our education and our careers, trying to ‘go the extra mile’, being ‘good’ feeling ‘guilty’, being ‘punished’. Instead we could be celebrated, inspired, appreciated, honoured simply for being who we are, and our connection to God does not need a special building, just a simply journey within.

     1. “….does not need a special building, just a simply journey within” Into the most special building of all – our bodies.

115. Regardless of gender, we need to honour the being inside that is delicate by nature and exquisitely divine.

116. When we find ourselves in such situation of suppression of any kind we can always ask why are we there for there is much offered to us in any set of circumstances we find ourselves in.

117. Making love in the physical sense is a deeply symbolic act of the ‘two becoming one’. Such a sacred act can be a great threat to those that seek divisive ways.

118. I have heard from other sources that girls who grew up in the Catholic system simply had no idea about sex and making love as it was such a taboo subject. This left them open to exploitation as they didn’t have a perspective.

     1. This is probably true, but from simply observing what is going on, regardless of whether a family is Catholic or not, the body and its functions can be a taboo subject for many, let alone having sex or making love. Parents so often in wanting to protect their children are not openly honest about the body and its functions and cycles. A child in my son’s class at school (aged 9/10) during a PSHE lesson, fainted at the thought of a woman inserting a tampon. He had no idea about how a woman’s body is configured and was freaked out by it when it was finally explained to him.

119. I grew up thinking how odd it was that something so essentially part of who we are wasn’t discussed, aside from innuendo, dirty jokes and rumours. That omission was felt as guilt and confusion. There was no-one I felt I could talk to about this, as I didn’t feel the relationships around me were truly honouring of each other. Writing this I realise I knew all along that making love wasn’t about the sexual act, but how one lived each day with oneself and especially the person one was in an intimate relationship with. I knew that if a person wasn’t connected with themselves and loved themselves, then sex would invariably be about satisfying one’s needs without connection to another. Perhaps this is why making love wasn’t talked about, people weren’t willing to see whether their relationships with themselves and another was loving or not.

     1. Yes I agree, Karin and have also wondered if sex is such a taboo subject or else made into something crude, because we have lost the beauty and intimacy of making love.

        1. I feel this is the reason too. I have never enjoyed crude jokes or feel them funny, simply because there has been such an awareness of how this dismisses our being. We have been doing this since time immemorial. Shakespeare easily springs to mind and whilst he quite clearly deals with divinity he satisfies this baser human need to laugh at our bodies and sex by putting in some smutty jokes. Did he put them in because he found them funny or to appeal to a certain mind, or to expose this point you make Janet by juxtaposing it with divinity so we can observe as an audience how far we have strayed from our innate beauty, or maybe both?

120. Kids are very attuned at spotting something that is not true or natural. An enforced celebate life just doesn’t seem natural. With the role models that many nuns and priests have presented over time, I can see why Catholic girls rebel.

121. Yes there is denigrating sexual repression in the Catholic Church, however this attitude spills out and is in all areas of life regarding how we are gender to gender and how we identify ourselves as a gender. A simple example is how women round their shoulders and keep their legs closed in standing or sitting, it is not great for our posture or esteem to have a closed posture, it is harmful to stand long term in this position, but when we go into protection we attempt to hide our breasts and do not want to be seen as slutty through having open legs. This is the experience of pretty much every women in the world. If we cannot stand to our true height, open and expanding, we are repressed and it is wise to be open to the endemic issue we have concerning our attitudes and gender. This blog beautifully highlights a tendril that is suffocating humanity in the name of ‘good’ and how this impacts in relationships.

     1. And, when women open themselves up they are said to be acting mannish in their actions. But, it is odd for we men are meant to be hard when at heart we are like a fine steak; warm, soft and tender. Could it be more of the undertones of the Catholic Church?

     2. This is such a great point to have made Samantha. I was in the hairdresser’s yesterday and having my hair coloured after what felt like a very long day. I was tired and uncomfortable for having to sit in a chair for so long. At one point I put my feet up on the footrest and had my knees open and I thought to myself that it wasn’t very ladylike to sit in this way, but that it didn’t matter because no one could really see me! What this blog and comments are exposing is how very deeply rooted the Catholic consciousness is in our everyday life.

        1. This thought of “it wasn’t very ladylike to sit in this way, but that it didn’t matter because no one could really see me!” is so familiar. It is insidious how the ingrained consciousness prescribed by the Catholic church and many other religious institutions touches even our own self-talk.

122. ‘Some women hide their bodies by wearing totally frumpy clothes or the opposite, using sexy, revealing clothes to have power over men. Neither offers equal respect between men and women.’ – The sad reality is that we have never learnt to truly connect with each other in essence, if we did, there would be a natural respect and understanding of each other.

123. This is such a wise comment Richard and very important to look at both sides of the angle. As you say – what a curse on all men – when I know loads of men, who are craving true intimacy, sacredness and fragility both within themselves and with their partners. What you have said here needs to be expanded.

124. I’m not sure how the Catholic Religion even came to comment on the sexual relationships of people, it seems to be another thing that is very far from the life of Jesus and the simplicity, love and brotherhood he lived. Jesus would not have had any control over the people. As Jesus talked about the kingdom of God living inside us, it would be better for people to be supported to connect to that and then discern for themselves what is a true way to live based on their own connection to God. That to me is the religion The Way of the Livingness (the way of the soul on earth).

     1. I couldn’t agree more, Melinda. I really feels to me as though ‘organised religion’ is used as a vehicle through which people assert their control to gain power for their own self gain.

     2. Yes reading this I’m not sure how people have let organised religion determine what is right and wrong with regard to ones very intimate, sexual relationships. We have given our power away and not claimed or even connected to what we feel within that constantly communicates what is loving and what is not.

125. It is quite obvious that men made up all the rules in the Catholic church, I mean what’s the deal with no women priests still?

     1. ‘Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?’ – because the Catholic church is completely male dominated, they have no interest in empowering women, rather, the complete opposite.

        1. But by cutting out such a big part of society, the church are actually cutting out a big part of God, because God is the sum total of everything and so if any aspect of life is left out, then an aspect of God is left out. And if any aspect of God is left out, then He ain’t God because God is the Totality of Life.

     2. I agree, the total absence of female priests in the Catholic church speaks for itself.

126. I am sure the Catholic Church has been instrumental in the torture and death of many thousands of women throughout the centuries.That instils a natural fear designed to make women of all ages hold back and suppress their natural glory and their sacredness. It is an insidious message of low self worth that serves to keep women small and not expressing themselves in full and it may well be many more centuries before we can fully reddress the balance.

127. All I can remember about my Bible studies as a kid in Sunday School is that they didn’t bear much resemblance to real life.

     1. Love this observation. Religion is life, it is how we live and how we move in life and yet, when offered by organised religions it so often has nothing to do with how we live. Which I guess is convenient when it comes to not needing to have your walk matching your talk….child abuse, murder, excommunication, subjugation of women …etc is somewhere reasoned and rationalised and normalised, because we as a humanity settle for the hypocrisy of the religion not being lived in the first place. I feel this enables the normalisation of abuse to occur.

     2. All I can remember was that if we were ‘good’ we got a golden star in the book.

     3. Yes, just rules and stories.

        1. I do remember the stories of Sunday School and that was the way to bring all the rules forward of how we should be in life.

     4. So true Rowena, I didn’t go to Sunday school, but I know that any encounter I did have with the teachings from the bible never truly made sense to me.

128. I have not worked out why that is, but interesting observation that religious institutions that impose sexual repression, tend to a woman’s duty to be subservient to her husband and have lots of babies. For a long time I assumed religion and putting women down go hand in hand. This all changed when I came across Serge Benhayon and reconnected to the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom, so I started to differentiate between true religion and man-made versions of it.

     1. Great point Golnaz. The Ageless Wisdom not only majestically celebrates the divine sacredness of the woman but also shows us how pivotal the female essence is to the evolution of humanity.

        1. The teachings of the Ageless Wisdom are very honouring of men and women, equally so, they show the natural harmony that we are here to live in together when both men and women live in the fullness of who they truly are. The problem we face is that it feels everything in life is currently set up to take us away from this truth.

        2. This is beautiful confirmation coming from a man who so strongly claims the truth of it. The learning is for us as women to claim it and then live it.

        3. Agree with both of you. Men aren’t living as true men and women aren’t living as true women. No wonder we all feel so lost and then grab onto anything to try to make life worth living.

        4. Love what you share here Otto… this is the learning and understanding boys and girls need to be exposed to from very young – and this in turn would bring harmonious relationships world wide.

     2. Golnaz indeed a great point, what does anyone gain in putting women down, the reality is everyone knows its normally the women that hold together the communities, the family and society.

        1. Very true, the power women hold is well known yet so often it is women who are suppressed because of this fact and now we see the women rising but not so much from their power and sacredness rather from a fighting to overcome the suppression and topple over the men which changes nothing. The power women hold is within and the more they are simply themselves the more men get to feel who they are and then things change, rather than what we see now which is each sex trying to out do the other.

     3. I love what you share here Otto and also from Alison ‘The teachings of the Ageless Wisdom are very honouring of men and women, equally so”. The tendency to pit one sex against another must be challenged. Predominant models of maleness out there are not the truth of who they are in essence and through the Ageless Wisdom I’ve come to feel and appreciate the true beauty of men.

     4. Yes it is the man-made versions of religion that have kept us in the dark for so long and kept women and men from connecting to who we truly are.

     5. It is the man-made versions which have so many people world-wide disillusioned with religion, in whatever form it takes… perhaps this is because we feel an unease within us that knows the lack of truth, true brotherhood, harmonious and equal relationships in these versions.

129. The guilt and shame in women regarding intimacy and sex runs very deep and is an inheritance that have us seriously affected to this day and age, no matter if we have been brought up within a ‘religious’ environment or not.

130. ‘God forbid’ that we get to know who we truly are by men and women making love and thus knowing not just God but also their own godliness. So let´s make the whole thing dirty, something merely animalistic and only acceptable for the purpose of procreation, where everything sacred is tainted with sin and revulsion. Then the way the body´s sexual energy will seek to express and relieve itself, will be confirming of the animalistic and harming nature of our otherwise divine (sacred) nature.

131. ‘If a girl is taught such a thing, do they then shut down their natural openness and sacredness and become suspicious of men?’ Good question, Richard, and I can say from my own experience, that yes, it shuts us down to true intimacy, seeing men as sexual predators and unable to truly and openly love with tenderness as I now know that all men truly can.

132. “I have since learned that intimacy is not just about being close in bed with a man or a woman, but about being deeply honest and sharing what we feel in all our relationships” – yes Carmel agree, the greatest thing I have appreciated about understanding intimacy is no longer associating the word purely with sexualised connotations or actions. Through the word’s meaning and living its truth which is openness and transparency we can be intimate with every single person.

     1. So true, Zofia, I absolutely love how my relationship with intimacy has blossomed since I have appreciated the true meaning of the word and all it offers, rather than just the sexual connotation which in no way begins to reflect the gorgeous invitation in what being intimate actually means.

133. ” Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?” Having been in a similar up bringing this is now completely obvious to me, with the awareness of the truth of intimacy and the simplicity and understanding of true expression allowing the honouring and love we innately are, with the fullness and sacredness of women to cherished by us all.

134. True Carmel, we can sit down or react and be the victim of that which the Catholic church and many other institutionalised religions have imposed upon us, with their doctrines now embedded in our culture but that’s not the way., It is about becoming aware of the hold it has over women and men. To truly feel we can reclaim our bodies like you wrote ‘We women need to reclaim our bodies for ourselves and then what we can offer our partner is a woman in her fullness: tender, precious and full of love, a woman who doesn’t want sex but who can be very sexy in her sacredness when she is truly making love.’

135. This is such a deeply needed conversation and the amount of harm and abuse that has played out with such heavy beliefs with imposed religions of what sex should be, it is no wonder the sex scandals and abuse are getting exposed more and more.

136. It is an insult to men to say they are only interested in sex… this completely tarnishes all men with the same brush, and dismisses their innately tender, sensitive and gentle nature.

     1. Well said Paula – we tend to label the masses based on the behaviour of some, and in that we forget that in essence that is not who they are, not even the ones who behave in accordance with the label.

137. I reckon this sexual repression thing is a societal issue as well as a religious one and both the repression and the reaction to the repression are both not it.

     1. Personally I don’t think that sexual repression is a societal problem, certainly not in the ‘civilised’ world. Far from it, sex seems to be absolutely everywhere, it comes at us through the radio, through the telly, through advertising, through the way our kids dance, through clothing, through magazines. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean that we are not sexually repressed as a society but the fact that it’s in our faces all of the time means that it’s not a buried topic anymore and has become very every day, so much so that’s it’s not even noticed half the time, unless it’s outwardly explicit.

        1. I feel that because of sexual repression that has been imposed on us through, in this case, the Catholic Church, we have ended up with an array of beliefs that have had a damaging effect on our relationship with ourselves and each other and in the expression of our love for ourselves and each other, including making love versus sex.

     2. The consciousness of this religion, being so tightly held for so many centuries is still present in our modern culture whether we are practising Catholics or not. There are still judgments on women of either being frigid or loose for example (definitely a by-product of the virgin worship), there is still shame around having a physical body and its functions, there is still shame around the act of sex. The pendulum can swing from not engaging sexually, to engaging sexually but feeling a tension with it (if not coming from a place of self worth and love), or in reaction, going to town on sexual activity in the name of being liberated, but what if this liberation were really self-abuse? What if true liberation came from honouring our sensitivity and our bodies and their functions, embracing them as the loving vehicles of expression they are?

138. ‘I am slowly learning that there is a way of making love that is truly love, where the woman’s body is treated as sacred and nothing takes place that does not honour that.’ – And that all starts with how we as women honour ourselves.

139. What I love about the teachings of Universal Medicine is that we are asked to question what we know and feel to be true, which exposes many of the dogmas and institutional doctrines which keep us lesser and disempowered, when in truth we are all equal in essence.

140. The Catholic religious institution seems to be able to excuse and ignore all sorts of behaviour in regard to sex which is truly abhorrent and unacceptable in any way. It appears in the media for a short time and then seems to go quiet but nothing is really done about it.

141. The fact that sexual suppression is only just coming up Carmel shows how insidious this type of indoctrination is and how we accept what we are told as children. Huge credit to you for choosing to be in a place in your life where you are actively looking for things to come up and out of the body, many do not know they can do this and have no realisation that these things are held firmly in the body for lifetimes. What better way to assure future participants than ingrain beliefs that last lifetimes.

142. I love the clarity and honesty that you bring to a subject that has for aeons been either hidden or over exposed in a way that is more about destroying any sense of self worth rather than honouring the innately sacred and precious woman within.

143. There are so many controversies around sex and making love. Although today people are a lot more open about sex and what goes on in the bedroom, we are still uneducated in regards to the potential this act of intimacy has for the bond between two people.

144. “… there is a way of making love that is truly love, where the woman’s body is treated as sacred and nothing takes place that does not honour that.” This establishes a level of understanding that is not of this world, but which needs to be grounded and lived by all women so as to bring true order to the world again.

145. It’s interesting how we can resist accepting the truth, even being willing to see the truth, when to do so it requires us to be open to accepting that everything we have ever believed is a lie – such is our arrogance. I remember feeling this way when I started being more aware of the truth of how we have been relentlessly manipulated. However, I’d much rather walk out of the cave into the sunshine, than stay in the cave in my dark comfort where I think I am safe, when in fact the complete opposite is true.

146. There has been repression of both men and women within the church and many other faiths and institutions. If there was not we would not be seeing the level of sexual abuse that has been revealed across the globe. Is sexual repression a part of this? Possibly. But my feeling from my first 18 years of life being in and surrounded by the catholic church, is that the repression comes through moulding us to not be our natural selves, to be the good person, good student, the good woman rather than being true to ourselves and therefore all others. This of course is not isolated to the catholic church.

     1. Yes the intention to be ‘good’ is something we were encouraged to strive for and it does not allow us to feel within and do what is natural to us, to live with the harmony, joy and stillness that brings truth.

147. Because like with any organisation or group of people that contains corruption or harmful behaviours, it suits our irresponsibility and lethargy to believe that we don’t have anything to do with the harmful part and only the ‘good’ part. It doesn’t suit us to admit that if one part is rotten, then that rot goes through the whole thing.

148. Wow Carmel you have really exposed the falsity of the churches sexual repression; how it leaves women with only two choices to conform or to rebel and you have well described the falsity of both which kills the sacredness and the glory that each woman holds.
     My religion holds women as divine and sacred to be honored, to deeply love herself and to move and express with that love. To see these powerhouse women in action is really something to behold.

     1. Bernard, how beautiful and deeply confirming it is to read your loving words this morning – “My religion holds women as divine and sacred to be honoured, to deeply love herself and to move and express with that love. To see these powerhouse women in action is really something to behold.” Thank you.

149. Beautiful Carmel, this is a profound teaching that should be our living truth. From my experience I can share that living without the knowing of who you truly are, is the greatest pain to life with. But when I chose The Way of The Livingness as my daily religion, by fact of me re-connecting to my truth, instantly brought in the wideness of life again, it exposed and still exposes the lies I have been living and the false ideals and beliefs I had walked with thinking that they were true and normal. I find now that what is normal is to connect with my heart and God. There is nothing else I need to do. As the rest is only a set up for distraction away from God, ‘our fire”.

150. I know you say it’s only sinking in now Carmel, but how wonderful, at any point in life, to expose the things within ourselves that frees us from living the distortion they impose.

151. Reading this I can see that I was i absolute rebellion of not wanting to get married because of what the Catholic church represented and what they told you as women how you needed to be. My time was many more years on from you but under the surface it was all still the same.

152. Current day religions are all about dominating and controlling the masses… in complete contrast to the true meaning of the word religion, which is to re-bind, re-turn to the truth each one of us knows lies deep within, and to then live that truth – a way of living that is very simple yet powerful and profound. All it takes is for each of us to be responsible in taking that journey within.

     1. ‘Current day religions are all about dominating and controlling the masses’ It makes you wonder why the masses have to be controlled, what is the consciousness that needs to keep us in submission, contracted and small? The world living a one religion in true brotherhood would be a very different place, with no one being or organisation having control over another, all of us living in harmony.

     2. True religion takes us within, whereas organised religion purposefully leads us away from ourselves. And it does this by employing a whole range of techniques and emotions that keep us on the periphery of who we actually are.

153. It is also of note that not only many mainstream religions have the fact that women are sacred as their core teaching, they also say they are unclean or to be submissive, which is the total opposite of the truth.

     1. This dichotomy of what it means to be a woman in mainstream religions has everyone very confused. The ideal of women needing to fit the picture of the divine like Mary is something no one can live up to. She is presented as pure, ‘untainted’ by sex etc., but in truth couldn’t have been. Connected to her inner essence yes, connected to God through her body yes, real yes and in being real accepting of her body and her natural divinity through honouring herself as a woman and everything that that means. As women, this is something we can all do.

154. Sometimes guidance from religious institutions is so out of touch with how life is, that is either of no support, or so misguiding that is actually makes the situation worse and more confused.

155. It is very interesting that now, in this era of transparency, so many catholic priests have been exposed for the sexual abuse of their parishioners. So much for sexual repression; when repressed, all those desires merely surface in a different form. What seems to be missing here is honesty and the catholic church has good reason to fear this when you examine its brutal history.

     1. The whole concept of celibacy is based on the ideals of self-control and discipline to demonstrate virtue, but as we know, over time any belief that comes from the head is hard to live up to. It can get further perverted when there is a myriad of unexpressed hurts and needs festering underneath that are not allowed honest expression, along with the shame of craving intimacy, which the church preaches as sinful. It is a misinterpreted form of intimacy, however as true intimacy isn’t just about sexual relations with another, it is about having an open, honest and loving relationship with self first. By its very nature, the Catholic Church encourages this misinterpretation through encouraging a foundational approach to life based on being less, unworthy and plain not good enough. That building of tension is going to need a release of some sort and whilst it is in no way acceptable, it is easy to understand how the rot of sexual suppression has resulted in so much terrible abuse.

     2. Yes there is no more scientific evidence needed, if we would ever have needed it, then this would prove what the Catholic Church teaches about love and sexuality is not working.

        1. The irony that the church professes to be the gateway to heaven, but then is exposed in its lovelessness, cannot be lost on the many millions of Catholics who attend church. We need to explore what it is about consciousnesses such as these that keep members hooked into them, despite the knowing there are many aspects that do not ring true.

     3. Whenever there is another scandal and one of the higher-ups in the Catholic church gives a press conference, you can feel that there is no true conviction to have the practice of molesting children come to an end, because they all know and have known that it was and is going on but they chose to turn a blind eye. It does seem as though the Catholic church has a lot of skeletons in its closet which are continually being exposed.

156. It’s as though the Catholic Church harbours a fear of the power that women innately hold, thereby, it uses repression as the form of control it needs to exist.

     1. Absolutely spot on Alison… there has been an eons long fear of the power of women and the consequent attempts to repress this power – which we as women continue to buy into.

157. Pope Francis has recently said the devil is ultimately behind the sexual abuse of children committed by priests – which feels like a complete refusal of the Catholic Church to take responsibility for the part they have all played in allowing the heinous sexual abuse against children to continue for years and years. Whilst we are all affected by energy, we also have free will and the ability to say no to things that we know are wrong, let alone outright criminal. However challenging that may feel at times, for whatever reason, we all ultimately hold the power to choose and we all know what is love and what is not.

     1. When an organisation invents characters like the devil then they can keep the lie going for centuries and take no responsibility for anything.

        1. I had a primary school teacher tell me little children were evil and needed to be made good. How is it Church, that little children are taught they are the total opposite to the truth that they are in fact already everything?

        2. How is it also that so many over the centuries have fallen for that lie and have allowed it to live on? How is it when we all know the truth deep down, that we could even begin to think about tainting all that beautiful innocence and amazing wisdom and light with that erroneous belief?

     2. It is a total cop-out to blame an energy for all the abuse that has happened. However, I would imagine it would be pretty hard for the pope to admit to the fact that the Catholic faith by its bastardised interpretations of the truth, historical desire to manipulate and control to gain power at the expense of others, whilst pretending to be all about God would be inward looking and reflective enough to realise just how deep the rot sits within this consciousness he has invested so much in.

158. Its no surprise that the ‘rules’ should’s or should not’s were taught at school, as a young person is probably more impressionable, perhaps vulnerable in terms of believing what a teacher says – it is a sure way of controlling a person right from the get-go because the impression made upon a person in this period certainly has the potential to remain with them for a life time.

159. With all due respect for the people who are a part of the catholic church, I feel that celibacy and a lack of marriage, although these may be considered godly, they also have the potential to ensure that a person experiences a justified and perhaps righteous withdrawal from life, which in my view is not so godly.

     1. Our idea of what constitutes ‘Godly’, is simply that, an ‘idea’, conjured up by the fantasies of the mind.

160. The church has so much to answer for when it comes to sexual repression. Whereas if we follow true religion as is The Way of the Livingness, we are encouraged to be open, honest and true to ourselves in everyday, and consequently this leads to true relationships that have no room for sexual repression in any form, but learning that ‘making love’ is an act that we can bring to everyone simply by virtue of the way we live. and of course the more intimate act of making love with the one person we are committed to in a truly loving and honouring relationship with each other.

161. “Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?” Because if it did, we would realise that we don’t need a religious institution such as this to manipulate our lives or control our behaviours. The depth of Sacredness within every woman is a natural fountain of loving wisdom, philosophy and integrity that when expressed with all our grace, sets the standards by which the whole of society innately abides by.

     1. ‘The depth of Sacredness within every woman is a natural fountain of loving wisdom, philosophy and integrity that when expressed with all our grace, sets the standards by which the whole of society innately abides by.’ – this is what true Religion teaches and reflects to us.

     2. It is interesting to note how successful religion has been in cutting off our awareness of the depth of Sacredness you talk of here, Rowena. It has been so successful that the very mention of the word has so many running for the hills in the dismissal that something this grand could every possibly be residing naturally within.

162. I was taught religion once a week at school by a very old nun (who was actually one of my mums teachers).
     She had a strange obsession (perhaps from her own sexual repression) with trying to educate us about how we need to be with boys and men.
     She would often repeat herself and say ‘never let a boy walk you into the bushes after school’ and ‘when you’re in the shower don’t touch yourself’. It was so behind the times and totally unrelatable.
     Ironically though it was through these conversations that I learned about masturbation and began to feel how controlling the Roman Catholic Church is, which also makes sense as it is a religion created in its time to control the masses by the Roman Empire.
     I have since learnt that I can have a relationship with God and Jesus without being a part of this church.

     1. ‘Don’t touch yourself’ is an interesting instruction, it makes our sacred parts somehow dirty. Like in some religions where women who are menstruating are considered ‘unclean’ there are many hang ups instilled into us by misguided (or sexually repressed) religious leaders.

163. Truth is always open to discussion, evaluation and building a deeper understanding. Whenever there is any form of suppression, we are witnessing a blatant lack of truth.

164. What has happened with the Catholic Church and women and babies born out of wedlock is really quite horrendous and only now coming to light.

     1. Hundreds of women were affected, perhaps thousands. Yes everything is now being exposed and the Catholic Church is responsible for some horrors that must have been known about but carefully hidden. It is appalling just what humans are capable of and how many stood by and said nothing.

165. The Catholic Church has a reputation for exerting power over the masses with torture and death. That is not a sign of a healthy organisation and today even if people are not put to death, much is still being suppressed and anyone who exposes the church can be at risk of psychological harm.

166. As we know sexual repression works far wider than just through the Catholic religion, for it is also seen in the circumcision of girls and women in certain cultures – all this is a backlash on the beauty and truth that we all as women are capable of living and hence bringing to all. But hiding from this will not change it, burning our bras in protest will not change it. What will truly change this is when we accept our role as true women and begin to live this in increasing increments all of the time. Only the lived presence of a woman celebrating herself is powerful enough to make a change. It is not possible to do this overnight, but it begins with the gradual steps of building our relationship with ourselves and each and every small step is to be celebrated.

167. Interesting how when our natural expression is restricted or repressed then it can come out in unnatural and distorted versions. This can be seen in all kinds of areas such as the sexual repression that Carmel has so beautifully shared, but also in terms of control and abuse and above all a self loathing or hatred as we are being instilled with the fact that something natural is not accepted and so must be seen as aberrant or ‘bad’. How much does this actually happen in life where we are being told to dampen our natural light and emanation because it is not seen as acceptable, when in fact our natural way of being is gentle and caring and always respectful of self and all others?

     1. So true Henrietta, it is not merely sexual repression it is the very essence of a woman that is subverted. Our society has repressed women to not live their divine essence then have self worth issues; a double edged set up leaving women nowhere to go. The only way out is to realise the evil of the set up and not be defined or restricted by it. Flaunt your divinity women and show our girls how to escape this set up.

168. It’s amazing how we let something that was not obvious and yet is incredibly obvious now go on for so long and then still be covered up. Yet today we see oppression in places that at first look great, but peel back the layers and they are anything but great.

     1. True David, we have allowed oppression to infect so many areas of our society, more and more will be exposed.

169. Women living the sacredness they naturally are and hold, will break down all the institutions that try to suppress this in their pursuit to have and maintain power over people.

     1. Well said Nico – and so it is that as women (and men) we hold an amazing responsibility and also an amazing power to make a change. But this only lies as a potential until such time that we begin to live the sacredness, little by little and building on this each and every day.

170. “Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?” As you say Carmel, the sacredness in women is suppressed as it will reveal the falseness the church, or any other institution that lives to this sacredness suppressing rule is putting on women as the rule to live to in order to get salvation form the imprisonment we live in. But when we fall for that we just allow ourselves to be imprisoned, the same imprisoning they want to rescue you from.

171. Suppressing people in their sexual expression is one of the ways to have control over people, as in making making love only about having sex for reproduction we are minimised in our being and our evolving back to Soul.

172. So true, Gyl, hence the importance for us, as women to reflect our claimed sacredness to each other so we may be reminded of this enormous power that we all hold within which will support everyone to return to their truth.

     1. True, I watched a documentary recently on the vote in Northern Ireland to allow abortion. It was really interesting and a reality check for how establishments and people feel they still own a woman’s body. There was a girl age 12 who had to go to the UK in secret as at the time it was still illegal ( and we’re just talking a year or two ago) to have an abortion after she’d been sexually abused.

173. If the teacher does not live Truth, the teacher cannot impart Truth to the students. It is as simple as that. Thus, a true authority does not come from name or how many followers it has, it comes from if Truth is consistently lived in its body (or the constitution’s body). This is our responsibility.

     1. Absolutely – such is the need for us to always feel the truth in any teaching before assuming it to be the way to go.

174. “A celibate life is celebrated and priests and nuns are not allowed to marry, but is a celibate life normal or healthy for everyone?” It is extraordinary to comprehend, a ‘religious’ institution that forbids its representatives to engage in healthy sexual relationships and yet turns a massive blind eye to the unhealthy sexual abuse that has taken place within this Church for eons. What it extensively proves to me is that suppressing our natural sexual activity pushes humanity into sexually deviant behaviours that then get out of control.

     1. Good point, Rowena, that suppression of anything genuine can lead to deviant behaviours

     2. This makes sense Rowena. Forbidding something natural will cause unnatural deviations of it in expression. The Church’s stringent belief of chastity has not worked for its clergy.

     3. Rowena, you’ve nailed it – and they themselves have delivered the proof.

     4. Agree entirely. The problem is that many of the Catholic priests enter the church before puberty. Thus, they are ‘sexually growing up’ under this extreme consciousness and have no way of expressing their natural feelings and urges….it is the classic pressure cooker situation…and so is it any wonder that they get badly bent out of shape and end up expressing their sexual urges in extreme, abusive and deviant ways?

175. The Catholic Church can be very pragmatic and has in the past been quite ruthless. The question then becomes why it has such an extreme view of pre-marital relationships? Hand-holding at the garden gate is a standard that may be normal for the most extreme religious societies on earth but the church knows that it is demanding the impossible. Is there a benefit for the church in demanding the impossible?

176. “I have always wanted men to see me for who I am, not just a sexy body…” – and rightfully so, but as long as men confuse intimacy with sexuality due to their upbringing and a culture not just of sexual repression but emotional repression they don´t know any different; and as long as women think they have to pander to men´s limitations to get at least ‘some’ attention and some breadcrumbs of intimacy nothing will really change.

     1. I don’t feel the confusion with intimacy is limited to men, it’s only been in recent years that I’ve understood what intimacy really means and how very beautiful it is to be intimate with each other in the true sense of the word.

177. Repression of sexuality is actually a well-known matter of fact that we can see happening in many cultural contexts and much work needs to be done to bring true change, but when will we start to become aware of the suppression of sacredness? First we would need to get a glimpse of an understanding of what sacredness actually is. Universal Medicine is possibly the only teaching organisation that presents it in the true way.

178. “Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?” Because once women re-connect to their innate sacredness, then they can see that God is in their body, not in a big church that is owned by a corrupt and oppressive organisation.

     1. Yes, they preach repression which increases the need for a church and ignore or condemn sacredness as that gives people a choice as there is then little or no need to look up to a church.

179. I feel in the light of what you are saying, Richard, we cannot be surprised by the amount of inappropriately expressed sexual energy which is particularly high in the Catholic Church.

180. The Catholic church’s main weapon is guilt and would never have all the power, money and land it has by not sending people on the massive guilt trips they have invented.

     1. Guilt is a very powerful tool to use for suppression and the Catholic church has this down to an art form, especially as it has been a practised way of being for centuries. Not only do they have a hold in this life but it also means that in the next there will be an energetic recognition and a pull to be involved in the Catholic church again, and again…

     2. It shows that real weapons and war are not necessarily the worst of crimes when we consider how much we are in shackles due to the many beliefs we hold and follow.

181. This force is control, a dictation of how women ‘should behave’ which then results in us behaving in ways that do not reflect the love that we innately all are. There is a mismatch between what we’re told and what we feel, so we stop feeling, believing the lies, causing separation and a judgment of others on completely false pretences. What a mess.

182. ‘I have always wanted men to see me for who I am, not just a sexy body, and I’m sure many women feel the same.’ – I have always wanted this to, and I feel mostly this has been the case. In order for this to happen, we must also be open to seeing men for who they truly are too, not as sexual predators, but the tender, sensitive, deeply caring beings that they are.

183. ‘“Boys are only after one thing,”’ I remember feeling deeply hurt when I heard this when I was approaching my teens as it wasn’t true – in truth I don’t think I knew what I wanted at all by this stage in life!

184. We as women must be very powerful, when there are so many religions that actually degrade and shut off women in all that they bring and are?!

185. You have posed some important questions Carmel. My experience of the catholic church is that it is an imposing system that practises power-over those that are practising it’s ‘faith’. it starts early in one’s life with subtle messages of unworthiness and undermines true Sacredness within women. Your blog opens the way for further sharing and an opportunity to begin the return path inward to re-claim what has been denied. Thank you.

186. One of the most forceful ways the truth is repressed is by the supply of a stream of false but seemingly ‘real’ things. While we are drawn into these illusionary substitutes we are distracted from the truth that lives in our heart.

187. What if every person within the world loved themselves fully, I mean really fully, first? ‘I know that in order to make love, rather than have sex, I need to start off feeling good about myself.’ Like that’s a game changer! But more importantly it is doable.

188. ‘Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?’ Great question. If we create confusion and guilt for people connecting to their ‘urge’ to express love through intimate touch, then create a whole taboo around the subject, then people don’t get to discuss and explore the differences between making love and sex and get to feel dirty and like they need salvation, the church then gets more followers. I wasn’t even brought up a Catholic and I have guilt around making love!

189. Even just saying the word ‘repression’ feels quite awful, let alone actually being repressed.

190. Religion like this can´t be true, if natural expression gets so devaluated and judged. Rules are never ever true and are a marker for a controlled way of living.

191. It is very noticeable through the examples given in this article just how much effort has gone into the suppression of women’s sacredness. Perhaps the control that the Catholic church has over people would not exist if women claimed their bodies and knew their worth without question.

192. When I first considered that Jesus had a wife and children, although it went against everything I’d ever been told in my C of E upbringing and RE lessons at school, it felt totally true and in keeping with the times and teachings of those days

193. Unless we live our lives from the relationship to self taking responsibility for every movement we make then there cannot be true intimacy in any relationship. True intimacy, being open and transparent comes from a depth of honesty in the relationship to self.

194. The suppression that happens is pretty extreme – and we do this under the guise of religion- but this is not true. It is sad to see how controlling we can be in the name of faith when not an ounce of true religion asks us to live in a restricted way.

195. Its quite incredible what we will accept if a large proportion of the population are choosing to be in a certain way or live in a certain way that doesn’t feel right. Growing up in a Catholic environment I felt all manner of discordance, but as it was all around me I just continued with a deep discomfort, following the crowd because that’s what everyone else was doing. I am learning how important it is to speak up when things don’t feel right and although there may be comeback from those that don’t like what has been expressed, this is much more preferable than living with that deep discomfort and agitation from keeping everything that is felt locked in.

196. ‘Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?’ because in the sacredness is the truth and this is the last thing that the Catholic church want us to connect to as it exposes it in all of it’s lies.

     1. Was the Catholic dogma contrived to control us?

197. Carmel, great question; ‘Why are we women not taught to honour and express how we feel? ‘ I find that talking about how I am feeling is a huge support for myself and others.

     1. It is so simple but also so simple to ignore. How we actually feel and accepting, expressing and allowing that.

     2. I agree Rebecca, I feel the reason we have all found this difficult, historically, is due to the judgment and comparison we have imposed on each other. However, understanding this, it’s incredibly beautiful to feel another completely open up for a discussion when met with love and no judgment, confirming how much we all want to communicate with each other in this open, honest, respectful way.

198. ‘Some women hide their bodies by wearing totally frumpy clothes.’ Carmel, I did this when I was a young woman, I remember purposefully hiding my body with baggy, masculine clothes as I didn’t like the attention I would get from men. Nowadays as my confidence in myself has grown, I enjoy wearing fitted clothes and love the way clothes hug the curves of my body. I enjoy my womanliness rather than trying to hide it and this feels really natural and lovely.

     1. …and when you see a woman walking in her fullness, wearing clothes that are a true expression of who she is, it is inspiring to watch her delicate yet strong flowing movements.

199. ‘These kinds of activities support the generalised belief that all men are only interested in sex.’ – I feel this is something that get’s said and perpetrated without people necessarily feeling this is true from their own experience. Maybe it starts from someone’s reaction to a particular situation, however, I personally do not feel this to be true from all the deeply caring and loving relationships I’ve had and continue to have with many male friends in my life.

200. The devastation that Christian beliefs can bring into people’s relationships is being seen in our societies today. Many relationships are more of an arrangement, a functional unit that from their choice have a family with children or not. When we reduce our relationships to a functional unit only we all fall short, because we are missing love in the relationship so much we want to fill that void and because we haven’t directly been taught to apply true love, we go into all kinds of wayward behaviours we think are loving, but in truth are abusive not only the the people directly involved, but also to the communities we live in and are part of.

201. I have been raised in the Catholic belief too and I cannot remember being told anything about how to be in an intimate relationship and about sex or making love. What I can feel from that upbringing is that making love was reduced to having sex. Because of the negation of making love in human relationships, can make one connect and feel the sacredness we are.

202. “Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?” Good question Carmel and one that we can actually apply to many aspects of our world history. We have only to look at more recent world events to confirm that the truth is manipulated on a daily basis that suit a wide range of agendas from politics to religion and industry and all intended to prevent us from connecting to our true power.

     1. Indeed much has been rewritten and untold to suit agendas of the day and this is why we must ourselves be discerning when we read about our past and present and not make assumptions that what is written and recorded is actually the way things have been or are.

     2. I have never been very interested in organised religion and distinctly remember sitting in our Divinity lessons at school thinking how the Bible reminded me of children’s books, where the author is trying to convey a moral, making it clear how we should behave in certain situations, and these messages are more easily received and remembered through ‘stories’.

     3. Yes, when we look at the media manipulation of truth today it does make you wonder how much of our taught history was true and how much was omitted in order to suit the agenda and preserve the comfort of the rulers of the day, the Catholic Church and other powerful organisations

        1. Who owns the schools that are teaching this history?

     4. Everything is a big lie and the ones that are playing a part in it do everything to keep the lie hidden to keep the game going on.

203. I have always wanted men to see me for who I am and not because of what I do, or look like. For this to happen I am learning that it requires a steady and consistent appreciation and love for the woman I am within, because if I don’t give myself this then how can expect another to give it to me.

     1. This line stood out for me as well, when reading today. We all so want to be seen for who we are, and what I am realising is that it is so much about being willing to be seen. Healing what makes us hide and measure what we share allows us to share ourselves. Everyone in truth sees all that we are, as you mention appreciation needs to come first from within. To be willing to see ourselves in full.

        1. Healing what makes us hide – yes first we need to identify the reasons why we hide and the low self worth they engender. Learning to listen to our body with absolute honesty and appreciation for all aspects of our selves is the way forward (within, actually).

        2. It is a great reminder- how often did I complain, I am not seen for who I am, when I myself did not see and valued it. I cannot put a demand to the outside, it is my responsibility to honour whatever I am able to bring to this earth.

     2. Beautifully said, Caroline, if we do not honour and respect every inch of ourselves first, how can we expect this from another, when we in return are not honouring and respecting them either.

     3. Yes, I can really relate to this. I’m so appreciative of letting go of my need to be seen as attractive in some way and returning to me appreciating myself. There are many beliefs I’ve picked up along the way. Like recently I have realised not being well I have believed to be repulsive to others and not just because say someone’s got a cold and a runny nose, but intrinsically unattractive because they are ill and therefore flawed.

        I’m not well currently and I noticed another belief around men that’s been flying around my head all my life – men being weary of being duped by a woman who plays at being helpless woman to gain care and attention. Today I had to knock that on the head. I’m not well and that’s ok. Sometimes I may have to ask for help. That’s not being conniving or manipulative but honest. The other person is perfectly entitled to say no to helping out and there be no hard feelings.

     4. Yes Caroline. Exactly the same sentence for us men too.

204. Carmel, I love your everyday examples of life and how by simple observation one can find how, what we define as life, true or not they are.

205. And that is a sad game when we allow for it to continue and that we follow. We tend to give credit to and more easily trust something that has been around for a long time, but that is a false and comfortable belief we are under, anything in any moment needs to be discerned for its truth and quality.

206. What we consider our ‘norm’ can only be challenged when we step outside, build relationships with people and get out there in the world. No one’s ‘normal’ is bad, but we may tolerate a standard of living or have a stance on a particular topic that could be evolved. A great example is the norm when you were younger of sexual repression and hiding away, and how your attitude has changed.

     1. We need open and transparent relationships in which we have to become super honest in what we hold as our norms, as only then are we able to evolve from these into the universal norms we have to return to.

207. ‘….a woman in her fullness: tender, precious and full of love, a woman who doesn’t want sex but who can be very sexy in her sacredness when she is truly making love.’ I love this Carmel and know this to be true. It is the complete opposite of what the Catholic Church wants us to believe and what i grew up with.

     1. A woman in her fullness encompasses the world.

208. Like many things that do not work, celibacy and sexual repression seems to breed perversion or at the very least some pretty messed up people. Although it may be just a small percentage of people/priests that are messed up by this, the damage is ongoing and won’t change unless something is done.

     1. The amount of harm this perversion has caused society for centuries, I feel is untold. Even if we are not celibate or sexually repressed there is still a lot of shame carried by most, whether articulated or not around the act of sex. This stems from a lack of understanding of what it means to be truly connected to yourself, your body and multidimensionality through the body and what precisely our bodies here are meant to do – in other words, simply be vehicles of expression, of energy passing through and choosing which energy we align to – this includes either having sex or making love – 2 very different expressions from two very different sources of energy.

209. In the catholic version of God and religion, women have been demonised ever since the true teachings were altered to suit the political needs of the era.

     1. You can’t cut women or men out of life, they are life.

210. It’s beautiful how you’ve re-connected with the innate divinity and sacredness that you are. This is something that Universal Medicine is so truly supportive of.

     1. Yes Fiona Universal Medicine is truly about honouring and supporting women and men to reclaim our natural power. Something rather unique in religion from my experience.

211. Although I never grew up in a catholic tradition, my sex education was extremely restricted just by the social norms of my time and raised by parents who were also kept in the dark during our vulnerable teenage years. It is strange given that this is such a natural expression of ours, one we know innately. It seems far better to me that we nurture the expression of our sensuality and sexiness, which then empowers us to deepen our intimacy, playfulness and love in our romantic relationships that in turn support the strong and healthy union of two people.

     1. Upon reflection, yes it is bizarre that we fail to discuss a normal part of living, and that having sex or making love and intimacy are created as a sordid, dirty secret. True love is something we all yearn for so it doesn’t make sense to suppress it.

        1. Well said Carmel. The level of corruption around this innately beautiful quality within us is huge when we view it in this way. When we celebrate this ability of ours to truly love one another with immense tenderness, grace, playfulness and joy, it truly is a crime against humanity to present it in any other light than the precious gift that it is.

212. Everything is felt energetically before its expressed verbally or by action, so in truth nothing is ever suppressed.

213. Anything that is suppressed is expressed anyway… it comes out in different ways that’s all – for example: when we don’t express frustration, it shows in our actions; when we don’t express hurt, we can withdraw which is felt by those around us.

214. I wonder why a religion needs to diminish its adherents? Is it so small that it needs to make its followers even smaller? And why is there such a demand to be a diminished follower?

     1. Perhaps because if we didn’t have the distraction of feeling guilty, less and small and then forever feeling justified in our reactions to life, we would have to step up and be the powerhouses that we naturally are!

215. So much has been suppressed under the false banner of religion, sexuality being one if them. It is an undermining of the full recognition the glory of our divinity and the depth of what it would mean if we lived that in our daily life. What could you possibly be ashamed of if you are living with that level of honouring? I love the way the presentation of the Ageless Wisdom by Serge Benhayon reminds us of our innate magnificence and supports the reconnection and expression of our true essence, and leaves us with the choice to live this level of magnificence in every area of life.

216. The judgements we learned and took on about gender are in the way of seeing the person first before the man or the woman, but that means we are only seeing what we are projecting out which gets us caught in the gender-related stereotypical dynamics whereby we are reducing each other. How can we ever get to know the divine sacredness of a woman, or the divine tenderness of a man when we lace each other with pictures?

217. It is astonishing how little truth there is available about relationships, sex and making love. With all the repression and rebellion neither side have come to a truth. Only from our connection to our body and the sensitivity we hold within can we come back to true relationships and making love.

218. The continuous repression of women through the ages through religion, and on the other hand the sexualisation of women outside of religion, (which is a repression in itself) shows the true power women hold in their bodies, for in the repression women are taught to feel bad, ashamed or even dirty in their own body or taught to give their bodies away..in either way it is with the same purpose, that of separating women from the sacredness that is held, untouched and unchanged, in their bodies always.

219. Thanks Carmel great to read your perspective and understanding or what took place with the Catholic religion. It has certainly helped me see the subtle underlying specific ways it operates in. Starting to feel how this has an effect on me too.

220. “Boys are only after one thing” – this is such a denigration of men and completely untrue.

     1. Absolutely Elizabeth… it totally dismisses everything about them – especially their sensitivity and their tender loving qualities.

        1. It also pits one gender against another. And reminds me of a belief I was fed by women in my family, namely, ‘Never trust a man’. An untrue and destructive belief that undermines every relationship with men before it even starts.

     2. I couldn’t agree more, it’s incredibly dis-honouring of men to make such an untrue statement. I’m sure we have all behaved in ways during our lives that in no way reflect the truth of who we are. Men crave true relationships based on a foundation of love in just the same way that women do.

221. When connecting to our hearts and feeling the Love we all are, how can what we feel be denied and as we deepen this process the depth of Love that can be felt brings tears to our eyes.

222. I really enjoyed your post, Carmel, and can relate to much of what you say. I had a religious education and was so often conflicted in how I felt, often succumbing to guilt about my behaviour or actions. It felt incredibly freeing to renounce Catholicism/Christianity and to go on my natural impulses and feelings.

     1. Guilt is a recurring theme in catholicism and can raise its ugly head long after we have cut our ties with it.

        1. That’s what I experience too Gabriele, every now and then this theme is coming back in my life to look at and let go more of its hold on me.

        2. I have noticed this theme of guilt play out in conversations with people. It affects all areas of life from feeling obliged to do something to taking on responsibility for other people’s behaviour. It’s interesting when guilt is such a strong influence in a person’s life that I often find out they have a Catholic upbringing.

     2. Guilt, energetically in the body has a similar effect as wearing a lead overcoat.

        1. Beautifully said Alexis, when we take on guilt it holds us back from living the fullness of who we are.

223. Sacredness was not a word that I could relate to within myself, until I was able to observe and feel the quality of it in Natalie Benhayon. It is amazing to have such a role model, to re-ignite the body and re-connect to the exquisiteness inside myself which was always there but suppressed or shut down.

224. How many religions are founded by first-hand accounts? How many are based on pictures of how we should be living and that was made up by men, most I would guess! What better way to control others than with rules from some dead guy that we have deified. Non-membership is these organisations was publicly dissuaded by all kinds of nefarious ways, as examples of choosing not to be a member. Today there are very few extreme religions that impose punishment for transgressions. But, more than half the world is a member of a religious order, how many ancient values and beliefs are still embedded within us?

     1. Embedded like we are enshrined in a tomb of our own making, and we are the ones with the keys to undo our nefarious ways, by starting to live in a more Loving way through healing to undo the tombs as we expose the false platforms they have provided, so we can move and walk free to set a new foundation as we walk.

     2. Interesting – it wasn’t Jeshua who started the Catholic Church, or Buddha who started Buddhism. They were amazing people who shared what they knew about the Ageless Wisdom, information for all of us, not for an exclusive few.

225. “Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?” Great question and one that needs to asked of society in general. Perhaps the answer to the question is, that if women were to reconnect to this precious innate quality and begin to live it, the world would be a very different place to live in, and there are, and always have been, many who are invested in it staying exactly the way it is.

226. There is much guilt, shame and fear wrapped up in the teachings of Catholicism, and as a young child this is totally confusing and it does not encourage questioning or listening to ones own body and natural impulses.

     1. Victoria your comment helps us to realise just how unnatural Catholicism is as a way of life

     2. I agree Victoria and what is interesting is how this idea of guilt, shame and repenting for our sins then inadvertently carries into other areas of our lives with the perpetual undercurrent of we are bad and sinners and so it dispels and takes away any sense of learning and brings with it the self bashing many of us have been used to rather than embracing our mistakes and learning from them.

227. Most of my teachers in high school were nuns and I remember the imposition and repression as an attempt to curb the natural inquisitiveness and general behaviours of us as young women. It wasn’t very successful with myself and my friends though neither was it encouraging of free expression.

     1. Ha yes, I remember as a boarder, I was larking around in the dormitory when the nun who looked after the boarders walked in – boy was I in trouble – all I was doing was holding my flared skirt tight against my bottom and wiggling my hips. Shock. horror. What evil she thought I was up to is anyone’s guess.

        1. ha ha I can see you doing that Carmel. We use to sneak over to the convent at lunch time and check out the nuns dormitories, we were fascinated with how these women lived together. Fortunately we didn’t get caught that time although there were other shenanigans we got up to that lead us to the principal’s office- a scary experience at any age.

228. When we truly understand and live the meaning of the word religion, it empowers us to express our feelings and qualities in full without limitation but with deep respect and integrity. When viewed in light of the suppression imposed upon people by so called religious institutions, it becomes clear that any organization that seeks to suppress our natural grace, wisdom and truth is most definitely working in opposition to its promised service.

     1. Yes, it is interesting how these institutions are actually doing the opposite of what they claim

229. During my many years in boarding school I saw so clearly how banning any topic tends to incite more curiousity and obsession by many who react to such an imposition, and especially when there is no recourse to discussing and making sense of it all there is room for all sorts of crazy ideas and choices in rebellion. From that insight I am certain that the imposition of the various religious institutions on sexuality has had a huge part to play with the sexual issues and abuse we have in society.

     1. You may be right, Golnaz, that the secrecy probably makes it more of an issue than commonplace or natural

230. There are many pictures that have been created about what it is to live a religious life. These pictures are different depending on where you stand on religion. One of the things created by these pictures is a fear of what will happen if we show that we are religious in any way. We need to come back to basics and understanding what religion means and what being religious means. We also need to be able to live what our expression of this is, of course with no imposition on anyone. Let’s explore what religious freedom truly means.

     1. I agree Jane and yet no one has considered to stop and ask well what is religion? ( until Serge Benhayon came along) and if it is that, then what is all of the above that you have stated?

231. When entertaining the possibility that what we call the Catholic Church is not just an institutionalized religion but a ‘consciousness’, i.e. a set of ideals and beliefs that goes with a particular way of thinking, views on life and corresponding behaviours we may need to ask what the overarching intention of such consciousness is and especially regarding women, femaleness and the quality of sacredness that is so deliciously embedded in them. Obviously, it is all geared to reduce women to such a point that they will never know who they divinely are and hence will not activate and live the sacredness their bodies naturally provides, thus ensuring male dominance and thereby an imbalance of life we all suffer.

     1. And another question may be why so many people participate in such a deleterious activity?

232. There is sex and then there is making love. The act of love making is a sacred act that celebrates the man and the woman in their tenderness and in their absolute sacredness. Sex is simply the physical act without taking it any deeper than that. Of course there are also grades of sex where it can be honouring sex without any impositions and then there are those forms of sex that bring in impositions and various forms of manipulation, abuse and use of the other. What do you accept in your relationship and where would you like to take it?

233. Not only did you have the nun’s version of men and the Church’s beliefs about sex and relationships, but in addition you could not counter these stories of what boys and men were like because you didn’t have those little 6 year old boys in your class, and through the subsequent years into teenage-hood, to come to your own understanding and experience.

234. ‘Some women hide their bodies by wearing totally frumpy clothes or the opposite, using sexy, revealing clothes to have power over men.’ I was definitely in the former category. I made myself androgynous and less feminine so that I wouldn’t attract unwanted, sleazy attention from men. I hid myself as a woman and didn’t dare expose the true me.

235. Today I spoke with a young man who has embodied sacredness and feels, knows and hears when there is true sacredness and when it is just knowledge and thinking we know what it is. It is interesting and telling to observe all the effort all the religions, the Catholic Church included, have put into bastardizing anything that comes even remotely to sacredness.

236. An absolutely gorgeous sharing Carmel, and one for us all to ponder on deeply on how we as women have felt a repression of our natural expression. Thank you!

237. This is such an interesting read Carmel. The interrelatedness of the woman’s body and sex is staggeringly deep and feels quite automatic because the concept of a woman’s sacredness and honouring that in making love is not something we were taught.

238. Thank you Serge Benhayon for supporting me to understand that my beliefs and ideals come from an outside source and that I have a natural sense of what is true for me. I just need to remember how to access it.

239. Human nature tends to crave what is withheld or prohibited! Even when the intentions are for our wellbeing like signs that warn of ‘shallow water No diving allowed’, there will always be someone to change the advice. Our dubious friend, Mr Free Will, will do anything to keep our ill choices alive and well!

240. “We women need to reclaim our bodies for ourselves . . . “. Hear hear! As a boy growing up in the Catholic faith my sexual feelings too were repressed. From my observation it turned these boys into having no regard for themselves with nearly 100% drinking alcohol now as adults — this led to more abuse to the body which leads to aggressive behaviour from man to man, which also leads to disrespect towards women.

241. The problem with repression is it often acts like a force on a coiled spring (which is symbolic of a behaviour), then when the force is released the spring reacts by bouncing higher than it would’ve otherwise done. Both the repression and the action of the spring are unnaturally exaggerated.

242. Yes, I can also relate to having no teachings or education as a child which encouraged me to embrace my power and inner authority.

243. There is so much in society that is designed to denature or repress the innate sexiness of the woman. This is why I love what the Universal Medicine teachings bring, as they constantly remind us of the divine qualities waiting to blossom from within.

244. A lot of women also appear to be “only after one thing” in the same way as men (in fact they can be worse) although none of this is true, another perversion away from the connection and love we all truly seek.

245. And making love and intimacy is not just about touch and intercourse. They may be a small part of it, but our (or the Church’s) obsession with these elements limits the zillions of other areas of life where it is possible to make love.

246. It is time we woke up to the fact that we don’t need these outdated, re-worked religions that fester separation in many ways. I have seen women in certain religions being so devout to what they have been sold that they are willing to accept all the abuse that is heaped on them as part of life in that religion. Once we start rebuilding our connection to ourselves we will see how deeply we have been fooled for so long.

247. ‘Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?’ – using repression as a form of control. The enormous consequences of this crushing and immensely destructive choice are still being felt today and will continue until we are all able to feel and see the truth of how we are being manipulated on a daily basis by forces that we may not be able to see, but they can be felt.

248. Your blog highlights a massive piece of the puzzle that is missing in our education, and that is what is true intimacy? Leaving a gap for all that is not of true intimacy to enter. The education system is creating women to feel less than they are, leaving men to miss out on feeling a woman in her sacredness. How can true intimacy be felt if we are all first not supported and shown how it is to be truly intimate with ourselves and honour our sacredness?

249. “I have always wanted men to see me for who I am, not just a sexy body, and I’m sure many women feel the same.” Agreed. In my attempt to be noticed beyond being an object of desire I pushed my body to compete physically with men and in doing so denied all my delicate, precious female attributes at great expense to my health. In the process of reclaiming my self-respect and my female qualities, I have noticed a big shift in how men relate to me. Voicing this now makes me realize how our lack of self-worth and self-respect underpins the quality of our relationships; change this and everything falls into its correct place.

250. I agree Jane – this may seem like the ‘old school’ way of boarding but I’m very sure that this is still going on today in many parts of the world, and more intensely than we may know without experiencing it for ourselves. I can’t believe the level of control and manipulation that is involved with the Catholic way, it just sounds like all rules and no reality or understanding into life and who we are in it.

251. Hearing about the Catholic ways is really devastating. I myself was never bought up with any religion, never went to a church or anything like that so I have no real experience or understanding of the control and sheltered nature that growing up in a religious boarding school is. Very insightful Carmel, thank you.

252. You make a good point here Shirley-Ann that we are the creators of our own experiences, because it is our lack of self respect that encourages disrespect from others

253. I love what you’re saying here. I can already think of extremes that are created in reaction to the suppression of our natural expression. Repressing who we truly are hurts so we seek to rectify that in ways that aren’t true and so are harmful in some way.

254. If we don’t talk openly about subjects they become taboo and all sorts of myths, lies and very unhelpful fantasies can develop. This can create insecurities, anxiety and fear of speaking openly so barriers are created and the opportunities for learning and intimacy are missed. Topics like sex, making love, death and dying are amongst such taboo topics which can leave people feeling very isolated.

     1. I agree, Karin, and perhaps a part of our uncomfortableness in discussing these topics comes from a knowing that we are not living in a true way, a way that confirms the truth of who we are. We can feel that these very foundational topics in our lives are a bit ‘off’ – not how we know they can be, the struggle is quite how to get there? By being real with each other, having open discussions, as with this blog, where so much can be shared as we support each other to find our way back to our innate way of living together, in love, harmony and equality.

255. If we are honest, before all the isms occur isn’t there a repression of our divinity that takes place? It’s us who sell ourselves out to lies not the other way around.

     1. Big ouch, but yes – we have free will to make our own choices and we have certainly been very quick to leave ourselves behind, dazzled by the allure and promise of something that cannot and will not ever deliver.

256. An awesome exposé Carmel of how indoctrination can tarnish our relationships and our life – and these ideals and beliefs can affect us for lifetimes.

257. Thank you Carmel, this helped me crack some of the last remnants of this Catholic religion in my own body. Even though not being directly associated with it myself this life I can feel I have taken on many of the ideals in my body. It is only through reading and seeing that of course there is no true religion in disconnecting women from themselves and society, love, sacredness and sexiness. Of course we have to live in every part of our life, in society, have partners and love them, make love, feel sexy (which has nothing to do with being sexual), be sacred and deeply honouring of our body. How could we think it is normal to not be allowed to do all these things?

258. I was raised as a Roman Catholic and I hated the feeling of being squashed by its rules and regulations and rebelled as much as I could. The bit that really got me as a child was that I was a sinner! I just could not and would not accept this and would ask anyone who would listen to me, how come a child can sin what could I do that would be see as a sin in the eyes of God? The answer is that we are all born sinners! and it is only through constantly partaking in the rites of the Catholic Church that we can redeem ourselves. I personally don’t believe this at all to me that speaks of control.

     1. What a great way to control the masses by convincing them that they are all sinners and that the only way they can get to heaven is to do something for God or his representatives on earth, or pay money, to the church. Sounds like this was the original fund-raising scam but sadly one that so many fell, and in some cases are still falling, for.

259. I remember when I was a child asking why priests and nuns and brothers were celibate and being told that it was so they could focus on building their relationship with God and did not have to worry about the normal relationship issues that come with having a family. This never made sense to me because I have always felt religion to be just as much about relationships with other people as it is with God.

     1. It is actually something manufactured by the church early on so they didn’t have to pay the widows. It always comes down to money.

260. ‘Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?’ This may be due to the fact that the whole of Catholicism would be exposed for what it is if it did this!

261. Carmel so much is said here to discuss. For one it is both ironic and insidious that the Catholic Church have celebrated celibacy yet abuse has been rife especially with children within it. So one thing is said in the church yet another thing is lived behind closed doors where no one can see. Out of all of this which really stood out for me, was the fact how not just in the Catholic Church, but pretty much everywhere we have been brought up to believe that intimacy means intimacy with a partner in a sexual way. Never have we been taught that intimacy is actually first deepening our relationship and connection with ourselves first and that in doing this we can then be intimate with another, not necessarily in a sexual way, but in a way there are no guards or barriers put up so this can be with friends, family and colleagues etc.

262. I was raised with freedom of choice for religion and tried and tested many, before becoming content with the consistency and abundance of love in The Way of the Livingness.

     1. How cool to have been given the freedom to choose. Only when you can feel what freedom is, when you detach yourself from the ideals and beliefs of a religious upbringing, do you appreciate the freedom that could have been offered.

263. Catholicism has a way to generate a ‘Catholic’ pattern of movement that is not conducive to people’s flourishing.

264. We can only rule over our body with our mind for so long, at some point we cannot hold back what lives within us, or has been suppressed due to the many beliefs we hold.

     1. Very true, Esther, and when we have been pushed to live in a way that is not our innate way of being, there has to be a correction to bring us back to a state of harmony – perhaps this is seen as being rebellious, however, it may also just be the correction required to re-unite us with our truth. That’s not to say that it’s ever acceptable to treat others in an abusive manner.

     2. True, and in fact even in the midst of some enforced beliefs we can still recognise and register what does not feel true in the body. I remember this as a child where I simply did not agree or believe what the teaching was suggesting. We each have that inner knowing and it is a choice whether we choose to listen or not.

        1. Yes, we can feel it in our bodies always and that is what we need to learn, to live life from our bodies, the more we allow that the clearer we will get of what is truly true and what not.

265. It is amazing how well the Catholic Church designed its demands about sex – their “they only want one thing” message gets confirmed countless times in the street and seems to be the truth when it is anything but the whole truth and a distortion to boot.

     1. Yes it manages to denigrate both men and woman in one blow. What has that got to do with love? Nothing and yet God is love so really none of this adds up because isn’t that religion supposed to have something to do with God?

     2. These sort of messages whether covert or overt create general mistrust between men and women and this is does not inspire true intimacy, love and respect that is natural between us.

266. I was raised a Catholic too and what I remember most strongly was the sense of shame around sex and how men and women were not encouraged to relate to each other. I also went to a convent as a day girl and I remember one day a piece of paper on the male organs we had been looking at in biology in a reproduction lesson, falling out of my book in front of the head teacher who was a nun. She blushed from her toes to the top of her head. How is it possible that a religion doesn’t accept the human body as it is, sees the fact of the body as a sin and warps the natural connection between men and women as evil?

     1. A very one sided view point indeed Michelle that is imposed upon us as children and as adults. The message is that we are sinners and to be embarrassed about our body and who we are – the total opposite of what really allows us to step into our power as a divine and powerful woman/man who is honouring and caring deeply of the physical body and all that we can live and bring with it.

        1. This consciousness of shame around our bodies has seeped into our secular way of living too, especially in countries like the UK and America. I know that in Germany people do not carry this shame in quite the same way, but when we look at the tight hold the catholic consciousness still has on so many people through the guilt we carry, the feeling of having to put everyone before ourselves, the shame over the body and its functions we can see that we have not shifted very much at all since the dark ages. In accepting and appreciating my body as it is, in having let go of any shame around it, in deeply appreciating myself as a woman, in letting go of protection and so on, I have come to know that my body is precious as a vehicle that energy passes through. The body certainly needs honouring. With awareness and understanding, as you say, Henrietta, we find the answer to divinity through it. Rather ironic that the church, which professes to be the doorway to divinity is actually a vehicle that prevents us from doing precisely that.

267. Feeling a sacredness within, feeling sexy or even just liking ourselves and honouring ourselves goes against the whole ‘Lesser being/sinners’ thing that the Catholic Church seems to run with. You can’t consider yourself as a ‘sinner’ if you actually love yourself.

     1. Beautifully expressed Leigh. Is it possible that the whole Catholic religion (and others) is an energetic setup to stop us from self-loving and actually stepping up to be the powerhouses that God designed us to be and that we in fact already are? Everything about the Catholic faith keeps the community in repression and in a consciousness that has us believing adamantly that we are unworthy and are less. Agreed – it is totally impossible to feel yourself as a sinner or as less when you actually genuinely love and appreciate yourself.

     2. Agree Leigh, casting someone as a ‘sinner’ is a curse and evil in itself. We are naturally divine beings and love is who we are.

268. A rough fact is that 80% of the world’s population belong to one of the top 12 religions. That means there are about 1.5 billion people that don’t believe. And what about those not actively practising their religion? If half did not practise, that would make 60% of the planet! What would all of that un-repressed religious dogma look like? Sodom and Gomorrah perhaps?

269. What you have pointed out Richard is quite profound of how the extremes can only exist, in the fringes we create.

270. “Of course, many Catholic girls did get pregnant and their babies were adopted away, leaving young mothers distressed for the rest of their lives”. What an incredible setup for these women. No sex education so they are unprepared, disempowered and uneducated when intimate relationships begin. Then having shame that having sinned and the lifetime guilt of giving away a child.

     1. and even worse if father priest was the father.

271. I have received the footprint of catholic religion through my family, culture and Spanish society in which catholic influence is very ingrained. That footprint has been huge, in an evident and subliminal manner. However, the truth of my body and the sacredness within it, is much more powerfeul than any imposition. Yes, for some time I have felt supressed by that religious consciousness, but when I come back to the sacredness of my body, everything dissipates and only remains the wisdom I’ve never lost. Truth is always more powerful than any creation.

272. Great subject to raise Carmel and we shouldn’t stop at just the Catholic religion for the way they regard sex and treat women, but all religions as well that don’t accept everyone as absolute equals.

     1. You could probably throw a few football clubs in here as well as many other institutions.

        1. oh yes and let’s not leave out the media.

273. I was raised a Catholic and one of the priests we had is finally doing time in prison after years of sexually abusing boys and girls. I often wondered whether he would have been like this if he had been allowed to marry or have a partner.

     1. Yes agreed, we build a way of living that means people have to deny themselves and then they turn to the most innocent to control and abuse because they are the least likely to speak up. So wrong.

     2. Yes, I have often wondered about the prolific sexual abuse that happens within the Catholic Church and that this might stem from the fact that having a partner and marriage is disallowed.

274. We have to get our eyes opened for what is really going on and therefore as you say Jane, all the ideals and beliefs we live with and the way the act out in our societies should be the subjects of our conversations at the dinner table and not the ordinary chit chat that we all know so well and feel so uncomfortable with.

275. In fact you can say that any sexual interaction between two people which is not in honour of the sacredness that we carry in our bodies that there is abuse to the core of our being.

276. After reading this blog I can clearly feel the consciousness of the sexual repression that is put over men through the indoctrination of the religious institutions or otherwise the ideals and beliefs that people hang on to. There is absolutely no freedom in giving expression to the sacred quality of men and woman. Instead there are the outbreaks of the repression people feel themselves under resulting in the abusive sexual acts many women and men can testify about.

277. I really listened up when reading this article; the significant difference between sex and being sexy; sex and making love; sex and intimacy so brilliantly explained and then the reality check about sexual repression perpetuating ‘if not caught and turned around.’ And that this is our choice. Thank you, Carmel.

278. Repression is what the Catholic Church does best. It represses that which is innately natural about us.

279. Even though in this life I haven’t had much association with institutional religion, I still picked up on the undercurrent through generations of family and friends around me, that having sex was bad, dirty and wrong before marriage, but only done when married to keep a relationship going or to have babies. Nowhere did I see making love as an expression of love and celebration of all that a couple lives in their everyday with everyone. If this was the norm, then there wouldn’t be the suppression and issues locked in our bodies that hold us back from truly expressing ourselves with a partner in full.

280. I couldn’t agree more Jane. When I was a teenager I secretly wished this is what we would talk about around the dinner table. I was never game to bring it up because it was such an uncomfortable topic for everyone. Society has made it so secretive, I wonder if that feeds the energy of sexual abuse. If we were open and honest and normal about it, would it then not expose the evil that is allowed to fester from making the female body wrong and bad and making love something far fetched.

281. I have always wondered whether the sexual repression in the church was a causative factor in the level of abuse that has been present within the church. Lets face it, their approach has not been a healthy one for religious people but also those who have attended church/schools over the years. But I certainly now get a sense of much more than just sexual repression and that through what is taught and how it is taught, we simply disconnect from what is very naturally a part of us. The enjoyment of our physical bodies, the love of how we can move our bodies, the appreciation of our curves and natural shapes and sizes, the love of ourselves, the appreciation of one another and when this is shared with another, the moment is an extension of the love we live in every moment.

282. “I have always wanted men to see me for who I am, not just a sexy body, and I’m sure many women feel the same.” I agree Carmel… in fact we all, male and female, want to be seen for who we are, to be honoured as the gorgeous beings we are and not just as the physical body.

     1. And when I realise this and accept nothing less, I also see clearly the opportunity to build a totally different relationship with my body… one from the inside out rather than the outside in.

     2. I remember as a younger woman desperately missing the natural connection I could have had with men. It felt like it wasn’t possible because I felt that they saw me as my body first and the potential for a sexual relationship before anything else. Now I am nearing my 50s and now that I am much more secure in myself having a natural authority, this isn’t an issue. I am also in the privileged position of knowing so many gorgeous men who do see me for who I am regardless of my gender. In this space, there is mutual love and appreciation that is unsullied by any need

283. “I cringed whenever any man I was with would ogle a girl, focussing on her breasts. I felt offended but the men would see it as a ‘healthy appreciation,’ whereas for me it has always felt sleazy.” Yes, ‘healthy appreciation’ is such a lie, an excuse and dishonouring of the woman … and I wonder how those men would feel if women ogled them in that sleazy way.

284. This is one of those ‘chicken and egg’ situations that requires us to take a huge step backwards in order to ask our selves some bigger questions here that go beyond our life conditioning into the deeper realms of our wisdom and power. If we women held true to our sacredness within, we would never allow such institutions to suppress it, so the bigger question for me is, “why did I make that choice in the first place? What lead me to abandon this sweet and sacred energy inside me in favour of a lesser quality?” One to keep me pondering for a while.

     1. Another big discussion to have from a big discussion that was presented here in the blog. Why did we make this choice in the first place? Lots to ponder on and reflect here and I agree a step back is needed in order to be able to see this more clearly and not be ‘in’ it. One thing that comes to me, well several really, is first jealousy from others so instead of staying connected to the sacredness within it is let go of, dropped, in order to not been seen, lie low on the radar, fit in and not attacked by another, even if this is a look that can be felt. Also not having a en masse reflection of people claiming and living from this within the world in authority that then gives others permission to do the same. At the end of the day though no matter how much we look at it what comes to me is to not have any excuses but regardless what happens to live our truth and to enjoy the process of loving, caring and cherishing ourselves more deeply.

     2. This is true Rowena, we so often assume we are victims in negative situations, not recognising that the original choice was ours in not truly valuing our own sacredness.

     3. One part of this is that there are very few role models out there of women who are truly in touch with their sacredness. In fact most of us don’t even know what the word means and it certainly not holier than thou. Natalie Benhayon is the most amazing role model of what it is to be a true woman and has inspired and ignited hundreds of women with her sacredness and spunk!

285. ‘The natural sacredness and natural sexiness (not sexual) of a woman is deliberately suppressed.’ So it is known where true power lies and what can change our world, otherwise you wouldn’t need to suppress it and we as women know it too.

286. The Catholic Church is responsible for impregnating millions of people with poisonous beliefs that have then festered away inside them for entire lifetimes. These beliefs have not only effected the people who were directed impregnated but everyone else as well, because we are one interconnected whole. A true scourge on society.

287. “Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?” My answer to that is that they want to own our relationship with God, they want it to come via them and a woman in her sacredness knows that she has a direct connection with God that has nought to do with the Catholic Church.

     1. Great answer to a great question… a conversation for every kitchen table at some point this week.

     2. Yes, and who would then need the Church?

     3. Yes they have a vested interest in getting between people and God that being money and the desire for power over others.

     4. Aha!

288. I wasn’t raised a Catholic and both my parents raised me to make up my own mind later when I was older. They didn’t Christian me which I love about their willingness to allow me to discover and express who I wanted to be. This said, neither of them could escape the underlying Catholic and Protestant beliefs about men and women that just pervaded their upbringing which I picked up on through how they were.

     What I hate is how people, who don’t want to practice what doesn’t feel true to them, still pick up on the insecurities and standards imposed on them through society as certain religions dominate. The need to be accepted in society and not go against accepted standards is strong. I know I have felt the force of conformity and feared hostility or social isolation for stepping out of the box.

289. Not talking about something never works – a lack of education around sex and relationship simply leads to a higher likelihood of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease, and incomplete consent due to a lack of understanding.

     1. Yes I agree not communicating how we feel and suppressing our natural awareness and sensitivity does not work and creates more problems in the end.

        1. I have noticed when around children, there can be a hesitancy and an element of secrecy around certain topics – in innocence a child might ask what the bra hanging on the washing line is, or why someone has a different skin colour and sometimes we go out of our way to not have to explain to children the realities of life, rather than being open and honest to the level they can at that moment understand so they feel included and part of life – there was nothing worse than feeling something and then being told by an adult your ‘too young to understand’ – is this true or do we not want to take the time to explain it in a way that they could understand

290. If we all reflected on the many teachings we are/were part of in our upbringing, and simply reasoned with our body and not our mind, in other words, be super honest about how we feel/felt about them, we would easily expose them for being true or not.

     1. Absolutely Esther but we are taught to ignore our bodies and live in our minds so as adults it is automatic to ignore.

        1. Which shows we have made life something that is not in accordance to our true being-ness. We like to dissect things and take them apart and just foster and promote parts of the whole to have the highest efficiency and outcome, but that is not how the universe works and neither do we being a part of this grand whole.

291. “Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?” That’s a big question Carmel and one that will hurt a very many people when the truth is revealed. It really shows how we can be blinded by doctrine, belief, pictures on what is good, but completely ignore, not see and be blinded to what the truth is right in front of our faces. But then sometimes the hurt is so, so great that it’s often easier to ignore, but like anything, everything catches up with us eventually.

292. A beautiful frank and open sharing of your experience in the Catholic education system. It has got me wondering how other religions view/teach/instill in their young views on women, her value, sex and making love – and how these shape the world, though very possibly devoid of the sacredness of a woman.

293. Although I grew up without direct experience of the teachings of the Catholic Church I was deeply affected by the air of sexual repression which infiltrated my family and education and like you feel I am only now recognising the extent of it and the lasting impact on my life. Honouring my sacredness and expressing it more has transformed my relationships as I am finally being more authentically me.

294. I was not brought up as a Catholic, but having been indoctrinated by the Church of England, much of what you say here rings bells for me, Carmel. So yes, I’ve no doubt religion has played a huge part in our sexual repression. To know now that we can honour our bodies in such a way that allows us to reconnect to our sacredness which in turn empowers us to say no to anything that is not truly loving is something all women should have access to.

     1. Absolutely Richard. It is very gorgeous to be in the presence of a man who honours himself in this way, and allows both himself and the women (and other men) around him to be more open to sharing with each other all of who we are.

     2. What is important here is that you make the distinction that the sexual repression is not one of denying our sexuality or feeling comfortable with men, but the suppression of a woman’s sacredness, – her true relationship with divinity, a relationship that is so natural and powerful should it be openly known and lived by her.

295. There are so many cases of sexual abuse in the press recently different religions seem to have the same problem of not truly caring for the young people while in their care. It must be the worst betrayal of trust for a child and as some of the now adults said no one believed them not even their parents, why would they? After all they too trusted their religion of choice. And what is worse is that the people who perpetrated such abuse seemingly are untouchable as they hide behind the authority of their church. Who gives them such a right this is injustice of the worst kind as they seemingly hold themselves above common law.

     1. The way societies treat children is very indicative of how mentally and soulfully well they are. I don’t think there is anywhere that truly supports children, as we see the highest suicide rates in idyllic places with great health care and education. There is something fundamentally missing from the way we live.

     2. Not only religions – it seems to be everywhere. Was just reading about it in the boy scouts or was it girl guides and of course the most dangerous place is in the family home.

        1. oh yes and schools too are rife with sexual abuse

296. Suppression of a natural process that leads to depression is an evil act

297. Yes, the burning and destruction of evidence that would expose the lie is a deliberate act against humanity.

298. I can very much relate to what you have shared here Carmel, I too went to an all girls high anglican church boarding school and am reminded of the self imposed shame i felt as a young woman around any kind of sexual act or thought. Having spent 5 of my teenage years at an all girls boarding school and not having any brothers to relate to, I became very wary and socially nervous around boys/men. Inspired by the work of Universal Medicine I began to bring greater heed and understanding to my relationship with myself and to steadily reclaim the sacredness that invited me to celebrate my entire body, from here I have been able to see how shut down I had become. I can honestly say that it has taken me until my 40’s to be able to really look deep into the eyes of man, for years I had carried the belief that to hold a man’s gaze was flirtatious, even slutty. Standing in the knowing and appreciation of myself as a woman today, I hugely appreciate the opportunity to gaze into the eyes of both women and men, to meet them and love them as my brothers and sisters, free of any sexual agenda or self bashing judgement.

299. so much is not discussed, hence the complete lack of intimacy, honesty and openness for many of us

300. “… Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?…” Control over the masses comes to mind..

301. “Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born within our bodies?” great question as my experience of growing up as a Catholic was that Women were not as good as men and could not have the same rights. There was no equality in that and certainly no celebration of the sacredness that women naturally and innately have.

     1. I think in particular with the Catholic Church alot of this repression comes from a deep seated fear of what the ruling class did not understand. The thought of women in their power would have been (and still is) terrifying. Like so many before them, rather than embrace that power and be vulnerable in the ‘I don’t know how this is going to turn out’ they have opted for millenia of subjugation in the hope that they don’t have to face it.

302. I didn’t have a religious upbringing, I only went to church on a couple of occasions for weddings or christenings and I remember going to Sunday school once and yet the messages that were imposed on you from your Catholic upbringing were still there, they were in society. I felt them. Sexual suppression is rife and it feels to me that I’m only just beginning to unpick the ideals and believes that I have grown up with and feel what it would be like to live claiming who I am.

303. Yes, it is not possible to control the masses if you acknowledge their power and sacredness.

304. “We women need to reclaim our bodies for ourselves and then what we can offer our partner is a woman in her fullness…” – a healing modality which has encouraged me back towards knowing what “my own fullness” is and embracing that as opposed to fighting it is Esoteric Yoga where the quality of stillness can be felt. Through stillness everything is felt to be known.

305. When truth is suppressed it will eventually come out, however long that may be.

306. I read somewhere that the Catholic Church was around a thousand years before it stopped its priests from marrying and that there were Popes that were married. The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus stayed single but I heard first hand from a minister who was a historian of the old Templar Church in London that it was far more likely that he was married and had children.

307. We could single out the church but isn’t it true that our whole society and ‘life as we know it’ has been founded on how best to repress? For whether it’s food, music, politics or sex, do we use these things to express how we feel or do use them to distract from the truth inside? I’d say more often than not it’s the latter.

     1. Good question, Joseph…I would agree that much of our social systems and structures are not designed to support the being to flourish.

     2. I agree with you Joseph, very well said. This is one of the reasons why someone like me who has never been a part of any organised religion can relate to what Carmel has shared. I too can feel this same repression coming from society and how we are taught to live. Now, I know there is another way, it is being taught by Serge Benhayon through The Way of The Livingness and thank God, these teachings are available to us all.

308. The catholic attitude towards sex is indeed carefully crafted, and it’s all about power over women and reflects the deep misogyny actively encouraged and cultivated towards women. Women are raised in catholicism to know their place and that is as being lesser, and so we bring less of us in this state to our lives and to our relationships, not the fullness of who we innately are.

309. I was brought up as Lutheran which was a whole lot more laid back than some of my mates that were Catholic school educated. But, when I got older, and there were classes we had to attend, not on Sundays, the soundproof crying room with a curtain, was a favourite make-out place. Suppression of our expression has always done the opposite. What is our reaction to something after being told we couldn’t or shouldn’t do? Do we not wish to find out first hand?

310. “The natural sacredness and natural sexiness (not sexual) of a woman is deliberately suppressed.” Thats so true Carmel and how can it be that the word sexiness means now being sexual? How can it be that a word can loose its actual meaning? Are we as a society perhaps afraid of being truly sexy? It is really time to claim our natural sacredness and natural sexiness back and see what will happen!

311. Carmel in sharing the effect of Catholicism in your life, you give the reader a glimpse of the enormity of the the effect that the Catholic Church has had on the people of the earth. If we try to imagine that same effect that the church has had on you (and in many cases the Catholic Church has had a much more drastic and damaging effect) in the lives of the millions of people throughout history, who have had contact with either the Catholic Church or a similar such organisation, then we get but a small glimpse into the absolute carnage that lays in the wake of organised religion. Shame, shame, shame that something that uses God’s name can be responsible for such devastation and destruction.

     1. I have recently attended some lectures that talk about Jeshua and the Gospels that carry quotes of his sayings, and it is amazing just how many of them have become parts of our everyday language but with a bastardised meaning, ‘go that extra mile’ is one of them.

312. Resurrect the truth of a woman’s body and you resurrect truth.

313. The Catholic Church instills in girls that their bodies are dirty and “unpure”. This is a huge denial of the sacredness and divinity of our body.

314. You are talking about what in the UK was called a ‘Chastity Belt’ and the Catholic Church has certainly locked up many millions of women throughout the centuries in an energetic chastity belt.

315. Carmel this article has got me going too! I was at a Methodist Ladies College boarding school and it felt so stuffy and hypocritical and the absence of boys meant that they became some kind of novelty to be ogled at when ever one dared to come up to the school grounds. It would have been so wonderful to have a balanced understanding of our sexuality at that age – as young women we would have felt more empowered to hold our sacredness and offer something more useful as a guide for equally lost young men.

     1. Yes I went to a Quaker girls boarding school which felt very shut away from any normal interactions with boys and equipped me very poorly for later relationships.

316. It is quite bizarre really that we refer to these institutions as ‘religious’ but the doctrines taught fall a long way short of the mark. Any organization that does not celebrate the Sacredness within all Women and teach us how to connect to and honour this loving, wise and innocent quality within us is deeply failing humanity. I am truly appreciative for being shown how to re-connect to mine so that I can resurrect my Sacredness within my body and within all my relationships.

317. “We women need to reclaim our bodies for ourselves and then what we can offer our partner is a woman in her fullness: tender, precious and full of love, a woman who doesn’t want sex but who can be very sexy in her sacredness when she is truly making love.”

     This is beautifully claimed Carmel and if this simple wisdom is put into practice and lived by women, it will not only serve to rekindle the sacred Fire in all women, but also help resurrect it deep within us all, men included!

     1. When I looked up the definition of Sacredness – every example given was related in some way to religion, so if the word ‘religion’ has been bastardised, in turn, so has our understanding of Sacredness. I’d always felt it was something unattainable, exquisitely divine and precious – beyond our worldly existence. It was quite a revelation to understand from the teachings of The Ageless Wisdom that sacredness is in fact something every single woman holds inside her – what a gift that I’d never before understood or had the opportunity to appreciate.

        1. Exactly Alison, that has been my learning experience too, that Sacredness was unattainable and a beautiful revelation to learn that it is naturally inside us all

318. There can be no true sacredness in a doctrine that removes from its teachings the very fact that Yeshua (Jesus) was a family man with a wife and 3 daughters and through his daily lived way reflected to us the natural ability we all have to live Heaven on Earth simply by living in connection (true family) with each other, both in a temporal and energetic sense.

     1. I hate the energy that has funnelled through organised religion to corrupt and twist the truth, resulting in us being bombarded with so many lies and untruths, brainwashing and pulling us away from living our true loving way of being with each other.

319. Equal respect between men and women is the key to many issues in todays world… but to have respect for another we need to first respect ourselves.

     1. Spot on Paula, the way we live globally is not yet truly embracing equality and respect for both men and women. So, it is worth looking at our relationship with ourselves and how that affects how we relate to the rest of the world.

320. Suppressing our expression, sweeping issues ‘under the carpet’ so to speak, harms us all… and eventually it all comes out in one way or another.

321. Many women may not even know what sacredness is, therefore it is important to have role models and examples of how sacredness is lived. I certainly didn’t meet anyone as I was growing up who was living in sacredness. I met my first role model in my mid thirties and this amazing woman is Natalie Benhayon.

322. What a shame that self-love is not nurtured from birth, instead it is buried by religious ideals and beliefs being imposed on children by adults who believe they are doing the ‘right thing’, but are just too thick in illusion to be able to step back and observe all that is really going on.

323. It is important these individual voices be heard about the state of organised religion and what effect they have had on people.

     1. Yes and the effect is far greater than the confines of the church itself, it goes way beyond the walls of the church, it is part of society.

324. I have not been part of any institutionalised religion but I can see that they do not teach women to live in our sacredness, in fact I have witness the opposite of sacredness and I feel this is very deliberate. Women and men are not treated as equals.

325. I too was brought up in the catholic faith, and I too always felt unworthy of love, and I always felt less than others…. I was unable to express myself and actually felt my expression blocked as a result of feeling so unworthy, which caused me so much frustration of not being able to share what I was truly feeling.

     1. Doing good really does come at a cost.

326. This has certainly made me wonder about how much of the history of the church is based on no truth at all. I recall as a younger person often wondering where all the powerful women were in the church…they certainly didn’t exist from where I stood. I found it very confusing that there were all these men in powerful leadership positions, but no women. As a young woman having grown up in the Catholic Church I was never taught anything about the sacredness of women and neither were the men taught anything about there natural tenderness. Is was all about fitting into the box of being good and doing good.

     1. ‘As a young woman having grown up in the Catholic Church I was never taught anything about the sacredness of women and neither were the men taught anything about there natural tenderness.’ This feels very deliberate, what better way to separate men and women and take their power away, stifling the exquisiteness of true connection and true relationships based on love and equality.

     2. I wasn’t raised Catholic but looking in from the outside it seems as if control and suppression are some of their practised rituals.

327. I also grew up in the Catholic Church and attended Catholic schools. There always felt like there was something missing in what was being taught within the church. As I grew up I left in my teenage years, in complete reaction to what I was feeling. You could say that I was rebelling as a teenager. I was reacting to the “do as I say and not as I do”, which was evident to me from a young age. I did love people coming together and feeling at one in celebrating that there was more to life. But what I could feel was that there was no celebration of us, no support for us to feel who we are and be all of who we are. I did not know that at the time, but I have come to know this now. There is no repression when we are celebrated for who we are.

     1. The only thing I enjoyed about the Mass was the singing, I loved being in the choir and our school church had great acoustics so our voices and the harmonies sounded beautiful.The mass was always meaningless to me (it was in Latin originally) and with the English version I can only remember the ‘Lord I am not worthy’ bits.

        1. I recall going to church many years after leaving and still knowing every single word and the order of everything in the mass. That completely stopped me in my tracks. I can still recite some of the prayers even though I have not said them for a long time. But they are words, they have no meaning to me.

328. So much about what goes on in life gets swept under the carpet and as the old saying goes boys will be boys. Learning to understand the process of return and starting out being at-least gentle before we can become self-loving is the honest approach to build a deepening relationship with Love Making. Every form of Love is built on a Loving daily rhythm which we then carry to bed.

     1. And self love goes for both men and women, we need to love and appreciate ourselves first and then that depth of love is what we carry to another.

329. There appears to be a huge setup in the world we are born into, to make it as hard as possible to hold onto the natural amazing beings we are, both men and women, and part of the setup is that we are “not taught to honour and express how we feel”. It is as if society deems us to not be fit for the world unless we fit into certain boxes and take on beliefs that have been passed on down through the generations without question. Well the world certainly isn’t working the way it could be, with all members of humanity being honoured for who they are, so maybe it’s time to start some very serious questioning.

330. Being brought up a Catholic, I always thought it bizarre that there was no marriage of the clergy and yet in the Church of England it was normal for vicars to marry. I definitely felt the sexual repression you speak of Carmel and more than that the message broadcast by the church was that it was sinful and ‘dirty’. A terrible message to be given.

     1. Catholic guilt is a highly insidious emotion many of us feel, having to go to confession every week, looking for what we did wrong. And as for the attitude to sex, as you say, Rachel, it was regarded as being ‘dirty’ but I’m wondering if we have labelled it that way ourselves because sex without true love can feel dirty in our bodies, and I’m not sure the Catholic Church knows anything about True Love.

        1. Carmel, yes there is no question that sex without true love does not feel good, it can feel repugnant. For me, I would go as far as to say that sex without true love is abusive. Making love with intimacy and a deep connection to your partner is a very different experience from getting sexual gratification out of a need to seek relief or to try and fill a feeling of emptiness. I would agree with you that the Catholic Church does not know much about True Love, for if it did, the actions, deeds and words from the organisation would be very different.

331. This really did show how we put society into a box. We buy into stereotypes and then we leave no room to discern for ourselves. Suppression just creates room for extreme behaviors and it’s important to talk about this.

     1. …and yes, we need to be able to discern for ourselves

     2. It sure is important to talk about it otherwise we walk around with all these preconceived notions and ideas about life and how others are without actually allowing people to simply be themselves.

332. This is a great exposé of the church, of the sexual repression that goes on within religions and the inspiration of sacredness in women.

333. When something is suppressed, it festers and will ultimately come out in some other way, often explosively… which is not healthy for anyone.

334. I love this enquiry and exploration of what it is and what it means to be a woman, and to connect to a natural sexiness and sassiness that comes from within. What occurs when we start to do this is an incredible blossoming and expression of that opening up, that filters into every area of our lives and relationships.

335. I find it really hard to get my head around why on earth anyone would want to send their 6 year old daughter or son off to boarding school. 6!! That is so young. Surely we have children to cherish and love deeply and be responsible for teaching them all they need to know so they can be all they truly are within the world? Obviously not 😐 We have so very much to learn, change and heal with regards to relationships and how we are with both ourselves and others in the world.

     1. In answer to your question, my mother was told, ‘She won’t always have her parents, but she will always have her education’. No mention of the word ‘Love’.

336. In my experience of the Catholic Church I rarely felt the depth of love and understanding in my relationships. This of course is a reflection of me at the time but also of the church itself. It true love was really the focus of their way of living surely you would feel that love in any conversations and intersections with them. Instead I often felt judgement and as I have come to learn, understanding can not exist when judgement is present.

     1. Judgement, yes, this is something I am only now learning to let go of. God was taught to us as a judgemental being and that is so far from the truth of God’s Love that encompasses all. The lies we were told about Heaven and Hell and Purgatory and Limbo…

337. Sexual relationships and expression is a natural and normal aspect of humanity, to make it a doctrine that is harmful and sinful is a deliberate means of manipulation and suppression.

     1. And with so many of us constantly struggling under the weight of misinformation around sex that has been fed to us during our early early years, it is so obvious how much ‘manipulation’ there has been to keep us in separation from something that is so very ‘natural and normal’. So it beggars the question – what would the purpose be to keep humanity from knowing what it is to truly make love?

        1. A great question, Ingrid, and I feel the answer is given in the presentations of the Ageless Wisdom by Serge Benhayon and living The Way of The Livingness – our multi-dimensionality.

338. I can also feel we all carry the consciousness of many different religions in our bodies as we have had many past lives which influence how we think today and because we do not have access to these past lives it is extremely if not impossible to think in a different way. While we continue to believe that we only have one life and that’s it, we will stay imprisoned.

     1. Good point, Mary, I hadn’t thought of that, that we have the imprints of all the religions we have ever lived, including the times when we lived the Ageless Wisdom, it is all there and for us to discern.

339. Sacredness lived, is the re-empowerment of women to live in full from their natural expression of grace with true power, authority, delicateness, solidness and deep wisdom.

     1. Our world would not be the way it is if women are living in sacredness and men living in tenderness.

     2. Beautiful words, Stephanie, and inspiring to know that living our sacredness is empowering

340. Carmel I know this well, in fact just about everything about true expression felt to be wrong with the right and wrong and the fact that everything I did I had to consider was that a ‘sin’ or not? I love how you start to free the truth of sacredness from the fear of ‘sin’ that I understood from the church growing up.

341. An inspiring and honest blog Carmel. I have been pondering upon the suppression of Sacredness and sensing the energy underlying the dictates of various religions and the knock on effect upon societies in general. Sacredness is innate, our divine origin, as natural as every breath – to suppress this, is to control the world with the illusion of separation from God, that it continues to foster. How evil the energy of this loveless consciousness is.
     “We women need to reclaim our bodies for ourselves and then what we can offer our partner is a woman in her fullness: tender, precious and full of love, a woman who doesn’t want sex but who can be very sexy in her sacredness when she is truly making love”.

342. Avoiding a subject doesn’t make it disappear completely, and in parenting this is an important topic to bring up as it will inevitable be a part of every young persons experience growing up, directly or indirectly.

     1. I agree, Susie, I am sure many misguided ideas will have affected young girls, one I remember is that you don’t get pregnant the first time – a useful belief for virgins, but there are plenty of girls who have been raped and got pregnant straight away. Yes, natural subjects like these need to be discussed openly and women need to grow up respecting their bodies so that men can respect them too.

343. Yes, Carmel, this is a great example of how instilled beliefs and ideals denature us and squash our natural and true expression.

344. Richard may be you have exposed the mainstream religions as they seem to want to oppress and control the masses they definitely do not have love as the foundation stone to be the base of their religious beliefs.

345. The beauty of true intimacy ,sacredness and making love as who we are is so divine so esquite to feel and be honoured by and opens up our lives and our bodies to lived love with the oneness and equality of who we are with the expression of this honestly.

346. Being with sacredness allows the space and clarity to hold your body in love and you will simply know what is and is not abuse and with that you hold your space. And so when we share our body we do so with this awareness, we hold ourselves sacred and it is profound and it enables us to not allow abuse but to hold others in love.

347. This makes me realise that it’s not just sexuality that is repressed, it’s everything about us in truth, it’s our true essence and its expression that is being denied. No wonder many of us don’t even know how to be with ourselves, let alone with another in true intimacy.

348. I would agree with this sexual repression as I grew up in a Catholic family/community myself and there is definitely a denial of the reality of the world and a warped view about what sex and making love is all about which sets you up to have warped relationships and issues in relationships when you get older as an adult.

349. The fact that so much discord, harmful behaviour and suppression of people is taking place by religious authorities and also lay people under the banner of religion, shows how far most religions have veered away from the truth of the original soul-led, love-full and all-encompassing teachings.

350. A great sharing Carmel of the truth of what went on in the Roman Catholic Church boarding schools as I was at one for the same ages and times also and it is beautiful to read your story with the understanding you offer.
     Reclaiming our sacredness and the love and honouring of our bodies as women is so deeply honouring and confirming of all i know and have felt always and you bring the honesty to the dishonouring that occurs in life to women and what we allow as normal and what we are taught or not taught to reality.

351. It is beautiful to see that at any age one can reconnect deeply to ones sacredness and love within and offer that to their partner, instead of the narrow imposed belief of dirtiness or sin, all so far away from our true nature.

     1. Absolutely, it is beautiful to read of this freedom and exploration in to returning to a healthy sacred relationships with the body, one that is not controlled by false ideas and hurtful experience.

352. It is true, we are brought up to believe that men are only after one thing which is a great way to diminish the men and for women to see them as less, and then to believe that they are unable to arise out of these behaviours.

353. “The sexual repression evident in many institutionalised religions, including the Catholic Church, is carefully crafted and can pass on through several generations if not caught and turned around. We women need to reclaim our bodies for ourselves ” So very true.

354. “Why are we women not taught to honour and express how we feel? We have been encouraged to be martyrs, do ‘good deeds’ and to put everyone else’s needs before our own. ” This is so prevalent Carmel. No wonder new mothers get depressed – they put family before their own welfare, yet if a woman goes down this affects her whole family. It is not selfish to care for ones own needs first.

     1. Absolutely Sueq2012. The subordination of women is still going on even in the Western world where we think we are so advanced. We fall into this when young and allow our true nature to be eroded by old beliefs that have run through the centuries. Rallying in the streets may change things on the surface but there are very deep attitudes and opinions that need exposing and renouncing.

355. In honouring how we feel and expressing it in full with absolute honesty may well challenge some people and they may feel uncomfortable, but if we do not express Truth, how can the world change?

356. “….there is a way of making love that is truly love, where the woman’s body is treated as sacred and nothing takes place that does not honour that” – I can feel such knowingness of truth in what you say here Carmel. So many of us have dropped our standards and in this not only compromised our bodies but equally never had the joy of truly making love with another person.

357. There is just so much that the Catholic and other religions tailor to suit their needs to keep people repressed sexually or socially and away from the truth.

358. I can relate to what you are sharing here Carmel; ‘A celibate life is celebrated and priests and nuns are not allowed to marry, but is a celibate life normal or healthy for everyone?’ When I was involved with the Hindu religion through the yoga I practiced I was advised by the swami not to have children as this would be a distraction, I was encouraged instead to focus on my yoga practice. This advice did not feel true to me.

     1. I am astonished that having children is considered a distraction! The Catholic Religion on the other hand encouraged everyone to have lots of children to increase the number of Catholics in the world!

359. It seems that to us humans if you make something taboo we want it even more and become depraved in wanting it, just look at the Catholic Church and all the sex scandals that happen and are coming to light.

360. Carmel, this is so interesting and shocking to read. It helps me make sense of why there is so little ‘making love’ in the world and why there is so much self doubt and lack of self worth in women. It is beautiful that you have exposed this and that you are turning this around for yourself.

361. Yup ditto Carmel being bought up Catholic did not prepare me for life as a sacred women, the suppression of women and the underlying unworthiness of women is the loud and clear message unless of course you are the virgin mother. Just ridiculous. It’s fascinating that religions like this and actually all the mainstream religions have been able to have such warped messed up views of half the population and get away with it and thrive in our modern day. So glad I am free of this weekly onslaught.

     1. I have found that there are many layers of different ways in which my upbringing affected my self worth

362. Intimacy is a very beautiful word when it is understood to mean an openness of two people being all the love that they are with each other.

363. The Catholic Church deliberately repress women exactly because of the power of “a woman in her fullness: tender, precious and full of love”. Because it is this sacred ‘version’ of a woman that will light our paths back to the Gods that we are – and we don’t need organised religion for that, so no surprise that they turn off the tap that feeds us the truth.

     1. Exactly as you ask Carmel “Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?” – and huge bravo for asking. The damage and devastation caused by these teachings, doctrines and abusive ideals goes way, way deeper than even the horrific child abuse (a grotesque scandal of which we are only just scrapping the tip of the iceberg).

     2. Well said.

364. It’s normal for us to be in relationship with each other, making love is a continuation, a further expression of the love that we already share with someone, this is what feels very normal to me. It’s not how I was raised, where sex before marriage was completely frowned upon. The sexual repression you talk about, Carmel, still exists in many pockets of our society, not only within religious institutions, but within communities who continue to hold onto what are perceived to be moral values. However, this all feels like a form of control and with control comes rebellion and re-actions which can then result in other innocent people becoming victims.

     1. Is there such a thing as a victim or is it our past catching up with us?

365. ‘Where does the rebellion come from? A celibate life is celebrated and priests and nuns are not allowed to marry, but is a celibate life normal or healthy for everyone?’ – No, I don’t feel a celibate life is normal or healthy and that this, in part, is why there has been such atrocious sexual abuse with children by members of the Catholic Church in particular. Many people have found themselves very conflicted with urges that they have felt powerless to control and as a result a shocking number of children have been subjected to horrendous abuse as a result.

366. I love what you are sharing here Carmel and it shows that the church in this case has thrown the baby out with the bathwater because sexiness, making love and intimacy are not dirty or wrong even though there is a truth in that sex when it is done just for relief or out of seeking something is less than what we can be. It shows as well that when we take a snippet of the truth it totally creates a regime that is actually very harming as it is putting something on people that is not true.

367. Believing ourselves to be sinful and unclean has fostered a world where everyone hates themselves. That is clearly the complete opposite of how God actually operates ~ forever with love.

     1. This is the lie that we have fallen for that we are all sinners in the eyes of God and are unworthy of his love.
        I can remember being told this as a child and it was devastating to me to feel that God could be spoken about with such authority and knowing it was a complete lie. We as children were told not to take Gods name in vain but here were people in ‘authority’ talking about God as though they knew him personally and yet in total disregard to the true nature of God.

368. There is a beautiful correlation here between sacredness and intimacy.

369. Sex is different from making love. If a religion is repressive towards sex which looks like making love but it is not, there is actually no love in sex, then we are repressing against something that is not true in the first place. The rebellion of that won’t be true either obviously. And anything that represses against what is not true cannot be true to begin with now, no?

370. Very simply anything that inhibits the naturalness of our true expression is not from the soul and is it not true that the authority of religion does not want us to get honest about this? No matter how much the cover ups are, our bodies never lie so we only need to be honest how we truly feel and know if what is being said is true.

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