In the Beginning…

When I was a little girl I was introduced to religion. One of my first experiences was of being placed in Sunday school, and in one of those classes a lady read Bible stories to us. They were mostly stories about Jesus and other characters from the Bible. However, during the story one of the little boys, who was quite a character, made some distracting comments to other children in an attempt to lighten up the atmosphere and create some innocent fun. This resulted in an eruption of anger from our lady reader and was followed by some swift, violent physical abuse enacted on the little boy. He was shocked and traumatised, as we all were. Our lady reader was also shocked by her own violent reaction, however she settled back in her chair to continue the story about God’s love, but we all sat there and felt the utter horror of what just happened, coupled with the now very empty words. Even at that tender age we all knew this was hypocrisy and very wrong. I remember looking around at all the other children sitting on the floor with me, I could feel the whole group and registered we all collectively knew that what we were being taught was very far from the truth of God.

I eventually convinced my mum that I didn’t want to return to Sunday school and because we were not a particularly devout religious family she allowed me to leave.

As I grew I became aware of other things to do with religion, such as how it happened in special buildings like churches. I could never understand this because I felt God was everywhere and permeated everything. I didn’t feel God was in a special place or with a special person because I felt him everywhere. I could not understand either why we would coop ourselves up into a dark and dreary building like a church when we could feel God in the fields and flowers, in the gardens, and the sky. I felt free in nature to just feel God exactly as he was, and I felt him all around me.

And even though as I grew I heard a lot of words about God, nothing confirmed his presence more than being in nature or looking up at the night sky and feeling all the stars. When I looked into the eyes of my loving and devoted pet dog, or felt my mother’s love, I also felt God in these moments, just as I did when I expressed my own love or joy. To me God felt accessible, humble, all knowing, kindly and understanding. And I felt him with me in every moment.

When I reached Grade 6, I was introduced to Religious Instruction (RI). A volunteer, who was another student’s mother, would come in and read stories to us and talk to us about God. I remember how tense, bored and flat the whole class would be and the instruction often felt quite imposing and converting. I could not relate to anything being communicated and I felt very uncomfortable with how imposing it all felt, like it was being forced onto me, so I asked my Mum to write a note to excuse me from the classes, allowing me to instead spend time in the library. I remember how free I felt from not having the RI forced onto me, as it did not feel like truth to me and it felt very suppressing to my whole body. My friend, whose mother it was that taught RI, would always apologise profusely for it, and we could all feel this was because we recognised the Religious Instruction was not something that felt true or good to any of us.

Whatever it was that Jesus lived and spoke, I knew it was not in the experiences I had of religion as it was being presented, nor in the words I heard.

As I look back I can see as a child I had my own inner knowing about God, this came from my experiences every day, from feeling and sensing things and trusting how I felt in my whole body. After all, if God is all around us why wouldn’t we be in constant communication? It felt very simple and normal to know this.

As a child I was a great observer, watching how the world worked, yet I had my own source of inner wisdom to refer to. My daily experiences taught me about God, as opposed to the words and ideas I heard. When I felt something was the truth, it would be like my whole body would light up on the inside and I would feel solid, steady and true. This truth always came from the inside out so when it came to God I was not too interested in learning from words from the outside in.

God just felt too big to put into words, it was something that had to be felt and experienced!

Looking Outside of Myself

As I grew up those words, ideas and concepts of religion soon felt like they were everywhere, in books and newspapers, TV shows and advertisements, conversations and the radio – everywhere there were ideas about God and religion.

As I moved through my teen years I lost my connection to the innocent inner knowing I had and began to look outside of myself for answers. My world was about learning knowledge, passing tests, and coping with the stresses of life. What I didn’t realise at the time was that the more I was trained in education to look outside of myself for the answers, the further I was growing away from myself.

By the time I left school I felt quite empty, yet I had this burning inner desire to understand the purpose of life, the big picture; why were we all here? I had become quite intellectual and the relationship I had with God as a child was now a distant memory.

I went from having a simple yet absolute knowing of God, to God being an intellectual concept to be tackled.

By this stage I was so affected by family trauma, years of bullying, and the education system that I began to search for God, and the world was very obliging to supply me with a myriad of beliefs. Whilst I never made it to church, I had allowed a number of religious concepts to come in from the outside and would regularly pray, and I felt like I always had to be or do good. I believed that God was mysterious, and even explored Indian religion and got temporarily involved with a guru. After exiting that, in came the New Age spirituality – I knew there was more to life and the search continued.

After exploring elements of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, indigenous shamanism, spirituality, the New Age, and various other smaller religions I realised at the age of 40 I still felt empty, my life still felt terrible, and I still lacked a personal connection to God, though I had moments which confirmed God’s undeniable presence. The deep purpose I knew life held was still not clear to me.

The knowing I had of God long ago was deeply buried under many ideas and beliefs about religion — each so different to each other. It was like humanity divided themselves up into segments and each came up with their own idea of God.

How could there be one God and so many varied ideas and religions?

Living the Truth of God

At the age of 41, and ready to give up the search, I decided to try one last thing – Serge Benhayon. I flew interstate to listen to a man I had never met – based on the consistent and unmistakable love my Esoteric Healing practitioner lived which he attributed to Serge’s work. This quality of love was enough to convince me that there was something truthful and real about this man’s work.

Within five minutes of hearing Serge speak, I knew I was hearing the truth. The absolute knowing I had in my whole body as a child was back! I was lighting up from the inside again! When you hear truth, your body knows absolutely – every fibre of your being responds.

Since that time, I have continued on with studying all that Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine offer and it’s like being given the complete package from Heaven. Everything I have needed to retrace the steps I made that took me away from myself, and from my inner connection to my essence and God, has been provided.

One of the keys for me has been the Gentle Breath Meditation™. This has supported me to feel that there is a way of breathing that allows me to stay connected to my essence, that precious place I knew and lived from as a little girl. When I lose that connection, maybe because I am rushing, reacting to life, or feeling out of sorts, I can come back to gently breathing, and I can then feel the essence within me again, present and permeating my body from my innermost heart. It is the most beautiful inner light re-igniting and spreading throughout my entire body. I then begin to feel the qualities of myself again, like my love, joy and cheekiness, that have been temporarily lost – it is an amazing feeling to know I am back!

Another significant part of my return to myself has been through the modality of Esoteric Yoga, which has supported me to reconnect back to my whole body. I still remember my first session, as I lay and felt my body, I could feel how incredibly racy my mind was (it was literally going at a 100 miles an hour), and I could feel how my body had many traumas stored in it. I was astonished as I didn’t even know this was occurring, or that I was living so disconnected from myself and from my body.

Esoteric Yoga has supported me to bring a daily focus to my whole body, and to begin living in a way that is considerate of my whole self, not from my mind alone. I am learning to live as that little girl again, respectful of the wisdom that comes from my body and my being, as opposed to knowledge alone that took sovereignty in the education process.

I also took the opportunity to learn the Sacred Esoteric Healing Modalities and began having sessions with Esoteric Healing Practitioners. This offered me great insight into how my life experiences had impacted my body and being, and I was able to let go of and clear emotion, trauma and energetic imprints of past experiences from my body, so that the essence of who I am could be expressed again. This is still an ongoing and very beautiful (and sometimes challenging) process.

True Religion

And perhaps the greatest gift of all has been in finding true religion – The Way of The Livingness. This is not something given from the outside in, or through words, but reconnected to via our own inner heart – that innermost place that remains connected to our Soul and to God. This innermost heart is something we all have, just as we all equally have a connection to God through this place.

This true religion is not practised in any special place, nor does it have superiors, it’s something we connect to within ourselves and feel and live from. It’s the absolute equality and brotherhood I have always felt to be true.

Just as I felt it to be as a little girl.

“The truest religion on earth is the one that is a direct relationship with God, the One Father of all.” (Serge Benhayon, Esoteric Teachings and Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 647)

By Melinda Knights, Self-employed in the construction industry, NSW, Australia

Related Reading:
Religion and The Way of The Livingness – Audio
We cannot be without God and Religion