As a kid I was totally confused. I grew up in a religious family and we always attended mass. I listened to many sermons that spoke about respect, love, compassion, solidarity, faith and how to treat others. These sermons were conducted by a priest who most of the kids found pretty scary, the words he shared were clearly not what he lived, yet no-one questioned this. My parents were very well respected in the parish community. Everyone told me I had wonderful parents because they helped out and did a lot for the church and were very nice. What I struggled with as a child was that all of these things were spoken about in church yet in day-to-day life people weren’t living loving relationships.
My parents were good people but they had no idea how to show any affection or true love. My mum had a very abusive childhood and was holding these issues which then impacted on all her relationships. She wasn’t coping with her past and so was not able to really connect or have deep relationships with anyone in her adult life. It was saddening to watch how her relationships with her siblings were in constant turmoil and how the family started to break down and family members who were once close refused to have anything to do with each other. As a child I would question her about this and ask why she wasn’t speaking to her sisters. I would question why in church we were told to love our family yet they wouldn’t even speak to each other. She was never able to answer that.
I then grew up with similar issues that I took into adulthood. I didn’t trust anyone and therefore I didn’t develop close relationships with people. If I was hurt, I too would also shut people out of my life and not deal with the issue. I got by and developed a successful career and just accepted that this was how life was to be.
That was until I started to have sessions at the Universal Medicine clinic. These sessions supported me to become aware of how I was carrying all my undealt with emotions in everything I did and in all of my interactions. I started to feel how much I was shutting people out and how underneath that I actually did want to connect with people and have loving and supportive relationships.
Despite growing up with a strong religious background I had never experienced loving and supportive relationships until this point in my life. The sessions at the Universal Medicine clinic supported me to address issues I had been avoiding and carrying my whole life. I had grown up believing that there was something wrong with me because my mum wasn’t able to love me so I developed many issues from this.
With the support of the Universal Medicine practitioners I got to see that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. But I now needed to take responsibility for the choices I had made and I was now in a position to choose what the quality of my life and relationships would be.
I now have an amazing life and very deep and loving relationships. I am now able to love my parents and family members in a way that they were never able to show me. At times they find this challenging as they are still holding issues that prevent them from really connecting with others and allowing loving relationships.
My parents are now more heavily involved in the church and are still considered very respected members of the community. They often go on overseas missionary trips to help out in underprivileged countries. However they still continue to struggle in their personal relationships and marriage. These missionary trips to help others can be used to mask their own issues for a while but when they return the ‘good’ feeling from helping others doesn’t last and they are quickly planning their next trip to avoid feeling their own pain and the hurt that they carry.
In the moments when my mum does stop, she will ask what I am doing differently and she expresses that she does want contact with her family. She has shared that she doesn’t want to face how she has been with them so for now she continues to use other ways to not deal with this. I do ponder on what is the real quality of what she is doing in these other countries, if she is not able to love herself and those she lives with, then how can love be expressed in what she does? This is not a judgment on her, I love her but I also see the pain she carries daily and how her religious faith has allowed this to stay as long as she is seen to be doing good.
by Anonymous, Australia
Words on Serge Benhayon 
What is so scary is how we as a society just seem to accept things that are handed down to us from Politcian’s, scientists, Medics, Media, Corporations etc., we have a tendency to behave like sheep no one questions the validity of what is being said. We have seemingly accepted a comfortable life over taking responsibility for ourselves. We think we are free, but we are not free at all but controlled and manipulated by an energy that allows us whatever we want or desire all the while suppressing us from who we naturally are.
“I love her but I also see the pain she carries daily and how her religious faith has allowed this to stay as long as she is seen to be doing good.” For me it was only when I discovered Universal Medicine and their philosophy, healing modalities, and religion The Way of the Livingness that I could begin to heal myself. It was an agony to carry many hurts and search over many decades to find a way to heal myself but not find anything that truly worked – apart from a year or so with a social worker for counselling who was excellent. I still found myself trapped in the same cycles and unable to understand or resurrect myself. I had no idea anymore that I even had an essence within me that was the true me. What I have found with Universal Medicine is because they understand the difference between soul and spirit and the overall human condition, and with the many self empowering tools they offer, such as the Gentle Breath Meditation and self care from whole body awareness, I have finally been able to make profound and lasting change. I can now see that when something like a modality, a book, or even a religion is sourced from the consciousness of the spirit no true healing is possible.
Anonymous, I would say that many of us can relate to your childhood experiences where it was very plain that there was duplicity occurring within the family and the wider community, and this causes a lot of confusion. Young children can read energy instinctively and know when something doesn’t feel right, like the priest you mentioned that felt scary, and so when we feel this about someone we usually give them a wide berth. We do not appreciate that children when they are young are very sensitive to energy, much more so than adults, as by the time we reach adulthood most of us have switched off this amazing ability to feel our surroundings. We rely instead on physicality and that’s when we get fooled because anyone can pretend to be ‘nice’ but because we are only seeing the physicality we cannot so easily feel the negative energy of say, jealousy, emanating from our friends that we get smashed with. Then we wonder why we get so tired and reach for another cup of coffee instead of reading the energy.
Spot on Richard, love is not a mindfullness thing, it is a bodyfullness thing to be lived day to day. We cannot just think about love and assume that is it, for that gets us no where. However, when we challenge ourselves to live the love we are then this can indeed begin to make changes in our current world.
As the title of the blog says, ‘doing good’ is in many ways a facade and can be used to cover up and distract oneself from a life one is living that one is not happy in and with.
We cannot change another or others, and we are not here to do that either, but what we can do is live to the best of our ability the love that we are, and then from this it can inspire another to make changes that allow them to live more of themselves in life too.
I agree with you Henrietta that if we live the love that we are to the best of our ability it is felt by others.
As they say – live what you preach or walk your talk – for this at least is an honest way of living.
Living all the love that you are is showing your family that they do not have to stay trapped in the escape of ‘doing’ good.
What I can feel from this is a effortsome-ness of being good, that it is a put-on that we have to keep hitting a perceived ideal or a target.
One of the blessings Universal Medicine offers is an understanding of ourselves, our hurts, our issues, and how to heal those, which brings us a tremendous understanding of others. With this understanding we can heal our relationships and observe where people are without taking their behaviour personally. .
What you share about your parents anonymous illustrates that the facade of being ‘nice’ and or ‘doing good’ can have so much more behind it to what meets the eye.
There’s a tactic of saying to ourselves that our hurts are too much to handle. We believe that we can’t face it. I am really seeing how false that is as it’s not that the hurt is too big but the love that was rejected as the hurt was favored is the bit we are unwilling (not that we are too small) to face. It’s our choice made in the face of love we don’t want to admit. Not that a hurt is beyond our ability to heal.
Thanks Leigh for what you have shared here, it’s very much what I experienced in the Women in Livingness workshop today on Empowerment to Power. I felt quite clearly that the power in me (and in us all) is huge and when I was connected to my power the hurts I allow to run my life don’t even exist. I really appreciated your comment, thank you.
Your story really reminds me that we will be in a perpetual cycle of hurting one another generation to generation unless one generation stops the buck here and takes responsibility for their part in it and chooses a different way forwards. How many people’s life are still effected by their childhood relationships? I hope this is the generation that chooses to makes the change.
From my experience sometimes the nice and good can be way more suffocating and confusing than the so called bad and rough.
That is very true – at least the bad and the rough show their true colours, where as “good” can be masking a whole plethora of issues and problems.
Meg, good is such an ugly word and was used throughout my childhood, it is also such a false word because you can mask a plethora of feelings behind the word. you can feel when someone is being nice on the outside but their body is telling you the complete opposite that they hate you and are jealous of you because you have what they want but cannot be bothered to actually make the effort to get it themselves.
I have also grew up in a Catholic environment where from an early age I observed how the preached love was not lived outside from the mass. You could do whatever in your private life while you would came back to confess your sins and pray two or three times the same devotional oratory. I’ve seen people around me playing the ‘good’ role when inside they where so angry, sad or frustrated. They were condescending and denying what they truly feel inside. I’ve seen how if an issue came up that was needed to talk about it, it was resolved with polite smiles and superficial conversations. This showed me a way of life that I accepted as normal but made me feel really sad, like something important was missing. Once I came accross Universal Medicine I started to question this model that I took for my life. What kind of faith and religion is that that accept the falseness in its many forms? And what are the foundations of this religion if people in there plays good but is not able of love themselves first? As I started to re-connect with myself and with my body I understood what true love and true religion is about. A religion in which everyone is equal, where people is willing to be honest with each other and not compromise any of themselves to get the benefit from the outside or to hide any of their emotional issues. Being part of Universal Medicine supports me deeply to set a new standards in my life based on respect, equality and Truth, the one I feel deep within me.
Inma you said
“I observed how the preached love was not lived outside from the mass. You could do whatever in your private life while you would came back to confess your sins and pray two or three times the same devotional oratory. I’ve seen people around me playing the ‘good’ role when inside they where so angry, sad or frustrated.”
I saw this too as a child and it really bothered me because I couldn’t understand why everyone couldn’t see though the lies being spun but went along with them. As children we can see straight through the games being played and for me the confusion set in when I was told that I wasn’t really seeing what I was actually seeing and allowed myself to be misled by the family. We use the word ‘family’ but to me it is such a lie because under the title of ‘family’ so much abuse is allowed to take place without being questioned because its ‘family’… What!
Being good can be a trap and you expose it very well with your honest blog. For me honesty is what can change everything in live and in the moment I chose to be super honest the next step to understand more about the hurts of other people and my hurts was there.
The message I came away with is that there can be much pain hidden in good. A note to be more aware of what is behind any good. Thank you.
One of the hardest things to come to grips with as a child is the disparity between what is said and what is seen and done. ‘Good’ is an excuse for all manner of things that distract from the true intention and energy behind the action or words. It creates a confusion in children that plants a seed that can last a lifetime.
I agree, yes please. Good is a stinking mess of confusion that takes an astute observer of energy to unravel.
Lucy I absolutely agree with you
“‘Good’ is an excuse for all manner of things that distract from the true intention and energy behind the action or words. It creates a confusion in children that plants a seed that can last a lifetime.”
I’m in my mid sixties and I’m still grappling with everything within the word ‘good’ to me it is such an ugly word because it is such a false word, we have as a society allowed ourselves to become immeshed in many false words. Words that have lost their true meaning are lethal weapons which we use to cut each other down or to hide behind so that the world is deprived of our true beauty.
It’s huge what’s going on in families, long standing grudges, inability to communicate, abuse, disrespect, and the withdrawal because we feel ill equipped to deal with the issues and the hurts. I’m so pleased I found Universal Medicine and could begin addressing the hurts I had stored within me, because underneath that is the essence of who we all are, such beauty, love and truth, which can then be shared in relationships. It really confirms for me how supportive Universal Medicine’s services are because of the healing I have experienced to now be so open and loving. It would not have been possible without Universal Medicine’s support.
Melinda the abuse that takes place under the umbrella of family is out of control as we are constantly at war with each other and we consider this to be ‘normal’. Like you I came across Universal Medicine and the healing session along with the workshops have supported me and thousands of others to be open and loving to ourselves first, the knock on effect is that we can be open and loving with everyone we meet, whether it is someone in the street to a work colleague to our family and friends they can feel the difference in our countenance because we are no longer at war with ourselves.
There are so many layers to this blog, how we shut down and cut people off when we feel hurt and have not been raised in love and to love, and how so many things are used to relieve these hurts, religion and charity being some of them … but they do not address the hurts and until we do, everything we do is laced with those hurts and not the true quality we can be.
The hurts are passed through generations, they just keep recycling and re-circulating despite the fact most parents do the best they can. We simply do not have the tools to heal ourselves. I know for me I felt like I had tried everything under the sun to sort my life out but it wasn’t until I found Universal Medicine (and close to giving up) that I truly experienced healing and an understanding of myself and others in those hurtful relationships. Then I could move on and return to my essence, the love within, and begin living from that love again. What Universal Medicine has to offer humanity in terms of true healing is huge.
The dichotomy of holding values but not living them in your day to day life surely must erode your sense of self.
The difference between the two religions is so clear here – one that drives us on being good to fill the absence of love that we are aching from, and the other that empowers us to connect with love so we won’t have to settle for anything less.
To me Fumiyo the biggest lie that we have been fed or have fallen for is that we are not love and we look out side of ourselves for the love we know we come from. But that love resides within us all it is a birthright that cannot be taken away. What we have allowed is this false life that keeps us all in the struggle when there is actually no struggle but a surrender within. Dare we surrender?
This question from you as a child – “I would question why in church we were told to love our family yet they wouldn’t even speak to each other”- goes to show the incredible insight and wisdom of children. They feel everything although sometimes find it hard to express it, and often when they do they are met by silence as in your case or simply told they don’t know what they are talking about. How amazing it would have been for your mother to have been able to acknowledge the truth of what you shared and allowed herself to begin to question why this was so.
Ingrid Ward I agree with you the hypocrisy that is religion runs very deep within us all, as children we can see through the veils of lies we are constantly fed, but are shut down by people who do not want to admit that they have been misled and continue to look out side of themselves for the answers by doing ‘good’ missionary work because it deflects the emptiness within by thinking that they are better than the people they are helping. It’s such a set up, but we fall for it every time.
I see how organised religions give us like a gold star or ‘good boy’ or ‘good girl’ sticker, similar to school, that we have turned up for a congregation or mass and then we can walk away and live a completely different way. This is also no different than us working a full committed week at work and then rewarding ourselves by obliterating ourselves with alcohol, drugs, partying, food and excessive hobbies on the weekend.
It is a huge thing how many people grow up feeling there is something wrong with them because as a child they are not loved in the way we all know love to truly be. Of course in that hurt they then become the parents who through not truly loving themselves are not able to love their child in the way we all know love to truly be and so it goes on and on and round and round until someone breaks the cycle.
Yes Nicola we self inflict ourselves or poison ourselves with everything that is non loving and feel the emptiness of that. We then compound the lovelessness by looking outside of ourselves to fill the gap, this can never work because we are wanting people who are equally non loving to give us the love they cannot give to themselves, it is a cycle of rottenness until as you say someone breaks the cycle which has happened but it will take a few generations before the full effect can be felt as we are in resistance to what has been offered to humanity.
We only need to look at our bodies for the results of ‘doing good’. It’s an ideal that sucks the life out of us.
Oh well said!!! I was so good, to the point of exhaustion – what good did that do? It certainly didn’t look good for my kids, my husband, my work, my family. Sucking the life out of us is a great expression to describe the harm good without truth can do.
True, a lot of effort and energy goes into being good that it drains us.
Jennifer if we then bring in the fact that everything is because of energy as taught by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine then what is the energy behind ‘good’ ? The fact that you know that ‘good’ sucks the life out of us, shows me that on some level we all know exactly what is happening to us. That there is an unseen energy that sucks the life force from us which we then make up by drinking and eating stimulating foods to give us a false energy as our energy has been drained from us. Just stop and think about how many people turn to coffee in the morning as a beverage that kick-starts the day for them, they are seeking the caffeine in the coffee as the stimulant that boosts their energy levels topped up during the day with foods that also falsely keep the body stimulated. Take away the props we use to keep us all going and we would see just how exhausted we all are and then we might question the reason why we lack our natural life force.
No good does us really good if it is not lived from our heart, feeling that we are all equal and do all matter in this world.
A beautiful reminder of how ‘good’ keeps us separated from ourselves and others, because good rewards us by making us feel better about ourselves or a situation, yet truth brings us to the realisation that there is no good to be done in the world, the world changes through love, and we have to love ourselves first.
Religion as practiced by most of mainstream religions allows a lot as long as you do ‘good’ and play by the rules … the fact that you have may relationship difficulties or poor quality is not considered so long as you’re ‘seen to be doing good’. It’s part of the convenient lies we tell ourselves, until one day we decide there is more and we stop and become to look anew at how we are living and being.
The righteousness that comes from being good creates a separation within ourselves and hence towards another. There is no love and we certainly are not coming from God when we think we are better than another because of the good we are doing.
‘Good’ and ‘true’ are so very different. Too often good is used as a mask to cover up how someone is actually doing, we can get involved in the ‘plight’ of another to avoid dealing with our own issues and hurts. When we are truly doing well we have the foresight to see that others have challenges to overcome and there can be different learnings for them in this. When we make it about truth we get to have more clarity to see how we can support without imposition.
To be ‘seen to be doing good’ – is a poison that eats at us and diminishes us in the illusion of the ‘good’ that it espouses. Give me the real thing, the honest ugliness of where we are truly at as a human race, warts and all, before anything that’s supposedly ‘good’ with the illusion of false progress and redemption that takes us further away from seeing what’s really going on and dealing with it.
Very true Katerina, and all in the same time showing the ‘under privileged’ that they are less than and are not capable of stepping up themselves. There is supporting and there is rescuing, these are completely different and have a completely different affect to the other person. One pulls them up and the other holds them down or in the same place.
“I had grown up believing that there was something wrong with me because ……….” What a common feeling this is. This is a great sharing of how it is not ‘my fault’ though it does require one to take personal responsibility to turn this belief around. With the correct loving support this is possible, as is demonstrated here.
We can justify to the ends of the earth that ‘doing good’ is something to attain or work towards. However if we ask our bodies what it feels like or look at our relationships as to the effects then we will be told something completely different. It takes some time to undo good, for its threaded through much of life.
Yes, the harm of ‘doing good’ is extremely insidious and because on the surface it appears beneficial it can be very hard to discern that it is actually harmful. That is why it is very difficult to untangle the truth from the falsehoods. Hence ‘good’ is true evil.
I fully agree – it is ingrained in our social psyche to such a huge extent and hence we are blinded to the harm it actually causes.
When there is no foundation of love for oneself the only thing that is left is built on doing good but this does not take away the emptiness and pain of living a loveless life.
I’m sure many people would relate to what you write here anonymous of feeling like something is wrong with them because they did not get loved by others. So learning to reconnect to and hold ourselves in love is super important because it stops this reliance on others to bring us love.
And when we feel something is wrong with us, we then understandably but very harmfully go to the ‘good deeds’ to feel better about ourselves and get the acknowledgement we so need. The more we let ourselves ponder on the evil of ‘Good’ the more we see.
The opportunity you created for yourself to change things is the gold I feel here. We can spend a lifetime running the same programme and feeling like a victim of our circumstances, or we can initiate change, and in that Universal Medicine has proven to be the very best catalyst,
This is such an amazing sharing completely breaking any ideas that doing good actually addresses issues, it doesn’t in fact in many cases it allows us to continue to ignore issues and not deal with them. And our world is built on doing good which is telling of how many of us live without addressing our deep hurts, and how we’re living as less than who we can be. And this is such a waste for we are all amazing and we and the world looses out on the truth of who we are. So why settle for good when we can have truth?
‘Our world is built on doing good’ and hence we do more and more good to try and patch up the hurts, empty spaces within us and outside of us – the dereliction we have created from going for Good instead of Truth in the first place.
Doing good can be a very effective cover up for not living the truth of what we know inside in our day to day life. That absence leaves an emptiness which we then seek to remedy by trying to do to others what we don’t do for ourselves; but, as you say, what quality does it come with?
When we honestly focus on the quality instead of the ‘doing’, everything is revealed for what it is. Then, doing good or bad is not the point, but the fact of us being connected to love or not in the process, as what we leave behind us is really different in each case.
When life is based on images, what does not fit the picture is lived with anguish and when the hold of the pictures is that strong, you cannot communicate openly about it. It crushes you twice. As a result, you learn to live up to the images until you say, enough.
Doing good is another go-to, no different to the many other medications we have available to us, to distract us from going deeper within ourselves and healing the wounds we have that prevent us from opening up to true love. At least with the likes of drug-taking and alcohol binging it’s obvious what is being chosen – reckless behaviour that takes one deeper into their own self-destruction, whereas with the likes of charity and ‘doing good’, there is the thick illusion of being benevolent and caring, while in actual fact it is just the same escape route from dealing with the realities of life – but much more insidious because of the enormous pretence. People hide in the illusion of charity and the damage this causes is massive – something society has not yet considered and does not want to consider.
Gosh, there is so much to expose here. It’s a big deal to openly say that ‘doing good’ can often be doing a hell of a lot of harm. It’s interesting how fearful we are of simply being vulnerable and expressing that we don’t feel ok in ourselves…and instead put a bandaid over it and keep going on. All that does is perpetuate a cycle that no one benefits from.
I can share with you Anon, that it is questionable what the doing good is bringing to our societies and the countries we think are in need. If the doing good is not from love that is being lived in all aspects of our lives, but instead just a way to escape and feel good about ourselves, for sure that what will be delivered through this good will actually be void of the love that brings true good to this world.
There is definitely a difference between the quality of ‘good’ and ‘love.’ ‘Good’ and ‘nice’ can be used to cover up a lack of love in our lives if we are not careful, which actually takes us further away from the love we seek and crave.
Reading this today what stands out is the separation and the compartmentalising life. What came first is like the chicken or the egg, if one lives their life in separation of themselves and others is that then what is reflected in the church or is it the separation reflected in the church then what is acted out in their personal life? In either way it all comes down to choice.
This blog is a beautiful example of how each of us come to live the love we hold within in our own time. And the grace of allowing another to do the same.
This is one of the really sad teachings of the church concerning what is considered to be a loving and caring life of giving to others for our salvation. As we have learnt from the teachings of The Ageless Wisdom by Serge Benhayon we first must learn to love ourselves. A really big lesson!
It has been my experience that so many people live their lives in protection and with a wall up to everyone else because of undealt with hurts from their past – I know I have lived like this too. Having an ideal way of living as many religions do does not deal with these hurts, in fact it can make them worse because you then feel unable to live up to the ideal that is being portrayed and so add on another layer of hurt. Universal Medicine has supported me 100% to look at, explore and heal many of my hurts in an extremely supportive, genuine, safe, authentic and consistent environment which is pretty awesome I must say.
Not just taught to be good, but rewarded for being good…. and so we shape ourselves to achieve the maximum recognition from the cot, right through school and our working lives, through to the grave. But that is generally configured to a system.. a system in this life that is struggling and not working. We desperately need alternatives, and Universal Medicine definitely achieves that.
We learn to be good and do good but deep down inside we feel deep compassion and immense care for each other that does not need to be learned but given the space and permission to be expressed so we can embrace and live it as the natural part of us that it is.
Children are so aware of everything through their 6th sense of clairsentience and thus feel the truth of everything that is going on around them. To have an adult speaking one thing and living in a very different way is not only confusing, but breeds a deep mistrust of people.
“I listened to many sermons that spoke about respect, love, compassion, solidarity, faith and how to treat others. These sermons were conducted by a priest who most of the kids found pretty scary, the words he shared were clearly not what he lived, yet no-one questioned this”.
Expressing love in its true form can disturb and make another feel uncomfortable especially when they hold and are attached to beliefs on what the word love means to them. But it is not a battle between who thinks what love is but living in a way that is true to ourselves.
Religion in how it’s often practiced can be used as a mask to avoid our hurts and can even keep us in the comfort of those hurts, so we walk about in the world with protection keeping all others out; the fallacy with this is laid bare here, we cannot do ‘good’ if we’re not addressing our hurts as we are just using that ‘good’ as relief and a way to avoid dealing with our issues … the truth is we need to address those hurts and allow ourselves to open up to ourselves and all others and then we bring quality into all our endeavours.
What is even more exposing is when there are challenges within the family and instead of reacting by escaping and staying away from them they see the good in keeping the relationships together but not by dealing with what is going on within them, their hurts and held pictures and ideals but by living from beliefs that they have to keep the family together because the bible says it is a Christian way of being. Being good is sneaky, clever and cunning and the more I expose this way of being within myself the more I see this behaviour being played out in another.
To hide the fact we are not living the quality of love that we know we can we focus on doing good in the vain attempt to compensate for the lack and the emptiness that we feel – completely closed off to the fact that the love we crave and want so much actually initiates from within if only we connect to it.
Our body is often the marker for honesty about things we have buried, issues we are avoiding. I have found that pain and difficulty are some of the most humbling experiences and bring a level of honesty that we don’t seem to want to connect to at other times. Escaping and not stopping to feel are just as much of a coping mechanism as alcohol and drugs, but everyone will come to this when they are ready and, in my experience, not before.
I see the burying we all do with issues we are not ready to address. This burying allows things to fester and then colours the way we look at situations. Being in activity all the time makes the tension of not dealing with the past so much easier but, from experience, the body breaks down. It is not built to live in multiple moments which is what we are doing when we leave multiple hurts undealt with. Burying issues never solves them.
“Doing Good” we have been told is a way to our own salvation, but as we so often find out in our own lives this isn’t the case at all. Unless we are coming from a true connection to our heart we are draining ourselves physically and not helping at all. It just looks good on the surface as you mentioned.
Dealing with our emotional and other issues (i.e. our “stuff”) is so essential and not just for ourselves but for everyone we come into contact with. I have met many people who use religion in a way that covers over issues, but any kind of band-aid means the issues unfortunately continue to fester and impact our quality of life – no matter how pious or “good” we may be. Getting free of our issues and returning to the essence of love we all innately are within is ironically the way back to God. Religion is that inner connection.
This got me thinking about my younger years attending church and all of the associated church activities. It’s interesting to consider that in being ‘good’ was how we repented for any of our sins and if we weren’t ‘good’ then we were most likely heading for the ‘pits of hell’. It’s a great tactic to control people really, but then at the same time there is making a choice of being controlled by the beliefs and rules of the church.
This is a great point you share here as you highlight the illusion of ‘doing good’ and how it gives you a false sense of feeling good, a sense that is not ever true and long lasting. Our greatest fulfilment is found in letting go of our hurts and living in truth in connection to who we are within. As then whatever we do is through a quality of true self-love that never imposes on another or needs to be sought after, as it is already lived and shared as such.
That false sense of feeling good from doing good, I feel is to provide ourselves with the relief from continually not addressing our own issues. It will however take its toll. Maybe then we will see the harm it causes.
Why is there such a need for us to fall into the doing good, which can also confirm another’s lack of responsibility, would it not be more productive if we learn to connect to ourselves and feel into the truth of something first.
You raise some very important points Anonymous, one of those being that we do not ever leave unresolved hurts from the past behind, and not only that, they are present in the quality of interaction we have with every other person, until such time as they are dealt with and let go. Questioning what it is we bring to another in the attempts to ‘help’ is very valid in light of this… and something that is currently ignored in the helping professions and charitable arenas.
Now that I have an understanding around the harm ‘doing good’ does to both myself and those I’m perceived to be doing good for, I’m far more aware of when I go into the drive of wanting to be seen doing the right thing for the sake of recognition. It’s awful. It’s not true and it serves no purpose.
For a long time I thought I could get away with just being good – not bothering to go deep into my heart and be open. How wrong was I. You can be and do so good and life would still remain very thirsty.
‘Doing good’ is truly painful and brings recognition if we are not loving ourselves. Most of us have not been taught to love ourselves first and fall (at least I did) for recognition at a young age and we start to measure, override what we feel inside. The truth is it takes us away from who we truly are. And we avoid to accept and live the power of love that, we definitely all know, is in our body.
Yes, I can relate to this Annelies – measuring and overriding what we feel as children, is a very rocky foundation for our adult years, usually resulting in living with emotions and buried hurts that colour the way of viewing life and living in a protective and irresponsible way which gets passed on to the next generation. A very vicious cycle.
We are taught from young to be good, and also to do good, a good deed for another and as we often get rewarded for doing good we learn quite quickly that this is what is expected of us, yet at what cost to ourselves and to the rest of humanity.
“I love her but I also see the pain she carries daily and how her religious faith has allowed this to stay as long as she is seen to be doing good.” What makes ‘doing good’ so evil is that superficially it appears so beneficial and loving when, in fact, it suppresses self-love – the foundation upon which true love is built. How can you love another if you have not first developed love for one self?
Yes the doing good thing is truly awful because you are actually causing harm to another and asking them to thank you and appreciate it. If they don’t because they can feel something is yukky then they can get caught up in feeling guilty or not trusting themselves and so more harm is heaped on top and so it goes on. Of course the person doing so called good in this manner is not only harming the recipient but themselves and in this case their family. It is not about good – it is about Love and Truth and they are completely different energetically.
So true Nicola, when we live and express from Truth and Love it is so different from ‘good’. Sometime truth can be painful but not to express the truth appropriately is the trap of doing good out of fear of it being painful and that is un- Loving.
Holding onto unresolved emotional hurts is an open tap of unending poison dripping into the body and mind, which is not turned off until the hurts are resolved.
Good is one of the highest evils. It is measured by the individual and different for all. Truth is equal for all – what we hold in our body.
It is deeply empowering to recognize that undealt with issues lead to an inability to have truly loving relationships due to the disconnection it causes and the reactions that come as a result of the issues being triggered. Once this truth is embraced along with a willingness to heal, love is no longer kept behind the wall of protection, the truth can be seen and relationships can be transformed.
Great sharing and I agree it is the downfall of institutionalised religion that they do not live what they preach.
There is a huge difference in a religion that teaches you to be good and accepts what the world appears to be and a religion that teaches you how to go back to everything you already are and ask you just to be, allowing those qualities out. One does not change the world but keep it going. The other do. The Way of The Livingness is the latter.
Every part of our life is interrelated and fed by the quality of the other parts so if on the surface it looks like you are doing ‘good’ but totally ignoring the rot in other parts how ‘good’ is that ‘good’ really.
The issues and problems that we encounter as children stay deep within us and are carried through life until we meet those, as in Universal Medicine, who support us to look at, understand and let go of what is holding us back so that then we are free to be who we truly are.
People often said I was a good listener, but this was a lie, because if I wasn’t listening to myself (and I wasn’t) how could I truly be listening to others. And also by being there for others, and not for me, I avoided looking at my own hurts and anxieties and found it difficult to share with others how I felt. Now it’s a more natural for me to openly express how I feel. And when I support others it is authentic as it flows from the more honest and loving relationship I now have with myself.
I was often told and believed I was a good listener, but this was a lie, because if I wasn’t listening to myself (and I wasn’t) how could I truly be listening to others. And also by being there for others, and not for me, I avoided looking at my own hurts and anxieties and found it difficult to share with others how I felt. Now it’s more natural for me to express how I feel and when I support others it is authentic and flows from the more honest and loving relationship I have with myself.
This blog exposes the ‘do good’ and charity industry. How can we do good for others when we’re not doing good for ourselves or immediate family. ‘Doing good’ is often an outward show for the benefit of others (recognition), it has little to do with how we truly feel inside or true brotherhood. It can be laced with arrogance – I can help you because you can’t help yourself, or sympathy – I feel sorry for you. If there is emptiness, lack of self worth, or hurt, put your own house in order first. Our first mission is to heal ourselves.
Yes good point Kehinde, we so often compensate our lack of connection and self-worth by trying to help others as this gives us an identification and so we can feel better about ourselves… however what are we offering if we do not know self-love?
So sad to think we confuse doing good with looking for acceptance in our lives from others. It becomes all about appearances and we miss out as do our families, as you have explained
So many of us have over lifetimes buried ourselves in ‘doing good’ to avoid feeling our own hurts and dealing with our own stuff. What better way to do this than to get involved in trying to ‘fix’ another? The simple fact is that no matter how hard we try and how much we sacrifice for others, we can’t ‘fix’ them or ‘save’ them. This is something we all have to do for ourselves so the only way we can really and truly support another is to sort out our own ‘house’ and heal our own hurts. Then it is by inspiration of us living our lives as ourselves we offer the reflection to another to do the same for themselves.
It’s great still that your mother can see and feel the changes in you and be curious about that. That shows that she’s felt something else and is willing to change albeit in her own time.
So true Matt’s, and an active curiosity about how life works is a foundational aspect to living what we learn.
I have seen many people with physical ill health not understanding why they have become sick because they or someone else was “such a good person”. It’s interesting that we have not questioned the notion of good. I certainly didn’t. Being good and being nice are almost in the same group and neither serve us at all as a humanity.
This blog really exposes how religion, indeed anything can be a crutch to avoid feeling and dealing with our pain and hurts and in fact it doesn’t work. I’ve seen many live as described in this blog, doing good and while well meaning it doesn’t help at all, and I’ve done my fair share of that too, but in fact life is about feeling and addressing what we do feel and ensuring we do not take this out on others and on life, it’s about taking care starting with ourselves, and that is true religion.
Presented like this, it is clear to see how we can use one area of our life to compensate for a lifetime of disappointment. It is clear too it is even more diabolical when that one area of life is fuelled by niceness and ‘doing good’. The quality of all we do when we operate with that energy is undermined – there can simply be no foundation of truth. This lends an interesting perspective to the noprofit and charitable sectors, which operate from a similar platform of doing good, whether they are faith-based organisations or not.
There are forms of what are called Religion that don’t actually reflect what they are saying as this blog states. With respect no matter what has happened in your life, at what point you are in life or how you see life there is always time to choose something else. I guess this is the biggest message I take from this blog today, that you can make a choice at anytime to heal what is going on no matter what the landscape might be. I remember carrying and without doubt still carrying issues that are my responsibility to heal or to look at and yet here they are still with me. It doesn’t matter what has happened again with respect but just do your best to deal with what is going on for you and from there everything else takes care of itself.
It’s so sinister really, but hard to pin down when on the outside everything looks good. It’s another form of corruption really that the vast majority are willing to accept.
‘Doing good’ to mask and avoid the own issues brings in no true ‘good’. Substitutes do not really work. Nothing can replace the connection to our true source, the true love we are and have for another – no matter how hard we try.
I had a similar experience in my childhood with lots of conflicting messages about love, religion and community and ‘doing good’. It took a long time and much support from Universal Medicine to break these beliefs I had and to realise that the quality of what we do for and offer others, is actually dependent on the quality of how we live and how we feel in our own bodies.
I grew up in a catholic church and saw very similar things. Participating in church activities and doing good for the church was esteemed, but there was no sense at all of presenting on self love or self care, which in the foundation for caring for others. It was all about devotion and selflessness. Really what kind of ‘good’ is being done when we are not offering ourselves this too.
‘Doing Good’. I don’t know that I have really pondered on what doing good is and I really get how we can be masking all sorts of things that we ourselves are not addressing and assuring ourselves that because we are doing good then God won’t punish us. Deep down however, I do know that we naturally love helping each other, but really it’s the quality and nature of the helping thats the important thing and if it doesn’t start with ourselves first then what quality are we offering others?
Anonymous,
This is great to ponder on, for deep inside we all know innately that connection with others is the only thing we ever really want. But when we go about trying to do this without connection to self, we find only hurt. Great honesty in exposing this paradigm.
This is a very powerful expose’ on the poison of ‘doing good’. It’s pretty much being used in the same way as drugs, food, coffee, alcohol and the other stimulations that life can provide for us to numb out our issues and not face the responsibility of who we are. The drug addict or gym junkie is considered normal amongst society, but the interesting thing is that the ‘do-gooder’ is actually commended for their actions.
You can really feel the difference when words people share come from the quality of how they live their everyday as opposed to when they don’t.
We push away and down our hurts and develop a management mechanism called life, and we have many devices that aide us in constructing and keeping it running – and ‘doing good’ is one such way, and we have no idea how cut off we have become from true love that we so crave.
One of the things about “doing good” that is motivated by the need to fill our own emptiness is that it’s actually quite selfish. Doing good can be a way to mask our own turmoil and distress and give a temporary high to provide relief from the pain in our lives, but effectively it means we are in a way using the people we are doing good for. We are perhaps too swayed by how things look on the surface, and not caring about intentions, motivations, or the actual energetic quality of our interactions when we do good. I know this because I’ve been there myself.
It is difficult to explain to people who are immersed in this kind of intellectual doing good, that our views differ and that it is important to me that we feel from our hearts and hold each other in equalness. Often this doing good holds no equalness and it is seen as the people that are being helped are lesser and the dogooders are more superior. This does not help someone’s evolution. It is like we are speaking a completely different language as this type of doing good is so broadly accepted. As you say anonymous, they need to do this to distract themselves from the reality of their own lives and the deep disconnection.
‘I do ponder on what is the real quality of what she is doing in these other countries, if she is not able to love herself and those she lives with, then how can love be expressed in what she does?’ And she is not the only one who is involved in ‘doing good’ so they don’t have to deal with their own loveless choices in life. And what a blessing are you for your family, they feel the choices you make are coming from love, they can choose to deny but will nevertheless feel it, you are breaking with the family pattern of abuse.
Being ‘good ‘ is unsustainable just as chasing identification and recognition, is unsustainable as it is a ‘fix’ like a drug that always wears off very quickly and has to be reinforced again, and again as their is no real essence in it. No real truth.
A beautifully shared experience of the truth that lies beneath our commonly held concepts of ‘doing good’. Your article confirms the importance of trusting our inner feelings and to look beneath the surface as everything is not always as it first appears – most often is just the first layer and there is much more to discover if we choose to look deeper. Less doing and more being.
There is a ring of familiarity in this blog Anonymous – from my own childhood, going to church, hearing the words but not seeing the love in action. I could not equate what was presented in the services to what was said in the hall afterwards, where conversations would frequently turn to gossip about others. The incongruence was evident in my home too where my parents never showed any love or affection towards each other. To me, you hit the nail on the head when you write of self-love – and the fact that self-love must be lived first for any of us to truly love another. This is the golden gift that Universal Medicine offers us all and it is one that has transformed my life.
This is a very powerful and empowering article because it confirms what many of us can feel but maybe haven’t been able to put words into. Like the author of this article I attended quite a few masses when I was younger but I could never really feel any form of love happening there. I know that what I felt inside was very precious and for me that was my connection with God but back then I didn’t call it God so when I heard people speak about God and I couldn’t feel any love in their words I started to question God and for quite a while I created an issue with the word God. The insidious thing is that when I started to question the word God I also started to question and leave my innate connection that I had with God. Now I’m claiming back back what I know God to be and as much as I can I love speaking about God because it’s something that has never left me. I left it because I bought into others version of God even though there is only one true version. God is something that forever lives within us and is deeply connected with how we are and carry ourselves. The phrase that “We are all God’s children” is for me very true and God does never leave us. We might leave this connection out of reaction when God is spoken about without love and I would say fair enough, but then we should all claim back what we know love to be and by that we will also claim back what God truly is. This will also put pressure on those speaking about God but are not really connected to what God truly means. Talking about God is one thing – living with God is what counts.
‘Talking about God is one thing – living with God is what counts’ – beautiful summary in one sentence Matts.
Doing good is a great distraction from is really going on, a relief in fact, in my personal experience. A very simple example is how easy it is help another person clean up a messy situation, but how difficult it can be to deal with ones own mess. But on a more serious note, as a child I noticed the discrepancy between doing good and how life was lived too, and when I raised this issue I was not heard because in fact it was the norm until I finally came across Universal Medicine and learned that not only was there a different way of approaching life, but people were actually living it.
“the words he shared were clearly not what he lived, yet no-one questioned this.” I can see how this can pertain to most professions in life also… a lot of people have advice to give, yet do not live the advice or a loving life as an example. It’s interesting – what are we really teaching another then?
interesting note on doing good and what may be behind it all.
The way that human psychology is explained in this blog is exquisite. How many of us can hold our hands up and say yes to also believing that there is or was something wrong with us because our parents were not able to express their love towards us because as children they did not have love expressed towards them, thus believing that there was something wrong with them. This blog is tremendous in showing that particular cycle of life that gets perpetuated generation after generation and how, with the help of Universal Medicine, it is possible to stop that cycle and to introduce the love that everyone has been essentially looking for.
The church is an interesting example of seeking support for deep wounds. I feel God as love and therefore I need to have a deep and truly connected relationship with love to have an understanding of God and how to walk Gods love in my day to day. I cannot say one thing and do another as it creates a tension of hypocrisy in my body. This was something I baulked at as a child when I came across it in the church. I now see it is not for others to do before me, or for me to learn by sitting in a church or other such venue, but for me to discover inside, to feel it in my body and express it in every movement, every word and thought.
“My mum had a very abusive childhood and was holding these issues which then impacted on all her relationships.” The cycle of abuse is a hard one to break until we are offered support that shows us it is safe to love, to let people in beyond the protection barriers. The mistrust comes from those not walking the talk which is what is the most normal in childhood. The best advocates for change are those who walk with open hearts and show, by example, that it is safe and in fact the only way to be with others in life.
Ah… This exposes the evil energy of ‘doing good’… Whenever we try and separate the quality of how we ourselves are and how we are living (ie how loving etc) with what we are presenting or seemingly doing, there’s a mismatch – and if we are honest, we can all feel this at some level (even if not consciously). When we try and promote this separation further in our activities of ‘doing good’ and / or avoid taking responsibility for this, we are aligning in a way that keeps allowing this evil energy to come in.
It is a very good question, when we don’t live the love in our own lives how can we truly serve others? Dealing with what is holding us back is very supportive, but not always easy, it takes a level of honesty that we don’t always want to go to. Because it asks responsibility for all that we do.
There is also a kind of intellectual quality about religion that is totally held in the mind, thought about, talked about but never brought deep into the heart to be lived. When people are in this kind of religion, they really do not understand that love is held in the body and lived. They do not see how the way we treat our bodies, the way we move and the thoughts we hold, the way we treat others, are all a part of love and are truly the connection we hold with ourselves and others. When the religion is intellectual, doing good is prescribed by the mind and the mind can be fooled. What seems to be good may in fact be keeping another from evolving, keeping another from taking responsibility, introducing another to a religion held in the mind and not a love lived in the body with a true connection with self and God.
Doing ‘good’ and not being true isn’t truly good. Understandably many use the ‘doing good’ to get recognition for being the ‘good person’ to feel good about ourselves (even though this feeling doesn’t last) because actually it is used to hide the lack of self-worth issues we hold against ourselves, instead of connecting to our own absolutely wonderful inner beauty and love. With most religions we hear the talk but they are just words if there is no walk to reflect the talk.
Many hurt and broken people seek to hide in churches for relief. By offering humanity our reflection of true love and understanding truth is possible.
We can be brought up to believe in God, and encouraged from an early age to do good, think of others, and in general be what society class as a responsible person. Yet at no time do we question in what quality we do these things in. I now feel it is more important for us to be aware of the quality we live by and as a result of this quality what we may have thought was doing good, actually is more harmful as it allows the underlying problem to continue without being addressed and therefore buries the issue deeper.
Within the church, trying to be faithful, and trying to be good are held as the way to heaven and the way to God. There is no real and practical help when it comes to healing hurts and healing relationships. Forgiveness is taught and you can sincerely believe you have forgiven another, yet the hurts are still held in the body. There are so many things unanswered and suffering is held as a way to atone for sins. So many people are held in this, sincerely believing that being a faithful member is the loving thing to do as selflessness is as important as being humble and meek. I have a lot of compassion for those believing that this is the way however we now have felt how much more healing there is in being self loving and how much more we all have to offer through treating ourselves with love and understanding that we are all equal sons of God. This opens the way to God up to new levels and new depths and shows us that what we need is within us and not preached to us by anyone, especially someone who does not live a truly loving life. We have all had lifetimes where we could not see a way out of the kind of religion that your parents have Anonymous, and this time around we have seen that there is a more loving way where we can truly heal our hurts and come to know love. We all have this equally, so on some level your parents have this too.
This is a very valuable comment to a very honest sharing by Anonymous. The pain of doing ‘good’ is commonly seen as a way to redeem/prove ourselves. I was driving past a church yesterday which had a sign out the front that said that God loved me and would forgive me for my sins. Years ago I would have just accepted that as the truth without further consideration. However since becoming involved with Universal Medicine I have realised that I don’t have to prove myself through ‘good’ deeds or to that I am an inherently bad person who needs to seek/beg forgiveness. Instead, I have a direct connection with God which confirms to me that I hold a love within me that has always been there and can’t be destroyed, taken away or measured according to a set of ideals and beliefs.
Anonymous this is an enlightening blog. I could see how it seems to be taking the easy way out by caring for others in a selfless way, but at the same time the old wounds would be poisoning us! We need to face up to our responsibilities on this Earth plane to deal with healing our own issues with ourselves and our partner and family first.
A powerful blog Anonymous – ‘I had grown up believing that there was something wrong with me because my mum wasn’t able to love me so I developed many issues from this.’ – This is a sad reality of what happens when no one reflects to us that we ARE love. Beutiful to hear how you have made a true turnaround for yourself.
It is beautiful that you can hold your parents in such love whilst still exposing the falsity of good when it is laced with undealt with hurts and void of the love it needs to truly heal or support another. It will be deeply healing for them to be held by you without any judgement for their choices whilst receiving the reflection you are offering them of the power of dealing with your choices and taking responsibility for them, for at any moment they can choose that too.
I agree Samantha truth is love and seeing things for what they are is so important
So very true Samantha, when we hold someone with love there is no judgment, and a beautiful reflection for others to feel too.
This is an uncomfortable exposure of the harm that is caused by hiding behind the ‘good, kind and helpful’ to others as a means of avoiding dealing with our own hurts. The teaching of Serge Benhayon that ‘You cannot love another until you love yourself’ is so true.
Wow, what a neat little package that is, tick the box of doing “good” yet not get real about your own life or deal with your stuff (which affects everyone) because you’re attending church. How confusing for church goers to be presented with all the supposed truths of religion, yet have no one living it as a role model. To talk about love yet not live it, nor have the priest actually living it. Isn’t that was Jesus did, live love? It’s like the true message of Jesus gets watered down, reinterpreted and twisted. Thank you for sharing so honestly about your family and giving such candid insight into life in religion from one family’s perspective.
What I have learned the hard way, from the presentations of Universal Medicine and proven in my own life, is that until the development of self-love begins, and the openness to accepting and deepening the love within, then none of the rest is even possible. Without holding ourselves in that love, we can’t be who we are, and we are not truly able to love another. So any relationship we have whether it be with our partners, children or people on the other side of the world cannot then hold the quality of love, and therefore there can be no true connection nor true evolution for anyone. As always the responsibility starts with ourselves.
Wow Anonymous, we go into all sorts of stories about how someone has hurt us and live our lives keeping others out based on that, when in fact someone has their own story and issues and their failure to express love with us is nothing to do with us and we continue the game when we then fail to express our own love with others – what a merry-go-round. And really it just needs us to step back and see and feel that we are responsible for our own choices and that how you are with me does not have to dictate how I am with you – this is very much I am learning right now. Thank you – your blog has really shone a light on the fact that I am responsible for the love I am no matter how another is and I am the one who chooses to express or abandon that love or not, and by doing so I affect me and all of us.
Love this Monica “how you are with me does not have to dictate how I am with you” responsibly choosing love will end the game.
Great examples here of using religion, public life and charity to hide the disharmony that is truly going on in life and often only felt by those close to us. We all have this capacity to hide and the harm is in burying the hurt we are attempting to hide from. Most often for sure, the dishonesty is not intentional, but ironically the healing only can come through making the choice to acknowledge our feelings instead of turning life into avoiding them.
Great points, as the way we are with ourselves and others in our lives, this quality is felt in all that we do. It brings a lot of responsibility to the way in which we live – is it truly loving or not.
It is sad to grow up in a world where people have difficulties to show their affection or through love, although this is the only thing they truly are looking out for but have no idea or whatsoever how to approach this as they are completely lost from the connection with themselves, where all the answers of life can be found and answered from. Growing up in such an environment is fostering a way of living in which we do not deal with our feelings and are not able to give words to how life actually feels to us. We end up in a body, filled with all these undealt with issues as there was no way we could talk about them and from carrying this hurt we start shutting out people from our lives, avoiding more hurt in our lives. How great it is that Serge Benhayon and Universal medicine and its practitioners are there to support us in reclaiming the truth of who we are back. To help us to restore who we truly are and in letting go of all the hurts that kept us imprisoned in our own small lives.
It is interesting how we can get caught up in doing ‘good’ we see good as doing the right thing, yet often deep down we know that ‘good’ is like a gloss, we are seen as doing the right thing, yet deep down we know it’s not about ‘good’ but about ‘Truth’. Time to drop the good and stand up for Truth.
I too have fallen for the ‘doing good’ in my life, I recall a time when I was supporting children financially in 3rd world countries yet I was struggling to pay my own bills. One day I finally woke up to the fact that the world didn’t need anymore poor people and that I needed to attend to my own finances to support myself before I could truly support another.
Doing good is such a trap in the world today. Whilst there are many things that can tick the temporal list of doing good, if it is not done in all of us and in truth and love then there is only harm.
Being good does not equate to being love and so being good is a very small part of us, it holds us back and keeps us small and anxious, worried about what good is, because good means something different to each of us. We can be love and expand and expand that love. Love asks us to be everything we are. Love is never small.
Great title- ‘the pain in doing good’ and well explained here too that doing good for others can be an effective way to avoid dealing with one’s own pain and hurt. I recently heard Serge Benhayon present about the tendency to have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviours to justify the good. But the good are not true, simply better than what we have pegged as bad. In other words we make choices that are ‘bad’ and this enables our good choices to be measured against better and worse, good and bad but never what is true. When I heard this I paused as I felt I have still got a lot of good nestled under my arms that is not being questioned for its veracity so having a look at the bad might help to un-nestle the good.
Hypocrisy is rife in society. Behind the cloak of doing good deeds we maintain our rage and hold on to all sorts of hurts and maliciousness. It is only when being presented with the truth that my choices dictate the way I live my life that I am able to see that, seeming to do good, is not the same as living a good life. I can ‘do’ more good by being truly me, by appreciating myself, than by accumulating a lifetime of good deeds and obligations.
Thank you for this honest open and exposing blog. It is exposing and potentially freeing for the reader, as many of us , including me have been caught in the ‘doing good’ deeds for others that are harming as they are done from the doer’s need to feel better not from a true loving impulse. So any ‘good deed’ is then laced by an untruth that does not inspire another to be more of the love and truth that is naturally them.
There is a sort of line of continuity between what we experienced growing up (even if we suffered from it) and what we become as adults. We become the hurts we carry around. We build ourselves upon them. That is where Universal Medicine enters the picture. The clear emphasis on choices make clear that we have a choice: to deal with the hurts we carry, to not be what we learned to be and suffer from it, to be who we truly are. These choices open up the possibility of claiming and living a true religious life that exposes the extent to which people hide behind established religions as much as how much they provide incentives for people to stay where we are in their own evolution.
The way we are with ourselves and in relationships determines so much of how you can be with others and be able to truly care or not.
The more I realize that doing good is a veil to not show how disconnected we are, the more I see my responsibility to discover in myself where and what I have invested in because of hiding my true self to not feel the hurt of me and the devastation I feel in the world around me. As you say Esther it is like a fortress. By choosing to come out of the fortress everything is becoming much more clear and the resentment I used to feel when playing the ‘nice and good’ game has no longer a hold on me. In fact I feel how much I missed being with people.
I agree we often hide behind being good. It is a very effective way to keep people at bay and be left alone about the things that really matter. I have done that for a lot of my life. It is a very lonely way of life even though it might look pretty awesome from the outside. But in the end we are just fooling each other and mostly ourselves if we are not willing to open up and look at those things that are hard to look at. And even though it might seem hard in the beginning I am always surprised how very easy it actually is to take one more step out of the fortress I have build for myself. There is a lot of beauty to encounter and the ugliness drops off step by step not being able to hold its place among all that beauty.
This hypocritical observation from when you were young Anonymous can be seen everywhere. We never went to church growing up other than for weddings and funerals, however, I also saw much contradiction in how adults acted around me. I found it confusing why an adult would say they were so tired and didn’t want to go out or do anything more for the day but then when someone rang they would say yes. I soon worked out that you continually do for others at the detriment of yourself to ‘look good’ or ‘be good’ and then resent that. Such a breakdown then results with our own relationship and then relationships with others.
” … yet in day-to-day life people weren’t living loving relationships.”
My father also grew up with this – his father was a strict Methodist and the church preached love of fellow human beings yet this was not expressed in practical terms. Dad always said they were hypocritical and thus did not have any time for the church or his father’s beliefs. I find it sad that my father had no (apparent) relationship with God which was passed to us children, however after I found Universal Medicine and was open to the presentations, thankfully that cycle is being healed.
This brings amazing insights to the underlying motivation of doing good and mainstream religious followers. What you describe feels very disempowering and I can feel how the faith in the church is holding them imprisioned in a belief system of doing good to others that is motivated by the deep pain and emptiness they feel of having never been truly met with love. This, not living true love, is the biggest disease of the human race and causes all the misery and desperation we face today.
It is a vicious cycle that holds us captured in the forever need of doing good until we stop and truly care for ourselves before we care for others.
As a child I couldn’t stand the hypocrisy in church, it is what made me turn my back on it. But now I see the pain that is underneath the mask and that all the good the parishioners try to do for others is in some way an attempt to heal the pain they feel inside. I have been one, I understand from the inside out that the only way to heal the pain of the emptiness you can feel inside is NOT to try to fix others but to support yourself and allow others to support you.
Feeling right or wrong and doing good or bad are ideals that can have a very strong grip on us, also hard to argue with as there is always rhyme and reason. True love actually challenges good and bad and hence shakes the foundation of the concepts that navigate us through life when we are not connected to love and truth.
Your willingness to take responsibility and make loving changes in your life is providing those around you with the opportunity to see that there is a truer way of living and being in relationship with one another. Doing good for others whilst sacrificing ourselves or trying to fill the emptiness within is harmful to everyone and there can never be any true love in this.
Yes deborahmckay there is such a belief in the world that to do good by others is the ultimate sacrifice and pat on the back. Even though deep inside we know that this is bollocks and when we do this we feel empty and drained.
Totally agree Deborah. We love to convince ourselves that our benevolence will make the world a better place, but it’s all a lie. How can we give to others if we can’t give to ourselves? It’s like any super simple analogy – you can’t teach someone something you haven’t already learnt.
You have raised a valid point in asking how effective is the work of all the benevolent organisations, when there is no true foundation of love.
This shows so clearly how we give our power away when joining a church/believe-system. It is so sad, all those people searching for love or happiness or salvation, and all they get from those institutions is hope or the illusion that they will be saved simply by following the christian or other rules. So many are trapped in that way, I was in a lesser version – and I am so glad that I now see that trap for what it is, and I’ve got my power back.
Doing good and being seen to do good is a common way we avoid confronting the unloving choices we may be making in our personal lives, but it doesn’t make the pain go away. This blog illustrates this very clearly.
I’ve often seen in the helping professions, that the helpers are not taking care and looking after themselves, so much so that they get very unwell and also burn out with exhaustion. So many of us have got caught up doing good, as a way of not dealing with our own hurts and issues.
For me, this blog clearly highlights the pitfalls of the ‘nice and polite’ facade. Seems like another clever form of protection and keeping people at a distance. It also feels like a form of control; controlling situations to be a certain way so as to not out the misery and disconnection one is feeling with themselves. No one will question the nice person.
I love reading this post because it reminds me that the quality we bring to everything we do is so important, and putting up a front simply is not worth it for anyone involved. We all deserve to deal with our own stuff so that we don’t dump it on others.
I am reminded that no matter what we do when it is seen from the point of view of “good” as opposed to love , it helps no one, even though we may look “good” to others, for having performed the task.
When we get caught up in doing good, we often use that to disguise that we don’t feel good about ourselves, and then by doing ‘good’ we think that makes us worthy and therefore better about ourselves.
Wow what a great reflection on the real purpose behind doing good and helping others as a distraction from truly feeling and dealing with what is truly going on in ones own relationship with oneself first. I am learning that only with a deep connection with oneself lovingly can this fullness be with everyone and everything else we do. Otherwise it is all empty and not from love and this can be really felt and leaves everyone and our self feeling empty and not truly connected and not love and we can all feel this. There is so much on this subject thank you for writing about this.
Growing up in a very religious family I can really relate to the concept of doing ‘good’. We were taught from a young age that it was very honourable to serve others, especially those ‘less fortunate’ than ourselves. The trouble was that we were never taught to love ourselves first. So while self sacrifice was considered to be the main virtue to be aimed for; something to be proud of, we were distracted away from knowing and valuing ourselves from within. It was constantly an exterior measure that was used and so once the emptiness started to show up, the answer was to try harder to do some good deed or other and so get the external reward of being recognised for being such a ‘good, decent example of how a person should live’. Knowing that this didn’t gel, I eventually turned away from the church but still had no answers for the emptiness until I became involved in Universal Medicine. Now I am gradually building a foundation of self love and appreciation which serves far more people than I ever did through my former ‘good deeds’.
I can relate to feeling like there was something wrong with me growing up and even until quite recently. Attending workshops and presentations run by Universal Medicine, as well as having sessions with Uni Med practitioners has really taught me that in fact, there is nothing wrong with me. I make choices that are at times different to the majority, but actually, that’s ok and the majority’s choice does not necessarily mean it’s normal. A normal choice is what feels natural to me.
How often do we do something for others so as not to look at ourselves. It is as if we use this doing ‘good’ to run away and hide from what is going on, rather than stand still and allow what is there to surface and be lovingly dealt with.
Great point Sally, I have used that tactic for a long time; finding somebody who needs my ‘help’, focusing on them, as that was easier than actually really looking at what was going on for me. I had to realise that that kind of help is no true help at all. I have now learnt that we are all equipped to deal with what is happening for us, and true support is never about ‘fixing’ anything for another, but to just be there lovingly, allowing them to find the way in their time.
That’s a real dousey of an article as it really exposes a lot. It exposes how we temporarily bury our issues in activity, it exposes how people use religion to mask many things that they don’t want to identify, it exposes how it is of no real value to help others if there is no real love in your body. It demonstrates that dealing with our issues changes our experience of life, bringing in true understanding, wisdom and love. A real corker of an article, thank you.
To me it feels like this ‘doing good’ just conceals what is truly going on. Like not being able to be loving with yourself and others being covered up by the fact of being very hard workers for the church for instance as that is what is talked about in this blog but it just could be a hard worker at work, in study etc. It is far more healing to look at why we would have problems with loving ourselves and thus others instead of being kept in the illusion of it being all fine by being applauded for doing good…
You’ve called out something very important in this blog anonymous — the real harm that takes place when there’s the illusion that we’re doing good for others by giving to charity, to those less fortunate when we haven’t first been truly loving with ourselves, and therefore with others. Mankind will eventually come to know that you can’t compartmentalise life and be a saviour in some parts and miserable, angry, resentful etc in another. Giving to a ‘good cause’ when life at home is empty, even rotten is simply a distraction from feeling the mess we’ve created and need to take responsibility for. And then what true good does any such charitable act do? We just need to look at the increasing rates of mortality in third world countries from famine and disease to see that all the charitable act in the world has done very little to alleviate humanity’s suffering.
Beautifully summed up Katerina. Holding out a helping hand from a loveless, empty body to help another so you feel better about yourself is harming for the person taking that hand. All it does is get the other to depend on them rather than be inspired to be more of themselves to change their loveless situation as they accept true support.
Absolutely! Doing ‘good’ for all to see is very rarely a worthwhile act as more often than not, behind closed doors we are living a completely different life to what we choose to put on show.
So true Elodie. How exhausting it must be to live different lives on either side of the door, and it must also become confusing as to which one is real.
I have realised recently that being ‘nice’ and ‘good’ are really some of the best and most cunning forms of actually keeping people away because no one questions it as it is difficult to fault it on the surface. We have let the quality of what we consider normal for relationships slide so far that we just accept decency and politeness as the pinnacle of being a sociable human being without looking at the day to day quality of all our relationships which can be so harming or healing.
Yes andrewmooney26, and the politeness will often be a thin veil masking the resentment, frustration and sadness that is beneath. It is rare these days and saddening that so few people look each other in the eye and simply connect, person to person with a look that lets the other know they are truly seen. And amidst all this, there is the championing of charity and doing good, but we don’t see the harm we are doing by being so disconnected with ourselves and therefore with all others.
Oh yes andrewmooney26, I can relate to what you revealed in your comment. So because most are playing this being nice and good we don’t have to look underneath and see what is really going on – most of us do not really like to feel that our relationships are harming.
Great Point Andrew, that is something I come by with myself almost everyday feeling that I only am doing nice, but not really connect. This is hurting me as it does everyone around me. So I started to connect, and what a beautiful experience that is !
It is beautiful when we drop the guard and protection that is ‘good ‘ and ‘nice’ and really let people in. That is the only way in my experience that true connection with others can occur.
A super important point here made Andrew, I too have become so much more aware about how being ‘nice’ and ‘good’ are so far from being loving and honest; it’s a great armour to keep people away, as it cannot be faulted on the surface. It’s a protection to not have to be open and vulnerable. Everybody loses out, as we all crave to truly connect with each other.
What a great question: if one cannot love themselves and sort out their own personal relationships, then how can they possibly sort out anyone else’s?
This is so simple Suzanne and yet makes so much sense. It’s obvious really.
Absolutely Suzanne, I feel it is the same with all our interactions. If we still have an issue then how can we be there for another?
Unequivocally Suzanne, doing a so-called ‘good’ in the name of God when you do not live any truth will never help another.
Absolutely Suzanne; how can we expect somebody to be able to truly help and support another, when they clearly cannot support themselves to have loving and deep relationships? If the relationship to ourselves is not there as a true foundation, then it’s very difficult to have close relationships with others. If we cannot love and accept ourselves, we will have a hard time letting anybody else’s love in.
It is a great question for everyone Suzanne. I grew up in a family of intellectually aspiring people who prided themselves on their benevolent offerings to charities, research organisations and education facilities. I knew as a teenager this was not true as we were not meeting each other in our relationships and we were not open and truly benevolent to each other at home. So how could money or a gift given from this place be of any benefit to another?
I have so often heard in my family as a kid “do what I say but don’t do what I do!” it felt so patronising and very intoxicating!
It is true that what we observe as a child has more power than what we are told and this is what is being said here. You could feel and knew the truth intimately and nothing that could be lived under the instruction from others in power brought love, joy or stillness. The lived way which Serge Benhayon practices everyday and the presentations of Universal medicine based on this truth can be felt and so the congruence of the spoken word and the action (lived way) are a true reflection of each other. This has been felt truly. Thank you for sharing and re- affirnming once again what we all know in our hearts as ‘The Way It Is’
Thank you for sharing. This highlighted for me the fact that the ‘good and benevolent’ acts that everyone thinks are good aren’t always. They sometimes leave you more empty than when you started.
Actually what you are sharing is too true but as well painful to look at. By “pain” I mean the feel of knowing how much the “play-good-person” is hurting her/himself and in the result others by playing “good”. Sensing the truth and what they are holding back. I had the same observations with my mum, and I truly love her, but the way she was avoiding her truth drove me mad as a child. I wasn’t able to express that back then but today I can and do so. It even helps me to understand myself. Why I had chosen to mistrust people, because I could feel the gap between the truth and them in action. And no one would like to listen, and I couldn’t accept this and reacted to it. And ended up becoming a player too. In other words – I couldn’t have cared less for me or anyone. Today I’m working on me to step back into my truth and accepting that love and everyone else and how things are. Which is huge looking at how much investment I had on others to please live their truth first before I do so. The playing good game can be very blinding.
Christinahecke you make a great point about how we can feel the gap between the truth and that in action. What I am learning is that we are re-acting to our own gaps and the affect that is having on everyone. We are all constantly communicating this to each other ie how much we are willing to live the truth.
Exactly, Vicky Geary! Some gaps we have created, some we have copied but in the end chosen by free will. In re-action 🙂
I too grew up feeling this gap… But when I started to become more aware and to take responsibility for my own behaviours, I had to also accept that often my own behaviours didn’t match to what came out of my mouth…. ! So I had been criticising and judging others for the very things I was doing myself! Sometimes my behaviours and actions still don’t match what I know to be truth and love, but thanks to the awareness I have from attending presentations by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, I am aware of this much more clearly and quickly and am more willing to take responsibility including addressing any underlying hurts
Wow, this shows us how easy it can be to be hypocritical in our society. The impulse is there to want to serve and help humanity, but without harmony in one’s own life how is one ever able to truly help others? This is a very revealing story that reveals much.
Great point and a trap many of us fall into, we feel if we do good, somehow that absolves us and we don’t have to deal with our own relationships, and yet that’s not true as this blog lovingly shows, we need to address our own hurts not avoid them, and doing good without that is not true good. Beautiful showing of that here, thank you.
What you have said is so true monicag2: doing good is like a flimsy bandaid, which is used to avoid looking at our own lives, and delaying the acknowledgement of what is in need of healing. Taking our un-addressed hurts with us as we “do good’ for others, is to me, just a way to avoid the reality of our lives and to simply make us feel better. Meanwhile, our hurts patiently wait to be addressed.
It simply doesn’t work when we don’t live ourselves what we share with others. It is empty and doesn’t offer another a real, felt choice. Doing ‘good’ in that way in actually harming both for the person doing it and for the recipient. Walk the talk is what it needed for all of us.
Yes we divert the responsibility to address our own hurts and put the focus solely on our outward pursuits of helping others as ” doing good.” But who are we really helping if we do not heal our own hurts first. Love thyself before we can love another.
Rebecca this is a trap that I fell into. I thought I loved my children and others dearly, but my own sense of self-worth was so low I was unable to be the love that I now know I can be. Focussing on helping others was a grand distraction from dealing with my own issues. I observe this dynamic happening a lot in our society.
You capture so much here, how doing good can often be a distraction from feeling what is truly going on with us. The bottom line is, if we don’t have love in how we are with us and those around us what is the quality in all those good things we do out there in the world. And the biggest thing many of us have with doing good, we make it, bigger and more important than us, rather than being us and doing what needs to be done from there. Something I’m still learning, we’re enough and it’s about connecting to that true inner quality in us which is always there and never tainted and expressing from there. I love the compassion you show with how you are with your family, accepting them in how they are and just being love with them, how beautiful.
You write with such sensitivity and understanding about yourself and your family. This was really beautiful to read, as I’ve been reflecting on my relationship with my family recently. Thank you.
I had a conversation about doing good just a few days ago and realised that we both held a different view on this. The Church I was part of when I grew up also supported “doing good” as a way of atonement for our sins . Thank you to Serge Benhayon for shining the light on what “doing good” does, if we don’t first Love ourselves we are unable to love others. It is sad to see families hiding behind their good deeds and all the while shutting other family members out. A very revealing blog, thank you Anonymous.
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Thank you for sharing, I too was brought up with religion , with the idea of being good and doing good so God would love me, no love for myself, not even wanting a self, until coming to Universal Medicine . Now the true loving me can come out and live .
I have also experienced how Universal Medicine practitioners offer a space by holding an immense love and support where I was able to feel safe to explore my re-connection to myself. This allowed me to reveal, expose and to let go of what was holding me back from being and living who I truly am. I am deeply grateful and appreciate the unwavering integrity in which these practitioners work and live, and hold no difference between the two.
I too was brought up on a diet of ‘Be a good girl’ but often felt resentful as I felt I was being asked to be something other than I already was. When I came to hear presentations by Serge Benhayon I understood that you do not have to be seen to be ‘doing good’ or being good, kind and helpful’, you just have to reconnect to your inner-heart and be who you truly and innately are.
What a beautiful reflection you must offer to your mother Anonymous – she can clearly feel the loving choices and connections you have now chosen in your life. There is also the grace that you are offering in not wanting to make her change and just holding her in love and without judgement.
What a beautiful reflection you are for your family – the truth in connection to self. Your blog has made me aware of how ‘pressure’ to change coming from the outside of ourselves, will bring with it, it’s equal and opposite force and thus supports people to continue making the choices they are making, locked into the pain of emptiness and need to fill it. In your ‘Reflection’, there is not a request to change, just a presence of Love in all it’s forms and a knowing that they too, hold the same love and presence within them, thus no resistance is felt. They can truly feel what is there. What a gift you are to your family.
This is spot-on; “these missionary trips to help others can be used to mask their own issues for a while”, indeed, it is a way of escaping. It is great to read that your mother has started to speak to you how she really feels. I fully agree with “I do ponder on what is the real quality of what she is doing in these other countries, if she is not able to love herself and those she lives with, then how can love be expressed in what she does? “ Thank you Anonymous for writing this so honestly. It is a very powerful article to read.
This is an amazing exposé. We could appear to be ‘good’ people, doing obviously ‘good’ things for the others, but that could just be a way to hide how loveless our life really is.
We have probably all experienced the mismatch between what people say and what they do, people who don’t walk their talk in other words. That is why it has been so incredibly freeing for me to come to Universal Medicine where it is not about doing good, but about love, truth, harmony and stillness. It is utterly simple: what you see is what you get.
Absolutely. Could it be that the mismatch between what people say and do is the main reason for us to give up, adopt the same behaviour, carve a way through life? And that by finally getting a reflection by Universal Medicine of how we all along knew it actually can and should be that we can open up again to what once was lost in childhood.
I was brought up to go to chapel and came to realize that something wasn’t right about it. It was when I met Serge Benhayon presenting the fact that to connect to God was through our inner heart that this was the first time in my life that made sense to me.
It is awesome how you changed to trust yourself and be true ! A really good example to understand how childhood-imprints can restrict us, BUT that we can choose to step out of it, making change of our whole life!!
Thank you anno, I also grew up in a very religious family where doing good was indoctrinated to everyone. It has only been since I met Serge Benhayon that I became aware of the importance of creating a foundation of self love and respect and this has allowed me to enjoy a more honest relationship with myself and others.
There is such honesty in your blog, thank you for sharing –
‘If she is not able to love herself and those she lives with, then how can love be expressed in what she does?’ – So true!
I have never understood what the point is in going to church (including if you are a minister or priest) if you don’t actually live the words and the integrity of your chosen religion in your everyday.
The mis-match between what people say and what they do has always been something with which I have struggled, particularly with those who profess to follow/practice a religion. Encountering Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine was, and is, so inspiring as he truly ‘walks his talk’ and there is absolutely no mis-match.
It is great to even start to consider if ‘doing good’ or ‘being nice’ is in any way truly beneficial for others. Your blog brings light to the possibility that it is often not even beneficial for the person doing the good & may actually be detrimental to them. Thank you for sharing.
What I struggled with as a child was that all of these things were spoken about in church yet in day-to-day life people weren’t living loving relationships. This highlights the contradiction between the church and to be seen doing good is all that matters, when TRUE and lasting success is by living and having loving relationships with everyone, especially with ones’s family.
What an amazing and honest story. Thank you for sharing. It is beautiful that you have been able to choose a different way to that of your parents yet still hold them without any judgment nor impose your choices on them. Inspirational.
What I find really beautiful anon is that your choice to be responsible for your own quality and build more love for yourself, and then in all your relationships, is how much this helps everyone, that your mum sees it and asks what you are doing differently and opens up more about how she really feels. At least now she is given an opportunity to see that there is another way to be in life.
Amnia this really sums everything up. With so much of life spent trying to be the good this or that (husband, brother, boss etc..) without love no wonder it never makes a real difference.
Re-visiting this blog I have realised just how far we have come from the origins of religion and charity. Surely if we cannot have a healthy relationship with ourselves or our immediate loved ones and family then how can we possibly help the rest of humanity? When we do these so called charitable acts are we really doing it for others or simply as a drug to avoid feeling our own pain?
great blog, exposing the falseness of ‘doing good’ that is promoted by many of the Mainstream religions.
Thank you for turning upside down the fact of “good” and “love”. The outside image can appear a good citizen, helping out but is devoid of true love. I also had forgotten what true love felt like until Universal Medicine.
There is much to consider in this article, what we bring to any situation is always affected by how we have been living, so if there are unresolved issues with family as you describe, then that will surely have an impact on everything else we do. Its a clear message that burying our problems is not the answer and that facing them is the only way to truly clear what we do not want to carry.
Even without the constructs of religion I have felt that ‘doing good’ has been and still is a very horrible fog that can be around me. Many times I have gone against what I felt in favour of appearing and being rewarded for ‘doing good’ or ‘being good’. It’s like we are not enough unless we preform in a certain way – even just looking back at the last 30 minutes I can see how much panic I can get into trying to work out how to get everything in my day done in a set way so that I can at the end rest knowing that I ‘did good’ and thus I am worth something. Wow, just writing that sounds crazy when I know I am completely capable of getting my daily tasks done without the panic. What this is telling me is more appreciation is needed from myself to myself. Thank you.
We are not taught by parents or school to consider the effect we have in every moment. We are never shown that how we are emotionally is what we bring to everything we do. Life and our relationships would be so much more loving if we were because we would understand the impact of our actions and learn to treat others in the way we would choose to be treated, with love.
An excellent blog exposing the emptiness so many people feel and use organised religion to fill the hole, and then when life is still not “perfect” to fill that emptiness even more, take on missionary activity to make themselves feel good, all unconscious mostly. It makes me look at how I might be addicted to my own version of organised religion that could come under the guise of many belief systems I have held since I was a child, and how even wanting someone else to hear about what I believe can feel like missionary work. It usually means I don’t live it myself. If I find myself doing that I can now stop and come home to myself to be honest about what I am doing, and as soon as I am back with me, there is no need to go out there and be or do “good”,
What a great artlcle, the anomaly you speak of is at the heart of all our major religions and within our societal institutions. It’s a rot we need to address, starting with us, and being honest about what we see and feel and how we are with each other. As you say how can we truly do good if we can’t be harmonious with our families. As many have noted already it’s a trap, a way to distract us from feeling what is truly going on. I love how you came to understand you and your mother’s way of coping in adulthood (shutting people out), but once you did it wasn’t about your mother but about you and the choices you made – a lovely peon to the choice and joy of self-responsibility. Thank you.
A great question: “What does it mean to DO GOOD?”
I too was utterly confused by the hypocrisy as a child; I saw seemingly angry preachers preaching about love!…I was able to dismiss it all as a bit crazy because my parents openly questioned it and were not affiliated with any one church but…
…for most of my life (37 yrs of it!) my main focus has been on “helping” others but I came to realize, on my own (before I found Uni. Med) that none of this had changed any of the pain or struggle I had sought to change…and that I had badly depleted myself in trying…It was a huge investment to give up on! I was devastated to see that all my bleeding efforts had not helped and only bled me near to death…and that I would need to learn another way to go forward….
Uni. Med. has helped me do exactly this.
In my past I had numerous therapists who would keep my session though they where white with pain, going through a stressful divorce or having a break down…now, I can feel that this is the FIRST time I am feeling what true support, from a person who truly supports themselves, feels like and I am telling you, it is NIGHT AND DAY.
This love I feel holds me and allows me to accept where I am in such a loving light.
I now feel a shift happening as I learn to truly support and care for myself. I can feel, now, that I can only offer what I have fully received myself and that I can only offer people, what and how I live inside and out.
I can relate here to this blog and to the hypocrisy of growing up in a Christian church community. I could not understand either how people could talk about love and equality at church on Sunday but then do horrible things to each other the rest of the week! It did not feel true to me so I left it behind at the age of 20. I have been very wary of any other organisations or religions since then due to this experience and I was also wary and watchful when I first met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. But over the years my trust has grown because I cannot fault the example of integrity, responsibility and consistency shown by Serge. The ‘esoteric student body’ is not perfect and we are all learning but there is a dedication to healing and growth and self-responsibility that I have never encountered anywhere else in the world.
It is amazing what ‘things’ we can find to hide in, for some it is alcohol or drugs for others it is overwork or new age modalities. For your mother her work with the church offers distraction from her earlier abuse. The unfortunate thing is with any distraction the under lying issue remains the same. Thank you for you sharing and your honesty.
Thank you for such an honest article that exposes the fact that most religions do not walk the walk, they just talk the talk.
Thank you for your writing on doing good. I like Dragana did not have religion imposed upon me, but I had a mother who could not love me. Her type of love was a doing, and as long as I was doing or being good then everything was alright. if I was sick I would get the best medical advice or the best dentist so her love came from a fixing when all was really needed was a love or an understanding. I did what I thought was everything to not become like my mother, yet I was still becoming like her. I was good at doing but not loving, and this was showing in my body as pain…..I had a painful body that was there every day, and doing was great at numbing that. Universal Medicine has been the only thing that has been able to help slowly reduce my painful body. Even now if I go into doing good in any way the pain is back.
I very much enjoyed reading this piece even though I did not grow up in a religious family. In fact, thank God 😉 I (or my family) had nothing to do with religion and I was always very weary of people in black robes and anyone speaking on behalf of God! I grew up in former Yugoslavia where religious holiday events have been (and still are) one of the biggest opportunity for almost everyone attending to ‘drown themselves in alcohol’! I cannot even in my wildest imagination picture God supporting the trend where people are celebrating Him by bringing about cirrhosis of the liver and getting ‘out of it’ or ‘off their heads’ – sheer madness.
I can totally relate to what happened to you and the way you are changing that “supposed-to-be-love” to true love.
My family history is very similar and I always wondered: how come they (my parents) are so good with everybody and at home they are complaining and grumpy? Why does she pray all the time but this house is so cold and sad?
Your article is so clear and has helped me understand that being good pacifies the spirit on the surface, and allows one to continue ignoring the issues that have been undealt with.
It shows the confusion lots of us have grown up with, as the adults said one thing but did and felt very different.
It is astonishing nowadays how many families, brothers and sisters don´t talk to each other as adults. I choose to bring love (me) to my family and, as you say, it is very challenging for some of them that someone truly connects and doesn´t give up on love. Sometimes they even react violently, but it is the consistency of the warmth and the gentleness that always melts the hardness, in me and in my brothers and sisters.
Julia Manglano, Spain
How sad the state of affairs that we are brought up with such plethora of “do as I say, not as I do” (whether within religion or otherwise – as Rachel wisely stated).
And “hear, hear” Rachel Hall. It all begins with ourselves, and our own choice to perpetuate the lovelessness, or not. I am particularly touched by the writer’s statement, “I am now able to love my parents and family members in a way that they were never able to show me.” Though they may never give us the ‘love we wanted/craved for’, can WE not love THEM so? Thank-you for this piece – it shows us again, that the tides are, indeed, turning.
This is a great, clear account of the hypocrisy that we all live with yet most turn a blind eye to.
Many of us will tell a very similar account to this. In our family, I questioned this mismatch between how people presented themselves at church versus the reality of how they were living outside church on a weekly basis (after leaving the Sunday services) until my parents could not ignore this truth any longer. They always admitted it was true but would go along as this is what they had always done. They both came from religious families where daily bible study at home was normal to them as well as attending services. It was very inspiring when I was about 10 when my parents found they could no longer attend church services and live in this way and we all stopped going to church. They weren’t ready to look at how they lived outside of church but they could feel the hypocrisy at play by going along and playing happy god abiding families for the hour.
Thank you for sharing your experience with the hypocrocies of religion. I attended church each weekend and then one day in my late teens soon after I had left home I returned for a service and read the words I had been saying week in week out for years, something along the lines of … forgive me for what I’ve done this week, I’ll try better next week. I was in that moment struck by the lack of responsibility of not living in a loving Christian way in the week and thinking that it was all going to be forgiven if I rocked up at church on Sunday. In that moment I completely understood that it was about committing to how we lived on a daily basis and I knew that my relationship with God felt true and much stronger outside of the church confines. I walked out at that moment and never entered a church again.
Thank you, your words expose the hipocrosy of the way we live, that we can be loveless but think that we can correct it by a few chartiable acts and going to church on Sunday then go back to living our disconnected, unhappy lives thinking that doing good makes a difference. I didn’t grow up in a religious family but the ideals of being nice and doing good still ran deep. At school in assembly every morning we would sing hymns, say prayers and have moral stories from the bible (even though it was a non denominational school). It shocked me to hear my head teacher speak about love and brotherly acts when she was the meanest most cold hearted person I had ever met at that age and didn’t live that as her example to the school children she was supposed to be caring for. It also deeply confused me that we were all God’s children yet he sent His ONLY Son to cleanse us of our sins!
The influence of religion, chartiy and good is very strong yet how often do we stop and ask ‘hang on a minute do these rules and ideas really work and who is truly benefiting?’ Do we think that because we make ourself feel better by doing something nice or giving a donation (often because we feel guilty) that things will change? Look at Africa we have been pouring money in for over 30 years and yet the mess keeps getting worse.
I feel we need to start on a small scale and adjust the way we live to be more loving and true and it is the ripple effect from that which really makes a difference.
Thank you. An amazing and exposing article showing a real-life example of how the religion you have here described, make it acceptable or alright……that is acceptable or alright to not be love under the guise of ‘doing good for others’ who are ‘less well off’ and/or in ‘poorer countries’. There are countless people who fall into this category of ‘charity’ and of ‘doing good’ and such ways are also promoted among schools, businesses and enterprises as the ‘right thing to do’, and as your article here demonstrates such displays of good are just covers to stop the true feelings of individuals from being felt, the consequences of which create a detrimental ripple effect to all others/families etc that ends up not being of any good – to anyone.
The quality with which we hold ourselves, is thus the quality with which we hold others in – let that be true love.
This article and the comments are all expressing how one thing is said by religion but the actions carried out by individuals living the so called religious life are very different. What astounds me is why don’t more people stop to question this? The above article explains how simple the absurdity is, it is staring us straight in the face, most of us do not have loving relationships with our family and yet we venture off to ‘do good’ to others.
Thank you for a beautiful post. I can relate to your experience – I too was born into and grew up in a very catholic family with many priests, nuns and missionaries amongst my relatives and ancestors. As a young child I felt that true LOVE existed but it certainly was not the love I was shown in my community. They all talked about it – love, compassion, brotherhood, faith but they were empty words and meaningless intellectual concepts. I also felt very deeply and it made me very sad that nobody was hopeful, joyful and/or harmonious as a result of “belonging” to that religion. So surely there was something wrong and by the time I was 15 I was really questionning religions realising that they were no more than legalised cults that they were not improving the way we live, the way we are in the world and the way we are with ourselves.
Our re-connection to our inner-heart shows us the way to true love, joy and harmony.
What a very powerful post. What an awesome message for the world.
Thanks so much for this post. I too grew up in a religious family and can resonate with your experience, without judgement. Our reconnection with and reflection of our true selves is all that is needed now….
I could really understand your storey, I also grew up in a religious family and saw the same inconsistencies in the religion, church priest and parishioners that you did. As a young child I grew up very saddened by the lie I was told, that when you die you go to heaven UNLESS you are not catholic or a you are a sinner, I knew my mum was not catholic but yet the rest of my family was, this is a huge burden to put on any child. I also saw we were supposed to live in poverty to be “good” while the priests drove around in Mercedes. I also heard how we should be helping the poor but yet I could never understand why people were sleeping on the streets while they could sleep in a warm church.
As a teenager I was sent to withdrawal any time I questioned the brothers at high school and was not allowed out until I agreed with their point of view or it came to the weeks end. I watched as a brother was shipped from one school to the next after abusing two of my friends.
There is so much corruption in the church that it would take me years to share all my experience of the church growing up, let alone the whole story of the church.
‘Organised religion’ is the cult I grew up in.
Tonisteenson, my family weren’t particularly religious, attendance at church was erratic, and I don’t remember much of it. But I heard stories in the family of those who were ‘chosen’ to be part of traditional celebrations and the expense of providing the right clothes. No matter how poor your opting out was not an option, and the churches provided no financial help.That didn’t feel like love to me, and though as an adult I searched, I never found a religion that was love, until The Way of the Livingness.
Yes in all my time associated with the church I found it was simply one hypocrisy, growing from the last hypocrisy. I never found truth in the church and it’s ways. The way of the livingness is simply that, the way we choose to live from our livingness no doctrine or rules simply connection and inspiration.
I grew up in a different church (temple actually) but could feel the same mismatch between what was being said and what I felt, between people drinking heavily on religious occasions to celebrate god and what I felt god to be in my heart. I too have parents who do lots of ‘good’ for others but don’t feel too happy in their relationship or life.