by Otto Bathurst, UK

I remember really clearly, when I was a 13 or 14 year old boy, looking around me, at the world, at my parents, at the huge buildings, the big roads, the zillions of people, the machines, the days passing me by, back and forth to school, the adults back and forth to work, the books, the sports, the whole thing really, the whole of life and asking myself… “ is this it? all this gargantuan effort, scale, history, noise, life…. there MUST be more to it than just this?”

Now, it wasn’t that I was depressed or anything like that! In fact I was having what I thought was a really nice time – it was just that I didn’t really see the point to it all. Not in a heavy way; just something inside of me was niggling.

Around the same period, there was a very popular computer game called Donkey Kong – you were a big ape and wooden barrels came rolling towards you. You had to jump over them, and if you were good enough you’d work your way up through the various levels of the game (it was actually pretty good fun). Anyway… I remember I used to say to my friends: “It’s like we are all stuck on the first level of Donkey Kong.”

So, once I left school, I began digging around, searching, checking out various religions, new age stuff, travelling a lot, trying all sorts out. Not the whole time, it wasn’t a focused crusade, sometimes life would sweep me up for a year or two… but always in the back of my mind was the question… “is this it?”

And then, one day I came across Serge Benhayon and the teachings of Universal Medicine.

So, what’s it all about?

It’s actually really, really simple.

Stop at any point in your day and take a very, very, very honest look at that day: and at every decision that you made, during that day.

Were the decisions that you made, made by you, purely you, only you… or were they made because of the life that you are in, because of the world that is all around you?

Initially you think, “Yeah, course they were made by me, I’m not nuts… who else made them?”

But then be more honest. Look more closely.

For me, a huge amount of the time, it is the latter. I am being run by my life. I am not running my life, I am being run by its ZILLIONS of ideals and belief systems. I am being run by what I think I should be: as a man, as a father, as a partner, as a television director, as a son, as a friend, as a funny guy, as an upstanding member of the community. I am being run by my need for recognition and acceptance. I am being run by my emotions, by my hopes, fears, ambitions, expectations. I am being run by the hopes, fears, ambitions, expectations of others… the list goes on and on (believe me – it really does!).

But, things are changing… more and more now, the decisions in my day are made by ME.

And that difference is EVERYTHING.

That difference is what Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon are all about.

It’s not complicated. It’s not voodoo. It’s not trickery, magic or space-agey. It’s not hippy, weird or left-field. It’s just a simple choice. Do you want to be making the choices, or do you want to have the choices made for you?

That’s all there is to it.

And thanks to the Esoteric Teachings, I am now off the first level of Donkey Kong.