Danielle Loveless, Australia
I spent a large part of my life not liking myself, with a lack of self-worth, never feeling enough, and never having true confidence in life. I tried to cover this by excelling at everything that I did. In this time I also lived quite abusively towards myself, to try be the best so I could feel that I was enough, but also to confirm that I was worthless. This included many different relationships with men to try and feel loved, get affection, or feel that I was in fact enough and accepted by others. In these relationships I would allow the men to be quite harsh or rude with me, because this is all I felt I deserved.
Since meeting Serge Benhayon and his family, and participating in Universal Medicine Workshops, I have had the opportunity to feel that there has always been a lovely me on the inside. I am a loving person, full of joy, full of confidence, and full of a deep respect and responsibility for myself, others and life. Beginning to connect to this place regularly, I have started to like myself, and respect myself and appreciate that I deserve nothing but gentleness, deep nurturing, care and even adoration and to be cherished by myself and others.
Although this was very foreign at first, as my self-worth grew I developed an awareness of how to be another way with myself, and I began to say no to unloving behaviours. This process involved me asking people close to me to be more honouring and loving with me in the way they speak with me or touch me, especially my partner. This was very difficult at first, because of the familiar ways of self-loathing, and also the fact that I had allowed others to be abusive with me for so long, so they didn’t understand why all of a sudden it needed to be different.
The most challenging part has been the difficulty or discomfort in speaking up. On the inside the self-abuse and self-loathing from the past would say to me, “who’s going to listen to you?” or “why is what you feel so important?” or “maybe you’re wrong”. It was like there was a constant voice telling me that I was pathetic, so just give up and do what you’ve always done. At these times, when I was upset, I’m afraid to admit that this is when I was very likely to say to my partner that you need to change because, “Serge said that…” or, “Natalie said that “…”. This was very unloving and came from my own hurts and inability to truly love myself and therefore a feeling that my words, my expressions and my feelings were not enough, or would not be heard. Neither Serge Benhayon, Natalie Benhayon nor any other practitioner at Universal Medicine have ever told me how to live my life, or what to tell my partner, so I now understand that what I said is how the work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine is abused and misinterpreted in an unloving way.
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
Danielle I hear you, I was similar to you when it came to my life too. This self worth and self love kills so many potentials that are within us and it is within many others. So when we start to address these issues, its a no wonder people around us are going to struggle with it, as it brings up so much for them by the art of reflection. However what I love about this is that it offers people the opportunity to do something about it, in other words, the opportunity to be inspired or to react and retaliate.
It is up to the individual as to what they do with this, we have no choice in the matter, in the meant time we and our lives continue on, showing others that there is another way.
Thank you for your openness and honesty Danielle, it can be quite hard to admit that we have had so little self worth that we have allowed others to walk all over us and therefore be abusive towards us which compounds the hurts we are already feeling. So it becomes a vicious circle, breaking the cycle for many of us started with meeting Serge Benhayon feeling supported to make some changes by addressing the hurts that we have carried around with us. These changes can be quite challenging to people who were used to relationships being one way only. Some people find the changes we make challenging but if we hold them with understanding then a whole different relationship can develop one based on deep love and that is pure gold to have in this day and age.
This is what Serge Benhayon and his family do, is to present that there is another way to live. We are not who we are, we are not our hurts, we actually are more then this. Its just that we cannot see this when there is all of that going around us.
The key is to hold people where they are at, and the rest is up to them, but we do not retract our love from this or them
So true, it is so important for us to love ourselves and be love first, never demand love from another, ‘Being Love First, not Demanding it from Others’.
Lovely to read of the changes in your life, ‘ I have started to like myself, and respect myself and appreciate that I deserve nothing but gentleness, deep nurturing, care and even adoration and to be cherished by myself and others.’
“Beginning to connect to this place regularly, I have started to like myself, and respect myself and appreciate that I deserve nothing but gentleness, deep nurturing, care and even adoration and to be cherished by myself and others.” A loving life does really start with ourselves, to feel the true essence we are within and how precious we are, and to be able to change our own behaviours to be more self loving, which sets a new standard for what we will then accept from others.
It’s very honest Danielle, thank you. Without the self loving relationship with ourselves we may not have a marker for what’s loving or not from others, it’s really up to us to build that love first with ourselves. Relationships are very much portrayed as receiving love from the other person, but we ourselves can start with self-love until we are able to be love, and then take the love we are into all of our relationships, but it’s to reflect to others who they are and to inspire people to reclaim that same love within themselves and to start living from it. Its very different to the concept of the need for love and the associated co-dependency often portrayed in romance, family and friendships.
We are so used to living in a way that love is conditional and pretty much dependent on others and circumstances, and to accept and surrender to the fact that we are love already can be a bit of a challenge for many as I have experienced it so. Somehow, there seems to be a kind of attraction in living in that kind of reduced state of being – very strange, but happens.
Saying ‘yes’ to the love we innately are, ‘to feel that there has always been a lovely me on the inside. I am a loving person, full of joy, full of confidence, and full of a deep respect and responsibility for myself, others and life. Beginning to connect to this place regularly, I have started to like myself, and respect myself and appreciate that I deserve nothing but gentleness, deep nurturing, care and even adoration and to be cherished by myself and others.’
For many of us when first starting out on our road to the recovery of self awareness and self love it was as you have written easier to say … ‘Serge said..’ because we did not have the feeling of what we were saying came from a body of truth. We knew Serge Benhayon spoke the truth because we could feel it. And we wanted others to feel it to. What many of us didn’t do was to give those people that we interacted with on a daily basis the space to decide for themselves. What I have learnt (admittedly on many occasions the hard way) is that you cannot convince anyone, we all come to a certain awareness in our own time.
Regardless of “[Any name] said…” it comes with a lot more strength when speaking from ourselves.
If and when you feel unsettled in your own body, you just want to run away from it. You identify being in your skin as the problem, without realizing (and this is the worst trick) that the only way to feel settlement is to deeply connect to yourself, cutting through the thousand things you feel apprehension about you, which are all garbage to start with.
Love unfolds from within. Our relationships are just a reflection of how much we honour this intimate connection in our life or not.
To truly love ourselves enough to not accept anything else but love in return is a great step to reclaiming our true selves, to understand that anything less than love is abuse makes us realise how unloving we have been both with ourselves and others.
When we quote Serge Benhayon or Natalie Benhayon we try to convince another because we don’t think that what we feel or think counts in the world. It is no wonder then that the cult label gets bandied about.
We go through life, we may not like the vehicle we are riding on, we may carry a host of internal turmoils as a result of which we may not treat it with the love and the care it deserves, so we just go on a pattern of movement destined not to meet ourselves. In that context, we seek answers and everything from outside of us. We want to buy what we cannot generate on our own. We are locked in this pattern. We cannot even fathom that could it be otherwise. It takes a lot of courage to want to explore the possibility of feeling a settlement in your body and taking it as your anchor. It is totally worth though.
The truest measure of who we are is known through our connection to and expression of our love within. The more we develop a loving and honoring relationship with our essence, our inner-quality, the more we naturally feel our confidence to just be ourselves, and express the truth we feel, as we realise that being and expressing less that this no longer feel true.
“I now understand that what I said is how the work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine is abused and misinterpreted in an unloving way.” And this arises when we speak from another’s truth rather than our own.
What I love is your absolute commitment to be honest. Your honesty is very inspiring and a good example that it is possible to change everything in life.
There is nothing less than absolute love that is deserved at all times, and the fact that this is not what comes is something for us all to deal with, but it must never stop the fact that love is always there to be accepted – a love that comes from the inner-heart of ourselves.
‘Being Love First, not Demanding it from Others’, is such a loving way to be in a relationship. At any time, I have relationship issues, I find it is so supportive to check in with myself and ask, am I being love or am I demanding it from others?
This is beautiful what you unravel here. Don’t we do that a lot to refer to something someone said or something we have learned to justify what we are saying or asking. Isn’t that how we learn to be in this world. But there is another way, where listening to our inner truth and listening to what we are truly feeling. And it takes a little bit until we do not need a back up anymore and to trust ourselves again when we have made ourselves believe that we are not worth of the true love we know.
I can really relate here Danielle to what you are saying about excelling at doing things to make up for not feeling ever good enough inside about oneself. I used to do this as well. The more I have connected to the fact that I am more than enough just being me, the less driven I have become to excel or be the best in life.
I used those lines with my partner as well. I had thoughts of ‘who do you think you are?’ initially when I was trying to speak up and say no to some things and about how I was actually feeling. It did rock the boat with many people including family, friends and work colleagues, yet a lot of that was to do with using what others lived and presented for my own self gain. I’ve found it is a constant re-learning to express with love and honesty like we did so openly when we were young children.
The drive to excel and to be the best to fill that gnawing emptiness is fruitless for external reward and recognition will always prove insatiable as building true self worth can only be regenerated from within.