Last year I shared a link to a web page with a very good childhood friend of mine. That web page was full of Before and After photos of students of The Way of The Livingness. These photos show how we were before we met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, and how we are now. They included a joyful ‘After’ photo of my husband and myself and a ‘Before’ photo of us eating ice cream sundaes and looking about 20 kilos heavier, a lot darker and with puffy glazed eyes… and it does not just stop there. In the Before photo I was 46 and in the After photo I was 57.

I am now 59 and looking and feeling younger, fitter and even more gorgeous and joyful and I can feel there is no end!

There are tons of ‘Before and After’ photos of students of The Way of The Livingness that are quite jaw-droppingly remarkable. The first thing I always notice is the change in the eyes. There is such a joy, light, openness and presence in the After photos compared to the Before ones. In my own Before photo I remember we were on holiday when I was eating that ice cream and I would have thought I was having a great time, but looking at it now, a large part of me was not there at all and I looked really bloated.

There are other very obvious physical differences in many of the photos including some huge examples of weight loss, some scary, hairy men turning into beautiful tender men, some scary, hard women turning into beautiful delicate women and generally people looking much younger, healthy and radiant in the After photos when in fact they are years older.

These are what you might call miraculous transformations of hundreds of people going against the trend we generally see in society. People who have found a true and simple way to live where they not only transform their health and vitality, thereby saving the bankrupt health systems of their countries a fortune, but are also living productive and exemplary lives, engaged in their communities and dedicated to giving back.

A few weeks after I had shared the link to the photo with my friend, I was speaking to her on the phone and she seemed much more distant than normal and a bit angry with me. I asked her if she had enjoyed the photos?

She said “no, not really – I felt you were all gloating.”

It has been quite a revelation for me over the last few years to discover just how furiously people can at times react to my joy.

I realised in hindsight that as a child I was naturally joyful and was always being told off; people found me very annoying. As time went by when everyone kept reacting to me and people didn’t seem to like me, I came to believe there was something wrong with me. It did not occur to me that there was something wrong with everyone else.

So I stopped expressing, stopped being joyful, stopped trusting myself and comfortably joined in with others in being miserable but very functional and pretending I was not as miserable as I was. I became a lot more popular.

All that changed in 2004 when I met Serge Benhayon, a man who does not hold back in living and expressing the pure Love, Joy and Truth that he is (and that we all are at essence).

That meeting re-ignited in me a true connection to myself and through that, to life and all others. It started the return from my After back to my Before… ha ha, as I write this I just realised that really we have the Before and After photos the wrong way around. The graceful transformation that is reflected in these photos is showing a journey of us RETURNING, so really the After photos are us getting closer to who we truly are and were Before we took on all that is not the truth of who we are!

However, what prompted me to write this was not about the process of return, which is indeed a whole glorious book of its own, but about the reaction of others to those who choose to return and make truly loving choices.

It seems that when we start to reconnect to and express who we truly are at essence, it can have quite a dramatic effect on others. Some are inspired and it can ignite a process of healing and transformation in them, as happened with me when I met Serge Benhayon. Others can be enraged.

The expression of love is first and foremost energetic, so whilst the photos show a transformation, it is even felt in a dark room with the lights turned out. We are all very sensitive to the vibration of others whether we are aware of it or not.

It can be very confronting to be faced with love (which is an energy) because it exposes all that is not of love (i.e. not of that same energetic quality). This can bring up in us many hurts that we may or may not be ready or willing to deal with. It can also hurt our pride and show us that we are not as truly loving, clever or nice as we like to think we are.

It can also bring up a jealous reaction. Jealousy is very harmful to everyone: the one expressing it, the one receiving it and in fact all of us as it is a direct attack on our very essence – and to add to that, these attacks come from our friends and family, for that is who we all are to each other. Jealousy is well explained at Unimedpedia and in the quote below:

“JEALOUSY is nothing more than self-fury. It is a personal attack on yourself for not doing what you knew had to be done, which is then vented outward to those who are doing what there is to be done.” Serge Benhayon, Esoteric Teachings & Revelations, p 123

Often people are not even aware that they are reacting or allowing jealousy to come through them. For those who are not aware of their sensitivity to energy, the reaction may not even be discernible, whilst for those who are more aware it can feel like a full-frontal assault.

There are others who become so enraged and incensed by the reflection of love that they will go to extreme lengths to distort or destroy the reflection. They might close their eyes and scream at the mirror, spit, rant or throw excrement at it, deny or pretend it is not there or as we have seen throughout history, try to destroy the mirror by burning it, locking it up, putting it under house arrest, stoning it, raping it, crucifying it or in recent times embarking on campaigns of cyber-abuse, cult calling and vilification.

However, you cannot kill love or joy – it is eternal, always there and who we are!

By Nicola Lessing, Aged 59, Goonellabah

Nicola Lessing shares that she only has one job ~ it is a 24/7 job, a lot of fun and one that she plans to never retire from. Her job is to be, live and express the love that she is in everything she does! As the General Manager and Director of both Travelbay (www.travelbay.com) and In Your Interest Financial Planning (www.inyourinterest.com.au), leader of two voluntary international teams working on Unimed Living, a Justice of the Peace, an active member of the local community and married to the gorgeous Christoph Schnelle she has plenty of opportunity to put this into practice.

Related Reading:
Everyday People in Livingness
Before and After My Self Love Program – Forever Unfolding the Real Me
International Day of Happiness – March 20th 2015 (The Difference between Happiness and Joy)
The Evil Effect of Jealousy