I was born Hong Kong Chinese.
I have never liked being Chinese because it never felt natural, but I have lived most of my life feeling trapped within the picture of what being Chinese meant. I was always looking to run away, to be any nationality, to live in any country but to be where I have incarnated to be.
What I wanted to run away from was feeling that the cultural traditions of being Chinese were not true, but I did not want to take responsibility in expressing this fact. In my observations and exploration I realised that there is no truth without first expressing in honesty.
In the Chinese culture, when a baby is born, because of its preciousness, the elder generations would call him or her ugly because of the belief that when a baby is adored she or he will start to be proud and therefore die.
From birth we are not confirmed of our innate worth of being alive by generations who do not know, and probably have never been confirmed, of their own worth either. Our ingrained way of expression is self-deprecating, convoluted and complicated; it is reflecting the lack of simplicity and love that are natural to our heart.
We are born into a culture where it is the norm to not accept self-worth and therefore the choice to evolve into our true being is very limited.
Being small and to hold back from our true worth is taught from young to be our normal way. From an early age we learn to not express truth for the sake of appearing humble.
The pained expressions of women, showing signs of being demure and quiet, in the Chinese culture is considered beautiful. Silence is considered a virtue.
Children grow up hearing one thing which means something else. It is a cultural norm to say something and to mean the opposite, without choosing to be aware that whatever is expressed does not simply go away, no matter how it is meant to be interpreted.
Women still choose to whiten and brighten their skin to escape being yellow. As a culture, we are looking up to the West and other cultures in lifestyles and fashion styles. Inferiority is the other side of the coin of control; when we do not honor our own worth, we are sold out to the supremacist consciousness, we use it amongst ourselves and to those we feel we can control. Control is in our blood from the lack of control we feel when lies make up the foundation of our existence. Equality is not a lived truth in us.
Many feelings are kept unspoken – we call this keeping words “in the heart” – but the truth is, what is from the heart cannot ever be kept mute by our body. Because our expression does not reflect honesty, our protection thickens. When we hide and do not share, we hold back transparency and true reflection. We do not learn from each other but keep everyone at bay.
In disconnection with ourselves, we live disconnection with others, but we call this being conservative. Anger is built from feeling truth but not speaking out. I know for a fact that my yellowness in complexion comes from the fact of what I have internalised and not expressed.
We retreat into our mind, far from the truth of our body. When we form our consciousness based on what is not true, we do not like ourselves very much and value is not something we feel in our blood. We never feel good enough, and to compensate this we compete and work non-stop to prove that we are the best. We convince ourselves that this is success, and so we continue this legacy by being dishonest to our bodies, but we make sure we look good on the outside and we do this very well. We tell ourselves it is all well worth it, by redefining success to be how we appear externally and how much money we have.
We earn the recognition that the Chinese are powerful; we think we are invincible and can reclaim the gaping hole and emptiness from our foundation by a constant drive of seeking externally, yet that is far from the truth. Our unworthiness remains no matter how much we have achieved. We do not in truth feel any more value in ourselves even with the infinite monetary zeroes in our banks.
Our bodies suffer and we further comfort ourselves that this is okay with all the forms of indulgences and entertainment we choose as our normal to not commit to life, and remain in the biggest comfort of all that “everyone is doing the same.”
For many years I have lived most of the above.
I met Serge Benhayon and attended presentations by Universal Medicine (Australia) in 2012 – a time when my ingrained patterns of looking up to, and outside of myself, were still strong. I felt aggrieved that I lived so far away from where the Universal Medicine presentations and clinics were based, as after all these years I had finally found the first and only teachings that truly made sense to me in a world that did not make much sense.
The purple books of Serge Benhayon were the first teachings that I connected with, and the books touched me deeply because what I know within my heart to be true, is expressed in them. The books did not teach me what to do or how to get from A to B, but they, as well as Serge Benhayon, inspired me to live my every day in deeper awareness and self-love, and from there my entire life gently but completely changed.
During the past 4 years I have come to accept that my Soul reincarnated in my birth place, Hong Kong, for a reason. And that reason has nothing to do with not being worthy, or that it was my loss (to be far away from Universal Medicine) to be born here.
In fact, it was such a loving opportunity for me to live step by step in deep patience and tender acceptance of my developing self. Throughout this deepening and ongoing process, I have realised that being physically far away from Universal Medicine can only mean that support is already where I am at.
The deepest support has come from my body and the lightness of joy that I know is within me. I started to understand through my own experiences as to why we do the things that we do, and what impact these ‘cultural’ choices have on us collectively as a momentum that has carried on for ages. But I also see how, although this momentum feels so strong, the connection that we can build with ourselves is even stronger than the force of a whole culture.
The power of this connection is never forceful; in fact, it is deeply joyful and light! Most importantly, when I take the responsibility to consistently express truth in all my delicateness, vulnerability, imperfection and power, this is the support to keep me going and a reflection being offered back to my whole culture.
Our culture is associated with a feeling of heaviness and being not enough, but this is only so because as generations we have avoided expressing in honesty – not because we do not know honesty but because we have not taken the responsibility to say what we truly mean or live who we truly are.
When I deepened this relationship with myself, I deepened the appreciation of being Chinese and the opportunity this has given me in re-discovering the deep connection with myself. There is no more need to run from my birth place or from my culture anymore, in fact, I wake up every day in joy to live the purpose of being born here.
The truth is I am not just Chinese, as no culture, nationality, color, religion or background can change the universal feeling I know within me.
What is experienced in the Chinese culture is not special to just the Chinese, it exists in other cultures too, and how we live in our culture affects all cultures. Every culture has its own specific consciousness from the collective choices of its people, and that we have to accept. The layers and layers of cultural prison we are held in, of which we are not initially aware, begin to show themselves when we live deeper the words that our hearts know, and layer upon layer they can also be gently released.
No matter how I look on the outside, where in the world I was born and where I am living now, what language I speak, deep inside there is something which does not distinguish me from everyone else, and this quality is who we all naturally and equally are.
Being physically far from Universal Medicine has asked me to live the responsibility of expressing the truth of who I am in my daily life and what a huge gift this is.
By Adele Leung, Creative Director/Fashion Stylist, Hong Kong
Further Reading:
Magic of Knowing… We Are All One and The Same On The Inside
Countries in Comfort