Reclaiming Religion

Liane Mandalis

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Liane Mandalis

For a long time I believed I was not religious. Indeed, I recoiled at the word and that is putting it mildly. It did not fit into my chosen trajectory in life, which was to live in reaction to all that I deemed ‘wrong’ with the world. I was a punk rock vegan angry activist that also dived head first into the spiritual New Age. Nowhere in this lost space did I turn to religion. I did not like being told what to do and all the religions I had come across felt extremely dogmatic and downright crushing to me. I was and still am, extremely sensitive. Instead, I sought solace in music, emotions, art and any spiritual teaching that promised escape from all the mess ‘us humans’ (feel the judgement in that) have created and all that my heightened sensitivity was alerting me to, but that I was doing nothing of true purpose about. Zero responsibility was a key factor in all my choices and I aligned myself to anything and everything that supported my choice to not commit to ‘real life’. My aim was to seek comfort in all its forms, sit this life out and recommit the next time around. You could say that I had mastered the art of procrastination and irresponsibility. 

​This worked for a while until the numbing effects wore off and the tension in my body became too persistent and too loud to ignore. Sounding like an alarm from deep within I was left to feel the eternal unsettlement that arises from knowing there is more to life but choosing to live less than this. My body and I collapsed into a heap of exhaustion, adrenal fatigue, kidney malfunction, mood swings, panic attacks and the like. It was not a pretty sight, yet still I doggedly refused to turn back to God.

​A friend lent me a book called ‘The Way It Is’ by ‘some guy’ called Serge Benhayon, who I had never even heard of. I started to read the book and ironically even though I kept nodding off while reading it, it was the only text that truly woke me up!

​Fast forward a few years and I was attending regular Universal Medicine events hosted by Serge when suddenly, much to my horror, he started to talk about religion. Every ounce of me was squirming – oh no, here we go, please do NOT take me there – I was resistant to say the least. However, based on the fact that every other thing this humble man had presented just felt so simple and so true to me, I thought I could at the very least remain open to what was being presented.

​Fast forward another year or so and it turns out that under the layers of resistance and protection, I am a deeply religious person. I can even type the word R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N without recoiling or even being affected by how that may look to anyone else.

Not only that, I love, love, LOVE the word religion and no longer cringe anywhere in the tiniest molecule of my being when I speak, write or live it.

Let me share this wondrous word with you:
The word religion comes from the Latin word religare that means to re-join. (From re meaning ‘again’ and ligare meaning to tie, to link, to join.) It also has its roots in the Latin word relegere that means to re-read. From the Latin re (again) and legere (read). Then there is the Latin word religio (which to me sounds like a modern day colloquial expression for one who is religious, I might even resurrect it under the provision it is said with an Australian accent . . .) which means ‘reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety’.

​The use of the prefix ‘re’ in all of these words indicates very clearly a re-turn to a previous state, to re-new, to re-fresh, to re-join, to re-connect the dots etc. This gives us a pretty clear message that we are here to re-turn to a former way of being we each in essence know AND we are to do it all again until every last person here walking this Earth remembers in full, the divinity we are, because the absolute truth here is that there is an undying bond between Earth and Heaven within us all that reunites our humanness with our Godliness that cannot ever be severed, only ignored.

​Therefore the true meaning of the word religion is that which serves to reconnect Heaven; the place where our true self – our Soul – resides, with Earth; the place where our physical form – our vehicle of expression – walks. 

This means that we are here to express the Soul’s light – pure love without an ounce of emotion to it – upon this Earth in a very physical sense so that we no longer walk in a vastly reduced version of this light, as the human spirit has done for centuries by virtue of separating/withdrawing from our Soul.

​Therefore true religion will not champion the existence of the first layer of light that is the human spirit and all its errant ways (believing it is bigger and therefore ‘better’ than the body it is encased within), nor impose upon us a list of rigid rules to make us be a certain way according to a fabricated set of ideals and beliefs. No. True religion simply asks us to reconnect to the love we already are within and allow this love to be in expression in all that we do.

​Did you know the word religion works as an acronym?
 
R stands for Return
 
Returning to the love we are – a Son of God.
 
E stands for Evolution
 
As does it stand for exposing the fact that our true evolution is not to go anywhere but simply return to the love that we are, with the understanding that there are not ‘many paths back to God’ as we are so erroneously taught, but only one Path of Return along with the many detours designed to take us on a winding path that further delays our re-turn to our true self – the Son of God we in-truth are.
 
L stands for Livingness
 
Nothing is truly known until it is lived. Our Livingness is the art of living what we know to be true and not blindly following doctrines because they ‘sound good’.
 
I stands for Ignition
 
Because within us all burns a love divine – a fiery spark just waiting to be re-ignited and thus re-united with each other and the Body of Love that is our Father we know as ‘God’ or ‘The Universe’.
 
G stands for God
 
You know, he is not such a bad bloke after all.
 
I stands for ‘I’
 
The ‘self’ as we know it, the human spirit that lives in separation to the love that we are and thus must make the journey home to our true self – our Soul.
 
O stands for Oneness
 
The stupendous Whole we each form when we stand together in truth and with love. It is the one-unified way of being we naturally live when in active expression of this love.
 
N stands for Now

And why not? For we have wasted centuries upon centuries of not re-claiming our throne and re-turning in full to the absolute majesty of the Kingdom of God that lives and breathes within us all.
 
The sum total of all this is known esoterically as The Way, or more specifically – The Way of The Livingness. 

​The Way of the Livingness is the Ageless Wisdom we have all lived and breathed before in our ancient past, founded in this era by Serge Benhayon and presented through Universal Medicine. It is a religion in the truest sense that does not shy away from stating the absolute truth that we are each the equal sons of God, no different to Jesus or the guy down the road, or his mum, sister, brother, daughter etc. 

​This means that all of us, regardless of our chosen religion, race or creed, are exactly the same in essence and this essence is Love – pure, simple, unadulterated, Heavenly love that has suffered not one drop of dilution no matter how damaged we may feel; how hurt by the world we have told ourselves we are, how withdrawn, miserable, angry, embittered, lonely etc. This love cannot die just as its flame cannot be snuffed out. The best we can do is add poison to our tank (be it through foods, thoughts, beliefs, behaviours and the like that do not come from love) so as to ‘muddy the water’ and thus not feel the potency of the fiery spark of Thy Father living, breathing and burning within us.

​And so for me – religion is my everything. It is my one true purpose in life. It is the very air that I breathe and the ground upon which I walk, as well as all that lays in-between that serves to keep me connected to the truth of who we are and exactly where it is we are going – straight back to Soul, everyone on board!
 
Amen