School is considered a very important, if not the only important focus in a child’s life in the Asian culture.
I was never really interested in school – it was something that I did because I believed I had to do it. Apart from the most basic foundations in language, maths and social skills, I found most of the subjects we had to study uninteresting. Going to school seemed like being in a vacuum that took me away from daily life. But more importantly, to be recognised through the education system meant I have made a pact to disconnect from myself.
As a child knowing this is what awaited me in entering our education system, I had two choices: to rebel, which is to say no (in reaction) to all that is felt to be not true, or to excel, which is to say I agree to numb from feeling the disconnection to myself that I choose. I did not know there was any other way.
I chose the latter, but not without consequences.
During my elementary and high school years, every day after school, the moment I got home I would sit at my desk and start to do homework and study. I would not break for anything except a haphazard dinner with my family, returning immediately to study until midnight. As a student I was not taught or expected to do anything else but study.
By age 11 I was put on tranquilisers before school exams because there was just too much to memorise and I was already living in deep anxiety and had insomnia at that tender age. I was encouraged to just do mediocrely at school by my parents after they witnessed the emotional distress I put myself in, but that was actually not a truly valid choice. I already felt imprisoned in a system where, no matter how I chose, I would lose. If I rebelled against school, I would be ostracized in society and suffer; if I chose to excel, I would equally suffer from further disconnecting from my own body. Whatever I chose I felt disempowered, but excellence in academics would earn me a recognition that the world bought into, so I chose to play that game whilst knowing it was not true success. What was seen as ‘A’ grades on the outside was very far from my true story that was not told.
My growing up years in school were spent crying and studying in bed with a sea of books around me.
I migrated to Canada when I was 17 with my younger sister because my family was unsure of the political future of Hong Kong, then soon to be under Chinese rule again. I got into a prestigious university studying Chemistry. I did not particularly feel equipped to study science, I just got in because of my grades.
I was very disillusioned in life at that point that I was close to giving up. I did not know what I wanted to study, I did not know what life was about, I did not know myself, I had very little confidence, I was hurt and deeply lost, and my physical and emotional health reflected all of that.
On top of that, this was considered normal by the world.
College days were also completely devoted to study, but panic and anxiety grew as now I was studying in a foreign country and had to take care of life with a younger sister. I knew there was so much more to life than just studying, but as a student in my culture, school was the be all and end all of life. And I did not know how to live life outside of studying! Without any idea of how to self-care, eating and sleeping as how I liked was common, which meant a normal daily diet would include coffee or chocolate covered cocoa beans for breakfast. I would start my day exhausted and eat fast foods or instant noodles during the day so that I could have the most time to study.
The way I had studied throughout my school days was not special, it is one typical example from many students who grew up in a culture where academic performance was the only life we knew.
Life is reduced to studying… the awesome possibilities and potential of a human being are reduced to the knowledge from books. I felt very trapped as I did not feel that I have learned anything in life at all. The anxiety that I felt not only came from having to fulfill academic pressures, it was knowing that the choices that were presented to me and that I chose, were not true: disconnecting from my body and retreating into the mind was the only way I could cope with the horror that I could feel but wanted to avoid feeling at all cost.
In my desperation I made the choice to quit studying life: I wanted to live life, I wanted to experience feeling it from my body, I wanted to truly learn.
I had to be very honest to myself and started to feel into all my choices. I made some pretty big choices at that time which had to be implemented, but I was willing to go there. From Chemistry, I switched my major to Chinese Studies, as what I truly felt to explore then was my culture because being in a foreign country highlighted a feeling on inequality within me, which I was on my way to exposing. I was still conscientious about studying but I started making friends and having life outside of school.
I wanted to truly learn through human relationships and the relationship with myself. I dropped studying science, and started to live the experiment of life.
Knowing that every moment is a living science brought back responsibility in my life. If something didn’t work out, I would have to go back and look at the data that built into the result. I didn’t want to rely on book knowledge because I knew there was a deeper way to live, and the only way to test that out was to fully give myself permission to trust in my own heart. The more I gave my heart the opportunity to express and got out of my own way, the more my life flowed with the results from this experiment as I built my foundation upon it. I knew love was a part of the equation, and it was something that was calling for a deeper exploration.
That was the time when I met Serge Benhayon in the 2012 Universal Medicine Vietnam Retreat. I was ready to go deeper with my experiment and practical tools would be supportive. From Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I have learned that the missing link to the True science of life is self-love. The tests I thought I had been doing with love over many years were still producing results which were unloving, and now I understood why. I hadn’t given myself the permission to express this love to myself. For the last three years, this was the living experiment I tested, researched, got more understanding of what worked and discarded what didn’t work in my life.
Life became clearer. I have chosen to be born in a place and in circumstances that have offered me ample opportunities to experience the devastation of what is not natural on a daily basis, so as to come back to loving myself. Loving myself was to constantly say no to what is not natural and choose to live the naturalness that my body knows. Without a foundation of what self-love feels like in my body at the start of this experiment, I had to feel the intense disconnection I have chosen to live from the reactions I had towards the world.
Life had felt unbearably lonely and I was always seeking to escape this loneliness. I could easily give up, saying this study of life is too difficult, as it indeed was. But with the support from Universal Medicine, I didn’t give up.
Instead I have come to the simple conclusion that in self-love, I just have to give love to myself, consistently without perfection, in all moments that my awareness allows.
In moments where I was unaware I had to go back and ask why, further refine what determines my ability to be aware, and test again.
No one can offer love to me, no one can tell me how to love myself, no one can force me to accept this love. I didn’t have to do anything special or to go to a faraway place to love myself, I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.
In this living experiment, the data becomes the confirmation. Nothing outside of me can truly confirm the success of my experiment or not, the only true confirmation is in my own body.
I have found another way to learn, a way which brings me deeper back to myself every day. Every choice that I make and how consistently these choices are made, will be everything that comes back to meet me, so taking responsibility is a given. Every moment is an opportunity to learn; if I dismiss any moment, I would have to take the responsibility to catch up and feel the consequences of that delay. In learning with responsibility, not only do I feel more energy and vitality, anxiety is replaced with joy. I am growing and expanding and always welcoming more to learn. Did I mention I am also looking and feeling amazing and beautiful?
There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness.
Inspired by the Love and Inspiration from Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine that is forever limitless.
By Adele Leung, Creative Director/Fashion Stylist, Hong Kong
Further Reading:
Livingness
Time for a New Normal
The Way of The Livingness – Where can I Register?
“I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.” We are an open book where we feel truth.
Adele this is a great topic of conversation, I would say that to rebel or to excel are both reactions that we get caught up in so that we disconnect from ourselves in order to cope with the education system we are all put through. I liken our education system to a sausage machine we all come out crushed at the end encased by a system that has never worked and will never work.
A great example of what it means to be a student of life.
Finding our feet in life and the ensuing Joy through being Soul-fully connected opens the door to the simple way of learning through being divinely connected and takes the pressure of any skill we can bring to the way we live.
“The only true confirmation is in my body”, how true is that?!! It is our relationship with our body that offers us a personalised equation of what works for us and what doesn’t. In your example, there was a time where burying yourself in your study worked, and then there was a time that having a more balanced experience of study worked. The key is to make it purposeful and not reactive or all consuming.
I really like the idea that when something didn’t work you went back to the data of what had made that result seem logical to you. It is a logical way to track back on the decisions we make in our life that could be part of the dis-ease we find in our lives.
Your sharing is a powerful one, Adele. Coming from someone who has been so successful in the Education system, sharing the pitfalls, the problems and the damage is more exposing than if from someone who hasn’t ‘made it,’ so to speak. You are representative of those that make it to the top of the tree… but to what cost? The way we educate needs turning on its head… yes, we need to develop the skills to work well in life, but we are desperately needing to learn how to live life well from every other angle.
‘Life is reduced to studying… the awesome possibilities and potential of a human being are reduced to the knowledge from books.’ This could be said for all school children everywhere… and life with everything there after, as we become adults is much reduced!
I agree Rachel we are all totally crushed there is no opportunity for self expression. The examination papers are couched in such a way that you have to conform to the way the system insists you answer the question, if you write outside the confines you are marked down. The whole system is rotten to the core and yet we hold it as one of the great bastions of our society.
This makes sense to me as a way to truly learn, and be responsible, ‘I have found another way to learn, a way which brings me deeper back to myself every day. Every choice that I make and how consistently these choices are made, will be everything that comes back to meet me, so taking responsibility is a given. Every moment is an opportunity to learn’.
In this process of return, we get to be honest and nakedly so learn from all of that.,
And so we walk in and with our power inspiring others to love and be love.
To me this was the normal of many children and cultures, it was incomprehensible that there is anything else other than this constant push and perpetual lack of space by stuffing more and more things in. This rhythm imposed on us is deeply abnormal.
We have got success very distorted and everyone is suffering from it.
Very true Michelle. We study with no regard for the body and cramp knowledge into us unnaturally because in society we get recognized as successful for doing so. Our exchange is money.
I agree totally Elizabeth. It is powerless to blame but empowering to walk the first step to live.
The Way of the Livingness is the first place I’ve learnt the joy of learning and the joy of experimenting with what does and doesn’t belong in my life. This is worlds apart from the education system as I knew it growing up. There is no benefit in learning if it is void of love.
The university of living life has a richness and depth that the knowledge in books doesn’t touch.
Absolutely and it is always inspiring.
Thats intense to be put on tranquilisers at age 11. I know children taking medication in the UK has gone up considerably- when our children need to be medicated for anxiety as a society we really need to stop and ask why and what truly can be done about it.
It is what’s going on in the real world. Our world is only escalating in intensity and we cannot remain under the blinders, we got to know what is going on and to never hold back reflecting there is another way.
I found out a few years ago, by having access to all of my medical notes, that I was put on what would be classed as a tranquiliser drug at age 5, and just because I checked under my bed, behind my curtains, in the wardrobe, etcetera before going to sleep.
Yes, it is intense, what are we considering normal that there are markers we are setting and expected to achieve that do not honour our values and natural strengths. If we had a focus on getting to know who we are, we would know what subjects to study and would be far more engaged in our own education with less fight and anxiety.
Adele, it is beautiful that after all of the anxiety and not knowing who you were that you came to feeling like this about yourself; ‘I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.’
Adele, this feels like we are failing children if this is how they feel when they leave school; ‘I had very little confidence, I was hurt and deeply lost, and my physical and emotional health reflected all of that.’
The education system needs to be very honest starting from now as what kind of children are we raising and what kind of society are we creating?
‘Loving myself was to constantly say no to what is not natural and choose to live the naturalness that my body knows.’ – life is so simple, when we follow what our bodies know is true, and discard the rest. Thank you for spelling it out so simply and clearly Adele.
Anything that is not love is not natural to our bodies and yet here we all are living in what appears to be a loveless world.
Why are we not educated to know we are hurt and also then how to deal with it; Otherwise you do retreat to your head, give up and withdraw as the case was with me. Once you withdraw depression can kick in. Education needs to support us not kill us.
True Education is life, it is not something we retreat into, but it is life itself, interconnected with everything starting with our body.
There’s more to learning than our brains, true learning occurs when we open our heart to others and we start to really see what is going on in the world and for people – then true learning occurs and it starts to become clear what our place is in the world.
Learning is a whole body matter and in that it is deeply inspiring. It is a relationship all throughout the way.
This blog exposes so much that is damaging in our current education system as it values those who do well academically whilst leaving the majority to feel they have failed in some way as they do not tick the right boxes but even those who get A grades can still feel that something is lacking so everyone suffers. Thank you for sharing how you navigated through this and came to the understanding that you needed to become your own science project to experiment with what worked for you and that without self-love there can be no true learning.
Everyone suffers in truth in the current education system. The recognition towards academically excellent students are generally compromising their health over the mind, the students who do not do well suffer from a lack of confidence and are haunted by the energy of failure and being invisible. The teachers suffer from the heavy workload and disregard of their body and all these emotions are somehow finding their way back towards the impact in their teaching and towards the students. It is a whole scary mess if we are truly honest.
It was interesting to feel how my body changed while reading this great blog Adele. When I read the first part that described your choice to excel in school via all the super intellectual based belief that all knowledge comes from books my head felt kind of foggy and I started to get a slight dull headache. But the latter sections where you were living your life via the guidance of your body and connecting with people, expressing more fully, etc. brought a clarity and lightness to me. This shows me what way is the truth, The Way of the Livingness.
Adele, you expose the dilemmas of being an A grade student. It is assumed that if you are bright and if you get that elusive A grade then life will be fine. Yet, the pressure of maintaining excellence puts an inordinate strain on the student. School only prepares students for exams it does not prepare students to live life.
No it doesn’t and this choice feels very stressful on the body. Not just because of the workload, but there is a constant tension that my body does not feel settled if my life is separated from life and love and remain in a vacuum of just studying and grades.
“I simply had to be myself.” the truth that calls for no academic study but an ever deepening knowing of who you are.
Learning who you are – now that is the best learning in the world.
This is a parable on self-love — I love it! I took these snippets from the blog that are a sure way to a self-love-affair:
“I hadn’t given myself the permission to express this love to myself.”
“Instead I have come to the simple conclusion that in self-love, I just have to give love to myself, consistently without perfection, in all moments that my awareness allows.”
“In moments where I was unaware I had to go back and ask why” — this exposes how we choose to not move in a way of appreciating that we are aware and confirm the next the level of awareness / love that presents itself.
“I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.”
Boy-yah!
?
What you describe is very common amongst school children, when will the education authorities realise that the education system as it stands is not working, ‘I did not know myself, I had very little confidence, I was hurt and deeply lost, and my physical and emotional health reflected all of that.’
When teachers start to be honest about themselves and not fall into the ideal and consciousness of education. This consciousness makes teachers inhuman and do not relate to students as people because they also do not relate to themselves as people.
This was my experience.
Learning through our lived experiences is a great way for us to explore, feel and understand more of who we are in essence and all others too. This is not only a great way to connect with people but also an opportunity to deepen our relationship with self which his a marvellous way to learn from life.
Adele, this is really gorgeous to read, I am studying at the moment and I can feel the pressure of deadlines and that I have a choice to go into stress and overwhelm – which feels awful in my body, or I have the choice to take care of myself along the way and not make the deadlines the priority.
I can relate and be inspired by this constantly in work too. The more intense work is, the default system is to even care deeper for myself in all areas.
What a pearl of wisdom Adele.
The pressure of the education system is so intense – and we are putting kids through this as a way of judging how good they will be in life. Adele – reading your story really shows how we impose on children and ask them to be something they naturally are not. What message then is society giving out? Thank God for Universal medicine that has allowed an understanding as to why we fight our own amazingness.
The education systems worldwide cater to knowledge, reputation and success but seem to have forgotten that it is about human beings first and foremost – and to start with, about very young, tender and impressionable and still relatively ‘fresh’ human beings. What are we doing to them? Turning them into functional and functioning robots?
I find it ironic how the books that you were studying will one define a prison as a physical place they themselves studied with the absence of Love, incite a greater prison than they would tout and that is the prison of the mind. A life lived in the absense of Love is not a life lived in fullness.
Adele, what you are sharing in this article makes such sense, ‘I have learned that the missing link to the True science of life is self-love.’ what a huge difference self love makes, in my own experience life without self love is empty, joyless and purposeless, self love feels key to living a truly loving life.
Sometimes I am amazed how little school and our education system seems to prepare us for real life and the responsibilities of being an adult, and not just a worker. But then again, that sense of responsibility is what the homes we grow up in is also to nourish – so we can’t blame the education system for everything that is going on in today’s world.
It is possible to live a life where we are content with all we have been offered. Appreciation of what we bring to ourselves and others is the antidote to everything that comes our way to throw us off track…to better ourselves, to be the best at whatever, to stand out. It’s all designed to distract us from the simplicity and wholeness we already are.
Having just recently re-entered the education system at the age of 56 what has become clearer to me is the level of anxiety I would have been living with whilst attending the many schools up until the age of 16 years. So it makes sense that anxiety impedes the learning and then we take on the beliefs that we are not capable of learning a certain subject and then this stays with us all of our lives. This is evident by how many people have negative experiences to recall about their school years.
Schools and education in particular have such an important part to play in our lives. Why have we chosen to concentrate on acquired rote knowledge rather than wisdom from our hearts?
When learning is only focused on attaining knowledge for self and to better our own lives and to be one up on others, then it completely crushes our innate wisdom from being what we grow from and base our decisions on.
Because we didn’t consciously choose it, it was chosen for us by forces that know that once we align to the consciousness that they peddle then we will be given the choices that they put up and ‘acquired rote knowledge’ is one of the choices that we’re given. Choosing to learn by connecting to the wisdom that comes through our bodies is not on offer from that particular consciousness, we have to align to a different consciousness for it to become available.
“No one can offer love to me, no one can tell me how to love myself, no one can force me to accept this love. I didn’t have to do anything special or to go to a faraway place to love myself, I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.” Simple and profound. We should all know this from day one.
It certainly is a strain to have an education system whereby we can go all out and excel or rebel. But we have to ask ourselves, why have we set up an education system that promotes this – and not just at a young age, but right through academia.
Thank you Adele it sounds like you have learned to be the forever student. The living of this learning is the truth of wisdom..
I used to, and still do have a very good recall ability. And recently I’ve taken up some online courses. The education system of read and repeat does feel very limiting and yet being an intelligent success is based on how limited you can be by developing one skill (recall). As Human Beings we are so much more than what we can repeat. And recall can only get us so far, the education from my living way, learning the results and ripples of my choices has had a far greater impact than recall alone has.
I’m sure there is an elation of being able to recall and get recognition from it, afterall we all want to be loved and accepted. But I would honestly ask my body is it enough? And the answer is clearly no.
We are the absolute source of love connected to divinity and humanity. If I choose to break this like for any reason, we all miss out.
We miss out on the reflection of divinity and the magnetic pull towards back to our origins.
Having just recently returned to study I can see how our number one purpose in life is to always be students of our every movements and it is in these movements we can uncover how our bodies prefer to walk, eat, read, study, take notes etc. Allowing our bodies the space to observe what we feel and it then move from there pure science in motion. Learning to appreciate and stop when our bodies feel to stop has been a real game changer to my study and to hold no perfection in getting good grades or being recognised for my work, simply just enjoying my body and the process is glorious.
Thank you for sharing I have avoided further study because of my past experiences of negating my body but feel inspired that I could approach it in a different way and lovingly take care of myself during the process.
Is this true education where: “Life is reduced to studying… the awesome possibilities and potential of a human being are reduced to the knowledge from books” – no for me it isn’t. And these books are often just one person’s perspective of the world, a perspective that is sometimes misguided or used to publicise an individual agenda. And all the while there is so much wisdom waiting to be shared by those who have so much lived experience to share that doesn’t always end up on the pages of a book.
The extraordinary angst that Adele experienced, is, unfortunately, endemic in the school life of many cultures.
If not in school life, this angst is also rampant in just life in general, in the way we have chosen to live.
I can relate to the anxiety of studying and having to really push myself to remember any basic facts, but what I have come to realise is that the anxiety was getting in the way of me retaining any information whatsoever. These days I study and actually find it easy for the first time in my life, and the only difference being is that I am not loading myself up with pictures of being perfect or even getting a high grade. I can also see now how the hype of getting the good grades in school was fuelled by the school needing high grades for ratings, and not that our lives would be ruined if we did not get good grades. Looking back at the pressure we were put under and put ourselves under, was way out of perspective to the reality of going out into the world and getting a job.
Having just embarked on study again it feels so different to approach it with a completely different quality. When I was in high school it was all about just getting it done and working long into the night to complete my work usually resorting to lollies to get me through. These days I usually work in small increments and allow myself plenty of breaks and I love going for a walk or doing some light stretches. It really does make studying more about the body and how we can support it to lovingly support us.
I taught English in South Korea to pre-school and primary aged children for six months in my early twenties. The pressure the kids were under was HUGE. I had never seen anything quite like it and I found it very distressing. But what I didn’t realise at the time was that I had put myself under the same sort of pressure to excel. Seeing it lived en masse by a society was a real shock.
A very exposing blog of the education system which feeds the mind with no relation to the heart and body. It is inspiring to read how you took yourself out of this mind maze of emptiness Adele and found the truth of who you really are. ” I didn’t have to do anything special or to go to a faraway place to love myself, I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.”
This is a sobering account of just one pupil and student, lost in an education system that (worldwide) does not support a connection to our body and the lived wisdom it delivers constantly. Without this connection, we are nothing but pawns in a mad scramble for recognition, accolades or failure – anything will do.
I found the best way to learn is to listen to my inner heart and the messages I receive from our body, and to be open to learning from each experience or situation without judgment. Bringing the awareness to how my body feels is the best way to connect to truth and clarity.
“I did not know what life was about, I did not know myself, I had very little confidence, I was hurt and deeply lost, and my physical and emotional health reflected all of that. On top of that, this was considered normal by the world.” With a fast majority of us in this predicament we can consider this ‘normal’ but ‘normal’ this certainly shouldn’t be! The way we are living needs to be examined and studied!
I feel the same way Adele, I was never really interested in school and felt something was missing but didn’t know what it was and it has only been in the last few years that I know that what I was missing was my own connection and knowing who I was so all I could feel was the imposition of what the world wanted me to be. Developing our relationship with ourselves allow us to have purpose in life of how we learn what is needed for the benefit of all.
To simply be ourselves is the key to excel in life and in whatever we do. It is with self-care and love that will support us through challenging moments and everyday life. What you shared Adele with support many people let go of stress and anxiety and start living a more loving way and The Way of The Livingness supports humanity in this 100%.
There is so much competition in education, it has become far less about grooming and building young adults to contribute to society in a particular field of work, but be the best, get the best grades, get into the best schools or universities. This is where we are missing the mark, we are not developing young people to listen to who they are, that they are not their profession, they are here also to live in harmony with all and make whatever they are learning about people, we have a long way to go.
An extraordinarily honest and revealing insight into what it is like to be a student and to feel the pressure that is there in so many young people’s lives… What a travesty.
Yes so true Adele, there is a true way to learn. Supporting kids to stay connected with themselves is key, letting them explore, create, for sure, but allowing them and giving feedback that they are already whole, that they don’t need to learn something to be someone, they are already complete.
When we make the achievements of education the driving force we forget how to live.
I am inspired by you Adele. Your story is a miracle as you have completely turned your life around for the better and this is such a rarity to hear especially from someone who was so well academically trained and perhaps viewed from every angle as being smart, bright and on top of it all.
What a great read Adele, only recently through the news did I hear of a young 11 year old boy potentially commit suicide as he received his first low grades from school and new of the expectations his mother had of him too. It’s terribly sad that we have built a society raised on placing intellectual intelligence above and beyond the natural intelligence and science of who we are first.
The education that comes from the whole body being a part of the learning process that was reintroduced to me through Universal Medicine makes such a difference to life. We are not just floating heads as much as we pretend and try to live as such at the rest of the bodies expense. I have learnt so much about life from being with my body far more than I ever understood when I came out of university with a head full of facts but little lived practicalities of what it means to live life.
Gosh! On tranquillisers at the age of 11 before exams!!!!!!!!!!! It doesn’t take a scientist to know that something here is incredibly wrong. It is great to hear your story and how for you, you were very aware of this and later able to break free from all the ill consciousness that comes with ‘study’, ‘school’, ‘university’ etc. and instead able to make it about love, self-love, relationships and people. For this is what it is truly about not text books or degrees. Anyone who meets Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine or reads his books, listens to an audio, reads a saying or has a Sacred Esoteric Healing session is truly blessed.
If every person who senses that something is not quite right speaks out about it in our world right away when we feel it, how would our world be different? If our world is the way it is now, in my experience that has to do with holding everything in knowing it is off and then reacting from my own holding back (ie it does not change anything but makes it worse), then it is worthwhile to try another way? My experiment would be to just say it as it is felt, without waiting for tension to build up and see what happens. Expression may not change what we see in the world, but allowing ourselves to express changes the relationship we have with ourselves.
Gosh I would love it if we were taught in school to dedicate everyday to learning more about life and our purpose in life, what an enriching experience it would be to be truly prepared for the life ahead of you.
Yes Meg I agree. It would be amazing if we start adjusting our education system to support and teach people to live a purposeful and loving way of life and not just focus on intellectaulised studies but show our younger generation a more supportive way to integrate into society and to teach each other about true values, purpose and life.
Learning from living life is what brings true wisdom. There are many bumps we walk into, but knowing we can handle them all is all that we need to truly evolve.
Life doesn’t work when we reduce it to any one part – be it study, partying, family or work. Once we realise and learn that all parts make up the whole equally – our lives could be a lot more enjoyable! Why do we choose to make some things more important then others or more fun then others when everything we do involves US doing it? So it makes sense to enjoy and be with ourselves first so everything we touch is in that same quality.
‘I wanted to truly learn through human relationships and the relationship with myself. I dropped studying science, and started to live the experiment of life.’ Wow a great choice to make Adele, when we live as a true student of the Ageless Wisdom our life becomes more grand and opens us up to the magic that is within and around us always.
“There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness”.
Simply divine Adele, thank you for sharing your wisdom, knowledge and experiences. I, like you, am a forever student of The Way of the Livingness; true education indeed.
Education is the purpose of life when we are younger. This is our only reality. We wake up have breakfast get dressed and go to school for a good portion of our childhood.
Yet during this time aren’t told to really appreciate who we are as little people. We are constantly driven to get to the next step instead of being allowed to naturally blossom without constraint to how that growth is to occur.
This is the true way forward for humanity valuing the interconnectedness of everything and that true learning can only come from loving yourself and using your body as your compass through life.
Could this be the missing ingredient for all of humanity, ‘There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness.’
“The tests I thought I had been doing with love over many years were still producing results which were unloving, and now I understood why.”
This sentence I so resonate with Adele. I thought I was living lovingly, yet when I started to really look at myself and feel my body and get honest, I was still in fact not an example of Love in Livingness in any way. Learning to truly self love and that it is the way I live my every move of every day that brings harmony to my body and my life is now how I choose to live and this is felt in all that I do.
I too did not fit into the education model. I knew from a young age it was not for me. I enjoyed to read your experience of it and how you dealt with such a severe situation and chose to follow your body rather than continue in a world that causes such disconnection.
I love what you have shared here Adele, “I wanted to truly learn through human relationships and the relationship with myself. I dropped studying science, and started to live the experiment of life.” learning through life and relationships is essential. Life is more than what we can learn at school or at a university. The richness of how open we are to people and let them in, is crucial to our development for ourselves and with each other.
I can really relate to what you’ve shared here Adele – I’m about to finish my first set of real College exams and I can clearly observe what you’ve shared about how easy it is to lose sight of life ‘on the outside’ and engage solely on the exams, not looking after ourselves in the process. I’ve found that there is however a great balance between still fully engaging with life, spending time for ourselves, with family, debriefing our feelings and so forth and taking the exams seriously. It doesn’t have to be a narrow choice of engaging with life or engaging with study – there is a balance that can be very supportive.
Thank you Adele for your deeply personal sharing that in so many ways resonates with me. I too threw myself into studies (at University) and ended up with insomnia from the over study and the anxiousness and pressures and expectations. And it was not till much later that I allowed myself to break away from this and then go into a form of rebellion and giving up too. Like you, self love was not really something I brought into my life nor even could understand the importance of it, till I came across the work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. This was an absolutely life changing thing for me and from here I have begun the return to a forever depending self care and self love that has been phenomenal to experience in its simplicity yet in its profundity.
The only true confirmation is in my own body. This is a very empowering tool as no matter what the external reality looks like, when I can feel the irrefutable truth and love deep and strong within myself, I am being held in a relationship like no other.
These words, near the outset of your article Adele, speak reams: “…to be recognised through the education system meant I have made a pact to disconnect from myself.”
I also excelled at pretty much everything study-wise when I was at school. It wasn’t particularly hard for me, but in the self-discoveries I’ve made over the years since, I realise how harsh the ‘disconnect’ from myself truly was. I recall a specific moment especially, in regards to musical education, where I knew I had a choice – and, feeling the enormity of external pressure to ‘succeed’ and ‘excel’, I wilfully chose to abandon myself and ‘turn on’ the switch I knew was within me, that knew how to do what everyone wanted of me. To be truthful, those around me did not connect with what I was feeling, or what may truly have been a natural expression from ‘me’ – the ability was there, so it was assumed that this deserved following through in a particular way.
From that point in particular, I was lost – rather than holding a foundation of self-love as you’ve so well described, I simply became more adept at getting recognition from others through ‘turning it on’ in the ways that were expected of me. Such is the nature of most of our education – the ‘being’ that we are, and the actual quality of what we produce, is well and truly left out of the equation.
This is a super powerful, and empowering read Adele. You have completely exposed the loveless nature of the majority of education, and the complete lack of acknowledgement of the sensitive and tender beings that we are that accompanies such societal pressures to ‘study and excel at it’ as you’ve described.
Beautiful blog Adele. Learning is so much narrowed down to only be in schools and that wisdom only comes from books or with the age. Yet as you have shared so beautifully true learning is about living life. This is freeing to feel as I am studying at university and I sometimes get caught up in that I am only learning there, but overall my experience is the other way around. I learn everywhere if I am open to it – life is my school and I must say one that is so much more enjoyable than the university alone.
Currently our education system is about knowledge, fostering the intelligence from the head and the wisdom we all have inside us when we connect to our soul and take our body into consideration is not taken into account and forgotten.
I am also a forever student of the way of the Livingness and I love how you described it: “There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness.”
Isn’t it absurd and so far from the truth that we consider it normal that children and young people have to damage and ignore their body to be in the education system. You only have to look at the students nowadays and listen to how they really are both physically and emotionally to see something is not right. And yet we consider it normal and let them harm themselves with what they do to themselves without starting the conversation about another way.
It does look like we only have 2 options to choose from when we are in school: either rebel and say no or try to excel and be the best. You choose the one that isn’t the worst and go along with that. With truth missing and so many children and later grown ups not connected to themselves and their bodies it is no wonder depression is through the roof as are all so many illnesses and diseases.
I am also struck by the pressure that has been put on young people culturally, no matter where they travel in the world, that results in this way of studying and depletion of internal resources. It is culturally disproportionally high and should be an area we look at closely.
There is something about this part of the blog that strikes me, I may even have commented before…”Knowing that every moment is a living science brought back responsibility in my life. If something didn’t work out, I would have to go back and look at the data that built into the result.” It is because I love science and clearly it speaks to me about the logical nature of how energy works. It is not complicated, it is logical and incredibly simple. I have some data to go look at now, not in a big way, but for the next evolution of understanding the energy that got me to where I am now.
As a parent it is my responsibility to express what learning truly is to my child, especially when he is ready to succumb to the tantalizations of recognition. Truth has to be clearly and consistently shared to our own children as well as to everyone else. We all deserve the opportunity to have truth felt again, although it is also our choice when we choose to align with it.
Bringing love and connection into education is so needed, this should be part of every syllabus, ‘Instead I have come to the simple conclusion that in self-love, I just have to give love to myself, consistently without perfection, in all moments that my awareness allows.’
I see the pressure of performance in education among Asian students who are studying in Australia. It is not uncommon for them to feel shame that only a pass or credit is received when others are achieving Distinctions or High Distinctions. They forget that they are working twice as hard because of language issues and unless given a reminder will drive themselves harder at the expense of their physical health and social connection. This drive has become internalised after a childhood of long hours of study so Adele your ‘social experiment’ is a very important blog that could help many look at education a different way.
The importance we place, demand and or impose on our children’s education is nuts! We have been through the meat grinder ourselves and wish to do the same for them, is this do on to others as others have done on us? If this is all in the pursuit of getting a good job, why will employers always prefer to experience over education everything? Being book smart does mean you can do what you know.
Education needs to be about common sense, connection with others and life skills anything else is just a tick box which destroys spontaneity. Unfortunately thus far our education system has not been based on love, we must change this if we want to live in a society that people actually want to be a part of.
I did not enjoy school. I got bored easily and found memorising very difficult; it felt so unnatural to be tested on what seemed to be my memory so I found school very hard work often checking out. No amount of books I read and studied truly energised me where I felt alive until I came across the purple books written by Serge Benhayon. For the first time in my entire life I actually wanted to read a book and I was awakened in some way every time I picked a purple book up. The books present truth which I had been seeking all my life to support me to connect to my inner most and live my life from this place.
Great blog Adele, what society often champions as success can be so far removed from true success. If whatever we ‘achieve’ is at the expense of our own bodies this can never be considered successful.
Beautifully expressed Adele ‘No one can offer love to me, no one can tell me how to love myself, no one can force me to accept this love. I didn’t have to do anything special or to go to a faraway place to love myself, I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.’
“the only true confirmation is in my own body” Adele this is also what the Way of The Livingness has taught me, its shown me what is possible, it’s shown me that I don’t need to be the smartest, the best at something but that the choice to be me and then live life is the greatest gift and what true learning is all about.
I love it when you say “Every moment is an opportunity to learn”. I used to reserve my learning for when I had books in front of me. The rest of the time I was shut off from any kind of learning. I now see it differently – books are for acquiring knowledge and life is for learning.
I too chose academic success which led to disconnection from myself. It was sneaky in that it was very socially acceptable and encouraged. At one point I did an entire university degree in one year whilst I had quite stressful personal circumstances. I still came out with A’s. I was a wreck at the end yet I was congratulated. Academic success is not a bad thing by nature, it is usually the way a person achieves it that is what needs to be looked at.
I had to be very honest with myself and started to feel into all my choices. I made some pretty big choices at that time which had to be implemented, but I was willing to go there. From Chemistry, I switched my major to Chinese Studies, as what I truly felt to explore then was my culture because being in a foreign country highlighted a feeling of inequality within me, which I was on my way to exposing. I was still conscientious about studying but I started making friends and having life outside of school.
Love this Adele. There is so much that learning can be and i love how you have taken the angle of life is science and an experiment to learn from. I am currently studying at university and I can feel the pressure to study hard and get certain grades. Sometimes being very stressed about the situation and how the content is presented. Life and learning can be so different if we choose to make it- you are an awesome example of this.
Education is pretty much reduced to academic performance as it stands, we have to ask ourselves truthfully if this is working or failing? In this blog are some answers as to why people start to give up on themselves and life.
Adele, I love your living experiment and what you have discovered, ‘I have found another way to learn, a way which brings me deeper back to myself every day. Every choice that I make and how consistently these choices are made, will be everything that comes back to meet me, so taking responsibility is a given. Every moment is an opportunity to learn; if I dismiss any moment, I would have to take the responsibility to catch up and feel the consequences of that delay. ‘ We can all learn so much by choosing to be aware, by connecting with our body and inner heart, listening to its wisdom and honouring what it lovingly conveys.
“Life is reduced to studying… the awesome possibilities and potential of a human being are reduced to the knowledge from books.” How many other ways in life do we reduce ourselves in this way, trying to fit within the boundaries we have set ourselves. Much of what we do is set by knowledge we have learnt from another. For example…food – the food pyramid, sleep – 8 hours, work – to provide, with set holidays…I could go on. In conforming to these ‘standards’ we stop listening to our own bodies and place our way of living in the hands of others, losing ourselves in the process. By listening to my own body I have learnt…food – I need very little and only from two food groups, sleep – I need four hours, sometimes more, but it changes from day to day, work – is serving others, and I enjoy it, and actually do not need a holiday.
Imagine what more there is to learn when we listen to within rather than look outside for the answers?
Thank you for exposing the huge price in disconnection that students pay for success in the academic field, it may be more extreme in the Asian culture but I am sure this is reflected around the world and that it is only by making the decision to re-connect to ourselves and feel what is true for us that we find our way back to a true way of learning that does not ask us to negate ourselves in the process because it is the way that we choose to live that is our true education.
I wonder how many students or children feel this way, having been a teacher in the education system I would say a lot. What does this say about our education system as it stands? ‘I was very disillusioned in life at that point that I was close to giving up. I did not know what I wanted to study, I did not know what life was about, I did not know myself, I had very little confidence, I was hurt and deeply lost, and my physical and emotional health reflected all of that.’
Adele your wrote: “Every choice that I make and how consistently these choices are made, will be everything that comes back to meet me, so taking responsibility is a given.” I wished I had learned that at school – I am sure my life would have been different.
As students, children and people simply, all we ever want is to be met. When students are met in connection, care, authenticity and not holding back by an educator who represents this in his/her living, students simply have the answers within themselves and this is repeatedly observed in the results from their work. There is no other way to truly learn and teach.
Isn’t it interesting how we made intelligence something that demands disconnection from our body, whilst the true intelligence I learned about with Universal Medicine actually is only achieved through connection with the body.
Wow Adele, I love how you unravel the consciousness that runs through academia world wide but at the same time your sharing has a particular flavour that reveals to me how your culture played into this, which gives me a broader perspective and understanding of the Asian culture.
Adele, this sounds like a wonderful love story welcoming yourself back to your soulful self. The world as it seems, is to disconnect us from ourselves. Some find their way back to soul and some are still lost in action. Thank goodness for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I say too!
Imagine an education system where we taught from year dot to lovingly stay connected to our body, that all is about energy and we experienced how in our essence we are all unified and share a universal knowingness. If that were our basis and from there we studied whatever temporal skill or knowledge was needed – what a different world we would have.
Absolutely Nicola, how different the world and our lives would be if we lived this truth from day one.
This life story melts me.
This goes to show that love is the only true way for us to live, and that any exalted levels of knowledge will not be the foundation for a loving and supportive relationship with one’s self.
Absolutely Kate, a singular pursuit of such knowledge will in fact undermine any true relationship with self.
There are two types of intelligence and two ways that we can all learn. The temporal knowledge is important but not without the wisdom of the soul, developed through connection with the body.
I agree Joel, temporal knowledge is important but without love it is empty…
This is so shocking ‘By age 11 I was put on tranquilisers before school exams because there was just too much to memorise and I was already living in deep anxiety and had insomnia at that tender age.’ Age 11 and on tranquillisers!!! It is beautifull how you have felt and seen the truth of all of this, I love what you share about experimenting with what you felt in your heart, that’s inspiring. Recently in the UK there has been a lot of media especially from parents saying they have had enough of all the tests their children have to do at a young age, how we need to let the children be children. I agree with this. Education needs to evolve to a whole different place where it is currently at. A very old consciousness needs to be broken here.
This is the kind of statement that ought to be put on Valentine’s day cards – “No one can offer love to me, no one can tell me how to love myself, no one can force me to accept this love.”. How great would it be if we dropped all the illusion around love and began to consider that we are love and all we have to do is express it?
“What was seen as ‘A’ grades on the outside was very far from my true story that was not told.”
This is the line that should ring alarm bells far and wide – for how can we put grades before the social and emotional wellbeing of our children – I work with a friend who threw herself into her studies and made life all about school work – despite being an A grade student she shared with me how empty, flat and washed up she felt by the end of school. Its stories such as these that we need to be sharing with children in schools – from one students experience to another.
“Loving myself was to constantly say no to what is not natural and choose to live the naturalness that my body knows.”
Adele what is hugely confirming about this blog is the consistent thread of awareness that the way you were living was not true. For no matter how far away we choose to live from our natural selves our bodies, our soul will always impulse us towards the truth.
You descibe how to self love innsuch a practical manner. This is beautiful Adele, as self love is the foundation of everything else.
What a blessing to feel ‘I have found another way to learn, a way which brings me deeper back to myself every day’. After many years of making life a struggle that sense of finding that I only have to connect to inner heart and all the outer demands of life feel insignificant compared to the wondrous joy that I find within. Life can be so simple when we allow it.
Andrew, because this tension that we and many others have felt while growing up started so young, it then became accepted as normal. Today this feels absolutely ludicrous, as would it not be an instant alarm in our bodies that something is seriously wrong if anxiety is being experienced so intensely with our children? And if as parents we continue to hold back in expressing about this, we will then perpetuate this horror as a continued norm.
School can teach us many patterns and beliefs that are harmful for life. What does a child learn by experiencing that results are more important then self-care? How does this set us up to handle all of what life is, which we know is so much more than our results and achievements.
Your comment Adele about the anxiety associated with studying and exams brought back memories for me. I would often have difficulty sleeping at night when I had an exam or assignment looming and would be physically sick and shaking from nervous tension on the day of an exam. And yet this is accepted as just being normal. Why does it have to be this way and surely if this way of studying and learning is having such a negative impact on our physical bodies it cannot be the way to go?
I can completely relate to the comment you made about being faced with two options at school – the rebel or the over-achieve -, as I remember feeling like that also and feeling that neither option felt like the truth of who I was, but there did not seem to be a third option of just being me at that time. When I left education and went into the work-force it was pretty much the same two options – rebel/do the bare minimum at work and don’t commit to life, or throw myself into work and try to be the best at what I did. I also chose the overachiever option. I can say that this was not great for my health or my body and I still carry the scars of living in this way today. In the last 10 years I have come to realise that there is indeed a third option – to simply live me and as a result the level of love and contentment in my life has risen substantially in that time since making more self-loving choices on a daily basis.
I agree Adele that in many ways our current education systems appear to be a school in how to disconnect from yourself and all about survival and security in the world, not about true contentment and knowing who you are. And we have all allowed this to be created by deciding that survival and security are greater than love.
The thread of comments in going deeper with all of this is a deeper understanding of how the world functions the way we currently do. We are immersed in a cycle that is self-abusive by a movement that has been on-going for a long time, and we have made that our normal and accepted it to be the normality of life. In this self-created cycle we are also abusing others. We have created a world which is governed by the mind in expense of our body and heart, a world where we have made lovelessness to be normal. In understanding this brings back simplicity, the purpose of living is simply about bringing back a movement or rhythm that once again feels true to our body and our heart.
Zofia that is exposing to be confirmed by your work experience in recruiting. Parents think they are setting up their children for temporal success by enrolling them in the best schools and making sure they are well prepared academically from young. Children as young as in kindergarten start taking open exams to earn certificates for their secondary school placement. But the truth is as you have observed through your work, the stresses put on children from young stay with them in life, not just in work but in every aspect of their lives, and there is no true success in this and neither is it normal.
While attending school I found that much of what I was being told to learn didn’t ring true in my body, so my solution to this was to check out to not have to feel the untruth of what was being taught. There is a pressure in schools where there is pride on being academic over all else. When we choose this there are many other areas that miss out.
I work in recruiting and look through people’s cv’s/careers every day, and the same also applied to me too when i was a student, which is that – the stresses and pressures experienced within one’s career or job, have already been created from the way one educates or studies in this same pressured way. In other words study/education lays the foundation for what is then experienced at work. Without the self-education of love, the study or work ethic becomes not truly supportive even divisive eventually leading to breakdown or fatigue where a person completely gives up on themselves and life [commitment issues being reflected by ‘job hopping’], or goes into overdrive to excel and achieve. Both lead to depletion from not utilising one’s own natural energy resources efficiently. Hence love is what brings in or brings back the efficiency and balance.
I agree Zofia that we seem to have fallen for the notion that success in life revolves around security and getting ‘that job’ and everything is set up to get it from a young age. There is a widely held belief that getting a good job and financial security is the ticket to a joyful and fulfilling life. Of course these things are important but if the focus is only on that at the expense of our relationship with ourselves and others and supporting our health and wellbeing, then it cannot lead to a fulfilling life, as evidenced by the current statistics in illness and disease, burnout and mental health disorders.
No result is a successful result without a joyful body delivering it.
Absolutely Kylie! That is an absolute truth.
Beautifully expressed Kylie. The marker of joy in our bodies truly is a confirmation that the movement chosen is the way to be, and if there is no joy it is also simply a reminder that we can choose to move differently.
If the education system presently is a picture that the world has accepted education to be, the deep harm that penetrates people in this is that the true learning with responsibility will not something we naturally move into.
True Adele. My experience is that in school many children learn with reluctance and feel the irrelevance of what is covered, or they struggle to keep up with the demands set and feel inadequate. They either invest in the system as you did and burn themselves out, or give up. This is far removed from learning with joy, commitment and responsibility.
School has not been made so children will want to bring all of their natural qualities and unleash all of their potential, its been made first to show us rules about how we should speak and respond, and adhere to lineal processes in life but not relate everything in the spherical way in which a child knows life. Without feelings, life is only what we are told, so it is important to allow children to express their feelings.
Adele I love your sharing of your journey through Education. I see with children today that not a lot has changed and there is a huge amount of pressure on them all to conform to the picture of education as being the all, that without it your life is not worth a cracker. What happens to the individual who will not make it through to the top grades, they are often the ones who lose faith in their ability to achieve and often don’t try for work feeling less than prepared for life in the work force. Are they the ones who end up on the dole where we have pushed them, and they feel they belong?
I have read that the age children are being sent to boarding schools now are becoming younger and younger, as young as 8 years old, and no doubt children are facing more abandonment issues with this. I wonder what goes on on the side of the parents, the decision they make to send children away at this young age. Frequently I hear parents making comments such as they cannot control their children, so it is better to send them off to boarding school. Understandably, parenting is not an easy task and it could feel we are out of control or we may project that onto our children, but the truth is any ideal or picture is just a protection as life cannot ever be controlled the way we think we can. If as parents we avoid looking at difficult issues, and give this responsibility to boarding schools, we are only buying time to truly take responsibility. For do we really think by absolving our responsibility as parents, schools will take up that responsibility for us? And if our children are not “transformed” after attending boarding schools, we can then further blame our education system? If our children is out of control that is their way of expressing that something is not quite right, and as parents it is our responsibility to understand (without accepting abuse of course) and read deeper into our children. We all have a right to be responsible, whether as parents, children or even the education system, and that begins with our understanding and relationship with oneself and with each other.
Agree Adele, because a parent who does not know or live true love cannot then instil this at home and with themselves through self-love and self-relationship to have a more true understanding of the way we relate to ourselves and the quality of this – bashing and critical, or easeful and open for example. This is why so many kids are suffering or in a level of dysfunction at school, further studies and later on into working life. What you say highlights the crucial importance of love within, is love at home, study and throughout work and life.
Parents we have to wake up to the fact that what we think are benefitting our children in the current education system is a picture that actually leads to great devastation to our children’s health and well-being, that clearly does not lead to any true form of success for our children. Not only are our children affected, we are also affected, and our choice to perpetuate this leads to our future generations being affected. As parents we have the responsibility to say this is enough and halt this deeply ingrained movement we have been led to move in.
This responsibility starts with ourselves, to bring love back into our own life. And this love will be naturally shared with our children and with the teachers and classmates in school, which may take time to ripple out, but the process has begun.
Thank you Adele for sharing that the true way to learn is with the entire body and the soul. We seem to restrict learning to knowledge, knowledge to the brain, the brain to memory so ultimately to learn is to remember and regurgitate rather than truly feeling something in the body.
Learning is not just about the academic – as you say – you are learning that love is something you choose for yourself, that all are equal, that how we live is something to learn and explore. Adele what you share breaks the conventions of learning – that it is so much bigger than what we perceive it to be and that with every movement of the body, we learn.
I love this line Adele….”I didn’t want to rely on book knowledge because I knew there was a deeper way to live.”These words would be so supportive for every child in every classroom around the world.
I agree nb. I remember clearly getting to the age of 16 after taking my exams and realising I knew very little and also that I knew nothing about life. I had been at school for 12 years and didn’t feel that I had been taught very much.
Agree Rachel, school was no place of confirming me in my independence and self-certainty or trust about myself and life, and more dependency on the right or top marks/academic stream to get you all to generate a level of false ‘independence’. Being independent in life – is to know who you are by the way you hold yourself and get to know who you truly are. Combine this with studies, and wow what a winning combination. Combine this without, then wow … what disaster.
True – that is, until we have a library of books that are full of this deeper way to live.
Bring in the School of The Livingness and incorporate the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom as they were taught underneath the great pyramids in Egypt thousands of years ago. Lets learn and understand how to be social first. Lets understand who we are and how to live as the sensitive beings we are. This is not exclusive but actually includes everything we need to know to live in a world where all is energy.
It was lovely to spend time with you Adele while I read your beautiful blog. In your blog you are offering us all such great inspiration from the simple changes that you have made in your life – I feel when we all look back on our lives we can realise that we did have a greater understanding of life but that we chose to not go down that road because it felt too rocky. I know I had moments when I knew there was a different way – and then chose to be pulled back into a way of living that was not true or self loving – that is until I met Serge Benhayon and began to attend courses and workshops that offered me greater insight into the true way to live life. I am now realising that life is as wonderful as I choose to make it in any given moment as I choose to let go and surrender to the all knowing Universe.
It is such a sad and painful a reduction of ourselves that comes from the way we champion knowledge based intelligence and academic success. As when we pin our hopes to achieving recognition from the outcomes of our studies or schooling we abandon the real truth, the love and care of our bodies as we have lost sense of who we are. We are not taught how our connection to ourselves, our Love, our Soul and our bodies is the source of the greatest intelligence that we could ever know. I am eternally grateful to Serge Benhayon and The Way of The Livingness that there is another way to live and learn of this intelligence, our true and innate intelligence that is waiting to be connected to and lived, one that we all have access to through being aware of who we truly are. A way that honors, the Divine wisdom within each and every student is equally great.
The pressure to be knowledgeable and constantly be reading about different topics is huge in my workplace. I don’t really conform because I know that that knowledge is used to help us disengage from eachother as people. The idea that an intellectual conversation connects people is completely lost on me. Often it becomes very competitive with who is the smarter one, the more worldly one.
The constant seek and thirst for knowledge is necessary and understandably so as an illusive substitute for connection but it will never suffice and further alienating with the body will engage us in a cycle that would not bring us to what we are looking for. We continue this movement knowing its detriment but it is still more familiar moving in this way, until it is not–either by our own choice to stop or we are forced to stop by our bodies.
yes, and the competition is fruitless and contributes to the lovelessness in this world.
I saw the same choice being played out at school, either to rebel, or to dive head first into being the academic ‘nerd’. Either way was a form of attention, good or bad, and was a form of reaction to the education systems way of asking you to perform rather than just be yourself.
Yes isn’t it interesting Rebecca, how it seems that we have a choice but it is not a true choice, it is just the action or re-action to the same detriment. That there is a third option is rarely presented to us. The offering of this third option is what makes this blog and the teaching of Universal Medicine so amazing.
Your words here Adele so beautifully expressed, No one can offer love to me, no one can tell me how to love myself, no one can force me to accept this love. I didn’t have to do anything special or to go to a faraway place to love myself, I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself. Absolutely love it.
Yes Julie, love is so simple, does not cost anything and is available to everyone, yet we make it so complicated and create all kinds of excuses, resistance, distractions to not embrace it. Something strange is certainly going on here, that we need to question at some point.
It is a long time since I have been involved in the education system, but from what I remember, it was quite stressful in the sense that you had to start thinking and stressing about your career from the beginning of high school. What if I want to be an engineer? Oh, then I need to do these subjects, and so on. The whole process creates nothing but anxiety for students and teachers alike. Where is the love of learning? Where is the wonder? we cry out that education is everything, but some of the most successful people I ever met never received a proper education, which begs the question, is education all we make it out to be, and if not, then what is true education, if it is not needed necessarily to prepare us for a successful career.
Great question Adam. In my experience the love of learning and our current education are two things that strangely enough do not go hand in hand. Recently, after 20+ years since being in school I enrolled to study online, and the greatest lesson I got from that experience was of discovering how it is I learn, and through that reignited what had all but been extinguished during my school years – the love I have for learning. For me, true education comes not by voiding our relationship with our body but through building it with love we lay a foundation for our natural enquiry to discover the endless well of our innate knowing.
What is success anyway but a picture that was fed to us and we have bought into, and yet from the body any ounce of anxiety or stress would not lead us to true success.
‘I wanted to truly learn through human relationships and the relationship with myself. I dropped studying science, and started to live the experiment of life.’ Adele I love this, our educational systems are all set up for us not to know who we are.
And damaged goods they are Doug. No longer can the majority go on to University from school, most require a gap year to get over the pressure they have been under.
Yes, the pressure they are under can be quite extreme, feeling the need to push through whatever exhaustion or stress they feel to get that required result, to get that piece of paper that says, now you are someone, you have achieved this. I don’t think the body would agree it was all worth it.
This is a truly beautiful blog to read Adele and inspirational. This is true education and is what we have on offer to support our own children through a system that is not geared for self discovery and self connection. Thank you.
We are taking the children out of school for a week to come to the retreat with us next week and asked the teacher if there was any work that we needed to take with us so as they didnt miss anything. She gave me a usb stick with some worksheets on it but said she would prefer them to just get experience out of where they are going as it would be more beneficial to them. She was sure correct here.Little did she know about the truth of what she was saying, or pehaps she could feel the whole truth of what she was saying.
The pressure within the Asian culture to achieve academically is actually mirrored in other cultures (quite possibly all cultures) as well. In some cultures it is not academic success that children are steered towards from their early childhood, but to be popular and socially successful amongst your peer group, to groom yourself to become a desirable wife and to focus your attention in the late teenage years on attracting a husband, to be good at sport. In Australia, there is even a strong cultural pressure to arrive at 18 years of age ‘care free,’ ‘fun to be with’ and more interested in enjoying the culturally imposed ‘entitlements of youth’ than in establishing yourself in your adulthood.
No matter what they look like, these cultural dictates are impositions on children and young people. All give them the message that in order to be accepted and successful, they have to be what their culture tells them to be, not who they feel they are in truth.
Yes, the majority of us are living up to false ideals and beliefs of who we think we should be or what the world wants, the whole time missing our most treasured gift – who we truly are.
To live in a world where our accepted rhythm is not from love requires a body which can consistently and steadily live its natural rhythm of love.
What you have described Doug of the education system is the microcosmic version of the world we now live in, and just seeing it in one area, education, the devastation and harm experienced is what the whole world is experiencing in a large scale, when people are not the focus and love is not our chosen way.
Love this blog Adele , thank you for sharing ‘No one can offer love to me, no one can tell me how to love myself, no one can force me to accept this love. I didn’t have to do anything special or to go to a faraway place to love myself, I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.
In this living experiment, the data becomes the confirmation. Nothing outside of me can truly confirm the success of my experiment or not, the only true confirmation is in my own body.’
Yes it is! Adele thank you for this amazing piece of writing, full of pure expression, I felt every word. The line that was of particular standout for me was ‘if I dismiss any moment, I would have to take the responsibility to catch up and feel the consequences of that delay’. The power of this truth allows me the space feel the responsibility each choice holds as not a weight but in actual fact a joy. From your commitment to studying life your mastering of teaching has emerged, thank you again Adele an absolute treasure of a blog.
‘The power of this truth allows me the space feel the responsibility each choice holds as not a weight but in actual fact a joy – SO true Giselle well said. There is great joy in being aware of the responsibility that each choice holds as we are offered to opportunity to be all that we are in every moment. And as we are Love, when we choose to be who we are we then naturally live our glory, which is joyful beyond measure.
Mind blowingly simple it can be when we allow ourselves to be who we are by dropping the images of what we think that looks like, and allow the natural emerging of who has been with us underneath, albeit hidden, every step of the way – Soul.
The images hold us prisoner from the riches that lay untapped deep within.
I saw a part in a documentary in Asia about the problem that is a result of the Chinese one child policy. The balance between men and women is gone and parents are worried about their children getting married. They have these match-markets where lot’s of parents go to find a match between a daughter and a man what struck me was to see that how important the education level and income of both people were to the parents. And what was mentioned also was that young people study for years and than work on their career. This way they do not find the time to have a relationship with someone and why the number of singles is very high.
The picture of success many of us have bought into is to excel academically, have a successful career, get married, in some parts of the world to have only one child, it includes many different things except having a relationship with our body and ourself, so life is all about dealing with complication (another picture) instead of living the simplicity from the heart.
Yes I think I also saw this same documentary too Diana, very interesting. It was striking to see the desperation and power that’s given to ‘relationship with another’ via these marriage-meeting-conventions, without there being any hint of exploration into self-relationship, and the actual quality of this. But how can it when it’s a generational thing and the defaulted position of a race or culture is to put oneself on the line, is normal and entirely expected, even celebrated. Though being here in Singapore, I’m seeing more and more people these days starting to break this buck and come out of this entrapped way of living in parental expectation that ill affects every aspect of a person’s life and work.
“But more importantly, to be recognised through the education system meant I have made a pact to disconnect from myself”. unfortunately these words are very true.
School for me was not about relationships, it could have been and I feel in the future it will be. I was there to learn what was being taught, and so it wasn’t about expressing myself, or learning about myself and life. With children of my own now I am observing that building a relationship with self enables us to have self worth, feel love appreciation and embody this knowing. There is potential for this to be the experience of the majority, simply by making the focus of life about relationships. When a child, cares, loves, likes themselves they are in a prime position to learn something with ease, no stress, pressure or trying, it can be learnt for purpose and not be hung on to emotionally. We can all support this in how we live and how we express ourselves.
This is amazing what you present here Samantha, it is the whole school curriculum of the future laid out. Learning is not the issue it only becomes an issue when we have lost the connection to ourselves. If we make education about deepening our self-worth, learning comes naturally and with ease and we will be all able to learn from each other – what a rich world this will be! And an intelligent one too!
This article really is awesome, how it feels, how it reads, the content, a package, a gift for humanity, full of lived experience.
Awesome revelations “the true science of life is self-love” and as you say “I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.”. we spend so much time looking outside ourselves for love, for healing, for acknowledgement, but with consistent commit and self-care, self -love arises and is felt. I have had this experience, I cold feel Love and Stillness, and this had been building but I had not been holding myself in it, as you say ‘offer it back to myself’. It continues to be a work in progress but I can feel a big but subtle shift, the need, the hurt, the loneliness, wanting something from anything else is melting away as I learn to hold myself in the Love that I feel.
Self-love is an incredibly power-full tool for re-connection when it is chosen and lived in everyday practical life, it can be your fundamental building block of life that carries you through every situation, clearly setting out what the quality of the outcome of every choice will be.
Beautifully said Shami. As I have learnt and continue to learn that when we are connected to ourselves, to our Love are we are connected to our awareness and are able to be guided through our every day, through every situation, what is of Love and what is not, what is true and what is not.
Unfortunately, your experience is one of many, to varying degrees. At exam time during my last years at college, I remember the stress and pressure and the people that crumbled beneath it, cry and in hysterics because they thought they would fail and everything in life was telling them that all their worth rode on the back of the exam results.
I was so lucky to have a mum at home who never, ever pressured me to do well and was always reminding me that exams are not the be all and end all, that my health and well being is no much more important, and that not being good at exams is no failure and doesn’t show me as unintelligent, it just shows I am not intelligent in a way that can be measured in an exam. This support was vital to me not getting so caught up in school life and in many ways compared to my peers, breezing through my exams. If I did get anxious, it was my choice to feel the pressure. And now, having let school I can only attest to what my mum told me – my exams ave had little to no impact on where I am going and what I am doing and I have found that where I may not have excelled at exams, I excel at life.
Thank you Adele for your honest sharing. For me it was interesting to get a sense of how the education system is felt in your country. With your open words I could feel how you were trapped – this following sentence said it all for me: “I would start my day exhausted and eat fast foods or instant noodles during the day so that I could have the most time to study.” How wonderful and inspirational is it that you had the commitment to change this way of living into a way of living were self love and self care is the leading impulse.
I distinctly remember feeling anxious about school when I was younger and that was before all the additional pressure children are under today to get ‘results’. Isn’t it time we valued educating from the inside out and not the other way around?
I recall this also Fiona and are watching my children now go through massive pressures at school, far more than I did. The responsibility that i now take in allowing them to feel the truth of these pressures and supporting them to not get caught in it all.
Yes Fiona, it is time. This is a time when our children are looking to discover and explore who they already are in relation to the world they are in, not what they need to do to be accepted in it. We are sending the wrong message to our children, one that tells them that who they are is not enough as we are asking them to over-ride their natural sense of what is true. It is no wonder there is so much anxiousness in our children today. As in truth who they already are is greater that any job in this world as they are equal Sons of God as we all are, here to live the Light we naturally are with all in this world.
Earlier this week I was speaking to a young friend of mine who was studying for her GCSE exams and as we spoke I noticed the deep anxiety she had. I asked if she was getting enough sleep to which she said not much. It’s crazy when our health is critical to the quality of life that there is no interest in schools to support children’s well being with all the focus on results.
Our education system has become about ticking boxes, getting good results and places a huge amount of pressure on young children to perform and compete against one another; it separates the ones that exceed and the ones that fail. This creates a division and separation in society, of those who have and those who have not. There is a truer way to educate our children, based on self-love, care and connection to their bodies, from there teaching them about loving others and working in unity with all others.
This is a very powerful blog as it exposes the impact and pressures education can put on our children. Where our child becomes identified by their performance at school – excel be bright and you are rewarded, struggle, react you are considered not so intelligent, could possibly have a learning disability and leaves the child feeling like a failure. Either way, they are just different ends of the same line – we are not educated in a way that makes it about our children first, who they are,their connection to themselves and encouraged to express who they are and bring that to the learning. The culture of education in Asia, being the most important and only thing as Adele has shared only amplifies what is really going on for our children. Education can be so much more yet it reduces and makes our children so much less.
If education is not based on building a loving relationship with our bodies and selves and then all others, we are simply creating a humanity that is capable of much self-harm to themselves and to humanity, as our current and past history clearly shows.
Absolutely Thomas, we then have class rooms of only ‘brains’ with names. Because that is the only organ the education system is interested in.
That is so true Thomas and what amazed me is – that most of us are living like this and could not get aware of it as it is simply so “normal” to be capable of so much self-harm. Therefore I love it that Adele is writing about it as it is a possibility to get this wonderful reflection.
Very true Thomas. We are clearly seeing the results of this today with the increase of cutting and self-harm in our children on the rise. This is far from normal. How is it possible that we as a society have allowed the existence of self -harm effect our children today the way it currently is? Unless we begin taking responsibility for how we care for ourselves, our bodies and each other we will continue to see love-less and harmful behaviours increase through our desensitised way of existing.
The current education system is based on fear of not doing well, and that life is about being better than another and getting ahead and competitiveness. It lacks something very fundamental, which is working together, collaboration and brotherhood. By encouraging competition we create separation between the children, which can lead to jealousy and even hate and anger between children, are we then not producing the children that will one day be the adults that are capable of harming another, inflicting violence and even causing wars?
So true, I see this play out in my children primary school, competition brings disharmony in their relationships, as soon as preschool is finished, the force to be better than each other comes in. inspiring understanding, community, cooperation and holding, themselves and each other equal in Love, would enable our children to develop true relationships and still learn the skills necessary to function in life. We can equally support and nurture one another, appreciating our individual qualities without stepping on each other to get some where. What kind of society is created from this sort of education? It is not a requirement to be better than another to learn and succeed.
Awesome blog Adele. Our current education system is not perfect and it could definitely be revised. Like many things in life and our many, many current systems I feel needs to be examined, updated and changed. But these changes starts with us, by taking responsibility, choosing to commit to life and to connect to ourselves first. From connecting to ourselves we will naturally know what is true and what is not. Change without true connection to love and who we are is just another version of the same thing.
I know love is one of the words used left right and centre and if we knew the true version of it it is the answer to everything that is wrong in this world.
Hear hear Chan, true change has to start with oneself, otherwise we are in reaction to what we feel isn’t right in our world, what’s important then is once we have taken full responsibility and care of our own life’s is to share that with the world and not keep it for ourselves.
I agree, the change begins within everyone of us, we are part of and responsible for what is reflected in life and so we have the power to choose.
“Life is reduced to studying… the awesome possibilities and potential of a human being are reduced to the knowledge from books”. Thank you, Adele, for saying this as it brings to light the fact that as a society we place more importance on the accumulation of knowledge rather than the natural expression of wisdom.
Absolutely Robyn, as a society we have sold out to a much lesser, limited and lower form of education, this knowledge based education, using our minds to recall what someone else said, actually inhibits or completely prevents us from accessing a far greater and stupendous wisdom that is available to us, by connecting deeply to our bodies and their movements.
Absolutely Robyn. I recall as a child really disliking librarys, and I still do. The pressure that was drummed into us to say that all you need to know will be found in these books felt awful in my body then and does now.
I have heard people say their school years were the best years of their lives, I couldnt disagree more.
Yes Joe, maybe it’s because many feel the responsibilities of life in adulthood and don’t feel equipped to deal with it all and that can be from not learning about us, life in our education system in the first place….
Teaching responsibility is the only way we will ever feel equipped in dealing with life. Being responsible in caring for our bodies is just as great a responsibility in caring for our assignments, capping one (in gravity) we are capping all, and we reduce our lives by reducing ourselves.
Interesting for me to note, I realise now I never got the true meaning of responsibility until after I began to commit to making loving choices for myself, rather than all that are not. It was then that I was ready to feel responsibility as not a burden that I’ll never be able to meet, conveniently confused as an obligation I’d sooner rebel against, but a tool that supports me to make loving choices.
Reading your experience Adele, I started to wonder what school would be like, if we studied and discussed the very parts you struggled with. What if our classes revolved around the heart of what life is truly about – LOVE? What if the curriculum was based on looking after and caring yourself? What if our teachers were encouraged to form relationships and connections with students as people first? This is one experiment I would love to see, to foster a wisdom that already lives inside you and me.
Joseph what your suggesting, would bring a very clear, strong and healthy next generation into the world, and this would make a huge difference to our current world health crisis, just for starters not to mention the reduction in wars and conflict.
Joseph, it is happening and for that as a part-time teacher, the school have cut the hours on the courses I am teaching. But the students thrive in class and that has been lived and will always be a marker in their bodies.
In our current education system there are two camps, so to speak the people that conform and excel and the ones that don’t conform and rebel and get low grades.
I found it interesting reading your account Adele of excelling in your study, as I choose the other option, which was to rebel, which has had its own set of consequences.
‘Rebellion’ is actually a fascinating and little understood choice. The children and teens who rebel during their schooling years are thought not to be as smart as the other kids, have a chip on their shoulder or not caring about their own futures. My experience as been that this is never the case. Frequently the ones who rebel are very smart – they are often academically intelligent and also worldly in a way their peers may not be. They are the ones who have questioned the system and chosen not to accept it in it’s lovelessness (though, As Adele described, this is in reaction to the system rather than following the path that feels true for them).
I agree Kathryn ‘Rebellion’ is little understood and your comment is enlightening. Yes rebelling is destructive but in a way it is highlighting there is little choice. People see their classmates ‘selling out to the system’ and feel it is not true for them. Many children oscillate between rebelling and ‘playing the game’ trying to find the ‘lesser of two evils’ When you are surrounded my distortions of truth the only thing that matters is what you feel for yourself.
“I wanted to truly learn through human relationships and the relationship with myself. I dropped studying science, and started to live the experiment of life.”
Humanity as a whole is living in a way that is far less than its potential; this is having a very detrimental effect on our health and well being. We allow pictures and images and thoughts to dominate how we should live, looking to the outside and comparing ourselves to others. Our bodies are the one thing that we can trust as they will not lie, as they give a direct reflection to us, in the way we have lived and the choices we make, if they are loving or not.
“There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness.” This way of living and the enormous benefits it brings to ones body, and life is the true way forth for humanity, as we have gone far astray from the true health and vitality that we should be enjoying.
“In this living experiment, the data becomes the confirmation. Nothing outside of me can truly confirm the success of my experiment or not, the only true confirmation is in my own body.” This is ground breaking information for the science of true health, and well being Adele, when we approach ourselves in this way we are tapping into the true, innate wisdom of our bodies, rather than imposing ideas or pictures of how we should live from the outside.
I have read the words before that life is a classroom and Adele I get that you are expressing this and that we need not lock ourselves into a knowledge based learning to justify our existence.
When we see the world as a classroom we realise how much is in our power to change. We are presented with endless possibilities to make different choices if we choose to open our hearts to the lessons we are shown.
Very well said Doug and we are seeing this more and more in education. Schools are only interested in their reputations and the marks of students highlight this. True wellbeing for students needs to play an equal part in any education. Then this goes out with them to their areas of work.
True education beautifully expressed, thank you Adele ” There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness.”
We have a long way to go in the education systems, where studying and learning come at the expense of our health and wellbeing. Not just physically, but also socially and psychologically,
Yes I agree Jennifer. Our education system has become too rigid and performance driven. But ultimately it is always up to us whether we choose to play the game of performing, seeking recognition or choose connection to ourselves throughout our schooling years. Wherever we are be it at school, at work or at home, if we are connected to who we are there is always an opportunity to learn, grow and give back to whatever system we have chosen to be in.
What you have said is very true Jennifer, the current educational system places no importance of self care and well-being of oneself, what kind of role models are we then producing, with our doctors and in the medical system, where the burn out and stress related suicide rates are getting higher and higher.
There is so little focus on emotional well being or even simply general well being of the child, the emphasis in the UK is firm,y on results and statistics. It is sad when we value marks on paper over and above the vitality of children.
Sure is true Jennifer. At our children s school the other day they were giving out awards on assembly. It was the start of second term and they gave out an award to all of the children who have 100% attendance rate for term 1. There were some who had not come to school due to sickness and in effect were not getting an award because they were at home resting their bodies that were unwell. This creates a competitive culture where one may feel pushed to disregard the nurturing of their body to perform and show up at school even when they are sick.
By recently stepping back into the educational system through university studies I am able to feel all the destruction that has occurred in my body by being in reaction to the energy that runs the educational system and what it asks of us. I have been able to feel that the educational system is set up to tell us that we know nothing and have to be ‘educated’, while at the same time asking us to ‘know’ everything when writing assignments and sitting exams. It really is a confusing process. So it is imperative that I come into the process knowing who I am and supporting myself in every way I can to hold this knowing, so I don’t go into this game and feel stupid and unequipped (like I have in the past). We are already everything and this we need to appreciate and remind ourselves of while dealing with a system that is there to tell us the exact opposite.
We are taught from young that we know nothing. Knowing nothing some strive to learn every piece of knowledge, so they can say they know what others do not know. This picture is what we move through life with in our relationship with ourselves and others. Our communication oscillate in between being supremacist and reduced, which are in effect one and the same–We Do Not Live Equality.
In many work and study situations, the communication that goes on are always in either of these polarities–those who hold temporal status exhibit supremacist traits as normality and those who are further down the ladder take up inferiority as identity. Both keep the world in a retarded state in evolution as we are now living.
There is no harmony in such a picture. Living life with this picture is a reductionism of our world, our life and the grandness of the divinity that we all are. Allowing this disharmony to foster is what culminates into war, illness and disease and all the corruption and modern plagues in the world.
A true way forward for education – honour the body and the rest simply flows. This is how I am going about my university studies. Each moment is another moment to deepen into this, which allows me to bring this quality to everything that I do, and on so many levels this is felt by everyone within the educational system. Leaving an imprint for others to walk on also.
“There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness.” Yes, it is!
If I am learning anything from Serge Benhayon it’s that living life everyday is a science as is the experience of learning from my body and that science interweaves through every single aspect of life. Whether we like or not. Having studied some anatomy and physiology it compares not. That was such a heady experience. Not to mention the pushing of myself of marks. That way is certainly no way to learn and understand about people.
Your blog is honest and tender, it is also very exposing of the outside unspoken pressure to conform to what society dictates. No matter how powerful this is, the body always knows the truth and when at the tender age of eleven there is anxiety, sleeplessness and tears regularly then there is something very wrong. You truly are a student of life – a student of your own life and what you have graduated with is a ‘Masters’ in loving self and reflecting this to the world. A Beautiful, insightful and inspiring read – than you Adele.
Adele Leung PHD Masters in Self Love, now that’s a qualification worth having!
I like that Alexis, Adele certainly is an advance student in Self-love and she is now teaching us what this means and she is giving back to humanity by sharing her wisdom.
Thank you for sharing Adele this is an incredible article. It exposes the choice that almost every child makes in school – to excel or to rebel. I have recently noticed that some of my peers have chosen to do both! They are fully focused in lessons, paying attention, getting the best grades, going to after school sessions but making sure they leave time for parties and drugs. ‘Being yourself’ just doesn’t seem to be an option, as when someone does this it’s not uncommon for them to be bullied and teased out of it, as all of the kids are only used to and comfortable with those who excel or rebel. That said, what I’ve found in school is that someone needs to take responsibility, step up and be themselves, to show that there is another path through school – one that doesn’t harm our bodies or make us depressed or contracted.
Yes Susie, powerful point ‘what I’ve found in school is that someone needs to take responsibility, step up and be themselves, to show that there is another path through school – one that doesn’t harm our bodies or make us depressed or contracted.’ That is exactly what school could be about – that we develop as responsible, confident, connected people prepared to go into the world with much to offer. With the current state of the school systems this would be a very courageous step, to go against the ‘crowd’, yet it is the way and can be done by such a person as you have described. Being yourself connects you to the inner support that is there, the power of love and is not to be underestimated.
Thats for sure Suzie. It only takes one person to stand up and show the others by reflection that they too are this and can choose this in everyday.
Agree Susie, well said, and thankfully they have you there to show the other way through the developed love you have for yourself that sets the true example of how to ‘do school’ – with joy, lightness, right effort and fresh pithiness too. ‘Being yourself’ being totally cool and the in thing to be into, without a doubt over any drug or substance.
It shows that in society we care more for the result, and the picture that is presented, than for the human being. How awful is that?
The industrial age is held up as a triumph in human standards for raising our living standards, but I wonder is the flip side that the system and its products or outcomes are now more important than people?
While reading this I did wonder about the effect that things like social media and ‘just google it’ are having on us. They can be very useful – a source of information second to none, and then the ability to interact with billions of people so easily. However, I think they are amplifying the disconnect that you highlight Adele – we are becoming lazy, and rather than experiencing and living our lives, we are becoming receivers for information that we have no control over the quality of. Like any technological advancement – its not just inventing it, but how you use it that is the critical factor.
All our movements come back to the quality we move ourselves with. Life can be done in connection as well as in disconnection, and in activities such as social media which can easily take us out of connection, the awareness to be in the quality of connection when using it cannot be dismissed.
I am reminded of a feeling I get when I sit at the desk in my office for too long staring at the screen. I quite literally feel two dimensional, and this is exactly the sense I get from your blog on studying Adele. That feeling is when we have let the life be sucked out of us, and rather than living we have chosen not to participate in life ourselves but rather have the ideals and beliefs fed to us in a safe way that entirely disconnects us from who we truly are.
Investing in academia falls well short of living from the inner- heart. It is only through the inner-heart does true wisdom lie.
Beautiful Donna – ‘inner-heart does true wisdom lie’ know that is where the education system can start, for children to connect to the wisdom of their inner heart and learn from there….There would never be a boring or dull moment but a richness in learning.
This is a terrifying insight into the reality of our education system and what we aspire to – ‘What was seen as ‘A’ grades on the outside was very far from my true story that was not told.’ – Our marks of success leaving so much unconsidered and with such devastation on the way. Thank you, Adele, for sharing your story – one that I know well and watch repeating endlessly.
Great comment Doug… it is certainly not people-centred and there is no doubt we all file out through the system as damaged goods at the end… at great expense to society… and yet they don’t seem to connect the dots that maybe society is in the disarray it is due to the foundation upon which it is built?
I loved what you shared about reductionism…. It is utterly ridiculous that as humans we attempt to reduce life and reduce ourselves and what we are capable of to the knowledge from books. It’s so awesome you exposed the lie by literally bursting at the seams after being contained in this way, to then explore what was possible in life when you trust your heart rather than what you were told… and for love to show you what is important. A truly amazing journey to read and to share.
A beautiful sharing Adele… we can spend so much of our lives seeking love outside of us when in fact the truth is it is all about loving ourselves “..in self-love, I just have to give love to myself, consistently without perfection, in all moments that my awareness allows.”
Love the simplicity you offer here Adele… “I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me.” We are so worth loving, and when we do give ourselves permission to be the love we naturally are. we show everyone they can be that love too.
‘In this living experiment, the data becomes the confirmation. Nothing outside of me can truly confirm the success of my experiment or not, the only true confirmation is in my own body’. The trust in our bodies becomes a knowing, and in turn this deep knowing becomes a way of living.
Adele, you share a deep well of wisdom with your words. A gentle way in which to explore our way of living, a way in which to observe all that we do with no attachment, only a watchful eye that is forever offering space for acceptance, change and room for more love. Once again your living way can be felt in your words.
Beautifully said Kim, I love reading Adele’s blog. It is deeply inspiring, full of wisdom, honesty and truth. I love your comment reminding me that there always is more space for love as it is forever expanding.
It’s crazy how trapped we can get in education and cultures we are brought up in. There are so many expectations from such a young age in many cultures to achieve academically, to the point that kids no longer get to be kids. I see it so much around friends and their children.
This is true Amita. Last year my daughter started school and there was so much pressure to achieve that there was no “time” for show and tell.
Every choice comes back to meet us. The choices that led to a wall of protection being erected can easily be dismantled by the choices to nurture and self love that lead to living a vital life, the responsibility is always ours. A beautiful blog Adele.
This is a truly important sharing Adele, we could all learn so much from it. Thank you for sharing your story and reinforcing that we have a very unintelligent education system in this world of ours! Where is love, common sense and harmony?
1
I am absolutely stunned by this insight into Chinese and academic culture. I have had some understanding of this from people I know but I had no idea it was this extreme. It is amazing that you found your way back to yourself Adele. I am inspired by your grace and the way you choose to take responsibility rather than blame someone else, ‘society’ or culture for putting pressure on you.
Thanks for this Adele, the Asian culture is known for the pride it takes in academic success. While attention to our learning is important, what you point out so strongly is the impact this can have when done with a drive.
Yeah it’s amazing the impact the drive for success actually has on our quality of life. It’s a set up to being insatiable forever, always needing to get smarter, more knowledgeable, more more more.
Our whole education system is not based on the love of learning, but rather the fear that we will not be truly prepared to deal with life, and so we are told that we NEED to have an education in order to survive. And so rarely do we stop to consider whether this is actually the truth. I have seen many a person who is well educated and yet ill equipped to deal with life, and many a person who is not educated at all, yet is able to integrate themselves into life exceedingly well.
Absolutely Adam! I have found myself occasionally try and learn as much knowledge as I can, and then when it gets into practical situations it is much different! A whole other level of focus is required to be steady and learn. And this is something we aren’t prepared for.
So very true, Adam. The way our educational system is currently structured it does not truly equip us for life. I remember getting to the end of my schooling and not having any idea in what direction I wanted to go or what direction I was even meant to go in.
This is very true Adam, our education system doesn’t prepare us for life, in a way that are equipped to not only deal with all situations that arise, but do well in them, as its based on recalling knowledge and not having a deep connection and relationship to our bodies and selves, from which we can respond to all the demands that life presents us with.
Yes Adam, I see it even in Childcare, parents pushing for their child to move up to the next room because they think their child is very bright because they can count and say lots of words, but their social skills are way behind. It’s all about what they can do, not who they are.
There will always be a fear in dealing with life if we do not simply deal with life.
So true Adam. I have seen this in many young children. Children as young as 4 and 5 reading as adults and winning every competition out there yet when it comes to dealing with social situations they melt down.
Yeah great point Adam! I have experienced this very thing also. Read knowledge, whilst handy and useful, does not prepare us to be with one another.
Adele I can so relate to having chosen the academic way rather than a truly living and loving way of life. I too spent much of my early years focused on being academically smart, and yet consistently struggling with this way of being as I felt stressed, burnt out, overwhelmed, in my head and not with myself. I too have found only since reconnecting back to self through the Way of the Livingness, Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon that I have begun to peel back these false perceptions I had of myself and finally I am beginning to know who I am not from my head but from my heart simply by reconnecting back to feeling me.
A brilliant read about the effects of the education system on our true selves and where we can choose to go when we’re in it. And life as a living experiment where all our choices come back to meet us – delay, consistency, responsibility, distraction, numbing – a great reminder.
I just thought of something that my daughter shared with me, and that is if you do too well at school, you get noticed and then it is expected that you keep getting good grades, so its better to not try too hard or do a good job even if you can as that way, no one expects any thing of you.
It made me wonder, how many other kids are playing this game, holding back so that higher expectations are not placed on them. Expectations can cripple us and feel so imposing.
That’s massive, play dumb and and the pressure is off. This really highlights the impact of expectations, it leaves one with no space for movement, it loves boxes with hard walls.
It says a lot about the pressures and impositions of school if children are learning coping strategies like this to avoid the intensity of expectations… I wonder if the education system realises how deeply harming it is in the way it is currently functioning and if so, if it even cares. It feels like they have an enormous responsibility to uphold and yet are being irresponsible with it.
I agree Expectations can cripple us and they do feel incredibly imposing. Teaching in the classroom I have observed children doing just what your daughter shared to hold of the pressure and weight of needing to be a high achiever and the demands that come with it. Either way though expectation from new government tests in the UK has risen enormously which will be difficult for pupils and teachers to reach.
Interestingly the UK government had modeled the changes on the Asian system in terms of its success and criteria. It’s too bad that whilst they were looking at results, achievement and outcomes they didn’t check on the health and wellbeing of a population that has to deal with structures and demands of a system that doesn’t truly have the pupil’s heart as a view.
That’s interesting RB what your daughter shared, I remember learning early on in my schools that If I said something intelligent in the class, the other children would then make fun and actually harass me outside of class. I quickly learnt to play down my brilliance and play dumb, to avoid jealousy, I learnt being the ‘bad kid’ in the class gained me popularity with the other children, but this a very detrimental effect on my education and grades, as I basically failed all but one exam.
Thomas I know that this culture is very strong in the UK. Students are anxious of showing their interest in learning because of bullying that might occur. The wanting to fit into their peer group is very strong. It’s as if the UK culture to learning is opposite to that of Asia. My understanding is that in Singapore and Shanghai a vast majority of parents will generally hire tutors out of school hours to boost their children’s learning. In either case both ends of the spectrum leave pupils not in the fullness of who they are and in value of themselves.
Thank you for writing this blog Adele. It gave me an insight and another perspective on education and what can happen at school. It made me appreciate that I didn’t go to school much due to sailing around the world and that I didn’t get caught up into the loosing yourself in the constant drive to get the grades.
The pressure in schools and on children with education today is so enormous and rising and it is bringing generations of children in stress ,suffering, exhaustion and depression and it is articles like this Adele that make a difference showing the truth of what is happening and the belief systems and control we are all under. Loving oneself and others with true self are and responsibility is the real education we are all missing .
Tricia the more we share about true self care and responsibility, the more we will expose the pressures in education today. Children are being put through so much stress and anxiety from such a young age, with no support of self care and self responsibility, no wonder more children are getting burnt out so young.
Well said ‘triciaNicholson’, Adele’s article exposes our current education system and the loveless ideals and beliefs and ideals it holds, and the huge damage it can have on our children which are our future generations, we need to meet children for who they are and support them to love and care for their bodies and themselves, that way the next generation will be loving and of good health and vitality, and able to create a more harmonious humanity than we currently have.
I loved reading every word of your amazing blog Adele but when I got to the last paragraph and read these words my whole body took a deep and gentle breath and said yes: “There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness.” ..yes this is the only way to truly learn what life and humanity is all about.
What a beautiful woman you are Adele, living the richness and fullness of yourself from your heart and bringing your shining light into the world. No education can produce that except your own education in taking responsibility for your choice to connect with what is true within you.
We should have self-love classes in schools and universities.
Any educator who lives self-love naturally imparts this class to all students, therefore, we all have a responsibility and we are all teachers and students of life.
So true Adele life is one big classroom where we are all teachers and students at the same time.
This is priceless Adele – it is like we have to take the longest, most roundabout route in order to finally discover that we have to come back full circle to simply return and re-connect within ourselves, to be back in touch with the innate love waiting there for us all the time, while we were wondering around seeking and looking for it externally!
“I didn’t have to do anything special or to go to a faraway place to love myself, I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me”.
What I also love about this article, is the acknowledgement that how ever ‘far off’ we are there is always a ‘knowing’ that something is not OK about the way we are living. We might not act on this consistent feeling but it is amazing to accept and appreciate that we do always know.
I made the choice to opt out of education as soon I was legally able. I never really participated in the classes except for a couple of teachers that I liked. I found school hard so rather than seeing if I could make it work for me, I chose to see it as a struggle and get out as soon as possible. This never really gave me a foundation for anything in life. I learnt to work to make my life comfortable but not to participate in life. The Way of the Livingness and Serge Benhayon has changed all this and now at the age of 60 I am really learning to commit to life, something I had not done for a very long time.
‘What was seen as ‘A’ grades on the outside was very far from my true story that was not told.’ I love this sentence Adele, it says exactly how we learn to live in this world, keeping a perfect picture on the outside but deeply struggling and feeling lost on the inside. So the focus we put on life is a mere speck of the whole that is going on.
So true Esther and this focus on grades starts in primary school, often with more emphasis in how well a child can read than how well the child is doing emotionally. Our screwed perception of the world starts off very young, in fact I can remember anxiety laden conversations in the playground, even before my boy started school about whether the child was walking or talking well. We seem to mark ourselves on performance rather than beingness. In fact our ability to simply just be is not recognised at all and yet under pins everything.
It is very important that this truth about education is being exposed in the world. So many will benefit from what you share here Adele.
It is important that the truth gets some air time. I know I have been sucked into the education system all my life, and still to this day get sucked into the ideal about the importance of education.
Hi Adele, the pressure you describe is huge and even though with everyone around you living like this, it is really huge that you have allways known that this was not what life is about.
“I didn’t want to rely on book knowledge because I knew there was a deeper way to live, and the only way to test that out was to fully give myself permission to trust in my own heart” Simply beautiful Adele and now you are sharing it with humanity. Thank you.
Adele this is beautiful to read, and something that is very useful to me to hear… “in self-love, I just have to give love to myself, consistently without perfection, in all moments that my awareness allows.”
The way our current education drives both students and teachers into mental ill health is a big wake up call for humanity – we rely so much on other people’s opinions that we forget to look to our own internal wisdom and fail to foster it in our children. Adele is a shining example of how life can be different when we learn to experience our own love.
True teaching and education offers the space for students to evolve to know who they truly are. Current education models offer minimal opportunities to supporting knowing who we are; as a result students generally feel a sense of failure in not being able to live up to the education expectations. So very amazing you made choices Adele to break out of the ideals you grew up with and start honour what was right for you to bring you to the incredible place where you are today. Your experience offers so much for so many. Thank you.
What fascinates me about reading your experience is that the chinese and asian learning methods are what the west are trying to emulate and the social consequences of this method is very clear to see. Because money is what we value we are chasing the competition at any cost. It is literally madness.
Yup. It can only be explained by lunacy. We are seeing the devastation of current education first hand, and yet are still championing and putting our children through a system that causes this…
It is scary – Asian students and their work ethic are the benchmark that nations aspire to – and this gives a very revealing look behind the curtain at how it can affect a child as they grow up, cut off from themselves and not enjoying the love and life of who they already are.
Making lovelessness a benchmark for the world is karma we have to come back to be responsible for, and the re-correction is re-connecting with ourselves.
In London private schools I have heard stories of pupils being pushed out if they do not make the grades and head hunting children with so called academic prowess to take their places. I have no idea if this is true but if it is we have completely lost our way in appreciating what we all bring focusing only on achieving results to impress the parents that are paying the fees.
This is absolutely true in Australian private schools. Scholarships are no different. Lowering school fees for students who can perform academically or sporting wise to raise the reputation of the school.
Also, at one of the schools in my town, they ask the children who underperform to stay home on the national naplan tests so they dont bring the reputation of the school down.
This is a shameful practice, which does nothing to assist those children who need it and distorts the results of the test so the government does not get a true picture of what is going on. Everybody loses when reputation is placed at the expense of truth.
That sounds outrageous Fiona, but unfortunately doesn’t sound surprising at the same time.
I loved this stop “On top of that, this was considered normal by the world.” that your state of living is considered normal is truly a reflection of humanity gone awol! We are seriously living so far from the truth of who we are and the consequences are enormous on health and wellbeing.
Wow Adele – what an amazing shift in your studying and how this started off as the societal norm of non stop research and regurgitation, and then became true experimenting and living in a way that you are a student of life, not of the academic. I grew up with a lot of Asian friends, and I felt the pressures they had to study all the time and be the best at everything. It was very exhausting just watching them and yet the education system put them on a pedestal as a role model for good grades. But what about their anxiety, stress, pressure, exhaustion? This is seen to be something we just have to deal with rather then saying perhaps this is not true education. I love the choices you now make to live in a way that supports you – constantly learning and observing.
Adele, this is beautiful, ‘I wanted to truly learn through human relationships and the relationship with myself’, this feels like a great study, it feels true and is your experience rather than just reading what someone else has written which seems to be the most common form of study.
“Life is reduced to studying… the awesome possibilities and potential of a human being are reduced to the knowledge from books”- sadly cultures like the Japanese and Chinese, and society in general believe this is what success is built on.
It is devastating the toll this is having on young students – the need to succeed or else their is no future potential for them. This is resulting in high suicide rates amongst students. However, does anybody stop to question why this is happening in a so-called advanced world?
I remember the push to hot house the education of children, meaning that these kids were supposed to then have advantages over others because their formal education began earlier. They were then going to get the best jobs and make the most money. I can remember the panic and guilt I felt as I realised I hadn’t done this and felt some guilt because I knew I would not make that decision. So those feelings/thoughts were in the air to try to push people to push their kids into this life of study. I understand why people get caught in this. I felt it was important to have time to play, to dream, to be outside and to just look. It was important to do nothing sometimes. I felt that study was only a part of life and not the measure of a person. I still feel that way and I know that the push to make parents feel guilty, panicked and in a rat race to provide advantage over another is there, but does not come from love but from fear.
” I know that the push to make parents feel guilty, panicked and in a rat race to provide advantage over another is there, but does not come from love but from fear.” And it feels like this is part of the energy driving the educational school system down the road it is currently travelling, which feels like it is moving further away from what true education encompasses.
And this is because the education system places far more importance on getting good grades than they do on love. The educational system has to be about love first and foremost, if not it will inevitably fail (and fall). The children are rebelling from this reason I just shared. Children feel love and can smell a non loving way miles away. For this they should get straight A’s but this is not valued (Yet). So for how long heels will be dug into this ingrained way is for us to witness. The sad thing is that our beloved children are the ones taking the hit until we come to our senses about the (true) purpose of the school system.
The pictures of what success is, what being a good parent is, how a child should be prepared for life are all pictures that keep us from the constant communication with our Soul, which if we have this connection, life is simply feeling every moment and surrendering to it.
What was done out of fear and lovelessness is an imposition not only on our children but also back at ourselves.
I fully agree with you Adele, the best study you can choose is ‘The Way of the Livingness’ and that is the only study that brings us back to where we come from and our bodies are designed for to live.
Absolutely Nico, every study after this should be an extension of our livingness.
It would be amazing for schools to teach that the purpose of life is to heal and evolve. That would be revelatory.
Thank you Adele, from reading your blog, it confirms how life is the greatest classroom there is.
I agree Johanne, I felt the same.
I can’t imagine you studying chemistry, I have to say. Not because it is not in you but because it just doesn’t sit right from the point of view of what I feel you can contribute to all of us and do so very well. The point is that we really don’t know what to do with ourselves when everything is just based on our grades and academic success – we make some very strange decisions and I did too in exactly the same situation.
Could not agree more Gabriele, it really makes sense of why so many people struggle to find purpose in life, if we base our choices on academic success and achievement we are dismissing such a huge aspect of life. Connecting back to self and our body, getting to know life through our choices we can begin to move out of this fog and see that life is not truly based on grades or academic success it is a reflection of the daily choices we make and that begins by developing a loving connection to self.
Gabriele I have come to realise that I could have gone into either Sciences or Arts in the temporal education system, as life will offer me the opportunities to live both in the true sense when I was ready to.
” In this living experiment, the data becomes the confirmation. Nothing outside of me can truly confirm the success of my experiment or not, the only true confirmation is in my own body.” Absolutely Brilliant Adele. There is no greater science or evidence then our own bodies.
I love this too, I love it most because no one can tell me from their heads otherwise as it is known in my body, something simple like science saying that you can drink red wine and it be good for your health, I know from my body that one sip – one sip – of alcohol changes my body dramatically and makes it feel awful so no scientist can tell me otherwise as my body knows the truth it does not have an vested financial interest as do some scientists!
And when we move correctly – with love, then we can even be academics. Studying and being love in the beginning may not be easy but, after a while, it can be very easy.
I am an educator in a high achieving academic school; many of my students are from Asia and I am aware of the culture of education for them, but you offer so much more understanding here for us all Adele. Thank you.
‘ ‘I didn’t have to do anything special or to go to a faraway place to love myself, I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.’ Imagine if this was taught at school; as an educator I do tell this my students. I offer the content as ‘hoops to jump through in life’ as we need to commit to life, however, it is my facilitation of supporting students to know who they are, and that they are stupendous that puts the joy in my step within my role.
So lovely to hear Gina, that you balance presenting the content needed to participate in life with the facilitation of connecting to who we are so that we can really enjoy and contribute in life.
Absolutely fabulous what you have shared here with us Adele. I too have felt so lonely during my life, seeking it from so many different avenues – partner, gurus, meditation, travel, education, successful job etc etc. But you nail it here: ‘I didn’t have to do anything special or to go to a faraway place to love myself, I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.’ This has been my experience and now I very rarely feel lonely. I have returned home and it feels yummy.
So true Gina, what Adele shares here is key, it is simply about coming back to and being ourselves. There is nothing more powerful, loving or expansive than expressing who we are in the world and it brings with it the greatest learning.
‘if I dismiss any moment, I would have to take the responsibility to catch up and feel the consequences of that delay.’ I realising how much of my life I live like this – tidying mess I make only to repeat and then I complain there is so much to do!! Wonderful to be honest about why I create distractions from living a simple, joyful life.
The honesty is key Karin and brilliant you are at doing this. Also key is not to fill our bodies up with self doubt or judgement. I find the judgement and self critique is far more harmful than the oops choice that I am self critiquing. It’s okay to have oops – if we learn from them – but if we keep in the cycle of beating ourselves up then we can’t learn and move on. I love deepening this awareness and learning how to truly re-love and be gentle with myself.
Adele what an amazing article. I am truly inspired by the solidness of your self-responsibility and your commitment to knowing and being you. Thank you.
Yes I agree, Karin what Adele offers is inspiring and exposing of the harm of us selling out to the current education system because of our lack of self worth and acceptance that we are all already All we need to be.
There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness.
This sums it up all so very beautifully Adele, that we are part of a much bigger cycle and rhythm of the universe, but we are also a very important part of that cycle and our movements and choices affect the interconnectedness of everything, and everything matters..
‘There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness.’ I agree Adele with all that I am that this is the way, no doubt about it!
Academia and the associated recognition for achievements is the norm for most children these days and life at school is even more competitive than in days gone by. The further we are away from ourselves the more we need recognition from the things we do. Your story is inspirational, Adele, Thank you.
So true Anne the more we need to strive for achievements academic or otherwise for recognition, the greater the reflection that we have lost touch with our sense of self that is perfectly okay and enough as it is.
Adele thank you for this real, honest and insightful blog – it is truly inspiring to read the changes you have made from having being so crushed by a system, to now embracing all that you are in full, through listening to your own body and understanding that the ‘True science of life is self-love’.
“In this living experiment, the data becomes the confirmation. Nothing outside of me can truly confirm the success of my experiment or not, the only true confirmation is in my own body”.
Yes I agree Stephanie, Adele made an excellent point about our bodies being the only true marker of success, as even those who ‘have it all’ on a temporal level – great career, a great family, financial stability etc. can feel hurt under the surface.
‘By age 11 I was put on tranquillisers before school exams because there was just too much to memorise and I was already living in deep anxiety and had insomnia at that tender age.’ The pressure we put on children to perform is enormous and the effects are devastating and it only gets more and more intense. We are so tender what are we imposing on our children with education in how it is organised at present time?
I agree Annelies. The pressure we put on children is enormous and the effects are devastating…it seems to be getting more and more intense. It is very shocking to realise that metal health statistics are on the sharp increase with teenagers and senior school pupils. Surely this says everything about how they feel in the system and a world of social media that they have to navigate through.
So true Rachel there is so much to navigate in the real world and the virtual world these days. Creating more pressure and expectations to keep up to be ‘successful and happy’ in the world. But at what expense to our health and mental health? This raises serious questions around what the education is preparing our children for, to pass assessments or truly prepare them to be in the world but not so overwhelmed by it
Until we begin to express our concern nothing is going to change. It feels as though everybody has become trapped in the cycle of conforming and no one will make the first move. Yes, it can be uncomfortable but the alternative is that nothing will change.
Tranquillisers at 11 is a truly horrifying picture of the harm of the pressures of the education system as it is. Personally I remember eating coffee out of a jar and downing No-doze like they were tic tacs just to get myself through exams. I understand the importance of education but have to wonder the harm it causes under it’s current consciousness. It seems like there are alarm bells going off everywhere yet you have to wonder if anybody is actually listening… for how bad does it need to get before we actually begin to address the consequences of the absolute lovelessness in the system?
“It seems like there are alarm bells going off everywhere yet you have to wonder if anybody is actually listening”, in our waywardness we move in a way which does not allow the body to listen. This movement has to be stopped (sometimes not until a huge alarm rings) and a different movement initiated for us to truly appreciate the support our bodies are to us.
When you connect to the fact that life is all about Love, there is no subject that is not interesting and compelling to hear more of. We start to see, as you do Adele, how we are all, scientists, engineers, doctors and spokespeople in our own way. When everything relates back to us learning to let in and out Love, our education never stops. This is so different to the way we currently teach. Beautiful how much we all can learn from us simply sharing our everyday livingness experiments generously.
This is so beautiful and inspiring to read, and so true, education isn’t giving us the tools we need to live. It is only providing what we are supposed to know in a intellectual sense, but never provides us with the tools to come to the knowing we have inside. This can only be done through living and loving ourselves. There is more to life than knowledge, we are part of humanity.
Thank you for sharing your short history of what it was like to study in Hong Kong as a child. It is an interesting thing because the whole world can see how informing yourself by pulling in knowledge can make you cold and isolated from people. Yet many countries applaude Chinese education because of the marks they receive.
It is harming to offer praise and receive recognition of what is not true, as then our marker of truth gets reduced and distorted, further alienating us with what is truly true, the quality which is within our heart and felt in our whole body.
Well said Adele.
I love reading your blogs Adele, you give me insights into different worlds! This one was familiar in parts and I am with you in discovering my own data. I am my own living breathing body of evidence.
Lucy, the world we now see and have accepted now is not the world we know is natural, our bodies are alarming us loud and clear to come back to honesty and truthful expression.
I love this Lucy, there is no hiding when we are our own body of evidence.
This is such an interesting blog Adele. I can relate to much of what you went through as a young woman. Although my life was not all about studying it did play a big part and I found myself feeling very disillusioned at the age of 18. I left school just before I did my A levels because I did not see the point in continuing. My parents were devastated, but I finally felt free. After working and learning about life through living it, I did go back to studying but this time it was with a purpose and I enjoyed it the second time around.
The pressure you mentioned of your life of study ring similar to my experiences of academia, and even after those years have past we can continue to play out the ‘rebel’ or ‘good student’ in other areas of our lives just with a different flavour. Playing the good student myself has created a tension between the ‘good’ student and the ‘true’ student that with the support of Universal Medicine I am returning to being. A true student studying from the whole of me and what my body has to present rather than what the mind can put in and repeat. The mind studies are not as up to date with what the body can teach us and the body also holds a record of which lessons need to be repeated and those we have surpassed. The mind can easily get stuck in wanting to repeat something over and over again when it’s not needed.
Very true Leigh, with the ‘good’ student and keen learner actually takes away from us what we inherently know – which is what we very naturally bring to the situations we are involved in. I was with some nursing students recently who will finish at the end of the year and I could feel the lack of confidence they felt because they think that they don’t know enough. Yes there is skills that they will need to learn, but that is constant in any profession, but they have not been supported to understand that simply being themselves, when they walk in a room is everything as is the connection that they have with others, because they have that with themselves first. We have a long way to go in the education system.
Adele I was listening to some lectures at an event yesterday, one was from a retired history teacher and it was so difficult to stay awake. It reminded me of many lessons at school and how the knowledge was more important than the connection, what you share and what I am now reflecting on is learning without connection first is not truly learning at all. And with connection we in constant learning.
Well said David, ‘learning without connection first is not truly learning at all. And with connection we’re in constant learning’. Such a clear difference in what true learning is when your body becomes the teacher.
That’s so interesting David. I was at a conference on Friday and was engaged and fully present – as was everyone – for the whole day and every single person on the day was met warmly by the organising committee and connected to and this was present for the whole day. It was extraordinary to feel and I took more away from this conference that I have any other that I have attended.
When connection is made to be first and foremost, what is taught and how the teaching is received as you have shared David can be very different from how education currently is. And yet, knowledge and information from books simply does not foster connection, and the responsibility in education (and in life) is for educators to be aware and live connection first with ourselves, and with that all that is shared comes from connection.
Thank you Adele and your story is a great expose of how investing in knowledge for the sake of it produces people who are cut off from their greatest intelligence, the intelligence of the Soul. Thank you for sharing your journey and your great courage to take yourself out of the box and decide to study life instead. Meeting Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine is indeed a huge turning point, because we are handed the very tools we need to make life about love and to apply that love to ourselves first and foremost, which simply is the best and most supportive education anyone can ever wish to receive because it re-connects us to our great intelligence and therefore our greatest source of wisdom in the universe, the Love of our Soul.
“Life is reduced to studying… the awesome possibilities and potential of a human being are reduced to the knowledge from books. ” This is way our society works and it has become even more intense in the last 2 decades with degrees required for even the most ‘hands on’ of professions, like nursing. And yet we are missing the most natural intelligence that is freely available to all – the intelligence of the inner heart. This is surely a travesty of what human life is truly about.
Thank you Adele for sharing how you came to live and reflect self-love for everyone to experience. How many people leave school in complete reaction or a state of numbness from having rebelled or excelled? and where do they go with that? Into more of the same. Reading this blog is an opportunity for us all to feel what was really happening at school. What was really behind the rebellious or excellent pupil, and the choices we made when we were at school and how they are still playing out. This blog confirms to us that no matter how we were behaving at school, and what choices we were making, our essence remains with us, waiting to be connected to.
I didn’t have the same ability to study as you did Adele, but I realise that I did the same with music. As a cellist at music college I threw myself into hours and hours of practice trying to attain perfection through a huge desire for recognition. The harm of this was absolute, and my body gave up and couldn’t play any more. What is sad is that I was using music as a way to express all my unresolved emotions. I gave up music long before I came across Universal Medicine, but I have been shown how these issues were still in my body. Developing a way of living with love for myself has been a journey of true healing that has allowed these issues to release and clear. Before we enter into any kind of ‘education’ it would be a good solid support to have an understanding of how to care for ourselves first. This is true education.
Not only studying, but as you say Rebecca, music, sports, anything really that we do in drive and competition to achieve temporal success leads us far away from the true support from our bodies, so the fact is we could never truly build anything truly successful and loving with ourselves. But wait, this picture is heralded and accepted as normal and the way to go in our current life—we have in our unawareness and emptiness said yes to what is not love, and our entire lives can be lived in the mercy of lovelessness that we choose and perpetuate, but then again if we can choose lovelessness, we can also stop and choose love again, but are we willing to let go of our pride and be honest?
Adele I deeply love this blog and all you share so simply and beautifully. I love how you are making life your experiment an everything you have shared and espcially the knowing that “There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness. ” Absolutely thank you a true inspiration.
To be trapped in a system where knowledge is the only way to gain social acceptance is proof that the world we have created is a crazy mess. We know our schools systems suit only the very few and only them if they are willing to cave in to a certain way of being. Questions need to be asked about how we change our education system and put people at the heart of schooling, not exam results, attainments and rewards.
That’s exactly how it’s changed through people being put at the heart of all education – as you so beautifully said Stephen. For marks do not determine how well someone will travel through life or the kind of professional they will be. I have seen many nurses who just passed at uni, to be amazing nurses. Do we value the people or the grades?
Adele your story is truly needed in a world where getting ‘A’ grades at school has become the everything. We need to look at the pressures placed on children in school and how this leaves them feeling ill equipped to deal with life. With the UK government making changes to the curriculum based on the Asian education model the angle of what impact this places on individuals has been ignored. We are lead to believe that the “A graders” have it all, but more testimonies from those few who actually manage to get there shows not all is rosy in the achievement garden.
It’s like the picture that if you don’t finish school or go to university then your life will about to nothing. Many many people have shown this not to be true at all. It also beings up what “have it all” actually means. Is it just the car, house and money for we all know that does not lead to the connections and love that we all search for in life. The quality of all of our relationships, including ourselves is more important. But there is none of that in attaining our A grades.
Adele, it is amazing to read your story, i can feel from what you have written how empty and narrow studying can be – that it can be just about reading books that someone else has written, experimenting and learning from life feels so much more true, i love this, ‘There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul, it involves all my movements, it is interconnected with all of life and humanity and beyond – it is The Way of The Livingness.’
Adele you really bring home to us all that studying and getting high grades is not it. We are led to believe that through education we succeed, but at what expense to the body and to our lives. The world is obsessed with exam results but at the end of day they they mean nothing if we are not living the love we know we can be. Our health and vitality suffer big time but because the way the education system is today it is almost expected that to achieve great results we will have to suffer in some way. Thank God for Serge Benhayon showing there is a different way that does not mean that the young of today are learning that they don’t have to go through an education system in total stress and exhaustion.
Wow Adele – a superb blog and one I will return to to comment on more but for today this is the line that stood out -“Life is reduced to studying… the awesome possibilities and potential of a human being are reduced to the knowledge from books.” as this sums up education and how many see there is a need to fill children with knowledge as if they know nothing and only can learn in the education system rather than seeing all of life is part of our learning.
“Every choice that I make and how consistently these choices are made, will be everything that comes back to meet me, so taking responsibility is a given. Every moment is an opportunity to learn; if I dismiss any moment, I would have to take the responsibility to catch up and feel the consequences of that delay. In learning with responsibility, not only do I feel more energy and vitality, anxiety is replaced with joy. I am growing and expanding and always welcoming more to learn.” Thanks for sharing Adele.
What a choice you made for yourself growing up Adele. It’s amazing that you felt the truth and new that you were making that choice.
True science is the ability to examine and discern the quality of energy behind our every behaviour. That is, we need to honesty ask ourselves; when we have moved, have we moved in and with the love we are or, have we moved counter to this? We then need to answer this truthfully. This approach requires zero defence and therefore the greatest and truest scientist in this sense, is not the one with the highest IQ or the greatest accolades, but the one who has the greatest humility and the depth of honesty required to willingly peer beneath the veil of their own illusion.
Thank God for those who are willing to peer beneath the veil of their own illusion and of that imposed upon them… for we desperately need people with the courage to do so to reflect to others the wonders of what is truly possible when we are free of that which keeps us small and contained within its paradigms.
There is so much in what you’ve shared Adele and this is just one of the points that stands out for me: “No one can offer love to me, no one can tell me how to love myself, no one can force me to accept this love. I didn’t have to do anything special or to go to a faraway place to love myself, I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.” It took a long time and coming to Universal Medicine for me to understand that I couldn’t receive love for myself from someone else – that it had to come from within me and that how I was with myself and subsequently others would then be reflected back to me.
Me too Marika and it is inspiring to feel how Adele changed from studying science to exploring it as a living experiment within herself.
‘In learning with responsibility, not only do I feel more energy and vitality, anxiety is replaced with joy. I am growing and expanding and always welcoming more to learn’ – this surely is the key to learning without the pressure from parents and the educations system.
Thank you Adele for exposing the corruption of education systems the world over which offer children no true choices but instead options for disconnection from themselves and life. You delineate so clearly the devastating impact that this had on you and your body and it is inspiring to read how you have turned this around and found a true way to learn that involves your whole body as a living experiment taking responsibility for your choices without expectation of perfection but a curiosity for life and how it lovingly unfolds.
Reading of your amazing journey Adele is very inspirational. As I was reading through and feeling how the pressure of your studies constantly made you ‘push’ yourself harder but underlying all that you just knew that there was more to life than what was being presented to you. I can relate to this as we become more and more disillusioned by what we feel is happening to us we begin our ‘searching’ in life for that something to fill in those gaps that have been created by what we feel life ought to be. To please others to come up to others expectations we feel so disconnected to the truth of what our purpose is in life. Miracles a plenty happen when Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon come into our lives that searching comes to a halt as self-love starts to become our daily way, then a true way of learning begins.
When you stand back and examine the mountain of knowledge that we forced ourselves to file away and the importance that was always placed on possessing it, is all at the cost of self.
So true Steve – for years, I used to feel rather like a walking filing cabinet cramming in all the information from school and then find there was so much tension, the’ file retrieval system’ got overloaded and a specific file was no where to be found without lots of mental activity causing more loss of energy or sleep.
Bang Steve, spot on.
Anything for self is done so at the cost of self and all.
To crack the impositions of our educational systems is such a huge thing to do. Taking re-incarnation into the equation we all are responsible for creating such systems. And you lead the way out of this mass by living this example and sharing it with us. Thank you, Adele.
Adele, thank you for sharing your choices of accumulating knowledge and the devastation it brought and the choice to learn about life by living it and the understanding this offers.
“I just have to give love to myself, consistently without perfection,” Learning to appreciate yourself with no goal of perfection is a true lesson of life.
‘I have found another way to learn, a way which brings me deeper back to myself every day’. Thank you Adele for expressing through your story how the world”s obsession with education and academic success robs children and young people of truly connecting to themselves. I know of families who believe that education and academic success is ALL that matters. The prize at the end of the journey worth the distress and and agony endured: secondary recognition through their child’s success, associated benefits of high incomes and promise of financial security. Material reward and status came before the inner well-being and health of the child. Thankfully, and through the work of Universal Medicine many parents now consider the child’s well-being first, school and education is something they do, not who they are.
As a world we must be feeling such a lack of worth to begin with to even make education and academic success an obsession that further reinforces our lack of worth, this is a cycle that did not originate from our hearts and if continued in the same manner will not move back into the heart. A stop and a different movement has to be initiated back to what is truth and that is we are awesome, grand and full already to begin with, all of humanity equally so.
I find it totally amazing Adele, that you were able to start to break away from the norm and start connecting back to yourself before Universal Medicine, it just goes to show your Soul never abandons you and you never lose truth when connected to your heart, enabling you to find your way back and your connection with the way of the livingness.
There is nothing more confirming in life Kevin than moving with our Soul and have that confirmation felt in our body. We all have this ability however most of the time it is because of the pictures that we carry that prevent us from accepting this.
Making academia the number one important thing in a child’s life seems to be what the West is trying to do as well, reducing art and creative studies so as to make more time for the three R’s. The stress put on the children seems to be cleverly designed to make them lose themselves and many must see the two options of excel or rebel their only options.
‘Life is reduced to studying… the awesome possibilities and potential of a human being are reduced to the knowledge from books’, and our whole education system is based on this. We try to control life by making it about knowledge instead of what we already know in our body.
What made me a bit shaky is that we learn to think that we can control life by making it about knowledge – how crazy it that. From day one we had this deep inner knowing inside of our bodies and than chose to forget it – we are indeed a very special species.
Absolutely Annelies. Education, learning and the entire schooling experience could be a way to enhance the potentials of every child and person rather than reducing their knowledge to just things from textbooks. If we were supported to find out own ‘flair’ and passion then schools could be very different places, and our attitude to learning would change completely.
“The more I gave my heart the opportunity to express and got out of my own way, the more my life flowed”. Living in a mental world has no heart in it and once we connect to our heart, as you did Adele, then we open to relationships with ourselves and to people first and the need for recognition and achievement is not so pressing because we are not reliant on that to define us as who we are. We can then bring more quality to our studies.
Well said Sandra Newland, the loving relationship we have with ourselves is fundamental in our ability to walk life in connection to all, and life flows. Such a different way forward will eventually be our ‘norm’ as the success that is so prized is not so successful in the end and it is being exposed at every level.
Adele, I love this line “I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me. I simply had to be myself.” Being party to the pressures of the education system takes us far away from ourselves into a world where recognition and achievement substitute for love. Your blog exposes this and shows how it is possible to return to living in a loving way no matter how far we have strayed from that.
Yes Sandra that line resonated with me ” I just have to give myself permission to feel my own love and offer it back to me.” It’s one thing to be loving, another to be self loving in your every move but I feel Adele has given me a deeper appreciation in giving ” myself permission to feel my own love ” which doesn’t involve any doing, just feeling. Super gorgeous detail you have offered Adele.
Movement is meaningless when we do not move in the depth of quality that we are, and we are moving all the time, everything in life is movement. So are we moving in evolution or not?
Adele I love your blog so far. I have read half of it and can’t wait to return to it after work. It is super exposing, very real and touching. Thank you deeply for this eye opening sharing and WOW what an amazing unfolding you have committed to!
Well Adele. I have now read all of your amazing sharing. WOW what an inspiration you are to all, especially those who have grown up in similar circumstances to and also delete depth of loneliness and anxiety etc.
Thank you again.
I was glued to my screen reading this Adele, seeing the steps you took and what you learned by experimenting and feeling what was true. Leaving connection out of any equation with self and others is the real failure here… not getting a lower grade on our report card. Teachers would see some devastating and sad behaviours children are running with because of culture and family expectations. My sons share stories of how stressed some peers get around report time because they’ve been told that anything less than A’s are not good enough. How refreshing for you to now live Adele knowing that we have always been enough no matter what we do.
Yes Aimee, when I look at it now the way our education system is set up is actually very devastating to humanity. While they pretend to give room to explore and develop our potential we carry within, education only takes us further away from who we truly are as many come to a stage that they are completely lost and in a way have lost sight of the purpose of life and with that the giving up on life is introduced in our existence.
We could even say that with our current education system we are learning how to dis-connect, how to not be ourselves and how to follow all the false beliefs and ideals that are fed to us.
Absolute truth. As my young children have just started the schooling system, what you describe here Vicky is absolutely what I am seeing go on.
I remember feeling this way at school, the giving up and asking the question of ‘what is this all for?’ and is it just the same when you leave school. And my boys are saying the same things from feeling the pressure of ticking boxes at school and making it about what they do not who they are.
Growing up I put pressure on my myself to get an “A” grade in all my subjects. I had this image that if I got “A”s I would be admired, accepted more by my peers and loved more by my parents. I was the youngest of 4 siblings and felt very disconnected or not met from my parents. They were too busy working from home or out at work.
So I studied hard similar to Adele, and suffered anxiety, insomnia ,deep sadness and loneliness.
Thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I have reconnected to who I am, and now know that I am enough, and don’t need to prove anything to anyone from “doing”. The key lies in the ”beingness”- in the stillness within I feel the love and joy of being uniquely me.
When a movement that leads to what is not true is carried out in life, it will always produce what is not true. That movement has to be halted first—before any other new movement can be introduced. No matter how we tell our children that the way of education now is not true, it would not change anything if they have accepted the movement of not feeling their own love and are in disconnection with themselves, because the picture of having to fit in is one which is deeply controlling.
Great wisdom here Adele, and this can be applied to all parts of life, such as making changes with parenting, relationships, work etc. “That movement has to be halted first—before any other new movement can be introduced.” This is definitely something I will be experimenting with today.
I have experienced a similar childhood which was based on performance and grades and not on truly living. How was I being set up by this system and my own choices to live a true life lived in full with all of me when I was being raised to live much lesser from the mind? What I have observed is that there is a form of thinking of us thinking that we are ‘free to live life’ once we get out of school and tertiary study. But this is not true as we can live life freely now by simply re-connecting with our soul
That sounds familiar – being “free to live life” as a huge expectation of better things to come when that lack of connection to our true essence really just spells never getting there; and thus we hop from one stage of life to another, from school to university to professional life and still, being “free to live life” remains a dream or mirage; but then there is ‘retirement’ and the ultimate carrot, or so it seems. Does it really work though? When I look around me I have to say it obviously doesn’t and also, hope and expectations don’t make such a great foundation.
Pictures of life disappoint and devastate and they constitute the prison that keeps us entrapped in an illusion of not being aware of what life is truly about.
Joshua, I like what you say about thinking that we are ‘free to live life ‘ once we get out of school and studies. But not surprisingly this way of thinking continues also in our working life when people say ‘I will be ‘free to live life’ when I am retired’ instead.
Yes it’s true there can be this constant pushing of the goal posts so that we can continue in our comfort and never truly live.
Absolutely it is one and the same the energy. We are always looking to achieve the next destination but if destinations are really true why do we need more and more of them?
Absolutely true Joshua! Being free to live life is living the life of your Soul!
There is no freedom in being pushed in a system and rhythm that does not feel natural or honor our body. But this too is a choice.
I also chose the option to excel in the beginning, and later rebelled. I could and can see the faults of the system back then and present, and I used to think it was them that had to change. But I betrayed my own responsibility too. Here I read a fantastic example of a posture to be a true student of life, and this makes me see how that conflicts with the way our mind likes to see a life as – that there is an image of ideal to be attained, that there is an end point in ‘time’; and how that can get still in the way of self-claimed students of life to be consistent with their choices and alignment.
Fumiyo how blessed we are of the awareness that every situation in life that is reflected back to us is simply the love we see of ourselves, and it could be used in our deepening development.
Adele,
I really enjoyed this article. The awareness you had around loosing the knowing and feeling of who you are to excel in education, is something I greatly admire, with the small understanding that I have of the pressure of the Asain culture that you lived in, to have this inner knowing that it was not who you are. Inspirational.
With the knowing what movement teaches is to express the knowing without delay.
I love this – I feel how you have so deeply taken this living experiment into your heart, Adele. Absolutely beautiful. And I feel a true humbleness of a committed, diligent student. Our life is actually a series of constant living experiments, whether we are conscious of it or not, we are getting feedbacks and results from our body and in our heart all the time and it’s just that many of us were choosing to ignore and override them – in favour of ideals and beliefs, or out of more deliberate self-sabotage.
“…the missing link to the True science of life is self-love.”
This is so true. It also the missing ingredient in our education systems. We barely hold our children with true care, let alone the love that they, us all, deserve to be held in. By caring, nurturing and loving ourselves, we are better able to show true care, love and support to others.
Absolutely Liane! The whole purpose of life is to bring who we are to what we do, and we cant do that without being loved and nurtured for who we are.
The true care we hold our children or others in is as much as that we hold ourselves too. So there is nothing to push or pretend and nothing ever to be hard on ourselves for, parents and children, we are always a deepening relationship, if that is the case, we feel love and there could never be blame. But if one side is not willing to deepen in a relationship, then it could be challenging in the sense that stagnation feels awful and we would end up walking far from each other or pretending to be close but feeling immense tension.
“I dropped studying science, and started to live the experiment of life.”
This was a great choice Adele. When we choose to study life, everything becomes a living science. We are the scientists, our every movement is under the microscope and our bodies are the instruments that record the results of a life lived in love or not.
I agree, after all life is a science experiment.
Evidence based medicine is all the rage….so enjoy studying your body and how it works so if your doctor ever asks you, you can offer some amazing insights and evidence that will have him throw out the books and study you!
My doctor has been quite baffled about a lot of things he has seen change in me, he has a lot of questions as they do not fit into his normal expectation of practice but he has never questioned these changes, as if he respects that I understand my body.
totally agree Liane, the best way to learn is to be the scientist of our own lives.
To excel or rebel – this really sums up the options for a child who feels incarcerated by a system of education that does very little to support and nurture true learning. What you share is inspiring Adele for it shows us there is a way to arise out of this seeming conundrum and that is, to study life as we live it and not life as we are told it should be. When we begin to look at the world in this way we become forever students as well as eternal teachers in this, our classroom of life.
Wow Adele – thanks for this eye-opening blog on your experience of education in your younger years and early adult life which is simply an example of what many would simply accept as normal. It really brings a depth of understanding as to where these ideals, beliefs and behaviours come from and the devastating impact they have on our bodies. However what you have clearly outlined here is a clear and very different way forward that begins with self-love and this is something that each one of us have access to.
Dear Adele your last paragraph is exquisite and definitely inspires me to consciously choose to move with my full body awareness to the best of my ability in every moment. It is truly a wonderful way to live.
Adele, your blog has touched me deeply in remembering the several students we used to host from the Asian countries during their final years at high school in student exchange situations, and the anxiety they exhibited as the pressure was upon them to perform in a way that seemed to me as a young mother of 3 children at that time, to be cruel ,demanding and dismissive to the core of the true worth of each of these gorgeous students. I recall one incident where our student received a call from her tutor that had her in tears as he was making demands of her to fulfil his expectations while she was staying with us, and demands that we could not even fulfil for her on a physical basis as we lived in a country town far away from the places he demanded she visit and research. It was at that time we heard of the many child suicides that were occurring as a result of these unrealistic expectations. Thank God for Serge Benhayon bringing the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom to the world once again – bringing a semblance of what is more loving and naturally so for humanity.
Robert what is witnessed in my every day life also is this momentum of going with what does not feel true and not expressing it but accepting it to be what is normal–does not only affect students. It affects every grown up working in society and creates an immense disharmony where those who are looked upon to be in power are suppressing those who feel they are in a lack of power, but the truth is there is no power when we do not take the responsibility of expressing what is true, and that is creating deep unrest and disharmony in our world.
‘Knowing that every moment is a living science brought back responsibility in my life.’ I love this line Adele. When we are forever ‘getting through life’ we do not value each moment and the opportunity for learning and responsibility to ourselves and life itself that each moment holds. This has been a huge learning for me.
“Going to school seemed like being in a vacuum that took me away from daily life.” this describes it all Adele! Anything in our lives that is like a vacuum and takes us away from our responsibility to the WHOLE, is draining us and is continuing our disconnection.
Thanks for sharing Adele. As you say it feels like at school there are two options : 1) to rebel or 2) to conform and achieve, both with equal hardship and struggle. What is the other way? Well there is another way, but nothing prepares us for this when we are growing up and going to school. The other way is going to school knowing it does not define us, studying enough to pass, looking after ourselves on all levels and not giving more importance to some things than others. This may sound hard to do because there is so much to consider — friends, what people think of you, what you parents say, but there is a way of living the future now, and most children are not educated that they can live this way.
The third option you present Harrison sounds like a pretty good one, and whilst so completely opposite to the most common chosen options, it’s the one that makes the most sense and that will guarantee a more joyful life experience.
I like your third way Harrison, because you can participate in life, society, and community where there is little love, or truth, but still be true to yourself. That is very self-empowering way to live.
Adele…through the raw beauty of your expression you have reflected for us all that underneath the devastation of how so many people are living, we all “deeply know that Love is part of the equation” patiently awaiting our connection to it. You have shared with us a story that unfortuneately is not uncommon, especially in schools, “to rebel” or “to excel” being choices that are made, both with heavy consequences affecting on all aspects of wellbeing.
Adele, It is through sharing our experiences like this that we begin to open up the conversations of how choices play a huge part in our responsibility towards our own reconnection to self love.
So beautifully put – “I have come to the simple conclusion that in self-love, I just have to give love to myself, consistently without perfection, in all moments that my awareness allows.”
Love that you have chosen to share so intimately with us…
Yes Chrissy, no matter how far away from love we live, we all “deeply know that love is part of the equation.” This reminds me that we are all the same, and deep down are all looking for exactly the same thing.
I could clearly feel the devastation in what Adele shared. I wasn’t brought up with a huge focus on the academic side of things so for me it was an eye opener to what many in the world are experiencing and feeling and avoiding to feel. I agree getting the conversations started is awesome.
Intimacy is the natural movement we are impulsed first with ourselves deep in the heart and from there moved to all parts of our body and as we move accordingly with this impulse we touch everyone and everything physically as well as non physically.
Well said Chrissy. Often people think that choosing to ‘rebel’ will have much worse consequences and effects than choosing the super academic and ‘excel’ path. However what Adele has exposed here is the fact that both choices have equally damaging effects, and can seriously damage someone’s mental and physical wellbeing. Being ourselves does not lead to these kinds of implications, and is the best balance.
The world considers it normal to live in such disconnection from ourselves, to place achievement ahead of the true quality of being we are living. We have settled for so little. It is by the lived light of those who can feel the truth that will re-awaken this slumber of the mundane and discordant existence.
It is very lonely living in disconnection from ourselves, especially when we can feel that there is so much more to life and yet we are nowhere near accessing it. This summarizes how I lived my whole life until I met Serge Benhayon. Need I say more? Quite simply, the work and unceasing love of Serge Benhayon has transformed my life in every which way, to the point where I am now able to be of assistance to others to equally awaken, and this is a precious gift that has no earthly value. It is a gift of true love.
Living with our selves is being in a constant relationship with responsibility and this is something I am beginning to cherish. I do not need any authority outside of me to guide me on how to live or the choices to make, for I can feel what is true. And when I err, my circumstances bring me back to truth. These corrections have been very large and painful over the years because I was not willing to accept the responsibility of my awareness. Now, they are tiny, just a little tug where required because I am in full acceptance of my light.
It is so empowering to be responsible, will not leave anything up to another, but through our relationship with ourselves deepening, we experience different levels of acceptance and it is truly inspiring to see true change.
‘Finding ourselves’ or simply ‘being our selves’ is about living with the love you describe, Adele. Expressing that love to our selves as a foundation, which then naturally expands into all that we do and say. It is not reliant on particular attitude, way of dressing, living in a particular location or eating a particular way; all of which I explored in my search for myself. It is the greatest gift and the greatest feeling to finally know the truth of who I am and to be living in a way where every day, I wake with such appreciation for all that I am and all that I have been given, seeing myself blossom into the gorgeous woman I have always been, but couldn’t feel or see because I was so blinded by the fog of the illusion I chose to accept.
Adele, you are such a strong point of light, re-awakening your connection to yourself like a warrior of the heart in Hong Kong. Thank you for sharing your story. I am curious at what stage you began to study and work with fashion design and styling? Quite a move away from academia; science and Chinese studies!
I can relate to your process. I get the sense that Chinese culture places an extra focus on study which burdens young students; I saw that in the many Asian students who moved to Australia to do their final years at my school, quite a prestigious girls grammar school in Melbourne.
Nonetheless, my family is Academic and the pressure in my school was to achieve, academically, in sport or in music.
Like you, I chose to excel but the path of rebellion began in year 9 and continued as a parallel process to my academic achievement until the end of year 12. I told myself that I just had to push everything (all of my feelings) aside and push through to the end, as then I would have ‘good opportunities’ in my life. Yet I limped over the finish line, broken and crushed, with not one iota of enthusiasm for the good University place I had earned.
I, too, made choices to shift my studies over to a more experiential learning of life, as I felt this was where I would ‘find myself’: I moved from studying Arts, to Drama and Theatre studies and then to Natural Medicine. I was drawn to be nurtured in a World that felt so cold and false. And the reality of healing was very clear to me, only it took me a further 10 years to find Universal Medicine and re-train as a true practitioner of the heart and soul, healing my wounds of the ill choices I had made to that point. I have learned that academia alone is not the true way for us to live and express the truth of who we are together, as a one unified humanity and whilst I will continue to study, I don’t think it will ever look like the degree or PHD that I once thought I needed.
Emma I went straight into the fashion industry as a sales person right after graduating from University, so more living was being called for in more areas in life.
And we are all PHD’s of life! Every single one of us who is living, breathing here on earth has been given the most blessed education, it just takes our responsibility to do so.
Wise are those who accept themselves as a living science. There is much to learn should we be willing to Evolve.
“There is a true way to learn; it involves my whole body and Soul.” This blog is absolute gold Adele and greatly needed today as the education system is based from knowledge learnt and discounts the true wisdom shared from our bodies. Thank you.
I feel the most important part of learning is purpose. With true purpose, the most ghastly and most ghastly presented material can be learned while keeping your equilibrium. Without purpose, exhaustion or disconnection may just be guaranteed.
I have also been surprised how much it is possible to combine academic study with true service, purpose and even love. It is possible, though it may not be immediately obvious.
I agree Christoph that when there is a true purpose it is possible to keep a balance in life. When you understand what the study is for it is easier to do it. At secondary school, I remember studying for the sake of studying and not because I knew what I wanted to do with it afterwards and it felt terrible. There was no connection to purpose. This is why studying, as an apprentice is great because you are connected to the study you are doing as you are also working in that area.
So true Elizabeth practical based education such as an apprenticeship where they are in a relationship with another who has expertise in their field as well as theory development is a much more balenced way to learn.
With a strong and unwavering purpose in life, every moment in everything there is learning with purpose.
Adele I remember feeling exactly as you did, wondering why I was learning about life rather than living it. For me it had become a safe haven, an escape from a world which I did not really want to engage in. My true education has come with my engagement with Universal Medicine – here I am forever learning the practical skills needed to make full use of the opportunities for learning that life itself presents – this has been my true education.
Adele your blog has touched me deeply. I know a lot of Asian students and see the pain of the situation you describe written on their bodies and carried like a wound in their hearts, especially if their struggle to succeed does not result in excellent results once they study in another culture. Once here they have to study hard to overcome the handicap of another language, another way of approaching learning and meeting strict student visa regulations as well as meeting family or self-imposed expectations. There is no fitness for life developed in this vicious cycle. Your blog would be very helpful for students to read.
The choices and constellations we have said yes to allow us the choice to further perpetuate the lack of worth we are as human beings, to continue to look up and be entrapped by supremacy by living the reductionism that we have accepted, or to start to wake up and say no because we feel and live the love that we are equally with everyone else.
“Going to school seemed like being in a vacuum that took me away from daily life” – it is the same experience over here in the UK. We are prepared for exams, exams, exams – not for life
Totally agree Jessica and it is the preparation for life that is so essential because that’s where a lot of people go out and have difficulty.
How is living for grades and recognition and accepting damage to our bodies ever okay when we are the grandness that we are? How can we ever hold back in expressing how not okay this is when we are the sons of God and have a daily responsibility to reflect all that humanity has accepted and thought is the normality of life when in truth are devastation we have created for ourselves and for our future generations?
“I wanted to truly learn through human relationships and the relationship with myself. I dropped studying science, and started to live the experiment of life.” Adele, I would feel that making that huge change in your life took much courage, wonderful that you stopped doing what was regarded as ‘normal’ and obviously realised in your heart that seeking knowledge for it’s own sake is not what life is about. The way that education nowadays imprisons children from such an early age into this rigid mindset that knowledge is the only way to success in life is so damaging to so many lives. And I know that within the Chinese (and many other Asian) culture, education is regarded as the ‘be all and end all’ for children who are driven so strongly in this regard by their parents. But this means that our true essence becomes buried deeper and deeper, so these people do not understand life and how it is meant to be lived. Thank you for a great expose of the damage that the present ‘normal’ education system imposes in Asia (and much of the world now) on people.
To go deeper than just how entrapped we are in the education system is also the entrapment with family and with culture. Any entrapment in life is a picture that we hold onto that limits and reduces us from living the trueness and expansiveness that we are, and there is no inspiration in this.
Absolutely Adele, until we begin dropping each and every one of these pictures we inprison ourselves by, we hold ourselves back from baring witness the much grander picture that awaits us.
‘Knowing that every moment is a living science brought back responsibility in my life.’ Adele, what a sentence this is, just understanding this brings us back to ourselves and how the choices we make determine the life we can live, thank you.
A wisdom that has no end, and needs not books or knowledge to know itself; but instead delivers books from the wealth of agelessness within.
The simplicity of your experiment felt lovely in my body and confirmed that we all know this loving way to be. It would be so empowering for kids to read that the struggles they face in education are a normal reaction to what is not true and to be confirmed that the two options offered are not the only way to respond.
I agree Fiona.
I absolutely love this blog!
I agree Bernadette, what Adele is sharing here is huge and exposes that we as a society are accepting that it’s all about what you can do/achieve and not about the person with huge impact on our health and sense of identity and who we see ourselves as. We will never choose to care for our bodies or know ourselves as more when the head is running the show. this line her Adele …the only true confirmation is in my own body.’ This line shows us, the true power of listening to our bodies and what they are sharing with us as the way back to claiming ourselves back from our choice to fit in and be accepted. The only acceptance we ever need comes from our own bodies and you most definitely reflect that for us. Thank-you.
Adele, you have certainly made a huge turnaround in your life which requires an enormous amount of honesty and dedication. Love is a word that is easily thrown around yet it’s something that is limitless in how it’s expressed from person to person. One thing for sure is that we all recognise it (to varying degrees) as something that is deeply familiar, but for most it’s still seen as the things a person does, rather than lives from inside of themselves. Thank you Adele – you have made it clear how important it is that we make this distinction.
“Adele, you have certainly made a huge turnaround in your life” – you certainly have, and it comes across in the way that you write that you are no longer held down by this
How important is self awareness? What struck me Adele was the way in which you have used your life as your TRUE education arena and experimented on yourself; going back and refining your awareness. Life has become a laboratory where you are applying love of self and then naturally offering that to others. -true, deeply touching and beautiful life education! Serge Benhayon is the ultimate educator, inspiring so many to return to the most evolutionary laboratory that is inside us all. This blog is revolutionary Adele!
I agree, Bernadette, this blog is revolutionary. Adele has exposed so much here about the lack of love within the education system, and the living of life purely to obtain knowledge as the whole reason for being. Adele’s experiment resulted in a true education, how to live one’s life in a self loving way. And how wonderful that after Adele had walked this path a short way, she then met Serge Benhayon who was able to help her learn what true love is, a deep connection to oneself, building that love which now emanates from this beautiful lady to all she comes in contact with.
Well said Bernadette. I too love the way that Adele has experimented with her life to uncover what is true, and agree that Serge Benhayon is the ultimate educator.
Bernadette the ever on-going class for all of humanity in life should be self-awareness.
Thank you Adele for a magnificent expose of the way in which education can become a prison – a place where our essence is incarcerated. I love the way you expressed your experience Adele. There was no blame or resentment; only true self acceptance and responsibility. Loved every word.
So true Bernadette. There was no blame or reaction in this blog as can be the case when adults try to expose the untruths they experienced as kids. I could just feel the solidness and joy of what Adele has claimed back for herself. Very inspiring!
Bernadette, so well expressed – education can appear to’ incarcerate our essence’ if we let it, and Adele’s blog is living proof that we can free ourselves from this prison. I agree it is lovely how she has no blame or resentment and can treat her experience and a living experiment.
These are such powerful words about the current state of education, containing the absolute truth Bernadette: “a place where our essence is incarcerated.” Instantly on reading these words I could clearly relate to them, seeing how I (and all those around me) lost the knowing of who I truly was the moment I stepped through the school gate and began to replace it with what was expected of me, and not how I could expand on the beautiful and knowing child that I naturally was in my essence.
Dear Adele, I was mesmerised reading your story today. And I find it a bit hard to put into words what I just experienced. Stunning and profound are two words that come. You have exposed much of what is wrong with our education system and nailed the part about rejecting or excelling at school. I rejected and it had its own set of consequences. Our education system is filled with incredible people wiht so much love & wisdom (children and teachers/staff) but the system is completely set up for that not to be expressed and it is so much about knowledge and outcomes. Reading your story I can feel the devastation for how many students are living like this – particularly within Asian culture. Thank you for sharing so honestly and that last paragraph summing up the Way of The Livingness was so gorgeous.
I agree Sarah,
Adele has truly exposed how culture, beliefs and should dos govern how and why we learn, our why we rebel. I too felt mesmerised as I read. A truly amazing article that education systems and cultural diversities could use as a foundation of how to move forward in our world today.
Culture can be an incredibly imposing influence at times and it takes a fair bit of smarts to know how to handle it… Smarts we are not always encouraged to have as children.
The truth that everyone can feel but is trapped in by the current education system simply has to be honestly expressed for the well-being of every body and the system that will one day be.
I wonder what it would like if our education system WAS geared towards teaching children how to embrace and express their joy and talents, rather than try to ‘mould’ kids into being the kind of person society wants them to be.
Thanks Adele for sharing your story. It is incredible the disregard that we will put ourselves in in order to acquire knowledge because we are sold the lie that knowledge through books is king and is what will get us through life. Thank goodness for The Way of the Livingness, which has shown us that true knowledge comes not from how much we read or study, but comes from when we connect with our inner-heart. Within the inner-heart is all the true wisdom of the universe and the way to access this is through our connection with our body.
Absolutely – what’s interesting is how the education system is geared towards valuing what information you can put in your brain as opposed to the body that you actually live in!
The clarity exposed here is that the education system is a reductionism of the grand intelligence that as a whole body and being we are capable of.
…and yet we fight, work hard, cram, compare, compete and study how to be reduced versions of ourselves!
Yes Kylie, you have made the point well that what we consider normal is putting our life’s energy to a false ideal and disregard and abuse ourselves in the process. Why do we work so hard to know ourselves less?
So true, Jessica. The system does not teach, or in any way support, self-love and connection with others. It is isolating, and the competition to achieve further separates people. What use is education if it does not lead to evolution and careers that offer connection and true support for all?
Yes imagine a day Jessica where our lessons at school are focused on valuing and appreciating what our body is communicating and learning how to self-nurture and affirm ourselves. Combined with the necessary skill development in the areas we are interested in would be so beneficial.
Even if the whole world has chosen to align with what is not true, our bodies will never lie to us, and that marker of truth is forever within us to be expressed.
The ongoing teachings of our body remain with us – regardless of whether we choose to study them or not… they are simply presented in different ways until we learn.
I agree Marika, through Adele’s story, we learn that it is never too late and whatever degree of distress we’ve experienced we can always comeback and heal. It’s a tremendous release to know we need look no further than the wisdom within ourselves.
For a child to be driven into high achievement with no purpose or confidence, to the extremes of anxiety and emotional hurt, to be void of care is one thing but “On top of that, this was considered normal by the world.” proves the world has got its priorities set to the detriment of people.
Good point Bernard – it is definitely normal, and also accepted, and even celebrated that you’ve overcome the anxiety and pressure to come out on top
Great point Bernard and Jessica that the world in general has got the priorities wrong. By doing it is a foundation of so much that is out of balance in the world today. Adele is an inspirational example of how life is so much more through the foundation of “the True science of life is self-love.”
There is always going to be someone at the top of the pile, this means that people are often trodden on on the way up, some are left behind and some are left at the bottom. Where’s the equality in that?! So as you rightly say Bernard, the world has definitely got its priorities upside down, it doesn’t appear so much about people anymore, just about results, statistics, one-up-man-ship, competition and a dog eat dog mentality.
Well said Bernard. If this is what is going on, we as a society need to stop and ask why? And why are we allowing it?
The normality as accepted by the world is a strong force but not as powerful as the consistent connection we collectively return to with Soul and take responsibility in expressing.
Gorgeous!! So true Adele. No greater power is that of one living in connection with their Soul.
If this way of living is considered normal by our culture and our world, as humanity we hold ourselves with very little worth and the emptiness that we feel within ourselves is allowing this to take place. We have chosen to be in such a situation to bring back the truth that we know, to live again the responsibility to reflect that this life is not what we have been told it is. The detriment of ourselves and of people in general is nothing natural.
Absolutely. We are taught to value results over quality; which results in the lack of quality in our daily living that we then strive and work hard to seek a solution for.
I agree Bernard, there are some big questions to ask here about what we consider normal and why. Is the normal that we strive for actually the truth or have we allowed a system that has gone so far in the opposite direction of what true care of a child is.
Wow Adele, this blog is as amazing as you are. The commitment to scientifically look at what was working and what was not has allowed you to let go of the what is not and ” simply be myself” The warmth and love that you are is beauty-full to behold and an inspiration for all to feel. Thankyou for sharing this incredible story.
I agree Tim, Adele’s story is a true gift to humanity – showing the way for us to first learn to connect with and love ourselves. This is true education and I’d love to see this piece go viral. I’ve posted it on social media already!
Me too. Let’s start sending it out!
That’s great Bernadette, posting articles such as Adele’s on social media is a sure way to reach a large audience and I am now asking myself what can I do to support humanity. I suppose the simple answer is to start to connect and love myself more and more, open myself up and let people in and then I can be my own form of walking social media everywhere I go, and if everything is energy then even sitting my living room typing these words, being the love that I am, is service, and the greater the love the greater the service.
Bernadette I love what you have recommend as it is true – more people need to read about such an inspiration so that they can feel through their bodies that there is an other way.
I also loved the commitment Adele showed to her experiment with life and re-discovering her true self. It highlighted that we need to keep focusing inward rather than looking outside for answers or approval from a world that doesn’t have true answers.
You hit the nail on the head Fiona, “we need to keep focusing inward rather than looking outside for answers or approval…”, why do we constantly seek approval, recognition and acceptance from others when all we will ever need is right there inside of us. If only humanity could acknowledge that what they are missing is the connection to their true selves, and they have all the answers in their all-knowing bodies, then the consciousness of humanity would shift and begin to heal, thus returning us all to our true origins, that being a divine Son of God.
To use one’s own lived experience as the experiment is the marker of true science for me, especially in the quality of self-love as the guiding principle as Adele described.
Adele shines in her picture doesn’t she Tim, and I can imagine she is like this in her day to day as well. Amazing indeed.
Agreed Tim, Adele is truly an inspiration to behold as are you. For a man to express so openly, tenderly and lovingly is a rarity today but what should be a normality. What we consider today is completely opposite to what is our true state of being. It is normal for a man to express his love and tenderness not to be tough and strong and pretend nothing hurts him.
This is a massively needed culture expose Adele. Many children feel trapped in a loveless system and that they only have the two choices you describe, to rebel, or to excel. Both choices drive you further from your truth.
And with these limited choices everyone misses out on experiencing the true qualities and wisdom of each child in the world.
Yes Aimee, when we all buy into this culture, we all miss out on ‘the true qualities and wisdom of each child in the world.’
Absolutely it’s time to expand our education systems to include much more than just knowledge and the practice of justifying our arguments regardless of whether they are based on facts or fabrications.
This is sorely needed in our education. LIfe is so much more than the ability to recall and analyze information.
Abby and jennym I agree it is time to expand our education systems that include much much more than gaining knowledge. We have narrowed our true potential for eons. As The Way of The Livingness shows we are so much more than we think we are and we can be so much more than the current education system allows.
Indeed Abby its time we rebalance mind driven knowledge with bodily wisdom.
For children to now be presented that there is third choice, as Adele has so clearly shown and is now living, would change the shape of education as we know it. And this change will not be driving the children from the truth but re-connecting them to it and to who they truly are.
So true, Ingrid. I have observed that it is difficult for children to take up the third choice as they have to live everything the school system is not. However when they choose to do this, the results are amazing for them and they can feel the power of being truly self loving.
Any system that asks you to either excel or rebel has to be fundamentally flawed. With the extent of anxiousness, stress and exhaustion today, it says a lot about our current systems.
If the values in our schools which is a lot of the foundation of our children lives are ones of putting success above all else then what qualities are they taking when they leave school or university and go out into the work place?
Our children are the parents of the future, so unless something changes goodness only knows that state the world will be in for the next generation. It is no good resting on our laurels or burying or heads in the sand, so I applaud Adele and many others who are speaking up for truth and bringing into our awareness what is truly going on in society.
Well expressed Sandra. In evolution there is no resting on our laurels, as every plateau is already tension. With responsibility as a human being and all the roles we share in life, every relationship is asking for us to go deeper, for the returning of humanity out of what is only being human is the purpose. There is no image to follow from this, we just have to feel our way in each and every movement we make, with our bodies as guide to confirm if a movement is evolutionary or anti-evolutionary that we have chosen.
Our responsibility in raising the children of this world leaves a lot to be desired. However, this is because we have not been taught to truly parent ourselves, and therefore have little hope of truly parenting others until we begin to live with the love we deserve first and foremost, and stop living as a by-product of our past choices and experiences.
Well put Bernie, the education system is in great need of a massive overhaul with the focus being on connection, brotherhood and learning with the purpose of serving
Hear hear Michelle, so very true. It is not so good that many view children as helpless victims and not seeing them for the incredibly empowered beings that they are.
“What was seen as ‘A’ grades on the outside was very far from my true story that was not told.” I love this line as it exposes how performance and excellence on the outside is celebrated in current society mostly without considering what the quality is it has been achieved in. Hearing your story behind the high grades would not make me celebrate these high grades but feel the deep mess we are in as a society making life about achievements but not love, care and quality.
I would say this is true of any industry Lieke. Success on the outside is far from success on the inside. We see this more and more today, as sports stars, celebrities, people at the ‘top of their game’ behave in a way that reveals that underneath all is not a success. Real success is a whole package and it comes from the level of love we can be with ourselves and everyone else.
Success appears to always come with a price and Adele you have clearly shown us the toll, as you say Fiona ‘ success is a whole package” once learned we are clearly our own heroes, self loved and appreciated for the natural essence and glory we bring. This is our marker in life which is ever shifting and deepening and our true success is recorded in heaven, not judged here on earth.
Well said Merrilee, that’s the crux of the matter of fact – “… true success is recorded in heaven, not judged here on earth.”
Snap Fiona I felt the same when I read Lieke’s comment. Success can look like many things but it is only the true joy and love lived on the inside that will confirm it as true success or not.
It is true Fiona, “Success on the outside is far from success on the inside”… then why do so many of us continue to go down this route? Isn’t it time we woke up to reality and starting asking questions about what is truly going on in the world and acknowledging that the way many of us are not only educating and bringing up our children, climbing the corporate ladder and competing with each for ‘success’ is not true success at all. It just shows how far we have dis-connected from the love that we truly are. And where do we begin… Universal Medicine is where it started for me, as until then I had no idea who I truly was but knew that there must be more to me that met the eye, and more to life than what I saw on the tv, read in the newspapers or what was gossiped about down the local pub. And hugging trees didn’t do it for me either, there is another way and that way is to religiously build a relationship with the love within myself and then reflect this love out to others.
When you look at success like this, as it may look like one thing on the outside yet on the inside there is so much stress and turmoil, then I really don’t like the look of it at all or is it that we have the meaning of the word success all messed up and confused?
Very much so Rosie, agree totally
I love the way Serge Benhayon describes true success in terms of being healthy and vibrant with a feeling of settlement in the body. Imagine if the norm was to feel content and joyful instead of anxious, worried, stressed and not feeling enough. Far from being a pipe dream Serge Bneahyon and Universal Medicine is showing us all that there is another way to live. It’s beautiful to read about your transformation Adele inspired by the Teachings of the Ageless Wisdom.
Totally Rachel, the ‘pipe dream’ is something you look out at. This term was used in surfing – searching the globe or just your local beaches for the best tube. It was a push, for not only the search, but surfing a wave always pushing it to surf to the max to get that real adrenaline force placing your body into a movement that was in disharmony. Many surfers are ‘living the pipe dream’ while their body is not in true health and vitality. As Rachel mentions true success is a healthy and vibrant body with that feeling of settlement, not the search to numb or check out from the unsettlement.
Success is a picture we hold onto in temporal life, when true success is image-free and it is about the consistency of quality moved in our every breath in life, much bigger than and without measure of what a picture can quantify.
Love it – image free, open and expansive.
Absolutely Adele, image free and self empowered, “Every choice that I make and how consistently these choices are made, will be everything that comes back to meet me, so taking responsibility is a given.”
I agree Fiona, true success cannot be measured from our external achievements if our bodies and personal life are a mess, the only true measure is the consistency of love and joy we feel in our bodies and lives, waking up everyday feeling joy without any particular reason.
Great point Lieke. We only have to look at our University graduates and the levels of exhaustion they come into the professions before they even start working. What quality of care and support do we have to offer in this state of being?
Yes, we become professionals of exhaustion, self abuse and giving up on life.
True Lieke. What is the ‘A’ based on? it is most certainly not an ALL encompassing grade based on our true intelligence – which is the quality in which we live.
Yes Lieke I agree – this is why I love Adeles honest blog so much – it let me feel what is really going on and with that I got the deeper understanding how we learn to be harmful with ourselves.
So true Lieke, there is so much that is celebrated in kids getting good grades, excelling in athletics and being a high performer. But actually on the inside, they are struggling to keep up, not connected with themselves and unable to express how they truly feel because they don’t want to let their parents down. It is not a good indictment of where were are at as a society at all.
Well said Monica, no amount of dazzle or glitz can ever replace the priceless, immeasurable glory we all are in essence.
Thats a great point Lieke, that there may be a straight A report that someone has achieved at school, but if it was achieved in a quality of a drive to succeed at all costs at the expense of care of themselves then what is the real quality of this grade.
Reducing life to academic performance being the measure of a kid’s success is a disaster, as you reveal here in your blog Adele. Thank you for putting your detail – your name, your face – to this phenomena, making it a real story and not a statistic.
I agree Suzanne. Kids know how amazing they are and feel the unlimited potential they have. We then put them into an education system that does not acknowledge who they are or all they bring and tells them they must learn X and Y to be a success in life. Individual teachers do their best to mitigate this imposition but the system itself does not support the kids or the teachers natural expression. As we can see from Adele’s experience being an ‘A grade’ student does not mean success.
Well said Suzanne about what Adele has presented here.
So true, when we reduce life to academic success we end up isolated and alone and on top of it with huge levels of anxiety, starting at a very young age – not to mention insomnia and a raft of other conditions that make life anything but the joy it can be.
The isolation and aloneness, no matter how many people are doing the same, is from the disconnection with Soul.
Even though I didn’t give myself away to the ‘academic life’ because I couldn’t relate, I felt ‘less than’ and so gave away my power to that – and ended up with similar results – anxiety, low self esteem etc.
None of it was about knowing and appreciating me for who I was, and the great natural intelligence of the heart.
The thing that I forget is the fact that behind each statistic there is a real story, and that story and person has an effect on many more people around them. When I read the story, I get the full impact of it and have heaps more understanding.
Very true Rosie, each story needs to be told because statistics do not wake us up. Real facts need to be added with a commitment by all before we truly understand what needs to be changed.
I agree Rosie, just goes to show that are education system is producing homogenous beings that are not celebrated and valued for their unique colour and expression. Here in the UK they have something called PSHE (physical, social, health and economic education) within our secondary schools, last year it was noted by the government that 40% of schools were not delivering this essential part of education – for here is the aspect that focuses on the physical, social and wellbeing of its students; how could we let this slide? The government themselves have admitted that there is too much emphasis on the curriculum.
So true Suzanne, we reduce people in so many ways, seeing them by what they can achieve, do or succeed in. This is especially non affirming for children who all they really want is to be met for who they truly are.
Yes, I agree Suzanne- it is devastating to see” life being reduced to academic performance” where children from such an early age are thrown into the education system where the parents believe this to lead to the child’s success in the future with no regard to their health- physical, emotional and mental. It’s fantastic that Adele has brought this issue up so all can see the truth underlying so called” success.”
Yes Loretta, this “success” is such a false ideal that most of our society strives to attain.
It is indeed a disaster to be measured on academic performance Suzanne as Adele has honestly expressed here. What I also feel is placing so much on someone’s academic performance is really a separation from who they truly are and that far outweighs academia and its accolades.
Allowing a child’s natural expression to shine and to be supported from here by the education system is sorely lacking today. True change can only be made from our own connection to who we are first, that reflection is gold and is expressed by Adele so openly here.
The fact that we have to be clearly aware of is the student who is excelling in academia is not always more successful than the student who is free and naturally shine in his expression, if we can distinguish truth, our child will have a foundation of truth to build upon.