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?
636 Comments
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.
So called success in our school system is very often achieved at the expense of the health and wellbeing of our children. Adele it is great that you have shared so openly about how this played out in your life so that we have more awareness around what occurs within the child at a deeper level.
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.
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.
It seems to me that we have chosen an approach to education that is all about knowledge and nothing to do with wisdom. We fill ourselves with facts and figures as if we are an empty vessel that needs to be filled. But what of our innateness, what of our common sense and the wisdom that we are born with? Should this not be nurtured at the same time? I feel it is likely that we will discover that our nature is far from empty and that true education honours this awareness, nurturing wisdom rather than filling an illusionary void.
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.
Absolutely Francisco, it is having a relationship with ourselves that really forms the foundation so that we can know true purpose in our lives. If I don’t know who I am how can I know how to live my part in all things?
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%.
When I look back to my secondary school (teenage) days as a weekly boarder I realise in the light of the blog that a number of my friends had various problems such as – exceptional exam stress occasionally even missing them completely, some didn’t sleep at all well, some had nightmares, others sleepwalked, and we did perceive a lot of pressure that seemed older than our years. Which was worse? Those with Issues or those who just quietly got on with it without questioning what we were doing as it was just something you had to do even when at times it didn’t make sense.
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.
Gosh, that someone so young might become so desperate to be what the world around him demands of him that they consider suicide is really tragic, and for every boy that feels that there are 100 others feeling degrees of that for sure.
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.
‘As a student I was not taught or expected to do anything else but study.’ – So often the emphasis on study is delivered in a way that says learning via the process of study is more important than a focus on who you are and your relationship to yourself. This is a very backwards and redrawing approach to raising our future generations.
We have got success very distorted and everyone is suffering from it.
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.
If we study in a way that is at the expense of our body and being then we cannot truly bring ourselves and all of our awareness to what we’re doing, and for this everyone misses out…
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.