Eunice Minford
Growing up in Northern Ireland, I had no time for religion. My parents took me to church and Sunday school as a child but from a young age I couldn’t see the point of it and stopped attending as a teenager when I was old enough to say no.
I continued having no time for religion in my early adult years and was definitely atheistic in outlook. Life according to me was simple – you are born, live and die – end of story. Just accept that and make the best of your life as you can. No need to worry about hell or whether you would go to heaven, for both were just figments of over-active imaginations. And God too was non-existent – he was just a fictitious, made-up character, a crutch that people needed to get through life, or someone to blame when life didn’t go our way.
Given the state of the world, man’s inhumanity to man, disease, destruction and death – God was null and void – nowhere to be seen. For surely a truly loving God would not permit such callousness, such evil? As for Jesus – regular renditions of ‘Jesus loves me this I know,’ did nothing to persuade me that he actually did love me – again it seemed more like a comforting soother for those who couldn’t cope with life head on – a bit of wishful thinking perhaps that somebody, somewhere loves them – even if that person was dead for more than 2000 years.
I had no time for religion or religious people. Hearing of people who had been atheist or drug addicts and then ‘finding Jesus’ and suddenly everything was wonderful did not inspire me to find out more – I found their self-righteous smugness and sycophantic adulation nauseating.
I swore to a friend I would never ‘do God’ or be religious – the very idea of it was abhorrent. To me, religion was responsible for so many evils – it was responsible for the senseless killing, injuring and maiming of multitudes. It condemned and branded loving and caring human beings just because they had a different religion, were gay or had an abortion. Why on earth would anyone want to be religious? There seemed to be nothing good about it.
I had no time for religion.
In my late thirties, life wasn’t going so well. My internal resources that had got me through any prior challenges were running dry. Life threw up some questions I had not considered nor expected. I began to question my life, why do things happen the way they do, what’s it all about? My simple philosophy was no longer working. There was a deeper angst at play, gnawing away at me, that would not go away – a sense that there had to be more to life than what I was living.
| I still had no time for religion and I wasn’t looking for God – but I was looking for Truth. I was looking for answers. The more I read and explored, the more I was being led to accept that there was a spiritual reality – something I had completely dismissed as even existing or being part of human life. I could do spiritual – but definitely not religious – I had no time for religion. I couldn’t even say the word God. |
As I explored and delved into the spiritual New Age, it became apparent that many of the speakers often referred to the religious leaders like Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed. Why were they bringing religion into it?
I had to find out more and decided to re-visit religion – given I had given up on it a long time ago – perhaps there was something to learn from it that I had dismissed before? I even trained as an Interfaith Minister – giving me a chance to explore all the main traditions to see what lay at the heart of each. It was a bit confusing – so many different views, opinions, beliefs, dogmas and doctrines – but what was the Truth?
Surely behind these many texts and stories there was a truth that each in their own way were endeavouring to tap into, to reveal and learn from – yet each also seemingly missing the mark along the way for none revealed a coherent, logical or spherical understanding of life, God and why things happen the way they do in a way that was complete, whole and made sense to me. The inexplicable was dismissed as just that – a mystery, God was a mystery, life was a mystery. There was a sense of powerlessness – we were unable to know, to find answers and just had to accept the way it is. But I didn’t accept that – I felt there was a truth to be known – I just had to find it.
There was one thing – a common thread that weaved between the different religions was that God is love. Now this felt like a truth to me – but there was much more to unpack. So many unanswered questions. Where were the answers? How could I remove the veil of false beliefs and teachings that permeated the whole area of religion to get to the heart of the matter and to find the true religion or at least what felt true to me, amongst the many false imposters?
As I deepened my understanding about God I came to know the truth of the love that God is for myself – not just as knowledge but experience. I was able to reconnect with that love within my own being – something that we are all innately able to do as we come from God and His love lives within us all. |
This was a game-changer.
| It transformed how I saw and knew myself – no longer was I the bad, dirty, unlovable, not good enough person – I was and am a Son of God – a being of light and love, a love that is majestic, unbounded, free and there for all. Now, this God I had time for. This coming home to God was the most enriching experience of my life – for it changed everything. It changed how I saw life, how I saw people and how I saw myself. |
In 2007 I started to attend the presentations of Serge Benhayon through Universal Medicine courses and workshops. My fledgling comprehension about God, myself, life, and the Universe was expanded to levels and depths way beyond my imagination. The resonance of truth resounded throughout my body – here I found what I had been searching for – the Truth. The existential angst melted, the questioning and questioning and questioning were replaced with the settlement of knowing.
‘No time for religion’ was banished to the waste bin - I found a religion I had time for – not just time, but space and lots of it. This religion isn’t about having a crutch, a life-soother or someone or something to blame when it all goes pear-shaped. There is no ‘them and us’ in this religion, there is no supplication, no false piety, no nauseating sycophantic adulation, and definitely no hell or damnation. I came to see and deeply know the religion I had no time for was not really religion at all – it was a bastardised form of it that bore little or no resemblance to it.
The word religion comes from the Latin religio and religare and means to re-bind, to re-connect and is about the relationship we have with ourselves and God – reconnecting with the love that lives within our heart and soul.
The word religion comes from the Latin religio and religare and means to re-bind, to re-connect and is about the relationship we have with ourselves and God – reconnecting with the love that lives within our heart and soul.
This religion is founded upon the truth of the love that God is and we are and from there all other truths unfold. It is based on the true energetic nature of the human person therefore whether someone is male or female, gay or straight, had an abortion or not had an abortion, whatever their nationality is, culture, beliefs, religious or atheist – all of that does not matter – for they are known first and foremost by the truth of who they are – and that is Love.
This love is equal for all and it is our task to love as God loves – without judgment, without condemnation, without critique – but to love and love some more. This love is not romantic love, it is not sexual nor emotional – it holds all within its gaze and understands all. At the same time, it says no to that which is not love – and so does not accept abuse of any kind – whilst holding the perpetrator of the abuse as the love they are even though they are not expressing from that love.
This love (and religion) calls us to be the love we are in every moment – to express from that love in how we move, walk, talk, act – to have every activity imbued with the quality and energy of love. And so we come to know it’s not about what we do – whether we are a surgeon, a cleaner, a hairdresser, a plumber, a nurse, a mother or a carpenter – but it is about the quality we bring to what we do.
This feeds into every activity of life – so we choose the food we eat according to what is truly loving for our body, we go to sleep when we feel tired and according to the true rhythms of the body, we deal with our emotional reactions knowing they are not love and do not come from our true self and we move our body in a way that is caring, gentle, respectful and loving. It is about our every living way and so is called The Way of The Livingness.
This religion, The Way of The Livingness, is about living a life of responsibility – for we have the power to choose how we live and that can be from love or that which is not love (all the emotions and mental beliefs). We come from love and we return to love by living in a way that is loving – not just for our own benefit of course, but for the benefit of all.
We live love that others may know they too are that and choose it for themselves – that we may all live in true religion, in true relationship with self and other and God and restore true brotherhood. We are a long way off from that but that does not invalidate the journey or render it pointless. History has shown many times that it only takes one man or woman to change the world – so why not be the one that brings that change to all by living the love that you are?
‘No time for religion’ is no more – for now there is no time without religion. There is no time when I am not in relationship with myself, other people, God or aspects of life be it food, work, exercise etc. – and bringing the love that I am to all of those relationships is for me true religion. Always a work in progress of course, for none of us are perfect and we are here to learn, grow and evolve and in my book there is no better way to evolve than through deepening our commitment and responsibility to be the love that we are in our way of living every moment of every day – a reflection of the boundless love we come from – God, our heavenly Father.
| In an era where there is increasing secularism and religion is in some corners a dirty word, assumed by some to be for those who cannot think rationally or logically – I love the fact that I am religious, deeply so, and even more so, given my complete antipathy towards it in the past. I love religion, true religion – a way of living based on the love we are and God is. As there is no time when we are not in relationship with ourselves – there is no time without religion – the question is, what is your religion, the foundation of your relationship with yourself – love or that which is not love? |
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