A Treatise on Consciousness – helping me find the path home

Searching for truth everywhere and finding it within

A Treatise on Consciousness – helping me find the path home

I’ve always been a seeker of truth; someone who has had a natural curiosity about life and moreover, about human beings and the way they function in life. Yet wherever I looked there seemed to be nothing but destruction, misery, poverty, suffering, intermittent pockets of excitement and good times, but very little sustaining love and joy.

I too felt a dissatisfaction within myself despite living a middle-class comfortable life, having family around me and a professional career. This feeling led me to keep searching for the missing link; the bit that would explain this restless part of me that felt empty despite everything I had in my life.

Over time I tried many different modalities, such as natural therapies, diet, exercise, keeping busy, working hard, reading books and other forms of media about health and wellbeing and life generally. Yet the inner ache and sense of feeling lost and disillusioned with the world remained and then someone suggested that I read a ‘purple book’ written by Serge Benhayon. I started reading the second book called A Treatise on Consciousness.

I was quite an avid reader, but the book was completely different from anything else I had read and I found I was both unsettled and fascinated as I slowly moved from page to page. There were many gems throughout the book that held true for me. It wasn’t that they were ‘feel good’ messages in the sense that they were cute or flowery.

In fact, I found the book hard hitting in many ways as it contained so much to reflect on and presented a completely different understanding of life compared to how I and most of the world lived and the norms we accepted without question. Yet, I kept reading because while my mind was overwhelmed from trying to process everything mentally, deep down in my body there was a growing settlement that stemmed from an unshakeable knowing that what was presented made more sense than anything else I had ever come across.

Self-responsibility was a key theme throughout the book. One example was the short, sharp yet simple sentence ‘You are your own saviour’ (p. 299). Everything in my body answered ‘yes’ to that message. I had absorbed society’s messages over time in the belief that the external counted and therefore it was important to meet the demands and expectations of others, be ‘good’, self-sacrifice and maintain the status quo.

My sense of self-worth was dependent on recognition from the outside world and I experienced highs and lows according to the degree of acceptance or disapproval I received from others. Yet I didn’t feel comfortable in that mode of living – it was like I was living in someone else’s skin and it didn’t fit me at all.

Accordingly, the level of self-responsibility implied in the above quote was life changing. The understanding that I was answerable to myself first and foremost and that no one else was responsible for finding solutions or fixing my problems seemed quite logical to me, yet I had never really seen things in this light before.

While the fact that I had been so easily caught in this hideous web was a bitter-sweet pill to swallow, there was also a sense of relief to know that I could undo the knot I had tied myself in. I was the one who was in charge of me and any self-capping was the end result and solely a consequence of my decisions along the way.

I realised that I needed to make some mammoth changes as my moment to moment choices all counted, and the levels of my self-acceptance, self-love and self-worth were dependent on how I chose to live my life. If something was off track, I now knew deep inside that an opportunity for deeper understanding and growth was on offer, should I be willing to ‘go there’.

My life has changed immeasurably since reading A Treatise on Consciousness. I am more open, gentle, self-loving and nurturing, have a greater connection with my body and hence my soul, and have a growing relationship with myself as a beautiful, delicate and precious woman. Without hesitation I say that the abovementioned and other ‘purpIe books‘ have been a large part of this journey as I have been finding my way back to ‘me’, unlocking the wisdom that is already there within and forming a way of living that holds sacred my own ‘being’. I now understand that I am a student of life so the challenges will come and go as I continue to grow and learn, but I’ve found that regardless of the circumstances at the time, I can pick up a purple book, randomly open at a page and there right before me will be the support I am seeking and which confirms once again ‘That truth forever lives and it is always found in the inner-most of our hearts’ (ibid, p. 304).

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ResponsibilityTruthJoyTherapiesSoul

  • By Helen Giles

    I love that life is never static and is always presenting new opportunities for myself and others to grow and evolve.

  • Photography: Matt Paul