Hi All, Treefern thank you for your great post .Note to Serge : Sugar in large doses can be harmful ,Universal Medicine in small doses is very harmful .In-love ,Eric

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treefern
Yet another Thank You this time to Corboy, I'm afraid I'm not very good with computers, it was very kind of you to pass on my message.
I can only hope my message may help others to keep believing that 'good will prevail over evil', or at the very least, good will prevail over very unloving, greedy men who prey on ill, lonely and frightened people, like Serge Benhayon does so well.

Hi Treefern
It is heartwarming to hear positive news of people freeing themselves from Serge's distorted world view, his choices, and errant energetic premise. It is such a mind trap that is is great to know that someone can with help pull themselves out and start to think for themselves again.
To anyone else that has a positive message, we and others that are struggling with Serges false choices are waiting to hear you message!

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frodobaggins
And yep she is wearing the hierachy necklace.

Serge isnt responsible for unearthing the discovery that EXCESSIVE sugar is bad for us. He has stumbled accross the science... rewrapped it in his own meaning and definition and tells his followers to eliminate it from their diets.

In case people are wondering.... Serge wants us to eliminate the "added" sugar to processed foods. Fruits of course have sugar and serge will provide you with the fruits that are ok to eat which have the right energetic balance.

Ironally grapes are ok.... just not wine

Whatever happened to everything in sensible moderation?!?!?!?!

Hi Frodo
if that is the basis for being an enlightened master then I am at least 20 years ahead of Serge. Why didnt I hear the voices? Oh yeah, I'm sane- forgot,
I cut out processed sugar knowing its obviously not good for you and that our ancestors would not have eaten it, and that it is contributing to modern diseases. I wonder why people find that so miraculous when Serge says it? This is his stage act- he takes the obvious that most people have remained unaware of and wraps his rubbish up in it and gives you the pill. When you take it, it dissolves and you are left digesting the rubbish on the inside- Something like this: Sugar is bad for you ( if you agree with that then you must accept: so is gluten, dairy, carbs, fruit I decide is bad, etc) Seeking God is good ( if you agree with that, then you need to accept I am a member of the hierarchy)
I haven't heard or read one thing that Serge has said that is something you couldn't work out for yourself or get from a balanced and unbiased professional, except of course all of his grand claims of exclusive and fantastic knowledge which of course you can only get from the antithesis of the aforementioned.

One way to evaluate the UM diet, especially if your energy is low.

Dont feel guilty. Get curious.

I am not a physican or medical professional, but have found this useful as an athletic person.

If feelng low energy, evaluate your UM diet using a method that has solid science behind it. You may, just perhaps be tired because you are not eating enough carbohydrate to keep sufficient glycogen in your muscles.

Athletes know about this. They call it bonking. Its why runners may have a sudden plung in energy and come undone.

Sugar is everywhere. Grapes do have sugar in them. Fortunately they are of a relatively low glycemic index.

If anyone wants to assess the Glycemic Index and Glycemic load of foods recommended in UM, go this website and others that give information about glycemic index.

Note: If one is consuming ONLY low glycemic index carbs, that is not necessarily a good thing. One will lack energy for sprinting, running, lifting loads. When I took too little carbohydrate, I could not maintain aerobic workouts (heart health) and found that I could only bicycle or walk on flats or downhills. Too little carbohydrate left me helpless when trying to walk or climb up hills or stairs. One just drags and loses vitality.

Too much sugar is not good, too little is not good, either.

One can look at various foodstuffs favored in the UM diet and see how they rate.

And much of this Glycemic Index work is a gift to us by the physicians and research scientists at the University of Sydney and their colleagues in Canada. Thanks, ANZACs.

High GI foods if eaten alone with produce a more rapid surge in blood glucose than low glycemic index.

Glycemic load is how much of a foodstuff one is eating.

[webcache.googleusercontent.com]

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Revised International Table of Glycemic Index (GI) and Glycemic Load (GL) Values—2008
By David Mendosa


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This is the definitive table for both the glycemic index and the glycemic load. I am able to reproduce it here courtesy of the author, Professor Jennie Brand-Miller of the University of Sydney. It is based on a table in different format but no more foods published December 2008 in Diabetes Care. However, only the abstract is free online there.

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The glycemic index (GI) is a numerical system of measuring how much of a rise in circulating blood sugar a carbohydrate triggers–the higher the number, the greater the blood sugar response. So a low GI food will cause a small rise, while a high GI food will trigger a dramatic spike. A list of carbohydrates with their glycemic values is shown below. A GI of 70 or more is high, a GI of 56 to 69 inclusive is medium, and a GI of 55 or less is low.


The glycemic load (GL) is a relatively new way to assess the impact of carbohydrate consumption that takes the glycemic index into account, but gives a fuller picture than does glycemic index alone. A GI value tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate turns into sugar. It doesn't tell you how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food. You need to know both things to understand a food's effect on blood sugar. That is where glycemic load comes in. The carbohydrate in watermelon, for example, has a high GI. But there isn't a lot of it, so watermelon's glycemic load is relatively low. A GL of 20 or more is high, a GL of 11 to 19 inclusive is medium, and a GL of 10 or less is low.


Foods that have a low GL almost always have a low GI. Foods with an intermediate or high GL range from very low to very high GI.

I, Corboy, offer my citizen's opinion that Serge's MO is not holistic.

It isnt holistic because non UM family and other relationships are devalued.

Someone defined a puritan as one whose mind never took a holiday.

Your mind, from discriptions given, gets no holiday if you are devoted to UM. You are kept busy. You are on a mission.

I predict that eventually, many devotees are going to feel tired, more and more tired. And that weariness will linger, no matter how many workshops and massage sessions you go to.

This isnt pranic attack. Its because as we go into our thirties and forties, we dont have as much energy as when younger.

Someone said, "When I was young, sleeping was an annoying interruption to all the things I wanted to do. I am now middle aged and sleep is a valuable activity in its own right and I cant find enough of it."

And, as time goes on, the relationship with UM and its products and then with SB and his interpretation of Alice Bailey's Theosophy becomes unbalanced and unholistic.

One becomes burdened. Burdened with constant self scrutiny to make sure one's feelings and energies are correct.

More and more concerned with pranic attack, more worried and vigilent about dietary requirements.

More workshops, more things to do, and because all this is so complicated, any competing commitment or relationship is set aside or rejected.

And mere pleasure is replaced by intensity. Being on a mission feels intense and vivid, but it isnt any fun. One cant play when the weight of mission is on one's shoulders.

However, soldiers on missions get R&R now and then. What about you?

You are likely to feel more and more guilty that you're tired, and if you confide this to anyone in UM, they are likely (my hunch) to see this as evidence that you need to do more.

I am making these guesses because I was a peacenik about twenty years ago, and as I grew past my twenties and into my thirties, I didnt have the energy I once had in surplus.

I became very tired. I faced that I wasnt having any fun being on a mission all the time and feeling guilty about the state of the world all the time.

I happened to admire, even adore, a couple of charismatic leaders in our group. They took constant risks doing non violent civil disobedience, fasting for 40 days or more, even going to gaol for considerable periods.

Much as I loved them, I reached a breaking point. I was a support person for one of these heroes.

And I faced I was becoming very, very weary, tired of worrying about the welfare of someone who repeatedly risked his health.

I was sorry to admit it but I became tired of caring about and caring for someone who at center, hidden behind all his heroism, was, essentially a very needy person who required lots and lots of attention from very many people.

Again, all this is my hunch, based on lived experience.

As noted earlier, people dont have the energy in their thirties and forties that they have in their twenties.

At some point many of you may sense you want something quieter and want partners and to start families of your own.

If your body is drained and weakened by dieting and stress, and too much time passes, you may not be able to start your family. Opportunities to date to marry, may pass you by as you burden yourself on the UM mission.

All this is just a guess on my part. But Ive lived it doing a different sort of save the world mission.

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corboy
At some point many of you may sense you want something quieter and want partners and to start families of your own.

If your body is drained and weakened by dieting and stress, and too much time passes, you may not be able to start your family. Opportunities to date to marry, may pass you by as you burden yourself on the UM mission.

I think at this point is where the darker side of Universal Medicine becomes more visible: when you're young and/or single, you may not only be an easier target for this kind of group but you may also feel like you have less to lose / you can walk away at any time.

What a lot of people have found / will find or are finding is that if they come into this group as a couple or start a relationship with someone in this group they find more and more they have more to lose and can't just walk away without losing the relationship. But the truly heartbreaking scenario is where a couple meets this group meets a child. In this scenario there are not only willing adults involved, but a child has been forced into a lose-lose situation without a vote where their options consist of :

a) a numb existence with parents who are unloving feeding them low value foods and a low value belief system
b) a split family where one parent is in and the other is out and the child is stuck in the middle
c) by some miracle the family unit makes it out in tact but still the child will be impacted by the effects of what could never be described as the ideal environment for a child.

As the adult caught up in the above scenario it is not such a quantum leap to see the free individual at the start of this description evolve into the adult at the end of this description who is forced to make a very difficult decision that now not only impacts theirself but their child and their family and the ramifications of which can be truly heartbreaking.

I think this is where people like myself and Eric and Concerned and LifeTTM and Treefern and JohnL and Frodo and Herbert are coming from. We can all testify how this group Universal Medicine has come into an otherwise happy and loving relationship and replaced it with hollowness, numbness, heartbreak and despair. Or at the very lowest extreme to see an intelligent, inspired and happy person replaced by a brainwashed, confused and self-doubting shell of a human.

For those who have raised a family you know how difficult and challenging it can be even in the best circumstances you can provide let alone when you are trying to do it within the suffocating confines of a control-obsessed cult.

An observation from my situation. Because of the exhaustive ban on so many foods I found my ex do these 2 things

1) could not maintain this strict diet and ended up binging for days on processed sugary foods.
The best she could do was a 2 week stretch before giving in.
2) felt guilty for days for doing it and then again would try to stick to Serges strict food guidelines

And this just kept happening over and over.

So instead of just having a sensible diet she was in pursuit of something that was totally unachievable because of the fear serge implanted in her head.

Concerned your so correct. He takes the obvious that science or commonsense has taught us.... Gets in front of people searching for answers and makes a sweeping statement to get them nodding... Uses his fancy buzzwords which resonate with the audience and before you know it your walking out the door with symbol cards, pillow cases to help you dream better and Serges formula to happily ever after. (just minus your partner)

As you say concerned... Many of his lifestyle recommendations don't require the advice of Serge. But he will some how with out any evidence advise you on the energetic truth behind the common sense and scientific explanations. Serge is so powerful he can even explain what science cant yet. Pure genius!

Hi everyone, I have been following the conversations here for a while now.

I have done a fair bit of the work with UM. My partner wanted little to do with it at the time but was very supportive nonetheless. My two children also chose to not be involved in any way.

The short story is, My life has found a new direction that was badly needed from the principles of UM's teachings. My marriage and family is intact and solid, my financial situation has never been better. I am happier, my family are happier, and I know why.

From my experience, for every person that has had a negative damaging effect from this organization, there are a hundred people who are living their lives on a greater foundation of health and wisdom than they might have otherwise began the work with.

I have stepped away from UM perhaps because of my skepticism on many of the claims without proof that have so eloquently been presented here. I don't do beliefs, and I found too much of what was presented as fact was asking me to believe things without sufficient tangible proof.

Honest skepticism has also allowed me to navigate through the many other religions to the place I am now, with myself, and what I know to be true. No beliefs, just possibilities that I choose to explore.

Quite often in history there are examples of people leaving their loved ones to live a religious or spiritual life they have found is true. It leaves a trail of pain and sadness for those who are left behind.

Serge asks students to keep their jobs, work on their relationships. But at the same time he asks one to stay true to what they feel to be true and do not compromise those values. He doesn't ask one to go sit in a cave on a mountain top and meditate, or become a celibate monk as many well respected religions do.

Serge teaches that we need to stay in the real world and be a living example of what we would like the world to be.

My life is fantastic and so are many many others that have been touched by Serge. That doesn't mean what he says is true. But it does allow the readers of this thread to entertain the possibility UM is not as sinister and harmful as portrayed.

Gibbs

What goes on in UM is, by my citizen's hunch, very much more than getting health advice.

As noted, one can get that sort of advice anywhere. But what one cannot get just anywhere is the intensity of a charisma driven social scene centered upon a leader who at the very least permits it to develop without checks and balances.

Not only do you get someone to adore and to embody your hopes and ideals, you get to be part of a group and have intense bonds shared with those who also adore the same leader.

When all that intense positive idealization is focused by many people upon the same object (the guru), this is the emotional equivalent of laser light. Think of what has been reported at sports stadiums and at rock concerts.

Your family doc doesnt offer this kind of drama.

In fact, the mark of the true professional is to support sobriety and lucidity, not encourage that sort of devotional emotion.

Health care professionals who walk the walk maintain boundaries and practice what I would term emotional chastity in relation to their patients and clients.

To many yearning persons this professionalism may seem cold, oppressive, wit holding and dull compared with New Age leaders who offer insta intimacy and a focus for adoration from a group.

So my guess, my citizen's hunch, is that its not the health advice - its the emotionally exciting and intense social scene thats the delivery medium for the otherwise commonplace health care advice.