Hi everybody,
It’s Nicky here. I have not posted a personal, written blog for a long time. There are several reasons for this, but mostly I feel it has been because I have been on, and currently am on a journey to discover more about who I truly am, learn about life (specifically how God’s Laws impact upon every area of it, especially on the soul) and come to some real awareness and understanding about my personal sin. I have been learning many lessons about God, God’s Laws, emotions, desire, and humility in the past 2 years – some of which have not been out of desire on my part, but more so from what the Law of Compensation has imposed upon me. I have been wanting to write a blog update for a while as I think some of my experiences can be helpful for others, but I also realised that it would probably be a long one if I was to be open and honest, and that I would need to give myself some time to write one out. I have had a bit of time over this holiday period to do that, so here goes.
I was asked to stop volunteering from God’s Way Ltd in March 2020 due to several unloving attitudes and desires that were highlighted in me that I had no desire to budge on. The main two were:
I received a lot of personal feedback from Jesus and Mary regarding both of these issues, and honestly it felt as though they could have been talking to me in Chinese (or any other language I do not understand) because when I look back, I just didn’t want to know about the unloving effects of these two areas of my life and the impact on others, nor the emotions which have driven them.
I decided the pain of experiencing some truth surrounding these two areas seemed too uncomfortable to me at the time, and so instead I chose to completely shut down all my emotions. I have since come to some understanding about how poor that decision was by events that I quickly attracted shortly afterwards.
I got back to England in September 2020, and this was the time where lockdowns were happening. Due to the restrictions placed on society, the rules surrounding property rental were quite severe. Although I had the funds to put a deposit on a rental property and pay rent in advance, no agency wished to interact with me further as they were requiring that I had worked and received a salary from a job based in the UK for the previous 6 months. Of course, I could not provide this after being in Australia for the previous 18 months, so found myself in a bad situation.
My grandparent’s old house was vacant at the time (as my grandmother passed earlier in the year while I was in Australia). My dad suggested it might be a good idea that I move in there for the time being until I got myself sorted out. It didn’t seem like I had any other option at the time, so I did. The house itself was very dingy, dark and smelly and it had not been properly maintained for a very long time. There were no real “comforts” there and I ended up just basically living out of one room in the house. I could not get myself a job due to the lockdowns, and I agreed to help my dad start renovating the house (while I lived inside it) and sorting some big jobs out, like the back yard.
I ended up finding myself alone a lot of the time in this house. I just didn’t want to see or talk to anybody. I felt nothing but rage about everything and the situation I was in. I spent many hours throughout these months just bashing the bare interior walls with some tube piping I bought back with me from Australia (as it felt very satisfying hitting things with it). I was just bashing and screaming with everything I had. I was feeling indignant, resentful, a sense of injustice about so many things, and feeling like I was being judged by people (as much as I was judging myself). I was also feeling oppressed, as it just seemed no matter where I went or what I did, it felt like I had this black cloud constantly over my head following me. I kept being relentlessly flooded with awful thoughts, and when the thoughts were not occurring (maybe only around 5% of my awake time) I was thinking “what the hell is happening to me? Why do I feel so awful? Where the hell are you now God?” etc.
I had an experience somewhere around this time when I found taps running and a blind that had fallen off the wall by itself, that I began questioning if I had done these things, and whether I was that out of it that I must have done them as there was nobody else around to do it but me. I felt like I had to get back into my body, so I went on a run around a park. As I got back home, I just started sobbing about whether I was going crazy, and as I did, I suddenly became acutely aware of this horde of extremely dark spirits who were with me. I saw an image in my mind of how grotesque they appeared, and I began to hear them cackling and laughing at me as I became aware of their presence. I felt like the only option I had was to pray to God, and as I did and let myself keep feeling, I felt them immediately disappear. I realised that they had been continuously around me for months (pretty much since I left Australia), messing with me trying to destroy me, and they were responsible for doing these physical things as a way of reaching their goal. To anyone who reads this, it may seem completely crazy what I have shared here, but it is the truth as I personally lived and experienced it and know it to be true.
I basically ended up just exhausting myself out from all the raging and anger. It was here where I started to re-call how I felt when I received God’s Love in the past and how different that feeling felt to my current “lot” at the time. Ironically, this helped me to connect with some of the pain about my situation. I then started to have this feeling like “No, there has got to be a way to get back to that feeling of God’s Love somehow.” It began to dawn on me gradually that the environment in which I lived was reflecting to me my own soul condition and desires to a large extent. Living in a dark, cold, dingy and stinky house with no direction and dependant on my dad to rescue me from the consequences of my own choices. I realised for myself that a lot of the rage and anger I was feeling was a denial of these truths and a huge resistance to the principle of self-responsibility and to “own” the experiences of my life rather than blaming others. Although the spirit attack I had experienced was an unloving act of those spirits, and without doubt added significantly to my pain and suffering, I now see that they only had such power and influence over me as a result of my own lack of humility and resistance to my own pain that I chose to suppress, and a desire to maintain my own false image.
As I am writing this and reflecting, I could not see at the time that a lot of the pain I was experiencing were the Laws of Cause and Effect (and Compensation) in action – a direct result (effect) of my own choices and decisions about how much I was damaging other people and myself with my own refusal to face my true state (born out of a superiority, which formed part of the cause of my pain). For me to start facing myself in this way felt pretty rough as it seemed there would be no benefit and I’d just keep feeling worse, worse than I already did. In fact, a lot of my rage and anger also came from this place of selfishness and rebellion, like “what is the point and personal benefit to me of letting this go?” And the fact I just did not really want to let it go, even though I was somehow feeling forced into seeing and facing it – which, in itself was enough to fuel my anger. Truly, the anger and rage just felt like a bottomless pit that had no end.
I remembered about some of the channellings I had heard Jesus and Mary have with darker spirits about their experiences in the spirit world, and it just hit me that my experience seemed to be very similar to some of theirs (even though before this, I thought that I was a great guy and was “progressing” so well – honestly my own self talk before that time was just gross, superior and arrogant – I say that frankly, rather than judging myself because it was). I started to feel like I had to make some decisions about my life as I was the only person responsible for it.
Soon after I had these, what felt like key realisations, I got a job as a residential support worker looking after children and teenagers in the care system who harboured a lot of pain and trauma about how they were abandoned, abused, and rejected by their parents. The job involved completing tasks like house cleaning, and admin type work, but I just felt relieved and happy to be doing something and offering what I could to assist these children who were in my (and my colleagues) care. Their behaviours were quite challenging at times, but I strived to take my responsibilities seriously by doing what I could to support them. I felt a lot of compassion towards the kids, as I felt like I could understand to some degree the relationship between some of their seemingly difficult behaviours and their pain. I built some good relationships with both the kids and my colleagues for the 9 months that I was in that role. Upon reflection, I think that being in this job helped me to think more about other people instead of being so self-absorbed, and the level of responsibility I had drove a lot of my attitude to be as loving as I could be towards them. It felt refreshing in some ways to offer support to others, rather than demanding it of others towards me. During this time, I ended up moving out of my grandparent’s old house and into a rental place. I felt much better about this and felt a sense of happiness, especially the fact that I wasn’t sponging off and demanding my dad look after me, and the obvious fact that my immediate living environment was much better.
I also rented an allotment space near to where I live because I wanted to learn how to grow food (both fruits and vegetables), but particularly doing so in harmony with some of God’s Laws that I became aware of during my time volunteering in Australia. There were several apple and plum trees already on the plot, alongside a cherry and pear tree. I learned about some of the principles of pruning fruit trees alongside growing other fruits and vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes, courgettes (zucchini), brassicas (such as kale, cabbage, cauliflower) etc. I also learned more about weeds during this process and how it was imperative for me to add more nutrients to the soil to help regenerate it. The allotment turned out to be like a hangout space for friends who desired to come down, learn with me and help out a bit. I ended up recording a lot of videos of the things I did on the allotment which I would like to edit into a video at some point in the future to share with others. I have really enjoyed working on the allotment and developing some other skills and knowledge. Honestly, the joy I felt when I pulled up my first potato was immense (laughing).
Towards the end of my time in the care job, I started to feel about what it was that I really wanted to do with my life. What are my passions? I didn’t really know, and as I reflect now, I think it is a process we continually engage in and develop through life as we act on hunches and are willing to experiment. I thought back to the time when I felt a sense of actual happiness (not just addictions), and that was when I found Divine Truth, connected to God, made some good friends, created the forum on my website, and shared my experiences of Divine Truth from a place of desiring to assist others. In some respects, it felt like I was going back to the absolute basics, something which I kind of did not want to do before it was forced upon me by God’s Laws because of my own feeling like I was better than that.
I have come to see that this superior attitude and feeling has been one of the reasons why I have not wanted to discover who I am because I felt I already knew (even though if I was honest with myself, after about 5 seconds I could see I totally did not). It was also because of the anger I had towards my dad for how he hurt me when I was a child, and the fact that I had been blaming him for my current pain rather than just processing it and letting it go. Jesus and Mary told me that I would rather blame my dad instead of discovering who I was, as it felt like an easier option for me to continue to do nothing rather than face the emotions and take some responsibility for my life. They also told me that my mum created this superior and entitled attitude in me that had been deeply affecting my life, drove this apathetic lack of passion and direction, rather than my dad. This was one of the truths I did not want to accept at the time they told me. Oftentimes, I think the actual truth is totally different then what we think or even hope it is, especially when we are in our facade as we want to tell ourselves all kinds of things to maintain denial and justify our addictions and unloving actions. I was strongly driven down this track, and it did nothing for me but cause even more pain, unhappiness, and misery based on what I have already shared.
I reflected on what I had done up to that point in my life and reminded myself that I had a Sport Science degree from when I graduated in 2010. I did enjoy some aspects of this course at the time, but I didn’t really feel any passion to work in this field. However, I felt like I would really want to teach an aspect of Divine Truth at some point in the future if I could sort myself out, and so through some quite fortunate events, I was given the opportunity to enrol onto a one-year PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education) course at Loughborough University to become a qualified secondary school teacher. As my degree was in Sport Science, it allowed me to train in the subject of Physical Education (PE), and I felt like I wanted to learn more about the principles of teaching to develop and improve my skills as a teacher.
I started the course in September 2021, and it felt strange but also quite nice being back at university to learn new things. It was also a bit weird, because up until that point I was amongst the youngest of many people I had interacted with in life and work, and suddenly, I was the oldest student on the course (I was 32), compared to many of my classmates who were between 22-24. In England, part of your teacher training involves going on two placements of between 9-11 weeks to local schools where you gain experience observing established teachers and then preparing, planning, and delivering your own lessons. There were also several written assignments that I had to complete simultaneously to this practical teaching element of the course. It was a very hectic and busy time for me as I was well out of my comfort zone, and due to the demands of the course I felt a large sense of responsibility and needing to step up if I was to get through it because they really throw you in at the deep end. In every lesson, I was being observed and assessed by other teachers and my mentors from my preparation and planning all the way through to the actual delivery. At the end of each lesson, I received a lot of detailed feedback about both the good parts of the lesson and areas for improvement. When I look back, I feel a strong sense of gratitude to the teachers who gave me feedback, as they were very generous with their time and pointed things out to me in such a way that I would understand them better. It just felt like there was so much going on and I had many emotional moments in the evenings when I got home about how incapable and out of my depth I felt. I also began to realise and accept that, in reality I knew very little, and I suppose that helped me to become a humbler person and grow a desire to learn.
In PE, there were practical lessons I would teach as well as classroom-based lessons, both of which I equally enjoyed for different reasons. One of the biggest realisations I had during my training year was shifting the focus from myself to the students who I would teach. Instead of trying to feel better about myself by having “good” lessons, worrying about how the lessons would go, and my own lack of knowledge, I started to ask myself questions solely relating to the students and what things would benefit them the most. This involved considering things like where and how I performed practical demonstrations to them, how I organised them in a way to observe me clearly, how I would deliver instructions, and what kinds of questions I would ask them to encourage their learning and understanding.
However, this wasn’t just a case of thinking it and changing, because I had to go through different emotions to enact the change. Anyway, this changed a lot of things for me. My planning process and lessons started to have a natural flow to them, and the students seemed to focus, behave, and enjoy the lessons more than before. It may seem obvious, but I began to understand that good teaching is all about being of service to those you are teaching and having some courage to accept the large responsibility that rests on your shoulders to say the truth and set a good example, rather than just talk it. I feel that a lot of my desire to avoid responsibility in my life was because I worried about making mistakes and being punished for them. This was totally an emotion I had in me from childhood where I was actually punished for doing “wrong” and even dissuaded from taking personal responsibility by my mum as she was selfishly driven to do things for me that I should have been taught to do for myself because she wanted to make herself feel better. When I have felt and reflected more about this dynamic that my mum initially set up and I continued, I can see this caused a lot of problems in my life. I developed narcissistic and selfish tendencies, felt like I could get away with doing very little whilst wanting a huge “reward” and in general just being very self-absorbed and obnoxious towards others. These are all things Jesus and Mary tried helping me become aware of.
I think that my biggest problem was developing the desire and motivation to even challenge this within myself as the emotions that were already inside me somehow compelled me to continue in this apathetic and selfish attitude. As sad as it may seem, in some ways I can see that my life had to go into complete disarray and hit a personal rock bottom for me to become more sincere about changing the issues. At the peak time of my suffering and pain, I just hated God and Gods Laws and it felt like I was being punished further and restricted, when really, I was choosing to be unloving and was intent on keeping that going. This year I have learned things like ironing my clothes, growing my own food and doing basic maintenance tasks round my apartment, things that I wished I learned when I was 7 or 8, rather than at 32. I have experienced that there is a sense of happiness I feel from within when I do these things for myself, and I am still feeling the emotions of pain and sadness relating to the fact I never did these things before as I do them now and feel the benefit. If at some point in the future I have children or am in a position of being a guardian of some kind, I will strive to do as much as I possibly can to encourage them to learn to do these kinds of things for themselves so that they get to experience a level of satisfaction and joy that I was deprived of, and well away from the pain I have had to experience in the correction process. It really is also quite crazy to me how even today, my mum feels bitter and angry about the fact I am not in contact with her and that I can look after my own life without needing her. I can understand her emotions better and why she feels this way, but the lack of love is very much real, and something I am processing through. Even crazier than this, is how differently my Dad has responded to some of the changes I have made. I can feel that he has grown a sense of respect for what I have done, and he has been encouraging me. I think that a lot of the anger, the physical and verbal abuse I received from my Dad when I was younger was because he could see the attitude I started to develop with my mum and he had a sense of fear about my life without knowing what he could do to change it. My dad’s response to his fear and terror is to become hard and angry as a way to gain a sense of power over his fear. While his responses did hurt me a lot and created sadness in me alongside other ways in which he treated me, I found him to be supportive in this other aspect of self-responsibility which was very much unexpected. Although now, it makes sense to me because my dad demands and needs very little from me to live his life, which is in stark contrast to the feelings I feel coming at me from my mum.
I believe a large factor in growing my desire to change were a few key emotions I felt. The first was connecting to this feeling of pain about how much I was judging myself for what I had done to hurt others. Once I did that, I felt as though I could start to feel an actual sense of feeling bad about some of my actions towards others. I think it is important for me to say here that the judgement I felt from some people when I was already at my lowest point was so painful that it almost made me want to give up completely. Judging other people when in reality we have no idea about what they are going through I think shows more about our own personal poor condition rather than the person we may be judging.
The second happened when I was in church singing along to a song performed by the church band. There were lyrics which kept repeating the phrase “I am a sinner, but God and God’s Love is greater than my sin” and I just had a complete breakdown in acceptance, rather than self-judgement that I am a sinner and have hurt people. I think part of my suffering involved me not wanting to connect to God about how I felt because I was judging myself so much for my actions, and I already felt bad enough that I worried somehow God would make me feel infinitely worse. In reality, as I had my emotional experience and longed to God, I felt only this sense of compassion and kindness in return that words cannot describe for how God felt about me and what I had done. It was completely different to what I expected, and it somehow intensified the sorrow I felt. It felt like a very freeing but aware state that I was in, and this is a process I am still in, with regards to coming to more clarity of how I have hurt others and my impact on their lives.
Anyway, I ended up working hard and this past July, I graduated as a qualified secondary school teacher. The graduation felt strange to me as it was only a piece of paper and certificate that I received during the ceremony for all the work and emotions I had gone through in the year. But as I reflect, I can see how I learned so many invaluable things during this period and felt a sense of happiness that I developed some key life skills relating to teaching, interacting with others, self-responsibility and public speaking amongst other things that cannot be taken away from me.
After I graduated, I reflected about my feelings concerning teaching in that I loved the actual teaching aspect but was not so passionate about the content of how PE is taught in schools. The times where I felt a real passion during my training year was when I had opportunities to speak to students about their motivations, attitudes, loving and kind behaviour and encouraging a change of heart. I decided to start applying to various secondary school teaching jobs as I figured it would be good to keep developing my skills and gain more experience. Furthermore, I had to take a student loan out to fund my studies and had no money left, so I needed a job to pay for my living expenses and begin paying back my debt. I ended up applying for several vacancies but did not hear anything back. During my training year, I had a conversation with a teaching assistant who told me that she sometimes teaches in prisons to earn a bit of extra money. She ended up emailing me information about who to contact if I was interested in doing this myself, so I found the email and applied as a cover teacher at three relatively local prisons.
When I took part in the 2019 Volunteer Selection Programme ran by Gods Way in Australia, part of the programme involved us participants creating a “Benefitting the World” presentation. I decided to focus mine on reforming the prison and justice system as I felt an inkling of passion about such an idea at the time even though I had not been inside or worked in such an environment before. I found as I did my research on the topic, I felt a stronger sense of desire and passion for this idea as I began to gain a sense of the downfalls of the current system in terms of love. This is what I based my presentation on at the time. Anyway, I completed the presentation but did not think much about it afterwards until I applied to this prison teaching role 5 months ago. As things go, I was invited to work at a female prison initially on a temporary 8-week contract to teach one run through of a Maths and English course and another called “Progression” which is all about helping learners prepare for life and challenges when they are released. I ended up creating a completely new Progression course from scratch by following the assessment criteria given by the awarding body of the course. I found that I had quite a lot of flexibility to design and deliver my lessons in such a way where I could help learners come to some realisations in their lives about their stories, pain and suffering and to desire a better life for themselves and others whilst still ensuring the course objectives and rules of the prison were met.
When the learners begin a new education course in the prison, they generally feel a strong sense of resistance to attending as they feel forced into it and that they would rather not be there. I designed into the Progression course opportunities for the learners to discuss aspects of their lives relating to the course content within a supportive, kind and non-judgemental classroom environment (which I have the responsibility to create and maintain) and I honestly did not know how it would go. I found that as I did this, the learners who had a negative influence upon the others stopped attending classes, leaving those who were more sincere the chance to engage more fully. I have found that when I have addressed issues, disruptions and negative influences that were occurring in the lessons, some those who were perpetrating them reflected and changed some of their attitudes in a positive manner, and I have really enjoyed seeing them make a positive choice in this way. For me to do this and uphold a certain environment, I have had to confront and challenge emotions in myself relating to why I felt a resistance to doing what I knew love would dictate I do in addressing the situation. This involved seeing love and kind regard as being more important than wanting learners to feel a certain positive way about me for my own selfish needs, a fear of being attacked and being projected anger at for confronting issues that needed to be confronted for the sake of the other, more sincere learners in the class as well as for those who were perpetrating the actions by basically saying to them that this behaviour is not acceptable. This is a work in progress for me, but I have made some progress on the issues.
I found that the learners began to open up about their lives, what they did to be in prison, and in some instances how they have learned from what they have done, and the regret of their actions. As the course progressed, they began to have a supportive and kind feeling towards each other and a sense of understanding and compassion for themselves grew. I am still teaching in the prison and have now completed almost 3 complete run-throughs of the course. I have agreed to complete one further run-through which will take me to late March 2023. Although I have been tweaking the course content and the way I organise and do certain things each time I deliver it, I have found that the learners have responded in pretty much the same way each time, which has given me a lot of faith. I love what I am doing at the moment, and I suspect my happiness now is greater than if I ended up taking a secondary school teacher job had I received any responses to my applications.
I have had opportunities to speak to the learners about the difficulties and challenges of prison life in a lot of detail, and they have suggested to me ways in which it can be improved to encourage those who wish to change be given the opportunities to do so. I feel a huge sense of compassion towards those who I teach. Every day I wake up, I feel the strongest sense of gratitude to God for the journey I have been on, the gifts I have been given, the lessons I have had to learn, the ones I am learning, and the ones I am yet to learn trusting at some point in the future I will get to them. My own rock bottom experiences have helped me to grow a real sense of compassion, kindness and love for others. Ultimately, I would like to create an official prison project where I have more freedom to design and facilitate somewhat of a longer version of the Volunteer Selection Programme to provide opportunities for those who are in prison become redeemed, heal their lives and be happier. The principles of redemption and transformation make me feel very emotional when I connect and feel about what they mean from God’s Perspective.
I have been having some therapy sessions with a local therapist since October as I felt like I wanted to explore some other emotions I had started to become aware of. I ended up finding a therapist who is very open to emotional release and has a strong desire to help people become very truthful with themselves. I attend the sessions weekly and have found them to be very helpful to validate certain experiences I have had in my life, and as such connect to emotions. During the sessions, I can feel my guide helping me to clearly discern the parts that are helpful and relevant to me, and those which are not. I have been putting together pieces of the jigsaw of my childhood and life experiences, and just recently felt the truth of both my parents’ motivations to have children. When I felt the truth of their motives, a lot of my feelings made sense to me, and it has helped me to connect with different pains and sadnesses I have about love. Again, this is a work in progress. The journey towards God is such an intense, emotional and deeply personal journey. I have come to accept the process a lot more and in general to grow a sense of ownership and responsibility for my emotional process and respect others’ process.
I also feel as though I would like to at some stage help run a learning centre which allows people who have a desire a place to visit, observe God’s Principles in action, participate in events and programmes to learn more about themselves, God and others. There is a passion I feel about the potential of such a place, and the gifts which can be given to others.
Since I graduated, I have also been working on completing the Padgett Messages Mobile App which I initially began working on but stopped in early 2017 due to issues of love at the time which prevented further progress on the project. I am currently working on it with a friend of mine called Matei, and we have made a lot of progress on it at this stage. I feel very excited for the prospect of people being able to search, navigate, interact with, and read the Padgett Messages in a very easy and straight forward way on their mobile devices. As part of my work, I have had the benefit of reading through the messages several times over, and this has helped me further in my own personal progress by reading and feeling about the truths that are contained in them. I have been working on the project in my spare time during evenings and weekends when I am not teaching. Matei is currently completing a PhD at Cambridge University, so he works on it like me when has a bit of spare time. I envisage it will still be a couple of months before we are able to make it available to people as we still need to work on the implementation and conduct some testing, alongside how we can gift the intellectual property created during the project rather than own it ourselves, which neither of us wish to do.
Anyway, I think that is enough that I would like to share with anyone who has managed to get to the end of this long blog post. There are plenty of stories I could share about some of the things I have experienced in the last couple of years, but maybe I will save that for another time. There is a very heavy feeling in England at the moment, and the spirit attack that myself and a few friends have experienced recently has been particularly intense. I hope that what I have shared in this post has relevance and is helpful to you in some way.
Wherever you may be, I wish you well in your own personal relationship with God and only hope you are finding more happiness in your lives.
Nicky