People’s Experiences

When I came across Belsebuub’s work back in Autumn 2005, I was at a point in my life where everything had drastically changed. I had just recovered from end of stage cancer, so the question of what was to come next often came to my mind. All I knew is that I felt that I had been given a second chance at life, and having come so close to death, I yearned for something more than what I had before. Before my diagnosis, it seemed I had it all: I was already in a committed relationship and had a dog, I had a busy social life, had recently bought my first flat, and was attending a world-renowned university. Professionally, I had co-published my research work, and had a great mentor. It seemed all boxes were ticked. Yet in the middle of all of this, questions that had followed me since childhood and which had often kept me awake at night still remained unanswered and with them, a part of me just always felt unfulfilled, empty and unhappy. What are we here for? How did we come into existence? What happens after we die? Is there a God? Is there a way to [...]

It is difficult to convey how much the information from the Searching Within course by Belsebuub has impacted my life. This write up will certainly not tell the full story, but I hope to give a sense of what it meant to me. A Bit on My Early Life I want to start off by saying a few things about my childhood in order to put the opportunity I gained from the course into context. I remember that in my early childhood, I perceived life in a different way, not as in a difference in worldview but an actual different way of perceiving the external world. It was more conscious. Everything I could see, everything I could hear, it all felt incredibly real. The sheets against my cheek as I went to bed, the sound of the spoons hitting the kitchen sink, the stillness and appearance of everyday objects I observed in the living room. As I grew up, I became aware of the gradual changes in the way I responded to life, becoming immersed in constant daydreams, bound in a cloud, but I also had a growing feeling deep down that something was missing. On the surface, I had [...]

The Searching Within course by Belsebuub came at a significant point in my life, and it helped me to turn a new page and chapter in that period of my life. This was the second course I took by Belsebuub, the first course being on astral travel and dreams. It made sense to me after the first course to continue to learn how the exploration of self-knowledge could help me positively change my psyche and my dreams during sleep, but also because I could tell that this course was setting things in a bigger overall picture where I could approach my daily life from a different perspective. Before the course Up until that point, I had been looking around to attend different spiritual groups and types of spiritual practices and I was getting more and more interested in meditation and experiencing the 'supernatural/spiritual/magic' which is what I imagined all spiritual things to be. But none of the groups or practices I found felt or sounded right to me, and so I did not make a start with any of them. Then I learned that a friend of mine was helping to organize courses written by Belsebuub, and that they were free of charge. [...]

Trying to Exchange Pleasure for Peace I can’t recall a particular event that made me want to dedicate my life to a spiritual search – it was more of a gradual thing.  As a teenager and young adult, my interests were diverse, but usually geared towards self-indulgence, such as getting drunk at parties/festivals and spending countless hours absorbed in television. However, alongside this, I had an early interest in self-discovery, which led me to study psychology at university.  I completed my degree with an OK grade, but was told by a tutor that I could have achieved so much more, if I had only applied myself to my studies in a better way.  The same type of comment had followed me since my school days, where I always did well enough to move onto the next level, but mediocre overall. I didn’t enjoy the feelings that underachievement brought, but just didn’t know how to develop the staying power to focus on what I needed to do, rather than having my attention pulled to and fro by one fleeting interest after another. I also became acutely aware of the pain that the endless pursuit of pleasure brought, as I found myself [...]

I attended the Searching Within course of The Gnostic Movement in 2007 at the Greek study center of Athens. Prior to this I had been participating in Gnosticweb’s online forums. I had been presented with the choice to attend either the Astral course or the Searching Within course. At the moment I had been aiming to overcome some harmful habits and change myself to become a better person so the Searching Within course sounded suitable for me. What had mostly attracted me to the Searching Within course was its statement that it would show me the tools to know myself better, uncover my subconscious drives and change. Comments in the forums by previous course participants were also very motivating. People were saying that the methods of the Searching Within course and the course structure itself were very effective. On an intellectual level, I was familiar with some of the ideas that I thought would be presented in the course and so I kind of knew what to expect. However, the approach and structure of the lessons taught in the Searching Within course were quite different to anything I had found before. Simplicity and Practicality The course was very simple and [...]

Belsebuub’s Searching Within course was perhaps the most impactful thing I experienced in my life. The information he presented resonated with me greatly, but most importantly the practices really worked and I managed to begin to overcome many debilitating negative states and experience things like peace and clarity on a level I had never experienced before. First Starting to Practice For me, the main introduction to Belsebuub’s Searching Within course was his book The Peace of the Spirit Within. A few of the catchphrases on the cover caught my attention when I first glanced at it, such as: “Look for the peace of the spirit within you – that which is permanent… That which is permanent is the consciousness.” I read through it but noted how Belsebuub made it clear that change would only occur through practice and personal experience, so I knew I needed to actually do the things I was reading to make any progress. However, the way Belsebuub wrote was so easy to understand and relate to that I already felt I learned a lot just by reading. In particular, I learned a lot about how it was actually possible to make lasting positive changes to how [...]

All my life, or at least almost as long as I can remember I wanted to gain knowledge and wisdom. But it wasn’t simply book learning I was interested in, or an intellectual interest, there was more to it. Searching for Practical Spiritual Knowledge When I was still quite young I would go to the spiritual section of the library and read books on the paranormal and various forms of meditation practice. As I got older I would scour the Internet to try and find different ways to increase psychic faculties and have out-of-body experiences, and searched for online places of spiritual knowledge. It was that sort of knowledge that I was looking for, the “how-to” knowledge of the metaphysical side of life that I felt was there somewhere, hiding. Yet so far, I had only come across superficial or not-very-practical stuff, no matter what sort of books or websites I read. Sometimes I would get this feeling welling up inside me that I couldn't explain – an intensely strong yearning for more than I currently had in my life. It would come at the strangest times. One memorable example was when I was stopped at pedestrian traffic lights waiting [...]

After having been told about and sent the Searching Within course via the downloadable PDFs yet not actually reading them for many months, one day I decided to give it a chance and finally go through it. I started with week one's topic, the course outline and introduction. In it, Belsebuub described key concepts that the course would cover that were completely new to me. Many things that I would have readily and quickly dismissed in the past if I had come across them in books or was told about them by others actually made sense for a change due to the very practical, down-to-earth, and simplistic way that Belsebuub managed to explain them. He had a way of describing things that could actually make them quite tangible and relatable to my life, so I could see how the information actually could apply—this was not a fantastical, typical, flowery, dreamy, unworldly way that most tend to write or speak about spiritual things, which was so off-putting to me. Experiencing the Benefits of Spiritual Exercises Then came the exercises. With each weekly topic there was also a weekly exercise. Although the course was eight weeks at the time and it was [...]

I stumbled upon the Searching Within course in a remarkable and unforgettable way. Back in late 2002, I learned that Belsebuub’s 9-week course in Self-Discovery was finishing off with a group walk in Toronto, Canada. My friends and I took the opportunity to join. Without having any prior knowledge about the course and its subject matter I was introduced into what I would later discover would be one of the most essential practices of the course – awareness of the present poment. What was special about this introduction for me was that while I thought I knew a few things about spirituality, this walk presented a most practical approach to the spiritual that I had never personally considered prior. The information and methodology I received was new to me, but beyond that was the exploratory approach that suggested an entirely different way of processing information, which was through personal effort, discovery and experience. Thus in this walk, I was trying out one of the Searching Within course’s primary exercises and learning about it in a very personal way. It became alive through my own efforts, taking its simple explanation into practice. It was mine to discover and experience. Something that I [...]

Belsebuub’s Searching Within course was offered online through the website Mysticweb.org in 2002 when I first took the course. I had just done his course on Astral Travel & Dreams which was the first course of [...]