Across my life I have spent time ‘looking for something’. I could not always say what this ‘something’ was and this search has been sporadic, moving from being quite active to ignoring this topic altogether.
Over the past eight years, I have been coming closer to this ‘something’ than ever before. I am sure there is much more to discover, but this something was ME… the real me.
There have been at least six stages of becoming me, and here are the broad brush strokes:
1) Realising there is more to life than just what we see:
I came to this early in life with parents that recognised life is not just about what can be seen; that there is also what can be felt on a subtler level (energetically). They showed me there was merit in understanding, or at the very least not being closed off to, this possibility.
Later in life I studied Natural Therapies, Homeopathy, Reiki, Remedial Therapies and a number of other modalities that all showed an appreciation for this energetic aspect of our being.
I had accepted that having found the concept of energy, this was the hidden part of the puzzle. However, the many and varied therapies I experienced promised so much, yet all I could find as a client and all I could offer as a practitioner was a momentary ‘wow’ or temporary relief. Regardless of this, people would keep coming to me for treatments (even doctors)… My own life was okay but I would not call it joyful – I still had big ups and downs, still felt a sense of struggle through my life.
The ‘something’ was not emerging from the work I was doing, regardless of how dedicated I was. Eventually, I stopped being a practitioner and went off to more traditional forms of employment.
2) Realising that focusing on energy is only the beginning:
After a period of time, comfortable with my career, playing in a band with mates, involved in my kids’ school, I attended (reluctantly) a presentation by Universal Medicine and this guy named Serge Benhayon, who made the suggestion that if everything is energy, everything is because of energy.
It was intriguing to consider the possibility that the energy behind joy may not be the same energy behind anger: the energy behind my thinking I am not any good is not the same energy behind my feeling I am amazing… and so on.
While I said ‘yes’ to this concept almost immediately, I did not fully grasp how deeply true this is. It took me some time to play with this concept and to confirm to myself that maybe there was a different energy behind things. What was most interesting is that I did not end up with a list of different types of energy. There were only two – love, and everything else.
At one point it felt strange to consider why my other studies of energy and healing had felt so true but had not introduced me to such a simple yet profound concept… ‘it’ is not what you do but the energy you do it in – even when you’re dealing with energy!
The Gentle Breath Meditation taught by Universal Medicine, and their workshops, were important parts of this learning, as it gave me some practical tools I could take away and use to develop this awareness.
In the past the teachings were ‘everything is energy’, so just open yourself up to that energy. Now I realise there is a deeper choice.
3) Realising I had a choice:
I began to take responsibility for my life at an energetic level: I chose to ‘feel’ how, or what I was eating, drinking and doing at any given time. Sometimes I would be convinced something was good for me but feel terrible after eating or drinking it. Over time I would test this out to see if the same thing happened.
Through this awareness, I had given myself true choice… to either choose things that are loving, or not. Diet no longer became a regime but a choice to be loving towards myself: exercise was no longer a ‘must do’ but a choice to be loving towards myself. Sometimes I made choices that were unloving (and I still do), but I had a clear point in my body to gauge this by. If I push myself at work to ‘get it done’, I can feel the drain of this, but in the past I would cover up that drain with coffee or sugar. Strangely, the more of these self-loving choices I made, the more I got done.
There are always more areas of my life I can bring more love to, but at the end of the day the ‘love’ I was feeling never said ‘do this or do that’, it just helped me feel the consequence of my choices. I began to realise this personal responsibility was not about removing myself from life and making myself so fragile I couldn’t interact with the world, but rather about how to be MORE of me in every moment.
I used the different esoteric modalities (Esoteric Healing, Chakra-puncture, Esoteric Massage etc.) to help me ‘clean up’ the mess of less supportive choices and build this personal responsibility.
This was when friends and family started to notice I was changing. Some were happy for me to learn this stuff – but not if it meant I would stop drinking alcohol etc. Some felt the change and wanted to know more, others drifted off. Either way, change, real change, was taking place.
4) Realising that my intention affected everything:
So things were changing – I was taking more responsibility for my life. My energy levels were picking up, I was needing less sleep but becoming more productive, the quality of my relationships was improving. So I must have been about ‘there’, right? Wrong….
While most other modalities I have gone to in the past offered to ‘help me’, the esoteric modalities got to a point where their benefits were limited by my own willingness or unwillingness to be responsible for my own healing.
I still went to different practitioners, but the benefits I received from each treatment were in direct relationship with what I was going to the practitioner for in the first place. For example: if I was going to have my life choices ‘cleaned up’, the treatment was less effective, but if I was going to ‘build a body of love’, then each session would be as amazing as I allowed it to be.
So I realised that my intention affected my level of healing (and everything else)… If I wanted someone to fix me, I got momentary relief: if I wanted to more fully connect to myself, to learn to live as me, then I got just that.
5) Realising that no workshop, book or other person makes my choices:
This was a confronting phase: I spent lots of time here being frustrated at how hard the world was making it for me to be me… yes, I was blaming others!
Surely if I was doing all this work, building all this awareness, it should be getting easier… Yes, I was wanting a reward, and to a degree wanting an excuse to give up.
In truth, life was getting easier, but I was more committed to finding something to fix – and to believing that I was not the one able to fix it.
Whenever I connected to me, the message was ‘you are enough’, but despite that, I would keep looking for the noise outside that place of connection.
I was convinced that everyone who was saying ‘it’s inside you’, was wrong. I was convinced that if I could get my wife, my kids, and the world around me to be more loving, I could then be love.
Eventually I had nowhere else to turn but to the humble reality that it did all come back to me…
6) Becoming a student of myself:
One day I stopped fighting, stopped looking outside myself. I wish I could say this occurred by a parting of the clouds and a bright light, but it didn’t.
This change came about by a willingness to take responsibility for the frustration, the desire to give up and any other emotion. Eventually, by taking responsibility for what I was feeling, there was not as much emotion in the way and what was left was… me.
The learning about taking energetic responsibility continues: it’s not something I expect to get right all the time but I live with me, the real me, more than at any other time in my life. There are still choices to be made every day – like what to eat, work to be done, kids to be looked after, and chores to be completed. I beat myself up less for my choices (past and present) and I feel more vitality than ever before, but I know I am far from the end.
In most stories this is the moment of epiphany…. but not in this case. The epiphany occurred back at stage two with Universal Medicine’s invitation to consider that while some people might be energetically aware, we are not all energetically discerning.
Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day.
If this is what love might be, I can’t wait for the next step.
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