by Anonymous, UK
As far back as I can remember I have been obsessed with food especially sugar. After school I would see what money was lying around, sneakily steal it from my parents and head off to the corner shop to buy a few pound’s worth of sweets. Once home I would ‘mong out’ in front of the television and eat and drink as much as I could before feeling sick. Looking back I did this to totally numb out – not that I could say anything in my life was particularly bad, I just knew even then I didn’t want to be in it fully.
Sugar quickly turned to alcohol and drugs and at the age of 13 if I wasn’t drunk every weekend then I was smoking pot or experimenting with other nasty chemicals; the venue for such activities would be the local youth club or Village Park!
This continued after finishing school, when at 17 I escaped to Greece to work in bars and restaurants. The perks with working in Greece were that you got all your drinks free and they were so much stronger then back home in the UK.
From Greece I got a boat to Israel with a few friends, where for a year I forgot my growing underlying problems with the help of cheap Russian vodka. From Israel to Egypt, where alcohol was not so easily available, my drug of choice became hashish. Smoking and diving most days, where I didn’t even like diving but overrode my feelings as it was the cool thing to be seen doing.
A particularly low moment in my life was when the man I was having a relationship with, a man who I thought I loved (I was starting to get an unhealthy obsession with) admitted he had three other wives! I was emotionally heartbroken and it was at this point I was introduced to Reiki. Now I had something to relieve me and focus on. What I didn’t know then was it was another form of obsession for me. I had now found spirituality and I was on a mission to pursue it from every angle possible.
I returned back to England where I found more of the same – qualifying in Kinesiology, Reflexology, energetic interference patterning, massage, teaching yoga and the list went on…
I had a mission and now I could push my pain down deeper without drugs or sugar because I was ‘helping people’.
I started self-employed work offering therapy for a mental health charity and I also worked at an eating disorders clinic, in addition to the local hospital. Helping people who were worse off than me allowed me to get away with my issues – you see if I’m working with people I presume are in a worse situation than me then that makes me OK, Right?….. WRONG!
Over a ten year period, as well as working self-employed, I also worked as a health care assistant working with a wide range of people including people with dementia, schizophrenia, brain injuries and learning disabilities. I worked in a range of hospitals, clinics, secure units and homes. The benefit of working this way was that I was in charge of my own time, so I could just fly away when things got tough. It gave me the perfect opportunity to avoid commitment because as soon as things got a bit tough I could head off to the sun in pursuit of the next best thing. Whilst in Barcelona and after a few months of hard core Kundalini yoga my periods stopped. At the time I had allowed myself to be convinced into thinking this was a positive thing – my body on the other hand was saying something entirely different. Back to England and I was due to start my second year of nursing but I managed to sabotage it as I was getting itchy feet and couldn’t stay in one place too long… so off to the sun I flew again…
Whilst working in Marbella as a shiatsu practitioner I started becoming very disillusioned with the whole alternative medicine scene – could I honestly say that in my ten years of therapy working I was truly helping my clients? For sure I could see the relief and the moments where they dropped deeper into their body but something did not feel right and I kept choosing to ignore it. I was also aware that in my time of complementary therapy I had not met another practitioner who truly inspired me. I was very aware by now that giving therapy often attracted those who did not want to deal with their stuff – yes, including me!
So on and off for ten years I would work in one place with the agency then another, live in England and then live ‘somewhere else’. In the space of ten years I lived in 6 different countries. Deep down all along I was craving the security of a long term job and a proper home, somehow though I managed to avoid it at all costs; flitting from one place to another while holding onto the belief that if I stayed put and got a stable home and a proper job I would be joining a society in which I felt I did not want to be part of.
So even with a full time well-paid job I chose to live alone on the beach with little possessions and a manky (damp blanket) as my bedding. The ocean was my bathroom and the stars were my celling. I was not new to living on a beach and had also lived in a couple of caves in the Canary Islands where I lived in one cave for a year – no fresh water and living mainly off the tomato and pepper plantations that grew nearby. As you can imagine, this was no place or way for a woman to live, but on reflection it exposes the little regard I had for myself.
All this allowed me to keep avoiding committing to a world I felt was too tough to be in.
I cannot believe it was only three years ago I was living on the beach with that manky, damp blanket!
So what changed? On my toing and froing back to England I came across a book by Serge Benhayon, Book 1 – ‘The Way it Is’ from a healing store in Norwich (Thanks Louise!), I took it back to Spain and would read it while living on the beach and at night I would keep it under my pillow which was usually a rolled up piece of clothing! When reading it I could feel my body resonating with truth, a truth I had forgotten yet deep down I knew it had been there all along.
When I was due to go back to England for a few weeks to work again for the health care agency, it was then I felt to have my first session with an esoteric healing practitioner. I honestly remember thinking I don’t really need to go as I’m fine the way I am. Wow I am glad I did.
One of the first things my practitioner said to me was that she was not there to make me feel any better but here to show me how far away I had come from being the true me. Now this was quite refreshing, as in all my years of giving therapy it was about making the client feel better by addressing their immediate needs and little or nothing about them taking responsibility for the way their life had turned out.
After our session I mentioned I was due to get a flight back to Spain the next day… in the love that I was held in I could feel that what I was saying was not right. For the next 24 hours I wrestled with whether or not to get the flight and I felt for myself what was true and I never got on the plane; and in fact it wasn’t until a year and half later I would pick up my few remaining things.
I started to realise how living rough on the beach was affecting my body and I was also becoming aware of the hardness that was inside as well as a sadness of not being able to fully commit to society. As I felt deeper into my ‘calm’ exterior I realised that not far underneath was a bag of nerves, as living on my own on the beach was not particularly safe, though at the time I would have said I was fine and loved it but in truth I could never truly relax, which again took its toll on my body.
Soon after my first session with the esoteric healing practitioner I started to let go of the lack of self-love and disregard I had in body and things started to shift quickly. Things that I wanted deep down all along started to manifest, basic but amazing things like consistency, a home where I felt safe, a regular job, a relationship based on trust and self-love and not only did I get a bathroom but an ensuite as well! I had started to allow love in and with it I realised I didn’t have to spend my life avoiding society. I started to commit fully to living in this life, my life!
I now have a lovely home. It has now been the longest period I have stayed in one place since childhood. I have regular work to which I am deeply committed.
My aim in this job and any other I may take up, is not to help save people but to be of true service. I know to do this I need to work on my own self-love and this will always be an on-going process, at least now I have the reflections of those who are already in that true service.
Before Universal Medicine I can honestly say I had never met a practitioner whether that was a yoga teacher, massage therapist or counsellor who I could be truly inspired by. The esoteric healing practitioners I have meet over the last few years live truth, energetic integrity and love in a way that I have not seen before. It is truly inspiring!
I am grateful to have that amazing support around me, if I do go off track I am able to be inspired by those who are living that love.
Thank you to all those truly inspiring role models I have met these last few years, for it is in you I can feel the pull of my own evolution.
Inspired by the work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine
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