by Joan Calder, Frome, Somerset, UK, my home is my work now

I have just experienced something that shows me how much, and in what way, Serge Benhayon’s presentations and the sessions I have had and courses I have attended with Universal Medicine, are helping me to change deep internal patterns I thought I was stuck in for life.

My first memories are fearful ones; I was terrified of the world and everything in it. I have spent a lot of my life in panic about the possibilities of harmful events occurring – phobias, threats and invasions that could happen to me – and I was always on alert and worried about any weird sensations I felt from inside my body.

I became protective and numbed myself by throwing myself into activities in a very driven way, and eventually trained and then worked in body and therapy modalities to relieve the pressure that this built up, as well as searching for the “ideal” healing for my ills from many, many different alternative therapies. Some of these seemed to work at the time, but ultimately the problems were still there underneath… ready to pop up when any crisis came along.

And come they did! I built layers to try to protect myself, to no avail, and ended up really ill because I could not express how I was truly feeling. Then I met Universal Medicine and started to work with myself from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. I began also to realise how much I had blamed myself for my reactions and the hard shell I had created. The panics grew less, my reactions to everything became less emotional and dramatic, and yet I was still missing the key that could change my approach to life at a very deep level.

Then recently something happened that gave me that key. Walking up a hillside with my partner, Noel, who is country born and bred, we met a small herd of interested young cows. I panicked… they sensed my fear and came closer. I felt powerless. Noel gave me the choice of going on past them or turning round, there was nowhere to run to. After one single definite gesture and word from Noel had stopped them in their tracks, I chose to go on and we passed them without trouble.

I pondered deeply about this incident. We sat in the sun and I talked it through, and remembered a story about the Indian prince who eventually had to face a tiger after years of avoiding the confrontation, only to discover that when he did it purred like a kitten!

I then connected to something big! I was now allowing a connection to my vulnerability! Before this moment I hadn’t been allowing myself to feel my own vulnerability and fragility, or my own humanness. I sat there for a long time and felt what it would be like to honour that feeling. When I got up to go back I had no idea whether anything had changed or not. We walked purposefully towards the cows… I was on the side nearest them, I did not feel like trying to hide behind Noel. I knew I could not hang on to my old ways anymore, I kept talking to myself about how I have felt, that I can be, and am, full of Love, and that I am glorious inside, and at the same time I allowed myself to feel my vulnerability.

I was very near the herd. They all looked up and stared, but not one moved. I walked past them confidently and felt this great expansion in my chest, and a wonderful feeling of being joyful and connected to everything. My body was light and free, and the cows and the world were no longer a threat to me. I did not feel the relief I had felt the first time after I had passed them, there was no need. I had embraced my tiger – or rather cows!

Allowing my vulnerability was the key to my opening my heart to the world – instead of defending myself against it.

I am no longer under the illusion that my emotions are going to disappear, but I have understood in myself my own reaction to them and felt a fundamental change of attitude. It could not have happened without the five years of encouragement to continually observe my choices and where they come from, and learning to feel my body and take more responsibility for myself.

And all this was possible because of the sure, steady loving support of Serge Benhayon, his clarity, and the continual inspiration of how he lives a life of truth, integrity and love – and from the support of the other practitioners, and many students of Universal Medicine.

Thank you all for the opportunity to experience my connection with myself and all that is around me in a new and loving way.