by Alan Johnston, Pottsville NSW
Up until my engagement with Universal Medicine, I never actually considered that (my) soul could intervene in (my) life. However, I did occasionally have the intimation that something was looking out for me in some way, even if at times it felt like the rough end of the pineapple.
For example, I once spent several weeks in prison.
The equation went like this: it was the end of the 1960’s, add a large BSA motorbike plus very long hair and a ‘rebel without a pause’ attitude, a three-car police chase, a conservative magistrate (I wore a wig to court to conceal my hair)… but incarceration was, he said, ‘unavoidable’.
I spent my first few days sharing a cell with a seminary student who was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. No contest as to who had the moral high ground.
Now, with a bit more self-reflection than when I was twenty, I have no doubt that this episode was my soul intervening and breaking up a self-destructive spiral.
Things weren’t the same when I got out – I mean apart from the prison haircut. And perhaps you can get a whiff of how that inmate ‘barber’, with all his mates watching on, relished cutting the hippie’s hair.
Closely entwined then, there was the ‘biblical’ disempowerment of the haircutting but also, thanks to my soul, a much more dire imprisonment was revealed.
What I mean is, that through the sudden loss of a heavily-invested-in identity, I got the first glimpse that I was a prisoner of my need for acceptance and recognition – from without, from others. As far back as I could tell it had always been like that. A life sentence, in fact. I probably couldn’t have expressed it quite this way at the time, I just felt extremely vulnerable.
So, while the rebellion didn’t disappear and indeed led to further self-destructive behaviour, I also very gratefully feel that this soul-provided insight/vulnerability (and other such episodes), ultimately helped draw me back to myself – albeit via the scenic route.
And how beautiful it now feels to name and sense the sphere of the soul and its influence, and the joy of that which senses….
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
A moment to stop and appreciate our soul, ‘the loving guidance of soul was steering my path and encouraging me to embrace my inner wisdom.’
Sometimes the imprisoning we inflict on ourselves may not be noticeable, but it may be greater and even more destructive than the one we can receive from the outside
Beautiful to appreciate that the Soul is Divine Love when we experience the ‘short, sharp shock’ that brings us to a stop and an opportunity to make a different choice in the way we live.
The best (or the worst) prison of all is the one that we don’t know we are in so that we would make it a home and never even think to try getting out of.
Life without the 60s would be so different as the rebel within us all got to be experienced and set a platform for the next generations to follow even be it at a different slant but still insidiously lost as the millennials are a testament to. Soul-full living, as you have shared Alan, is so extra-ordinarily different as it brings such a Joyous Harmony to life.
Appreciation of our Soul, has set a platform for us to be more intimate with everyone and thus we start to evolve and deepen in our Soul-full essences.
And rather than searching we simply live with appreciation of our Soul and feel the simplicity of what life is like without the usual drive and judge-mental attachments we can become addicted to.
It is so lovely to feel the presence of our Soul without it having to ‘come to our rescue’.
It is immensely beautiful and deeply settling to feel and know that the sense of the presence of our Soul, that which has never really left me alone throughout my life, is in fact real, and is an impulse that we can live guided by and is the true representation of who we are and our purpose for being here. Inspired by The Way of the Livingness, I have discovered that a Soulful way of being in life is truly possible.
Your stint in prison clearly put a stop to your ‘rebel without a pause’ trajectory Alan – but well done to you for listening and being honest about where you were going if you continued the direction and path you were on.
I would like to see a photo of you with the wig on that you wore to court many years ago. 🙂
Yes until we start getting glimpses of what it is to sense and move with the light of the Soul, it is not so obvious that we are constricted and constrained in a world of illusion, a prison of our own making.
Human life is an enormous experience, and when we get a sense of the soul it’s truly a defining moment, we are already making the return to something much grander by the gentle waking up of our soul’s presence.