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….