189 thoughts on “The Six Stages of ‘Becoming Me’ (so far anyway): Part 2”

1. Elizabeth I totally agree with you to become a student of ourselves is the best medicine or present we can give to ourselves. The Ageless Wisdom teachings gives everyone the opportunity to look deep within themselves and discover this other part of ourselves which has remained hidden under the falseness of life we think is life but actually bears no resemblance to who we are in truth.

2. This resonated with me Joel,
   “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. ”
   I also felt that if everyone around me was more loving it would be far easier for me to love. But that is not how this life is set up. Even before we enter this realm of life we have agreed how our life will be and it has no basis of love to it. We are all set up from the beginning to look outside of ourselves for love and confirmation of that love, rather than rely on our own sense of who we are and what we are here to bring. I thank the stars in heaven that I came across Serge Benhayon and the Ageless wisdom teachings because these teachings have supported me and thousands of other people to reconnect to the love that is naturally within us rather than looking outside of ourselves and expecting others to be the love we want for ourselves. It just doesn’t work that way as evidenced by the society we live in today.

3. This statement bought an awareness and a confirmation of what I need to stop doing, ‘looking outside myself’. Something I continue to do to from time to time, thinking that the ‘outside of myself’ will have the answer and if anything it is the complete opposite.

   It is the willingness to take full responsibility and it is only when we accept this, that makes the difference to the quality of lives we live. Life will be seen from a different perspective, it then becomes the playground or merry go round and you become the observer of life.

   1. Shushila, It all boils down to the fact that we think we think, we do not fully grasp that we are given the thoughts to think by an alignment to either one of two energies Soul or astral and that if we then use our astral ‘thoughts’ to get out out of a situation we are just compounding the problem. If we use the thoughts given to us by the soul-full energy it’s an entirely different process. Because we do not use our minds but use our bodies which carry far more intelligence than our minds can ever know.

4. Step by step, march by march making our way back to where we came from. It is not a forwards path at all, much to our surprise, but a path of return. Thank you Elizabeth for this beautiful reminder and confirmation.

5. Joel you have made another comment that deserves a stop moment, and this is where you talk about how we might be energetically aware but it does not mean that we are energetically discerning. We feel so much all of the time, but a willingness to go deeper and understanding this is key.

   1. It’s only when we allow to feel more, that our awareness becomes more aware and in that we have two choices, to be more discerning or remain in the ignorance of it all.

6. We are the only ones who make our choices – we may not be able to “choose” what happens to us in life (though on some level we do with the natural laws of actions and consequences), but we certainly do have a choice over how we react or respond to a certain situation.

7. Joel, this is super powerful and shows us that what we put in or invest in is what we then get returns on: “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.”

8. This is so true, ‘Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day.’

9. Our intention with everything is super important, ‘ 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.’

   1. I agree with you Lorraine, at first I had no intention to do anything. I was blinded by the ideals, beliefs, pictures I had been given of who I was and furthermore by the expectations that I had allowed to be placed on me by family, friends and work colleagues. When we come to the realisation that all that ‘crap’ is not who we are then there is an opportunity to get to know our true selves. Having got to this stage my intention is to discover me, the modality that is supporting me currently is the Esoteric Breast Massage this modality supports me to actually deepen my relationship with myself as a woman and I absolutely adore this inner beauty that I am discovering that there is a sweet delicateness I had no idea was there within me. There is so much more to us than we are led to believe. We sold and have swallowed so many lies that for some of us it is hard to get past such barriers. If we can get past them then from my own experience it is so worth the effort. It is a beautiful rediscovery of one’s true self.

10. I would say I have been in step 5 for some time as well, but going into 6 and realising that it’s not those outside of me that are constantly saying I am Love but my own body shouting this constantly.

11. Thank you Joel, I always enjoy the honesty and how relatable everything is that you have shared. And, a great reminder about checking in on my intention and whether I am here for self or for the all.

12. May I offer Two more steps and how we move (1) as life is deepened this becomes our awareness of how Lovingly we can be through moving and brings a deepening-humble-appreciative-ness (2) of our divinity. As being humble is to feel the connection to our Soul and accepting no other energy.

13. “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” – this is such a brilliant observation. I haven’t really clocked it myself, but what I can feel is a sense of responsibility being accepted as we accept more of who we are, and that there’s nothing to be fixed because truth naturally exposes and dispels what does not belong.

14. When we heal ourselves it is for us All. Thank you Joel for sharing your, Stages of ‘Becoming Me’ (so far anyway). I love the ‘so far anyway’… very true from my experience as there is always more of us to unfold.:)

    1. Yes, having a session, healing ourselves, everything we do is for All.

15. ‘Love is not looking for a happy ending’,… great point, it an ever expansive movement of expression.

    1. Love is so much more and so different to what we have been brought up in society to believe. It is an expansive movement of expression Victoria – so beautifully said, and not the emotional mayhem that we have been conditioned to know it as.

16. It was such an eye opener when I started to realise how much my intention affected the way I felt and how things turned out.

    1. So True Fiona, and adding to what has been shared it is not only our intentions, but all the wayward things we do are also a reflection that does not Truly serve our bodies and thus is a reflection that does not bring the Truth of our divinity.

17. Taking responsibility alone has an amazing ripple effect, yet doing things for relief will not work any more because there is an awareness there is more to consider with responsibility. What a gift.

    1. Thank you Lucy and may I add that the Heavens have / is showering us with much Love and we can but only accept these gifts through the choice of being responsible.

18. True change only takes place if you able to land a highly personalized approach (to your healing and to the study of yourself) into a flow of increasing awareness that life is not just about you but about all.

    1. Eduardo we have been lied to and have swallowed the lie that it is all about taking care of others and to take care of ourselves is a selfish act. This to me has a very religious smell to it. But actually the more we take care of ourselves by looking inwards it is possible to discover the flow of increasing awareness you talk about that life then becomes not just about the individual but about everyone. This then becomes a very joy-full expression of true love towards our fellow human-beings which is so sorely missed by everyone.

19. The distinction between seeing a practitioner expecting to get ‘fixed’ and seeing one to be supported in one’s own healing brings not only a difference in focus for the session, it results in a different outcome as you so correctly share, Joel. The former is like having a plaster put on a wound while the latter achieves true healing in that the root cause of the wound is addressed so you do not keep hurting yourself.

    1. Yes it is great love, it just doesn’t let you settle for less than the magnificence you are from. There is quite a battle till you realise you are fighting yourself and there is little point in continuing the ‘battle’.

       1. Hence true healing only occurs when one is open and willing to change and accept responsibility for one’s own wellbeing.

20. A beautiful, heartfelt and lived description of the unfolding path to ‘me’.

21. This highlights the self-empowerment that is offered through The Way of The Livingness, as you realise that all that is lived is because of the energy you align to, what you are willing to say ‘yes’ to and as such all the choices that are made are what follows from this. I have discovered the more we live in connection to our Soul the more we live guided by the truth of the love we are, every step of our way.

22. I am a big fan of intention as the more you become aware of it the more you understand that it underpins everything. As Joel’s example shows, the clearer and more committed you are to your intention for healing (and it not just being about relief or getting ‘better’) the greater the healing can be. I have never known any other healing modality where you realise that you are responsible for your own healing.

23. It is definitely very humbling to realise that no matter what is happening around us we have a choice as to how we respond to it and we can either react and add more toxic energy to the world or we can observe and respond with love. And that ultimately blaming the world does not lead anywhere but a miserable life.

    1. andrewmooney26 having blamed the world most of my life for the duff cards I had been handed, and so lived that miserable life you talk of, to come to the understanding that those duff cards were the result of past life choices was a big Ostrich size egg to suck on. I now understand that we repeat life until we clear all the unloving toxic imprints we have left in our wake and relearn to remaster ourselves so that the misaligned astral energy we have been using is replaced with the true energy we come from which is the soul.

24. The willingness to heal is what makes the whole difference of the world.

25. Committing to becoming a student of ourselves is the best move we can ever make.

    1. As a student of ourselves, we are forever open to learning.

26. “Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day” – and it is me that puts a limit on how much love I allow me to be. The frustration, the desire to give up, the emotions – these are what I create in an attempt to put a stop to this never ending expanding pull – as if I am in fear of this pull towards God.

    1. What is going on Fumiyo when we can feel so much love within us and it is the most gorgeous feeling to have, to then sabotage ourselves by eating or drinking something that takes the edge of the feeling of grandness. That’s when we really get to see what the separated spirit is up to, because there is this part of us that does not want to reconnect back to the one soul it separated from to have this lesser life we are all living. At last the spirit has exposed itself and the trickery it has been using. Coming to this realisation we can then take back mastery of ourselves, so that when we want to eat that bar of chocolate or packet of crisps is to know that it is not really us that wants such food but this other separated part of us, that wants to dull our bodies so that we do not feel the majesty of who we truly are. If we can be disgusted by such trickery and falsehood then maybe we have a chance of reclaiming the true sense of who we are.

27. It is interesting how we resist what we already know deep inside to be true, it is as if we want some form of proof, some sort of epiphany to confirm what we feel, before we truly believe in ourselves, the more connected we become the more honest we are able to be with ourselves and the less need for any proof because we already feel everything.

28. Becoming a student of ‘myself’ is becoming a student of life as everyday presents a new learning experience and a new opportunity to learn more about myself , others and the universe we are part of.

    1. Very true, life is constantly ready to reflect to us the next layer to learn from. If we are looking for relief then this constant reflection will irritate us because we are looking for our ‘time off’ but if we embrace the discovery of who we are and what we are a part of, then we embrace the reflections with less resistance.

29. Human beings need to give themselves more credit. We can read life beyond what we see because we actually see life at the level of intention and not just the physicality of how that plays out. This to me speak volumes of how amazing we are and how we each have an intimate relationship with energy.

    1. So true Rachael, we do need to give ourselves more credit and appreciate how much we do actually clock, see and know. The point is we have given way more credit and focus to the behaviours that mask the relationship we have with energy.

30. Being a student of myself is an honouring of who I am in every aspect, zero judgement allowed.

31. The understanding and appreciation that in our essence we are love and that there is nothing to ‘fix’ of the being within and it is the wayward spirit that we have a responsibility to bring back to being at one with the Soul.

    1. The more we are prepared to see the more we are shown just how wayward we have become. But all is not lost there is a plan that will take us all back to the one soul we all come from.

32. “but if I was going to ‘build a body of love’, then each session would be as amazing as I allowed it to be.”
    Bringing this choice to our sessions and our everyday life makes living a grand experience of learning, understanding and humbleness. True healing cvan not but happen as one builds their body of love with the deepest of loving dedication.

33. I’ve run with that belief if I didn’t have this one in my life or this person at my work or if the kids were sorted then I would be fine and I would have no issues… the thing is I realised I liked issues because they kept me distracted from myself. Once I realised that in truth I really didn’t have any issues, We really are the only ones that can take responsibility for our own healing, love, appreciation and acceptance ourselves.

    1. It’s fascinating watching ourselves as we create our own drama and issues out of basically nothing. All a big game and distraction that we use to stay individual and avoid getting on with our purpose of living deeper levels of truth and love.

    2. Aimee I speak to a lot of people during the day at my work place and obviously people like to talk about how they are and what is happening to them in life and so many of us talk about our issues and how everything would be fine if… What you are sharing is gold, ‘the thing is I realised I liked issues because they kept me distracted from myself. Once I realised that in truth I really didn’t have any issues, We really are the only ones that can take responsibility for our own healing, love, appreciation and acceptance ourselves.’ We distract ourselves in a myriad of different ways to prevent the inner reflection of what is on offer to humanity. I can put up both hands and say I know I did. As corny as it might sound discovering that there is indeed another part to us has been the most delightful experience and one that I will treasure because all the misery has dissipated and in its place is a feeling of joy, life is a joy, I could never have said that in my 20’s,30’s,40,’s or 50’s!

34. Ha ha, how we want people and the world to change first, instead of being responsible and realising change starts with self first, only then can we show others a different way, and it is then their choice what they do with this. ‘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.’

    1. It’s like a game of chess waiting for someone else to make the first move, yet the constantly changing outside world, and the conditions we place on it, set us up to never make that commitment to being the love we are.

35. Intention, wow how many people go for healing to try to be fixed, and as you point out that only brings momentary relief, whereas if we are truly looking to heal and be responsible for this, it is very different, ‘ 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.’

    1. I went to Practitioners, bought supplements, did this course and that course all because I wanted to be fixed and didn’t really want to take any responsibility for how I was living. In this energy I gave my power away constantly because I thought I was broken. No wonder the healthcare system is under such overwhelm, stress and exhaustion.

       1. Aimee if we take a closer look at what you have written, where does this need to be fixed come from and why do we give our power away to other people, institutions etc., where does this lack of responsibility come from? What if there was an energy that supplied us with thoughts that we are broken and need fixing? While we are focused on the fed belief that we need fixing which is looking outside of ourselves for the answers we have taken our focus away from the innermost part of ourselves which actually holds the answers we are looking for. If we can see the web of lies or games we have fallen for this will be the first step to self mastery and the taking back of our power.

36. It is very loving to understand the power of intention. Is what you are doing support and benefit just you or benefit many? You can reach both outcomes but there is a significant difference in what shapes our world. It’s also important to not confuse this with ‘good’ because self-gratification and self-recognition is for self. It’s a big one and great to be aware of.

37. Joel its very interesting what you share about your intention especially in the case of going for a healing session. I know I have often gone for a session hoping to be ‘fixed.’ I agree that we do in fact limit what we can connect to and heal if our intentions are about relinquishing responsibility.

38. ‘Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day.’ Beautiful and simple wisdom Joel, the more steps we take towards love we find an endless supply of love continually waiting for us to connect to and embrace.

39. By virtue of the nature of love, there can be no ‘end’ can there Joel… For love has no fixed outcome, no fixed point to reach – there is always a deeper level, a more expanded knowing and experience.
    Not to seek any point of perfection whatsoever, but actually to appreciate that in knowing love, we are communing with the divine, with the part of ourselves that IS love, and has awaited our returning and listening to its promptings for so very long (for the most of us, I would say…).

    1. Victoria I adore what you are saying about true love that there is no end, for love is not fixed, there is no end to reach, just more expansion. To get to a point where we can feel the richness of true love in our bodies rather than the cold emptiness where we look out to life for a fix to dull the pain of the emptiness we feel. It is a complete 360 degree turn around.

40. I love your step 4 that intention is everything – ultimately something I have found is that so much of what I do is essentially for self gain and self preservation and not truly for humanity.There is such a difference when we let the self go and do what is needed to be done. There is no call or seeking for recognition and no reward needed. Suddenly you find yourself in the moment not worrying or thinking about the outcome or what may be because you know the quality of what you are doing will take care of that. I have felt and sensed that feeling and the more I live it the more natural it becomes. Saying that it is our natural way of being we have just strayed so far away from it it seems hard to sustain it whereas it actually takes a lot of energy to sustain the other, that is the constant drive and search for recognition and approval.

41. ‘Realising that no workshop, book or other person makes my choices..’
    Ain’t that the truth! I’ve found workshops, books and sessions from Universal Medicine modality practitioners a HUGE support that always offer another level to go to with myself, but, no matter how many sessions I have or workshops I go to, the choice to go there with myself is always my own.

    1. I agree as well Rachael – no one can do it for us and we always have a choice. After all we live with ourselves 24/7 and so it makes sense. To think or want a person or a course to make things better for us is giving our power away – ultimately whatever is before us is for us to learn something and so we should embrace it rather than fear or contract away from it.

42. Joel, I love the clarity you bring in what you share here, it’s very supportive and I almost laughed (winced more like) when you described how with the Esoteric modalities it’s about what we are willing to take there, and it forever offers us back where we are wiling to go, and exposes any place where we are conditional and so right now reading your sharing has supported me in seeing another level of how I bargain with the world, I will do this, if I get that, and so I’m learning that maybe I can be love anyway no matter what. Another level of the journey.

    1. Yes the bargaining – who would have thought we were doing ourselves out of heaven each time we bargained with ourselves!!!

43. Joel you have a way of expressing that is for all – is universal. The support your blogs bring as a result is immense. You are a torch-bearer for those of us choosing to stumble around in the dark whilst holding our own unlit torch.

44. “Intention”, it is but a word, yet it holds the key to unlocking the grandness that lies with in all of us. For how can we begin to explore what is within unless we intend to do so.

45. The pursuit of happiness that once made up a large part of my existence is now being replaced with the awareness that I am, and we all are, innately joy-full beings. In the pursuit, happiness was always just out of reach, something to be attained, something off in the future somewhere, tantalising for sure, but never quite attained – at least not for very long. The reconnection to self, reveals that there is an essential beingness in us, that is not in pursuit of anything but that already is ‘everything’. What is shared here in Joel’s blog is very wise. We are students of ourselves – and in my view, when we realise this, we are on the right track.

46. I love that through all the stages you have woken up to or developed, that you now find yourself at a place of greater understanding for yourself and the world and move forward without expectation of getting it right all the time but rather just choose to be with you as much as possible with every choice, knowing that is the best guide you can have through life.

47. Oh yes, learning that it all comes back to us, has been revelatory and very revealing for me, seeing that it all comes back to the choices I make and how willing I am to live who I am in any situation or setting. It definitely takes blame out of the equation… well we can still use it if we choose but it definitely shows that it’s useless and just keeps us in the same unloving momentum longer.

48. Number 5 – two-fold wisdom here. Realising that you cannot blame another for your own choices is the first step. The second is realising that all our choices accumulate and form the platform we found our next choice upon. So as we lift the quality of our past choices with our present choices it founds a more loving quality to expand from and seeds forth a magnetic pull that allows the opportunity for even more loving choices to come to us. Accepting we are enough exactly as we are imperfections and all is the major contributor to this foundation.

49. Number 4 – I love the wisdom here. Cleaning up a mess is great but if you just replace it with the same mess nothing has changed so I totally agree with you Joel, it’s much more effective to replace what you need to cleared away by filling that same space will love.

50. I love the way you share your unfolding and the steps that you had to take Joel, this shows how there is always a next step to take as we forever expand and evolve in this universe.

51. I had a few laugh out loud moments Joel as your candour was delightful, but also because I could relate to what you shared! So much awesome wisdom shared here, and I will be looking to become more aware of my intentions, particularly in practitioner sessions and why I am there.

52. I love how you said that love is not about a happy ending, it’s about being me. Very recently I have had a run of people reacting to me. Interestingly this is something that I would have run from in the past and done everything possible to avoid any kind of what I thought was confrontation. But what I am realising is that it is much more important to be true and stuff up than it is to try and get it right and attempt to fit in by being nice. This has been huge and the walls haven’t fallen in. The reaction of others is not for me to take on, but to simply observe make note and learn.

    1. Very true Jennifer, because it may still be us but at least we learn and can remain the forever student reading the energy of the situation, rather than flapping around on the surface.

    2. It’s a really good point Jennifer that we can invest in outcomes we feel may bring us happiness or some other thing, when the truth is the gold lies in just being ourselves.

53. I used to believe that the only reason I felt different after a healing session was because the practitioner was so amazing (which they were!). I very much saw myself in the passenger seat, as a passive receiver of healing. It was Esoteric Yoga that broke this belief, as there was no one placing needles or their hands on me. The significant changes I felt in my body over the session could only be down to my choices.

54. Never have I felt so clearly the power of my intention to affect the way my body feels, as when I started to attend Esoteric Yoga. I could lay down for relief, comfort or to check out or I could lay down to deeply connect with me. The difference in the way my body responded to this was astounding, even though the movement was the same. This was another confirmation that everything is energy.

55. The ever expanding art of ‘being’ love is well captured here Joel. It is a moment to moment choice. It is a moment to moment responsibility and opportunity, the look more deeply at our intentions, to deepen our connection and commitment to life, our self and others and to take more responsibility in the broader scheme of things.

56. “Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day.” To understand love like this Joel is wonderful as it offer the possibility that it is never about solutions but about choices we can make in every second of our lives.

57. “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.” I fell for this one too Joel. We have to stop holding the world to ransom and instead be the love that we are and only then will that be reflected back to us.

58. Becoming the real me has been a time of initially being alone and discovering my inner most feelings. Removing myself from the noise of life and questioning who I really was and how I really felt. Having a deeper relationship with my feelings and how to honour them and staying connected with my body and myself I was then ready to start to take this out to the world. The stronger my relationship with myself, my body, my feelings and honoring me the less I looked to the outside. In fact it took me many years of trying to stop reacting to everything around me or trying to stop taking it on to realise that you can’t just stop doing these things without replacing it with something else – which was a connection to and relationship with our inner-most self.

59. I am really appreciating the no. 6 – being a student of ourselves – this is another level of unfoldment that keeps deepening in itself, so I guess we never grow out of that as the subject of our study keeps evolving and expanding.

60. “Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day.” Thus there is a forever deepening of our love and being the real me. It is indeed a journey that never ends, but a journey that becomes richer with every step we take to be more in our fullness.

61. “Eventually I had nowhere else to turn but to the humble reality that it did all come back to me…” and when we realise that our inner ‘me’ is love we take the first steps back to the love that we are all from.

62. I had the impression from reading this blog that we may think things happen sequentially but really they come back around in cycles over and over again. This can trigger frustration in thinking we are getting nowhere or even going backwards but ultimately it can lead to a very loving way of learning as we see life as recurring opportunities and not missed ones. Discerning energy is definitely a process of getting it wrong and if choosing awareness and honesty, having the opportunity to become ever more discerning.

63. Great clarification about our individual responsibility for discerning energy, for the choices we make and for our intention when making those choices. This can all seem like a monumental ask, but the point is to choose to start.

    1. love it Cathy, There is no better place to start than the place you chose to start! It is the only way we can start 🙂

64. Thank you Joel for another great blog, “love just wants me to be me” I am enough, this I am learning little by little so I can be me, the real me.

65. It is profound to realise that we have the epiphany and then the deeper one and the next and the next. Each moment we take responsibility leads to the next and more joyful choice. Love is the foundation and opens up a world of more loving choices. It is absolutely awesome.

    1. So true Amanda, my learning of late has been to stop waiting for that deepening to stop…it doesn’t! sometimes I pull the ripcord to slow thing down when I let myself think the next step is scary but in reality it is wonderful and only the exposing of my own pride that I find scary!

66. Awesome Joel. I just read part 1 and I felt to follow on to read part 2 because it was absolutely brilliant. I found it so inspiring and deeply honest with everything you’ve presented. I love your style of writing and expression.

67. Great sharing Joel – “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.” I got stuck here for a while – it’s quite lovely knowing we all do indeed tread the same path home.

    1. I can so relate to this too Shelleyjones44, I got stuck here for a very long time, waiting for others to be more loving so I could be loving back. If I kept on waiting I would have been waiting for the rest of my life but since I was introduced to Universal Medicine, I had stopped playing the waiting game and started to be loving more and more.

68. The misleading belief I carry that I can be love only when the people around me are more loving is a lie. I can be love at any time.

69. Joel I love reading how your path is unfolding, great sharing for us to read, thank you.

70. Bubble blow!, “Love doesn’t want me to be happy, it wants me to be me”.

    Blows most heart throb movies out of the water 😉

71. This is a powerful point you’ve made Joel in relation to attending healing sessions – are we going there to have our life choices cleaned up or with an intention to build a body of love.

72. ‘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.’ I can relate to this one and it has taken some time to really let this go and in that I can choose the path of living me and love myself anyway. I would say this is still a challenge in my life, to observe the choices others make and to not absorb and try to change them so I can feel better. A bit of an ‘ouch’ here.

    1. it’s interested to reflect back on this article…and feel that this is still an unfolding allowing…

73. ‘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.’ How this noise can distract us and get in the way of looking ourself in the eyes and saying that there is no escape here, it is up to us and no one else.

74. How to get to the real essence of a person underneath the piles and piles of distractions and at times what feel like thick layers of concrete, definitely isn’t taught in other modalities, which as you point out Joel, are based on fixing a problem. It took me a while to shift my expectations around to self ownership when I first started to attend Universal Medicine presentations. But I am now having a moment of appreciation for myself as I realise that these days I take it as a given that I have made the choices that has lead to the situation I find myself in and that despite any mess, what remains consistent is that I am love at my core and this is what I am constantly moving to.

75. What I feel more and more is that personal development is nothing that we achieve. It`s just an alignment to true energy. I often read blogs and think „Wow! This person is so strong and has changed so much!“ But the person has just chosen energy that was passing through him or her and is also passing through me.

76. ‘So I must have been about ‘there’, right? Wrong….’ Joel this made me giggle as I think this all the time. If I just deal with this issue I’ll be fully surrendered to love. Sometimes I even make a mental list of the issues I need to deal with to finish, to get to the end. The funny thing is, there is no end.

77. I was point 5 to a tee. I tried to fix everything and everyone around me thinking that this would make things easier for me. It was so draining. I have only just recently started to accept that I should look at me first, because everyone else is just being themselves, I’m the only one reacting to their behaviours, so what’s going on with me? I’m starting to feel my body more and learning what’s going on with my body. I’m fitting more things into my day and it feels like sunshine inside my body.

78. You raise a great point here Joel – do we go to a practitioner to clear out the excess so that we can revert back to putting it back in (the old detox/retox loop) or do we go to build/deepen the love that is already there?

79. I love part 2 Joel, particularly how it feels that it is not the grand finale but yet another humble ‘first step’. It’s a funny concept isn’t it – ‘getting there’ – for it implies that when we do indeed ‘get there’, we stop, job done. Although this bubble is soon popped when we ‘get there’ and realise that the landscape has shifted somewhat but we are not ‘there’ at all but simply at another point in which to choose how to move. And so the journey begins again but at a deeper level. In this way we live in accordance to the breath of the Universe; we breathe in to deepen, we breathe out to expand. There is no end because love is not a happy ending – it is a joyous beginning.

    1. Love it Liane, the life of the forever student can only be a humble one. Just when I think I nail it, I get shown the vastness of what else there is to learn. The gift is that I don’t feel less for still having more to learn, I am confirmed that I am all that there is to learn.

    2. Brilliant comment Liane, I love it. ‘There is no end because love is not a happy ending – it is a joyous beginning.’ It is certainly worth embracing, as love forever expands, we can choose to expand with it and release the tension of going against it.

80. ‘If I wanted to more fully connect to myself, to learn to live as me, then I got just that’. This is the very beautiful thing about the modalities, it supports us to connect back to who we are, underneath all that we have constructed or thought that we need to be.

81. Going from energetic awareness too energetic discernment was the big one for me too Joel.. I have witnessed that not everyone likes to make the shift from energetic awareness to energetic discernment as it is the beginning of becoming energetically responsible.

82. The realisation of intention was a big one for me too, realising that intention in itself is energy. I got first hand experience with this intention energy with food; I was eating yoghurt, knowing I had always been allergic to cows milk, my skin often reacting in a rash. It got to the point that I didn’t even need to eat the yoghurt for a rash to become itchy, just walking towards the kitchen and fridge was enough to trigger my body to react – my rash became itchy before I even held the tub of yoghurt in my hand. It was a great lesson in intention to learn, with me realising deeply how energy cannot be tricked and cannot ever lie.

83. This is awesome Joel and I can really relate to your stages of ‘becoming me’ and particularly that ‘Love … just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day’ and that the more I embrace this journey the more love unfolds and supports me to become more of me. Thank you for expressing it so eloquently.

84. Interesting stages of awareness Joel. Lately I have been feeling the inward motion much more clearly, a knowing that it is about my relationship with God that informs my choices. Interestingly, I am way less reactive and blaming of others and finding a consistency in the way I am with myself. I am really enjoying exploring and deepening this.

85. I found reading this that I could really relate to number 5 at the moment. My life has ‘improved’ and gotten ‘better’ but instead of trying to pull myself from a dark space ‘into a better life/light’ as I used to believe was the way to go it is now more of a case of allowing the feelings of who I am out from within. This can feel like I am 12ft tall, warm, solid in what I know and feel and a sense if being at ease in myself and in life, to be in my focus more throughout my day is something that I am building and like you Joel I get this sense of always being on the tip of the iceberg of whats yet to be felt. Knowing a way through life that is about discovering how amazing it can be feels more simple and less tense than trying to struggle and try for ‘a better life’.

    1. Thanks Leigh this sums it up so well ‘Knowing a way through life that is about discovering how amazing it can be feels more simple and less tense than trying to struggle and try for ‘a better life’.’

86. “Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day” – a beautiful reminder, thank you. I can very much relate to having the conditions we put on ourselves before we feel like we can actually claim ‘I am love’ while we have that as knowledge, and it was so liberating to realise that that thought itself was already not coming from love, and love indeed was always right here just waiting patiently to be expressed and shared.

87. We are so amazing, but we limit ourselves by thinking we will never ‘get there’. However, by making a commitment to love and being a student of ourselves, we are always ‘there’, on the precipice of choosing to step up and go deeper.

    1. I love this Carmin, the relief of knowing we are already there. We just have to clean up the mess we made looking for ‘ourselves’ everywhere else but within.

88. Yes agree Joel, how can there be one real epiphany when the knowing of oneself and is end-less, and the depth of us infinite.

89. I loved reading 4,5 and 6 Joel. Intention was a great point. It’s like once you start with something tangible and pure it can just all roll on from there and develope from that. Like a seed- with an intention to grow.

90. Great call to be responsible for one’s own healing!

91. Great point about unconsciously seeking a reward or outcome, this is the downfall of many as we are already all that we can be its just not lived, expressed or ‘brought out’ for others to see and feel. The choice is ours, but to begin by knowing deeply that love is who we are is a great beginning.

92. Realising that no one was going to fix me, that it was up to me to do my own fixing, and that began with self love, self responsibility and the understanding that everything I needed was inside me, was the biggest “aha” moment for me – and that’s when my healing began.

93. By constantly looking outside ourselves for everything from recognition to blaming others for how our life has unfolded we are actually just fighting ourselves by ignoring our own innate qualities that are for each of us our own true foundations for our own flavour of awesomeness.

94. Love it Joel! The sentence that stood out for me:
    ‘Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day.’
    And I love that it doesn’t stop, that there is deepening and deepening of the everything in our life.

95. Love it Joel, specifically the part when you say “that while some people might be energetically aware, we are not all energetically discerning.” Very true and a great reflection to deepen energetic discerning.

96. These are the true stories worth telling, thank you Joel for yours. It holds it all, complete, and ready for whats next.

97. Your realisation about energetic responsibility feels like a major step in your healing Joel, and one I am enjoying working on also, so that I too can be more of me and allow the loving soul to flourish.

98. ‘Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day.’ Wise words indeed. Love just wants me to be the real me. I’ll take that into my day.

99. Joel’s part 2 really does bring home to me that it is always my responsibility for my own healing. ”…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”.

    1. For me too Caroline… Taking responsibility for all of my choices is often something I have wanted to avoid (ie I’m willing to accept some choices, but not all…), however I have also come to understand, accept and experience that it is the only thing that provides true freedom and true healing, and also the only thing that truly offers another that same opportunity to be responsible for their choices and therefore the opportunity for their own healing.

    2. This is massive really, choosing to take responsibility for our own healing, ultimately no healing can take place if we are not willing to go there. But when we do start to take responsibility and start healing it expands out to others too.

100. Thank you Joel for the next steps in your story, I will be looking more deeply at my intentions, as sometimes I know I am looking for a fix when going for a healing session, not wanting to take responsibility. What a beautiful intention it is “to build a body of love”

101. I loved the section on intention and how what unfolds has to do with our reason for showing up. I will be looking more deeply at this.

102. This blog is great Joel, very real, down to earth and honest. I love how you have shared your journey and not made it about an end point, or a happy ending – just an unfoldment that keeps continuing in being more of the real you.

103. What a moment it is when we understand that healing can be used to clean up the choices we have made that have been less than loving, or they can be part of a program to evolve…and what does that then mean about our responsibility between sessions. Your blog is revolutionary Joel, in the sense that you are exposing the nature of healing. It can be a place-marker where we try to hold onto a certain level of development, or it can be a tool for acceleration deeper into who we truly are. That depends on us….not the healer.
     You have also exposed the nature of epiphany. Far from a moment of drama, heralded by blinding light, it is a steady unfolding process, developed in steadfastness and commitment. Yes the clouds that have obscured our essence do part, steadily, until our way is revealed in all of its clarity. And there is light, but it is the light of our own essence, and far from blinding it alights our way.

104. I love the realness of what you have shared Joel. No peak to reach or bubble to burst or pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to find. Just you – and all of you letting go of the fight and accepting who you are. Thank you for your deeply revealing blog. There is much here for all, including me.

105. These steps have been awesome to read Joel.. What really stood out to me as something I want to take on into one of my steps is ‘becoming a student of myself’ and actually learn from all of my experience what is true to me rather then just ticking everyone else’s boxes and being a good student for everyone besides myself. Thank you Joel for revealing this to me.

106. Hi Joel I was again curious to read your second blog and I have to admit that I love the stages you describe. Your way to write is easy to understand and for me it is an invitation to ponder on how I live my life so thank you for being so inspirational.

107. Love is not about a happy ending, so true, as there is no end to love. I am also a student of myself and therefore a student of love, learning every day.

108. I enjoyed reading your account of your unfolding path. “Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me ( the real me ) ..more and more every day.” What a beautiful way to finish. Thanks Joel.

109. These are deep learnings. I cannot stop being amazed at how much we change the way we see the world and life and how natural becomes something that was previously so far away from anything we considered real or desirable. And, of course, all this is possible because we can deeply feel the truth in what Universal Medicine offers.

110. There is so much joy, beauty and light in this piece Joel – thank you. The truth you have shared is inspiring. I love how you have ended with – ‘Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me)… more and more every day.’ As with true love there is no ending, only a forever deepening and an infinite expansion.

111. Thank you very much Joel for writing this. Many students can relate to what you have written so honestly. We all go through different stages, don’t we?

112. I loved what you shared about feeling like you are enough when connected to yourself and yet still finding yourself looking outside that place of connection. It’s like we have a default program to not believe this about ourselves unless the world outside confirms we are. It is ridiculous. Thank you for the beautiful reminder that we are enough and that connection is where the truth can be found.

113. Awesome Joel. From my own experience I know that there is no ‘end’ to this forever unfolding evolution. I really love how you wrote about that ‘need for reward’ after ‘working so hard’ It is amazing how we put up such a fight against coming back to the love we naturally are and it really helps to be aware of those thoughts.

114. “love….just wants me to be me” says it all Joel, that we are everything we always wanted to be and more when we allow that. No goal to arrive at, no rules, no finish point, just a moment by moment choice to be love or not. Beautiful!

115. Joel once again a truly honest account of your journey to Love. I truly felt inspired by your words “Love is not looking for a happy ending, it just wants me to be me (the real me) more and more every day”. With thanks.

116. Thanks Joel, I know I certainly still find myself looking for the fairy tale ending, which is really just a seeking of comfort. I love your honesty and where you have come to in yourself, very inspiring.

117. Loved this Joel as it was honest, deeply revealing and so relatable. I can feel how much our development back to love comes down to how honest we are with ourselves. Thanks for all you have shared.

118. I absolutely love Step 4: ‘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’. So amazing.
     In fact what am I saying….I LOVE all the steps…as I work my way through all of them myself!!

119. I really liked how you explained with what intention you can go to a practitioner. Made me ponder..Thank you !

120. Your words above Joel stuck out for me:

     “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 feel in your appreciation of what energetic discernment meant to you, that you open up an exploration of why we may choose to leave that place of connection. It may not be answerable in words, but I appreciate how you allow people to explore it in their own ways, with your open ended way of writing in this bog.

121. Thank you Joel for sharing your stages, It is very inspiring and a big reflection.

122. “In truth, life was getting easier, but I was more committed to finding something to fix”
     I can relate to this Joel, I was looking at my life from a point of view of fixing it, thinking that I would get to an end and be all fixed. But now realising that it is never about fixing, me or any one else. It is just a beautiful unfolding and taking responsibility for
     all the choices I make without judgement.

123. I can very much relate to the transition from stage 5 to 6, i.e. from fully accepting my 100% responsibility in and for everything I am involved with. Although it is not me alone who is responsible for everything going on in the world I have a finger in the pie, either by contributing to it with love or with anything that is not love. That is a huge and all-encompassing responsibility I am not absolutely willing to accept or be aware of every second of my life yet.

124. This is truly such a gorgeous blog, Joel, I simply love it. I related to stage 4 where you point out that the benefits of healing are limited to our own intention, Self-responsibility. In stage 5 I had to giggle when reading “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.” How ridiculous is that? I’ve fallen for similar thinking myself, Self-irresponsibility. And then stage 6 where you stop looking outside of yourself. That’s what it all comes down to. Thank you for the inspiration.

125. Reading stage 5 has been a powerful reminder for me of the importance of my connection with myself.

126. Joel, I was inspired by the wisdom you shared in stage 4, on the importance of our intentions. I will now bring more awareness to what my intentions are, when I next go for a healing session.

127. I loved both part 1 and part 2.
     They were laid out amazingly.
     I look forward to reading about the ‘next step’ another deepening step of commitment to yourself.
     Maybe that will be the title?

     1. Next step…has to be about responsibility not just to myself but everyone…still nailing it but nice to think about

128. Great Joel, the beauty of what you share and what the esoteric modalities support, is to connect to and empower ourselves. They do not pander, and often I’ve wished they did, but they do not; it’s truly about us taking responsibility for ourselves and choosing each and every moment to make loving choices. I relate to so much of what you share – wanting to give up, yet wanting to get there… and wanting that epiphany, that moment, and yet the more I commit to me, the more I surrender and stop trying, and the more I see that it’s taking each step, confirming it and taking that next step – this is both ordinary and extraordinary, and real.

129. I can very much relate to your article Joel, it makes a lot of sense, and humorous too.

130. What you’ve said Joel about taking personal energetic responsibility for our choices seems key to me in as you say, not just making life about the next quick fix but making it about building love in our every day.

131. Great point here Joel that many of us are energetically aware (in fact we can all feel energy easily if we allow it) but most of us need some work when it comes to energetically discerning what is the quality of the energy that we are allowing to flow in our bodies. This is the crucial bit that many complementary health modalities leave out.

132. Hi Joel,
     It’s great to read the processes you have been going through, and the little stuck point where you were blaming others. It really made me smile as I found it quite amazing how much I wanted to hang onto making it about how other people were, how they treated me and how they needed to be loving to me first. I had a real need for everything to be perfect around me. With the support of Universal Medicine and the amazing presentations by Serge Benhayon, I have firstly been able to admit that I do this and secondly, been able to actually stop it in many situations and look at what that attitude I have brings and let it go by making a loving choice instead and letting everything and everyone around me get to experience that – without needing them to be a certain way. I’m still noticing more subtle ways that I want to avoid taking responsibility in my life, but in understanding what I’m doing, I’m much more willing and able to get over it and choose love, which feels great. In doing this, my life becomes more simple, relationships are improving and there are more smiles. I’m no longer looking for life to bring me love, I’m actually bringing love to it.

133. Dear Joel, this is beautiful. As you say, taking responsibility for our emotions day to day clears the way to just simply being ourselves, and that is when the ‘real me’ starts to grow and build a life of love.

     1. Thank you Joel and Janet, I agree, ‘building a body of love’ to be of service to self-first, benefits all of humanity.

134. Joel, thank-you so much for putting in words a process that I too, am living. I could actually feel my heart in my chest expanding with each and every word….it still is now as I write and it feels so true. Discerning energy and allowing myself to fully feel it all is the key – as you say, love just wants me to be me, more and more, just like my heart is expressing now. And I loved how you clarified approaching your own healing with a practitioner not to clear-up anymore but to continue building the body of love. Isn’t this what we are all returning to? The relief isn’t sustaining but the foundation of more loving choices is.

135. Another gripping article Joel, with great realisations along the way.

136. ‘This change came about by a willingness to take responsibility for the frustration, the desire to give up and any other emotions. Eventually, by taking responsibility for what I was feeling, there was not as much emotion in the way and what was left was… me.’ So relatable and real Joel. Very timely for me. Thank you.

137. Joel once again your words of truth, ring like a bell in the darkness that bring us all back home.

138. Just wow, I can relate to this on so many levels, it feels like I am reading a personal account of myself! The part that has stuck with me the most is “if I was going to ‘build a body of love’, then each session would be as amazing as I allowed it to be.” And the fact that it is my choice to beat myself up/become frustrated or simply admit that I feel this way and be open to seeing how to choose to not be so negative. Thank you.

     1. Leigh, funny I’d been feeling how frustration is my go-to rather than just admitting how I feel, I go into frustration to avoid – so it’s a reaction, so now it’s about feeling where I am and being with that rather than jumping into frustration and as you say here, it’s a choice.

139. Joel, thanks for spelling this out so thoroughly – I could see me in so much of this. It really helps reading this and I learned much from it. I can recognise some of the pitfalls I have also experienced along the way, and I agree there is no epiphany, simply more connection and love to claim!

140. Joel, I loved reading your post and I can so much relate to some of your experiences. Thank you for sharing.

141. That was a real ‘page turner’ – I like the way you write. It is very simple and funny as well. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

142. This is so inspiring and supportive Joel. Thank you for your eloquence in describing the desire to give up – how creating hard times as an excuse to give up and blame, – but when there is a willingness to take responsibility for all of that, what is left is – just, us. Great stuff Joel, thanks so much.

143. Lovely Joel, I love the chapter on becoming a student of yourself and look froward to hearing what you discover as you deepen your Love. Thanks Joel.

144. I am really enjoying reading and feeling your unfolding stages. Thank you for your sharing Joel.

145. Thank you Joel – this has really helped me to feel the depth of my commitment to me and how it is deepening.

146. Another great post Joel, I am with you all the way and looking forward to your next step.

147. A great article Joel with many lessons I could draw from. I look forward to the next installment!

148. Joel, such a joyful account of your unfolding path and very healing for myself & others to read. Thanks for sharing.

149. Joel, I really enjoyed the stages of your commitment to you. Something I can completely relate to.

     1. I agree Sharon, lots of fun.

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