by Nicki Ferguson, Sydney

Love is always there to support us, we just don’t always allow ourselves to feel it. The lack of loving support that I used to have for myself, and the (sometimes bumpy) journey of re-discovering that support, is the main gist of this post.

I listen to Universal Medicine audio presentations often. They help bring me back to my truest self as a reminder of what I, in truth, already know about the world – how it feels from the inside and how it behaves on the out. I also see an Esoteric Practitioner.

I’ve been pondering about a contribution to this blog for a few months now. Partly because I want to feel like I am in a good space to contribute… that is, connected to love and able to write from a place of love so that love is the energetic imprint clearly marked on my words. But that’s where I come undone… this idealistic desire to be in a ‘perfect’ space to be able to express my truth.

The other thing I would like to share is how immensely grateful I am to have found my way to the Universal Medicine presentations and my Esoteric healing sessions. I get the opportunity to reconnect to love and what it feels like to embody it, especially when I’m in contact with others who live connected to love.

I’ve lived esoterically in some ways all my life: I recognise in hindsight that I was drawn to (especially pre-teen years) living a soulful, present life. I was aware of how precious life is, how powerful and cleansing nature can be. What I didn’t get so much was other humans and my seemingly complex reactions to them. As I grew I got more confused with the world and all its double meanings and undisputed loveless practices. I felt less stillness and more chaos as I tried to navigate my way through other people’s expectations and energetic nuisances. I started to withdraw to a point where I wouldn’t hug or touch friends or family – for no apparent or logical reason other than it just didn’t feel right. And so, as I held back expressing my love through touch, word and movement, I started to hurt.

My late teens and early twenties were speckled with depression, and although most in my life wouldn’t have guessed it, I felt desperate – sometimes hopeless, sometimes psychotic. I tackled the pull between ending the suffering completely or devoting myself to a life of service… a nunnery perhaps, an African orphanage, a Tibetan mountaintop? The escape routes in my imagination were endless – and let’s be honest – a bit dramatic.

Just this moment I remembered a piece of advice my mum gave me when my sisters and I were quite young. She said: “if it ever gets so bad that you want to kill yourself, just run away and start a new life”. I believe I just found my default key. I’ll high tail it out of there when things get dull or uncomfortable or confrontational. Not because mum said so, but because I haven’t in the past been able to take full responsibility for my part in life… significant given I play the lead role.

Even though pursuing change has been a technique to distract from feelings of inadequacy (rather than allowing myself to feel those yucky moments), change has at times also served me. Exploring new age philosophies and modalities I realised there were people out there who were also aware of the ‘disconnection disease’, that is, a loss of the feeling of true love for oneself; the inability to be lovingly still with oneself; and the fear of being intimate, vulnerable and open with others. I learned that there were people who had found lighter ways of living. By lighter, I mean people who express their loving truth and / or have allowed themselves to let go of some of the emotional weights that may have once held them back from openly loving and feeling love. It took me a decade more to realise there are also a lot of charlatans. In almost every playground, and for that matter in almost every person, I realised that there is a collection of masks and insecurities and disconnection diseases going on. Navigating these in a non-judgemental and loving way, so as not to separate myself from people or absorb their ‘stuff’, is what I am working on today.

I know the love has to come from me and has to be expressed by me for it to be a real truth. One of my great challenges is that I go into my head, trying to problem-solve things, instead of simply registering how they feel in my body. I listen to Universal Medicine presentations as a flagging tool to help me remember how to do that – how to feel more and think less. The more I remember, the more I come back to myself to live it in my day to day life and the more I feel; I then find it easier to refrain from judgement towards myself and others. I find it easier to be more loving because my expression comes forth naturally, without the judgement or the need for that default escape route.

So the perfect time to write this is now. This is where my awareness is at now as I live the ebbs and flows of love, reconnecting (and sometimes disconnecting) to what living soulfully means on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis. More than ever I’m aware of the concept of cyclical learning. Each time I feel overwhelmed / distraught / excited about something – a ‘something’ that I feel like I’ve addressed before – I remember a little more about how to live without fear and mistrust, with blinkered eyes or disregard.

The esoteric way feels truthful, as I’ve experienced it so far. I’m still feeling my way through some of what is presented, and I won’t take it for truth or believe everything I hear until I feel it so, through living it and connecting to it as a truth for myself.

As I feel out more truth it gets easier to identify others who live esoterically – that is, lovingly or from their innermost. Even those who have never heard of Universal Medicine or anything related to the esoteric, but who live with integrity and honesty, are easier to recognise. Just as like attracts like, love attracts love. No matter what organisation or belief system one rules their life by, when a person expresses themselves from a place of truth, only one thing is felt… love. 

Ultimately this reflection reminds me that the world, as dark as it can feel at times, will always hold love – in all others and within me. The only thing I have to lose by not recognising my part in this, is the feeling of love.