“Hello, Enrique,
I am writing these lines to you to tell you about my change and rebirth.
Someone could say, in all seriousness, that drugs do not exist in all their different and numerous forms. On the contrary, it is the human being who gives them life. When I entered into that destructive world of drugs, I eventually came to ask myself some questions:
Why have I decided “not to be”?
Why did I want to forget about myself?
Why did I come to that decision to run away from life?
Why did I accept something so false as drugs, thinking that they served a purpose?
What made me run away from the world of dream and death?
Today I do not know if I have all the answers. However, fortunately, we all have the most valuable power that you can have: the power of changing ourselves. It is possible to change our life and consequently our world. It may easily be understood that the ‘outside’ is none other than the reflection of the ‘inside’, and that it is possible to get out of madness and to get into sanity from that premise.
When I was involved with drugs, in their thousand forms, I was running away from myself and, in this way, I decided not “to be”. Like many young people, I had a life that included frequent moments of suffering. And as I was blind in my inner world, I could not understand my reactions, my emotions, far less my negative thoughts.
I did not realize what the influences were, nor what the people were like who surrounded me in my life as a young addict. To be blind in a world of darkness made me feel like a victim, unable to change life in the way it came to me and that is why I suffered a lot. Like this – very victimized and with no capacity to do anything – I thought that all positive action was in vain and because of that I was not able to change my circumstances. During those days, I felt that I did not have any other option but to run away from myself and from everything that my life represented.
I was like this, year after year, accumulating more and more suffering, with my only option being, as I have already told you, to try not “to be”. That was the worst stage of my addiction to intoxicating drugs. So the moment came when my suffering reached its most intense point, I touched the bottom of that atrocious pain that was sinking me, and I felt that there were no reasons to continue on with my life as it was. At that moment I fell into a deep depression and I started to ask God to give me even just one reason to live… because I did not glimpse one anymore. Some weeks later I started to realize that the only way of changing was by going consciously to the solution of my problem and that the solution was very near me. It was inside myself. I realized that although there had been more than a thousand people who had hurt me or treated me unfairly, it was not important because that was outside of my control and power to change. The only thing I could change was how I connected myself with those people, that is to say, to change myself.
I wondered several times what might have happened if I had not responded with my deep anger in the past, when rage was a daily occurrence for me. I very slowly turned into a witness of my own rage.I started to read and to look for the truth everywhere. I met some teachers and many of their teachings told me that my inner search was the only way out of suffering, the only chance of change and rebirth. I started to wake up to mysteries that have always been presented in the mythologies and esoteric schools of each authentic religion. Religiousness, in its direct and pure way, was a practical teaching; and when I applied it I found I could face that new life positively each day. That gave me some serenity, knowing that I had found one of the keys to drive my change, getting closer to the way of my inner life and the reencounter with my spirituality.
My new Way was as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew 7:7:
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened…”
It was a fight against a part of myself; but, above all, it was a fight against darkness. From then on I started to view things in a very alert way, resisting my unconscious actions, especially those that were automatic and self-destructive.
Jesus spoke about self-knowledge when he talked about seeking for the truth to make you free. In this way, light started to appear to me in the middle of darkness; my consciousness, which is not much different from the universal one, came back; and, little by little, I succeeded in prevailing over my demons and my own unconscious aggregates. I started to get to know myself and from that point I launched myself into a very strong spiritual life that was different from before.
Some mysteries were opened for me, I started to feel the truth about “being present” as mythological representations – the Medusa and her gaze that traps everyone who looks directly at her; Athena, who arms her son using the idea of the mirror and looking indirectly; Perseus, who eliminates Medusa and her millions of manifestations in the shape of snakes, was that brave hero sacrificing himself for the gods’ glory – the winged sandals, the helmet and the sword are the elements that represent the inner way, used today as a guide and practical manual in that immense combat that allows us to depart from suffering and darkness and to reach peace and eternal light.
Here I have tried to describe in a few words how I achieved a deep, radical change – a rebirth based on self-knowledge and on my inner way. Today I well know that all of us, the pilgrims of the inner way, we greet each other, because we know that, in fact, we have the same mission: to approach inner knowledge and Love every day. We all know that Love is eternal and it is God.
Truly, everything was much easier than I thought, there was nothing to replace – I had everything inside myself if I only woke up to the fact; if I opened myself up to life; and if I did it from inside. I do not sleep anymore, now I am abundance and before I was pure poverty. If I had to explain to you here, my dear friend Enrique, all about my change in a few words, I would repeat a phrase from Samael Aun Weor:
“You should not depend upon ideas or someone else’ s concepts because wisdom is inside yourself…”
I have found a way out from my addiction. Today I wish to share with you, and others, the concept that it ispossible to get out, it is possible to change and, above all, that we can all do so with the help of Love.
A big hug from your friend,
Martin (already a pilgrim along the “straight” Way to Santiago) ”