From Darkness to Light

Part 1. | Part 2. | Part 3. | Part 4. | Part 5. | Part 6. | Part 7.

Once we were settled here in Mexico I became quite obsessed with injustices I had uncovered at the US Academy. I used my skills as a web designer to build websites, I wrote letters to US authorities and the various schools in the area the abuse had occurred. I went to online forums and tried to expose the Academy's unwillingness to act on these heinous atrocities.

I had gone completely away from my Real journey and taken the darkened side road of judgment and condemnation and I felt entirely justified. Life became very bleak, I wasn't able to get my regular pain medication here in Mexico and the pain in my paralyzed leg became impossible to bare. I went to doctor after doctor but it was no use, Mexico just didn't have real pain medication of the kind I was on in the US. Eventually I was directed to this seedy little pain clinic at the edge of town, I went and fortunately the doctor there spoke English so I could explain my problem to him.

He understood and gave me some pills, they worked, I was over the moon for about a month then I had to go get more pills. I hadn't been able to read the label on the container so I asked the doctor what the pills were. "Morphine" he said without batting an eye, my God I had become addicted to Morphine and I hadn't even noticed.

I became extremely reclusive, I shut myself in my room and drew the curtains only going out to visit the doctor and to take Jenny for a short walk once a day. Naturally, as is the case with addictive substances I kept needing more, the pain in my leg would return so I would up the dose. It got to be a vicious circle of dependency; I would sit on my bed in a Morphine haze and watch the television day after day, month after month popping pills.

Two years went by, I had almost disappeared into my haze, I felt nothing and my thoughts were very limited even mundane. One morning I was sitting on the edge of my bed feeling terrible, starkly alone and unhappy, here I was an addict, a slave to pills and I could NOT see a way out.

My head dropped as if by reflex and I said aloud, "Holy Spirit, help me" Then, as I reached for the bottle of Morphine beside me I noticed that a single sun beam had penetrated my darkened lair through a crack in the curtain. It lighted on the gold embossed spine of my dusty old copy of A Course in Miracle, I was momentarily transfixed.

Latter that day I began to vomit, I had diarrhea and I became dehydrated very quickly, the maid kept me clean and fed though I was unable to get much down. The situation soon became critical and I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. I found out latter that I was so dehydrated that when they asked me my name, I didn't know it, I had some form of typhoid and I was extremely ill.

The doctor at the hospital confiscated my Morphine; he told me that I was going to have to come off it if I wanted to recover my health. He said I would need to join a group for addicts and he proscribed antidepressants and all sorts of other meds that he said would help me through the physical withdrawal stage.

I told him I had other help, I was going to beat this thing with the help of my own mind and I would rather not replace one addiction for another so I thanked him but declined his meds. When I arrived home from the hospital I was extremely weak, I went into my bathroom and tossed the remaining six bottles of Morphine into the toilet. I was already withdrawing severely so this act was torture; I knew that just one pill could elevate the terrible cramps, temperature variations, and incessant shaking I was experiencing. But I had made my decision I was prepared to die rather than continue along the path I had been on.

I went to bed, it was hell for weeks but finally I recovered, I had pulled out my Course book and blown off the dust so I felt I had a friend with me once more. Finally I got out of my bed and ventured out into the street again, the sun was shining and there were happy people everywhere. I took my Jenny and went for a coffee to celebrate the reclamation of my life.

I had come through my darkest night, I had been reading my Course in Miracles all through the recovery but it was like an entirely new book. I saw my own responsibility for what I did and saw around me in a totally new light, I was the cause and not merely an effect. As I looked at the world outside myself now I saw it quite differently, there was no sin or corruption, no pain or suffering. The world was merely as I interpreted it and all my interpretations had been wrong.

As I recovered my physical strength I went to see friends in the US, I reread many of the Lessons in the Course and I realized with happy refrain, as I pondered the different situations in my life, that I had been wrong about everything. Finally after 50 years of searching everywhere for God, I had found Him, He was in me, the last place I thought to look. Not only was He in me but everything I looked at or thought about now reflected His Loving presence and I could choose to hand everything over to Him. I was ecstatic, there wasn't anything out there at all, as the Course had said, there is Only One Mind, no duality existed anywhere and finally these weren't just words, they were MY EXPERIENCE.

Part 1. | Part 2. | Part 3. | Part 4. | Part 5. | Part 6. | Part 7.

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