Original in Spanish

As a child I was most troubled by the harshness of life. I could not understand the hurtful things that people did to one another. Even in school the harshness did not abate. While things have changed greatly and children are no longer disciplined by the rod, when I was young it was not unusual for teachers to use a long, hard stick to punish children.

Physical hardship was only one form of anguish. In addition, there were many things that I feared, including the feeling that man's future is totally unsure, that he is governed by the stars, and that pure luck overshadows every day of his life.

An experience I had many years ago tells much about the oppressive fear that I felt. My family had moved to a town in the mountains of our country. One evening I was out walking with the intention of getting to know the place. As I came down a road, there was an old house, and I pushed open the front door. Nightfall had come, and in the midst of darkness I saw two eyes that shone directly at me. I thought it was the devil himself.

My imagination ran wild, influenced by the warnings that elders had often given me that the devil was going to come after me one day. I fled home. But my inability to come to terms with this childhood fear represented a broader challenge in my life as I matured. I always seemed to be afraid of something, especially when I had to make decisions.

A day came, however, when something happened that changed my life and showed me how to overcome fear. I had traveled to visit relatives. One of my sisters who had never gone out alone had managed to attend a meeting to which she had been invited. It was a meeting of Christian Scientists. There she was given copies of The Herald of Christian Science, and upon her return she gave me one.

As I read, a light dawned upon my life. I decided to investigate this Christian teaching. Not long afterward our family was invited to a Christian Science lecture. It was a wonderful experience, and I soon obtained a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. I started its daily study along with the Bible.

I began, also, to examine my life with a new, spiritual conviction of man's oneness with God. I realized, as I learned more about God and the nature of human thought as a seeming mixture of good and evil, that I was not powerless to change the way I thought. I was learning that God is good and that He is divine Love. A deep desire to live in harmony with God grew within me. I soon began to understand that spiritual regeneration also brings physical healing. I no longer relied upon medication but upon prayer, prayer that would uplift me to understand man's true nature as God's spiritual image and likeness, His spiritual child.

I was seeing in actual experience the truth of a statement from Science and Health: "Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear,—this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony. The purification of sense and self is a proof of progress."

The first step I took was to assure myself that God's allness is absolute and upholds the integrity of man. I realized that evil is not the power that it seems to be. It is a deception, a lie, because it has no power from God nor will it ever have. As I studied the Bible, I saw that our Master, Christ Jesus, demonstrated that evil is not definitive or supreme; that it does not derive authority or foundation from the law of God. Therefore, in the end, all evil has to yield before the power of divine Truth, Life, and Love. The most precious moment of my life was my introduction to Christian Science. This is what brought to me freedom and liberation from the fear, the anguish, and the harshness that had haunted me.

For me, Christian Science brought light into my dark habitation, where I had been bewildered by many shadows from the past. How far I had been from having the least understanding of God! Yet so close was He to me that I came to see that those limitations that had bound me were actually fictitious and nonexistent.

Each person has this same opportunity and ability to be free. In fact, the desire to be free is the first requirement along with a willingness to change the way we think and live. Our true nature is not material and limited, for man is God's spiritual offspring and he is absolutely governed by God, who is wholly good. The real man is free, and this is what I have learned in Christian Science. Ignorance of our spiritual selfhood is not permanent, although as I learned, spiritual ignorance can impose upon us much misfortune and calamity until we learn of God and of man as they truly are.

An experience brought me full circle to the place where I had as a child believed I had been confronted by the devil. As a professor, I had applied for a new position, director of a center for higher studies. As a result of this new position I moved to a province in the area of Cuzco, near the town in the mountains to which my family had moved. When I first arrived, many comments were made about the challenges of living at such high altitudes and the sickness that could result.

Although I had dismissed these comments, one night when I went to bed I felt ill and my heart was pounding so hard that I could not sleep. I was terrified at first by feelings that I could not breathe normally because of the high altitude and lack of oxygen. As I prayed to quiet my fear, I thought of this statement from Science and Health: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all." With this in mind, I began to identify myself as a spiritual and perfect idea of God, the great All-in-all. The symptoms of altitude sickness left, I fell asleep, and upon waking the next day I went to work and was untroubled by the altitude for the two years that I lived in that area.

Not long after that healing, while I was traveling on business, the bus stopped in the town where I had as a child pushed open the door of that old house. It was nighttime once again, and as I looked out over the countryside, I realized that what I had believed were the eyes of the devil were nothing more than summer fireflies!

The light of Christ, Truth, which has come into my life through the study and practice of Christian Science, has destroyed the fears that had long darkened my life. I now know what the Master meant when John's Gospel records him as saying, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." This freedom of mind and body is what I have found in Christian Science.