The hotel of enlightenment

To get sober, I slept in a mosquito-infested dorm in Nicaragua with 16 other men, subsisted on a diet of rice and beans, and performed labor therapy in the fields

Beach hotel
(Image credit: (Courtesy Shutterstock))

Some four years ago, while living in Nicaragua, I came to perceive my environment as a world of symbols and signs whose purpose was to tell me a dramatic and mystical story about myself and lead me through it. These symbols, which could present themselves as anything from a gust of wind to a building to a person to an event, were like the words of a hieroglyphic that had always existed but that I had suddenly been given the gift of interpreting.

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