I’m Bulgarian and to write in English for me is not easy at all.
I’ll try my best, but if you notice some none English way of expression, do not focus on it, and it will come to you much easier.
The stories that you will read here are not written in Bulgarian language.
They are real stories from my life.
In fact these are the moments from my life that led me to the one that I am.
I started them for you guys in this forum.
You can print them, give them to your friends, publish them, make money out of them, and do what ever you want to do.
My only request is not to change even a word.
***
Now when I look back in my life, I can say that all of it was a miracle that had to bring me to exactly this point, where I’m sharing it with you.
That could sound empty of sense, but you will understand it later.
My conscious life started only about five years ago.
Before that I was blinded by all that shiny earthly desires: to achieve, to prove, to gain, to be The Man.
I wouldn’t say that my life before was fiasco, but now I see it as a very long state of self hypnosis.
Yet, it was my Path, the meaning of which I understood only some five years ago.
I was not religious man.
In Bulgaria it was kind of forbidden to go in church and talk about God.
It was not officially, but it was not recommended to do it.
Actually I never had the need to discover for my self whether there is something like God.
Moral values are nothing but community agreement that is accepted by the majority.
In Bulgaria the formal “agreement” was: God does not exist.
I remember my first time when I asked my self what happen to the consciousness when man dies.
I was about thirteen years young boy, staying in front of the mirror with this question in my mind.
I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly the answer came in me as from nowhere.
Watching my self in the mirror I knew that when I leave this world I’ll go to something like a place, which is not place, but Big Conscious, which contains in itself many like me.
Now it look strange to me that this moment very quickly was forgotten, and it came up in my memory after more than thirty five years.
Next thing that I remember from my childhood in connection with God was a short conversation with my mother about church and God.
My mother and my father never talked to me and my brother about religion.
I don’t remember how the conversation started, but I said that I’ll never in my life go in a church.
My mother was surprised from this words.
“Why” – she asked me.
“Because there is no God, and therefore no point of going in the church” – was my answer.
Mom looked at me in some strange way, like she wanted to say more than she did:
“I don’t know what is God, and in what way it is supposed to exist, but the church is something very beautiful that you must see”
Later on she came to me and asked me:
“How can you explain the impossibility of God’s existence?”
That was ve-e-ery easy question for “clever” boy like me:
“It is impossible for a person to create and rule all this universe” – answered I.
“I don’t thing that it is a person” – said my mother. – “It is probably SOMETHING that is so different than us, that we can not imagine it, and we must not try to imagine something and reject it because does not fit our understanding”.
That conversation I forgot like the mirror story, but I don’t remember ever in my later life to reject something because I don’t understand it.
My attitude to the unknown was always “could be”.
My first experience in the life that made me to admit that perhaps there is SOMETHING, was about three years after my marriage.
I was driving in the town with my wife and my children in the car.
It was a narrow two way street with pedestrian pavement on both sides.
On the left-hand pavement there was a group of children staying in a circle and peacefully talking something.
I was approaching them with about 60 km/h (30 miles per hour), and when the distance between my car and the children was about sixty meters I saw in my self how one of the children runs in front of the car. I quickly moved my attention to the group and I knew which child will run and in what direction.
All that happen so quick in my mind, but with such a great details that humane mind can not explain it.
I started to break immediately.
In the moment when I put my foot on the breaks, the child run in front of the car without any particular reason.
When he went on the street I pushed the breaks a little harder and the front wheels skimmed for a moment making the sound which is always a sign for a bad driving experience.
The child stopped some twenty meters in front of the car and could not move, horrified from the view of the car coming on him.
The car stopped so close to the child that I could not see from the driver’s sit his knees.
I was staying in the car so calm that my wife thought that I’m in a shock.
In that age for me was normal to jump out of the car, to swear and even slap the child, but I was siting and thinking what was that thing which helped me to save one life.
That was the moment when my mothers words came to me as absolute Truth, and since then I knew that There is SOMETHING that might be called God.
And again… I forgot about this and my life took me on its normal everyday trail.
…Until one day after years my granny’s sister called me on the phone with very strange question:
“Nikolay, dear, I’m coming to Pleven (my town in Bulgaria) and I’d like to ask you, would you take some church books, left to us from our priest? He passed away few days ago.”
That was a surprise…
“Why you ask me!?” – realy… Why she asked me?
“Well… I’m just asking…” – she couldn’t find the reason, why she asked me.
May be because she’s passing by our town on her way to visit my granny…
That was the only explanation in that moment.
“Fine. Bring the books, aunty (I don’t call her grandma). How do you know that I want to have such a books” – I did lie to make her feel good.
“Did you!? I knew that this books are for you, my boy” – she was the happiest person I have ever talked on the phone.
When she came with the books two days later I asked her to tell me the story about them.
That were the books of the priest who was serving in their village, and was very good friend with my aunt’s family.
Before his death he asked my aunt and my uncle to ask around and give the books to the one that would be happy to have them.
No one wanted church books in his house.
I was the first to say “I want them”.
When I looked at the books I discover that they are very old books with antique value which could bring me a fortune.
That time like any young man I wanted to make money, to be rich, to be famous and have everything.
I could not explain how it happen but I did never came to the idea to sell the books.
I put them on my book shelve and only the Bible, which is thick and red would remind me that I had those books in my library.
From time to time I used to open it and read it, but never with the intention to find something valuable in it.
Time past, and we moved few times from one flat to another.
One day I saw the Bible on my new book shelve and then I remembered that there was smaller but very expensive books as well.
I tried to find them without success.
The Bible later I took with me in South Africa and today I have it with me, and I’m very thankful to my aunty and her friend, the priest, who wanted the books to go to the one that will be happy to have them.
With this Book I made my first steps in my journey back to my self.
