I'll be satisfied if this can be of any help to anyone who, anguished by a diagnosis, can take me as an example, as palpable evidence that other healing methods exist, and can even neutralize the pessimism instiled by doctors.

I want it to be clear that everyone has to find her/his own way. Healing techniques that benefit some do not work for others. But what is certain is that there is always a way to heal oneself. Look for it and you'll find it. If can do it, you can do it too.

I remember that I also felt rage upon confirming the contradictions of a medical system in which I had little confidence by that time, a system which, on the one hand, called from the rooftops for illness prevention, and the adoption of basic measures to avoid infection, and on the other hand, kept everlasting silence about the results of a test made without the patient's consent.

During the rest of the day I was absent-minded, my thoughts wandered. That night and the next one too I cried, I cried a lot.

I thought about how unfair my destiny was. Why me?. Why now?. I was 38 years old. After a normal childhood (although I can't say the same about my adolescence) I found myself inmerse in an inner battle due to the non-acceptance of my homosexuality, which went against the cultural and social rules by which I had been raised. These facts led me to try to commit suicide three times, the first time when I was 17.

And when at last I had more or less gotten my life on-track and had found a reason to keep on living, removing those slef-destructive ideas definitively, this fatal news made me stagger once again. Hadn't I asked for death again and again?. And there it was, served up on a platter. Except this was not the idea of death taht I had in mind.

Nor did I hear what I was hoping for when I went to the homeopath's: he had no cure for AIDS. So he prescribed some trace elements and then all I could do was wait for the possible complications that would have to be treated when they appeared.

And just when I had begun to think about suicide again as the only possible alternative, Lama Gangchen appeared in my life.

I found out through a friend that a Tibertan Lama healer was coming to Madrid in october. This gave me hope. If Western medicine had no solutions for me, perhaps Eastern medicine could offer a remedy.

Among the information I gathered, once I had recovered from the shock and initial discouragement, I found some Tibetan medicine and its treatment for AIDS. It turned out to be very encouraging. I had heard about other treatments as well that were as much alternative as allopathic, and they seemed to be promising.

I put myself in the hands of Doctor Lobsang who prescribed a treatment that I followed exactly as I was told for one year. Beside medicines, it included a meal plan and a special diet for full moon days. It was very strange and incredible for a doctor to explain that illness was related to the law of cause and effect (Karma) and could even come from previous lives.

During the time I followed the treatment I didn't observe any change. I continued to be in good health. The analysis, however was still showing less leukocytos than normal counts of T-4.

The folloging year I abandoned the Tibetan medication and because I had crossed the ominous barrier of 500 T-4 (exactly 456), the Internal Medicine Service that was responsible for my case offered to start treatment with AZT. And although at that moment I was not aware of its toxicity or the secondary effects of the analogue nucleoside, I immeddiately refused. I didn't need to think twice. The specialists' astonishment was tremendous when they saw that I rejected a very «expensive and sophisticated» medication which I was lucky to receive free through Social Security, and that I didn't want to be «one of the privileged few that had access to that protocol», something that others could only wish for. I had to explain to them that because I didn't believe in their medicine, their drugs weren't of any help either. But I didn't reject the possibility of coming back in a moment of pure despair, to beg for the same medication that, at the moment, when I was lucid, I rejected.

They threatened me with ominous predictions about imminent death, but I begged them to consider me as an exception to their statistics, because only I could decide how long, and the manner in which, I was going to live.

At my request my homeopath proposed to start blood Isotherapy, a treatment that I followed during 1994 and for five months of 1995.

The results obtained were disparate and did not have any relation with the application of the successive treatments nor with my state of health. The numbers swang from 410 T-4 to 1.072 T-4 (in tests done in differents labs), 700 T-4 in the next analysis and 555 T-4 in the other, etc.

During this period I checked out some other techniques that, at the time, I considered to be valid. I did Yoga, Tibertan rites on a physical level; I tried nourishing supplements such as Onagra oil; I worked with breathing doing Rebirthing; for the mind, I used positive statements, visualization, etc. I tried up to a total of twenty different therapies, some of them esoteric: Healing Tao, two levels of Reiki, Mystical therapy, Crystal and stone Healing, etc. I even had a chat with a woman called Esther, from Astorga, who claimed to be in touch, with the stars, and who offered me healing in exchange for nothing. I simply had to have confidence that my recovery was being worked on from up there. The peak of all this anxious search came in a religious-mystical pilgrimage to a remote part of the Tibetan plateau (the sacred area of Mount Kailas and Manasarovar lake), crossing the barrier of Himalayas on foot in an adventure like expedition. At the same time I increased my knowledge of the illness with readings that offered a vision of illness completely opposed to that of the official theory. This helped me a lot.

I was becoming more and more fond of self-healing and self-help subjects and of subtle therapies, having more confidence in my own capacity for healing. Little by little, I don't know exactly how, I arrived at the feeling and later the conviction that healing comes from inside oneself and not outside as we normally think. The body has its own mechanisms for self-recovery that even work in the same way with serious illnesses and with the so called «incurable ones».

We are used to looking for healing outside ourselves-through medication, going from treatment to treatment, and getting increasingly frustrated when we realize that we won't obtain the so-hoped-for recovery. Then the mind plunges into negative feelings (depression, anxiety, blame, etc.), that deteriorate the process even more.

We often forget that we have something else other than a body or a mind -let us call it a soul or a spirit (although it sounds religious)- and that authentic healing goes not only through a physical or mental process, but through a spiritual one too.

Another important point in the healing process is when you realize that it is not a question of luck, fate or chance that you have a illness. Instead it is something that every person draws into his/her life with his/her own deeds, in order to give themselves the opportunity to grow spiritually.

Illness is not a misfortune, but an authentic gift: It is the only stimulus that is capable of compeling you to solve your deepest conflicts.

I remember that when I read letters from people being grateful to AIDS or cancer for having changed their lives, I thought that they were off their rockers or that they said this, because of resignation. But now I understand, because I share their vision. What would I be without AIDS?. Where would I be?.

I am sure I would not be doing «crazy things» with Lama Gangchen, nor getting up every day an hour early to do the Sadhana (healing practice), nor paying attention to my body, and my mind, much less my soul. I can't tell you how much I prefer to be where I am and I thank my illness for the change that it has brought in my life.

In this process of evolution, Lama Gangchen Rimpoche's Tantric Self-healing has played an essential role.

I've been practising self-healing since the Tibetan Medicine Congress in 1993. At the beginning it seemed complicated and went against the Western mentality. How could it possibly be that just from doing some gesture or reciting some words you could obtain tangible benefits?. I did the sadhana sporadically, in spite of not being totally convinced, just in case...

Little by little I observed, although I had never experienced serious health complications, that my best moments -those in which I was in better spirit, more lively and tranquil- came when I was doing the tantric practice.

I experimented more and more, coming to the conclusion that there was a direct correlation between inner peace and sadhana. The more I practiced, the more at peace I felt with myself and everybody else.

There came a moment when singing the tantric mantra and practicing the mudra stopped being a routine or something mechanical and became enjoyable and more lively with the gradual introduction of visualizations, symbols, colours, breathing, etc.

It was right after my trip to Tibet in august of 1994 that I started to do the sadhana without missing a single day. Apart from the sensation of mental and spiritual peace, sometimes I came to perceive physical sensations such as an ascending heat through my spine.

Since then, tantric self-healing has come to form part of my daily life. I continue to receive, in a subtle way, the benefits of a healing system that has come from a very ancient wisdom, thanks to the generosity and compassion of Venerable Lama Gangchen Tulku Rimpoché, of whom I consider myself a fortunate pupil.

Epilogue.

My present situation is one of total stability. I don't receive any treatment, nor do I take any medication. In my second to last check-up, in view of the «inexplicable» improvement, the Internal Medicine Service asked for an HIV culture. It turned out to be negative, but even today no one has been able to give me any satisfactory reason for such an occurrence.

I am determined not to do any other analysis, basically because I don't suffer from any illness and also because the recounts of T-4 have been shown to be inadequate and obsolete by official medicine itself. Besides they are only useful in making seropositive people hostages of fear and withnesses of how their own terror makes the numbers diminish progressively.

If any complication arose, I'd consult homeopathy, Bach flowers or any other soft therapy.

I emphatically refuse to take any medicine that contains secondary effects because of toxicity (and I am not only talking about antirretrovirales, but also simple antibiotics, vaccines, etc.), always remembering the Hippocratic first principle that our medicine seems to forget. It says: «Primum non nocere» (First non damage).

I am against prophylaxis that encourage the disproportionate ingestion of drugs as a «prevention».

I am in favour of spiritual healing with all its connotations, as opposed to merely physical ones.

I practice Lama Gangchen's Tantric self-healing daily, and have authentic faith in its healing power.

I am aware of the radical turn that my existence has taken. I want to insist that this personal change I have started «thanks to my illness», which has brought to my life the thoughts and deeds that I believe to be correct:

I invoke those verses from the Upanishad that say:

You are what your deep and driving wish is.
Such as your wish is, so is your will.
Such as your will is, so are your deeds.
Such as your deeds are, so is your destiny.

I have a project in mind that consist of making self-support groups in every city or, better yet, in every neighbourhood, gathering all kinds of sick people who are looking for a path of healing. Every group would have a place available where they could periodically meet to exchange information and experiences, and carry on the appropiate practices for improving their quality of life. most importantly here they could give and receive the essential moral support necessary for cultivating personal self-acceptance and for awakening their own healing mechanisms.

The motto of this place could be: «I help myself while helping others».