UPDATED Journey Back Into the Vault

03/13/24 • 6 min

This is the story of those psychological forces that help define us. Who are you and where did you come from? Learning more about your past brings a sense of security and inner peace. Mario Cartaya went back to Cuba to reclaim his forgotten Cuban past and wrote a book about it called Journey Back Into the Vault, In Search of My Faded Cuban Childhood Footprints.

Subscribe with your favorite podcast player

Apple Podcasts Android RSS

Welcome to this edition of Newsgram

Have you ever wondered about the forces that shape our identity? Who we truly are and where we come from? In a world filled with uncertainty, reconnecting with our roots can offer a sense of security and inner peace. Today we are going to journey back in time to explore the captivating tale of one man’s quest to reclaim his Cuban roots.

Mario Cartaya – How do we go from all the hate and the anger and the fear that we are exposed to daily into achieving an inner peace.

That’s Mario Cartaya. He is the author of “Journey Back Into the Vault: In Search of My Faded Cuban Childhood Footprints.” His is a very personal adventure but it’s also a reminder of how powerful it is to learn about ourselves and where we came from.

Mario Cartaya – Come to terms with who you really are and then try to find that inner-peace within us that we all need so much.

He knows something about this. In an effort to reclaim his forgotten Cuban childhood and his original identity he did some digging into his own past. The results are in his new book Journey Back Into the Vault, In Search of My Faded Cuban Childhood. When he was nine years old he was forced to flee his home country with his parents and older brother in a pretty dramatic way.

Mario Cartaya – The head of the Cuban Nationalization program of American properties putting a gun to my dad’s head demanding his books. My dad did comply eventually and that forced us to leave the island when Guevara told him your future safety in this country is no longer guaranteed.

When you’re forced to leave your country in this way you have to leave everything behind, your aunts, uncles, friends and acquaintances.

Mario Cartaya – We just never got to say goodbye. The 1960’s if you remember was a time of the Cuban missile crisis, it was of the bay of Pigs invasion, it was time when many, many things happened and there was no communication between us and Cuba so they did and we only found out through Western Union telegraphs that would tell us your grandfather died, your uncle died.

I can’t imagine the culture shock of coming to America from Cuba in the early 1960’s. I guess one of the cool things would be the fact that he was very young and didn’t have to be concerned with the draft or politics. You get to just try and fit in as an American kid. play some baseball, make new friends, eat a hot dog and learn why we call it soccer....

Mario Cartaya – It was wonderful. Becoming an American was easy, however that vault that I built to protect me from all these painful and relevant memories would come to play a few years later.

Yep, at some point in the growing up process we are all forced to breach that vault where we’ve stored all those painful memories and see if enough time has gone by to have another look. For some of us it happens naturally and for others you have to crack open your own unconscious ‘vault’ and retrieve the buried memories to better examine them in with the wisdom that comes from growing older.

Mario chose to head back to Cuba.

Mario Cartaya – I was hoping that the stimulus of going to the buildings, the places where I lived, would remind me however what that stimulus did was it took me to a place inside me where all those memories lived. I had never lost those memories that I thought I’d forgotten. I had never forgotten it. I just stopped myself from remembering. I protected myself from remembering in the subconscious vault that we all build and I realized that as the memories returned the demos of long ago belonged long ago and the more I opened myself to going inside that vault and discovering who I am. It’s not who I was, it’s ...

Subscribe with your favorite podcast player

Apple Podcasts Android RSS

Welcome to this edition of Newsgram

Mario Cartaya – How do we go from all the hate and the anger and the fear that we are exposed to daily into achieving an inner peace.

Mario Cartaya – Come to terms with who you really are and then try to find that inner-peace within us that we all need so much.

When you’re forced to leave your country in this way you have to leave everything behind, your aunts, uncles, friends and acquaintances.

Mario Cartaya – It was wonderful. Becoming an American was easy, however that vault that I built to protect me from all these painful and relevant memories would come to play a few years later.

Mario chose to head back to Cuba.

Previous Episode

The Story of My Soul

The Story of my Soul by Helen P. Slater is the personal healing journey of Helen P. Slater. The book is written from a spiritual perspective, about divine love, abuse, trauma, spirit guides and soul healing.

Subscribe with your favorite podcast player

Apple Podcasts Android RSS

Welcome to this edition of Newsgram!

A long time ago in a land called the eighties I was working for a company that produced radio programs. We syndicated them to stations all over the country and I was lucky enough to work on a Pete Townsend special featuring the music of The Who. Pete Townsend is a fascinating and deeply religious man. At the time he was working as an editor at the publishing house Faber & Faber, the book publishing company that also published his book “Horses Neck”. Anyway, when asked about the single “Who are You” – a progressive rock-N-roll song he said it was actually written about God. Imagine looking up to the sky and asking God “Who are you?”

That story has stuck with me all these years. Today’s show is for anyone who has ever asked the question ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What am I doing here?’

Helen P. Slater is someone who did that very thing and got an answer...well, sort of...

Helen P. Slater – I called out one night, “Please help me” because I was feeling so helpless and one of my guides appeared to me and said his name was Jeremiah and he could help and then a whole host of guides turned up and I was told that I was seeing them on the Astral Plane and that I had extra sensory perception abilities. And they said we can take you on a healing journey because the reason you are actually sick is because of Karma and trauma and so I said ok, I’d like to go on this journey.

I’m going to jump in here because that was a lot. Her story is nothing short of fascinating and it’s all detailed very clearly in her book “The Story of My Soul” but to get the most out of this podcast you need to believe that anything is possible. That there is a world outside this one. That we all have Spirit Guides and they have a boss who we call God.

Helen P. Slater (New Reality) There is actually a reality behind the normal reality that we see and when you have Extra Sensory Perception which we all do have we can see into the astral plane. We can see things that we might not otherwise see.

How cool is that? Helen was at a very low point in her life so she looked to God for help.

Helen P. Slater – I got rich with chronic fatigue syndrome and had to move out of my house, had to use my savings to live off. I couldn’t work and then I met my guides.

She was not only helped but she was told that she had the ability to help others.

Helen P. Slater – They said to me you will go on a long journey because then you will know each step in the healing journey and you will. Be able to help other people quickly. And they said you have special gifts. You can heal peoples worries and anxieties from the root causes and I said I’d like to go on the journey. And so then they took me up in a meditation into a high white space and said that I could ask questions of the creator and they called God the creator because it’s a very different, very loving, very caring energy in this high white light space. And so that is the start of the journey and then my guide Madeline said please write it all down and then other people can benefit from this journey to heal Kharma and trauma.

And if you’re saying to yourself, hold on a second Sam, you said she was sick with Chronic fatigue what is all this about Karma and Trauma...I’m glad you asked... and we will get to that in a minute but first let Helen explain what what is was like to be taken by her guides on a healing journey into the astral plane.

Helen P. Slater – Now these beings are on this platform in our universe. They were surrounded by stars up in the universe it was very eerie and very stressful because I thought, I know something’s happened something very dangerous and these people are telling me to heal it basically and so I followed and followed and went to this star where there was a psychotic warrior and a beautiful being having a battle.

It was very eerie and very psychotic energy with this psychotic warrior and I was told that to heal insanity was one of things that I was aske...

Next Episode

Finding Peace

Welcome to this edition of Newsgram!

Subscribe with your favorite podcast player

Apple Podcasts Android RSS

Doing this podcast I’ve learned a lot of different things thanks to the great authors I’ve been lucky enough to meet. The topics are so broad and varied from children’s books to autobiographies to fiction and spirituality — you really never know what you’re going to get so thank you for clicking on this episode.

Today we are taking a common sense approach to the question “Who am I?” and what was I put on this earth to do. Just to clarify — you are probably already living your purpose and don’t even realize it. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking that there must be more to life and in the course of doing that we tend to forget the little things that actually mean a lot. Like simple kindnesses that are so easy to do you don’t even think about them. You just do it but they mean something to the recipient.

How grateful are you that water comes out of the tap? I wasn’t until recently when I was reminded that in many parts of the world people have to go and get water from a river or a well, and it’s not clean. Billions of people don’t know the luxury we take for granted. It puts things in perspective — but this is not a show about water — or gratitude, although that is important, it’s a show about finding peace.

Rebecca Payne – We get so busy running around doing things for the kids if you are married with children or you have children. Running about. Our daily lives running to the store and getting this or that. Going to work, coming home, taking care of the shopping and all of that kind of stuff that we don’t take out time to rest and that’s one of the principle teachings in the book “Finding Peace” is to rest. That’s one of the secrets, to take that day, take that time to just slow down and be at peace and sitting on the porch is one way to do that.

That’s Dr. Rebecca Payne, author of the book she just mentioned, Finding Peace. The cover features a bistro table and a couple of chairs on the front porch of a house that serve as a reminder to take time out to rest.

Rebecca Payne – Life is a journey and you have to take time to slow down and enjoy it. We get so caught up with running around and spinning our own web that we forget that we are here to enjoy this life, to discover one another and have peace. You can’t have peace if you don’t slow down.

Stop and smell the roses. It’s just that simple but hearing it and doing it are two different things. It’s not always that easy. Our lives can be very complicated so in her book she created a fun way to teach us how to slow down and live a peaceful and rewarding life. To do that she created two characters, Jamie and Miss Mazey. Jamie is looking for answers and Miss Mazey is keen to teach them using biblical principles.

Rebecca Payne – Rebecca discusses the creation of these two characters and that they are a reflection of Rebecca and her spiritual mother.

Jamie is on a path toward enlightenment and Miss Mazey is offering up the spiritual wisdom to help her get there. Here’s an example. We already talked about the importance of taking time out to rest — like God did on the seventh day.

Rebecca Payne – You cannot go seven days a week running around all day every day and not rest. Rebecca cites scriptures like Jeremy 1:5, Matthew 6:33 to illustrate that in the scriptures you will find wisdom to find freedom and freedom will give you peace.

And there’s that word again, Peace and believe it or not peace is just the beginning.

Rebecca Payne – I discovered that with peace comes joy. With joy comes happiness. These are fruits of the Holy Spirit so the fruit of the spirit becomes evident in your life. You have joy, you have peace, you have happiness , you take on goodness, you take on kindness, you take on the ability to persevere and have patience. All of these things start transpiring in your life as you allow the Holy Spirit to work in your life. You can’t do these things, you can’t make these changes by yourself. I tried it does not work but with the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God you can have your life transformed and then literally find peace and with that peace comes the simplicity of life.

If you’re someone who is looking...