Although the practical side of life was slowly beginning to improve, during this time of soul searching the emotional and mental confusion was at times totally unbearable. A very heavy depression set in which I could in no way shake off. My new found vulnerability gave me a feeling of helplessness and I could see no way of clarifying my thoughts. I was still racked with doubt, turmoil and guilt and the more healthy feelings of love, trust, hope and freedom were missing. I could latch on to nothing, my mind was a maze and I was lost in it.
This struggle, to keep an objective perspective, had been going on now for two to three years and my face was often bathed in a sweat of heavy depression.
At one point, in a moment of fear, I had agreed to see a psychiatrist. Our meeting was brief since his, not so reassuring, advice was that this may go on forever and I just had to keep on doing my best. Curiously enough, instead of dampening me, these words created an anger in me which guaranteed a fight! I was strangely convinced that there was a way out and I intended proving him very wrong.
I desperately tried everything I knew to calm myself and resolve these anxieties. I read the Jesus’ words, “Consider the lilies of the field, consider their ways …” and decided to do just that. I would go into the park and just sit, looking at the flowers, feeling my hands, my body and saying to myself “I am”. It was a sort of relaxation exercise which, for a while, kept out all the dubious and negative thoughts which were bombarding my mind.
Gradually my feeling of self worth started returning. On one of these troubled nights I had a dream. In the dream I was walking down a road in pitch darkness when I saw a strange group of people. One man was pushing a wheelbarrow with dead bodies lying inside it in all sorts of contorted shapes. Then the man, pushing the barrow, looked straight into my eyes and took fright. He let go of the barrow and fled instantly followed by all the others who suddenly came to life. I looked at the proceedings, in my dream, in utter amazement.
The next morning I saw Damian and told him about it. He listened and then suggested the dream may be heralding my resurrection and all the dead fleeing were those hurts, pains and anxieties in my life.
As I listened to his explanation, something happened. I knew I would never be depressed again. Sad perhaps, unhappy yes, but that despair and lack of hope, praise God, was gone and never returned.
Now, even during waking hours, the bright glimpses of God’s eternal light started to pierce through the darkness.
I was on my way to visit a friend and was walking down The Cromwell Road. Without warning my perception was suddenly drawn into a truly different state. It was the same road, the same London, the same world but I saw it in a totally new light. I realised, or rather knew, that what I saw, what I didn’t see and where I was existing, was united into one. No part of it was excluded for there were no parts. It was all one. This happened in a split second but to this day, the awareness of that moment is as real and vivid as when it happened. The euphoria which followed was exhilarating and I accepted it with a natural grace, the grace of that moment.
Now, deep in my subconscious, things were showing me that inner healing was taking place.
One night I dreamed that I was at the circus. I love the circus. I was watching all the acts, the trapeze, the horses, the acrobats and it felt as though I was really there and accompanied by the unseen Holy Spirit.
Then I noticed four or five jugglers dressed in black who stepped out of the enclosure into the central ring. Somehow I knew they represented all that was cunning and dark yet to look at they were magnificent, composed and very much in control. Their mastery gave the art an apparent ease.
From nowhere came these equally splendid characters dressed in white who unobtrusively took their places behind each of the men dressed in black. They reached out and calmly took over the juggling. It was so effortless, composed and so cleverly done that the men in black realised they were outwitted and eased their way out without so much as a backward glance. I knew at that moment that the good would always triumph over evil, there was no match. The lasting impression of that dream was the utter serenity of this triumph.
As well as struggling with psychological pain and depression, I also had to cope with a physical problem that had dogged me since the age of three. The pains in my left leg which paralysed me as a child in Gozo, had not gone away completely. For the past seven or eight years, they had returned with a vengance. My leg would suddenly go dead on me and I would be forced to walk with a painful limp for weeks on end. At times, it would be so agonising, I would have to receive pain killing injections to enable me to go on.
A few weeks after these dreams and experiences, I was once again being treated at hospital for my leg problem. I spoke on the phone to Jaime, a doctor friend of mine, who told me that it was congenital, I had been born with a loose ligament which meant I would just have to live with it.
I had no intention of doing so. “Lord,” I said, “that’s enough, no more.” and indeed it has never returned since that day.
This showed me that, when spiritual healing takes place, other healings often follow.