LISTENING TO THE SILENCES

My visit to Dundee was most enjoyable as Tony and Wilma went out of their way to make me welcome. Theirs was a lovely warm and caring household, caring manifested in virtually every one of their many activities and work. My visit was broken in the middle to respond to an urgent invitation to travel to David's home a short distance to the north, where I was to meet his wife Marjorie, and their youngest daughter, Margaret, the only one of their four children still at home. Additionally, I was to renew another friendship, and how delightful that was. During our training, and when we had been comparatively close to London, David and I had hitched to the north of the city and to Brookmans Park, where there was a Free Polish Radio, and where, helping to man it, was David's new brother-in-law, Bruno, who had married his elder sister Rae. The epic of Bruno's escape from Poland when it was overrun is well worth the hearing, but here he was and Rae also, so welcoming, and such warmth. And here it was, the other family that I wrote about earlier, which I hadn't know that I had, but which absorbed me as if I had always been a part of it, as did David and Marjorie's other children, Allison, Michael and John and their partners, when I was to meet them subsequently. But I have to warn you: Bruno's Polish generosity with a tumbler and whisky bottle exceeds even that of a generous Scot - and you get one nationality added to the other, and you need a strong head!

It is interesting to pause and reflect for a moment that if I had not responded to the intense intrusions in the way that I had, and left the motorway to compose myself, my arrival at Westbank would not have coincided with that of David. This pause for reflection really acknowledges the fact that the spiritual intrusions, good and bad, were a feature of my every waking moment. That I had coped thus far, and continued to cope satisfactorily, says a lot for the strategies that I was developing, which in turn owed everything to the fact that I was fully aware of how the voice hearing and physical intrusions first began. I write in analytical detail later describing exactly the variety of forms that the intrusions can take, and how they can exert their influence, but for the moment please accept that anyone can be imitated, or any situation conjured up within one's imaginative mind, and the skill with which this is done is considerable. A 'voice' resembling that of Inspector Clousseau, or the subtle effects of a sensual female presence, can be generated so easily - and all the while I was trying to cope within and through this barrage, and wondering whether, indeed, there were these three individual 'guides', as had been represented. Fortunately the issue was to be resolved, and soon.

Still reeling from all the amazement and excitement generated at Westbank by my encounter with David, I had, nevertheless, remembered to ask Patricia whether I could come with my friends to the absent healing meeting during the coming week. She had agreed and so we duly arrived. All the gatherings took place in a spacious and light upstairs lounge, and while I haven't consciously tried to copy it in the arrangement of my own room, there is, nevertheless, a similarity of ambience and outlook, which makes it easy for me to recall this particular day, and sequence of events.

We were a small gathering, for, apart from myself, Tony and Wilma, there was just Patricia and a woman who normally assisted with her healing work. Patricia began a gentle led meditation, and, virtually as she started, and always conscious of my intention never to lose control of my own thoughts, I was strongly aware of the presence of my supposed quartet of 'guides' - four, because my father was sometimes represented as being present. It is difficult to describe one's awareness of 'manifestations', but, by whatever means, I was conscious of four 'individuals' close to me, and almost as soon as this fact registered, they moved rapidly to my rear. Suddenly, I became aware of a huge body of available resource, support and power. It was as if I had become the spear point of a huge phalanx of infinite size; my back was ramrodded, and with that came the knowledge that there would be unlimited support and assistance available in all my endeavours, but - and this is the most crucial element of the whole event - everything would be delivered anonymously. Simultaneously my view out of the window opposite ceased to be that of the garden, and instead I was presented with the concept of my far distant goal from which I was separated by a varied and difficult terrain. I knew that if I was to arrive there, it would only be through my own efforts in walking every step of the way, but, provided that this goal was the right one, the available support would be immense.

Through it all, I had not lost the thread of Patricia's narrative. Symbolically, she was taking us to the ultimate centre of healing and the ultimate 'healer', as we journeyed steadily up the abstract mountain to the divine temple at the top. "But", she said, "you may not feel it necessary to go fully to the top, you may decide to pause". That, I thought, is for me, and immediately there was fed into my mind a view looking down on the small plateau on which my house sits, and I was indeed looking down onto my own house. Patricia continued upward to arrive at the temple at the top of the mountain in which would be the person, source of all healing, but essentially unseen, the 'ineffable'. "Hold on" I thought, "this is not my understanding" - all my recent experiences following on from recovery from the initial spiritual trauma, had been of a growing openness in what I was trying to do, and in respect of relationship with the 'Holy Family' of my prayer and response. So where did that leave me? Stuck on a mountain with nowhere to go? No, for again I was looking down at my house, only this time the 'lid' was off, and I was looking down into my kitchen and there at the table, the arrangement of which was still in the planning stage, sat my 'ultimate healer', talking animatedly with some children.

I could not have had plainer answers to my inner questions and to questions that I had yet to ask. I would know that in future every voice would be suspect, and that, as I further found out, everything that came from a desirable source would be entirely by deep 'subliminal transfer', and without being represented as coming from any nominated 'person' - the origin should be obvious and clear. That, unfortunately, did not mean that henceforth there would be absolute certainty about the source of anything that came into my head. I wish that this could be so, but it is not to be, and constantly one must be on one's guard: constantly. There were many gifts that came via the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and one of these, perhaps the most important, is Discernment. It has become customary in certain political circles to say everything in triplicate, so I must do the same. Discernment. Discernment. Discernment. There is no other option; constant alertness and never drop one's guard. Intelligent people become familiar with the ploys of the advertising industry, from the full frontal assault, to the subtle, low-key, almost subliminal insinuation. The supermarket does not have to advertise its bread; it lets the smell of freshly baked loaves diffuse through the air-conditioning. Coffee shops used to let the smell of roasting coffee beans drift down the High Street. Who can resist? (Just mention a bacon butty, or the smell of frying onions, and I am sure that in some mouths the saliva will start to run).

In a similar manner, thoughts, concepts, perceptions of taste or smell even, can be subtly drifted into the mind in such a way that one does not realise that they have come from anywhere but one's own intellect. It is hard to write of these situations without going into an immense amount of detail, and obviously, the perception and reaction will differ from person to person. If possible, I shall try to describe typical scenarios later in my writing as I enlarge other concepts, although I cannot guarantee that I shall succeed. But I must try, for in addition to the direct voice hearing experience, there can be created in susceptible individuals obsessions, cravings and addictions, self-image fixations and eating disorders.

For my immediate purpose, the additional statements and answers that emerged during the course of the meditation could not have been more plain, either. There would be no ethereal, unreachable 'temple of healing' in my predictable future other than here in my own home. Neither need I look further than these four walls for my rôle model; he would be here, both inside me as I attempt to emulate him and at my side or in my hands when I ask for help for others. I am sorry that I cannot comment further, but my spiritual life and thoughts are very private to me, as are the dedications of my self and my domestic resources to the needs and care of others here or where they are reachable.

When I had returned from my first visit to Westbank, I found myself essentially on the edge of a void. Full of thoughts of my new found talents, having no point of reference, no one with like experiences to consult or with whom to explore ideas, I felt as a painter must when faced with a blank canvas. But whereas the painter has been there before, has had tuition and had tutorial experience, and has a whole tradition of painting deriving from early times from which to draw inspiration, I was looking at my own canvas, but finding that there was no living tradition of healing there to guide me, nor practitioners to consult. It might have been said that I had my rôle model, and that his healing exploits have been fully written about in the New Testament. Quite so, but at times this association with Biblical healings turned out to be a major disadvantage in addressing the expectations that many individuals have. Some people preface the word 'healing' with 'spiritual' or 'faith', and from those two words many things flow. Firstly, the word 'spiritual' has, for some, a connotation of 'spiritualism' that they find unacceptable; for others it betokens an interaction with spiritual beings, which they are not prepared to experience. Yet again, there can be the unspoken expectation of a 'Jesus'-type miracle, a concept that an individual could find overwhelming. Secondly, 'faith' also releases a whole gamut of reactions; is it the faith of the practitioner or the faith of the patient that is implied? If it is the faith of the patient, does that mean that he or she has to take on board any religious beliefs or practices, and if there is no cure or improvement, does that mean that the person did not have enough faith, or that past 'sin' was an impediment?

I found all these reactions, either expressed openly or implied, as I started to offer to individuals what I thought would be of benefit to them. Gradually, as these resposes started to become apparent, and as my own predilections came to the fore, my approach, technique and strategy started to develop.

It may be asked why I did not follow exactly the methods and techniques that I had witnessed and assisted with during my time at Westbank. That would be a fair point. There are two reasons why I did not do so: the first is that, as you may recall, I no longer used a pendulum: the second is that I never felt myself to be sufficiently competent to perform any physical manipulations upon a person. In the event, and as will emerge, I adopted, and gradually developed, a practice based upon and more suited to the analytical engineering method that governs my approach to most situations. You may remember that in my work with measuring devices in the nuclear plants, if any piece of equipment failed it was not sufficient simply to repair it, but the reason for its failure had to be known and eliminated before a repair could be considered complete. Similarly, with any illness there must be a cause or causes, which if found could be addressed and hopefully eliminated, although I did not reach a sufficient degree of competence to follow this investigative path for some time. Initially, and continuing while my understanding and experience increased, I simply applied my hands where and for how long seemed appropriate.