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Psychiatry
Communications From the Void
A pivotal message accessed through silence.
Posted June 15, 2020
To set the scene, in 1975, after becoming fully registered as a doctor in England, I traveled to New Zealand, spending six months in a surgical post at Tokoroa in the North Island, then six months in the psychiatry department in Christchurch in the South. After my one-year NZ visa expired, I then obtained a full residency permit for Australia and went there, working initially in general practice in four different states. Later, I decided to resume specialist training in psychiatry, but in 1981, after three years of that, I came to a crossroads, resigned my job, and set off traveling, reaching home in the UK eventually via South Africa, Egypt, the USA, and Canada.
Seeking a different path in life, I wrote a novel and spent some time unsuccessfully seeking publication. I also traveled to visit friends and family around Britain. My savings were dwindling, but I did not worry much. More than a year had passed, and I was still at that crossroads, deliberately taking time out because I was completely unsure what to do next. Back in Australia, I had taken instruction from some wisdom teachers, learning a lot, particularly how to meditate, so, with this uncertain mental attitude, I went for a few days to a newly established retreat center in Cumbria, on the banks of Morecombe Bay.
At that stage, some form of spiritual life appealed to me, and I had even begun thinking about living in a monastery somewhere. But as it turned out, the universe had other plans. The next day, I walked in warm sunshine through the retreat center garden and a patch of woodland down to the banks of the bay where there was a stone bench.
Once again, I sat alone in stillness and silence, going deep enough into a trance to become oblivious for a time to myself and my surroundings. I don't know how long I was there, but suddenly I was fully awake and alert, and there were words, strong and clear as if put straight from the void into my ear; "You are a psychiatrist, Larry. That is what you have trained to do ... Go and do that!"
I am sure this was not a pathological hallucination, more like some form of deep, spiritual intuition. Either way, there was no denying such an unequivocal and authoritative command, so I drove back to London the next day, looked up the positions vacant in the latest medical journal, and saw advertised there the job I somehow knew would be mine as the great cosmic plan of the universe and my tiny part in it unfolded. I went to see the professor of psychiatry at St George's Hospital, who encouraged me to apply, and was duly appointed to the advertised post.
The next few years were not totally clear sailing. I had to continue training and take two sets of professional exams, and then compete for jobs on the crowded career ladder, but I was always confident. Even in the darkest moments of practicing psychiatry in difficult circumstances, for it is a challenging, unpopular, misunderstood, and under-resourced specialty, I felt hope, nourished by the idea that something more powerful than I was keeping me safe and on track.
I am so grateful for that mysterious, heaven-sent message on the banks of Morecombe Bay which, giving me a strong sense of resolve, has led directly to me being where I am, and who I am, today; but the point to stress is that I was able to access the source of that pivotal guidance and faith through silence and stillness, through what might be called the "wisdom practice" of meditation, mindfulness, "stilling," or "silent prayer." You do not have to be a believer or practitioner of religion to benefit from this kind of exercise, which, when the skill of simply sitting in silence is sufficiently developed, can help a person discover who they are truly meant to be, and how they might best spend their life.
The lesson, it seems to me, is that if you want a meaningful existence, a life-affirming sense that you are not just a passenger but someone who is making a genuinely valuable contribution to society, discovering real purpose as you go, with unparalleled, "cosmic" experiences of belonging, freedom, and joy, there is at least one reliable path: the way of silence. My advice? Listen patiently to your inner guide, read plenty of wisdom material, try to find good, kind teachers, also similar spiritually-minded companions, and give it a go by yourself.
Copyright Larry Culliford.
This post is based on part of the inaugural SpIRE Library Lecture, which I gave in Dublin on March 5, 2020. You can listen to it here (48 min.) or read it here.
