During a nervous breakdown in my early twenties, at the time of the John F. Kennedy assassination, I stumbled into a labyrinth of life that few have ever experienced.
In undergraduate school, I, like many young men at the time, intended to march off to the madness of war. I signed up for college ROTC, graduated Cum laude, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Signal Corps. With a full fellowship, I matriculated to Yale graduate engineering. However, struggling on that path, I fell ill the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia caused by the stress of failing my courses, poor nutrition, and fear of Vietnam combat. I couldn’t function, and my parents took me home.
My mother’s tearful, loving warmth and nourishing meals, freed me from external stresses, allowing my mind to disconnect from the ordinary rituals and rigors of life. I began to recuperate and yearned for the soothing heartbeat of Mother Nature. I wandered the surrounding woods and flowered meadows near my home—but the comfort and security of my circumstances weren’t enough. The element of risk—essential for my spiritual growth—was missing.
Imprisoned within my head—my illness isolated me from the outside world. Distracted by meaningless inward chatter, I was unable to express my bizarre unworldly insights. However, during those long months of insulated darkness, somehow I had been changing into a different being that soon penetrated the walls of its cocoon. My breakdown became a breakthrough.
Desperate for direction, I sought to learn from the writings of great sages of the past which I read and reread to help me with confusion about what I was to do and to discover what made me tick.
During this struggle to earn my freedom wings, I was aware that tranquilizer drugs were enfeebling me, so I secretly stopped taking them when I felt capable of doing so. Like a caterpillar morphing in its chrysalis from mush, I emerged from solitary confinement, unlike the creature I was before. Always praying, I arose one day mysteriously reborn. As Leonardo DaVinci wrote, “I awoke, only to find that the whole world was still asleep.” It was as if I’d spiritually risen from the living dead.
My nervous breakdown somehow became a spiritual breakthrough.
The Word of God became my counselor, my muse, coaxing me to leave my family and career, to give all my savings to the poor, and abandon my worldly desires. If I was serious about discovering who I really was, nothing less perilous would suffice.
Only the details of my religious experience vary from what many others have suffered. Those who manage to survive a spiritual metanoia have had to endure the severe labor pains, as flesh gives birth to spirit (John 16:21). I had much more trauma to endure in my spiritual growth to maturity as a new being. Moved by Scripture to combat my fears, I hit the road on a penniless pilgrimage, wearing a used military jacket, army boots, and carrying a few essentials in a knapsack.
Part of my ongoing healing has been the writing of this ten-year experience in a book called, “Path Perilous … My Search for God and the Miraculous,” which I hope will inspire others on their journey to self-realization. Though physically challenging, the much harder work was examining my inner life and conquering myself. Penning my unusual adventure has taken more than twenty years.
I hope my true story will encourage psychiatrists, caregivers, parents of suicidal youth, and anyone afflicted with disabling depression. This path to full recovery is not for the faint of heart, as Christ’s gift of genuine healing requires courage and faith that we can emerge from our dark night of the soul as monarchs soaring to beatific visions of God.
You can learn more details about my book at RMDellorfanoAuthor.com
By Richard M.Dell’Orfano
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