I’m writing this on a peaceful Sunday afternoon with the warble of magpies providing a suitable musical accompaniment to my thoughts. It’s two weeks since we returned from exploring Western Australia – the big State! And it is big – and in its vastness we were introduced to a range of extraordinary and interesting entities that capture some of the history of our planet.

Perhaps the most remarkable of these was our viewing of the stromatolites at Hamelin Pool, Shark Bay. These ancient marine wonders are intriguing and unique rock formations – fossils that have developed over some 3.43 billion years and indicate to palaeontologists the earliest forms of life on Earth. Though they appear inanimate, hidden within is vital growth! Sometimes described as living rocks, stromatolites are formed from microbial communities (cyanobacteria) that reside therein and continue, extraordinarily, to build them. It is believed that these communities, through the process of photosynthesis, were responsible for originally increasing the level of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere sufficiently to enable life as we know it to develop.

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We hear a lot about ‘resilience’ these days. I think the word is often interpreted as some extraordinary toughness that is needed if we’re to survive challenges that appear in life on a regular basis.

But resilience is essentially about flexibility and the ability to “bounce back”; about being equipped to react with an element of elasticity as opposed to inflexible, rigid and uncompromising attitudes.

As it happens, Ainslie Meares encapsulated the word resilience in one of his remarkable poems circa 1980 and long before it became the catch word of the 21st century:

Some run for shelter,
The tree holds firm
And sways with the storm,
The eagle is borne higher and higher (Thoughts, 1980)

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Yesterday was spent on retreat in a beautiful garden.

I’ve always been drawn to the garden and I always manage to include something about gardens in my books.  It’s in those places of nature, among a plethora of green that I find an embracing and very deep comfort.  Even now, in our chilly Melbourne winter, the damp air is refreshing, the breeze invigorating and the occasional raindrop, a reminder that the season is in full swing.

Of course I love open beaches, rolling hills, wide plains and intense forests – so typical of the variety of our country.  Each space holds its charm and its value.  But most of all, for me anyway, there is security and peace in the garden. Read more

The question is often put to me ‘what’s the difference between Stillness Meditation Therapy and other methods of meditation’?  Here are my thoughts from over 25 years’ teaching!

First, some clarification!  The concept of Stillness Meditation (SMT) is significantly different from classical meditation which primarily involves the principles of Hindu or Buddhist teachings.  SMT is a Western style of meditation and a medically based form of therapy.  It is unrelated to classical or sectarian meditation and it does not use method or technique.

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