3.8.2008 Every death is a creation… Death is always here, we only chose to see its face sometimes and ignore it at other times. It's been an interesting day today as we found out that one of the students' grandmother died. Emma lives in Doha with her husband Greg and she's from New Zealand originally. She only arrived 2 weeks ago for a big birthday celebration of her grandmother's 90th. And this morning had a phone call from her mother to find out that she wa...

31.7.2008 Home sweet home is Stillpoint! I'm so happy to have returned and be practising with John and Lucy again. Although I seem to have lost all my strength in the past 2 weeks it is slowly coming back and my trust in John's hands have increased incredibly. And he continues to share his teaching and takes time to explain his logic. Oh I thank everyday for whatever brought me to John. There wasa big storm in Nelson yesterday with trees falling, roofs flying...

Vipassana Diary Day 0 Things are never what they turn out to be, there is so much planning you could do in your life and yet nothing is predictable. I'm having a good reminder again (thanks universe). We arrived at the Vipassana centre with Liz, all ready for our 10days of sitting and meditating…Until an hour after the registration I was approached and asked if I could serve as they were very short staffed in the kitchen. It wasn't something I had prepared ...

Vipassana Diary Day 2 We're beginning to have more fun in the kitchen; speed we work at is incredible. Cheryl used to have an award winning restaurant and likes to jazz up the recipes; Ken's doing an acupuncture course at uni; Mark is a Kiwi living at the centre for a few months. We've been learning from Cheryl that in a busy kitchen you have often have to warn each other when you're whizzing around with big, heavy, hot pot "behind you", "hot p...

12.7.2008 Time to witness relationships! Well, it's been amazing few days in Byron Bay. Saying goodbye to my darling lion family Mandy and Bart was pretty hard in Port Macquarie. Initially I wasn't sure if I was being a burden for such a long time, but I could see how much they were enjoying my company too. We had fun in the evenings, cooking, eating, watching movies or wildlife programmes, Mandy doing her colouring in book for her teacher training, getting c...