All posts tagged: gratitude

Photos from the Australian desert during a silent bushwalking adventure, with a vegetarian cook & dingoes (Part One)

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Hello folks, I’m back from the yatra, as calm and settled as can be nowadays. “What’s a yatra”, some of you wonder? This explains it, from the Yatra Australia website: “A yatra is a unique journey providing a special environment to engage with and enquire deeply into the potential of ‘human awakening.’ In the company of like-minded people, it takes place within some of the most pristine landscapes of our natural world. A yatra offers an integrative experience, combining physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual explorations in a secular environment. Being primarily based in the Buddhist tradition we also respect and draw from the wealth of many other wisdom traditions such as yoga, advaita, tao, modern science and tribal cultures. A flexible combination of yoga, meditation, silent walking, dharma teachings, experiential exercises, story telling around the camp- fire, wholesome meals and our intuitive way of ceremony and creative expression support an unfolding process. Got it? Let’s get on with it then. So we flew to Alice Springs, got the 4WD bus out towards Palm Valley (2 …

From Brooklyn to the Bush: going out to the Australian desert for some silence

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Hello folks- do any of you recall my Yatra last year, meditating and walking the South Coast national park after the terrible bushfires, with a group of mainly over 50s? It was stunning, and even made me delete the Candy Crush app, check the post HERE for details. Well, I’m going again. But this time, to Alice Springs in central Australia, hiking along the Finke River: “The Finke River, or Larapinta (Arrernte), is a river in central Australia, one of four main rivers of the Lake Eyre Basin and thought to be the oldest riverbed in the world. It flows for only a few days a year and when this happens, its water usually disappears into the sands of the Simpson Desert, rarely if ever reaching Lake Eyre.” (Wikipedia) I’m very excited, as you can see from this freshly-snapped selfie as I type! And my living room is a mess, as I air all my thermals and sleeping bag, trying to pack minimally yet effectively. Last-minute washing needs to dry, and I can’t decide whether to take poles or not… So for once, …

Farewell New York, you were great, thank you

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It’s been an action-packed three weeks, and now I’m so ready for home in Australia. I’ve ticked off every item on my ‘Must Do/See’ list, including: Central Park, the Met/Whitney/Guggenheim/New Museum/Brooklyn Museum, Coney Island, ferry past Statue of Liberty, Manhattan walks, Brooklyn Bridge, Red Hook, Roosevelt Island, and 10-15kms/day of street strolling. I also got to walk & talk all through the Botanic Gardens with fellow blogger LA, which was an unexpected treat. I’ve discovered the joys of Van Leuwen’s vegan ice cream, plus the widely-available bakeries & Mexican food all through Brooklyn, & of course Key Lime Pie. My brother’s wedding was wonderful- I got to walk him down the aisle- and my speech went down well too (phew). The last week has just been relaxing at his apartment, getting to know he & his lovely wife (they have been together for 10 years but she & I have only met once before for 24hrs in a barn in France); I am SO LUCKY & grateful to have spent this time together after so …

No more travel quarantine in Australia, so now I’m in New York

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Yes, you read that right Folks. After 2 years not going anywhere or doing much at all, I have impulsively flown to the Big Apple for 3 weeks! I have a great motivation too: after postponing twice due to Covid of course, my dear brother is getting married in Manhattan. In 2020, I was taking my son as well- I had a suit made to measure- it was very exciting… and then Covid/lockdowns/quarantines etc- literally no planes flying out of Australia. After a little tantrum, I surrendered. And have been carving spoons, gardening, & pottering around in the rainforest. But right now, I’m in New York New York. Brooklyn for a week, Manhattan for 5 days near the wedding venues, then back to Brooklyn. I AM HAVING THE BEST TIME! Walking, walking, walking. People watching. Eating. Listening. Smelling. More walking. Yesterday I stepped out 13.3kms, and today was 14 as I crossed back and forth over the Brooklyn Bridge. I’ve never made a blog post on my phone, tapping away in my cute Airbnb, so …

There are simply no words for me in these times

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Greetings from the Australian rainforest, where birds sing soggy songs after so much rain. The sun is elbowing clouds aside as best it can, and I am grateful to see the small holes of blue coming and going. Today is my dear dead Dad’s birthday, and I’m staying quietly at home. Normally, as my honouring ritual, I oil his antique French furniture; this year, there’s too much mould trying to get a grip, so I’m refusing to feed the spores with expensive linseed and orange blossom. Today is also the monthly Women’s Dharma Day meditation meeting, and I needed it so much. More than I knew. As I wrote last time, I’ve been volunteering daily with Resilient Lismore, a Facebook group formed to help my nearby beloved Lismore (and surrounds) deal with flood recovery. It started in 2017, as a response to the Cyclone Debbie flood, with 3000 members. Now we’ve had 2 catastrophic floods a month apart, including landslides and massive devastation, so subsequently have almost 30,000 members. I’m one of the team of …

Meditation? Seven days on, seven days off

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One of my last posts invited Readers to join me using the Insight Timer app to meditate daily. Or to share your own personal meditation/quiet-solo-time practices. *sigh I was so inspired by myself and my post, I checked in to the app every day, and religiously sat to meditate. Until I didn’t. Then a week went by, and I still didn’t. Now it’s been two weeks, and I’m continuing to not sit. *sigh One of my three New Year’s eve intentions was to not be self-critical; I do absolutely love myself, and all my flaws (not that there’s many haha), BUT I will still be quick to criticise myself sometimes- like most of us, I’m guessing. So I’m trying to resist feeling disappointed with my lack of meditation discipline, and admit that I’ve been on holidays/had visitors/been housesitting etc. *sigh Still, it’s not THAT hard to find five or ten minutes to sit quietly is it G? Is it sabotage? Am I truly just a lazy person? Do I have no self-discipline? *sigh How easy …

I know this is so wrong… but I promise I’ll do it today…

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… I think the devil made me do it 🙂 I know one reader in particular (Hi P!) is going to tear his hair out at my folly. What’s a dumb thing you can’t help doing, even though you absolutely KNOW you shouldn’t? Drive a bit too far before filling up with petrol? Too long time between dentist appointments? (Damn, I do that too). Release your foolish failures here, it’s a safe space 🙂 In gratitude for being silly sometimes, without huge repercussions, G xO

So grateful to be locking down here in the rainforest for COVID-19

Who wants to join me in a meditative new resolution?

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Like all of us, I’m glad to have made it unscathed to the end of this year. Surrounding me have been lockdowns, high tensions about vaccination rates (we called it the ‘strollout’ at first here in Australia), and now the surging stress of Omicron. *sigh I am utterly blessed and grateful to live where I do, with my trees, birds, and nearby creek. My latest New Year’s Eve plans have all been shelved, with Covid cases soaring both locally and nationally, and a party in my pyjamas and living room is more appealing by the day. (Or an early night. I could handle an early night.) But today, I came across a blogging recommendation for the Insight Timer app. Have you heard of it? At least three of my friends swear by it, and I’ve been meaning to check it out… So I downloaded it, and listened to my first 20-min talk sitting on the [pictured] verandah in the early sunshine, after several days of rain. It felt great. Then I started thinking about all …

A year has passed since I nearly died; this makes me both happy & sad

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Today, 12 months ago, I rolled my car right over on a wet road, and wrote about it here. Somehow, I came away with only concussion, whiplash, and a frozen shoulder (which is now thankfully almost fully ‘thawed’). The ambulance workers couldn’t believe I wasn’t more badly injured; neither could the 2 doctors on duty, and the smash repairs guy who towed away my car looked at me incredulously: “There’s not a straight panel on it! How are you not dead?” Obviously, I’m so glad I’m not dead. As are my son, my beloved, and my family and friends. It absolutely rocked my world, for in 37 years of driving, I’d never even had a car park prang. It shocked me to feel so vulnerable in my concussion and whiplash, then had to accept my shoulder was in fact ‘freezing’ in April [they are often triggered by a traumatic event, and occur more often in women over 50 FYI]. The shoulder was agony– if I knocked it, it felt like I’d been hit by lightning, …

It’s official: Buddhism teaches that your buddies are your blessing

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Hello Everyone, from the lush rainforest in Australia, where once a month I sit in a circle of women studying meditation and Buddhism. This month was the last meeting for the year, and our wise crone leader Yoda Carol chose to reflect on friendship for her talk, or ‘Admirable Camaraderie’ as Buddha called it. She’s lived in the same intentional community hidden in the hills for nearly 50 years, having been one of the founding members. She’s travelled the world, facilitating conflict resolution for all kinds of humans, from big corporations down to divorcing families… so her wisdoms come from plenty of lived experience as well as her decades of Buddhist meditation and study. She asked us a simple question, which I’m going to ask you: “Do you always call, or are you always being called?” Buddha talked of cultivating friendships, to offer and receive full kinship, as one of the most effective paths to Loving Kindness. So when did you last reach out to someone, in these strange times of lockdowns, travel restrictions, and …