Editors Note

Dec/Feb 2010

I love getting older. I love now knowing that everything I see I can choose to see from different perspectives. I love learning what life is about from totally new angles. I love observing myself and others. I love letting go and finding new spaces and places to go inside myself ...I love learning about love …and realising it is not going to be fulfilled by someone else! I now understand what projection is and I am recognising what triggers me. I love feeling happy and not having to feel the need to seek happiness. I love just being in a moment and feeling really good – right then, when I am in it. And I really love smiling at everyone. Life is truly wonderful.
            Towards the end of 2009 I attended three very good and different conferences – the AIMA Conference (Australasian Integrative Medicine Association), the Gawler Conference, and the Mind, Body & Its Potential Conference. The highlight for me at the AIMA Conference was definitely Dr Charlie Teo, a man who lives by the principle that a doctor should always treat his patients as he would a member of his own family. Dr Teo spoke about his experiences treating patients with brain tumours, the inspiration he gained from them, and the importance of offering hope. (We are looking forward to publishing an interview with Dr Teo in the next issue of The Art of Healing).
            The Gawler Conference was also exceptional in 2009 with the highlight being the panel discussion with Ian Gawler, Craig Hassed, Petrea King, and Professor Ian Olver from the Cancer Council. The main question in discussion was what are the challenges, opportunities and vision for the future for cancer management. Ian Gawler said that observational studies that looked closely at the benefits of meditation for cancer should be conducted. Craig Hassed said that we need to revisit how practitioners are trained so at the end of their training they come out with more integrative skills. He also said we need to move away from the ‘us and them’ approach and move towards what works by creating a model with a focus on healthy enquiry and a vigorous form of questioning rather than a blind refusal to accept. Petrea King said we need to tailor treatments to the individual, and change the emphasis from treating the disease to treating the person. She also suggested we use more common sense in diagnosis rather than just research and science, and look at how the mind works and how it influences decisions. Professor Ian Olver said that more of the health $ should be spent on prevention strategies, and that studies need to be designed on how we can motivate people to cease smoking and change their diet. Altogether, this panel discussion was a real coup for the Gawler Conference, and a credit to Christine Johnson who does so much work organising this conference each year. It was also sad to see Ian Gawler step down from the foundation, but after more than 30 years involvement, we all wish him well in whatever he chooses to do henceforth. We are so lucky to have him.
            I also wanted to mention something Ruth Gawler said in her workshop that really resonated with me; “in the world today we need to build a network of relationships rather than a hierarchy of individuals.
            And then there was the Mind, Body & Its Potential Conference beautifully organised by the Vajryana Institute, with the Dalai Lama in attendance again this year. Once again, there were so many good speakers, with my ‘preferences’ going to Dr Jane Burns from the Orygen Youth Health Research Centre, and Alan Wallace, President of the Santa Barbara Institute for Conciousness Studies in the USA and author of Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism and Christianity. We are certainly planning to bring you more from these people in The Art of Healing magazine in the future.
            Finally, I wanted to reprint this piece from a US magazine called Enlighten Next, which I believe is a brilliant publication:
“The world must have a God; but our concept of God must be extended as the dimensions of our world are extended,” wrote [Pierre Teilhard de Chardin] almost a century ago. In the early twentieth century, evolution had changed everything, he noted. And he predicted that only those religions would survive that were willing to develop forms of their traditions that organically embrace the reality of an evolutionary worldview. . . . The consciousness of our age calls out for a God principle that lives not just in the wondrous beauty of nature, or the eternal stillness of the present moment, but in the unknown creative potential that exists in the mysterious space of the future.
From article published in Enlighten Next magazine, written by “A Theologian of Renewal,” executive editor Carter Phipps

Send an Email to Catherine