My first peak experience was at twenty-one, when I didn’t know there were such things. This fellow named Hugh wanted to break the record for walking end to end of the Warrumbungle National Park, which was three days plus a few hours. Four of us set off, all distance runners, all experienced bushwalkers.

I was looking forward to once again enjoying the majestic beauty of this magical place.

We got out of the car—and the rain started.

No. That’s an understatement. A vertical firehose battered us with water drops of force. There must have been some air there, because head-down we could breathe, but otherwise we were in a freshwater ocean. Anyone sensible would have got back in the car and skulked off home. We charged down the instantaneous waterslide.

At the first five-minute rest stop, I removed my raincoat, being as wet inside from condensation as outside from rain.

That night we set up a sodden tent, put a sodden fly over it, and shivered in sodden sleeping bags. I think the others actually slept. After a while, I got up, put a cold, wet leather hat on my head (where else?) and went for a walk. The rain was steady and continuous, but no longer that intense initial cascade. There must have been a full moon above the miles-thick cloud, since I could see my way well enough.

I came to a dead forest giant, a mere silhouette of arms reaching toward the wet sky. No doubt, I thought, it was the dry, cosy home of creatures sensible enough to stay out of the rain. One mighty branch lay on the ground. Even in the dark and rain, charcoal visibly coated it, no doubt from the lightning strike that had killed the tree, who knows how long ago.

I sat on the branch and looked at the tree.

Time stops. The tree and I have become ONE. Roots anchoring me to the planet, branches connecting me to heaven, I AM. The little soft human body, the rain, the cold don’t matter, don’t even exist. I am LOVE for all. I just AM.

Then a voice said behind me, “What are you doing, idiot, sitting out in the rain?”

I returned to mundane, wet, miserable reality to laugh at him. You’re just as wet!

It took us over five days of fording the mighty river the creek had become, slipping down mud and climbing up all-fours. At the end, we found some miraculously dry leaves and branches in a rock overhang and toasted our bare butts, because kidneys are the best thing to defrost first. Then we regained the road and made our way back to the car.

My second peak experience was forty-nine years later. My first use of blessedly free time upon retiring from my counselling psychology practice was to go on a ten-day Buddhist retreat. To my disappointment it was organised for beginning meditators and I soon tuned out the instruction, focusing on the positives instead.

Beautiful, eucalyptus-scented forests all around. The sound of the bell waking us at dawn, calling us to meals and to the beginnings and ends of meditation sessions. The wonderful vegan meals. The metta (lovingkindness) we all broadcast at each other. And of course the lack of hurry, of the opportunity to meditate for hours at a time.

On the third day I woke before the bell, then decided to do a little walking meditation.

I stopped beside the dining hall to admire the dawn. Even the kitchen staff had not appeared yet—I could have been the only human on the planet as I gazed at grey melding into the palest blue into canary yellow into flame.

Time stops. I just stand, still in mind and motionless in body.

Then a voice that is not my voice says within my mind, “I AM.”

I snapped back into time, terrified. “I’m not ready for this!” I shouted back to my Visitor without sound. “I am too faulty, too many Lessons to learn, too much restitution to pay for mistakes and acts of thoughtless unkindness, too many unwanted thoughts.”

There was no answer, except for a warm glow of metta, but it was enough.

Two more peak experiences blessed me during those ten days, then it was back to the all-too-busy life of an environmental and humanitarian activist.

Then, in 2024, my darling daughter, Natalie, was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. I’ve had all too much personal experience with grief, and had guided many an unfortunate person through the journey of loss or bereavement, and now put it into practice.

Two of my friends have survived to old age despite terminal cancer in their youth—Petrea King and Ian Gawler—and five of my clients achieved “spontaneous remission” although I don’t know whether that has been permanent. I’ve set the requirement out on my website here, and one of my books is on cancer. There are no guarantees. You can do all the right things and die of the growth within you anyway. But to have a chance, you need to hold an apparently paradoxical view. “I am doing everything possible to battle this but am happy to accept any outcome.” The science is clear: anger and fear handicap the immune system. Acceptance, inner peace, give it maximum chance to do its thing.

So, I started with hope for the miracle Petrea and Ian were blessed with, but also started advance grieving, including a daily grief journal.

I still do editing for several small publishers. One of them is Sleepy Lion Publishing, which specialises in spiritual writing. They sent me a brilliant and inspiring book, Voices of Contemporary Christians, edited by Janice Dolley and Heather-Jane Ozanne, who had pulled together a whole heap of contributors. As well as line editing, my task was to maintain each author’s distinctive voice while creating a unity for the whole work. I am Buddhist, not Christian, but time and again I felt like cheering at the content. But then, there is one Truth. Each religion shows it through the coloured-glass window of a different culture. As I progressed, I tested out the various recommendations, and this led to my next peak experience.

One of the contributors was only identified as Peter, with no surname specified. Here are a couple of quotes from this marvellous man:

“God, Spirit, Higher Self—call it what we like—can communicate with every one of us… And not only that God can communicate with us, but that He/She/It does.” (p 47)

“Reassurance came in the form of my own personal conversations with God, or dialogues with my Higher Self as I prefer to call them.” (p 48)

So, I gave it a go. I went into a deep meditative state, then asked within my mind, “Speak to me about Natalie.”

Eyes closed, heart open, I felt pins and needles travel over my body. No words came, but I felt cradled in unconditional love, and a deep, compassionate sadness.

I cried.

The last time I’ve had a peak experience was while lying in her bed. (I just had to get that one in.) You see, while we were waiting for a vacancy in the palliative care hospital, I took my turn in providing the 24-hour care she needed by then. She preferred to sleep on a couch in the living room and insisted I use her super-duper high-tech bed.

Everything else was high tech in her little house. The ice cube maker gurgled. The fish tank bubbled. The freezer hummed. The aircon sighed. Vision was as bad: little red and green and blue lights peeked out of too many places to count. Besides, I was on high alert, supervigilant for any movement by my fifty-six-year-old baby. So, I didn’t get much sleep.

It was 2:17 am by the bedside clock when I felt a Presence. Yes, I knew she was ready to leave her current body. And yes, I knew it was necessary, and that I would accept it in peace.

Indeed, Natalie died soon after. My grief was resolved almost immediately. I was able to engage in all the necessities of living, accepted the hole she has left in my life, happy to enjoy a joke, admire beauty, fight the good fight for decency and justice.

There are two reasons apart from that Higher Self.

One is that she has let us know she is all right. At the medically determined time of her death, her mother and brother both felt a hug, some 2,000 km apart. One of her best friends is a TV addict. When he visited her in palliative care, she promised to turn his idiot box off. That didn’t happen immediately, but when he went home from her memorial service. He tried the remote six times, to no avail. The TV turned off immediately.

Her favourite colour was purple, and she told us she’d turn the outflow of our washing machine that colour, the one associated with the crown and third eye chakras. Given we live on the driest continent, further dried by the climate catastrophe, we save our wastewater in a bin for the garden. Indeed, the next wash after her death was an almost iridescent pink, like highly diluted beetroot juice. A white tablecloth in the wash was unstained.

The second reason I am fine is my application of the many research-validated tools I have used with my clients.

One of them is to turn disaster to benefit. I want to use the fruit of my personal experience and professional expertise to relieve the suffering of as many other people as possible. My tool for this is my twentieth book, The Hole in Your Life: Grief and Bereavement. You can learn a little about the kind of person Natalie was, get a free peek at one of the essential tools for resolving grief (and for almost everything else) by visiting http://grief.lhpress.com

The same techniques also work for any source of serious distress, such as witnessing the daily horror story that passes for the news.

So, please, use this book for your own benefit, and encourage others to do so, too. Email me a review, and I’ll reward you with a free (electronic) copy of one of my other titles. I mean, heavens, you don’t want the same one, do you?