By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
BARRISTER Michael Kuzilny regularly practises both meditation and the law in Dandenong Magistrates’ Court.
He says he’s learnt to detach himself from the never-ending woe heard before the courts; sometimes closing his eyes for inner sanctuary during a hearing.
“I haven’t had an unhappy state of mind since I started meditating 20 years ago.
“You don’t mind what happens – you could get news you’ve got six months to go and you just accept it.”
Mr Kuzilny, who hosts Channel 31’s Tough Times Don’t Last, says he has known of police colleagues who have commited suicide under the weight of life and job stresses.
Workers in courts are often “down” and in too much of a rush to stop, smile and say hello, he says.
He himself had got weighed down by death threats and death scenes, until a horrific night on the beat as a Frankston-based policeman.
In his e-book Meditate or Go Crazy!, he writes how in that night he interviewed a crying mother whose five children under 10 had died in a car crash.
He also locked up 15 violent drunks, got bashed in a pub and went to four other serious car crashes.
He delivered news to parents that their teenage daughter had commited suicide, and received news of an ex-cop who left a suicide note next to his badge and shot himself in the heart.
To round off the night, his fiancé told him she was seeing someone else.
He writes he took time off and went through his “own self-pity party” before being introduced to meditation.
When he doesn’t meditate it’s like he loses his “protective armour”, he said.
He says his 32-page book gives the “gift of stillness”. It is available online.
