Some Meares' method teachers don't teach 5 pillars - so, do pillars really matter?
Owen teaches the 5 pillars Stillness Meditation Touch Therapy system as Dr Meares taught it to him and wrote about it in his books and papers. The 5 elements Owen calls pillars are:
P1. Solo Stillness Meditation.
P2. Meditation progression. Incremental addition of slight difficulty.
P3. Living in calm with ease, even in the face of difficulty.
P4. Meditation support factors.
P5. Stillness powered meditative touch therapy.
I was an accredited SMT teacher from 2017-2024 and there was a parting of the ways after I was informed the 5 pillars approach and SMT were not compatible.
Some modified versions are compared with the 5 pillars system below:
P1 (Stillness Meditation) similar assuming effortlessness rather than focus is taught. P1 is impacted by diminished or absent P2-P5.
P2 is virtually absent. No increments means no meditation progression.
P3 is diminished without ease facilitated by P2.
P4 is weak or absent. Support factors are forgotten or glossed over.
P5 is weakened. Nonverbal communication (eg touch) is downsized or absent with more talk.
One individual who says they never use touch claims Ainslie Meares' had a second teaching method (Pillar 5) involving only talking. Yet, Meares wrote:-
“Touch says what words cannot say... As we let our minds go still together, the process is greatly intensified by some degree of physical contact”. ABL.
The talking only method is said to be in one of Meares' books. Books use the written word. Without words, there can be no “textbooks” as in instructional and self help books. Meares wrote instructions (they are in Ainslie Meares on Meditation) so readers unable to travel or without resources could learn Stillness Meditation. Those instructions were translated into a dozen languages and helped millions of people. After Dr Meares' passed they have become hard to get hold of and this is one reason why Owen published Ainslie Meares on Meditation. Reading Dr Meares' instructions and reviewing them is very helpful in learning Stillness Meditation. However, just reading a book will help you understand what to experience but won't still your mind. Meditation practice is needed to experience Stillness. Meditation tuition or meditative touch therapy are very helpful in showing you how to experience it. The teacher's calm becomes your calm and the process is greatly intensified by nonverbal communication, after fully informed client consent, as in teacher presence, gesture, hands reaching out and not quite touching, soothing sounds and touch. Hands that reachout and sweep or hover but don't quite touch are very helpful for people who are too sensitive to be able to consent to touch right now.