I’m not very good, nor comfortable, blowing my own trumpet…

Writers on the internet know this feeling well: we are urged to promote our presence, yet our inner nature knows what sort of people talk about themselves all the time…

This is particularly true if your main activity is of a teaching nature within a spiritual discipline. The road to understanding the ego – the lower self – is one of self-observation, with many cringing and disbelieving moments as the truth unravels.

Sue Vincent, Stuart France and I created short versions of our spiritual history for the Silent Eye website some time ago. We were aware there were more tech-savvy ways of doing this, but lacked the expertise to stand ourselves in front of a video camera and have ago. I remember from my ‘corporate’ days in the IT industry how difficult video was to work with. It’s the kind of medium in which a lack of experience and professionalism shows up immediately… and people switch it off; because we’ve all got used to the well-produced product.

When it comes to sound, it’s easier, but, again, wholly reliant on the experience – and sympathetic depth – of the person doing the interview. The human voice conveys a million nuances, all of them detectable by the listener in ways that filter through into our consciousness as ‘mood’ or ‘quality’. The mind has to learn to condense at an early stage; if it didn’t, it would literally go mad.

Enter Gary Vasey. Dr G. Michael Vasey, to be precise, for he holds a PhD in geological sciences. He’s one of those ‘polymaths’ who’s good at everything, yet manages, beneath his occasional Yorkshire gruffness, to remain kind and warm in his interactions. He’s the co-author, along with Sue Vincent, of The Magical Hexagram. His other blogs and books cover magic and mysticism… and he has more than a passing interest in ghosts and ghost stories.

Like Sue, Stuart and myself, he has followed a variety of mystical and magical paths in his life. He lives in the Czech Republic, but likes to come back to visit his mum and siblings when he can. Gary has attended a few of our ‘Mystery in the Landscape’ weekends, and knows us well.

Gary is also a singer/songwriter and a skilled sound recordist. The era of the Podcast has been key to his ability to promote his songs. Recently, Gary has widened his Podcast work to include interviews with some of the people he’s got to know over his several decades in the world of the magical and mystical.

Gary had already created a podcast interview with Sue, and wanted to do one with me as the founder of the Silent Eye. A short time ago, we convened across a Skype link to carry out the interview: subsequently turned into a podcast in his studio. To be honest, I was a little apprehensive, which sounds daft when I look back on the hundreds of talks I have given to audiences of various sizes over the past thirty years. I needn’t have worried.

Within minutes, and with little prompting, I was relating my early years of being victimised by the local church and school headmaster in the tiny village where I grew up; then passing on to a childhood in a Rosicrucian family, before becoming a leading figure in one of many organisations that eventually led to meeting up with Sue Vincent and Stuart France and the creation of the Silent Eye…

But why read it, when you can make a cup of coffee, put your feet up and spend a gentle and undemanding half-hour listening to the podcast? With, hopefully, an occasional smile, the odd tut and a wry thought of ‘I know just what that feels like…’

If it’s not a very human and unpretentious story, then I’ve got it wrong.

Those of you into jazz will have spotted that the opening photo is not a trumpet at all, but a saxophone. It is mine. I’m not very good at playing it, yet… but it’s on the list….

Below is the link to the podcast… And please tell your friends if you think they’d be interested. Thank you!

The links:

Direct link to the Podcast with Stephen Tanham (37 mins). The link is in the first line of the text click here

Or past this link into your browser.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-magical-world-of-g-michael-vasey/id1518198271?i=1000487765643

Podcast with Sue Vincent: click here.

©Copyright Stephen Tanham, 2020.

Stephen Tanham is a founding Director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, which offers a not-for-profit home study programme covering three years of inner and outer exploration of the self, leading to a deeper knowledge of our personality and the links to its more powerful originator, the Soul.