(📩 1100 words, a ten minute read, the mystical journey)

We are so simple, and yet so complex. The simple is what we are; the complex is what we take ourselves to be before we discover what we are.

We are formed as points of awareness – consciousness – into a composite organic body made of the most sophisticated formations of matter. These cellular structures carry us from oneness with mother’s body to the rigours of living and surviving in an independent body – though our whole ‘eco-system’ is set up to enable that consciousness to understand the world around us.

Kindness and care are two of the inherent qualities we are born with. Love is another. These were not formed by our brains; they are of another order, and innate. They are properties of what we are.

Unlike plants, but like animals, we are mobile: we can choose where to take our physical and emotional refreshment. We share many aspects of this with other mammals, whose nature our bodies mirror, providing us with strong instincts to help us lengthen our lives; establish ourselves in relationships small or large; and unite, sexually, with another to deepen intimacy and create a nurtured home for new life.

Our growth, mental and physical, is predicated on being separate; though we long not to be so, in both intimate and societal groupings.

We realise early on that we often contradict ourselves…but we may not have the language to express it.

We have no choice but to identify with our bodies. The reality is that we are souls inhabiting a physical vehicle of cellular life. We have a strong sense of existing, but the ‘confinement’ of our pliable souls results in an increasingly rigid identification with the body. This becomes the first sense of self, the first identity.

If we are fortunate enough to encounter someone who can demonstrate the falseness of this, and give us a glimpse of the ‘energy of the larger being’ in the other perspective, we may choose to enter some kind of spiritual path. This journey will often focus us on the finer, unconscious energies that we already possess, and demonstrate the interplay of body, instincts and soul.

Meditation will be a key part of this, together with one of a variety of techniques for asking questions of ‘ourselves in the now’ – the present moment in which we have our being. we may be startled when we realise the truth of the ancient maxim: ‘Ask and ye shall receive’.

Few realise how responsive life can be if we simply ask it…

In parallel, we will be shown how the human soul in a body is powerfully drawn into a ‘constellation’ of behavioural characteristics that become the personality, or egoic self.

The ego is not the monster that pocket psychology has made it. The ego is the result of an essential defence of the hard-won self, and must continue to play that part until we find and adopt a more powerful identification of self than the purely egoic. The mystics, particularly those of us who endeavour to teach, need strong egos. Egos are the main tools with which we work in the world, and are a characteristic of intelligent living.

We will become used to ‘standing back’ from the ego and watching it a work – seeing how automatic our responses to life can be, from both positive and negative perspectives. Until this is an established discipline, it can be painful. Even then, it is likely to be uncomfortable. But it is essential and empowering if we want to live in the truth of ourselves.

At that point, we could be asked (usually by a friend, and with a smile) if there really is a self? The question usually comes as a shock, since the notion of a ‘higher self’ or ‘Self’ seems to be the heart of our growing awareness. Why is the question asked? Because it’s time to

To work with this, we need to begin a separation of being conscious, from being aware. Both can have casual meanings; something deeper is meant here. Behind our sense of self is a well established knowing of our existence at a deep level. Trying to ‘find a self’ is problematic, if we move beyond the egoic level, yet we already know the ego is a construct; a set of reactions knitted together by the mind for its intelligent use.

Where, then, is the true Self?

Here, we come to one of the most potent gates of consciousness.

Since the infant mind developed, we have been refining its use of ‘objects’. There is a ‘me’ and there are its ‘objects’, objects that have edges, are individual. and together make up a consistent but shifting ‘world’. This subject-object duality is the basis of the mind’s development. We name everything. Naming is the mind at work with its objects. This power is even referenced in the Bible’s Genesis.

Faced with the question: ‘does the self exist?’ we are brought back from the familiarity of subject-object to consider that though the question exists, the questioner may not… at least in the form we expect.

We may encounter the notion of ‘the void’. This reduction of the self to ‘nothing’ will challenge us so much that it shakes our taken-for-granted foundations. Personally, I find the use of the word ‘void’ a misleading one; it has negative connotations in modern life beyond the intent of those who first used it, mystically.

Instead, let’s consider it as ‘nothing’. We may already have played with the idea that the subject (me) exists, and that the objects of our consciousness – outside of our selves – do not. Now we are asked what happens if we take away even this self?

That state of ‘nothing’ has much to teach us. I will not spoil anyone’s journey into it, save to say that the voyage is one that makes, rather than destroys, us.

Being nothing is not no-being. Being nothing is begun by having no objects matched to your state of subject, and then to stand in the awe of your ‘part’ of being – which turns out to be intimately related to the whole of being.

Much of this may remain, at best, mysterious to the reader. But it may lay a trail of mystery that entices … and encourages.

Please let it…

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©Stephen Tanham 2024

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

http://www.suningemini.blog

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)