SteveTanham – writing, mysticism, photography, poetry, friends

Category: Incarnation

September 7, 2023 + #Silenti, Consciousness, enneagram, Higher Mind, Incarnation, Life and Death, Silent Eye School, Soul

Personality: friend or foe?

by Steve Tanham

When reading many modern books on mystical development, you might think that the personality was now viewed as negative; a foe to be overcome on the way to the real self. There is much truth in this, but it is incomplete and spoken from an ‘immature’ perspective. That partial vision of it misses the finest potential of what we have loving crafted of ourselves … Read More Personality: friend or foe?

August 3, 2023 + #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Higher Mind, Incarnation, Powers of the Mind, Psychology, Silent Eye School, Spiritual Enneagram

Nine Keys: (5) The Giant Sail

by Steve Tanham

So far, we’ve looked at the development of the self – the ego-personality. We’ve seen how our ‘being’ arrives, entirely whole but naked to this world, at birth. It then begins to develop a protective shell as it finds its place in a world that is not entirely comforting. We moved on to consider the layers of perception, and how there is a fundamental … Read More Nine Keys: (5) The Giant Sail

July 27, 2023 + #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Higher Mind, Incarnation, Powers of the Mind, Psychology, Silent Eye School, Spiritual Enneagram

Nine Keys: (4) The edge of the known

by Steve Tanham

We look out at the world with our eyes. There is a strong, conceptual basis for our looking. We look out from an in-here to an out-there. In other words, we locate ourselves – the ‘me’ – inside something that we regard as an intimate ‘home’, never seeing, perhaps for all of our lives, that we have created the division. The immediate effect of … Read More Nine Keys: (4) The edge of the known

July 20, 2023 + #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Gurdjieff, Incarnation, Photography, Psychology, Silent Eye School, Spiritual Enneagram

Nine Keys: (3) the Fall

by Steve Tanham

We seldom think about what it must have been like to be a new-born.Perhaps there is something uncomfortable about the image of being so helpless? And yet that first period of life – emerging from mother’s body in which we have been safely cocooned with all our needs met – is formative for the rest of the human being’s incarnation in matter. The way … Read More Nine Keys: (3) the Fall

July 13, 2023 + #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Gurdjieff, Incarnation, Photography, Psychology, Silent Eye School, Spiritual Enneagram

Nine Keys: (2) The look of love

by Steve Tanham

A good friend wrote to me after last week’s Part One of this series. They wondered if they had ever really known their ‘real self’. It’s a common observation, and people who can say this are being emotionally honest at a deep level. But I can reassure anyone who feels this way that they are mistaken. The feeling is that life has apparently taken … Read More Nine Keys: (2) The look of love

July 6, 2023 + #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Gurdjieff, Incarnation, Photography, Psychology, Silent Eye School, Spiritual Enneagram

Nine Keys: (1) The human hologram

by Steve Tanham

Modern spirituality is aligned with psychology in many ways; one of them being that whichever direction we travel in on our quest to ‘find the real’, we need to start with the personality. The personality is where we live. We think of it as us. Because it’s ‘me’, there is no questioning how it views things. True, we can be aware that we tend … Read More Nine Keys: (1) The human hologram

February 2, 2023 + #Silent Eye, #Silenti, Child of Light, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Higher Mind, Incarnation, meditation, Mindfulness, Mystery Schools

Age and the Inner Life

by Steve Tanham

How old are we? It’s often a cruel question and we wrestle with the answer, knowing full well how many years downstream we are … but feeling, not too deep inside, that our inner state bears no relation to that set of two digits… Traditionally, this has been dismissed as just part of our psychology. We don’t want to feel old, so we learn … Read More Age and the Inner Life

January 26, 2023 + #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Incarnation, Love, meditation, Memories, nature

Embrace of the Inner Age

by Steve Tanham

There are many symmetries in life but one of the least remarked on is the complementary states of early and later life relative to where we place our attention. When young, despite ‘trailing clouds of glory’, as Wordsworth elegantly wrote, we are completely in-volved with the physical world ‘out-there’. From the wonder and adoration of our baby state, through the realisation that we can … Read More Embrace of the Inner Age

June 11, 2020 + #Silenti, Consciousness, enneagram, esoteric psychology, Incarnation, Silent Eye School, Spirituality

The Mysterious Self

by Steve Tanham

One of the most wonderful elements of being Human is the sense of self; yet there is great confusion as to what the ‘self’ really is… even whether it exists at all. Something harvests the experiences of each day yet declares itself separate from them. This accumulation is deemed to be a living entity – the ‘me’ – resplendent with a memory of having … Read More The Mysterious Self

July 25, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Biology and mysticism, Child of Light, Consciousness, Egregore, enneagram, esoteric psychology, Fear, Higher Mind, Incarnation, Initiation, Life-sciences, meditation, Mystery Schools, nature, Photography, Silent Eye School, Silent Eye Workshops, Soul, soul in body, Spirit, spiritual turning around, Spirituality

The creature on the beach beyond thought

by Steve Tanham

It lay there, head in the sky, gazing at the radiance. Its tail was still in the ocean of thought, the gentle waves urging it back where it belonged… The gaps in the waves had always been there; they were the rhythm of life. But it had never thought to use them as a way through. To where? To beauty, certainly. The sights and … Read More The creature on the beach beyond thought

July 18, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Egypt, Astrophysics, Belief and Faith, Biology and mysticism, Child of Light, Christianity and modern mysticism, Consciousness, Egyptian Gods, enneagram, esoteric psychology, Fear, Incarnation, Life and Death, Love, Mindfulness, myths and spirituality, Photography, Solar Year, spiritual turning around, Spirituality, The Beloved, Understanding Fear

Death of a salesman

by Steve Tanham

In a few short weeks it will be September. We (the Silent Eye) have been invited to speak at the Unitarian Society of Psychical Studies annual conference at the Nightingale Centre in Derbyshire. We use this lovely place for our main annual event in April each year. We had our official ‘birth’ there in 2013. It is a very special place to us, and … Read More Death of a salesman

November 24, 2015 + Bakewell, Bakewell Jail, Ballad of Reading Gaol, Ben's Bit, imprisonment, Incarnation, Journey of the hero, Mystical poetry, Oscar Wilde tribute, Uncategorized

From Bakewell with love – the gift of surprise

by Steve Tanham

What do you do when two of your best friends put you in gaol for a crime the three of you carried out… and leave you there? The characters of Wen, Don and Ben in the Doomsday series by Stuart France and Sue Vincent are not-so-loosely based on the three people who run the Silent Eye School. Imagine, in real life, joining the other two one … Read More From Bakewell with love – the gift of surprise