SteveTanham – writing, mysticism, photography, poetry, friends

Category: Psychology

(-900 words; a ten-minute read) Not ‘typing’ in the sense of my fingers tapping across this keyboard. Something else is conveyed, here: the idea that although we are each a unique example of walking, talking protoplasm, we exhibit patterns of behaviour that are so strong they can be ‘collected’ into groups – ‘types’. Astrology is good example with which to explore the idea. The … Read More In the world but not of it (3) : True to Type

August 31, 2023 + #Silent Eye, #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Psychology, Soul, soul in body, Spiritual Enneagram

Nine Keys (9 – final): An emotional reunion

by Steve Tanham

How are we to end this series of posts? Each of these nine has been a glimpse into an aspect of true ‘spiritual’ knowledge … but only that. I’ve comes to trust that the correct alignment of ordinary knowledge will result in it becoming a channel of deeper and truer knowing. That truer knowing is alive and waiting to serve our outer self – … Read More Nine Keys (9 – final): An emotional reunion

August 24, 2023 + #Silent Eye, #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Psychology, Soul, soul in body, Spiritual Enneagram

Nine Keys (8): When experience grows dull

by Steve Tanham

Last Sunday evening, we held our monthly Silent Eye Explorations on Zoom; hosting an international audience for an informal and informative discussion on the subject of the ‘Ways of Knowing’. These are open to all – see the base of this post for details. The content of that 90 minutes was a thorough investigation of what it mean to know, and how we take … Read More Nine Keys (8): When experience grows dull

August 17, 2023 + #Silent Eye, #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Psychology, Soul, soul in body, Spiritual Enneagram

Nine Keys (7): Dying for Love

by Steve Tanham

Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now. You are covered with thick cloud. Slide out the side. Die, and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you have died. Your old life was a frantic running … Read More Nine Keys (7): Dying for Love

August 10, 2023 + #Silent Eye, #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Psychology, Soul, soul in body, Spiritual Enneagram

Nine Keys (6): An uprising of Self

by Steve Tanham

Our soul – likened here last week to a giant sail – is not the only occupant of our ‘interior’. At the fundamental level of our consciousness is a foundation of Being which is perfect and full of loving and potential… ‘It’ only needs a Soul for its completeness. Normally thought of as part of the soul, this layer of our true Self has … Read More Nine Keys (6): An uprising of Self

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 16, 2023 + #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Psychology

The Glowing Ascent of Reaction

by Steve Tanham

We all have moments when we experience that inner sense of ‘glow and wellbeing’ – often quite unexpectedly… This usually happens when we are carrying out a task or thinking out a situation and become absorbed to a depth that assists us to resolve something complex. That eventual sense of a breakthrough is indicative! As is the deep breath that usually accompanies the triumph… … Read More The Glowing Ascent of Reaction

January 19, 2023 + #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Higher Mind, Life-sciences, Photography, Psychology

The Unmasked Human

by Steve Tanham

In an attitude that most of us would find chilling, Francis Crick, the Noble Laureate who co-discovered the structure of DNA, referred to it as ‘the astonishing hypothesis’. He wasn’t talking about genes, but the proposal that all human feelings, actions and thoughts – right down to the level of consciousness, itself, are the products of neural activity in the brain. In truth, science … Read More The Unmasked Human