‘Surreal’ is an often used word and does its best to convey a moment, usually quite fleeting, in which there is both a heightened sense of ‘being there’ and another feeling of strangeness. The two come together and we feel vaguely uncomfortable that something for which we have no real words envelopes us.
This state of consciousness is described in more detail in the Silent Eye’s consciousness course as being a temporary cessation of the ‘filters’ that cloud our experience of the seemingly ordinary world. A better word for the experience is ‘present’, as in present to what’s real.
In truth, nothing is ordinary, and reality is seeing that…
Our first ‘present’ moment of the day happened when we carefully bypassed Henrietta and entered the sanctuary of the Farmhouse Cafe in Balemartin. My first post in this series, last week, resulted in several offers to adopt Henrietta, the bike guardian, so I reproduce, above, the photograph of her doing her day-job. I don’t think she’s available for adoption…
The impending storm had quickened our minds, in the way that survival does, and, with the first of the rain driving at the windows, we found we had entered an establishment that had just opened. The staff – four quite young people – looked at us as though we had camped outside overnight, falling through the door, in desperation, the minute they unlocked it. I suppose we looked a bit alien in our bright cycling gear.
For a short while, we had the place to ourselves. The interior was plain but functional, as though it were half a farmhouse, which I suspect it was. The staff had the air of close family and riends, with at least three daughters on duty. Life on Tiree revolves around tourism and farming, with everyone helping out for both. Everyone we met on the island was very friendly, though you could detect a certain island manner.
The cafe owners had a proud display of rosettes for their competition cattle. We were about to ask when a group of eight or so people arrived for an early lunch, closely followed by another, even larger group! It was Saturday and restaurants are scarce on Tiree. We could see why all the family were employed, as the place went from empty to full in about five minutes.
We had planned to have a coffee and, perhaps a piece of cake to keep our strength up. But, with the rain lashing at the windows, we consoled ourselves with a longer-lasting choice of some delicious soup and local bread, and wondered if our day’s adventure had ended before it had really begun…
The downpour continued and we were forced to add some cake and a second pot of coffee to the mix before we stepped out into a dripping Balemartine. The saddles were sodden but a few minutes of emergency finger-wiping restored them to a usable condition. Ominously, the sky had not brightened, and we wondered if we were wise to leave the relative safety of the cafe.
That sense of leaving ‘for an uncertain destination’ has always seemed to be at the heart of mysticism, too. The familiar is safe, but the dark skies of the unknown landscape can just as easily brighten to the beauty of the beyond, when the possible storm is observed to be a shallow and passing thing. The ‘inner quietness’ of such a spiritual moment was mirrored in our journey as we crested the next hill.
Before us was a line of beautiful beaches, but that wasn’t what took our eye. Beyond the beaches was what looked like an old military base. We had only a basic map and no idea what the landscape offered, though we knew the island was relatively flat. The little map of the road showed we were travelling into a dead-end, so all we had to do was keep pedalling and we’d get there.
The traditional Highland longhorn, grazing by the beach. The coat was shorter than I’d seen before. Perhaps they are trimmed for the summer, or maybe there is natural shedding? Assistance gratefully received…
Wild flowers, some of them quite exotic, were abundant by the sea. On the little meadow in front of this beach we even found a few wild orchids.
And then the road came to a fork, with the dark cluster of buildings ahead. We decided to approach by the seaward track, leaving the bikes parked by a wall. We had been told there was no crime on Tiree, so we could leave them as we liked – even without Henrietta to guard.
The wild beauty of Tiree – with a prophetic glimpse of a dark rock on the horizon
Wonderful things happen when you choose an unusual path to an envisioned goal. In this case the approach we made for ourselves, along the edge of the sea, brought us to a most dramatic vista.
It was obviously a harbour, with the ability to seal off the flow of the tide so that some kind of vessel could be maintained. The sea was calm on our day, but we could envisage how violent it might be in the depths of winter. But what had been its purpose?
The ‘dark village’, apparently constructed of the same stone, and at the same time, as the dock, seemed quite deserted, yet was, or had been, very important in Tiree’s past. What was this ‘ghost town’ on our tiny island?
We climbed up onto its walls to get a glimpse of the whole complex of buildings from this perspective.
The answer would teach us as much about the city from which our flight had begun, only three hours prior, as the island of Tiree, itself… Despite the ever-threatening weather, it was becoming a very magical day.
Because we had entered from the sea, we still had no idea what the dark village was, nor why it had ever justified such a grand and robust harbour.
The answer was a lesson in Scotland’s history and a revelation of something quite astonishing in its scale and importance. It was also a lesson in how we take for granted the ‘giants’ on whose shoulders we ‘stand’ as Newton said.
To be continued…
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Steve Tanham is a director of the Silent Eye school of Consciousness. His personal blog is at stevetanham.wordpress.com
©Copyright Stephen Tanham, text and pictures. Re-use with permission.
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We decided to leave the main road and take the back roads, just for a last look at the hills. Add that to the possibility of avoiding a long traffic jam just ahead and the fact that there was a historic church just off the slip road and getting sidetracked was irresistible. Not that I could remember anything about the church… I just recognised the name of the town as being of some importance and the sign supplied a possible reason why. It wouldn’t have mattered if it hadn’t been there… there was bound to be somewhere we could grab some lunch.
Five minutes later, we had parked the car right outside a sandwich bar at the top of St Asaph’s High Street and found ourselves a cathedral. The trouble was, the cathedral was shut, so we wandered off down the High Street in search of a little church we…
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Fear Death-in-Life
Get death in life…
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Embrace Death-in-Life
Get life in death…
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In the high places
A veil of serenity
Soothes the wildest heart
Savage beasts bow to beauty
And passion wears purity
A moorland dawn. The heather is in bloom, its delicate honey fragrances the morning for me alone. No bees yet seek the purple heart of the hills, no walkers share the stones. The valley still sleeps beneath a coverlet of cloud. Humanity here is no more than a memory. I am alone with beauty.
It does not matter where, this is my place. Where the shore between the heather and the mists is a meeting of world. Where dreams are shaped of flowers and stones wear the faces of my ancestors. No matter where the world leads me, my heart is here and I am home.
Tall the cliffs of stone
That mark the entry to my heart’s domain,
Wild and empty in its vastness
The solitude of living…
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Such beauty in your pristine edge
Precision killer of my stroll
When summer’s heat extends
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And pant to unclad leg migrates
In summer breeze that soothes the soul
Exposing flesh to that which rends
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No wrath to insects, bees or sheep
Just to my naive naked limb
From what beneath the ivy bends
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©Stephen Tanham
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We woke to a glorious morning for our final day in Wales. We still had things to see… far more things than we expected, in fact…but they would be on our way back to Yorkshire. I had been reluctant to leave the beach and turn my back on the sea, not knowing how long it would be before I would see it again. “You never know…” had said my companion, and he had been right. I thought we were heading for the mountains and then inland… but instead, we had wandered through the mountains and found ourselves once more by the sea.
I don’t think he was at all surprised when I suggested delaying our departure just long enough to explore the road around Great Orme. We had seen the summit a couple of days before, but from there you do not see the full extent of the headland…
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The tiny airport was a refreshing change to the madness of modern flying, with its scarring signature of ‘security’. You could imagine a kindly local lady rushing out and saying, “Hamish the Russian terrorist is on holiday today, so I’m just going to wave you through, dearies…”
The Royal Mail man fixes the engine prior to takeoff… probably.
There was, though, little distance to wave us through. Tiree is one of a pair of Scottish islands in this westernmost part of the Inner Hebrides – the other being Coll. Tiree is just twelve miles long and three across, and is relatively flat. It is renowned for its simple life, friendly people and beautiful beaches.
The main building of the airport comprises just three rooms: an arrivals/departures main space which doubles as the baggage arrival hall; an office for the staff and a departures lounge. Outside, a man in a transit van waited for our small party with four hybrid mountain bikes – part of the package trip and a great way (we hoped) to see the island in a day.
Our plane – an HS Twin Otter, sat on the tarmac outside the terminal, ready to take the six or so passengers who were now walking across the apron to climb its pull-down steps. An hour later, in the mirror of our inbound flight, they would be in Glasgow, having covered a distance that, on previous Scottish holidays, had taken us about ten hours by road and ferry.
The whole day-trip was a combined Christmas/birthday present from two long-standing friends who have drawn up their ‘bucket-list’, and asked us to share this part of it with them. We were delighted to be there. The four of us are happy with the idea of such an adventure, though the other couple have explored far-flung parts of the world with a fearlessness what we do not possess.
When you write blogs regularly you need inspiration. One of the most productive and creative methods I know to be inspired is to take a current theme to a new landscape and see what comes from the place. The trip to Tiree seemed ideal for this.
On the flight, as the green highlands, lakes and seaways drifted by far below, I emptied my mind to allow the ingress of the most ‘topical’ comments made, recently, by our Companions – those who take the three-year journey of spiritual self-discovery with us via our mentored correspondence course.
The answer that arose in my consciousness was an unlikely one: the topics of intrinsic perfection in the ‘world’ we experience and the idea within this of right action. It was unlikely because the simple landscape of Tiree was likely to be just that – simple and lacking in sophistication, though that was not expected to detract from its appeal.
The idea of perfection, in this context, is that the world is not as we initially see it, but ‘clouded over’ by lenses of the personality. Only by self-knowledge of how our daily ‘self’ has ‘hardened’ around a set of foundational reactions to life can we approach the cleaning of these lenses. When we do, we begin to see powerful changes in our lives – in fact, the world seems to change, whereas what is really happening is that we are seeing the truth for (possibly) the first time since early childhood – but with the gift of adult discrimination.
The idea of intrinsic perfection is that the above journey to great personal truth illustrates that the ordinary world does not ‘see’ what is before it. As we develop our ‘seeing’, we come to know it differently. Taken to the limit we perceive that what we experience when we don’t react in a habitual way is increasingly perfect, since it is driving the personal evolution of so many incarnated souls…
The idea can produce a lively debate, as you can imagine, so it is generally reserved for the third year of our three-year guided journey, where it forms one of nine ways of considering ‘objective reality’ – that which simply is – beyond personal opinion.
Leaving Tiree’s tiny but wonderful airport, we collected the bikes, turned left towards the island’s circular coastal road and, within five minutes, found ourselves at the main junction and beside a lovely beach.
As the photo of Bernie (above) shows, the weather was worsening, with a stiff breeze coming off the sea. With some trepidation, we began to pedal away from the relative familiarity of the airport’s grounds and into the darkening unknown.
The small plane that had brought us to Tiree did not have provision for refreshments – the co-pilot came out of the cabin and read out the safety notice before we took off, then returned to help the captain fly the plane! By the time we encountered the beach road, we had all decided that an early cup of coffee with a comprehensive look at the map would be very welcome – as well as giving us a potential place of shelter in the event of a downpour.
Our opening few miles were quite difficult. The wind off the sea was brisk, to say the least. This was in stark contrast to the weather we had left in Cumbria, which, for once, had been warm and sunny!
One of our group hadn’t ridden a bike for many years and needed a settling-in period, which was duly provided. They quickly recovered cycling skills that few really forget and, despite the constant stream of cars from the ferry port – indicating the arrival of the other form of transport to the island – we made our way, with increasing smiles, to the tiny village of Balemartine, where the map said, there was one of the island’s cafes.
Belmartine under a lowering sky
We had initially missed the cafe. Only the signpost alerted us to our error and we doubled back to find it just opening, which was just as well as the heavens opened and we fell into its welcoming and well-staffed embrace. I was last in, as I wanted to check the bikes were not intruding on the parking space. And then Henrietta, was we came to know her, joined us to guard the cycles. She stayed nearby for the whole time we were in there.
Henrietta offers a free bike-guarding service… it’s best to accept
To be continued…
Steve Tanham is a director of the Silent Eye school of Consciousness. His personal blog is at stevetanham.wordpress.com
©Copyright Stephen Tanham, text and pictures. Re-use with permission.
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Our encounter with Dyffryn Ardudwy on the previous day had whetted our prehistoric appetite.
The challenge now was to find a suitable site on our journey back en-route to Llandudno.
There was no shortage of possible contenders although many of them involved steep climbs and the hot June weather was becoming a reckoning factor.
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The sensible thing would have been to keep driving.
The flow of air at high speed was proving an effective enough coolant.
But legend reached us of a disturbed and reconstructed cairn not far from Betws-y-Coed.
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Capel Garmon Burial-Chamber
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No 8 (Light)
God is nearer to us than our own soul and God is the means whereby our Substance and our Sensuality are kept together so as never to be apart.’
– Julian of Norwich
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No 9 (Dark)
‘I saw that God never began to love us… We…
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We see as if we were above
Though loosely rooted on the soil
And layered logic takes away
The glory of the pearl-light stream
Rising, rich in shining joy
From darker line of summer’s trees
©Copyright Stephen Tanham
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Tiny roads, miles from nowhere and barely wide enough for a car, wound between hills and hedgerows before finally opening out into the valley. And there, we became a traffic jam. The road was occupied by a horse that had evidently let itself out of its home and wandered down the lane to see the youngsters. Mare or stallion, it was impossible to tell from the last car, but the impression was that the king had come to see his subjects. When we arrived on the scene, all the foals were at the fence, nuzzling their visitor and prancing with excitement. It was, you could tell, a real ‘moment’ for them… and a lovely sight to see. It took me a while to even think of getting the camera as we watched and waited, not wishing to spook the horse.
“Before the gods that made the gods…” A few words…
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Sun in Gemini 
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