The idea is a simple one: to pick a location and invite a group of friends – some of them Companions of the Silent Eye School, some simply friends, some new to the whole thing – to experience it in a different way…

It does require a degree of preparation. For these ‘shared discovery’ events to work they have to flow, smoothly, from one ‘scene’ to another. And those scenes are real events in real places with the usual potential for things to go awry… and that’s where the magic comes in, because there’s a balance to be struck, here: a balance between trying to control everything and reduce the ‘errors’ in the situation to zero; and letting events simply unfold by themselves – truly being in the moment, but as a conscious group…

It’s a balance carefully learned over many years. Without confidence that it will ‘come good’ it may not, and an overall ‘structure’ in which it can happen it may not, but if over-controlled, then it has no freedom to, shall we say, improvise. 

What improvises is what mystics call ‘the Spirit’. It’s a word used a lot in religion, (which the Silent Eye is not) and it is often placed out of reach of untrained experiencers by the dogma that can go with such religion. In the Silent Eye, we simply say that the powerful and world-changing presence of the Spirit belongs to everyone, and that we all experience it many times each day. 

The key to whether or not this ‘supercharges’ our lives is whether we are conscious of its active presence or take it to be simply accidental or ‘random’. 

We do not need to invoke a concept of, or a belief in a God to realise this experience. It is a property of the twinning of consciousness and our ‘world’, and has always belonged to mankind. 

In a world, and its resulting minds, which invokes a conditioning belief that everything is a predetermined chain of fixed events, from the Big Bang onwards, there is no room for the Spirit to be seen because we are not looking for it with any conviction…

Ancient ‘priests’ from many traditions saw and experienced things very differently, and so can we… And we do not need to dress up in, say, Pagan, Christian or Buddhist robes to do so, though they can act as amplifiers, should we wish.

The summer solstice is a very special and poignant time of year. In the few weeks prior – which is the period during which we have our summer weekend (one of four through the year), you can feel the swelling and the ripeness of nature as she nurtures her manifold forms of life to their state of fullness, an idea and a feeling that mystics of all ages have viewed as one side of the concept of polarity; the opposite being the bareness and seemingly forlorn character of the depths of winter, which we might call spiritually negative – at least as far as the outer world of manifestation is concerned.

Ancient Christian mystics named the Summer Solstice after St John; and the dark winter one after St Stephen. 

Thus, last Friday, a group of us in normal, casual dress, arrived at the tiny cove of Borth-y-Gest, a mile south of Porthmadog, North Wales, to begin the 2017 summer workshop by walking, talking, and, above all, listening as our event began with a simple but lovely meal at The Moorings restaurant. 

——- to be continued ——-

©Stephen Tanham