The first test would be to see whether Alexandra would be there, at all; the second would be whether she would launch a stream of invective at me, slapping down her written ‘resignation’ and thumping it for final punctuation in very British style.
My first latte was half cold by the time I drank it. No show … I felt sad.
I collected my things, lowering my head to pick up the battered leather folder I sometimes carried to these meetings. As my leg straightened to push me back to a standing position, the hand landed on my shoulder, spinning me around and back into the old wooden chair, which somehow managed to stay vertical, though not unmoved.
“I …”
“No!”, the familiar voice said. But with an interesting overtone.
“I …” I said, attempting once again to explain how glad I was to see her.
The hand that had assaulted me, flashed towards me, again, but this time with a gentler manoeuvre: she pulled up my chin with her long fingers and placed a finger over my lips, symbolically sealing them.
“Not one word,” she said. “Not till I’ve had my say.”
She sat down. In what could only have been a pre-arranged move, Rose came over with two coffees. She looked down at the delight in my eyes and returned it with a withering look that spoke of an indulgence not earned.
Alexandra took out a sealed letter from her back handbag and slapped it down in front of me.
“Open it!”
Pleased at the determination of her response, I sliced open the pristine white legal envelope with my thumb nail and spread out the single sheet of paper next to my coffee.
She had taken my image, scanned it in, and added some things. It was a clever response – exactly what I had been looking for; but, beyond that, it was a response from the heart.
“You weren’t trying to get rid of me – it was a test; a kind of first level graduation?”
Playing by her rules, for now, I remained mute and nodded.
“One circle, but an inside and an outside, “she said, “For all my cleverness, I was on the outside?”
Again, I nodded.
“Good,” she finally breathed out and sipped some of her coffee. “So, to be on the inside is not a matter of ‘joining’ some secret body; it’s a state of mind and … heart.”
This time I didn’t need to nod; the smile said it all.
I broke my silence. “Gurdjieff called it the circle of conscious humanity; it’s not that we need to ‘join’ anything, just to wake up to our true state and realise that the world is not what it had seemed.”
“And exploring that state is the next step – my next step if I get it right?”
“Yes,” I said happily. “And you have got it right … The next stage is different, but it builds on what you’ve already done.”
“Will we still use the enneagram?” Alexandra asked.
“The enneagram is really like a compass,” I said, taking my own coffee and letting the words find themselves, or as my best friends would say, getting the hell out of the way . . . “It comes into and drops out of our quest, but it’s never far away. It’s only a symbol; a glyph, don’t forget that. The real journey is fluid and formless and takes place, as you have seen, within.” I paused to let that sink in, then continued. “The real value of the enneagram is that its structure allows the incorporation of some major insights into the psyche – insights that were not easily expressible in the past; though there were those great minds who could …”
She was silent for several minutes. Then, ‘So what happens next?”
“Next, we use something different as a basis for exploration of the human spiritual journey, but we look for clues in the language of what we have already learned.”
She looked wistfully at her coffee. It feels like we’ve come a long way … It would all have been Greek to me a year ago!’
“Greek to me,” I said. “That’s interesting …. done much Greek?”
“Language?” she shook her head. “Nothing beyond the basic tourist stuff, but I always loved the myths …”
“Which ones did you like best?”
“The Labours of Hercules. They were the most mysterious … and the most odd.”
“Would you like to revisit them and see if they contain anything of spiritual value?”
“Love too …”
“Time for us both to do some homework, then.” I added, looking at my watch. “And for you to be on your way to London.”
I watched her go, glad we were still working together and smiling at her choice of subject matter. It was going to be an interesting time … in the back of my mind the figure of Apollo was smiling.
————————————
Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee is usually published on Thursdays.
All images and text ©International copyright, The Silent Eye School of Consciousness, 2015.
Steve Tanham is a founding director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness; a place of companionship, sharing and the search for the real in life, using the loving techniques and insights of esoteric psychology. He retired from a life as an IT entrepreneur to establish the School in 2012, and, having persuaded Sue Vincent to . . .
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More from the ‘twins’ . . .
“Oooh, you look well!” She beams you a chirpy smile across the yard, halting you in your progress with the heavy load of rubbish for the bin. You force the pained grimace into more acceptable lines, unwilling to scare the nice old lady.
Why is it that you only ever hear those words when your hair is wild, you wear no make-up, you’ve had no more than three hours sleep and have just fallen down the stairs? When you have cursed the alarm clock that makes you crawl back upstairs to turn off its insistent clamour two hours after you reluctantly rose to start a day you could wish you had missed. When the bathroom scales say there are several alien pounds of flesh you were not, until this moment, acquainted with…and which have no call to have invoked squatting rights on your hips when the budgie eats more than…
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The air is blazing on the Greek island. There is a faint breeze blowing off the shore, but it does little to cool the afternoon. Sitting comfortably in my beach chair, I wiggle my toes in the sand, digging them deeper and feeling the hot, dry grains give way to the wetter and more compact sublayer of the beach.
The tidal shelf extends all of three feet. There is a small gradient just in front of me which accommodates it, and up which the apologetic waves race in a gentle culmination of sound and motion. I push my feet forward towards the waves, seeing how close I can get without actually touching the water; get it wrong and you get them wet, for a count of two, or at most, three. It’s not an unpleasant mistake. There are people around me on this friendly Greek island, but none of them talk to me. I don’t know if this is because I haven’t tried to talk to them, yet.
I look out at the sea through my old Oakley sunglasses; classy but aged. Small enough to fit in a shirt pocket but bullet-proof. Used to use them for mountain biking in places like the Derbyshire Hills …
Stupid . . . stupid . . .
The self-guided meditation fades. It was, of course, a reaction to the not-so-subtle interrogation by Dr Grey, which had left me shaken; needing somewhere to be me for a while, though I recognise the turning away from reality in that.
My consciousness returns to my senses, the dark cell and the sounds coming from beyond it. Yellow Eyes has left the grill in the door slightly open. I get off the bed and go to stand by it, looking out along the dimly lit corridor at what I have called ‘the tower’.
In the middle of the jail is a huge brick chimney, with an internal width the size of one of Derbyshire’s famous wells. I have often looked at its dominant, central structure on the way to and from the exercise yard. It’s a classic piece of Victorian engineering. I’m assuming it was part of the older heating system – now it just seems to be there, and is probably holding up the old building …
As a lover of heights, I have wondered what it would be like to sit on top of that vertical brick tunnel and gaze out at the lovely landscape of Bakewell and the hills beyond. The danger that would be part of such an experience makes it easier to visualise – one of the oddities of the human creative imagination.
The interview with Dr Grey made me feel like I was hanging on the inside of that tower; with him about to stamp on my fingers. He knew when to apply the shock; and I had little to say in my defence. Just when you think it couldn’t get worse. I think to myself … it does – much worse; and I know he’s perfectly capable of getting a local sanity hearing from the affronted and senior people of Bakewell who control my fate.
Dwelling on him will just increase his power, so I picture him sitting with me, talking, genially, on the top of the tower – with us both kicking our feet against the brick. For a second or two, the humour of it makes me smile; but then I dismiss the thought, along with the remnants of the Greek island’s lovely beach.
My thoughts keep returning to babies – or more accurately, to the journey of being born into the world. It’s upsetting but not illogical to think that my frightened and straining mind would think of my new life as being born, again, though not in a pleasant way. Perhaps the tube-like image of the tower is part of that?
Does a baby feel like this; coming into life? In the mind of that soul the whole of time has been Mother, and the sea of her womb; warm, holding, feeding, linked as one creature. And then, she begins to push the child away . . . down, into the tube which constrains and constricts. I’ll be there at the other end, her intimate thoughts with the child’s say, just trust …
But she’s not, of course. Not in the same way, though she does everything to honour that trust in the way that one now separated from the other can do; and such is the beauty and drama of birth. I think of Wen and Don – now so far away, I hope, from all this …
My thoughts return to my image of the child born. I’ll be there at the end, the mother in my head said. Instead, you’re on the outside of something; one becomes two. Lying, in a state of total vulnerability, and doing the only thing you can; the thing that grips your soul with the full power of this new shell – crying . . . and you cry and cry … and everyone seems happy with this, and you’re passed to the shell of Her the Most Warm and she knows what to do, and your mouth takes on a will of its own and you suck, and suck . . . and suck.
And thereafter, you never stop sucking, though the substances change, as the world is eaten, and painful teeth replace soft pink lips.
Later, you learn that there are different types of eating; that the milk of She the Most Warm is only one variant of food. There are two others, though the third has been largely overlooked because we’ve stopped believing in wonder and forgotten its purpose.
There is the air you breathe, which seems to be very different in function to the liquid and food that enters down the shared tube that goes deeply into you, just as the chimney in Bakewell Jail penetrates down into the bowels of the place – the fire room, down below, where, in the days of its use a full-time caretaker would tend it and the warmth it brought to the whole building.
The air has its own special place that links the lighter part of your world with the more vital part of your body, joining the internal flow of life in a very special way.
And the third type of food? The most powerful of secrets that the ancients knew, but we have forgotten? Why, of course that’s . . .
The nine grills on the shuttered hatch flick fully open on their oiled tracks; and Yellow Eyes is there. I will have to break off from my train of thought to be deferential to him.
“Special visit, m’Lud,” he rasps.
“I have a visitor?” I respond, my hopes rising.
“No, you’re going on a special visit,” he chortles. “Not far.” He is enjoying my unease.
He takes me to a old and narrow spiral staircase which ascends, vertically, along the outer wall of the central chimney – my Tower. I had never noticed it, before. Urging me upwards, I complete three turns before we emerge onto a landing. There are additional cells, here, though they don’t look used. The doorway to the last one is partly open.
“In!” Yellow Eyes nods his head and I enter what turns out to be a very pleasant space. Inside is Dr Grey, sitting on the cell’s large bed, beneath a glass ceiling that curls from the outer wall back towards the central structures of the place, topped with shaped ironwork. It’s essentially a conservatory – light, airy and uplifting.
“Bakewell’s Victorian jail is an example of what was known as ‘improving’ design.” says Dr Grey. “Trusted prisoners were allowed to graduate to one of these rooms, where they had the benefits of fresh air, and …” He swings his arms around and points to the view. “ … even a view of the surrounding hills. “ Dr Grey laughs, amused with what he’s trying to make happen. “You and your friends liked the hills, didn’t you, Ben?”
“He travels fastest who travels alone . . .” I say to him, finding something suitably trite to fend off his relentless logic.
He ignores this irrelevance. “Given that you may be in here for some time, Ben,” he says, getting up off the bed and approaching me in what he takes to be a conciliatory fashion while opening his arms. “We thought you might appreciate a transfer to this more comfortable cell?” He stands back to allow me the freedom of exploring. Were I being kinder to myself, I would stand stock-still and refuse. But the hills are there … and they gave birth to the people who carved the ancient stone – that stone.
In an agony of what will soon be self-denial, I walk around the edge of the cell, looking out over the town and then beyond to the nearby and beloved green landscape. The autumn is at its height and the mellow colours are beautiful.
“You wouldn’t think the two rooms were in the same building . .” I notice the deliberate softening of Dr Grey’s sentiment by the juxtaposition of the word rooms for the reality of cells. This is, indeed, a clever man …
They watch, wordless but happy, as my eyes mist over, looking outwards. Watch as I turn to face the direction in which I suspect Don and Wen fled the scene. I do not blame them; what else could they have done? What sense three of us locked in here?
Yellow Eyes grunts. Dr Grey nods, sagely. What they are not conscious of is that I am used to there being a special feeling about those moments of the now that are pivotal. They have an immediacy … as though someone else is listening. We can react to them in many ways – we can drift off into fantasy or imagination, which is fine, but doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. If we want to pierce that heart with the spear of our own presence, our own consciousness, we need to bear witness to its reality, in all its wonder or sadness. That is our birthright, and we have no idea of the power of it, nor of the truth it carries.
That moment of power, with all its poignant consequences, is coming now, like a spear or an arrow launched from somewhere else. I hold metaphorical arms out to the beautiful vista beyond the curved glass, hug it in my heart, and know it will be long time before I see it, again.
“And all I have to do is to tell you I have accomplices and give you their names . . . and then you’ll dress us up in the clothes of local ‘history society’ fools and a prank gone too far?” I say softly.
“This is a mess for all of us, Ben,” Dr Grey says sincerely, still hoping. “Have you any idea how many important people you’ve upset?” He lets this sink in, then adds, “It’s an easy way out . . . for all of us.”
And then the arrow strikes from the sky, and it hurts, it bloody hurts; and I say, in a whisper that they can both hear, “But it’s not the truth.”
There is the silence of a thinly-witnessed crushing of the pale flesh of fingers beneath a boot’s sole; and then a falling into blackness …
I am back in my cell. The smaller, darker cell with only a skylight that looks at occasional blue, cloud, or five stars, on a good night. It’s colder in here, too, though the coming winter will, no doubt, make autumn’s first chill seem mild.
The light has gone, now – as has Dr Grey. Yellow Eyes has slammed shut the nine slices of his huge face in the door’s grill for the final time today, marching off down his corridor in disgust. There remains only the presence of ‘me’.
I have made my bed. There is only one way ahead, now … I have to convert that ‘me’ into a meaningful and deeper “I”, using only the trust that the unfolding now contains all that is needed, no matter how meagre.
I think of the third type of ‘food’. It is so simple that no-one considers it: the food of the soul is what is taken in by the senses – impressions. The alchemy of spiritual transformation is to take in our impressions and ‘eat’ them in a different way – no matter how humble their source seems to be … and they who carved the stone knew this …
I lie in the darkness, wondering. I consider a return to my Greek beach; but decide against it. It is not real, though it is attractive. It wastes the power of the moment, the high-octane content of immediacy that is our very lives, and a gift from somewhere else … though it can often be hard to see it that way.
It is said that the darkest moments contain the highest potency. I may need that thought in the future.
I close my eyes and try to clear my frightened mind. From somewhere in those depths something different appears. In an action that is not simply imagination, a clear image of the stone forms in my mind with such vibrancy that I can move around it as we first did in the churchyard in Bakewell …
———————————————————–< to be continued-
Ben’s Bit is a continuing first-person narrative of the character created by Stuart France and Sue Vincent, which may bear some relation to the author of this story, Steve Tanham, their fellow director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness. In the latest of their books, Scions of Albion, Ben is arrested for his overly enthusiastic part in a mad escapade, and the other two are nowhere to be seen . . . For more, enjoy their Doomsday series of books, and the new series (Lands of Exile) beginning soon. Click here for details.
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Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee, part 26 – Outside the circle
There was a chill wind as I took up my appointed place outside the doorway of our Monday morning cafe. The Summer had been a poor one for the North of England. Now, it looked as though the Autumn was about to arrive prematurely. I pulled my too-thin rain mac around my collar for warmth in the breeze blowing in from the dark sea.
It was already 08:45, fifteen minutes into our regular meeting time. Through the glass of the doorway, I could see Alexandra drinking her coffee and looking worried that I was so late. Five minutes later, she checked her phone, for the fourth time, looking for reasons for this uncharacteristic laxity on my part.
I was standing to one side of the door and could only be seen by people coming in and out. To those inside the cafe I was invisible – but, because of the refraction of the bright light, I could see, clearly, into the interior.
I watched, sad that it had to be this way, but conscious of the greater purpose of the uncharacteristic act. I watched as she finished her second coffee, then looked, one last time, at her phone, checking it for messages and then getting to her feet, reluctant to leave the space in which so many of our meaningful encounters had taken place.
She stopped in the opened doorway when she saw me, standing stock still and making no effort to enter. “You’ve not been there all the time . . .” her head shook in disbelief. “ . . . Have you?”
I nodded. Looking deeply into those hazel eyes and holding out the small envelope I had brought. It contained a home made card.
“A little farewell present,” I said.
“Farewell!” Her voice withered as the implication sank in. “Why? Have I let you down?”
“Quite the opposite,” I said, smiling sadly. “You’ve been a wonderful pupil.”
“Then why?” It was a plea, and nearly a cry.
“I have to say goodbye to what you are.” I said.
“To what I am?”
“Yes,” I said. “There is no other way.”
“There’s always a way – you showed me that!”
“Not for this . . . this is different.” My tone was gentle. This was hard, and could only be approached head-on.
“Goodbye? – just like that, after all we’ve done; all the work and humour and all your efforts?” She clutched at the door frame to steady herself. “You’ve played tricks on me before – granted always with a higher purpose. Is this another?”
“No trick,” I said. “I have to say goodbye to what you are . . .”
“Wait, wait,” she said, pushing me further up the pavement to allow a couple into the coffee shop. “‘to what I am’ – that’s very specific language . . .”
It was the cue I needed. I pushed the card into her hand, saying nothing. She looked down at it as though it was cursed. “Do I open it now?” She sounded dejected.
“It might make you feel better . . .”
I watched as she tore open the envelope. Inside was a plain white card comprising two pages. The inner sheet, where the greeting normally is, contained a stark image of a circle with black and white dots along its perimeter line.
I leaned to kiss Alexandra on the cheek and, wordlessly, strode off across the marine drive, leaving her there; mute but raging.
At that moment, I hated myself, but there was no other way . . .
What would she make of the card? Would it speak to her?
———————————————-< Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee is normally published on Thursdays.
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Sue, holding all the strings, of course, sheds some light on Ben’s predicament . . . from afar . . .
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Stuart takes us deeply into spiritual riddles . . .
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Ben’s Bit – part five – The Reasonable Dr Grey
The man is calm. His dark-rimmed, circular glasses focus the intensity of his study at me, rather than taking in the light that bounces off my prison uniform, whose monotone colour, resembling a modern warship, bears his name.
“Do you think it’s normal for a person in your position to refuse bail?” Dr Grey asks, reasonably. He knits the fingers of his hands together into an unconscious tight fist, in a movement that reminds me how physically close together two entirely different gestures can be. “It was, after all, a first offence?” he says.
He’s not a reasonable person, though the system, no doubt, judges him to be so. He’s a very person. Very educated, very fair . . . very capable of judgement.
I have no doubt that I am in the presence of evil, very here.
I put my hands on the old metal table that separates us and look back through the glass circles that shield his eyes. Deliberately and slowly, I gather my own hands and pull his attention towards the fingers which interlock gently and lovingly, bringing mind and matter into harmony as I cross the thumbs and breathe the silence of calmness and life into this sterile exchange.
Despite his intent, he realises that I have created a parody of his false tranquility. He separates his own clenched fingers and knits his brows.
“We are not unreasonable people, Ben,” he says, reassuringly; hiding his inner frustration that a renowned Derbyshire psychiatrist could be tripped up so soon in a relationship by a gesture. “I am sure that you . . .” he pauses for effect. “ . . . And your accomplices had your reasons for the crime, but wouldn’t it have been easier to accept the bail conditions once you were caught?” He smiles, and I have to acknowledge that I am in the presence of a very clever man.
I want this to be over, so a degree of cooperation is necessary, though I already know what the outcome will be. I respond with, “The bail figure set by the local judge took advantage of my perceived status as a businessman. It was inflated beyond reasonableness and based on a false value of my so-called wealth.” Then I look him in the eyes and say, pointedly, “Hundreds of thousands is not funny, nor is it justice . . .”
Dr Grey smiles, understandingly, and mulls this over with an opening of his fingers to show that’s debatable for a criminal masquerading as a respectable pillar of the community. For the thousandth time, he clicks the silver ball at the end of his pen, then scribbles some notes in his expensive looking and weather-beaten black leather pad. “So, you weren’t against the idea of bail?” he asks.
“Not at all.” I say. “Do you think I enjoy being in here?”
“I just wondered,” he muses. “If, perhaps you felt like a martyr to your cause?”
“What cause?” I add, pulling my eyes from looking at my crossed thumbs and raising them to look, calmly, into his.
“The cause that took you all out in the late night, dressed and armed for theft, to raid our ancient church?”
I think of Wen’s humble but accurate air rife . . . hardly special forces, even given our impromptu, all-black uniforms. “Don’t you think you’re getting carried away with this?” I ask, reasonably, avoiding any response to his carefully hidden word ‘all’.
“Carried away as in our precious stone . . .” He sneers, proud of his timely quip in the face of the first real response he’s had from me.
“Our precious stone?” I ask. “You’re local then?”
Dr Grey breathes deeply. His body language suggests growing impatience. I’m learning far more about him than he is about me. He has all the power, of course. But I don’t want to show him I know that . . .
“This is an old jail, Ben,” he lets out the held breath. “It is not a pleasant place to be – it has a history of doing strange things to one’s mental state. Wouldn’t you rather cooperate with us and put this behind you?” He drums his fingers on the metal surface; it sounds a lot like the drum roll that might precede a hanging. It’s cleverly done and quite sinister; changing the emotional atmosphere in this room of interrogation. “We can be creatively lenient, too . . .” It’s a chilling statement, given what it really says.
Before I can extract this outrageous mental dagger, he continues, “Conspiring to carry out an act like this – as the stone could not have been stolen by one man, alone – can be considered a serious offence . . . if there are thought to be deeper motives.” Dr Grey smiles, bringing the drum roll to a sudden stop.
“We -when,” I say, shrieking inside that I nearby dropped the ball. “When I moved the stone, I did not steal it, I simply moved it somewhere else – somewhere it had originally been . . .”
“I know,” he says, gleefully, pouncing on the cue he’s been expecting. He pushes another edition of the Bakewell Gazette across the table at me.
The article is an old one. I suspect Dr Grey has been saving it. It is simply an update on the one that Yellow Eyes brought me, but hints that the inhabitants of the nearby village, to which we took the stone, are secretly pleased that their choice piece of sacred history has been restored. Quite how the good and the great of Bakewell are taking it can be read in the determined expression on Dr Grey’s face, as he watches me clutch at this ray of hope.
“Not in a million years . . .” he says, meaning any determined opposition to my incarceration from the villagers, but pointing at the article. “. . . Could you have moved that stone, alone.” It’s a very clever use of English, and even someone studying the videotape of the interview would easily miss it.
“I did move the stone, I used portable machinery. It’s quite possible if you know what you’re doing – and my car is more that capable of carrying that load.” The latter is true.
“Beautiful car, I’m told . . . a BMW?” he adds. “You must miss it?”
I pretend I’m looking back at my featureless cell wall. I miss more than just my bloody car . . .
He leans forward. “Ben,” he says, changing his tone back to Dr Reasonable, “Do you think that the man in the street, in a Bakewell street, say, would describe you as a sane person . . .”
It is, unfortunately and terrifyingly, a very reasonable question . . .
———————————————————–< to be continued-
Ben’s Bit is a continuing first-person narrative of the character created by Stuart France and Sue Vincent, which may bear some relation to the author of this story, Steve Tanham, their fellow director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness. In the latest of their books, Scions of Albion, Ben is arrested for his overly enthusiastic part in a mad escapade, and the other two are nowhere to be seen . . . For more, enjoy their Doomsday series of books, and the new series (Lands of Exile) beginning soon. Click here for details.
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Rooted in the Land
No raging storm front tears my roots from ridge
No howling sky will twist and drag my limbs from land
The densest deluge will not wash my will
enduring, rooted here to frame and feed this place.
But one day the lightning may come . . .
And neither rhyme nor reason then resist endurance’s end
©Copyright words and image Stephen Tanham 2015
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Sue (and the rest of us) recalls one of the most intense and dramatic moments of the Silent Eye’s history . . . was that only a year ago?
Sun in Gemini 
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