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Mind – mover of the Soul (3) Seeing Pi and finding your birthday…
by Steve Tanham
One of the most important things we do with our minds is to learn, yet we seldom ask: how do we learn things, and is it a single process?
How do we learn things, and is it a single process?
How do we learn things?
We have to be careful to define what we mean by learning. The child or young student gains praise by learning facts. Facts are important, as we are discovering in a world where idiots are given microphones and loud-hailers so they can bay at other adoring idiots; the entire set of bayer and recipient comfortable in a self-enclosed bubble, protected from knowledge osmosis.
Our collective sense of outrage at this treatment of the truth appears to have evaporated. Every day, the headlines bring us another loud idiot, looking to score in the rankings.
Every day, the headlines bring us another loud idiot, looking to score in the rankings.
On both sides of the Atlantic, we can point to populists who knowingly harvest the opinions (and votes) of people who do not have the capacity to question the noises they rally around. The protagonists here are in possession of the facts; the truth, but their character is such that the exploitation of the opposite side of that coin – the deliberate untruth – is acceptable as a route to power.
their character is such that the exploitation of the opposite side of that coin – the deliberate untruth – is acceptable as a route to power.
It’s a well-trodden path. Every fascist dictator or religious strongman/woman who rose to prominence claiming they represented ‘the people’ repeats the assault on the truth. In politics it is not unusual; even expected. But episodes like Covid vaccines and attempted overthrowing of audited national voting have exposed the new fragility of what used to be the self-evident.
…have exposed the new fragility of what used to be the self-evident.
Society depends upon that outrage. The collective derision of the deliberately twisted truth is one of our most powerful weapons to protect our civilisations. This is mirrored in the individual by the corrosive effect of having to live with untruths. We can rightly say that the soul is less bright; even dimmed, in the face of untruth.
This is not a political blog, though I may have opened with a rant…
Rather than look at the abuse of opinion, we might gain insight from examining the wider processes of truth, and how we truly learn – or surrender to happy not-knowing, but comfortably the same as our friend, Jack, in the pub.
The schoolboy’s accumulation of facts, regurgitated as multiple choice ‘ticks in boxes’, is valid for that stage of their learning. We can assemble accurate but empty facts into a ‘kit-bag’ of relevant information and have it to hand when we need to carry out something more important.
Which begs the question: what is the nature of that which is ‘more important’?
Which begs the question: what is the nature of that which is ‘more important’?
When information stored by us as reliable facts becomes part of something we can do, can achieve, then we know that the fact – the information is ‘a seed’.
A seed cannot fulfil its potential without soil in which to grow and water to trigger its life. Yet the seed contains all the ‘process’ it needs to set in motion the potential it holds.
If I know the radius of a potential circle, it might help me as long as I know that a piece of string constrained to stay taut and then allowed to move at one of its ends, would ‘describe’ a circle with that length of string as its radius.
More theoretically, I might be able to design a circular garden feature if I know that within any circle, the diameter and the circumference are related by the multiplication of the former using a mysterious number called Pi – approximately 22 divided by 7.
Put simply: the diameter (all the way across the circle and crossing the middle) times Pi is always equal to the length of the circumference; the length of the string stretched equally all the way round.
This means that the inner meaning of a circle is to be a ‘growing machine’; one that converts straight lines of certain lengths (single dimensional) into a higher two-dimensional figure (the circle) which has the unique property of that first length as its child… or more accurately, its seed.
The seed in this case is the mysterious number ‘Pi’, which is not really a number, but a process. hidden in our number system to point out to us that our rational view of the world has a few cracks in it. In schoolboy facts, Pi is thought of as the number 22/7 or 3.142. But that is just an approximation which works, as long as you don’t ask philosophical questions of it…
If you are fascinated by the truth of Pi there’s a bit more below, taken from the Careers in Maths website: Did you know Pi has your birthday written in it?
This means that the inner meaning of a circle is to be a ‘growing machine’!
To my knowledge, the ‘zombies against truth’ have not derided the properties of the circle in favour of an opinion to the contrary, though they might be preparing such a case…
Does this radical idea of a ‘growing machine’ have parallels in the human mind?
The philosopher Jidhu Krishnamurti considered such questions deeply. He studied the process of learning from a spiritual perspective; meaning that spiritual learning not only has the power to transform us, it must transform us…
He said some wonderful things about learning; including the statement “Learning is not additive – you cannot gather learning.”
Learning is not additive – you cannot gather learning
To the rational mind, this is anathema…
The mind gathers – accumulates – for a living. Its greatest joy is to add to the store of facts. This is not to say that those facts are not true, nor that they are not capable of being ‘seeds’ for action. But Krishnamurti was on the trail of a much higher goal: He wanted to find the ‘Pi of the mind’, and he found it in a different type of learning, one in which the mind has to be placed into a state of emptiness of (even) facts…
In this state, if we hold it open, the incoming seed, the ‘Pi’, does its work and converts our straight line into a mystically-experienced circle, where learning is immediate and total…
You cannot see if you are not empty. This means no commitment, always learning, not accumulating; it means observing, being awake, being aware without any choice, and therefore giving tremendous attention
Jidhu Krishnamurti
Does this denigrate the mind? Not at all… But it does point to where the mind might be more powerfully employed…
In the next post, we will examine this ‘other place’.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Cartmel, anarchy and the perfect morning…
by Steve Tanham
The Cumbrian village of Cartmel is most famous for its racecourse, but it is difficult to find any part of it that is not also beautiful or at least interesting. There are also examples here of innovative responses to hard times… Something we all need to take note of.
Cartmel lies two miles northwest of Grange-over-Sands, on the northern edge of Morecambe Bay, just outside the Lake District National Park and alongside the River Eea. It takes its name from the Cartmel Peninsula and used to be called Kirkby in Cartmel.
The village is the location of the 12th-century Cartmel Priory, around which it initially grew. There is free, two-hour parking at the rear. This is where we begin our photo-walk.
I’m here for my NHS-booked Covid booster: my fourth vaccination in the Covid sequence. The day before, I had my flu jab. When I view it this way, I’m beginning to feel like a pin cushion…
I’m a believer in being protected. I don’t subscribe to the idea of micro-robots shaping my mind into governmental compliance. My bodily inclinations seem more or less as they were…
We skirt around the back of the Priory to get to Cartmel’s main street, where most of the shops are still closed. No chance of an early take-away coffee, then… pity; a good coffee can cheer up any queue)
The doctor’s surgery (where the vaccinations are being offered) is on the outskirts of the village. On the way, we pass a couple of places I have wanted to photograph but never had the time. The mellow but bright autumn morning light is perfect… and I’m still fifteen minutes early for my jab… what an opportunity…
I’ve been waiting to snap this beauty for a while. The small river; a tributary of the Eea, makes a perfect foreground and generator of contrasts, Rivers are hard to avoid in Cartmel. Several of them cross-cross the village centre)
The vaccine injection is handled in a friendly and efficient manner, and the event even has a burst of humour when the lady doctor dealing with me confesses that she’s been at it since dawn and is dying for a break and a coffee.
In my best impression of Alan Arkin, one of my favourite humans, I surprise her by calling out of the office: “This doctor needs a coffee!”.
For a second there is silence… Then she dissolves into laughter… as do the reception staff who come to check on her well-being with the potential madman… We part on the best of terms, no police involved, and the quiet and creepy web of doctors’ waiting rooms slightly ripped…
I have a very small anarchic streak… Usually, it’s in a well-taped box in my pocket. But every now and then, when the fabric of ‘space-time- process’ needs a magical kick, I’m happy to oblige…
Reverting to normal human, I venture out dragging the second of two pierced arms in as many days. Perhaps the number of holes in my arms has tipped me slightly over the edge?
I get a grip and we walk… The weather is even nicer than it was when we arrived. The main street in Cartmel holds some visual gems.
Next door is a new shop offering ‘Vintage goods’. They look good but I’ve just had a text from my wife and ‘abandoned collie’ to say they are waiting in a coffee shop at the top end of The Square.
Several older buildings in the main street have been modernised to offer modern facilities for snacks, wine and dining.
Further up the street are two of Simon Rogan’s famous eateries, including ‘L’enclume’: his top-class Michelin 3-star restaurant, and Rogan and Co, a more modest bistro-style establishment.
My phone beeps. My wife’s coffee is going cold and so is mine. I must rush back. I can choose to photograph the Paul Rogans for you…. Or choose another, little-known route…where there’s this:
At the end of an uninspiring alley lies the The ‘Ford’ Footbridge. In medieval times, Cartmel was a bustling market village centred around the walled 12th century Priory Church.
The only access across the River Eea running North to South, which separated the village, was by using the ford crossing along the line of the new footbridge. During times when the river was in flood only horses and carts could pass, leaving pedestrians to pay a toll to use the narrow Penny Bridge downstream.
With the formation of the Carmel Township Initiative in 2014, progress was finally made towards raising the necessary funds.
Despite numerous difficulties including securing Planning Consent, consents from the Environment Agency and United Utilities, as well as other statutory bodies.
A scheme was finally agreed in 2019 and the footbridge laid in place in 2020 with funding from: the European Agricultural Fund, many local sources including South Lakeland district council and the Cumbria Fells and Dales LEADER programm. Local residents also provide a significant contribution.
Our walk ends with my arrival at the Cartmel Square Cafe and guest- house – newly opened and an example of the kind of innovation that’s going to be needed to get small businesses through the next few years of extreme economic challenge.
They have formed a partnership with the nearby pub – which, post-Brexit, was finding it impossible to recruit an affordable chef. The Cartmel Square cafe cooks the breakfasts for the hotel’s guest and ferries them across the square… Simple and effective, and benefits both.
And the cafe makes great breakfasts… With holes in both arms, and government nanobots flowing through my veins, I needed one…
Hope you enjoyed the walk…
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Bardsea Sunset
by Steve Tanham
Just about my favourite shot of October so far.
Bardsea is a vast beach a few miles along the coast road from Ulverston. It looks south over Morecambe Bay and is a favourite walk for dog owners. Frisbees can be thrown ‘for miles’!
When we returned to the car, the sun was setting and I could see its reflection in one of the pools. That gave me the idea for this shot, which contrasts the warm sun and the cold ripple of the sandy mud that makes up the beach.
I took one version of the sunset, then bent a little lower to include the ripples in the mud.
A small amount of tweaking with the colours and the contrasts were effective – and the overall ‘feeling’ was exactly what it was like to be there.
I hope it conveys it to you… Just feel that autumn chill!
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Mind: mover of the Soul (2)
by Steve Tanham
The consideration of mind is a journey, not a concept. There’s nothing theoretical about the degree to which we believe we are ‘in-here’ in our body.
That statement has two parts: the sense of us -the observer, being contained inside something, and the inherent idea of ‘self’ in the status of the observer. To the mind, the observer self-evidently is... The place where she/he is, is the mind. This apparent tautology has a wonderful cause…
Let’s explore the territory in which this self – this ‘me’ – lives and operates. This can prove deeply revealing!
We don’t have an issue with the assumption that we are contained inside something. We feel no sense of restraint, no confinement. Why is this? In a sense there is actually comfort in this. The internal ‘me’ has never been anywhere else. The mind as we know it has grown up here in this space. Its home is here. Its exploration of the world out-there is via the senses. The senses are the experiential nature of the body; hence we associate our self with the body.
And we don’t need to interfere with that in our explorations. This exercise is not about unsettling the mind, far from it… It is about a wider empowerment. But it is important to know that the mind did not precede everything…
But we do want to explore the ‘architecture’ of this core of what it is to be us.
We can think of the mind as simply the brain, but that is like pointing to all the parts of a disassembled car and saying: ‘that’s all there is to driving’. The act of driving brings together the mechanism, purpose and joy of the whole endeavour. Simply put, it gives it life.
This process of synthesis is one of the main pointers to the ‘spiritual’. It shows us an alignment of conditions and intent that add up to ‘more than the sum of the parts’. This is a classic hallmark of the phenomenon of emergence, which is found in all natural systems, such as the flying formation adopted by a flock of migrating birds.
Can we even be aware of our own minds? This is one of the key questions, and it has deep implications. We can watch our own minds at work: following the logic of our lifetime’s nurture and training; some of which is positive; some negative… But we can watch it at work. There is, though, something deeper than the mind, and there lies one of the deepest of surprises…
We can watch the process of choosing pleasure…or not. If, for example, we are dieting for our health, we can see that chocolate eclair and make a willed decision not to have it. Our body might make us feel bad at that point, increasing our sense of hunger, but our will can carry us through. With repetition, such acts of will create a resolute response mechanism, the opposite of a weakness.
This is particularly true with things for which we have strong likes and dislikes. If we look closely, and ahead of the usual ‘programmed’ reaction, we can be witness to our working of preference and prejudice: a powerful tool for our inner journey of reorientation.
Becoming aware of our thinking is instructive. Usually, we think in words – itself a surprise to those studying themselves. Hunger and fears, for example, don’t originate in words, but our minds may have a ‘discussion’ once they are registered.
There are many more examples of the activity of the mind, but to summarise: it is a set of mental and emotional triggers and responses that act as a collective automated response to the challenges, rewards and impulses of our lives. The mind is the vehicle that extends our deepest consciousness into the world.
What that deepest consciousness is, and how much ‘me’ it has in it, we will consider soon.
Core to any work with the mind is to see that such responses need not be automatic, nor even followed at all. This kind of life-system looks for the hidden spaces between stimuli and reaction; then teaches how to enter and use them as a buffer against habitual behaviour. Making things conscious is the heart of inner health.
That process can be the start of a fascinating and deep road (really several roads) leading inwards to show how these responses were formed from things in early life that were not fulfilled. Using this, we can see how what we consider ‘me’ came about. This is not regression. It uses certain archetypes to help us in technique of inner encounters in a specific lanscape.
Psychology confines itself to the restoration of a healthy ego. Schools like the Silent Eye are not so constrained. They use a mixture of traditional and modern methods to build intellectual and emotional ‘bridges and roads’ through the personality and back to the truly spiritual in our natures.
Once the ‘real map’ of the human is seen, the consciousness changes in harmony with that vision. This is not a process of intellect, though the mind plays its part. The intellect cannot conceive of what precedes it.
The mind is brought into being by an inner spiritual process, one native to the human but unseen behind personality. We can change this…
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Only the Eye that Sees
by Steve Tanham
Without the autumn
I could not know the spring.
The fulsome green, harmonic
To elegance of death by colour,
Made crisp by failing light.
–
Without the winter
I could not know the summer’s
Smile, written in the dance of life
Zenith’d with burning Sun
Born, frozen in the still of ice.
–
Without the spring
I could not know the autumn’s
Parting glory, life turned mellow
The going down and rising up
The pendulum of nature.
–
We are both one and legion
We are the single eye
That sees the many changes.
–
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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When colour drains…
by Steve Tanham
There are a few weeks of the year, in the early stages of autumn, when the combination of soft light, pale sun and changing foliage creates quite magical landscapes here in South Lakeland.
This is particularly true of the small, quiet lanes on the southern outskirts of Kendal, home to the celebrated ‘basket of eggs’ landscape that marks the final stages of the glacial flows which carved out the Lake District.
The hedgerows are freshly cut; ‘topped’ as the farmers say in these parts. This provides a stark, raised surface for photography which – like the ancient stone walls – is perfect to lead the eye into the distance.
Colour is the key…or rather the muting of it…
The exuberance of summer has gone. The few remaining patches of it no longer form part of a coherent whole. But the ‘pale fade’ that it leaves behind is lovely, in itself, and with the correct camera placing, can be revealed in its own beauty.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Mind: mover of the Soul (1)
by Steve Tanham
Science has its definitions of what the mind is, yet, for most of us, we don’t even consider the question; driven by the fact that what would do the ‘considering’ is the mind itself.
It’s like one of those logical traps, like why it’s a bad idea to saw off the branch of the overgrown apple tree that you’re sitting on… Can the mind be aware of itself? Being self-aware; or aware of oneself is a key component of any consideration of our full being.
The mind is firmly established as ‘me’. So powerful is this identity that we can even use the mind to interfere with our vital functions – like breathing, for example.
The instinctive functions, like fear, so this for us as well, but they are developed to take their own actions – though we can interfere with that if we choose.
Our will operates through the mind. We consider a course of action, test its safety with memory, debate it ‘in our minds’ then make a decision, passing that to the agents of action within our mental and physical makeup. In the early stages of the action we are operating at the microsecond level to check that what we thought we had initiated is actually coming to pass.
‘Like turning the corner, when driving the car…’
The mind is mainly concerned with the world – the ‘out-there’. The autonomic nervous system takes care of most of our internals, including our mind’s infliction of various poisons, like alcohol. We are complex beings, and pleasure (and avoidance of pain) makes up a whole chunk of our identity.
What unsettles the mind is if we ask the question “Who am I”, and do so holding the possibility that our minds may not be the whole story.
This may seem trite: “I’m me of course!” That should be the answer.
But it’s not…
In simple terms, we cannot find ourselves in the mind. No amount of searching will tease out a place or a ‘thing’ that we can fully endorse as ‘me’.
We can clearly feel the mind as the place of intent…. But it’s not the place ‘where we be’. It’s not the oasis of our Being…
The way the mind deals with the ‘out-there’ is by allocating everything the status of an object. We are used to the idea of objects: individual things that are separate from each other… and, most importantly, from us.
We spend our lives refining the nature of our library of external objects. The four-legged thing that we sit on as a child becomes a universal ‘set’ of things called chairs. Once learned we can recognise not just that the wooden object over there is a chair but also what its function is – no matter what the shape or material… I’ll just go and have a snooze in that armchair rather than at the kitchen table.
It’s seamless. But the mind is clever enough to know that such categories of objects must always be capable of extension. The chair that the man in the car workshop is sitting on turns out to have three legs rather than four. Yet he sits safely… Note to mind: chairs for sitting on don’t necessarily have four legs, and some of them are called stools.
The deepest journey we can take with our mind is to get it to quieten itself. It will object this because it ‘knows’ that if it’s not running and constantly interpreting the world for ‘us’ Then we are in danger. There’s a paradox in that, as you may have spotted.
But perhaps we are not in danger if we drop beneath the mind, at least most of the time. It may be that under the object-based vigilance there lies a layer of true self, a place from which the mind actually arises, like a giant wave rises up from the sea, yet never ceases to be part of it…
This might just be a place of real and not false identity. It may be a place and a self whose authenticity could never be questioned…. Because its nature is undeniably real, and does not have to be built by logic, learned and remembered as important.
It may simply – with all the power in the universe, BE.
In this series of posts, we will examine this possibility, and find a ‘richness beneath and within’ that we may never have considered.
and find a ‘richness beneath and within that we may never have considered…
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Maple Quay
by Steve Tanham
There’s a giant maple tree on the quayside at Waterhead on the northern shores of Lake Windermere. Waterhead is the most northerly ferry stop on this, England’s biggest lake. Boats from Waterhead link the town of Ambleside to Bowness and Lakeside at the southern tip of the lake.
We call it ‘Maple Quay’ though it has no official name. In the autumn, the tree is so beautiful that visitors to Lake Windermere take the ferry from Bowness with it on their agenda for the typical ‘flying visit’. The fact that it is only a short distance from the ferry point makes it a must-see.
Many don’t realise that the town of Ambleside – one of the most popular in the Lakes – is a thirty minute walk further north from ‘its’ ferry point, though there is an ancient looking bus to transport those who don’t wish to, or can’t walk. For these folks, who typically have less than an hour to spend at Waterhead, the famous maple is a key part of their time spent here in the Autumn.
The two photos of a tourist map of Lake Windermere show the location of the lake’s towns.
When I took the photograph, last Sunday, an American visitor was balanced, precariously, on a concrete fence post across the road – risking life and limb to get a good shot of the tree and, the lake and the hills beyond.
The tree was planted over 40 years ago, and occupies a beautiful position halfway between the ferry pier and the ruins of the Roman fort. The stonework around its base has been progressively improved.
For us, the Autumn is not complete without a visit to ‘Maple Quay’.
The ‘Maple Quay’ tree will feature in the Silent Eye’s May 2023 weekend: ‘The Waters of Life’, a mystical journey based on the landscapes around Lake Windermere and several crossings of the lake, itself…
Contact us on: rivingtide@gmail.com for details.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Ark of the Berry
by Steve Tanham
When Winter’s bite
Makes clear it’s first and full intent
There comes to pass a holy summer berry,
Both food and ark of life renewed.
Which eaten and dispersed, begins
The dark and bitter climb, through
Root and branch and stem
Until within the flower of year to come
It finds itself remade but one
—————————————
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Eye, aye and I…
by Steve Tanham
One of the many paradoxes of modern mysticism is that there is no good word to describe the ‘sense of self’ that we all have, but which does not appear to be shareable as meaning.
It is as though the real meaning of ‘me’ always slips away when we try to define it. We point to ourselves and say, “Well, it’s just me!”
And it is… in the most fundamental way possible – to which we will return at the end of this piece. But first we need to try to explore this sense of self that is at the heart of our lives and yet which we so take for granted.
We have not always have this overriding sense of ‘me’. In my own life, I remember quite clearly when this ‘self’ happened -when I knew that ‘something’ had entered my consciousness (or had become my consciousness) and transformed me; connecting all the bits into a much more purposeful ‘being’.
This transition is usually experienced around the age of seven, though that can vary. I was standing in the back-yard of my grandparents’ house in Bolton. I was staring at the great stone blocks that formed the ‘fence’ between our house and the next one up the steep street of terraced houses. At that time my Victorian great-grandmother was still alive, though I didn’t see much of her. My beloved grandma and she did not get on…
Decades later, I was talking to my mother on one of our frequent walks. She was telling me about her own similar experience of the ‘entry of self’… and she said the words ‘in the backyard’. I stopped her to ask which backyard, realising that this could be a ‘spooky’ moment. She said matter of factly that she meant their house – my grandparent’s house.
Fascinated, I described exactly where this had happened to me… and she confirmed it was the exact same place it had happened to her…
What does our sense of self do? For one thing, it makes us into a person. A person is someone who has a personality – created by some mixture of innate traits and self-development: astrological mapping may play a part here, but there are other systems of understanding personality as described by modern developmental psychology.
Either way, the journey of the infant to ‘self-hood’ is a journey of reaction to the world. From birth, we encounter things we need, we love and those we are frightened of. They all contribute to what becomes our personality; which, in turn, forms the basis of our adulthood.
Thus equipped, we step, often naively, into the adult world, where we usually get our ‘rough’ edges’ knocked off so that we can become a useful and adult member of society.
But that inner sense of self doesn’t seem to change…
We have all heard older relatives say, “I don’t feel any older. My body may be so, but what’s inside doesn’t feel a day older than my youth”
What’s inside is that ‘crystallised’ self that came into existence at the end of our childhood, and before our hormones began to drag us into the world of the adult.
Does this have spiritual significance? In the deepest sense, this is the story of the ‘spiritual’ retold in modern language.
Because that strong sense of my-self, our identity, patterns our lives, yet is not based upon our fundamental layer of experience. It is all built on the halfway-house of the personality.
Our experience of the world is one of developing awareness. We cannot descend a ladder of consciousness and find a layer of shared awareness; it is unique to each one of us. Language helps us share experience, but the raw stuff of fundamental awareness cannot be shared, simply because its nature is to BE.
There is no getting beneath it. If we follow any deep enquiry into our selves, we come up against this fact: the deepest part of our aliveness is simply a peaceful world of uncritical awareness. Whatever we truly are, its single property is being a point of awareness.
Whether that ‘point’ really exists is a conjecture beyond the scope of this blog. But it is a question to be asked…
In the body, the personality feels contained within the biological structure. This gives rise to the sense of self: bodies are separate, therefore so is the self. And so the self develops, an island of itself, as we have seen. Self gives us a strong personality which we need for success in life. But balance is important. We all know, or know of, ‘egoic monsters’ in our own and public life.
Mystical development is the ‘road back’ to a renewed relationship with that fundamental awareness and its ‘loving kindness’ deep within us.
Mystical simply means a re-experience of these deep mysteries of our selves. Seen this way, our entire life has been a partnership – not a struggle – between the egoic ‘must exist as me’ personality and the never far away urging of something deeper, something not born of life, but with which we came into the world.
This inner voice, to which we often reply ‘aye’ or ‘no’ makes no judgement on us. Our egoic natures do that all by themselves with guilt and stored ‘scoldings’.
The inner urging is always towards unity of the self – the soul, if you like, though there are a hundred definitions of what the soul is.
Somewhere along our road, we realise that what actually looks out on the world is that original being. What reacts to that world is the personality. When, unhappy with the shallowness of our personality, we begin to shift ‘who we are’ in the direction of the inner awareness, we loosen the ties of the world, and begin to re-evaluate the truly fundamental nature of what lies beyond the ‘me’ as we know it
Nothing is lost in this journey that wasn’t illusion in the first place….
If we are ready – and this is what mystical and mystery schools do – we might find ourselves grasping that moment and taking our ‘selves’ to a place where they are ‘washed and made ready’ to greet the forgotten twin… who may just have been at the heart of our lives all along.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Lines on Stone
by Steve Tanham
It’s amusing to watch your own progress with a pastime, hobby, or even a skill. I was new to creative photography a few years ago, and set about it with the usual Gemini enthusiasm.
It doesn’t take long before you’ve taken hundreds of shots, some of them credible renderings of beautiful things – like our local River Kent, or buildings, or even skies – which seem so ‘big’ in this Cumbrian landscape…
But after a while, it’s other things that capture your attention, often unexpectedly.
Currently, my ‘eye’ is drawn to what I think of as ‘lines on stone’. The above monochrome image is an example. The symmetry of the lines of solid railings, merging into the curves at the end of the jetty is fascinating.
I have set of software filters that enhance the monochrome and give it soft edges and a dreamy look. The distant line of bright clouds on the horizon helps pull the eyes beyond the end of the structure. Above all, the brightness of the foreground rail draws your interest into the picture.
Your eye becomes trained in hunting out what you might find attractive. Many times I will take a shot without knowing why I find it interesting – but knowing that I do.
Later, sometimes on magnifying the image, I find what it was that the mind saw; as though it has its own grasp of interesting patterns and symmetries – which I think we all have.
We just need to develop it…
I think I’ll call this one ‘End of the Line’. Double-meanings can be fun.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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The afternoon sun was bright in the sky. We were walking back along Morecambe’s Stone Jetty – one of mum’s favourite short walks.
We had just passed the half-way point by the old cafe, when I noticed we were approaching one of the tallest lamp posts – and the sun was very close to it’s line in the sky.
I had been looking for a ‘noir’ image to go with a short story. I had a flash of inspiration that if I aligned the lamp with the sun behind it, the brightness would look like it came from the lamp, itself.
By converting the bright day image to monochrome, the contrasts assumed a very different tone… and I had an image full of unknowns and menace…
I’ll keep it for a matching story!
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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