Stuart adds some mystical insight to his re-creation of the Gilgamesh story…
*
…You begin to hear distant sounds…
The hub-bub of city streets…
At first faint…
Grows gradually louder…
Market sellers ply their wares…
Children shout and laugh at their games…
And behind the city sound-scape a lyre weaves its reedy resonances…
*
You find yourself amid a thriving thoroughfare of Uruk…
The sun is high in the sky overhead…
The sand beneath your sandaled feet is warm and dusty…
You are moving against the flow of people who are heading for the central precincts of the Great Walled City…
They babble excitedly to each other…
Straining to get ahead…
They are caught in the moment, focused
And drawn to whatever attraction is pulling them centrally…
*
But you are heading towards one of the huge pylon gates that break the massive stone blocks of the city walls…
Soon you find yourself alone…
The clamour of the city-folk fading behind you…
View original post 151 more words
Share this:
A Strong Right Arm – written in response to Diana Wallace Peach’s Myths of the Mirror #writingprompt for May 2019.
When Jackson de Ville came to, he was seated and Electra was straddling him. The knife was in his clenched fist and there seemed to be some mental compulsion preventing him from letting it go. She moved forward, so that the blade began to impale her soft flesh…
For a second he had to fight to remember how he got there…
Jackson’s bodyguard work on the inner planet Folis 12 was supposed to be the climax of his distinguished career as a cop. ‘Cop’ was an old word now, but it had stuck. The Enforcement, for which Jackson worked – had been on Electra’s tail for an age… now the undercover detective and his sidekick, Brocco, were closing in for the kill.
The woman giving the talk was the fabled Dr Rosenthal. Specialist in the new meta-science of system balancing, she could draw an audience from across the explored galaxy. Her ‘systems’ were complete solar systems, within which her new family of non-linear equations could adjust an entire set of planetary orbits, bringing about harmonic changes so that each planet could be farmed, using the energies of the others…
It wasn’t rocket science. It was way beyond rocket science. He remembered whistling with admiration as the invited crowd of VIPs surged towards the thick quartz observation window, flanked by the two gothic-looking towers on either side. The whole building looking down on the desert below from the edge of a rocky escarpment.
Dr Rosenthal had turned and motioned he and Brocco into one of the small towers where she said they’d get a better view of internal and external proceedings with a wider angle. They had been assigned to protect the genius lady, who turned out to be far more attractive than Jackson had expected. He could see by the grin that Brocco, found her so, too…
That perfume…. rich and expensive. Where had he….?
Rosenthal’s voice could be heard closing her speech from the adjacent chamber. Jackson stood in the doorway, scanning the audience.
“So, honoured guests, please continue to look down on this desert that is about to be transformed into high yield agricultural land for food.” She moved towards the door to the chamber containing Jackson and Brocco, still speaking. “I will make our final adjustments and rejoin you as you watch our very first act of Solar System Terrafarming…
And then the fragrant lady they were protecting was sliding into their strange little tower and Jackson’s alarm bells were drowning out coherent thought. He was startled when she pushed past them both and hit the middle set of buttons on the chamber’s small console.
There was a roaring noise and the room shook. At first, Jackson thought the tower had tilted to allow for a better view, but then he saw that they were climbing into the sky. A mile below, three large black machines surged into the desert plain and spaced themselves out in a huge triangle. Within seconds each had spawned smaller replicas whose role was to fill in the sides of what was becoming a vast stockade. He gasped as the interior became a sea of self-replicating drilling machines…
By then, his head was hurting and his heavy body was clinging to the edge of the console, trying not to fall to the floor. His last view out of the window was of a desert plain thousands of kilometres wide, filled with frantically-moving black machinery.
Then he hit the floor and someone strong whose perfume was beautiful but deadly was rolling him into an acceleration bag, which inflated just as he began to black out. The tiny chamber was now dark. As he lost consciousness he saw the blackness of space through the perspex panel over his face.
————
He moaned. His muscles were stretched taut. A warm body next to his ran its fingers over his skin in response.
“Welcome back…” it said.
He shivered.
“Don’t worry, she was already dead.” The fingers played and teased with his right nipple.
“Who?” he managed with a hoarse whisper.
“Who – the dead Dr Rosenthal or who – your captor?”
“Shit,” said Jackson.
“Only me,” said the perfume he now knew was Electra Eckberg’s. Her disguise had been perfect!
“Shit,” he cursed, again. “Didn’t you get enough last time!”
“Petulant…” she said, kissing where the fingers had teased.
Her voice changed, becoming hard business. “Sadly, we can’t take another vacation.”
Jackson fought the urge to tell her what he thought of her sick humour, but she put a soft finger over his lips. The conditioned response kicked in and he turned mute. He hated himself for it. It was a form of hypnosis – like the effect of the deadly perfume.
“I’m dying,” she said softly. “Really dying. Folis 12 is now generating more oil than humanity needs for the next twenty years… Don’t hold it against me, I had to fund my retirement and I’m very good with molecular machines…”
He swallowed, wondering, irrationally, if swallowing was allowed. His heart was racing. He sucked in air and fought to be calm. The fingers stroked his skin. No pain so far…
“Brocco?” he asked in a whisper.
“Thanks for the sympathy, bitch!” she barked. Then, softer, “He didn’t make it. Wasn’t expecting two of you and I only had one acceleration pouch.” Her strong fingers squeezed. He winced, swallowing.
“Don’t tell me I was wrong…”
She slid her body off the cold metal table. The perfume – dark hybrid roses spiced with opium at three in the morning: she had made him learn it when he was at his most unhinged – walked around his head.
Then came the whirring noises. He looked up to see a canopy of tiny drills sliding over his body.
“Electra, please.” He was begging. Six foot four of total muscle. All begging.
“I could have killed you a long time ago. Stop being such a bloody baby.”
But it didn’t stop him screaming, even though the million sources of pain were more like tiny electric shocks than agony.
After a while he blacked out. When he came to, he was seated and she was straddling him. The knife was in his clenched fist and there seemed to be some mental compulsion preventing him from letting it go. She moved forward, so that the tip of the blade impaled her soft flesh.
Lights flashed outside the tiny escape craft.
“Where are we?” he shouted at her, seeing tiny drops of blood. Knowing she wasn’t kidding – she was dying…
“Akkatura,” she hissed.
“The orbiting pirate station?”
“Yes,” she managed.
“And you think a cop will be welcome here!?”
Her hand came up to pull his neck. “You’ll see… now kiss me,” The whisper faded to a tiny “one last time…”
He couldn’t help it. He was alive, even if his flesh was screaming. She hadn’t killed him. He bent forward and did as she commanded, sliding the blade home as their lips met.
The taste was bitter sweet. Like her perfume. The loss of consciousness was instantaneous. The lip gloss had begun its work…
He woke in a strange but opulent room. Hours had passed, he could tell from his beard.
“Good morning, Mr de Ville,’ said the robot voice. You are safe and one of our guests. Your account is pre-settled. You can leave when you wish but a rather large amount of money is conditional on you staying here for a short while…”
He looked around, then noticed a light blinking on the room’s console. “The late Ms Eckberg wished to you to have every…” the voice hesitated, seeking the right word. “…comfort while you recovered from your operation.”
Operation! His head was screaming as he ran to the bathroom, remembering the rig of tiny drills. He moaned as he caught sight of his body in the mirror. He had be re-engineered… A complex mass of electronics and energy cells lined his right torso, but the biggest change was his right arm, which appeared to be completely bionic.
“You bitch!,” he hurled at the image. “You tormenting bitch… I hope you went straight to hell and burn there…”
He watched in horror as his right hand began to climb in slow motion up his flesh, in what was obviously a silent parody of cyber-movement. When the digits reached his nipple, they tweaked it. At the same time a familiar and perfumed voice said in his brain, “Now, I hope we’re not going to hurt each other, Jackson…”
© Stephen Tanham
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.
The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.
Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.
Share this:
+ #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Fear, Journey of the hero, Life and Death, Love, Lust, Mindfulness, Mystery Play, Mystery Schools, Mystical ritual drama, Myth, myths and spirituality, Sex, Sexual Force, Soul, soul in body, Spiritual use of sex force, Spirituality, Stream of Consciousness, Sumerian myths
Gilgamesh descending (2)
by Steve Tanham
I enter the temple at the head of the twin columns of the Dancers of Fate. Those of the kingdom enter behind their King in silent reverence as we pass the Guardian and bow our respects.
Alone, but knowing they follow, I cross the centre of the exotic floor and move towards the east of the temple. The gold-draped chair is waiting. I turn and stand, watching the precise formation of Fate Dancers peel away left and right, to literally flow down the circumference of the large circle that is the enneagram; the heart of this temple of the mysteries.
All wait for the King. I take a deep breath before beginning. He is waiting in the space around the golden chair… The familiar feel of an autocratic king from thousands of years ago.
I realise that I am the break in his continuity. Settling into the seated vessel, once more, this ancient king breaks with tradition and gazes across to look at the woman who is half human, half goddess – Ninsun, his mother. The memory is still fresh in his mind: the dream of the rock that fell from the sky to the ground, the way it was adored – the way he hugged and loved it! His strong body curls with the strangeness of it; the embarrassment of how he knelt before her as in a trance, asking her to tell him what it meant…
A friend, Ninsun had said. Even a man capable of being a brother! He was to come into my life… I can feel the King’s astonishment, even though I know he is cuniform words in clay from nearly three thousand years ago. And then the separation leaves us… and there is just Gilgamesh the King on his large throne, whose arms curl up into two wooden hands that hold his beloved sword. He is calm… purposeful. But the most powerful man in the world knows that world is changing.
He was beloved of the Gods, he knew. Why else had the world fallen at his feet? Surely, he had nothing to fear.
Now, there is no more time to indulge the mystery. The women are dancing again and he must watch, captivated. The women known as the Fate Dancers had devised these movements for his pleasure, though he divined the hidden hand of the gods in the way it stroked his heart, like a lyre whose music was not heard, but felt.
Everyone in the royal palace loved the hypnotic flow of the Fates’ dance. Shamhat had even petitioned him to let them make its gliding patterns permanent in the floor of the royal chamber. And he had agreed; at a great cost to the royal purse… for the dancers, but most of all for her. For Shamhat.
But that had been before she refused his advances, saying she had served her time and no longer answered to him but to the Divine Council, alone. His fingers grip the blade of his sword. No other circumstance in the world could have frustrated him like this! The Fate Dancers dance on… unperturbed.
“Shamhat!” He spits out the word. The High Priestess’s name etches a bitter taste on his tongue… Before him, like flickers of half-seen light, the Fate Dancers maintain the perfection of their movements; but Gilgamesh, with his hawk-like vision, sees their eyes flicker, before, smiling, his fingertips bid them continue.
Shamhat! He would make her pay for her public refusal to share her bed with the God King. But it would have to be subtle. Like him, she was partly God, partly human… and clever.
He looks down from his throne at the elegant and beautiful movements across the glistening white floor of his chamber. The Fate Dancers’ feet follow a pattern of lines that intersect the large circle at nine points. Three of them are formed into a triangle bounded by golden stars set into the white crystals. The other six lines intersect like the ghostly pattern of a gemstone and their intersections with the circle are marked with stars of dark blue lapis lazuli.
All this had been created for Shamhat, working – he now saw – to aid in this strange contest of the mind and body with which she saw fit to challenge his authority. But he loved the movements of the dancers. So much so that he could feel his world shifting each time they began to flow across the magical glyph before him.
There would be time to fix this, he thought to himself, settling back into his throne and reaching for his golden cup of mead.
He must have dozed off… Before him, the floor design glitters in the flickering light of the tallow candles. A rough man dressed in furs kneels at the edge of the court and he could sense another behind him. Gilgamesh reaches for his sword, but the vizier’s hand stops him, gently.
“My apologies, King Gilgamesh, I sought not to disturb your rest. There is no threat.”
Gilgamesh lets go the grip on his sword. “That is a dangerous place to stand, even for a royal vizier!”
The vizier bows and points at the kneeling supplicant. “He has news we felt you would wish to know, especially in these… uncertain times.”
Gilgamesh can taste the dawning of the new in the air all around him.
“Speak, man!” he shouts at the trapper. “If what you say is true, let us have no ceremony. What is it you have seen?”
“Why, I have seen a giant, my king!”
The king laughs, refreshed, relaxed and alert. He is amused. Good-naturedly, he tells the trapper that he has been listening to tavern stories. The man protests and the king is about to dismiss him as a fool when he realises that the description of the powerful and fleet wild man is remarkably close to how he, the king, would be described by a stranger, had he lived from the land.
“There is truth in your voice,” Gilgamesh concludes. Reluctantly, he asks the trapper why this has such importance that he risks his life coming to the royal palace to report it.
“My Lord,” says the trembling man, “he could be your very twin.”
Gilgamesh takes a breath and gazes upwards, letting it out slowly. No-one can see his smile.
Time passes. The royal chamber is empty, apart from the king. The tallow candles have burned low. They are making sputtering noises in their flickering death. Gilgamesh follows the spirals of soot high into the dimness of the chamber.
He is pleased with himself. The trapper has been despatched to find the high priestess, who will be told that she is to use her divine arts to seduce and civilise the wild twin. He knows that this action will open up a new sea of possibilities, but he does not care.
All that matters is that he will have vengeance on the woman he used to love…
Other parts in this series:
©Stephen Tanham
Lord of the Deep, the Silent Eye’s 2019 April workshop, was created by Stuart France, assisted by Sue Vincent.
This narrative is a personal journey through that ritual drama in the persona of Gilgamesh.
Header image by Sue Vincent, copyright the Silent Eye.
Stephen Tanham is a director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.
The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.
Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.
From Sue, the inner, human story of the Lord of the Deep workshop…
“It is,” said Steve, not knowing quite how true his words would prove to be, “a weekend for heroes.” While the ancient story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu was originally penned in the grand, heroic vein, our own retelling and adaptation would have to rely on more modest means in order to succeed. Ingenuity, intent and imagination would transform a bare room into a window on a distant past. Colour would evoke the heat of the rich, desert city of Uruk. Costumes and props would suggest, rather than recreate, an era… but the real magic that transforms an empty space into a working temple is the people with whom you share it. And, before we share the story of our workshop weekend, there are heroes other than Gilgamesh and Enkidu who must be acknowledged.
It is difficult to find the words to express my utter admiration and gratitude to everyone who…
View original post 767 more words
Share this:
+ #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Fear, Journey of the hero, Life and Death, Love, Lust, Mindfulness, Mystery Play, Mystery Schools, Myth, myths and spirituality, Sex, Sexual Force, Soul, soul in body, Spiritual use of sex force, Spirituality, Stream of Consciousness, Sumerian myths
Gilgamesh descending (1)
by Steve Tanham
Julius Caesar, speaking after winning an important battle in Asia Minor, is quoted as saying ‘I came, I saw, I conquered…’
The same cannot be said for Gilgamesh the King – one of Julius Caesar’s mighty empire-building forebears, who ruled the land of Sumer from the city of Uruk in the southernmost region of Mesopotamia. The story of King Gilgamesh may or may not be based upon fact. Its importance to our lives – and probably survival – is due to it being an unusual kind of story: one that contains the power to initiate inner change in the human mind and heart.
The epic of Gilgamesh was written down in fragments, beginning 2,500 years ago. It is a mysterious tale, and was seen as ideal for adaptation to the Silent Eye’s purposes by the writing team of Stuart France and Sue Vincent (France and Vincent).
Planes, trains and automobiles. Friday, April 26th finally arrives and an excited group assembles at the Nightingale Centre in the tiny village of Great Hucklow – a gem within the Derbyshire hills. Stuart had chosen the epic of Gilgamesh two years prior as the basis for the 2019 Silent Eye workshop. A great deal of work had been put in by he and Sue to bring it to life. Now, we were costumed, breathing deeply, silent and lined up for entry into what would become our emotional and spiritual home for the next two and a half days…. The word ‘intense’ is appropriate, but not sufficient.
Where Caesar enjoyed conquest, the Silent Eye’s retelling of the story of Gilgamesh begins with failure – the failure of the King to persuade his former lover to sleep with him. She is Shamhat – the magical and sexually skilled high-priestess of Uruk; Uruk the city of gold and tall walls, rebuilt by the purposeful hands of the King, himself – rebuilt so that what is within can be safe… The children sleep safely in their beds, but…
Within a mystical play of this nature, the key words always have meanings beyond their obvious ones…. both must fit the story and, ultimately, carry us through into a new perspective. When that transformation is done within a group understanding, the voyage across the emotional ocean is to a new reality.
One reading of the original texts of the legend of Gilgamesh will show that the modern world did not invent graphic sex. The potency of sexual force was known and deeply explored by that ancient society – as it was across so much of the ancient world in a time before the censoring authority of Christianity began to bend the original meaning of the word ‘evil’. The cost of this crushing of the predominantly feminine power was that we lost the living presence of the divine feminine and our priestesses – and the world was a poorer and less compassionate place.
Shamhat was the priestess of that ancient place – and, allegorically, would call upon her sexual force within the play to great effect. But, she begins our story by denying it to Gilgamesh, an act that demonstrates to those present that there is something very wrong with their iconic relationship…
Gilgamesh has laboured hard to make Uruk safe.
But, in Stuart’s words laid before us in the script, the children of Uruk are not entirely safe… They ‘cry themselves to sleep at night’. Their vulnerability is not sexual, though; it is of the soul.
Their mighty king has conquered all, beginning with restoring his own place to the throne, lost after the premature death of his great father – a man he barely knew.
Gilgamesh can and does have everything he needs, including his pick of the first night of lovemaking with every bride on her wedding night. In our own, Norman-derived history we know it as the ‘droit de seigneur’; and it was an enduring statement of the abuse of feudal male power for thousands of years after Gilgamesh strode the walls of Uruk in his lonely anguish.
This man, this king, has nothing to fear. The whole world bows before him… except Shamhat, who thus becomes the ‘thing’ he wants the most.
This was the backdrop for Silent Eye’s annual workshop: Lord of the Deep. Possibly the most intense three days I have ever lived through – and not by choice. Despite many attempts on my part (and Stuart’s, once he realised I was serious) to find another to take it on, I ended up playing the role of this doomed king. Gilgamesh is descending in the title of this series of blogs – borrowed from its use in astrology – because his life is about to descend into a private hell on earth.
Those familiar with the spiritual and psychological work done in a ‘temple of the mysteries’ will know the intensity that builds, as each stage of the working is brought from idea to breath to reality.
Gilgamesh, mighty and all-powerful ruler of the fabled city of Uruk was angry. The children were not sleeping peacefully in their beds, and the forces of chaos were about to (metaphorically) clash with the quiet peace of that Derbyshire village. To enter into these workings is to be changed… there is no escaping that result.
It had begun… and none of us really knew where it was going to end. A script is only a part of what actually happens on these occasions. It was not a question of being surrounded by ill-wishers – quite the opposite. It was a matter of knowing what lay ahead as the emotional journey began. I would need those friends around me, even though Gilgamesh the character appeared to have few of them.
When you undertake such a role, you have to give yourself over to it; letting its nature emerge and giving it a real home. Effectively, each player becomes a vessel for the inner story. Once that inner story is begun there is no let up – not if you want to do justice to the transformative nature of the weekend.
So, now – reliving that Friday – we shift to the living present… and pick up the bound scripts or digital tablets within which the two-hundred pages of our immediate future are inscribed. There begins music that pulls at the heart, then the courtiers pass the palace Guardian and file into the temple room behind their revered King Gilgamesh. A breath; a final glance at the opening words. Gilgamesh is angry… I breathe even more deeply; I have no idea why this emotion is so intense. But his existential lava flows into my own soul the minute I begin speaking… and my voice changes, all by itself.
Run, children, run.
©Stephen Tanham
Header image by Sue Vincent, copyright the Silent Eye.
Stephen Tanham is a director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.
The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.
Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.
Share this:
+ #Silenti, Collie dogs, Consciousness, Mindfulness, Places and Prose, Silent Eye School, Spirituality, Stream of Consciousness
“The best day, ever” in Eden
by Steve Tanham
They were watching me from the side of a steep bank that frames the inner edge of a huge surface of concrete which will soon be Eden North, replicating – but with differences – the internationally famous Eden Project in Cornwall.
The space used to be Bubbles swimming pool and, before that, was the renowned Super Swimming Stadium, the centre of so many children’s holidays before their parents discovered you could get more reliable sunshine than Morecambe’s on a suddenly affordable Spanish Costa Brava.
They all died a kind of death, then, the Victorian seaside towns… But some of us keep the faith, if only for that steaming mug of a ‘milky coffee’ in the depths of freezing winter, when we’ve finished the dog-walk.
The two young girls. I had seen them arrive a few minutes, before – with their mother. She looked the very picture of care-worn but caring. It’s a look you see a lot in poor seaside towns… Morecambe has been a long time in the doldrums, but there is a light on the horizon; one begun by Urban Splash’s refurbishment of the Midland Hotel – a surviving Art Deco masterpiece.
We had the first night of our honeymoon there, in 2010, a year after its opening. Bernie is from Morecambe… well, actually, Heysham, its sister town a few miles to the south. It’s pronounced Hee-sham, not Hay-sham. She’s very particular about that, so I thought I’d better include it! We both love Art Deco, and had followed the hotel’s rebirth with a great deal of pleasure.
The new Eden North promises to make a great difference to this once-proud resort. It can’t happen soon, enough. The Eden people know what we have never forgotten; that across the vastness of Morecambe Bay lies the whole vista of the Lake District…
It takes a seed of something to bring true life back to a place or a person who has become sad… in body, spirit, career, in their home, in their life… Sometimes, you don’t know you have the power to do this until you find yourself equipped – often in the most unexpected way.
I looked at the frustrated collie and I threw the cheap frisbee again. The wind was behind me and defeated what little aerodynamic soundness it had. You don’t get much from the seafront beach stop for three quid. It had been two, but I decided to add another two ‘tennis’ balls to the bag so that we had a spare in case Tess (the collie) lost one. Her frustration with Dad had begun when we got to North Beach for her usual ball or frisbee session of sandy madness and discovered that the ball and chucker were still in the back of the departing Toyota, now too far away towards Sainsbury’s and shopping to call back. “Perhaps a stone or two?” I had said, weakly, into the betrayed hazel eyes, knowing the result…
Now, twenty minutes and five hundred yards further south, the cheap frisbee was suddenly seized by the wind and carried along the vast concrete expanse in a motion that I can only describe as ‘skittering’. Round and round it turned, whilst travelling at increasing speed towards the grassy boundary – within sight of the Midland Hotel.
The collie’s interest was renewed by this magical motion and, howling, she sped after it, only to snap her strong jaws over its momentarily upended motion and break it in two.
You don’t get much from the beach shop for two quid.
The two young girls were now only yards away from me – and squealing with delight at Tess’s antics. I turned to look at their joyous faces – full of simple happiness – and asked if they’d like to have a go… but I could see the disappointment as they gazed on the distant plastic ruin, now in two bits and still being blown onto the distant grass.
The tennis balls! I had forgotten those…
“Would you like a go with Tess and a tennis ball?” I asked, looking up at an anxious Mum still on the promenade. I smiled and waved, showing her that her lovely kids were in safe hands.
“Could we?” asked the eldest girl.
“Of course,” I said, delving into the bag and extracting a new tennis ball. It was offered and taken.
“We’re on holiday,” said the eldest girl.
“I’m on holiday, too,” added her younger sister, looking very proud of the fact that they were in this adventure together.
“How about you take turns,” I said, gently.
The eldest bobbed her head. The youngest almost bowed hers. Tess trotted up to her new friends, tail wagging, mightily. Things were looking up… The girls stared adoringly at the collie.
When both girls had taken a turn, the eldest offered me back the ball.
“You can have a few more goes if you like?” I said.
And that’s when it happened… The elder sister looked across at her mum and turned back to me, saying, as she danced a step, “This is the best day ever…”
I can only say that I was broken at that moment; and fought to suppress the tears that formed, not wanting to spoil their fun. That such a simple act of kindness could have brought them so much joy was so very… unexpected.
I pretended to fumble with the ball and composed myself.
“How about we have one go each and three rounds of it all?” I asked.
“That would be nine chucks!” said the elder girl, laughing at the chance to show off her arithmetic.
Nine chucks later they looked up at their mother, who was moving slowly along the prom and waving at them. She looked happy with the turn of events, though she had kept her distance.
The youngest gave me back our ball. “Thank you!’ she beamed. “We’re off to the beach, now.”
I could see the excitement on their faces at this further delight. And then I remembered the small carrier bag by my ankles.
“Do you have your beach tennis balls?” I asked, conspiratorially.
Two earnest little heads shook, negatively.
“Better take these, then,” I winked, passing them the little white bag, with its two new balls. “Go now! Your mum is waiting!”
They danced off, but the eldest turned to wave, one final time, before they took their mother’s hands.
My own young grandchildren – two girls – live in Australia. One day when they visit, I hope to bring them to see the new Eden North Project; and point down to where the barren concrete was; on the best day, ever…
©Stephen Tanham
Stephen Tanham is a director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.
The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.
Share this:
Stagshaw Garden is a sloping woodland garden of approximately eight acres. It is located on a steep slope named Skelghyll Fell on the north-eastern shores of Windermere, England’s largest lake. The area around Windermere is considered the centre of the Lake District. The word ‘Lakeland’ has become a normal way of referring, locally, to the Lake District.
Most of the Lake District is protected by the National Trust – a preservation organisation which was founded in 1897 and empowered by an Act of Parliament in the early years of the twentieth century. Beatrice Potter, the children’s author, was one of the founders of the National Trust. She lived in Lakeland and bequeathed her substantial local landholdings to the Trust at its formation.
Stagshaw Garden was created for the National Trust by Cubby Acland. The project was begun in 1959 and continued to his death in 1979.
Acland was a local travel author and a Land Agent for the National Trust. He lived in one of the country houses on the edge of what became Stagshaw Garden and was intimately familiar with the layout of Skelghyll Fell – within which the present garden was created and landscaped. The entire Wansfell Estate passed into the hands of the National Trust in 1957.
We are lucky to live in Kendal; a half-hour’s drive from the shores of Lake Windermere. Many of our relatives like to visit… Easter is popular, as the ‘coming alive’ of the local landscape is very tangible at that time.
For this Easter weekend, we had my mother and Bernie’s sister staying with us. My mother is eighty-nine and has vascular dementia. Although she has a full life – and is still independent – her attention span is short, so we try to construct days out which compensate for this and give her the happiest family memories for as long as she can retain them…
We have learned from experience that getting out early in the day is the key to a successful trip; as is filling it with a number of relatively short activities. This gives her time to relax in the afternoons, back at our house, and not get too tired by the day.
Stagshaw Garden is an easy walk (following an initial short climb) and so was an ideal choice for our morning, which called for a first visit of about an hour. Having decided this, we wrestled everyone out early and arrived just after nine-thirty, enjoying the unusually light traffic for such a popular weekend…
The garden is steep, but accessible. It follows the ravine created over millennia by the descending stream. It is famous for its shrubs, especially rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias.
From the rustic wooden gate, the path winds up to the right and begins to follow the stream valley that climbs the hill. This forms the core of the garden.
It was still before ten in the morning and the light had that special spring-like quality to it. Everything seemed extra bright, and the colours – particularly the greens – were vivid and sumptuous.
When Bernie and I retired from our former life in IT, she went back to college to qualify in horticulture – something she had always wanted to do – and now volunteers with Cumbria in Bloom, part of the RHS’ work of promoting gardens.
Neither of us had ever visited Stagshaw Garden, but it was on our list, largely because Bernie is fascinated by the kind of landscape design that moulds itself into a difficult landscape – such as a long gulley on the side of a Lakeland fell…
The trick, she explained, was to make it look completely natural; to take the visitor on a journey that looked as though its path has always been there, winding and climbing through the changing forest.
We were delighted to find a section of bluebells at the highest point of our climb. A deer also made an appearance but ran off too quickly to photograph. We had reached the limit of what Mum could cope with – but we had promised her bluebells… Their sudden appearance at this high-point made her morning.
From our partial ‘summit’, two paths led back down through the garden. The first was the way we had come. The second offered us an alternative descent which gave us an unexpected view of Cubby Acland’s former home.
Ahead lay a visit to Waterhead, a coffee and an unexpected scone with local jam and cream; followed by the ruin of a Roman Fort and a dog chasing a frisbee… but that’s probably enough for one post! A very happy but tired mother returned home by the early afternoon for her nap…
©Stephen Tanham 2020
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.
The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.
Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.
Share this:
From Jordis, a dear Companion…
Jordis Fasheh, a friend and Companion of the School, tells how she found the Silent Eye at a pivotal point in her personal journey. At the moment when the Silent Eye officially came into being, Jordis was the first to step forward and join us…
Jordis as Nephthys, Land of the Exiles, 2014
How it came to be that I joined The Silent Eye, A Modern Mystery School.
It all started when I was ten years old. A child in search of something greater than herself. If I had read an Autobiography of a Yogi at that time things may have turned out differently. But I ran away from home one day, snuck on the subway and rode to the end of the line. Not knowing what it was I was searching for, when I disembarked from the train, the first thing I asked was, “where is the nearest Church.”
View original post 1,568 more words
Share this:
+ #Cats, #FurryFives, #InnerCatPeace, #RagDollCats, Collie dogs, Rag Doll Cats, The Inner Cat, Your inner wolf
#FurryFives – Easter
by Steve Tanham
Sammy: She didn’t need to flounce off like that!
Tess: She’ll be back when she smells the lunch cooking.
Sammy: She lived with us, once, you know. She didn’t flounce off when we rescued her from the streets of Bolton! Oh, no – scoffed all my food then!
Tess: Ingrate…
Sammy: Sniff.
©Stephen Tanham
Share this:
+ #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Mystery Schools, Powers of the Mind, Silent Eye School, Spirit, Spirituality, Stream of Consciousness
The Ship
by Steve Tanham
This morning, I will drive to the family home town of Bolton, in Lancashire to collect my mother who is coming to spend Easter with us here in Cumbria.
The journey is straightforward: fifteen minutes will take me from the outskirts of Kendal to the M6 motorway, southbound. After that, at least conceptually, it’s a straight line to the intersection with the M61, which will take me south-east to within a few miles of my destination.
Yesterday, I was musing about a conversation I had with a friend where we related our lives to the voyage of a ship. For mankind, there has always been something romantic – potentially grand – about the notion of a sea voyage. My car journey this morning will be very tame compared with what the ‘ancient mariners’ faced. My car may be wobbled by high winds, but is unlikely to be blown off course. The road completely maps to the journey; I will not find myself having to navigate across strange hills and fields as I struggle to hold a course.
My ship – the vessel of the car – is designed to protect me in the event of a crash; in a way that few such vessels of the past did. And yet, at any time, the several tons of hurtling steel, glass and explosive liquid could do untold damage to others on the road. I may be safer, but the exposure to my own errors or lack of concentration is significant.
Can we compare the journey of our lives to the voyage of a ship? Is life in modern society making us more of a car than a free-sailing ship? Does that mean that where we go is completely pre-ordained by the equivalent of ‘roads’?
It’s a good question… And, often it helps to think in these stark terms…
The first question we might ask is: do we have a ship at all? Are we not simply a point of consciousness moving from a past, through a present, to a future? That is certainly how physics would describe it.
Do we really have any free will in that journey? Or does having to fit in with our world, our society, make us as conditioned as my car will be on its fixed road? Subject only to the weather, the fuel in the car, the attention I must place on the road and the behaviour of others on its length…
From a mystical perspective, we may say that we need to learn to have a ship in the first place. We have body, but that may not wholly equate to a ship. The captain of a sailing ship truly had the skills to take that vessel anywhere on the seas. He may have been under orders to adopt a certain route, but his freedom of choice was absolute.
Beneath the captain and the wood of his vessel was the ocean, a constantly changing surface beneath which he did not wish to go… Staying afloat meant playing by some hidden but very special rules learned over many centuries, if not millennia. Can we compare this to our lives?
The road of ordinary life is there to protect us. It serves us well. But we may choose a seemingly riskier path, one that leaves the road in a seemingly tiny vessel called the Self; one that has no fear of the sea and its ever-changing faces…
©Stephen Tanham
Stephen Tanham is a director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.
The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.
Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.
Share this:
Paris and Notre Dame – a very special place for Sue Vincent…
Notre Dame de Paris.
The three images of the Cathedral are photographs of postcards in my Parisian diaries.
The white dome of the Sacré-Cœur, floating like some fairy tale castle against the blackness was my very first glimpse of Paris. It was a school trip, we were no more than children… and I fell in love with the city there and then. My eyes filled with tears, my heart with memories and emotions that should not have been mine, I felt that I had come home.
We stayed at the Lycée Henri-IV, just behind the Pantheon. Sneaking out, illicitly, before breakfast, very early next morning, I found myself wandering down the Rue Mouffetard. A tramp was curled around his wine bottle in a doorway. Market stalls were being set up. Everything smelled of coffee and new bread… and I determined that one day, when I was old enough, I would…
View original post 923 more words
Share this:
+ #Poetry, Christianity and modern mysticism, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Higher Mind, Mindfulness, Mystery Schools, Silent Eye School, Spirituality
Angel of the Nought #writephoto
by Steve Tanham
I am not The Angel of the North.
I am not the cross on which.
The teacher of the power of love died.
I am the way that divides.
The awakened from the sleeping.
I am old, but younger.
Than you….
➰
© Stephen Tanham
In response to Sue Vincent’s challenge:
https://scvincent.com/2019/04/11/thursday-photo-prompt-decisions-writephoto/
You must be logged in to post a comment.