Wish you were here?
We regularly share the stories of our workshop weekends on these pages. What is impossible to share on these pages is the sense of warmth, the laughter and the camaraderie that attends these weekends. Those who come along are not all members of the Silent Eye… in fact, the majority are not. It is not a requirement. They come for the sake of friendship, companionship and a shared curiosity about the mysteries of this land and the even deeper mysteries our human lives.
Three times a year we gather for informal workshops in the landscape, exploring historic sites and the spiritual history of those who built them. Sometimes we take a more modern landscape and seek a symbolic meaning, finding ways to apply what we learn to or own daily lives. Spirituality is not a noun, but a verb…
In April, we host a different kind of workshop, using a…
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Blue #writephoto #SueVincent
Born into the illusion of separation
you thought life was a climb
to a blue heaven
until you looked below
discovering the mirror of reflection
and the path of the shadow
pointing inward
to the light
My contribution to Sue Vincent’s #writephoto challenge Blue
The Seeds of Intent
The seeds of intent by Steve Tanham:
An old friend, now sadly departed, but formative in my younger days, used to say that there were two ways to deal with ‘seeds’: one was to bury them so that they could be forgotten; the other was to plant them so that they would catch the ‘tide of happenings’.
He often spoke of the ‘seeds of intent’ and how powerful a small beginning could be, if sown in the right way. Two questions spring to mind: the first is to decide on the precise nature of the seed, itself; the other is to decide where to plant it, and in what season.
Seasons are important. Nature’s outer cycle of seed, apparent dormancy, emergence, and fruition has much to teach us about how this circle of four provides an envelope within which all types of seeds become, in turn: planted, born into a world they hope to inhabit, become children…
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Thaw #Writephoto #SueVincent
My contribution to Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompt #thaw:
The flat rock remembered her sacrifice, but the land remembered only her love. Each spring the hills called her spirit out of the body of Earth and welcomed her home. The legend of the green maiden was known far and wide. It was told to children around fireplaces before the first thaw. Passed down through the generations.
Some say she lived hundreds of years ago. Others said thousands. And, some say she never really died. That the rock had given her eternal life, and not death.
The travelers who spotted her were always alone. She joined the ones who sat for a time in rest on the flat stone. As they gazed at the faraway hills, her green light would appear at their feet. Ah, the faires are out, spring must be on its way! The traveler would remark, unaware of the journey that awaited.
Then the green light would vanish and the brook that fell from the land of the giants would sing with her laughter.
Another one is coming, she called out to the sleeping hills. Time to wake up!
Into the Dark Earth
Another perspective on the Solstice. This one from Stephen Tanham:
A light in the darkness
A beautifully honest Solstice post by Sue Vincent:
I have awoken with a fire in my belly, a good fire, one that speaks of life, a beacon in the dark, and if I place it on a high enough peak perhaps you can see it, perhaps it can light a flame in your heart, and when you feel its warmth, then you may be able to light one too, to pass it on, for each of us can be a light in the dark for someone else, and someone else, and someone else, until there is a chain of golden light shining far and wide connecting us one to another. © Leah Bracknell.
Today will see the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, the shortest day and the longest night, when shadows close around us. The cold moon is little more than a silver sliver in the sky, struggling to pierce the heavy pall of clouds, and…
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My Journey with the Aham Prema mantra & the Inner Fugitive Archetype of the Enneagram #ahamprema #mantras #yogamantras #healingmantras
My journey with the mantra Aham Prema, “I Am Divine Love,” continues, pulling me deeper within to examine the origins of fears that hold back the full light of the divine self. Love’s opposite is not hate, but fear. Hate and all its friends are byproducts of fear.
In the first post I wrote about working with the Aham Prema mantra, I talked about the constriction I felt in my throat. The journey through this pathway to the voice of inner truth continues. Almost every night I note in my journal some point of evidence about my throat being worked like a muscle. I also make note of the sensations felt in my heart and third eye chakras. The heart feels as though it wants to be free of another barrier, while the brow seeks the expansion of the inner light.
In my Silent Eye School of Consciousness studies, I am working with the energy of the inner fugitive, an aspect of the self that can reside in a habitual state of fear and hiding. The mantra Aham Prema adds to the intensity of the work, pulling me into depths I have, I realize, avoided exploring. I will call this place terror: that aspect of extreme fear that holds the tightest binds around the true-self. Irrational terror, if one considers only this lifetime, but I cannot.
The signs are too many. They appear everywhere. One day, while I walk, I see the number 6, where the inner fugitive likes to reside on the Enneagram, in a murder of crows. Another day, it appears as a bevy of doves. My dreams at night bring me deeper, pulling me to places of extremes to test the reins of fear binding the fugitive-self. One night, while I am on a ship being pulled underwater, I realize I am no longer afraid of “drowning.” Yet, in the same night, I find myself cowering away from an archway of the gods filling the sky with its awesome presence. One glance tells me I haven’t reached faith without doubt of the divine.
Aham Prema. “I Am Divine Love.” To open the light within, one must also surrender to the light without, knowing that when the reins of fear are broken there is no division.
When I go to sleep after day 7 of working with the mantra, I dream of artichokes in muffins presented by Sue Vincent, my mentor. Later, Eagle appears. Eagle has been a faithful and revelatory guide for many years. Years ago, Eagle brought me the vision of a past life that is significant to this journey.
By day 10 I start to succumb to a cold virus which, it will be no surprise, begins with a sore throat before it works its way to the sinuses, causing pain from the pressure built up in my temples and forehead. From here it travels down the channel of the throat into the heart chakra where the lungs start to fill with fluid residue.
Later in the day, I see 6 crows in the sky, circling and calling out.
In the evening, I go into a meditation and find I am pulled into the forest nearby my house, to a place I have not walked in years. It is a path lined with evergreens. Years ago, when I first walked the path with my late dog Daisy, my mind brought me to a recurring nightmare from childhood. The dream was of sheer terror, and each night it would wake me at the same moment when the voice of fear tried to escape from my throat. It was a dream of fleeing through a forest of pines which, I later discovered through meditation and healing work, held the imprint of terror from a past life when I tried to flee from the Nazis through an evergreen woods. During my meditation, waves of healing pass through me as my body begins to release the binds of its terror.
When I later fall into sleep , Daisy visits me in a dream. My beloved companion who taught me that forests are places of magic and elemental love, and not to be feared, has returned for a night.
On day 11 I cannot practice the 54 repetitions I have been chanting every night. My throat is too sore, and my body is beyond fatigued. I need to rest.
And so I find myself at the edge of faith with my soul asking me, Will you release the residue of fear that remains to open fully to the Light? Will you stand naked to Love in the arms of Faith?
Being Storm
A poem that goes deeper than you might at first think…
It’s beating on my eyes again
It’s blowing up my nose
It’s howling round my lips and mouth
And stealing my repose
➰
He dares not let it in, again
The chaos is too strong
It throws around the furniture
And wrecks the right and wrong
➰
I’d like to give a voice to it
But how to drink the wind?
I’ll have to keep him well subdued
Then see what else it brings
➰
A finer wine would be uncased
A deeper taste, an ‘I’ concealed
And leaden fear would drop away
To leave the laughing storm revealed
➰
©Stephen Tanham
The Light Behind the Story 