On the third Sunday of every month, the Silent Eye hosts a Zoom-based discussion to explore one of the core topics of modern mysticism.
This series of ongoing posts will feature a summary of each monthly discussion; of which this is the first. The talks are open to all, and we welcome new visitors to the group – whether you drop in to take a look, or decide to stay and join our work. There is link at the end of the post to enable you to join one of our sessions.
The SE-Exploration talk for Sunday 17 September 2023 was :The Nature and Function of the Soul.
No-one wants a dry set of ‘minutes’ of such meetings. We’ll tell the story of these special events as informally as possible.
This one began with a story of a ten-year old boy who fell in love in the golden-ness of a village autumn. The girl he fell in love with was in the same class at primary school, but she had no time for this junior suitor.
But that didn’t stop him; he was richly experiencing the inner glow of love….but mixed with the deep greens and golds of the season. He had no reason to question this mix. He was too busy enjoying an the rapture.
We’ll come back to his story… For now, let’s get to know the subject.
Any group discussion about ‘the soul’ is usefully begun by an exploration of what those attending feel and know about their own. All of us felt we ‘had’ a soul, but the definitions varied: is the soul something deeply ‘within’ us, psychologically, or does it have a separate ‘being-ness’ independent of our our self – the egoic personality?
Does the soul form a key part of our identity, or is that something that we can, perhaps, work towards as we understand its reality – perhaps the most important reality we can know?
Previous discussions had considered the importance of the feeling of presence that we all understood to be with us at key moments. This is felt by many who venture into an exploration of their inner state, and is most commonly experienced as a ‘glow’ over the chest region, which, when encouraged with sympathetic and gentle breathing, will spread over the whole body.
As a species, we are suspicious of simple truths, but this is one of the most powerful and accessible ‘inner’ experiences we can have. It is wholly positive and has no risks, generating a composite sense of wellness in the entire body … and beyond.
There was intense curiosity about whether the soul has a structure and components. One lady, deeply experienced in these matters, suggested that we should consider the soul as ‘connecting’ the essential Self with the ‘surface level’ of our life: the personality.
Some discussion ensured as to whether the personality – psychology’s egoic self – was identical with what we know as character. It was suggested that character was deeper than the event-generated egoic personality whose unfolding – often via reaction to ‘vivid’ events in childhood – dominates the early years of our lives, forming fixed structures of mental response that pattern our lives from then on.
It is at this level that modern developmental psychology and object-relations (how we see all relationships, whether people or physical objects) meet, each potentially providing the other with missing keys vital to the soul’s expression in the world.
We talked about the development of the self (egoic – personality) and how much of it is a result of the stages of exploration and development undertaken by the infant within the confines of a family – hopefully a loving and supportive one, but we all know the consequences of that not be being true. How fragile the road to maturity can be…
To ‘schools of the soul’ like the Silent Eye, there is a deeper self – usually written with a capital ‘S’ as Self. This inner being – belonging wholly to the world of Being and not the physical, is our essential self – Essence, whose goal is to manifest itself in the denser world to ennoble existence. This is a demanding task; an undertaking which, itself, is the journey to ‘enlightenment’.
The lady who shared the idea that the soul connects the Self and the ‘person’ cautioned us that the deep Self was not subject to the laws of organic life…nor to the idea of a lifetime, at all. The implications of this being that elements of character might be inherited by the infant or even the unborn child due to the equivalent of a ‘magnetic’ effect from the powerful presence of the unseen Essence (Self or Spirit in other descriptions)
(Above: the reproduction of a mental diagram we constructed at the end of the meeting. The world of ‘the spirit’ – boundless being and creativity – underpins creation. Above that, the Self (Spirit) forms the Soul, whose role is to shape a bridge as the Organ of Experience; which is present throughout the levels, spanning egoic personality to Self and Being. The aspects of the Self include Love, Compassion, Strength and Brilliance of mind and heart. There are many more.
We mentally drew a map of the relationship between the outermost levels of mankind – our personalities, and the spiritually higher domains of the soul. This has been transposed, above.
We concluded that the soul is simply (and wonderfully) the ‘organ’ of experience – and therefore the underlying and ‘non-physical’ Self. The Self was also referred to as the Christ nature, an idea showing that Self, Soul and Personality have the potential to unite all the vehicles of consciousness that span Being to Matter in the expanding cycles of creation.
Such discussions necessarily touch on deep emotions. We encountered the difficulty of refining the personality in line with the energising radiance from the inner presence of the Self, in order to counter the enervating effects of a life of struggle.
And the boy in love? What became of him? Decades later, he was still puzzling the intensity of that episode. Then he began to understand the nature of the soul, and the essential Self that is its deepest foundation. One of the properties of the deep Self is a quality of ‘merging, golden love’ – exactly the qualities of his juvenile adoration… And yes, I was that lad…
Why not join us for our October chat? The details are below:
The SE-Exploration talk for Sunday 15 October 2023 will be :The Magic and Mystery of Identity.
Identity is so deeply rooted in our characters, it’s often impossible to tease out and study; and yet doing so is essential if we are to understand how we ended up where and how we are…
In this talk we will examine what identity is and why it is so important to the flowering of our self in life, and provides us with a faithful pointer to the depths of our being.
Join us for 90 mins of friendship and amicable sharing of views and experiences … not forgetting fun. Bringing a glass of wine with you is perfectly acceptable.
If you’re not on our contact list and would like a Zoom invitation to join us at the next SE-Explore meeting (see above), send an email to rivingtide@gmail.com.
©Stephen Tanham 2023
Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog