I was up to meet the dawn on Saturday, finding the world covered in a heavy frost and very beautiful. The morning began with a guided meditation. The companions gathered at 7am and closed their eyes. It was a simple journey… that of a seed thrown by an unseen hand to the winds. The tiny point of consciousness watched from inside itself as it grew, illustrating the journey into becoming.
Breakfast and preparation… and then it was time for the second of the ritual dramas.
These dramatic episodes, played with conviction in a place made sacred, have a profound effect, enabling understanding, engaging the emotions as well as the intellect as they bring the teachings to life in a unique manner. This is one of the ways we will teach, through workshops and teaching sessions and the weekend workshops, open to all.
These do not form an essential part of the School’s course, they are not required, nor is attendance limited to School members… but rather they enhance and enrich it, as well as allowing friendships and companionship to grow. Study can be a lonely thing and the personal journey must be ultimately walked alone… but that does not mean there cannot be company along the way, a hand to hold when the ground seems rough or laughter shared in sunlight.
The first ritual drama saw the arrival of nine travellers, sheltering from a storm in the monastery of the Keepers of the First Flame. A shamanic drummer and two Troubadours, accompanied by a strange Child also sought shelter. They were following a quest to rescue an imprisoned king, or so they believed, and sought shelter and refuge for the Child while they continued their journey.
The first drama introduced these characters, and ended as the Troubadours left to continue their search, leaving the Child in the care of the nine and the Keepers. On Saturday morning the second drama was to explore the characters further, seeing deeper into their innermost being.
As the Troubadours were ‘absent’, Steve assisted our technician and had placed me in the role of the Great Mother, simply to bless the individual journey each was about to undertake as they entered the Temple.
And that felt odd. All the very human insecurities raised their head as I had read this point.. me, as Great Mother? How… what could I, just me, bring to this? And that question, I realised, was also the answer. I could bring my Self, it is all we can ever do.
The costume was simple and symbolic, grey veiled in clouds of night, a girdle of stars, dark tears at my throat and a simple nine pointed circlet, beautifully crafted by Katie. All chosen for their simplicity and symbolism… especially the veil which prevented the pilgrims from seeing Her face, yet allowed them into her embrace. I thought I had it sorted.
I do not know and cannot tell what others felt. Only what I saw and felt myself. I stood in the silence of the sacred space and waited for the first of the companions to enter, a silent prayer in my heart, not knowing really what to do, simply trusting that I would know when the moment came. The bells called the companions in, and the first saluted the central Light and turned to me.
And it was simple. I just held out my arms and embraced them and the cloudy veil held them like dark wings.
It sounds very little. But, from my heart to yours, I tell you that this was the most profoundly moving thing. Each pair of eyes met mine with radiant joy, each heart was open and full of Light and Life and Love, each face lit with so much beauty. One after another I held them. Overwhelmed and humble, with a glowing, incandescent sun, it seemed, blazing in my heart.
I sat in silence to watch the drama unfold and behind the veil the tears slid across my cheeks to meet my smile.
Our five senses may not be five at all… It turns out we have far more capabilities than we thought…
(800 words; a seven-minute read)
We all have our favourite concepts of physical capability – breathing, flexibility, strength and such like. But what if the power of our senses extended far beyond what we know? This is not about the historic idea of a sixth-sense, though that can be entirely valid. I’m referring to the kind of synthesis that enables things to work together as a ‘whole system’, in the way that the science of Emergence has shown us that ‘mere matter’ can become self-organising and apparently exhibit ‘intelligence’; the very same way that the first protein-based RNA molecules formed into life-repeating chains and gave rise to our DNA, the very substance of life’s persistence…
In a age of fast-paced scientific discovery, we are learning that what we think of as our separate senses are capable of ‘raising their game’ so that they become the basis of new levels of feeling and action in the world.
Philosophers have long postulated this; and psychology has shown us that, though it is often hard to see what others are thinking and feeling, we can train our senses to enable us to ‘see’ into the bubbles that are their worlds – with much deeper empathy.
The model of the five senses I wrote about in last weeks’ Thursday blog is derived from no less a figure than Aristotle. Though easily understood, it has been shown that the five-sense model of consciousness undervalues and underestimates how and how far the human being can ‘sense’.
I learned about the advances in this field from an article in the British Psychological Society’s online magazine. This is free to subscribers and offers frequent insights into how the science of mind and behaviour is progressing. A recent edition showcases an article from author and researcher Emma Young. She writes, ‘We have many more than five senses – here’s how to make the most of them’, she discusses such mechanisms as Proprioception – the sensing of the location of our body parts in space.
We take this for granted, but try closing your eyes and extending a hand or leg. You can no longer see the limb, but your mind has a good idea of where it is. The accuracy of this sense, known as ‘proprioception’, is vital to our physical wellbeing, and saves us from what would be frequent injury without it.
To get an idea of how automatic this skill is, try closing your eyes and walking around a familiar room – much as a blind person learns to do – and you will find a very different ‘self-process’ is engaged.
Emma Young references how Covid has eaten into the degree to which we make use this extra sense. She suggests we use artificial exercises, such as making up stepping-stones from mats placed in the garden or home. This will replicate the under-used activity of proprioception and help restore this hidden but vital part of being alive. The benefits go further, and according to recent American research, such exercises actually stimulate working memory in the brain.
The problem with our eyes is that they are open all the time. We depend on them too much – a sentiment no-doubt echoed by Shamans of all ages, who have always taught that we can have total knowledge of things only by embracing them as both the ‘now’ and as vividly alive in a holistic way – allowing the higher consciousness mechanisms to engage and ‘self-organise’ at a level above the individual senses.
If it is safe to do so, try moving around your house with your eyes closed – or even blindfold! Who does not remember the intensity of consciousness generated by the child’s game of ‘blind man’s buff’?
One of the levels of synthesis available to us is the result of the body’s vestibular system, used by our minds to establish both balance and the sense of being located and homed inside a physical body. We take this for granted, and it is undoubtedly one of the ‘senses’ that make us feel settled and calm. But many people faced with unusual conditions – such as undergoing surgery – report ‘out of body’ experiences that may relate, directly, to the suppression of the vestibular self-locating mechanisms that are fundamental to our normal consciousness.
Emma Young references the particular efficacy of exercises that move the head, such as Pilates, or Tai Chi, in addition to any action that challenges our balance, such as walking along a rope placed on the floor.
It has been shown that psychological well-being is greatly assisted by the correct use of our eyes, in the sense of what kind of light we ‘take in’ at differing times of day. Bright and ‘sunny’ light is really good for us in the morning; while the more restful evening should be bathed in muted, soft lights, and we shouldn’t stimulate our senses by using computer screen before we go to bed.
Research is showing that an acute sense of smell – such a that possessed by wolves – is still with us, despite evolutionary fears that we have such capability. We just need to begin using it, again. For all we know, much our society’s depression may come from ‘tech smells’ that have a semi-poisonous effect on our lives. “If you see a rose,” says Emma Young, “stop and smell it…”
Apparently a ‘fishy smell’ improves our critical thinking; and people who are more sensitive to smell have better sex lives…
Emma Young goes on to talk about our ability to ‘inner-sense’, including our own heart-beat, without the use of external devices. I remember an exercise from my youth where we had to use the second hand of our watches to time a six-second period and count the heart beats by placing a finger on the back of the wrist. Multiply the result by ten, and you have your heart rate.
With a little effort (and I’ve tried this) you can feel your heartbeat quite easily simply by ‘listening within’. If you add the second-hand technique, you can measure it… or you could just bask in its magnificent presence and thank it, knowing that some day, it will have finished its loving and dutiful job… to carry our outer ‘self’ through the continuity of life.
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References:
British Psychological Society’s weekly online digest:
We were sitting on the M6 motorway. The car was stationary, as it had been for the previous thirty minutes. Ahead of us was the next junction, within sight, but closed off. Beyond that there was a wall of standing traffic. The motorway was closed but we – the stranded – were still on it.
The fourth ambulance came screaming up the thankfully empty lane next to the central reservation. It had been closed for resurfacing; a miracle, really, given the likely mayhem that lay ahead of the wall of silent cars in front of us.
More for something to say than any real content, we began to talk about how it had been ‘one of those days’ and how we were always unlucky in trying to pick the fastest queue for checkout at CostCo, the place from which we had just come, only minutes before hitting the brakes at the sight of the wall of cars and trucks going nowhere.
We do a lot of our monthly shopping there. Like most warehouses, it’s not pretty, but it is functional, and allows us to buy in bulk, rather than shopping every weekend. The collie and her need for lots of exercise usually dictates the nature of our days. We’re probably a lot healthier than we would be without her. We’d rather spend our time dog-walking and writing than shopping. So CostCo serves us well.
Our chosen queue, moving efficiently when we switched to it, had proved the very opposite in the few minutes afterwards. I knew how sensitive the northern M6 would be to peak traffic, and we were about to enter that period of almost exponential build-up. I had muttered under my breath; eager to be checked out and on our way back to Cumbria.
Now, sitting on the vast tarmac strip that is a modern motorway, we could see movement. Two of the traffic policemen were removing the barriers to the exit road – an escape that would at least allow us to find another route home. In less than a minute, we were moving and driving up the ramp, from where we could see the carnage that had been just around the shallow bend of the carriageway.
And then the revelation struck me. At 70 miles per hour we would have been at what had become the crash scene a few seconds ahead of where we were. In other words, we would have been in the middle of it…
Switching queues, with our usual dismal result, might not have been so bad, after all. The wrong queue had, quite possibly, saved our lives.
There had been hugs and welcomes, flurries of suitcases, gorgeously coloured garments peeking shyly from their wrappings, but most of all the joy of meeting old friends, many for the very first time in person.
And then we began.
There was the welcome and a dinner friendlier, warmer, more full of laughter than I have ever seen at one of these gatherings so early in the proceedings. Maybe I am biased… but I was not the only one to remark on the feeling in the air.
We talked through the teaching method and the way the weekend would unfold, then, suddenly it seemed, it was time to begin.
There had been a last minute change of plan, as one of the company could not be there on time. Matt, our fabulous photographer, had stepped in gallantly to cover for most of her role as one of the Keepers of the First Flame, but for some strange reason he did not see himself as Isis. So I had, unexpectedly, opened the drama in the role of the Mother. Not precisely as we had planned, but in the end, it seemed so fitting I could not help but smile as I looked around the circle.
A quick change later then Steve and I, clad in the glorious solar colours of the School, and Stuart, without whom none of this could have ever been the same, were waiting our turn to enter the Temple. And that was quite a moment.
There is an energy to these things that builds slowly through the weekend, becoming deeper and stronger as both drama and understanding unfold, yet this very first moment was filled with a tension and anticipation that was palpable and very moving.
Of course, the companions had probably realised by this point that we were about to sing, Steve and I… and I am not known for my singing, or not in a positive manner anyway….
Yet, it seemed that when Troubadour One took up the guitar and began to sing the song written for this moment, and Troubadour Two stood behind him with her hands on his shoulder and they raised their voices in harmony, as the Child gently woke the Nine from sleep, something fell into place. The Troubadours sang in tune and the simple music woke more than the sleepers.
A story began to unfold, and with the characters’ waking something came alive and began a journey into self-exploration that left none unmoved through the weekend. The ritual drama began to unfold and what seemed a simple story lit up from the inside as the points of the enneagram were brought to life by the archetypal figures so lovingly crafted and beautifully played.
There were experienced ritualists and some for whom this was a first taste, but none who had taken this journey before.
As we filed out in silence, not one was left untouched by the feeling in that room and there was a real reverence as each saluted the simple central Light that symbolises so much. The stairs were lined with white robed figures, quietly waiting for the working space to empty, and that Light was reflected in all eyes.
My mind skipped back to the previous Alchemy weekends here and recognised the thread that ran through them to bring us to this point. Similar, but very different. And then my heart slid forward to the next ritual, the following morning knowing what had been written. If there was so much emotion here already, I could not begin to imagine how that was going to feel.
And I was right.
I could never have imagined such beauty, such warmth, or so much loving joy.
‘…One of the stops we did manage to make on the way to our second ‘official sojourn’ in Glastonbury was, Merlin’s Mound.
Now, Merlin’s Mound you might have thought would be a well-known tourist attraction boasting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year just like its Big-Sister Mound of Sil-Bury Hill, so called because late legend has a king called Sil buried there along with his treasure, a golden horse.
Not so.
Quite why this is not the case it is difficult to fathom although one possible reason is that Merlin’s Mound is hidden within the grounds of Marlborough College which is a private school.
Of course, there is nothing actually buried in Silbury Hill because it isn’t a burial mound at all and the Golden Horse is far more likely to refer to the sun which, knowing the folk responsible for its construction, probably set behind the hill when viewed from one of the other sites in the area, or seemingly rose from it, and I did not learn that at any school, private or otherwise…
“Which would make it Sol-Bury Hill, anyway,” says Wen.
…Now, I was lucky enough to come across Merlin’s Mound because I attended a conference in the grounds of the college and I have to say I was astonished to learn of its existence but not half as astonished as I was to learn of its size.
In fact for a long time I was fairly sure that although Silbury Hill was regarded as Merlin’s Bigger Sister, size wise, there was not an awful lot in it.
“Silbury Hill is much bigger,” says Wen.
“I’m not so sure.”
“Much bigger, Merlin’s Mound only looks comparable because it dwarfs the buildings that currently hide it so effectively.”
“I don’t think there’s much in it.”
“What does Silbury Hill have to give it scale?”
“No, there’s not a lot else in the vicinity is there.”
“This is one reason why accurate measurement is so important.”
But anyway, and more importantly than accurate measurement of any kind, work is currently ongoing in the renovation of Merlin’s Mound and we are able to walk two-thirds the way around its newly refurbished spiral path-way and I have to say although it was something of a disappointment not to be able to get all the way to top in other ways it was not such a bad thing after all for just getting two thirds the way up was giving me a rather ‘heady’ feeling.
“I know,” says Wen. “Me too. What’s the line in, ‘A House on the River’ when Aeth’s troop, in all their glory, is approaching the strong-hold of Aillil Silver-Tongue and Sweet-Mouthed Maeve?”
“My head may as well be in a vat full of wine…”
“My head may as well be a vat full of wine,” laughs Wen, and I laugh too.
Although, to be strictly accurate in our comparison, the experience is far, far better than drinking or indeed, being wine…
Sue and Stuart moved forward from the start of the Silent Eye to become a formidable writing team, beginning with their book, The Initiate, published in September 2013.
(Above: a very dynamic combination – Sue Vincent and Stuart France, photographed in 2014. You can find a list of their prolific writings at France and Vincent.
In this extract, Sue describes the 2013 ritual birth of the Silent Eye, but through the eyes of an ancient female priestess she felt she knew, psychically. This figure – later named ‘Bratha’, was to be an often present figure in her later writings, and in the workshop “The Feathered Seer’ that she and Stuart created in 2016.
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There was smoke again, and flames, but this time they were for her alone. The fire had claimed her and images rose and fell within the orange glow.
She gave herself to the moment, seeing with inner eyes a strange scene unfolding.
Far below, it seemed, a golden vortex drew her, sending up motes of light like the ash from the burning wood, rising into the night. She followed their trail in vision to the centre of the maelstrom of power whirling deosil, an island of Light in the darkness…
A sacred space…
The golden robed figure sat veiled and alone in the centre of a strange symbol. It reminded her of a great, winged bird, its wings wrapped around the seated priestess. At her feet a golden chalice held a single flame, while around her invisible gold flowed in a river of power.
The figure was immobile as a statue, her robes catching the light of the flickering flame, only her breathing, slow and steady, made her seem alive. A man approached through the base of the winged symbol, a great Eye on his breast. He sat before the silent figure, taking her hands and speaking words unheard into the night. The golden one bowed her head in acknowledgement and he took up his place to her right, one hand outstretched on her shoulder.
There was a new shift in the swirling vortex as they waited in silence. She could sense the streams of colour spiralling around the enthroned Priest and the Lady. They could not see her. They saw nothing but the Purpose they served.
Another joined them, a younger energy flowed in as he too sat before the priestess. He took the hands in a silence that sang to the morning, bowing over them and placing a kiss on each. Three pairs of eyes, shining with Love… He took his place on her left and rested his hand on her shoulder.
They were an arrow, she the point, they her strength and source of flight. Another three added to the symbol traced on the ground around them. They waited and the power grew. Three strands now entwined in the vortex.
Others came, men and women in strange garb, one by one. Hesitant, awed by what they felt as they entered the sacred circle. In turn they stood in silent offering before she who held the moment, giving of themselves to what stood before them… The One that was Three.
The priestess in gold held each pair of eyes, accepting their gifts with Love and silence, bowing her head to each in thanks and blessing. They took their seats to either side, forming great wings of life around the three.
She did not understand, but she recognised.
When all had entered, she too, invisible and beyond time, entered the circle, stepping across the worlds, it seemed. She too offered to the Mother and the eyes that met hers were her own. There was a shift, a dizzying moment, when she felt herself seeing through both pairs of eyes and looking into her-self across millennia.
She joined the Vigil and wore silence.
After a time the priestess stood, taking up the light in the cup, placing a cloak of white fur about her shoulders. Holding the power and wrapped in silence she led the way into the pre-dawn light, her companions following in silent procession. It seemed to the watcher that they walked within a globe of golden light.
The temple building was strange to her eyes, but not as strange as the sleeping landscape into which the priestess led them. Tall huts of stone, square and angular beside a hard, unnatural path, disconnected from earth. Shiny chariots with black wheels lined the path. She felt sick with shock, yet curious about this strange world.
They saw no others as they walked, climbing the path towards the tree-line. The silence was broken by the bleating of a new lamb. It must be spring, she thought. The lamb watched, meeting their eyes and bleated again, three times in all. The companions shared smiling glances. They understood this. It meant something to them.
They turned to the left between trees and were walking in dew-drenched grass, sparkling with rainbows and diamond droplets, climbing the hill. She felt better on the grass, the earth touching her feet. It felt like home.
Up they climbed, beyond a tree to a small plateau in the hillside. A board of black and white squares held bread and the cup was placed there on the ground. The golden one and the priest of the Eye stood facing the coming dawn, a pale glow on the horizon heralding its birth. The Man-Child stood behind them, with their companions arced at his back.
She watched as priest and priestess raised their arms in unison, greeting the sunrise. This she understood. Her own priests greeted the dawn thus. As the sun rose, and with their hands still raised, they turned to each other, becoming an arch, gate of the morning, through which the first rays of the sun could touch the company.
Thus they stood as the Man-child crossed his hands on his breast and bowed. Then he dared to pass through into the Light. As he did so, a strange sound rang out, a sound chanted by the two who were the gateway…
The gathered silence finally split and broken by a two-fold word of power… A mingling of energies that she could see…
Birds sang and a hawk flew from the rising of the sun, spreading its wings over those below in benediction. This too they understood.
Each then passed in turn through the gateway, to that strange chant. Each spoke words she could not understand into the morning. The first were anointed with fragrant oil. Some were not, yet all gave themselves to the Light. She could see it in their faces, read it in their hearts as they stepped forward in joy.
She too passed through that gateway invisible and silent, feeling the change, joining them across time and space, knowing somehow that neither existed, only the moment in which she stood, the reality in which she was.
Dream or vision, it mattered not.
Here, now, she was.
The arc had shifted to stand in the sun. Now facing the priest and priestess, behind the man-child…
Something new was born into the world, a beacon of Light and she felt herself part of it.
The priest carried bread to the companions, each taking a small piece and breaking the fast of a new dawn. The priestess carried the cup, sharing the blood red contents with each. Then the two shared also, with each other and with the earth.
For a moment she shared their joy as the ritual ended. They were smiling, laughing and embracing each other, the release of power at the birthing leaving them light as feathers. And light as a feather she felt herself begin to drift back to her flames in the darkness.
As the vision faded into embers, the ground hard beneath her, the wind cold beneath the stars, she held out her hands over the dying flames and sent her own blessing upon that bright company. In whatever realm or world they moved whatever time or place, what they had wrought in the dawn light was sacred. She did not understand, but she knew and recognised her kin…
If you would like to read the story of the Song of the Troubadour, as given in the workshop, Sue Vincent helped to turn the workbook for the event into an Amazon book, available in paperback and Kindle formats. See below.
(Above: The Song of the Troubadour book and script is available on Amazon, priced at £5.99. Click the image
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a modern yet mystical journey through the forest of personality to the sunrise of Being.
If you would like to read the story of the Song of the Troubadour, as given in the workshop, Sue Vincent helped to turn the workbook for the event into an Amazon book, available in paperback and Kindle formats. See below.
We have this interesting phrase: ‘Making sense of it…’ But we may never stop to think of its origins, or what logic is behind it.
(870 words; a five-minute read)
(Above: the setting sun reminds us that there is a single reason why all things are ‘seen’.)
There are at least two interpretations of what ‘sense’ means. The first refers to the domain of our five physical senses: sight, hearing touch, smell and taste – all but one of them centred directly in the head – the seat of most of the brain.
Physics tells us that we really live in a vast electromagnetic world, and have a meagre five narrow windows onto its expanse. Whatever our true ‘beingness’ is, these five windows are obviously important… to us, and possibly beyond. We pride ourselves on being a ‘dominant species’ of life on Earth, so we assume that the five senses and the information and context they bring are an important part of that eminence.
The other use of the word is when we get a ‘sense’ of something. This refers more to understanding than any individual sense, like taste. A novel may refer to a character, say a detective, ‘smelling fear’ on someone; a phrase that evokes a whole series of images in our minds. These draw on our past direct experience of such things at the composite level. We may well have been in fearful situations and ‘smelled’ our own fear… Sensory experience can often be unpleasant, so we build a life in which this aspect is minimised.
It’s a useful exercise to go through a week and deliberately try to experience one or two key situations with all the senses alerted. We may find connections we hadn’t thought about as the delicate hues of the rose blend with the ‘ebb and flow’ of its perfume, and the tiny noise as the breeze vibrates its petals.
The five senses continually ‘stream’ a vast amount of information to the brain, whose initial job is to get rid of most of it. If it didn’t filter it in this real-time way, we would go insane. To do this for us, unconsciously and continuously, requires that the brain learns what is important for us. These ‘heads of importance’ (the expectations of our mother, for example) become central to how we collect, filter and refine our experience. The refining stage recognises that the heads of importance may change over time – my mother may become old and suffer memory loss, so the way I gather and process her ‘data’ may need to revert to a more child-like model, effectively reverting backwards in time.
Making sense of our world, and continually refining it, is therefore a high-state process centred on memory. The structures in the memory – these heads of importance – are sophisticated ‘silos’ of information that go to make up living images of our world; in fact, they are our world…
Our ‘self’ is derived very much from how we feel about theses images. Those to which we have attached importance have a sense of belonging to us and we move towards them. Things we don’t like will be attached to a sense of rejection, and we move away from them – often building sophisticated barriers so we never have to meet them, again. As children, we may not have had that luxury… and suffered in silence. But our adult life is entirely shaped by being able to put force behind these preferences.
From a brain perspective, this is all well and good. We feel protected as much as our lives can allow. Poor people may live a life of horror, in which they are forced to live adjacent to the unpleasant. Very rich people may live in gated communities and feel a sense of disconnectedness with their worlds. This is not moral comment, simply how our brains are wired to drive our lives.
The problems arise with the self. The self is a composite image we hold of what is really important to us. It is what we identify with: ‘Yes, that’s who I am’. The self is double edged sword. A strong sense of self is essential to have a stable and successful life.
But… by its nature, being based upon memory’s structures, it is formed only from the past. Our existence in the present – in the now – is not consciously lived.
Thankfully, our senses are still working in the present; still gathering and passing data to the brain so that our heads of importance can be updated and fine-tuned (‘that Tony Johnson has turned out to be okay, despite my initial dislike of him!’)
One of the long-standing exercises in mystical training is to deliberately dwell on the senses, as we mentioned in the opening. When we first approach this, we may think we are ‘going the wrong way’; dwelling on the mundane and physical rather than turning to elevated thoughts and concepts. It is only when we experience the sudden influx of the truly new that we gain the contrast between our supposedly present state and the truly present…
Sue’s account of the Birth of the School, April 22, 2013…
The work of a time impossible to count came to a focus in a single point of Light over the weekend as the Silent Eye School of Consciousness was born. For once I am at a loss for words and it is difficult to find expression for what was wrought by the companions who came together in such love, laughter and glorious, vivid technicolour.
To go by the timetable, telling what happened, may give a glimpse into how these weekend workshops run… but it would capture nothing of the exuberance, the emotion, the sheer joy, the profound awe. To attempt to write these things the way they were felt places them out of context and will possibly sound like exaggeration. Yet, if I used every superlative in the dictionary, I doubt if words could encapsulate what was shared in the cradle of the Derby shire hills.
I can but try.
From across the globe a diverse group of people made their way to the beautiful little village of Great Hucklow. There were threads running through the group connecting us all, some were known to each other, many were meeting for the first time, some have worked together in the past in other times and places, some came to the weekend with little or no practical knowledge of what would be involved. The age range spanned decades, companions came from Europe, Canada, the US and across the UK, north to south, west to east.
Writers, artists, teachers, engineers… the range of experience and knowledge that were brought to the mix was incredible. And you are probably going to hear that word a lot. Yet all shared a simple, single spark of life and Light.
These were not all dedicated School members. Many came simply to give their loving support as friends, some were drawn by something more tenuous and in some strange and beautiful circumstances. One thing we all felt was that everyone was there for a purpose and brought a unique and very personal touch to the company that met in a flurry of robes and suitcases.
The Temple team, one or two others and most of our international travellers converged on the tiny village pub hours before the official start time. The setting up takes a while. It was wonderful to greet old friends, meeting some for the very first time, yet seeing this small group of early arrivals gel almost instantly into something that seems to have been a foretaste of the whole weekend. There was so much laughter, many hugs, and an instant feeling of warmth and kinship that was beautiful to see, and indescribable to feel around you and through every fibre of being. It was tangible and every pair of eyes seemed lit from within.
The Temple team get pride of place here. They were astonishing. Anne and Lil constructed our working space and made a uniquely beautiful and sacred geometry into a place to hold the Light. They were soon assisted by willing hands and one abiding memory is that of these two wonderful ladies and our fabulous photographer on hands and knees constructing the enneagram.
I have seen them work their particular magic in making a simple room into a sacred space in previous years. But this was special. This was the first time the Silent Eye had a Temple for the drama that forms the core of the weekend’s working. To peek through the doors when all was done and see the deceptively simple layout framing the central Light brought the first round of tears… the first of many… as it dawned on me that the birth of our School now had a home.
