Intention chooses Heaven

| Steve Tanham
(Image by author)

The words stopped my reading… I mean I read them and had to go back to them, immediately – not even finishing the sentence before returning.

Intention has long fascinated. It’s one of those vitally important words that belong with a handful of others, like memory, or will, or detachment, or even truth. Each of them carries great import when, and only when, it’s placed in its correct hierarchy of spiritual importance to mankind. It’s hard to imagine how important these words are. Familiarity has dulled their powers, but that can be fixed by conscious exposure to their reality.

The rusty object can be dug from the earth and, with time and dedication, lovingly restored to the mantelpiece.

“Intention chooses heaven”

I was reading a Buddhist text quoted in a favourite author, Tiramit, in which the placing and importance of ‘intention’ was clearly spelled out.

In the book of Genesis, we are admonished: ‘But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’. This instruction, far from being some general command, is a specific psychological reference that a certain pattern of thinking will take us away from ‘heaven’.

Good and evil is to like or dislike. By liking or disliking we engage with the elements of life which draw or repel us. Instead of ‘seeing the heavens reflected in a calm sea’ we create the waves that prevent us from seeing the starry sky.

So how do we get back to bathing in the eternal calmness of starlight? One of the keys is to understand the proper place of intention; and to do that, we must examine our own lives in detail to find out what stops us using the full power of this human faculty.

Intention is not simply will. Will is a kind of sustained emotion. It keep our effort focussed on a goal, a direction. Intention is to find that focus in the first place; moreover, to find a space within us where we can see the possibilities with the greatest inner clarity and calmness.

The article referred to when the Buddha, sitting under the Boddhi tree, was assailed by the demons of Mara. He repelled them by calling the Earth to witness the large number of perfections he had accumulated over ‘past lives’. Tiramit’s post invites us to interpret such ‘past lives’ in two ways: literally or figuratively. If the latter, then it invites us to review the highs and lows of our present lives in a way that is attentive yet dispassionate – seeing everything we have done, accurately and honestly, yet not allowing either negative or positive feelings (dislikes or likes) about each experience to arise. We make it simply part of the wave that was and is our lives. It is truth, if viewed in this way. It therefore simply becomes an ‘is’, or as the Buddha would have said, it is ‘thus’…

Such reviews of personal history are a time-honoured method of arriving at a state of equanimity. We need to acknowledge the power that like and dislike have held over us. We need to see that the world’s accolades of material gain are not those belonging to the inner consciousness. Very different qualities are valued by our inner Self.

And get past being the victim or the star of the show…

Within equanimity, we are alert to but not identified with, events. We see our past as important only in that it got us ‘here’; and here is immediately relinquished to the movement of the now, ever fresh and ever full of potential – but if equanimity prevails, that potential has been subtly altered. It’s like an equilateral triangle: balance the like and dislike of the two base points and something wonderful happens at the third…

Our true, inner power in the now is to be present to it, which, in turn bring its sense of presence to us. The world becomes intelligent as teacher. This marriage of attention and power invites a new state of intent, as we clearly see the right way forward and move consciously along a front that unites our inner and outer worlds.

A full understanding of this requires that we investigate what is actually meant by ‘Karma’, rather than the petty ‘action and judgement’ modes of its comprehension.

We will discuss the ‘law of Karma’ and its deeper implications, in next week’s Silent Eye post.

The Dhamma Footsteps article is here.

©Stephen Tanham 2021

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

Game of Midnight

| Steve Tanham 
It is dark, so there won’t be any
Photographs
They will, like the sun
Be resting in untaken 
Manifestation

But collie’s last trip
Outdoors
In upward glance reveals
A silver-blue unlike
Any before

It is the moon, hiding and smiling
At
The one human on the planet
Standing here within the game
Of Midnight

©Stephen Tanham 2021

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

Pasta and petroglyphs

| Sue Vincent

north 002

“Ow, ooh, ouch… ow..”

“What’s up?” he asked, locking the door of the flat as I descended the steep stairs. I grinned through the pain… he’d know soon enough… the calf muscles had taken a hit from three days climbing hills. Which is why, we had decided, Sunday would be leisurely.

north 003

The pub was shut; we had gone in search of a late breakfast and wifi and, finding neither, headed off to the park instead, where toasted teacakes and coffee would keep us going for a while. The housekeeping arrangements on these weekend visits are beautifully simple. Neither of us tend to eat huge amounts and are quite happy to go with the flow.

north 139

We hadn’t planned on being out all that long, but by the time we had investigated the rest of the pubs in the area and found some wonderful pasta for a late lunch, my eyes were smarting and starting to swell. They do it at the most inconvenient moments, and for no reason I can put my finger on. Some kind of allergy I suppose, but I could happily live without looking as if I’d gone several rounds in a boxing ring. Between us we were not in the best of visible states; having caught the sun the day before one of us was rather pink and glowing, the other needing dark glasses.

north 007

We decided to pay a visit to the wood-stone. On the Friday we had sought out some of the petro-glyphs on Ilkley Moor and it felt right to wander back and look at the stone. You could see the similarities in the ancient carved stones, although the relief on the wood stone is far deeper than the petro-glyphs on the moor. Was that erosion from the exposed site or had they been made that way? The latter, probably. Having seen them so close together in time, our theories seemed to be stronger than ever.

north 004

The bluebells were out in the woods and the air full of their perfume. I love this time of year! Just a few weeks since our last visit and the wood has burst into life. Beech leaves throw a delicate canopy of golden green against the sky, distance melts away with the blue mist of flowers and even time seems to take a holiday. There is a peace in the little glade through the portal of trees that brings the perfect end to a sleepy afternoon.

north 167

Leisurely, though, seems to be a variable thing. We worked our socks off in the evening. As the experiences of the weekend shaped themselves, the cover for Doomsday was designed and agreed and rituals built for next year’s Silent Eye workshop. Not a bad evening’s work all told. Monday, my last day, we had plans… a further visit to a stone circle. There were ideas to put to the test…

north 018

The Healing Art (part two)

| Steve Tanham

“The healer must know themselves to be connected to something bigger, something vast in its power to help us… something entirely whole. The healer is not the source of the power, simply its conduit.”

Who said it is lost in the past. For me, it expressed the entire art of healing; the idea that suffering is ‘smaller’ than the power of wholeness.

The main barrier to the positive perception of ‘healing at a distance’ is the belief that it can’t work; that there are no laws of the physical that support it.

The face-to-face comfort and companionship offered by someone sitting with the recipient are obvious, and easily supported by psychology. But the methods by which healing at a distance could operate are less discussed – for example, is the ‘self’ bigger than the physical constraints of the body?

When you’re with someone you love, you can feel their presence in a heightened way. There is an intensity about the space you share. The world becomes a special place within that ‘bubble’. You don’t have to be touching them for this to work.

If this works across a cafe table, then why assume that any distance is a barrier? Healing energies and loving energies are strikingly similar. What matters is focus, and the ability to draw on what is bigger than the ordinary self.

With people you know well, you can picture and feel their presence over any distance. That idea of a picture is of great importance. What about if we had the picture of a shared place of healing; a special landscape envisaged and brought to life by active cooperation and participation from around the world?

How about a picture that came alive?

(Above: an image created for the Silent Eye’s healing circle by mystical artist Giselle Bolotin. Image ©Copyright 2021) Facebook Page.

This is the method we have chosen to use to establish the Silent Eye’s new Healing Circle. The process is open to both those who need healing and those who would like to support the healing of others.

This method, often known as use of the ‘magical imagination’ has been used for millennia. We have a clear picture of a place of working. We bring it to life within our own imagination…. then we move within it, using certain conventions to bring into play our deeper and more purposeful energies.

The result is not subject to the limitations of space. This directed energy operates according to the laws of consciousness, alone. Nothing is ‘invoked’ by this method other than the attunement of your own energies, focussed on the needs of you or another.

This may be enough description, and you may decide this kind of healing method is for others. However, if you are interested in joining us in this endeavour, then the full script of the ‘guided journey’ is below.

The new Healing Circle will be inaugurated on the dawn of the Summer Solstice: Monday June 21, 2021, beginning at 04:44 in the morning – the time of the dawn – and continuing for the next seven hours. We would be delighted if you could join us by reading to yourself (or other friends) the text below at any point during that period.

———————————————

The Silent Eye Healing Circle – Guided meditation

The sun is rising on the horizon…

Before you is a level plain, a waving grassland, kissed with the golden rays. In the middle of this is a raised hill with a flat top. On the hill, you can see what looks like a small temple structure. You walk towards the temple with a sense of expectation, each step adds more positive energy to your journey. 

Soon you are climbing the wide, wooden steps to the raised surface. There is a gap in the temple’s walls and you look through. A Priest, sitting at a beautiful oval table, shaped like an eye, beckons you to join him. As you walk into the temple, you see that there is also a Priestess seated at the opposite end of the oval table. Each occupies a cut-out, carved, perfectly into the curving vesica shape of the table’s ends.

As you approach the centre of the temple, the Priest stands to welcome you. He asks you to take his seat and shows you a slip of shimmering paper flecked with gold. He offers you a beautiful antique ink-pen and asks you to write your name on the paper. In your visualisation, you watch as your signature emerges onto the beautiful parchment.

“Have you come to give or receive healing?” he asks. Again, he points to the paper and you write the one of the words, GIVE or RECEIVE, beneath your signature.

The Priest directs you to stand and take the parchment to the Priestess who now rises to greet you. She directs you to sit in her chair then opens her palm saying, “Lay the paper on my hand.” You do so and, the second that her skin and the paper meet, a myriad of small flames engulf the paper which curls into a burning cylinder and then dissolves into a thousand motes of golden light, each flying gently upwards to join what you now see is a slowly revolving picture of a galaxy where the stars and star systems are the glowing motes of the history of the Earth’s healing.

The Priestess smiles and offers you her hands from which all the motes of golden light have flown. She turns you to face the outer walls of the temple and you see, for the first time, that the “pillars” are, in fact, people – each one cloaked, hooded, and veiled. The Priestess turns you around so that you have completed a circle then you come back to face her.

“There are seven of these planetary healers,” she says, “and, though you cannot see their faces, they KNOW you. Walk, clockwise around the circle until you find an energy that matches your intentions here.”

The Priest rises to take you to the first of the Planetary Healers, standing just left of the entrance where you entered the temple. Beneath the flowing robes, you cannot tell whether they are male or female, but you can feel the radiated love directed at you.

You approach the figure. Immediately, you begin to feel the energies of Mars.

“Absorb the energies of each, then, the second time around, rest by the one who matches your needs,” says the Priest.

In turn he escorts you, after the figure embodying the Mars energy, to the Planetary Healers of Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Sun, and Moon. At the end of the circle and, once more by the entrance, the Priest speaks, inviting you to take a further circuit and rest at the place you have chosen. You may take rest and healing in more than one place if you wish, but each time moving clockwise to the next. Your time with the Planetary Healers may be spent in taking or giving healing, but you should not mix the two in a single visit to the Healing Circle.

When you have completed your time in the circle, you return to the Priestess, holding her eyes and conveying, silently, what you have experienced. The Priest will escort you out of the temple and down the wooden steps. You make your way across the soft grasslands marked by two rows of flaming torches. At the end of the grasslands lies the start of your regular world of experience.

This guided meditation is designed so that you may take from, or add to, the healing energies of the Silent Eye’s Healing Circle. It is open to all, at all times of day or night. The officers of the Silent Eye, and others taking part, will regularly add their own energies to the Healing Circle. You may wish to add to this energy, and we thank you for doing so.

The Silent Eye’s Healing Circle is available anywhere in the world at all times apart from Tuesdays, during the period 14:00-15:00 GMT, when our own High Priestess performs a weekly closing down and re-opening ritual. During that time, we ask you not to enter.

These instructions may be freely copied and distributed as long as they retain the original words. They are also be found on the healing page of the Silent Eye’s website at: www.thesilenteye.co.uk

Thank you for participating in our work.

The Silent Eye’s Healing Circle is not a commercial undertaking. We do not, nor every will, make charges for our healing work. Companions and officers of the Silent Eye provide their time, freely, as part of their undertaking to serve.

©Stephen Tanham 2021

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

 

Caress of Green

| Steve Tanham 
The heat, it must have been the heat
That teased and turned my steps
That stepped a different thrust and beat
A moan of limbs on fire where once were feet. 

The green, it must have been the green
That cooled me in a light I’d never drunk
That drank me in a way that drew a sigh
Surrendering to what - before, I had not seen.

Into the trees; I went within the singing
My garments eased from flesh that needed air
An airing of the need within my skin and hair
With ending like a bell that needed ringing. 

That sound - a cry that led you to the wood
To find me, naked, drinking at the stream
The hand, that once had stroked now drew on flesh
The nails inscribing paths of where I’d been.

©Stephen Tanham 2021

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

Bah’t ‘at

| Sue Vincent

north 111

Well, two of us were up there on Ilkley Moor bah’t ‘at… the third stubbornly clung to the trademark headgear that makes him look like something feral. To be fair, it was a little chilly up there.

idiots abroad

We had arrived early and, after fortifying ourselves with a toasted teacake and a coffee apiece, headed off to the parish church to look at the ancient Saxon crosses and Roman altars, now safely ensconced in the base of the bell tower to protect them from the depredations of the elements. We had an hour before Steve was due to arrive, and that was enough to see what we needed to see and wander out into the morning sunshine. It was going to be a long day.

north 054
We… the inner team of the Silent Eye… were meeting to tramp the moors in search of a landscape for use in a private School event. From the Cow and Calf to the Swastika Stone, by way of White Wells, Heber’s Ghyll and the ancient petroglyphs I took them to the places of my childhood, places where I have dreamed, wept, laughed and played.

north 164
It was a beautiful day. Regardless of the fact I will be returning there soon, there were the inevitable tears on leaving. I cannot help it, the place has a home in my heart deeper than any other or perhaps it is that my heart has its home there. As we turned the car off the moorside road a red kite flew over… I have not seen them there before… the sight of that distinctive silhouette in the air, wings outstretched, felt like a blessing. A perfect way to end the day.

north 176
Tall the cliffs of stone
That mark the entry to my heart’s domain,
Wild and empty in its vastness
The solitude of living earth.
The wind lifts the heart
And bears it through the storm
To where the lichen crusted rocks
Cling to the clouds.
Part of my heart remains there
Scattered with the ashes of a lost love
Mingled with the joy and pain of memory,
Of childhood wonder and a lover’s kiss.
Deep the roots which bind me to that land,
Like the weathered pines that cling for life
To the purple hillside…
Genuflecting, but standing, still,
Naked in the mist.
Or the great stones,
Ice carved in aeons past
Into a landscape of dreams,
Marked by ancient hands
With figures of Light,
That I may stand beside them,
Millennia apart,
And recognise my kin.

north 063

May my beloved pass…

| Stuart France

*

Draw back the bolt, Ba-Ba…

Open the doors of heaven.

Fling them open for my beloved.

*

Drawn back by the breath

of the fire-spirit…

The doors are open!

*

Arise Horus! Return,

that my beloved may also return.

Borne on the flame drawn by the gods.

*

Clear a way…

That my beloved may pass.

My beloved is Horus.

 

Spell 316 Pyramid Texts

The Healing Art (part one)

| Steve Tanham

“Healing is about restoring the person’s power to heal themselves.”

The old lady who said it was called Jean. Beloved of all us us at the Roiscrucian group in Manchester, she was was a venerated outlier from a previous age; an age in which the sheer magic of mystical development and communion was not taken for granted, and was a path that required work…

“He has the healing touch, your son,” Jean had said to my father, matter of factly, as we were having tea, cake and biscuits after the monthly meeting. She had been suffering terrible back pain and I had felt drawn to ask her if I could place my hands on her back, where I knew the pain was located. She gladly agreed. Moments later, I felt the flow of the familiar energy… and she had sighed, quietly, the muscles in her back relaxing, and her breathing taking on a more normal rhythm.

No-one had said that to me, before, yet it made me feel good that she had voiced it. Raised in a Rosiucrucian family, I was used to being viewed as ‘odd’. Working with healing energies was another perfectly sensible oddity. Some things had to be grasped and performed intellectually, but there was nothing about invoking and using the healing force that was intellectual; it flowed like a living love from healer to the person who needed it.

It just ‘was’…

You can feel the energy best in the hands. Bring your palms close together, with the thumbs up, but don’t let them touch. Closing your eyes is not necessary but can help when you are starting out. Take a short in-breath, then expel the stale energy from your lungs. Inhale from the stomach, first, letting the diaphragm expand, fill your lungs to a count of five, and stop for a second or two with in the ‘fullness’ to register the gentle heat building in the space between the hands. Repeat the breathing and direct the energy from the in-taken breath through your body, down your arms to the space between the palms.

Repeat the breathing, but do not strain at any point. A good healer is relaxed. A stressed healer does not heal.

Build the energy until you feel it has a power and warmth, and is being fed from within you by each breath. Your arms and your chest will feel like a powerful horseshoe.

If the person you are helping is comfortable with it, offer to lay your hands upon them in an appropriate place. The back of the neck at collar height is extremely effective, as it offers a direct connection with one of the most important parts of the spine and nervous system.

We are looking to interrupt the body’s ill-health or discomfort. Our excess of this loving warmth is to be used to restore, then tip their healing balance so their own body restores itself. In short, we are attempting to address the whole of the person we are working with.

The person needing healing may simply be ill, or may depleted in other ways. Often, people cause their own ‘dis-ease’ by holding negative thoughts and emotions within their bodies. These accumulate, darkly, within the self, preventing the healthy flow of their own restorative energy.

If the person receiving help is uneasy with close physical contact, offer to take their hands, instead. Hold their right in your left and vice-vera. You will feel a warmth in the wrists and thumbs as you conduct your energy flow. If no contact is possible, you can still send the loving energy by standing near them and directing your heart and mind to work together with theirs across the short distance.

Nothing complex in all that; nor was there ever. It’s simply a natural energy that one needs to encourage, develop and, above all, have confidence in. There is a special spiritual power in knowing that something is right and capable. In a sense, it’s like seeing it done, already…

What about across a distance? Is it possible to conduct what used to be called ‘metaphysical healing’ while not in the presence of a person, or group of people? In the Silent Eye, we believe it is, and has been practiced for thousands of years. We are about to establish a world-wide resource available to anyone, for every hour of each week, apart from a one-hour period where our special ‘place of healing’ will be allowed to rest, then restored, after the quiet hour has passed.

I will be providing details of this next week. We are inaugurating this at the Summer Solstice, when we will be building and empowering a shared guided meditation available to all to help them connect with the healing service. Anyone may join in. The new Healing Circle will operate on a basis of an elevated conception of ‘take and give’. Those who feel well and strong may, using the same guided meditation format, give some of their energy rather than taking it from the Healing Circle. A person who has been helped may choose to come back, subsequently, and give as a form of thanks.

The establishment of the Healing Circle will link it with powers of Being, ensuring that its energies are constantly refreshed for the use of those in need.

Next week, we will consider in more detail the principles of healing at a distance, and provide the script for the guided meditation to establish the Silent Eye’s healing circle in your own life, should you wish to join us.

The Silent Eye’s Healing Circle is not a commercial undertaking. We do not, nor every will, make charges for our healing work. Companions and officers of the Silent Eye provide their time, freely, as part of their undertaking to serve.

©Stephen Tanham 2021

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog