Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life - Posts Tagged "fourth-way"
First Workshop?
With the Silent Eye’s launch weekend coming up in April, a point was made that these things can be daunting for anyone who has never attended an esoteric workshop and who may have absolutely no idea what to expect. So I thought it might be an idea to write about it from a more subjective viewpoint than the School presents in the brochure.
It is all very well knowing the type of subjects that will be covered, the fact that we will be using ritual drama and will run presentation and meditation sessions... but really, if you have never been to one of these workshops you are still none the wiser.
As a friend wrote in the forum: “Daunting beyond words, that first time. But after a couple of hours you realise that they're all mad (in the good way), and that nobody appears to know any more than you do (not really) and that if it weren't for the interruptions caused by the scheduled events, you'd all be sitting around drinking tea and chatting "interesting stuff" for the entire 3 days...”
The weekend begins on the Friday evening. You are greeted and allowed to settle into your room. There will be time to meet old friends perhaps and begin to make new ones in a relaxed atmosphere. An informal welcome and introduction to the weekend precedes a buffet dinner, after which we talk you through the first of a series of ritual dramas that will begin the thread that continually weaves through the weekend.
Everyone takes part in these ritual dramas. They are fully scripted...you don’t have to learn your lines, know how to act, what to do or where to be. Everyone begins together on an emotional journey that simply requires you to be part of it.
The ritual dramas are scripted down to the last detail… and mistakes still happen. Even experienced ritualists can be found snoring through their ‘cue’ after a long flight. It doesn’t matter. Someone will always either nudge or cover for them. One experienced ritualist of my all-too-intimate acquaintance has been known to sob and sniff her way through half a particularly moving ritual, using her robe sleeve as a handkerchief. (Makes note to self to take tissues this time….).
In the evenings half the companions retire to the village pub, the others chat in the comfortable lounge or walk in the beautiful landscape and grounds and the evenings pass in a relaxed and friendly manner.
The mornings begin with a guided meditation, where you are simply asked to relax and take an emotive journey in the imagination. These are followed by Knowledge Lectures and group work… where you will be presented with a variety of subjects and invited to share your thoughts and participate in discussion. You are not expected to be familiar with the concepts presented and there is no expected degree of knowledge or learning required, just the openness to listen to new ideas and old, to think and feel and see what comes.
Mealtimes are wonderful for talk. The food is incredibly good at the Nightingale Centre and they cater for all diets beautifully. The rooms are comfortable, the staff impeccable and the centre itself beautifully presented, in glorious countryside.
We intend the weekend to be comfortable, fun, challenging and informative. We hope to have you laughing, thinking, moving and feeling... possibly shedding an odd tear. We want those who attend to leave their mark on the birth of our school and hope we can leave a gentle mark on their lives too.
You do not have to be a member of the School to attend. You do not even have to be thinking about joining. We just want to share this unique moment with a group of people who are there because they wish to be. All are warmly welcome.
There will be other workshops. We intend to run them regularly. We know there are few esoteric workshops of this calibre that are open to all in the UK at this time. The vast majority of the good ones are tied to Schools or particular groups and so are generally fully subscribed fairly rapidly.
It is worth stressing that we do not seek to make money from these workshops or from the School. It will operate on a strictly not for profit basis.
Full details of the workshop can be found on the Silent Eye website Events page. We still have places available and it would be wonderful to fill them.
An account of my nervousness at my very first esoteric ‘event’ can be found on our forum too. Like the workshop, you are welcome to join the forum without expectation of joining the school. It is an infant forum and would be glad of new members to help me build a community for discussion of spiritual and esoteric subjects from all viewpoints. And hopefully a little laughter too. All we need is a name and email address on the form to make sure you are a real person, we can then register you with the website and you can jump right in and join what I hope to build into a comfortable and interesting place to be.
In Light,
Sue Vincent
It is all very well knowing the type of subjects that will be covered, the fact that we will be using ritual drama and will run presentation and meditation sessions... but really, if you have never been to one of these workshops you are still none the wiser.
As a friend wrote in the forum: “Daunting beyond words, that first time. But after a couple of hours you realise that they're all mad (in the good way), and that nobody appears to know any more than you do (not really) and that if it weren't for the interruptions caused by the scheduled events, you'd all be sitting around drinking tea and chatting "interesting stuff" for the entire 3 days...”
The weekend begins on the Friday evening. You are greeted and allowed to settle into your room. There will be time to meet old friends perhaps and begin to make new ones in a relaxed atmosphere. An informal welcome and introduction to the weekend precedes a buffet dinner, after which we talk you through the first of a series of ritual dramas that will begin the thread that continually weaves through the weekend.
Everyone takes part in these ritual dramas. They are fully scripted...you don’t have to learn your lines, know how to act, what to do or where to be. Everyone begins together on an emotional journey that simply requires you to be part of it.
The ritual dramas are scripted down to the last detail… and mistakes still happen. Even experienced ritualists can be found snoring through their ‘cue’ after a long flight. It doesn’t matter. Someone will always either nudge or cover for them. One experienced ritualist of my all-too-intimate acquaintance has been known to sob and sniff her way through half a particularly moving ritual, using her robe sleeve as a handkerchief. (Makes note to self to take tissues this time….).
In the evenings half the companions retire to the village pub, the others chat in the comfortable lounge or walk in the beautiful landscape and grounds and the evenings pass in a relaxed and friendly manner.
The mornings begin with a guided meditation, where you are simply asked to relax and take an emotive journey in the imagination. These are followed by Knowledge Lectures and group work… where you will be presented with a variety of subjects and invited to share your thoughts and participate in discussion. You are not expected to be familiar with the concepts presented and there is no expected degree of knowledge or learning required, just the openness to listen to new ideas and old, to think and feel and see what comes.
Mealtimes are wonderful for talk. The food is incredibly good at the Nightingale Centre and they cater for all diets beautifully. The rooms are comfortable, the staff impeccable and the centre itself beautifully presented, in glorious countryside.
We intend the weekend to be comfortable, fun, challenging and informative. We hope to have you laughing, thinking, moving and feeling... possibly shedding an odd tear. We want those who attend to leave their mark on the birth of our school and hope we can leave a gentle mark on their lives too.
You do not have to be a member of the School to attend. You do not even have to be thinking about joining. We just want to share this unique moment with a group of people who are there because they wish to be. All are warmly welcome.
There will be other workshops. We intend to run them regularly. We know there are few esoteric workshops of this calibre that are open to all in the UK at this time. The vast majority of the good ones are tied to Schools or particular groups and so are generally fully subscribed fairly rapidly.
It is worth stressing that we do not seek to make money from these workshops or from the School. It will operate on a strictly not for profit basis.
Full details of the workshop can be found on the Silent Eye website Events page. We still have places available and it would be wonderful to fill them.
An account of my nervousness at my very first esoteric ‘event’ can be found on our forum too. Like the workshop, you are welcome to join the forum without expectation of joining the school. It is an infant forum and would be glad of new members to help me build a community for discussion of spiritual and esoteric subjects from all viewpoints. And hopefully a little laughter too. All we need is a name and email address on the form to make sure you are a real person, we can then register you with the website and you can jump right in and join what I hope to build into a comfortable and interesting place to be.
In Light,
Sue Vincent
Three Ring Circus
I have a slight problem with time. There is not enough of it in a day. And certainly not enough daylight. This I count as terribly bad planning on the part of the Powers That Be when there are deadlines to be met. My request for an extension, however, was turned down categorically with instructions to await the natural lengthening of days. They call it Spring. Not even for me will They budge on that one, it seems. Life has become a little surreal.
I am doing my best, therefore, with the meagre twenty four hours I have at my daily disposal. It is all about priorities.
I will dust the living room again before the patina of dust reaches Quentin Crisp-like depths. Honest. Probably next time I happen to notice sunlight failing abysmally to reflect in gleaming surfaces. Or if I’m having visitors.
I have cut time wasted sleeping to a minimum and keep pen and paper by the bed just in case. Food, thanks to the issues with time and waiting lists within the health service, continues to occupy but a marginal sector of the day and can, in fact, be dealt with by the simple expedient of typing one handed. The doglet ensures I get a little fresh air and exercise. This is very good for both my health and my juggling skills. These days our walks tend to involve me precariously balancing a notebook on a fencepost in the middle of nowhere to jot down something I don’t want to lose. Words, phrases, diagrams and sketches…
And not just in the middle of nowhere either… village shop, supermarket, mid conversation….
Anyone looking over my shoulder would probably sidle surreptitiously away and contemplate calling the men with the straitjacket… I can’t blame them. Some of the stuff I scribble down looks weird even to me… and it has to be pretty odd for me to admit that.
“We are an extrusion of the mind of God through which the One experiences manifestation through Its reflection as the Many, learning to Realise Itself”. Yes, I know. It sounds like something Borg-like from Star Trek. Sometimes I’m not even sure what I mean until I take it out and meditate on it. Or write. Which often serves the same purpose these days.
Just as well too, as often the stuff that is written is a last ditch attempt to hold on to a fleeting inspiration with the phone precariously clamped between a shoulder and one ear. A few scrawled strokes of the pen, like the finger painting of a drunken spider, may be all I’m left with of an internal dialogue that made perfect sense at the time… “the qualities of the human heart that longs for dragons…”, “the stones of childhood are chunks of memory”…. See what I mean? I’d have me carted away if I read some of this stuff!
Yet the whole process is immensely satisfying and I wouldn’t change a thing. To be honest, I wouldn’t even change the limited number of minutes in a day, as the compression of time leads to a richness of creative experience such as I have seldom known. Never known.
Not one minute of the day passes in inattention, no detail is too small to chase with the butterfly net of imagination. It might just be the mustard seed of inspiration I have been waiting for.
As the launch of the Silent Eye School draws inexorably closer and April seems suddenly far too near, both directors are working under similar pressure. Thankfully we share Mercury in spades and seem to thrive on it. The launch weekend is taking shape beautifully… the attention to detail that is put in beforehand will ensure that those who attend will be able to find something in it that speaks to them deeply, we hope, whether or not they plan on joining us in the School.
This is something we are passionate about. The way we teach and what we teach within the School will appeal to some and not to others. This is as it should be. But we will ensure that anyone attending our workshops will find something that stands alone, its value independent of the School, yet equally of interest within the context of the course.
It is a difficult balance to achieve, and along with the juggling skills and the tightrope we choose to walk to stay true to what we believe, it is a little like operating in a three ring circus. But then, we don’t need it to be easy… we just need to get it right.
There are still a few places available for the launch weekend if you’d care to join us and celebrate the birth of the School with us.
Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I apparently have a tiger and a mercenary to paint…..the School is a demandingly vivid mistress and one it is a joy to serve.
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”~ Rabindranath Tagore
I am doing my best, therefore, with the meagre twenty four hours I have at my daily disposal. It is all about priorities.
I will dust the living room again before the patina of dust reaches Quentin Crisp-like depths. Honest. Probably next time I happen to notice sunlight failing abysmally to reflect in gleaming surfaces. Or if I’m having visitors.
I have cut time wasted sleeping to a minimum and keep pen and paper by the bed just in case. Food, thanks to the issues with time and waiting lists within the health service, continues to occupy but a marginal sector of the day and can, in fact, be dealt with by the simple expedient of typing one handed. The doglet ensures I get a little fresh air and exercise. This is very good for both my health and my juggling skills. These days our walks tend to involve me precariously balancing a notebook on a fencepost in the middle of nowhere to jot down something I don’t want to lose. Words, phrases, diagrams and sketches…
And not just in the middle of nowhere either… village shop, supermarket, mid conversation….
Anyone looking over my shoulder would probably sidle surreptitiously away and contemplate calling the men with the straitjacket… I can’t blame them. Some of the stuff I scribble down looks weird even to me… and it has to be pretty odd for me to admit that.
“We are an extrusion of the mind of God through which the One experiences manifestation through Its reflection as the Many, learning to Realise Itself”. Yes, I know. It sounds like something Borg-like from Star Trek. Sometimes I’m not even sure what I mean until I take it out and meditate on it. Or write. Which often serves the same purpose these days.
Just as well too, as often the stuff that is written is a last ditch attempt to hold on to a fleeting inspiration with the phone precariously clamped between a shoulder and one ear. A few scrawled strokes of the pen, like the finger painting of a drunken spider, may be all I’m left with of an internal dialogue that made perfect sense at the time… “the qualities of the human heart that longs for dragons…”, “the stones of childhood are chunks of memory”…. See what I mean? I’d have me carted away if I read some of this stuff!
Yet the whole process is immensely satisfying and I wouldn’t change a thing. To be honest, I wouldn’t even change the limited number of minutes in a day, as the compression of time leads to a richness of creative experience such as I have seldom known. Never known.
Not one minute of the day passes in inattention, no detail is too small to chase with the butterfly net of imagination. It might just be the mustard seed of inspiration I have been waiting for.
As the launch of the Silent Eye School draws inexorably closer and April seems suddenly far too near, both directors are working under similar pressure. Thankfully we share Mercury in spades and seem to thrive on it. The launch weekend is taking shape beautifully… the attention to detail that is put in beforehand will ensure that those who attend will be able to find something in it that speaks to them deeply, we hope, whether or not they plan on joining us in the School.
This is something we are passionate about. The way we teach and what we teach within the School will appeal to some and not to others. This is as it should be. But we will ensure that anyone attending our workshops will find something that stands alone, its value independent of the School, yet equally of interest within the context of the course.
It is a difficult balance to achieve, and along with the juggling skills and the tightrope we choose to walk to stay true to what we believe, it is a little like operating in a three ring circus. But then, we don’t need it to be easy… we just need to get it right.
There are still a few places available for the launch weekend if you’d care to join us and celebrate the birth of the School with us.
Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I apparently have a tiger and a mercenary to paint…..the School is a demandingly vivid mistress and one it is a joy to serve.
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”~ Rabindranath Tagore
Dance of imagination
I’m sitting in tears today as the final fragment of the launch falls into place. Of course, it isn’t quite that simple… it doesn’t just happen… though this almost did. But this critical part of the weekend has only just been drawn together. We knew what was needed in principle, but had to wait to be shown the how.
Now we know.
And the beauty in it is astonishing.
Yet on paper it looks like nothing, almost silence.
This is often the way with meditations, the sacred drama we will use, the Pathworkings that are voyages in the imagination. On paper they are quite lifeless. It is only when the imagination comes into play and emotion wakens in the inner heart that they take on reality and a life of their own.
You can test this for yourself, very easily. Recite a poem or a prayer learned by rote, something you learned as a child before it held any meaning in your life. Recite it as if it were a stranger and had no depth… as if you were reading entries in a telephone directory. Then recite it again, with all it means to you in every word, all the emotion, all the attachments…speak it with love and memory, and you feel it in every corner of your being.
Guided meditations, Pathworkings, prayer or a simple poem or story, they all work in the same way. The writer notes the words on paper or screen, attempting to capture an elusive vision, something that has sung in their own heart. For them the words have life and meaning, depth and colour, for they see the inner vision from which they were born. With them they seek to evoke a similar emotional response in the reader. But it is a two way process, and the words cannot take on life and colour unless the reader engages with them.
Then it becomes a dance, a duet that transcends space and time, a magical pas de deux where the minds and imaginations of writer and reader meet in a reality beyond the workaday world. Each add their own particular shades and colour to the words, emotive meaning being deeply unique to each of us and an inner landscape comes into being where the mind can wander.
This holds true for any artist seeking to share a vision. Even a painter can only set an image free into the world. It is the viewer’s heart that responds and brings it to life.
In our book, “The Mystical Hexagram”, Gary and I use vivid landscapes painted with word and imagination to take the reader on an inner journey that is one of healing and self-discovery. In the Silent Eye the School will also use this technique, an ancient one in the Mysteries.
The drama used in our workshops is an extension of this and brings the imagination into life, capturing the attention of body, heart and mind, taking the inner dance to new levels.
So today as I read through the document that sets out the simplest of scenes, a shared vision given form in words, I saw it played out on the screen of my heart and felt it there. I felt the emotions it evokes, saw the depth of meaning in the simple directions, brought to life in my imagination in vivid hues and I wept at the beauty it carries and the promise it holds for the future to which we have committed our lives.
Now we know.
And the beauty in it is astonishing.
Yet on paper it looks like nothing, almost silence.
This is often the way with meditations, the sacred drama we will use, the Pathworkings that are voyages in the imagination. On paper they are quite lifeless. It is only when the imagination comes into play and emotion wakens in the inner heart that they take on reality and a life of their own.
You can test this for yourself, very easily. Recite a poem or a prayer learned by rote, something you learned as a child before it held any meaning in your life. Recite it as if it were a stranger and had no depth… as if you were reading entries in a telephone directory. Then recite it again, with all it means to you in every word, all the emotion, all the attachments…speak it with love and memory, and you feel it in every corner of your being.
Guided meditations, Pathworkings, prayer or a simple poem or story, they all work in the same way. The writer notes the words on paper or screen, attempting to capture an elusive vision, something that has sung in their own heart. For them the words have life and meaning, depth and colour, for they see the inner vision from which they were born. With them they seek to evoke a similar emotional response in the reader. But it is a two way process, and the words cannot take on life and colour unless the reader engages with them.
Then it becomes a dance, a duet that transcends space and time, a magical pas de deux where the minds and imaginations of writer and reader meet in a reality beyond the workaday world. Each add their own particular shades and colour to the words, emotive meaning being deeply unique to each of us and an inner landscape comes into being where the mind can wander.
This holds true for any artist seeking to share a vision. Even a painter can only set an image free into the world. It is the viewer’s heart that responds and brings it to life.
In our book, “The Mystical Hexagram”, Gary and I use vivid landscapes painted with word and imagination to take the reader on an inner journey that is one of healing and self-discovery. In the Silent Eye the School will also use this technique, an ancient one in the Mysteries.
The drama used in our workshops is an extension of this and brings the imagination into life, capturing the attention of body, heart and mind, taking the inner dance to new levels.
So today as I read through the document that sets out the simplest of scenes, a shared vision given form in words, I saw it played out on the screen of my heart and felt it there. I felt the emotions it evokes, saw the depth of meaning in the simple directions, brought to life in my imagination in vivid hues and I wept at the beauty it carries and the promise it holds for the future to which we have committed our lives.
