Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life, page 1053
November 28, 2013
A gift in the night
I couldn’t sleep. It was one of those odd nights where the eyes were too tired to carry on reading, yet the mind too awake to sleep. I lay awake, acutely aware of my body’s presence… the silky stuff of the sheets on skin, the rushing whisper of blood in the ears, the minute movement of the whole from the heartbeat. Small tickles of unruly hair against my face, the pressure of a badly sprung mattress in my back, the throbbing stigmata of unhealed blisters in the palm…
It is a curious state and one we have probably all experienced, where the body occupies a level of awareness greater than we have the attention for most of the time, yet, conversely, that very active presence in the stillness serves only to highlight the difference between the physical state and the other parts of our being as we watch and feel ourselves living from a different angle, separate and distinct. We become both observer and observed and somehow realise that even that state is itself an observation from yet another level of being.
Plunged finally into dream I was ‘home’, the reality of the images familiar, eliciting emotions and responses that would make sense to the waking mind and heart. The landscape is a familiar one from the body’s reality, one I have walked both in person and in memory all my life, winter and summer, spring and fall… one I know intimately on many levels. I ‘blame’ a friend and fellow Yorkshire lass for that excursion, her exile from the moors shared yesterday in words that sang to me also. And set off the yearning. It takes little to do so.
The people I met in dream were a mixture of those I love and have loved, and some I knew I have known, but cannot place in this lifetime… and there too was a yearning, a desire to embrace both people and landscape and open to a feeling of continuous love that pervaded the dream like mist the swirls and eddies of a moorland mist.
It was a beautiful interlude, an unconscious gift to myself, perhaps... or from some other level of being… A subconscious portrayal of a deep longing, or a holiday with loved ones… It all depends on what you believe a dream to be. For myself, it doesn’t really matter. Accepting the gift of experience, real or illusive, still provides the experience, the awakened emotions, the warmth of presence. Why analyse the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ when the perception holds beauty and feeds the soul?
I woke after only three hours and lay in the darkness feeling not the body this time, but the levels of emotion… love and joy…and now awake, a renewed sense of gently nostalgic longing… following the images and warmth of the dream through the maze of mind, heart and memory, threads intertwined, lives touching and heather-scented, the tang of crushed bracken in the night air as real as incense.
I had spent the night in the arms of love, cradled in a distant landscape… as real in the moment as the keyboard beneath my fingertips this morning. There is a place within each of us that is like this, I think, a place where time, distance and memory lose their meaning and we can simply let go of their illusion and be bathed in a serene joy. Does it matter if the world would say we dream?
The pen paints the souls longing
In jewel tones.
The darkness veils the stars,
Yet their Light shines unseen,
But not unfelt
An ember of gold
In the shadows.
Now you remind us
To count all our blessings,
Holding them dear
For the little while.
You remind us too
That chivalry survives,
And the courage to laugh
In the face of tragedy.
Then you remind us
That friendship is precious
A gift to be cherished
And never lost.
I am reminded
That life has its purpose
And our purpose in life
Is to Live it.
It is a curious state and one we have probably all experienced, where the body occupies a level of awareness greater than we have the attention for most of the time, yet, conversely, that very active presence in the stillness serves only to highlight the difference between the physical state and the other parts of our being as we watch and feel ourselves living from a different angle, separate and distinct. We become both observer and observed and somehow realise that even that state is itself an observation from yet another level of being.
Plunged finally into dream I was ‘home’, the reality of the images familiar, eliciting emotions and responses that would make sense to the waking mind and heart. The landscape is a familiar one from the body’s reality, one I have walked both in person and in memory all my life, winter and summer, spring and fall… one I know intimately on many levels. I ‘blame’ a friend and fellow Yorkshire lass for that excursion, her exile from the moors shared yesterday in words that sang to me also. And set off the yearning. It takes little to do so.
The people I met in dream were a mixture of those I love and have loved, and some I knew I have known, but cannot place in this lifetime… and there too was a yearning, a desire to embrace both people and landscape and open to a feeling of continuous love that pervaded the dream like mist the swirls and eddies of a moorland mist.
It was a beautiful interlude, an unconscious gift to myself, perhaps... or from some other level of being… A subconscious portrayal of a deep longing, or a holiday with loved ones… It all depends on what you believe a dream to be. For myself, it doesn’t really matter. Accepting the gift of experience, real or illusive, still provides the experience, the awakened emotions, the warmth of presence. Why analyse the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ when the perception holds beauty and feeds the soul?
I woke after only three hours and lay in the darkness feeling not the body this time, but the levels of emotion… love and joy…and now awake, a renewed sense of gently nostalgic longing… following the images and warmth of the dream through the maze of mind, heart and memory, threads intertwined, lives touching and heather-scented, the tang of crushed bracken in the night air as real as incense.
I had spent the night in the arms of love, cradled in a distant landscape… as real in the moment as the keyboard beneath my fingertips this morning. There is a place within each of us that is like this, I think, a place where time, distance and memory lose their meaning and we can simply let go of their illusion and be bathed in a serene joy. Does it matter if the world would say we dream?
The pen paints the souls longing
In jewel tones.
The darkness veils the stars,
Yet their Light shines unseen,
But not unfelt
An ember of gold
In the shadows.
Now you remind us
To count all our blessings,
Holding them dear
For the little while.
You remind us too
That chivalry survives,
And the courage to laugh
In the face of tragedy.
Then you remind us
That friendship is precious
A gift to be cherished
And never lost.
I am reminded
That life has its purpose
And our purpose in life
Is to Live it.
November 22, 2013
Eastern promise
I was up and out very early yesterday . I didn’t get very far… the lane at the end of my street to be exact… before I stopped the car and got out. The sun was cresting the horizon and the view over the fields was too beautiful to miss. Pushing my way through the gap in the hedge I stood among the last of the nettles to watch.
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."
Omar Khayyam
It only lasted a few moments, as the sun lit the clouds, turning them to molten gold, but that burst of glory made the day begin in beauty. I was, not for the first time and certainly not the last, grateful to live away from the town, where dawn is seldom truly seen. The sun makes its appearance there much later, obscured by rooftops. In the town the horizon becomes our habitations and places of work… here I see the Sun-god caress the curved body of Earth with a lover’s tenderness, bathing her in the delicate grace of his light.
The bigger the city the less likely we are to see the world waken to a true dawn with our skyscrapers and edifices. We see the light flood the sky, perhaps, as it is doing here now. As I look out of my window the sky is suffused with the pale grey of a pigeon’s breast as the sun rises beyond my horizon… soon the eye of heaven will open above the distant hills. The sky is cloudy, I may not see that moment today… perhaps there will be but a blush against the clouds…or maybe just the silent creeping light suffusing the sky.
For now there is quiet… no birds sing welcome to the dawn. In a few more minutes they will lift their voices in joy and busily begin their day. I sit here frozen with the door to the garden standing wide for Ani and listen for the first song to begin. I cannot know what is to come… I can only wait in stillness and wonder.
Ah, fill the Cup: -- what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!
Omar Khayyam
It doesn’t really matter if I, one small being with one pair of eyes, see the dawn in splendour. This morning the cloud is heavy and only the faintest flush of rose touches the world through their blanket. But as I write the birds begin to greet the morning, silhouettes turn from black to grey, less stark, less imposing, melding into the background of the day. Colour begins to warm the monochrome landscape and the whirring of busy wings becomes a subliminal thrum as the feathered denizens of the garden begin their busy quest for food.
Dawn crept upon a misty world almost unawares, stealing in behind the clouds. Yet I only have to listen to hear the world wake and know a new day has begun. Beneath this sky a world wakes or sleeps, holding all that I love in a single embrace.The sky may stay cloudy, or the mists may part to reveal the blue of beyond. Like the dawn, it is there, even though it is veiled from sight. As winter shrouds the world in frozen, misted shadows there is comfort in that thought. Beyond the horizon is always a dawn waiting to unfurl, beyond the clouds the azure canvas waits for us to write our dreams upon it, beyond the curtains of darkest night a new morning waits silently in the wings and will not miss the cue. An eternal dance where the veils that are dropped reveal both dancer and watcher to be one and the same, sharing the rhythm of the heartbeat of creation.
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."
Omar Khayyam
It only lasted a few moments, as the sun lit the clouds, turning them to molten gold, but that burst of glory made the day begin in beauty. I was, not for the first time and certainly not the last, grateful to live away from the town, where dawn is seldom truly seen. The sun makes its appearance there much later, obscured by rooftops. In the town the horizon becomes our habitations and places of work… here I see the Sun-god caress the curved body of Earth with a lover’s tenderness, bathing her in the delicate grace of his light.
The bigger the city the less likely we are to see the world waken to a true dawn with our skyscrapers and edifices. We see the light flood the sky, perhaps, as it is doing here now. As I look out of my window the sky is suffused with the pale grey of a pigeon’s breast as the sun rises beyond my horizon… soon the eye of heaven will open above the distant hills. The sky is cloudy, I may not see that moment today… perhaps there will be but a blush against the clouds…or maybe just the silent creeping light suffusing the sky.
For now there is quiet… no birds sing welcome to the dawn. In a few more minutes they will lift their voices in joy and busily begin their day. I sit here frozen with the door to the garden standing wide for Ani and listen for the first song to begin. I cannot know what is to come… I can only wait in stillness and wonder.
Ah, fill the Cup: -- what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!
Omar Khayyam
It doesn’t really matter if I, one small being with one pair of eyes, see the dawn in splendour. This morning the cloud is heavy and only the faintest flush of rose touches the world through their blanket. But as I write the birds begin to greet the morning, silhouettes turn from black to grey, less stark, less imposing, melding into the background of the day. Colour begins to warm the monochrome landscape and the whirring of busy wings becomes a subliminal thrum as the feathered denizens of the garden begin their busy quest for food.
Dawn crept upon a misty world almost unawares, stealing in behind the clouds. Yet I only have to listen to hear the world wake and know a new day has begun. Beneath this sky a world wakes or sleeps, holding all that I love in a single embrace.The sky may stay cloudy, or the mists may part to reveal the blue of beyond. Like the dawn, it is there, even though it is veiled from sight. As winter shrouds the world in frozen, misted shadows there is comfort in that thought. Beyond the horizon is always a dawn waiting to unfurl, beyond the clouds the azure canvas waits for us to write our dreams upon it, beyond the curtains of darkest night a new morning waits silently in the wings and will not miss the cue. An eternal dance where the veils that are dropped reveal both dancer and watcher to be one and the same, sharing the rhythm of the heartbeat of creation.
November 18, 2013
Moonlit musing
I was awake far too early again this morning. My bedroom is uncurtained save for a fine gauze that drapes the window allowing the moonlight in and dream-filled eyes to look out. The sky was dark when I woke and there were no stars to see as they were hidden behind cloud and mist. I had been half awake for some time, thinking about stars… and that state on the edge of dream holds some strange concepts.
The thoughts were not new… are any thoughts truly original?… and I wondered how many human beings have paused on the edge of slumber to consider the stars that wheel overhead every night, unregarded by most of us, most of the time.
I wondered about stars. We know there are planets… suns… galaxies… billions of the things twinkling away up there. To us they are just ‘stars’ most of the time. We assume we understand them to a certain degree, knowing what they are made of. Yet does that mean we really know what they are?
Look, I was half asleep…and my sons will happily remind you of the word ‘weird’….
I thought about water. H2O… everybody knows that. We all know what water is… how it is made.. two hydrogen atoms to every oxygen atom, etc… We know what it looks like, feels like, where it comes from, what we use it for, what we need it for… but do we know what it actually ‘is’?
Every culture, every people… even any writer who has touched on these things… has created their own mythology of the stars to explain their nature. Long before telescopes and spacecraft we ‘knew’ what the stars were. They were gods and heroes, mythical creatures… the souls of the dead. They were angelic beings, divine lights in the sky…They were, in my somnolent state, the souls of the departed, rainbow fragments of being awaiting rebirth…Pinpricks in the map of heaven that let the Light shine through, showing us that there was something beyond the world we live in.
I suppose I wasn’t questioning the nature of the stars as much as the nature of reality. And how the time and place of our birth on history’s pages colours our perception and understanding of that reality.
In this era of science and fact, of wondrous discoveries about the natural world around us, I wonder if we have lost something of the magical landscape our forefathers knew? Were they closer to the true nature of water, perhaps, when they saw it as sacred? By knowing the chemical composition of water and its cycle we are able to understand its physical nature, it is true, and it enables us to see clearly the impact our own species is having on the world for good or ill.
But perhaps we are no closer to understanding what anything actually ‘is’? I think we just like to comfort ourselves with knowledge and call it understanding.
Just think about it a moment… what are you? What am I? Are we simply the bodies we inhabit and in which we move through the inculated reality of the world? Are we more.. or less… than our thoughts and emotions, aspirations and dreams? Behind all those there is that indefinable something that is ‘you’… that unique and unfathomable ingredient that makes us all different… Even identical twins raised together have their own unique note in the symphony of life.
Perhaps reality is simply whatever we believe it to be? Most of us never question that an apple is an apple, a wall just a wall… Indeed, as children that incessant ‘why’ is often silenced with an exasperated ‘It just is, okay?’ and we cease to ponder reality, simply learning the rules to move through its observed parameters the same as everyone else, agreeing a reality by consensus.
The odd thing is that as soon as you begin to question the true nature of the smallest grain of sand it throws everything else into question and possibilities emerge that bring the magic back to life. You have to wonder if our very acceptance brainwashes us into blindness, so that we fail to see the marvels and mysteries hidden in plain sight in a world we think we know.
The mind wanders odd pathways in that half state when the body sleeps while the mind is wakeful. Through mine this morning a phrase from an old ritual meandered, seeming to make an abstract kind of sense… that we are ‘the marvellous seed of the stars’. The image that rose in my mind was one of a wondering beauty and if we create our reality ourselves, I think I’m going with that one.
Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
~ Chief Seattle, 1854 ~
The thoughts were not new… are any thoughts truly original?… and I wondered how many human beings have paused on the edge of slumber to consider the stars that wheel overhead every night, unregarded by most of us, most of the time.
I wondered about stars. We know there are planets… suns… galaxies… billions of the things twinkling away up there. To us they are just ‘stars’ most of the time. We assume we understand them to a certain degree, knowing what they are made of. Yet does that mean we really know what they are?
Look, I was half asleep…and my sons will happily remind you of the word ‘weird’….
I thought about water. H2O… everybody knows that. We all know what water is… how it is made.. two hydrogen atoms to every oxygen atom, etc… We know what it looks like, feels like, where it comes from, what we use it for, what we need it for… but do we know what it actually ‘is’?
Every culture, every people… even any writer who has touched on these things… has created their own mythology of the stars to explain their nature. Long before telescopes and spacecraft we ‘knew’ what the stars were. They were gods and heroes, mythical creatures… the souls of the dead. They were angelic beings, divine lights in the sky…They were, in my somnolent state, the souls of the departed, rainbow fragments of being awaiting rebirth…Pinpricks in the map of heaven that let the Light shine through, showing us that there was something beyond the world we live in.
I suppose I wasn’t questioning the nature of the stars as much as the nature of reality. And how the time and place of our birth on history’s pages colours our perception and understanding of that reality.
In this era of science and fact, of wondrous discoveries about the natural world around us, I wonder if we have lost something of the magical landscape our forefathers knew? Were they closer to the true nature of water, perhaps, when they saw it as sacred? By knowing the chemical composition of water and its cycle we are able to understand its physical nature, it is true, and it enables us to see clearly the impact our own species is having on the world for good or ill.
But perhaps we are no closer to understanding what anything actually ‘is’? I think we just like to comfort ourselves with knowledge and call it understanding.
Just think about it a moment… what are you? What am I? Are we simply the bodies we inhabit and in which we move through the inculated reality of the world? Are we more.. or less… than our thoughts and emotions, aspirations and dreams? Behind all those there is that indefinable something that is ‘you’… that unique and unfathomable ingredient that makes us all different… Even identical twins raised together have their own unique note in the symphony of life.
Perhaps reality is simply whatever we believe it to be? Most of us never question that an apple is an apple, a wall just a wall… Indeed, as children that incessant ‘why’ is often silenced with an exasperated ‘It just is, okay?’ and we cease to ponder reality, simply learning the rules to move through its observed parameters the same as everyone else, agreeing a reality by consensus.
The odd thing is that as soon as you begin to question the true nature of the smallest grain of sand it throws everything else into question and possibilities emerge that bring the magic back to life. You have to wonder if our very acceptance brainwashes us into blindness, so that we fail to see the marvels and mysteries hidden in plain sight in a world we think we know.
The mind wanders odd pathways in that half state when the body sleeps while the mind is wakeful. Through mine this morning a phrase from an old ritual meandered, seeming to make an abstract kind of sense… that we are ‘the marvellous seed of the stars’. The image that rose in my mind was one of a wondering beauty and if we create our reality ourselves, I think I’m going with that one.
Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
~ Chief Seattle, 1854 ~
November 16, 2013
A golden dawn
I couldn’t sleep. I’d gone to bed early and spent most of the night in that liminal state between dream and waking when the mind treads strange pathways, watching itself, while the body rests as if in slumber.
It is a strange state where the levels of consciousness seem to separate out and you see each of them clearly. Like liquid in a centrifuge, your immobility in the spinning of the world teases out the dense from the subtle, showing the clear definition between the layers of being, where in the agitated movement of everyday life we are accustomed to see them mingled, as if shaken together and cannot see what they truly are.
As you lie there you are aware of the components of who you are… the body… heavy, dense, the stuff of earth… the emotions and the mind… other layers less observable as a rule… and you see how they mingle, inter-dependant, the ingredients of the being you call you.
For that brief time it is a bit like the wonder of watching a rainbow as a child. Seeing all the colours of light refracted and separated in the unreal prism. Light is all around us, always, yet though it illuminates the world we do not see light itself until it interacts and plays upon the physical world, as in a rainbow, captured in water droplets, refracting and reflecting the sun.
When you see a rainbow, it isn’t really there… it is not an object, cannot be touched or approached.. which is why that pot of gold is so elusive. We see them only when the sun is behind us and conditions are precisely right. Sometimes the light reflects twice within the moisture and there is a double arc, the colours reversed in the inner and outer bows. To a child… or a dreamer… there is magic here.
Although the rainbow allows us to see sunlight manifest in beauty, have you ever thought that you cannot look at both the rainbow and the sun at the same time? You may see prisms in the clouds or camera lens… tiny glimpses of colour… yet to see the full beauty of a rainbow the sun must be behind you, and if you look towards the sun, the rainbow is no longer in your line of sight… it is no longer perceivable. To see the rainbow you turn your back towards the sun, to see the source you turn your gaze from the rainbow.
Yet if you stand between them and close your eyes, you know that both are there, even if unseen.
As I observed the separating layers of self in the night I thought about that… and realised that there was, in the spectrum of being I was observing, a rainbow of self, ranging from the density of matter to the most ethereal levels of mind. They too are reflecting and refracting a Source unseen, that stands behind our life, out of our line of sight.
Call it what you will, in the still, small hours it was clear. And something else too. The observer was none of the parts of me that I think of as ‘me’ in daily life… it was other than that… poised between the Source and the rainbow, knowing both and partaking of the nature of each, poised at the mid-point of creation.
As dawn rose on a frosty autumn morning I was out with Ani and saw the sky on fire, pondering the night. In that flare of golden glory I saw the source of light reflected in the windows and rooftops of the sleeping village, gilding the clouds and setting the skeletal trees ablaze. I could not see the sun itself, obscured by the structures in which we live our lives, but its colours changed the world into a magical place as I watched.
For those moments I was aware that the world was held in the reflected light of the sun, a sun still in the heavens even for the dark side of the planet, simply obscured by our own shadow as we the earth turns its back in sleep.
And there are no words for the feeling that followed, knowing that we too are rainbows of being, gilded refractions of the One, and though we may not see both Source and manifestation in the same glance, though It may be obscured by the busyness of our lives, we sometimes catch a glimpse, a prism in the clouds, and we can close our eyes and know that both are there.
It is a strange state where the levels of consciousness seem to separate out and you see each of them clearly. Like liquid in a centrifuge, your immobility in the spinning of the world teases out the dense from the subtle, showing the clear definition between the layers of being, where in the agitated movement of everyday life we are accustomed to see them mingled, as if shaken together and cannot see what they truly are.
As you lie there you are aware of the components of who you are… the body… heavy, dense, the stuff of earth… the emotions and the mind… other layers less observable as a rule… and you see how they mingle, inter-dependant, the ingredients of the being you call you.
For that brief time it is a bit like the wonder of watching a rainbow as a child. Seeing all the colours of light refracted and separated in the unreal prism. Light is all around us, always, yet though it illuminates the world we do not see light itself until it interacts and plays upon the physical world, as in a rainbow, captured in water droplets, refracting and reflecting the sun.
When you see a rainbow, it isn’t really there… it is not an object, cannot be touched or approached.. which is why that pot of gold is so elusive. We see them only when the sun is behind us and conditions are precisely right. Sometimes the light reflects twice within the moisture and there is a double arc, the colours reversed in the inner and outer bows. To a child… or a dreamer… there is magic here.
Although the rainbow allows us to see sunlight manifest in beauty, have you ever thought that you cannot look at both the rainbow and the sun at the same time? You may see prisms in the clouds or camera lens… tiny glimpses of colour… yet to see the full beauty of a rainbow the sun must be behind you, and if you look towards the sun, the rainbow is no longer in your line of sight… it is no longer perceivable. To see the rainbow you turn your back towards the sun, to see the source you turn your gaze from the rainbow.
Yet if you stand between them and close your eyes, you know that both are there, even if unseen.
As I observed the separating layers of self in the night I thought about that… and realised that there was, in the spectrum of being I was observing, a rainbow of self, ranging from the density of matter to the most ethereal levels of mind. They too are reflecting and refracting a Source unseen, that stands behind our life, out of our line of sight.
Call it what you will, in the still, small hours it was clear. And something else too. The observer was none of the parts of me that I think of as ‘me’ in daily life… it was other than that… poised between the Source and the rainbow, knowing both and partaking of the nature of each, poised at the mid-point of creation.
As dawn rose on a frosty autumn morning I was out with Ani and saw the sky on fire, pondering the night. In that flare of golden glory I saw the source of light reflected in the windows and rooftops of the sleeping village, gilding the clouds and setting the skeletal trees ablaze. I could not see the sun itself, obscured by the structures in which we live our lives, but its colours changed the world into a magical place as I watched.
For those moments I was aware that the world was held in the reflected light of the sun, a sun still in the heavens even for the dark side of the planet, simply obscured by our own shadow as we the earth turns its back in sleep.
And there are no words for the feeling that followed, knowing that we too are rainbows of being, gilded refractions of the One, and though we may not see both Source and manifestation in the same glance, though It may be obscured by the busyness of our lives, we sometimes catch a glimpse, a prism in the clouds, and we can close our eyes and know that both are there.
November 14, 2013
“You never loved me anyway.”
One of my all-time favourite fantasy cycles is the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson. They were the first adult fantasy books I ever read other than the classics such as Tolkien. My grandfather sent me a copy of the first book in paperback when I was living in France, “You’ll like this. The cover says it all…”
Well, if it did, I have to say, I didn’t fancy it. Bear in mind the fantasy genre hadn’t come my way back then and flicking through the first chapters the style didn’t appeal, the hero was an anti-hero and even commits unspeakable acts. I didn’t care for the way the opening chapters were written and honestly, the only reason I persevered was because I had already read my way through all the English language books in the local library. Reading in French wasn’t quite as relaxing and engaged areas of the brain other than the imagination.
Then, within the pages, I met the central character of the story… and it wasn’t hero or heroine, it was the Land. I was hooked. The plot deepened and it became more than a living landscape that sang to me of my own roots and the moors of home. It became a story of the awakening of beauty in a soul to whom it had been lost, it was the opening to love and trust in a place of darkness.
“Something there is in beauty
which grows in the soul of the beholder
like a flower:
fragile –
for many are the blights which may waste
the beauty
for the beholder –
and imperishable –
for the beauty may die,
or the world may die,
but the soul in which the flower grows
survives.”
Stephen R. Donaldson
There have been many books that have made me laugh and cry… but I think few have touched such a deep place with such intimacy. Yet it is just a story… something unreal, made-up… and still, somehow the leper’s journey into his own inner darkness leads to light.
I couldn’t wait for the second series…and my horror when I found the land wasted was real. Again I had to persevere. No longer because there were things I did not like, but , as Covenant says, “This you have to understand. There’s only one way to hurt a man who’s lost everything. Give him back something broken.” And this time he wasn’t alone… there was a woman with him, Linden Avery… a doctor. And she too was broken, feeling the hurt of the Land through her physician’s senses in every pore.
I suppose you could read the books as just stories. Like most people I suspect, I don’t read that way. Imagination paints pictures into which I step and live the story with the characters and see the parallels between their stories and challenges and my own, played out in full view or hidden in symbolism within the tale. Fantasy became a firm favourite because of this depth.
“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.”
Lloyd Alexander
As a reader, Linden was a challenge. You couldn’t like her. She was uncomfortable, damaged, withdrawn from her own reality by hiding within the utter professionalism of the hyper-reality of medicine. There is a moment when the story breaks through her barriers and a litany commences in her mind, “You never loved me anyway.” I won’t spoil the story by telling you why, but it rose from the deep past, a child’s cry in a woman’s mind that defined the reality she believed in for herself and which built a barrier she dare not cross for fear of what the truth might really be… and for fear of finding that pain once again… fresh in memory and anew in her current situation.
It has been this phrase that has been playing through my mind the past few days as I have pondered the way in which we perceive reality; how we unconsciously… often helplessly… allow the past to layer veil after veil upon the truth of who we are and the lives we live. We construct barriers of logic and reason, and walls equally secure, if not thicker, of fantasy and emotion behind which we can hide. The rose coloured veils are perhaps the hardest to rend because they destroy our illusions of self and make us question who we are, who we think we are and why we prefer to live in the illusion rather than face the reality in the mirror. I think it is a question we must all face at some point in our lives when we begin to seek to understand rather than simply move through life day by day.
“The heart cherishes secrets not worth the telling”
Stephen R. Donaldson
Near the end of the second trilogy of the Chronicles, there is a moment of utter transcendence, which left me gasping at its beauty the first time I read it. It illustrated the power hidden, latent, within each of us to shape our lives and futures. It showed what can be achieved by the human heart that is truly open to love and learns the meaning of that much overused word ‘unconditional’. In letting go of past belief and allowing the veils of self-imposed illusion to be rent we can find a freedom to act, to live and to be in truth, accepting the sometimes inevitable hurts of life as part of the process, but knowing, quite simply, that beyond them lies a path to freedom and joy.
“Despair and bitterness are not the only songs in the world”
Stephen R. DonaldsonThe Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever
Well, if it did, I have to say, I didn’t fancy it. Bear in mind the fantasy genre hadn’t come my way back then and flicking through the first chapters the style didn’t appeal, the hero was an anti-hero and even commits unspeakable acts. I didn’t care for the way the opening chapters were written and honestly, the only reason I persevered was because I had already read my way through all the English language books in the local library. Reading in French wasn’t quite as relaxing and engaged areas of the brain other than the imagination.
Then, within the pages, I met the central character of the story… and it wasn’t hero or heroine, it was the Land. I was hooked. The plot deepened and it became more than a living landscape that sang to me of my own roots and the moors of home. It became a story of the awakening of beauty in a soul to whom it had been lost, it was the opening to love and trust in a place of darkness.
“Something there is in beauty
which grows in the soul of the beholder
like a flower:
fragile –
for many are the blights which may waste
the beauty
for the beholder –
and imperishable –
for the beauty may die,
or the world may die,
but the soul in which the flower grows
survives.”
Stephen R. Donaldson
There have been many books that have made me laugh and cry… but I think few have touched such a deep place with such intimacy. Yet it is just a story… something unreal, made-up… and still, somehow the leper’s journey into his own inner darkness leads to light.
I couldn’t wait for the second series…and my horror when I found the land wasted was real. Again I had to persevere. No longer because there were things I did not like, but , as Covenant says, “This you have to understand. There’s only one way to hurt a man who’s lost everything. Give him back something broken.” And this time he wasn’t alone… there was a woman with him, Linden Avery… a doctor. And she too was broken, feeling the hurt of the Land through her physician’s senses in every pore.
I suppose you could read the books as just stories. Like most people I suspect, I don’t read that way. Imagination paints pictures into which I step and live the story with the characters and see the parallels between their stories and challenges and my own, played out in full view or hidden in symbolism within the tale. Fantasy became a firm favourite because of this depth.
“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.”
Lloyd Alexander
As a reader, Linden was a challenge. You couldn’t like her. She was uncomfortable, damaged, withdrawn from her own reality by hiding within the utter professionalism of the hyper-reality of medicine. There is a moment when the story breaks through her barriers and a litany commences in her mind, “You never loved me anyway.” I won’t spoil the story by telling you why, but it rose from the deep past, a child’s cry in a woman’s mind that defined the reality she believed in for herself and which built a barrier she dare not cross for fear of what the truth might really be… and for fear of finding that pain once again… fresh in memory and anew in her current situation.
It has been this phrase that has been playing through my mind the past few days as I have pondered the way in which we perceive reality; how we unconsciously… often helplessly… allow the past to layer veil after veil upon the truth of who we are and the lives we live. We construct barriers of logic and reason, and walls equally secure, if not thicker, of fantasy and emotion behind which we can hide. The rose coloured veils are perhaps the hardest to rend because they destroy our illusions of self and make us question who we are, who we think we are and why we prefer to live in the illusion rather than face the reality in the mirror. I think it is a question we must all face at some point in our lives when we begin to seek to understand rather than simply move through life day by day.
“The heart cherishes secrets not worth the telling”
Stephen R. Donaldson
Near the end of the second trilogy of the Chronicles, there is a moment of utter transcendence, which left me gasping at its beauty the first time I read it. It illustrated the power hidden, latent, within each of us to shape our lives and futures. It showed what can be achieved by the human heart that is truly open to love and learns the meaning of that much overused word ‘unconditional’. In letting go of past belief and allowing the veils of self-imposed illusion to be rent we can find a freedom to act, to live and to be in truth, accepting the sometimes inevitable hurts of life as part of the process, but knowing, quite simply, that beyond them lies a path to freedom and joy.
“Despair and bitterness are not the only songs in the world”
Stephen R. DonaldsonThe Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever
On se croit mèche
I’ve sat here for once staring at a blank screen. Not because I can’t think of anything to say. There are things I want to write today, things nagging at the edges of mind, heart and fingertips, but I can’t. They revolve around stories other than my own and must, therefore, remain behind a veil of silence. They are stories of love, and of loss, and of the heartache that we each experience at some point in our lives. Of the tragedies played out behind staid lace curtains or ultra-modern blinds, in the quiet precincts of home or the corridors of aseptic impersonality.
They are all our human stories that mark the rites of life and the seeds of growth, defining the learning curve of emotion. And they touch us all, as soon as we open ourselves to love in any of its myriad guises.
What is the alternative? A bland life lacking in the emotional peaks and troughs…? While we think that we could happily live without the heartaches perhaps… without them would we be able to look up to the heights and appreciate their beauty? You only see the true glory of a mountain when you have climbed it from its roots.
Yet that is no comfort to those stuck in the shadowy, tangled foothills. And in almost every street, in every city, there are private hells we do not see. There are those who retreat behind closed doors, those who reach out and many who wish they knew how, lifting wordless eyes to a sky that seems too far, where only the rain answers their tears.
There is the other side too, those who close their eyes to the pain around them, refusing to look in case they are touched, clutching the skirts of the silks and brocades of their own illusive contentment for fear of it being mired by the grief of others.
But for most of us there is that helpless yearning to help, knowing that, quite often, there is nothing we can do. Except, perhaps, to witness in shared humanity and with love.
I remember watching my sons four years ago. The elder barely conscious, paralysed, holding his brother with eyes he could barely control, the younger holding his hand, as he had every day, smiling down with absolute love. There was something around that hospital bed that drew all eyes. The tall, smiling figure, holding the pale hand in his brown one. In every ward, in every hospital, the nurses commented on the light of love that seemed to shine about the two of them. It will, I know, remain my most enduring memory of that time. Being there with love was all he could do.
Watching them, as a parent, knowing the searing grief behind that smile, I wanted to be able to ‘make it better’ as I had when they were small. The powerlessness to change anything was gut wrenching, appalling. All I could do was to be there with love. As they were for me.
Maybe that is what matters most… even when there are practical things we can do, perhaps it matters more that we mean it… acting from the heart and not from some inflated sense of who we are and what we can do… or from our own need to be seen as helpful, our need to be appreciated. Maybe these are the times we can and should step away from ourselves and the needs of our own ego… for if we look honestly into the mirrors of our souls we find we all share many frailties… and simply be the living flame of love.
“On se croit mèche, on n’est que suif.” As the candle burns the tallow is consumed, transformed. We think we are the wick from which that flame springs and upon which it dances. In truth, it may be that we are the tallow that fuels the flame of Love.
They are all our human stories that mark the rites of life and the seeds of growth, defining the learning curve of emotion. And they touch us all, as soon as we open ourselves to love in any of its myriad guises.
What is the alternative? A bland life lacking in the emotional peaks and troughs…? While we think that we could happily live without the heartaches perhaps… without them would we be able to look up to the heights and appreciate their beauty? You only see the true glory of a mountain when you have climbed it from its roots.
Yet that is no comfort to those stuck in the shadowy, tangled foothills. And in almost every street, in every city, there are private hells we do not see. There are those who retreat behind closed doors, those who reach out and many who wish they knew how, lifting wordless eyes to a sky that seems too far, where only the rain answers their tears.
There is the other side too, those who close their eyes to the pain around them, refusing to look in case they are touched, clutching the skirts of the silks and brocades of their own illusive contentment for fear of it being mired by the grief of others.
But for most of us there is that helpless yearning to help, knowing that, quite often, there is nothing we can do. Except, perhaps, to witness in shared humanity and with love.
I remember watching my sons four years ago. The elder barely conscious, paralysed, holding his brother with eyes he could barely control, the younger holding his hand, as he had every day, smiling down with absolute love. There was something around that hospital bed that drew all eyes. The tall, smiling figure, holding the pale hand in his brown one. In every ward, in every hospital, the nurses commented on the light of love that seemed to shine about the two of them. It will, I know, remain my most enduring memory of that time. Being there with love was all he could do.
Watching them, as a parent, knowing the searing grief behind that smile, I wanted to be able to ‘make it better’ as I had when they were small. The powerlessness to change anything was gut wrenching, appalling. All I could do was to be there with love. As they were for me.
Maybe that is what matters most… even when there are practical things we can do, perhaps it matters more that we mean it… acting from the heart and not from some inflated sense of who we are and what we can do… or from our own need to be seen as helpful, our need to be appreciated. Maybe these are the times we can and should step away from ourselves and the needs of our own ego… for if we look honestly into the mirrors of our souls we find we all share many frailties… and simply be the living flame of love.
“On se croit mèche, on n’est que suif.” As the candle burns the tallow is consumed, transformed. We think we are the wick from which that flame springs and upon which it dances. In truth, it may be that we are the tallow that fuels the flame of Love.
November 7, 2013
Out of Season
He probably didn’t need to laugh quite so much.
I have an excuse... I have flu… migraine...I’m not well…
My son had found me, head in hands… and knowing this had asked what was wrong.
I knew I shouldn’t have told him….
…to be fair, he has every reason to laugh.
I’d just turned the phone ringer volume up…
..in case Ani needed to call me.
I know she is a very clever dog, but…
Yep. I’m losing the plot.
To be fair, I’m not alone.
The roses are in full bloom, primulas sparkle in the pale sunlight, the fish are active, jumping at the clouds of midges above the pond. Geum’s dot the garden with flame. Perfume from the choisya blossom… the clear blue of campanulas and the deep purple of hebe…and the bright yellow of winter mahonia….
It is November. It is cold. Even the garden is confused.
It seems many things are bending normality to suit themselves.
And really, why ever not?
Who says we have to conform to a normality predefined by who knows who? And who does define it anyway? When you really think about it… we do.
There is no law that says you have to get old when you reach a certain age, retire to the armchair and wait for a decorous finale… And no rule that says a child cannot be as gifted as a Mozart… Or the fallacy that old dogs can’t learn new tricks…
Lots of platitudes, accepted norms… yet really, there is nothing set in stone. Fear, perhaps, is the definer of normality. We fear to step outside the narrow boundaries that we see as acceptable…And while we do so we narrow the boundaries of acceptable behaviour more and more, setting our own limits just a smidgen inside the safe zone. Being conventional, behaving as one ‘ought’, becomes an unconscious boundary we fear to cross.
We look out at a society whose concept of the ‘usual’ is defined by its own fears of standing out from the crowd... falling flat on its face… looking ‘silly’ in the eyes of others. Why should that matter? It is those who take risks…go out on a limb for an idea, an ideal, an innovation that get things done and move life forward for the rest of us.
As teenagers we push the envelope of acceptability with fashions and music, crusading ideas that challenge the normality of preceding generations. I think that is perhaps the only reason we, as a society, haven’t imploded, or followed the example of the mythical Oozlum bird. Each generation pushes the bounds out a little further… perhaps so it has a slightly bigger prison of normality to play in as it, in turn, ages and settles for convention. The revolutions of our youth become the bars of mediocrity in middle age.
There are also some who defy normality through fear of being swallowed whole by the gaping maw of age or mediocrity. Fear, on both sides of the equation, defines… and has a lot to answer for. Yet we are the ones who give it life.
Those who defy these unwritten rules are cast in one of two roles... they are either labelled with epithets such as Bohemian, hippy, weird… you know the type of thing… those half envious names that we secretly wish we could live up to, while endowing them with a tone of quasi-indulgent superiority. Or we hail them as examples of what we could be. The dividing line seems also to be defined by society... if you are successful, you may be hailed as the latter category... the rest serve as a measure of our own slavery to convention.
Yet we all have that spark within us that makes us unique. The rebellious teenager still lives within each one of us, ready to challenge the limits the mundane world seems to impose. We are all capable of the inner freedom to be great… even if that greatness is never seen beyond the confines of our own hearts and minds.
I have an excuse... I have flu… migraine...I’m not well…
My son had found me, head in hands… and knowing this had asked what was wrong.
I knew I shouldn’t have told him….
…to be fair, he has every reason to laugh.
I’d just turned the phone ringer volume up…
..in case Ani needed to call me.
I know she is a very clever dog, but…
Yep. I’m losing the plot.
To be fair, I’m not alone.
The roses are in full bloom, primulas sparkle in the pale sunlight, the fish are active, jumping at the clouds of midges above the pond. Geum’s dot the garden with flame. Perfume from the choisya blossom… the clear blue of campanulas and the deep purple of hebe…and the bright yellow of winter mahonia….
It is November. It is cold. Even the garden is confused.
It seems many things are bending normality to suit themselves.
And really, why ever not?
Who says we have to conform to a normality predefined by who knows who? And who does define it anyway? When you really think about it… we do.
There is no law that says you have to get old when you reach a certain age, retire to the armchair and wait for a decorous finale… And no rule that says a child cannot be as gifted as a Mozart… Or the fallacy that old dogs can’t learn new tricks…
Lots of platitudes, accepted norms… yet really, there is nothing set in stone. Fear, perhaps, is the definer of normality. We fear to step outside the narrow boundaries that we see as acceptable…And while we do so we narrow the boundaries of acceptable behaviour more and more, setting our own limits just a smidgen inside the safe zone. Being conventional, behaving as one ‘ought’, becomes an unconscious boundary we fear to cross.
We look out at a society whose concept of the ‘usual’ is defined by its own fears of standing out from the crowd... falling flat on its face… looking ‘silly’ in the eyes of others. Why should that matter? It is those who take risks…go out on a limb for an idea, an ideal, an innovation that get things done and move life forward for the rest of us.
As teenagers we push the envelope of acceptability with fashions and music, crusading ideas that challenge the normality of preceding generations. I think that is perhaps the only reason we, as a society, haven’t imploded, or followed the example of the mythical Oozlum bird. Each generation pushes the bounds out a little further… perhaps so it has a slightly bigger prison of normality to play in as it, in turn, ages and settles for convention. The revolutions of our youth become the bars of mediocrity in middle age.
There are also some who defy normality through fear of being swallowed whole by the gaping maw of age or mediocrity. Fear, on both sides of the equation, defines… and has a lot to answer for. Yet we are the ones who give it life.
Those who defy these unwritten rules are cast in one of two roles... they are either labelled with epithets such as Bohemian, hippy, weird… you know the type of thing… those half envious names that we secretly wish we could live up to, while endowing them with a tone of quasi-indulgent superiority. Or we hail them as examples of what we could be. The dividing line seems also to be defined by society... if you are successful, you may be hailed as the latter category... the rest serve as a measure of our own slavery to convention.
Yet we all have that spark within us that makes us unique. The rebellious teenager still lives within each one of us, ready to challenge the limits the mundane world seems to impose. We are all capable of the inner freedom to be great… even if that greatness is never seen beyond the confines of our own hearts and minds.
November 4, 2013
"If at first..."
Sleep would have been nice. I’m told it is good for you. I was certainly tired enough and expected to fall into a deep slumber as soon as my head hit the pillow... well at least by the second chapter… and indulge until daylight.
Not, I am afraid, so.
The clock said 4am… it had said 1am as I turned out the lamp… and while I gritted my teeth and tried to resist, dragging the duvet over my head stubbornly in the interest of getting some much needed rest, the dreams were gnawing at my ear like a small rodent and telling me to get up and do something about them. And I was wide awake. You wouldn’t think something as ephemeral as a dream, small as a mouse could be so insistent… but then, mice are persistent creatures.
I gave in. Stopped fighting. Sometimes it is the best thing to do.
I dealt with the dream which, on allowing the subliminal whisper to finally have its way, turned out to be more ursine than murine and that leaves me and the coffee twiddling thumbs before dawn yet again. Which is, as the idiom goes, a bit of a bugger.
Still, there are benefits to being upright, though Ani may see them merely in terms of an early start with the tennis ball and a dawn raid on the empty milk carton, several inches of tongue currently cleaning the inside of translucent plastic at my feet.
There were rewards too in the inbox, although they could have quite easily waited till later, and a reference that led off on an interesting tangent over the second coffee. Persistence pays off, but it can be a double edged sword. You need the quality in order to achieve anything, yet the tight focus required inevitably blinds you to the wider picture that may include many more possible avenues than the one you are driving at ... or feel you are driven towards.
I watched this in action yesterday as I drove home from my son’s. The busy road runs through a landscape of ploughed fields and as I drove a red kite flew alongside me for about half a mile, keeping itself level with my eyeline and speed… which, when I think about it, was awesome enough in itself. There was a moment... a split second… when it hung in the air… then swooped below the line of the hedgerow, emerging with a small rodent in its talons. The speed was incredible… it all happened in a glance through the side window… and then it was away… soaring.
At first it was only the privilege of watching something so beautiful that imprinted itself on consciousness. But I realised that had the great bird, symbol of Isis, not been high enough, far enough from the ground, she would not have seen her prey… her goal… nor been able to pinpoint her descent so accurately. Her quarry lives and moves on the earth, yet she, had she joined it there, would have ended up with muddy feathers and no lunch. Her gift is to soar and to see from above and utilise her glorious design of wing and feather. She uses her whole being to its full potential by rising above the level of that which she seeks.
With our focus so firmly on the necessities of life in a demanding world, I have to wonder if we are walking in a muddy field alien to our true nature and failing to rise high enough to see a clearer, wider picture. Within the ridges and furrows of ploughed earth we may lose sight of the greater landscape and get caught in the sticky morass that makes flight ever more difficult.
There is the old saying we all know, that ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’. We quote it without thinking, knowing that without the daily grind, the petty worries and pressures, the heart sees clearer the distant beloved and the emotion shines, standing bright against the mundane world. The details fade as we move apart, flaws disappear out of focus and we are left only with the essence of love.
On the negative side this can blind us to reality and allow us to indulge in the make believe of a romantic dream… and may explain why to many the past holds the only attraction, seen from a safe distance and we yearn for an illusion. Most of the time, however, it shows how small the details are in comparison to the essence, allowing us to see reality with truer vision as the minor details blur and recede. Yet we do not seem to notice that perhaps this applies at a deeper level also, and that by stepping back from the cares and worries, widening our focus and seeing the landscapes of our lives from horizon to horizon, we might just fall in love with life itself.
Not, I am afraid, so.
The clock said 4am… it had said 1am as I turned out the lamp… and while I gritted my teeth and tried to resist, dragging the duvet over my head stubbornly in the interest of getting some much needed rest, the dreams were gnawing at my ear like a small rodent and telling me to get up and do something about them. And I was wide awake. You wouldn’t think something as ephemeral as a dream, small as a mouse could be so insistent… but then, mice are persistent creatures.
I gave in. Stopped fighting. Sometimes it is the best thing to do.
I dealt with the dream which, on allowing the subliminal whisper to finally have its way, turned out to be more ursine than murine and that leaves me and the coffee twiddling thumbs before dawn yet again. Which is, as the idiom goes, a bit of a bugger.
Still, there are benefits to being upright, though Ani may see them merely in terms of an early start with the tennis ball and a dawn raid on the empty milk carton, several inches of tongue currently cleaning the inside of translucent plastic at my feet.
There were rewards too in the inbox, although they could have quite easily waited till later, and a reference that led off on an interesting tangent over the second coffee. Persistence pays off, but it can be a double edged sword. You need the quality in order to achieve anything, yet the tight focus required inevitably blinds you to the wider picture that may include many more possible avenues than the one you are driving at ... or feel you are driven towards.
I watched this in action yesterday as I drove home from my son’s. The busy road runs through a landscape of ploughed fields and as I drove a red kite flew alongside me for about half a mile, keeping itself level with my eyeline and speed… which, when I think about it, was awesome enough in itself. There was a moment... a split second… when it hung in the air… then swooped below the line of the hedgerow, emerging with a small rodent in its talons. The speed was incredible… it all happened in a glance through the side window… and then it was away… soaring.
At first it was only the privilege of watching something so beautiful that imprinted itself on consciousness. But I realised that had the great bird, symbol of Isis, not been high enough, far enough from the ground, she would not have seen her prey… her goal… nor been able to pinpoint her descent so accurately. Her quarry lives and moves on the earth, yet she, had she joined it there, would have ended up with muddy feathers and no lunch. Her gift is to soar and to see from above and utilise her glorious design of wing and feather. She uses her whole being to its full potential by rising above the level of that which she seeks.
With our focus so firmly on the necessities of life in a demanding world, I have to wonder if we are walking in a muddy field alien to our true nature and failing to rise high enough to see a clearer, wider picture. Within the ridges and furrows of ploughed earth we may lose sight of the greater landscape and get caught in the sticky morass that makes flight ever more difficult.
There is the old saying we all know, that ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’. We quote it without thinking, knowing that without the daily grind, the petty worries and pressures, the heart sees clearer the distant beloved and the emotion shines, standing bright against the mundane world. The details fade as we move apart, flaws disappear out of focus and we are left only with the essence of love.
On the negative side this can blind us to reality and allow us to indulge in the make believe of a romantic dream… and may explain why to many the past holds the only attraction, seen from a safe distance and we yearn for an illusion. Most of the time, however, it shows how small the details are in comparison to the essence, allowing us to see reality with truer vision as the minor details blur and recede. Yet we do not seem to notice that perhaps this applies at a deeper level also, and that by stepping back from the cares and worries, widening our focus and seeing the landscapes of our lives from horizon to horizon, we might just fall in love with life itself.
October 15, 2013
The Osiriad: Isis & Osiris, the Divine Lovers
A new book
by Sue Vincent
Foreword by Steve Tanham
“There was a time we did not walk the earth. A time when our nascent essence flowed, undifferentiated, in the Source of Being.”
In forgotten ages, the stories tell, the gods lived and ruled amongst men. Many tales were told, across many times and cultures, following the themes common to all mankind. Stories were woven of love and loss, magic and mystery, life and death. One such story has survived from the most distant times. In the Two Lands of Ancient Egypt a mythical history has been preserved across millennia. It begins with the dawn of Creation itself and spans one of the greatest stories ever to capture the heart and imagination. Myths are, by their very nature, organic. They grow from a seed sown around a hearthfire, perhaps, and the stories travelled the ancient highways, embellished and adapted with each retelling. Who knows what the first story told?
“Your myths tell our tales and your own, entwined like lovers in the embrace of eternity. Yet you forget, losing yourselves in your fears, denying the sacredness of life, selecting only those facets that allow your blindness and turning from the mirror of your own image.”
In this retelling of the ancient story it is the Mistress of all Magic herself who tells the tale of the sacred family of Egypt.
“We have borne many names and many faces, my family and I. All races have called us after their own fashion and we live their stories for them, bringing to life the Universal Laws and Man’s own innermost heart. We have laughed and loved, taught and suffered, sharing the emotions that give richness to life. But for now, I will share a chapter of my family’s story. One that has survived intact through the millennia, known and remembered still, across your world. Carved in stone, written on papyrus, I will tell you of a time when my name was Isis.”
ISBN-13: 978-1492881605
ISBN-10: 1492881600
Available soon on Amazon in Paperback and for Kindle
by Sue Vincent
Foreword by Steve Tanham
“There was a time we did not walk the earth. A time when our nascent essence flowed, undifferentiated, in the Source of Being.”
In forgotten ages, the stories tell, the gods lived and ruled amongst men. Many tales were told, across many times and cultures, following the themes common to all mankind. Stories were woven of love and loss, magic and mystery, life and death. One such story has survived from the most distant times. In the Two Lands of Ancient Egypt a mythical history has been preserved across millennia. It begins with the dawn of Creation itself and spans one of the greatest stories ever to capture the heart and imagination. Myths are, by their very nature, organic. They grow from a seed sown around a hearthfire, perhaps, and the stories travelled the ancient highways, embellished and adapted with each retelling. Who knows what the first story told?
“Your myths tell our tales and your own, entwined like lovers in the embrace of eternity. Yet you forget, losing yourselves in your fears, denying the sacredness of life, selecting only those facets that allow your blindness and turning from the mirror of your own image.”
In this retelling of the ancient story it is the Mistress of all Magic herself who tells the tale of the sacred family of Egypt.
“We have borne many names and many faces, my family and I. All races have called us after their own fashion and we live their stories for them, bringing to life the Universal Laws and Man’s own innermost heart. We have laughed and loved, taught and suffered, sharing the emotions that give richness to life. But for now, I will share a chapter of my family’s story. One that has survived intact through the millennia, known and remembered still, across your world. Carved in stone, written on papyrus, I will tell you of a time when my name was Isis.”
ISBN-13: 978-1492881605
ISBN-10: 1492881600
Available soon on Amazon in Paperback and for Kindle
September 29, 2013
Being human
The restaurant is quiet now, many of the tables are empty. Sunset gilds the weathered stone of the window frames and casts ghosts of a beautiful day across the table, igniting the ruby heart in the half empty glasses. The woman tapping away at the little keyboard glances at her companion. There is an expression of deep concentration, emotions flitting across the unguarded face… She smiles. He is lost in the story, seeing it played out on the screen of imagination, reading from the heart, feeling the joy and grief of the characters. The book in his hands is a dream made concrete, the ephemeral made real. Her dream, his reality. From the back cover her own face smiles back.
***
An old story plays out in images on the flickering screen, acted to perfection by stars, long dead, but here, forever, captured in an unending moment. The story may have no basis in reality… or perhaps it does…but the grief of she who weeps for her son is that of every mother’s tears. Alone in the dark tears course unstoppable…rivulets of pain and compassion… from cheek, to throat, to breast… back to the heart that watches, a mother’s heart who knows that grief. The acted emotion evoking a response, a mirror, in the reality that observes the fantasy.
***
Faded photographs, a tapestry of images… instants in time captured by the lens and brought back to life by the sight of the heart. Memories carry presence from the now to the then as eyes read the story of the past. The emotions are not then, but now.
***
Paint rushes across the canvas, swirling and curling like dust-devils in the heat of summer. You can feel it beating down on the unprotected head. Energy flows in every line and curve…passion made visible, calling to something deep within your being
***
The music begins and you are lost in images born of sound and emotion, carried upon wings of imagination shared across centuries, heart to heart with unspoken words….
***
School dinners. It is not the same smell… but so close you are instantly transported back to childhood, feeling once more all the small details of that moment, recalling the taste of a favourite sweet, perhaps, or the comfort of a touch. For a scintilla of conscious time you are a child again.
***
You will have noticed a bit of a theme going on here… images, brought to consciousness through the senses and evoking emotions that are not images, or memories in themselves, but, here and present now. Many spiritual paths over the ages have advocated a leaving behind of the things of the flesh, divorcing ourselves from the senses and focussing our attention firmly upon the higher and ethereal realms of spirit. I , nor I think, can anyone say with utter certitude …except through personal conviction… whether this is the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to go about things. There are and have been mystics of all faiths and paths that have embraced this concept with their whole being and who have come to a personal enlightenment. There are others who have embraced the world and all it offers and have also reached that level of spiritual beauty.
For me, personally, and for the Silent Eye, we have chosen the latter path…or perhaps it is closer to the truth to say it has embraced us. The idea of turning away from the world, for me, implies a separation from the Divine, by whatever name we choose to call It. The world in which we live, the bodies we inhabit, the creatures, great and small, with which we share this planet… our home… to me are all expressions of the One. And that includes us.
Even as a child the idea that we should turn from ourselves.. the way we were made, the tools we were given with which to experience the world… seemed odd. Though I was raised in a rather unusual family with wide ranging religious and spiritual beliefs, I lived in a nominally Christian country, went to Sunday School and learned from the Bible. It said, quite clearly, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Genesis 1:27. KJV In fact, in the same phrase, it said it thrice.
Now, the Sunday School child, with the child’s simplistic viewpoint, could not quite grasp how, on the one hand, we were being taught that God was omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent… yet had obviously got it all wrong, because we had to be ashamed of our bodies and their functions, deny human emotions and senses and try to become perfect. Surely, I thought, if God had created us in His image... like a mirror… we were already perfect in His eyes?
Ah, said the Sunday School teacher, smiling beatifically… but there was the Fall... the expulsion from Eden…sin….
Hmm... thought the child, rapidly learning to keep quiet… but didn’t God create the Tree, the Apple and the Serpent too? Maybe he knew what He was doing? Maybe, they too were part of His plan, His perfection? Decades passed, symbolism and abstract thought applied, beliefs changing and evolving as life adds to the store of knowledge and understanding…yet this idea always stuck, unshakeably, in my mind.
Maybe, just maybe, the things of this earth were meant to be experienced and learned from? And perhaps the senses we use to move blindly and often blandly through life were the gateway to a deeper understanding? And when I realised that it is through the senses that we touch the deepest emotions that began to make sense.
There is a difference between being a slave to the senses and using them… the same difference perhaps between using opiates for medical purposes and for the recreational escapism that ends in addiction. The one offers release from pain, the other dependency.
There is no guarantee that the reality any of us sees is the same as that seen through another’s eyes. We all see the sky is blue… but how can we tell if what I see as the colour I call blue is the same as the colour you see? We agree, by consensus, that it is blue.. and can replicate our own version of blue in other things… but who is to say my ‘blue’ is not actually your ‘green’… just called by the same name? Our perception of the world is unique and personal, but we have a consensual language with which to share experience.
Perhaps the only area where we can touch each other’s reality at a deep level of true understanding... where we can communicate heart to heart, wordlessly and in all simplicity, is through the emotions… and emotions are accessed through the senses Think about that… without the physical senses we could not feel… indeed, most of the language of emotion describes sensation… we feel, are touched, we hurt….
There is another phrase from the Bible that also stuck and which has been brought back to the surface recently through our work on The Initiate…“…a sword shall pierce through your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” Luke 2:35
Emotions are universal, timeless and understood by all. Once experienced they are part of us and we recognise them in ourselves and in others. Compassion answers grief, eyes meet in joy, tenderness meets need… a wordless understanding that transcends all other forms of communication. Who among us who has experienced the heart-piercing sword of loss cannot feel it in another? The thoughts of many hearts, indeed, become clear when we allow ourselves to listen to our own.
Maybe just being human can bring us closer to each other than we realise.…across time and space, across all political and geographical divides, leaving an imprint of emotion that others can understand, miles and millennia apart.
***
An old story plays out in images on the flickering screen, acted to perfection by stars, long dead, but here, forever, captured in an unending moment. The story may have no basis in reality… or perhaps it does…but the grief of she who weeps for her son is that of every mother’s tears. Alone in the dark tears course unstoppable…rivulets of pain and compassion… from cheek, to throat, to breast… back to the heart that watches, a mother’s heart who knows that grief. The acted emotion evoking a response, a mirror, in the reality that observes the fantasy.
***
Faded photographs, a tapestry of images… instants in time captured by the lens and brought back to life by the sight of the heart. Memories carry presence from the now to the then as eyes read the story of the past. The emotions are not then, but now.
***
Paint rushes across the canvas, swirling and curling like dust-devils in the heat of summer. You can feel it beating down on the unprotected head. Energy flows in every line and curve…passion made visible, calling to something deep within your being
***
The music begins and you are lost in images born of sound and emotion, carried upon wings of imagination shared across centuries, heart to heart with unspoken words….
***
School dinners. It is not the same smell… but so close you are instantly transported back to childhood, feeling once more all the small details of that moment, recalling the taste of a favourite sweet, perhaps, or the comfort of a touch. For a scintilla of conscious time you are a child again.
***
You will have noticed a bit of a theme going on here… images, brought to consciousness through the senses and evoking emotions that are not images, or memories in themselves, but, here and present now. Many spiritual paths over the ages have advocated a leaving behind of the things of the flesh, divorcing ourselves from the senses and focussing our attention firmly upon the higher and ethereal realms of spirit. I , nor I think, can anyone say with utter certitude …except through personal conviction… whether this is the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to go about things. There are and have been mystics of all faiths and paths that have embraced this concept with their whole being and who have come to a personal enlightenment. There are others who have embraced the world and all it offers and have also reached that level of spiritual beauty.
For me, personally, and for the Silent Eye, we have chosen the latter path…or perhaps it is closer to the truth to say it has embraced us. The idea of turning away from the world, for me, implies a separation from the Divine, by whatever name we choose to call It. The world in which we live, the bodies we inhabit, the creatures, great and small, with which we share this planet… our home… to me are all expressions of the One. And that includes us.
Even as a child the idea that we should turn from ourselves.. the way we were made, the tools we were given with which to experience the world… seemed odd. Though I was raised in a rather unusual family with wide ranging religious and spiritual beliefs, I lived in a nominally Christian country, went to Sunday School and learned from the Bible. It said, quite clearly, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Genesis 1:27. KJV In fact, in the same phrase, it said it thrice.
Now, the Sunday School child, with the child’s simplistic viewpoint, could not quite grasp how, on the one hand, we were being taught that God was omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent… yet had obviously got it all wrong, because we had to be ashamed of our bodies and their functions, deny human emotions and senses and try to become perfect. Surely, I thought, if God had created us in His image... like a mirror… we were already perfect in His eyes?
Ah, said the Sunday School teacher, smiling beatifically… but there was the Fall... the expulsion from Eden…sin….
Hmm... thought the child, rapidly learning to keep quiet… but didn’t God create the Tree, the Apple and the Serpent too? Maybe he knew what He was doing? Maybe, they too were part of His plan, His perfection? Decades passed, symbolism and abstract thought applied, beliefs changing and evolving as life adds to the store of knowledge and understanding…yet this idea always stuck, unshakeably, in my mind.
Maybe, just maybe, the things of this earth were meant to be experienced and learned from? And perhaps the senses we use to move blindly and often blandly through life were the gateway to a deeper understanding? And when I realised that it is through the senses that we touch the deepest emotions that began to make sense.
There is a difference between being a slave to the senses and using them… the same difference perhaps between using opiates for medical purposes and for the recreational escapism that ends in addiction. The one offers release from pain, the other dependency.
There is no guarantee that the reality any of us sees is the same as that seen through another’s eyes. We all see the sky is blue… but how can we tell if what I see as the colour I call blue is the same as the colour you see? We agree, by consensus, that it is blue.. and can replicate our own version of blue in other things… but who is to say my ‘blue’ is not actually your ‘green’… just called by the same name? Our perception of the world is unique and personal, but we have a consensual language with which to share experience.
Perhaps the only area where we can touch each other’s reality at a deep level of true understanding... where we can communicate heart to heart, wordlessly and in all simplicity, is through the emotions… and emotions are accessed through the senses Think about that… without the physical senses we could not feel… indeed, most of the language of emotion describes sensation… we feel, are touched, we hurt….
There is another phrase from the Bible that also stuck and which has been brought back to the surface recently through our work on The Initiate…“…a sword shall pierce through your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” Luke 2:35
Emotions are universal, timeless and understood by all. Once experienced they are part of us and we recognise them in ourselves and in others. Compassion answers grief, eyes meet in joy, tenderness meets need… a wordless understanding that transcends all other forms of communication. Who among us who has experienced the heart-piercing sword of loss cannot feel it in another? The thoughts of many hearts, indeed, become clear when we allow ourselves to listen to our own.
Maybe just being human can bring us closer to each other than we realise.…across time and space, across all political and geographical divides, leaving an imprint of emotion that others can understand, miles and millennia apart.
