Time, as always, passed quickly and the two hours had flown. Once more we and half those who had attended as well as some who had been unable to join us earlier, had congregated at the George where a friend had already acquired a small flock of well-earned pints and a table or two where the discussions continued until last orders … it had been a good evening. On Thursday members of the Silent Eye had met once again in Glastonbury. This would be the fourth of our talks under the aegis of the Glastonbury Reception Centre and Sanctuary and we had chosen a difficult subject to address… the nature of the soul.

Everyone present would have their own very personal interpretation of that word and a deeply emotive one too. We were not, however, seeking to impose an idea, but to explore together what it might mean to each of us through a symbolic representation of the story of the soul’s journey through an incarnation.

We had chosen to depart from a formal style of presentation and be ourselves the illustration of the ideas we would explore. The room was laid out in an informal arc of three groups around the central symbol of the Enneagram that forms the core of the Silent Eye’s method of spiritual exploration. There would be no slides, no projector, no separation between some nebulous ‘us’ and ‘them’… all who were there would be participants in the story of the soul, in the same way that our individual journey through a lifetime is coloured by all the lives that touch our own.

Steve was to symbolise the Child brought into life through the creative forces of Father, and Mother… the dynamic and passive principles mirrored in our human journey. Pebbles, black, white and grey were tossed into the child’s arena, symbolically depicting the experiences of a lifetime that, while teaching yet obscure our perception of the essence of Being as we move from the innocence of childhood through the forest of experience towards the transition of death.

Each of the pebbles were memories of pivotal events and moments from a lifetime, shared by the group and ‘set in stone’… symbolically baked in awareness in the fires of the heart and released. Stuart had illustrated this concept with an adaptation of the story of the Tower of Babel, told from the perspective of the spiritual journey. Throughout the evening these ‘experiences’ impacted upon the child at random moments, never knowing whether they would be good or bad… and unable to predict whether those that stuck gently would hold more value than the more painful ones. Each pebble was collected and ‘stored’ in a glass jar filled with water… a vessel of experience where the spaces between the layered accretion of stone was permeated by the pure substance of the soul.

At the point of the death of the personality, administered by the Mother and symbolic of both the physical end of life and the initiatic journey of the Seeker, the waters of the soul were given back into the care of the Source of life and there transformed into the budding potential that was shared with the company … just as the essence of individual experience adds to the pool of life itself. The pebbles were tipped out into the centre of the mat… human experience synthesised, harvested and finally discarded when it had served.

As an analogy, the ritual presentation worked very well and was a graphic illustration of the journey we take. Steve, who is able to share these concepts with great clarity, had shown the journey of the soul of Everyman… the journey of the Fool… in a way that seemed to resonate with all those present, regardless of their own personal path through the Mysteries.