I was talking with a friend, as you do, comparing notes over coffee and a few thousand miles. He described his own spiritual tradition as ‘walking in Beauty’. That, I thought, was a wonderful way to describe any path. Yet it came to my mind that if I had to describe as simply the path that has drawn me, the path we seek to share with the School, I would have to say that we ‘walk in Love’.

For me, there is little difference in essence between the two. They are, perhaps, facets of the same thing seen through a different lens. As with many concepts, the words carry some powerful personal emotions. Beauty looks different to each of us, though there may be common points between observers where all will recognise something that goes beyond time, culture and the rest of the conditioning filters that superimpose themselves upon our eyes. Not everyone will see beauty in the barren rocks and treeless landscape of the high moors, but most will see it in the trusting smile of a child.

Love, too, covers a huge emotional landscape. Again, there is the common ground that seems to speak to the heart of humanity and again it is stretched across the extremes from the nurturing and caring to the catabolic. While love may lift us to the heavens, it may not, at first glance look like love when it strips us bare and leaves us naked in the desert, in a seeming act of cruelty. But ultimately, even these dark and painful moments can be a great gift of Love, for in that vast emptiness we may find the core of Being.

With the Silent Eye, we needed a way to carry the student beyond these filters, beyond thought and logic, beyond the personal emotions that may be associated with a particular word, system or concept towards something more universal. We seek to speak to a deeper level of consciousness, leading the intellect to the heart and the emotions with the mind and imagination. So what else would we do in a modern Mystery School than fall back upon probably the oldest way we know? The power of stories.

Storytellers have woven their magic across all ages and cultures. The bards of old carried wisdom and knowledge in their tales from fireside to fireside. Many of these tales still linger in our cultures and societies, and the roots of myth and legend weave through our lives no matter where we live.

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