Smorgasbord Posts from Your Archives – #Potluck – Green Light 2017 by Sue Vincent

Welcome to the series of Posts from Your Archives, where bloggers put their trust in me. In this series, I dive into a blogger’s archives and select four posts to share here to my audience.

If you would like to know how it works here is the original post: https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/smorgasbord-posts-from-your-archives-newseries-pot-luck-and-do-you-trust-me/

This is the second post from the archives of a regular contributor to the series and wonderful supporter of us all, apart from challenging us each week with photo and Haiku prompts Sue Vincent wanders the land..in search of the ancient and modern to share with us. In this post Sue reminds us how we tend to breeze through much of our life on auto pilot, missing a great deal of wonderful sights and events in the process.

Green Light 2017 by Sue Vincent

Every day I drive the five mile stretch of road to my son’s home, then drive back. I do this seven days a week, every single day, except when I’m away. This stretch of road is an ‘A’ road… no parked cars, few turn-offs, just a couple of quiet junctions and very few bends. I know it well. I have been driving it daily for more than fifteen years. So well do I know it, that I barely have to think about it.

Nevertheless, all roads are alive in their own, particular way and taking notice reveals many surprises. This road passes through the fields and hedgerows of rural Buckinghamshire between the town and my village. Driving back today there were men giving the wide grass verges their annual trim and filling the air with that evocative scent of new-mown grass. Being a hot day, the cut grass dried quickly, blowing green-gold flurries across the road. Dust devils danced in the laybys, whipped into action by passing lorries. A flattened can tumbled across the road in silver sparkles, and, as always, the kites wheeled overhead. Beside the road, the tragedy of road kill; the vivid green and red of a woodpecker and the glossy russet of a sleek young fox… a counterpoint to the badger, curled as if asleep in the gutter.

In the hedgerows the scarlet splashes of field poppies and the yellow of ragwort blaze against the pinks of herb Robert and fireweed, while the porcelain blue of cranesbill calms the shadows. By the road a feather, a very large feather, stands upright in the grass. There is nowhere to stop here, so I regretfully silence my curiosity and head for home, feeling the road beneath me through the wheel of the car, hearing the birds over the engine noise.

I notice the details, observing my own awareness in the moment, feeling very much alive. Because it is such an easy road to drive, I can usually pay attention to the road and focus on the changing seasons of the landscape around me. Yesterday, however, was a different story.

A recent housing development at the edge of town necessitated a new road junction with traffic lights. When it was brand new… an interruption to the steady flow… awareness was a given. Very quickly, however, the junction became part of the accepted nature of the road, just another detail to bear in mind when driving. Going into town yesterday threw this into sharp relief, and illustrated neatly the very mechanicalness of which we speak in the Silent Eye course.

I had a lot on my mind that morning and I was already halfway across the junction before I realised I couldn’t remember looking to see if the lights were red or green. There was a flare of horror as I glanced up at the farthest set of lights to check and saw that, thankfuly, I was fine. Time seems to stop in these moments and I appeared to have several conversations with myself at once, berating and questioning, in that strange state of bifurcated consciousness, while still driving steadily through what was, after all, only a split second and a mere ten yards of the junction.

I had obviously looked at the lights on autopilot, which explains why there was no immediate memory of doing so. And that autopilot is one of the things which can carry us through life blind to the details, retaining only the haziest notion of what has been going on around us… and within us for that matter, focussing entirely on the personal and missing so much of everything…and everyone… else. It is a conveniently effortless state in which to live and very often we are simply unaware that we are operating in that way as habit, routine and our familiar normality hold our attention in a mechanical state. It does make me wonder just how much of our lives we live as automata before we finally hit that junction and have to wake up.

©Sue Vincent 2017

About Sue Vincent

Sue Vincent is a Yorkshire born writer, esoteric teacher and Director of The Silent Eye. She has been immersed in the Mysteries all her life. Sue maintains a popular blog and is co-author of The Mystical Hexagram with Dr G.M.Vasey. Sue lives in Buckinghamshire, having been stranded there some years ago due to an accident with a blindfold, a pin and a map. She has a lasting love-affair with the landscape of Albion, the hidden country of the heart. She is currently owned by a small dog who also writes at http://scvincent.com/

The Silent Eye School of Consciousness is a modern Mystery School that seeks to allow its students to find the inherent magic in living and being. With students around the world the School offers a fully supervised and practical correspondence course that explores the self through guided inner journeys and daily exercises. It also offers workshops that combine sacred drama, lectures and informal gatherings to bring the teachings to life in a vivid and exciting format. The Silent Eye operates on a not-for-profit basis. Full details of the School may be found on the official website, http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk.

A selection of books by Sue Vincent and Stuart Frances

One of the recent reviews for Sword of Destiny

Anita Dawes 5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful journey into an old realm… 5 June 2019

An amputation of the soul
So dark, so final, yet I understand it.
I love the way you became a priest
Absolving Merlin of the sins written about him
None of which I believed
Arthurs birth is better told without the sting of rape
Robed in rainbows, like moonlight on water, FAB
I didn’t so much read this book as eat my way through it…

Read the reviews and buy the books from the following links: – UK – USA – France – Germany

And you can find more reviews and follow Sue on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6551588.Sue_Vincent

Connect to Sue

Blog: http://scvincent.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/scvincent
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/S-C-Vincent/17967259931?ref=hl
Silent Eye Website: http://thesilenteye.co.uk/
Website (books) : http://www.franceandvincent.com/
Silent Eye Authors FB: https://www.facebook.com/silenteyeauthors?ref=hl

My thanks to Sue for permitting me to browse her archives and share some with you…Sally.