Doubt and Discernment (Part 1)

Hearing all this talk about eros and the imaginal and engaging these practices, trying out these practices of the erotic-imaginal, and especially when it's sexual -- you know, explicitly sexual, the eros and the images -- it would be very normal, I think, in our culture, but also in the Dharma culture, for doubt to arise. It would be very understandable, very normal. So it's important to address this, I think, and to take a little time to look at that from different perspectives, unpack it, etc., and offer something that hopefully will be helpful.

Some or perhaps even quite a bit of what I'm going to touch on here we may have mentioned before here and there, but a lot of it's worth repeating, I think. Some of it, at least, is worth repeating. And I also want to take it a little bit further into other discernments, more refined discernments regarding eros and craving, etc. Someone could hear all this, or even do a practice, and even when they're surprised by what the practice opens for them, and how touched they are, and the beauty of it, someone can still -- and they do -- come with a question: "But isn't this escapism?", this business with the imaginal, and especially when it's erotic. "Isn't this escapism? Will it lead to my not engaging with life?"

So, you know, questions. Well, in a way, is it? Is it escapism? Does it reduce your engagement with life, lead to some kind of cutting off from opening to life, meeting it, engaging with it? Does it close down your care with respect to life? In a way, the best way to address the question of doubt is really to turn it into an active question. Find out. Because at the end of the day, only you and your inquiry and your experience will really have the power, the convincing power. Sometimes a teacher or an authority says this or that, and people just trust the teacher, me or Catherine or whoever it is in this case, but really, at the end of the day, we can know something for ourselves through our inquiry, through finding out, turning away from the paralysis of doubt into an active engagement of questioning. Find out. Is this escapism? Does it lead to a closing down of the care and of the engagement? So notice. See what happens. We actually have to experiment to find out for ourselves.

In a way, we can give the question back to you, and I think that's a very important level of this. But we can also say more about it. We've talked about, a little bit on this retreat and quite a bit on previous retreats -- for instance, Path of the Imaginal -- about the fact that images often come with a sense of duty. Somehow this imaginal figure or this image, wrapped up in that, some way or other, they come with a message. Angelos, 'angel,' means 'message-bearer.' There's some kind of sense of duty. Sometimes it's not at all obvious, or it's not obvious how or whether that needs to be concrete, that actually I need to do something or say something or whatever it is, and exactly what the translation is, or how the image and the sense of duty in the image translates into my life, how obvious that translation is, in what way, in what form, in what idiom, and what domain, and what manner of expression.

Most images -- not all, but most images -- seem to want, seem to demand, some kind of translation somehow. I don't mean 'translation' to mean, "It means X. It means I should do this." I mean 'translation' as in moving one thing from one area, dimension, domain, to another -- translation -- so from the image to the life like that. Of course, some images are already wrapped up in life, the imaginal perception we have of our lives, of others, of situations, of our work, of our loves, etc. But somehow the image is asking to be taken into the world somehow. So there's a discernment in, is it asking that? How is it asking that? How does life and image kind of reflect or mirror or echo each other? What's the dance, the back and forth, the dialogue, the theatre, if you like, between those two, two stages reflecting each other? As if two plays on each stage, and they're somehow corresponding, and they're somehow interacting -- the players on this stage and the actors on the other stage, opposite each other, and mixing even.

So this is something to point out in terms of, "Is this escapism? Will it reduce my engagement with life? Will it lead to this kind of non-engagement, withdrawal into this fantasy world of images, and one becomes kind of inert and unengaged in one's actual life?" But in relation to that, there's this sense of duty that images often have. So that's one thing. Another is -- and I've pointed this out before, so I'm not going to go into it now, but -- there is, at least in some spiritual circles, and Theravādan Buddhism could definitely be a case in point, the image of non-engagement, which is actually quite dominant. The image of the Buddha who kind of looks with affable equanimity at the sort of entanglements of more worldly beings, and is not himself kind of engaged so much: the eyes closed, the stillness, the equanimity, and of course the movement to transcendence (which is something we'll come back to). It's more like, is there an image of non-engagement that's actually dominant, and oftentimes dominant partly through its unconsciousness, that we don't see it as an image, or we don't have enough range of other possible images, archetypal images available to us as pictures of awakening and direction?

So it's not that images lead to non-engagement, and so we better not have images. Sometimes the way Theravādan Buddhism is taught is "Don't have images," but there's a kind of not-very-conscious, implicit fantasy image of where we're headed, and that's towards a kind of non-engagement -- politically, environmentally, etc. I've talked about all this before; I'm not going to go into it now. But engagement is, in part, demanded by an image, most images. Even an image of non-engagement is a kind of -- how am I going to be in life? I'm going to be not so embroiled, not so involved, not so heated by the fires of passion and involvement and social justice, etc. But the nature of the engagement or non-engagement is given by the image.

And we could add to all this that, rather than taking us away from life, image and fantasy, in the ways that I'm using those words, as imaginal images (I'm not going to say 'imaginal images' every time, but almost always that's what I mean), images, imaginal images and fantasies, they actually bring a dimensionality to our perceptions of life and the world, self and other. That's not a non-engagement; that's a sort of deepening of connection, a filling out. They also bring meaningfulness to the perceptions of self, other, world, through the image, through the fantasy, through becoming conscious of that, feeling our way into it, opening to it, letting it open us.

People say, "Is this not just fleeing reality? Are you not just trying to flee reality?" Fleeing 'reality.' I've also touched on this in other retreats, but 'reality' -- there's so much wrapped up in that ideation. Something like fleeing reality is a movement of fear and aversion: there's something I don't want to open to. There's something I want to run away from, close down from, turn the world off, turn that world off at least. It's a movement of fear. Is this what we're talking about, really? A movement of fear? And again, does it close the heart and close the engagement? Fleeing reality out of fear will do exactly that. It will. And it will become quite obvious in time -- if not to oneself, to others around one -- that there's a closing of the heart happening here. There's a closing of the psyche. And there's a lack of engagement in life. There's a dying of the engagement in life, to a certain extent.

[11:18] We could also, again, turn the question around, and actually say that this whole notion of fleeing reality into imagination may be missing the fact that it's coming already out of a certain ontology, epistemology, cosmology which has, over centuries now, belittled the imagination and belittled any kind of sacredness of that or purpose to it, or soulmaking as well. So if we actually open up the conceptual framework, the logos, and actually grant the world of the imaginal a place, a necessary place, an importance, a significance, then we can actually turn that question round and say, in our lives, are we fleeing the reality of the imaginal? Yes? It's a different kind of reality, and there are all kinds of, for me, very interesting ontological questions for us to work out as human beings -- I don't think to find a final answer, but to explore creatively, creative epistemology, creative ontology, creative cosmologies.

But we could easily ask, all this dismissal of the imagination, and this kind of fearful clinging on to so-called reality, are we fleeing the reality of the imaginal? Fleeing the demands of it, fleeing its implications, the depth, the meaningfulness, the duty that comes from that, the ways that it opens the psyche, the soul, the heart, the vision, the sense of the world, the sense of the self, the sense of other? Yeah? For me, there's more cogency and force in that questioning, that way round. We're so used to assuming and thinking a certain way. And on top of that, there's just the whole question, related: what do you mean by 'reality,' or what are you assuming reality is? Atomic billiard balls buzzing around in some kind of scientific materialist flatland? Is that what reality is? Or is reality exposed by so-called bare attention or mindfulness, and therefore the imaginal and all that is not reality? So again, I'm not going to go into that. I've talked plenty and written about that in the past. But there's so much implicit, in terms of assumptions, in these kind of questions: "Is it escapism? Is it fleeing reality? Is it wish fulfilment?" It's important to address these questions, but to actually really address them, really make them questions. It's very easy for something to sound like a question, and it's not actually a question.

So, you know, is it wish fulfilment? Is it even my wish? In the erotic-imaginal, do I really feel like, "This is me and my wishes, and I'm indulging my wishes"? Actually look into that. Whose wish is this? I'm engaged in this erotic-imaginal interaction, or I'm watching, sensing this erotic-imaginal interaction, whatever. Is it really my wish we're talking about? My wish? The ego's wish? Whose wish is it? It's quite subtle. And am I able to let go? We talked about this before. Am I just dragged without any choice whatsoever, or am I able to practise putting down, letting go, walking away, picking up and putting down?

A variation on this kind of question: "Isn't all this just indulging greed? All this talk about eros and erotic-imaginal, isn't that just indulging greed?" So yeah, important to ask this question. But again, let's go into the question more. What happens to those who indulge what we might call 'greed' or 'craving,' over time, over a year or ten years? You watch a person, and when that kind of tendency and habit to indulge greed and craving has kind of got a free flow, it's allowed, it's acquiesced to, it gains the upper hand. We can start making all kinds of justifications to ourselves: "I work really hard," and this and that, whatever it is. Even talking about Dharma folk, people who are living a Dharma life in some kind of very full way -- it's their work, it's their whatever-it-is; it's really at the centre of their life. And yet, somehow, over the years, what happens when just things like comfort, convenience, pleasure, security (all very normal), when the craving for these things (comfort, convenience, pleasure, security), there's more leeway for it? It's given more permission. It's acquiesced to. It's not questioned so much. It just has its kind of river flowing at the side of whatever else we're doing Dharma-wise, and it's regarded as okay. What happens to the fire? What happens to the brilliance of being, to the intensity, to the lustre of the diamond, of the citta, of the heart, of the soul, the radiance? What happens to that over time, five years, ten years, twenty years?

And what happens, conversely, to someone who explores the erotic-imaginal, and actually discerns between eros and craving, and investigates eros, and opens to it, and lets it take things deeper over time? What kind of citta, what kind of soul, emerges or is shaped by indulging one or the other -- eros, or craving or greed? So look. Look around you. Find out. Don't assume. Don't even assume that this person or that person must be living like this or making this choice or that choice, just because I assume that about them, or myself.

So doubt is questioning, and that's really good. But make it questioning. Make it real questioning. I mean this inquiry, investigation -- not just settling for a fog of paralysis or confusion, or just a sort of standard, easy answer, just "I've heard this, so it must be true." Then, to investigate, of course, we have to begin to discern between eros and craving in the first place. We've talked some about this, and we'll come back to it. The centrality of the energy body. Just including the energy body already in the awareness, and the fullness of that, already moves it, helps it become eros rather than craving -- the sensitivity, the openness to the whole energy body. And eros will be characterized, the erotic-imaginal will be characterized, by an opening and a harmonizing, perhaps energizing, etc., of the energy body, unlike craving. Then there's the soulmaking, which we can notice as well. So we've touched on this, and we'll actually revisit it some more, I think.

But we can notice the differences here. And we can learn, as we've touched on already in earlier talks, we can actually learn to navigate between or from craving to eros. That's quite possible. Something might feel like I'm caught in craving, or craving has caught me; there's the contraction of that or whatever. There's a certain way of seeing. There's a certain state of the consciousness, of the energy body, etc. We can discern that, and then, with the development of the skill and the art of practice, let's see if we can liberate this craving into eros. Not just let it go. We can do that, too, in many ways. I've talked a lot and written about that elsewhere. But we can actually learn to navigate from craving to eros, let it transform.

[20:50] So some eros, as I said, is very, very subtle. I'm not just talking about sexuality; I've said this many times. And even there, there's really a range. Some eros, and some of that erotic connection and erotic charge and movement, is very, very subtle. But let's not be too naïve here. In a way, I don't want to be alarmist, because that's completely defeating the purpose, and it's not justified. It's just not justified. On the other hand, just because of the range of subtlety, and also because of the distinctions we're making (like what leads to what), I don't want to be too naïve. We've said eros is fire. There's something about eros that's like a fire, and fire is potentially dangerous. I've said this already. Fire is also extremely useful, extremely productive, very helpful. But it's also something that can be dangerous. So yes, we can learn to navigate with practice, with time, from craving to eros; transform craving to eros in the moment. But also, something may start as eros and, if we're not careful, may just contract into craving -- divert, contort itself, or get shrunk somehow, and so it becomes craving.

So there's a danger in all this. There are dangers in all this, playing with fire. Of course, if you've been around the Dharma for a while, you know that one of the Buddha's metaphors, if you like, was of extinguishment, extinguishing the fires of greed, aversion, and delusion.^[1] So there's the whole imagery, if you like, of extinguishing fires. That's very, very central in Pali Canon Buddhism. This is partly an aside, but that's actually quite interesting, because a case could be made historically that the Buddha picked that analogy for a couple of reasons. One was, as all teachers must be, as all dialogue must be, it's in context. The context that he was dealing with at that time in India was a Brahmanical sort of religion, Vedic, etc. I don't know the exact details, but they kept [the fire] alive; you had to keep the fire going. So there were actually people whose job, whose sacrificial duty, was to keep the fires going. I think there were three fires. So the Buddha was addressing -- a little bit polemic, a little bit wanting to turn something upside down. He said it's not three fires that you need to keep going. It's three fires that you need to put out: greed, aversion/hatred, and delusion.

So you can see, if you like, the relativity of that metaphor, partly that came out of context. Had he been in a very different context, would he have used that metaphor? We are now in a different context, especially living in cold England, or New England, or wherever we are. There's a second reason that the Buddha picked that. [It] was to do with the sort of physics, if you like, or the then-current understanding of what fire was and what happened to it, what happened to a fire that you put out. Nowadays, we just think, well, you just put it out. It's gone. It's extinguished. It's just disappeared. There is no fire. In those days, actually the sense was the fire was liberated when you put out a fire. Here's this wood fire or whatever, and you extinguish it, and the fire is liberated. It's sort of liberated in the sense that it's not clinging to any object. It is, I think, beyond space and time, etc. It's unbound. There's an etymology there of nibbāna with that unbinding of fire: ni(b) + bāna, unbinding. But it wasn't just a disappearance and a non-existence. It was almost, if you like, more potent, but not clinging to anything. It was just this kind of abstract fire that was liberated.

But anyway, the point is that if we're used to hearing a certain directionality in regard to the metaphor, the imagery of fire, and then we're using the opposite analogies here about mastery of the fire, stoking it, tending the flames and all this, that can cause something in the being to shake a little bit with doubt. If we talk about the imagery of Dionysus, which I did in one talk recently, and saying how unsettling, how disruptive, how fragmenting, violent, and erotic, and a little bit intoxicated (Dionysus was the god of wine), and wild, raving, etc., and how that disrupts the sort of serene, controlled, placid, sometimes sterile sort of course of what is regarded as civilized -- that's all in the territory when we play with fire, when we're with eros. And then that mythology, and the mythology of the breaking of the vessels from the Kabbalah, Shevirat ha-Kelim -- all this, we're saying this is in the territory of what we're opening to. This comes with the whole landscape that we're entering. If would be very understandable if doubt and trepidation arose. Again, it doesn't fit the imagery that we have or that we've absorbed. There isn't a kind of Dionysus equivalent in Theravādan Buddhism. That iconography, the mythology, just doesn't exist except as something to get rid of.

I think I mentioned this before, but in the Vajrayāna icons and deities of tantric Buddhism -- I'm not sure; I don't know nearly enough about the history of how icons get mixed, etc., or how they did get mixed, but a lot of those gods are full of wildness. Those yidams and deities are full of wildness -- wrathful deities, phallic deities, and the eros and the sexuality that's visible there. But in Theravāda Buddhism, Pali Canon Buddhism, we're really not used to that kind of mythology. It just is not given a place, except as something to renounce and move beyond, get rid of, towards another archetype of this renunciate: celibate, equanimous, uninvolved, calm, all that.

So yeah, playing with fire. There's danger, and there's upset, and shatterings, and disruptions. All that goes with the territory, I think, of soulmaking and opening to eros and fire. Again, I don't want to be alarmist, because we're also talking about really subtle movements, and there's the wisdom in the navigation, but there is that possibility. But even then, you know, we can ask -- and again, it's really important to ask -- is there a path without risk? Is there some kind of practice that has no risk? Anyone who really loves a path or a set of practices, anyone who really loves it, that it's really important to them in their life, they will be willing to put up with and open themselves to some kind of risk. Some kind of sacrifice, some kind of discomfort or confusion at times, or suffering, is regarded as okay and acceptable and even necessary on the path. So ask this of yourselves. Look back at your path or paths you've taken, and see at different times how ready and willing -- and also the nobility of this, the beauty of this -- you were to open to and enter into and go through all kinds of periods or moments or transitions of risk when you didn't quite know, or sacrificing something or other, confusion, discomfort -- suffering, basically. And the question is, what kind of risk, sacrifice, confusion, discomfort, suffering, are okay on the path? What kind?

It's less dominant now, but the whole Mahāsi tradition as it was taught by Mahāsi Sayadaw and U Pandita and some teachers -- very, very intense and strict. The retreats there were full of suffering. Ask anyone who sat through some of those long retreats with U Pandita. Someone from the outside would say, "Why are you putting yourself through all this suffering? I thought you were interested in getting rid of suffering." But there's a whole logos there, and there's a whole image that gives nobility to that suffering, and there's a whole purpose. There's all kinds of sacrifice, all kinds of risk, all kinds of confusion, discomfort -- or rather, certain kinds; there's a range there in just that paradigm of the sort of strict U Pandita style. The question is, what kind? What kind is okay on your path, and how does it fit? What kind of discomfort, confusion, sacrifice, risk, suffering?

[31:58] Or, you know, Ajahn Chah. There's a passage somewhere -- maybe in A Still Forest Pool; I can't remember.^[2] But he talks about just meditating in the jungle when he was practising in solitary, and just crying this deep well of tears, sometimes not even sure why he's crying. Maybe there's loneliness and stuff, but it's beyond that. And, you know, many of us know this. It's just practising, and this upwelling of profound sobbing, etc. And yet, there's the whole image and logos that kind of supports that this is good: "This is good. Yeah, it's difficult. But this is good. This is heartful. This is healing. This is releasing whatever it is." Of course, you get that in psychotherapeutic paradigms as well. I've been through all of this, sitting through lots of pain, huge upsurges of emotions I just didn't know what they were about. What kind of risk, discomfort, confusion, sacrifice, suffering are okay on your path?

Or you think about an artist, someone who really gives themself, dedicates themself. Again, how much? What are they willing to put up with? There's risk in that, and there's confusion, and there's sacrifice. This is not an easy choice. So, similar. This is part of the territory when we love something deeply, when we're really engaged. And a question with all that is: what does it serve? If there's going to be involved, there's the possibility of disruption, there's a possibility of confusion, there's some kind of risk, and there's some kind of suffering or burn, if you like, what is it serving? All this goes together with an understanding, with a sense of where I'm going, with a logos, with a conceptual framework, as we talked. Any practice brings risk. Absolutely. What kind? What kinds, plural? And what's it serving? How are we seeing it? And what's okay for us?

If I trace my own sort of process, not just with imaginal practice, but specifically with the more obviously erotic-imaginal -- again, we're making the point that eros and the imaginal go together; it's not imaginal unless there's eros, and it's not eros unless there's the imaginal dimension. But if I trace my own process, I'm certain that it took me a while. It was really a gradual process to move towards really trusting, for instance, images or working with images even of females who were attractive. So I was a little bit cautious. And it's funny now, some years later, after having experimented with all this for some years now. I actually can't quite remember why [laughs] I was so tentative and so unsure about exploring the more erotic images, which I think is interesting in itself. Something that actually had quite a subtle but powerful grip on my consciousness and on my choices in practice, I actually can't -- I was trying to remember in preparing this talk, but I can't fully remember. I think it had something to do with a suspicion that anything like that would just be a distraction, would distract and dilute me from my kind of central purpose of what practice was about, and there was something in that kind of engagement with eros and sexuality and the feminine that would confuse me. But this is kind of partly a guess, and it's interesting to me that I can't actually remember. In other words, it's just passed. Strangely, I was trying to find it in old notes, but I seem to have lost a notebook.

Anyway, I know that Jung, Carl Jung, in a way, some people would interpret his whole psychology as being partly, if you like, emerging from a whole predisposition that was very similarly kind of distrustful of the feminine and the attractive, sexual, as if there's some kind of luring siren there. I know James Hillman and some others had made that critique and wondered what kind of psychology would have emerged from Jung had he been more trusting [of] and more listened to what he called anima, the anima voice, which he was so sort of wary of in the development of his psychology and in his personal process. So, interesting to me. I look back, and I see sometimes that there was a tendency at first to choose a non-sexual image to work with in meditation. For example, if I'd had two dreams the night before that had made an impact on me and I remembered, and one was, say, more obviously sexual, and the other was maybe a little bit more obviously spiritual, then I would choose the more spiritual one. There was that tendency to lean away from that into what was more obviously spiritual. Or if I was working with an image in meditation, and there were multiple figures there, I'd say, "Okay, which one ...?" If it was, like, one I would go to, it would tend to be not the, for instance, attractive female one or whatever.

So I notice that tendency looking back, and I notice also that I was quite tentative at first -- in meditation practice, at least, tentative -- "Well, this is spiritual," so that if there was beginning to be more a willingness to explore the erotic-imaginal and even the sexual, even that was tentative at first. So perhaps I wouldn't kind of go into the more carnal and voracious sexual image, or maybe just hold back a little from letting it unfold that way, where otherwise it would have been more natural: "But no, this is meditation time, so it's spiritual" or whatever. And then, again, I think I've lost a notebook or something, but I made a note a while ago about all this, that I could trace a kind of gradual letting myself explore, gradually, more and more, this kind of strand of the erotic-imaginal, and the specifically sexual, in the meditation practice. I just can't find that notebook. But anyway, I was aware of this; I could trace this evolution, if you like.

And then, a few years ago, I had a dream. Somehow in the dream, I was trying to resist the seductive advances of a beautiful woman, and I wasn't quite sure I could remember after the dream, "Why am I resisting this?" I don't know if she was -- was she a yogi or something? Was there some kind of boundary issue? I wasn't sure. It was something like that. But I felt very ambivalent, very drawn towards her and attracted, so I felt like only kind of half successful in my attempts to resist her. By that time, I was interested in all this, so I took it into meditation and into the imaginal practice. Here she was again; I sort of let her come again. And then I entered her, deliberately. I don't mean sexually. I mean entered her being and sort of became her, identified with her, which I've explained as one of the options, and how you can do that.

[40:38] I became her in the meditation practice, and sort of looked out of her eyes, out of her being, at me, at Rob. I was aware of how much kindness. She really cared for me. There was, again, love there. But she's also kind of communicating somehow, "You're being a bit idiotic, Rob, and you're missing the point here." So that was interesting. Here's someone just kind of pointing out a sort of stupidity, if you like [laughs], and rigidity. And I asked her, as I was experimenting, finding ways of working with images (this was a few years ago), I asked her, "What do you want?" And her response, I can't remember if it was verbal or not, but her response, the sense I got, was actually she had just very simple sexual desire, very simple, erotic, sensual desire. And in the very simplicity of it was a kind of purity. It's like, "Look how simple and pure this is," and "You're being a little idiotic, Rob." [laughs]

So this was kind of interesting. I let myself experiment in the meditation, with the eros, with the erotic-imaginal, and with the sexual. But as I was working with it, it's like, I felt confused. It was like, "What's the point of this? Where is it going? Where would this kind of exploration go? Okay, I'm mindful of the sexual imagery, and entering into that, but is it actually going to achieve anything? Does it lead to the end of suffering?" So that confusion was very, very alive for me. It was very much at the point there. A little later I realized, "I actually don't know, and more than that, I am deliberately in a period of exploration here." Or rather, "This is the domain of my exploration." I kind of almost feel always in a period of exploration, but "This is the domain of exploration. I actually don't know the answers to these questions: is there a point? Where will it go? Will it achieve anything? What's it got to do with the end of suffering?"

I've shared this, I think, on some other talk somewhere or other, but I remembered many years before, a time in my practice where what I was really investigating deeply and exploring, the domain of my exploration at the time in practice, was the relationship of awareness and emptiness. You find all these conflicting teachings, and unclear, and people dogmatically saying this and that, and it was so, so searing for me as an investigation, and so much heart and emotion and passion involved. I remember sitting outside at Gaia House crying tears with so much wanting to understand, wanting to penetrate with insight, and just not having someone I could ask or fully rely on for an answer. So there was all that confusion in the investigation, and the passion of the exploration. But eventually, insights came in relation to awareness and emptiness, and answers came, and ways forward emerged. I found things, or discovered things, or worked certain things out, or found ways to practise, etc. So I was kind of remembering that, and telling myself, "Hey, you've been through something like this before -- confusion, and really unsure how to proceed, and what's worth trusting, and all that."

And then also reflecting, in regard to the imaginal, it may be that there is no definite, final answer or truth, so it's even a different kind of investigation, if you like. But at the moment, I said, "Yeah, I'm aware of that, and I'm actually okay with that." So partly it was okay, and there was still this kind of concern and trepidation and real ambivalence about the possibility of a long but ultimately fruitless exploration. I might decide to explore all this, and spend years and hours and hours of practice time, and eventually come to the conclusion, "Well, that was a waste of time," or "That was really not helpful, and now I'm stuck with this and that problem or whatever it is." [laughs] But this is the risk. Or that was the risk for me at that time. That felt like the risk. And this is, if you like, the risk of the -- if we make a metaphor -- of the research scientist. If you listen to some theoretical physicist, "I spend my days working out equations on a piece of paper, trying out equations and theories on a piece of paper or a blackboard, and at the end of the day none of them have worked, and I just erase them all. Then I do the same thing the next day." So how many dead ends, or how much unknown there is in the passion and the willingness to explore. And similarly, in a different way, same if you're an artist, or sometimes there's something similar there. But kind of telling myself, well, that's the lot. If you're exploring, if you're actually finding out, when there doesn't appear to be any teachings on this that I was aware of, then that's the lot. You don't know. There's a risk there. You're moving into the unknown, and you don't know where it's going to lead.

In relation to that image that came out of the dream, what did come was a sense of a particular kind of holiness, a feminine divinity that permeated nature. Now I would call that cosmopoesis; back then I hadn't made that connection yet. But I noticed that: "Oh, that's interesting." I worked with that outside, and there was this real sense of feminine divinity in and through nature. A little later still, going for a walk, something -- it felt like I was in a different relationship, a different sensual relationship with nature. Something in the sensuality opened with regard to the nature around me, beneath my feet, etc. It wasn't just mindfulness of sensations. It involved that, of course. I had been practising that for years. Nor was it only just enjoying the pleasantness of the hot day or whatever it was, the warmth on my skin and all that.

Another kind of level came into my relationship with nature that was sensual. Something opened in the sensuality. And yet, it still could not be reduced to, I wasn't going to put it in the box, it did not feel appropriate or right to say, "Oh, this figure from the dream and the imaginal practice, she represents my sensuality," or something like that. No. There was a sense of there's something bigger here I can't quite get my mind around or fathom completely. It's as if she manifests or embodies, this figure, some kind of at present unfamiliar kind of wisdom and unfamiliar kind of depth. So something was opening, but bigger than I could really figure out, if you like, or the mind could figure out. A lot of this happens in small movements. That's partly what I want to communicate about this kind of process, working with soul-work, and certainly exploring. A lot of it's in small movements.

[49:04] I'll share another image, and I'll actually give more detail. So this is, again, a transition over time, maybe a year later or a little less than a year -- I don't know, half a year, a bit more. And again, why I choose certain images to share: sometimes I'll choose an image because it's really intense, and could be regarded as kind of crazy, and it's almost to normalize: "There's that range too." Sometimes I choose an image because it's really the opposite: it's really not a big deal. It's not that colourful. It's not that unusual or dramatic. Or to really give a sense of the range, like, "All that is there." And sometimes I want to share, I want to include, what goes on in working with the images, including all the sort of false starts and wrong turns, etc., in the practice, so you get a sense of actually creative working and responding and navigating, that it's not all just immediately obvious and clear and all that. There's some -- what's the word? -- dancing, a little bit, with the thing.

So I was sitting in meditation, and kind of opening myself to see what came. I see a visual image, in this case. I see a young woman sitting by the side of the road, and she's sad for some reason. I'm unsure whether to go with the image at first, but then I decided to go with it. So I sat down next to her. And her arms were very attractive; there was something like I wanted to comfort her, and I stroked her arms, a sort of mixture with sexual attraction but also because she was sad. I noticed that I wanted her to talk. But I also noticed at the same time that there was a pressure to make her talk because of some or other book that I was reading that basically said you need to get some verbal message or something from the image. So I kind of backed off a little bit from the pressure of wanting it to be verbal, and just kind of opening the sensitivity to, if you like, receiving communication. I've said somewhere before, the communication can be just the image; it's not like there's the image, and then it communicates X, Y verbally or with some kind of signal or something. Sometimes the image is the communication.

But this question, what does she want? Backing off the whole pressure to be verbal. And the sense was, she was communicating, she wants to be loved by me. There's some kind of communication at that. It was actually hard to stay focused. Again, I'm mentioning this because that's all part of it. It's like, "Ah, this image, my concentration flits in and out of it. I lose it. It comes back." Okay, fine. Either that's the nature of this image, or it's just one of those days. No problem. There's some kind of loving of her. So I'm working as well with this. It's not so focused, but I'm in and out of that. I'm really loving her, but the loving, it's not that it's explicitly sexual. It's not really sexual. It's more just kind of sharing and being with her. Somehow there's love being communicated. And she keeps changing. Somehow, in that, I see or I kind of reflect that she's empty. She's changing. She's not inherently this way or that. And that makes me realize I can only love -- because I'm sort of trying to open myself to loving her; I say 'trying,' but it's a very delicate trying, supporting that movement of the heart and that opening of the heart and that flow. I realize I can love only who is in front of me right now.

So she keeps changing (how she is, etc., her appearance), and really I can only love who is in front of me right now, and commit to at least showing up for how they appear next. So here's what she is now, and just however she'll be in the next moment or minute or whatever, it's like, okay, well, I'm just going to keep showing up, and whoever it is in front of me, however she seems, I'm going to keep loving that. So there's a sense of mystery in that, in her emptiness. And then I also realize, with a thought, "Oh, this applies to real beings, as well, because they change, too, don't they?" [laughs] And it tells me something about love. So there's a thought. Okay, fine. There's a little insight there about mettā and stuff like that, with implications for 'actual life,' so-called. But, okay, just noting that, and I don't make a big deal of that, or I don't focus on it.

But again, the whole thing comes in and out of focus, and I have to remind myself to see it all as an experiment. I really have to make a conscious -- again, there's this kind of unsureness: "What am I doing here? Is it leading anywhere? Is it ... da-da-da?" But I just remind myself of this attitude of experimentation, and that helps. So there's this kind of sharing and meeting. And she sort of opens up to me. Her being opens, and it's like I enter her. And then all kind of kaleidoscopic, geometrical forms appear, which feel quite mystical and significant and wondrous somehow. Quite subtle. But again, doubt arises, and I don't particularly -- I'm not necessarily picking up on these kaleidoscopic, geometrical forms, even though they feel very wondrous.

But then, after all this, I feel the subtle after-effects of that whole interaction, of that whole imaginal interaction. So you can hear as I'm saying this how kind of undramatic the whole thing is, how much unsureness there is, and how the whole thing is just really kind of micro-movements that, at the time, can really seem like, "Hmm, I'm not sure. Is this significant? Should I stay with this? Is anything happening?" All that. The word for 'psyche,' it's a Greek word, and I'm pretty sure it's either related to or even some very similar word is the same word for 'butterfly.' I can't remember if I've shared this in a talk before. So 'psyche' and 'butterfly' are related. Now, a butterfly -- I'm taking this from James Hillman -- makes little flitting movements from side to side. It's not this direct, supersonic jet flight, or a crow's flight, or a bird of prey's, a falcon's sort of soaring through space at this great speed. It makes these little, flitting, non-direct, moving from side to side, not very fast. That's the characteristic movement, the characteristic flight of the psyche.

So there's a lot, as I said, in this soul-work, soulmaking work and imaginal work -- a lot of it feels, yeah, like little micro-movements, this side and then that side. Not this sense of great strides in a direct line that can characterize other movements or other, if you say, dimensions of soul-movement, the movement of other dimensions of soul, spirit, etc. Now, what's also interesting, again, in the sort of seeming lack of power at first of this whole experience -- I get up, and it's soup time or whatever, and the thought goes through my head; it was something I had read not too long ago -- again, read it -- about the cosmos being erotic, something to do with Kabbalah, somewhere or other I had read. It's like that thought, just vaguely remembering it, that had been planted there from what I had read, sort of came into an alchemical reaction, if you like, with this image that also didn't seem really that fruitful or that dramatic particularly, that I was ambivalent about and not sure about.

But then, somehow they came into interaction, and that opened up the whole sense of the eros of the cosmos on multiple levels. It's quite subtle, but really quite a subtle but powerful transformation of the perception of the world related to or imbued with, again, this sense of that imaginal young woman and the feminine pervading, the feminine divinity pervading, this feminine divinity pervading the consciousness, seeping out into what I now call 'cosmopoesis'; some kind of alchemical transubstantiation of the world there. And then a lot of happiness came with that. So I made a note, you know, "Oh, okay, this is interesting. Don't judge the value of imaginal practice while you're actually doing it." Because it may not feel like much or seem very significant, and the effects can come later sometimes. Again, we're back to this discernment between intensity and effect, efficaciousness.

[59:32] So an image, or something that's planted as what we've read or heard in a teaching, these things are like seeds, and they can do their work kind of underground, and blossom later, just like mettā practice or something like that. And then even later I went out, and I think I went for a bike ride, and I was just walking my bike for a while. There was a sense of being in this alive universe, personified -- impersonal, for sure, but it also had this personification, divine personification of this, what sometimes is called anima mundi, the soul of the world, the World Soul, related to this image, related to the idea that I had read a little while ago, but such joy and freedom and some kind of sense of relief there, and a really touching sort of mystical beauty in that particular perception. It almost made me laugh with the joy of it. I'm sharing it partly for the details there in the sense of playing with something, staying with it, altering things, picking this up but not that, picking that up but not this, etc.

So that's a little bit of my process, just to tell you in terms of the movement in relationship to doubt with respect to all this, eros and the imaginal. But basically, as I said at the beginning of this talk, you need to know for yourself. I've had my process with this, and maybe still going on in other areas related to this, but you need to know for yourself, and for that, we all need to keep questioning, keep exploring with respect to desire and craving and eros. It's that spirit that the Buddha was pointing to when he said the Dharma is ehipassiko: come and see for yourself. Come and see. *Ehi, '*here.' Passati is 'to see.' Come and see. So that spirit of that. Find out for yourself. You have to keep exploring. We have to keep exploring. Keep that questioning alive. It's very easy to think we're doing that, and to believe we're doing it because we did it in the past, and actually it's dried up a little bit, and we're just running on an old range of insights, and not extending that questioning and that range.

For example, it's very easy to see sometimes how desire arises from some kind of sense of lack. And then what happens is we make a conclusion. That conclusion is reinforced when we hear teachings that say that: "Yeah, desire comes out of a lack. It's your existential lack," or people put it different ways, "and that's what gives rise to desire." It could be a Dharma teacher saying that. It could be some kinds of modern psychoanalysis, etc. But the question is: is that always true? Is it always the case that desire always comes from a sense of lack? We may well revisit this, but if we don't, I just want to say now: no, find out. Because sometimes there's joy and celebration that give rise to desire. Joy or celebration. There is a sense of the libido overflowing. It's not lack; it's the opposite. It's a kind of superabundance. Something is overflowing. 'Libido,' remember, is etymologically related to 'libation,' and has to do with the pouring of liquid as one of its etymological connections. The libido is overflowing. It's anything but lack.

Other times, we can have a sense of, "This is already flowing." The desire is already flowing from me to you, from me to this thing, eternally somehow. It's already there. It's not a lack: "I'm trying to fill something." There's desire, there's an erotic connection, and it's already happening. It's not lack-driven. It's flowing from me to you, pouring from me to you, rather than me grasping at something out of lack. But investigation, knowing for yourself, keeping the questioning alive, and not resting on just a limited range and the assumptions that get entrenched out of that. Any investigation/exploration needs sensitivity, and this investigation in particular, into eros and into the imaginal, into soulmaking -- that kind of exploration needs a lot of sensitivity. I talked about this on the last retreat, The Poetry of Perception. It needs sensitivity and subtlety. We really need to develop the subtlety of our attention, the subtlety of our discernment.

So when we talk about imaginal practice, and mindfulness of images, and bringing mindfulness to bear on the whole realm of the imaginal and eros, we definitely mean, but we're not just talking about including the energy body, the emotional awareness, the sensitivity to that, the sensitivity to the whole soulmaking and all that. But also, there's another thing that we need to make clear: that we're also involved or should be aware of, make ourselves subtly attentive to, the subtleties of relating. So the erotic-imaginal implies a relationship, an erotic connection, and all the subtleties of that relating, of the kinds of eros or the kinds of love with respect to each imaginal figure. Again, back to particularities and uniqueness: each imaginal figure is unique. Actually, I would say with respect to each erotic-imaginal interaction, what's the kind of eros here? What are the subtleties of the relating? What are the kinds of love in this interaction? And maybe with an image, an imaginal figure, that I've had a long-standing relationship, worked with in meditation, in practice many times. But right now, in this interaction, what are the subtleties of the relating involved, or that seem to be asked for, or the kind of eros, the kind of love, here, now?

So with the erotic-imaginal, we're talking about living relationships -- responsive, sensitive relating. It's so easy for things to kind of degenerate a little bit into just a set of techniques. We need to be a little bit vigilant about that. Keep the sensitivity, keep the subtlety of discernment and attention alive, so it doesn't become just a formula: here's my image, and then I do this, and then I ... whatever. Yeah? Living, alive, like any practice, any practice whatsoever -- but maybe one could say even more so in the realm of the imaginal.

An imaginal figure, an imaginal relationship, it hopefully doesn't ever get kind of consciously or unconsciously dumped in a category that we say, "Tick. Known. I know that one. Completely known." What if we did that, if we approached human others that way, human relationships? "Oh, yeah. I know all about you. I know who this person is," with a sense that we completely know them. Sure, we know, of course, some things, and we rely on some things, and there's that what we recognize. But what if we had that attitude in our human relationships, with human others, in our caring relationships, or with the way we are with our eros with human others, or sexually with others? We just had this, "Oh, I know that. I know them. I have the whole thing packaged." Or with perceptions and ideas, conceptions of nature. How easy it is: "Oh, yeah, I know what that is. Of course. Maybe there's some scientific stuff I don't understand about how trees do this, or how animals do this, or how that evolved," or whatever, this or that. There's something that's just kind of in my perception or in my conception of nature, and all the diversity in nature, nature as a whole, like, "Oh, yeah, I kind of know what that is." What happens then to the relationship?

Again, here, we're not just talking about, when we use the word 'image' or 'imaginal figure,' etc., we're not just meaning intrapsychic, so-called intrapsychic, but also our perceptions in the world which are imbued with the imaginal, imaginal perceptions of self, other, world. Yeah? It's referring to all of this.

So, you know, it's important to recognize and differentiate, or realize what differentiates, let's say, meditating on an image of an explicitly sexual interaction -- what differentiates that kind of meditation on an image with an imaginal figure from mere indulgence of what we might call more, I don't know, typical -- is that the right word? -- sexual fantasy? And 'fantasy' in the small sense. What's the differentiation there? What differentiates the two? Well, hopefully this should be clear by now, but I'll say it anyway. To answer that: everything that differentiates imaginal practice from daydreaming and craving.

For example, the mindfulness of the energy body, the sensitivity to the energy body, the subtlety of attention to emotions and soulmaking resonances in the body, in the whole psyche. The non-identification -- that's quite a big deal, isn't it? The sense of both the other and the self almost as being theatrical: this is theatre. There's something not real here. The self that's engaging this, or the self that's involved in this, put it that way, is not real, but is also real. There's some kind of Middle Way that's sort of parallel to the Middle Way of emptiness between existing and not existing. There's a Middle Way of the imaginal between real and not real. There's a sense of the theatre of it. It's different than a lot of other psychotherapeutic work or some spiritual work, when we might use the imagination, but the self involved, there's a sense of "it's real." Here, what characterizes this is more this sense of theatre, and yet, potent theatre, as theatre can be, or as all art can be. There's something palpably not real in the way that we usually think of that word, but also real and powerful there. In other words, we're seeing image as image, to use that phrase that we've used before.

But it's also differentiated, that kind of erotic-imaginal practice is differentiated from, I don't know what to call it -- humdrum sexual fantasy, typical sexual fantasy? -- by the conceptual framework that's operating. So there's a whole, as we said, logos here. That logos structures things and navigates and gives a direction and a purpose. Wrapped up with the logos or emerging out of the logos is a whole intentionality, because the logos, the conceptual framework, also constellates an intentionality with respect to the image and the eros. So I'm not just, you know, chasing pleasant sensations or whatever it is, or just distracting myself because I'm procrastinating on some project I have to do or whatever it is. The intentionality is wrapped up in or emergent from, given by, determined by, the conceptual framework in part. And that intentionality, as well as the conceptual framework, that makes a big difference.

The sense of dimensionality in the image that we're relating to -- that's a key piece. That's characteristic of the imaginal and the erotic-imaginal. The eternality of the image. These are things, as I've said before, that you may not notice at first if you're new to this, but then you begin to see, "Oh, yeah, that's there," the dimensionality, the eternality. That differentiates 'imaginal' from 'imaginary' or just 'imagination.' Of course, you know, eros is distinguished from craving, and imaginal practice is distinguished from daydreaming, differentiated by what they lead to in the moment, in the energy body, in the soulmaking, and long-term, as well, in terms of engagement and longer-term soulmaking; the opening of beauty, both in the moment but also longer-term; meaningfulness, both in the moment but also long-term in the life. The soulmaking has the stimulation and the opening of eros-psyche-logos, so also the mind is involved here. The mind is stretched. The conceptions, the visions, the perception, all of that is stretched in the world into what was previously unfamiliar territory. This is the soulmaking expansion. So what's the difference? Well, one leads to all that, and the other doesn't.

And again, as someone asked me just this morning, "Just remind me why we need all this. What's the purpose of all this? What's the purpose of delineating something called eros?" Again, we talked about it before on this retreat, but just to say one thing right now: yeah, we can have a spiritual practice or a path where, for instance, I'm moving towards the insight and the perception of oneness, universal oneness, and actually many kinds of oneness -- universal love, universal awareness, universal being, or the Unfabricated. There are different kinds. But actually, there's a limited amount of kinds. I've never actually bothered to count. And then there are kind of micro-variations of each. But then, once one has kind of seen or had those experiences enough times, and it's really, "Oh, yeah, that's gone in there as a viable perception, and has changed my sense of what existence is and what the self is, opening to all these kinds of oneness," then you're sort of done. You either declare yourself liberated or whatever it is, and you do what you do based on that declaration.

But there's a kind of -- it's just done; it's finite. It's a little bit almost formulaic. You can map this stuff out. In terms of that movement towards oneness, you can pretty much map it out, what the perceptions are, the various ways they might happen. There's always the possibility it just goes by itself, but generally speaking, if you do this and that, it will tend to open this way and that way. You can map it out. There's a kind of predictability or formulaic nature to that kind of opening, important as it is. I'm really not knocking it. It's really crucial. So that's one thing about that kind of path of oneness. A second thing about it is that the particulars and the uniqueness of things or beings or aspects is not actually that important. So there's a kind of equivalence or replaceability. Because everything is one, it doesn't really matter what there is, because whatever else there is in this thing's place, it will also be one. It's all the same.

So if this forest gets cut down and made into a car park or whatever it is, or even if, you know, species go extinct or whatever, it's all one. It's all one, or whatever I say -- it's all love, or it's all awareness, or it's just the play of awareness or something. So, you know, there's a validity and a value to these perceptions, absolutely. There's also, again, a danger. There's a risk -- in this case, non-engagement. And a certain direction, and certain doors, won't open that way. In contrast, with the exploration of the erotic-imaginal, I would say it's infinitely creative. There are infinite possibilities for creation and discovery of beauty, meaningfulness, dimensionality, dimensions, a sense of sacredness and divinity, the opening of eros-psyche-logos (meaning ideation and image). It's actually infinite in its possibilities. It's not just a sort of set and kind of fairly predictable range of experience, like, "Oh yeah, there's that one and that one," like we said before.

And, with the erotic-imaginal, the sacredness and the divinity is in and through the particulars, as well as in and through the universal oneness. In and through the particulars. It somehow rescues the particulars, and actually gives them more dimensionality, more kinds of sacredness, more kinds of senses of divinity. How many? I think infinite. Potentially infinite. There are infinite possibilities for creation and discovery. The path of soulmaking is endless, open-ended, infinite potentially.

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1. E.g. SN 35:28. ↩︎

2. E.g. Ajahn Jayasaro, Stillness Flowing: The Life and Teachings of Ajahn Chah (Malaysia: Panyaprateep Foundation, 2017), 70--1. ↩︎