Transcription
So we have a little time now at the end of the day, if there's anything you want to share, or a comment, or insights you want to share, or experiences or whatever, or questions. And as I said at some point, what we were exploring today didn't involve so much in terms of actual practice and technique, etc. I mean, it came up a little bit, well, in the guided meditations just a little bit, and a little bit in the earlier Q & A period. Though we didn't talk about it, I'm certainly happy to, if there's something about that as well. Gary, yeah?
Q1: possible safety issues with imaginal practice; assumptions underlying fear of imaginal practice; potential dangers in all meditation practice; monitoring to see whether any way of paying attention is helpful
Yogi: Yeah, well, on the actual practice, I guess one of the examples that you gave at the beginning, and you have referred to several times, this sort of devil figure, and then the rather strong sexual imagery at the end -- I'm concerned about the safety aspects of practising it, and it seems to me, with something like that, it indicates -- I mean, I'm not a therapist, but it indicates possible deep psychological disturbance. And I'm wondering, if someone practised this without either teacher contact or being in therapy, it could actually be quite harmful. And possibly, I mean, if it's because of childhood abuse, it could actually leave someone still doing it. And I guess I'm very concerned. While the overall practice of working with the imaginal and images seems very fruitful, it's rather extreme, how the violence or sexual imagery like that could, seems to me, need special handling. So I guess it's ... what safety precautions do you think need to be drawn? There aren't very many teachers, insight teachers in the UK, so it's not that easy to work with them.
Rob: Yeah. So that black devil series was not practice. That's what was characteristic about it. None of it except the very last one, of turning towards it when she was, you know, "I can't do the inner child thing," and turned towards -- that was the only conscious practice. This was just something that happened to her. So she was in therapy, and didn't tell the therapist, and actually felt, "I'm really glad that I did not tell the therapist." It freaked her out at the time, disturbed her a lot. So something unfolded which actually was healing, interestingly, to her depression, etc., her chronic periods of depression.
Yes, of course this is important, what you're raising. I don't know the answer, to be honest. I think what I would rather say is, or in addition to what you're saying, is, again, perhaps draw attention to the kinds of assumptions that are underneath what you're saying, or wrapped up in what you're saying.
So every practice has a danger. There's no such thing as a practice or a technique or a road without a danger. In the old days of Insight Meditation, similar things, and it was regarded as really problematic for people to be doing it, etc. So even straightforward meditation has that.
I think a few things. One is that -- and I mentioned this in the day -- you know, when you said, "Oh, child sexual abuse, and therefore that's causative." And this is such a tricky area, so I have to be careful here. But it may still be that that's, you know, what one tends to, "Oh, that's the most important thing," or "That's the dominant thing," or "That's what's creating the images." Maybe, but there's an assumption there, you know? Now, it's dangerous for me to say, or it's contentious for me to say. I'm aware of that, and I need to be sensitive here. So I'm not saying it is or it isn't, but I'm just wanting to draw out the assumptions there in/behind your question.
So I think, in terms of practice, and someone asked this earlier: as one engages this kind of practice, either on one's own, or with the support of someone else, maybe that someone else, if it's a teacher or a therapist or whatever, part of what they're doing is seeing, "Well, what's possible here, right now, for this person? What's appropriate? What's not?" But that goes for all practice, all kinds of practice. What's helping this person?
There's a way of practising insight meditation where you really focus hard on rapid impermanence in a very narrow, focused way. Drives a lot of people nuts, actually. It has a lot of -- potentially, for some people, some personality types and sort of energy types. There's always the question, for me as a teacher: what's going to be helpful for this person now? And can I help make this practice or that -- if it feels like it would be helpful, how can I help make it helpful? And I don't have a formula for that, for myself, in advance. It's more like you're feeling it out.
Part of what one is doing, though -- and this came up, this is what came up earlier in the Q & A -- is that, maybe, in a lot of times when I work with people, part of what I'm really doing is opening up a different relationship with images. So even if part of the cause of this image was something that happened in the past -- I'm not ruling that out -- always what's significant is the way of relating to it, and the way of conceiving of it as well. And often, the way of conceiving of it is quite hidden. That's why we talked about a lot of what we did today. So there's a way of, like, opening that up and making it helpful or safe. And if it's not, then something else, you know?
In terms of doing it on one's own -- yeah, I'm not sure. I don't know. To me, all practice, so even simple mindfulness practice -- I'm sitting, and I feel sad. Can I pay attention to my sadness? And sometimes people pay attention to the sadness, and I'm being with, I think I'm being with my sadness, and the whole thing is sinking, sinking in sadness.
What's happening there is, what's wrapped up in my mindfulness is actually not helpful. There's something wrapped up that I'm not seeing. So part of the mindfulness -- 5 per cent, let's say -- a part of the mind is just (use the word loosely) monitoring: is the way that I'm paying attention to this, the way that I'm working right now, the flavour, the mix of what's involved in the mindfulness, is that helpful or not? And if it is helpful, it gives a certain quality or certain qualities to the unfolding experience. So it might be that the sadness is eased a little bit. It might be the sadness stays, but it has something around it that's a little bit more soft. It feels a little bit more healing.
So that kind of, if one's working on one's own in meditation, that goes for any practice that one's doing. Some part is just, how is this going? What's helpful here? I'm surfing. I'm responding to what's there. And that would go for imaginal practice, or any practice at all. So I'm not sure I can answer in very specifics, but I would say all that. It's okay? Yeah?
Please.
Q2: differences between imaginal practice and an open awareness practice that includes images; regarding image as primary; energy body as anchor in imaginal practice
Yogi: I'm still trying to figure out how this is different from the practice that I already do, which is an open, very open awareness, anything that's going on, and focusing on the relationship with what arises -- how am I looking at the emotion or thought or whatever. I have an image, a certain image that repeats every couple of months, and comes up, you know, some emotion that's attached to that. I'm wondering how -- are you suggesting that we do something on top of that, or something different, or embrace it differently?
Rob: Yeah, thank you. That's a really good question. I think I am, but it might be quite subtle. Again, this came up earlier. So I can be open to the totality, and really, in two ways, actually -- I'm saying something a bit general first. I can be open to the totality in two ways: I can be open to the totality as totality, as kaleidoscopic totality, symphony, etc. Or I can be open to the totality, and the attention actually moves between what's most prominent: now there's something in the body, now there's an emotion, now there's a thought, and moving quite freely between that, from what's most prominent, yeah?
And then, let's say an image comes up, as I said, and I can be with it. But I think, just off the top of my head, right now, I think probably the distinction I'm making is in the background conceiving of what's happening, and what this image is or isn't. So if I view the emotion as primary, that puts a different slant on the thing. It's a completely valid way of working, but the image is just kind of either explaining the emotion -- "It's got to do with my history," or something like that. So that would give a certain way of looking, which I'm saying is valid, but we're moving slightly away. Or one possibility is to move away from that.
If I say the image is from my past, again, I'm putting it into a certain way of looking, yeah? If I give more attention to the emotional feeling in the body, it's a certain thing. So I think, saying all of that's possible and lots more, but one can lean it towards just dropping in the idea, or playing with the idea, entertaining the idea that actually, there may be something -- don't know what the word to say is -- important for the psyche in the image, and that the image holds more than just an emotion, that if I give a certain kind of sensitivity to the image, to some images, and a way of relating to it, I find, actually, it has a multidimensionality of emotion in one image. So it's not one emotion. It's a really delicate jewel, multifaceted jewel of lots of different emotions. And then I say, "Oh, the image is actually somehow more central than this particular emotion that I'm feeling."
But I could go in there and do something different. I could just be with the emotion, and watch sadness sort of ebb and flow, for instance, in my chest. No problem -- that's a very good practice. It takes it in a slightly different direction if I give, I put, I adopt a conceptual framework, even temporarily, that there's something primary here, in that sense. And then what I'm doing is -- and that's why I introduced this energy body thing -- so I'm with this sense of the body, and I stay. That's my anchor. If I'm off that, I'm actually daydreaming. So I'm with this, but I'm also with the sensitivity here. I'm picking up on the multiplicity of resonances, and meaningfulnesses, and emotional resonances, etc., of that image. Then that becomes more what we're talking about. So some of it's emotion. Some of it's ideas. You understand? Is this answering ...? Not quite?
Yogi: No, it's lovely.
Rob: Oh, okay. [laughs]
Q3: dependent arising of image; trusting the image causes an imaginal encounter to unfold differently
Yogi: You know, after what you've given us, it becomes virtually impossible to ask an intelligent question. [laughter] But I'm going to try something I've got in my mind. I had a nightmare, years ago. I was a very young man at the time. And what's important about this, in response to what you've given us, at that time, I didn't even know the word 'psychology,' let alone 'Insight Meditation.' And this nightmare was extremely painful, to the point where I was fighting to fall asleep. And when I [?], I tried to sort of use alcohol, you know, to [?]. And I was in the army at the time. By Thursday, didn't have any money left! [laughs] So I had to suffer this nightmare. But it came to a time when I felt like this: I would be sleeping on the bed, then some bogeyman would come and put me in a sack, and then choke me, you know? And it came to the time where I just, you know, I just gave up. I said, "Take me!" And it stopped.
Now, I've been thinking, suppose I'd gone to a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist, perhaps he would have asked me, "What does this mean to you?" But without any knowledge of this, I realize that, you know, and I didn't get this advice from anyone; it was just, you know ... I don't know if that's related to ...
Rob: It's absolutely related, and it's very important to say that. Thank you for saying that. It's not an uncommon experience. Like I said, and I can't remember if I said it in the Q & A before or elsewhere, but a Dharma practitioner needs to understand that what arises in the moment is, in part, caused, if you like, by the present moment attitude and relationship and way of conceiving of it. So that when I have a nightmare image, in the nightmare, and there's fear in relationship to that, and resistance in relationship to that, it actually constellates it more hardly, more solidly, more intensely, more oppressively. Same thing is true of a back pain in meditation, actually. So there's something about understanding relationship and perception. This is dependent arising -- really, really important. But you have another possibility, if we just make a slight nuance here of direction. So this is great, what you're talking about. Absolutely great. And you discovered something that's fundamentally important for a practitioner to understand.
But it would also have been possible to -- or maybe not then, but theoretically, at least -- possible to, okay, I don't just give myself into this and just whatever, but I actually enter into it as an imaginal event, so to speak, which is a little more keeping it around, but entering into it with the idea that there's something to trust here. Or if that's possible, and sometimes it's not possible. And then this idea of trust begins to open something. So you're actually keeping the image, but it will unfold differently. [15:34] That bogeyman will turn out differently, just as that black devil man turned out differently (although that person was not practising). So there's a sort of Middle Way there as well. Do you understand? So again, it's really fundamental: none of this is separate from the way of conceiving, the way of relating, etc., and what's going on in relationship to. Yeah, really important.
Q4: navigating spontaneous images
Yogi: I had a question about using image with samatha or samādhi practice, because while doing that practice, the image of -- at first it was just when you feel your whole body, it was of a cloak being put on. And at the time, I wasn't trying to nuance or find out what that felt like. It was more that this was helping the whole body sense. And when you were speaking earlier, I thought, "Well, is that the ego going, 'Well, this is useful for samādhi, so I'm going to use it'?" There was another image that came up of a feeling of tinkling in the body. And ...
Rob: Tingling?
Yogi: Not tingling. Tinkling, with a K. And the image that came up was of a Christmas tree, and air rushing through, and that sound. Again, not used to find out any nuance of meaning or resonance. Could there have been, or is it more that images can sometimes be used as just a way to heighten sensation and go in that direction?
Rob: Yeah. So you can do what you want here. And as I said, I don't think there's a right or wrong. You know, this is going right back to the first thing I said: this is open exploration. Who's to say what's right or wrong? There are just possibilities here. To me, some of the possibilities are more interesting than others. But that's not to say they have to be the same ones that you find more interesting. So I've tended to lean, certainly last year and a little bit today, on what may, for some, sound a bit more extreme or far out, of the possible ways of relating. But, you know, it varies. But it's perfectly valid, and that's actually good, skilful -- what the Buddha would call 'skilful means'-- to use an image, if it triggers a sense of well-being in the body that you can then concentrate on and go more into samādhi, this kind of stillness and harmonization. Absolutely, why not? No problem.
So it might be that that's all the image is, just that. It was an image that came up. See, we haven't mapped out this today, like, what images have depth to them, or what are just sort of more surface associations? But it might be it's just a surface association. It works by association to create more samādhi, you know. No problem. Or it may be something deeper. We don't know, or don't know yet.
I didn't mention this -- well, it maybe came up in the Q & A -- but what's also interestingly characteristic (I actually said this last year, I remember), what's characteristic, this is, I find, really interesting: when an image, even if it's disturbing to the mind, and to the mind's usual sort of box of what's okay and what's not, and what's disturbing, or what's weird, even when the image is disturbing to the mind, if it's right for the soul, if we use that language, something happens in the energy body when that image appears, and it's that the energy body goes into a sense of alignment. And so you can use the energy -- that's partly why I was using that today as a start -- you can use the energy body as a compass, as a navigation system. There's something that seems to be, I feel like, almost like a law here, maybe, that when it's right, something harmonizes, integrates, and aligns in the energy body. That's partly the reason why the energy body, what we're calling energy body, is so fundamental to this work, in the way I would describe (also because of the not daydreaming, and also because of the picking up on the resonances).
And when it goes into alignment like that, you actually then have an option. You can either stay with the image, and now that the body feels a certain way, just keep picking up on the subtleties and the resonances. And then you're doing the more imaginal work and following the image. Or here's the harmonization, here's the alignment, here's the well-being; let's leave the image, and just lean into samādhi, because that's almost the samādhi right there, and I just need to fill it out. So characteristic of image-work, even if the images are kind of weird and disturbing, is that they give this sense, and then you keep getting these options. So you can actually balance it very well. Let's say you're on retreat or something. You can balance it very well with this kind of moving in and out of deep well-being and samādhi and the harmonization of the whole energy, and the image-work. Yeah? So, not quite sure, in terms of what you described, but there are possibilities there. Yeah?
