Energy, Image, Emotion (Part 1)

On other retreats, other occasions and situations, I've talked a lot about working with emotions skilfully, different possibilities for a meditator to work well with their emotional life -- both the lovely, beautiful, positive emotions, if you like, and the more difficult ones. It seems to me that's a really important part of our practice in general. Tonight I just want to talk about emotions, really just enough or in the context of imaginal practice, so as much as that interfaces with our explorations for this retreat, this course. Particularly what I want to go into is the interface, the nexus, if you like, of emotion, energy, and image. So we've been talking about energy body, and a little bit about how emotions can be reflected there. I want to go into that more and look at this relationship between emotion, energy, and image, and also view, because that's always an inescapable factor. So the nexus, really, of energy, emotion, image, and view.

Before we do that, and because it's relevant, just a little bit of recap from earlier. So we said that, we could say that there are three modes, if you like, of the mindfulness of the body. We're particularly interested, on this retreat, in developing sensitivity to what I called the third mode, the energy body. Really developing, over time, gradually, the sensitivity to the energy body and the sense of the body that way energetically. Some people, I have a friend, a close friend, and she knows much more about anatomy than me, so when she is sensitive to her energy body and the way emotions and energies are manifesting and reflected there, she always ties it in -- or it seems to me, she quite often ties it in -- with precise anatomy: "Oh, my ovaries feel this," or "my epiglottis" or whatever it is. [laughs] I myself don't know very much about anatomy at all, but I want to say don't worry about that. It's really not necessary. It's fine if you do it. It's not necessary for what we're doing for this retreat. We can give attention to a quality of energy somewhere in the energy body, or the breath, the feeling of the breath energy somewhere in the energy body, or an emotion manifesting, and we're kind of not sure, "Is that around my mouth, or is that in my chest or my throat?" Sometimes things get a little amorphous and blurred, and it doesn't matter. It's not necessary to tie it in, to correlate it with an actual anatomical, physical structure in the body. A lot of the time, the energy body is quite an amorphous field, filled with awareness. That could be just a space, as we said, a sort of space a little bit around the body and including that whole space, or it could have more contours, similar to the physical body.

This, we said, this energy body, is an experience. It's not something to believe. It's not a hypothesis. We're just talking about an experience, and talking about a kind of experience, a texture of experience, a way of paying attention. We're talking about it with the term 'energy body.' We said, why? Why would we do that? Partly because it's a way in to this quality of samādhi that we want to cultivate as a journey in our practice, and just developing more and more this spectrum, this range of possibilities for the ways that the being can feel, the mind and the body, the energy body. Cultivating the well-being, the harmonization, the energy, the restfulness there, the brightness, the alignment of the energies, because that forms a huge resource. That becomes a huge wellspring for us -- not just for our practice in all kinds of ways, but for our whole life.

So that's one reason for developing this sensitivity to the energy body. The second reason, as I've alluded to, is that in developing the sensitivity to the energy body, we develop naturally, we increase our sensitivity with respect to our emotions, and also with respect to imaginal practice and the images that come. So that the energy body forms an instrument, if you like. It becomes quite a subtle instrument and powerful instrument for working with emotions, and for sensitivity and navigating through images and with images, navigating the practice.

So these are some of the reasons why we want to develop the sensitivity to the energy body. But notice something, because implied there is that we're not trying always to be in the samādhi mode of tending to a sort of pleasantness and openness of energy, etc. We're not aiming to always be in some state of pleasant well-being, open, harmonized energy. (A) I think that's probably relatively impossible, and (B) for something to be a resource, for the samādhi and the well-being of that to be a resource, a deep, powerful, potent resource in our life, it's not that it needs to be there all the time. Absolutely not. It needs to be there often enough, often enough that we can have access to it, dip in and out of it. Not always. That's quite different. And 'often enough' will form and create a very deep and nourishing resource for us in our lives, and out of that, freedom comes, and the ability to let go of what we need to let go of in life much more easily. Many other benefits, many other gifts of that resource.

In terms of practice, we have different intentions, or intended directions at different times. Sometimes we're cultivating the samādhi, or working gently, playfully at tending to this well-being and the pleasantness or comfort of the energy body, and other times we're doing something different. And it's conscious, and we're moving flexibly between those different intentions at different times.

We also mentioned that, at times, or rather often, the awareness will shrink. So we're working with this middle size of attention, this sort of body size, a little bit bigger than the body, and it will shrink many, many times, the awareness. It will shrink when we're beset or troubled by an afflictive emotion. It will shrink when there is pain or discomfort somewhere in the body. It will shrink when we're distracted by something, or caught in thought, when the mind is caught in thought. All of those -- afflictive emotion, the pain and discomfort, the being caught in thought -- all of those involve clinging or craving or aversion to a significant enough degree, relatively gross, actually, on the scale of things, and that goes with the shrinking of the attention.

Sometimes the awareness just shrinks out of habit. It's habitual, unfortunately, for us to have a more contracted attention. But we can change that habit through practice, and have available to us different sizes of attention, like different gears in a car, which we can use at different times. They're available for us, accessible for us, as part of the resource of a meditatively trained mind and heart. But we will see that the awareness shrinks, many times, and we want to just recognize when it has: what does that feel like? Recognize it's shrunk, and over and over, just stretch it again, expand it again, to just a little bit bigger than the body, the physical body. And then filling that space with this bright sensitivity as we talked about.

Regarding the direction, the intended direction of samādhi at times, it's very creative, very playful. Really anything goes that helps you get in touch with that energy body, and just helps to kind of shape it or open it up to something that feels comfortable, easeful, nice, relatively pleasant, maybe quite pleasant. Anything goes. We talked about just hanging out with the more open space of the energy body. Sometimes just that -- you start to realize, "Oh, in a very subtle way, it's actually quite pleasant. I hadn't even noticed that before." But through the style of attention and the openness, it's like "Oh, there's some vaguely pleasant energy in that that I can tune into and just hang out in."

Or there are different ways of working with the breath, as we went through, either tuning into the expansion and contraction of the whole energy body space, or the sense of energization, relaxation, with the in- and the out-breath. Or imagining the breath centred and expanding from some centre in the body -- the heart centre, throat centre, head centre, belly centre; could be anywhere, actually. Imagining that, but then really feeling the energetic quality of that and the effect of that on the energy body space. Or imagining the breath coming in and out of certain centres -- again, could be anywhere: top of the head, down in the belly, perineum. If you're standing up, you can breathe up through the feet, into the whole body. And with that, experimenting with what kind of breath: how does this breath want to be when it's coming in and out there, or when it's centred there? So imagining, but really feeling as well the energetic sense.

And then there's also the possibility of not necessarily using the breath, or maybe combining it with the breath, but using the imagination a little more actively, and for instance imagining certain lines of energy, perhaps up the body, up the body and out the legs, straight lines of energy, perhaps extending further down or up. And that can be very, very helpful -- quite subtle but very helpful. Or imagining a cloud of light, the body as a cloud of light energy, or actually a contoured body of light. And then there are all the possibilities of playing with mettā that we talked about, etc. Many, many possibilities. Anything goes, but the intention for the samādhi, the directionality, is really to gently cultivate, gently tend to a sense of well-being of the energy body, and eventually seeing if that sense of well-being can actually spread and permeate, as the awareness does, the whole space.

We also mentioned, of course, sometimes, there's going to be not so much a sense of well-being, but rather there's going to be pain and discomfort in the body, and then we ran through certain possibilities. Let's just repeat them now, recap:

(1) The awareness shrinks when there's pain and discomfort in the body, very naturally, so just opening it out can help. Just open out that shrunken awareness, stretch it again over the whole space -- very helpful. (2) We can gently direct the attention, or rather sit it, sit the awareness, centre it more where there's an okayness somewhere, where there's some degree of comfort, rather than getting dragged into the pain or the discomfort. The attention is often dragged in or away in distraction. What if we just put it somewhere, rest it somewhere where it feels relatively okay? (3) We can imagine the breath or the breath energy moving freely, unobstructedly, through that place of pain, discomfort, blocked energy or whatever. (4) We can imagine the breath or the energy coming in and out of the area of pain or discomfort, also very helpful. We can imagine the mettā originating from the very centre of the area of discomfort -- very counterintuitive, but sometimes very helpful. Or the mettā flowing into that point.

(5) We can also imagine a light, a bright light, centred at the discomfort and the pain, and include the whole body, so the light is radiating through the body from that point, and the whole body, again, is in the awareness. (6) And then we also said we can bring a kind of light and steady attention to the discomfort, to the pain, wherever it is, within the whole-body awareness. Within a sort of background awareness of the whole body, bring a light, steady attention to the discomfort, and really allow it to be uncomfortable. Fully allow. The emphasis is all on the allowing, moment to moment, allowing it to be what it is. It's this moment of unpleasantness, and then another. Really opening, really welcoming the unpleasantness. Very, very skilful way of attending.

(7) We can also use the imagination to put the discomfort in the body in connection with some sense of comfort or well-being or pleasure. So for instance, we might have, as I mentioned, an area that feels uncomfortable, but we can tap in and realize the rest of the body, or around that, actually it feels quite nice. There's quite a sense of softness or warmth or well-being or openness. And we can surround that discomfort with something more comfortable, and almost like holding it or cradling it. But what's important here is the connection: what is uncomfortable is placed in connection with something that's comfortable, with something that's warm and soft and has more well-being in it.

And perhaps that more comfortable energy, the softer, warmer energy, can sort of lap against, like gentle waves, perhaps in a lake, lapping against a jagged rock, and just lapping and lapping. Perhaps that's the breath, and the breath can feel at times itself quite soft or gentle, or soothing, or pleasant, or healing, and that energy quality of the breath, perhaps, is like gentle waves lapping against what's uncomfortable. Sometimes we can even just imagine that there's a sort of channel between an area of discomfort and an area where it's more comfortable and more okay. So for example, I think I mentioned this morning we could feel tight and uncomfortable in the throat, but the belly feels relatively okay. Well, just imagine that there's a channel connecting those two areas. Don't do anything else but just imagine that they're connected with a channel, and that's all, and just see what happens. We're putting something that's difficult in contact with something that's healing; you could view it that way. Or again, similar to what we said before, the pleasantness, the comfort, what is relatively okay or warm or soft, can kind of wave through what is uncomfortable. But again, always the playfulness, always the experimenting. There are so many possibilities here, and possibilities for creativity and playfulness.

And if there's pleasantness somewhere, if there's a sense of well-being that doesn't disappear after a second or two, it's really around for some minutes, then can we focus on that? Really include it. Give it some attention. Perhaps enter into it, even, with the attention, probe it with the attention, really finding the pleasure there and the enjoyment. Or can we open up to it? It's like opening the whole body to this pleasant energy. Or dissolve in it somehow, or dissolve it through the body. But really we're relishing, enjoying. The emphasis is on allowing oneself, and really the encouragement is to allow oneself to enjoy what feels good in the energy body -- even if it's unremarkable; even if it's subtly pleasant and doesn't seem much of a big deal. If it's more steady for some minutes, we really want to include that enjoyment and actually kind of prioritize it.

In relation to all this, in relation to this direction and this intended direction of the samādhi, of the cultivating of the well-being in the energy body, attending to the well-being, we don't have to necessarily make it some ego thing where we're measuring, "How well am I doing at this thing called samādhi? Am I succeeding? Am I a great meditator or not?" We don't have to kind of create an inner critic around all this. It all depends on the attitude. If you were feeling maybe not so well one day, and think, "Oh, I've got a backache or whatever, and I need to rest. I'm really tired," and maybe you arrange a bunch of pillows and cushions on the sofa or on your bed, and you're arranging them just right so you feel comfortable, so it's restful, so it's easeful, it's unlikely that your inner critic or ego is going to make a big deal out of that. It's just a gesture of kindness. It's arranging things, playing with the movement of pillows: "That doesn't quite work. Let's move it down. Ah, that's better." It's just that movement of kindness.

Or a similar situation: you're feeling tired, or a lot of tension or whatever, and you decide to run a bath and put all your oils or whatever you like in the bath. Similarly, it's not a big thing for the ego to get involved with. We don't tend to measure ourselves. It's purely kindness: "What do I like? A little bit warmer? Okay, let's see what we can do there. A little bit more of this oil or whatever it is." So it's really a movement of kindness, and we can be quite creative with it, quite playful and kind, and in that way, it's subverting or diverting from the whole involvement with the inner critic and the ego-measurement.

In terms of practice possibilities, let's say, let's delineate a couple of things:

(1) So first there is this **intention of *samādhi ***that we've talked about, this intention for a direction towards cultivating a sense, tending to a sense, nourishing a sense of well-being, just as much as possible, in the energy body. So we're attending to the energy body, and using the images, for instance, or the breath, or whatever, to try very gently, playfully, to create and allow a kind of opening of pleasure there. And that can increase, and we're nourishing that. That's the direction of what we call samādhi. Part of that, sometimes there will be difficulties that come up, energetic difficulties, emotional difficulties. Within the direction of the samādhi intention, then we're responding to those difficulties, but trying to sort of smooth them out so that they become more okay, so that what's unpleasant starts to dissolve a little bit and transform into something more pleasant or more okay and comfortable. So that is this first direction or intended direction of what we call samādhi, all of that.

(2) Now let's introduce another possibility, a second possibility, which is just an attention to the emotions in the energy body as they manifest, as they express or are reflected in the energy body, whether they're difficult emotions or not difficult emotions, pleasant or unpleasant. There's just the attention to the emotions in the energy body, without the intention to move it towards what's pleasant, to tend towards the sense of well-being and comfort, ease, pleasure, etc.

Now, this attention to the emotions in the energy body, as I mentioned earlier, is part of just developing our emotional awareness in our practice and in our life. It's part of, also, being able to work skilfully with our emotions, with our emotional life, and the richness and the range of our emotional life. Actually, if we place that in a bigger context, a bigger picture with respect to our emotional life, our emotions, the range of emotions that we have in our life, in our practice, what's a bigger picture? We could say, maybe it has at least five aspects of what are we trying to do as practitioners with our emotions. Where are we going with our emotional life as practitioners? I would say maybe we could delineate five aspects. There are probably more, but let's say five for now.

(1) The first is just, we want to be able to feel our emotions, to be sensitive to our emotions, including all the nuances of that, including the more beautiful ones and the more difficult ones. We want to be alive and in touch with the richness and the range and the depth of our heart, and the subtleties of our heart, of our emotional heart. That, to me, is an important aspect -- the sensitivity, the ability to feel.

(2) A second one is that we want to be able to handle, to have the capacity to tolerate, to be with, to be okay with, what goes on and comes through our heart and our emotionality. So that means both what is difficult -- we want to be able to handle what is difficult -- and also what is positive or beautiful. Sometimes intense joy is actually quite difficult for people to handle; we're not used to it in this culture. So can I handle, do I know how to handle? Can I develop my capacity to handle what comes through? In our times now, I feel that there are dimensions of this. Can I handle what is purely, so to speak, my personal emotional life, what's going on for me personally? But globally, we are facing such a conglomeration of crises, environmentally, and with the climate, and resource depletion, and economic structures failing, and all kinds of things, that actually, if you like, we could say we're called to hold emotions that may be much larger. Or rather, our developing our capacity to handle what may be, at times, more intense emotions, can be, hopefully will be, in the service of the planet. If I cannot hold those kind of emotions in the face of the increasing crises we face as a species, then I cannot offer much, because I will run away, I will hide my head in the sand, I will distract myself, I will ... something or other. So that's the second aspect in the big picture, handling, being able to handle and tolerate.

(3) The third aspect we could say of the big picture regarding emotions is that, as practitioners, we're in the business of cultivating beautiful qualities of heart, as the Buddha might say, positive emotions: joy, and compassion, and love, and equanimity, and appreciation, and gratitude, all these beautiful qualities of heart, generosity, etc. That's part of the trajectory. It's part of the path. Complementary to that, we're also in the business of learning to let go of emotions that are not that useful, that are not really that fruitful for us; they don't really lead us where we want to go. Now, this is not the same as letting go of what is unpleasant, because sometimes what's difficult to bear, what feels a little bit unpleasant, may be fruitful if we can find the right relationship with it. So it's not just differentiating between pleasant and unpleasant, and choosing the pleasant over the unpleasant. It's really discerning what's fruitful, what, as the Buddha might say, leads onwards towards the goal, and what's not. And learning over time to sort of defuse, like a bomb defuser or expert, defuse what's not useful, while encouraging and cultivating what is and what's nourishing and helpful to the being. So that's the third.

(4) The fourth, regarding our emotions, the big picture of what we want to do with the emotions, is that they form, actually, a sensitivity to the emotions forms part of, an inclusion of the emotions forms part of imaginal practice, and actually part of all meditation. So this sensitivity is very particular when it comes to deepening certain directions in meditation.

(5) The fifth aspect or dimension of what we want to develop with emotions is, we could say, an understanding. This has a couple of aspects to it. I want to understand my personal patterns, my personal habits, emotionally. What are the kinds of emotion that I keep constructing, fabricating? How do I tend to react to certain situations or perceptions? How does that arise? There's a lot to that, but I want to understand my patterns and habits. More broadly, I want to understand what we could say is the dependent arising of emotions, including view. So we'll talk more about this, how emotions arise dependent on all kinds of conditions. I want to understand that. I want to understand: apart from just my personal patterns and habits, what is it that gives rise to an emotion? What is an emotion dependent on? Partly it's dependent on conception, and assumption, and view, and relationship with, maybe aversion or clinging. So all that's part of it.

I'm really talking about the big picture. Here on this retreat, what we're focusing on is approaching the emotions via the energy body. This is what I want to talk about tonight and tomorrow. So there's, as I said, the samādhi intention, the intended direction of samādhi, or there's the intention of just paying attention to the emotions as they manifest in the energy body, just hanging out and paying attention to that ebb and flow, and swell and decrease, and coming and going. This kind of attention to the emotions in the energy body needs to be quite sensitive often. We're talking about quite a delicate attention. Not always, but often, it's asking us for quite a delicate attention. It's also asking us to sustain our attention, at least the way I'm talking about it, sustaining the attention on the emotion and the feeling of that, the energy of that, in the energy body.

What I'm talking about now, in this mode of practice, this direction, this intended direction, also includes quite a range. So it includes difficult emotions, as we said, and also the positive or the beautiful, the pleasant emotions. The whole range is something we want to include in what we're paying attention to. And it also includes the more subtle emotions, subtle negative emotions. For example, boredom is not a big, strong emotion usually. It's quite subtle, but that's part of what I want to give attention to, that emotion, or those more subtle difficult emotions, and how they manifest in the energy body. And also the more delicate or subtle positive emotions. Some emotions, sometimes a sense of sacredness, for example, can be really quite subtle, or a sense of prayerfulness can be really quite a delicate emotion. We want to include that. So not just the extremes; we're becoming more sensitive with practice to the range of our emotional life.

Now, I'm going to emphasize on this retreat paying attention to the midline, meaning the central line of the body, say somewhere down even below the genitals, the perineum, and up all the way. Up the front of the body is where a lot of emotions often -- not always, absolutely not always, and later we can expand this -- but often a lot of the action emotionally, in terms of what's expressed in the energy body, happens along this midline. Somewhere from the perineum up to the sort of -- well, it can even be the top of the head, but somewhere in the head. So just a gentle, sustained attention to that midline and what's happening there energetically. Our emotions will be expressed often along that midline, so that's a good place to start and sustain your attention in this mode of practice. Like I said, it doesn't have to correlate, or we don't have to know, "That's a certain anatomical point." Sometimes in meditation that all gets a little vague, and it doesn't matter where it is anatomically, physically. For our purposes right now, let's say it doesn't matter.

So regarding any difficult emotion or energy -- so that could be a sense of pressure somewhere, perhaps along that middle line, or a heaviness, or a sense of contraction or tightness somewhere, could be the throat or the heart or the belly. Could also be just a strange sense of, "This area of energy feels kind of foggy," or "This area of energy feels subtly a bit like a swarm of bees in a way that's a bit unpleasant." It can be all kinds of things. So any difficulty, let's say, what do we want to do then? Let's be clear. We want to attend to that, keep the attention as much as we can, in this mode of practice, steadily focused on that feeling, on that energy wherever it is. If it drifts, just come back to that. So here's this pressure in my chest, or around there in the midline. I'm just attending to it steadily.

(1) Can I see: what kind of attention does it need? Sometimes we can actually laser-beam the sensations of pressure, and really look at it with quite a lot of intensity, and sometimes what's asked for, as I said, is much more delicate attention. It's much more like holding those sensations, delicately, lightly in the attention. But the attention is steady, and there's a sensitivity, a discernment: what kind of attention? So that's one aspect.

(2) A second aspect, at the same time, is making sure that there's, so to speak, more energy in the mindfulness than there is in the emotion. If there's more energy in the emotion than in the awareness, than in the mindfulness, then we're sunk. We're overwhelmed by the emotion. So somehow we want to bring a sense of presence to bear, and we kind of energize the attention, the mindfulness, so that there's more energy in that than the emotion. Just that balance, that way -- that the mindfulness is, if you like, stronger, we could say, than the emotion -- that alone is really helpful and really healing. But it's something to check, because sometimes people are mindful, or think they're being mindful, and there's not enough energy in the mindfulness, and they're actually sinking in an emotion; it's not really that helpful. So that's a second aspect.

(3) A third aspect (again, this we've already mentioned) is that the body space, the energy body, may be at times, it may be that it contains a sense of resource in it, and that body space can be around what feels difficult emotionally or energetically. Again, it may lap up in the ways that we talked about before, just now -- lap up against what's difficult, or surround it, or bathe it, or hold it. And this actually is an aspect of kindness, this holding or embracing, or connecting of what's difficult with what's more healing and more lovely. But there is often the possibility of some energetic resource in the larger body space that we can use as a context and put into contact with what's difficult. So that's an aspect.

(4) The fourth aspect is really what I mentioned before, this allowing. If I'm paying attention to what's difficult, somewhere in the energy body, on that midline, really significant and helpful is this attitude, this energetic stance in the attention, of allowing, moment to moment. How fully can this sensation, which is going to be unpleasant, how fully can it be allowed? The doors of the awareness are opening to it, welcoming it, even, moment to moment. Really, really helpful.

So if you listen carefully to all that, it's quite different than sort of being with it: "I'm sort of being with my emotions. I'm sort of accepting that I kind of feel crappy right now, or that I'm miserable," or this and that. It's actually much more specific, and there's a steadiness involved. There's the sensitivity. And there are certain qualities that are brought to bear, and as much as possible, infusing the awareness. So this is what matters. It's the quality of the attention. The kind and the quality of the attention is what matters in relationship to emotional difficulty. That's one of the things that really matters. So the qualities within the attention will either help or actually worsen what's going on. If there's a little bit of judgment, or a little bit of aversion, or pushing away energetically, even without the mind thinking that, it's going to have an effect, and almost certainly an unhelpful effect. But if there's warmth and gentleness and allowing, in a more deliberate and intense kind of allowing, not just this vague sort of acceptance, this is really what matters: the steadiness, the sensitivity, the quality of attention, the qualities in the attention, the kind of attention.

We could actually extrapolate a larger point from that, and say that mindfulness in general includes, if you like, a kind of question, a sort of subliminal question at times, which is really, "Is this helpful?" So we tend to think of mindfulness as something like it's one word, but we can have a lot of different flavours of mindfulness. Really, what we're saying is, "Is this right now, this way of attending, these qualities of mindfulness that are being brought to bear in relationship to this difficulty, is this helpful?" That's a question, because sometimes it's not, and something needs a little bit of reshaping or tweaking or changing.

So there's a kind of question being asked with mindfulness. This goes for whatever we're attending to. We can play with it. We can play with the kind of attention, the qualities in the attention, etc. And all of that implies, as well, that of course the relationship with -- in this case an emotional difficulty or an emotion somewhere in the body -- the relationship with it and the view of it (which I'll come back to much more later, about the view), but the relationship and the view of it are crucially important. That's what makes the difference. And we could actually even say that the relationship with what's going on, in terms of an emotion, the relationship with the emotion itself, and the view of the emotion itself, we could say they're actually included in what we mean by 'emotion.' So it's these things (emotion, relationship with emotion, view of emotion), they kind of make one package, one gestalt, if you like.

Still with difficulties, and working with difficulties that come up emotionally: hindrances, of course. Some of you will know this. We can include that in what we work with. So especially now I'm talking about hindrances of restlessness and dullness. Both of them, dullness and drowsiness and restlessness, both of them require or are really helped by opening the space of the awareness. Again, it will shrink when there's a hindrance, and just opening it up wider again can be really helpful, just that alone.

Sometimes even the vast space, the third size of attention that we talked about, opening up the space really large, looking at the sky or having a sense of the whole space of the room that you're in, taking that in, imagining a space, really helpful, because they both, restlessness and dullness, included in those states is this contraction of the attention, contraction of the awareness. So being aware of space, opening up a wider or much wider awareness can be really helpful.

With restlessness, sometimes attention to the out-breath is really helpful, because there's this, as we mentioned, organic relaxation that's happening with the out-breath, that goes with the out-breath, and just attending to that quality of relaxation can soothe and calm a bit of restlessness. Conversely, when there's dullness and drowsiness and that hindrance, attention to the energizing quality of the in-breath can be really helpful. Also breathing a little longer can energize. Also if there's dullness and drowsiness, sometimes imagining a bright light, perhaps in the middle of your head, perhaps in your heart centre, surrounding and permeating the whole body, and just staying with that bright white, golden light, can be really helpful.

So a lot of instructions here. As we mentioned, I'll repeat some of these things tomorrow morning, recapitulate. But let's add a piece here, because we're on an imaginal practice retreat: actually deliberately calling and engaging with an image that's helpful when there's a difficult emotion going on, that can be really helpful. So for example, here's some afflictive emotion, and just bringing the image of whoever it is that feels helpful, Kuan Yin, or Avalokiteśvara, or Tārā, or maybe a teacher that you feel really embodies a lot of love or support for you, and deliberately bringing that image into the awareness and sustaining it, and again, putting yourself in contact with that image, that beneficent image, that benevolent image, and putting also the pain, the emotional pain in the body, in the energy body, in relationship to that image. So maybe there's a kind of light being beamed towards you, towards the pain -- all kinds of possibilities. But really the deliberately invoking and engaging and staying with, sustaining a helpful image.

Sometimes what can happen is, when there's a difficult emotion, an image arises spontaneously, and ends up being very helpful. I'm going to talk about this. This can be very significant for our purposes, and can be surprisingly helpful. It's interesting to kind of explore a little bit: how is it that these images, whether they're deliberate or spontaneous, how do they help when there's a difficult emotion? One of the ways they help, and perhaps what some people would think would be the most obvious, is that, as I mentioned, there can be love from the image. Sometimes it's not a classical imaginal figure of love -- it's not Jesus or Kuan Yin or something. It's some other image that we don't tend to immediately associate with love, but yet there is love from that image that we feel imbuing us, imbuing the body, touching the emotional pain, somehow healing us. This love has a very gradual effect, and can address, heal, dissolve the emotional difficulty. That's very possible and very healing.

And yet, sometimes what happens is an image appears and it has an immediate effect. It's sudden. And what's happening there is that the healing effect, or the dissolving of the difficult emotion, is not coming because of love. Something else is going on. This is very, very interesting in terms of imaginal practice. There are all kinds of examples one can give.

Actually, to give one example of a spontaneous image, I'm going to read you a letter. Some months ago, it was written to me, a long note from someone who was on a personal retreat here. I'm going to read the whole letter, just because almost every word is relevant to everything that we're talking about through the course of this retreat:

"Hi, Rob. I wouldn't normally write such a long note, but I'm not sure I could share this new image in an interview and still look you in the eye." So even that's relevant, because sometimes images like this, we feel, "Oh, this is so weird." I'll explain, what she's going to say. We feel, "This is so weird." I just want to normalize it, partly, and normalize also the sense of reticence there.

"I have been noticing at points when I'm walking through the house, and even in the garden, the sensation of being kissed hard on the mouth. Seemed a bit strange, but I didn't really think any more about it. Then, yesterday, after you said that samādhi practice has a different intention of following and building pleasure in the body," as we've talked about today and yesterday, "I decided to do a few sits to see what happened. I was doing all the normal breathing with the body when I had the sensation of being licked from the hara," the lower belly centre, "all the way up the front of the body. To say that my entire body split in half with pleasure would be a huge understatement. My body started to shake. I sat for an hour and a half, and there were many images of skin on skin, but not a full image," by which she means either the full body or a full visual image, I suspect.

"Since then, I've had the same visits of this intense sexual body energy on three other sits: last night for an hour and a half, at four o'clock in the morning for another hour, and just now. On this last sit, the image seemed to coalesce. I was having some very intense back pain, and was working with the allowing practice, but didn't seem to have the strength to welcome it, at which point a woman started to kiss the area of pain, like it was a mouth, and any pain in my body seemed to give her and me ecstatic pleasure. There are visual elements of this image, but it's largely kinaesthetic, and it feels like the body, in these encounters, becomes a sexual organ -- the whole thing. And the image is wrapped up in the breath energy that rubs against the body. So many of the images you describe in your talks are functioning in a healing capacity. I definitely feel intensely nourished by this energy, but wondered if there was quite a large danger of becoming attached to this in a negative way."

So part of my response to her, in a note, was that no, there isn't really a danger, and she should keep opening to it and enjoying it. Well, there's not much of a danger, but anyway. She goes on, "I just want to make it clear that this wasn't a head fantasy. It was completely in the body. Is it okay to keep working with it, and if so, are there dangers or directions you wouldn't go in? If you are busy at the moment feel free to respond to this at a later time in an email. It definitely isn't distressing me, but since I've never had an experience like this, I'm having trouble integrating it."

Really the integration that she felt she was having trouble with was really just having permission, recognizing that it wasn't crazy, and having permission to open it, to allow it, to call on it more deliberately at times. Naturally it integrated into the body, and the experience of the energy body and the samādhi (the sense of harmonization, alignment, energization, pleasure, in this case quite strong pleasure) arose naturally and organically from the image. This kind of thing is a lot less rare than you might, many people might, expect.

A different example, another person who has a chronic liver condition, ailment, inflammation of the liver, was sitting again on a retreat one day in meditation. There was this pain in the liver area, and the image of a lion. Now, this image of a lion was an image that she'd had before, quite a few times, so this imaginal figure was quite a friend to her. This lion came. Usually it had a lot of power to it, as lions sometimes do. And it started to lick her liver, to lick that area of the body with a lot of tenderness, but also, in her words, "there was something awesome and majestic" about this huge lion licking her liver.

This went on, she said, in the meditation. She said she was just with this for twenty minutes, and it felt incredibly healing. As that went on, the whole energy body began to align and open, and again, the well-being started to open, the samādhi started to open, the harmonization of the energy body came more and more. So what started with quite a difficult -- in this case not so much an emotion, but a physical affliction -- through the image was transformed gradually, through the love and the tangibility, energetic tangibility of the image, transformed, and samādhi came out of that.

Sometimes the love that comes through an image may feel bigger than the body, bigger than our body. It's as if an imaginal figure or some image creates or opens up a huge space of love, bigger than the body. And then we can literally allow ourselves to feel 'in love,' literally in love, in a space of love, and perhaps then open to that space, or feel the whole body, the whole energy body bathed in that love.

So images can transform emotions that are occurring, and can transform the energy. This happens a lot. They can also arise when there are no difficulties -- so, those examples, or when people were struggling with this or that, but also when there are no difficulties. Some time ago, I was teaching a weekend retreat. Actually, samādhi was the theme, and people were working with the breath and the energy body that we're talking about. A person reported to me, she was really enjoying it, was feeling very calm, and she said, "There's a delicious sense of divinity permeating the energy body and the whole space through the practice."

She was just with that. And then, actually, it felt like this feeling or this delicious sense of divinity, in her words, became personified in the figure of Ramana Maharshi, the great Indian sage and saint from the twentieth century. I think he died in the fifties. She had a very strong heart-connection with this teacher. So this delicious sense of divinity became personified as an image of Ramana Maharshi, and the top of her head felt like it opened, and in descended this figure of Ramana. It was kind of absorbed into her body, into her being, through the top of the head. And with that, a great raising of the energy level.

So he, so to speak, entered into the body and the being, and much more energy became available. But interestingly, the energy felt, she said, quite 'lumpy' was the word she used. It was actually a bit uncomfortable. So a big quantum leap in the energy levels, but it didn't feel that comfortable, sort of lumpy throughout the energy body. So it's like, "Okay, let's see if we can smooth this energy out, and just work with imagining the flows of the energies. Don't jump to conclusions that it's a bad thing or that I'm going to be stuck here or something like that." And she just allowed the awareness to drop to her belly, and really allow the different energies, and really gently work at smoothing them out. Very, very skilful, working in practice there.

So regarding difficult energy in the energy body, we have some options. And again, 'options' is a key word. We are complex. We're encouraging flexibility, not just one way of doing things.

(1) One option is, as we mentioned, to gently emphasize or place the attention, sit the awareness more where there's the comfort, the sense of comfort and pleasure, if that's available, if there is somewhere.

(2) Another option, though, is to deliberately bring to mind and engage with a helpful image. One can also do that deliberately when there is no difficulty. So the woman whose letter I read you, now that's become part of her practice. It's a way in, for her, to samādhi and to the energy, opening that way. Other people say a teacher that they have a connection to also seems to come as a presence imaginally, and perhaps fill their body, and that helps everything to open and energize and calm and feel good, or just comes nearby or something like that and there's a kind of resonance. So even when there's no difficulty or strong sense of difficulty, we can deliberately use a helpful image as part of what helps. But certainly when there is a difficulty, we can deliberately engage a helpful image, imaginal figure. So that's the second possibility.

(3) The third possibility with difficult energy, difficult emotion, is to focus on or to work with the difficulty of the emotion, as we explained, in the different ways we explained earlier just now.

Now, doing that, it may be that as I attend, as I take care of the quality of attention and the steadiness and the sensitivity and the ways of paying attention, it may be that the difficulty dissolves gradually as I pay attention in these skilful ways. It may be that it gets less and it becomes really quite subtle. So maybe it's still there, but it's really quite subtle.

Now, one option is to actually stay with it as it gets more and more subtle, and it might be -- this is really good practice -- keep the steadiness, the sensitivity, the qualities of the attention, and let the whole difficulty become more and more subtle as an experience. Stay, track it, with that subtlety. Stay there. Sometimes it gets more and more subtle, and it actually becomes pleasant. Funnily enough, that can also be a way into samādhi, and then that pleasantness can spread. Very interesting. And it's certainly okay if it doesn't disappear, the difficulty, or if it doesn't become pleasant. No problem. We're just focusing on it and working with it in these more skilful ways. That's the third option.

And sometimes, especially when the focus on the difficulty of the emotion or the energy that feels difficult is a little lighter, it's not so intense, it's just kind of letting it be there, we're in touch with it but we're not so much focusing in on it, sometimes just being with in that way, an image constellates out of the difficulty, you could say, the emotional difficulty, and the difficulty subsides when the image comes. Or the energy is transformed. Perhaps the energy in the energy body is opened or aligns or harmonizes, or we just have more energy. I'm going to talk more about all these possibilities tomorrow. Or the emotion is transformed. Very, very possible.

So, I remember one time I was -- actually, it was something going on in terms of wider Dharma politics; I'd just read an email and felt a bit frustrated with this sort of wider political situation in a certain Saṅgha. Something was going on with someone. And I was with that feeling of frustration, but something felt a little bit -- I felt a little bit stuck in relationship to it, or the energies, let's say, were stuck. The energies were stuck, and there wasn't a lot of clarity as to what to do or how to respond. So the whole energy body felt a bit stuck. The emotion was frustration. It wasn't very clear. Even the energy itself was not very clear, and it definitely wasn't pleasant; it was subtly unpleasant. As I was with this, just gently, without so much focusing in on it, just holding it and aware of it, an image suddenly coalesced, and it was liquid. Some kind of liquid being poured in through the crown, through the top of my head. And what was quite interesting was that, "What colour does that liquid want to be?", I found myself asking. But there wasn't a right colour, so the colour of the liquid wasn't a significant aspect to the image. I'm mentioning this because it relates to some stuff we're going to talk about another day.

But this liquid was being poured into my energy body, in the imagination. Just by itself it arose. And as it was poured in, clarity came, and strength came, regarding my sense of what is my duty in relation to this situation that I had felt frustrated by, and what am I asked to perhaps continue expressing, or not be daunted because my expression doesn't seem understood or accepted or whatever. So there was clarity that came, and strength. This feeling pervaded the whole body. The liquid pervaded the whole body in the image, and a sense of strength came -- energetically strength, fortitude, resolve. I felt much, much better. That's quite a subtle example, but quite telling in a lot of ways. One thing I want to mention (it's something we'll come back to, but I'll mention it now, about that image): it wasn't clear who was pouring this liquid in. It wasn't me pouring liquid into the top of my head, and it wasn't, so to speak, in Dharma language, 'just pouring,' or 'just being poured.' There was some sense of an other, and actually somehow a divine other, in some vague way, some vague sense of an other. A somehow divine other was pouring this liquid into me and down into me.

I want to make a general point which I'll return to: with imaginal practice, the sense of otherness, the otherness of the imaginal figure, is quite key. It's a key ingredient, this sense of otherness. In other words, it's not me. And this otherness gives vitality to images. It gives a sense of depth, a depth to images, and potency, power. The sense of otherness. That's something we'll come back to.