Transcription
As I already mentioned, this work with the energy body, practising directly with the energy body, developing the sensitivity and the skill there in different ways, generally giving it attention, will really form a thread through the whole course here, because it really forms a basis for a lot of what we're doing. So it's going to stay with us through the week, the development of the practice with regard to the energy body, and the skill with regard to the energy body. And actually, hopefully that skill and development of skill with the energy body can continue to develop through our life, because a sensitivity and skill with regard to the energy body will offer all kinds of tools, all kinds of support in our life, in our general awareness and sensitivity, and very much in our practice, in our life of practice, in many different ways, as we go on and develop and deepen and widen our practice.
We've talked about samādhi and the resource that samādhi is for the mind, for the body, for the whole being -- a resource in terms of practice, but also a resource in terms of life and ability to let go. In a way, you could say what samādhi is, or a large portion of the spectrum of samādhi states as they go deeper, are really states of the energy body. They're openings and energizations, and particular ways the energy body feels, and the mind feels within that in harmony with the energy body. Using the energy body to start with, as a way in to develop samādhi and develop the resource of samādhi, is, if you like, approaching it more directly. It's one way of approaching it, developing the samādhi. Working with the energy body, part of the purpose of that is for the sake of cultivating samādhi, developing that resource, that deep well of well-being within us, that can then be accessible to us in our lives at times, and for our practice.
We also mentioned how capacity and skill developed with the energy body will also enable us in different ways to work with difficult emotions, and how necessary and helpful that is in our lives as human beings, but also in our practice and practices. A very, very important skill for a human being to develop, or skills, range of skills for a human being to develop.
In fact, giving attention to the energy body and developing that sensitivity gives us emotional and energetic sensitivity for all practice. I would actually ground almost all meditation practices in a sensitivity and an awareness of the whole energy body, and really include that as something that's basic and fundamental to how we might approach any practice, all practices. So for example, with mettā or loving-kindness practice, there's a way of doing that that I would encourage, if I were teaching mettā, when I teach mettā, to really have the sense of the whole energy body as a basis, as the kind of foundation for the mettā practice. And in emptiness practices, again, the sensitivity, the awareness of the energy body, and the inclusion of the feeling of the whole energy body, really, really helpful -- indispensable for navigating within certain emptiness practices, most emptiness practices and other insight practices. So, so helpful.
The same is true, as we mentioned, with imaginal practices. To pick up on the subtle resonances, the nuances of images and imaginal figures in imaginal practice, and to navigate between images, and have a sense of where to move, how to move -- really, really helped by staying in contact with the energy body and being sensitive there. And again, it keeps mindfulness around with regard to imaginal practice. It keeps it grounded in the bodily sense.
As the days go by and we start talking much more, and predominantly, about imaginal practice, just to point out now that on this retreat I'm going to be encouraging very much a moving back and forth between practices focused primarily on the energy body -- for example, samādhi, as we've already talked about, and the second practice around emotional awareness with the energy body that I want to talk about today -- moving back and forth between those practices, directly with the energy body on one hand, and more direct imaginal practice on the other hand. So back and forth. And even the imaginal practice is always tied in with the energy body. So no one is probably going to sit, or probably should sit, and just be focusing on images all day. I'll say more about this later on in the retreat, but really what I want to encourage is a back and forth -- focusing on the energy body, either for cultivating the samādhi, or just for the emotional awareness as I'll talk about now, between that and between imaginal practice, still sensitive to the energy body. So that, in fact, in terms of time, you will probably spend, or I hope you will spend, more time directly with the energy body than with imaginal practices. Again, I'll talk more about this, about the balance and the fluidity of balance there. But all this, again, is just a way of saying how fundamental and important and central it is, the practice with the energy body. I'll keep referring to it. I'll keep adding little bits to our work with it and developing that. And do ask about it, please, and different aspects of practising with the energy body.
This morning, what I want to really talk about mostly is emotional awareness via the energy body. What do we mean by 'emotion'? Well, emotion is one of these inexhaustibly deep subjects, but let's just say, for now, what we mean by an emotion is a state of the mind, a state of the awareness, and a state of the energy body -- both. So an emotion includes both the mental, if you like, and the state of consciousness, but also the state of the energy body. That together, those two, the mind and the body, the energy body, make up, or rather form two aspects of what's included in any emotion, or most emotions.
Within what we mean by 'emotion,' what I mean by 'emotion,' for our purposes now, is certainly the beautiful, lovely, so-called positive emotions that probably feel quite pleasant, and also the more difficult or afflictive or negative emotions. So I really mean all of that when I use the word 'emotion.' And I mean both the quite obvious emotions that may be quite intense in the experience, and also the more subtle range of emotions, so something like boredom or peacefulness. Peace is quite a subtle emotion, most of the time, unless it's a really, really profound peace. These are more subtle manifestations of emotion, but I really want to include them. And sometimes there's just the sense of "not much is happening emotionally," so I want to include that. That sense of "not much, feel okay, feel pretty peaceful." So, intense and subtle -- all of this, for our purposes in practice, all that is important. The whole range, we want to include in our explorations in practice.
Just to recap what I said last night about putting this work with emotions, meditative work with emotions, in a much bigger picture in terms of what are we trying to do as practitioners with our emotions, what are our aims regarding our emotions, or at least some of our aims, principal aims as practitioners:
(1) We said that that included the cultivation, the gradual cultivation of the beautiful qualities of the heart that the Buddha emphasized so much -- love, and generosity, and compassion, and equanimity, etc. The positive, beneficial qualities of heart. That there's a steady, gradual -- well, probably not steady, but gradual, let's say, cultivation of those qualities. And conversely, there's, over time, a gradual letting go of the habits of creating negative emotions, difficult emotions, emotions that are really not that supportive, that do not serve us. So the cultivation of the beautiful and the helpful, and the gradual letting go of what is not so helpful, or the letting go of the habit of creating what is not so helpful. How does that letting go happen? It happens through the cultivation of the positive, in a way. It happens also through understanding what's going on, how we create what's positive and also how we create what's negative, how that is fabricated. So that understanding plays a big part in dissolving these habits, and also learning how to dissolve a negative emotion in practice, how that might be helped to unfabricate, to take away some of what's locking it into place. So all that's a part of the big trajectory regarding emotions.
(2) Then, secondly, there's just the increasing capacity to actually be in contact with what's happening in our heart, in our emotional life, to feel our emotions that pass through. We want, gradually, to develop more and more sensitivity to our emotions and the emotional life, and the whole richness and spectrum and depth of that, including the subtle emotions. So much about deepening in practice is actually about deepening in subtlety. So really developing that sensitivity, over the whole range, including the subtle.
(3) And then also we mentioned a third aspect perhaps is learning to handle our emotional life, handle what passes through when it's quite intense -- or sometimes when it's not, to be present when it's more subtle and doesn't seem like much is going on. Certainly to handle the more afflictive emotions, the more difficult emotions, but also the positive emotions that sometimes can be very intense -- joy, or love, etc. -- and a person is very often not used to feeling such intensity that's pushing out and expanding the range of the heart. So learning gradually to handle what comes through, what comes up emotionally, meaning to be able to hold it well, to tolerate, but also to hold it in a helpful way, to hold what's happening emotionally, in our heart, in a helpful way. That's part of handling. But also part of handling is also, as I mentioned, to know, in the way that I'm handling, for instance, this difficult emotion or this afflictive emotion, the way that I'm handling it actually helps to ease it. If it's an emotion that doesn't serve, it helps to ease it on its way to dissolution or helps to dissolve it. That's also a part of handling. Handling is not just putting up with, although sometimes it is tolerating, tolerating. So this development of the sensitivity, including to the subtle range regarding our emotions, and this learning how to handle, how to hold and tolerate, those two aspects are very much a part of imaginal practice, very much of all imaginal practice.
(4) And then a fourth aspect of the big picture, the big journey or trajectory regarding our emotions in our lifetime of practice, is that through all of these different aspects that we've just mentioned, we really want to, over time, see and understand, witness, the dependent arising of emotions. How are they fabricated? Dependent on what? These are not just personal factors. They're more, if you like, impersonal, or just ways that consciousness works, ways that perception and the mind, the heart work. So really, I'm not going into that so much on this retreat, but really understanding that dependent arising regarding emotions. There's a lot involved there.
Through all of these aspects, in terms of the big picture, we could say, then, through all of that, we have more and more available to us for our practice and for our life. We have available to us more the instrument of our heart, this delicate, incredibly beautiful, sensitive, amazing instrument that is our heart, and its capacity to feel, and its subtlety, and its nuance, and its range, and its extraordinary power and beauty. So we really want, in our lives and our practice, to have that instrument available, and know how to read it, how to play it.
(1) So we have the samādhi practice, which we talked about, and the intention of the direction to tend to that well-being and cultivate that in the energy body. (2) Now, today, and I mentioned some of this last night, but now, today, I want to add a second practice, a second direction of intention, and that is really an attention to any emotion, or any experience (which may not be an emotional thing), pleasant or unpleasant, that manifests in the energy body. We said that a lot of the action will happen on the midline, the sort of vertical axis. It could be right on the surface there, almost on the skin, so to speak, or inside. It doesn't matter; could be either. The attention to what goes on there along that midline does not have to be correlated to some bit of the anatomy: "Oh, that's my whatever it is. It's in my small intestine." We don't have to do that necessarily. It's just, "I feel this there, and what does it feel like?"
So that, whatever sensations or occurrence of an emotion, or an energy somewhere on that midline, becomes the foreground, a steadiness of attention. That's the foreground of what we're paying attention to in this practice, this second practice. And the whole body, the whole space of the energy body, forms the background. So there's a foreground of attention and a background of attention. The foreground is, for example, this tightness in my heart right now, and I'm really tuning into that with this steadiness of attention, but in the background, I'm still aware of the whole energy body space.
What do we want to do with that? Anything that arises, an emotion or not an emotion, pleasant or unpleasant, in this practice, I can decide to turn towards it and give it, as much as I can, a steady attention. Keep the attention lightly focused on what's going on there, either on the whole midline, or usually it's more some portion of the midline, some area around maybe the throat or in the middle of the head or something. Give it that steadiness of attention -- light, holding the attention on it.
And then giving some awareness to the quality of attention. It's not just that it's trying to be steady, and when it goes off into distraction I move the mind back, but also, does the attention need or want to be quite delicate with this emotion or energy that I'm paying attention to on the midline? Does the attention need to have a kind of holding quality to it, as if it's holding lightly this emotion, perhaps this sadness, or these moments of sadness and sensations of sadness along the midline, perhaps around the throat or the mouth or the heart centre? There's a sense of, rather than boring into them with a laser beam -- which sometimes is really appropriate and helpful -- maybe this emotion or this quality along the midline needs a much more light holding, as if the attention is like cupping the hands and letting the energy or the sensations or the feeling of the emotion just rest very lightly, or be supported very lightly, in the cupped hands, metaphorically, of the attention.
So the kind of attention, as well as trying to keep it steady, relatively. And then also we mentioned last night, in this practice we want to really check that the attention has enough energy in it. There's enough of a sort of vitality to the presence; I'm really there, not sort of half there. Sometimes we need to just check, does it need a bit more energy? Do I need to show up with a bit more brightness to this paying attention to this emotion or this feeling, this energetic sensation along the midline? We want, as I mentioned last night, the energy of the mindfulness to be always greater than the energy of the emotion in this kind of work, because if it's the other way around, if the emotion, or especially if it's a difficult emotion, has more energy than the awareness and the attention, we're actually overwhelmed. We'll get overwhelmed, and we sink in that emotion. That's not helpful.
So in this second practice, you can deliberately kind of shift gears and bring the attention to the midline. Maybe something's going on there, and you stay steady with that, delicate, holding it with energized attention. Or sometimes you go to the midline and there's nothing happening. You say, "Nothing's happening there. I don't particularly feel anything." What is it to stay with that emotion of 'nothing happening,' or the energy feeling along the midline of 'nothing happening'? Stay very light, very steady with the attention on 'not much happening.' Or something was happening, but as you pay attention to it, it gets more subtle, and maybe it seems like it's dissolving a little bit. What happens if I just stay? I don't say, "Oh, forget it now, I'll go back." I mean, I could go back to the samādhi practice or something else. But another option with this second practice is just to stay as whatever is present and manifesting in the midline there just gets more subtle. I stay with the subtlety and I let the attention get correspondingly subtle. Very, very helpful.
Now, as we develop the skill with the samādhi and the skill with the body space energy and the energy body, that can become, over time, it becomes something more that we can call on as a resource. So we feel this bubble, this balloon of the whole body energy. It feels quite nice, or relatively peaceful, or warm, or there's some degree of comfort there. And over time, this increases as something we have access to and also something that becomes a deeper and deeper resource. The well-being there gets richer and deeper. It's something that we can really use as a resource at the same time as we're paying attention to what is difficult.
We mentioned we can sometimes put that resource or feel that resource around the difficulty. This well-being kind of cushions or embraces or laps up against what's difficult, this sadness, this grief, this tightness or pressure or hurt, or whatever it is. So the access to the resource -- it's not either/or; it's almost like you have both at the same time, and the resource, the well-being, can be like a kindness around, or a holding around what's difficult. Very, very skilful, as one develops the capacity to bring the lovely and the positive, if you like, the beautiful, in contact with what is difficult. It's this contact of the beautiful and the helpful with what is difficult -- that is what is healing. It's the contact of the two. That is what is healing with regards to difficult emotions. So can there be a tenderness around, can I allow or somehow very gently encourage a tenderness, a kindness, a holding around what is difficult emotionally, perhaps on the midline?
A part of all this is also checking the mental view, checking what the mind is doing in terms of how it's regarding this difficulty. What's its attitude and assumptions? Maybe I'm blaming myself: "I shouldn't be feeling this. If I was a better meditator, I wouldn't be feeling this," or "It's wrong in some way. It shouldn't be like this. I shouldn't be feeling this." Very easily, the mind gets locked into certain assumptions. Sometimes they're just under the radar. We don't actually realize that we're judging ourselves for having it, or deeming this emotion or this manifestation of difficult energy 'wrong.' The mind is passing judgment. Sometimes it's very subtle. It's just under the radar. So to check for that. Sometimes what you can do is just play with switching that for a moment, just decide to see this that's happening now that feels difficult as perfect: "It's perfect. It's just as it should be." You're playing with switching the view for a moment, and see what that does.
And actually, we should point out that for imaginal practice, when we talk about imaginal practice, we really want the whole of the emotional range, because the whole -- including what is difficult at times, so what is very lovely and what is difficult and what is quite subtle -- all that range of emotion will be fertile range. It's all fertile ground when we come to imaginal practice. So any idea of "I shouldn't be feeling this," or "This is a wrong emotion," or "That's too weird as an emotion," or whatever it is, blaming ourselves, that's utterly misplaced when it comes to imaginal practice, because the whole range of emotion is fertile ground for imaginal practice, in imaginal practice.
Remember, again, I'm going to say this so many times: awareness contracts anyway, but it contracts also when there's a difficulty, either physically or emotionally or energetically. The awareness will shrink. It shrinks basically when there's aversion, grasping, as there will be when there's difficulty. So noticing that and then stretching the awareness, expanding it again, inflating that balloon, if you like, or filling the sail of the awareness. Stretching it over the whole body, whole-body awareness, even a little bit bigger, really inhabiting and filling that space with the awareness again, over and over. Keep checking, because it will keep shrinking. Seeing that it shrunk, and opening it, expanding it again -- so, so important.
Some states, like, for instance, drowsiness, dullness, or restlessness, or fear, those kind of states are very much helped by opening to a much wider space, a vast space of awareness, which maybe comes from being outside, and actually perhaps doing some walking meditation or standing meditation outside, taking in the space, including that in the awareness, taking in the sky. Or in the meditation hall or in a room, just taking in the space of the room, or imagining the space. Some people with more practice are just able to make the awareness, allow the awareness in different ways to expand very, very large. Any way of doing that can be very helpful with certain emotions.
In terms of the difficult, we also talked about working with an imagination of the breath energy, or just energy moving, or imagining lights, etc., so that's also available.
With this second practice of actually attending to emotion directly in the energy body, mostly on that midline, let's say, for now, attending directly to what's difficult there -- or rather, particularly in relation to what's difficult there, because remember, we can just pay attention even when it's not difficult, and just station the awareness there. But in regard to difficult emotions in the energy body, the key element in what's helpful there is a lessening of aversion, grasping, and clinging. This is the factor that's so central. That's the thing that makes more difference. So one of the aspects we talked about that you can really get into this in quite a focused way is really to practise allowing, opening, welcoming as fully as possible. This is really a practice. It's not just an idea: "I'm trying to allow it." Practising, making a practice of allowing as fully as possible, welcoming this emotion, this heavy energy, this pressure in the chest or whatever it is, the sensations there. What do I mean? I mean getting first intimate with what it feels like: what does it actually feel like, that pressure, that heaviness, that tightness, whatever it is? And then opening the doors of the awareness to welcome that. Let those sensations be there as fully as possible.
Almost all the emphasis in this practice of allowing is really on the allowing, on opening, over and over, moment to moment, welcoming the sensations. So it's not just a thought: "Oh, I accept this, or I'm trying to accept this." We're not just talking about something too gross or unenergized like that or vague. We're really talking about a quite fundamental movement of the energetic relationship with the sensations in the moment. Something is actually shifting and changing in my energetic relationship to these sensations. There's an opening. And then I'm repeating that change of the energetic relationship, over and over. There it is for a moment, I'm opening, and again, I'm intimate, opening, again, intimate, opening, repeating this change in relationship. This is what I call the practice of allowing. And, if you like, it's a subset of this second practice. It's a certain strand of this second practice, or rather it's something we can emphasize at times, really put the emphasis on the allowing within this second practice of attending to the energetics of the midline, without trying to steer it towards the well-being of the samādhi. This is the second practice, and within that, there's the possibility of really emphasizing the allowing as I just described.
Now, allowing, again, allowing or accepting or welcoming is not a way of living. We really should bring a little discernment and intelligence here. I would not try to live that way. It's not a way of living; it's a way of practising. And even within that, I would say, within practising allowing, there are degrees of allowing. This is really, really important, as well, in navigating practice. If I get very, very good at this moment-to-moment allowing, this really opening and allowing as fully as possible -- if I get very good at that, and the allowing goes very deep and very full, what I will notice, over time, as my skill at doing that develops, is that what I allow deeply, very deeply, when there's a deep allowing, that fades. If it's a difficult emotion, it begins to dissolve or fade, or the sensations disappear. It takes me actually deeper and deeper into states of emptiness, if we use that phrase. So if I really develop the allowing deeply, when it's a deep degree of allowing, what I'm allowing fades. I'm not going to get too much into that. I'm just going to mention it right now. That belongs to a different retreat, that whole conversation. But that's important to realize.
Or, in practice, if I'm allowing, but less sort of intensely -- I'm still allowing this thing, but I'm not so much emphasizing the allowing in such a subtle and deep and thorough way, moment to moment -- then, as we mentioned last night, it may be that just allowing this difficulty to be there more generally, more lightly in the allowing, it may be that an image spontaneously arises, let's use the language 'out of' that emotion or 'with' that emotion, 'from' that state. So when there's less allowing, or less of a full-throttle allowing, then it might be that a spontaneous image arises, and then that's one of the ways, as I'll go into more, it's one of the ways of entering into imaginal practice when there's a difficult emotion arising, and just relating to it in a certain way allows images to arise spontaneously.
We also talked about, and now I want to add to the instructions, then, we can deliberately bring up, invoke, and then dwell with, focus on, and resonate with, meditate on, the image of a loving figure. It's a very, very important part of imaginal practice. That could be a deity, Christ, or Tārā, or another tantric deity, or something else. It could be someone you know: a dear friend, or a lover, or a teacher that you have a very helpful or deep relationship with, and there's a lot of love there. It could be a mythic personage, a mythic figure that embodies this love somehow for you. It could be a previous image that you've had. So maybe you've worked a little bit with images already, and this particular imaginal figure that you know from before, you can call on and feel their love, and stay there, resonating with that love, and receiving their love. Or it could be a dream figure. Sometimes we have a dream, and someone in a dream, something about them really touches us, or we feel love coming from them, something very healing. Especially if the dream is recent, one may recall that figure and use it as a deliberate imaginal figure, deliberately recalled, and practise with it.
One of the things that's possible is that this imaginal figure that you deliberately invoked and are deliberately staying steady with in meditation is loving you. They are loving you somehow. It could be through their gaze. As you're holding this image, you're seeing and feeling how they are gazing at you, how they are beholding you, how they look at you. Or they may be touching you. They're loving you through touch, through the way they touch you, or through their energy. They're just emanating or radiating a certain energy or light or something, and they're loving you in that, through that. Or it could be not so much that they're loving you, but they're loving the hurt or the discomfort that you're feeling. So this pain, this grief that I'm feeling, that is being held as much as I am being held and loved. So they may be loving you, or they may be loving the hurt or the discomfort itself, perhaps holding it, or surrounding it somehow, embracing it, or beaming a light or energy on it, or stroking this hurt, or licking it, or kissing it, or bathing it. Many, many possibilities. See what feels like it's right and helpful. So that's a possibility too.
I just want to mention one thing about attention in general in regards to both working with the energy body and the samādhi, or this attention to emotions, or working with images. We could, and again, it's slightly artificial, but it can be helpful to differentiate, to delineate three aspects of attention, or three capacities of attention that we can sort of be aware of and check:
(1) One is the directing of attention. So this is the first aspect. We direct the attention to an object, to a sound, or an image, or a sight, or a sensation in the body, or a sense door -- just sounds in general or whatever. This is one aspect of attention. It's the directing of attention. Where am I directing it? Do I want to hold it a little bit with something so that I know when it's gone off, and I bring it back to directing again? That's one aspect.
(2) The second aspect, which we mentioned already, is the energizing of attention, the brightening, the sort of bringing more intensity into the sense of presence. That's an important aspect of attention. What is it to know how to energize the attention, to be more fully present, more alive? There's more vitality and energy, brightness and intensity in the presence, in the attention. That would be a second aspect.
(3) A third aspect is what I would call the tuning of the attention. So these three aspects are not really separate. They certainly influence each other, and they blend into each other. But it's worth differentiating them. The tuning of the attention. So with the energy body and the energy space, we can realize, I can tune to this particular quality, let's say of softness in the energy body. Or this particular frequency of energy -- there's a frequency of a kind of happiness, let's say, and that's a certain quality. I can tune to that. It's like tuning a radio receiver to a certain frequency. Particularly with regards to samādhi, that can be really helpful, because what I tune to, it tends to amplify that frequency. So I want to really get into the softness, let's say, or this sense of warmth; I tune to that quality or frequency of warmth within the energy body. But when we're doing the second practice, of attention to the emotions, whether they're pleasant or unpleasant, without so much wanting to direct them towards the well-being and the pleasantness of samādhi, then there's also a sense of tuning to this particular emotion. As I said, some of the emotions are quite subtle. Or there's a mix of emotions, and I can tune to one of them in particular, if I want to.
So this tuning to the quality or the frequency of energy or emotion, or of image. Again, we might be working with an image, and you start to realize, as I mentioned, an image is quite a complex thing. It's beautiful in that way. It's so rich and so multidimensional. Either what is it to tune to the totality of an image and its qualities, or the sense of it, the characteristics of it, or to tune to a particular quality of the image? Particularly, for example, the love of Kuan Yin, or Jesus's love and compassion. Tuning the attention in these different ways is a very important aspect.
So directing, energizing, and tuning, three aspects of attention. Sometimes it's good to differentiate. And especially this last one, tuning, very, very important both for the samādhi practice, the emotional awareness practices that we're emphasizing today, and as we go into it more and more, unfold more and more the imaginal practice, it's a very important aspect of that. But actually they're all important: directing, energizing, tuning.
Just to be clear, today we have two principal practices: we have the samādhi and the intention of that direction, to cultivate, to tend to the comfort or well-being in the energy body, playing with it in different ways. That continues. Included in that is working with the difficulties that arise, hindrances, and stuck energy, and emotional difficulties, but with the light intention, the playful intention, of easing those difficulties, dissolving them so they move towards more well-being. That's one practice.
And then we can move, today, between that practice and this second practice of just stationing the attention, just staying lightly steady, sensitive on that midline as foreground, with the whole body as background, sensitive to the emotions, the whole wide range of emotions. Not necessarily intense. Just station the attention sensitively on the midline or some area of the midline where some emotional energy is happening, with the whole body in the background. As we do that, as I mentioned, sometimes just doing that, if I find the right kind of attention, sometimes what will happen is, what is going on emotionally will calm. Gradually, it will calm. It will become more subtle. It may become more beautiful. One option is to stay and let it grow more subtle, and let the attention grow more subtle, so that we're also developing the sensitivity. Sometimes what you'll find is it actually goes into a state that's more like a samādhi state, where there's a kind of well-being that comes out of that. These practices, the samādhi and the attention to the emotions in the energy body, they also fluidly move between each other, and you can very consciously shift gears at times -- very consciously, deliberately shift gears between these two practices, despite their being fluidly related.
And as we mentioned, just beginning to include -- although this is a bit more a secondary intention right now, or optional, less important right now; we'll include it more and more -- sometimes, either working with the samādhi, or with a difficult emotion or energy that comes up, an image may constellate out of that. Occasionally you can even ask it to, ask this difficult emotion to constellate as an image. Sometimes that's a good thing to do. But let's say this for now (obviously we're going to talk much more about it): if an image comes out of a difficulty, or when there's actually no difficulty and it feels all very good, if an image comes, then notice the effects. This is really important: notice the effects of that image on the energy body. This image comes, and how does it affect and make the energy body feel? How does it affect the emotion? It might be that something lovely comes in the energy body or the emotion, and then we can open to that and enjoy that. There's lots to say about navigating between these practices, and I'll say more about that later. For now, two principal practices: the samādhi, and secondly the delicate, sensitive attention to the emotional manifestation in the energy body along the midline. And then if it arises occasionally, you can feel free to go with the images, but really notice their effects on the energy body and the emotion. Okay?
