Soulmaking (Part 2)

When hearing these ideas about soul and soulfulness and soulmaking, it would be very understandable if a person wonders, "Is that the Dharma? Is that Dharma?" Very understandable. We've said a little bit so far in different talks and earlier about the possible ways of conceiving of Dharma that might open up a space for images and fantasy and this whole imaginal practice. And so I want to say a little bit more about the whole relationship of Dharma, ways of conceiving the Dharma, and ourselves in relation to that, and the relationship of that with images or imaginal practice and soul, soulfulness. So that whole network of relationships and possibilities, really, of conceiving relationship there.

Earlier I was emphasizing one, I think, very fertile, very fruitful way of conceiving of Dharma and Dharma practice is as practising, developing skill, in a whole range of ways of looking, and developing flexibility of ways of looking, ways of relating, ways of conceiving. In doing so, traditionally -- at least how I would like to think of Dharma practice traditionally, the tradition of Dharma practice -- in practising a range of ways of looking, one sees that certain ways of looking fabricate less. They fabricate certainly less papañca. They fabricate less dukkha, less suffering. They fabricate less sense of self. They fabricate less perception. That means less actual appearance, less experience. I'm using those words synonymously: perception, experience, appearance.

So one begins to get the sense of what is it in the way of looking at any time, what factors within the way of looking tend to fabricate more self, more dukkha, more experience, and what fabricates less. One goes on this journey of understanding, understanding fabrication -- which means understanding dependent arising very deeply. All of that brings an understanding of emptiness. Not to stay in any state. Not to stay in any one way of looking either. But through the flexibility and the movement that opens up of the perception, the changes in perception that are facilitated by the changes in the way of looking, one understands emptiness more and more deeply. So that might be a traditional way of understanding, or a way of understanding traditional Dharma -- let's put it that way. There's this range, this flexibility of ways of looking, and the developing of the skill with that whole range of ways of looking. We also delineated, within that range, three broad sort of camps or, let's say, directions of practice:

(1) One is actually quite a thin avenue. It's this idea of bare attention, which we said is a bit of a misnomer and a little bit misleading, because sometimes people think, "When I'm practising mindfulness, when I'm practising this bare attention, this simple attention, and I'm 'being with things as they are'" -- to misuse a phrase of the Buddha -- "when I'm doing that, then there is no fabrication. No fabrication is occurring at that point. I'm seeing in an unfabricated way. I'm experiencing what is unfabricated."

That's, to my way of thinking, definitely not the case. It's a real misunderstanding of what's happening there. It's a misunderstanding. It will also lock down what's possible for us, both in terms of understanding but also in terms of the range of experience. So rather, can we see this mode of bare attention, or mode of simple mindfulness, as one mode of practising, one way of looking, which fabricates relatively less, a little less than our normal ways of looking as we move in the world every day if the mind is not trained? We have bare attention as a sort of degree, a slight decrease in how much fabrication there is in terms of self and perception. There's still some self being fabricated with bare attention. There's definitely quite a lot of fabrication of perception; there are still conceptions, etc., wrapped up in that. So that would be one sort of camp or avenue, within this range of ways of looking that make up the Dharma.

(2) The second, we said, is a whole slew of practices, a whole range of practices, that actually fabricate a lot less than so-called 'bare attention.' Deep emptiness practices, deep samādhi, deep mettā practices, all kinds of things will actually not construct -- or deconstruct, or dissolve -- the sense of self in that moment. In the moment of engaging certain ways of looking, the sense of self, the perception, the appearances themselves, begin to desubstantiate, become less and less substantial, and dissolve to different degrees, all the way down to total non-appearance of any experience, any sense of self, of subject, of consciousness, of knowing, of space, of time, etc. So there's a whole range there. That would be a second sort of avenue, everything, all the practices that are included in that, and unfabricating really quite deeply.

(3) A third group or avenue is fabricating, actually engaging in skilful fabrication of self and of perception. This third avenue opens the door, unlike the other two. Unlike the bare attention and the unfabricating, this third avenue of practice (deliberate, skilful fabrication, creative, if you like) gives permission and gives space and potential for the use of images and imaginal practice and fantasy, etc.

So the bare attention as a modicum of less fabrication; the deeper less fabricating or non-fabricating, unfabricating; and the skilful use of fabrication. And in a way, any Dharma practice that we do can be placed in one of those three baskets, if you like. And why not have the whole range? We should have the whole range. There's something important and beautiful in having that whole range.

So we said all that, and we've also mentioned that with that, running through all that, or alongside all that, is the recognition that we also bring fantasy to our perception and sense of what the Dharma is, what awakening is, who the Buddha was, etc. So there is fantasy/mythos/image imbuing our conceptions and perceptions of all that -- of Dharma, of awakening, of Buddha, of path, etc. That's not a bad thing. That's part of skilful fabricating, in fact, one mode of skilful fabricating. But given all that, we can revisit, open up a little bit more the possibilities for relationship of Dharma conception, conception of Dharma and imaginal practice.

For instance, regarding images of the self or, if you like, self-images, the very emptiness of the self, the thorough, absolute emptiness of any self-image -- no self-image, no self-concept or conception of what the self is will be true, ultimately speaking. All of them are empty. That thorough emptiness of the self allows us, in fact, to play with self-images, with different self-images, without believing any of them, rather than saying, "No, personality is empty, but the self really is a process," and then there's a kind of implicit belief that that process is some kind of real thing. I've talked and written about this elsewhere; I don't want to go too much into it. But that then curtails the possibilities a little bit.

Or often, one might come across teachings or believe that the self is, we always think of the self as some kind of puffed-up ego thing. 'Ego' is equated with 'self' in a negative way, some kind of big pride or grandiosity, etc. So we want to cut that, in that view. Or we have a view, "Now I have an unhealthy self-image, and through practice, I want to replace that unhealthy self-image with a healthy self-image. And then once I've done that, then I can see that actually there's no self." So there's this sort of unhealthy, to healthy, to no self.

Different models, one will come across different interpretations of what the Dharma is saying in relation to self. I would, as I said, rather open things up even more and say all self-views are empty. None of them will be ultimately true. And that absolute thoroughness of the emptiness of self allows us to play with infinite possibilities of self-view, with a multiplicity of self-images. The key word is 'play' there, and 'multiplicity,' playing with that multiplicity through imaginal practice.

Even the idea or the sense that we can sometimes have with imaginal figures that they have a certain kind of reality -- they do exist in some kind of way. It's a different way than concrete reality. [taps on something] But that they exist some way, and that they shape our character in this life, or our essence in some way, that they flow through us, and they shape what we express in life -- even that kind of view has a place. It's okay, because even these imaginal figures -- and sometimes the word there is 'daemon' -- they are empty too. So knowing they're empty, I can entertain this sense and this idea.

Sometimes, again, in Dharma, you would come across something that says, "The nature of the self is that it's the result of all past causes and conditions and ideas and events that I've come across, and all that connects together, that web connects together and gives rise to the self. Other than the self as a sort of confluence of past causes and conditions, the self doesn't exist." That is the true self, and in this view, that would be what 'dependent arising' means, and what it would mean to say the self is a dependent arising: it's dependent on past causes and conditions coming together and creating this self which, apart from that, has no existence. That's given often as a meaning of what 'dependent arising' means, and what it means to say the self is empty. And so then, from that point of view, the idea of these imaginal figures existing somehow, in some different mode of existing or kind of reality, a different ontological status, if you like, and shaping our life and coming through in our expression, that wouldn't fit, because it doesn't fit this model of the self as just the confluence of past causes and conditions. If they're these eternal figures or timeless figures, that doesn't fit that.

But that view of the self as just the past causes and conditions, and that's what it means to say the self is a dependent arising and empty, that's too narrow, I would say. A full Dharma understanding of what emptiness means goes way, way beyond that. That's one direction to emptiness, to a certain level. Full understanding of emptiness goes way, way wider, multidirectional. We can see the emptiness of something from many different directions, and much deeper than that. So these imaginary figures may exist in some way, may shape my character, and give expression, be expressed through me in my life. They flow through me in some way, or I channel them. They are empty, also, just because they don't exist in time -- like anything. All things are empty because time is empty, and everything needs time to exist in. So it's not only that things are empty because there are past causes and conditions; they can be empty in lots of different ways.

This thorough understanding of emptiness, what I'm really trying to say is, the more thorough and the more deep our understanding of emptiness, the more it can open out permission and range in terms of imaginal practice, and also conception. We know, "Hey, I can conceive that, because it's empty in another way. It's more fundamentally empty."

So there's lots of space here in relation to self, imaginal practice in relation to self, and how it might fit with a broader Dharma conception. But how about with regard to the whole question of ending suffering, or at least decreasing suffering, and the whole Four Noble Truths (which really are a way of saying, "There is suffering, and we're in the business of ending it or decreasing it")? How about this whole idea of soul, and imaginal practice in the service of soul? How does that, or what are the ways that might interface with this whole very central conception in the Dharma, and direction in the Dharma, of decreasing suffering, freeing us from suffering?

Many people would wisely say that is what Dharma is: it's the Four Noble Truths, in a nutshell, and we're in the business of ending or at least decreasing suffering. So how images relate to all that, well, it depends on how we use the images and how we conceive of the images. There are options here.

So, for example, here's some dukkha, here's some dis-ease, some suffering, some pain. One might let that dukkha constellate as an image. Then one has the image of this dukkha, whatever it is, this heartache, the image of this loneliness, the image of this grief or whatever. And one can relate to that by holding that image and loving that image. That would be incorporating imaginal practice, in a way, very simply, within the direction of decreasing suffering and the Four Noble Truths.

Or again, quite simply, one might have an image of what is positive and beautiful, so to speak, for example Kuan Yin or a bodhisattva of compassion or something, or just an image of loving light or whatever. And through that, there is the cultivation -- through practising with that image, there's the cultivation of the beautiful and the positive. Just that, by itself, that use of images would fit very nicely within the sort of classical programme of the Four Noble Truths. Or again, and we talked about this, putting that image of love or what's beautiful, the beautiful qualities of heart, putting that in contact with the dukkha, or putting that image through the imagination in contact with the image of the dukkha. So there's the image of Kuan Yin contacting, embracing, shining, holding the image of the dukkha. And again, all this is just a skilful use of imaginal practice that would fit very easily within that directionality and conception of lessening suffering and the Four Noble Truths.

If, however, we bring in this conception that I talked about before of this nourishing and deepening, and enrichening and firing up, and supporting and opening of soulfulness as a goal -- and that is the thrust of imaginal practice, or the direction, the opening of imaginal practice -- then the relationship with ending dukkha becomes more complex. Because in nourishing a direction or intending a direction or supporting a direction of increased soulfulness, more and more soulfulness with relation to this situation or this experience or this image, it may not end the dukkha there.

This loneliness, and actually relating to that loneliness with a sense of really caring for the soul and the soulfulness and the soulmaking there, may not completely end the dukkha. It may end some of the dukkha, or dissolve some of it, but it may not completely end the dukkha of that loneliness. Or this endless longing, this yearning, or this eros that might burn a little bit. I talked about this on another retreat, this pothos, the infinite longing. It may not end that. In caring for the soulfulness, I may not dissolve that endless longing that's part of it, or the image of loneliness. I may open up to it in a different way. I may, as we talked about, give it place. It finds a place. It finds its god, so to speak, but it may not end it. And maybe even some of these imaginal figures -- as we've alluded to, and I want to talk more about later -- they may place demands on us, and those demands on the being of different kinds are not without a certain amount of burden.

So what does the soul want? It's a different question than just ending dukkha. What does the soul want, if we use that language? Well, it wants soulfulness. Souls want soulfulness, souls want soulmaking, and that includes fantasy/image/mythos. That's central to soulmaking, the soulfulness. They don't necessarily want to end dukkha. That might be included, or a certain level of that might be included, but there can be slightly different things in relation to any situation or any experience or any image. Even more complicated, when we put all this in terms of a more long-term goal, when we have more this long-term goal of nourishing, deepening, opening, firing, enriching, supporting soulfulness -- what's the relationship with that and ending dukkha or decreasing suffering? What's the relationship of that as a goal, as a direction, as an aspiration and a movement? What's the relationship of that with the whole idea and the whole fantasy of the Dharma? Complex. Complex, and not necessarily easy even to inquire into.

Let's go into this slowly. If, at times, soulfulness is my priority -- rather than just my priority in approaching this experience or this dukkha or this image or whatever, rather than my priority being just letting go, or non-clinging, or non-attachment, or cultivating the positive, or seeing that it's not-self, or seeing the emptiness of this or that -- if at times, rather than all those more traditional Dharma intentions in approaching experience, if at times the soulfulness is my priority, then we can already equate that with a kind of recognition, there's already going on there a recognition that image and fantasy are present, and we're already honouring our need for them by making soulfulness a priority, in understanding that and working with that.

But as we practise that way, with that recognition and making soulfulness a priority at times, it will have all kinds of openings and consequences. Let's actually list perhaps five, at least, of them, and explore them a little bit. As I do that, as I recognize the presence of image and fantasy, and honour my need for that, and honour the need for soulfulness, I begin, as I do that more and more through practice, and I get a feel for it, it changes my vision, literally. It changes my ways of looking and perceiving things, and I begin to recognize what we've alluded to quite a few times already. I begin to recognize the fantasies in everything that I care about. Everything that's meaningful to me, I recognize it's shot through with fantasy, with image, with mythos. It's imbuing everything that I love. Including, I begin to recognize the fantasies that imbue my whole sense of the Dharma, and my whole vision and sense and conception of what awakening is, and who the Buddha was, and the historical Buddha, and my whole idea of ending dukkha, or decreasing dukkha.

You can see, for instance, just historically, the vision of all that -- particularly what awakening is, who the Buddha is, and what it means to end dukkha -- if we compare three streams of Dharma. The more Vajrayāna, the tantric tradition, has a very different fantasy and conceptual framework of what those things mean (ending dukkha, awakening, the Buddha, etc.). Compare that with more classical Theravādan teachings of ending rebirth, etc., and the historical Buddha, and all that. Compare that with some of the more modern interpretations of Dharma, what I call more existentialist. Again, the fantasy of ending dukkha, the fantasy of the self on the path, to whatever that much more limited ending of dukkha is -- because the existential view would say, "Well, we can only end dukkha to a certain degree"; it doesn't buy into the whole rebirth thing, etc.

There are three different streams there with very different fantasies and conceptual frameworks operating. I've talked about this in other talks and other retreats, so I'm not going to go into it again. None of that is bad. The only problem would be if I don't recognize that fantasy is running through all this. Really, really important. Once I recognize that, and really begin to admit it and open to it -- instead of either pretending it's not happening, or admitting it but not recognizing how deeply and fully it imbues things, and what the implications are -- once I recognize that, then actually it puts the Dharma on a different ground. We have a different grounding then for Dharma. And it's grounded more in imagination and fantasy. Interesting. That's quite radical, I think.

What does it mean to have as our sense of the ground of the Dharma that it is already imaginal? And then this whole question: why is it so important, when we hear some teaching, or this person's teaching or that teaching, or we read something, and a person [asks], "Yes, but is that Buddhism?" When we realize that the Dharma is grounded in imagination, anyway -- and as I'll point out later, also metaphysical assumptions; again, I talked about this on other retreats, so I'm not going to go too much into it -- it's grounded very differently in that recognition. Fantasies are operating, of Dharma, of awakening, etc., and also metaphysical assumptions. We could also point, historically, to how different, say, Japanese or Chinese Buddhism is from Indian Buddhism. It's radical. I'm not even sure the Buddha would recognize it as Buddhism. So there are historical, cultural changes, which we can kind of deconstruct, and point to that and say, "Well, is that Buddhism?" That's a different tack. It's important, but it's a different tack. And already in the West, in terms of what we add conceptually and in the cultural mind view, and what we let go of.

So there are those kind of historical changes, but I want to say something a little bit different, that has more to do with this recognition, as I said, of fantasy at the basis, the grounding of what the Dharma is, and also the metaphysical assumptions -- and the key word there is 'assumptions.' We cannot get away -- you pursue philosophical questions, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, and you get to whole questions about how we know anything, how we can trust what we know, about what's real, etc., and somewhere or other we have to assume something. I can't get beyond having to make assumptions philosophically. That's metaphysics, whether I like it or not.

So a grounding, this strange reconfiguring, tectonic shift, a grounding in the recognition that the imagination is the ground of the Dharma, and metaphysical assumptions also. Then we can start to ask, "What is going on psychologically for a person when they're getting agitated about who or what the historical Buddha actually was, and whether this or that is Buddhist or not?" What's going on psychologically? What kind of fantasies are operating for that person around the Buddha historically, around Buddhism, around Dharma, around self, around all that? Something is going on in the psyche in relationship to all that, and it hasn't quite recognized the grounding. It hasn't recognized that we can ground the whole thing in image. It hasn't realized that anyway there are metaphysical assumptions operating in any framing of the Dharma, of the path, of the goal, awakening, all the rest of it.

So there's this different ground, this recognition of fantasy, and that brings a different ground for the Dharma, in the imagination. Then the other question that comes out of this is, this pursuing at times soulfulness as a priority, it starts to open up other questions, and we start to realize, "Oh, what is my fantasy, or what fantasies are operating in this very question of how we conceive soulfulness and its relationship to the Dharma?" That includes the fantasy of the self. So this whole question that we're talking about right now, one could, and people do very much try, "This is my interpretation of the Dharma, and this new concept ... ", which probably comes from something Western, in psychotherapy, or something for a person about childhood experiences or whatever, and I try and kind of make a point that that's already within the Dharma historically, or this or that, or it's a more materialistic view, and again, I try and spin the history of the Dharma, and say, "This is what the Buddha was really trying to say historically." So I place the whole thing, I'm framing it as, "This is within the Dharma." The self then is just kind of championing or rescuing the Buddha's original message perhaps.

So one could try -- I could try, if I was so inclined -- to put all this talk of soulfulness in and try and present it as a more traditional Dharma package that was already there, that I'm just kind of amplifying a little bit. Or we could, you could, I could say, "This soulfulness, what we're really doing is expanding the Dharma. We inherited this much Dharma, this range, and now we're expanding it as is our right culturally. You and I talking about this business about soul and soulfulness and soulmaking, we're actually stretching what the Dharma means." That would be a fantasy. And then the fantasy of the self there is as a stretcher, as an expander. Or another possibility is, "We're breaking out of the Dharma." That could be a fantasy of what we're doing with this talk of soulfulness and soul and soulmaking. Then the fantasy of the self within that is as, what, as some kind of exploder of limits, exploder of tradition, in terms of an iconoclastic self, etc. Different styles of fantasy, of how we're conceiving the whole relationship with soulfulness with the Dharma, and in that, wrapped up in that, as always, is a fantasy of self.

With any fantasy of a tradition or a trajectory or a path, it has to be engaging and enchanting to me. So even if I try and put this -- let's say I choose the fantasy of "It's within the Dharma. It's already there. It was already there. I'm just highlighting it," whatever fantasy I have of the Dharma there and of the self, that has to be engaging and enchanting to me. It's like the whole fantasy of this work, and the conceptual work itself, and also the fantasy of the Dharma -- what is the conception? What is the framework of the Dharma that I'm engaging in? Is it engaging to me? Am I engaged by it? Is it enchanting to me? I could go further and say, is it big enough? Is my fantasy of the Dharma big enough for the soul, or will the soul outgrow the conceptual box and the fantasy box of the Dharma that I have right now? This is an important question.

So when I take soulfulness and this sensitivity to soulfulness and the desire to nourish it and support, and enrich, and deepen, and open, expand it, and grow it, care for it, when that becomes (at least at times) the principal navigator, that sets us on an open-ended journey. It has no limits. Soulfulness, the increase in soulfulness, the deepening, the enrichening of soulfulness, is open-ended and without limit. In part, that's because the psyche's desire for soulmaking will keep opening and deepening the range of perception. I'm going to come back to this.

So when we take soulfulness as, if you like, the most important thing, and we navigate that way, at those times, the psyche's desire for soulmaking will open and deepen and expand the range of perception of self, of other, and world. That expanding of the range of perception is part of soulfulness. And that's part of what makes this navigation by soulfulness, by sensitivity to soulfulness, open-ended. The pace at which that deepening and expanding of the range of perception, and the range of appearance and experience, the pace at which that happens is quite individual. I think it depends on how much fire, so to speak, a person has, how fiery their soul is, how much eros runs through their soul and drives their soul. Some people are really quite fiery and quite quick. There's a lot of eros there. I'm going to come back to this soon. And so this opening of the perception of self/other/world, this opening of more and more soulfulness, and this movement of soulmaking that opens up that range, happens quite quickly. They burn through quite quickly into new territory. In other people, it's very, very slow. And in other people it barely seems to move much at all.

When we take soulfulness as navigator, we're, in a way, saying 'yes' to the psyche's desire for soulmaking. I'm going to come back to this. And that keeps opening the range of perception, experience, the range of experience of self/other/world. And that happens at different paces for different people. But the question: is my Dharma framework that I'm operating in, is my fantasy or vision, my mythos of the Dharma, is it big enough, or will the self outgrow it if I let soulfulness be what steers me, or the beacon, if you like, the pole star I'm moving towards, the direction I'm moving in?

There's the recognition of the place of image and fantasy, and the honouring of our need for image, fantasy, and soulfulness. And that expands into this recognition that that's everywhere, imbuing. Fantasy, image, mythos are imbuing whatever I care about. And then recognizing that, through that, we can put the Dharma on a different ground, on imaginal ground. Then there's the question, "What is the fantasy of how I'm conceiving of the relationship of soulfulness and Dharma, and the self within that?" And then this question, "Is my fantasy and my conception of the Dharma big enough, or will the self outgrow it?"

In all of this -- I mentioned this before, but I'll say it again. It's quite a big subject. But there can be a very different relationship. To make a connection here, there can be a very different relationship of this teaching of the Four Noble Truths and clinging, a very different relationship with that teaching. Very often, people hear that clinging causes suffering, and if you don't cling, then you'll suffer less or won't suffer at all. They try and make this non-clinging, or lessening clinging, a way of life. They try and live that way. And very soon, they're going to run into problems there. This sounds a little unkind, but it becomes a little bit silly. It's impossible. And it will not fit our life, and it certainly will not fit our soul. Trying to move through the world that way is a little bit unwise. It won't help the soulfulness. It's impossible. It's not very skilful.

Versus actually regarding this whole teaching about clinging, and letting go of clinging, and the whole shorthand version of the Four Noble Truths -- there is suffering, it's caused by clinging, I can release that clinging and have freedom from suffering, or some degree of freedom from suffering. That's the shorthand version of the Four Noble Truths. It's almost like a lens, a way of approaching things. Using that as a key. So that shorthand version of the Four Noble Truths, and the teaching about clinging, and ways of clinging less -- using that as a key that opens up the whole realm of perception.

That's related to this whole idea about fabrication, because it's clinging, more centrally than anything else -- and 'clinging' in the wide range of what that means -- that fabricates self and dukkha and perception of appearances. So I start playing with this business of clinging and letting go of clinging, and this framework or lens of the Four Noble Truths, and lo and behold, it functions like a key that opens up not just freedom at different times, but a whole deeper understanding of the fabrication of perception, and the emptiness of all things through that. I should say much more about that, but we don't have time. I've talked about it a lot and written about it as well. But rather than letting go of clinging as a way of life -- a lot of people try and get into that, even unconsciously, as a mode -- rather, using it as a way of practising this decreasing clinging, in different ways, to different degrees, and seeing that that functions as a key that opens understanding and opens perception.

One way or another, through emptiness practice, through imaginal practice or whatever, we begin to see that Dharma concepts -- clinging, and Four Noble Truths, and this and that -- they're not realities. Dharma concepts are not pointing to real things. They are ways of looking. A Dharma concept functions best when it is a way of looking. There's a range of ways of looking, not a single way of looking. Dharma concepts each offer slightly different lenses, and even those lenses have ranges in them. So Dharma concepts are not realities. They're ways of looking that bring freedom, and also that bring freedom both in the future and in the moment. Dharma concepts are ways of looking that bring freedom, but also that liberate other ways of looking, or that liberate our ability and our flexibility to look in different ways.

So we pick up Dharma concepts, not as realities, but as tools, as lenses, as ways of looking. They bring freedom in the moment. We can see that and feel that. And through all that, it actually liberates more ways of looking. In other words, it opens up the perception. Dharma concepts bring a sense of freedom from dukkha, but they also open the perception. This is crucial. That's a very different way of understanding the Dharma -- what we're trying to do, what the central thrust and movement of the Dharma is. As I said, I would feel it's more fertile in terms of what it then offers in relationship to imaginal practice, and by allowing place and space for imaginal practice.

In relation to this, all this is still talking about the relationship of these ideas of soul and soulfulness and soulmaking, with the whole idea of ending or at least decreasing dukkha. So we have to have a slightly different way of conceiving of the Dharma than what may be normal, to allow this kind of fertility. Now, I would say that we can orient, one can orient this navigation of practice and practices, taking caring for soulfulness and soulmaking as what's helping to navigate us -- we can orient that in a way, definitely, that eventually brings more and more a lovely sense of lightness into the whole sense of existence. More and more, a sense of the transparency of things, the diaphanous nature of things, the beauty, different kinds of beauty, as I said, depth, sacredness. We can orient this care for the soul, this care for soulfulness and soulmaking, so that it does liberate in these ways, and bring a freeing up and an opening of the range of perception. In a way, perception gets healed of its limitations, which are often limitations that we don't even realize, because we're so used to them and everyone in the culture seems to agree on them.

So one of the freedoms here is this freeing up of the range of perception, the healing of perception, and also in ways that we wouldn't get without taking our navigation through the care of the soul and the soulfulness and the soulmaking. Because, for instance, seeing just purely in terms of emptiness, the emptiness of all things, or the oneness of all things, or this and that, it will give a universal sense "everything is empty," or "everything is one," or whatever it is, but it loses the personal dimension. And I'm going to come back to that hopefully in other talks. This healing of perception, this opening of the range of perception through imaginal practice, and through caring for the soul and taking that as a principal navigator, that allows the perception to open up in ways that beautifully bring together or include both the personal dimensions -- the dimension of personhood -- and the universal. You have both together, or can lean on one or the other.

We can take soulfulness as what guides us, and the care for soulfulness and soulmaking as what guides us in practice, and eventually, there will be a lot less dukkha, or we can steer it in that direction. But on the way, it may include the dukkha of certain images and certain fantasies. We're just conceiving it in a slightly different way. We're saying soulfulness is important, is the primary thing, rather than ending dukkha is the primary thing, which would be a classically Dharmic way of seeing things -- always ending dukkha is what's most important, decreasing dukkha. So the goal and the orientation may be conceived differently, but certainly it's possible to steer, through the care of the soul, and using that as the navigating principle, into a lot of freedom, a lot of lightness and transparency, beauty, sacredness, freeing up of the perception in really broad and beautiful ways.

Given all of this, everything we've said so far about soul and soulfulness and soulmaking, let's move on and ask, or rather state that part of soulmaking involves conceptualizing, concepts. We said this before, but again, to stress it. The question becomes: what conceptual framework, what conceptions, what eidos, to use that Greek word again, what ideas and ways of looking nurture, deepen, open, ignite, enrich, and support, and nourish soulfulness? What conceptual frameworks aid the soulfulness? That becomes a question that is part of practice, just as in a more traditional Dharma understanding the question would be: what conceptual frameworks help us to decrease or end dukkha?

Again, I've mentioned in other talks, all philosophical systems, if we're talking now about conceptual frameworks, all philosophical systems run into problems of one kind or another at some point. They all will rest on assumptions. Eventually, we come to a place where we just are making assumptions. We dig deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and we realize, "Oh, this system of philosophy rests on an assumption." One of the conceptual frameworks that really supports a sense of soul and soulfulness and soulmaking is this idea, which we've touched on already, that image/mythos/fantasy is primary. It's fundamental and primary. That is not something that we could ever prove, I don't think. It's impossible to prove it. I'm not even interested in proving it. I don't feel I need to prove it, because there's no truth claim there.

If we turn the whole question around philosophically, what we can prove, and what I spent a little time doing, is actually proving, perhaps, that the mistakes, or exposing some of the assumptions, or critiquing, say, the dominant views of the culture, or any views that claim some kind of reality or truth. One can actually prove that any system or philosophy, even if it's dressed up as not a system that claims some kind of reality or truth, one can critique it from a number of different directions. Oftentimes, especially nowadays, and even some presentations of modern Dharma will say, "Well, I'm not interested in truth. Truth is an oppressive notion," etc. But still contained within them, implicitly, some notion of what's true and what's false, and leaning towards often what's quite a limited version of what's true, while verbally rejecting the whole notion of truth, and saying, "I'm not interested in that." So one could philosophically, as I said, critique quite strongly the dominant views that claim a certain reality or truth, usually implicitly, or dismiss imagination or images, imaginal practice, and this talk of soul as 'metaphysics.'

I said elsewhere: there's always a hidden metaphysics in those kind of notions. Always a hidden ontology, assumption about what's real, always a hidden epistemology, always a hidden cosmology. So what if we really open up to that, recognize it, all that, and then just see: what if we entertain this conceptual framework and see what happens? What if we entertain that conceptual framework and see what happens? By 'entertain,' I don't just mean think it. I mean actually see through it, view through it. I'm talking about practice here, in a way that affects perception. Practice is not practice, as far as I'm concerned, unless it affects perception. A meditator is someone who plays with different ways of looking, relationships, conceptions, in ways that affect perception. So we say, "What if this conceptual framework, what if this one?" And we sort of put it in, and take it for a ride, and see what happens. So philosophies and conceptual frameworks become more like doors, opportunities. That word, actually, is ob + portus, like portal or port, related to the word for 'door,' our word for 'door.' Rather than getting stuck in truth claims, we're actually very, very light and flexible and agile with conceptual frameworks. Using them as doors, opportunistically, as opportunities for what can come, what can grow and open up through this door. We enter through this door, and a world opens up.

We're asking now, "What is it that supports and nourishes soulfulness?" And one answer to that is the conceptual frameworks that we're entertaining, and the relationship with conceptual frameworks. Another aspect of what supports soulfulness is love, love and desire and eros. This is huge. I want to just say a little bit now. I've said before: where there is love, there image or fantasy or mythos is operating. So if the person feels like, "I'm not sure. Where is the image in my life? Where is the fantasy?", look where there is love. Where there is love, there there is image and fantasy and mythos. Or we could turn that around and say fantasy and image are part of loving deeply. They are necessary in loving deeply, especially when we're talking about personal love.

So fantasy and image are a beautiful and necessary part of loving deeply. But we could say a little more. We could say also that -- or just state as what's axiomatic -- eros is also part of soulmaking. Eros is part of soulmaking. Now, what do I mean by 'eros'? This is quite tricky. Again, I partly like to say eros is undefinable. I think that's actually very wise. I'm not sure if we'll get to it this retreat, how much we can fit this in, but perhaps at another time in the future. There's something about that that's really valuable, to hold eros as an undefinable and very expanding idea.

But certainly by 'eros,' when I use that word, or even 'erotic,' I don't just mean the sexual. Okay, so it includes the sexual, but not just that. Let's say, for now, that eros is the desire for more connection. So you can see how that could obviously include the sexual, etc. But let's say for now, as a sort of springboard definition, loose, springboard definition of eros, it's the desire for more connection with another, with ourselves, even, with something in the world, with whatever. Now, this desire for more connection, it operates in relationship to anything we love or anything where there is soulfulness. It desires, so to speak, to penetrate further what we love. I'm using deliberately sexual language here, erotic language. The desire of eros is to penetrate further; it wants more connection. It wants to penetrate further or, you could say, in a more feminine mode, it wants to open more, open more to what we love, or open up what we love even more. So it wants to penetrate further into what we love for more connection. It wants to open up what we love. It wants to expand it. It wants to inseminate the image of the beloved. The desire of eros is to inseminate the image of the beloved.

For example, I could think of many examples, but let's say, one of the musicians I really love is Keith Jarrett. Some of you may know him. He's done a huge, broad range of work, so I'm not crazy about all of it, but a lot of it I really love, and I love him, and I'm, again, like [with] Eric Dolphy, so thankful for him. So in the love and in the image of him (there's the love and the image of him), that image, at this point, includes a kind of vague sense of what or who he 'channels' -- and again, not using that word in too concrete or literal or tight a way, as sometimes the New Age does. But there's some vague sense there of what or who he channels through his music, and through his dedication to music. So in my image of him, he is more than human. The image makes him more than human, in some way. The image of Keith Jarrett is inseminated, through the eros, to open up, to expand, in this case, in this way. It's not just that I'm interested in more of his music, and I want to hear this, and I want to hear that, but it's actually what he is; the image of him gains depth. He's no longer just a human being. He is that, of course, just a human musician. There's something else with it, but it's vague, okay, and I'm not taking it completely literally.

So this opening up of the image and the fantasy of someone or something that we love, that there is this eros connection with, opens up the perspective, enriches the perspective, and that in itself is an increase in the soulfulness, and nourishing a deepening of the soulfulness. They're almost like one and the same thing. With that, too, there is a nourishing and a supporting and an opening and enrichening of the resonances and the range and the depth of the sense of sacredness. All this goes together. Now, in other words, my sense of Keith Jarrett is [that] something coming through is something very sacred. There's a real sense of holiness there. In other words, or with that, if we're now with Greek words, mythos and eros and psyche, let's use another word, logos, which I'm going to use as 'conceptual framework.' That also opens up.

In other words, I don't just think of him as a biological machine with amazing neural networks that can do all this incredible improvising, and incredible dexterity of the hands, ears trained in this way and that way. Yes, yes, all that. But wrapped up in the logos, wrapped up in the conceptual framework, wrapped up in the image of him, the eros, the love expands more and more, so that he becomes, in the image, more than human. In the image, necessarily, then, I have to make room with the logos, with the conceptual framework, for a different dimension of sacredness, beyond the human.

I'm saying this quite clumsily; I apologize. What I'm really trying to say is the eros and the psyche and the soulfulness and the logos, the conceptual framework, they end up fertilizing each other. The eros opens up the image, enriches the image. It penetrates. It wants to penetrate further, and it needs a space to penetrate into, so it has to impregnate the image of what we love, inseminate it, open it, expand it. In doing that, it gives it other dimensions. That's part of expanding it. Those other dimensions, the mind, the conceptual framework, needs to expand to accommodate and support those other dimensions that we sense in the image. So the soulfulness, the sacredness, the conceptual framework, the image, the eros -- these are all feeding each other, because when there's more of a sense of depth now, let's say, in this image-sense of Keith Jarrett, then I love him more, because I'm loving more than just the human and all his human challenges and the dedication. I'm loving even more than that. I'm including that, but even more. So there's more eros, and more fertility of the soulfulness, of the conceptual framework, the way these things grow together. I hope this makes sense.

Images, fantasies, mythoi -- they need to, and they will, contact life. I've talked a little about that and I will talk more about that. In so doing, they bring healing of different kinds. They also de-literalize life. So instead of, "Life is just this, just that. This is my story," as we alluded to earlier, the whole imbuing of life with images, and recognition that image and fantasy are operating, de-literalizes life. Soulmaking comes into life and into experience and into the sense of self and other, colouring life, ensouling life. Objects, things, experiences are enriched, given depth, another dimension, if we use that word again without being too tight around it. They expand the perception. So the perception, then, is different of things, because they have this other soul-dimension to them.

Through the love, and because there's a different sense of things, a different perception of things, they're more ensouled, we love them more. The love is deeper. And that love, that eros, wants to, it will, by itself, expand further. It wants to penetrate further into this image, open this image up even more, into greater depth. So there is this mutual opening or mutual inseminating of the eros, of the psyche and soulfulness, and of the logos, of the conceptual framework, granting and giving soul to the world, ensouling. What is it to sense the world with soul? This is actually open-ended, this mutual opening, this mutual insemination of eros, psyche or soul, and logos. Potentially open-ended. We'll come back to this, I hope.

What is it, though, we could ask and we should ask, what is it that helps to open the soul in this way, the psyche in this way, the soulfulness? And what is it, correspondingly, that blocks the opening of the soul and the psyche, the soulfulness? Very often, what happens is we're stuck and clinging to one view -- either one image, or more often, we're not seeing something as an image, and we're literalizing it: "This is reality. This self-image is true. That image of the other ..." We don't recognize it's image. We're stuck in one view, not recognizing it's image, and this whole fertility that's granted by the conceptual framework being open and having room for image and the growth of that, the mutual fertility of psyche, eros, and logos is blocked. It's stuck. So sometimes it's that, that we're clinging too tightly to one view. Or we don't see image as image; it's too literal, and then the whole thing grinds to a halt because it's too concrete. Sometimes what we need is to bring in or allow or hear from someone else a different way of storying something in our life, where actually the soul and this fertilization process has gotten stuck and contracted, rigidified. We need to let in another image, or see it through the lens of another image, this experience, or this image itself, or this history of mine. That brings more freedom, it frees things up, and also allows the soulfulness to grow. The soulfulness is nourished.

I remember, some of you will have heard me tell that story of the retreatant where I offered the image, at some point when we were talking, of the sacred prostitute, in relation to her past and things that had happened, and paths she had gone down when she was much, much younger. She was stuck in a certain way of looking, a certain view, clinging to a certain view of that past and of herself in that past that was bound up in shame and literalism. By just suggesting another image, just bringing another image into the field as we were talking, a lot of freeing up happened. A re-souling, if you like, happened, of the whole story. And the shame dissolved, etc.

So sometimes we're stuck in one image, taking it as real, and we need to bring in or have access to some other image, a multiplicity, that opens things up. Or, as I said, it might be that the conceptual framework, the logos, is too rigid. So this is our box of what reality is or what the Dharma is or whatever it is, and the box is too tight. It does not allow a deepening or opening of the perception. So I cannot see Keith Jarrett that way, because I don't believe that; I just believe in human beings and neurological wiring which, because of neuroplasticity, can be trained, and quite extraordinarily so. So the logos has its limits, and it will not allow this deepening and opening and expanding of the perception of the image. Because of that, the eros cannot increase, because it has only so much area to move into. It doesn't [allow] this expanding of the image that's allowed with a wider conceptual framework, or a looser flexibility with conceptual framework. It doesn't support the deeper movement and growing of love and the movement of the eros. There's a kind of infertility there, because of the rigidity and the tightness and the smallness of the conceptual framework, the logos.

Again, just to point out, with the logos, with the conceptual framework, that is an aspect of soul, we could say, that's involved. Where there is fantasy and love, logos is always involved. Conceptual framework is always involved. For example, we might have a fantasy of practice, and we might love, for example, mindfulness. People -- "I love mindfulness!" But wrapped up in that is actually a love of certain ideas, wrapped up in the mindfulness itself. My idea of mindfulness, my logos of mindfulness, fantasy of mindfulness -- they're all wrapped up together, implicitly and explicitly. So for example, in my love of mindfulness, in my fantasy of practice, is wrapped up, potentially, ideas about simplicity and the beauty of simplicity. That's an idea, the idea that mindfulness is something simple, or the idea that when I'm mindful I'm being with what actually is. Now, that's a huge idea that's dressed up as a non-idea, as an absence of idea: "No, no, no, I'm just being non-conceptual. I'm just being simple, by being with what actually is." It's an idea, and I'm in love with that idea as part of my love of mindfulness. There's a lot involved in that idea, and it's dressed up as a non-idea, as an absence of ideation.

Or maybe wrapped up in my love of mindfulness is the whole love of 'being' versus 'doing': "I love to be. I love to just be, and drop doing." A lot of ideas wrapped up. I'm in love with that idea, and that idea itself has a lot of ideas within it. Or it might be the kind of mindfulness that's really into this kind of microscopic attention to appearances, and penetrating them or perceiving them down to their elemental nature, moments of this or that, or whatever. Again, wrapped up in my love of practising mindfulness that way, in that direction, is also that idea of scrutinizing and dissecting things to their elemental nature, to their real nature, whatever.

So conceptual frameworks, logos, ideas are involved where there is fantasy and love, just to point that out. Eros, psyche, logos -- they're completely interweaved. You could say they're actually aspects of each other, of soul. Again, to stress that when we cling to a certain logos or a certain conceptual framework, that it will limit or prevent the opening of perception. Because it only has a certain range, it cannot entertain and give ground and support to a perception that does not make sense within that conceptual framework. It limits and prevents the opening of perception and the opening of experience.

The question is, individually, how quick does the fire of eros burn and penetrate and open, so that it needs a new logos, and also new images, or deeper or more fertile? How quick does that burn in us? It's very individual. But all this, I'm saying it because it's all related to this whole investigation of the relationship of soulfulness and Dharma and ways of conceiving Dharma. All this is related. It's wrapped up in there. In a way, we could say exploring this very question of the relationship of soulfulness and Dharma is potentially itself also soulmaking. But it brings into the very exploration the ideas of soul and soulmaking and conceptual frameworks, different ways of understanding the Dharma, and eros, and all that together, and relationships, and it can be itself something that is soulmaking.