Opening, Tuning, and Relating to the Imaginal: Instructions (3)

So I just want to clarify a couple of things about the instructions and then move on.

(1) First is in regard to walking meditation. It's important to understand: walking is a posture, just like sitting is a posture, or standing, or lying down is a posture. It's not in itself a meditation. We can do most meditations in the walking posture, practise most meditations in the walking posture. So it's just a posture which can be used to take the meditation any direction we want, really, usually. In the context of imaginal practice and this course, we could kind of divide the walking in two, in terms of possibilities there:

(1.1) We can do the walking meditation with the intention of the samādhi, with regards to cultivating that well-being, that harmonization and ease in the energy body, and the sensitivity to the energy body, on the one hand. And on the other hand, we can also walk doing the imaginal practice, so the imaginal practice taking place in the walking posture. With the samādhi in the walking posture -- some of you will be familiar with this already; some of you really won't -- you can start by standing. And same as when we're sitting, expand the awareness, feel the whole energy body, tune into that. If there is some well-being or pleasantness or nice energy somewhere, just stay with that. Tune to it, open to it, feel it in all the ways that we've discussed. You're welcome to use images if they help open that, or a bit of breath work, whatever it is, or just tuning to the energy body -- everything that we talked about.

When that feels a little bit established, that nice energy or well-being or pleasantness, just linger with it, and then begin to walk. But instead of paying attention to the soles of your feet or the sensations of moving the legs, throughout the legs or whatever it is, or walking in a much wider space that includes the sky, instead of those options, we're actually walking in the sort of bubble or space of the energy body, tuned to the feeling, the texture, the vibration, the tone of that whole space, just as if you were sitting, but now one is walking. I'm tuning to that, particularly if there's a sense of some degree of well-being or comfort or ease or even pleasure there. That's what we're paying attention to. Same thing. Walking between two points, stopping at any time you want in the middle of the path, stopping for as long as you want at the end, just having that as a priority, that nourishing of the well-being in the energy body and with the sensitivity to the energy body.

You might need to walk a little faster to help you tune in that way, or a little slower, or a lot slower. You might need to stop a lot. It doesn't matter. You're really just taking the same practice, the same samādhi direction of practice, and applying it in a different posture. As always, being responsive, being playful, being creative, and seeing what helps. So that would be the samādhi practice when we're walking, with the energy body when we're walking.

(1.2) Then it's quite possible to do imaginal practice when you're walking. Very, very possible. In classical mettā practice, when I would give walking instructions, you can imagine the person that you're giving mettā to at the end of your walking path, so that you're walking towards them, radiating mettā towards them in a very lovely way. Then you reach them at the end, and they magically appear at the other end, and you turn round and do the same thing, walk towards this person that you're radiating well-wishing towards. Or you can imagine them walking by your side, and both of you are perhaps in a bubble of mettā, of well-wishing, of light, whatever, healing. Many possibilities there.

So those kinds of possibilities, I suppose, are possible doing walking meditation with more open imaginal practice. But actually, you will find as you play with this, there are all kinds of possibilities, and ways that the surroundings can be taken in (which we'll come back to). Many, many possibilities -- more than one might think before one actually gets into the walking posture with imaginal practice and plays with it a little bit. Just as with the walking samādhi practice, you can stop at any time, you can stop for as long as you want, and stand if that's helpful at any point, and vary the pace, or find the pace for any session that feels most conducive to working with that image. So again, very playful, very responsive.

So that was the first thing I wanted to clarify.

(2) The second thing, I feel like I probably expressed something in an unhelpful way about how long we spend with images. I said two minutes is loads. What I really meant to say, what I should have said was, "Two minutes may be enough." It's very possible to spend a whole session with an image, or a really long time, an hour or something like that with one image, and it's maybe evolving slowly or going through different phases or something. The key point really is not this amount of time or that amount of time. It's just, "Is it still helpful?" So if I'm spending a long time with an image, does it still feel full of resonances for the soul? Is there still the soulfulness there through that? Of course, the mind wanders, you bring it back. The soulfulness might dim and then come back a little bit. It's not so much a time guideline; as always, we're tuning into what's happening, sensitive to what's happening, just sensitive to whether the soulfulness is there and whether it feels helpful. You can spend as long or as short as feels helpful and soulful.

Okay, so, we mentioned the other day, we began to get into a little more detail in the instructions, different aspects and dimensions of the ways we can interact with images, the ways we relate to images and imaginal figures. We brought up the possibility of a shift in attitude -- asking, usually implicitly, not necessarily a literal question, "What do you want?", of the imaginal figure. Not "What can you give me?", but "What do you want?" So turning things around in the relationship. Not necessarily an actual question, though it could be. But more a sensing and intuiting. It's really a shift in attitude with the imaginal figure.

So I just want to restate that again, and say a little bit more about that as we go on through the retreat. "What do you want?" Maybe what this imaginal figure, what this daimon wants, is to be expressed in some way, probably in my life. So maybe that's what it wants. But again, not so literal -- its expression may not just be a concrete, literalized mimicry of what the image is.

It may be that what the imaginal figure wants is just to be seen. It's not asking for any expression or doing anything different. It just wants to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be honoured. The key word there is the 'honouring.' There's a sense that this is something that needs honouring. We get the sense that's what it wants.

Maybe what it wants is really to look at you in a certain way. What's really important with some imaginal figures or instances with imaginal figures is how they see you, how this image sees me, how it looks at me, this imaginal figure or animal or whatever it is. How they respond and act towards me, that's actually what's important.

One of the possibilities within that, of how they see me and how they act towards me, there are many, many ways in which healing can happen, and on many different levels. I could give so many examples of this, the healing possibilities, the different healing possibilities of working with images. I think I already talked about the retreatant who was meditating, and had the liver condition, and was in some pain and low energy with her liver condition, and then this magnificent lion came towards her. She was already familiar with the lion from before, and it started licking her liver. The healing that came out of that, and how that moved then into the samādhi as the energy body changed over twenty minutes or so.

And then recently someone was sharing a little bit how they were beginning, in their life, to dare to look more closely at a really quite painful aspect of their relationship with their father when they were much younger, and how there was really some sexual inappropriateness there from the father. And all the pain that that brought up, and the confusion, and the difficulty there, and opening to that, daring to open to that -- the courage that that took. Another image that she'd had before quite regularly, of this phoenix -- I think I mentioned it already, and I will mention it again in another context, as well -- this phoenix came, this huge, beautiful, immensely strong but very compassionate phoenix, bird, came and enfolded her completely in its huge wings. So it was, I think, behind her, and brought its wings to cover her whole body, but particularly her breasts. So much healing in that. Interesting to me that even in the gesture of -- I asked her about this -- in the gesture of doing that, very healing, very protective in the enfolding of the wings of this phoenix, but also the image itself, and that gesture, had a kind of eroticism to it, the way it covered her breasts. So in a way, there was a healing of the erotics there as well. It was erotic, but it had so much love and healing with it, that it actually healed something, or began to heal something around the sexuality.

So many possibilities. I remember, more than a year ago, I think, a beautiful image that really touched me. I'll say a little bit about it, just because there are a few other aspects that are instructive. I was feeling not well physically, a tummy ache and stuff, and suddenly in the meditation this huge, Godzilla-like creature (seemed to be made of metal parts, though) appeared with red, blazing eyes, and raging. Then, very suddenly, that also kind of collapsed or shattered or exploded, and morphed into this giant anthropomorphic figure, so this giant human-like figure. But it also seemed to be made of metal.

Very quickly, that collapsed, shattered, and shrunk into a fox, which at first seemed like it was made of metal, but then shrugged off the metal exterior to become more fleshy and furry and a natural fox animal. This fox is a fugitive. He travels alone. He avoids contact. He hides. I feel myself into his body at times. I feel what it feels like to be him. And I get a sense of him, both from within and also looking at him. I sense his wisdom. There's something about this fox -- he's very wise, and he knows things. He knows esoteric things and philosophical things. But he's very tentative about who he comes close to, who he lets himself come close to. He will only let himself come close if he senses that you really want to learn.

There's something about this fox that's so beautiful, I bow to him imaginally in the meditation. My heart feels drawn to bow, and to make añjali with my hands in that gesture of bowing. There's a real sense of reverence, and softness. I feel tearful in the meditation as I'm doing this. I get a sense of him, and I see him on his travels. He will come, this fox, to a circle of people around a fire, for instance, and give of his wisdom. He's open to doing that. But otherwise he avoids contact, he hides, he is furtive and fugitive. It might even be that someone is trying to catch him or destroy him. So I'm getting this sense of this fox, and the beauty of it, and the reverence in the relationship there. Then he stands on my tummy. I'm still in the sitting posture in the meditation, my physical body, but imaginally, I lie down. And his paws, they bear the touch of his wanderings. The paws press in, onto my belly, at certain points, as if they're almost acupressure points in my tummy and on my back, for healing. And it feels very, very healing. Again, I feel the energy harmonize and heal. It feels very lovely there. So lots of dimensions to that kind of image.

There can be, as in this example, a lot of healing, as I said, go on there, in the images. Many different dimensions. And also, as we mentioned already, love. In the relationship with the imaginal figure, particularly how they look at me or how I look at them, love may be the important thing. I think I told the image of the white horse, and the beautiful love between us, really. And then that image of the jazz musician Eric Dolphy as I was doing the walking meditation, and how the whole thing there really seemed about my gratitude and my love -- a little bit about his blessing me, but really it was about my love and my gratitude -- and how, so much, that love is part of the soulmaking.

Again, to quote that beautiful poem of Mary Oliver's from her collection West Wind, it's a prose poem about Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet who drowned very young. She's writing about him, and she says, "I love this poet, which means nothing here or there, but is like a garden in my heart." So the love that we have for these imaginal figures, or that they have for us -- it means nothing to anyone, perhaps, my love of Eric Dolphy. You might say, "Who cares?" But it does something. It's a garden in my heart. In other words, it's fertile in my heart and in my soul. It is soulmaking, the love there. That figure, and the love in relationship to it, is soulmaking. As we said when I talked about another musician, Keith Jarrett, that love itself, the eros there wants to penetrate further, and open up the image of the beloved, so that it does open the image, and give other dimensions and range to the image, and more of a sense of sacredness. That opening of the range and opening of the sense of sacredness fertilizes the image, but also fertilizes, then, it asks for an expansion of the conceptual framework, to include those other dimensions. Then the eros may love more, etc. So there's a real fertilizing process going on through the love and through the eros.

Again, I've said this before, but it's so important: when the love is there in the image, either way or both ways, from me towards the image or from the image towards me, we're really interested in the particular quality of that love. So love has such a range of possibilities for us as human beings; there are so many flavours and styles and dimensions and qualities to the different kinds of love that are possible for us. It's not always just simple, universal mettā, or just compassion. It may be. But there may be, as for instance in this image of Eric Dolphy, and the love there, it has a very, very particular quality. So really to tune in and notice the particular quality of love that's present with any imaginal interaction.

All this, about the healing and the love, etc., is part of this question, "How am I drawn or asked to interact with this image?" Sometimes we feel almost pulled or led in or invited into a certain mode of interacting. It may be a verbal dialogue. It may be something else entirely. It may be more a sexual interaction, that there's lovemaking. There are all kinds of possibilities, all kinds.

When we say, as I said in the earlier instructions, to include an awareness of the thoughts that come up in relation to this image, and the conceptual frameworks that are operating, then we add this dimension of a kind of attitude or stance in relationship to the image, of "What do you want?" So all these things, these aspects of the relationship with the image, they bring up the question or imply the question of the relationship, the exact relationship. What is the relationship between this image and my life? This is an interesting question, to say the least. It's potentially quite tricky. But it's interesting. It's not something we want to think too much about, or kind of interpret, you know, think and form an interpretation; it's more something we'll kind of get glimpses of, or a feeling for, an intuitive awareness of, that a relationship is there, and what is the relationship, or how are things mirroring, etc.

So sometimes an image will give advice to a person about their life. I actually remember, quite some years ago now, an image. Actually the image is not that important. There were black and white figures, and a sort of ritual thing going on with these figures. This is years ago, before I had done that much imaginal practice. And I remember at some point being drawn to ask these sort of priest-like figures if I should go ahead and write this book about emptiness that people had been asking me to write, a few people. And the answer was clearly "yes," that even if it didn't have much -- wasn't popular, didn't sell very well, it would still be a worthwhile thing. But that kind of thing, I think, is quite rare, where an image actually gives advice. Not only is it rare, I think, again, my leaning, or my favourite leaning -- as is obvious by now, on this retreat -- is that it will be more interesting, rather than getting advice, the soulmaking and the soulfulness is the emphasis. That makes it more interesting, the whole relationship with image and the whole imaginal practice, rather than me just seeking out these images to get advice about what I should do, etc., which can possibly become too much of an ego thing, trying to be successful at this and that and whatever.

More interesting, more radical, will be just to prioritize the soulmaking, and the soulmaking also with respect to the relationship of the image and my life. What helps that to be soulmaking, to have this soulmaking stance or support the soulmaking there? It's this sense of life and images mirroring each other, but particularly my life mirroring these images and these imaginal figures, or echoing these imaginal figures. My life, my self, my journey, the soul-events of my life, having their origins and their roots, in some way, in these imaginal figures, in these archetypal dimensions, these more divine dimensions of being, if you like. That kind of loose conceptual framework, that kind of attitude, is much more supportive and opening for the soulmaking and the soulfulness.

So clearly, anyone playing with imaginal practice, even a little bit, will notice that images reflect life at times, or something happens in one's life, or some thread in one's life, and it's expressed in the images. That's obvious; one can see that. But more interesting, to me, is this other direction of flow, if you like -- 'causality' may be too strong a word: images kind of finding their expression in life. Life, as I said, mirroring or echoing or having its origins or roots in imaginal figures. This, to me, is more interesting, more radical, and more conducive and supportive of soulmaking.

So, yes, life leads to images, let's say. But, more interesting, images have their fruits in life, or are expressed in my life. Actually, even if it seems clear that it's an event in life or a feeling in life that has given rise to this image, the image then -- practised with in the right way -- the image is, or at least it leads to, a way of looking at life, a certain relationship with life. So even if it seems obvious that the image was spawned or had its root or was born out of some event in my life and kind of mirrors that, that way round, relating to it as image then shapes and constellates a rich and potentially soulmaking way of looking and relating to that part of life, my whole life, or that event, or that aspect of my self or whatever. So just the image, in the way we're talking about it, turns into something that is soulmaking, always, whatever it seems like its origins are.

Very simply, the question always is: does it enhance the soulfulness? Does it nourish and deepen and widen and ignite and enrich the sense of soulfulness? Is there soulmaking here? Not so much what the origins are. I can see it either way, but if it does seem to come out of life, the image mirrors life rather than the other way around (which would be the more unusual way of looking at it), if it does seem the image comes out of life, then picking it up in the right way, practising it in the right way, does it bring soulfulness? Does it enhance the soulfulness? Does it nourish that soulfulness?

Sometimes, all that, the soulfulness with respect to an image is very much helped by the awareness of a kind of loose connection with life or a mirroring of my life, that my life mirrors the image or the other way round. Sometimes it's really helped, in the awareness, in the meditative awareness, one's aware of the connections. It makes it more soulful, more poignant, sometimes. And sometimes not, actually, and we don't need to look for it. This is a curious thing.

Most images, perhaps, really have a connection with the life. We see our life mirroring these images, or vice versa, and there's a lot of soulmaking in that connection, or in the awareness of that connection, a lot of emotional resonances, ideational resonances, soul-resonances. Sometimes not, and we don't need to look for it.

So as an example of one that isn't, I remember about a year and a half or so ago (I can't remember exactly), suddenly in the meditation, there was a pond or a lake in moonlight, a very tranquil, almost otherworldly scene. Very, very beautiful scene. And out of the trees and the foliage, right by the shore of this lake stepped a white unicorn suddenly, and was there by this very still, moonlit lake, standing in the moonlight at the shore. Deep sense of silence to this unicorn, a very beautiful creature. And again, there's love from him or her. I couldn't tell the gender. Love from the unicorn to me, and also from me to this unicorn. And again, a sense of devotion. I'm not even quite sure what exactly I was devoted to. And it brought a stillness into my whole being. This unicorn, she was solitary, a solitary creature. Very unafraid -- there was no danger here. Very still. But the whole image really seemed to be in another world, a world somehow unconnected with the ups and downs and the vicissitudes of this world and this life. Something very unperturbed and unconcerned. Very, very touching. And yet, there was nothing about this that had any relationship with the events of this life, really. So sometimes a lot of images do have that relationship with life, or our life mirrors an image, and sometimes not. So to be sensitive to that in the practice.

When there is an echoing or a mirroring of our life, again, we want to make sure that we have a non-literalistic understanding of that relationship. So if there's this soldier or warrior image, I know it doesn't mean to join the army or harm anyone in any way. Or the wanderer image. I know it doesn't mean that. We've been into this. Or another example I remember, quite some time ago, an image of a painter's studio, an artist's studio. It seemed to have a lot potency to it, this image, but I was trying to understand it a little bit too literalistically at first in the meditation. But then I began to be with it in a couple different sessions, and I realized it was really about the space. There was a connection in terms of my sense of my work and the importance of creative output and being creative, which is something that feels very important to me, letting that flow and to produce creatively, which is also something that feels -- deep, deep in my soul -- very important. But not to take it literally, to become a painter -- I'm far from that -- or hire a place. It was about the space, about the enclosing walls protecting this space, and this space of creativity, and all the kind of attitudes of the artist that go with that, and all the, if you like, the sacred space of the artist. Not wanting to translate that too literally; it wasn't then that I needed to go and find some place like that, which I don't have. I didn't do that. But it can be there as an image, and fertile and fertilizing as an image in the psyche, this space, the artist's studio. So there's a relationship there, but it does not have to be literalistic or concretely acted out, usually.

Now, you've noticed, I know, for sure, that as one is practising with images, all kinds of doubts can come up, just like when one is practising any other meditation. Doubt is a hindrance, one of the five hindrances classically, and can come up. There can be confusion, or sometimes even paralysis with regards to the practice. Very often, the question, "Am I doing this right, or am I doing it wrong?" This is so common, not just for imaginal practice, but for all meditation. The question is operating there, often consciously, but sometimes unconsciously: "Am I doing this right?" And the fear of doing it wrong. So that question is there, and it's dominating, and it's pressuring things, this getting it right or getting it wrong, and the fear there, rather than what I really so much want to emphasize -- this attitude of experimentation and playfulness. Letting go of 'right' and 'wrong,' and just playing, and having fun, and daring to experiment. And asking, instead, "Does this feel helpful?" That's a very different question than, "Am I doing this right, or am I doing it wrong?" Does this, what I'm doing right now, how I'm relating to this image, how I'm holding the attention, what I'm paying attention to, does it feel helpful? And now we're adding, "Does it feel soulful?" Is there soulfulness coming out of that, with this? So these questions are much more useful questions and much more fertile questions. They open the avenues, rather than locking them down.

Again, a person might have a doubt, "Am I making this up?" Especially with imaginal practices, it happens all the time: "Am I making this up?" This is really important, and different people who work with images in psychotherapy or other modalities have different opinions on this. I would like to say that actually it's okay if an idea comes into the mind in imaginal practice, or an impulse to make something happen with an image, or to introduce some other element or some other figure into an image, or change it, even, perhaps, at times. Not a problem if I'm making it up. Always -- and this is a rule of thumb now; let's make it into a guiding rule -- always the question, "Does this feel like it's nourishing and opening and deepening and enrichening the soulfulness right now?" The soulfulness becomes the indicator, the navigator of our practice in the moment. Not so much it's always wrong to make things up, or I should always make things up. That doesn't matter. We don't need to get snagged with that question: "Oh, that's the ego doing that." Use the fruit, the result in the moment, how it feels, and use the soulfulness as an indicator, as a navigator that we're on the right track. So there's a responsiveness there. If it feels soulful, and I've made this thing happen in the image, no problem -- it feels soulful. If I haven't, and it doesn't -- it's tuning into that, the soulfulness aspect, and the resonances there, and letting that guide us, trusting that.

Again, with the doubt, some person might say they were with an image and thought, "This is too weird," or "This is too dark," or whatever, "this image." And the mind comes in with its views and -- we talked about this in the opening talk -- its limited range of what's okay, or what kind of images are acceptable, or what's emotionally okay in the range or in terms of the self-view. "This is too weird." So often a person will think that in imaginal practice. Or too dark. Or conversely, a person says, "This isn't weird enough. It should be weirder. I've heard all these stories. People say this and that happens, or Rob said this." Or generally speaking, meditating, and the thought or the inclination, "Something else should be happening." So this is very, very common.

But again, could we rather be more responsive, and let other factors, other aspects of what's going on, be our guides? Namely the energy body, and the way that responds when an image is right and soulful, as I outlined the other day in the instructions, all the different cues and clues we can pick up on in the energy body, and the sense of soulfulness and the resonances and the beauty and the depth and the meaningfulness -- all that that we outlined. Letting the energy body and the sense of soulfulness guide us, rather than the mind's often too-tight or locked-in views. And the energy body and the sense of soulfulness, what's going on there might be quite subtle. Might not be that far out or dramatic, those effects, but we can really use them as indicators, as part of the whole sensitivity, developing the sensitivity of the instrument.

In terms of doubts, a person might say, "Well, I don't have images," or "I don't get very many images," whatever. We've been through this, so this is repetition at this point, but remember, an image is not necessarily visual, and there's a whole range of possibilities there in terms of the sense modalities operating, etc. This "I don't have images," which I've heard a few times from people over the years -- again, to repeat, the views that we have, meaning the conceptual frameworks that we entertain or that we're holding, will allow or support more or less images, depending on what the conceptual framework is. So some conceptual frameworks just won't allow and support a fertile enough soil in the psyche for images to arise, because wrapped up in the view, in the conceptual framework, is a dismissal or a denigration, ontologically or otherwise, of images.

That's very connected just with attitudes in general: "Images are daydreams, they're papañca, they're worthless. It's not being mindful. When there's an image or a fantasy, that's not being in touch with reality." All these kind of attitudes and views are really, really prevalent, as we said in the opening talk. They will have an effect on what then arises in the psyche. They will constrain the possibility of images arising. And of course, especially if you come through the Insight Meditation tradition, as I do, one has practised, I had practised for years, diligently discarding images when they came up, for the most part, and returning to the breath or returning to so-called bare attention or whatever, with all the attitudes implied in that being reinforced, and as a practice, just reinforcing this discarding and returning to something that seemed, or was deemed to be more (quote) 'real.' So the attitudes, the views, and the practice, over years, will constrain and decrease the flow of images, and the arising and the availability of images. Just to be aware of that, if it still feels like, "Well, I really don't have images in that sense." We have trained ourselves out of that through practice and view, but we can open that door again. We can train the imagination, if you like, and train the sensitivity and the opening and the tuning to the imaginal, through practice and through opening up the view, as we've talked about.

Anyway, in terms of how much people have arising for them images -- in the sense of imaginal objects or figures, whatever sense modality that's coming in -- anyway, that's not the deepest objective, as I would see it, of the retreat. The thing that I'm most interested in is opening up and sensitizing to a whole different way of sensing life. Opening up the perception of this, here and now, of life, of self, of other, of world. That, to me, is the objective that I'm most deeply interested in for all this. So whether or not I have lots of imaginal objects, imaginal figures arising is secondary. It may be that that's part of my trajectory. It may be that's not so much part of my trajectory. But there's another objective that's more important, I would say.

Again, just saying more about the whole question about doubt and navigating all this. So often, so often with imaginal practice, an image that is initially scary arises, and becomes, over time -- sometimes very quickly, and sometimes really over quite a while, months or even in some cases years, but usually because it's before they've been introduced to all the things that we're talking about -- becomes a helpful image. So what started scary, or was deemed initially or felt to be a scary image, becomes helpful.

A person was telling me, some time ago, about this, what she called 'the black hag,' this old woman, dressed in black, sort of witch-like, etc. It seemed very dark, the black clothes, etc., and the ugly old woman features. It kind of had this, what seemed to be an aura of wickedness. But actually, no. No, no, no. This image, with spending more time, trusting a little bit, became a really, really helpful figure, deeply fertile in the psyche and the soul, and deeply wise as well. The style of love and admonition, if you like, from the black hag, was not cute and cuddly and soft -- she retained her kind of character. But there was absolute love in it, and lots of trust.

So there's, again, a particular quality or flavour of the love that flowed through there, but nothing scary in that, nothing harmful in that. Just that the mind immediately picked up on it in a certain way, and assumed that this was scary. So often what seems scary at first actually turns out to be something very helpful. This is important. Can we trust the benevolence of these imaginal figures? Or is it possible even to play with trusting, just enter into trusting for a period, a portion of the meditation? Maybe just a few minutes. Can I play with even imagining that they're benevolent, trusting that there's something there? Because that trust becomes a significant factor in the whole mix of imaginal practice.

The trust itself will affect the way of looking. In the moment that there's trust, we're looking and relating differently. In the moment when there isn't trust, we're looking and relating differently than that. The way of looking always affects the images, just like any other perception. The way of looking always affects, always make a difference. You can see this in nightmares, for instance. I don't know if ever in a nightmare -- perhaps you're chased by a monster in a nightmare -- and something changes in the way that you see the monster, and there's a little bit more of a kinder view of the monster. And guess what? The monster changes, in the nightmare. The more fear I have of the monster, the less trust, the more I run away from it, the more oppressive and scary-looking it becomes. The more it feels dangerous. And when that fear subsides, for whatever reason, if you've ever experienced this in a nightmare, the whole monster, as an apparition, changes as well. So the image is affected by the way of looking, and we can sometimes play with the trust, trusting there's a treasure there, trusting that there's something beautiful and right and necessary there. That's something that we can [entertain]. Again, this is part of the eidos, the idea that we entertain, trusting it, trusting that there's a treasure there, even if it looks at first a little bit scary. This is an important point.

Eventually, through practice with images and the kind of conceptual frameworks that we're talking about, eventually, this might actually mature, this attitude and this vision of images. It might even mature to a place where we trust the archetypal necessity, even at the centre of so-called pathological behaviour, of behaviour that is quite painful in our lives -- maybe even addiction or addictive inclinations or pathological inclinations. It can even mature to a place where we trust that even somewhere in the middle of that, there's an archetypal necessity. This is tricky; it's a fine line here. I need to see, in that case, image as image. What happens, often, it might be that what's happening there is the image that's operating archetypally, in this addiction or whatever it is, is seen not as image -- it's taken too concretely. So if I do identify or get in touch with an archetypal necessity at the centre of this pathological behaviour or whatever it is, I really need to see image as image.

But one gets a sense that, in some of the real knots of our life, or places where there is addiction or this or that, and there's suffering and pathological behaviour, something else can be at the centre there, at the root there. Sometimes people can be a little over-simplistic in our psychology and say, "Always it's because what one is seeking is love, and one is going about it the wrong way. Everyone wants love, and people look for it in mistaken places, and that's what's driving addiction, and that's what drives this dukkha-making behaviour, or whatever it is, or this inclination." Or we tend to, again, be too simple psychologically and say, "It's always down to the seeking of pleasure and the seeking to run away from unpleasant feelings. That's what's driving the addiction. It's an escape mechanism." That may be going on, but it may not be the whole of what's driving this thing, or at the centre of it. So I feel sometimes we want to have very simple psychologies, and apply them universally: "Everyone wants love, and that's what's driving it. It's just seeking love in this mistaken way," or seeking happiness, or seeking pleasure, or fleeing unpleasantness, the unpleasant emotions or whatever it is. Maybe, for sure. But maybe there's more, and richer, and a deeper kind of treasure or archetypal necessity, which needs a different relationship to it. It needs honouring, but also seeing it's image. We could say much more about this. I won't say more now about that.

Sometimes, as well, still on the subjects of doubt and trust, sometimes we have an image and it just seems weird, or it seems insignificant; I can't really see the point of this image. But it may, over time, gradually, come to feel more significant, and come to affect one's life long-term, this image that at first did not seem very significant. Maybe there is something coming through this image, or our ability to let what wants to come through, one's daimon, etc., is coming, but it's coming slowly, gradually, in a way that's not obvious at first.

There's an open question in terms of imaginal practice, in terms of what we might call 'pacing' with images. I've touched on this before, but I want to repeat it because it's quite an important one. I got this from Thomas Moore, the contemporary Thomas Moore, the psychologist. He talked about listening to music. When we really love a piece of music, we listen to it again and again. No one says, "I've heard that piece. I heard it once. I wouldn't listen to it again." If you love it, you want to listen to it again and again. Compared to, say, a book or a Dharma talk that explains things in more rational terms: once I've understood it, I've understood it. I don't need to listen to it again. So an image is more like music that we love, versus a piece of information or something instructive or an explanation.

Sometimes, with Dharma talks that I've given, people say to me, or they write or something and say, "I listened to those Dharma talks or this Dharma talk over and over and over." Most often, the reason is because they're so packed with information and explanation and stuff like that that a person needs to listen to really absorb all that information. But very occasionally, or a few times, someone has said, "When you tell that little story, or that image that you related or whatever," and they're talking about, like, a ten-second fragment, or two minutes or something, and they say, "I just loop it round and round and round, and I don't know what it is about that, but I just keep listening to that thing over and over, that tiny little section." What they're doing then is, that stretch of that talk, half a minute or whatever, has become alive for them as an image, just as a person who really loves music will listen to the same, sometimes the same little passage again and again, if you're a musician, into that sort of thing, and sometimes just the same piece of music. There's something that's become soulfully fertile, and not just informationally fertile there.

Similarly with images, do I just want to move on to the next image, or do I want to recall an image deliberately and marinate with it again, tune to it again, linger with it, just like we would with a piece of music, be in that soul-space, that soul-world of that image? Tuning and marinating and lingering in the energies, the emotions, the soulfulness, the resonances of that image. So this is an open question: when to bring back an image and be with it more (maybe it evolves a little bit, maybe not, doesn't need to), and when to move on and be more open. I don't think there's a right and a wrong here; I'm just flagging it as an element, as a sort of open question that's part of our pacing.

Sometimes we find that we deliberately bring a helpful image in, and that doesn't stay as that image. It fertilizes and spawns other images that seem not that connected. Someone was saying they were having a hard time with a situation in their life, very complex, and sort of sitting in meditation and feeling kind of weighed down by this whole complex knot of a situation that was going on -- couldn't see a way forward with it, and felt burdened by the whole thing, beaten down, almost, by it. And then they brought, deliberately, the image of their niece and nephew to mind, who they absolutely delighted in and loved very much. That image didn't stay. The love arose, and they felt the love for the niece and nephew, and the delight there, and then suddenly the image changed and became the image of a dancer. A woman dancing, powerful in her body, poised and confident, and dancing with great energy and passion and bravura and skill. They tuned to this image of the dancer, which seemed to have nothing much directly in relation to the situation, or in relation to the niece and nephew. But the whole situation that they were in in their life, they began to feel very different about. Somehow, through the image of this dancer, they could kind of get a bit more -- not only space, but a different perspective on what was going on. So the poet W. B. Yeats, in a poem, wrote about "the images that yet-fresh images beget." Sometimes there's an image, and it gives birth to, if you like, or catalyses another image that can be very helpful.

Someone a while ago talked to me or asked me -- I was talking about imaginal practice, and they really picked up on this idea of what we said before, that we can relate to images in a way that we're basically using them as some kind of part of a self-help journey or practice or path, which is fine, completely fine. But as I said, how can I steer it beyond that sort of self-help attitude and relationship? So to say a bit about that here. Really what we're talking about this morning is more about interacting with images, relating to them, navigating with images. So, how to go beyond the sort of self-help relationship? Well, it's really playing with this idea of, perhaps, serving. Playing with the idea of serving this angel or this daimon or this imaginal figure. In the meditation, playing with that as an idea, that I'm serving it, rather than it's serving me. That's very improvised. One wants to tune into what that feels like. It may involve even a devotional sense. There's no right or wrong way of doing that. We really can improvise with that.

Related to that is all the kind of conceptual ideas that we've talked about that support or nourish that soulfulness and soulmaking. So it's all of that included. But really just taking the time, as well, with those images that feel deep, that feel important, that we have the sense with them that my life is mirroring them somehow. Those are the images that will really -- along with the right attitude towards them, and playing with that attitude and this idea of serving -- will really turn around into this other, more radical relationship. So, serving the angel, the daimon, my life mirroring it. But again, not literal -- it's not necessarily so concretized or literalized. That would make me quite nervous, I think, that kind of too-tight and too-literalized attitude. We're talking, again, about poetic images, a poetic sensibility, which can be yet very, very powerful, without being literal.

At times, I've mentioned this sense that we can have of the kind of non-temporal dimension of images, the timelessness or the eternality that images seem to have. That's part of their poetic nature, it's part of their iconic nature, and part of what gives them this power, that they somehow exist beyond time. And tuning into that can be really, really helpful in this sense of opening up a more radical relationship with them.

Again, just to touch on something I think I threw out earlier, and just to restate it and amplify it a tiny bit. We talked about -- I can't remember if I used these words -- but the sort of 'octave' of an image, or the 'register' of an image, if we use words from musical metaphors. So, for example, what do I mean by that? I mean the degree of solidity or substantiality that the image seems to have. So, for example, one might have, let's say, an erotic-image. It looks like, and maybe feels like, it feels very solid, earthy, fleshy, and it's maybe got a more raunchy, erotic character or feel to the whole thing. That's one end of the spectrum, if you like, of this register of pitches. That's one octave. Or one might have, in terms of, let's say, events that take place, or characters in the image, it might be a very similar kind of thing, but the whole thing appears more etheric, if you like, more insubstantial. One could say it's happening at a higher pitch. It might be very erotic, without being so obviously sexual, for instance.

So there's not a right or wrong here. That's really, really important. It's not like higher is better. I think some people might say that. Some people might say lower is better, in terms of this register of the images, of the solidity of the image or the substantiality of the image. I would say it's all good. What you'll notice, definitely, again: you can't get away from this dependent arising, so that dependent on the mind state is the sense of, the perception of the substantiality of the image. In other words, when we're in a very, very insubstantial, a state that's perceiving a lot of insubstantiality in the body and in everything else -- perhaps deep emptiness, or deep samādhi, those kind of states, deep mettā -- that mind state will tend to constellate images, or the images that are constellated within that mind state, within that state of consciousness, will tend to be insubstantial. It's dependent arising, dependent on the mind state, the state of consciousness. And it's malleable. You'll find that you can actually transpose an image to another register, another octave -- the same image at another octave, or similar enough, or it changes a bit.

So yes, it's dependent on the mind, and yes, it's malleable, and -- if it's not too much contradiction -- one can also sense at times that this particular image, this is the octave that it belongs in. It belongs in the more earthy, substantial, solid range. Or it belongs in this higher, etheric range. That's part of the tuning and the sensitivity, is actually feeling what feels, let's say, 'right' (without making that too heavy a word). Certainly with an image, certainly with the image or the sense of the self and the body -- that can also have this range of register, of octaves there. And also -- and very importantly; we're going to get more into this -- of the surroundings. In other words, the sense of things and surroundings, or the image-sense of the surroundings of the world, can be very solid and earthy, or very insubstantial. Just pointing that out, again, and seeing if you can notice and learn and play and tune and become sensitive there.

Last thing. All images -- probably most images -- are portable, so to speak. We can transport them to other situations, other postures, other interactions in the day. A person -- this is really quite a while ago -- was telling me how they were beginning to really enjoy playing with bringing in, incorporating, the image of Kuan Yin into their meditations, and particularly into the way they were doing mettā and compassion meditations. This sense of Kuan Yin as a living deity, if you like, a living imaginal figure, also had a complexity of character -- she had different flavours. Sometimes she was very playful, sometimes she was very tender, sometimes she was like a kind of pixie. There was a whole range there of different flavours to her, and therefore to the expression in practice, to her personality, to the kind of love that came out at different times and these different flavours.

So he was enjoying all that, and imagining her, at times -- this is where the portability come in -- actually imagining her in others. So looking at his friend, or talking with a work colleague, and imagining that Kuan Yin was in that person, or expressing through that person, that person was Kuan Yin. Depending on the flavour of Kuan Yin that was manifesting at that time, her particular personality or expression, the quality of love, he would feel devoted to them more generally, but also in different ways depending on the flavour. The relationship changed, anyway, just by seeing them as Kuan Yin, feeling and imagining and sensing them as Kuan Yin, and then within that there was also quite a range of how that felt. So this is very similar, if you know about Mother Teresa and her practice working with, in her words, "the poorest of the poor," and people suffering from leprosy and all kinds of other injuries and sicknesses, etc. Her practice was basically to see everyone as Christ. So she sees the person, and at the same time she sees Christ within them. That was her main practice, in fact, and that was what enabled her to do the amazing work that she did.

An image that comes up a lot for me, in all kinds of different ways, is the image of the jazz musician. I actually was a jazz musician years ago. And the image can come up many different ways. Again, it's something that's portable, sometimes. But its portability is quite subtle. So one might think, with the mind, it's like, "Oh, a jazz musician. That means improvising. So it just means improvise through the day in your work and in your interactions, without having a sort of plan of what to do." It does mean that, or this image can be translated in that way, but also in a lot more subtle ways, which maybe on this retreat I'll go into as an example of something. But the way these images can spill over, there's a real range there, there's a whole variety, and it can be very, very subtle. I'm not even sure I could properly articulate the way the jazz musician image then might come in when I'm talking to someone or listening to them. It's not just about improvisation. It's really quite subtle, in terms of the whole sensibility of self and other and situation, etc.

So, self-image, other-image, self-fantasy, other-fantasy, and they're portable. We also talked about fantasy of the Dharma, and are we aware of what the fantasy is. That's an optional strand, if you like. You can investigate that if you want, or ponder it, or reflect on it, or tune into it. What is the fantasy of the Dharma that you've been entertaining? Basically, to say again, where there is love, where there is a sense of meaningfulness, of beauty, of depth, there you will find fantasy/image/mythos operating. Where there is love, meaningfulness, beauty, depth, soulfulness, etc., there there is a fantasy and image operating. The question is, what is it?

So, we can begin to look at this, and begin to make it portable -- the image, the fantasies of self, the image, the fantasies of other. Play with them. And also of the world and the cosmos. I'm going to say more about this as we go on, the image, imaginal practice in relationship to the world. But you might notice already that images you're working with begin to spread out and sort of suffuse or transform a little bit, or transubstantiate, but they spread out to the wider world, the surroundings, the environment, and even the sense of the whole cosmos. Just to say, for now, it's really okay if that happens -- it's part of the portability; it's part of the work with images. I would expect it to happen. Let it happen. Play with it a little bit. Sensitize to it a little bit. And hopefully we're going to elaborate more about that in the next few days. Okay, that's enough for now.