The Love and Demands of the Imaginal (Part 1)

Hopefully it should be very clear, at least by now, that when we use a word like 'image,' we're indicating something much more in the scope of that than might be indicated by a word like 'metaphor.' So an image, in the way I'm using it, is much more than a metaphor, at least the way we tend to use the word 'metaphor' nowadays. Looking up that word, 'metaphor,' in my dictionary, it gives an example: "He is a lion in battle." That's an example of a metaphor. But that's not really an image so much as you might as well say, "Well, he's very ferocious when it comes to fighting." You could just simply replace it with an adjective such as 'ferocious' or whatever. It's not an image in the way that I mostly want to indicate and open up the meaning of that word, 'image.'

In the metaphor as it's used that way, that doesn't have the sense of aliveness -- that this image, this imaginal figure, has some kind of life, and autonomy, even, of its own; some kind of reality and importance; a depth and richness of its own being, if you like, and what it fertilizes in the psyche, in terms of the meaningfulness, etc. The love that can pass between the self and the imaginal figure, the sense of necessity, and the demand or demands that imaginal figures can seem to bring to us or offer to us, give to us, place on us -- none of that is really there in a metaphor, in the way that we usually use the word 'metaphor.' So an image is much, much more than a metaphor.

Going into this a little bit further, what I want to explore a little bit further, open out a bit more, is these aspects of the imaginal, the aspects of love and necessity and demand from imaginal figures; the way they might love us, the way they might place demands on us, or seem to. So we use those words, 'love,' 'necessity,' 'demand,' and we sense them as we're working with images in imaginal practice, on or off the cushion. Sensing a demand, sensing their love, sensing the necessity of this imaginal figure or image. We sense it and, as we've already said, we also acknowledge, we also recognize that it's sensed and it's given this sense. We give, through our way of looking, through the conceptual framework, we give the sense of demand to the image that we then feel from the image.

In other words, the conceptual framework and the way of looking constellate the sense of the demand, of the love, of the necessity. We sense it and we know that it's given by the way of looking. It's never independent of the way of looking, of the conceptual framework. So we understand, "Yes, dependent arising. Yes, empty." But there's power there, in that balance of understanding. We're not saying, "It's not real, because I'm just making it up." Nor are we losing sight of the fact that it's a dependent arising, dependent on the mind, the conceptual framework, the way of looking. Right there, in that Middle Way, there's a lot of power and aliveness, without the concreteness and the literalizing and the tightening around sort of fundamentalist beliefs around all this stuff.

Again, I would say it's impossible to prove. How would you even begin to prove that this imaginal figure is, so to speak, really placing a demand on me, or really loves me, or whatever? We're not now in the realm of the provable. We're not relating to this, in terms of its reality status, in the way that we would relate to a scientific reality. We're not approaching it that way, in terms of propositions that are provable or not by experiment or this or that. The kind of truth, the kind of reality these images have, are not scientific-style truths, scientific-style realities -- at least classical science, pre-quantum and all that. And they're not even quantum-style truths, realities. It's more like art. You hold things more like art. We're not in the realm of the provable. We're entertaining conceptual frameworks, and seeing: what effects? What opens? What is given birth to? What is fertilized? What direction do things go in when I entertain this conceptual framework, and entertain the idea of love and demand from the imaginal figures?

So we can, as I said before, entertain different conceptual frameworks. We could entertain the idea, or hold the conceptual framework in regard to an image, that this image represents this or that quality or aspect of being that is not yet available to myself. It's something that I haven't yet developed in myself or grown into or whatever. This quality, whatever it is, a psychological quality, will be helpful to me, and balancing for me, balance out other qualities that are available to me that maybe are too strong, etc. And in a way, the image represents something that is for the growth of the self, the psychological or spiritual growth of the self. In that sense, they can be integrated. Many contemporary psychologists would approach imaginal work, work with the imagination, with that kind of conception. It's really, really okay and fine, and if that's what you feel comfortable with, go for it. But as I also pointed out many times, there will be limits to that kind of view. There are limits to that kind of view. It's a limited and limiting view, if we only conceive of images that way. Certainly sometimes that's a perfectly helpful and appropriate way, but there are also other possibilities, which, to me, are more radical and more interesting. Yes, fine to look at it that way, but it's not the only way. To regard things only that way would be limited and limiting.

Sometimes a spontaneous image arises for a person with loving demands, and those loving demands are clearly healing for the human self. There are so many examples I could share of that. The demand from the image is something that's clearly in the service of the human self and the growth that way. So someone on retreat -- it was quite a while ago now, a few years -- they were sharing something of their history and then what happened in their meditation. When they were a little girl (and this is in the early 1950s), they had a serious accident. I don't know exactly what happened. They had a serious accident and were in hospital for some weeks, in hospital, strapped down, immobile, on the hospital bed. In the early fifties, the sort of way the medical system worked there was if a child was in hospital they would not let the parents visit. So the parents were not allowed to visit her. She was very young, in hospital, strapped down, immobile on the bed.

Decades later, decades later in meditation here, she heard a voice, so to speak. She was told to stand up from the meditation and then lie down. So she did that. Then the image, or the sense -- it was a more kinaesthetic sense, rather than visual -- the sense of someone untying, loosening and cutting her restraints, the restraints that were strapping her down on the bed. It was both gentle, this undoing, and also forceful at times. Sometimes it was gentle, sometimes it was forceful. But there was a great sense of release in that, the release from being strapped down in that. Very, very powerful.

And then afterwards, she was sitting outside, outside of the meditation, looking at the trees and the grass, and there were tears. The healing was really flowing in her being, and tears were there. And an image of a baby, held, protected, loved, peaceful -- in a peaceful holding, totally content. And she stayed with that, and the beauty of that image. She said she could actually feel and taste a drop of breast milk on her lips. So sweet, she said, so beautiful. So here's an image very much related to a memory. And the demand, "Stand up, lie down," and then this undoing -- very much on the dimension, if you like, of the human self and the healing of the human self, of past wounding, trauma, if you like.

To give another example -- and I think I might have mentioned this in another talk on another retreat; I can't remember -- someone was relating to me, they were a long-term student of Thích Nhất Hạnh, and had exposure to him through film, and meeting him, and his teachings over the years. They felt that the image of him, and the felt sense of him, she said, "I could feel it in my body," but really what was the specificity about this image, in this case, of Thích Nhất Hạnh, was the sense of his inner authority, and that inner authority that he had in his being, coming out of his continual devotion and alignment over the years to what was important to him, what was deeply most important to him. That sense of his inner authority, in the image, through the image, helped her to connect to hers. With that was this sense of a loving demand, a sense of Thích Nhất Hạnh 'expecting' her (those were her words), expecting her to step into that authority for herself -- the authority, if you like, over her mind, and the authority over what is being chosen, what she chose to cultivate in the present moment: a wakefulness, care, loving-kindness, aliveness, etc. So this benign authority was constellated in the image of Thích Nhất Hạnh, with this loving demand from his image. She felt that aspect, that loving demand, work on her. It was doing something in her being, and very, very helpful on her path.

So certainly sometimes the loving demands come from the images and they're operating very much for the growth of the human, if you like. But as I said, we need to be a bit careful here. Sometimes what happens is the ego -- if we use that word -- makes or wants to make a demand of the image. So the demand is from me to the image. Someone was sharing of this image of a tramp. They weren't a tramp in their life at all, but they could see there was something of that outcast, and the loneliness, and the isolation, and the being shut out, and the being impoverished, and the being looked down on, and the disdain, that constellated as this image. And they could also see somehow the mirroring in their life of that.

The impulse, very understandable, of this man, in relation to this image (he hadn't done a lot of imaginal work) was actually, "Let's invite this tramp into" -- there was an image where he's looking through a window into a family gathering, and it's all cosy and warm with the fire there, etc., and he's outside looking in, something he's shut out of. And very understandably, the inclination was, "Let's let him in there," or "Let's give him a friend," or "Let's give him better clothes," or something, "Bring him in from the cold." Maybe that's important in a way, that movement of the demand from the self to the image, at times.

But yet, as he was telling me about this image, I was also struck by the fact that -- say, in the image of Christ, Christ is also something of a destitute, a wanderer, an outcast. There's something about the holiness of the image itself. Somehow in this tramp, maybe if I look deeper, I see Christ. It doesn't need to suddenly then become shiny and radiant and clean, all the dirt off his clothes and his face. There's something in the complexity. The poor one, the outcast, the one looked down on is the Christ, is the holy one. It's hard for the ego to understand that. It's hard for the usual self-view to understand that, and especially when it's connected or one feels the pain of the mirroring of this image in one's life. We say, "Oh, I want things to be different." It's complex. But really what I'm saying is, it's tricky here; to be sensitive to what are the demands of the image, and what are they serving. What are they serving? If I make demands on the image, what is that serving, and who is that serving? Who is it healing? I don't think there's a right and a wrong here. Certainly in talking with this person, I was very tentative -- I didn't know. I was just voicing something, really.

So yes, sometimes, to be careful of the demand from the self to the image. But it's tricky. Sometimes what happens is, a person is in the image that's happening, that is going on -- is themselves. One sees oneself as an image, or in an imaginal interaction, in a constellation, but one has entered it so fully that one has actually become part of the image. The self-sense has become an imaginal self, differently, and then the demand from that imaginal self is maybe not so much the usual self/ego demand.

As an example, someone was telling me not too long ago they were on a retreat where the teacher was leading a compassion guided meditation, and actually using or offering as a possibility that one could use a figure like Avalokiteśvara or Kuan Yin or Jesus, and see them, imagine them, as the source of the compassion. The teacher said, at one point in this guided meditation, "If it feels okay, put this person -- this deity or human person that's the source of the compassion -- put them behind you in space, so that they are radiating to you from behind." They're radiating that compassion to you from the direction behind.

Now, for this person sharing with me, that image of Avalokiteśvara or Jesus behind soon became her lover. It was the image of her lover behind her. Then a lot of eros, an erotic charge, came into the whole image. Then her lover was entering her sexually. And then it took a whole other level: the lover was removing her skin, she said like unzipping her skin, peeling her skin off, and plunging his hands into her blood and her flesh, pulling her heart out and putting it in his mouth. She said this felt incredibly blissful. Not grotesque or scary, but very, very blissful.

In that case, she felt and saw an image of herself, but she had become image. Her self had entered into the image fully. So she said to her lover in the image, "Take me apart," in this kind of physical, erotic, loving way. The lover took out one of her eyes and then the other, and I think again placed it in his mouth. So she was feeling that she was being emptied in this way, the lover was emptying her in this way, very blissful, very erotic. That was happening from behind, and in front of her was the image of, in this case, her brother, and his suffering and, as she said, his density of being in his suffering, in comparison with the bliss and the emptiness that she was feeling through this erotic compassion that was coming through.

That bliss and emptiness came into contact with the suffering of her brother in the image, like a healing contact of compassion, like we've talked about. It's the contact, the putting in connection of the healing qualities with the suffering. But there wasn't much conscious will going on; it was almost like this was just happening, this movement from behind, with the eros suffusing the compassion and the emptying out and the bliss, and all of that was coming into contact with the person suffering, and as a stream of compassion with a particular flavour.

So there's lots there in that image, and I hope, in the not too distant future, to talk a lot more particularly about eros in relation to the imaginal. But really the point there was that, although sometimes we need to be careful of the demands of the self towards an image if we want to retain the soulfulness aspect, the soulmaking aspect, as opposed to the prioritizing of the self-growth aspect, sometimes we need to be careful about the demands of the self to the image, but sometimes what happens is one sees oneself as image, or one is so much in the image that one can trust the demands. "Take me apart." That was the demand of the self, "take me apart," to this lover and the eros of the situation, the sort of holy fleshiness of the situation, erotic dismembering and emptying. One could, in that case, trust that demand of the self, because the self was so much a part of the fabric of the image -- it wasn't the usual self-stance.

Sometimes we feel or sense a demand from an image, from an imaginal figure, and it can feel like it's stretching us to accept that demand, to bow to it, to take it on. It feels like it stretches us. There's some kind of trial there. It involves, maybe, a trial, and there's the discomfort of being stretched, and the kind of trial of that. So maybe the image and the imaginal figure, what's implicit there in the demand, or where they take us, or just being in contact with them, they take us beyond the circumference of the world that we know and the social scene that we know, or the Dharma scene that we know, or the culture or community whose ideas and whose range of acceptable behaviour and the whole sort of world-view of that culture -- might take us beyond that. We might move on. The image is showing us something, pulling us towards something, and that we're moving out, breaking through the circumference, the limits of that world-view and the culture and that community, moving on.

There might be, if that's the case, as it is in some cases, a kind of loneliness on the human or social level that comes out of the demand or, if you like, taking on or accepting the demand of an image. Sometimes it's the opposite: it might be that actually something in this image is calling us into more relationship, where we actually feel like, "Oh, that would be too much work, or too much hassle, or I don't really feel inclined to enter deeper into the community that way and take up a certain position in the community of responsibility or centrality or something." But there's a demand, generally speaking, and it can be that it feels quite a stretch. Something in us is being stretched, again, beyond the usual range of, let's say, the self, or the ego, if we use those words.

Again, to really make this clear, a demand like that, or any demand, is not inherent in the image, really. We are choosing a conceptual framework. When we talk about demands this way, we're choosing a conceptual framework, choosing to adopt a conceptual framework that nourishes, deepens, enrichens, widens, supports soulfulness, soulmaking, and the beauty and the meaningfulness and all of that. So that's really what we're doing. It's not inherent, this demand. We're choosing a conceptual framework that incorporates that, a conceptual framework that supports the soulmaking, that nourishes the soulmaking, and a conceptual framework, then, when images and archetypes are somehow bigger than the self. Rather than being in the self, they're bigger than the self. There's something, in some way, kind of eternal -- or better to say timeless -- about them, about these imaginal figures. Something, in some way, autonomous about them. Something, in some particular way, real. They have a kind of reality and a kind of divinity. I'm aware these are all loaded words, loaded concepts. But we're adopting consciously a conceptual framework that entertains lightly those kind of views. And that with all that, they have demands. That's part of the conceptual view that we're entertaining, and that the self serves them, rather than the other way round, that these imaginal figures, or archetypal figures, or daimons, are in the service of the self.

So this is tricky, in many ways. And again, to point out that entertaining or allowing a notion of demand from the imaginal figure, it needs this view of liquidity, this alchemical maxim of "do not proceed until everything has turned to liquid." That needs to be there, in the sense of we see that way, we see the liquidity (the emptiness, in other words), the insubstantiality of this, in order to have the right relationship with this notion of demand as part of our conceptual framework. It's not literal. The ego is not getting too stuck on this and relating to it too literally. It is -- I keep using this word -- tricky, I think. There's a real subtle Middle Way here, as I said.

Someone was telling me (this was, again, some years ago), a woman was sharing in an interview her -- well, she was talking about her past lovers and things, and a sense of resentment at not being met by lovers equally. I asked, "In what way have you felt not met equally?" And she explained a bit about that. She also shared that from quite an early age in her life she was aware that she was very attractive to many men, and also that she had sort of -- what would you say? -- an intuitive wisdom, a deep sensitivity in the areas of the erotic and the romantic. She was in her element in that, and deeply attractive to many men. We were talking; it's almost like she was sort of an embodiment of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and the erotic, etc., and erotic love. Almost as this figure within her, this goddess, if you like, that was coming through (let's call her Aphrodite), it wanted her beauty and her sensitivity and intuitive wisdom in regards to love and eros and sexuality, etc., it wanted that to be seen, to be recognized, and even a little bit to be worshipped.

Now, how close that is to a kind of ego wanting those things, ego wanting to be seen and to be regarded as beautiful and to be even worshipped. We think, "What an ego trip." Maybe. Maybe some of that gets mixed into this kind of thing at times. But maybe something else is coming through at times, that is in the nature of, in this case, the divinity that was coming through or the imaginal figure that was coming through, and (I'll return to this later) that part of that is that it's not an ego thing when that's wanting to be recognized. If you say, "God wants to be recognized," "The soul wants to be seen," "Something of holiness here wants to be seen," that's different from a purely ego wanting or craving. As I said, very tricky, and sometimes you get these things mixed -- perhaps more often than we might think. We tend to dismiss something as ego. No, have a closer look. Sense more deeply, more soulfully into what's going on.

All this brings up the question: what is healing? When we talk about healing in all these different ways, what do we mean? What does that word mean? Who is healed? What is healed? What is freed? Who is being freed and healed? The ego, or something else? I'm going to return to this. But just to put that question out now: what do we mean by 'healing'? Who is being healed? What is being healed? What is being freed?

Sometimes with the demand that we feel from an image, that we sense from the image, it's often quite subtle. I've mentioned this before: it might be just to behold the imaginal figure, just to witness the imaginal figure. There's nothing else other than to behold it, to stay with it, to look at it, to sense it, to feel into it. In so doing, in doing that, the soulfulness is nurtured and enriched and deepened and expanded. The psyche is expanded, because the soulfulness is expanded, and the range of image is expanded. With that, the love of this image, eros is expanded, and the conceptual framework is also expanded, as we talked about the other day.

So with all that, libido -- and I mean that more in the sense of the whole psychic energy that's available in the whole system, not just the sexual energy -- the libido also grows, just from beholding and witnessing an image, and seeing its beauty, and feeling our love for it, and feeling its holiness and the meaningfulness and the soulfulness. Something is fertilizing. The psyche, the eros, and the logos -- all of that gets expanded. And usually it's very gradual. It's a gradual movement. And gradually the sense of sacredness, of meaningfulness, expands. It's deepened, it's enriched. I'm going to come back to this soon in another talk. But partly through just engaging imaginal practice meditatively, something starts gradually expanding. The sense of sacredness starts spilling over into life. Life becomes multi-levelled. We start feeling life, and sensing it, perceiving life as richer, more sacredness and meaningfulness everywhere, multidimensional. That's a gradual movement. So the demand that seems to go with an image can often be very subtle. But it's powerful in its gradual effect, just beholding, just witnessing.

Sometimes the love and demand from an image is not obvious. It's much more implicit, if you like. I remember, it wasn't too long ago, a year and a half or something. I was mostly finished writing my book on emptiness. It was a huge amount of work with that, and that that involved. I had sent away to the publisher the manuscript, etc., and got the proofs back. And it was so full of mistakes that they had made, and formatting errors, etc. In the meditation I was, again, curious to explore the whole relationship with writing the book from the perspective of imaginal practice rather than just emptiness practice, which I already knew quite well.

So, in the meditation, I had this figure who had come relatively often in the course of writing the book. It was a master sculptor in a sort of underground cave. A master sculptor and his apprentice. And I tended in the image to be more in the position of the apprentice to this master sculptor. The master communicates in some way -- it wasn't quite a verbal dialogue -- he communicates, "One has to finish it. Nearly there." He's talking about the sculpting, but this is a very clear example of how it's mirroring, in this case, something that's in my life -- the writing of the book. "One has to finish it. Nearly there." He is, this master sculptor, basically a perfectionist. He has to be. That is the kind of, if you like, the moral code, the ethos, of masters and apprentices like these. He pushes the apprentice to the limit. He's quite stern, and he's not a pushover. He sets tasks and limits, and he's very firm with it. That's the moral code, and the moral code of perfectionism as well. There's a lot of power in that, in a good way. There's a lot of energy in that. He's communicating, "You do it right. You do it as perfect as possible and to the highest standard possible. That's just what we do. That's how we do things."

There's a big rock, either to be carved, or he's half-carving it into a sculpture; he's sort of a little way through it. It's a big rock there, and he touches it, and brushes the carving dust from it with his fingers that's left there. Sometimes it feels like that rock is my body. Somehow he is, through this relationship, carving me, and carving my body. In this case, as I said, this is one of those images where there is a very clear -- or seemed to be a very clear -- parallel between what was happening in the life and the image. I ask, in a non-verbal way, about time and rushing, having so much other work and commitments to do, and wanting to move on, my wanting to move on to other work and other explorations. He said, "It doesn't matter, as long as it's done well. It doesn't matter how long it takes. It doesn't matter how you feel about it."

So there's a clear demand there. The love that was there is much more implicit -- it's not obvious. Even as I'm relating to that, I'm aware that it doesn't sound like there's much love there. But there was a real love there. It's just not the obvious kind of love, and it's not getting stated so explicitly. But this master loves his apprentice, and cares for him, and is really sculpting him and shaping him through love. It's just a certain quality or character of love. That love has a certain mode of expression that is particular to it and unique to it. And it's implicit in the image; it's not obvious.

Another imaginal figure that kind of visits relatively often for me is John Coltrane, clearly a historical figure, and someone I love very much. He comes to me sometimes when I'm meditating, and curiously always sits in the same place in my room, just in front and a little bit to the left, facing me, on a ledge. And sometimes he's, in terms of work or creative output or things of different kinds, he's much more gently but firmly encouraging. There's something about him, just his physical presence, a very sort of heavy-set, strong, African American figure, in his body. There's something about his resolution, and his commitment to his path, and the force that came through him, and everything that that cost him, and his steadiness with that over the years. He had a short life, actually. He died when he was 40. But there's something in him communicating, with a kind of kindness, encouraging me gently and firmly. So there the love is obvious. The demand was more implicit. It was coming through a more gentle and encouraging mode, but it was actually uncompromising. It's like, "You know, you don't just give in or stop because something is difficult or it's challenging or people don't understand," or this or that. He also got a lot of -- it was difficult for him as his music became more avant-garde, and people didn't understand.

So sometimes the love is not so obvious; it's implicit, whereas the demand is obvious. Sometimes the demand is more implicit, less obvious, where the love seems more obvious. Sometimes the demand that the image seems to convey to us, communicate to us, it feels strong and obvious, but it's not necessarily practically clear what it means or what it implies or what it's totally practically asking for.

Do you remember some days ago I shared the image of the person listening to the public lecture and feeling that actually what was being said was quite stupid and offensive, but she felt most of the other people in the room were thinking that it was brilliant, and then suddenly this huge phoenix appears and fills the room with its magnificence and nobility? She shared some more specifically about the demand, which I'd like to share with you. I can't remember if this is from an email that she [wrote] -- I don't remember -- and these are exactly her words, or if I wrote it down after we met, so it's slightly paraphrased. But let's say these are her words: "The bird showing up that way could easily sound like a revenge fantasy of sorts, and there certainly was raging going on. But when I feel into it, it's as if the phoenix isn't really concerned about engaging in dialogue with stupidity at all."

In other words, it doesn't want revenge or to make this person look stupid publicly or anything like that. She said, "It's not even insouciant; it's not even like it's totally carefree. It's just that by its very presence, it's seeing through and manifesting a different stance than what was being broadcast publicly by this speaker." It's manifesting a different stance, and it's changing everything just by being there. This is the bit about the demand. She said, "It feels like it's asking me to behold it, to bear witness to the beauty. Or not only bear witness -- it feels like it wants the beauty to be burnt into and carried by my heart. Somehow it's asking me to witness it, and somehow in that, it wants the beauty to be burnt into and carried by my heart." This is her words. "There's a very profound sense of being asked to serve, and I'm not sure what that means." Again, sometimes it's strong, but it's not really clear what it means.

She goes on, "And to exercise discernment. The demand is to exercise discernment. And it's asking me to be bold." So all these demands are implicit and strongly communicated, and very touching, and all part of the beauty. But they're not exactly clear, where they apply or what they mean, or what their broader rippling out effect or expression in the life is, manifestation in life. It's not practically clear.

As I said, sometimes the demand is just to behold, just to honour and see the divinity of something, or the beauty of something, to honour that that we're witnessing. Somehow, in my life, I'm honouring this imaginal figure and everything that they communicate and bear and are and express. Sometimes it might be that we are called to act in life, in our life, or choose, or tread a certain path. Sometimes it bears fruit in some physical manifestation, physical form or other, or physical expression or other. Sometimes it's just honouring something in the soul, so to speak, and that's the demand. Sometimes we're actually needing to manifest and express something. It's, again, tricky, and sometimes difficult to discern or feel into: what's being demanded here? If it's an acting and a choosing in life, then what is the exact expression?

We said really to be careful with the kind of literal, concretized mimicking of what the image is. So if it's asking for something to be acted on or chosen in my life, I need to make a certain choice, to manifest something, what is that? Some images seem to want that, and some images don't seem to need that. It's on another level, just the honouring. But if it's the acting, it needs a physical manifestation somehow, then what? And what about the ethics involved? Again, this is -- I keep using this word -- tricky. This is complex. Rich territory to explore, and not an easy, simple discernment and exploration.

Sometimes we might be tempted to say, "Let's put the ethics primary. Let's put the ethics very clear as a sort of boundary and framework and basis. Let's make those primary, not the images primary." And then we feel that's safer. I think there is and there may be a real wisdom in adopting that kind of stance or that kind of position. But even that -- I think sometimes we can be a little naïve, or at least unaware, how much our ethical responses, or our absence or lack of ethical responses in life, is shaped by fantasy and mythos. I remember some years ago giving a talk about this, "The Necessity of Fantasy," actually trying to point out that it's the mythos, the fantasy, that shapes the ethos, the ethics.

This has really changed now, but some years ago, one could have looked at the Dharma scene -- or it's changing, let's say -- one could have looked at the Dharma scene and said, "Why is there so little response to the global environmental catastrophes and the problem of climate change? Why is there so little Dharma response to that, or so little even acknowledgment that that needs to get included in what we mean by Dharma practice and ethics? Why is it that so few Dharma people are speaking up and taking a stand and being bold with that?" That's a very complex question. There's lot involved there. As I said, it's definitely changing, in the years since then. But one of the reasons may be because of the dominant Dharma fantasies, if you like, that are more in line with the figures of equanimity and non-action, not getting involved. The revolutionary has not been such a dominant myth or fantasy or imaginal figure in the range of myths that are present in the Dharma, that fertilize the Dharma. And because of that, it limits the range of responses or the range of even what's included.

So this is interesting, the whole relationship between mythos and ethos, imaginal figures and fantasies and ethics. What happens with terrorists, you could say, "Well, they really have all this imaginal stuff going," in the sense of demand and duty and all that. The problem there is they're not understanding it as image. They're not seeing image as image. So jihad, holy war, is a completely literalized concept. Not actually seeing it as a poetic image, it's something that one acts on in a totally literal way. That's a fundamentalist belief going on there in regard to images, completely unaware of the soul-element of this, if you like, and seeing image as image.

What happens if we trust this view, this seeing image as image, and we use the energy body as a navigator, as I've explained? There's a lot here. We're touching on what we touched on before, about trust, and navigating all this and learning to trust. So often, scary images turn out to be real treasures. That black devil man who was around for decades is still around. He has become much less scary. The practitioner is no longer scared of him. She's kind of learnt to trust him. But he hasn't, through that, become some kind of simple, desexualized nice guy. He's still the black devil man. But he's an ally. Something deeply important and trustable there. Or the black hag figure that I shared the other day from someone else. She retains that black hag character, but she's no longer scary. So they're not what they seem at first, images. And again, the way of looking affects how they unfold and how they shape -- always, always, that dependent arising, dependent on the mind and the way of looking. Seeing image as image, knowing image as image, and entertaining this assumption of their benevolence -- very crucial, these aspects of the way of looking. They really are very helpful in allowing the image to grow and fulfil its potential, you could say. Seeing image as image, and the assumptions of benevolence -- they're part of the fabrication, the shaping of the image there. Just like, as we pointed out, in a nightmare.

There's also this -- again, we talked about this the other day -- but there's this sense of trusting the archetypal necessity in the image, this treasure. Perhaps trusting an archetypal necessity eventually at the centre of pathological behaviour. At the core of it might be something archetypal, perhaps addiction or some other inclination or whatever. Sometimes in something like that, we could say in the terms of classical mythology, it's Dionysus sometimes, the wild god of wine and ecstasy. And Dionysus has certain demands. What are the demands? Do they need acting on? What happens when I see image as image? What happens when I feel it more in the body? What needs acting on, and what can just be honoured?

Sometimes in that sort of thing, it's too simple to say, "That's always it." I'm not saying that's always at the core of, say, alcoholic addiction. I don't mean to imply that at all. But sometimes there's something like that, some other god or archetypal necessity, at the centre of something that looks just a mess of pathology. Something else is going on there. There are other demands that are not being seen in the right way and honoured. What happens if, if that's the case, and if a person feels into that, and feels into it with everything that we've been talking about with imaginal practice, all the richness and the nuance and the sensitivity of practising with that, and the conceptual framework, seeing image as image, using the energy body, trusting it, and recognizing an archetypal necessity? Just that view, what might that do in relation to the pathological behaviour or the addiction or whatever?

Some of you will know, one of the things that keeps addictions spinning, keeps the loop of addiction spinning, one ingredient there is shame. It's part of the vicious cycle. Typically, an addict will engage in their addiction, and then afterwards feel shame. That shame actually is very difficult to bear. It propels another cycle of addictive behaviour. It's almost like what they call 'acting out,' because the shame is very hard to tolerate. One gets caught in this self-fulfilling prophecy, if you like, about how useless one is or what a bad person one is. Addiction behaviour leads to shame; shame leads to more addiction behaviour. Just looping like that. But if sometimes a person can recognize the beauty, the unusual beauty, the unusual treasure, the unusual archetypal necessity or god, if you like, the god at the centre of that pathology, and the demands of that god, and honour what that is, who that is, then that dissolves a lot of the shame. What was seen as shameful has now come to be seen as divine. Completely different. That opens the possibility of a different way of relating with the whole addictive pattern and everything that's included there. The shame is gone, and the shame is what propels this vicious cycle. It might be dissolved a little bit and replaced with something much more deeply, deeply respectful. That might have a big effect, in terms of the suffering there.

So these may be, for a lot of people, unusual kind of views, this trusting, this deeply trusting the treasure that an image is, even if it looks weird, or pathological, or dark, or whatever it is, or even trusting the archetypal necessity running through what looks a mess or fucked up or whatever in our life. Sometimes artists sense this easier, or can sense this kind of -- what's operating in their psyche, or in the psyche. They can sense that easier, sometimes, than other people. So Picasso said, at one point, "Painting is stronger than I am. It does what it wants with me." There's a sense -- if you also read some of the writings, not the poems, of T. S. Eliot, or Rilke, or other poets -- there's really this sense of something bigger making a demand on the being, and the way that is not always necessarily so easy, but it feels important.

So again, to say again, these things, these imaginal figures, they have a certain autonomy, and so the autonomy to be able to make a demand. But that is not quite the same as saying they're completely independent. That black devil man we were just talking about, or we've seen instances I've shared where an image surprises one: "I could never have thought of that." And so there's an indication of the image's autonomy there. But for example, that black devil man came again in an image, and had his back to this meditator, and then he turned around towards her. In her imagination, she took one step towards him. This is more recently, years after the more difficult relationship with him. She took one step towards him in her imagination, but he kept her away with the palm of his hand, and an outstretched arm on her sternum. Very firm: "Keep your distance." This was very perplexing to her. It was something that he suddenly did. She realized, "Oh, he's really not in my control. He's not wholly in my control. There's an autonomy here." But autonomy doesn't necessarily mean independence, independent from the mind or the way of looking. Nothing is independent of the mind and the way of looking. That gesture of his was also contingent on her gesture of stepping towards him. So there's autonomy; that's not the same as being independent and having an independent existence, independent of the view that's entertained, or of the actions of the self in relation to the image.

But this sense we have of imaginal figures and the conceptual framework there -- potentially very powerful, very radical. A retreatant said to me a little while ago, "We are doors," she said, "We are doors for what wants to come through." Again, it's a way of looking, a conceptual framework that's being entertained in saying that, or in realizing that. And in that conceptual framework, the human self is somehow less than or within the imaginal figure. The imaginal figure is somehow more. We are just the door for what wants to come through.

Even more radically put, Henry Corbin used to say:

It's not your individuation that is your task. It's the angel's individuation that is your task.^[1]

'Individuation' was a word he borrowed from Jung, meaning growing into the fullness of your particular unique personality, and that self-growth implied there. So not your growth, your path, your individuation, but the angel's. That's your task. So again, there's a shift in view here. We're entertaining a view of the psyche, a view of psychology, a view of the self, a view of the soul, a view of images, and also of divinity and what is of value. All that is wrapped up in that sentence, "Not your individuation, but the angel's individuation is your task." There's this kind of reversal of the usual way of seeing existence, and what the self is, and what these imaginal figures are.