Transcription
In a few minutes, we'd like to do a bit of an experiment, to be honest. It's a guided meditation. But I think it's worth taking a few minutes. It might be helpful, just a few minutes after that, to recap a little in terms of meditation and instructions, what we've been doing, just for the sake of you guys being clear. There's a lot we're putting out, and sometimes it's hard to discern between things or navigate or understand how it all fits together.
So very briefly to recap. Some of you might want to write this down, because it will help you keep it clear. Or maybe you have a mind that can just keep hold of these things. You could say that there are five directions we've offered so far already as meditative directions or intentions. I'm using those words deliberately. They're intentions and directions. Partly why I'm saying that is because all five are actually interrelated. They overlap. They will occur at the same time. There'll be mixtures in the moment in practice. Sometimes two of them are happening, or five of them are happening, or whatever. To help us get clear, help you get clear in the moment, you can think of them as, "What's my actual intention here? What am I trying to do right now in practice? Where am I gently encouraging the practice to move towards? What am I emphasizing right now among that mix?" They overlap. They're interconnected. They feed each other. But one way of thinking about it is five different directions (but they're not really different).
(1) The first is samādhi, by which I mean (very briefly to say) tending to, caring for, gently encouraging a sense of well-being in the energy field, in the feeling of the space that my body occupies, and the mind occupying that space and enjoying that well-being, whether it's intense or whether it's really quite unremarkable. Some sense of harmony, of well-being there. The intention of samādhi is not so much whether that's happening or not, or how good it feels. It's more [that] that's what I'm gently working on. I'm tending to that. I'm encouraging it. That makes it, at that time, a samādhi practice, you could say. It might actually feel quite difficult at times, but that's still my intention: I'm working with a difficulty, to smooth out the difficulties or the wonkiness in the system or whatever. But my intention is not so much what's happening; it's what's my intention with what's happening. Gently nourishing, shaping the feeling of the energy body towards more well-being. We could call that samādhi. You could develop that for years, all of these things. There's skill involved and different things. But that's the first.
(2) The second is a caring for and an attention to the emotional life and the emotional unfolding in the moment, again via the energy body. Sometimes it's working with the difficult: here's this heartache, here's this grief, here's this anger, here's this contraction. Sometimes it's just a much subtler emotional state, like boredom, or I don't know, something subtler like that. It includes working with the difficult. It might also include working with the lovely, and opening to that, being with that, and watching that in the energy body. Or it's just something that's really quite neutral, but still my focus and my intention is to be with, to watch, to care for, to hold, to be sensitive to what's happening emotionally. As Catherine was talking about this morning, there's all kinds of skill involved, and a lot of stuff from other retreats, and mindfulness practice, and insight meditation that you know and you can bring that to bear. And in the talks that we asked you to listen to before the retreat, lots of ways of working, and skilful ways of working with the emotions. So that's the second.
(3) The third is the imaginal. This could be a spontaneous image that arises. You're sitting in meditation, or out of meditation, whatever, and an image arises, and it feels like, "Oh, this is interesting. This is helpful. It feels resonating in my soul." And you go with that spontaneous image. It could also be a deliberately invoked image, something that has been meaningful and helpful to you in the past. Maybe the past is just the last sitting, you know. It came for the first time an hour ago? Fine. Bring it up again if it feels helpful. So there's the deliberate invoking, calling to mind, calling into presence and into relationship with an imaginal image. It doesn't have to be only the imaginal figure of love that we did on the first day; it can be anything, as long as it feels soulmaking, touches my soul. It doesn't have to be love. It doesn't have to be a certain kind of love. Love comes in a lot of different flavours, yeah? But it can be spontaneous or deliberate with the imaginal.
(4) The fourth one is what I've been calling cosmopoesis. So this is more, the senses are open to the world around us and others around us, and we're seeing that -- again, either spontaneously or deliberately -- seeing others, seeing the earth, seeing the cosmos, seeing it, sensing it other than we usually do. We're sensing it as divine in some way -- on this retreat, particularly a divine that involves the imaginal. We'll say more about this. But here there's an opening. We talked about opening the eyes, opening the senses. It's not so much just an imaginal figure 'inside,' so to speak. We're actually sensing life through image, sensing the cosmos through image. That's what I call cosmopoesis. It's creative.
(5) The fifth one is really just to say energy body again. All of this is going to be, as much as possible, done with sensitivity to the energy body. What do we mean by 'energy body'? We mean a whole range. It's just how this feels. It can be very solid; we're really talking about a sense of earthiness and solidity. That's just a range on the possible frequencies of how the energy body can be experienced. Or it can be very ethereal, very light and luminous, and translucent and spacious. It's all just the range of the energy body. Within the working with the energy body, we talked yesterday about the possibility of actually listening to the energy body, feeling it, and it manifesting in movement or posture, and letting yourself explore that. How do the hands want to be? What posture do I want to adopt? What movements do I want to adopt? Sometimes keeping the physical body still, and just feeling the inner imaginal body, if you like, the energy body actually dancing, moving in a certain posture. Yeah?
[8:23] So those are the five. They all overlap. What you'll get sometimes is here's an emotion, it's difficult, I'm working with it, and then at some point it gives birth to an image. Then I come into relationship with the image, and the image affects the emotion. Maybe from the image actually comes some well-being. Everything is going to affect everything else. What matters, I think, for clarity, is just being clear what's going on, but also, what am I emphasizing right now? Because I could be working with an image -- a couple of people wrote this in a note -- working with an image, and then out of the image a very nice feeling comes. There, I have a choice: I can stay with the relationship with the image, resonating with all the soulmaking, beautiful fecundity and complexity of the image, aware and enjoying that it feels nice. Great! Or I can almost emphasize more the well-being in the body, and maybe the image fades or goes to the background. Then I'm leaning more in a samādhi direction. It's just about controlling my glider a little bit: "What currents are here? Ah, I'll ride that one. Okay, now this one."
An image can spill over into cosmopoesis. All this, they're all connected. It's just to be aware what's happening, and then actually at some point, "Okay, if this is happening, do I want to shift gears or shift direction, and make an intentional shift to emphasize this or that?"
So that's that. Let's do this experiment. We're going to start with a mantra, a mantra that probably many of you will be familiar with -- the syllables Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ. It's the mantra of Avalokiteśvara from the Buddhist pantheon. He's the bodhisattva of compassion. There are many different ways to work with mantras, many different ways, and many different meanings associated with them. Some people, when they start going into Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ, "What does it mean?", each syllable has a very specific resonance in certain tantric teachings. Oṃ is the opening to the universal, some people say, and hūṃ of the Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ is the embodiment. We could do all that, but actually what you find is different interpretations, often completely contradictory, which is interesting given what we've emphasized on this retreat. It reinforces the idea that all this is creative. They're just ways of looking. We can adopt and shape this how we want. But rather than be very specific about what this means or that means or what it should do, again, we would like to emphasize more a kind of looser, more poetic, creative approach to this. So this mantra can unfold in all kinds of ways. It can have all kinds of meanings that will be different from one person to the next, etc.
Some of you are familiar with this mantra, and you've probably heard different melodies for it. This relates to what I was talking about yesterday with compassion and love. It's the mantra of compassion. We could use a melody and sing it in a way that's full of yearning, full of the pathos and the tearful resonances with the pain of the world. That would be one flavour of orienting the thing. Or a certain tenderness, a beautiful tenderness, or just a spaciousness, or a kind of healing quality. All this is possible as characteristics of compassion, which can be translated musically into the melody and the way that it's sung.
Partly why this is an experiment, what I want to get at today is, funnily enough, not so much emphasizing the obvious aspect of compassion. I want to use the mantra, see if it's possible to use the mantra, to open some kind of cosmopoesis for us. So the interest is more in the transformation of the sense of the world, the sense of what the world is, than so much in invoking compassion -- but again, overlapped, and it's all subjective as to what musical character gives rise to what.
So let's just do this! [laughs] And see what happens. If you want to come into a meditative posture that feels comfortable. And Catherine and I will chant a little bit until you get the melody and then join in. But let's come into your posture first. As always, settle into the posture.
[14:07, guided meditation begins]
Is it possible to let the centre of the awareness be in the heart centre? Rather than in the head centre or anywhere else, it's that the centre of your awareness is in the middle of the chest, in the heart. Just letting the awareness be centred there, and move outward to the whole energy body and the whole space from that centre. Sitting in the heart, in the energy body, open. Opening that space. Filling it with awareness.
Although we're not emphasizing it so much, there is compassion being intended and radiated through this chanting. Let that be part of it, that there are blessings coming forth from your heart. There's at least the intention for compassion, for care, for love, for healing and tenderness, to yourself, to all beings, and actually to the whole world. Part of what's happening here is there's this radiating out of that. It doesn't mean you feel it all the time; it just means that that's the intention. That's included in the intention.
Catherine will start the chant, and we'll join in. When you feel like you kind of get the melody, please join in, and let yourself sing it, but connected to the energy body. Then I will guide us as we go.
[16:49, Catherine chants]
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
[Everyone joins]
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: As you keep chanting, see if you can feel your throat and your chest open.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: And listen. Listen as well.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: The chanting, the air, and the intention open you up.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Let it open up the whole energy body.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: It's radiating to expand the energy body, and fill out, radiate out from the energy body.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: The intention, the sound, comes from the whole of you, pouring outwards in all directions.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Opening, trusting the goodness of your intention.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Letting it take form, take embodiment, through sound.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Through the expressions of your body.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Now, Catherine will continue the chant, and you guys fall silent, but listen.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Let it echo in your being.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: The resonances of sound and of soul and of love.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Of beauty, of sacredness.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: So, enchanting -- we are en-chanting.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: A spell, an invocation, magic.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: In a way, the mantra, the sounds, are actually echoing something that is already present -- something woven into the cosmos, part of the fabric of the cosmos.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: These sounds that are more than sounds, mantra, divine speech.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: In the incantation, in the chanting, we're joining in. We're adding to something that's already here, already everywhere, a dimension of the cosmos.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Just very loosely, lightly, without pressure, in the opening, can you get a sense the syllables, each syllable, is a jewel? These jewels, infinite jewels, spread throughout the cosmos. Everywhere. Already existing, this divine speech.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Jewels that are creative elements, cosmic powers, part of the magical fabric of things.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: They are prayer. These jewels, woven into the fabric of things, are prayer, blessing, praise.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Jewels of many colours, beauty, holiness.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Divinity.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Now, let it go silent for a bit. Can you have that mantra internally? Very lightly, very spaciously, very delicately. But it's still this more cosmic sense. It's the echoes in your mind, the roots of which are divine. The roots of your mind, of your consciousness, echoing, resonating with the mantra that is everywhere. Maybe it's the whole melody. Maybe just very faint echoes, filaments. Maybe it gets fainter. But the sense of the jewels, the mantra as jewels, that can stay. Just open, open. Maybe it has the internal mantra, maybe very faintly, maybe it's faded. These jewels of the imaginal realm that pervade the cosmos, the beauty of that, everywhere, within, without, all around.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Actually, can we hear all sounds as mantra, all sounds as divine speech?
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: So it's in Catherine's voice, it's in my voice.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: It's in the coughing, and the sneezing, and the shuffling. It's in the birdsong. It's in the wind.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Open, hearing all sounds as mantra.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Through these jewels, the divine is blessing all of creation. And creation isn't other than the divine.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: The divine is blessing itself.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Blessing its blessing.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: No need to get tight. We're opening to something. We're opening to a poetic/artistic possibility. Very delicate.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Maybe you get a sense that not just sounds, but everything, body sensations, sights, all things are these jewels.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: All things, all appearances, all phenomena, all experiences: divine speech.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Beautiful jewels.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Again, if we just go into silence for a bit. So it's not so much about sound, inner sound or outer sound. Perhaps that fades, the echoes in the mind fade. But this more pervasive sense in all the senses, something more subtle, more magical, a cosmopoesis -- involving, including, all of the senses. This is actually what we're tuning into. This is, if you like, the 'object,' so to speak, of the meditation. It's not necessarily in one place spatially; it's everywhere. No need to push anything. Just gently opening and encouraging something subtle. When you're ready, still in this awareness, if you can keep this awareness and, when you're ready, opening your eyes. Letting it come into the sight, as well, just a little bit. All things, sights, sounds, the plane overhead, the bird outside: jewels.
[36:21] Now, we could try one more thing. See if we can transition to standing up and putting the mats to the side of the room, but seeing if you can do that with awareness of the energy body. Just paying attention to the energy body in the transition of the movement. We're going to just do one last thing with this chant. Just see, without pressure, if you can feel the body space as you're moving. So there's the mindfulness there of the body.
And then let's sort of homogenously fill the room. Again, in the standing posture, just connecting with the energy body. Letting that space, a bit bigger than you -- filling it out with awareness. But again, seeing if you can let that awareness centre in the heart centre, in the middle of the chest. Allowing and including what's moving through emotionally right now, whatever that is. It has a place. It's welcome. So aware of the heart, aware of the space of the energy body. Aware, too, of the sensations with the feet. But you're in that energy body space. You're filling that with awareness. Catherine will start chanting again, and the same cosmopoesis, the same encouragement to that art, that poetry.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: There's openness in the listening, receptivity, but there's also poetry.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: It's a creative listening, creatively allowing the ripples, the radiation.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Creative sensing of yourself, of the world around you.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Creative receptivity.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Let the eyes open, if they're not already.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Stay connected to your heart, to your soul, to the energy body, the resonances.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Opening the senses. Now, is it possible to walk slowly around the room, walking between each other, keeping this sensibility, this openness, this creative receptivity?
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: It doesn't have to be super slow, but whatever feels like it works for you.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: You don't have to make eye contact, but you can if you want.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: But open to these beings around you, here in this room.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Who are these beings? What are these bodies?
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Are they not also jewels?
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Is not each one a thousand jewels?
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Sensitive to the energy body, sensitive to the heart, the soul. But open. The senses open.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Open to the mysterious depths of otherness.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: The divinity of these bodies, of these beings.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: And then just wherever you are, coming to stillness.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
Rob: Open to your experience.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ ...
Rob: Allowing the fullness of whatever is here -- energy, soul-resonances, heart-resonances.
Catherine: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ hrīḥ, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.
[45:45, guided meditation ends]
Rob: And then just dwelling together in the silence with that awareness. Eyes might be open, or closed if you prefer right now. There's a maṇḍala here. Maybe as we were moving, it was a fluid maṇḍala. The bodies, the objects, make a maṇḍala. Okay. Now can we re-transition to the sitting posture with the same kind of awareness of the energy body, etc.? When you're ready. These transition times are interesting times, in terms of staying connected.
So there are all kinds of possibilities. Maybe you start to get a sense of so many possibilities. Even if we were to hear back, if we had time for that, we'd hear a lot of different variations in terms of the individual experiences. This goes for all imaginal practice and what we're calling cosmopoesis. But there's a movement, generally speaking, a movement out into seeing, sensing, knowing, perceiving the world, the cosmos, differently, cosmopoetically. So the movement is out, to include. Eventually, everything is included. Nothing is excluded. So hearing all sounds as mantra. This is just one exercise, one way into doing something. But one of the emphases is all sounds, so even the sounds that are not pretty, or the sounds of tears, as Catherine was saying this morning about re-enchanting dukkha, and last night. Even the sound of pain, of dukkha, even the sounds of the planes overhead, or the not-so-pretty sounds, the movement or the inclination is all sounds, and then eventually all things. That's the movement of cosmopoesis. It's outward and inclusive. That's the sort of encouragement there.
In what we just did, you can enter something like that in a number of ways. All this is very creative. As I keep saying, it's art, it's play. Experiment, find out. You can go in like we did via the mantra, actually verbalizing and chanting a mantra. You can also start it via sound. For instance, when I shared the story about listening to the birdsong, and then the birdsong becomes a kind of imaginal birdsong, if you like, in the way that it connects. So rather than starting with the mantra, you actually start by just listening. In the listening, in the openness to listening to whatever it is, the sounds get imbued imaginally, and there comes a cosmopoesis.
You might start with an intention to hear all sounds as mantra. So there's no actual mantra, vocalized or internal, but my intention is to hear all sounds as divine speech. Or maybe I'm just listening, and through my openness, like I said, I'm just open, listening, and something transforms in the hearing, in the perceiving, the art of perception, the poetry of perception. Or it might be that something like what we did, or some other meditation, there's a memory of a certain cosmopoesis, a certain way of sensing existence, of sensing the cosmos, that we've experienced at a certain time. Just as we talked earlier about deliberately recalling an image, you can deliberately recall a cosmopoesis. Not forcing it; you're just bringing back something that already occurred, and seeing if I can engage that perception more deliberately again, sustain it. Eventually, it's going to everything, beyond sounds, etc. All appearances, all phenomena, all experiences, in all the senses.
I will say one thing about sound. Actually, about speech. Right now, I'm speaking, and you guys are listening ... at least hopefully. But it's a miracle, you know, the miracle of communication. I have an idea in my head, and somehow with all this apparatus, and muscles, and larynx, and tongue positions, I vibrate the air, and it goes in your ear, and you understand -- hopefully you understand [laughter] -- what I'm trying to say. There's communication between two beings. How amazing is that? When you think of all the subtlety of nuance about emotion, or a joke -- a joke's an amazing thing. It's like there's some humour, and somehow it just crosses from here to there or there to here, and we're laughing at the same thing. It's a miracle.
So speech has the miracle and the holiness of its semantic aspects, of the communication, what I'm trying to communicate, what I want you to hear, what you want to hear, and understanding each other. But speech also involves sound. Even right now -- in this case, it's me speaking. At the same time as you're understanding what I'm saying, you can also hear: this is mantra. It's divine speech. It's in the sound. It's in the music of the sound. There's a meaning level, and there's a music level. The divine permeates both. Can you just hear the sounds of the voice right now? It's the babble of the divine. It's the spell, the magic of the divine speech -- in the sound, not in the meaning. At the very same time that we're hearing the meaning and understanding, another part is cosmopoetically hearing the sound of another human being, or the birds, or whatever, in a different way. It's a different level. It's easier with pleasant sounds, but this divine is not to do with pleasantness. We're not talking about prettiness of sensation. We're talking about another level that we can get a sense of.
You may have related to what we just did, that whole guided meditation, or maybe not. In a way, it doesn't really matter. Again, this emphasis on playing, experimenting, finding what works for you. In a way, what Catherine and I are doing is just putting out different ideas, different possibilities. Maybe you take them as they are, maybe you alter them with your own creative variations, maybe it's something completely different. Discover, play, experiment. Find your own. There's no formula here in terms of specifics, as we've said before.
