Sensing Divinity

So we said right at the beginning of the retreat that people use these words, 'enchantment,' 'imaginal,' 'soul,' 'divine,' in lots of different ways. On this retreat, we're choosing to include in our meaning of what 'enchantment' is, or the kinds of enchantment that we're talking about, include a sense of divinity. That's what we're talking about. When we speak about enchantment, it includes a sense of divinity, some sense of divinity, of divine dimensions. Now, we've already been talking quite a bit, Catherine was talking, and we've mentioned actually, in a way, part of what we're interested in enchanting is the world, of course, but also the self. Can we re-enchant the self? Last night and actually in the next couple of days, we'll be circling around this and exploring: what does that mean? What does it involve? What does it require to re-enchant the sense of self?

There's so much we could say about all this stuff, but let's take a step back and talk perhaps a little bit about divinity, just a little bit. I talked some in other talks, and I don't want to say too much, but just a couple of things. The range of what that could mean, the depths of what that could mean, is enormous. But we've been making this distinction on this retreat between what we could call a kind of divinity that is sensed as universal -- it's everywhere and in everything, equal, regardless. In these kind of traditions, Insight Meditation and probably most meditative traditions that are around these days, that's probably the most common sense of divinity that's opened to. It can come in all kinds of ways. In a way, it's a kind of, I would say, a natural unfolding of deepening in meditation.

What's characteristic of that opening to universality or universal dimension of divinity is less fabrication of perception. This isn't obvious for people. Someone doing extended mettā practice, loving-kindness practice, eventually what will happen is it will feel like, at some point, the whole world has the fabric of love, the whole world is made of love. It is love. That's its essence, its substance. As much as it's concrete or whatever it is, at another level, one feels in one's whole being that the whole world is love or the whole world is compassion. This is a natural unfolding. It has a universal quality -- everything is equally that, including my self. I am part of that oneness.

What's actually happening there is there's a fabrication of perception, but the perception is being fabricated less. Instead of solidity and separateness and contraction, this and that being different, etc., all that fabrication of the perception of separate things is calming down a little bit, and joined together in some kind of oneness. It could be a oneness of love. It could be a oneness of awareness. It could be a oneness of silence. Those beautiful poems of Thomas Merton that Catherine was reading last night, one silence pervades everything, one silence at the core of my being, of your being. We can know this. Beautiful, available, mystical perceptions coming out of more usual kinds of practice that we do. One nothingness, one peace -- they're all flavours of universal oneness that we can know. It just comes in different ways from letting go of clinging, and the perception just naturally will open out to these mystical perceptions.

Catherine was talking about desire last night. Some people have a passion, a burning desire, to know that level of the universal divine. To know that silence, to taste it, to feel it at the centre of the being and the centre of all things. Or to know all of those kinds of oneness. Something is on fire in the being: "I want to know that." And we can know it. So there's a desire for that, and then interestingly -- this is all, in a way, classical Dharma teaching, what I'm talking about so far -- there's a desire for that, a burning desire for these kinds of openings, these kind of mystical, universal insights of universal divinity. And then the knowing of that, the tasting of that silence, of that peace, of that love, then does something to my desires in the rest of my life. It gives a context. The black around the flame that Catherine was talking about last night, that's what that black is. It's the universal peace, or love, or silence, or whatever. So the flame can burn, but it has context. All these universal divinities give equanimity in our life, in relation to the comings, goings, ups, downs, desires for this person, that person, this thing, that thing. It's all put in a different mystical context -- not "I hope that we become anaemic and bleached of all engagement with life," but the whole swelling up and dying down of our desires in life is just held differently, in a much vaster space, in a much vaster context.

Then the kinds of things that we've been talking about on this retreat, beginning to talk about, what is then the place of eros? What is then the place of sexuality? We're asking a lot on this retreat, because we're not just saying, "Let it go," the imagination, the erotic, the sexual, the desire, the dark, the dark gods. We're not just saying, "Let it go. It's bad. Get rid of it. Iron it out." We're also not just saying, "Just be mindful of it." We're saying: can we re-engage with it, can we include it on the path? It's asking a lot. What we're setting up here as a path is really asking a lot -- a lot of skill, a lot of healing, a lot of bases, a lot of development, a lot of intelligent perspective and conceptual framework. But this black, this silence, this mystical oneness, or these mystical onenesses, give a kind of steadiness. There's a resource of steadiness in relationship to our desire, and we're freer with the desire. I'm not bowled over this way or that way. I've got this infinite, infinite resource.

So there's this universal kind of divinity, and then there's the divinity that comes more through the imaginal, and a divinity that retains personhood -- either of the imaginal figure, or of my self, or of the other, of this object, of this tree, of whatever it is; the divinity in and through the particulars and the persons, an imaginal divinity. Like we said right at the beginning, these overlap -- not to make these little, neat frames. These overlap. But there's a distinction here. Can we know and taste and develop skill in opening to both kinds of divinity, the universal and the personal, the oneness and the particular? Yes, we can. But as I said, it's asking a lot. It's actually asking a lot. I don't know if you can get the sense of the breadth of what's going to be involved in such a path, because we're including the dark, we're including the desire, and all of that. So again, we can have desire for both. We long for, I long to know both, both these kinds of divinity. I long to have my life infused by them, by that knowing, by that seeing. The first, the universal, will cool the desires in and for the world. An opening to vast universal divinity will cool the desires in and for the world. The second kind of divinity will inflame them. Somehow, this needs to be balanced, perhaps. There are other factors that contribute. There's too much to say, but we'll be circling around it in the days.

[10:58] Then we come back to this question of self, and re-enchanting the self. We're saying that included in that is seeing, sensing, knowing, feeling the divinity of the self, your self. How does it feel, right now, if you consider the possibility of seeing your divinity? How does that strike you, to know that you are divine? Both because you are part of a oneness that you may have glimpsed, or intuited, or know well, but also that you are divine in and through the particulars of your personhood, all the darknesses, all the difficulties, all the dukkha, your desires, the events of your life. How does that even strike you right now? How does it feel as a possibility? You, unique you, your unique life, your unique life and death: divine. What does that stir in your being? We could say a lot just about that, and we will, what our responses to even that kind of possibility can be. But if I add another question, what's your sense of what would help you know your divinity (in that second sense of the particular, your personhood, every little detail, every little uniqueness)? What's your sense of what would help you to know that? Where, perhaps, have you glimpsed that, or intuit that, or get a sense?

So I don't know about instructions. I'm not sure. It's so individual, this, in terms of so many elements that make this journey up, this part of the journey up. It's very individual in terms of what order people do things, and what needs to be developed, what needs to be there to actually allow that kind of transformation of perception. In terms of instructions, I'm actually not sure. I don't know what you need, what's needed. But we could say some general things.

The universal kind of divinity happens, as I said, just through practising sort of standard practices like mettā, loving-kindness, compassion, and those kind of things, the brahmavihāras. Or resting in awareness, just being aware of awareness and open to all things. Eventually, that awareness will just permeate everything, will have a sense of universality, infinitude, and divinity to it. Or just seeing emptiness more and more. All of them are characterized by certain degrees of unfabricating, and eventually, if one really goes deep and skilfully with the emptiness practice, eventually total unfabricating. That gives different kinds of, degrees of, depths and flavours of universal divinity.

But the other kind of divinity, the more personal one, may be a natural evolution of imaginal practice. It may be just what arises over time when we open to the path of the imaginal and play with it. Something happens -- usually slowly -- that instead of this imaginal figure that I then work with in my meditation period and then I have my day or whatever, and then I have another meditation period and I engage it, actually eventually a whole sensibility, a whole way of feeling and sensing life becomes more available. Life becomes image. Image and life meet, and life becomes image. Life becomes image. Life is imbued with the imaginal. We have a different relationship, a different dimension available to us. It's Blake's "double vision" I talked about.

We said that you can begin to get a sense of this, because when an imaginal figure or a certain image is strong, is soulmaking, look then. Recognize in it: it already has the flavour of divinity. It already has a sense of dimensionality. It already has a sense of eternality to it. So an image that's really alive, that really touches you, that stirs the soulmaking, it's what I would call 'iconic.' It has this timeless quality to it. This is the divinity inherent in the imaginal, if you like. Life becomes ensouled. Soul is everywhere in life. It's just amenable to our modes of being, ways of looking. That includes the self, and all the foibles, and the follies, and the crazinesses, and the beauties, and the gifts of your self. All that becomes enchanted, becomes divine, in and through the particular.

A couple of people asked me. I think at some point I said in a talk, or maybe I wrote something somewhere, about my illness and about possibly dying soon, or (some people say) very probably dying soon. I said that's perfect. Or rather, I can have a sense, in the depths of things, of the perfection of all of it.^[1] "How can you say that? What's going on there?" Someone wrote a note about Ram Dass's teacher, Neem Karoli Baba. He used to say, "Can't you see everything is perfect?" Now, I can't speak for Neem Karoli Baba, but I'm guessing that that kind of perfect that he was talking about then was related to the universal divine. If everything is love, if everything is just awareness, it doesn't matter what it is aware of. If that's the nature of everything, then everything is perfect. And life and death, and good and bad, and pain and pleasure, it's all, at a deeper level, one substance, so everything is perfect. That's one kind of knowing that we can know. And then a person asked me in a note, "Well, how can you say that about terrorist acts, and the terrible things that happen, and your cancer, and this and that, and your possibly dying young?"

This kind of thing, I wouldn't stretch it as a sort of idea that then tries to fit. What happens is these kind of perceptions, the heart, the being, the consciousness opens to them more and more, and at a certain point, we get there's a kind of perfection at that level of universality. But to try and then fit it as an idea where it won't go, no. Respond with compassion. Respond with wise action in response to these things in the world. If that response of wise seeing and wise compassion is not there, and a person is saying, "It's perfect," that makes me very suspicious. It's perfect, and one does everything one can to respond to the suffering in the world. When that response is not there, and the heart is not touched by the pain in the world, something's off in my "everything is perfect" story. Something's not authentic for me.

But if and when I said that about possibly dying soon, etc., that's not quite what I meant -- or rather, I included that, but I meant more about this individuality, the particulars. In a way, it comes out of just imaginal practice. Yes, sure, the emptiness and all that, but imaginal practice. Life becomes image. My life, my being, all the particular gifts, and all the particular struggles and challenges, the duration of my life -- however long that turns out to be -- the birth, the death, the things that come through me, these are all seen, they become ensouled. And in that soul, they are felt at times to not be separate from, if you like, a World Soul. All this arises naturally in the course of imaginal practice filling out, filling out, the conceptual structure being big enough to expand and hold these kind of altered perceptions. So at one level, of course, I don't want to die. I want to live. And at another level -- I don't know, I honestly don't know what will happen, but there's something perfect in the particulars, and it's such a striking depth of seeing that. There's a kind of amazement at the perfection, of even all the little details.

[22:27] So this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. There are different kinds of sense of divinity -- the universal on one hand, and in and through the particular. And they're not really separate. So in terms of instructions and things like that, in a way, it's just a natural evolution of imaginal practice, that kind of seeing, that availability of that kind of perception. You know, we've been working with this imaginal figure of love, and it doesn't have to be a figure of love. It could be any imaginal figure. But there's a sense, as I said, almost in my definition of 'imaginal,' that it includes a dimension of divinity. We sense a divinity there.

In the meditation, the imaginal figure -- or any imaginal figure that feels divine in some way -- is gazing at you, maybe with love, maybe with who knows what. But the sustained gaze of that divinity on me, on you, in the meditation, eventually you become imbued with divinity. The gaze communicates all kinds of things -- not only love, but eventually I feel divine through the gaze of the divine on me. Eventually. I'm not talking about something that necessarily happens like [snaps fingers] that, but there's an evolution here. In a way, that's part of what we talked about: sometimes the harmonizing, here I am looking at this imaginal figure, and I come into harmony with those divine qualities. That harmony moves toward union, so I may become that figure, or I become divine in these ways.

There was a beautiful quote that Catherine read -- I can't remember when it was -- from Thomas Merton, this prayer: "None of me belongs to anyone but you, God. None of me belongs to anyone but you." Sometimes just letting these fragments of poetry arise in the mind, letting them do their soul-work, letting them echo in the heart and resonate: "None of me belongs to anyone but you, God." We might not even know what does it mean, what am I saying, but there's poetry there, and the poetry works on us. You can hear it in that beautiful line of Thomas Merton, there's the surrender of the being. "None of me belongs to anyone but you." That surrender -- we talked about this before -- can open to a receiving, and that receiving to the harmonizing, and the harmonizing to a union, and there is a sense of "I belong to you, and I am divine also."

Or it might be that in a cosmopoesis the imaginal has spilled over into the world. Whenever an image is alive -- whether that's an imaginal figure, or a world seen as image in cosmopoesis -- always, at that point, the self is being imagined at the same time. Sometimes we don't realize this. Sometimes you can just check, "What's the sense of self right now?" One might recognize there's a kind of divinity also in the sense of self at that point. What happens, or what can happen, and some people already maybe who have been practising with the imaginal for a while and things, you know, report just being able to remember the sense of divinity, and just bring it into the moment, and see something as divine, and see oneself as divine. It gets more available. It just becomes something you can just do it, just flip the perception, enter another mode of perception. That might sound like, "Oh, I don't know how," but it just comes with familiarity, with practice.

We don't have that much time on this retreat. But what is it -- which we've touched on a little bit -- what is it to know, instead of being always suspicious of my desire, "That's a kilesa. That's a defilement. It's one of the three poisons," what is it actually to even entertain the notion that desire has divine roots, that there's a divinity, a treasure, in my desire, in my eros? What's the difference between eros and greed? What's the difference? What makes it open up into soulmaking, or makes it contract the being, contract the soul, shrink the life and the perception? What's the difference? Do I need to throw out desire? And desire being, if you like, an aspect of self, can I see the divinity? Can I know the divinity of desire, discover the divinity in desire? Or anger, rage. These things that we view as enemies, defilements, etc., is it just so simple?

In Buddhist Tantrism, there are practices where one deliberately considers or imagines, in different ways, the divinity of different aspects of the self, like desire, or anger, or the body, or the senses. These are imagined as different deities even. All kinds of exercises that one can do. In the Jewish tradition, there are 613 commandments, like little prescriptions for things you're supposed to do -- how you wash your hands, what you're supposed to do or not do on the Sabbath; all kinds of things, every little detail of life. And there are prayers, often, with a lot of these things. So you wash your hands, you say a blessing. You eat, you say a blessing. You take a certain drink ... Everything becomes blessed through these commandments. It can look like a bunch of rules, kind of lifeless and constricting, but at its root, the mystical idea there is to bless and to sense one's life and the world and one's actions as blessed. We're opening to seeing our actions as blessing, and blessing God, blessing life, through that.

If that kind of practice goes deeper and deeper, this sense of ritual blessing, of blessing life, of being blessed by life, of blessing the divine, in and through one's actions, including the actions of perceiving, of consciousness, of kindness, one can almost feel that one is part of God doing that. There is the divinity acting through me in this action, washing my hands, eating a piece of bread. Who is doing that? In Buddhist teaching, there's also, "Who sees? Who are you?" One answer is, "No one. Nothing. Anattā, no-self." Another answer, I would say -- I hesitate to use the word 'deeper,' but another level of answer, "Who sees? Who are you? The Buddha. Buddha-nature sees. Buddha-nature is conscious, in your sight, in your hearing, in your tasting, in your thinking. Buddha-nature, Buddha is seeing, is knowing, is conscious, is alive, through you. Buddha is acting through you -- the cosmic Buddha, the dharmakāya."

Again, sometimes the deeper one practises with emptiness and all that, the more these become available. But also sometimes they can just be poetic ideas, and we can just try them on. There's a kind of concept there, but the concept is not just an intellectual thing -- we can bring it in in a way that the concept becomes a percept, a perception. Not just an idea. It actually starts imbuing. I actually feel like my seeing is different now. It's the Buddha's seeing. It's some divine seeing through me. And the body is involved, so it's not just heady. Concept, percept, and body are connected, intimately woven together.

So really just, if you like, pointing out certain possibilities, how this might come, what might support it, this re-enchanting of the self, and recognizing, being able to move in and out of the perception of one's self as divinity in all one's particulars, in one's personhood -- not the erasing, the erasure, the blanching of one's personhood, but the inflaming of one's personhood with the divine flame, seeing that one's person, one's particulars are divine fire.

I wonder about doing a little exercise now. Yeah, let's do that. So why don't you just turn to your neighbour, someone you don't know. So if you need to, move places or whatever. If you haven't got anyone, just stand and ... Good, okay.

[35:21, guided meditation begins]

Okay, so first things first: settle into the body. Your body. [laughter] Tomorrow's another day, but. [laughter] Settle into your body. Feel the ground. Feel the connection with the ground underneath you, whether it's your backside, your legs, your feet, whatever is touching the ground. Really get that solidity and your connection with the ground. Just that establishment of grounding, of connection.

From that grounding, feel the rest of your body. Feel the uprightness of the posture. Feel your body sitting. Feel, as we've been talking about so much, the energy body, the field of energy, of vibration, texture. Again, whatever we do, can this be something that we're just remaining in contact with, sensitive to, open to? Just dwelling, inhabiting, filling that space with your awareness.

Any time over the next few minutes that you feel you've lost that, just keep checking in: am I still here in this space? Do I still have some consciousness including how this space, how the energy body, feels? If you don't, can that be retained -- not at the exclusion of the other, necessarily, hopefully, but retained alongside or in the envelope of the awareness of the other? So you have your experience, and your experience of the other. Not losing myself, my sensitivity to myself, in the awareness of other, nor am I losing the other because I'm just with myself.

With this staying in contact with the energy body, let yourself just become aware of the other. You don't need to make direct eye contact at this point if you don't want to. No problem. But you're just aware of the being in front of you, and aware of your own being at the same time. The body and being here, body and being there. Just awareness, of self, of other. Now, this person, who you may not know very well at all, you probably don't, just offering them mettā, well-wishing: I don't know exactly what your struggles are, I don't know exactly what your joys are, but I wish you well. I wish your body well. I wish you well in your being, in your mind, in your heart. Just very gentle, just offering them that well-wishing, radiating it out towards them. Pure and simple. Doesn't depend on anything -- what they look like, or what you think they might be like. Just wishing well, and just having the intention to wish well. Again and again, the intention repeating, gently, gently.

Now, as you're giving the mettā -- and you can just gently sustain that intention -- and you're with your body and your energy body, can you also include an awareness that you are, at this moment, receiving the mettā of the other? So you're giving, and you're also receiving. Just lightly, spaciously, holding or feeling both of those elements, aspects. There's the giving and the receiving of the well-wishing of the other. This other is wishing you well. This other has the intention to wish you well, over and over, just as you are engaging in towards them.

When you feel ready, if your eyes are not already open, allow them to open. Allow yourself to make eye contact with each other as you sustain this giving and receiving of mettā towards each other. Mettā means, implicitly, a letting go of judgment. You're receiving a gaze that has the intention for no judgment, only well-wishing. You're receiving that right now, and you're, over and over, giving that. Let yourself make the contact, giving and receiving, caring.

[42:41] And then we try to add one more piece. If you look into the other's eyes, can you see the life in the eyes? Can you see and feel and sense the presence that shines out of the eyes? Feel and sense the consciousness, the awareness, the brightness, and the aliveness of that. This is consciousness that is visible, is palpable, sensible, in the eyes of the other, through the eyes of the other. Is that possible? Tuning to the sense of the bright presence, the consciousness, as it is radiating from the other's eyes. There is this mystery there, this mystery of being, mystery of consciousness. Amazing aliveness of that, the brightness, the illumination, the radiance of that, the presence.

Sometimes you get a sense of the mystery of it, and the depth of it, and the surprise of it, the divinity of it. Very human, and so much in it. The human has divine dimensions. The divinity of this consciousness, the blessing of the consciousness, the miracle of it.

If you feel okay, staying with that, or again, you might want to return to the mettā and the well-wishing. You can include that awareness of the consciousness or the divinity, but include now again the mettā, the giving and the receiving, offering of these intentions of kindness, of well-wishing. Feeling your body, feeling the energy body. Including self, including other in the awareness, in the mettā.

Then just taking a moment to thank your partner, to thank yourself.

[48:00, guided meditation ends]

If you can pry yourself away ... [laughter] Returning to the ...

So just to reiterate, and I think it's something we said right at the beginning of the retreat: distinctions are useful. Categorizations are useful. But they're also limited. It's helpful to differentiate, I think, between perceptions of a kind of universal divinity and perceptions of more particular or personified or personhooded divinity, but they overlap. They totally overlap. But if we don't make a distinction, it's almost like sometimes the experience just goes in a certain direction and misses other possibilities. Distinctions are skilful means, but they're not really real. All these things overlap. [to Catherine] Did you have something else?

Catherine: It may be that as you go to walking, if you have a raincoat or don't mind the blessings of the rain, if you're happy to soak them in, be outside or be inside, it may be that any effects or resonances kind of linger after making contact this way. Really take very good care to keep any inner critic out of the picture: "Oh, I blew it. I had my one chance at seeing divinity." Really keep that "I didn't do it right," or "The other one was more divine than me" or ... [laughs] All of those with the better than, worse than, same as story. Really take care with that. We're really allowed to practise here in the sacred boundary of the temple. We'll keep those kinds of assessments outside the gates. You're really allowed to settle. Let your feet both give and receive blessing as you walk. Hold your heart. And this is a precious day. Every day is a precious day, right? We don't always realize it. But you've put a lot of groundwork in. You have a lot of resource in each of your souls, even if sometimes we're working with feeling like we don't have enough resource. So really use the day. Really let it use you actually. Let the day use you.