Transcription
So, again, just a reminder. We're recording the Q & As, but if you're not comfortable with having your question recorded, just say that, and we can pause it. No problem. Anyone, please? Yeah, Andrea.
Q1: supporting the imaginal and seeing divinity off retreat
Yogi: I have a question following on from what Laurence said at the last session. His was more a doubt about the process of the imaginal for him as a person. This is more of a fear, really, about returning to the context of home, particularly as it relates to -- you know, here, seeing your own divinity with so much permission, and so much love and support. And it's been hard even then at times. So to return to a place that just feels, in many ways, that it doesn't support this kind of work, how can we take courage and continue?
Rob: Could everyone hear that? Yeah? Hopefully we'll speak to that in the closing day. The culture does not support that. [laughs] In fact, the culture probably thinks it's unhealthy and mad, dangerous, etc. If there's something in you that feels moved, called, to that vision of things -- or at least to moving in and out of that vision of things -- then just like any practice, it needs support. I was just reflecting, you know, a minute ago: it's pretty amazing that we can come together for less than a week and all this stuff can happen. People are having experiences and understandings, and connecting things, and struggling with all that. It kind of tells me it's more available. A lot of this stuff is more available than we tend to think or assume. I think the secret being off retreat -- and I will repeat this -- is you need to be nourished. That doesn't mean twenty-four hours of every day, every day of the week. It means getting enough, enough input of different views. Everywhere we look in society, this isn't the view that you're going to get. We'll be talking about this in the talks tonight and tomorrow night. What is the cultural view of self? What does the culture do with self? We're inundated by that, surrounded by that. Ways of thinking about self, pressures on the self, "The self is this. It's not that. It's supposed to feel this way, and at the same time it's contradictory and supposed to be doing something else."
So what's important, I think, is getting enough of another message. That could be through reading; it could be through listening; could be through friends who are also interested in that, and there's sharing and there's mutual back-and-forth and support, and listening, and other people's ideas. So that's one thing. I think we underestimate -- this goes for all kinds of practice, and opening to the mystical, and its whole range -- it's like, it needs a lot of support. But that support doesn't need to be continuous. You just need little openings, little injections, little short readings or whatever it is. That goes for practice as well. If we go back to the beginning of the retreat when I said I'm not emphasizing continuity, I'm not emphasizing focusing the mind, etc., what I'm emphasizing or what I'm hoping to get instead is a sense of agility. That means in one's daily life, in the busyness, in the demands and stresses, there are little moments, little pockets in the day, where -- it doesn't have to even be a half an hour, forty-five minute, hour of sitting -- little pockets in the day where there can be this shift of the way of looking, and that gets more and more agile.
Absolutely do not underestimate those. We think, "It would be better if I could do a long retreat." Not necessarily. Absolutely not necessarily. It can be these little moments. They just become these shifts of tapping into something imaginal, cosmopoesis, whatever divinity in this, that, self. They just become much more available, much more frequently available, much more accessible. Don't believe the assumptions of the mind that think they're not practice. And as I said, I emphasize the flexibility of the way of looking, and the agility of the movement of the way of looking over continuity for this kind of work, and also for insight work, as I would conceive it in terms of understanding emptiness, etc. Does that ...? So that's two things, and I think they're really important. I'll say one more thing. I'm not sure if I should say this or not. Maybe I'll say the other thing in the closing. Is that okay? Yeah.
Dayajoti, please. [6:11]
Q2: self-orientation vs divine orientation; the razor's edge and entering into the Middle Way
Yogi: You were saying about the intention, practising with the intention of self, or with the intention for God [inaudible] ...
Rob: You can use the B-word instead.
Yogi: That's my question, with the bodhisattva. There's a real deepening of that, my reason for practice, which is the bodhisattva. It just feels, you know, for the benefit of all beings. I wonder, are those different? For me, it feels completely ...
Rob: Could everyone hear that? Dayajoti's saying I was making a distinction. I'm not sure how much is edited out of the tape. There was actually a whole talk about this distinction between self-intention and divine intention, etc., but that's definitely not here, and I can't remember how much. Anyway, it will be on Dharma Seed.
First of all, about that, it's not either/or. It's not so black and white. There's a spectrum there, and we move along that spectrum. At times, or even periods of our life, it's totally appropriate to view the practice as for myself, for my growth, for my healing, and all that. Other times, it's just flipped, and practice is about practising for God. Not for the realization of God, but for God, or you could say for bodhisattva. I'd like to nuance a little bit an alternative to what you said as well. You could say practising for the Buddha, or it's the Buddha practising, or the Buddha is creating the Buddha through my practice. God is making God through my practice.
But -- not too quick -- the first thing is that there's a range. People fall in different places. No one is forcing you to be on this place or this place on a range, ever. I just want to expand the possibility of the idea that there is a spectrum here. Sometimes, just hearing the idea, then a person can decide where they want to be on that range. And we move, over years. We move. It may be that a certain amount of healing is necessary. This isn't what you're asking; I'm just saying this. A certain amount of healing and integration and coalescing, if you like, or consolidation of self is necessary before one can then kind of offer that up and let that go and see the whole thing from the perspective of the divine. So that's the first thing. That's really for everyone.
I'm really trying to keep this word, 'divinity,' open. If that's what works for you, great. It's interesting that we've been using the word 'God' and 'divine' more on this retreat than, say, 'Buddha' or 'Buddha-nature,' but you can think of them interchangeably. Even Buddha-nature has a range of meanings, you know, in the different traditions, people arguing about what it means. You know that. So it's up to you. If that's what is alive for you, then go for it.
I still think there's a difference. There are two distinctions that may be possible, just to point out. Again, not saying you have to do anything at all; we're just talking about possibilities. One is this thing about levels and dimensions. It could be that one is serving all beings, or seeing one's practice in the service of all beings, but 'all beings' is seen in what we're calling a kind of flat way. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't have this other dimensionality, this sense of what a being is or what a human being is, and what exactly I'm serving when I serve a human being. It's a bit what I would call modernist humanist -- it's just a bit flat.
Now, if that works for someone, if that's what they dedicate their life to, and that's meaningful to them, and that's alive to a certain extent in their soul, and that's what they want, great. Absolutely wonderful. I really don't want to get so, "You have to see it this way. You have to see it that way." But just in the language you used, the language didn't communicate this sense of the beings. It might be that that's there for you anyway. So who is being served? What is a human being? And who is the one serving? What is involved in the serving? Or rather, what is the one serving -- what is the bodhisattva made up of? What comprises a bodhisattva?
That relates to the second thing. It's a bit like, if we put it in more Buddhist terms, it's like I might be meditating on a tantric deity or something, and my purpose can be to grow my qualities so that I serve all beings, and kind of just extending that a little bit, my purpose can be serving that deity. It's like my practice is doing that deity's work. It's part of that. And even, "Who is it really who's doing my practice?", it's the deity. Who is it really who is speaking right now? It's the deity. In some respects, these are really subtle distinctions, like we're quibbling with words or something, but actually there's a range here of different dimensions of how we're conceiving practice. It could be the bodhisattva, the one whose aspiration is to serve all beings. It could be the cosmic Buddha. He's not a bodhisattva. He's already arrived. He's already complete. It's already the perfect dharmakāya, manifesting in your images with the perfect saṃbhogakāya, in the perfect nirmāṇakāya, the perfect manifestation. That doesn't mean one is then stupid and thinks everything one does is exactly appropriate and perfect and no one can criticize me. There's a kind of multidimensionality of the view in the moment: here, there, listening, right now, looking, listening, is the Samantabhadra, is the cosmic Buddha, and it's also the fumbling, foibling human being. Do you see? Does this ...? Yeah? Is there more? No?
So I really want to stress personally what I find a little troubling is getting kind of told how to view things, or only allowed a certain limited view. Unfortunately, that's too common in our world, and it's even common in the Buddhist world nowadays -- this or that, different sects, secular Buddhism and all this stuff, it's like, "This is the only view." What matters to me is that there's a plurality of views, because people will, their souls want different things, need different things, need different views. And there are many people who are actually comfortable moving between views. So even this aspect of what you're asking about, you can move between different views at different times, and just have that spectrum of views. If we take the art metaphor, it's like, if I say to you, "You can only have one piece of art that you get to listen to, look at, or whatever it is," that's hard. [laughter] We want a choice. We want a range. We want a range of moods. We want a range of all kinds of stuff. Same with views. How does this sit?
Yogi: It's good. There's one sort of related thing. It just feels like it's such a razor's edge between the kind of conceiving, way of looking, and belief. I want that to be really clear, because I don't want to go there with belief. [15:33]
Rob: That also, the whole thing about a razor's edge, was also in a talk. It's not on this retreat. It's really important. This has come up several times, this thing about the real, not real. It's the Middle Way in the Dharma. Two things. One is, my experience is that what seems like this really fine tightrope walking act between reifying and dismissing, believing or denigrating, what looks like a razor's edge, this razor-thin tightrope act, either the more we understand emptiness, or the more we liberate that kind of artistic view of things that I was talking about, or certain philosophical perspectives, that razor's edge which appears so thin, "I can fall off one side or the other," it actually becomes a huge playing field. If I can find my entry into that Middle Way, it actually opens up all the possibilities and doesn't feel tight at all.
Apparently there was one teacher who, whatever anyone asked him, would just say, "More practice is required," which [laughter] is a little difficult, but in a way, I'm partly saying that, especially about the emptiness piece. The artistic piece is something that different people find their way into, even before they understand the emptiness thing. It's just a mode of being; it's an artistic attitude or sensibility. But also I would say you're going to wobble. One is going to wobble. I've said this to several people: the fact that you're asking, the fact that you're cautious, it shows the awareness, it shows the carefulness, it shows the care, it shows the alertness, on the lookout. It's a healthy doubt.
You can wobble. And you can find your balance again. You can wobble either way -- in a dismissal or an over-reification. I would say expect it to happen. Because you've maybe felt like you've done it so much before, and it was so painful or it led to bad consequences, it's like, this doubt, the sincerity in your question, the sort of integrity, and openness, and vulnerability in your question, it will prevent it being so extreme. But you'll wobble. You'll fall off that way, and then you'll fall off this way. This micro-thing, it's okay. You'll see. They're micro-wobbles, usually, rather than this whole, big lifetime plunged into the abyss of reification or whatever. Do you see?
So I hear the caution and the vulnerability and the pain there. I could of course be wrong. But my sense is it's not dangerous in the same way, because of all that care. It's almost like, don't be afraid -- as I said, it becomes not a tightrope act, actually, as you get into it. But let's use that analogy. When the tightrope walker is learning to tightrope walk, they get up on something this high, and they're falling off thousands of times. It's part of the deal. Or what's that thing about horse riding? You just have to learn to ... fall off ... or ... [laughter] I've never actually seen a horse. [laughter] I'm just kidding! But yeah, or bike riding or whatever it is. Part of the problem is the fear of the thing. You realize these micro-falling -- one way and the other. Some people have a tendency to fall off more to the left, to the reification, and some people have a tendency to fall off more to the kind of nihilist dismissal of everything. But generally, we just keep falling off. As we go deeper, you could say, or get more experience with all this, we get less afraid of falling off. It becomes less of a big life catastrophe, I'm there for ten years or whatever. We recognize it, and it's less of a big deal, and we can just find our way again. So it's a really important question, but my sense is let yourself play. You know, children play, and they fall over. It's fine. They get up. Yeah? Okay.
Andy? Yeah.
Q3: fantasy and the mode of renunciation, different pulls from different archetypes
Yogi: This is kind of related to the last two. I'm moving back into Insight Meditation and Theravāda, still wanting to engage seriously with that and to take things like renunciation seriously. But then also recognizing that a lot of those renunciatory things can end up being quite soul-shrinking, rather than soulmaking. I'm wondering how to balance the two in a sensitive and productive way.
Rob: So Andy's asking, there's still this attraction to more classical Theravādan-style Buddhism with its renunciation aspects and the encouragement as well. There's the attraction to that, and the attraction to these other things that we're talking about. And how to balance the two. When you say 'renunciation,' can you say what would be an example of that? What do you mean?
Yogi: I just mean something like, we've been talking about the attitude to sensuality, which in Theravādan Buddhism is not very well developed. And the relationship to art, sense pleasure, political engagement. It's like trying to love and care for these things, and at the same time recognizing that they're going to be shoved aside, or we've sort of been told, "Don't bother." [inaudible]
Rob: One way of approaching the question is through fantasy, or through the recognition of fantasy. It's a bit like the other question you asked in the other group -- you see that the renunciation is not just a good idea; it's actually alive for you as something that's attractive as a fantasy, a way of living. Do you understand? As is the artistic sensibility, and the intellectual, and the creative, and all that. So you have, as we've been saying several times in groups and stuff, you are a multitude. There are lots of archetypal callings pulling on your soul or inhabiting your soul. That's multiple blessings, and it ain't easy. Sometimes they just go like this, and they pull in different directions. Sometimes one goes quiet for a while and one is more dominant. Sometimes they're just at the same time, and it's not clear. But I feel very much one can have a life where all of this is included. Partly what allows that is the sensing some of these modes -- let's say the mode of renunciation -- as image, as archetype, and letting that image be alive, or the artist or whatever it is.
I think I shared in some talks, one image that's alive for me is the jazz musician. I was a jazz musician for many years. That's an image that can live on in me and come up in all kinds of subtle ways and subtle moments, without me needing to give up everything and go and start practising my instrument again and going out and being a professional jazz musician. You understand? The image/fantasy flavour of the jazz musician can come up. With nothing to do with music, it can be there. Also the monk is very alive, and for a period in my life -- I was talking with someone else about this -- I gave up music. I was on my way to the monastery to be a monk. Gaia House kind of sidetracked me. [laughter] I'm still here. Hey! [laughter] I'm kidding. I changed my mind. My mind was changed.
But the archetype of the monk is still alive in me. It's a bit like Andrea's question, similar, in the sense that you don't need a big concrete chunk of time, or a choice between A and B, between black and white, left and right, or whatever. The monk archetype can be alive for little moments in your day in such a nourishing way so that that hermit, the renunciate, the love of that, the fantasy of that, is beautifully alive -- maybe in little actions, maybe in days of more silence or whatever, maybe in just the smallest little thing, the smallest moment. That's enough to nourish the soul. It's getting out of the concretization of either/or big life choices, and into the fantasy of both, whether it's art (literature in your case), or the monastic, the renunciate. Both of them can live when I allow the imaginal to come alive. If I don't, then everything becomes a choice between. It becomes so concretized.
That's one way of approaching the question, actually allowing it to have more imaginal breadth and depth and richness, allowing these pulls and these attractions. Where there's meaningfulness for us, where there's attraction, eros -- in this case, the eros of attraction to the Theravādan sort of archetype -- where there's meaningfulness, where there's eros, where there's soulmaking, where there's beauty, that means there is an image operating there, or several images, that are alive. It's helpful to recognize that, and let them become alive. Then we have much more freedom, much more depth, much more nuance with the whole thing. How does that sound?
Yogi: Yeah. That's sort of giving me permission to do the things I've been doing already. [laughter] The question always comes up, especially when I've been on retreat for a while. It's like I move back into the kind of monk archetype, and then it's like there's a worry, "If you really want to follow that to its end, then the others should be pushed aside," like they're kind of wasting time. It's just a question of whether things that aren't in that kind of archetype would pull away from ...
Rob: Two things. I left the States, I left the music, gave away everything, and wanted to be a monk. Part of the reason for deciding not to was realizing that I didn't need to. If you say, "I have to be a monk to realize the Unfabricated. I have to be a monk to realize the depths of emptiness," etc., I don't think that's true. The fruits of practice are available to us if we practise with our hearts, with dedication, with intelligence, with practising in ways that liberate. We can also practise in ways that don't liberate, and spend lots of time with every earnest, heartful dedication, and I'm just going around in circles or hitting a brick wall. I don't think you need to be a monk. Or I don't think one needs to be a monk. Personally speaking, I don't think you need to be a monk. [laughter] It's because I know him, I can say that. [laughter] Don't necessarily buy the hype.
[28:36] The second thing, what you touched on, is about permission. I know it was kind of a joke. But in a way, just saying something serious about that, Catherine and I were talking, and a lot about this kind of retreat -- maybe you felt it already -- is actually giving permission to ways of seeing, to sensibilities, to things that are in us, legitimizing and giving permission to. That's partly why it's good for people to come to Q & As and groups, because you actually see, "Oh, that part of me that I was a bit quiet about is actually shared, recognized, celebrated. It exists in others." I'm just putting that word 'permission' out and saying something bigger about it. Yeah?
Tam, yeah.
Q4: balancing the imaginal/eros with cooling/equanimity, checking in for realism or reification
Yogi: My question is about religious ecstasy. I'm just kind of nervous and frightened right now ...
Rob: Frightened to ask or ...?
Yogi: Nervous. As I shared with you this morning, Rob, a lot of this retreat is very familiar, but it's gone really, really deep. I'm fortunate and blessed to be quite primed to lots of the things that we've been doing. They're very alive in my practice, like having a love being, and the four elements practice, and cosmic love surrounding, energy body. These are really in my life. However, the effect of the way that you and Catherine have offered these things to us has caused me to have numerous experiences -- I want to say, I want to be brave and go there, I want to say 'cosmic orgasms.' I don't mean physiological. Not consciously at the time, but like, looking back and saying, "Oh, I was enlightened for a few minutes there," and things like that. What I would like to understand is that I don't feel like I'm going to be grabbing or grasping at these experiences, and I have no idea -- because I can't read the future -- if I will experience them again at home. However, if I go home and find that I can, they might be dangerous, or cause, trigger, my potential to have psychosis, or mania, or feelings of bigness, self-aggrandizement. Please, will you help me understand how I can smallify them or something?
Rob: Okay. Two things maybe I would say. One is, you have to see what we're doing in the context of the bigger path. You understand? So when Catherine was talking about the black that surrounds the flame, that black is cooling. One of the original meanings of nibbāna is 'cooling.' It's one of the meanings, 'cooling.' In a way, people are very [different]. That's why I say I think teaching group retreats is a crazy business. There's so much diversity in people, what they need, and this personality, that personality, that tendency. And it's all wonderful, but some people need to gather the resources of cooling, of calming, of equanimity, as well as the resources of a kind of steadiness of love. So it might be that one of the things for you to think about -- not instead of all this, but alongside it -- is also gathering, developing, the access to coolness, to space, to equanimity and that kind of thing. That will balance things.
So that's one thing. It's really about having a vision of the breadth of practice. I said this morning, this is asking a lot. There's a lot involved, to really have available the picture that we're presenting. Different people will need to develop this a bit more, or that a bit more, or this first, and then that. So you have to kind of know also what your tendencies are. Now, you're speaking them. So one of the things is, yeah, more access to coolness, steadiness, equanimity, more spaciousness of perspective, rather than, "Wow, here's that amazing thing, and I'm just lost in it." Yeah? What comes is a kind of balance, a poise. The flame can still be there, but it's not just this way, or then blown out completely, and then burning everything. So that's one thing: just to think about the kind of practices and the kind of reflections and attitudes that help you access more of that cooling and spaciousness that gives you equanimity and steadiness.
Second thing relates to what we've been talking about together, about putting the divine healing energy that you're feeling, making sure it contacts the dukkha. Sometimes that means, even when you're feeling great, deliberately bringing up the dukkha, or the memory of the dukkha, and putting it right in the middle of that lovely bliss feeling, and just letting that wash over, letting the two come into contact. The more you do that, the more the sort of extremes of our existence, they meet, they start integrating more. We've talked about this. That would be a second thing.
Just for now, the third thing might be -- it goes back to this question of real and not real. I don't know what else to say about that, other than I feel that it's not the extremity or the intensity of bliss or vision that's dangerous. It's not that. It's the, "Ah, that's real now," and either identifying oneself -- "This is who I am," or "That's exactly how things are. This is now the reality." It's the realism that's the problem. What I was talking about with someone else, often what happens is we don't realize that the realism is happening. We're unaware, "What have I made real at this moment?" It could be a certain vision of the world, or it could be my self when I'm in this state, "I am that," and I'm so kind of entranced or captivated, enchanted in not such a good sense with that, that I don't realize there's too much realism in it.
How one moves to let go of realism without falling into a dismissal, and "It's all rubbish, waste of a week at Gaia. Could've gone to ..." It's, again, this poles thing. There's something about finding this Middle Way. Right now I just can't think of anything else to say about that, but that's an important -- at least having it as an awareness of what the mind can tend to do. It's not just you; it's the human mind, it's consciousness. Just being aware of that, and then looking for it sometimes. When we were talking about art, there's a way that these practices and these openings of perception can have immense power to heal, to move us, to give beauty and everything, and just like art, they don't have to be 'real' to do that. They don't have to be believed. That's why I made the artistic analogy. The power is in that. But you might be on the lookout, gently, for this kind of grasping realism thing. So that would be a third possibility. Yeah? Okay.
I don't want to neglect this side. John, yeah? [38:38]
Q5: circumscribing certain things as sacred on the way to seeing all as sacred
Yogi: Thanks so much for your teaching this morning about mitzvot, commandments and blessings, which really spoke to me. It kind of tied in with a worry I had about, I think it was your last Dharma talk, what you said at the end, which maybe I misunderstood. It was about pragmatism. You said something about pragmatism, and then you talked about the sacred and the profane, or maybe the other way around. The thing it feels to me is that with the mitzvot of washing the hands, and the blessing, the blessing sanctifies it. It's not just a useful -- if I understand what you mean by practising correctly -- it's not just that the action, the commandment, the good deed is a convenient way or a useful way.
Rob: A useful way for what?
Yogi: Well, for anything. It isn't itself holy. So I was wondering if you could explain what you meant by 'pragmatism.'
Rob: I'm trying to remember. I think, if I remember, it was particularly in the context of circumscribing the sacred as separate from the profane. So for example, going on pilgrimage as if that place there is a holy place that I'll go on pilgrimage to, from my ordinary place where I live, or this retreat space is a sacred space, or this temple is a sacred space as opposed to profane space. Sometimes what you get is teachings that say everything is sacred. In a way, that's where we want to go -- towards seeing everything as sacred. But sometimes we want to jump there straight away, and we just say, "Everything is sacred," but quickly that just dissolves into a mush where actually nothing is sacred. So the pragmatism is really in recognizing the skill of circumscribing certain things as sacred. You know, the temple in Biblical times was sacred. It's not that the rest of life wasn't, but it was a sacred place. And the Torah scroll is sacred. In Kabbalistic teachings, and in Hasidism and things, the encouragement is to see everything as sacred, to redeem it in that sense, but the more intermediate step is saying, "There's sacredness, there's sacredness," and you enter into a different relationship. Or when you do a ritual, you're actually creating something, creating a taste of the sacred. That serves a purpose. I won't even say 'intermediate' purpose, but intermediate in the sense of 'on the way to seeing it everywhere.' So that's all I meant at that point by 'pragmatism.'
Yogi: Yeah. I think I misunderstood the word 'circumscribed'; I think I thought you were talking that we could just jump over the sacred, whereas to me, maybe what I should have understood is some sanctification of the sacred makes it sink in.
Rob: Exactly. Yeah, precisely.
Sampo, yeah?
Q6: working with both the light gods and the dark gods, opening to the diversity of images
Yogi: In seeing all things as divine, especially the kilesas, and the images of the divine we have like the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas, the light gods or the nice guys ... [laughter] They're not the dark gods you mentioned. For me to see the ordinary and the nice things as sacred everywhere around me, it requires that I can see the dark side of things as sacred as well. Otherwise, somehow it doesn't go as deep. Could you say something about the dark gods? Unless there's a talk coming up on the subject.
Rob: I honestly can't remember what's in the ... [laughter] But yeah, you know ...
Yogi: If you come and listen, it's ... [laughter]
Rob: Maybe! [laughter] Yeah, actually, now you say, I remember mentioning that. I do, honestly. It's in one of the two coming up. Again, people are different with this. Souls are different. Souls have different resonances, souls have different callings, and also souls have different ways of developing, we could say. Some people, as you're saying, "I can't really get as much as I could from the light gods unless I integrate the dark gods." Other people, you know, they need a lot of time with the light gods. It heals something, it reassures something, it settles something, it opens something. Then maybe at some point there's a capacity to integrate the dark gods. So people are different. What you're saying, someone else might be like, "Uh-uh." They may not even be ready to hear about dark gods; it just won't fit, or it disturbs them because of things that have happened in the past, or wounds, or stuff that it's too similar to that, or because of cultural conditioning that they just can't see through. All kinds of reasons. So first of all, there's a difference. I think when I started teaching about the imaginal, I was very much emphasizing the dark gods, and partly I just find a lot of what I teach to be a response to the context around me. It's all this, so it's like, "Hold on. What about this, guys? What about this that we're missing?" What do you need about it now? What are you kind of asking? Could you say a bit more? I could say lots. What is it that you're needing?
Yogi: Just that there are a lot of nice experiences with the light gods on this retreat and personally as well, but there are moments when the kilesas are more active, or in comes the analytical mind. The sensibility kind of grows, or the kind of sense that something is missing. I can't say much more about it, but some of the loveliness could be fuller if the connection with the dark side was more ...
Rob: So you're asking how to make that connection?
Yogi: Yeah. Because the images that we have, and the images that I naturally have, that I feel are coming to me, don't include those. I think it's more a question of conditioning.
Rob: Sure, it is. And it's a question of culture, and assumptions, and all kinds of stuff. Culturally, for thousands of years, we don't really have a place for the dark gods in Western culture. What happened historically was a lot of gods were sort of amalgamated into the Christ image, and other gods like Aphrodite, who's more, if you could say, sexuality as sacred, it got seen as a demon, you know. Culturally, in the wider culture, and also Gaia House culture, we tend not to, or Gaia House as an institution tends not to really go there and talk about that, and include that, or sanctify that, or recognize the sacredness of the dark gods. Again, that's part of the reason for some of these teachings. On this retreat, in contrast, just personally in contrast to the last few years where I've been saying a lot about dark gods, I feel like it's more, a little bit more towards the light.
But in terms of how to do it, it might be just, in imaginal practice, just be open to the diversity of images. A dark god, a dark image, involves -- 'dark' in a very loose sense here -- you know, things like sexuality, things like rage, or certain kinds of suffering, or loneliness, or some kind of what might be regarded as pathological element, those images are darker. Does that make sense? So you can just be open in your imaginal practice and they will come. Otherwise, you wouldn't be asking the question. They're part of what you need. They will come as images.
And again, it's always a sense of like -- not in your case, but maybe the mind is saying, "Oh, I don't know about this one. It's this or that, or it's not holy or whatever. It's just my kilesas." In a way, part of the potency of bringing imaginal work alive and letting it do its soulmaking function is just -- I'm saying this to everyone now -- just granting a little bit of trust to the image. "My mind doesn't ... I'm not sure if I can trust this." Just give it a little bit of trust. Just give it a little bit of the beginnings of the belief that there might be something holy here, there might be a treasure for me, there might be something that's asking something of me. That's enough to inject life and potency into the image, and then it can start doing its work. Some of these can become really beautiful soulmaking divinities available to the soul, absolutely.
So one [way] is just more open in imaginal practice and they will come, or as you shared before, it's like, what moves you -- perhaps a painting that you see, or a work of art, and a character from that that's more dark, if you like. A second way is through an emotion or through a bodily energy that comes up. Were it a longer retreat, we'd probably talk much more about desire and eros and that kind of thing. But what is it, again, to feel that, and to allow it in a way, and even just entertain the possibility as an idea? "There's something holy here. It's not just an impurity, just a kilesa, just greed, just dirty, sensual desire." Just having that attitude liberates it a little bit. So one way is through things that arise, and the other way is through images and just being open to more images, a range of images. Is that okay? Are you sure? Okay.
Let's have just a minute of silence together.
