Wisdom, Art, Balance (Part 1)

There are two maxims or aphorisms from the alchemical traditions that I'd like to share. I think they're relevant and important for any practice, for all practices, maybe for all paths; for all practices, meditative, spiritual. Also for the practice of psychotherapy and the path of psychotherapy and healing. Many, many directions and dimensions of practice they would be applicable to and important to consider in.

So the first -- and sorry, I can't recall where I came across this or read it -- but the first is, "The strength of the vessel" -- the vessel is the alchemical vessel that holds the material that's being worked on. "The strength of the vessel must be proportionate to the tension in the material," or we could say "the energy in the material." So the strength of the vessel must be proportionate to the energy in the material. The second, I think I've shared in the past in some talk or other: "She who masters the fire masters the work." One who masters the fire masters the work. Okay? So two gems of wisdom there, quite general and broad-ranging in their applicability.

If it's not already obvious, just to state that, you know, if we're going to open and explore this territory of eros, of desire, of soulmaking and all that, but especially of eros, really going to open it up with integrity, with thoroughness, comprehensiveness, depth, intelligence, then that opening up and that exploration demands that we take care, care of a lot of different aspects, dimensions, and elements of that path of opening and exploration. It demands that we bring also a certain wisdom and art and skill to the whole process.

So I want to go into some of that today, and look at what might these two alchemical maxims mean, and mean for us, and explore what they mean, and what might they mean for our explorations. We already said in a previous talk now that the notion of a vessel for the soulmaking enterprise, for the soulmaking work, a notion of a vessel for the eros, sometimes that's provided by the boundaries that are in place in a certain relationship or relationships, and that they create what we called a temenos, a sacred space, a vessel that holds and heats the material, the work, the soul-material. So the eros is functioning as fire there, and there's a vessel created by certain boundaries in all kinds of different ways. Meditation is also a boundary. In the meditation, one isn't acting out certain whatever-it-is, images, etc. We've opened up the possibility that the body moves and reflects somehow or refracts what's happening imaginally and energetically and erotically, but sometimes the body is still also. But generally speaking, there's not an acting out. There's not a concretization or implementation in manifest actuality of the image. Meditation, too, meditation posture, meditation session, etc., also functions as a kind of vessel, temenos.

But the whole question, in a broader sense, of what contributes to the strength of a vessel, what makes a vessel strong, you know, it's complex. There are a lot of things to consider, a lot of factors that go into that. Even if you think just in terms of physical vessels that are strong, some are strong and yet brittle, or strong up to a certain point, and then they might shatter. So another kind of strength -- this is something we have to consider very much in the work about eros and soulmaking -- another kind of strength comes from or with elasticity -- that the strength of a vessel, its ability to actually not burst, and thus to contain the material and the work and the fire, comes from its elasticity, or in part from its elasticity, its capacity to stretch, to be fluid, to morph and take on different shapes when it needs to.

Why is this relevant to our work in particular? Exactly because of the nature of what we've explained of the eros-psyche-logos dynamic and its tendency, its natural inclination to expansion of image, of psyche, of eros -- expansion, growth, widening, deepening. You can hear it's going to need a vessel that's elastic. So right away we can see, just in terms of that analogy with elasticity, there's a lot that's implied. It's a complex issue, this question of strength of the vessel.

And the word 'fire' in the other alchemical aphorism, "She who masters the fire masters the work." 'Fire' can mean a lot of different things in different practices, you know? As can 'vessel.' 'Vessel' might be a relationship, like a psychotherapeutic relationship, or a teacher/student relationship becomes a vessel. But again, many possibilities what the vessel actually is. The vessel can be the body or the psyche. But 'fire' could refer to, does refer to, many different things. So in any practice, fire is also connected with effort and intensity, the intentness and intensity that we bring to bear on the work, whatever work that is -- if it's meditation practice, traditional Insight Meditation, or noting arising and passing, or concentration, or whatever it is, mettā. The questions of effort and intensity, we could say, that's part of fire. I've talked a lot about that in the past. But also, of course, we said on this retreat eros is fire. Eros is flame. Desire, fire. Longing. All this is fire. So this second alchemical maxim comes very much into this work.

But it's not simple. Even the question of mastery -- do we ever, as I suggested in an earlier talk, do we ever really completely master the fire that is given to us and the eros that comes through us? Or is it always going to be eventually bigger than us? And even if it is always going to be bigger than us because of its divinity, because of the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, because it will keep expanding and opening up other dimensions and meanings, and resonances and power, does that mean that we should abandon any attempts at mastery, at developing our ability and our capacity and our skill and our art? It's complex. All this is complex.

Fire burns. You know, we've said this before. Fire burns, so it demands care. And yet, without fire, just as human beings, evolutionarily and biologically, we're very limited in what we can do without fire. He/she who masters the fire masters the work. And in relation to the vessels analogy, I've talked in the past on certain retreats about this teaching from Lurianic Kabbalah, from the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, about the shattering of the vessels, Shevirat ha-Kelim. It's not just saying things are impermanent. It's saying actually organically woven into psychological development, cosmological development, conceptual development, development of relationship, etc., the vessels that we form -- again, whether they're relational, conceptual, intellectual, emotional, energetic, all kinds of things -- at different points in our, we could say soul's development, or just the movement of the soul, they might need not just to stretch, but to shatter.

A vessel that we've taken care to build up, that provides a temenos, provides the support of a structure, containment, orientation, shatters -- sometimes very unexpectedly; sometimes violently; sometimes it just sort of melts. But this is, I would say, an inevitable part of living life deeply as a human being, and also as cultures. That shattering may be more or less kind of sudden or violent or whatever, but it's part of what happens if there is eros. You could say it's part of what happens, of course, when the eros ignites that whole eros-psyche-logos dynamic, because then it expands, and at some point we might have to shatter something because the wall won't budge otherwise. It's not elastic. It won't expand.

[10:49] So yes, there's building, developing the strength of the vessel or vessels and their elasticity, and mastering the fire. But even these concepts, they're not so simple. And, you know, just a reminder: there is no such thing as a practice or a path without dangers, without dangers that may be more specific to this path or that path. Not necessarily more or less dangerous; just that the dangers are specific to each path. So oftentimes people, especially when they're first hearing about imaginal practice, or maybe first hearing about eros, say, "That's dangerous. That sounds dangerous." It's just kind of what we've been indoctrinated by. Is it really any more dangerous than, let's say, simple mindfulness practice? Or are the dangers just different?

If you've been reading the newspapers in the last, I don't know, year or so, you'll be aware of articles that are appearing about mindfulness and eight-week courses and teaching mindfulness, and how there have been occasions where it seems like the mindfulness itself has caused some kind of mental destabilization or emergence of repressed trauma or this or that. And if we just take, as an example, simple mindfulness practice, in the way that it's kind of taught in a very secular context these days, I've had people say to me, "I've been practising mindfulness, and I got a lot from it, but at the same time, I feel neutered." A woman said to me, "I feel neutered." Powerful words. What does it mean to feel neutered? Something has been cut off, amputated from her being. In this case it has a whole erotic connection, doesn't it, to be neutered?

Or another friend, a close friend said to me that practising, living in an Insight Meditation centre for some years -- this was many years ago -- something in her soul, she knew something was going on at the time, but couldn't quite articulate it or get clear about it until some years later: something in her soul was dying, was being killed. So yes, a lot of learning, a lot of development, a lot of lovely stuff, and something being killed. It was not so obvious at the time. The neutering is not so obvious to a lot of people as a kind of freaking out or whatever it is. And there are a lot more subtle dangers with the mindfulness aspect that have to do, let's say, with soulmaking, and with realism, the kind of realism that's entrenched or implicitly communicated as a foundation in mindfulness teachings mostly.

So all paths, all paths have their dangers. This is something that it's just part of wisdom to be aware of that fact, and aware of, "Well, if I'm going to take this path, what are the dangers that I need to look out for? Or if I'm going to take that path, what are the particular dangers of that path?" It's, I think, foolish and naïve to think there's such a thing as a path without danger, or that the path that I'm on doesn't have dangers, and then point to other paths and say they're dangerous.

I want to talk about bringing wisdom, developing balance, and the art of balance, and bringing equanimity in to bear on, in, and with this whole exploration of eros and soulmaking. And at the same time, kind of contradict myself, or balance that with -- I may need to repeat this: when we're with eros, or rather, when we're exploring eros and opening that door, we're opening the door also (potentially, if it's a comprehensive exploration) to a wider range of -- let's call them archetypes -- than we may have been used to, especially if we think of the Dharma in quite a narrow way. So, you know, the classical god Dionysus has a lot to do with eros. He's an erotic god, as are many others from different traditions. Hermes is an erotic god. Aphrodite, of course, from that tradition. But also in the Buddhist tradition, if you look at the tantric deities, a lot of them are erotic deities in different ways.

Listen to this from James Hillman about Dionysus.^[1] And bear in mind what this archetypal elaboration of this god, Dionysus, says about the path, about what the path can be -- quite different, or a strand of the path can be quite different than how we usually think about it in kind of a more narrow conception -- and what it might involve, if we really open up this exploration of eros. So Dionysus, in the myths, is dismembered into countless pieces. It happens in different ways, either at his birth, or at different points. And then he's re-membered. We're re-membering Dionysus, dismembering and re-membering. He's put back together. There's a kind of resurrection there as well. Hillman says he's a "figure of many guises and pursuits. He was called the Divided," but also the Undivided, or both together: the Divided/Undivided. He's called "the Loosener, the Lord of Souls, the Lord of Wild Beasts. His realm was outside the conventional constraints of the city; his dances took place on hillsides near woodlands. In the city he ruled the theater, both comic and tragic."

Can you see how this relates to everything that we're talking about? And "coming apart," being dismembered, "implicates a myth quite different from those we usually associate with strength of character," for example. So this is not Hercules we're talking about. This is not sort of ego willpower. This is not Artemis, the ruler of animal nature, the goddess of animal nature. It's not Hera, the queen of the household and the upholder of family values. Instead, Dionysus is the Lord of Souls, the divided god who was pulled to pieces. He's a strange figure, this Dionysus. He was even named 'the stranger.' He's an "intoxicating life force who came on the scene," would appear from outside the usual civilization, "together with a dancing [group] of ... satyrs and raving devotees." He was also declared to be Hades. So there's some kind of strange identity of Dionysus, who's the sort of intoxicating life force, with Hades, who's the invisible god of the souls in the underworld. It's complex. All this, woven together. Can you hear the resonances and the mirrorings of even just what we've said so far on this retreat?

[19:13] Hillman goes on. He said in relation to, then, erotic arousal and desire coming into our life and disrupting things, potentially disrupting things sometimes -- in all kinds of ways; not just talking about sexual, again. Talking about just that force, that movement of eros, and its capacity to stretch our vessels, the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, and sometimes shatter them. He says, "[Realize] you are not solely to blame for the conflict brought on by arousal. The source lies deeper than human nature. It is archetypal, a conflict among the gods. The call of Dionysos tends to upset the normal course of civilization, whose wise overseer Athene" -- another classical goddess -- "did not permit his goat" -- Dionysus' goat -- "in her terrain." A goat is this very kind of disruptive animal, if you like. "Dionysos, 'Lord of Women,' called to both genders and all ages to join his rituals." This is not something just for men, or just for women, or just for young people or whatever. "Women left their household duties to follow him into the hills for release and raving. Two 'old-timers' with gray hair in Euripides' play The Bacchae go off to dance with Dionysos 'all night and all day.'"

Now, how do you hear that? How are you hearing that? Is there already for you a certain identity construct? Perhaps you're already quite identified with that kind of archetypal figure of Dionysus and that kind of actualization of behaviour. Or perhaps you're identified with the opposite, the sort of picture of calm and cool equanimity and stillness. Where is your tendency of identification, clinging, attachment? And do you hear this in terms of a necessity of concretization? "Oh, I better go find the nearest rave or whatever and dance all night long." Or if something needs manifestation -- we've talked about this before in terms of imaginal practice -- is it just a very obvious translation, very narrow? "Oh, it means actually dancing." Is that what this means? Does raving, and dancing in the hills with raving devotees, does that mean actually dancing? It might. It might be concretized that way. But not necessarily. The question is, does it, and how? How does it move, and what does it call for? We've been through this before on previous retreats.

But is my interpretation of this mythological figure, this archetypal figure and divinity, am I putting it into too narrow a box in my interpretation and my translation? What's my tendency here anyway in relation to all this? So I'm interested, we're interested, in opening up this territory, opening up a myth. A myth should open, and these teachings should open, rather than just justify what we already kind of believe or are entrenched in. Partly, these teachings are to legitimize and realize a place for something that we might have been judging ourselves for, and actually see that in a different light. But not only to justify. To open as well.

Let's go into this a little bit. What might be involved in creating good vessels, 'right' vessels (if we can use that word)? Right vessels, and supporting -- let's call it 'mastery,' but that really means the ability with all this, a facility, an art, the capacity and skill of navigation and discernment with all this. What might be involved in creating and forging right vessels and developing mastery? Those two are not actually separate, just to make that clear from the start. The navigation, the capacity and skill in responding to what's actually happening in one's practice, in one's life, with eros, with the imaginal, with soulmaking, in real time, in the moment, our abilities to bring different factors to bear and all that, this navigation, this richness and complexity of responding, and the skill and art and ability in all kinds of different ways, that actually creates the vessel in the moment. Yeah? So it's not like you have the pre-packaged vessel and then you add a bit of mastery. That actually is making a vessel in real time, in the moment, as things are moving and developing. They're not really separate.

But let's think about all this. Let's go into this and unfold it a little bit, unpack it. Right vessels. What might that mean? You may be aware of this, but in Vajrayāna teachings, in tantric practice, at least in Tibetan Buddhism and other Buddhist traditions, they are almost always only presented -- or I think almost always; they should be almost always only presented -- after certain preliminary practices which are regarded as necessary. So there's a whole range of preliminaries, and I wonder if we can think, too, about that. What might be a preliminary for me? What needs to be in place? What do I need to take care of and establish if I'm going to do this kind of practice, exploring eros, etc.?

In the Vajrayāna, the preliminaries would include ethics. Actually, I don't know that tradition from the inside, so to speak, so I'm just kind of getting this from the outside. I'm hoping and assuming this is the case. It includes ethics -- a grounding, an establishment in ethics. It's something we'll come back to. It includes ethics. It includes other practices. So, for example, the development of some samādhi is probably a preliminary or prerequisite to doing Vajrayāna practices, tantric practices. It should be -- this I know is actually not the case, unfortunately, but tantric practice, Vajrayāna practice, is predicated, is based on, an understanding of emptiness and some facility with emptiness practice. We'll return to this. I've said it before. I would state all this for our path as well. Tantric practices, also, if you talk to someone, or if you read, you get the sense that it's also very much based on faith. There's some kind of faith operating here, and which may not be a so-called naïve realist faith, as sometimes it gets portrayed as or dismissed or labelled as. If there's an understanding of emptiness, Tārā is empty. Whoever it is, this tantric deity is empty. Oftentimes people don't understand this, and they're still practising tantra, or they think they understand it, etc.

But technically, somehow the faith that's involved is also imbued with an understanding of emptiness. But faith is another of the preliminaries. And also, even devotion, tied in with faith, obviously. But that devotion needs to be embodied. So you see again in the Vajrayāna practices how either mantra recitation or the prostrations -- think of people doing hundreds of thousands of prostrations. How much work and time and commitment and effort is involved in that? There's an embodiment of devotion there, literally an embodiment of devotion. So all these form preliminaries, as does a conceptual framework or other. Some conceptual framework is provided for understanding imaginal practice, etc., or tantric practice. And also -- and again, sometimes it's not so obvious from the outside, but Saṅgha is implied as well. So there's the support of other people who are exploring this together, teachers and co-adventurers, etc., that one can talk to, one can feel nourished by, one can be in the presence of, and that kind of support that functions there.

So all these -- ethics, other practices, samādhi, emptiness, faith, devotion that's embodied, conceptual frameworks, Saṅgha. This is all part of the preliminaries that are deemed necessary in tantra and Vajrayāna practice. And, you know, we'd do well, I think, you would do well, to reflect on some of this, and what does it mean for you? What does it mean for us exploring this, opening up the range of what practice is, and the directions and dimensions of what practice can be and can involve? What might each of these mean -- Saṅgha, and devotion, and emptiness, understanding, and ethics, and all that? Preliminaries. It's a question. I'll come back to it. It's a question. Part of that question, or inherent in the very concept of preliminaries, is pre-, prerequisite, preliminary. It's like, does that imply a certain ordering of my development in practice, an ordering of what practices I'm developing? In other words, do I need to, as I mentioned in a previous talk, develop my capacity to really say no to that cookie or that second slice of dessert or whatever it is when I don't really need it, and really feel secure in that, before I attempt any of this stuff? Do I need to feel that I'm not just pulled around by vedanā or by the promise of "someone might love me" or whatever it is, "and make me feel okay about myself," before I open up this exploration of eros?

[31:09] So yes, some people do do that first, and then get interested in this other stuff. Some people do that and never get interested in this other stuff. Some people need to do that first, need to feel that kind of establishment of security and development before they can open this. And others, as I said in a previous talk on this retreat, others can't wait. There's something in the depth and aliveness of the eros that moves through them in this life that they can't wait, or things are happening, and the investigations and the development into more traditional kinds of letting go and this exploration of eros need to go on somehow in parallel. We touched on this before. But I would say both letting go, in both the sort of more superficial sense of, you know, the cookie and the chocolate cake and all this, and the tea and all that, and the deeper sense that we talked about, in terms of really letting go of subtle clinging, and really opening up this whole range of insights into dependent arising and emptiness -- both all that, and a sort of conscious and mindful exploration and development of art with regard to eros, both of these, I would say, for me, more and more, I would regard as both of them are elements or part of what I would conceive to be a full path, a full practice.

If we're just going to say, "Eros -- you're talking about desire," or "That's just clinging, and that just leads to suffering," that implies, "Well, just put it down. Don't engage with eros. It's fire. Don't go near it. Just put it down." But most of us listening to this are probably lay people. We're not celibate renunciates, for a start. Actually, again, if you've lived for a while in monasteries, there's still a question of actually how renunciate are a lot of monastics. They may not be having sex, but there are a lot of other opportunities for sense pleasures and indulgences, etc. But anyway, both lay people and celibate renunciates, whether they're monastic or lay celibate renunciates, eros is there already. That's partly what I'm trying to say on this retreat. It's already there as an element of our being, as an element of our soul, as a force in our lives and in our practice. So even just eros with regard to the path (which we'll come back to talking about what does that mean), and eros with regard even just to a narrow range of images and fantasies that are alive for us. Maybe they're just the Buddhist ones, the sort of classical Buddhist ones, but there's eros in relation to them and to the path. Even if it's just that range and those kinds of directions of eros that are allowed, eros is there already. It's alive in our lives and it needs kind of addressing. It needs understanding. It needs exploring.

But if we, as lay people, are just going to believe something incredibly sort of over-simplistic and dismissive as "Eros is basically craving, and it brings suffering," then really what we're believing or what we're kind of buying into is, if we buy into that, we're also buying into, "Okay, then. I'm deciding to live, you're deciding to live, as a lay person. So you're effectively then deliberately engaging in what leads to suffering." Which somehow indirectly implies that you're kind of either a bit stupid, we're a bit stupid, or our practice is essentially a waste of time. I mean, we may get a little benefit, but really what we're doing is opting for some version of the path that is really not a full version. It's really not the real deal.

Now, of course, some people believe exactly that, and either decide to be monastics or just hope that in a future life they get born to be and able to be a monastic or something. Some people actually believe that. But really, is it true? Is that true? And the whole lot of it. Is it true that eros just leads to suffering? It's that simple, therefore leave it, put it down, just turn away, and/or put up with some kind of pretty half-assed attempt at the path? Is that really true? We're just sort of, yeah, putting up with really second best? Or do we need -- as is the whole basis of the retreat -- do we need other concepts and conceptual frameworks here so that we can really include eros, and include the exploration of it, as well as the other sort of parallel factor of letting go, both at the more superficial, everyday level, and at the really deep exploration? Do we need other ideas and practices that can actually allow us to include and explore both?

So there's this whole question about ordering and all that. But I would say, you know, an exploration of eros, in the wide sense -- again, I've said this before, but just to say again. If we talk, going back to those first two alchemical maxims, and say eros is fire, and the vessel needs to be strong so it doesn't burst or melt or whatever, it can sound like, "Wow, this is something really intense and dangerous that we're doing." But don't get carried away with those particular images of fire, or alchemical vessels heating up and perhaps cracking, and all that stuff. Yeah, there's that possibility, that we're dealing sometimes with something that's really strong, that's really stretching our being emotionally, energetically, conceptually, psychically, and all that. But also a lot of eros, a lot of the experience of eros, is really something quite subtle. As I said before, practice, for me, needs to be able to span that whole range. Yes, the intense. Yes, the stretching. And yes, sometimes even the breaking. But also the subtle, and the easily overlooked, and the not particularly remarkable, the not very intense. It's not the case that one is the real deal and the other isn't at all. So don't get too taken for a ride by some of the imagery from alchemy or other things.

[39:03] So the exploration of eros in the broad sense -- not just sexual, not just intense, but yes, all of that: the intense, and the not intense, and the sexual, and the not sexual imagery and all that. One thing it needs, touching on what we've already mentioned, is, I would say, a heartfelt, integrated, embodied rootedness in and commitment to ethics. Why I'm saying all that is because some people, the commitment to ethics is actually coming out of fear, or it's just coming out of "because so-and-so authority said," and one has never questioned it. I'm talking about something, as I said, really heartfelt. It's coming deep in the being. There's an engagement, a commitment to. It's integrated into one's life and embodied in one's life. There's a commitment there and a rootedness there. I'm choosing these words very deliberately.

But that involves an engagement, a living, and a questioning. So sometimes what happens is people just, whether it's Buddhist ethics or the ethics of Western societies as they stand in whatever era one lives in, it's really just a person is doing this just because they're afraid of the consequences or they're told to do it by some authority. They've never really questioned it. Sometimes that's okay. A person hasn't developed that capacity yet. And sometimes, actually, it creates a situation where the ethics are not full enough. I've spoken about this in relation to Buddhist ethics, that sometimes because they're made at a time before globalization, before climate change, etc., and from the perspective more of simplifying one's consciousness and one's life, and maybe ensuring a good rebirth and all that, rather than other reasons, for instance, that are there in other religious traditions -- because of all that, sometimes Buddhist ethics actually needs a bit more questioning and expanding. Questioning ethics doesn't mean giving up this or that, necessarily. It might mean giving up this thing that I used to hold as an ethical constraint. It might. You might decide, "I no longer really believe that. I no longer feel that that's the appropriate or right thing to do."

But it might also operate the other way. In other words, I really engage in a questioning of ethics, lived, beautiful, embodied, heartfelt, and that causes me to actually extend my ethical commitments beyond, let's say, the five precepts as they're usually understood. I've spoken about all that before in other talks. But I would say exploration of eros needs that heartfelt, integrated, embodied rootedness in and commitment to ethics, okay? And including the questioning of our ethics, ongoing.

A second thing that it needs, I would say, is skill and confidence in emotional awareness, with emotional energetics and just energetics in general. Skill and confidence in emotional awareness and energetics. This is why we put so much emphasis on the emotional and energy body, and stated that that was a prerequisite for this course, etc. So that means skill and confidence to be able to notice what's going on emotionally, energetically in the body, including subtle, really subtle manifestations of emotion and energies. Not just the really obvious ones; really subtle movements and manifestations there, and to be able to notice and discern and handle, also, energies, especially the stronger ones. So really to have some skill with the energy body, and being able to open if energies are strong, so there's not this pressure there (this is something we'll return to); to allow energies to flow in different ways when they feel a bit blocked; the capacity to tolerate energies that are intense and creating a feeling of pressure, and all that.

So this, I would say, is a second demand, if you like, or necessity for the exploration of eros in practice. A third is some degree of what we could call trust or faith or even wisdom, actually. A little trust. As I mentioned before, this might even come as a kind of experiment. In other words, we're just experimenting with an attitude of trust, temporarily, in regard to eros, or in regard to this sexual image, or whatever it is. What gives us even the trust to be able to experiment temporarily? Well, hopefully that's an attitude in our practice anyway. As I would teach it, that's very much a key ingredient -- experimentation, playfulness, with mindfulness, discerning: what happens when I do this? What happens when I conceive this way? What happens when I look this way? But knowing, developing a firsthand knowledge, that the conception, the conceptual framework that I entertain at any moment, and the way of looking, shapes and conditions the experiences that then unfold. Simple, deep understanding of dependent arising. It can be taken deeper and deeper, as we said.

But knowing that allows me to experiment even with just a little bit of trusting. Trusting, for example, this idea that eros or desire, at root, is a treasure. There's something to be treasured there. Despite its obvious connection with suffering and dukkha, wrapped up in eros and desire is a treasure. Trusting, maybe, that it may express a deeper intelligence of soul. So it's like searching for jewels, or searching for gold. You have to clean off the dross, and mine a little bit, and find something, find the gem there, right in the middle of the eros or the desire; brush off the other stuff. Again, a limited analogy. But again, trusting perhaps a little bit that there's some kind of telos operating here, that something, through desire, through eros, is pulling us towards an end that is, if you like, constellated by the soul's intelligence or wisdom, or the wisdom of the Buddha-nature or whatever. A little bit of trust, experimenting with that eros may itself be holy or divine in origin, though it's easily distorted in different ways.

So those kinds of trust, which, for some, may sound really far out already, they may well emerge just from a (what we're calling) phenomenological approach, with an open-minded inquiry into our experience, into imaginal practice, and into soulmaking, and into eros. But these things just that we've mentioned so far -- the rootedness in ethics in an integrated way, the skill and confidence in emotional awareness and energetics, and a certain amount of trust and wisdom in regard to eros -- we could call this a kind of skill set. I'm going to mention more. But we could call that a skill set. And that skill set, or that language of 'skill set,' implies that these are developable things. That relationship with ethics is developable. That skill with the emotions and the energies is developable. Even that trust is developable. So I use the language of 'skill set' to imply partly that these are developable things, factors, elements.

If we talk a bit about equanimity, which is obviously a key word in Buddhadharma, how does that come into all this business when you talk about desire and passion and eros and all that? Equanimity. We may wonder, well, what about the equanimity? Or I have a lot of eros, and I keep falling over or getting floored by my desire or whatever. So, equanimity. What does that mean? How does it come in in relation to this path? Equanimity implies several things, we could say. It implies balance. That means not toppling over, either forward toward this object that we're enamoured with or that there's an erotic connection with, or kind of backwards in recoil, in fear, in different kinds of fear that can come up in relationship when there's a lot of eros. So equanimity implies balance.

[49:36] What does this whole word 'balance' then mean in relationship to eros? Steadiness is implied, in the sense of, like -- maybe that's the wrong word, but not short-circuiting. Yeah, steadiness -- that it can last, that the eros can last. A flame that can burn steadily; that's what I mean. So sometimes the eros, it's like a flame that just -- a lot of charge goes through the electrical circuit, and it just blows the circuit, or it short-circuits, or the whole thing just collapses. It kind of caves in on itself. All this is very common with eros. There's a lot of eros, and there's this imbalance, falling over one way, either towards or away from, or a kind of blowing out or collapsing inwards or something. But equanimity implies balance. It implies this kind of steadiness.

It also implies spaciousness, meaning non-contraction. So again, what does this mean in relationship to eros? That it doesn't, for instance, contract in craving. That it doesn't contract in realism as well. There's not a contraction emotionally or energetically, a shrinking or freezing, a contraction of view. So all this is implied in that. But what does it mean, equanimity in our life and in our practice and in relation to eros? This is actually, I think, more interesting than we often hear about or we might first think about when we consider equanimity as a sort of word in Buddhadharma. Some of you will know from meditation that really deep equanimity, or experiences of deep equanimity, when there's this kind of letting go of the pushing away of experience that we don't like in some way or that's unpleasant, and letting go also of the pulling towards us, or trying to pull ourselves towards a pleasant experience or attractive experience, when there's really that developed in the meditation, going deeper and deeper and deeper, it takes you deeper and deeper into non-fabrication. It lessens fabrication, eventually into the Unfabricated. So experiences of deep equanimity are experiences of much less fabrication, you know, on a spectrum of fabrication of perception.

The experience of spaciousness is also connected with that. Deep equanimity often is an experience of deep spaciousness, deep unfabricating. Sometimes blackness. Blackness and equanimity -- we touched on this in the last retreat. These are all kind of characteristic of meditative states of deep equanimity. And they bring, generally speaking, over time, and not just when those kind of states are experienced once or twice, but repeated sort of descent or immersion in those kind of states, opening to them in meditation, bring, generally speaking, in one's life, a kind of steadiness and spaciousness with respect to the things of the world. So we taste something. We taste a whole different perspective and sense of things in those states. A whole different perspective. A whole different kind of sense of existence in those states. And that brings, generally speaking, over time, with repeated immersion, in and out, in and out, a kind of steadiness and spaciousness with respect to the things of the world, and, in a way, less kind of craving with regard to the things of the world.

The shadow side of all that is maybe those kinds of experiences, those kind of perspectives, can also bring a disengagement. So that's interesting. Why does it sometimes bring a kind of disengagement? Even sometimes a kind of anaemia. But more like a political or environmental disengagement, non-engagement. What does it depend on, whether it brings a disengagement, or actually there can be all the fruits of that deep equanimity and still an engagement, a passionate engagement? I've talked about this before, so I'm not going to labour it now, but partly it depends on the fantasies and on the conceptual frameworks that are operating there in relationship to what the path involves and what awakening looks like. Fantasies are always there, concepts are always there. Dependent on what they are shapes the ethics, if we tie it into what we said before, and shapes the engagement as well, and the degree of engagement, and the fullness, and what it looks like.

But shadow aside, potentially those kind of experiences -- sometimes a one-off will do something radical in one's life, but more generally, it's dipping in and out, getting really used to those perspectives and those openings -- potentially then, because of the spaciousness and the steadiness, it's almost like something in the being has the spaciousness and the steadiness, and then a kind of confidence that it can then allow desire, eros, in regard to certain things in life, because that steadiness, that spaciousness, that perspective, is absorbed. Catherine held up this beautiful picture in the last retreat -- or was it a cloth? I can't remember -- with the black, the pitch-black sort of background, and then within that, a flame in the middle of it.^[2] The flame of eros is supported, is contextualized, is allowed and given strength by the blackness, the deep equanimity, the space around it that we can open to. That deep blackness is often characteristic of states of deep unfabrication.

A slight aside, but there's an important point, and we'll come back to it: the desire for the Unfabricated, the desire for the Absolute, as some people call it, the desire for the transcendent, even the desire for onenesses, knowing different onenesses, different kind of stages of less fabrication in meditation, the desire for all that, I would say, is a soul-desire. It's a deep desire. The desire for equanimity in life, for balance, I would actually say is not a soul-desire. We don't really have eros about equanimity. We can really want it, but I would be hard-pressed to imagine that it could function as a kind of soulmaking object for us, equanimity in itself. But the desire for the Unfabricated, or this deep black, or the states of less fabrication, the oneness and the space of all that and the mystical knowing, that can be a deep soul-desire. The desire for equanimity that comes out of it, I have a hard time conceiving that that could really be a soul-desire, an erotic object, a soulmaking object. It's more a kind of, if you like, a medical aspiration, in the sense that it's really helpful in our life to have equanimity, to have some coolness, to have some perspective. It's soothing. It's freeing. It's healing in certain ways. So it's important. It's definitely important. Heavens, it's really important! And it's important in relation to eros because it can, over time, enable this kind of balance with eros. But in itself, it's not really an erotic object or a soulmaking object, unlike the desire for the Unfabricated, and the Unfabricated itself, or knowing different kinds of oneness, etc.

[58:58] While we're on this subject, this is still an aside, but actually it's quite important to everything that we're saying: eros implies -- or implicit, implicated, woven in, involved in eros as we're using that word, in the big sense -- it implies psyche and image. It implies the imaginal. And the imaginal, psyche and image, implies this notion of what we've called on other retreats daimons, imaginal figures, and a duty to the imaginal figure that can sometimes be felt. So eros kind of implies all that, whatever that imaginal figure is or whatever it kind of imbues. And, as I've mentioned, there can be also eros in relationship to the imaginal figure. What, though, is the relationship between freedom and duty? There's this whole movement in the path towards freedom, and for me, that's a very big word with a lot of dimensions, a lot of directions that may be way more than we initially conceive of or hear about or whatever.

What's the relationship between freedom and the movement towards freedom, and duty? Duty can sometimes be a lessening of freedom, a constraint of freedom. I'm not totally free because I have this duty that I need to do or need to carry out or whatever it is. So duty often goes with imaginal practice, as I've mentioned on another retreat and opened up. But what's the relationship between duty and freedom? Doesn't duty sometimes also mean a kind of constraint of freedom? So this is, to me, just really interesting to be aware of and explore. But one thing I will say for example right now is that an imaginal duty and the kind of devotion to that (or those, plural), I would say it doesn't just curtail freedom or certain freedoms, but it also brings certain freedoms at certain levels. And oftentimes it brings freedom in relation to the really big things -- so, for example, in relation to death or the possibility of dying, the possibility of an early death even. Because one feels that one is devoted to, in line with, following one's calling, plugged into one's duty, carrying out one's duty as best one can in the time and the circumstances allotted to one, because one feels that alignment, then there is a certain freedom in relationship to death, a certain deep, deep okayness in relation to death and to the big things in life -- the big losses, the big ups and downs. It keeps your bearings, and it gives you a sense of what's important.

So, you know, there's that pop phrase book, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. Is that what it's called? Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, and then in brackets there's the subtitle, And It's All Small Stuff, I think, if I remember the title. But this is saying, you know, with this whole imaginal dimension, and the duty there and all that, the duties there, it's saying: don't sweat the small stuff, but it's not all small stuff. If I say it's all small stuff, I lose the soul-dimension, because soulmaking has everything to do with meaningfulness and importance and all that. Don't sweat the small stuff, but it's not all small stuff. It matters. It matters deeply to our being, to our life, to what unfolds for us, to our souls, to the cosmos, to God, to the Buddha-nature, to the tradition. It matters that we follow our duties, that we sense that, that we give that a certain amount of reverence and devotion. And what does that look like? That's not a simple question either.

We mentioned earlier on this retreat and on previous retreats the importance, the delicacy of the question of what an image may or may not be asking for, what needs to manifest from an image, and the kind of open-mindedness and sensitivity in the inquiry with regard to images and imaginal figures and the sense of duty -- not necessarily at all a simple translation, concretization of the image. So real care needs to be taken there, and a Middle Way between that kind of over-simplistic translation, concretization, and a dismissal of what the image might be asking for. So there's a Middle Way there, and no simple answers necessarily. No formulaic answers either. So there's that kind of Middle Way in regard to all this sense of duty and manifestation and importance and meaningfulness. There's also the Middle Way just between what matters and what is empty at the same time as mattering. Seeing image as image, understanding it, relating to it in a way that allows it its potency and power for the soul, at the same time as not reifying and identifying. So, you know, in some ways, it's asking a lot. In other ways, it's just kind of natural to imaginal practice, and it may not require a lot of training to do that. People just understand it, intuit it directly, in the context of imaginal practice.

But anyway, in relation to all this that we've just said, there is clearly a complex relationship between duty and freedom. In some respects, the duty that we feel towards an image or from an image constrains freedom, maybe constrains the equanimity in some regards. But, as we've just explained, on the other hand, at the same time, it also brings a kind of deep freedom at certain levels, and also equanimity, as I said, in relation to the big things of life and death.

Okay, let's pause there kind of as we go down our list, and pick up this list in the next part, in terms of the qualities, the factors, that are important and necessary to mastering the fire, as we said, and shaping the vessel for these practices.