Eros and the Brahmaviharas

Until quite recently, really quite recently, I tended in teaching to try as much as possible to avoid repeating myself, repeating things that I had said in other talks, other teachings, or presented. And partly just because that's the kind of personality style, I guess, in relation to creativity and stuff, perhaps. But partly also I felt like it didn't serve the teaching, the student, the listener, especially in the age of recordings, or with a book where you can always go back and read again and do your own repetition. As well as that, I also used to think that sometimes it's better not to spell out fully the obvious consequences of whatever teachings one is presenting. For example, in the book I wrote, or in other series of teachings, I didn't fully spell out all the consequences, partly because I thought that if the listener or reader engages and inquires and questions into the material, that personal engagement in that way will actually lead to them digesting the material better, understanding it better, assimilating it better, having it available to them better and more fully.

But I'm really questioning all that in the last couple of years. So I'm not sure. I think there are a lot of assumptions there. And certainly in terms of people engaging, I think that happens in different ways, and it takes a certain amount of confidence to question or even make one's own conclusions from certain things that are presented, etc. So I'm questioning all this and revising it very much. Why I'm saying that is because now, at the risk of repeating myself, but for the sake of clarity, I'd like to take a little time and explore a little bit the relationship of eros and the brahmavihāras (loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity). Explore the relationships, the differences there, and also point to the possibility of using eros and the erotic-imaginal in the service of brahmavihāra cultivation and practice, or even in actual brahmavihāra practice, with mettā and compassion, etc.

We already said: can we notice with imaginal practice -- there's a lot in imaginal practice that's not immediately obvious. Once we hang out with it, and get used to that terrain and that opening, that world, if you like, we start to notice certain qualities or aspects, characteristics, of that world, and the relationships there. One of the things that we've pointed out that's noticeable there -- maybe immediately; it may be very obvious; or may be really much less obvious and something that's sort of, "Oh, yeah, okay," something that dawns on us kind of slowly or gradually or only in time -- and that is the presence of love. In the imaginal, in the imaginal space, there is love. It may be obvious at first. It may be much less obvious. There is love, so to speak, from ourselves to the imaginal figure. We love imaginal figures. And sometimes, again, this is really not obvious at all, but it's there in one way or another, in one form or quality of love or another.

And that's another thing we said: the range of kinds of qualities or presentations or flavours of love is enormously variable. So there's love from self to the imaginal figure, and there's also love from the imaginal figure to self. And everything that we just said applies: it may be really obvious, it may be not obvious at all. It comes in a whole wide range of flavours, colours, expressions, etc. But what we're talking about here is erotic love. Because eros and the imaginal go together, we're talking about erotic love in the imaginal, in the imaginal world, between imaginal figures and ourselves. And eros has a lot of aspects in common with mettā, but it's also, if you like, more than mettā. There's more to it. It's different. And this is what I want to make sure we're clear about.

Most people, perhaps, when they practise mettā (loving-kindness) or compassion, most people use their imagination to some extent. I mean, at least you have some kind of sense of the person to whom you're giving mettā. Maybe you use white light, or maybe you see them smiling, or you just sense their being in the imagination without a visual image there. The use of imagination in mettā, it's great; it's really valid and okay, and for most people it's very, very helpful, in whatever ways that works, but that per se, the use of the imagination in mettā, is not the erotic-imaginal. Imagination doesn't equate as imaginal, and mettā doesn't equate as eros.

We also gave that example of what we were calling in the last retreat an imaginal figure of love, and using then -- actually in different ways which we didn't quite tease out in the last retreat -- one for the sake of cultivating mettā, and the other for the sake of the whole movement into the erotic-imaginal, which we didn't kind of unpack so much on the last retreat, though we did point at it and open that possibility.^[1] So we talked about, for instance, Grandma or the lap of the Buddha, and made the distinction that if Grandma is not an erotic object for me -- not a sexual object, but an erotic object, in terms of meaning that she is full of dimensionality; my interest is aroused; there's more to her; I want to kind of know her and contact her; she has these dimensions to her being that I want to enter, open to -- if that is not there, then Grandma may be a really valuable mettā figure, figure for the cultivation of mettā, an imagination figure, but she's not imaginal, and that's certainly not erotic there. There's no eros. It's really, really valuable, certainly okay, very helpful, but erotic-imaginal is something different than those, either just the use of the imagination for the sake of mettā or this figure that may express mettā to us but is not full of eros either way (from us to her or from her to us).

But there are similarities and overlaps between eros and the brahmavihāras, certainly there are. And we can say, as I think I said right near the beginning of this course, that care -- to me -- care is a part of eros. So that's included. When there's an erotic relationship, there is care there. I was using 'love' in that sense, as 'care,' care for the other's being. So to me, that's actually part of eros. There are other similarities between eros and the brahmavihāras. For example, equanimity is something you may know that we can talk about in two ways. In a way, the Buddha kind of implicitly made this distinction. Equanimity towards beings -- there it's related to compassion practice. We care for their suffering, we try and do what we can to alleviate the suffering of some being, but we also realize, in a way, they need to take responsibility, and there's a limit to how much I can do sometimes. There's a limit in complicated relationships, complicated situations and circumstances, to what I can do to alleviate their suffering. And recognizing those limits, and recognizing that they may need to take responsibility in some way is a part of what supports the equanimity towards beings in the context of compassion towards beings. And actually sometimes, another person's suffering is really up to us, and we can step in there and do something, extend ourselves.

But as well as equanimity towards beings, the Buddha talked about equanimity in a way that what he's really referring to is equanimity towards phenomena (pleasant or unpleasant, etc.), that there's a kind of evenness, not getting so aversive to the unpleasant and rejecting it and trying to get rid of it, caught up in that kind of knee-jerk reaction, and so sort of craving and contracted around seeking out the pleasant or seeking to hold onto the pleasant, etc., the fear of losing it. So there's a kind of equanimity and evenness and impartiality, if you like, towards phenomena, pleasant/unpleasant, beautiful/ugly, etc. So equanimity, it's possible to practise equanimity and have equanimity in relation to beings and in relationship to phenomena.

And the same is true of eros, right? Everything we've talked about on this retreat, there's eros certainly towards a human other. Actually, any thing can be alive for us as an erotic object, if it fulfils the criteria that we've delineated, the relationship with anything. It could be this lamp in front of me. It could be this talk, the ideas. Could be you as the listeners. Could be an imaginal figure. Could be a tree. Anything. Could be a heartache, that there's an erotic relationship with my heartache. It's different than just a mettā relationship with my heartache, right? The heartache has dimensions, has divinity, has meaningfulness, has purpose, comes alive in that way through the erotic relationship. But like equanimity, eros can also be towards beings and towards phenomena. Actual beings, physical beings, imaginal beings, and phenomena, actual phenomena, and imaginal phenomena.

And also, and maybe some of you will know this and some of you are less aware of it, but this is also true of mettā and compassion, loving-kindness and compassion. Most of us understand those or have been exposed to those as teachings of what we can practise, qualities we can practise in relation and cultivate in relation to beings, to sentient beings. Really beautiful practice, and very powerful in terms of the insights that it can liberate. Not just the healing and opening that it can bring experientially, but also the insights into dependent origination -- the practices of loving-kindness and compassion towards phenomena, directing love towards dharmas, which is less commonly practised, and much less commonly understood in terms of its implications for understanding emptiness and dependent origination.^[2]

[13:20] But anyway, there are lots of similarities and overlaps between eros and the brahmavihāras, but what about the differentiations between them? Can we get clear or clearer in our differentiation, differentiating between eros and the brahmavihāras? So eros, we have said, has desire in it. It has this wanting, wanting to connect, wanting to connect more, wanting to contact, wanting to know, to penetrate, to enter, to open to, etc. It has, in that sense, attraction. It has desire and attraction in it. It also has delight as part of it. It's accompanied by delight, or delight is part of the whole experience of eros, we have said. So desire, attraction, delight. Also with eros, the perception of beauty is an integral feature, an inevitable feature of eros. The perception of beauty, and also, I would say, of meaningfulness. This erotic other, this beloved other, whether it's an object or a person or whatever, a being, is somehow meaningful to my soul. And the eros itself is also meaningful. But that is because eros goes with the imaginal; all these qualities are part of that. So desire, attraction, delight, beauty, meaningfulness.

In contrast, mettā, for example, attraction is not part of mettā. Mettā does not involve a desire to connect more with, to know more, to penetrate, to open to, etc. Let's be really clear here. Mettā may support a realization of interconnectedness: that we are already interconnected. There's already an interconnection on lots of different levels of being between me and this person that I'm offering mettā to, directing compassion to, etc. So mettā may support and open the realization of an interconnectedness that already exists. And similarly, a realization of interconnectedness supports mettā. To the degree that we realize the depth of our interconnectedness, to that degree is mettā made easier and supported. The practice of mettā towards this person is made easier and supported by the degree and the depth to which I realize and the fullness to which I realize our interconnectedness.

But that's different. Realizing interconnectedness that's already, so to speak, an existential fact, if you like, is different than a desire to connect more. It's different than that. And again, in contrast, mettā may support, give rise to, an increase in our perception of the beauty of the other. If you've done a lot of mettā practice, you'll know this: here's that person. They're just kind of neutral. I don't think much of them, or there's aversion to them -- I find them ugly in some way, or even repulsive, or whatever it is. I don't like them. And as you practise mettā, you start to see, in all kinds of different ways, some beauty there. And there might be some delight in their being, in their presence, certainly in the practice of mettā. That's a slightly different thing. So mettā may support an increase in the perception of beauty and delight, but the perception of beauty and the experience of delight, delighting in the other and how they are, these are not essential to mettā -- almost by definition, because that would make mettā conditional. The whole point of mettā is that it's unconditional: I don't need to find you beautiful. I don't need to perceive you as beautiful. I don't need to delight in your being and presence. It might come out of the mettā practice, but the whole point of the unconditionality of mettā -- that's the goal; the ideal of mettā is unconditionality -- it's that these are not essential, they're not necessary to mettā, the perception of beauty of the other and the delight in the other. So there are contrasts here that are quite important to be really clear about and draw out.

We have been saying that eros includes something like what we might call personal love. In other words, better to put, love for the particulars of this being or this person or this thing, love for the uniqueness and through the uniqueness. And that's different, again, than mettā. Mettā is just: you love them. Why do you love them? Because they're a sentient being. It's not about loving their particulars. It's not love for the particulars. It's just, in a way, for the universals. Sentient beings suffer. We share suffering. Even if I don't share exactly the same kind of suffering that you do, there's something in common with suffering, with mortality, with fragility, illness, vulnerability, emotional vulnerability, all that. And the compassion is running through those strands of universality, just because you're a sentient being, just because I'm a sentient being, whereas the eros is for, in, and through the particulars and the uniqueness.

[19:46] And again, this is noticeable with images, in the imaginal realm. Sometimes it's immediately noticeable, and sometimes we need to perhaps spend longer, dwelling with a sensitivity, with an openness, with a receptivity and a kind of fine-tuning or attunement of our attention, of our being, in the imaginal realm, with an imaginal figure, to realize: ah, yes, there's more than mettā here. There is this what we're calling a personal love, or love for, in, and through the particulars and the uniqueness. Yes? So in that story of the retreatant who, in her beautiful relationship with the trees and the forest, loved them, was in love with them and their particulars and their uniqueness, and just felt at first there was a discrepancy there, there's an inequality: I'm just loved because I'm one of Gaia's children, a kind of universality there. And then actually realizing, just hanging out with the image until we realize: oh, oh yes, there's something else here. It might feel like something has shifted in the image. I actually think it's there from the beginning in the imaginal, and we need to notice it.

What I want to say is, we need that kind of love as well as we need mettā. We need this personal love. We need to love particulars and uniquenesses. And we need our particulars, our personhoods, our particular personhoods, our unique personhoods, our particularities and our uniquenesses loved. We need to feel that. Why? Because we have, as I've pointed out before, I would say we just have, we experience, we sense, we viscerally feel ourselves to be a different kind of self. We have a modernist self now. And the whole self-experience is different. It's more complex. It is more individual. There is more complexity to individuality nowadays, more particularities, more edges, more contradictions, all of that. This is something that modernism -- actually, as I was talking with Catherine the other day, she was pointing out that it started with St Augustine, perhaps, and then through centuries, and actually changed Christianity, or the relationship with Jesus was part of what gave rise to more of a sense of individuality in the modern self, etc. But anyway, at this point, in our culture, we have a certain very complex, very multifaceted sense of self, of which uniqueness of that self, personhood and the uniquenesses in that self, and the particularities, are absolutely essential dimensions.

We can't just erase them and get rid of them. Someone might say, "Yes, but that's a construct." And I say, "Yes, of course it's a construct. But it's also our experience, our visceral, gut experience" -- not all the time, because there are different practices, different ways of looking that move in and out of that, and turn it up and turn it down, etc., bring out the contrasts, fade them through less fabrication, etc., but it is an experience that we will keep coming back to. We will keep being confronted by it because we've grown up with it, but also because it's in our society. And anyway, if a person says, "That's a construct. That kind of self is a construct," you can say, "Yes, but everything is a construct. Show me something that's not a construct. Show me something that's not fabricated." We've gone into this. If you point to bare attention or the moment-to-moment process of aggregates, I would just say: look deeper. More practice. More practice with the ways of looking that show that that too is a fabrication, that too can fade, how it gets fabricated. It's just a level of fabrication.

And thirdly, from everything we've been saying, what we've explored on this retreat, we could see that modernist construction of self as indeed a construction, but a construction emerging individually and culturally from the very process of the soulmaking dynamic, from the stretching of the eros-psyche-logos. A new kind of self is created or discovered, or, if you like, the self is expanded, complicated, enriched, widened, deepened, given dimensionality, etc. The modernist self may be, or one way of seeing it is actually as a result of an individual and cultural process of soulmaking. And now that modernist self is inviting a further level of soulmaking, through all this, through the love, the erotic love that it's asking for, asking us to open to this dimension and not shut it out, and open to what personhood can be and can mean, the divinity of it and all that. It's inviting, asking for, more soulmaking. But we cannot erase or ignore this self that we feel. We certainly can't erase it permanently. It can go quiet to different degrees, beyond the personality, and then much deeper than that even. But we can't live in a way that erases that self or ignores it, and to try to do that, or to think that one has done that, that would be poverties, mistakes. They would make us poor rather than richer and fuller and freer. It strangely kind of constrains. And to try and ignore it and try and do that would just betray a lack of full insight, I believe.

So there's this, what we're calling love for, in, through the particulars, the uniquenesses. What would it be to dwell in that, to open to it, both our love for the imaginal figure in their particularities and their uniqueness or the uniqueness and particularities that are, so to speak, part of them, and also their personal love for us and our particulars and our uniqueness? To sit in that, to dwell in it, to abide in it, to feel it, soak in it, absorb it, take it in, either from the gaze of the imaginal other, or from some other communication (which may or may not be verbal -- it may be tactile, it may be sexual, it may be from light streaming; all kinds of possibilities). To open to and dwell in and open to receive the imaginal figure's love for you. Is that possible? So much healing is available there, to feel loved, to be loved, to know one's love, to recognize that one is loved, in all kinds of ways, in our particularities, and with all the sense of dimensionality to that love, to that figure -- in other words, to the origin of the love, because the imaginal figure, in that case, is the source of that love -- and to feel like that source itself is multi-levelled, multidimensional, multi-aspected. And also in ourself; what receives it within us is multidimensional, as well, or it's received at different dimensions of our being (put it that way).

Again, as I said before, this can be difficult, this kind of opening to the loving gaze of the other, whether it's a human other or an imaginal other. It can be difficult. Oftentimes when you're teaching mettā practice, this is interesting, because you just see: for so many people, it's often harder to receive mettā and compassion, to receive love, than to give it. And perhaps in the Buddha's time he would have found that very, very strange. Certainly I know the Dalai Lama was very surprised when he came to the West first and saw that. For a lot of people -- certainly not for everyone, absolutely not for everyone, but it's often harder to receive love than to give it.

[29:02] We talked before [about] how we can have in all this a very ambivalent relationship, a very charged relationship with being seen. So something in us yearns and longs to be seen, to be naked, to be gathered in another one's gaze, to be transparent, not hidden. And also this can be very difficult, very charged, very hard to tolerate sometimes for some people, this being seen. So one ends up with a very ambivalent relationship, something we yearn for and fear or run away from or back off from or close ourselves off from, turn away from. It might be the whole of ourselves; it might be just places within ourself. Parts of us are fine being seen, and parts of us it's really on an edge of ambivalence there for us. There can be pain wrapped up in this, shame that's causing this ambivalence -- we're ashamed to show some part. We believe we're like this, or we shouldn't be like that, or whatever it is. And there can be grief wrapped up in this. So this is, you know, relatively common for us in the modern West, and of course perhaps in other cultures, too; I'm just less familiar with those cultures.

If that is the case, then the question of, okay, what order should we go in with these kinds of practices? And how should we pace it? Am I going to, "Oh, I feel this real ambivalence. I'm just going to force myself into tying myself down in the gaze of this other who is loving me, or the imaginal figure with their erotic gaze or even just their mettā"? It's always a question. There isn't a formula for this: "Everyone needs to proceed in the same order. This will always be easier than that, and you should go this fast exactly." Of course it's not going to be like that! And as always, these kinds of practices, and practice in general, it's asking for sensitivity, for feeling what feels right. It changes all the time. We're really fluidly responsive to the whole unfolding of practice. But, you know, in time, and with this responsiveness, and maybe with the help of teachers and loved ones and friends and all of that, practising alone, practising together, all of that, there can be this increasing capacity to expose oneself, if you like, to the erotic gaze, to the love of the imaginal figure/other, and to dwell there.

When we first raised this, I mentioned the possibility of actually, if there is this ambivalence or seeming inability to, for some people, even to give mettā to themselves -- so even in a whole different practice, trying to give mettā, it's like, it might be that there's an imaginal figure who you can ask, and talk to, and bring this very difficulty to, and just see, what do they say? What do they do? How do they respond? There is an autonomy here that they have, as we keep saying. Imaginal figures have an autonomy that can sometimes really surprise us, and the way that they express love, and they want to love us. They want to communicate something. Sometimes what they want to communicate is the love. This word, 'angel,' means 'messenger,' 'communicator.' And the angels that come to us, the angels that we open to in the imaginal realm, they want to love us, and they want to communicate something, and they have this sometimes surprising autonomy and kind of intelligence that we could not have engineered or predicted.

Just to kind of [laughs] say something -- a little bit the cat getting out of the bag, but: there's love there anyway. Their love is there anyway. They love you anyway. It's going on anyway, in other words. You can try and avoid it, etc., turn your attention away from it, but it's going on anyway, if you like, at one level.

So we can learn about love, and hopefully we do learn about love, through and in our human relationships. Hopefully we take care and work at those relationships that we really -- we learn how to love and how to be loved, how to receive love. We learn about love, and what it is, and what it involves, through our taking care and working at and hanging in there and working with the difficulties in our human relationships. But also we learn about love through, with, and from our imaginal figures, the figures of the imaginal realm that come to us. We can learn a lot about love through, with, and from imaginal figures.

But with all this and the distinctions we made before, eros, if you like, is more than mettā. It involves more than mettā. So whether it's from us to the other, the object, the imaginal object or the actual other, or from the other to ourself, eros involves more than mettā. It has other aspects, other dimensions. Again, sometimes we can be a little too simplistic in the way that we pick up the Dharma or what we take from it, and then what we neglect to look into and flesh out and bring alive in our lives. Very easily we just think, "Well, there is just mettā and its far and near enemies," if you know the teaching on that. So there's just mettā, loving-kindness, and then its far enemy is ill-will, and its near enemy is attachment. These are the kind of categories, and it's got to fit somewhere in there. If you say, "Yeah, I really love my partner or my lover" or whatever it is, and you say, "Well, okay, I kind of just admit it's mettā, definitely mettā plus some attachment. And yeah, okay, that's just attachment." But actually is that what's going on? Not to say there isn't attachment there; there may well be, there often is, in the complexity of human relationships. Of course there is.

But there's also other, as we said, delineations that we can draw out. That doesn't really capture it, does it, mettā and attachment, that that's the mixture of my love here, the love that flows between us? So again, we can be a little -- I don't know what the word is -- lazy, sloppy, simplistic, oversimplifying, a little too quick to close the eyes. But this is not to imply that eros is always better, or we should always strive for an erotic relationship. That's not to imply that at all. There's absolutely a place for mettā, and the simplicity and the simplifying that it brings and involves, and for its universality, and for its unconditionality. Absolutely necessary. That's why the Buddha placed such emphasis on it. I don't know how common that was in the teachings of his time, to actually put so much emphasis on the brahmavihāras. But so important and skilful to really know those practices and develop them. Can't say how much treasure there is in that. So I'm not saying, "Eros involves more than mettā, therefore it's always better, therefore always try and do that." I'm not saying that at all. There's really a place and a necessity for mettā and compassion and the brahmavihāras, their simplicity, their universality, their unconditionality.

But there are differences, in fact, related to these factors that we just talked about -- simplicity, universality, and unconditionality. In relationship with another (and actually, that other could be an imaginal other, an actual other, or the self, in relationship with the self, or in relationship with a phenomenon), the practice of mettā, for example, or compassion, or equanimity, leads to (progressively, as you do it more, its direction is towards) fabricating that other less, fabricating the perception of the other less. Again, whether it's self, giving mettā to self, whether it's directing mettā or compassion to phenomena, or equanimity towards phenomena, or towards another, the brahmavihāras actually tend towards a decrease of the fabrication of the perception of the other, of the object of whom one is directing the mettā or compassion or equanimity or whatever, but then eventually to all things. They simplify the perception of the other as part of that movement. And also because self/other/world always arise as a constellation, as we said, they will also simplify the sense of self. So the simplification is part of the movement of less fabrication.

And the perceptions of oneness that come out of that -- self and other are really one; we're one luminous heart essence of love or whatever the perception is -- as we've said several times on this retreat, the various perceptions of oneness are station points on this spectrum of lessening fabrication of the perception of the other and self that happens through the brahmavihāra practice. So the brahmavihāra practices, as you get deeper into them, they decrease the fabrication of the perception of other and also self. Part of that is the simplification of the perception of other and self and also world, and partly the perceptions of oneness, the sense of oneness that happen there -- it's all wrapped up in the movement of lessening fabrication. In contrast, eros actually fabricates more. It doesn't simplify. It adds complexity to the object, to the beloved other. It becomes multifaceted, multidimensional, as we've said, this beloved other, whatever it is, whoever they are.

And they may even increase in the images they sort of express. So one person for me might sort of hold a whole range of images and might manifest to me with different imaginal faces. The movement of eros is an increase in complexity, a complexifying, a complicating, as we've said, and an increase in the fabrication of other. Yes? Eros can go towards melting and union, so to speak, with the other, and we've talked about that in practice, and you've probably experienced that by now. But it will seek, after a sort of dip into that union, it will seek to kind of reinstate the sense of twoness, the erotic polarity, the erotic dyad there. There will be a return to that because of the fertility of that and the necessity of that to the eros. Even when we know the oneness, it's like the knowing of the oneness will just be something that's sort of in the background, part of the mix of what is known in the erotic twoness, in the erotic coupling, in the erotic tension of twoness there in the dyad.

[43:00] What ensues from that particular difference, the difference in the movement towards less and towards more fabrication, if you like, what ensues is a difference in also the perceptions, the openings, the experiences of sacredness and divinity that come out of these two directions of practice. Why is that important relative to the brahmavihāras? Because -- and again, you'll know this if you've done a lot of dedicated brahmavihāra practice, especially mettā and compassion -- if you did that, say cultivated mettā and compassion on a retreat for some weeks, or at home, whatever, then there would be a point (and I think this is an inevitable point unless something is getting in the way), maybe quite fast but usually quite gradually, where the mettā or the compassion begins to feel like I'm not doing it. Actually I sense it everywhere. I sense it in the air. I sense it in the space. I sense that mettā or compassion is a sort of -- I think I've used the words before that it's woven into the fabric of the cosmos.

There is mettā and compassion filling this space, the space of the universe. And when I start to feel that, then I can kind of let that, if you like, the cosmic mettā or the cosmic compassion that pervades everywhere, I can start to let that do the work. Oftentimes people having that kind of experience, opening to it, apart from the relief and the beauty and how deeply it touches, it brings also a sense of divinity. They will often start talking in theistic language, even if they've had no inclination to do that before at all. As I said, it starts to feel with that that, "Oh, it's not me doing. I'm not cranking this wheel of mettā and compassion. I'm not holding the other person's suffering," if that's what I'm trying to do within the compassion practice. "I'm not having to respond." It's almost like it's there. It's a little bit effortless. It's like the cosmos is doing it, the divine is doing it, the Buddha-nature is just doing it, and all I'm doing is kind of opening to letting that happen as it's already happening, and recognizing it. All I'm doing is really opening and tuning my attention to that and tuning into that kind of wavelength, if you like, of perception.

Because it doesn't feel at that point like the self is doing it, the self is responsible, the self is having to work at this compassion, "I'm responsible for this compassion, and I'm the one holding the suffering," etc., this is a huge relief. At that point there's this kind of, "Oh, wow, phew." And with all that, equanimity comes in. The vastness gives rise, the automatic sense of effortless compassion and love and holding, equanimity and steadiness that are sort of there and perceivable, shot through the cosmos, allows the self to be much more equanimous in relationship to the suffering that we're in touch with in the compassion practice. And correspondingly, or with all that, there's an increase in our capacity to face suffering, to open to suffering. We don't have to run away. The heart is, you know, in some respects we could say that our heart gets bigger. It's no longer my personal heart. It's the universal heart. It's the universal compassion. It's the divine compassion that the heart is just opening to.

So our, if you like, capacity to meet suffering, to face it, to hold it -- although it doesn't feel so much that we are holding it -- is vastly expanded when we are in touch with that sense. It's not me that has to do it. It's not little old me that has to somehow hold this enormous suffering that you might be going through, or that's in the world, or that we see on the news, or that the planet is facing. Something much vaster, more powerful that we don't have to create and work at; all we have to do is recognize. Now, that kind of divine or cosmically infused love there and compassion, it could be just from normal, standard loving-kindness or compassion practice, or it could be coming from the erotic-imaginal, and even the sexual imaginal. Yes? And I would say we can know both those possibilities. So that kind of sense of cosmic, divine love, and the equanimity that then imbues that love and that loving-kindness and compassion, coming from either more standard brahmavihāra practices (loving-kindness and compassion, etc.), without any of the imaginal, without certainly any erotic-imaginal, and certainly not with any sexual erotic-imaginal, that's very possible, and I've just described that very sort of normal thing I would expect for people doing the brahmavihāra practices in the standard way.

But we can also know it through and with the erotic-imaginal, and, as I said, even the sexual erotic-imaginal. And we can explore both, know both are possible, and explore the differences. What's part of the differences? Well, they both give rise to this divinity. They both sacralize, if you like, if that's a verb. They give rise to and spread a sense of sacredness. Eros does it because of the eros-psyche-logos dynamic that we've talked about giving a sense of dimensionality and beyondness to, at first, the erotic beloved, the other, and that's part of what will happen with the eros-psyche-logos dynamic as it gets going, if it's not inhibited, as we said, if it's not blocked. And in the sense of dimensionality, and in that sense of beyondness, and the mystery and the beauty with that, there will be at some point some kind of sense of the divine or the mystic. I'm going to come back to these words because they're actually hard to define, and rightly so. But in a way, the mystic is, you could say -- when does something become mystical? When it's beyond whatever is agreed to be the normal, agreed-on perception of what something is. I mean, obviously there are lots of caveats with that definition.

But because of the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, the opening up of dimensions, the perception of dimensions, the perception or the sense of beyond, of mystery, of beauty, the logos then expanding the idea of what that thing is, what that other is, and all the soulmaking involved, there is an inevitable sacralizing that comes through eros because of the soulmaking dynamic that it instigates, ignites, etc., inseminates. Mettā and the brahmavihāras also sacralize, but they sacralize through this decrease in fabrication, this lessening of fabrication of perception that they kind of support or unlock. And because of that, there's a kind of limited direction of the sacralizing; it's always going to be in the direction of less fabricating. And that follows a kind of spectrum. Maybe you could say there are infinite gradations on that spectrum. It certainly seems, in my experience, that there are, if you like, typical, common sort of stations along the way, stopping points, plateaus along the way of that spectrum of lessening fabrication. But there's a limited direction. It will always have something about oneness in it, some kind of oneness, to greater or lesser degrees, and different kinds of oneness. Always, then, some sense of universality. Often some sense of luminosity as well. But universality and oneness will be characteristic of the kind of narrowing of the direction of the sacralizing.

[52:47] Whereas with eros, with the sense of love and cosmopoetic divinity that comes out with eros, there are infinite possible directions of sacralizing there because the eros picks up on and amplifies, ramifies the personal, the particular, the characteristic unique qualities there. It multiplies or spreads them, through the soulmaking dynamic, perhaps in cosmopoesis, to discover and create them -- discover/create them -- everywhere throughout the cosmos. So it's infinite in the sense of there's not a limited number of possibilities of the flavours that can have and the characteristics that can have. It doesn't just move along this sort of narrow line deepening into oneness and less fabrication, etc. Certainly there's depth there, but it's much wider in the sense of the number of possibilities being infinite.

So what I would just like to open, apart from getting clear because I think it's helpful conceptually, but also open the possibility of practice. If you feel enough or when you feel enough trust in practising with eros and the imaginal and the erotic-imaginal, you may want to explore this combination, if you like, or this navigation, but actually combination, mixing, of the eros with the brahmavihāras -- if and when you feel enough trust in the practice of the erotic-imaginal. And again, I'm really including the sexual erotic-imaginal as well. Though it might also be that doing this kind of practice and seeing how the erotic-imaginal, even the sexual erotic-imaginal, can support the brahmavihāras also greatly adds to your trust in the practice of the erotic-imaginal.

So one possibility is working with imaginal practice, getting a sense of the eros involved there in the practice with this imaginal figure, and all the beauty of that, and the multidirectionality and multidimensionality of that. And then, when that's there -- and sometimes that can be very quick if you're familiar with it, and sometimes it takes time to get used to all those different aspects and qualities, and linger in it and feel the beauty there, but actually it can be very quick -- then one can navigate either straight into mettā and compassion practices and just kind of let the image go, but more interesting for us is actually to direct it including still the erotic-imaginal, and the eros, and the sense of the eros, and even the image, and directing, navigating, steering in a way that includes the eros and the erotic-imaginal while opening to the mettā and compassion. So it's kind of a fusion, a mixture.

For example, one can be working with the eros in the imaginal practice, and then introduce a person that you know is suffering. Of course it could be your own suffering. But for instance, introduce a third person. So there's the self, and the beloved other (the object of the eros), and then a third person. You know that they're suffering, and you just introduce that into the constellation. Maybe it has to constellate spatially a certain way. You can be really creative here. And what's possible, as I said, is the erotic divinity, the sense of the divine love that's kind of coming out of, being supported by, emerging from the erotic-image, can actually be what then spills over and meets the suffering and the suffering person, like water spilling over, like a tide coming in, or light can radiate. All kinds of possibilities -- you can be very, very creative here -- for the way that the divine love that is emanating or being expressed through the erotic-image, the way that extends and carries over to include and to meet and encompass and address the suffering other and their suffering. All kinds of possibilities. Again, we can be really surprised, really surprised here. The imaginal has a dimension of creativity which is not our own. We can also be more deliberate, and do it this way or do it that way, more deliberate, more intentional steering.

When I first started exploring this nexus, this meeting point of eros and the brahmavihāras in practice, this was really interesting to me, because typically we would assume that eros is, in the way that we usually think about, it's associated with craving, and it's kind of self-interested: "What can I get for me? I'm interested in my pleasure. I want to keep this erotic object for me. I want to hoard the pleasure for myself," or my whole being and my orientation is contracted around the eros, contracted around the other, etc., and around the self. And one sees that actually that's not the case -- interesting -- again because eros tends to open, open up in all dimensions, in the energy body, etc. We've talked about that before.

So this was much more possible than I had anticipated. I mean, I thought actually that it would work, but it was really much easier than I anticipated. Also what was easier was the fact that we can actually hold two very different images simultaneously. So there's this image of the beloved other and whatever eros is happening, communicating, flowing between us in that image, or maybe not even between us -- it could be a couple, an imaginal couple that we are witnessing and are outside of; we've talked about all this before. But then we can have a third image of this suffering person. So there's the erotic other, and there's the suffering person and the self or another. And there's the possibility to hold a kind of network of images, if you like, or certainly more than one image or two images at the same time.

And also because we tend to think (especially with mettā) of it being something very tender and gentle and soft, and that's the sort of direction of the mettā practice as it evolves: it gets more subtle, more gentle, also kind of less tempestuous; if it's compassionate, it gets less tearful, gets more steady, more quiet, more subtle and more even. That's part of the movement towards less fabrication. It has more equanimity in it as well. But what was also quite interesting to me was that the whole spectrum of erotic expression and erotic kind of character was available and valuable and translatable, if you like, to the character of the brahmavihāras that came with it. For example, the carnal and the voracious eros and those kind of images that I've described on occasion in this course and perhaps other courses, what we might call the demonically divine, that actually lent itself very well, surprisingly perhaps, to the compassion, without having to be dimmed or translated into something tender, sweet and gentle, and not sexual.

But of course, also that -- the eros being very subtle, not necessarily sexual at all, perhaps holding hands or not even that, just a kind of eros that's not physical, that's just very sweet, very gentle, very calm, very tender, that too, the eros there, can translate and give character to the kind of brahmavihāra that came out of it. So if it was, for instance, a fierce eroticism in the image, that may, for instance, give rise to a kind of quality in the cosmopoetic divinity that's manifesting love and compassion like a protector deity. It might be a protector deity that it gives rise to, that kind of quality. I mentioned that. Even these images where one is eating or feasting on the flesh and bones of the erotic beloved, even that can transfer very directly to the suffering other, so that strangely, eating them and feasting on them can seem to express the compassion and address the suffering, licking them ferociously. You'd usually think eating a person doesn't seem a very compassionate thing to do, feasting on them [laughs], but actually it can be in the imagination. Full of compassion. Can be.

[1:04:24] And of course, tenderness can, a tender eros, can express in a tender compassion, for instance. Catherine was telling me of something she saw years ago in Sarnath in India. She was on retreat there and she saw a dog that -- pffft, I don't know what had happened. Maybe someone had cut the dog's throat. I don't know. She doesn't know what was going on there, didn't know what had happened exactly. But the other dogs, either in the litter or in -- I don't know if they were biologically related -- but the other dogs were just licking the wound, over and over and over, and just gathering around, licking and licking and licking this wound. And it healed the wound. I think it took some days, but it healed the wound. She was just so struck by this way of healing through licking. All the other little dogs were there licking this wound that probably would have caused the death of this injured dog.

Similarly, there can be this kind of erotic licking in the erotic-image, and that transfers to a kind of very tender licking of the suffering heart, of the suffering person. There are all kinds of possibilities. Or it may be here's the erotic-image, and the erotic action itself doesn't transfer, but some light emanates, for example. So it's not something like licking, but it could be just light emanates perhaps from an area of the body or a body part or an organ that's been involved in the image, that's kind of central to the image, or from the action, from, let's say, the licking or the feasting. It's not the feasting per se, as a light that emanates from the feasting, that has that quality of eros, that character, and also that compassion in it. Or it might be a particular emotional quality that's central to the image. So we've talked about how devotion can be part of an imaginal relationship. And it might be that sense of devotion that's there, characteristic of the image, that then gets cosmopoetically amplified and spread, and that becomes characteristic. Devotion becomes part of the quality of compassion that then is washing over and washing through the suffering being.

As I said, there are actually infinite possibilities here. The light can be like a direct beam to the suffering person, or can suffuse in all directions. Maybe there's not a light. All kinds of possibilities. But also -- as I was exploring this, and I think you will find as well, and people have reported to me quite a few times with this, to their surprise usually -- bliss arises. And it's not just a sexual bliss. It's rapture. It's pīti, it's sukha. And samādhi comes, it's possible. And they're so surprised. It's like, "I thought this was supposed to be a hindrance, a distraction," etc. But bliss and samādhi come out of the erotic-imaginal, when it's either on its own or when it's put in combination with the brahmavihāras.

And again, and perhaps surprisingly, a natural, effortless equanimity can come with the erotic-imaginal when it's combined with the brahmavihāras. So natural equanimity in relationship, let's say, to the suffering person, which is necessary for compassion practice. Anyone doing sustained compassion practice very quickly realizes the need for equanimity there as the heart opens, and confronting the suffering, and opening to the pain in the world. And so, because partly of the cosmopoesis and what we talked about before, and the sense of it's not the self doing it, there's a sense of the divinity doing it, or the source being in the other dimensions, because of that there's a kind of natural recognition and sense of equanimity that pervades and supports the compassion.

So I really want to just draw attention to these possibilities, and encourage you, when you feel ready, to explore them, to experiment in practice, to play and see what's possible. We could ask, well, why bother? Why not just do mettā and compassion in the standard ways? And yeah, of course, I'm not saying to replace them at all. It may be, for some people at certain times, it may be that because there's so much libido involved, so much energy available to us when eros is alive in us at that time, that actually that kind of gives a whole other level of energy to the loving-kindness or compassion or muditā practice when it's allowed to infuse those brahmavihāra practices. Just there's a whole kind of other level of energy that becomes immediately available if we can join them and make that navigation possible.

But also just to know that, again, sexual images, sexual energy, eros does not have to be a distraction. If one is intent, say on brahmavihāra practice, and it feels like eros is coming in, the sexual desire is coming in, the energy is a sexual energy, images are coming in, and that's a distraction from my mettā practice or whatever it is, actually it doesn't need to be regarded as a distraction. You can include it in very creative ways that actually give a whole other depth and texture and range of possibilities to the brahmavihāra practice. So just to know that's possible.

But actually, for me, it's something in just knowing that it's possible that is opening up our views and our understandings and our conceptual framework and our exploration. This, to me, is really important. Really, really important. It's not that doing this is just for the sake of the brahmavihāras, because then you might as well ask, well, why do we have to do them with the erotic-imaginal? It's more complicated, you've got more stuff to learn, etc. Fair enough, if my goal is just the cultivation of the brahmavihāras, if that's the purpose of my practice. Certainly, to me, in this wider way of saying, what is practice? Where are we going? What are the possibilities? What do I want involved, integrated into my sense of practice, of life, integrated into my understanding? If it's more than just the cultivation of the brahmavihāras, then this integrating and including and experimenting with eros and the imaginal, and the ways they may interface and contribute to and flow into and open up directions and possibilities with the brahmavihāras, that's a necessity then. There's a point there beyond just the opening up of the brahmavihāras, right? Soulmaking. For me, what's so important is the opening, the increasing, the adding to our sense of sacredness, our senses, plural, of sacredness. The pluralizing of our senses of sacredness. The giving depth, breadth, range, to the senses of sacredness, the experience of sacredness, the experiences of sacredness, the expansion of all that. To me, that's one of the main reasons for all of this and all these teachings.

And so I offer this as an opening, as a possibility, as something you may want to practise with and experiment with, and also as an avenue for further investigation. You can find out things here for yourself. You can add to the research, if we borrow that fantasy. All kinds of things possible.