Transcription
Okey-doke. So we've got this general idea that we've got threads that we're weaving together, that we can actually separate and move between in our practice as we navigate our experience, as we navigate our practice. (1) We've got the thread of what we're calling samādhi in the energy body and cultivating that well-being -- really, really helpful. (2) We've got the thread of just the kind of awareness of our emotions in the energy body, with the energy body, through the energy body -- also a really, really indispensable element of practice, really important in developing the art. (3) Then we've got this whole kind of infinite area of imaginal practice to explore, and on this retreat specifically we're interested in eros in the imaginal. Of course that involves all imaginal practice. Eros can be, as I said, very, very strong, obviously sexual, to very, very subtle and not sexual at all. But eros is, I would say, an intrinsic part of the imaginal, and the imaginal involves eros.
So on this retreat we're exploring the imaginal with that thread as one of the main emphases, and within that, the exploration of eros -- that's the third thread. And also within that is the whole investigation into the dynamics, if you like, of polarity, of twoness and oneness, as part of what happens both in imaginal practice and just in perception generally. That's a part of desire and eros.
(4) The last thread so far is what we introduced yesterday: just the thread, if you like, of renunciation, letting go.
(5) I'd like to add another possibility, another thread that you can -- we actually really encourage you to try out and explore. Any of these threads, you can use as much or as little as you want, dip in, dip out, etc. But we'd really encourage you to explore at least a little bit what we're going to offer now. To make a distinction, as I've just said, in imaginal practice or with imaginal practice, eros is implicit. It's intrinsically woven in when something is imaginal. When something or other comes alive to us imaginally, there is eros involved. Where there is eros, if it's left to do its thing, if it's not blocked in some way, it will open up the imaginal. So the imaginal and eros kind of go together. What I want to introduce now this morning as a possibility is a practice we call opening to the current of desire. In this practice, the delineation I'd like to make is we actually let go of the image. The image is not so much primary, and we're working more with the energy of desire, okay? So when there's eros, image is implicit, and we tend to be working in the field in relationship with an image. This is almost like letting the image go a little bit, and focusing more on the energy of the desire. I'll try and explain what we mean.
There's a delineation there. Like all delineations, it falls apart at a certain point. It blurs. The distinctions are not that clear. What's common to these two practices, the imaginal/eros and opening to the current of desire, is that they both involve a trust. Trust is necessary to some degree. Even just a little bit, just a grain of trust. Trusting in the image, trusting in the imaginal in one case, and actually in both cases trusting desire and trusting eros. So we're not letting go as in the renunciation thread. We're actually opening to desire here, allowing it, trusting it, and seeing what that opens for us, in us, what that opens to us.
There are three steps to this practice. It's actually quite simple. Three steps. I'll say what they are, and then I'll go through some examples, and then nuance it a little bit. Three steps in the instructions. If you notice some dukkha, some dis-ease, some -- call it suffering; if you notice some dukkha, or even if you just notice a desire, if you notice either dukkha or desire, if you notice dukkha, there will be desire wrapped up in it. That's basic Dharma teaching. Where there's dukkha, there is desire wrapped up in it.
(1) So if you notice either dukkha or desire you can ask yourself -- first step -- ask yourself, what am I wanting here? So even if I don't actually see a desire at first, all I notice is dukkha, I feel this or that, actually bring in the question: what am I wanting here? But what am I wanting, if you like, more deeply? You have to go really to the deep level of the desire. So rather than this person or that thing, that car, whatever it is, something more abstract, seemingly abstract. What am I really after here? Something seemingly more general. I'll give examples to explain what I mean in a minute.
I really wish I could come up with -- maybe someone can suggest a word for an image of something that's not imaginal, that's reified, that's concretized, that's flat. Anyone? Help me out. Fixation? Okay, yeah. A fixated image. Okay, thank you. Here's this thing that I want, this person that I want, this relationship that I want, this event that I want to unfold a certain way, whatever it is, and letting that go, letting that fixated image, that fixation go, and coming to the generality of what it is that I want. It's a deeper level. It might seem more abstract, but it's actually a deeper level. So here, as I said, the image is not primary. In the imaginal practice, we're not saying "the image represents my desire for this," or "the image represents this quality in me" or whatever. We have the idea in imaginal practice, we entertain the idea that the image is primary, like we said with Linda the other day.
Here we let go of that, and we come to something more general, more abstract underneath. We're unhooking from the specific object that we feel we want, the specific person, the specific event, the specific fixated image. We're unhooking that and finding something deeper. What is it that I'm really after here? (2) Second step is to just, if you like, sweep aside whatever Dharma preconceptions you have about desire. We all know desire is a problem, it leads to suffering, it's a defilement, all that. Just temporarily sweep them off the table, and just drop in a couple of grains of trust. Maybe this desire, maybe there's a soul-intelligence that's stimulating, that's giving birth to this desire. Maybe this desire is a manifestation of a deeper soul-intelligence. Maybe there's a treasure here in this desire. Just temporarily, we're playing with that conception, that trust, just a little bit. Yeah? Second step.
Now, those first two steps could be done in any order. In other words, you can entertain the idea that there may be something to trust here, there may be a treasure here in the desire, you could do that first, and then you could ask: what is that deeper desire? What is it that I'm really after here?
(3) Third step is to open to the current of that desire,** to really open up the body, open up the field of the body for that energy of desire to move. Now, I'm making this gesture upward. Oftentimes it is upward, but it might not be. It could be outwards. And as Catherine was describing in the talk yesterday, it could go downwards. Something is dynamic. Something in desire is dynamic. Desire is a dynamic force, and we feel that energetically in the body. So what is it to really open the body to that current of desire? Now, I mean really, really open, okay? Everyone in here has heard "open to" whatever it is going on, a desire or a pain or a sadness, "be with it," "accept it," sort of general, kind mindfulness teachings. I mean really open, okay? I don't mean just be aware of it, and kind of it's okay that you have this desire right now. I mean really open the being to it, so you can actually let that current move as much as possible, the current, the stream, the energy of desire in the energy body.
What happens when you do that? Something very, very interesting happens, actually. I'll come back to the example that Catherine used last night, but that already gives it away. Something doesn't at first kind of make sense in terms of traditional Dharma teachings. What happens is an abundance comes. A sense of abundance comes into the being, is given and made manifest in the being. The state of consciousness and of body transforms. Peace comes. Joy comes. The thing that we wanted, that which we really desired, is then palpably and immediately recognized and felt to be here. I have it already, whatever it was that I was after. We may come back to this on this retreat, because there are different ways that that which we're already after, whatever that is, is already present. But this is one of them. Somehow, in the treasure of the desire, it has yielded to my being and opened to my being the very thing that I wanted, and I haven't done anything different in the world. She/he may still not be interested in me or whatever it is, can't get that job, whatever it is.
Let me give a few examples. I'm a little wary of time, but I want you to understand this, so I'll give four examples. I hope that's not too much. The first one is actually, in a way, the most straightforward. The other ones nuance it a little bit. (1) The first one was I was sitting upstairs when I used to live here. This was some years ago. Something was going on politically with Gaia House. I can't even remember what it is. It was troubling me. I was sitting in meditation. I was troubled by whatever the situation was. And for some reason, it occurred to me to ask myself, "What am I really wanting here?" Like, what's going on here? What is the desire for? What I saw, what came was, again, it's this, "I want this problem to go away" or whatever it was politically; I actually can't remember, like I said. But the deeper answer that came was freedom from constraint. What I wanted was freedom from constraint. You hear the generality of that? It can sound a little abstract, but actually it was very meaningful to me. It's not an image. It's a kind of, if you like, a kind of abstraction, but personal; it's rooted in the being.
So I really just let myself open to that, let myself feel that desire, and lo and behold, what came was freedom from constraint. I felt it. Nothing had changed in Gaia House politics. It probably still hasn't changed. [laughter] Sorry! [laughter] Can we take that bit off the ... [laughter] [in background: You're so out of date!] Yeah, I am. I am a dinosaur. [laughter] But there it was: the freedom from constraint was palpable. And the release of that, it was right there in the moment, in the being, to enjoy, to open to. I thought, isn't that interesting? So that's a very straightforward example.
(2) Second example. I was working with someone a few weeks ago, and here there wasn't any dukkha. Okay? So my example, there was dukkha. In this example there wasn't any dukkha. She was talking about someone, her lover, and she said, "I want to kiss him on the mouth." There wasn't a problem there. She could kiss him on the mouth or whatever. But then we were just exploring this a little bit, and sort of asked, "What comes with that image?" So we're not, again, sustaining the image as primary. "What comes with that image? What is it that you're really after?" Or, "What do you imagine you'd get through kissing him on the mouth?" So there's absolutely no hint of, "What do you imagine you'd get?", as we were doing yesterday, "There's nothing. It's dukkha. It's impermanent, a kiss on the mouth." We've changed gear here, right? We're out of that "it's unsatisfactory" mode.
"What do you imagine you'd get through kissing him on the mouth?" She said, "Joining. I'd get joining." So I was working with her. I was thinking, "Hmm. Is that deep enough? Is that abstract enough?" It turned out it was. It could have gone to another level. I asked again, "What do you get through joining?" You know, take it to an even deeper level, more general, if you like. But actually it turned out to be fine. In that, that was enough, and there the sense of joining came, right there without the kiss. And it wasn't through imagining; it was through the energy. So it was enough, and there was the delight of joining right there in that moment.
(3) Third example. This is from some years ago. I've just got to remind myself of the different elements because it's a little bit complicated. I was working with a woman and in an interview. She was about to go off -- I think it was to New Zealand; I can't remember. No, it was California. Sorry. She was going to California. She had met someone there, met a guy there, and they were about to start a new romance. It had just been sort of long distance, texting and stuff mostly before that. Can't remember if they had Skype. How old is Skype? Oh, okay, so they had Skype back then. Anyway. So there was some contact electronically. But she came into the interview in a state of anxiety about the whole thing. She said, "I'm craving. I feel that's painful. I feel the contraction of it." We talked a little about it. "I feel there's a fear of loss. Maybe I go out there and it won't work out." So there was anxiety with all the loveliness of a new romance, etc., but there was the anxiety "maybe it won't work out," and this fear.
So the first thing we did was just talk in a sort of more standard Dharma way about craving, and how that works, and the relationship with dukkha. Craving involves what we might call 'hype,' okay? Papañca. Where there's craving, the mind goes into the hype about how wonderful it's going to be, how great this thing is going to be when I get there or whatever it is. Also with aversion -- how terrible this thing is going to get. So craving involves hype. We talked about this, how the mind, in the grip of craving, constructs a kind of artificial distinction between things and times so they seem so different. 'Here, now' seems so different to 'there, then.' It's hyped up by the mind through craving. She actually said, in her words, "The adventure begins then, when I get to California. Now it's just waiting. It's just limbo." So now is just boring waiting time, now, here. There and then will be the adventure. Even though there was lots of skyping and texting and whatever, phone calls, lovely exchange, the mind is creating this polarity. It's emphasizing this polarity between things and times, events and times.
Is it really that different? This is more standard Dharma teaching. Is it really that different, things and times, here and now, there and then, past or future? In Dharma language, we could deconstruct it, can't we? What do I have here? What is my world here? It's five aggregates (body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness), six sense fields (touch, taste, smell, sight, sound, and mind). I have that here. I have that there. I have it pretty much wherever I go. [laughter] Is it really that different? Little bit different kinds of pleasure, different kinds of unpleasant. So there's a deconstruction of the hype. I deconstruct it into, "What are the elements of my existence? Is it really that different?" So that's standard Dharma teaching. Less hype, less craving. Less craving, less hype. They feed each other, right?
Okay. But then we were interested, I was interested in working in a different way, seeing what else might open up. I asked her, what are you wanting? She said, "Him! It's obvious." [laughter] And it's hard to see. It's like, "What do you mean? Of course it's him." It's hard to see it's more than that. I was just kind of gently seeing if that question could open up. I asked her more. She said, "I love that I can say anything and that I'm listened to." This opened up, and going deeper into this "what are you wanting?", she said actually four things. It's quite complex, but you can hear the generalities here. "I want the opening of the heart. I want the expression. I want the connection and being received. And I want to love." Four things. You can hear the generalities there, yeah? So here the desire is not landing on a limited object.
Then we did this thing: "Can you really trust that? Can you really open to that? Just trust it a little bit, and really open to it." Now, for her, that current was unfamiliar. The force of it was unfamiliar, a little bit like what Catherine was alluding to last night. The current was deeper and more powerful than who she usually took herself to be. I said, "Can you let it fill the body? Can you really allow it? Can you really feel it?" Her boundaries of self began to dissolve. Now, where she was at in her practice, that was quite a new thing, so we worked a little bit with kind of being okay with that. There was the expansion of the sense of being. There was a little bit of fear with that, as I said. We investigated the fear, brought in some compassion, etc., and that was enough for her for that time. But something was really opening.
Eventually, whether it's gradually or suddenly, we are able to allow that kind of expansion, that kind of dissolution. There's a whole new sense of self, of life force, strength, openness, independence, not dependent on the object of desire being there; fulfilled somehow, to a great extent, by -- what could we say? -- the life force opening, the deep desire flowing, not on getting. This is not so much standard Dharma teaching.
(4) Fourth example. Just to revisit the example from last night that Catherine shared in her talk. Someone in the group not feeling alive, saying, "I want to feel alive." Having a fixated image, letting go of that. "I want to feel alive." Then what happened is the aliveness came -- in this case, came down, that current. Then what happened is it went into an imaginal image, okay? So there's a little bit of a fork in the road here. In other words, liberating the desire this way can open up the realm of the imaginal. That can be very fruitful, and you go into the imaginal. Or it opens up the being, and what we want is already here, and there doesn't need to be an image. It can go either way.
All right. Let me just say a little bit more. Sometimes what happens, oftentimes what happens but not always, is that wrapped up in our experience of desire is the feeling of lack, a feeling of frustration, a feeling of perhaps grief or loss, or a presumption of not getting, of not being able to get, that either it's a fact or we just assume that. In other words, desire is wrapped up with elements that make it more complex and more problematic. Really helpful, then, to be able to discern sometimes what's wrapped up with my experience of desire. Am I assuming I won't be able to get? Why? Because it's always been that way for me? Is it actually what I'm feeling is not so much the desire but the lack or the frustration? These are actually different things. They get intertwined.
So sometimes with this practice that we're opening up today, sometimes what we need to do is to care for those other elements first. We need to discern, are they present? What else is present? Is there a sense of lack? Is there a sense of crushedness, impossibility, frustration, grief, whatever? Discern them, and actually go to them first and care for them. This we've talked about at other times, but this kind of heart work is really, really important. And sometimes we do not need to do that. Sometimes we don't need to do that. So often in these circles there can be a kind of habit just over years. It's really good practice to do that, but sometimes we don't need to do that. We don't need to be with the difficult first.
Sometimes, as I said, there's a habit of the movement of the mind and the heart to go to the difficult, to the lack, to the frustration, to the grief or whatever, and we can get a little bit stuck in that. We always do that, and in a way, we never get out of it. So I'm not liberating the desire; I'm just going to that lack and that pain. It might be tender, it might be lovely, but there's a way sometimes that it just stays there. I'm just going round and round in my sense of lack. I'm not saying this always happens, but it's a possibility. The attention is drawn to the lack, to the grief, to the disappointment, to the frustration, and I don't see that that very attention and that habit of attention is actually keeping the whole lack and disappointment in place. I don't see that. And I think, "This is real. This is the reality. That thing about what you're doing with desire, that's a kind of -- you're creating something there. This is the real thing. This is the truth." I don't see that the attention is actually fabricating and manufacturing it sometimes. It's a really delicate investigation in practice. It takes a lot of courage and care to investigate this.
I hope that's enough to understand. There is this option, this thread that's possible. We'd really like you to try it. If you're into it, try it, use it a lot. If you want, just visit it, put it on the shelf for later, whatever. But try it at least a few times. Away from the image, into the current of the desire, and working with that, but trusting, trusting the treasure in that.
One last thing. You'll notice that -- well, let's put it this way: the desires we have in life, and the deep desires, and those deep currents of desire, I would say they're really, really important. They're so important to us. Some of them need acting on. It can't just be, "I'm aware of a desire." Sometimes with the imaginal, something is being asked to manifest. It's not always obvious or clear what that is. And it might be nothing. I've talked about this on other retreats.
So both with the desires that we really long for and what moves through us imaginally, sometimes something is demanded of us there. Sometimes. And it's not always obvious what that is. And sometimes it's not appropriate to act on a desire, it's not even possible, and it's not necessary. Sometimes it's neither appropriate, possible, nor necessary to act on a desire. We can work with the imaginal or with the energy of the desire, and I don't need to do anything. Nothing in the world needs to change. Yeah? And that acting is not the point. Sometimes it is the point: I need to bring something into being, I need to say something, I need to do something. And other times, it's completely not the point. It's, so to speak, internally that is the point. In this practice, it's more this internal, the opening to the current of desire, and not the acting. That's what we're emphasizing. Is that enough to make sense of this practice? Yes? Okay.
Let's sit together then.
