Transcription
These different strands that we're offering, the renunciation strand, and what we did yesterday with opening to the current of desire, they have the characteristic of simplifying. Renunciation, letting go, everything's the same, equal, and to be let go of. The being comes, hopefully, into some simplifying. Everything simplifies. In the opening to the current of desire, also characteristic of that practice is a kind of simplifying. Letting go of the image, if you like, going almost beyond the image into the generality and the energy and, as some of you experienced with that movement, there's a kind of simplifying. That's one of the options.
Everything else we're doing is subsumed into the practice of the imaginal, the erotic-imaginal, eros being wrapped up in what it means for something to be imaginal and the imaginal being something that's pulled in, ignited, generated by eros, if it's allowed to. The imaginal practice is by far the more complex of everything that we're offering. There's much more to it. It's multifaceted. There's so much that we could say about it. We're actually holding back to not overload you guys. It's also complexifying. Rather than simplifying, imaginal practice complexi ... complicates. [laughter] I have English O-level! [laughter]
So this is different than how we tend to think of Dharma practice. By its nature, images complicate. This whole soulmaking dynamic, when the eros is allowed, it's allowed, its movement, it will start generating more images, discovering more to an image and discovering more images. Generating, creating, and discovering more images; more aspects to images, more folds within an image. There's a giving birth. There's a proliferation (in the best sense). Create/discover, reveal folds, aspects, dimensions, complexities, further images. And then images spread in cosmopoesis to the world, to others, to our selves, to different aspects of our selves. We discover/create different aspects of our self, as well as the image, if that whole soulmaking process, that whole eros-psyche-logos dynamic is allowed to do its thing, if it's not blocked through ideation, through energetics, through some or other wall or repression, of which there can be many.
So the whole movement is an enrichening, deepening, widening, complexi ... complicating. [laughter] Complexificationing. [laughter] But, given that, what do all imaginal practices have in common? They have in common this, let's say, their own eros, their own desire to give birth in this way, to spread and feed back and grow the eros and grow the images in depth, breadth, all of it, and grow also the logos, the ideation, the concept. So the whole thing gets more and more fertilized, more and more fecund. They share that. But in that, in the 'more' that is created and discovered, part of that is, as we were saying, the dimensionality opens. Dimensionality moves into divinity. It moves into sacredness. What imaginal practices have in common is a movement towards opening up sacredness, the creation/discovery of more and more sacredness, more and more kinds of sacredness, sacredness in places we would never even have thought to look for sacredness; places which we would never even have thought or realized even existed. Dimensions of our being, aspects of our body are not only made sacred, they're also discovered in themselves; we didn't know that facet existed.
Despite the complicating nature of imaginal practice, one of the characteristics it shares is this movement towards generating sacredness, the discovery, the revelation, the creation of the sacredness. So, body for instance. We talked about body this morning. Catherine talked about body. We have an experience or a conception of body, or conceptions and experiences of body, that we move through in our life, shaped by the dominant cultural paradigm, shaped psychologically by certain experiences and feedbacks, and what people have told us that our body looks like or is to them. And this forms a limited logos and a limited image. There are limitations on the idea and limitations on the image of what our body is. So once somehow or other the soulmaking process gets to touch the body, it's like a fire, the fire of eros, it will kindle this and it will kindle that and it will ignite everything. For example, the body starts getting drawn into the flames of the soulmaking process, and then it starts to come alive in all kinds of ways. It comes alive as image. It gets complicated. It gets dimensions and facets. What does this mean? Body as an object -- I sense this as an object; I, the knower, somehow sense this as an object, and it's not just -- I mean, it certainly is cells and molecules and all that, but it's not just that. There's a richness to what it can be as an object. The image of body as object expands.
The image of body and the idea of body and the sense of body and the felt experience of body as subject also begins to be drawn in. In other words, the body is a locus of knowing. I know through the body, through my eyes, through my nose, ears, touch, and those senses, as Catherine was talking about. Also the range of our experience and our conception and our image of what the body is as a locus of knowing. So my friend says, "I know through my ovaries." Tell that to a biologist, and ...! But something's happening in the soulmaking. It becomes a valid way of knowing. The subjective pole, if you like, of what we conceive and imagine the body to be, soulmaking has got it, and it's come alive, and it's opened, and it's complicated, and it's enriched, and where is it going? Something is added. And that very knowing through the ovaries is felt as a sacred knowing because the soulmaking has got it, and the vision similarly. There is no end to this. There's a potentially endlessly generative process here.
[9:13] Body as object, body as subject, body as -- I don't know -- vessel/vehicle of expression. We speak in the world, we move in the world, and it's not of course -- you know this -- it's not just functional. So what is it to feel the body and to move the body soulfully? It's coming from soul. The movement is coming from soul. I know some of you know this intimately. The last retreat in August, we said sometimes we have this walking; what we do is we sit still in meditation, usually, and then we walk up and down in a line. Now, of course, when the postman and people come, they think that's completely bonkers. [laughter] Now, we have a culture here where it's very normal -- so normal, in fact, that if someone does something else it looks weird. [laughter] So if everyone's still in meditation, and this person is doing this kind of [makes movement] like that, it's somehow culturally, in this culture, not okay. Or if you're out there, and somehow you're doing your thing, moving, again, people are like, "Well, you should be like ..." [laughter] "It should look a lot more miserable." We're conditioned culturally, and this is part of what limits the soulmaking dynamic. This is culture too.
An instruction now: we would like to open up what 'meditation' means. So yes, it can be really still, and there can be a lot of stillness inside, and that's what's there right now, and that's what one is going for, and that's feeding the soul. At other times, something wants to move. And the question is, can I be in touch with the energy body? Can I feel that? Can I let it move, and be in touch? Again, my compass is the sense of soulmaking. If I can feel those resonances, that meaningfulness, even if I don't understand it, but something in the body needs to do this thing, then we let it, and that's our walking/moving/standing meditation. Then, of course, it's like, "Oh, maybe people think I'm bonkers," or "Do I look good?", you know, all that. [laughter] That's part of the problem with all this. That's another limit on the soulmaking. It's ego. It's a rigidity of ego and that whole thing. So we'd like to invite that [movement]. And sometimes you can be sitting, and I've seen people do this -- there's a gentle movement happening in sitting. Why not? If it feels right with the energy body, if it feels like this is somehow soulful, trust it, go for it. Obviously in here you have to be relatively quiet.
There's a third possibility. We mentioned this on the last retreat. Third possibility is that I'm actually sitting or standing or whatever really, really still. So from the outside it looks like I'm not moving at all. When I feel into my energy body, I can feel that stillness, and I can also feel something is moving. I feel my energy body moving. I'm sitting here like this [still], and something in me is dancing, or something in me is turning somersaults, or something in me is jumping for joy, bouncing around the room. It's not ungrounded at all; I'm really in touch with the experience of the energy body -- kind of both experiences. So sometimes that's a third option, is you just let the energy body and the imaginal body, so to speak, do its thing, but you're in touch with it. Yes? So there's an instruction there.
But to go back to this point I said earlier, yes, imaginal practice is complex. There are a lot of sides to it and a lot to say. It is also complicating. That's its nature, that's its movement in the most beautiful way, the most gorgeously generous movement of the mystery of things. That's what imaginal practices have in common, this movement towards opening up, this movement of opening up sacredness. We discover more and more kinds of sacredness. Okay? I'm talking about long-range movement here. I mean little discoveries, but also long-range movement.
You may really know that. You may recognize this: "I know that." Either "I already knew it," or "Ah, you're just putting into words what I had sensed anyway." Or you may feel like, "I don't quite get that yet." Doesn't matter. What I want to draw attention to at this point is intention. It's probably the case that most of us here are here because of that longing and yearning for sacredness. There's something about that that we recognize is important, and we want more of it, and we want to discover more of it, and we want more to be included in the sacred, more and more sides and facets of the world, of the self, of other, of body, of material, and also of the beyond. So sacredness can be both beyond the world, the utterly transcendent, and thoroughly in the world and through the world, both. And if soulmaking is allowed its thing, it will have it all. It will have all kinds of sacredness, some that you can't, no one in this room, including me and Catherine, can even think of right now. Doesn't even occur to us yet. It's there, waiting to be created/discovered.
What is it to, however much you recognize this, however much it makes sense to you right now, what is it to touch into that intention, if there's some desire for that, if there's some intention for your practice, for your life, to open up and discover more sacredness? Can we do a little exercise together? If we can clear the mats and the sitting stuff to the sides of the room, and see if you can do this with the mindfulness of the energy body. Yeah, you don't need to face me. In fact, the whole point of the exercise that we're going to do in a minute is to face everything, or anything.
[16:38, guided meditation begins]
Just feel yourself standing. Feel the rootedness with the contact with the floor. Feel the rootedness in the earth, the connection there. And feel your heart, whatever is moving in your heart right now, whatever it is. And feel the energy body.
Now, just see if it's accessible -- and it's okay if it's not in this moment accessible to you -- just some sense of your intention, your longing, your desire to discover, to know more, to be intimate with more sacredness, or sacredness in the world. Feel that as something that you're devoted to. Can you feel -- in whatever way you experience that, in your heart, in your being, in your soul -- this direction, this devotion of your soul to sacredness, to discovering, to participating, to knowing sacredness?
Can you get a sense how in relationship to sacredness you, we, are all small? It's always something bigger than us. There's always more to know. We will never complete it. So there's a humility, there's a reverence. Perhaps we're asking. So let yourself feel that. Open to that, care for that. Let yourself feel aligned with that. So the body, the being, the soul, the heart is in touch and aligned.
Let me ask you another question. Can you trust this movement into more sacredness, into the discovery, the creation, the revelation, the opening of more and more sacredness? Can you trust that it's even possible that more and more of the folds and dimensions and aspects of all existence, inner and outer, material and non-material, that they can be subsumed, involved, seen, felt, known as sacred in different ways? Is there some trust in that potential opening, that potential movement?
So you don't have to have any experience now of sacredness. But maybe you do. Maybe even you can sense your very intention as sacred. Anything inner and outer, everything inner and outer, formed and unformed and beyond. Can there be just a little bit of trust?
[21:25] And now, when you're ready, in your own time, take your time, you can open the eyes and open the senses. Sound, sight, touch, perhaps smell, perhaps taste. And everything that comes to you through the senses, everything in which we participate in perception, in the movement of the senses, whatever you experience in terms of that right now, can you, to borrow Catherine's image of the holy fire as the eros, as the intention, your intention that it, too, can be subsumed, involved, seen, sensed, felt as sacred? I don't need to have that experience right now; I'm just regarding it with this humility and intention. The birdsong, the silence, your own body's sensation of standing, the other beings in this room, the carpet -- whatever comes to the senses, there's just this stance of openness of intention.
And what if, when you feel ready and if you feel ready, you begin to move, walk slowly around the room, at whatever pace feels right? And whatever comes into the fields of all the senses, one is regarding it with this intention that at least I trust or I aspire, I hope, I want to move in the direction that one day, too, somehow that is subsumed in the sacred, is seen, felt, experienced as sacred. Just staying close to that holy fire.
If it feels okay to make eye contact, we see the intention to regard others as sacred, to be led and opened in that movement. Everything and anything. So it's not experience we're chasing right now. It's just we're taking care of an attitude, staying close to that holy fire in a certain direction of intention. Let your whole body be involved in this alignment of the being -- heart, body, soul, senses, world. And there is also that which is beyond the world. All of it, all of it.
There is nothing that cannot be sacred. Nothing that cannot be sacred in more ways than we can even imagine right now.
So it's really not about necessarily having an experience of sacredness in this moment. It's just the humility, the openness, the aspiration, the closeness to that holy fire, the dedication to allowing things to open and reveal their sacredness to us, their sacrednesses to us.
Taking care of the heart. Intention is impermanent, so of course we lose it. Just as in any practice, gently coming back, reconnecting, reminding yourself, pointing in a certain direction. Tending the flame.
[32:39] And then, wherever you are, just coming to a standstill. Can you be open to all of you right now? Body, heart, soul. Do you sense the sacredness of your longing, of your intention for sacredness? Do you see the beauty? Can you feel the beauty of your intention? Can you recognize that beauty, that sacredness? Where does it come from, this longing? Whose is it?
Staying open, connected to all of your body, heart, soul, mind, can you -- just to end now -- can you bow in whatever form that wants to take for you? It doesn't have to look like a bow, but bow in whatever form that wants to take, to the sacredness that you want to know, the sacredness you don't yet know, and bow to the wanting. A bow can look like anything, or nothing at all.
[37:01, guided meditation ends]
Okay. So I wonder if we can rearrange the room to how it was, but I wonder if that can happen in a way that we stay connected and caring to the heart, stay connected and caring to the body, the energy body, and this soul as well. So don't let that care get lost in the movement. Okay.
