Transcription
I have to admit I feel a bit ambivalent about talking more right now, and we're very conscious that it's a lot of content, and different people need different things at different times, digest differently, etc. So, still feel a bit unsure, but I think I'm going to go ahead. Tonight, just so you know, there won't be so much content. We'll have a different way of being together, so it won't be so much stuff coming at you, just so you know that.
I want to see if, without talking too long, I can say enough to open up something else, or another possibility a little bit connected to some of the stuff I was talking about last night. When you're in love, or when you love anything, when you're devoted to anything, when you're dedicated to anything, when something is meaningful to you in a deep way, there is fantasy and image operating there. There is an imaginal constellation, and it's an imaginal perception of you in your life and of some thing in your life. In other words, it's not just intrapsychic. We're actually seeing others and self imbued with fantasy. So that the whole constellation of other or thing or object or event, work -- other, self, world, and time, all that constellation is ignited as fantasy, and also the eros, the desire there.
This also applies to the path, and to our idea of awakening, and our fantasy of awakening, fantasy of the Buddha, fantasy of teachers. All this is brought in or engulfed in the movement, in the beautiful movement of fantasy, wherever there's love, wherever there's meaningfulness to us, wherever there's that devotion. Now, usual psychology says when you're in love, for somewhere between three and six months, you're a little bit doolally, and there are the fantasies there, and we call it projection, and there's all that. Hopefully you make it through that period, and then you start to get real. And then that's proper love. But is that actually what happens? Is that actually, so to speak, the best thing to happen? Or is it more that, in time, as things progress, there is this attunement to and attention to the relationship, the needs in the relationship, the different psychological patterns that one confronts and meets in oneself and in the other, and one cares for all that, and cares for the relating and the dialogue and the interactions and the patterns, but at the same time, the fantasies don't and shouldn't go away? They might change, they might deepen, they might become more subtle, more attuned to the -- let's use that word -- 'realities,' more nuanced, more sensitive. What happens if they go away over the months, over the years, in a romantic relationship? What happens?
I mean, it might be the end of the relationship. People get bored. Or it might be the relationship just finds another way of being together that's more about mettā and friendship, but the eros has gone. How common is this? The sex might still be there, but the eros might be gone. You can certainly have sex without eros. Same with the path. When you love the path and you're dedicated to the path, whatever that means, it's imbued with fantasy. What happens when our path is not imbued with fantasy? What happens to it? We lose our inspiration. It becomes flat. Or we go into a kind of fixation mode, and it becomes about measurement: "How am I doing? I've heard about these different stages of awakening. I wonder, have I got that first stage yet? Where am I?" And it becomes fixated, reified, concretized, rigidified, into a kind of movement or a relationship of ego-measurement. This is what happens for people who care, for people who love and invest themselves. How easily the eros and the richness and the beauty of the fantasy goes into craving and fixation. Probably everyone in this room knows that.
So what I want to just see if it's possible to open up a little bit for us is talking about fantasies of the goal, if you like, fantasies of awakening, fantasies of the path and what the path involves, but also fantasies of the self on the path. In other words, like I said, when there's image, there's a whole imaginal constellation. It's not just that object or that other person. This is so important: we forget to see sometimes the self needs to be included in that fantasy, is included in that imaginal constellation. What's going on with the self-image, in the good sense? What is, so to speak, the fantasy of the job of the self on the path? What's your job on the path, and what's the image of the self walking that path?
(1) Now, usually, in spiritual teachings, whether they're Buddhist or other teachings -- especially Eastern teachings, but -- they're taught and framed in what we might call the medical model, a medical fantasy. The Four Noble Truths: there's suffering, there's a cause of suffering, there's the possibility of the end of suffering, and there's the way to the end of suffering. This is actually a medical formula that the Buddha adopted. At that time in India, this is how a doctor would talk to a patient: "This is your problem. This is what caused it. You can be cured if you do what I say. And this is what you need to do. This is the prescription."
So we've inherited that. That's absolutely the most central thing in Buddhism, Four Noble Truths. And even if we don't think of the Four Noble Truths -- if someone says, "What's the Four Noble Truths?", "Uh ..." [laughs] -- we've imbued completely, or almost completely is what I want to say, this idea of what we're doing is reducing suffering. We're healing suffering. It's a medical model, and this is what we need to do. So that whole idea and fantasy, medical fantasy -- and some of you are teachers, so then you're not so much in the patient as in the doctor role of the fantasy -- that imbues our thinking, so much so that when a person talks about their practice, or thinks about their practice, or someone's teaching, it's always somehow related to what's going to help free from suffering, what's going to help alleviate suffering. Okay?
The whole way we frame to ourselves, and to others, and when we talk to anyone, and the -- I can't read my notes there -- the conceptual framework, frame-work [laughs], the whole relationship with the path and the self on the path and the job on the path and what practice is, it's in this medical model, medical fantasy model.
(2) Coupled with that in spiritual teachings is what we might call a second fantasy, often. It's the religious fantasy. Now, by that I mean something relatively specific. But all these fantasies -- I'm going to go through quite a few, and open this up a little bit, hopefully -- there's a lot of wiggle room in here; they're quite broad. But what's characteristic of what I'm going to call a religious fantasy is that I'm essentially, in my practice, the job of the self is to replicate as closely as possible someone else's awakening. It's the Buddha, right? He had this awakening, and we're somehow trying to get something pretty close or at least in the direction of that awakening. Characteristic of -- I mean, I use that word loosely, 'religions,' and in different ways at different times, but characteristic of religion is the authority is in the past. The authority is in the past. We look to the past, look to the tradition, and the self in that is -- with beauty, with reverence, filling out the fantasy there -- replicating something.
So in a way, if you like, there's not much new in the religious fantasy. It's not that we're going to make new discoveries. We might open up the demographic of where we take the Buddha's teaching. So Mark is working in prisons, taking it to that demographic. Jamie's doing some wonderful work. So we're opening up the demographic. But essentially the discovery is not new. We might use, "Oh, there's some research on what mindfulness does to your brain," but this is just a kind of corroboration with culturally sanctioned ideation that supports what's already there. There's nothing wrong with this. This is all beautiful and lovely.
I can't remember what I said in the talk last night. I don't know if this is clear yet to you. You know, sometimes you may have noticed this. What do you actually want in practice? What do you actually want? Now, at times, of course you want an alleviation of suffering, and that's why you're practising, but all it takes is a little bit of honest inquiry and reflection, and you see that some portion of the time, and maybe even a lot, that's not actually what you're primarily most concerned about. There's something else.
If we keep talking about it as if it's that, and keep prioritizing that, it's as if we're sort of looking at the world, looking at ourselves and the reality in a kind of blinkered way; we're not being psychologically honest, perhaps. So we use, we've been using this word, 'soulmaking.' But sometimes one sees what actually one wants, whether one uses that word or not, it's actually soulmaking. I'm more interested in that at times than I am in the reduction of suffering. So also with the fantasies that go with -- this is complex; there are lots of pieces here that could fit together -- the fantasies of the self can be larger than or other than the religious fantasy and the medical fantasy. When I say something is fantasy, it doesn't mean it doesn't have any (quote) 'reality' to it. Of course it does.
What I want to say is there are other fantasies possible of the self on the path and of the job of the self on the path, as much as there are of awakening and all of this. Maybe there are loads, you know? But if I just offer some possibilities to open this up a little bit. (3) One could, at times, have the fantasy of "What am I, how am I actually seeing my practice? Who am I when I'm practising? What am I doing?", and one might have the feeling that I'm researching. I'm a researcher. I'm a research scientist. What am I researching? Well, it could be the end of suffering in the medical model. It could be I'm actually researching consciousness, or I'm researching perception, or I'm a phenomenological researcher or something.
But then the whole job of the self and the fantasy and what gives juice and aliveness is different there. It may be that it's bound up and there's certainly an overlap with this reduction of suffering, and what's the relationship with the Buddha's discoveries and teachers who are important to you, etc. But there's a different fantasy of self operating there. What's really exciting one and galvanizing one at times is this possibility of discovery. If we think about a scientific researcher, what's the relationship with time? So the religious fantasy looks backwards, to replicate. Science uses the past as a platform, but it's looking to the future. It is presumed in science that the science of 100 years from now will know more than the science of 100 years from the past. Not just the same. There's a forward [movement]. What is it to, what would it be, to have a fantasy of the self that you could make discoveries that are not discovered yet? That you could be researching in a way that's moving forward? What is the job there? What's the goal of that fantasy and the aliveness there? It's not just the reduction of suffering. There's more involved there. It's not just functional in that way. That's a third possibility.
(4) There could be a fantasy of the artist. I've talked about this elsewhere. What's the job of the artist? What's the purpose? If my practice is art, I'm playing with these ways of looking, and really, like we called the last retreat, The Poetry of Perception, why do people make art? Why do human beings make art? What's it for? [comment in background, inaudible] It's a rhetorical question, because what I want to say is, whatever answer anyone gives, and I'm sure there would be loads of beautiful answers, you're never going to capture it. You're never going to capture that urge, that human urge to create and to be involved in art. Art is always going to be bigger. Why does the artist do what they do? Why do human beings make art? In the broader sense I mean 'art.' What's the purpose of it?
If I'm fantasizing and feeling my practice as artist, what's the purpose of it? I keep trying to talk about it in the medical model, but actually something in me is really relating in a different way. What's the artist's relationship with the movement of time, past and future? An artist who really gives themselves to the art, most artists will want to explore the past, the past masters, so-called, etc., absorb those styles, replicate, but they don't want to stop there. And the whole idea with art is that it can go in a million different directions. It's going to be new. So it's not predetermined even where it's moving. And what does the artist create? What does the artist make? What does the practice artist make, if we say artists make things or create things?
(5) What about an adventurer as another fantasy? What's the adventurer's relationship or fantasy of their place in time? Their relationship with tradition? What's the job of the adventurer? What's the goal? Does an adventurer have a goal? Or is adventure the goal of the adventurer?
(6) What about the lover? Fantasy of self on the path: what am I doing? My job is to be a lover. And what does that mean? What does it mean, my job is to be a lover? A lover of what? Lover of who? What is the job of, the duty of, the lover? And what is the sense of self and the sense of goal that the lover would have?
I was working with someone not too long ago, and inquiring into this with her. I think it was just in one session, talking about when you feel most alive in practice, when you love it, when something is really ignited in you, what is it that you love at that time? What is the fantasy that's operating at that time? And she said, feeling into it -- we did this a few times; there were different answers. "Who are you in that? In other words, what's the fantasy?" "I'm a landing place," she said. "I'm a meeting place for all these threads and characters," from her history, from her life, from the culture, from so-called intrapsychic. And her job was to be that meeting place, that landing place, and just to open. You can hear how that's a much more receptive fantasy. Really beautiful. That was her job. That was the fantasy of the self. A little while later she said, "I'm a lover, a lover of psyche. I'm a lover of psyche." Very different, different fantasy operating, really.
To say it again: where there's love, there is fantasy. So there is fantasy kind of as a ground of the path. There's usually a mix of fantasies, in fact. But the path is not just functional. It's not just I'm accruing techniques to reduce my suffering. Sometimes we talk almost, or we present things, as if that's what's going on. All of this is good; it's all beautiful. And there's certainly not one that's better (or right or wrong) than another. If I am in that reducing suffering fantasy, it's not just functional; it's not just utilitarian. It's not just that. It's always, where we love it, there's going to be fantasy involved. There are people in the world, of course, you go to a class and you learn a couple of techniques about this or that to reduce your stress, but that person may or may not ever fall in love with practice. And if they don't, then it could be purely utilitarian. But once we start to get involved, then it gets imbued with fantasy, so that even that medical, functional reduction of suffering fantasy gets imbued with other fantasies.
So no right or wrong here, but can we see this? It's almost like waking up psychologically a little bit. Can we recognize fantasy runs through our life, where there's meaningfulness, etc.? Fantasy runs in your life. Can we recognize, admit, acknowledge, the necessity of fantasy, the inevitability of fantasy, the beauty of fantasy and the gift of fantasy? For a lot of people, this is a completely upside down way of thinking. I'm feeling more and more like a kind of psychology that doesn't realize the necessity, inevitability, beauty, and gift of fantasy and eros, it almost inevitably ties itself in contradictions. People say one thing, but actually what's really driving them is something that they're not quite fully admitting, or they have no conceptual framework to flesh it out and to support it. There's almost a kind of not full integrity there, by not admitting the place of fantasy and eros there.
To me, I'm beginning to feel more and more like the psychology needs to be a bit more sophisticated to really shine a light on something that's there anyway for us. It's just that we don't have words for it so much. So oftentimes we don't really realize, because we don't really think this way, we don't realize something that's already there in our life, ebbing and flowing, getting ignited and illuminated, and then ebbing away. We don't realize that fantasy is involved almost as the ground of our path. The ground that we walk on, if you like, is fantasy, to a certain extent. We often don't realize what the fantasy is that's driving us, that's supporting us, that's inspiring us -- plural, what they are.
And we don't realize the implications of all this. What are the implications of all this? I think they're many and far-reaching. So, you know, I'm certain that this is landing in different places. I hope that for some people -- hopefully now, but maybe sometime soon -- you can sense that there's a whole other level of liberation possible when you start to open this, a whole other level, a kind of meta-level of liberation. Can anyone get that? [laughter] On the other hand, some people might be like, "I'm not really sure what you're talking about." And other people might be, "This is really, really disturbing. This is really disturbing." So I'm really aware of that, and I want to be sensitive to that.
And it might be that you say, "Well, if you're talking about being on the ground of fantasy, aren't you then just pulling the rug out of my whole path and my whole sense of what I'm doing? You're just saying it's fantasy," and the whole thing kind of crashes and deconstructs. It might be then we're left without any juice, inspiration, fire, because you just lost the fantasy, because you've realized it was fantasy, therefore it can't be real, therefore I can't trust it, therefore ... etc. And it might be horrific, disorienting, disconcerting, etc. That's not the point; in other words, that's not the real possibility that I'm pointing to here. There will be a reconstruction. We construct as human beings, we fabricate, we fantasize. There will be a reconstruction. The question is, what's my belief about that reconstruction? Is it realist or not?
This is only horrific, what I'm talking about, if it's too realist. If I really get this thing, that fantasy imbues our life, imbues our love, and it has its juice in the non-realism, if I get that, there's a whole other level of liberation here. Is what's reconstructed as fantasy realist or not? Or is it, let's say, poetic or not?
And with all this, you know, one of the questions is, am I locked into a certain fantasy? Maybe I don't even realize. Am I just locked into a fantasy? And maybe it doesn't really fit me, this fantasy, but I'm just locked in, and maybe there's just a kind of mono way of seeing. Or can there be a flexibility here, a flexibility in the fantasizing? So as with images, to me, it doesn't matter at all whether the fantasies that are supporting you, inspiring you, driving you, drawing you on, pulling you on, it doesn't matter whether they're your inventions, so to speak, or your discoveries, or whether they're just received fantasies. That's actually irrelevant. It doesn't matter at all, whether you read them in a book, heard them, got communicated by a teacher or something or other. The question, as always, is: is it, are they, soulmaking? Are they soulmaking? In other words, do they open up the inspiration, the ignition, the dimensionality, the depth, the beauty, the meaningfulness, etc., the eros?
So what is going on, what is inspiring, what is igniting, what is beautiful, etc., when you feel most alive in practice? What is it really? At those times then, what is it that makes you feel alive? What is it that you love? There's a lot of room here. I think I ran through six, but there are all kinds of possibilities. And then what does this particular fantasy that I'm in, how does it fantasize an ending? Is there an ending? Is there a completion? So when I asked the woman, she said, "I'm a lover of psyche. I'm a meeting place for all these threads." I said, "Is there a completion to that? Is there an end?" "No. No end." "Is that a problem?" "No." [laughter] Whereas other fantasies, it's a problem; we're definitely wanting to arrive somewhere. Or are we? So wrapped up in all of this is even the idea of, "Is there an end? Is there a completion?"
Okay. So I'm going to stop there. I just wanted to see if this could be opened up a little bit. And maybe just put those seeds out, you know, just sprinkle some seeds, and they land where they land, to borrow someone else's phrase. We may revisit this and work with it as an exercise. We may. We'll see. To me, I don't know if it even makes sense, maybe, but as I said, there's something immensely potent here, potentially at least, in this kind of re-looking, or opening up, let's say. So we may revisit it. I just wanted to kind of scatter some seeds a little bit.
