Aspects of the Imaginal (Part 4)

We've been saying that, for a number of reasons, it might be helpful at times to adopt or enter a perspective that recognizes that the imaginal, or an imaginal perception, or a sensing with soul, is actually constituted from/with different elements that are interrelated, or different aspects, and to investigate a little bit, and to see what is involved there. What are those elements and aspects of this imaginal constellation? And exploring in this way, bringing this perspective, and then looking a little closer and teasing things apart, even if that apartness is somewhat artificial, and looking a little closer, it's for the sake of increasing our understanding, filling out our conceptual framework; also increasing and developing our sensitivity and our discernment, to actually be sensitive to these things, and notice these things, and our attentiveness, and our attunement, our capacity to attune to them, and feel their different qualities and modes and aspects, etc.

But it's also useful and helpful to adopt and explore this perspective because of the potential for practice in, as I said, igniting the imaginal, entering more fully into the mundus imaginalis, the imaginal world, moving along that spectrum of imagination experiences, moving more along that spectrum towards the fully or authentically or genuinely imaginal.

So we can say, again, that an imaginal perception or perceiving imaginally or sensing with soul actually involves a constellation or a lattice of elements, of aspects. And any star in that constellation, or any node in that lattice, its triggering can trigger or ignite or infect, if you like, the whole lattice. So, for example, it might be that seeing the self, seeing myself, yourself, seeing the self as angel is what kind of occurs first, or we notice first, or what actually ignites first in the experience. And then this seeing the self as angel, as part of the whole larger constellation of the imaginal experience at that time, then ignites the sensing of other, world, and eros, imaginally, erotically, theophanically, etc.

So it might happen in time. It might be that actually they get ignited. It might be, actually, that there's a noticing that happens in time -- one, and then the other, and then the other. Or the first to ignite, or (so to speak) the door that opens first, the node to resonate first, with eros and imaginally, to resonate erotically and imaginally with, might be the humility of the heart. We'll come back to this. The sensitivity or awareness of the energy body -- we've touched on that already. It might be the Middle Way of the imaginal, actually sensing that Middle Way, this kind of 'neither real nor not real' quality. It's related to the Middle Way of emptiness, but it's different. It's what I call the imaginal Middle Way, or the Middle Way of the imaginal, the theatre-like quality or status of what is occurring, what is being experienced, the perceptions involved.

Or it might an idea or conception that's involved in this perception. Or we start with an idea or conception, and this starts, as I said, infecting, inflaming, igniting, triggering, opening the other nodes in the lattice. We actually start with an idea or a conception that's implicit there. Or we start with the eros, or some part of the whole multidirected eros that is flowing, that is alive in the self/other/world relations there. Might be we start with the sense of deep value, that that is the first door to open, the first to be ignited in our consciousness -- the sense of deep value or treasure of what we are perceiving, or some aspect of what we're perceiving, some pole of what we are perceiving.

It may be a sense of the divinity, or a theophany, again, of some aspect of perception. Or it may be the very sense of participation with or within that sense of divinity. It's that sense of participation that then inflames the whole constellation, the whole lattice, makes it burn more brightly, takes us deeper into the imaginal.

So an awareness of one or some of the different connecting nodes in the lattice allows us to try different things, if you like, to trigger or ignite the constellation, to ignite the imaginal experience, to enter further into the mundus imaginalis, the imaginal world. But as I said, sometimes we can jiggle and wiggle one node, and actually do something there to support that particular star or node igniting, illuminating. And sometimes it's more a matter of, more precise and helpful to recognize that what we're doing at times is, rather than changing anything, is just noticing some aspect that is already aflame, already ignited. And it's this noticing, this attention, that allows that node to ignite further and more fully and deeper. And then the whole lattice to get ignited, triggered from that, either simultaneously -- the whole lattice, the whole imaginal constellation kind of illuminates at one point, like a light switch going on -- or gradually, kind of node by node.

And this is quite interesting too: when it ignites, the whole thing turns on, if you like, becomes alive imaginally, when the whole lattice ignites simultaneously, it can feel like something just took a quantum leap -- so from one discrete state to another. It's like a sudden jump of a system, if you like, this system of nodes or a lattice to a different state. So it's something that can feel really like, "Whoa! We just suddenly shifted gears there into a really different state of perception, of consciousness, of being, and a different experience."

Now, we haven't talked much, and we won't talk much yet, maybe perhaps for quite a while, about actually working in a dyad with another, intensely, with the soulmaking and the imaginal perceptions that involve each other, and being in participation and dialogue and reciprocal relationship in that erotic-imaginal dyad. I'm just mentioning this, but sometimes what can happen is, that quantum leap happens not just for one person, but for a whole field of two people, or sometimes more. It's like the whole field and the whole -- in this case, if we're talking about a dyad -- both people suddenly undergo that quantum leap. There's some kind of almost magic of a shared entry or a shared inflaming or illumination of the imaginal together. We won't dwell on that.

And at the same time (I already mentioned this), it's good to recognize that where there is eros and the imaginal, there is always (and we'll come back to this too) a sense of grace, of gift. And with that, therefore, there must be a sense of receptivity. We receive gifts. We receive grace. We open to it. It is bestowed on us. And so, if it's grace and gift that we are receiving, that means that the quality of receptivity, the stance, the poise, the posture, the inner posture of receptivity and of sensitivity and flexibility and attunement are necessary. It's as if we notice the gift. We pick up on the grace, on the breeze, so to speak. Our antennae, so to speak, are moved. Our receptors are moved. And then, "Ah! What is that? Something on the wind, something on the breeze, an intimation, a fragrance." And we tune to it, cock our heads to it, turn towards it, open to it to receive it.

So there's this real element of grace, gift. "No one knows next where the Spirit bloweth," to quote, roughly, Jesus.^[1] And so it's not completely in our control. We don't completely direct this. There is an element of technical art and skill and deliberateness, and bringing images back deliberately, and deliberately supporting this or that gently, and working with that, and responsiveness. But there's also this element of grace, of openness, of receptivity, sensibility, flexibility, and attunement. These qualities are part of the imaginal constellation as well. It's not just about technique, but it does involve technique. It's never totally under my control and mastery. Recognizing that fact is humbling, but it also, to me, makes it more beautiful. I've said this before. Soul is greater than ego, is greater than me, greater than you.

But again, we have a conception, or an approach, or an attitude that kind of straddles two modalities, or two inclinations: the inclination to receive, and the inclination to be deliberate and active, proactive -- a kind of mastery, etc. We're straddling and including those. There's space here, flexibility, range.

Okay. Little bit more about this process or dynamic of what we might call ignition, or turning on, or illuminating the imaginal, the imaginal becoming illuminated. So we talk about these nodes and elements of the imaginal constellation. But it's not just that they're kind of like on/off settings: "This element of humility, or this element of eros is either on or either off, just like an on/off switch." They are also, at times at least, more like, again, spectra, or dimmer switches. Instead of a flick on/off switch, a dimmer switch. You turn the lights up or down, or in the middle. Or like a volume switch on a CD player, or whatever it is. Or like a fire -- if each is a kind of individual fire, it's not simply on or off. I mean, that's one way of looking at it, but it's also like a degree. Is it just a kind of ember? Or is it really flaming, or really kind of a raging fire, or whatever? That's maybe too clumsy an analogy. But at least it's more passive than a switch, which is something that we switch on or off. [14:12]

So this kind of idea of suddenly sparking, or the ignition of one node triggering or igniting suddenly, the sparking of other nodes or elements -- that's a good way, and that actually can convey this sudden change of state, this kind of quantum leap that can often occur here. But at other times, the transition (as I mentioned earlier) is actually more gradual. So it's like dials or faders moving higher or lower up their scale, more or less, on or off. And we can actively turn any one of them up by simply noticing or paying careful, gentle, attuned attention to that element.

Perhaps, then, the whole lattice is gradually turned up. The whole imaginal constellation gradually turns up with that. Or sometimes, at a certain threshold of turning up one of the elements, there is a sudden ignition of all the others. So all kinds of transitions are possible here, or developments are possible.

One more little thing with that. So all this that I'm talking about, we're really talking about developing the art or the skill of imaginal practice or of sensing with soul. In time, as that skill or art develops, and the whole range of what's involved there -- because it's really a collection of all kinds of things that are implicit and required for imaginal practice -- we may find that we can even kind of guide the relative balance of the settings of any two, or maybe even more, of these kind of dials, if you like that image of it.

So for example, the attention to the energy body is one of those nodes, is one of those dials, if you like. And the attention to it can modulate from anywhere, like, from just a background, minimal awareness, to a kind of complete immersion in the sense of the energy body, the whole energy body. The awareness is completely immersed in it, that energy body awareness, where it is on its scale relative to the attention to the image itself. So here's this image, whatever it is, and here's my sense of the energy body, and I've got basically both of them -- awareness and attention to both of them in imaginal practice. And the relative degrees of where the attention is weighted, more or less, we can vary that. So I can lean it back, so to speak, into the awareness of the energy body, and more of the energy going there, more of the sensitivity there, and what's experienced there. And I might go so far as into a jhāna. I can kind of lean so far into the kind of pleasure that's going on in the energy body that I actually enter a jhāna, and the image is either completely gone, or in the background. Or vice versa: the energy body is more, I'm aware of it, but the primary thing I'm paying attention to is the image. And there's a whole gradation there of relative weighting of the attention, and the emphasis of the attention.

And similarly with the emotion. Maybe an image brings with it some kind of poignancy, or a particular kind of loneliness, or as I said, a particular kind of loving and being loved, or whatever it is, or sadness, or joy, or a particular kind of delight. And again, we can lean into that, if we want to, in time, much more than the image, while still keeping the image around.

Or we may just, so to speak, completely lean into an exploration and a being with and a holding of the emotion going on, and let the image kind of fade. And vice versa: we can be much more with the image, or some other aspect of the imaginal constellation, and just aware of what's going on with our emotions in the emotional body, etc. [18:56] And similarly with other aspects, the emptiness aspect. In other words, we can play with the relative emphasis of attention or leaning of attention or weight of attention on any of these different elements.

So I don't know how that sounds. It might sound to you, "Boy, that's really advanced," or whatever. And certainly it takes practice to develop that kind of facility and flexibility, and nuance of art and attention. But it's similar, in many ways -- some of you will know, I think I used at one point the analogy of a great hawk or eagle gliding on air currents, as a sort of image or symbol for how one can move really quite gracefully, and sometimes with a real minimal effort between, say, an insight mode of working or way of looking, and the samādhi that kind of organically comes with the letting go that comes from the insight. So just like this hawk is riding high on the warm air currents, and if it wants to go left, it's just the slightest movement. It's sensitive to what currents are already there, what thermals, what directions of wind, and it can just pick the one that's going left if it wants to go left, for example. And just a slight inclination sends it that way. This hawk is riding on what's already present. And similarly, if it wants to go right, it's just a slight inclination, a slight modification. There's a real beauty and gracefulness and art to that. And one develops. Again, this is all part of developing the sensitivity in practice, and the attunement. There's so much possible here. If it sounds outlandish, it isn't. It probably takes time and practice to develop, but it's certainly possible.

Okay, so if we continue a little bit with our list now, we've already mentioned -- let's see, (1) the first one was the energy body awareness, and we said a little bit about that.

(2) The second one was just the fact of giving rise to soulmaking, the sense of soulfulness and soulmaking happening. So soulfulness as an experience, the soulfulness of what's going on, is another element.

(3) The third we mentioned was loving and being loved, and we said about the particularities there, and the attunement there. And so with that third element, really to tune in, and to feel that particularity, and to let it touch you. Let this being loved touch your being, touch the heart. Feel it in the body. Feel it in the soul, etc.

And we also said that the range of how those loves can manifest in imaginal perception and sensing with soul is really large. So, yes, absolutely it includes mettā. It includes compassion at times. It includes muditā, etc. And also, we should say equanimity. So it includes the classical brahmavihāras. But there's much more particularity in the kinds of love. And the range is actually larger than what we tend to think of with the brahmavihāras. This range is also quite wide, because there are different flavours of mettā, of course, and all that.

(4) Okay, and so a fourth element or node in the imaginal constellation is eros. I've talked about eros before, so won't go into it much. Just mentioning it there. Again, it's something we can notice, tune into, and that noticing and tuning into ignites it further, and then that can trigger the rest of the lattice, take us further into the imaginal, deeper into the more authentically, fully imaginal.

And we also said, for example, being in relationship with the whole of my energy body, and the sensitivity to the energy body, is likely to support eros opening rather than craving and the contraction of craving. It's going to support the opening of eros. So eros feels like an opening. It also opens the imaginal, etc. We've been through all this on other retreats, so I'm not going to go into it much now at all.

But all this presupposes that I'm able to notice eros, that I'm actually familiar with the experience of eros. And again, I'm not going to delineate everything that's involved in the experience of eros. We've done that before. But that also may take some practice, like, "Oh, this is eros present. What is there? How do I recognize eros? Am I familiar with it?" And then I can kind of hone in on it more, open up to it more, etc., allow it more, all that that supports that particular element or aspect or node. So eros is very important in distinction to craving. As I said, craving is a contraction, and it contracts. It limits and contracts the possibilities of soulmaking. Eros is more of an opening, and it opens all the dimensions of the possibilities of soulmaking. So it's really that that makes a difference here.

(5) But I've also talked about, a fifth element might be beauty. A sense of beauty is an aspect of the imaginal constellation. But just like love, the range of beauty that we can feel touched by and feel open to is huge. Oftentimes, like with love, we tend to kind of box in a little too narrowly our sense of what qualifies as beautiful, or what beauty is, what it looks like or sounds like, or whatever. Huge range here. Be surprised at the range that beauty can have for us, or our sense of beauty, the things that we can find beautiful.

And again, I've talked quite a bit about beauty, and I've also written about it recently, so I'm not going to go into it here much. But just to mention it, that's, again, a factor, a node, an element, an aspect that we can tune to, begin to resonate with, be touched by, open to, appreciate, enjoy. And in the fullness of that, that node comes deeper and more fully alive, and that can trigger the other nodes to come alive, and the fullness of the authentically imaginal. [27:07]

Now, I really have lost track of the numbers, which is a good thing, because [laughs] as I said earlier, actually, if there are numbers here to the elements of the list, don't take them too seriously or too rigidly or too tightly at all. You'll see that these elements kind of reflect each other, blend into each other, are not that discrete. Some of them are obviously not discrete. Others are anyway interconnected. But I think it might be number six.

(6) And this is a sense of what I call dimensionality. It's a little hard to describe, but this dimensionality, it's almost as if a thing is not just flat. It has other, if you like, depths, or there's more to it. And those dimensions kind of recede or proceed into a sense, they shade into a sense, at some point, of divinity. And again, I've talked quite a bit about divinity in the last few retreats. So I'm not going to say too much. But it's a mysterious word, isn't it, this divinity? It's like, "What do you really mean when you say 'divinity'?" And this is, again, one of those words that I would deliberately not put in too tight a box, because by its nature, it won't fit there.

In addition, there are infinite possibilities for the experience of divinity. We could, and I have, delineated certain common elements of experiences of divinity. But I would say there are infinite possibilities. There is not one experience of the divine. There are, once we get into the imaginal practices, infinite experiences we can have of divinity. So it's a kind of word that's mysterious in a number of different ways. But for me, it feels like a very important word. And actually, for most people who experience imaginal practice, and actually get the flavour of it, and get into it, and get the sense of it, all this makes sense. So it feels like, "Yes, that is the right word. I might never have used that word before, or really related to it much, but there's kind of no other word for this sense I have of this imaginal figure, or this way that I'm sensing this thing in my life, or this person, or whatever."

It has a sense of dimensionality, of multiple dimensions to it. They may not be clear. And that dimensionality shades into a kind of sense of divinity. So the sense of divinity also implies a kind of infinity, or kinds of infinity itself. In other words, the word 'divinity,' to me, implies that we can never exhaust it. We can never fully fathom it. So it's related to the unfathomability of objects as well, of imaginal figures and objects, and of that which is perceived when we are sensing with soul, that which is sensed with soul. The divinity means that I can't reduce this, or it feels like this perception, this sense of whatever it is, is not reducible to X or Y, or "It is this," or I sum it up, or I box it in, or "I understand it now." There's always going to be more. There are always going to be more dimensions, more depths, more heights, if you like, more beyond what I can either capture with my intellect or even fully experience.

So there's always a kind of 'infinite' and 'beyond' element to an experience of the divine. But (and again, I've been through this before, but I'll say it briefly now), I would say, especially when we get into imaginal practice and sensing with soul, by definition, the 'beyondness' of the divine is not only beyond appearances (in other words, the transcendent Unfabricated, the fading of experiences, that experience). Nor is it a 'beyond' in that it's always kind of lighter or more ethereal. It's somehow in, with, through, as the appearance itself. [32:17]

So yes, there is a sense of a kind of divinity (we've talked about this before) that is beyond the appearance, with the fading of the appearance, so revealing the essence of a thing, we might say. But there's also, in the particularities of this appearance, there is an immanent divinity that has still a beyondness to it, and an infinity to it.

Both the notions of dimensionality (or if we say depths, or heights, or supernality in some traditions, the supernal, meaning the heavenly, etc.), both notions of dimensionality and of divinity make some people very nervous -- understandably, because of some of the history associated with such concepts, and the metaphysics involved, but particularly the implications for valuing: what is of value, and what is of more value, and what is of less value? And what is considered more real and less real?

So these two aspects -- valuing and real -- are tied up, or at least historically, were very much tied up with notions of dimensionality and divinity, and many people felt that the sort of entrenched Western religions would value the deep or the high or the transcendent over the immediate, the material, the superficial, etc. And sometimes exclusively valuing one over the other, with a great cost to all kinds of aspects of our existence. And also valuing of the divine over the human, etc. And then this had a reaction with humanism and scientific materialism, etc.

But to me, it's actually not that simple. It's quite interesting, and not that simple. I would like to say that perhaps, in terms of the question of what's real, perhaps we can think of this notion of dimensionality and, to a certain extent, even of divinity, as not so much a question of 'more real.' So it's not a kind of ontological assessment: "This is deeper. This is therefore more real when we get a sense of depth in some perception or pertaining to some figure or something that we're sensing."

So rather than an ontological kind of claim, it's just a kind of epistemological claim. It's like, its deeper meaning, it's harder to sense. The instrument has to be opened and tuned and takes more preparation to sense what is deeper, what is more obscure, what is less obvious -- these other dimensions. So rather than saying they are more real (making an ontological distinction), we can just be making an epistemological distinction: acknowledging that, yeah, these dimensions that sometimes we are graced with, opening to, are harder to sense. They take more tuning, more sensitivity, etc. The imaginal, or the nodes of the imaginal lattice, have to be quite empowered, turned on, to enable this kind of sensing of dimensionality. [36:33] And sometimes that dimensionality is kind of obscurely sensed, and sometimes more specifically sensed.

In terms of value, again, I would say that more dimensions does include an increase in value. But because the dimensions that we're talking about here don't disvalue the immediate, the apparent, the form, the material, it's just that we're not seeing that material in a kind of reductive way, as purely unholy, and dismissing it, or purely illusion, or whatever it is.

And to say that, in our sense of deeper dimensionality or higher dimensionality, in our sense of divinity, we are not asserting ontological priority or primacy that "They are more real," or "Only that is real. Only the divine beyond is real, and appearances are not real," to not make an ontological assertion or claim there is slightly unusual. It's also to say, from another perspective, that divinity is not real, nor is it unreal. This is unusual, and may sound mysterious, and very difficult for some people for whom so much any talk of divinity, etc., goes with an assertion and a kind of hierarchy of reality, and also of value. They might think, and it might be quite common to think, "Well, how can it have power or value or meaningfulness or whatever for the soul, then? How can this sense of divinity have power or value, meaningfulness for the soul, if you're not saying it's real, or more real, like it's neither real nor unreal?" Well, it can have power, value, meaningfulness for the soul, and it does.

Some of you, familiar with the emptiness teachings, know about this Middle Way of emptiness -- not real, not not-real -- and the beauty that opens up, and the transformative capability that opens up when we get that sense of things. So we can apply that, too, here, and we can apply the Middle Way of the imaginal, which is related but slightly different. This sense of divinity that moves us so much, that bestows, and gives, and opens, and has for us so much value, that brings value with it kind of implicitly, this divinity we sense as neither real nor not real in the usual sense, in the usual meaning. Wonderful. Beautiful. [40:31]

So perceiving imaginally or sensing with soul involves some or other conception, whether it's clear or obscure, of the sacred or divine nature and origin of an image, an imaginal image, or whatever perceptions are involved. In other words, they are not just conceived as, for example, the result of my only human history: "This image is arising because X happened to me when I was much younger," or whatever it is -- unless my actual human history is also conceived as an expression, a manifestation, a journey of the divine, which makes this image that re-presents it or recalls it as memory or whatever also kind of divine, makes it have an origin in the divine. So not just that, not just a kind of result of something in my brain firing, either completely randomly, or contingently on other sensory input or whatever. But the valuing goes right through. It's not other than the appearance. I've talked a little about this, so I won't say much more now.

Now, related to this aspect of divinity -- we could say dimensionality and divinity are two elements. We could count them as one, as our sixth element. Or we could separate those two. Doesn't really matter.

(7) But the next one, let's say the seventh: grace. This is obviously related to the sense of divinity. And grace, we've touched on it before, but there's this quality of being given something, of receiving something. The image, or the perception, or the sense of the beauty and the divinity of this thing -- it's coming from divinity, and the divinity itself, and the beauty of it, and the very appearance of it, the very experience of it is sensed as gift, as given, which is different than, "Oh, how lucky." 'Luck' means a kind of random occurrence. The sense of grace implies some divinity or some greater dimension bestowing something on us, giving us something. It's not a matter of luck, of random occurrence. Nor is it arising because of my clever engineering of the circumstances. That's obviously not grace either. There's a sense of gift, of receiving, of grace. It's a beautiful word.

And to me, it also has something inexplicable in it. There's something almost surprising in opening to an image. No matter how much you've done this, there's always an element of, like, "Wow, what a gift. Who would have imagined this? Who would have foreseen such a thing?" There's something inexplicable, a mystery there, and a sense of being given something, receiving something from some thing, some dimension, some divinity, bigger, greater, beyond ourselves and beyond our capacities, our machinations, our ken. And with all that, and that kind of gift, there's a sense of beneficence, of the goodwill and bounty of something pouring down on us, visiting us, being given to us. So that's another element or node, aspect of the imaginal we can tune into.

(8) Very related to that is perhaps an eighth, depending on how we're counting. And I've mentioned this one before very briefly on a retreat: reverence, obviously related to grace and divinity, etc. Reverence, as I think I pointed out when I previously mentioned it, is from a Latin word that kind of means 'to be in awe of.' So again, the sense of something that's beyond us, beyond our ken. And reverence is, for some people, a strange word, or it's a word that has associations of perhaps stiffness or a sense of should. Reverent: "You should be reverent. You should be respectful." And like we're being told by authorities or elders or whatever to "be reverent" or whatever. There's a sense of should and stiffness. What I mean, the sense of reverence itself, when it's authentically experienced, there's something very beautiful. It's something that has a pliability to it. The soul and the heart are pliable. And again, here we have, reverence is itself a composite, as is grace and other things we will come to. It involves the heart. The heart feels reverence. It involves the soul. It's more than the heart. And it's also a kind of concept. There's a concept involved, again, of something to which we feel awe, something bigger, greater, beyond us.

We can feel that reverence in the body. We feel it in the energy body -- as I said, a kind of pliability, a certain softening, perhaps, a certain opening, a certain energizing. A very beautiful quality. Where there's eros, and where there's the imaginal perception, where there's the erotic-imaginal, and eros is allowed to do its thing in inseminating and fertilizing the eros-psyche-logos dynamic so that there's soulmaking -- where there's the erotic-imaginal, reverence is implied there. Reverence is included there. It's part of, certainly, the subjective pole of the imaginal constellation -- an attitude, a poise, a stance, an opening in reverence. Something very lovely.

And if we go on to our list, related to that, this kind of constellation, you see how closely related and interconnected and overlapping actually a lot of these elements are. But still, I feel it's really important to draw them out, and discern between them, and draw attention to them.

(9) So this next one, I think ninth, or ninth and tenth, depending on how you're counting: humility, and also bowing. And again, they're related. So humility is another word that can be kind of loaded for us in our culture. Or we get a little bit narrow and stuck in a certain range of meaning, or a certain stiffness in relation to what it means or what it looks like. So we certainly do not mean by 'humility' any kind of self-shaming, or self-blaming, or self-punishing, or anything that's kind of life-denying. So some people, even if they don't consciously think that's what humility means, it has those kind of echoes, perhaps from the past, or dimly from some cultural associations that we have. That's certainly not what we mean with that.

Humility goes with reverence for the other, or the imaginal object, and for the self. Again, the imaginal constellation spreads over other, self, and world. So there's reverence, not just for other, but to the self. Humility goes with reverence to the self. There is respect and reverence for the self included in our humility. [50:08] We tend to think 'humble,' and we tend to think of a sort of belittling of the self, some people. But actually there's reverence for the self in the very experience of humility in the face of another, or towards another, humility of the self with another.

Even more, if we go deeper into these ideas, humility, to me, implies, and involved in humility, is this kind of deep, a deep and wonderful participation of the self in the other, in the imaginal object, in the cosmos, in existence, in God. We'll come back to this notion of participation. This is a really important but subtle point: humility implies a kind of participation, not an alienation. I'm included in what I am humble towards. I somehow, mysteriously and deeply, participate in that theophany or that divinity, that beauty that I am humble in relation to. Again, it goes with grace, and with a sense of meaningfulness.

So as I said, it can be a tricky word for us, some of these words, and 'humility' may be one of them for some of us. Partly that's cultural, historical. Often in the West, with the kind of secular modernism, that kind of culture that's dominated by that ethos, sometimes we don't have the humility of some other cultures or periods in the world. And we have a kind of -- you could call it a kind of arrogance instead of a humility. There's a sense that we can do: "Everything's dependent on me." If we want something, we can rearrange things. We can fix things. We can have mastery over nature, and technology as that rapidly growing impetus and movement and desire, and maybe addiction, to master everything and control everything, and to make everything dependent on us, on our will, etc. -- and with all the beauty and the gifts and the help that that brings.

Yet somehow, the lack of humility that sometimes goes with secular modernism is also tied in with a kind of existential alienation and unrootedness of the self. So the self feels kind of not so humble, kind of more powerful, if you like. But at the very same time, it feels this existential alienation, unrootedness, and the abyss of what's supposed or assumed to be an ultimately real meaninglessness of one's existence. And that kind of forms an existential abyss of unrootedness: "Yeah, you can kind of make up meanings or arrange your life to kind of give it meaning, but at the bottom of it all, we're living in a meaningless cosmos." And that abyss of existential meaninglessness, alienation, and unrootedness goes [with], kind of is the flip side or the wages of this kind of lack of humility. They can very much go together, this presumed, ultimately real meaninglessness of one's existence, of one's struggles, of one's life, of one's choices.

At first blush, the humility of another culture, say in the past or elsewhere in the world, it might look to us less powerful. But again, it has a flip side, because someone embedded in that culture might really have a sense that we don't have, of much deeper and wider and more intimate belonging, and of meaningfulness -- more than just meaning, but meaningfulness to their lives -- that we sometimes don't, in this dance of what can be a lack of humility; an embeddedness in the cosmos, a significance and value of the self, of one's life, one's choices, one's actions, one's duties. Sometimes that's harder to earn in the kind of cosmic picture that we have.

And so I'm not suggesting going back in a kind of primitivism to other cultures, but is there something here that we can bring awareness to, and find ways to open up, so that we have a beautiful humility that gives us gifts? Without sacrificing technology completely, and all that, of course. So how can we move forwards, not backwards, to receive a more healthy, soulful sense, perspective, idea of the self and of the cosmos? How can we progress towards that?

But humility is implicit in the imaginal constellation. It's implicit in the sense of the image's or the imaginal figure's autonomy, which we'll come back to -- the non-reductive, non-reducibility of the image. So reverence, the unfathomability, the divinity, the dimensionality -- humility, you could say, comes out of that. It's implicit in that. And if we notice it, that noticing and tuning to it and allowing it and opening to it can draw it out, can amplify that node, if you like, encourage it and perhaps even ignite it further, and that ignites the whole mode.

And I mentioned bowing as well. So this, to me, is very mixed up with this sense of divinity, grace, reverence, humility, etc. Bowing, again, for me, is a very, very beautiful stance or poise or movement of the being, movement of devotion. And by 'bowing,' I don't just mean a physical gesture, though it may be. Or it may look different than what we tend to think a bow looks like. But something in the being is moved (and it may not even manifest as a physical movement) in reverence, in surrender, in orientation to that sense of sacredness, in giving oneself to something. So again, bowing is not, for instance, just a gesture, but it's also not just kind of accepting: "I bow to my fate. I bow to this illness" or whatever. It's not just about accepting. It includes a sense of the sacredness of what one is bowing to. And implicit in that is the unfathomability, etc., of all what one is bowing to.

So again, humility can be, for some people, a slightly awkward word, or one that has kind of tricky connotations, even if it's subtly in the field, in the kind of aura or the cloud of the word and what it might mean for us. But as we're using it, humility doesn't preclude our empowerment. So because I am or I feel or you feel humble, it doesn't mean that we're disempowered. It might mean that we feel great empowerment in all kinds of ways. So empowerment and humility can coexist in the experience of an image, as they can coexist in life, in the relations of our life to others and events and to the cosmos -- but only if neither the humility nor the empowerment is identified with. Only if neither the humility nor the empowerment is identified with. So again, this kind of imaginal Middle Way is necessary, so that we don't take on the identity of 'the humble one,' and reify that as who we are, and really believe that, or 'the empowered one,' or whatever. But one of the points here is humility doesn't always look or feel how we typically think it looks or feels. [1:00:48]

If I amplify what we just said, actually, and just pause on that for a second: humility -- even grace, for some people -- these kind of words, they're often loaded for us, and they can mean different things, and be loaded in different ways, depending on our past conditioning with such words. But in imaginal practice, or with sensing with soul, these words and these attitudes -- humility, grace, reverence, etc., bowing -- the words and the attitudes to which they refer, they need to not be too self-weighted, too heavy with self, too focused on self. And certainly not on heavy concepts like sin and the sin of the self and all that, and that kind of heavy, contracted, dense, and tight fabrication of self-sense and self-story.

You could say these kind of words, humility and reverence and the rest, they and the dispositions that they refer to, they occupy a certain region of the spectrum of self-fabrication. In other words, too much tight, dense, solid self-fabrication in association with those words, and we've lost the imaginal. Outside of that region of that at least slightly lighter self-fabrication, the imaginal perception, the sensing with soul won't work, and won't be fruitful.

There's a lot here we could say about this kind of thing. Let me say one last thing as a kind of general point about if this cluster of notions -- humility and bowing, reverence and grace -- if they are involved in soulmaking and imaginal practice as I'm saying they are (I'm kind of insisting that they are, or they will become). When they're involved with soulmaking, they will themselves get caught up as objects of the soulmaking dynamic, of the eros-psyche-logos dynamic. And so the very sense, the very experience, and the very idea of, for example, humility, will expand, will stretch, will break, etc., break open, and be constituted larger, etc.

As we have explained about the whole process, the whole way the eros-psyche-logos dynamic works, when anything comes into its vortex, into its orbit, when anything is caught up, subsumed, involved, implicated in it, and then it comes alive as an object of soulmaking, the eros-psyche-logos dynamic goes to work on that object itself -- our sense, our idea, our experience of humility, of what that means to us, of what that can be to us, what it looks like, or what its range is. Similarly with bowing and the rest of them. So it will, itself -- whatever it is; let's talk about humility -- humility will itself become image. Humility becomes an imaginal object, and an object of eros. We start to have an erotic relationship with the humility that we are experiencing, or that we glimpse. And then the whole thing gets infused and ignited itself. [1:04:58]

So again, we don't reject delineations in this whole conceptual framework that we're unfolding. We don't reject delineations and concepts, and try to "just open" and "be non-conceptual" or whatever. But we use definitions and use delineations from some starting point. So wherever you are, wherever that is for an individual at the moment, and your sense of, "This is what humility means," and then that quality -- humility or whatever it is -- can develop, because it gets stretched, it gets expanded, it gets busted open, it gets worked, deepened, widened, etc., by the soulmaking dynamic, the very sense of that.

So the quality can develop because we're practising it, and because we're allowing it and opening to it. But then it gets to a whole other gear of opening and development of the image and the idea of that very quality of, say, humility or reverence. And as with all soulmaking, it's potentially infinite. What's the range, what's the limit of what that word can be, and mean, and feel, and be experienced as by us? Like the rest of the soulmaking dynamic, it's potentially infinite, its range, its depth, its subtlety, its nuances, the individual shadings and delineations we start to make within humility, as well as our relationship with it. That gets all opened up.

So like everything else in imaginal work and soulmaking work, we make delineations. But those delineations we make don't get dissolved or erased. The 'two' that we make -- humility and bowing, or humility and whatever it is, non-humility -- whatever 'two' we make doesn't collapse or melt into a 'one' only, although we can be conscious of the dimension of unity pervading everything. But rather, in imaginal practice and soulmaking work and that whole direction, that whole opening, the delineations and the twonesses are mostly retained, as we'll come back to. But they have soft and elastic edges, so they can expand. They can be stretched. So whether we're talking about the twoness of self and object, or self and imaginal object, or self and other, self and world, or just the twonesses of delineating between concepts.

We introduced some of these words, like humility, and they might sound a little awkward or unfamiliar. We're just not really used to that kind of word, or that kind of stance, perhaps. We're not really familiar with it. We haven't got a flavour of it yet. But as we practise with it, you start to notice it. You start to get more familiar with it. You start to amplify it. You start to feel more comfortable with it. It starts to grow and develop. And then once it becomes itself an object of eros, once it itself becomes imaginal -- we have an imaginal image of this humility, of this bowing, of this poise, whatever it is -- then there's an even greater development, potentially infinite development, of the depth and the breadth, and the complications, and the nuances of what can be involved for us in that very word, 'humility.' But we start where we are, and it grows from there, just through the attention, through the care, through the gentle and subtle entering into the practice, and responsiveness.

(10) So I think -- I've lost count -- I think a tenth on our list is trust. I've mentioned it briefly as we ran through the list, and I've talked about it on previous retreats (I think Path of the Imaginal, and perhaps other retreats). And this, to me, is an important element. I pointed out before on other retreats that sometimes we have an image that, to our usual, habitual thinking, is alarming or disturbing or violent, or it's like, "This can't be right." Or it feels, like, sexually inappropriate, or whatever it is, or grandiose, or this or that.

And sometimes what we need to do is, can I just summon a little, a grain of trust here? A grain of trust to assume that there is some deeper soul-intelligence working through this image that I don't understand, that to conventional thinking feels perhaps pathological or weird or whatever it is, or just not very interesting, and kind of a bit boring or whatever. Just a grain of trust. And if I can drop that grain of trust into the mix, into the imaginal constellation, then we start to see the dependent arising of images. Same with dreams, etc. I've been through all this before on other retreats. You actually see that the trust starts allowing something different to happen if the image is locked or stuck or whatever it is. Sometimes the image itself transforms just through the trust. The relationship with the image, imaginal figure, transforms. And how that imaginal figure relates to us or acts towards us might be transformed through the introduction of just a little bit of trust, because the whole thing is a dependent origination. It's a dynamic, completely interacting system of elements.

We see also, in terms of dependent arising, a stance of distrust (say, towards an imaginal figure or towards a perception), it implies and actually builds, it fabricates -- the very stance of distrust and perhaps fear fabricates a self-reification. And with the self-reification, it's harder for the self to become imaginal, to get an imaginal sense of self at that point, self become image. So the distrust already implies a certain self-reification, and it fabricates, it leads to a kind of self-reification which blocks how much the imaginal perception can spread to and subsume the self, and kind of render pliable and flexible and dynamic the whole imaginal constellation. [1:12:58]

And again, similar to what we've said with humility and bowing and the rest of it, the trust that we're talking about here, just a little bit of trust -- again, the dependent arising -- we see there's a decrease of reification with that. And it actually needs that. If we're taking the self too reified, then trust is not possible.

But the kind of trust we're talking about is not -- like, we might tend to think, "I'm really in a dangerous situation. This person is offering help, but they might be a bad person. Can I trust them?", or whatever. And if that were a real-life situation, it would all be very reified, and the whole sense of who's trusting would very reified. The trust we're talking about with imaginal practice and sensing with soul, the sense of the self that's doing the trusting is already a lot less reified, as is the object of the trust.

But trust is related to a sense of value, which again, we could pull that out as a separate element of our list. I don't think I have, but we could. So I trust something because I sense there's a treasure here. "This image that looks so uninteresting or so impoverished or so crazy or pathological, I don't get it, But I just" -- and with experience, this comes more and more -- "I trust there's an intelligence here that I don't understand. I trust there's a treasure here that I don't understand. I trust there's a deep value here that I don't quite get yet. And if I can enter into the right relationship, maybe that will become apparent."

There's a relationship between sensing with soul and the sense of value anyway, but I may go into that later, so let's leave that for now. [1:15:09] Sometimes what happens with images is, for instance, we might have a sense of -- I could give examples, but I won't, because I haven't asked for permission yet, so -- we have a sense of an image, and some clearly good beings in the image, and we're feeling nurtured by that, and that's really helpful. And then perhaps at some point, some other characters come into the image, and they seem to be destroying or attacking or wiping out what we thought were the good guys, and clearly they must be the bad guys. And so, one option there, in terms of imaginal practice, is actually to kind of intervene and support the 'good guys' imaginally against the 'bad guys,' so to speak.

But it may also be, there may, again, be a deeper intelligence working. So what seems problematic or seems perhaps dark, maybe something else is happening. Something is moving to another level. And what seems like purely dark or unremittingly pathological may have a deeper intelligence to it, and a deeper kind of wisdom, and a deeper kind of necessity to it. So what if I just move more back into a mode of witnessing that, let's say, destruction of the apparently good guys by the apparently bad guys in the image? And I witness that, and I resonate with it, and I feel the pathos of it, and I sense in the soul what that does, and I sense in the energy body what that does.

Again, we can really use the sense of the energy body being aligned, energized, opened, harmonized. This is a very, very good indicator that we're on the right track: "My mind doesn't get this. It was all very nice with the good guys. Now the bad guys have come, and they're kind of taking over from the good guys. But somehow my energy body is getting more harmonized and more open as that happens. I can trust it, even my mind doesn't get it."

Or sometimes, deeper than just the mind's sort of superficial, conventional objections and fears, there's a sense of the soulmaking and the resonances and the meaningfulness. And we don't completely understand it, but it feels somehow right. It's touching us and resonating with the soul deeply.

(11) Okay, last one for now. I think it's number eleven on our list, but again, it depends how you count: duty. Again, I mentioned it before, and again, it's something that I've talked, I think, quite a bit about, certainly on that retreat, Path of the Imaginal. I'm not sure if other times. But to me, this is really important as well. It's another aspect of the imaginal constellation, and indeed of any soulmaking experience: a sense of duty that the soul feels. It has a duty. It's not always clear what that duty is, or how it should manifest (I've been through all this before), whether it needs to be literal, whether it needs to be concretized, whether it needs to be an obvious translation or something much more subtle, whether it needs to be just purely internal, through the reverence, through the bowing, for instance, through the respect and humility. So I'm not going to go into that again, but I will point out now that, as I said, it's always an aspect of the relationship with the imaginal object, the imaginal figure, and indeed of any soulmaking experience.

So even, for instance, when what's happening to constitute a soulmaking experience is not so much an image, but just an idea, or a framework that has expanded -- our whole logos or conceptual framework, or just an individual idea. We have a new idea, and it's sort of, we can feel the importance of it. It's new. Something's expanded in my whole conceptual framework, just by the introduction of this new idea. It might be something about anything: about the cosmos, or about the nature of God, or the nature of self or soul or emptiness -- whatever. Or it might be the expansion into a new way of looking. It might be even the perception of a kind of a level of oneness that is relatively new, is an expansion for me. Or a state of consciousness -- for example, a jhāna that's relatively new. When it feels soulmaking, somehow, and often vaguely, we feel at some level a sense of duty, for instance, to explore it further, to consolidate it.

So if I've perceived that oneness, somewhere in the being there's a sense of, like, "I need to go into this more. I need to open to it more. I've got a duty to kind of consolidate it, make it part of my life, let it or support it to actually influence and guide or undergird my everyday life, my choices, my values." You know, what would it be for this new idea, or this new conceptual framework, this new way of looking, this new perception of whatever it is -- cosmic oneness of some kind, or just this state, this jhāna that I've glimpsed -- this remarkable state, whatever it is: the third jhāna, it's utterly remarkable!

And somehow, what does it imply about my life? What does it imply about how to live, and what to choose, and what's important, and what's valuable? And how can I bring that in so that it really flows in and informs and supports and grounds my life, my existence, my orientation? Somehow, I feel that we vaguely -- even when there's no obvious image involved; when there's soulmaking involved -- and anyway, it's different with imaginal figures, but there's still this sense: there's some kind of duty that we feel -- at the very least, not to forget it. So again, I would say that's an aspect, an element, a node of the imaginal relationship, again, in more of the subjective pole. There may be also an objective correlate or a correlate in the imaginal object, in the imaginal figure.

But let's stop there for now.