Transcription
I'd like to look in a little more detail at, if you like, the alchemy of perception, or that transition, the process by which, through which, in which, we come to sense with soul, sense the world with soul, sense others and things of this world with soul -- how that transformation of perception actually happens, some of the elements involved in that, how life becomes image, and to give some examples and look at what's going on there.
Before I do, something occurs to me, or I feel a bit impelled to say again something to perhaps reassure you. I don't know if that's needed. But as I said in the first talk, I feel like I'm treading a little bit of a tightrope between, on the one side, wanting to bring in a sense of precision and careful discernment, and a kind of acuity of and refinement of attention, and wisdom in terms of what's involved in all this business of imaginal perception, perceiving imaginally, sensing with soul, etc., on the one hand; and on the other hand, not wanting -- in that careful delineation and examination of what's involved -- not wanting, on the other hand, to discourage, or make it overly prohibitive, or formulaic, or too tightly circumscribed. I really would like you to feel like you can jump in and play and experiment, and it doesn't have to be "Am I getting it right?", this kind of freeze/cramp that so often plagues meditators and people on different spiritual paths, but especially, I find ... well, in some ways, we teach Insight Meditation particularly, and I seem to encounter that a lot. So I'm really wanting to strike that balance and say a bit more that helps you feel, hopefully, free in this process, free to play.
I've pointed out that when we talk about soulmaking and that whole journey, if you like, or trajectory, direction of soulmaking, that what we're really talking about is a dynamic process. There's a dynamism involved. In fact, there's all kinds of dynamism involved in soulmaking, so that eros itself is a dynamic movement towards wanting more, etc., or of bringing something towards us and opening to it. There's a dynamism there. There's a dynamism in what we described as the very soulmaking dynamic, the eros-psyche-logos process, the way they get involved with each other, inseminate each other, fill each other out, complicate, enrich, widen, deepen -- all that. There's what I mentioned, I think, in the end of the last part of this talk: there's the kind of process involved, in that soulmaking will bring, give birth to discernments, discriminations, distinctions, delineations, in both our conception and our perception, of all kinds of elements of experience -- emotional, material, sensory, intellectual, you name it, in terms of the logos, the conceptual framework. And the very making of some discernments and distinctions and refinements of delineation also feeds the soulmaking process. There's a kind of dynamism involved in that. All kinds of dynamism involved in the soulmaking movement, and, I would say, dynamic responsiveness, if you like. We talked about that hawk gliding on the thermal air currents, and the ability to respond to what's happening, to dance with what's happening in the being, in the perception, in the body, in the totality of that, and move in response to that very dynamically, very beautifully. That dynamic responsiveness is also an element of soulmaking.
However, when I say all that and imply all that, that there's a dynamism involved, and what we're talking about is dynamic processes involved in soulmaking, one also has to consider the time frames of what we're talking about. If something is dynamic, it can be dynamic with a very sudden, dramatic shift of something bursting into consciousness, or a sudden change of responsiveness that's happening in the moment. Or it can be dynamic in a very almost imperceptible way over time to build up a change. Or it can be dynamic in stages, in the sense we kind of 'plateau' for a while, if you want to use that word. It's not the best word, but let's say things look relatively static for a while. They're being consolidated. We're steadying with something, and then something suddenly shatters or just gradually changes. So one has to look at the kind of temporal styles or different temporal characteristics of the way change happens. Dynamic responsiveness, dynamism, doesn't mean that there's always change happening, and it's always rapid change, and things are always exploding or moving rapidly. Sometimes there are periods like that, and sometimes it's characterized by -- what would you call it? -- different trajectories of change or -- there's a word for it -- graph of change or whatever.
For example -- and I did already touch on this when we talked about the eros-psyche-logos dynamic in the last part of this talk -- we said they actually have different lability, if that's the word. They're labile in different ways. They're changeable in different ways. Logos tends to change more slowly over time, or we need to kind of consolidate a conceptual framework, or just a new idea, get used to it over quite some time, usually. And then something might shatter or change. Or, in time, with practice, there's this ability to shift it quite rapidly, deliberately. So we can say logos is involved in sensing with soul. In other words, there's always a concept happening. There's always a conceptual framework being engaged when we're sensing with soul. It's not a non-conceptual experience. But the expansion or stretching or shattering of a logos is something that's usually more gradual, slower over time. It's less labile as one of the elements in that trinity than, say, eros. So we already made that point as an example.
Then another example would be, we talked about the movement, the organic movement (if we're not blocking it) for the soulmaking dynamic to sort of spread from not just the erotically imaginal object or other but also, so to speak, back towards the self and the elements of the self, and also out towards the world. What can be very helpful at times is attending to that particular trinity there -- self, other, world -- and just allowing that to be or encouraging that to be more balanced, the soulmaking spreading in a more balanced direction, at times. But even saying that, it doesn't mean it always needs to be balanced: "I always need to make sure that self, other, world are equally balanced in this soulmaking situation, to the same degree or intensity of soulmaking that's spreading equally in all directions." No. The whole thing is fluid.
Sometimes we're much more with one of those three, much more than the other two. And it may be that we actually need to dwell more with certain poles there in that, if we just stay with that self/other/world trinity there. Or we could add eros to make it a quaternity, self/other/world/eros, in terms of what becomes an object of soulmaking, becomes taken up by the soulmaking process and becomes an erotic-imaginal object for us.
But maybe we need to dwell with one of those poles, if you like, of that pattern. For example, habitually the soulmaking process might not come back to our selves. I've mentioned this before. It's possible to always see the divinity, the beauty, etc., in the other, in the imaginal object, and habitually, for different reasons, it doesn't come back to the self, or we're blocking it coming back to the self, or just neglecting to look there, and through the looking, through the noticing, allowing it to ignite the self as an erotically imaginal object for ourselves. That might be a habit, so we might need to linger a little bit with the self as image, and stay there, and be a bit imbalanced the other way for a while, because it's countering our habit. Or it could be the other way round: that we're always with the self, and we're in situations where we forget to see, "Oh, what's happening with my perception of the other at the moment?", and letting that become more imaginal. In working with different people, I see people have different habits here, and sometimes, if I'm working with them, I need to just gently remind, "What about that? Can you notice what's happening there?" "Ah, yes." Something opens. The water spreads in that direction to balance things out, and that helps the whole soulmaking process.
[11:28] Or it might be, for example, in the soulmaking or in the sensing with soul, that we need, at times or stages in our practice, to give more attention to the bodily experience, the energy body experience in what's going on, because that's actually not become something that's just second nature to us, to notice what's going on with the energy body. So actually to give more attention to that. Or we lose touch with that in our sort of erotic fascination with the other; we go out, hence the exercises on twoness, or part of the reasons for the exercises on twoness that we were doing on some of the recent retreats.
So we may need to linger more with the energy body, and really get used to what it is to pay attention in a way that brings the energy body alive. That in itself can take months and often years. It's really a journey for people. As I've pointed out before, it doesn't just equate with mindfulness of the body. It opens up the experience of mindfulness of the body, opens up the wavelengths of that much more broadly. And again, within that, in attending to the energy body and the energy body experience, our habit may be that it's always very solid: it's always just the sensations of the bum on the cushion or the chair, or very gross-level, solid-level sensations, and we need to get used to (and this can take some time) the much finer range of the spectrum, where things are much more ethereal, and the sense of the body as a kind of luminous space of refined vibration. Or vice versa: that's someone's habitual default, and they need to get used to the more solid, earthy kind of sense of the energy body.
Or again, in terms of energies and body, for lots of different reasons, it might be that different kinds of resonances and movements and feeling energy in certain areas of the body -- for instance, the heart area can be very sensitive there, but when it comes to the hips or the kind of sexual energy, it's a bit cut off, or just a bit frozen, or it doesn't fill out there. So there might be a period where that fills out more. Or again, vice versa: that the heart, and the whole heartfulness, and how the movement of emotionality fills out with the energy body is not something that a person is used to attending to. Again, just extrapolating from that, just dwelling more with the emotions as the kind of pull of what one is paying attention to within the whole imaginal constellation may be, for some people, at certain stages in their practice, really what they lean towards over and over. That might be very important as a kind of growth.
Or we get the sense of the imaginal and the whole soulmaking thing, and it's always kind of habitually very nicey-nicey. It's always kind of white-robed angels of light, etc., and very ethereal in the texture of the images, etc., and there's less of the dark gods. Or, again, vice versa: it's all a bit dark, and filled with dukkha and angst, or dark in lots of different ways, maybe sexually or whatever, and there needs to be that opening out of the more obviously, more traditional kind of etheric, beneficent, angelic, light, luminous, refined presences. Again, what's the habit? What's needed? Or, as I've also noticed recently, the whole realm of desire: for many people, it's actually not okay to have desire. That can be a kind of cultural transmission in terms of the wider culture. It can be an early religious transmission, or something in the family, or the schooling, or in the Dharma teaching. Even just allowing one's desire and allowing one's eros, if we talk about the Opening to the Current of Desire practice, or just the awareness of eros in the imaginal practices, there might be a period where one is just learning to notice desire, actually feel it, what it feels like, and allow it, and be okay with it. And then even recognize it as a lovely thing and a beautiful thing. That can increase all the way to sensing it, as I've explained in the Eros Unfettered talks, sensing it as a divine thing, our desire as divine desire. So that might be a whole way that the dynamic or the constellation needs to be kind of weighted for some people, maybe for a while.
[17:29] So we talked about balance, and all these elements, etc., but there's still also the individual kind of growth or development of a soul (if you like, as an expression). So what is habit that we need to kind of address? "Oh, yeah, that always happens. I always neglect to do this." And it's just a little shift, or a little shift of attention, that allows it to break out of our normal habit. Sometimes these habits are not, "Oh, that's terrible. That's going to take me decades to ..." It's just a shift, and then, "Ah, there, it's moved," right there in the moment. The habit might still be a little bit entrenched, but the actual shifting of it is not such a big deal in a lot of cases.
Or it may be a little more involved. We may need to look at some of the, for instance, with the desire thing, what are the murky beliefs that I've absorbed from my education, from my culture, from Dharma culture sometimes, that just block off, inhibit and disallow my desire and my celebration of the beauty of that, etc., or even that possibility? So that's a question: what's habit? What does it need? And what is kind of given by soul to me? It's given that this particular, say, complex emotion needs lingering with, or this bandwidth of the energy body spectrum needs lingering with. Let's say it's given to me by soul as part of my soulmaking, my soul-education. So that becomes, like, what's given by soul, and what is purely habit? What is needed here? I'm not saying these are necessarily easy questions. But just to have that kind of light inquiry rather than a formulaic approach to all these questions of balance and dynamism, and what needs to be happening, and what should be happening, and all that.
And then, also, what's just a personal soul-style, a personal kind of way that my soul is, or way that your soul is, that needs respecting? Some people have more darkness -- in the beautiful sense of the word: beautiful, rich darkness -- than others. It's part of their soul make-up. Some people do have much more facility, let's say, with the ethereal than with the denser realms. Some people do have just more sexual libido and eros than others. This all needs to be respected, you know. So what's personal soul-style that needs to be respected? What's habit and kind of indoctrination or just encrustation by habit? What is given to me by soul, and what is actually needed? All this, again, very light, very open, playful. Don't be afraid of making mistakes with this. You'll make mistakes. Don't fear them. It's not a big deal. A mistake is something to be responded to: "Ah, yeah. Okay." It's part of the dynamic responsiveness. I really want to encourage that sense of playing, and that kind of permission and freedom to just dive in and play. And then ... actually, even that I'm going to qualify later, but let's just say that for now. [laughs]
All this talk of dynamism and dynamics is intimately associated with pacing. Pacing, I think, was something I talked about -- if I remember -- in the Path of the Imaginal retreat. I'm aware there are a lot of aspects to all this information I'm putting out, so it might well have been something that just got lost in the amount of material being communicated. But pacing in regards to a particular image: how much do I stay with this one image, and call it back deliberately, or just let it move on in itself, transform, or bring another image in, or look for another image, or whatever? These are questions that I've gone into before. But there are also questions of pacing now we're bringing in in relation to these elements and this whole sense of dynamism itself. How quickly do we move through logoi, for instance -- this breaking of the vessels that I've been talking about in several retreats? It's not that vessels can break all the time. There needs to be times of building, building vessels, building structures, understanding conceptual frameworks, really absorbing them, digesting them, making them work for us, really getting the juice out of them, the mileage out of them. And then maybe there's breaking vessels, or stretching, or additioning, or questioning. So there are pacing questions, discernments to make, in all this talk of dynamism, with regard to the different elements.
[23:13] And then also, I've said so much and I still will continue to say a lot about this business of reification, and how important this Middle Way of the imaginal is, of the theatre kind of quality or element of the whole sensing with soul and imaginal. It is more complicated than all that, which I'll return to, but what I want to say right now is that -- and I've said it before; I think it was the end of the Re-enchanting retreat -- look, it is a big deal, this reification business. It is often the element that is kind of at the root of problems that we encounter when we try these practices and it feels like, "Oh, it kind of exploded, or I went into a brick wall, or something went wrong," or the soulmaking is stuck, or there's dukkha coming in rather than a kind of opening of the soulmaking process, or things are not kind of fully imaginal, authentically imaginal in the way that we described in the first talk of this series.
It is often a reification that's at the root of what's going on there, and one can kind of trace it back and see, "Oh, yes. There's reifying of something or other here, or quite a lot of things." That is the case, and it is really important. But also, we don't want to be the reification police, with "thou shalt not reify" as the first commandment. Expect to reify. Look, it's a human... To me, that goes with the First Noble Truth: there is dukkha, dukkha arises. It's like, dukkha rests on reification. So we will do that. We will reify. Expect to reify. And again, in the context of what I'm trying to say right now in this little fragment here: don't get too hung up on all this. Sometimes it's necessary to reify something, and maybe for a while. There can still be a lot of soulmaking, let's say, that happens in a reified perspective. So it is a big deal, but you don't need to get frozen in this, "Oh, my goodness. What happens if I reify?", so the whole thing gets stuck that way. Expect that you will reify. Probably it's quite a maturity to really whittle that down so that it tends to happen less and less. It is a big deal, but don't get too hung up on it. We really don't want to be the reification police with this, and we don't want you to be the reification police with respect to yourselves.
Just finally for right now, I feel like whatever I say in all this, trying to make these delineations, trying to say things -- "Do you see how this is working? It's like this. It has this element and not that, or this rather than that, and it must include this," and da-da-da -- whatever I say, whatever we say in trying to provide a framework and a platform for all these explorations, there are going to be exceptions. I'm beginning to think ... [laughs] There will be possible exceptions. It's more like, teaching this stuff, I feel like, is more like teaching art or teaching music. It's like, yeah, it's really important you learn rules of harmony, and kind of things to look out for when you're improvising, and different ways you can do things, and did you think about this, or you can explore this, and don't forget this, and all that. But whatever one says as a teacher, I think, or whatever one is told as a teacher, there are exceptions possible. Someone can just give an example of exactly an exception to what you've just explained, and the opposite of it.
That doesn't mean, though, that all that explanation, that delineation, and the exploration of those delineations and those refinements of perception and those conceptions and conceptual frameworks, is irrelevant just because there are exceptions. So again, I feel there's this kind of -- 'tightrope' is too dramatic a metaphor, but there's a kind of balance, and a kind of looseness with precision that's involved in this, a looseness with a kind of precision of discernment and refinement and attention. Again, I'm kind of inserting this fragment at this point just because it occurred to me, and because I really want to encourage and not discourage. So I hope that that's helpful.
