Sensing with Soul (Part 5)

I very much hope that all this analysis, if we can call it that, of what's involved in and what supports sensing with soul, perceiving imaginally, soulmaking, I hope that it's helpful, all this analysis and kind of taking apart what we mean by those words. I hope that that's helpful. I hope that it opens up possibilities, and makes actual possibilities for you, and allows you to open up this field further. And I hope that in what we're saying here, and through your own practice of it, and dipping in and trying stuff and taking note of what happens, I hope that through all of that you really get a taste of the kinds of things that we're talking about, the kinds of experiences -- 'get the taste' in terms of actually experience for yourself these kinds of openings, deepenings, transformations, whatever you want to call it; that you both get the taste and get the idea. You know, that's a metaphorical term, but also more literally: you understand conceptually, as well as having certain -- not certain experiences, but as well as it opening up experientially, that it also opens up for you conceptually. It makes sense. It's grounded conceptually, both through what we're saying and through your own practical explorations.

With that, again, I really want to encourage you to play, to experiment. 'Experiment' means trying different stuff, doing some different things in practice than you might usually do. But 'experiment*'* implies with it a sort of attentive, careful noticing of what happens, a kind of inquiry in and through the practice -- sometimes even questioning. And through that combination of play and inquiry -- we could say 'experimentation,' this attentive noticing when we're playing -- a maturing of soulmaking and imaginal practice, and of understanding, will take place. It's that combination: playing or experimenting with a kind of attentive noticing and inquiry, and kind of thinking about it as well. All of that together will inevitably open up and establish a kind of gradual maturing of these kinds of practices and of the understanding. So that way of approaching things is very different from the harassment or pressure of the question, "Am I getting this right? Am I getting it right?", which so often, as I said, plagues meditators, and oppresses the meditative exploration and the meditative path.

We're slowly, gradually looking at: what is it that allows, opens, supports, catalyses sensing with soul, sensing life, the world, the things of the world, the materiality, the bodies, the beings of the world, sensing any and all of that with soul? We've touched on the importance of certain aspects of the way that we are present, the way that we show up, if you like, in the present moment, and bring our awareness and our being to bear. And certain factors of aspects of our presence, if you like, if we want to call it that, being kind of key. So for instance, humility; heart opening or heart softening; a certain amount, a slight or some degree of lessening of the fabrication of perception; some degree of loosening of perceptual and conceptual grasping too tightly on what a thing is and how reality is, etc.; sensitivity as an aspect of presence; energy body awareness -- these kinds of things. I'm just repeating now what we've been through before, just to reiterate it once more.

We kind of said any aspect or element of the imaginal, any node in the imaginal constellation (we went through that whole list), attention to or noticing that node can either suddenly or gradually bring that element alive, and then from there, the whole lattice can ignite, become illuminated; the fully imaginal can be moved towards or entered into, either suddenly or gradually. And also we said that, in all of that, some of those elements won't necessarily be there at first or in the beginnings of your practice with all this. Something, for instance, like the sense of participation -- I wonder whether that's just a bit more subtle. In other words, it's maybe not likely to be noticed immediately. I mean, it could be the fact that you've heard me say it so much kind of stimulates that noticing and makes it more accessible. But the general point right now is that it's not necessary that all these elements, you notice them at first. As I said, there's a maturing almost of the discernment that happens, like your eyes getting used to the dark, but over quite a period of time. It's like, "What's actually involved in imaginal perception? What's actually involved in sensing with soul?"

Again, I'm just reviewing briefly. We also said that the order of practices is not important. For example, one might start with a so-called intrapsychic image or intrapsychic sensing with soul, so-called, and from there it spreads out to some thing, some object, some person, or just the general environment in a kind of cosmopoesis, to what we might call 'extrapsychic' sensing with soul. Or it might work the other way around: one starts with some material object, or the general sense of one's surroundings, perceived/sensed with soul, and from that arises some intrapsychic image of oneself or someone else or something else.

So it can work in either order, either way. It might be only extrapsychic. It might just stay with this object in front of me, this thing, this being, whatever it is in the material world, manifesting materially, and one senses them with soul, and that's just what it does. It might be that we start with, for instance, some degree of cultivating some samādhi, and the well-being, the harmonization, the integrity and beauty, really, of the energy body experience there, and that liquefies to a certain extent, lessens fabrication to a certain extent, loosens things to a certain extent, and in that loosening/liquification there's the possibility for more sensing with soul of the world around us, because everything is kind of liquefied a little bit, loosened.

Or (and we also mentioned the possibility) it can be emptiness practices first, which essentially do a similar kind of thing: they're all a movement of less fabrication, lessening of fabrication. Or some other elements. For instance, we've mentioned humility. It might be that lingering with that sense, allowing that to open one, and allowing oneself to open into that realm or mode of being that we call humility, with everything that's involved there, in whatever way that does, and whatever that means for us, or however that opens at that time, it may be that that element is sort of the way in, the door that opens to allow a sensing with soul, into the mundus imaginalis.

[9:45] In all this analysis, there's this possibility to develop our understanding conceptually, of the conceptual framework, and understanding regarding some of the elements that might be involved in (whichever way one wants to put it) opening a door, or building, creating this constellation, this construction, this fabrication that is the imaginal, and also with practice. So dwelling on this allows both the understanding and the practice, hopefully, to develop, for you to gain some confidence in, because you can actually try stuff: dwell or focus on this or that element, try changing this, that, just noticing or tweaking an element, or amplifying it, or whatever it is.

But we also made the point that, okay, there's this understanding and skill that develops regarding what elements might be involved, but never, never, never is soulmaking going to be only a matter of technique, or something that can be harnessed under the rubric of 'my mastery,' 'your mastery.' It's never going to be only that. Yes, there is skill and art that can develop in practice, and yes, there certainly is a quite beautiful and remarkable evolution of refinement of discernment, conceptually and perceptually and all that, and that's really helpful and important. But it's never going to come just under that. I'm never going to get it completely under my thumb. There's always going to be an element in soulmaking of grace, of the unexpected, of something being given, a gift, and receiving something, so to speak, from beyond ourselves. A sense of grace, of gift, of receiving something from beyond ourselves is always, I would say, to some degree an element in soulmaking practice, in sensing with soul, in imaginal perception.

So that's the end of the little review. If we pick up on that little point, and amplify something that I mentioned recently, we can, as I said just now, receive something from beyond ourselves. That 'beyond ourselves' might be from another human or other humans right now in the present, materially together with us, or a whole field or group or whatever. That's one possibility of a 'beyond ourselves' that we may receive from. Now, we're not going to talk, and we probably won't talk for quite a while, about (I don't know what to call it exactly) deliberate dyadic soulmaking practice, where the erotic-imaginal is explored deliberately, face to face with another, and kind of held there, and explored there, and allowed to amplify with each other in the form, in the temenos there. I think we'll save that till later. I don't think we recommend that practice quite yet. It's very beautiful, very wonderful, but it takes quite a lot of prerequisites psychologically, in terms of skill with one's own process, relational skills and arts, all kinds of things, energetics, etc. So I'm not really wanting to talk so much about that as a deliberate kind of avenue and possibility in practice.

Rather, for right now, just to mention a possibility, because some of you will have experienced this anyway, and it happens, of course, that we receive, we're given something from beyond ourselves, sometimes from other human selves right now that we're in relationship with, and that opens up for us. What we get from them, what they communicate to us, opens up the possibility right then for us of sensing with soul. We could possibly give a few examples of this. One, actually, is something that I can report for myself, helped by Catherine, in fact. I think it was the last retreat, The Alchemy of Desire, and I was talking at some point, perhaps in the talk "Longing, Vulnerability, Anteros," or something like that. I was talking about something that happened, and my worry or fear, if you like, regarding a certain creative project that was very dear to my soul and heart, and my fear, my concern, worry, that it would just get lost, or dissolve, or not come to a fruition, and also my recognition that it didn't depend on me, and how that opened up through an exploration that Catherine helped me with, but that was primarily my own image, if you like, that I explored.

That was around the same time -- I can't remember if it was before the retreat or after the retreat -- Catherine and I were skyping, and I think it was a similar uncertainty that I was in, or similar anxiety, really, I was in about this creative project that felt very important to me. We were skyping. I was maybe sharing some of this, I think, and some of my feelings. And at a certain point, her perception shifted into an imaginal perception. In other words, she was sensing with soul. She was sensing me with soul, through the medium of Skype. In other words, I, for her, had become image at that point -- not so much as a narrative, but in that moment, as a kind of iconic image. Not so much the whole story of this, if I remember rightly. And with everything that that involves, and the theophany, and the dimensionality, and all of that.

She shared that with me in real time, in the moment. She said, "This is how I'm seeing right now." She was quite struck by the perception, and the sort of numinosity there and luminosity, and the beauty of that in her perception. Her communicating of that, of her perception, in this case of me, communicating that to me in the moment, in the midst of my sharing open-heartedly about the anxiety that I was feeling, did something to my perception of, if you like, the life of this work, or the life of this creative work that I was caring deeply about and actually concerned about.

So her communicating that perception to me -- it's not so much that I picked up that exact perception, and saw myself iconically, theophanically, as image, as she was. It was more something illuminated in the field. And then I was able, at that point, somehow, in the magic sort of ignition of that, of the field, of her communicating, that was triggered by her communication of her imaginal perception, I was able to perceive the life of the work more imaginally, the life of this creative project more imaginally. And then the kind of contraction of anxiety that was there was able to relax. It was as if I caught the sensing with soul or caught the imaginal field from her, or her perception and her communication of that imaginal perception ignited not the same perception, but a related perception, perhaps, but a different perception in me imaginally.

So I had been in this kind of, "I need to figure out what to do to ensure that this creative work lives and becomes generative in the future if I die," etc. I had been in that, and the grip of that "I need to figure out how to do, what's the solution here." In my shift that was catalysed by her shift of seeing me imaginally, in my shift, then that grip relaxed. There was a whole different seeing of this creative project, of my relationship with it, and the possibility that I might die before it comes to fruition, etc. That all relaxed, and that became imaginal, and there was a very different relationship with that. So that would be one example, again, of something we receive from beyond ourselves that opens, if you like, turns the key, in our perception, so that we are then able to perceive, to sense with soul.

A second example. Some of you might remember this. I'm trying to remember ... I'm pretty sure I recounted it in a talk, which I think might be "The Theatre of Selves," maybe in the second part. I'm not going to do the whole thing right now, but I was relating the true story of working with a yogi on retreat, and her sharing with me some really difficult memories that she had felt a lot of shame about for many years, concerning something that happened when she was quite young -- a very young woman, really. We hadn't discussed anything about 'imaginal,' hadn't even used that word. This was really quite a few years ago.

But as she was talking, I heard the words 'sacred prostitute.' And I was sort of wrestling with myself as I was listening, of whether it was kind of okay to share that. I did. And in a way, what came to me through these words was an imaginal perception or a sensing with soul of the memory of the whole scene and account, narrative really, of what she was sharing with me. It was so painful for her, and so bound in shame decades later. And my sense, my imaginal perceiving of that story, that episode in her life, I then shared that with her.

In this case, she immediately picked up the flame of that, that very same imaginal perceiving, that very same sensing of that memory, of that narrative, with soul. It was the same one. So [this example is] different than what happened with Catherine and I on Skype, where what ignited for me was a slightly different perception. In this case, it was the same image. I really had been a few minutes listening, you know: "I'm not sure I can say that in regard to this very painful thing." But I did say it, and she immediately grasped that image. It was immediately something that cast the whole episode and the whole pain of it in a very different light. It was literally seen with a different way of looking. It was remembered -- not the facts, but the whole colour, and the whole actual movement of what was going on there. What was going on in this painful memory? We can interpret it, if you like, this way: "The hermeneutic of it is this way, and it's shaming, and it's a kind of moral inferiority, and a great mistake, and there's no beauty. There's nothing redeeming in it."

And something shifted in this perception. As I shared back then, it wasn't just my intellect coming up with, "Now, I wonder what we could do here to recast it, to bring in a different way of looking." Something was, if you like, given to me, so I received something from beyond myself which had to do with the field. In the field, we were looking together at that memory. I received something from beyond myself. Who knows from where? From soul, from whatever. And then communicated it to her, and that was exactly what she needed then to shift and see the whole thing with a resanctification, and a redeeming, an opening up to see what was beautiful there and what was divine. Mercy began to flow, healing began to flow, etc. -- her sense not just of the past, but then of her present as well. It's as if she recognized the necessity and the 'truth,' if you like, if we even use that word, the 'truth' of that imaginal perception, the 'truth' of sensing what happened with soul, remembering in that different way, of both her past and her self, yes? And that means her self in the present too. So that would be another example, again, of receiving something from beyond ourselves, and it being communicated within, between humans.

[25:02] Another one. Again, it was something I was involved in with a very good friend. I can't remember when, but sometime in the last few years. I don't quite remember what led up to it, but I think we were both feeling a certain particular kind of tenderness and openness between us. It wasn't that something had been closed, or hardened, or hidden, or held tightly behind certain doors for fear of being seen. It wasn't that at all. But something happened, and I think we both felt this kind of (metaphorically speaking) nakedness with each other.

Again, it wasn't that we were hiding anything before that, and suddenly it was like, "Ah, now I can show you what I'm ashamed of" or anything. It was nothing like that at all, although that can be a very important moment in human beings relating. But actually it wasn't that. It was just that something happened, or in the flow of things there was suddenly a sense of this really beautiful kind of nakedness together.

We were sort of talking a little bit, but there was a lot of just silence, and sort of real slow pace to things. I was kind of checking or paying attention to this kind of beautiful feeling of nakedness metaphorically. I was [noticing], "Oh, it's got this real innocence with it, and a kind of real unguardedness." And again [laughs], not that there was really much guardedness before. But really it became almost like a kind of pristine, Edenic (as in Garden of Eden) kind of thing: something very young, very, very innocent, sort of open and unguarded and really naked.

And that, as I tracked it inside, in the flow of this very sparse conversation, just being together (and there was a lot of love there) ... I was paying attention kind of at the same time to this sense that I had. And then, in the paying attention, it became imaginal. It took that kind of quantum jump, and the very sense of my nakedness, and innocence, openness, unguardedness, and the kind of youngness of that, began to have those qualities of beauty, and theophany, and dimensionality, and all the rest of it. So it became, if you like, iconic for me. There was something of the iconic image in that and, as we talked about, the elements of the imaginal. I was just noticing these elements of the imaginal, and I wasn't doing it in any deliberate way. I don't think I'd even articulated this business about elements of the imaginal to myself at that time. But [I] began to notice the element of eternality. It's as if that nakedness, innocence, unguardedness, openness, young image -- I sensed the eternality of it. There was this young, naked boy, etc. It had this 'always already happening in hierophanic time' quality to it, and that amplified the sense of divinity of the whole thing.

I haven't talked about it for quite a while, but I talked at some point (perhaps in Path of the Imaginal) about this possibility of kind of seeing an image as an object, or becoming an image, etc., as two possible different kind of ways of relating to an image, among others. In this case, I opened more to this iconic divine image, and its eternality, and the beauty of it, and the sweetness of it, the kind of innocent purity of it. And I sort of became that more. So, again, it's not that I was identified. There wasn't this rigid, tight ego-grasping at it. But it's as if I let myself enter into being that image, or feeling myself as that image. And with that, it felt like, as part of the image, that there was a blessing radiating from that image, which, as I entered into the image and sort of became that image physically, if you like, in my bodily experience, it felt like my body and my hands, etc., were sort of emanating blessing, that part of the image. I remember placing my hands on my friend's head in blessing, and she could feel the blessing energy. It was, I felt, very, very beautiful and touching and interesting.

Now, again, there wasn't really much reification going on or much identification. If someone were to go around placing their hands on people's heads, with this sense of being identified with having blessing energy coming out of them, and telling people, "It's good for you if you let me touch your head, because I've got blessing coming out of my hands," that personally would make me very nervous. Maybe that's just my style. But here it really felt, in that theatre, in that imaginal Middle Way, with all the loveliness and power, and ability to affect the soul and heart (but not the identification, not the ego-identification and grasping and reification of that), what happened really there was, through the touch -- well, we were together in this kind of heart experience before, but through the touch, then, we both were in the sensing with soul through the touch. The image, the imaginal there, was shared between us, and part of its sharing was sharing through the touch.

[32:17] In all those three examples I've just given, we could say, again, something comes from beyond ourselves. Could be from another, another human being. We could talk, perhaps, about the field, as they talk about fields in quantum theory. It's like the field takes a quantum leap. In other words, what two people are experiencing, the whole thing becomes imaginal together. This, to me, is really quite interesting. In the field, whoever is participating, there's a quantum leap into a new imaginal sense. Notice that in the examples where there was dukkha, that imaginal sense doesn't ignore or erase the dukkha that was there, nor the particularity of a person, of the persons involved, or the events, or the story. But it transforms the seeing, transforms the sensing. Something has gone to sensing with soul. Something has opened up in the field, taken that quantum leap. It's taken a quantum leap into the imaginal realm. The imaginal perceiving has opened up.

What can happen, as I mentioned, is this quantum leap (if we use that analogy) can be, if you like, given to or arise first in one person, if there are two people there -- first in one person, who then communicates it to the other. And the second person, their sensing also then makes the quantum leap so that the whole field has shifted. Both of them are in this new perception. The whole sense of what was and is present, the perceptions of selves, the others, objects, events, the world, all become (as they do in the soulmaking dynamic) involved and transubstantiated, transfigured, if you like, and the beauty of that.

So again, I'm mentioning this as one of the ways in which, one of the elements in which sensing with soul opens for us is that we receive from beyond ourselves. But I do, again, want to just say: I think in terms of unpacking and unfolding and presenting all this material, I just want to put the brakes on a little bit in terms of this deliberate dyadic soulmaking practice, which is something that I think does take quite a lot of preparation, and prerequisite capacity, skills, arts, etc., in all kinds of domains -- relational, psychological, personal, energetic, insight, all that.

But anyway, some of you will recognize from these kinds of examples that you've already actually experienced this. As I said when I described what happened with the ritual with the tangerines, in a way, some of you might have felt, "Yeah, I've already experienced this many times," or talking with a friend, or in an interview or something, or sharing images in a group. Of course, lovers in love know this kind of thing. They might not have a conceptual framework for it, but people taste this kind of thing. You, of course, may know the possibility from your own experience with times when you were in love, etc. It's not so much about that sort of form or definition of a relationship. It's more like where there is the erotic-imaginal alive, it can spread between two people. And 'the erotic-imaginal' does not necessarily mean sexual/romantic between two people.

As another example of this, if you like, field or receiving from another, actually to share something that Catherine told me that her niece told her. This particular niece is actually just five years younger than Catherine, or thereabouts -- around five years. Catherine's mother was Catherine's niece's grandmother, despite the fact that Catherine's niece is only five years younger than Catherine. When Catherine's mother died, two and a half years ago or so, then Catherine's niece shared with Catherine ... I want to get the words right, so let me just find it. [shuffles papers] She said, "Nanny" -- that's what she called Catherine's mum, so her grandmother -- "Nanny was the only person who would say to me, when I went round to her house and sat beside her and told her my problems, she was the only person who would say, 'Let's sit quietly and put ourselves in the hands of the Lord.'" Beautiful. "Let's sit quietly and put ourselves in the hands of the Lord." And then Catherine's niece was saying, "Now there will be no one who will say that to me any more." So she was the only figure, Catherine's mother, being a devout Catholic -- she died in her nineties -- was the only figure in Catherine's niece's life who still had that kind of devoutness, that kind of relationship with God that was unabashed enough, unashamed enough, humble enough to share it with others in what sounds to me like really not a kind of pushy, evangelical way. Catherine's niece said she was the only person who would communicate that.

In terms of our analysis, a couple of things here. One is, in saying that -- and of course that probably happened many times over Catherine's niece's life and her knowing of Catherine's mum -- there's a fusion of a few different elements. In the many times, it probably then, at that point, opened up in different ways depending on what the problem was, depending on all kinds of factors as they sat quietly together and put themselves in the hands of the Lord. You can see the humility there. You can see the reverence, all that. You can see, also, what is communicated from one human being to another -- again, receiving something of that humility, [and] of a certain idea as well, because there's a whole conception involved there of putting themselves in the hands of the Lord. Again, it might be very vague, but there's a conception of divinity. There's a conception of the human relation with divinity, etc., being communicated. So an idea is there, an invitation to humility is there, coming from another. And also an image is there. If someone says, "Let's put ourselves in the hands of the Lord," I presume that no one actually has a visual image then of some giant hand descending from the cloud, in which you sort of hop onto this hand or something. It's a metaphor. But it's a loose image. It can become enough, as a vague metaphor, to be itself an imaginal perception that opens up then the sensing of the problem with soul, etc.

But there are definitely a few elements there. One is a kind of image, if you like, and an idea, and this other in the field (or in this case, a kind of dyad) from which Catherine's niece then received something from beyond herself -- something that, on her own, she's not quite able to access because of lots of different reasons. All that together, with the invitation to humility and other elements, that opens up the sensing with soul. And then that can manifest and open up in different ways, in different directions, depending on what the problem was that she was dealing with, or all kinds of other factors in the present moment.

[41:15] I just want to say something else about that particular anecdote. To me, when I hear that, something that could easily be overlooked in someone sharing that when someone else dies, or in just what people report of their lives, etc. -- it might be obvious to some of you, but I think it can be very easily overlooked in our present zeitgeist, in our culture's sort of way of conceiving of existence and all of that. Of course, I could be wrong, but to me, when I hear it, it seems to me that Catherine's niece, in saying that to Catherine after Catherine's mum died, after her grandmother died, she's expressing that she's missing not just her grandmother's human kindness, not just the comforting that happened then, but she's also missing something much more specific. She's missing what is communicated of the sacred through her grandmother, in a very particular way.

She said, "Now there will be no one." It's very rare in her life. It's very precious. She's missing not just the human kindness and comfort, but also what came through in a very particular, very personal way, through Catherine's mother to her, of the sacred, of the sense or idea or image or fantasy of the divine, expressed or brought into presence, or conjured, even, if you want to use that word, through a particular person -- their style, their mode of doing that, as if each of us (potentially at least, and hopefully more than potentially) refracts the divine in a different way. Each of us in our life has the opportunity to sing the praise of existence, to communicate through our being in so many different ways their sense of the sacredness of existence.

We all do that, and we refract, if you like, the light of the divine, the infinite light of the divine. We refract it each in our particular ways. We each have our different songs, or ranges of songs, that we each sing. It's that, over and above the human kindness or comfort that she might have received from her grandmother or whatever it is, it's that that Catherine's niece is expressing that she's missing, and the rarity of that, the loss of that from her life -- and the loss generally, but also, in this case, specifically as well. "My nanny, my grandma" had this particular way that she expressed and brought the divine into manifestation, through how she related to the divine, through how she felt it, how she expressed it.

Is not this the most precious gift that we bear, that we give to each other as human beings -- the way, the ways that we express that and show that to each other, and yeah, if we use that word, 'refract' the light of the sacred, of the divine, of the beyond, of the mystery? There's something much more going on there. It's much more than just a strategy for decreasing suffering. I mean, it could be seen that way, and it had that function, definitely. There's something useful there. But this whole other level of the taste, the intimation, the disclosure, the fragrance of the particular expression or slant or refraction of divinity that we get from each other ... it's not useful. [laughs] In a way, it's useless. I'll come back to that in another talk, I think. But is it not the most precious gift (I think it is) of the most beautiful things that we love in this existence?

Let's move on. Another possibility -- and I've alluded to this many times, but let's just draw it out a little bit -- is that a life situation that we're in can become image for us. It becomes imaginal for us, or we sense that situation, that life situation, with soul. There is that potential. So instead of, "There's just this problem, or just this thing that I like, or this thing that I'm interested in," we can, in practice, allow it to become fully imaginal for us. Now, sometimes that's obvious, or it's obvious that the thing is or can easily be fully imaginal. But oftentimes it's not. It's not at all, and we just regard this thing as a kind of, "Ugh, I'm caught up in this papañca," or "It's a problem that I have. I have too much desire," or this or that. Oftentimes we're not aware, or a person isn't aware, of the potential in a life situation to liberate the imaginal that's there, and to plug in, to connect with, to open to a very different sensing of that situation, of themselves in that situation, sensing it with soul.

Someone was sharing with me in an interview a while ago. I asked her permission to share it with you. It was a slightly complicated sort of nexus of conditions, if you like. I can't remember if she said also, in relation to imaginal practice, "I don't get images." She may or may not, but I think it's important in this connection, because what I'm going to say now also addresses those of you who still might think, "Oh, I don't get images." We said quite a lot about that in past talks. Oftentimes the image is there in our life; it's just we haven't kind of recognized it as image, recognized the fantasy that is propelling us, that is calling us, that is pulling us anyway. It's in what we love. It's in what we're moved by. It's in what is meaningful to us. I think I said in "Image, Mythos, Dharma," but many times over the last few years, where we love, there is image. Where we're dedicated, there is image. You can look there. It's a matter of, so to speak, unearthing the image, or illuminating the image there, and then it kind of shining its light on us and on the whole situation.

So here was a situation where -- there are different sides to it, so let me just kind of present the whole picture very briefly. She had shared with me that she had gone to an exhibition of a certain Japanese artist, Hokusai, that some of you will know -- a very wonderful artist from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I think. And then generally was sharing just more how much she really loved art and literature, but was kind of regretting that she had no time in her life to study it as she would like. But also it turned out some of the impetus to study was because she was in a certain social situation where she had just moved, and a lot of the people that she was encountering in this new town where she lived were kind of into the arts, but in a way where -- I don't know how to say -- as if they were boasting their knowledge, how much they knew about it. So it was a slightly intimidating social scene where she felt she had to kind of equal their knowledge or not be exposed as being ignorant, etc. It didn't sound a very pleasant social scene that she had been introduced to, and she was very ambivalent about whether she wanted to be in that scene at all, understandably.

So this "I don't have time to study it" was itself mixed. It was partly "I need to know more to keep up with these people around me who have this slightly harsh judgmental quality, or comparing, a 'measuring each other' quality to it." And some of it was just coming out of love. Another piece here was that I think she had a column in a magazine in her profession, which had nothing to do with art or literature, a regular column, and she was talking about that and her relationship with teaching that. It was a teaching thing, and communicating the teaching in her column.

Talking about this, she reported how she felt that she could get really manic, like in relation to some of these things -- either in relation to this column that she had to write, or in relation to getting excited about art or literature. She felt that energy in the chest, and then her mind just spins: "Then I'll do this, and then I'll do that, and after that I'll do that," as if this kind of forward momentum of overexcited papañca was something that she kind of didn't want to get into. She recognized it, and she said, "I tend to do that. I tend to get" -- I think she used the word 'manic.' So we all recognize that, or most of us will recognize that possibility as one of the possibilities of papañca: we're in planning mode, and we're overexcited, and we're not really in our bodies, and it's all gotten kind of out of hand.

[52:48] As we were talking, I just kind of said, "Okay, that's really good to be aware of that. And, if you like, there are at least three fantasies woven together here in your life." I mean 'fantasy,' in this case, in the good sense -- in other words, something that is already image and fantasy for us, in that it has beauty, it has meaningfulness, it has all this. But it needs to be recognized as such, and allowed as such, given permission, and granted its respect and trust and those kind of elements, in order for it to have its power, because otherwise what happens is we mistake something that's potentially fantasy. We mistake it for papañca. Now, sometimes what comes to us as image and fantasy can be papañca, or it can turn into papañca, or it can actually be papañca, but we start relating to it differently, and it's more that it becomes imaginal. That's what I want to go into now.

What I want to kind of offer as a possibility, as a permission, or as a reconceiving, is that maybe it was actually imaginal to start with, and because we didn't trust it, and because we didn't pay attention and relate to it in the right way (we were suspicious of it, or we closed it down, or we didn't involve the energy body, etc., and all that, and didn't respect it), it became more of a papañca for us and a problematic energy spinning in our consciousness, in our being. But these things are usually always redeemable at any point. It's not that we have to catch them and nip them in the bud. It could be years of what I've been considering as papañca and unskilful relationship with something, and then I reconceive it. I just give it a little bit of trust. I enter into relationship in a different way, with much more attention and respect and all that, grant it the possibility that it may have some treasure in it and all that, and actually the thing becomes imaginal and not papañca.

So here there was the possibility, I pointed out as we were talking, that woven into her life there are at least three fantasies kind of pulling her, propelling her, functioning already -- good fantasies, in our sense of imaginal fantasies, soul-fantasies. One was around art. One was around what we might call Japanese Buddhist aesthetics, or a Japanese way of life. One was the whole realm of literature. And one was her column, her teaching column in this magazine as her own creative flow, rather than as just something that she did as part of her duties of her job, as a kind of like, "Oh, dear, it's time to write that column again."

All these were possible and live fantasies that somehow, in relating to them or conceiving of them, there was more suspicion than trust, and not quite the relationship that allowed the blossoming, the blooming into full sensing with soul and imaginal relationship. But all these fantasies, these imaginal narratives -- the Japanese Buddhist way of life, the literature, the column as her own artistic, creative flow -- all of them had beauty, soul-resonance, meaningfulness, mystery, all the rest of it. All of them can be and sometimes were what we were calling fixations -- in other words, images that weren't imaginal; fixated images, the stuff of papañca. They could be that if we relate to them in the wrong way.

So for example, if that wanting to measure up to this strange new social situation that I'm in, where everyone is sort of dropping hints of how much they know about this art or that art or that literature, and I feel like I have to keep up, and it's very intimidating, if that part of me that gets roped into that not-very-nice social way of relating, and the ego-measurement involved in that -- if that part of me gets hold of this, then I'm going to be relating to these potentially beautiful fantasies and potentially imaginal fantasies as ... they become fixations, not imaginal. I'm going to be relating to them from the need or from the effort to try and impress others with what I know about art or whatever, or in my column that I'm writing, or my fear of failing to do so, my fear of failing in this column that I'm doing.

But what we can do at any point in practice is actually take it into the meditation, take these strands in our life, this complex, this nexus of fantastical strands in our life, and begin to meditate on the soul-resonances that these have for us. So that Hokusai art, for example: we can meditate on, tune into, bring back into the mind's eye those paintings, and meditate on the soul-resonances, and how they move and touch my soul, and what they mean for me, even if I can't articulate it or put it into words. Feeling into that, allowing those very fantasies of my wish to somehow be artistic in writing this column that's about something completely different, and my wish for a creative flow there.

So meditatively taking up these strands -- perhaps at first singly, and then perhaps in combination or whatever -- meditating, feeling into the soul-resonances, taking one's time, with mindfulness, with the sensitivity to the energy body. And then within all that, you know, one can be aware, for instance, of what happens in the energy body when it goes into the excitement of, "I'll do this, and then I'll do that, and then I can do this, and then after that I'll do the next thing." And perhaps relating to that in energetic terms as one possibility within the meditation. How does the energy want to flow when I become excited? It goes into this kind of almost intolerable (what she was calling) 'manic energy' in her chest, and then probably at some point what happens -- she was trained in mindfulness, but probably at some point what happens is we a bit lose connection with the body, and then the mind just spins about what I'm going to do, and then we think, "I just need to drop all this. This is crazy. Forget all this. It's all papañca." And we just cut the loop. Sometimes that's really important. We talked about this, the necessity of being able to do that.

But sometimes you can just go in slowly, and really tune into the resonances, the meaningfulness, the beauty, the dimensionality, the mystery, all of the rest of it here, and within that, the energy body. What does happen to my energy body? When I think about my own possibilities of artistic flow, or my own wish to be creative artistically somehow, in whatever form is given for me or available for me to do that, then I see, "Oh, then it tends to go to excitement." Okay. Well, excitement's an interesting energy. It comes from inspiration. It comes from love. It comes from eros. So what happens to the erotic energy in the body (if we just stay with the energy body experience dimension now)? What happens in the energy body experience of eros that it kind of goes from something that's very lovely and harmonizing, and takes us deeper into the imaginal, and opens up beauty and empowerment and all the rest of it, what happens that it goes into a kind of excitement that's a little too top-heavy and intolerable and feels not very helpful?

How is it that the energy wants to flow? Maybe I can allow it to flow that way. Perhaps it wants to go up and out the body. Perhaps it wants to radiate out the chest in this kind of outburst of energetic song, like a songbird, or out the throat. Who knows? But maybe I can allow it to do that, or even imagine it flowing that way, moving that way. Maybe sometimes it's just the simple awareness of what's happening energetically. But I can also use the imagination, as we've talked about, in the energy body awareness, and have an image of my body. Maybe I have an image of my body a certain way with this kind of inspired energy in it. Then, because I'm approaching it meditatively, with this delicate, sensitive attunement to soul-resonances, and how the heart is touched, and how the meaningfulness is touched, and how the energy is and wants to be and wants to move, and all of that, again, the dynamic responsiveness and sensitivity to all that, the whole nexus of these soulful fantasies can open up, in a way -- open up their beauty, their dimensionality, their gift to us, rather than become problem.

[1:03:25] Again, one can do all this with a particular fantasy, or this impetus that I have, or this calling, or this wish to be creative. Or it might be a combination of fantasies. And then one can play, as I mentioned, with the balance of awareness within that, with the attention to the fantasy and all the elements involved in that, and to the energy body, maybe a bit more in the energy body, and play with that. We talked about that each one is like a dial, and what the relative settings of my dials of attention on the energy body, alongside attention on the soul-resonance of the fantasy itself, I can play with that. What feels helpful? But there's so much to explore there and allow to open up in potentially a much more helpful, fruitful, soulmaking way there.

So, again, the images and the fantasies were, so to speak, already there, if you like, underneath all this complexity, and the sense of papañca, and the sense of manic energy, and all that. But they weren't quite being related to yet in a way that brought soulmaking, that brought empowerment, that brought freedom, that brought the creativity and discovery of soulmaking, of sensing with soul, etc. But it really is possible. And actually, in a way, this applies to so many of the examples that I've given over the last few years in talks. There's a way of kind of hearing them again from that perspective: we're in this or that situation, or this or that event, or whatever, and is there a way that actually the image or the fantasy can be made sensible, in the sense of we sense, "Ah, that's the image. That's the fantasy. What's involved there? How does it feel?" We enter into it, and we give it life, or we allow it to have life, and it gives us its life, instead of strangling us in all these kind of spaghetti loops of papañca, and then constriction, and then feeling, "Oh, no, I shouldn't do that. And it's not okay, or over the top," or whatever.

Now, related, or related in all this (and again, in hindsight, you'll see that this is the case): imaginal images and fantasies, or sensing with soul, always includes (I've said this already) a sense of value or values, what we deeply value, which is a part of the meaningfulness that it has for us. So if we think about the example that I just gave of that person, it's like the valuing of art, the valuing of artistic expression and creativity, the valuing of a certain kind of aesthetic (what we might call a Japanese aesthetic or whatever, loosely speaking). [And] with Catherine's niece, the valuing of everything that was involved in the beauty of Catherine's mother, Catherine's niece's nanny, saying that, bringing that forth, bringing that possibility or opening that possibility, opening the door into the realm, into the territory of that mode of being. It included, wrapped up in there were things or elements or dimensions or directions of experience that Catherine's niece valued deeply. And similarly with that story about the seeing of this episode as, kind of obliquely, something shining through it of the sacred prostitute. Always in the imaginal images and fantasy, in sensing with soul, values are part of it.

This is something I want to return to, almost certainly in this set of talks, and hopefully at some point even more in the future. In this set of talks, partly why I want to return to it is -- it's not obvious at first, and I'll explain hopefully how, but this business of values relates to ... there's something about the philosophy of the imaginal, or the philosophy undergirding this whole business of sensing with soul, etc. It has to do with epistemology, which is how do we know or recognize that we're knowing something. There's something about values that mirrors that, how we know and recognize values. I will come back to this. I'm looking at the time. I think I'm going to end soon. One possibility, which I may do soon or maybe in the future, is we could perhaps do a whole guided meditation where one enters or opens up the sensing with soul, opens up the imaginal realm, through a sense of value. But I don't think I'm going to do that right now.

Just to finish on a more general point: many of the aspects and the elements that I've enumerated over these talks so far (for instance, this whole notion of value, values, and humility, whatever), many of these aspects we could kind of single out and really dwell and linger on them and explore them much, much more, each one. So for example, humility: we could spend a whole retreat even on just this question of humility, and what does it mean for us, or what happens when we hear that word. How do we relate to it? Does it kind of prickle us in an unpleasant way? Do we resist it? Does it have a soul-resonance already for us? What do we think it means at the moment? What happens for us as that word, and that concept of humility, and our experience of humility becomes drawn in and involved in the soulmaking dynamic -- becomes itself an object of eros and an imaginal object? What happens to it?

What happens when, because of the soulmaking process, we start making more and more refined discernments and discriminations within what we might call 'humility'? "Oh, there's this kind of humility, and that colour, and that colour, and that colour." So we could easily spend a whole retreat on just that. Or the whole relationship with desire. We talked a lot so far already in other retreats about desire and eros and all this, but we could back up and just look at: what is my relationship with desire? Am I stuck because I actually don't see it as a good thing, or only certain desires are a good thing, or it's not spiritual, or I'm afraid of it, or is it just completely out of control in my life? What are the different kinds of desire? All that, we could spend quite a while just looking at where we each are with desire, and our conceiving of it, and our relation of it, and our discriminations of the kinds of desire, etc.

Or with the whole idea of conceiving and logos, which some people find so anathema to the spiritual path, or this kind of resistance to the idea, or afraid -- again, might be one's personal relationship with it: "I'm afraid that I'm stupid. You say all this stuff, and it sounds so smart, and I don't get it, and da-da-da," or whatever, or think, "I already understand all that," or whatever it is. Or maybe there's a kind of rigidity, or we don't hang on enough to certain ideas. So each of these aspects, we could easily slow down, and really linger, and really explore: just where are we each? And what do we need? And what's kind of current for us right now as this particular aspect as one of the many elements involved in the whole movement and opening of soulmaking? What do we need right now? What do we see right now? What do we sense right now in relation to that? Where are we? What are we bringing with us from the past? What can we let go of? What do we need right now? And to expand and explore each of these elements, aspects, or building blocks, if you like, of the whole soulmaking movement, of the whole practice of sensing with soul and perceiving imaginally. I'm just mentioning that, and hopefully it will be something for the future.

Let's stop there for now.