Dukkha and Soulmaking (Part 3)

Let's continue our consideration of some of the ways in which we can perhaps get hold of the wrong end of the stick, so to speak, with imaginal practice, grasp it in the wrong way, relate to it and conceive of it in ways that actually bring dukkha that isn't necessary. So opening up that awareness. And what do we need to pay attention to, what do we need to consider, what do we need to take care of, etc., in order that this yāna, this vehicle of soulmaking, works for us, is actually able to do what we intuit that it can do, and perhaps even more?

Let's continue, and pick up where we left off in the last part of this talk, with the whole issue of realism, reification, and identification in relation to images and what we sense with soul. In this part of the talk, and perhaps -- it depends how eventually these talks get divided up into parts, but certainly in this part, and in perhaps the next maybe even couple of parts (I don't know), I certainly want to offer some hopefully helpful advice regarding this whole question of what we need to care for, and how we can make sure that we're not just increasing dukkha through trying to engage in imaginal practice, how we can actually prevent that, if you like. Part of what I hope to do is, yes, offer some hopefully helpful advice.

Another part or strand of what I want to do is less about me telling you how it is, me having the answers and disseminating them, but rather, I think, some of what I want to do is more akin to just trying to open up some questioning, open up the discourse around certain aspects of existence. If you like, I want to, in part, ponder out loud with you, without having the answers myself. Because some of what I want to touch on, as I mentioned in an earlier talk, some of what I want to touch on regarding ontology and epistemology, etc., and how that weaves into this paradigm of soulmaking, this path of soulmaking, and the practices of sensing with soul, some of all of that regarding ontology and epistemology, it is perhaps not given to human beings, and perhaps never will be given to human beings, to know definitively proved answers to these questions of ontology and epistemology.

They're kind of open questions. And how we relate to the impossibility of arriving at some final answer regarding ontology and epistemology that satisfies everyone regarding every realm of existence, the fact of that, how we relate to that fact of impossibility, is either we make it interesting and fertile, or we just close it down, and it becomes a barren wasteland, an area that is not supporting soulmaking and that itself is not opened through soulmaking. So some of what I'd like to go into is more -- hopefully some helpful advice, but some is really just opening up a discussion, pondering, wondering out loud with you.

I already said that when I survey a little bit the problems we get into with sensing with soul and imaginal practice and all that, in many ways one can say that realism of one kind or another is the most common problem, and in some ways it's at the root of other problems. A problem or difficulty one encounters, or a way that dukkha is created, might seem at first that it's not to do with realism, some kind of realism going on, but we can kind of expose or trace it back to, "Ah, underneath that, so to speak, this or that inclination, or way of relating, or whatever it was, there was some kind of realism going on." So in that sense, it's the most basic as well as the most common problem.

Included in that, or the kinds of ways it spins out or tangles a web for us, is -- and I think I mentioned some of these -- something in us concludes, "This image, or this sense that I have of whatever I'm sensing with soul, it means this or that about me." Either we get puffed up by that because we're believing that to be true, or we worry about ourselves, worry about our sanity, worry about our goodness or badness. We worry about all kinds of things. So one way is, "It means this or that about me."

Another possibility is I perceive such-and-such imaginally, or whatever it is, this image, imaginal figure, and then we take it as indicating, "This is what will happen in my life. This is what will unfold in the material world," etc. Or we take it as meaning, "This is what I should do." And in the sort of squeezing of a sense of duty, there's too much concretization, too much literalization of the image. So "what I should do" becomes too clumsy and clunky and too plainly translated into life. So those are some of the ways, some of the obvious ways and immediate ways that perspectives of realism -- which are usually unconscious; in other words, we don't really quite understand that we're in the grip of realism -- but those are some of the ways in which it can manifest.

One of the sort of symptoms of realism is that it often goes with a kind of pendulum motion, a kind of almost violent swinging from one extreme to the other, it seems to me, in general. Realism tends, in general, to lead to swings in view -- big, diametrically opposed, polarized swings in view or opinion, and also the sense of things. For example, between, if you like, a kind of self-elevation on one side, and then swinging to a self-deprecation or self-abasement on the other side. Or, in other language, swinging between a kind of grandiosity of the self and a kind of, let's say, inner critic, putting down of the self. Realism will tend to pick up those extremes, and believe in them, and swing between them without much in the middle. We're either pumping ourselves up, and believing that reification of grandiosity about ourselves, or the opposite: we believe in our worthlessness, failure, badness, etc., of the perspective of the inner critic.

Similar, and related to that, is the swing, again, dependent on realism, between what we might call mania and depression, to use words from clinical psychology. The sort of high of mania and the low of depression, and with that, a believing in a concretized, a reified self-view, a rigid identity in either extreme there, and also a believed-in, rigidified world-view that goes with either the extreme of mania or the extreme of depression (or some kinds of depression, most kinds of depression). Again, these swings are indicators that we haven't really found that territory of the Middle Way. If I look at my history and my experience, and I just see that swing between, this pendulum, swinging between these poles, it's a signal that something around realism and the imaginal Middle Way, etc., needs more opening up for us, more vivification for us.

I'll put this in as well. It's related to this. But what I also notice is a swinging between what we might call 'realist religious dogma or religious fundamentalism' on the one hand, and a 'realist secularist dogma or fundamentalism' on the other hand. This is quite an interesting thing to witness as well. A person can be so entrenched in some kind of religious dogma, really -- fundamentalism in the sense of, "This is true. I insist that X is real and true," whatever that religious belief is. And a little time later, sometimes just a year or whatever later, they're just as entrenched in what we might call a 'realist secularist dogma or fundamentalism,' denying the reality of what they used to believe in, and insisting on the reality of a more so-called 'secularist' view. Or, if there's not this pendulum swing there, then there is this very awkward and strange sort of coexistence of the two: one is sort of an ardent secularist, as well as having all kinds of strangely superstitious beliefs, or attractions to the magical, the mystical, the spiritualist, etc. These kinds of patterns of swinging pendulum between extremely entrenched views, opinions, and senses of things, is a kind of symptom that something about realism needs a bit more turning of the soil, a bit more opening up, a bit more space, a bit more investigation.

[12:14] In a way, those kinds of manifestations of realism, and the problems they cause, are a little more obvious. The answers with respect to them are also, I would say, a little bit more clear cut. At least to my current thinking, there's a whole realm of questions or manifestations, questions around, as I said, ontology and epistemology, but manifestations of what possibly is a kind of reified identification or general reification -- questions around that that are actually more subtle. For example, am I actually attached to a certain image? I can feel it's soulmaking for me. It's beautiful. It's fertile. It's all of that. It's meaningful. I sense the divinity, etc. I even sense the Middle Way with respect to it, and the theatre quality with respect to it. But is there some, still, level of entrenchment or identification?

I'm going to share something from my own history. I realize in sharing this that I'm perhaps making myself vulnerable to accusations from certain people who have certain perspectives that really all this that I'm sharing is just a sure indication of some kind (some kinds, probably, plural), various kinds of psychological pathology on my part. So I want to take that risk in the hope that this is helpful, partly because you might see, in my sharing a lot of the detail here, you might see not exactly the same images operating, but maybe you can translate the general framework of what I'm talking about into maybe some of what you see in the way you relate to the images that are really meaningful, and the fantasies that are really close to your soul, that run through your life.

I also want to illustrate: for me, there's always a questioning. Here's this conceptual framework. I still want to be open to questioning it. Here's this image, or the way, the manner of my relationship to a certain image or fantasy, and I still want to be open to questioning that, questioning: how is my relationship with that? What do I think about that? Is there another view possible? Is there another conceptual framework possible? So in the spirit of that openness to questioning, and with the hope that it's all helpful.

It's a little bit involved. Let me try and take my time and unfold it. Some time ago, quite a little while ago, I was talking with Catherine one night. I can't remember what it was that brought this up, that made it sort of present for me. We were inquiring into a certain kind of pain that arises for me, for my soul, that's related to, very much entwined with ... we could say it's the pain of certain kinds of loneliness that come up often for me, or have come up in the past often for me over my life, around much of what we might call the creative work that I have done or that I do. So that might be in music, when I was a composer, or writing poetry, or also in teaching Dharma. Especially the pain around where things are a little bit unusual, in terms of what's being composed, or the teachings that are being constructed or expressed, and that may stretch boundaries that are then current or limits of the ways people tend to conceive this or that.

The image that had been alive for me for many years, through many of these different phases of creative or artistic work, whatever we want to call it, it was very powerful. It's a powerful image for me. It's not something that sounds particularly dramatic, perhaps, but it's powerful. It's powerful for my soul. A lot of inspiration, a lot of beauty, and also this kind of poignancy. It wasn't free of suffering in the usual sense. It's what we might call an image of creative aloneness, or creative loneliness, actually, more usually. Rather than just creative aloneness, creative loneliness. So the dukkha of loneliness, wrapped up in an image that was also very powerful, deep, meaningful, etc., fertile. So the image of essentially working alone, often working very hard in the image, as well, and then in the perception that tended to come out of that image, the perception of not being understood as fully as I would like. In that, also, occupying a somewhat -- being a somewhat far-out figure, somewhat sort of liminal, at the edge, if you like, of any community, whether it was a musical community, an artistic community, a social community, a Dharma community, as well as in the larger culture, the larger culture of our society. So that was an element of this -- not just of the image, but also of the particular kind of pain, as I'll try and explain, that was kind of wrapped up in, woven into the image.

Also the sense in the image of having to sort of do battle. You sense this echoing and being echoed of the warrior image that I've shared, the lone solider image that I've shared many times in the past. So battling sometimes with the very people that are listening to whatever it is, or reading or whatever -- battling, in some sense, certain views, or about what art is, or Dharma is, or this or that, or battling with authority figures, and sometimes battling with both. So having to battle to express, manifest, bring into being what wants to come through me creatively. Again, I'm sharing -- these are images that are very powerful, very close to my soul, you know, close in to me. And I'm aware of how they could be perceived from certain psychological paradigms.

So Catherine and I were talking about this, and kind of inquiring around this whole constellation of images, or pattern with regard to certain images. As we were doing it, I realized a couple of things. One was that, as we were inquiring, I was sort of assuming a little bit, or fearing, in fact, that this inquiry had a kind of agenda and adopted a perspective which was presuming that it would be better if the loneliness weren't there. In other words, the loneliness is a signal that something is wrong; something is being wrongly related to, or over-identified with, or whatever. Presumption, also, that the image, these images of (whatever we call) creative aloneness, or creative loneliness, they need transforming, or they need healing. Or they need to be held differently, so that my feelings, and also my choices in behaviour in relation to others in the larger community, can be different and more kind of 'as they ought to be.' So in other words, there's this kind of unspoken pressure in the inquiry, or my fear was that there might be an unspoken pressure in the inquiry coming from the culture, from myself, from whoever, that was pushing: "Actually, there's something wrong here. This needs to be different. And in the approach to the image, we want to transform the image or relate to it differently," or whatever.

A second thing I realized was that there was a subtle concern or fear of losing two aspects of this whole constellation of images, of this whole imaginal network, that had become very precious to me and to my soul. Somewhere in my being, there was a slight concern, if you like, or fear, really (let's call it fear), that if the lonely aspect of the image goes, or actually if any aspect of the image goes, if that's taken away -- it's like, "Let's just cut off the pathological part. Let's just cut off the dukkha part, and we'll leave the creative part" -- there was this concern that if the lonely aspect of the image goes, or if any aspect of the image goes, then something of an integrated whole has been destroyed. Because the image is actually of lonely creative expression, lonely creative work, struggle, toil, etc. The image is not just of creativity with a sort of optional extra that could be added on or not of loneliness or even just aloneness.

[23:25] So the concern was that I might lose actually all the image, and in losing the image I would lose everything that goes with that image that we've talked about as aspects, elements, of image -- beauty and love being inevitably woven into and with any imaginal figure. We've defined those already as elements of the imaginal. There's beauty there, even if that beauty is very unconventional. It's the beauty of this soldier, solitarily fighting, day after day, through exhaustion, etc. It actually has a kind of unconventional beauty. It did to me. It's a surprising kind of beauty, maybe. So 'beauty' in the large sense. We've been through all this. Or beauty that is bigger than a narrow sense of beauty. And then also, as I mentioned, the love. So with and in relationship with an image, there's a love of that image, and a being loved by. Because the imaginal figure opens into dimensionality and divinity, the imaginal figure is divine to us when we let it fill out. So wrapped up in the very imaginal experience is this love of and being loved with the divine, and the gorgeousness and the grace of that.

So there was a fear that if I kind of surgically remove, somehow, the dukkha part of the image, the loneliness, that maybe I'll actually lose it all, because it's an integrated whole, and it's not an option to lose just a part of it. So that was one thing that I realized that I had a fear about or concern about. The second: there was somewhere in me that I was concerned that I might lose the actual creative capacity and inspiration that I love, that is like a lifeblood to me, that is a joy of my being, that is a thrill, and with which I have a profound sense of duty and beauty and all of that. I think it was Rilke [who] also was like, "I know Freud's doing all this stuff. I actually don't want to be psychoanalysed, thank you very much," he said, "because I'm afraid of losing the divine creative outflow, outpouring, through that process." But both of these gifts -- the gifts of the beauty and the love, the divine beauty and the divine love, and loving and being loved; and also the gift of the actual capacity and inspiration for the kinds of creativity that I love -- I've gotten used to them, I suppose, and they're, for my soul, deep treasures.

I realized that, and we were talking around it and in it and about it. But something in the way we're talking, it doesn't really shift much, or the way I'm approaching it doesn't really shift or enable a release in regard to this image of creative loneliness. Then, at some point -- and I don't know if it was later or during the discussion -- something occurred to me. Over some years, there have been, if you like, changes, transformations, evolutions in certain images that have been very woven close in to my soul and my soul-movement, the journey and expression there. There have been certain changes. That solitary soldier or warrior image doesn't arise so much these days. It's not so common. Sometimes that solitary wanderer image has been added to, if you like, or has a kind of extension to it that came. Where that solitary wanderer is often wandering alone through deserts, etc., an endless walking, there are images sometimes where he gets to rest, where he's taken perhaps into a tent in the desert, and somehow he receives healing. His feet are massaged by angelic figures. There's a kind of divine or angelic succour that's given to him through another, that addresses the wounds and the marks of his solitary wandering, his bruised body, etc. So it's not that that image has disappeared, but it's kind of got a whole other part to it, if you like.

Images of a tramp or a destitute, sort of really at the edges of society, having nothing. Then sometimes there have been images of this tramp or totally impoverished person receiving nourishment and nectar from a goddess or whatever. So these are also very, very touching, very beautiful to my soul. A figure, also, of someone who has considerably more weight and fleshiness to their body than I do, in this life at least [laughs], resting in a sort of pool or -- what are those things called? -- jacuzzis or something like that, and very at ease, very relaxed, and very into resting and really not doing much, not sort of going anywhere and getting anywhere or being in this supercharged, turned-on state. That figure emerging at times as a sort of alternative to another archetypal image that I think I shared some years ago, borrowed from the myth of Horus, the Egyptian falcon god.

This falcon god, I think I shared, he's born, and immediately he flies swifter and further out than all other gods have before him. There's something in that quickness and fastness, and the brilliance of it, and the far-outness of it. He goes really far out. But then that far-outness is both at times delicious, exhilarating, enjoyable, and at times exactly that far-outness brings a kind of vulnerability of aloneness. So he has all this particular power of his kind of divinity that he manifests and expresses, and enjoys and revels in, and it comes at a cost. It comes at a cost. There's much more to the myth. It's, I think, very beautiful. It touches me a lot. But the point is exactly that it touches me a lot; it's an archetypal image that I can really resonate with, and it moves me. And quite in contrast to this imaginal figure of this person just resting easefully in a pool without any sense of a duty, of having to fly far and fast and do that kind of work. He has a very different kind of work: his work is to rest in this jacuzzi, and to enjoy it, and to luxuriate in it.

[32:39] So in addition to the sort of images that were typical over really quite a long period of time, there arose, gradually and slowly, certain modifications, or additions, or extensions, or alternatives to these images. The question I had originally was: was there an attachment to or an entrenchment in a particular image, like the image of the solitary wanderer, like the Horus myth, like the solitary soldier/warrior in the image? But in all these instances where the original image is -- what could we say? -- broadened or supplemented with another related or a complementary image, in all these instances, the extension, supplementation, complementation, came through imaginal work.

It wasn't through challenging the apparent attachment to the image, intellectually challenging it, or questioning (either totally explicitly or implicitly) its health from the perspectives and standards of some other, pre-determined conceptual framework (for example, conventional Buddhist teachings, or the assumptions of contemporary psychodynamic or cognitive behavioural psychotherapies or whatever -- all of which presume health looks like this, and have both a logos and fantasies that run through them for what health looks like). It wasn't the kind of questioning coming from those perspectives. It wasn't a kind of intellectual challenging there. It wasn't a kind of logical deconstruction of the image, or some kind of reductionist thing going on in the approach. None of that -- which I was happy to play with, and I think that's also an important point; I want to stress that part of the opening up and the willingness to question conceptual frameworks. None of that made any real shift, certainly in the depth of power of the original images, or in the kind of allegiance to them, the way something in my soul would keep going back and saying, "No, there's something about that. There's something about that that just feels more essential or more close to me." None of that had any effect, really.

It was only through working, over and over again, repeatedly, with the original image itself, as it arose, without any agenda of changing or improving it. So going back to that original fear I had about, "Oh, is that kind of sneaking in, in this inquiry, that I've actually got an agenda of changing or (quote) 'improving' this image?" The transformation, the opening up of this image, the broadening of these images, these related images, happened through imaginal work -- and not through imaginal work that was trying to change or improve the original image; or it happened through imaginal work with other images which arose organically; or in imaginal work, sensing with soul, in the sense of experiences of life and relationship as imaginal perceptions, when they naturally became images for the soul. It was only in all of that imaginal work that the original image, whatever it was, was significantly modified, expanded, or made more flexible, if you like.

That's one point there. If we say, "Is it possible I'm attached to this image, or too entrenched in a certain image or a certain way of seeing things?", it may be through imaginal work -- going, if you like, deeper into that whole imaginal constellation, or expanding the imaginal work without an agenda -- that actually it's opened up, rather than necessarily just cutting off the image (although that is a possibility in some cases too).

In our inquiry, there was conceptual questioning, and the possibility of looking at other different supportive conceptual frameworks. That's always going to be a fruitful and indispensable element of inquiry, and even a soulmaking inquiry. We did kind of turn the soil there. It helped. But to quote Russell Lockhart and Thomas Moore -- I don't know if they would call themselves Jungian or post-Jungian psychotherapists; I'm not sure, but they work a lot with images and the imaginal. According to them, as they point out, images ask for other images. This image, whatever it is that I'm entertaining, that I'm relating to, that I'm struggling with or whatever, that I'm questioning whether I'm entrenched in -- images ask for other images, rather than only conceptual responses or only heart and emotional responses.

The image asks for other images, asks for an opening up of more imaginal work. And only those images that were, if you like, 'discovered' by the soul -- or we could say 'given' by the soul -- were effective here in opening things up. It wasn't like the ego's idea: "I think we should throw in another image of a guy in a jacuzzi because that's really different from the falcon god guy." It arose organically. It was given, if you like, by the soul to the consciousness. It was, if you like, discovered by the soul, rather than contrived, placed there in a contrived way, by the ego's idea of what was right or wrong, or kind of grasping too quickly at something that might be an opposite of that other image that I thought maybe I'm entrenched in that, maybe I'm attached to that. Not for the purpose of self-improvement or healing or whatever -- that was not even in the thinking, in the paradigm in working with the images. And (I'll return to this) I would doubt whether any of that, placing an image there in a contrived way or grasping at something to try and improve the self or heal, whether that would really be soulmaking.

[40:26] So I hope you can hear there's a lot in what I'm saying, you know, and it brings us back to that question or that pondering, and when I talked about different fantasies of the path. Soulmaking may well overlap with what we might call healing and liberating, but those aims and those directions are not necessarily equivalent and interchangeable. It depends how we define things. So soulmaking, yes: connection and overlap with healing and liberating. But not necessarily exactly the same thing, or we can just substitute one word for another.

To open that up just a little bit now (I'll hopefully come back to it in later talks), people often these days talk about healing, but what is meant when a person talks of 'healing'? Who or what, exactly, is healed? Is it the self of modern ego psychology? Is it the self that is made to adapt, or pretend, or simulate, or hide certain aspects that it wants to show or conceal from the view of the dominant culture so this self can be acceptable, functional within the scope or assumptions of our modernist Western capitalist society? Is it the Self with a big S that Jung talks about? Is that what is healed? Is it the self as the process of the five psychophysical aggregates and their conditioning mechanisms in a temporally unfolding process? Is that what is healed? Is it the soul, and if so, what does that mean?

Similarly with the notion of liberation. What is liberation? Is it the liberation of Buddhism? If we say "yes," which Buddhism? Whose Buddhism? Even if you listen to teachers just at Gaia House, you can see, boy, there's a pretty big range in the conception of what liberation is, or where the path goes, of what's possible, what we're even really fundamentally addressing when we say dukkha. I'll come back to this. Even just in the teachers at Gaia House, let alone going outside of Gaia House.

We tend to believe, partly conditioned by past teachings that we've had, that any apparent attachment to an image, it needs liberating. We need to liberate that attachment, undo it, find space, somehow make a movement towards non-attachment, something called 'non-attachment.' Space, liberation, non-attachment from any apparent attachment to an image: that would be the traditional view of healing and liberation.

So this idea instead that perhaps we have, or we might have, a duty of some kind to an image, to an imaginal figure, to a soulmaking perception, that it has somehow a hold on us, that it somehow places demands on us, and our soul somehow must answer, is called to answer -- we're never made to answer; we're called, let's put it that way -- called to answer to this duty even if there's a certain amount of dukkha, of pain and suffering, that remain wrapped up in that image, without dissolving, wrapped up in the image and our relation to it. That's quite a different idea, not (on the face of it) compatible with the usual contemporary notions of freedom and non-attachment. James Hillman is quite extreme in this. He insists that pathologizing is central to soulmaking. In stark contrast to the other extreme, sort of traditional Eastern spiritual views of liberation and the whole path to it, where it's just about more and more space and more and more freedom, Hillman was quite insistent in his saying, "No, soulmaking needs pathologizing. There's something about pathologizing, making problems, making dukkha or being ensnared in dukkha, that's essential to soulmaking."

You've got two quite disparate views there. I wonder about all this. And I wonder about the possibility of really daring to explore all this and be aware of what teachings we're conditioned by, what authorities, etc. Can we be bold and creative with the conceptual frameworks and the ideas regarding all this? Is there a way of embracing all of that into one larger conceptual framework that's perhaps more subtle? So all these questions, for me, around soulmaking, around the path of soulmaking, they're really, really interesting questions. Partly why they're so interesting and rich and exciting is that we can ask these questions in a way that also questions whether there's a truth to be discovered in the answers that we may arrive at, or that we may create in asking the questions.

We can ask a question without believing or going into an idea that the answers to these questions are therefore going to be truths. We can, and I would prefer the mode, the approach, the attitude, of kind of realizing, or let's say entertaining the idea that, just as much as we can conceive of our questions potentially uncovering truths, we can view them also as creations. The questions lead to creations. They even lead to what we might call 'soulmaking fictions.' Any answers we arrive at or entertain, we can regard as creations and soulmaking fictions. It's a very different idea than "the answer is a truth."

With all that, we realize also -- which makes the questions so exciting to me and so rich -- we realize that, along with all that, the path that then unfolds for us, or that we kind of create, discover and create, depends on the way we answer these kinds of questions about suffering, about attachment, about what healing means, about what liberation is, about duty or no duty, about pathology. The path that unfolds for us is dependent, as always, on the conceptual frameworks we form and adopt.

There's something here in the whole kind of meta-paradigm, if you like, that's, to me, as I said, so rich, so exciting, because of that liberation from a rigid notion of truth and the discovery of truth. It's more in tune with the potentially liberating issues of postmodernism, or pragmatist philosophy, or whatever you want to call it, rather than sort of typically modern or even premodern ways of conceiving. I've talked about some of that before, I think. But to me, it makes it kind of fun, and more exploratory, and the very questioning is participatory. It's open. It's an open field, rather than a narrowing down. It's creative rather than limited, as it would be in a kind of realist or truth-assuming approach. I hope all that makes sense, and I hope it's helpful. There's quite a lot in there.

[50:27] But again, if we continue, there are subtle and complex and deep questions regarding the way the universe is, regarding ontology and epistemology, that are kind of open. As well as questions of identification and attachment, there are these bigger questions around ontology and epistemology. If we trace what we're doing here, I said at the start of the talk [that] we're looking partly at ways in which realism can lead to identification, reification, attachment in ways that are not helpful, and how that can be liberated. But as we get into this whole question of realism and dukkha more, we also realize that, as well as the potential over-identification, etc., or the question of, "Is it okay and fruitful to be identified, have that image closely woven into one's life?", as well as the nuances and subtleties of those kind of questions, there are also questions regarding ontology, epistemology, cosmology, which are more subtle.

For example, I shared -- I don't remember when; maybe in the Re-enchanting retreat^[1] -- a sensing with soul of the birdsong outside the window, and how the song of the birds was kind of weaving my energy body, weaving my body, and healing me. Very beautiful image, full of grace and loveliness. But I think I also shared, I hope that I shared, when I shared that image, that there was a sense of healing and being healed by the birdsong, but the meaning of 'healing' was not closed down, or limited, or too narrow, or put into a box. Similarly, sometimes there are angels of light that come as if they're caring for me -- breathtakingly beautiful, and also part of a healing.

But with those images, for me, there's a kind of openness to what 'healing' means. In other words, I may well die soon. I know that. I know that I may well not survive this cancer. But it doesn't take away the sense of healing, and the sense of the possible reality of that healing. It's just that what 'healing' might mean -- including a physical level of healing -- might not mean surviving this cancer or this illness. So if these angels of light, beautiful, radiant -- radiant in terms of luminosity, radiant in terms of love -- if these angels of light are caring for me, watching over me, etc. ... I don't know what to say, what words to use. If they are touching me, if they are interacting with me, if they are guiding things a little bit, if that's the sense, the imaginal sense, if that's the sensing with soul, it still does not mean, to my conception, that I don't have to work. It's just natural with that imaginal sense, with that sensing with soul, that I'm still not guaranteed a certain outcome. Actually, there are no guarantees that just because angelic figures of light tend to me and minister me, and feel like they're interacting with matter, or the birdsong or whatever, it doesn't mean that there's necessarily this or that outcome. Several people say similarly, and I can say the same for myself: sometimes it feels like the trees care for me, or the birds care for me. But that doesn't necessarily imply an outcome that suits my ego or just what I want. I might die. And yet that takes away nothing from the beauty or the reality or the healing of this sensing with soul, in my case, or in the case of others who have shared similar-ish things with me.

This is, partly, I'm just opening doors for discussion and questioning. I don't want to close a door on the possibility of the material efficacy of prayer, of what we might call or what we would call 'magic,' or of the kind of intuition that a person might have of something that's happening, in a way, we might say, in the unseen realms or something. I don't want to close the door on that possibility. But for me, it doesn't narrow down to a sort of tight meaning of what 'healing' means, and it doesn't necessarily at all imply an outcome that, so to speak, my ego would be pleased with or would want. We're not really talking about that here. That, to me, is part of the whole sense of sensing with soul. It's part of all those elements of the imaginal perception.

So that with these kinds of senses (the trees and birds care for me, or whatever it is, these angels, the birdsong), there's -- I don't know how to describe it -- a sort of aura or cloud or space around and imbuing the perception that's one of, well, just more space. It's not so tight. It's not so narrowly grasped in terms of what it means, and what it implies, and what will happen, and what I want. There is some kind of spaciousness of the Middle Way, the spaciousness of the razor's edge of the Middle Way. Some kind of questioning, some kind of acknowledgment of, "I don't actually know what this means fully."

Sometimes, you know -- it's actually relatively common if a person dares to let themselves sense something and sense in these ways -- sometimes a person senses, and they might have different ways they articulate it to themselves or to others, "The universe wants something from me. I sense the universe wants something." It might be more specific than that: "I sense that the universe wants something -- not just that it's something or other, [and] I have no idea what it is, but it's actually in this direction, or this kind of thing, or that kind of work, or whatever." I remember reading or hearing something about Princess Diana. I really don't know much about her or that whole thing; I was in the States for most of the time. But I remember reading or hearing that she had said something to her father, if I remember rightly, something about when she was young, in her teens or early twenties, I think. I don't remember what age she got married. But she had said something about she was really being strict with herself not to lose her virginity. She said to her father, "I have a sense I'm going to be in the public eye. I just have this sense, and that that's somehow important."

I remember also hearing an audio, a snippet of an audio interview with John Coltrane. He was talking about a dream he had of a band. It was just before he left Miles Davis's band as a sideman and formed his own band for the first time in an ongoing way. He said he had this dream, and it was a certain sound of this quartet. He was very careful in the interview. He was a very sort of humble person in many ways. He said, "I don't at all want to kind of insinuate that I can see the future or anything like that, but I heard this sound, this band, this quartet, and it was a certain sound." And if you know, that's sort of what they call the classic John Coltrane Quartet of his kind of middle period. It really was a certain new sound in jazz, and it was so groundbreaking, and for me, and I think for so many people, such an unbelievably rich and deep gift to the world, what came through -- I mean, him and his whole life, but really that band in particular. So I don't want to close the door on these kinds of possibilities of intuitions, of prayer, of what we might call 'magic.' But if someone's too tight with this, or too reified, too identified, too believing, it personally makes me nervous. It sits wrong with me. Alarm bells go off for me.

[1:00:46] So if we just linger on this a little bit. Someone might have -- perhaps I may have had, or someone might have had -- an image of performing something or other in front of large crowds, whether it's music or whatever it is. There's this sense, and it's really gripping. The image is beautiful and all that. But it's still worth asking with these kinds of things: what is it that's -- if you like, if we use the word -- what is it that is 'essential' to the image? So is it, for example -- if that's an image: I'm performing music in front of large crowds or whatever -- is it the size of the crowd, the numbers, the amount of people in the audience, that's actually essential to the image? Now, it might be. It might be, as Diana said, "I feel like I'm going to be in the public eye," or however exactly she phrased it. "A lot of people are going to be looking at me. I'm under scrutiny from a lot of people," something like that. So it might be that the numbers are somehow essential to the image. But it's still worth asking, because they might have nothing to do with it, and actually it's something quite else that's more essential and more meaningful, that's more the core of the divinity and the beauty and the duty in that image.

Again, opening up the conversation, hopefully, the discourse, the questioning, the allowing of pondering, of reflecting on, considering certain possibilities, at the same time as expressing, I think, a healthy caution with all this. So to me, signals that one is on the right track are humility, reverence, duty. But a duty to whom and to what? Something of that to which we are reverent to and humble before. That's what we have the duty towards. It's not separate from ourselves, but it's larger. It goes in those dimensionalities and divinity. The image, the imaginal figure, if that's what we're talking about, it's me and it's not me. It's in that kind of Middle Way, me and not me, that some of the graciousness with all this, the fluidity, the flexibility, the non-rigidity with all this, is able to come in. That's a signal, too: that it's not so rigid in terms of what actually transpires. There's a sense in the reverence, in the humility, in the duty, also of unfathomability. That's part of it. It's part also. So it's not so narrowed kind of laterally, but also vertically.

Another thing I'd like to throw in now, it's quite unusual. I'm not quite sure how to say it. But there's something in imaginal perception that carries with it a kind of impossibility -- the impossibility of a complete, material manifestation; the impossibility of a perfect replication of that image in one's life. Oftentimes, imaginal figures carry this kind of impossibility with them. And in regard to that, there's going to be then some dukkha in the manifestation of whatever it is in my life that echoes or mirrors that image. Why? Because it's impossible to completely manifest that image. This has echoes of or perhaps analogies to what Hillman is getting at. There's some dukkha related to soulmaking work, some dukkha related to -- let's say some dukkha related to imaginal work. Part of it's in the impossibility. There's some level that it's impossible to completely manifest or perfectly replicate the image in one's life, so that what manifests is always less than. It's always an imperfect replication or imperfect refraction of.

It's also impossible ... and I've mentioned this in previous talks; I can't remember where it was. It might have been in Path of the Imaginal. I don't remember. It might have been in Re-enchanting the Cosmos, or both. There's also another kind of impossibility with regard to imaginal figures, and that's the impossibility to do, to manifest, everything that all the many angels and daimons require of you, of me. In other words, we are complex. The psyche is complex. We don't have just one imaginal figure calling us; we have many, and they move in different directions. Often they have quite opposing styles, wishes, desires, movements, expressions, kind of value systems, etc. One begins to realize, "Oh, I am in -- again, to borrow from Hillman -- a kind of polytheistic situation here. Many angels, many daimons, come to me, ask of me. I have a duty to many of them, and I cannot possibly do it all, and I certainly cannot possibly do it all at the same time."

Again, if I share for me, there's a monk, and there's a musician, to name just two. I certainly can't be a monk and a musician at the same time, certainly not in the Theravādan tradition. Or rather, the degree of intensity and passion and devotion which each one asks for in the purity of their archetypal styles, for me, you can't do both. Either you're going to devote yourself to one or the other. Many people have shared similar things: "I feel drawn to be a nun, but I'm an artist," etc. And there's the tendency there to want to just lock into a kind of reified view, a realist view: "Either I'm going to be a nun, or I'm going to be an artist," or "I'm going to live on retreat, or I'm going to devote my time to making art and being busy in the world of art, trying to make a living that way."

But all this, once we kind of realize that this is our situation, there's a polytheism of angels and daimons -- for many of us, let's say; for most of us, I think. And they have conflicting demands and directions, and we can't possibly do it all at the same time. We can't possibly manifest or express or commit to all of them at once in our life. So there's a kind of dukkha in that. There's the sadness, the grief even: "I wish these callings that I have, these passions that I have, these images that speak to me so beautifully, I wish I was able to fulfil them both in manifestation, expression and dedication, in material manifestation. I wish I was able to do them both at once." [1:09:03] Maybe one has periods in one's life, as I have, but still, there's this, "Aw." It's got some dukkha with.

This is, by the way, related to something I want to come back to regarding values, and the way that values that are important to us also often conflict, are impossible to manifest and bring into being or chase at the same time. Those are what's called 'antinomies' in values. I'll come back to that in another talk.^[2] But what this means is, when I realize the polytheism there, and the conflicting duties, if you like, and pulls and beauties there in my (let's call it) pantheon of imaginal figures, of daimons and angels, then I realize I can't possibly reify too much. I can't possibly over-identify too much. I am this, and I am that, and this and that don't really go together. I can't possibly manifest them together. So seeing this, acknowledging it, opening out to that view of the wider complexity and polytheistic landscape of our psyche, also helps, allows us to reify less, identify less with regard to imaginal figures, and so, less dukkha.

[1:10:37] Wrapped up in the points I've just made is also another element that, again, I've touched on before, so we'll just remind ourselves now. It's that where there's eros, it will create and discover, or create/discover, it will always create/discover more beyonds. It will create something transcendent, something beyond to what I already know, already have manifested, already am inhabiting, already am familiar with. Something transcendent -- not, as far as sensing with soul is concerned, not beyond the perception, the sensing, but in and through. Eros always will create, find a way to create and/or discover more, more beyond. It's really good to know that! [laughs] That's related to the pothos in the eros, and the kind of longing. It has this tonality, if you like, this flavour of some degree of dukkha, or at least potential for dukkha, in the beyondness, in the 'not yet'-ness, in the wanting more, not quite satisfied. We're saying rather than that's all just taṇhā, and useless, and craving, and brings saṃsāra, we're saying, no, with the eros there's the possibility of beauty, and discovery and creation of divinity, and all the soulmaking, etc. But because it has this beyond and 'not yet'-ness to it, there can be the slight flavour of dukkha there, wrapped up in that eros, in the movement of eros.

But again, as we've emphasized in this series of talks, recognizing or noticing or paying attention to this aspect, the beyondness aspect of the imaginal, knowing that that will be there because of the eros, noticing it, tuning into it, will allow the whole thing to become more imaginal. This attention, noticing this node in the imaginal constellation, in the lattice, illumines that node, and then that illumines, ignites, the whole constellation of the imaginal. Then that brings with it [that] it's obviously not real, because one of the other nodes that's ignited is the sense of theatre or Middle Way. And rather, it's divine. The divinity also shows itself. So it's not necessarily easy when we feel the dukkha of wanting more, or we feel we're a bit stuck on wanting something. But if we can notice that 'beyond' aspect, recognize that it's part of what happens with eros, let that ignite more, and let that ignite the whole imaginal constellation, the whole imaginal perception, then there's more ease, because we realize it's not real, we cling less, and there's more beauty and divinity. Not necessarily easy, but definitely possible. There's a loosening of any tight craving or the grip of too much grasping, and so less dukkha.

Another way of approaching what we've just said is to say that, in the experience of the imaginal, in the experience of sensing with soul, we can, if you like, investigate, "Who is it?", both the object and the subject. "Who am I now? Who is this now? What am I now? What is this now that is in relationship in the sensing with soul?" That investigation is with eros, with the sensing with soul, with soulmaking, with the imaginal. It's not a deconstructive or reductionist investigation, which would just kind of inhibit or drain the life out of the whole sensing with soul. But in investigating 'who' or 'what,' again, we expand into the beyond -- both of the object and also of the self, of the subject. They become more imaginal. The imaginal Middle Way opens up. It's obvious that this 'what' that I perhaps am feeling dukkha with because I'm grasping too much at wanting it or something or other, some kind of grasping -- there's some kind of dukkha there -- it becomes clear in the imaginal [Middle] Way: what it is and what I am is neither real nor not real. It's got that theatre element. It's got the dimensionality to it, and it's got the divinity, so that what this is that I may be stuck on is the divine and has the unfathomability of the divine. It's more than what I took it to be at first blush or from the perspective of the view of craving, the view that I was in when there was a lot of craving. So with the opening up of the Middle Way, with the dimensionality and divinity that comes, there is, again, a lessening of identification, a reduction and a lessening of dukkha.

Again, all these pieces that I'm talking about or angles that I'm talking about are related. With a little pondering you can see that. But another really important piece to bear in mind here is that element that we talked about in the first talk, the fullness of intention. That helps make something fully imaginal, authentically imaginal. This fullness of intention will help with the equanimity, and where there's equanimity, there's a decrease of dukkha. Where the intention is fuller -- in other words, where we're not shrinking what the object is, or what we're after in our connection with the object, when we're not shrinking it or getting caught up in craving for this object -- when the intention is actually fuller, we realize, "Oh, my deeper, fuller intention is for soulmaking, for the whole of soulmaking. It's not for this object as I immediately perceive it. It's not for any smaller element."

This can happen: we might start off with a sensing with soul, and then eros (if we're not careful) can shrink to craving, and then that shrinks the perception, and the intention shrinks, and all of these factors. We're in a dynamic situation whenever we're sensing with soul. It's possible that we start with the erotic-imaginal, and there's all this beauty and loveliness, and if we're not careful, it shrinks to craving, with the shrinking of intention, the shrinking of perception, and all kinds of things.

But having or opening up to that, reminding ourselves of the fullness of intention, it's like planting deep roots. Like a tree that has deep roots, it will be stable in the winds. There's something really, really important about reminding ourselves, or aligning, or dwelling with the intention, or opening up the intention, when we're engaged in this work. That's one way of relieving some dukkha that might have crept in through some kind of cramping, or grasping, or shrinking, either of intention, or of craving, or reification, or something or other.

We remind ourselves, or we realize, in fact, that what we really love, what we're really wishing for, yearning for, and intending for is the whole of soulmaking. It's not just the excitement of imaginal perception or eros that I'm after, or the sense of aliveness, or the sense of juiciness, or delight, or some kind of pleasure or thrill. It's not, as I said, just the object in its very tightly circumscribed, delimited form, without those soft boundaries, soft edges, and unfathomability that we talked about. The intention is bigger than just for that. Nor is it just for eros. Nor is it just for image, images, or psyche, if you like, in the small sense of 'psyche.' But the intention can be, and I would say it is, in the soul's deeper intention anyway. So it's something we realize, or we connect with an intention that's already existing in the soul. It might be dormant. It might be hidden. We might not have consciously realized. But we connect with that. The intention is for the whole of soulmaking. That means for the sense of dimensionality, for the sense of divinity, the opening up of sacredness, for the sense of meaningfulness, etc. -- that whole list of aspects and elements that we outlined.

[1:21:26] And included in the whole of soulmaking, our intention, our direction, our longing, our yearning, is also for logos. Remember, if we talk about the soulmaking dynamic, the three principle elements of that are eros, psyche, and logos -- which means also for conceptual framework. So I'm hungry for this; my intention is also to do with logos and to do with conceptual framework. Sometimes -- it's very understandable, given our culture, and also given the excitement of some of this stuff that can be there at times -- sometimes we just want to extend or intensify the eros or the image or images we're having in the smaller sense, without kind of recognizing the larger soulmaking movement that is happening or can potentially happen. We want to extend or intensify the eros and the psyche and the feeling of that, and we're less interested in the logos, less interested in the conceptual frameworks or the ideas operating or the possibilities there. What is it if we align, remind, or connect with, realize, that our deepest passion and commitment, or the deepest passion and commitment of the soul, the deepest love and desire and longing of the soul, is for the whole of soulmaking? The deepest commitment of the soul is to soul. And if that's the fullness of intention, we can reconnect with that.

But if we just emphasize this logos, because for a lot of people that may be the piece that's missing. Of course, it could be the overly focused-on piece at the expense of other elements -- for instance, body or energy body or whatever. But oftentimes it's the logos. What would that look like, to consciously include that? "Oh, it's the whole of soulmaking. So that includes ... what does that include? A piece of that includes logos." That means curiosity, but perhaps it means curiosity about what is happening in my experience, and why it's happening, and the dependent arising of all that, or the factors that feed or starve or squash or ignite. A curiosity regarding conceptual frameworks and their effects that we've talked about.

Again, if I go back to that -- I can't remember, there were a few talks. I talked about the fantasies of the path.^[3] One of them I was calling, I think, the 'researcher' fantasy -- that kind of fantasy of experimenting in practice, and being interested in the results of trying this and trying that: "What happens if I do that? What happens if I lean this way? What happens if I emphasize that? What happens if I bring this into awareness?" Inhabiting that fantasy, it will bring with it, I think, a certain amount of equanimity in regard to the actual experiences that are happening, because I'm less taken with the experience and I'm more interested in, "Why is this happening? And how does this all fit together? Hmm. What's there to understand here? What's the conceptual framework that might be emerging? And I wonder what happens if X or Y ..."

Some people, if you know the Enneagram personality types, some people say, "Oh, that researcher fantasy, that's like a Number Five. They tend to be a bit aloof or distant." I'm not sure whether it necessarily implies that. I have my reservations about personality typology psychologies anyway. But in this case, I don't necessarily think that the researcher fantasy brings equanimity through a sort of standing back, crossing one's arms, and sort of a more aloof, uninvolved noticing of what's happening. I would say it could actually bring more equanimity because it brings, as I said, more roots in terms of an enlargening of what one's commitments are: now I have the root of logos as well, or the root of the intention for the investigation of logos and conceptual framework as an additional root making me more stable. And also I have an additional thread or strand of intimacy with whatever is going on, because it's like the intimacy between me and whatever or whoever I'm sensing with soul now has that extra facet, extra strand of intimacy in and through the logos, in and through conception.

So this applies also to human beings. Some of the intimacy, and certainly the soulmaking intimacy, that can flow between human beings is prevented or supported or enlarged, that intimacy, dependent on or through the logos that might be shared. In other words, we can be intimate also through logos. As well as body, as well as energy, as well as psychically, as well as heartfully, there's also a kind of being intimate through and in logos. But certainly in terms of what's happening when one's sensing with soul, the researcher fantasy is one way, where there's dukkha and a bit of instability, actually bringing in more of that researcher fantasy, for some people, can bring more equanimity, and thus less dukkha, into the whole process. But the larger point is about the fullness of intention, reminding ourselves, re-finding that, reopening to it, realizing that that's actually what we really want when we're wanting. It's not this or that person. It's not this or that thing manifesting. What the soul most deeply wants is soulmaking, and the fullness of soulmaking, and everything that that means.

Again, tied in with all this, or connected: dukkha increases, as I said, if eros becomes craving, or shrinks to craving. Dukkha increases. No doubt about it. Craving goes with dukkha, dukkha goes with craving. But if the eros can be maintained as eros and not shrink into craving, then there won't be dukkha coming into the experience. Definitely there will be a big reduction in the dukkha coming into the sensing with soul, into the imaginal experience. And certainly if any craving there can be alchemically transformed into eros, which is very possible (and we've talked about this before on other retreats), then that conversion of craving to eros alleviates dukkha. It would drain quite a lot of the dukkha out of the experience. I'm not going to go into all the different ways, but one way we talked about was, for instance, including more of the energy body awareness, and the whole energy body allows craving to manifest more as eros. Shrinking of the bodily awareness to one part or whatever tends to go with craving.

Again, I'm not going to repeat it, because we've talked a lot about it before, but unlike craving, eros opens. It opens the sense of dimensionalities. It opens a sense of divinity, and divinity in potentially infinite forms or faces, infinite possibilities of particular theophanies rather than just universal kind of -- I was going to say prefab, but run-of-the-mill, if you like, versions of divinity, of universal divinity. Eros opens, creates and discovers, richnesses and facets of what we're sensing with soul, opens up the sense of beauty, of possibility still of expression and individual expression, the creation and discovery of all of that. Essentially, eros goes with, and opens up, and leads to, and stimulates, and supports soulmaking and sensing with soul. Craving does not. I'm not going to go into all that, because we've dwelt quite a lot on it in past retreats.

We've also said, you know, we've put out quite a few teachings, but the eros can be very strong. It can be very subtle, and it can also be very strong at times. It's part of the possible maturing, to learn how gradually to ride that eros, or handle it, or respond to it, to modulate it sometimes. The different approaches that are possible there are really, really useful and part of the developing art. And never forgetting, there's always the possibility, which we should never lose sight of: the possibility of, hey, just let go. Just cut something. Just drop it for now and simplify. Let the image go. Let the eros go. So there's that possibility, too, when there's dukkha there because the eros feels too strong.

[1:31:49] In relation to eros, let me read you something by the poet W. H. Auden. I can't remember where this is from. Someone sent it to me, and I neglected to ask them where it was from exactly, which of his writings. But I'll read you this short quote from W. H. Auden, the poet:

When someone begins to lose the glamour they had for us on our first meeting them, we tell ourselves that we have been deceived, that our phantasy cast a halo over them which they are unworthy to bear. It is always possible however that the reverse is the case; that our disappointment is due to a failure of our own sensibility which lacks the strength to maintain itself at the acuteness with which it began. People may really be what we first thought them, and what we subsequently think of as the disappointing reality [may be] the person obscured by the staleness of our senses. The vision of eros is, in my opinion, a religious vision. It is an indirect manifestation of the glory of the personal Creator through a personal creature.^[4]

You can see a lot of similarities with the kinds of ways we're presenting things, and some differences too. But "it is always possible however ... that our disappointment is due to a failure of our own sensibility which lacks the strength to maintain itself at the acuteness with which it began." In terms of dukkha, if we put it in the framework of dukkha, sometimes people think, "I fell in love with this person when I first met them. They looked so wonderful, so angelic, and da-da-da. That's how I sensed them. Then, after a while, I sensed, 'Eh, they're actually just a schmuck like everyone else.'" And we say, "Eros was a projection when I fell in love. It was a delusion. It was my wishful thinking," etc. "It was my grasping, my craving."

Auden is, in that little short quote there, he's really saying no, eros helps us to see reality. It's only through eros that we perceive what is real about this person. And because eros and the kind of acuity and sensitivity of soul and of sensing that that demands of us is too much for us to sustain -- we're not practised at it; we're not given the encouragement; it's hard work -- then our initial sensing of this person, thing, or whatever, slips to something more ordinary, more commonly agreed on, more flat, etc., less holy. He's saying actually eros is, if you like, the mode of being or the lens through which we perceive and we sense what is real.

So there's one kind of ontology, if you like, wrapped up in how he's saying that, in what he's saying. I really want to open up that as a possibility for ontology. So I'm back to the ontological questions now, and the kind of pondering and thinking out loud. One position is kind of more in line with what we just heard Auden write/say. An alternative ontology is that eros, as we said, stimulates and supports, and opens and ignites soulmaking in the ways that we are talking about what 'soulmaking' means, and that's actually the intention, is for soulmaking. That's what the soul wants.

So it's not for this object, or for the sense of excitement or aliveness, or pleasure or whatever. It's not for this object, if you like, alone or in itself, somehow separated from its whole involvement in soulmaking, not separated from the whole vortex of soulmaking and the whole imaginal constellation that opens up with sensing with soul. There is this elasticity and softness of edges of the object, and in that elasticity, in the softness of edges, is where we sense the potential for soulmaking and the actuality of soulmaking, in that expansion of the object. That's what the intention is.

But in terms of the alternative ontology, what's happening here is rather than eros showing us the 'real' -- "This person, this object, this thing, this world, I, whatever, am actually like that really," that's one viable ontology, we might say, very much at odds with the dominant world-view at the moment. But an alternative ontology is that eros brings soulmaking, and in soulmaking, at least in the way that we're talking about it, there's this recognition. In the bringing of soulmaking, there's the recognizing of, if you like, the truth of participation in perception, the truth of the participatory nature of perception. So rather than a kind of simple reality one is inducted in or recognizes in the process of soulmaking, a truth or reality of a more participatory nature of reality, if you like, of perception.

So regarding the perceptions and the senses of things that arise in and through the erotic-imaginal, we could actually, for now -- again, it's just something I want to throw out there to open up the discussion, to think out loud -- we could actually delineate a kind of rough spectrum of ontologies regarding the perceptions that arise through the erotic-imaginal, through eros and through sensing with soul.

At one end -- and perhaps this is the dominant, we could say, modernist cultural view -- at one end of the spectrum of ontologies, of ways of thinking about the reality or non-reality of what's going on there in this sensing with soul, we could say, *"*I create something unreal. That image or that sense of things, I have just created. My mind, my neurology or whatever, has created something unreal." It's just unreal in a very simplistic sense that most of modern culture conceives of reality and unreality. At the other end of the spectrum, we could say, "In imaginal perception, in sensing with soul, through eros, I discover the real." That may be something more akin to what Auden is saying. So there's, at one end, "I'm creating something unreal," and at the other end, "I'm discovering what is real."

In between, there are two, to me, more interesting and, I think, more philosophically viable positions. Actually, I think the whole thing is interesting and viable, but anyway. The second position -- so, if you like, moving along from the "I create something unreal," then there's a position that would say, "There's nothing real out there. There are just mental projections. Matter is just a play of awareness. This is all just mind only. There's nothing, so to speak, 'out there,' but the play of awareness and the projection of consciousness or whatever. So therefore, in imaginal perception, I am just creating freely, perhaps at the whim of soul, directed by soul, or directed just by my will in terms of adopting this or that way of looking. There's nothing really real out there. It's all just mental projection, mind out there."

A third view on this spectrum of ontologies is what we might call the 'participatory' view. A little harder to explain, as I said before. A little more mysterious. But in that ontology, the self, I who am sensing this or that with soul, or sensing in this or that way with soul, I, the thing that I am sensing, the other, the object, the world, matter, mind, and divinity -- all of those elements: me, the object, the world, the matter, the mind, and divinity, the mind in the will, and in its perception and perceiving, and ways of looking, and its awareness -- all of that is not separate. They all participate in each other.

Can you enter into a kind of contemplative pondering of what that might mean and what that might do to the whole sense of ontology here, and the possibilities of ontology and epistemology regarding sensing with soul? I, self, other, world, matter, mind, divinity -- none of that is separate, nor is it all just one thing. They all participate in each other.

But as I say, really what I want to do is not so much give answers and insist on "it's this way or that way," but open up possibilities for more creation and discovery, for pondering, for reflection, and for elbowing some room regarding the ontological and epistemological bases for sensing with soul and those kind of perceptions. You could also, perhaps, ponder and think through: what kinds of suffering, or what possible ways of suffering, and what kind of soulmaking, are made possible or prevented through any of these different ontologies? If we say, "This is what's happening with eros in terms of its effect on perception and what kind of conception of reality is happening with erotic-imaginal perception," what do each of those possibilities deliver for the soul, and in terms of dukkha? Because that's the subject we're talking about.

I want to say a little bit more about eros and fire, hopefully in the next part. So we'll come back to that. But let's stop there for now.