Dukkha and Soulmaking (Part 4 - Mastering the Fire)

Let's linger a little while longer on our larger theme for this talk, at least so far: the theme of our consideration of different facets of the soulmaking movement or journey that may ask of us greater attention, awareness. What needs care? What aspects, what facets need care, need attention, need inquiry, need respect, also, or modulation, responsiveness, in order that soulmaking opens up, and not dukkha? So that the relationship with the imaginal, and sensing with soul, and the whole soulmaking journey, doesn't bring dukkha, what do we need to include in our care?

Again, if I can say at the beginning of this part that my hope, my intention, is to, yes, hopefully offer things that might be helpful by way of advice, if you like. But also to stimulate and open your own reflection on these issues and these aspects, your own soulmaking reflections about all this, your own soulmaking observations, experimentations, considerations of all this. So both me disseminating advice, and also opening up a field, drawing attention to a field, and inviting you also to create and discover within that field regarding these issues, these facets that I'm drawing attention to.

So we ended in the last part with saying a little bit about eros, and again pointing out some of the distinction between eros and craving: that craving contracts the being, does not bring soulmaking, brings dukkha, etc. And eros has an opening characteristic. It stimulates and supports soulmaking, and does not, in itself, lead to more dukkha, generally speaking. We've said all that, and the kind of subtleties and details of all that, and explained what the differences are, and how that all works in different talks on other retreats so far, so I'm not going to go into it so much today. But I want to perhaps dwell on a few other aspects of desire, eros, craving, and that kind of nexus there or collection there, and what we might call 'mastering the fire.' Some of you will remember, I think I used in one or two talks an alchemical maxim from the Middle Ages. Forgive me; I can't remember who said it first or wrote it. But it said something like, "One who masters the fire masters the work." So talking about alchemy, talking about the transubstantiation of existence, really, and the things, the matter, of existence, into sacredness.

"One who masters the fire," the fire that heats the alchemical vessel, "masters the work," the work of alchemy. So if we use that metaphor or image of fire loosely for this collection of qualities (desire, eros, craving, etc.), then what does it mean, what might be involved in mastering the fire? Because if we master the fire, then that fire does not create dukkha. Fire, obviously, from the beginning of humanity's discovery of it or harnessing of it, has been recognized, "This is something quite dangerous." Very potent, very dangerous if we have the wrong relationship to it, or find ourselves in the wrong relationship to it, and incredibly helpful for all kinds of things, obviously: heating, cooking, warmth, protection, all the rest of it. So 'mastering the fire,' so to speak, if we use that alchemical metaphor or image, 'mastering the fire' so that this path of soulmaking, or practices of the imaginal and sensing with soul, don't actually lead to dukkha, because we're in the right relationship with the fire. Just that sort of piece right now, so that alchemy happens in the soulmaking, or the alchemy of soulmaking happens, the alchemy of sensing with soul, and not so much dukkha. Where there's the alchemy of soulmaking, there is, generally speaking, the draining away of dukkha, the release, the freedom from dukkha.

Let's look at this: fire as a metaphor or shorthand or an image for desire and the different kinds of desire, and care with the relationship with that and the discernment with that. I was speaking to someone not too long ago in an interview, and we were talking about this. Someone who had been practising really quite a long time, but because -- at least in the Dharma that she had encountered -- there hadn't really been an inclusion of the element of desire, what she had absorbed from the teachings that she had come across was more this kind of putting aside of desire, or shunning it, or regarding it only with suspicion, ignoring it, trying to quell the fires of desire, etc. Then beginning to really be interested in and sense the wisdom and the potential in actually having greater discernment and greater flexibility in one's relationship with fire of different kinds, beginning to be interested in that and sense the wisdom of that. We were talking about desire, if you like, in the broadest ways, and the need to discern between different kinds of desire, and their operations at different times in our lives, and what they need, etc., as an element, if you like, as a translation of the metaphor, or some of what's involved in the metaphor of mastering the fire.

If I remember, we talked about the necessity to learn -- and probably gradually -- to learn to discern between, say, (1) craving as one kind of burning; (2) devotional yearning as another. (3) A third might be intelligent, responsive, practical desire. (4) And a fourth might be eros. Again, with all these things, the divisions are not always so clear. They overlap, etc. We find ourselves in situations and mind states and states of being that involve a kind of mixture of these, and then part of the alchemical work is the refining, the purification and modulation to all that, that comes once the discernment is there.

So let's look at these four divisions, if we make loose divisions right now.

(1) Craving, we've said, brings a contraction. How do I know? I feel it in the body. Yes, you can feel it in the mind in different ways, a kind of gripping of obsessive thinking, certainly, and also a shrinking of the space of awareness. But also I would draw attention to: when there's craving, we feel a contraction in the energy body, and a non-harmonizing of the energy body. As well, we notice that the sense of self and the sense of other or object are both reified. Both self and other, subject and object, are reified by craving or in the experience of craving. So there is not that sense of what we call the imaginal Middle Way, nor is there the sense of the emptiness Middle Way.

There is, too, we can notice, not a sense of the object having a kind of unfathomable depth, and nor the subject, nor the self. So, one of the things about craving: it's closing down and drawing tight limits and solid limits around what it involves, or what it connects, if you like (or disconnects, in a way) -- subject and object, etc., and time -- rather than these soft, elastic edges, and rather than the dimensionality and the unfathomability, the unfathomable depth that we sense in the erotic-imaginal, in our sense of the beloved other, the object, the imaginal figure, and the subject, the self. There is not that unfathomable depth with craving, taṇhā, in object, or subject, or world, or time. And, as I said, craving brings dukkha with all this contraction, reification, circumscription, solidifying, tightening. It flattens things.

(2) If we contrast that with the second kind of desire that I mentioned in this fourfold loose scheme now, devotional yearning. For many practices, this can be really important to recognize: "Oh, what is that?" If I just lump that experience, that movement of the soul, if I just lump that into a category called 'craving,' or "That's just desire. That's no good. That leads to suffering," boy, am I missing out on something that's so beautiful, so rich an aspect of human being, and a possibility of human being! Yes, there is often a kind of bittersweet quality, a kind of poignancy to devotional yearning. We yearn for the divine. We yearn for the beloved other of the erotic-imaginal. We yearn for that depth that's just beyond, etc. There's something beautiful here, and we can recognize that beauty mixed in with the poignancy and the bittersweet quality of it. It also has a kind of poetic characteristic to it. Our yearning itself feels poetic. And that's also not quite the same as the theatre aspect, but something like that. We feel in a poetic frame of being, a poetic mode of being, when that devotional yearning is pouring through our soul or kindled in our soul.

Is that dukkha? Well, you could say. The bittersweetness, the poignancy, the yearning, the 'not yet'-ness. Yes, I guess you could say there's a kind of dukkha. But it's a different kind of dukkha, isn't it? It's got that beauty, that richness, that poetry, bittersweetness in it. And, again, if we talk about distinction with craving, there is the infinite, unfathomable depth of the beloved other, the object of my yearning. That infinite unfathomability and depth and dimensionality is discernible. The divinity, also, is discernible, whereas craving, as I said, it flattens, contracts things. Things become "just that," what I think they are. They don't have this palpable, discernible, sensible sense of infinite and unfathomable depth. So the poetry, the beauty, the bittersweetness, the richness, the poetic quality of soul at that point, of sensibility, the infinite, unfathomable depth, the dukkha that one isn't sure that one really would want to let go of. All this helps us to discern this kind of desire, this kind of fire burning in the soul, devotional yearning that comes and goes, visits the soul, is kindled in the soul, in the being, at different times.

(3) [15:25] And then there's a kind of desire, a kind of desire operating, a third category we could call intelligent, responsive, practical desire. So, for example, one is practising samādhi, and even in a jhāna. Yes, in a jhāna. It may not be a kind of mystical or divine experience in a particular jhāna, say, whatever it is, first, second jhāna. It may be. It may not be. And the desire itself doesn't have that kind of poetic poignancy, but it's just practical. It's just the desire, moment to moment, to sustain the particular pleasure that is the dominant feature of this or that jhāna -- so pīti in the first jhāna; the sukha, the happiness and joy in the second jhāna; the exquisite peacefulness of the third jhāna. Just the desire to sustain that, to permeate it, to permeate that through the body, to stabilize it, etc.

This desire is operating in a very low-key way, as a kind of engine, as a kind of navigator, as a kind of director, moment to moment, of what one is doing -- yes, doing -- in a jhāna. And it's really not a big deal. A part of the mind is just intelligently, practically, responsively -- in other words, it's responding to what's actually happening; I don't have to push at permeating any more. I don't have to desire permeation any more if the body is already permeated. It's just a gentle ticking over of desire that's directing the attention and the intention to sustain, let's say, the pervasion of sukha, the permeation of sukha in the whole energy body. It's really not a big deal. I can't get too tight with it. I can't get too manic with it. I can't get my knickers too much in a twist with it. It's just part of the art of jhāna. It's part of the skill of jhāna. And it's very low-key: just an intelligent, responsive, practical desire.

Just as a kind of equivalent from the world would be: I've got a meeting somewhere. I have to go to that meeting -- a Dharma meeting, a teacher meeting, an interview, whatever it is, a soulmaking meeting with a friend. And I have a desire to get to the meeting, so I get in my car, I get on my bike or whatever it is, and I drive there or I cycle there. But I'm cycling responsively -- both responsibly and responsively. I'm responding to what the conditions around me need: there's a car coming around the corner, slow down. The lane narrows; I have to wait for this car to go by or whatever it is. Now I'm going uphill, so I change gear. Now I'm going downhill, so I maybe freewheel, and maybe a little bit of brakes now and then. There's intelligent, responsive, practical desire. It's not a big deal, you know? [laughs] It's just part of life. It's an everyday element of our lives most of the time. We cannot make an enemy out of this. We have to recognize when there's that kind of desire. We need it. It's part of our life. We do it all the time, whether we think about it or not. It's part of meditation. It's part of everyday life. It's part of sustaining what's beautiful. And it's part of our path, yeah?

(4) And then the fourth category we can contrast is eros, which we've talked about, that opens the imaginal, that opens and stimulates, and supports, and fertilizes, and catalyses the soulmaking dynamic of eros-psyche-logos, bringing with it the imaginal Middle Way, the unfathomable, infinite depth. Also recognizable there: the theatre quality, the unfathomability, the dimensionality, the divinity that we've talked about, of the object. In other words, again, contrasting it with craving, the object does not have that unfathomable, infinite [depth]. This is how we can discern. There's not a reification with eros. There's not the tight boundaries. There's the more porous boundaries, or soft, elastic edges, the beauty, the divinity, the meaningfulness, the energy body harmonization and alignment and openness (again, in contradistinction to the experience of craving). All that. Subject and object, self and erotic object, erotic other, beloved other, are opened up in depth. We can discern between these different kinds of desire. That discernment, obviously, is part of what we might call 'mastering the fire.' I need to discern, if I'm on the path -- any path, actually, but certainly for the soulmaking path, because then that distinction (particularly with eros) needs to get made.

Now, I've said -- I think it was in the last part of this talk, but certainly in one of the parts of this talk, and we've talked before, and also in previous retreats -- we've talked about some of the different ways that desire and opening to the current of desire, for example, releases dukkha. Where there is dukkha, actually, rather than just letting go of the desire (which is a very viable option and a very sensible option at times), this real art of opening to the current of desire and releasing dukkha, dissolving dukkha, and discovering treasure right in the heart of the desire. We've talked about that. We've taught that.

We've also mentioned a few times how, in desires, especially in deep desires, in deep longings, in our devotion, actually is the gift potentially of equanimity. In other words, connecting with, fixing on, focusing on, feeling in one's body, meditating on, surrendering to, aligning oneself with one's deepest movement of desire and devotion, deepest movements of desire and devotion, hanging on, grasping on to that desire with the body, with the whole being, with the heart, with the mind, with the energy body, how helpful that can be for rooting the being. And in that deeper rooting, there's the equanimity, and thus, again, not the dukkha that comes with being blown this way and that, knocked over this way, knocked over that way, blown off course, unstable, unsettled, etc. So sometimes hang on to your desire, hang on to your deep desires, find ways of doing that, in meditation, with the body, with the heart, with the whole being. Really, really skilful teaching.

[24:01] But in that, to give such a teaching, also it invites or it requires a subtlety of awareness, a kind of questioning, a probing, an asking, a listening. It's good to be aware: is this desire that I feel, that I'm opening to or aligning myself with, or whatever I'm doing, is it an open-ended desire or not? In other words, is it a desire that I hope at some point to fulfil, to then tick off: "Done that, achieved that"? Or is it a desire that's more open-ended: "There's no real end to this"? And that can be a problematically open-ended thing, or an unproblematically open-ended thing. We wouldn't want that desire to close, to go out, to reach an end, to be limited, to not have more territory to open, to create, to discover. So is this desire open-ended or not? And in what kind of ways?

Also to be aware and to investigate: any desire happens in what we could call a context or a field of conditions, inner and outer, that make that desire feasible or not, make certainly the achievement of that desire feasible or not, or even just moving in the direction of the desire feasible or not. In other words, I need to be aware, if I have this desire, and it's actually, for that desire, the goal of that desire to materially manifest is impossible with this set of outer conditions, or with this set of inner conditions. Or I can't even move in that direction with this set of conditions. Or I'm actually in a field where there is that possibility. Or it may be possible if the conditions change. In a way, this is just common sense, but this is part of also just bringing some kind of awareness and common sense to desire.

Less perhaps obvious, though in some ways perhaps even more important, is another aspect or set of conditions we need to be aware of: that often a desire that exists, or moves in us, or arises in us, it meets what we could call an internal pattern of habit with regard to desire. This, I think, is very interesting and very important in terms of one's psychological self-awareness. So I might have, for example, a habit of feeling lack. I've talked about this when we talked about the beauty of desire and the Opening to the Current of Desire practice.^[1] It may be that my tendency is to go into feeling the lack, and not so much into feeling the desire and the potency of the desire, and I get stuck a little bit in this feeling of lack.

There may be, we could say, good reasons for that. And it may be actually important to feel that. But that may also be a habit, an internal habit. That's what happens: the desire arises in an internal field of a certain pattern or patternings, and one of them is this feeling lack. That does something to the desire. It sends the desire in a certain way, or dampens it in a certain way, or blocks it in a certain way, or it convolutes it in a certain way or something, or it ricochets off somewhere else. Or a desire might arise in an internal habit field, if you like, or pattern field, of expecting disappointment, or expecting the frustration of this desire or any desire. Or it might arise in an internal habit field of disallowing or judging desire, again for different reasons -- cultural conditioning, education, spiritual education, family education, religious education, etc. Or their opposites, of course: I never feel a sense of lack. I just go straight into the desire, gunning myopically to get the thing that I want. I never expect to be disappointed or my desires frustrated. I never question my desire. I never say "no," whatever. It's rarely never or always, is it? But tendencies, habit patterns and patterns of tendency.

These kinds of habit patterns, internal conditions around the desire, have a huge effect on what unfolds, and whether the desire is felt or experienced as healing, as clarifying, as freeing, as empowering (as it may be, for instance, in that Opening to the Current of Desire practice that we taught), or as dukkha in various ways. So desire can bring dukkha in lots of different ways, and it depends what it interacts with, especially internally in the saṅkhāras, in the patterns of belief, thinking, assumption, tendency, all of that.

And a last, or at least for now, one other element to be aware of with one's desire, if one's questioning this desire, and whether it's worth, "Is this something to hang on to, etc., to open to?", is whether the desire is authentic or not, authentic to my soul. So often I have the sense that, as human beings, we can get caught up in desires that actually we don't really care about. Somehow we're putting a lot of energy chasing this and that, and actually we don't really care about it. I don't just mean kind of consumerist movements of "I need this" or whatever, but also spiritually. Sometimes a person says, "I really want to realize emptiness," and that may not actually be, at this time in one's life, one's actual, authentic soul's desire. It may be that one has just got one's head full of this, "I need to realize emptiness. I need to realize the Unfabricated," or whatever it is, because we've just been exposed to certain teachings that emphasize it a lot, and certain people say, "This is the really important thing," and we're in a crowd that kind of ... people are really into that, and we pick up on that, and we get a little bit trammelled by that, and pushed into a certain direction. It may not be authentic to our soul at that time. It may be that actually [when] we want to realize this, or have a deep insight, or have this jhāna experience, or realize emptiness deeply, or whatever it is, that actually what's happening there is the ego is trying to measure up. I've touched on this in the past in talks. I feel it's a really important thing to be aware of as a possibility. Is this authentic? In other words, is this desire coming from my soul? And will it be soulmaking? Is it what I really, authentically want -- 'authentic' has to do with 'author' and 'self,' auto -- to me, to my soul, right now?

I remember a conversation, an interview with someone. Again, very seasoned practitioner. We were talking about eros and desire and soul and all kinds of stuff. She said to me at some point, "I'm not sure if I'm attracted to, if I actually long for the Unfabricated and all that that you talk about, Rob. When I look inside, I see that what I long for -- I do long for the holy, I do long for a sense of sacredness, but I long for the holy embodied in this or that person and relationship." The next thing she said was, "Should I be more mature?" She was asking me, "I find myself not wanting this so much, but wanting that. This kind of holiness, not that kind of holiness. Should I be more mature?" And she was asking me as sort of her teacher to -- not to pass judgment, but asking me for my input.

What I actually felt was important to say in that moment was just to point out that the paradigm that comes to us from the Buddha and from the Pali Canon, from the Theravādan teachings, is a kind of paradigm and dogma that is patriarchal, full of patriarchal assumptions and patriarchal inclinations, or, we might say (and put it in quotation marks), 'typically masculine' kind of assumptions, movements, inclinations, priorities, styles.

It's hard -- I mean, with all the caveats there, and the care around language and boxes and gender stuff and all that -- it's hard not to read the Pali Canon, that whole tradition that comes out of that, as really a kind of patriarchal lineage there, both in its power structures, certainly, and its regard for women's inferiority and inability and that kind of thing with the bhikkhunīs that's been at the forefront of Theravādan Buddhist consciousness recently. But also in the kind of styles of being, and the styles of aim, and the styles of moving towards aim and goal, and what is desired. So the Rhinoceros Sutta or the Rhinoceros Horn Sutta is really a sutta where the Buddha just extols and praises solitude, the solitary wanderer.^[2] It's, "You know, Saṅgha is great, but solitary wanderer is the best thing. Be solitary. Be independent." And the model of the Buddha, also, as a very (again, in quotation marks) 'typically masculine' kind of archetype, really. And the whole transcendent versus immanent thrust and priority, as this person was saying in the interview -- the holiness beyond, in the transcendent Unfabricated, and finding herself, "I'm not sure. I'm not actually sure if that really draws me," but holiness embodied in this or that person, in this or that relationship, as a more immanent opening, thrust, movement, priority, desire.

[37:53] So, with all of this, do we have the courage and the discernment, and the intelligence and the openness, to actually question some of the priorities that have come down to us through and from different spiritual traditions, teachers, lineages, etc.? Recognizing that there may well be some value in this or that. And what's authentic to my soul? And what's, if you like, the partiality of this or that tradition, this or that lineage? For some people, this is too scary to do, or it feels arrogant, or one thinks, "How could I possibly do that?" So again, perhaps exposing oneself to Saṅgha. The image of just the bold, solitary questioner is a certain kind of image. The image of in relationship, inquiring together, hearing, listening to each other's heart and soul concerns is a different kind of image, a different kind of style of questioning. Again, what's (in inverted commas) 'typically masculine,' or 'typically feminine,' or whatever? Please excuse that language. I hope you can understand what I'm getting at, and perhaps there are better ways to say it, so excuse me if I'm not saying it quite right. What I'm really talking about is authenticity, authenticity to my soul, to my soulmaking right now. This thing that I feel I have a desire or I think I have a desire for, and I set my sights on -- is it authentic to my soul right now? And does it bring soulmaking? Or is something else going on there?

Another piece in this that's worth mentioning is when we talk about fire, fire is hot, obviously, and with eros as well at times, and also with the Opening to the Current of Desire practice, some of what we've been implicitly talking about is the ability to tolerate that much eros, tolerate that much desire, tolerate that much energy sometimes, or learning to tolerate it, to handle it, because of how one's skilfully responding to it, and modulating it, etc. -- or not so much 'modulating' it, but responding to it, addressing it, being in relationship with it. This tolerating of intensity is a kind of necessity at times, and more for some people than others, which I'll say more about as we go on.

In the soulmaking practice, in the soulmaking path, we need to be able to or we need to develop the capacity to tolerate the intensity of eros, of libido, of energy in general at times. To forge soul requires heat, yes? The ironmonger's forge, it's a furnace. Part of the process is heat. It also involves cooling, doesn't it? You take the heated metal, and then you cool it, and then you bend it, and you put it back in the fire. Part of the mastering the fire is the timing of the fire: when hot, how much heat, what kind of heat (which we'll get into, hopefully, a little bit), and when to take it out of the heat. But at times, yes, red hot, white hot flame in the forge. So tolerating -- the capacity, the ability to tolerate intensity at times, of energy, of eros, of desire, of libido in general, to forge soul, to create and discover soul and soulmaking. To forge the sense of self, of other, object, world, eros that goes with soulmaking.

So again, we've talked quite a lot about this in different retreats, especially recently, the Eros Unfettered and the Of Hermits and Lovers: The Alchemy of Desire retreats, and the different things that can help in practice there. But it's also worth pointing out, I think, that (again) personality is a significant factor, as is habit, as is cultural conditioning. You know, I've been at parties or whatever, dinners or dinner parties or whatever it is, and you can see sometimes certain personalities -- good friends, actually -- have a different relationship with intensity. I remember putting on a piece of music at a party (some John Coltrane, who I mentioned the other day), and a good friend of mine -- this is years ago -- saying after a little while, "Can you put something else on? It's a bit intense." Or when a conversation gets kind of heated -- not necessarily arguing, but just full of intellectual passion or brilliance -- and some people, it's just a bit intense, and "I'd rather not." It's just not the habit, or it's not okay in a certain situation or whatever.

Sometimes that's personality, and sometimes it's habit, and sometimes it's cultural conditioning, as I said. Sometimes we create a habit or we create conditions that have an effect on the fire. I mentioned (I can't remember when it was, but years ago) just a little bit of alcohol, drink a bit of beer or a bit of wine every day; what happens to my fire, my fires? It dulls and dims my fire. It dulls my intensity, dampens all that. It makes soggy. That alcohol, that liquid, it dampens, it makes soggy my fire. And one can see that in others. You see the fire, their intensity, and over time, you see that go out of their life. Did they actually become kind of lacking fire because of the daily or regular habit of drinking even just a little bit of alcohol?

And then there's cultural conditioning and cultural kind of inhibitions, depending on the situation or upbringing and all that, that affects how we relate or whether we can tolerate intensity. Intensity is just something to tolerate, so to speak, if there even is such a thing as in itself. But if I then have a voice of cultural conditioning saying, "This isn't okay," or "It's not good to be intense," or "It's not good to be intense in a social situation," or "It's not good to be intense when you're ..." whatever it is, or "This kind of intensity is okay. That kind of intensity isn't," that's going to put another kind of pressure on the fire that makes it also hard to tolerate. Either we just smother the fire, or it gets smothered, or we actually feel a kind of intolerable pressure, and we can't tolerate the intensity.

Kind of implicit in all that, what I've just said, is our capacity and ability to tolerate intensity, heat, fire, is also dependent, of course, on the logos that's going on at the moment. For example, if it's with an imaginal figure, and there's the fire of eros there, then the logos that we have of regarding imagination, regarding soulmaking, regarding the kind of perceptions that we're calling sensing with soul, the logos we have regarding fire, eros, desire, etc. -- all that helps or hinders my capacity in the moment to tolerate this intensity.

In other words, as I said before, and I think in that talk "Logos in the Garden of Souls" on the Eros Unfettered retreat, and other places, a logos, if it's the right logos, it really helps give stability and capacity. It helps the soulmaking. A logos that doesn't, that is suspicious of imagination or suspicious of eros, or a logos that kind of makes the fire burn, builds a structure of wood (if we extend the metaphor) where it all just burns too quickly, not that helpful for tolerating.

So tolerating depends on logos. My capacity to tolerate intensity depends on the logoi operating, and also, of course, on the images operating, the fantasies operating, that are in play. For example, the self-images operating. The images, if we go back to that party, of Coltrane and of that kind of music. The images also of intensity. The images (if we're talking on a Dharma path) of one's self, of what a seeker is and feels like, what it means to be a seeker. Is a seeker someone with fire? What kind of fire? What's the image, what's the fantasy of that, the fantasy of the self on the path? What's the fantasy of the path? What's the fantasy of the Dharma? The fantasy of the tradition, and other seekers that we might know? The fantasy of that lineage and their relationship to all this? Or the fantasy, the image, of intensity with respect to talking about ideas, like that that's not okay to have that kind of intensity -- for what reasons? All this will affect our capacity to tolerate intensity, tolerate heat -- so the logos, and the image of the fire and all of that, what we've said as possibilities there, outlined as possibilities.

[50:30] Now, I should say with all this: we're talking about fire, and it may well have occurred to you already that fire is an image. We're using it as a metaphor or an image, and not as a clear concept. It's not a clear concept. If I say, "What is fire?", I'm not exactly just translating it as 'desire.' But that's okay. It's not a problem. But we could go into it as a concept, and kind of have a look at what's involved in fire. What does fire include? We've said and we've dwelt a little bit on eros, craving, desire, and differentiating between them. But fire includes that. Passion, commitment, energetic arousal, intensity of focus, mental arousal, alertness, sensitivity, receptivity, penetratingness. All these, we could say, are included in what 'fire' can mean. When we talk about someone's fire, or my fire, your fire, on the path or in relation to something, we really mean all this -- eros, craving, desire, the play of all this; passion, commitment, energetic arousal, intensity of focus; as I said, mental aspects like alertness, sensitivity, receptivity, penetratingness, all that.

We can also say, in terms of what's involved in fire, what are the aspects of fire that we might need to be aware of in mastering the fire? I actually don't want to go into this too much. I just want to throw some things out, relatively briefly, for you to reflect on, for you to consider in your awarenesses, in your investigations, experiments, explorations, conversations. We talk about mastering the fire, and we use that as a loose metaphor, a loose image. What might be involved, for me, right now? What can I notice? What can I take care of? What can I perhaps modulate and respond to there? What are the elements involved?

So again, I'm not intending to be really rigorous or complete or systematic here, but just to kind of sprinkle some seeds for your process, for your creativity, for your discovery. I'm actually quite reluctant to be systematic here -- that reluctance is probably my personality style -- partly because, as I've said before, there are different soul-styles, different souls, or different souls even at different stages in their life. The fire burns differently. It's a different kind of fire burning in that person and that person. You can't really say it's more or less; it's just a different style of burning. This one rages, and it's that colour, and that one's quieter but much more steady, has less wind in it, whatever. So there are different soul-styles, and soul-styles need respecting. It's not for me, not for anyone, to say, "All fires should look like this. Your fire should look like this." As a teacher, what's my responsibility to a student in regards to their fire? And what's your responsibility as a practitioner in regards to your own fire? What is my soul-style? What is your soul-style, your fire style? Or your fire style in relation to this or that aspect? And what actually needs some attention, needs some care, needs some mastery, some active responsiveness, some taking care, some change, some adaptation, some steering?

So again, there's this kind of dialectic, this -- 'tightrope' is too dramatic an analogy -- with all this. For example, emotionality is, we could say, an element or a character, a characteristic of fire. So sometimes it's characteristic of certain people's fire. It's like their style, their fire style, their soul-style, is very emotional, and less so with other people's fire. And again, it doesn't mean there's less fire, or it's a fire of less quality. It's a fire of different quality.

So the question is, for example, here's the passion, and how much emotion is there in that passion? Passion can be very steady, very unremarkable, and kind of undramatic-looking to the outside eye, and also to the inner sense of it. It hasn't got a lot of emotionality in it. And other people, or other styles, or the same person at a different time, the passion has a lot of emotion in it. But if there's emotionality in the fire, as a characteristic of fire, whatever emotionality is in the fire needs to be relatively fluid. That means not too rigid or frozen, either in fixed, repetitive patterns: "I always get really upset about this," and it gets locked into something in a way that's actually just frozen, just rigid, just repetitive. "This is just saṃsāra. This is just this dukkha cycling around again." It's got a lot of emotion, it's got a lot of fire, but it's just a kind of saṃsāric prison. Only certain emotions around certain things, and I'm just locked into that too much, too constrained, too small, too repetitive. The fire is frozen, in a way.

This is just a side point, but you get this also with the range of a person's empathic warmth, as well, if we talk about heat and fire. Sometimes a person can be very empathic with something where they kind of agree with or understand or are familiar with a certain logos, and they have a certain view of why that person is suffering, and that kind of suffering is justified according to a certain logos, and the compassion flows, the fire flows, the warmth there, the compassion, the empathy flows very freely. And when a person is describing a kind of suffering that doesn't quite fit into the remit, into the extent, the circle of the logos that that person has, then there can be -- this person is suffering, maybe just as much as the first person, but the listener has no empathy there because the logos, as I said, logos functions as a face, as a connecting point, a connecting strand of intimacy between people, and because the suffering that you're talking about, I just can't really understand it, or in my world-view, my logos, my Dharma view or whatever, it just doesn't make sense, I can't therefore really empathize much. I can't really extend the warmth of the empathy and the compassion and that kind of tender fire there.

[58:53] So there needs to be a certain, if you like, fluidity to the emotionality, to the fire, perhaps, to the way it burns. But not too much fluidity, so that one is kind of emotionally disturbed and agitated about everything: "Everything sets off my fire. I'm just, like, on a hair trigger or whatever the phrase is. Everything disturbs me. Everything agitates me." The fire is too undisciplined, in a way, too fluid. This little thing I get upset about or on fire about, and that little thing, and it's just flitting. The fire is flitting all over the place in a way that's not really harmonized, not really building anything, not really opening anything at all -- just one agitation after another.

So these kind of elements, you can see again how they're related, how they overlap. Passion needs commitment, and commitment needs passion. If we talk about a fire that's steady, it's the commitment and the passion. I can't be, "I feel really passionate about this," and then look at my behaviour, and it just doesn't play out in any kind of consistent dedication or devotion or commitment. But a commitment needs some kind of passion, needs some kind of warmth and fire and ignition, sparkle. Part of that is the fluidity, if you like, of the fire being neither too great nor too limited. Again, that fluidity also has to do with attention. Attention flitting from this thing to that thing: "Now that's got my fire. Now that's got my fire. Now ..." It's like there's a certain amount of harnessing that needs to happen for the fire to really be soulmaking (but not too much, too tight, too small), and also of the emotionality.

We could say the fire needs to sustain. It needs to not burn out or exhaust its fuel. What does this mean as far as soulmaking is concerned, as far as eros is concerned? The fire must sustain, not burn out, and not exhaust its fuel. What does it mean for our path, our paths? It must burn, fire must burn, our fires must burn, in ways that support the sustaining of something else -- that is, the path, our commitment, the necessary practices, study, preparation, questioning, struggle, hassle, purification, all that. The fire is in the service of sustaining something else. Fire must sustain, in our case, soulmaking -- everything that's involved in that. Fire itself is not soulmaking, just as fire itself is neither helpful nor unhelpful. As I said, it can be dangerous. It can be extremely beneficial. Fire in itself is kind of neither this nor that. So fire is in the service of something. We want it to burn in a way that it can actually support and serve sustaining other aspects. You get quick burning fires. There are kinds of wood that burn very quickly. And there are kinds of wood (and I think hardwoods), they burn much slower, or the flame is more steady. What does that have to do with patience? Longing, devotion, yearning, eros, and patience (one of the pāramīs the Buddha talked about).

There are fires, there are woods or conditions of wood, where the fire causes a lot of smoke, more smoke than fire. Or conditions of fuel where there's very little smoke; it's all fire. What might this mean? What might this mean when it comes to our fire, the possibilities of mastering the fire, or just discernment with regard to the fire, awareness, responsiveness, possible responsiveness?

We could say, related to a lot of what we just said, discipline is necessary for a holy fire. 'Discipline' is an interesting word. I mean it in both senses of the word. We've got this retreat coming up in a couple of months, Tending the Holy Fire. What do we need for a holy fire, for that metaphor, that image? Discipline is actually an ingredient, or some discipline, let's say. A lot of these things, there are kind of opposites, complements, paradoxes. So 'discipline*' --* I mean it in two senses of the word. A 'discipline' is a teaching. A 'disciple' is someone who is a pupil, is someone who studies. So 'discipline' in the holy fire requires learning. I have to study, in the broadest sense of what that means. I have to develop. And implicit in that is a stance, a poise, an attitude of humility. That's necessary for a holy fire to burn within me, within my life, within my path, on my path.

And the second meaning of 'discipline': some kind of steadiness or rigour, or actually containment. So it's interesting, if you think about those religions or places or traditions that burn a kind of eternal holy fire. There's that in synagogues in Judaism. There's that in the Parsi religion (I'll come back to the Parsi attitude to fire, or the Parsi teaching and ritual around fire, in a little bit). Also other places -- the Olympic torch. I think under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris as well. Where there's eternal fire, that eternal fire is contained. In other words, the fuel is brought to the fire in order that it keep going, and it's contained in a small space.

Compare that with a wildfire, where the fire finds the fuel. It spreads to find the fuel. Maybe the soul needs both. The soul needs a fire that's contained, and it also needs to spread. The soulmaking dynamic spreads, the vortex of eros-psyche-logos spreads, in different ways, into different domains. It's the breaking of the vessels. There's a wildfire. So some discipline, and some whatever the opposite of discipline is, some wildness. I'll come back to that too. Perhaps the soul needs both. But discipline -- for now, let's dwell on that one -- in both the senses of a willingness to learn, an attitude, a poise, a relationship of learning, studying, developing, humility, and of, let's say, the rigour of containment that allows steadiness.

Talking about containment now, our word 'focus' actually comes from a Latin word which means 'hearth' or 'fireplace.' In this word 'focus,' as in a hearth or a fireplace, it was where people gathered before there was electricity, and before there was central heating and all that. The family, the village or whatever, would gather around the hearth, the fireplace. That would be the focus. That would be the focus of the social life, the focus of also the spiritual life sometimes. So that word, 'focus,' has a lot to do with fires burning, with mastery of fire. It has something to do with mastery of fire. A gathering of energies -- so like a magnifying glass actually focuses the rays of light and the energy in the ray of light enough that something can ignite. Listen, listen to this with your soul. All of this is what we might call poetic metaphor. How will it translate? How might it translate? What might it mean for you? What might it give you to consider? But there's something that needs or that involves a kind of gathering of energies, a kind of focusing in the way fires sometimes need to burn.

[1:09:17] There's also, back to this word, 'focus,' and its meaning in Latin of 'hearth' or 'fireplace,' there's the fact that when a fire is burning in our soul it brings to it, it gathers to it, other qualities. Other beings gather around fire, the focus, the hearth, the fireplace. Part of the alchemy of the fire in the soul is that it draws to it, we could say, other aspects of soul. Images, imaginal figures are drawn to that fire. The divine is drawn to the soul's fire.

Actually, staying with this just for a little bit longer, this business about focus and gathering energies. In the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, many of you will know in the English translations it's often translated, for example, "a monk or meditator dwells or abides looking at," -passī, "or regarding or contemplating the body in the body, the feelings in the feelings," etc., "ardent, alert, and careful." 'Ardent' is a very common translation. It directly translates the Pali word ātāpī, which itself translates as 'heat,' the heat from the sun, ātāpī, or the fire or burning of zeal. Actually, also in Latin, ardere is 'to burn.' So there's something about, the Buddha's really talking about gathering the energies in a certain way, gathering the focus, mindful. Sampajāna, 'fully alert,' knowing what's happening. And satima, 'careful,' 'with mindful care.' And ardent, with the fire gathered, focused, or with one's fire burning in relation to this, with zeal.

Of course, in that more Theravādan style of the Pali Canon, the combination of that description of mindful focus, ardent, alert, careful -- it sort of repeats in the refrain, if I remember, in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta -- implicit in that combination, in the sampajāna, in the clearly comprehending what's happening right now, and carefulness, with the ardency, with the burning zeal, the fire, implicit in that combination is a style of burning that is very focused, contained. We might even say 'restrained': the fire is restrained. This is not a wild and ecstatic fire burning, as it might be in other traditions -- say, tantric traditions, or some tantric traditions, or kind of Dionysian things or whatever. There's fire there, but it's a certain, if you like, image of the way the fire burns. It's much more contained, much more steady, but there's fire.

We could also point out that fire needs (I don't know what to call it) intelligence perhaps. So sometimes what happens is we get in, as human beings, we get into kind of a black-and-white thinking with regard to something. And that black-and-white thinking is coupled with and fuelled by a certain reification, and a certain clinging to some self-view, so that something that sounds perhaps really good is actually being fed by a kind of thinking that's not so fully explored, or perhaps lacking a certain kind of intelligence. So even, like, "I must do a year retreat so I can realize emptiness, and then ..." You know, implicitly, why? "Because then my problems will go away." And maybe even underneath that, if you ask why, there's a thinking: "Well, maybe I'll be a better person then," or "I'll have proved my self-worth," measurement, etc. Again, we have this, is it authentic? Is it soulmaking? But also what's constructing a kind of black-and-white thinking, and a kind of wrapping in, involving, pulling in a kind of reification and a self-view there, perhaps in a way that the fuel for that fire is going to make that fire burn not in a way that's really helpful?

If we stay again with this, go back to this containment analogy: sometimes a person is kind of enamoured with fieriness, or there's a kind of (to use words we used on a previous retreat) 'immature enchantment' with fire or with passion. So the fire tends to get always itself reified. So we're talking about fire now. It's an image. And the relation with that image when it's imaginal can be loose and responsive and poetic, etc., and not so clung-to in a way that's unhelpful, not with the tightness of craving and grasping. But sometimes you see in a person's style, there's some kind of tendency to almost always reify and concretize, to be enamoured of passion and then to reify and concretize what fire is going to look like, and to make it visible. It always need to manifest, and perhaps, again, through a very black-and-white thinking: my passion for this, my fire with regard to this, manifests in this kind of total action, a very extreme implementation or playing out or expression of something or choice. I drop everything, and I do that. Of course, sometimes that's part of a freedom, and it's exactly the right thing to do, and there's some beauty in that, and there's some radicality in that in the best sense. And partly it's more that there's this immature enchantment with fire, and with that, a rigid belief in what it looks like, and a too-tight tendency, an impulse to concretize always, wrapped up with this black-and-white thinking: "If there's fire, fire is good, and passion is good, and if there is, then I do this," and it's very kind of radical and black and white.

Is it really necessary that there's that kind of black-and-white thinking or concretization, a total sort of concretization of something? Is the image we have of fire and passion being reified and being clung to in ways that are perhaps not that helpful and not necessarily that soulmaking? Or they end up yielding interactions in the world or situations that are not soulmaking, because they're built, again, on some kind of reification, and some kind of black-and-white thinking, an attachment to self-view, an attachment to a certain idea of fire and passion.

What would happen instead if the fire and the passion itself were allowed to become imaginal, in the sense of properly imaginal, authentically imaginal, genuinely imaginal? Which means lingering with the very sense of fire, and the perception and the ideation of fire and passion, sensing its beauty, sensing its unfathomability, its dimensionality, its beyondnesses, its divinity. And in that, discerning: what is the actual duty that's wrapped up in the beauty of this fire for me, of this sense of this passion for me? Not just plugging in an automatic, immature enchantment, black-and-white thinking, reification, solid self-view, etc.

[1:19:10] Then, if we can approach it more imaginally, more maturely, our enchantment becomes mature enchantment, and we can have the beauty and the dimensionality of that imaginal fire. And we can have action that is not burdened or injected with reification and identification in ways that make it problematic, issue in something problematic, or meet something problematic later on in the world. So in a way, we could say that's also a kind of containment. Not just jumping into this kind of immediate translation into an immediate sort of black-and-white interpretation, concretization of duty. The fire needs a little containment. Let's stare into that fire a little bit. Let's feel that fire. Let's meditate on that fire. Let it become imaginal, and see what comes from that. So sometimes we could say, yeah, fire needs a bit more containment, or containment of a different kind. And sometimes it needs less containment.

Again, just seeds for you to reflect on, for you to consider, talk with each other about, inquire into, experiment with, become aware of in practice. We can talk about fire in different -- what should we say? -- dimensions of our being. What is it to feel fire, and to allow the fire, and to respond to the fire in or of the mind, the fire of attention, the fire of the intellect and the brilliancy of that, the fire in thought and conception? Or the fire of the heart? Does it need to be either in the mind or the heart, or can we have both together? Why not? The fire, as we said, including empathy as a kind of fire, a kind of warmth, the fire of the heart's passion, the heart's being moved, the heart's longing. And fire in the body, so to speak. And even then, in different parts or dimensions of the body. What's it mean, fire in the whole body? What's fire in the belly? What's fire in the loins? These are all, if you like, directions or kinds of fire or elements of fire we can explore.

I mentioned the Parsi religion of ancient Persia. It actually came out of the Zoroastrian religion, or it is the continuation of Zoroastrian religion. It was based in Persia many centuries ago. In that religion -- Catherine told me about this, and I did a little bit of research on it -- they keep burning a holy fire, an eternal fire. That's part of their ritual. But to make a new fire, and to consecrate a new fire and a new fire temple, it takes more than two and a half years. So it's not just you light a fire, and you just decide that it's holy. Again, listen with your soul. Listen what it means for you and for us with regard to soulmaking, with regard to passion, with regard to eros, with regard to path, with regard to (possibly) ritual, all of that, but also both outer and inner. It's a big deal to consecrate a new fire, to consecrate a new fire temple. There are sixteen different kinds of fire that need to be brought and gathered together to make, to consecrate a new fire. Each of those individual fires needs to be individually consecrated. So this newly consecrated holy fire in the new temple needs to be ignited from sixteen different kinds of fire, each individually consecrated. Together, one by one, they contribute to this newly consecrated fire. Those sixteen, I'll read them to you, if I can find them ... So they are:

(1) The fire used by a dyer, meaning someone who dyes wool or cloth or garments or material in a pot, in a cauldron. The fire from a dyer.

(2) The fire from the house of a king or a ruler.

Those are two. This is not in any particular order, by the way.

(3) The fire from a potter, someone who makes pottery with clay.

(4) The fire from a brick-maker.

How might all these, each of these kinds of fires, function as little images or imaginal seeds that might get translated and planted in the soul? This kind of fire, that kind of fire, in the soul. I'll leave you -- if that is interesting to you, or you're attracted to that. The fire from a potter, the fire from a brick-maker. They do different things in the culture, don't they? Someone who dyes cloth or wool or whatever, someone who rules, someone who makes pots and dishes and jugs, the fire from a brick-maker, the bricks that make houses and buildings and temples.

(5) The fire from an ascetic.

(6) The fire from a goldsmith. In other words, the fire that burns what is precious, and makes of it beautiful ornaments, and beautiful decorations, and beautiful things of great value.

(7) The fire from a mint, the fire that burns metal to make coins.

(8) The fire from an ironsmith, the fire that heats iron to make different tools, different implements.

(9) The fire from an armourer. So a very particular kind of implement -- shields and swords and armour.

(10) The fire from a baker, from the baker's oven. The fire that makes the goodness of bread, the nourishment that comes from turning the earth and the wheat and the rye or spelt or whatever it is, the grains from the earth. Turning that, helping that to become nourishment for us, wholesome nourishment.

(11) The fire from a brewer. [laughs] Someone who brews alcohol. That's interesting, too, isn't it? If we connect that with Dionysus.

(12) The fire from a soldier. Again, I talked about nobility, and the duty of the warrior image, the soldier, everything that goes into being a soldier (in the best sense of the word, or at least the imaginal soldier).

(13) The fire from any house in the community. So just a kind of ordinary hearth.

Those are (14) so far.^[3] And then two fires that come not from humans. Not from live humans, at least.

(15) One is fire from the burning of a corpse, the fire from the cremation pyre.

(16) And lastly, fire from lightning, lightning from clouds.

So the first fourteen are all fires from different kinds of human and social interactions. This is one of the ways that, socially at least, we can say that the Zoroastrian community, in their sacredness, gathered together, pooled together, the social cohesion, involved everyone. But to me, it's more than that. Again, translating for us, it's not just 'me and my fire,' but we. Our eros, our fire, our soulmaking ignites from others, with others, from the Saṅgha, in the Saṅgha, as we've pointed out.

[1:29:19] But then these last two fires -- the cremation fires, the fire from the dead. There's a connection with the ancestors: fire from the Beyond of this world, the Beyond of human beings. Fire from the dead, the connection with death. And soul has a connection with death. Then the fire from lightning, meaning the fire from the heavens, from the sky -- really from the heavens. Again, another natural or non-human dimension. So I just offer that as something that perhaps for some of you will stimulate a further reflection, thinking, poetic imagining into fire and kinds of fire, what might be involved and what might be necessary, and what makes a fire soulmaking, what allows and supports a fire to be soulmaking.

A couple of things just to end, having said all this, and just playing a little bit, and considering a little bit this metaphor of mastering the fire, in the context of really saying if our fire is not mastered, if it either just goes out or if it burns in a totally uncontrolled way, then there is dukkha. Or rather, there are different ways that fire can create dukkha in the soulmaking process, in the erotic-imaginal process, if we're not careful with it, if we're not attending to it, if there isn't enough mastery of the fire. But in a way, I can't help but want to qualify all that and contextualize it by saying a couple more things.

One is that there has to be -- at least in the way that I would conceive of the whole soulmaking process and soulmaking dynamic -- there has to be a realization that we will never completely master soul's fire or fires. So it's a good metaphor. It's a lovely image, an alchemical image, and it's really important in this consideration of how do we actually have this vehicle of soulmaking work well for us, deliver what it can deliver, open what it can open, and issue where it can issue. Well, mastering the fire is part of that. But I have to say, again, complementing or in dialectical tension with what I've said, I don't think we will ever completely master soul's fires. And I would say we wouldn't want to. We wouldn't want to, the soul wouldn't want to master its own fires, if you like. The soul will always, as I've said, be and have more than 'me' somehow, than my sense of ego.

So again, to borrow that phrase from Jesus, something like (sorry if I'm misquoting it), "No one knows where the Holy Spirit bloweth." He's making an analogy with the wind, the atmospheric wind of the earth. No one knows where that bloweth. It comes, it goes, it changes directions. We can't predict it. We receive it. We're pushed and pulled by it. We can do something with that push and pull, as sailors do, but no one really knows and you can't predict where it bloweth, where the spirit bloweth, where the Holy Spirit bloweth. The soul's fire, like the Holy Spirit -- and fire is also an image for Holy Spirit in many traditions -- is not going to be (A) completely predictable or (B) completely controllable. I cannot ever completely arrive at final mastery of my soul's fire, of the soul's fire, and nor would I actually ever want to. There's the beauty of that beyondness, of something bigger than me, of also the unpredictability of it.

So yes, at times, it blows out of my control, or I don't quite know where it's blowing or why. At times it seems to blow out. And then at times it comes back. It re-emerges from the embers, from what seemed like the ashes. It doesn't seem to be always directed by me. From some perspectives, it seems never to be directed by me; it's given to me by soul, as I said, and it's my job to harness it, to respond to it, to have some mastery in relationship to it.

We talked about, on previous retreats, the potential realization somewhere on the trajectory of soulmaking that my desire, my eros, my will, even, is actually rooted in or emanating from the divine eros, the divine desire, the divine will. This fire is not even my fire. Now, that's a genuine, and I would also say inevitable, soulmaking perception that arises, inevitably, with a certain maturing of the whole soulmaking movement. It arises at times, in and out. And then it's something that, with practice, we can deliberately sort of tap into that perspective. I'm talking here about it needs to be an embodied, sensitive way of looking, that perspective. It's not just a kind of attractive idea, and a kind of convenient one because then it's like, "Oh, any desire I have is good, because it's God's desire, or it's divine," that kind of, again, very immature, ego-serving appropriation of a perspective.

But there's this humility, and I would say beauty, mystery, and magnificence in realizing that yes, I can reflect on and practise and attend to mastering the fire, my capacity and my ability with that, and tolerating, and everything that we've talked about, and more, but I will never completely master the fire. There's always something -- soul will always be bigger. Soul will always be greater. Soul will always be more powerful, in my book.

And on that note, related to that, in the context we've talked about, how we can take care and attend and respond in imaginal practice, in sensing with soul, in the whole soulmaking path, so that it doesn't create more dukkha, or lock dukkha into place, or exacerbate it. This is really important, this business about fire, and kind of exploring that metaphor, and seeing what it means in my life, on my path, in my practices. But there's a sense where it's never going to be under my thumb completely. And thank God for that. Donald Winnicott, the psychiatrist, D. W. Winnicott, wrote somewhere or other:

We are poor indeed if we are only sane.^[4]

So here is a man who devoted his life to psychiatry -- to, if you could say, the support of sanity. And he wrote, "We are poor indeed if we are only sane." There's always going to be some part where the fire rages out of control, some thread, sometimes. There's always going to be something Dionysian, some craziness, some insanity, some holy madness. I hope it's holy and not unholy. "We are poor indeed if we are only sane." We could also say, "We are poor indeed if we are only safe," just to play a little bit with what he said. We are poor indeed if we are only safe too. If the fire is always under my thumb, if I always master it, if it's always under my control, if it's always contained just so, then I'm always sane. I'm always safe. I have a feeling of always being safe. But maybe I'm not then receiving the full grace and gift, and impetus and direction, of soul and soul's desires, designs, intentions for me.