Dukkha and Soulmaking (Part 5)

So we've spent some time now drawing attention to some of the elements of soulmaking practice around which we need to take care, to which we need to give some consideration or some development, if we want to ensure as much as possible that these kinds of practices and this kind of path of soulmaking doesn't actually create more dukkha in different ways, or bring its own whole set and level of problems.

Now I would like to turn that around, in a manner of speaking, and talk a little bit about how sensing with soul and imaginal practices can relieve dukkha, free us from dukkha, bring some kind of liberation in regard to some dukkha that we are experiencing or some situation of dukkha, some kind of healing, some kind of resolution or clarity or empowerment or something.

So if you've been listening to the imaginal talks from when we first started -- "The Theatre of Selves," and maybe even before that; I can't remember -- and the sort of whole trajectory there on different retreats, you'll have heard many, many examples of situations of dukkha, or sense of some kind of dukkha, some kind of pain, suffering, imprisonment, confusion, in all the different domains of one's being. And then practising not an avoidance of that dukkha, not a turning away from it, but rather a being with it, an intimacy with the dukkha, a holding of the pain in the emotional body, in the energy body, aware of the situation. And then that being with the dukkha, with care, and with the body, and with the sensitivity, out of that, an image arose, an imaginal image, and that transformed the whole sense of the situation, the whole sense of the dukkha, bringing some relief, some ease, some freedom, some dissolving of the dukkha -- not often completely. It's a slightly different approach here, or rather, what it leaves is not a sort of bland, blandly peaceful situation. It's slightly different there. But the being with the dukkha, the going into it, holding and relating to it in a certain way, allows sometimes, in the kind of alchemy there, an image to arise that becomes imaginal, and that then transforms, and with it, brings an alchemy that transforms the dukkha, that brings some kind of freedom from dukkha. That's often quite remarkable and beautiful.

I want to talk about that a little bit. As I said, if you've been listening, you'll have heard many instances, and I hope that also if you're listening you will have recognized this in your own experience by now -- many, hopefully, situations of dukkha for yourself that have been transformed, liberated, opened up, given another dimension, freed in some regard through the emergence of the imaginal in a way that wasn't contrived, wasn't coming along and deciding, "What can I imagine to make myself feel better here?", and moving away and avoiding the dukkha, but by being, as I said, intimate with the dukkha, and the imaginal arising out of that.

So I want to draw attention to this. It should already be obvious for anyone listening at this point, but just to say a little bit more about it as one of the options that we have as practitioners, one of the ways of approaching dukkha, and also one of the options we have of conceiving of what is going on in regard to imaginal practice, in regard to dukkha, in regard to pathology, etc.

One option, among others -- not better, not worse; just another option, another angle in with regard to dukkha and freeing from dukkha, and also with regard to the whole edifice of conceptions around dukkha, and freedom from dukkha, and soul, and all of that. You will have heard many examples, stories I've related of myself, or of someone else I've been working with or who has shared with me something or other and said it's okay to share it, and hopefully you'll have seen this for yourself. There's some kind of emotional difficulty, or the nervous system is agitated, unsettled, jangly, and the mind won't settle down; some kind of difficulty in the field of relationships that one is in, or the work or social situation one is in. Any of that -- emotions, nervous system, mind, relational, occupational, whatever it is -- or a combination of those kinds of dukkha.

One option is being with that dukkha, with the emotional body, with the energy body, and caring for it in the ways that we've described before. And out of that kind of crucible, if you like, in the crucible of the alchemical vessel, an imaginal image arises, or we sense the situation with soul, we could say. It might be that the situation itself becomes image, or I become image, and I look just the same in the image as I do now. It doesn't appear that different than what we might call material consensual reality. Or something might be very different. But some kind of sensing with soul emerges out of the crucible, out of the alchemical vessel and heat of the difficulty, because of the way we're being intimate with it and connecting with it, with the energy body, with the emotional body, etc.

That imaginal perception, that sensing with soul, does something to the energy body. What was a feeling of agitation and disharmony and unsettledness and jangliness in the energy body that went with the dukkha actually now becomes a sense, in the energy body, palpable and immediate, of harmony. To use a certain language, the nervous system has been regulated through the emergence of the image. Through the emergence of the imaginal, through the sensing with soul, the nervous system has been regulated, if we use that language. Something has been soothed. Something has been healed. But it's not so much through addressing the nervous system directly, and not so much in this case, in that trajectory I've just described, through addressing the energy body, and playing with the samatha, or ways of breathing or imagining the energy body, etc. Not so much through thinking about one's personal family history or wounding or whatever it is.

As I said, it's just one option among other kind of angles of approach to dukkha. But for this to work, what arises has to be imaginal. It has to be soulmaking. And remember, that's for me now. In other words, as we said, the imaginal is only for a person now, for me now. What was imaginal for me yesterday or a year ago may not be imaginal for me now. It has to be alive as image for me now. And images transform. So for example, as I shared the other day, that lonely wanderer image -- it might be that X months ago or years ago that that image, or the solitary soldier, that image might have done its alchemical healing work because it was alive for me as image as it was, and transformed the dukkha and relieved the dukkha. But it might be that today, or some weeks later, some years later, that image has transformed.

Whether the image, as it used to be, would still function for healing, or whether it needs a new one, there's not a formula for this. We can't predict it. But we actually feel when something is imaginal in the moment. So it has to be imaginal for me now. Or something comes into my mind as a kind of spark, a poetic spark, an imaginal spark, something serving to help me see or sense the situation with soul. Often what arises in image may -- as I said, I may borrow someone, or use as an image someone who is a historical person, or an actual person in my life, but when they're image for me, when they're imaginal for me, my imaginal sense of this person doesn't have to conform to what is actual, historical reality.

I remember having actually exactly this kind of situation where the mind wouldn't settle, the nervous system was kind of jangly, and there was some kind of agitation. And it was related to what I felt to be a difficult political work situation that I was unsure how to relate to, how to kind of enter into the relationships there. A book by Michel Foucault had arrived in the post, and I had just glanced at it, and read the sort of tiny bio on the back. That came into my mind, and the sort of image of him, and he functioned as an imaginal spark for me. But in my image of him, I had assumed several things about how he was. I noticed he died quite young, and assumed maybe he died of this, and maybe he was this kind of personality. That image triggered something else, and triggered something else, and the whole situation that I was in regarding these meetings that were coming up around work, etc., became imaginal for me in a way that just immediately released a lot of energy, a lot of harmonization in the energy body, and the settling of the nervous system, the regulating of the nervous system.

[13:43] Later, when, out of curiosity, I googled Michel Foucault and read about him, I found that what had functioned as image, imaginal image for me, so helpfully, what had made him so helpful as an imaginal image for me wasn't actually historically accurate. So it doesn't matter, when we have historical figures or famous figures or whatever it is, even friends who have become imaginal images for us, it doesn't matter that it corresponds that completely with so-called 'historical reality.'

But something happens. The dukkha is relieved. The nervous system is regulated. The emotions have some kind of healing. And the perception of a situation that is difficult is transformed, as also is the perception of self. That's not to say that it's transformed in a way that it's no longer difficult, or it's just become bland and without problem, without challenge. There may exist in that situation a calling. This is part of the duty of the image. So it's not 'no self, no problem, no issue' here. With the image, the situation might still be a challenge. But the self has become imaginal, the situation has become imaginal, and with that, it issues a duty, or the soul issues a duty as part of that. That still might be challenging. [There] still might be quite a lot of emotion and energy tied up in that situation.

So we're not talking about just a relief and a kind of bleeding out of the life of the situation. It's still charged, in a way, but the emotions are more harmonized. They're harmonized with the imaginal self and the imaginal sense of the situation. With the sense of duty that might emerge with the image, there's a clarity about direction. One gains in that a poise, a stance, a resolve, some kind of empowerment with all this. And the whole thing has become soulmaking. The whole thing feels soulmaking. That doesn't mean it's without challenge. It doesn't mean, even, that it's without difficult emotion. But there's everything that characterizes soulmaking: there's beauty, there's duty, there's meaningfulness, all of that.

If I pick up on the examples I've used in these talks and quite a few times over the last few years, the examples of the solitary wanderer and the solitary soldier/warrior, it might be that in a certain situation of suffering, a certain difficult situation, or what is perceived as such, a certain difficult social situation, that with the rendering or allowing or opening up of the imaginal perception, of the sensing with soul of that whole social constellation, that the dukkha is transformed. Something is transformed, but some dukkha still remains. There may still be a certain kind of loneliness remaining. It's the loneliness of that solitary wanderer. It remains. But something, some large part of the dukkha, has gone. It may be that a certain kind of battling remains in whatever situation, or one is standing up for what one believes needs standing up for and speaking up for, and one is resisting what one believes in one's soul needs resisting. One is speaking out. One is putting one's, perhaps, life or career on the line, or whatever it is. So that a lot is transformed, a lot of the dukkha drains out of the situation, a lot of the discombobulation clarifies and aligns, and there is that poise, but still a certain kind of dukkha -- in these examples, the dukkha of the solitary wanderer, and the dukkha of the solitary warrior.

But that dukkha, because it's now seen in the imaginal opening out, that dukkha is given place. It has a place, it has a rooting, a grounding, in the imaginal, in the mundus imaginalis. It has a rooting in soul. It has the nobility and the beauty and the meaningfulness that is given to it by finding its place, taking its place, or its place being recognized, its rooting and grounding being recognized in soul (which is also just to say in the divine, or in some kind of divinity). So there is this dukkha, but it has this beauty to it. There can still be the sense of purpose, of nobility of different kinds. There is still the love. So that solitary wanderer, there's a lot of love there. He is the recipient of a lot of love. Still, as I said, one doesn't abandon one's duty. One may be even given a duty through the relationship with the imaginal, as we've touched on and pointed out several times. The whole thing becomes imbued with a meaningfulness, set in a kind of fluid and light structure of meaningfulness. The whole thing receives or opens to a sense of dimensionality.

Life, and dukkha, and whatever situation we are in, and one's self, and all of it, begin to be sensed with soul, to be seen as image. And part of that, as we've elaborated in the first talk of this series, is this sense of infinite echoing or infinite mirroring of image and life, of self and image, of my story and my endeavours in the world and this imaginal figure or whatever it is. That sense, and the mystery of that infinite echoing and mirroring, comes as a blessing. It adds a texture of profound and sweet blessing, although some kind of strand of what we could call dukkha remains through this whole thing. But because of that, the large part of the dukkha is attenuated, is released, is freed.

Part of what I want to do, as I said, is to situate the soulmaking path in, alongside, and in context with, other paths and approaches, and in particular around approaches to dukkha. So one could, for example, approach dukkha with (as we just mentioned) sort of regarding the nervous system as primary. Something has happened, or a situation, or ongoing, or an event, or whatever, and it's kind of jolted or programmed, if you like, the nervous system to get stuck in certain unhelpful patterns. It can be very difficult. And so one can approach the dukkha that then arises at any time with a conception that places the nervous system as primary, and also an approach that kind of heads straight for the nervous system and looking there. That's great and fine.

Or one can regard, actually, one's (for example) history with a family or whatever, one's personal psychological history, and regard that as primary. So, obviously related to the nervous system -- not completely the same; overlapping. And again, take that as the primary approach: this dukkha now, how does it mirror what happened to me when I was a child, etc., the situation I found myself in? And go back to that, and heal that, so to speak, open that up, address that first, and then allow the current situation to heal from that. Wonderful too.

Or one can turn one's attention and give conceptual primacy of place to the current actual relations. And what do they need? How do they need to be addressed? What is skilful relationship here? What's actually going on in the room? All kinds of other possibilities too. But these are all, as I said, possible conceptual frameworks and possible practical approaches in terms of what they approach first, primarily, and what kind of is in a conceptual structure given sort of primacy of place.

But there is also the possibility to approach via the imaginal first, via sensing with soul, that that becomes the kind of leaning of the approach -- at times, not always. But one approach among other options would be to look for, if you like, the imaginal. Where is the imaginal, if you like, here? What needs to emerge? Is it something that needs to be revealed here, some image or some way of sensing with soul that can emerge? That can be, if you like, the primary leaning of the practical approach. And we can create or discover a conceptual framework that gives the soul (in our sense of the word) or the imaginal (in our sense of the word) conceptual primacy. In other words, we regard that as the sort of foundational factor, if you like.

[25:56] Actually, one can see that all these are tools, and all these are aspects of a kind of human situation of dukkha, that are mutually dependently arising. In other words, what's happening in the nervous system, whether it's regulated or not, and what kind of patterns gain kind of control at any time in the nervous system; how we see a social situation or a work situation that's difficult; the actual situation we're in, and how we perceive it; what images of self are operating (in the plural there, images) and whether they're imaginal or not -- the relative activation of the erotic-imaginal, in other words; the energy body sense -- all of these are actually mutually dependent arising. In other words, what is the sort of dominant and dominating state of the nervous system depends on how I'm paying attention to the energy body, and vice versa. My perception of this social situation that I'm in, or this difficult work situation, or whatever it is, depends on the energy body, and the state of the nervous system. And my perception of the situation that I'm in also depends on whether that's imaginal or not (in other words, I can have an imaginal perception of that), and how I'm paying attention to the energy body, and what is the sense in the energy body.

All these factors are mutual dependent arisings. Sometimes what happens for us as human beings is we forget that. In fact, we forget it a lot. And we find ourselves clinging to some conceptual framework (even if we don't think we are) that kind of forgets about the mutual dependent arising of these things. So it wants to take one of these things (for example, the nervous system; for example, the family history, or whatever) and place it as primary (for example, the embryonic history or whatever, or for example, the image), and kind of focus on that as the most important thing and the most foundational thing, forgetting that how I see my history actually depends on all kinds of things in the present moment, like what's happening in the energy body; like what's happening in the nervous system; like what kind of images are operating, how authentically imaginal they are; like what social situation I'm in, in the present, also influences my perception of the past. So all of these, we can paint arrows of causation, or we should realize that the arrows of causation move among every node there, and others, and in all directions. Mutual dependent arising between all of that.

So, as I said, really just want to highlight the imaginal and the sensing with soul as one option among others, one possibility among many others, including many Dharma approaches. And I've also given examples of how we can be in a situation with another person, and perhaps we're experiencing dukkha of some kind, and this is our friend or a teacher or something, and something is communicated by that person from us, or by us to that person, and the one who is suffering is able to see imaginally, to sense with soul. Something has been communicated, either because the other has an image alive for them, or feels something in the present moment of image, or sees the suffering that we are in imaginally, and they communicate it to us. So the imaginal is communicated in the field. And then we catch that spark. Something of the imaginal perception, something of the sensing with soul, is ignited in us through the field, through what is being given to us by another, as I described in one talk. I described that situation, skyping with Catherine. I was struggling around this possibility of, or questioning what would happen with some creative work that was really important to me. And she saw me imaginally, communicated that to me, and then that helped me see the whole situation, and the whole work, and what would happen to it and myself in relation to the work, etc., see that as image. I was able then to sense that with soul. And the dukkha went out of the situation. The beauty came in. The soulmaking expanded the whole thing. And it was clearer what to do, what my poise and relationship and stance and duty was in relation to that.

Or I shared the story of the woman [to whom] I'd voiced the words that I heard, the image that was kind of vaguely emerging for me as she was telling me about something in her history that was very difficult and happened some decades before. I voiced the kind of poetic phrase or image of the sacred prostitute. And something was communicated -- picked up on by me, communicated to her, and then she was able to perceive that whole history, and herself, and the whole trajectory of her life, in this imaginal, imaginally filled-out way. It became rich with image. It was transformed. The whole situation found its mirroring, its echoing, in the mundus imaginalis. Or the situation was seen as a kind of contracted echoing; what happened in the history was seen as a contracted echoing, a contracted, distorted mirroring of an image, of something in the imaginal realm.

[33:34] As a teacher, I've completely lost count of how often this happens, that I might be working with someone, and either I sense an image as potential -- I glimpse something -- or I sometimes even sense what wants to happen in the energy body of the other, or see the image of their energy body, all kinds of things, very subtle and not really a big deal. And then in communicating that, that other person kind of taps into an image and, for instance, may open up to a different sense of themselves because they're sensing themselves with soul, different sense of their body, different sense of empowerment, perhaps a kind of empowerment that's really not familiar to them. Sometimes, working with people, I'm a little unsure: on the one side, there is this real potential to communicate images in a field so that another picks up on and their sensing with soul is ignited, as we said. On the other hand, I sometimes just wonder how much should I say or kind of input, and what the timing of that is. One wonders: does it matter where it arises first in a field, the image?

And of course, again, there will be many examples where actually I might be working with someone, or you're with someone, and the image arises just in them, and one is just a kind of witness or holding the space or whatever. So all this, of course, can [happen], and again, I hope you've seen that it can happen in a field, and it can also happen alone in one's practice, in solitude.

I pointed out (I think it was in Eros Unfettered^[1]) that there might be times or situations where there's a desire to be with a particular person, romantically, sexually, and one feels stuck, because this other person, that's not what they want in the relationship with us, or there's a very clear boundary; it's not possible or something. And one finds oneself locked into a kind of grasping and clinging, and kind of stuck with the dukkha of that craving in relation to this person. There is some eros, but there's also a lot of craving mixed up with it, and the whole thing is just painful.

And then, if we're actually in some kind of relationship with them (perhaps we're friends or whatever it is), that relationship also becomes quite difficult because of this stuck clinging that's there, and grasping. And I drew attention to the, I think, very important possibility of rather than only the option of, "Let go. Put it down. Cool off. Find what you want somewhere else. Look at what one's dragging in here that's inappropriate -- perhaps it doesn't really belong here -- that needs a different kind of healing," as well as all those options and many more, there is the option, too, of letting that person become image even more, become imaginal even more.

So dwelling with them, with the image of them meditatively, and tuning into all these elements of the imaginal that we described in the first talk of this series, and letting that amplify, letting that fill out, letting it flesh out and gain that richness and dimensionality. In allowing oneself, encouraging oneself, even, to dwell meditatively, mindfully, sensitively, exploringly, with the image of this person, and tuning to them as image, as potentially soulmaking image, as we've described, then what happens is we start picking up on some or other imaginal aspects or elements of that whole imaginal constellation. There's this ignition. As we notice a certain aspect, there's the ignition of that particular aspect, the illumination of it as imaginal image, and then the whole constellation.

And, as we've said before, one of the elements of that imaginal constellation will be the very sense of imaginal Middle Way, the very sense of theatre, the very sense of 'not quite real, not quite not real' -- neither category seems to apply. This is one of the things that will make all the difference. Instead of, "I need to manifest a concrete romantic or sexual or whatever kind of relationship with this person," the whole thing, the very sense of them, is expanded, altered, enriched, deepened, widened, allowed to become more imaginal, allowed to become more authentically imaginal, [as] it kind of wanted to be in the first place perhaps.

So there's a sense we're seeing image as image. We're not mistaking potential image for concrete reality or something that needs to be concretized. So that's one of the aspects and elements of the imaginal constellation that we actually encourage and support to become more obvious to us, to become more palpable to us, so we don't make that mistake between insisting on this material fact ensuing, and actually what is image, what is the mundus imaginalis, what is theophany. That's one aspect, if we allow ourselves to dwell and tune sensitively to the image of this person.

The second is that, in the whole soulmaking dynamic that's supported by that kind of sensitive tuning, in the whole soulmaking dynamic that opens up there, we create and discover the 'more' that pothos wants. Remember how we described the whole dynamic that eros pushes on, because eros wants more connection, more contact, more penetration, more intimacy, more touch, whatever? That's the pothos in the eros, wanting always more. And that if we don't allow things to open up on the dimensions of the imaginal, we can only pursue that 'more' in one place -- in concrete reality. Or we have to, so to speak, shut everything down, shut the eros down, go back to 'just letting go' or whatever it is.

There's a third option, if you like: the option of the erotic-imaginal opening up the soulmaking dynamic, and hence the sensing with soul, so that the 'more' that the pothos in the eros seeks is created and discovered in that soulmaking dynamic, in the eros-psyche-logos mutual fertilization, widening, deepening, complication. I have, then, more intimacy, more faces/aspects of the beloved to become intimate with. Different light shines through, more, deeper, wider, more varied. I have all kinds of intimacy there in those dimensions. With all that, there's the meaningfulness, the beauty, the divinity that's part of the dimensionality, and all that. I'm actually receiving all that as grace through allowing the image to expand, rather than shutting it down, or rather than locking onto it and demanding it manifest concretely, physically.

[43:18] So in receiving more, and all the beauty of that and all the gift of that, and in recognizing the imaginal Middle Way as one of the elements of the imaginal in the constellation there, the clinging is reduced. The grasping, the fixation is reduced. The pressure, then, of the situation is reduced, including the pressure that I am putting on this person and on an actuality of whatever our material relationship is. Less pressure in my psyche because there is 'more,' because the soulmaking dynamic opening up has created 'more' -- more vistas, more facets and sides of the beloved, and of myself, and of the eros, more dimensions of all that, larger, deeper. There is more space, so less pressure. And with the relaxing of the grasping, and with the relaxing of the pressure, not only does that person then maybe feel less pressured by my insistence on some actual material form of our relationship, but also my dukkha is eased through that relaxation of clinging and through the relaxation of the pressure.

So this is a really, really important possibility. Two things about that. One to point out -- which I perhaps didn't make clear when I first described that possibility -- is that that's not necessarily that easy. It might take a lot of practice and a lot of skill there to be able to do that, but it really is possible. It really is possible. It's almost like they become bigger, we become bigger. Through the soulmaking expansion, the whole contraction of the craving is released, and the whole thing issues in a different sense.

So the first thing is three things. One is: it really is possible, and it would be remiss of me, I think, to not stand by that possibility, and not point out that possibility. But it's also important for me to say, yeah, and that might be quite difficult. It involves quite a maturity of practice, and quite a development of one's skill in imaginal practice and with the erotic-imaginal, to be able to do and effect and allow such a transformation.

The second thing is, in so doing with this person -- it might be a person that's actually in our life in some form of relationship or some kind of relationship or other, but it's not the kind of relationship that we think we want or the craving wants -- if we're practising this way, none of this means a turning away from dukkha. None of this means, also, a turning away from actual relationship, and avoiding this person. It doesn't mean not taking care of any potential difficulties we might have in our relating. So we still need to address and approach the actual relationship and what it needs. Often, when there's a lot of clinging, and one person really wants something the other doesn't, that brings a lot of difficulty into the actual relating. So that, also, if one is actually in communication with this person, that needs relating to. And then the inner work may be, in this kind of angle of possibility, may also be this opening up the whole imaginal perception, the opening up of the whole sensing with soul of other, of self, etc., and of the eros itself.

All that is possible. But it's not at the expense of or instead of taking care of the actual relationship. What actually happens, then, if one works this way with this kind of difficulty, you know, you may end up in a romantic/sexual relationship with this person, but you may not, but in a way, that becomes much less important, because you've got something else that, in a way, was the essence of what your soul was wanting, often.

Now, I could give so many examples of instances where there really was something very disturbing going on: a memory, or a person was really disturbed by seeing what their impulses were in certain situations or in certain relationships, or a set of events that's really difficult, or a situation one's in, or self-images that are really disturbing or painful or contracted, or all of that. So many instances I could give. I won't now. But so many instances I could give where the suffering of these different kinds, whether it's in relation to impulses one sees in oneself, or memories, or situations, or events (past and present, or potentially in the future), self-constructs and images that are very painful, not imaginal, etc., and whatever the dukkha is can seem really almost irredeemable, terrible: "One shouldn't even let this get the light of day, let alone share it with another person. Shameful, pathological, weird," etc. So many instances. Some I'm actually not sharing just because the immediate effect might be to be disturbed by what one hears, [and] also because I've given a lot of examples already.

[50:40] But what can happen, what really is possible (I've seen this over and over and over again), is that this which seems so strange, so terribly difficult and pathological and a kind of hopeless thing, through the soulmaking practices, it or something became image. The whole thing was seen with soul, starting with the dukkha. Maybe the sense of that dukkha or the thing that was dukkha was then seen imaginally, and in that, kind of transformed or transubstantiated. Or, as I said, an image or sensing with soul emerged from that thing, that difficulty, from becoming intimate with it, and then there was some kind of release of dukkha. Not avoiding the problem, but going into it in a way that opens up the sensing with soul. And then that opens up the whole situation, opens up the sense of the dukkha without kind of dissolving it completely. It transforms it.

In a lot of these transformations that I'm describing and I have described, one wonders whether it's actually, or whether one way of conceiving would be, as I mentioned earlier, that the image is actually primary. It's almost that, in this difficulty, in this pathology, in this terrible thing or this impulse that I have, or even in the memories and events or situations I'm in, in this contracted self-image that seems can't be helpful at all, one wonders sometimes whether it's almost like there's an imaginal image -- or potentially imaginal image -- not hiding, but buried in there, and that the healing, the liberation, the relief from dukkha, comes when it is revealed.

The image was there all along. It perhaps was driving the whole difficult pattern. This is what I meant when I said right from the beginning, "The Theatre of Selves" and all that, "image is primary." What would it be to consider image as primary? What would it be to entertain the conception that image is primary? So it's like that's there, buried. Somehow we've gotten into kind of wrong relationship with that image, and what could have been eros, or what started off as eros, got contracted into craving, which brought more contraction. What started off as image, and potentially imaginal image, was grasped the wrong way, and became what we're calling 'fixated' image -- not imaginal image, reified. Or became, in other language, kind of papañca.

If you, again, trace your own examples where this has happened for you, or if you recount to yourself different examples that you've perhaps heard me give of this transformation of dukkha through the erotic-imaginal and through the sensing with soul, and play with, "Oh, I could see that in a way that conceives of the image as primary." Not my history as primary in itself in the usual way we think about that causally. Not my trauma as primary. Not my nervous system as primary, not my whatever-it-is. But actually one could, at times -- and again, this is just one option among others, and that's something I'll come back to -- one could, I think it would be a very good exercise if you really want to fertilize and till the soil of your understanding and your grasp and your taste for these practices and this whole path, it's really good to kind of play with the conceiving.

So, as I said, trace it if you can. Bring to mind instances where you have undergone this kind of transformation of dukkha through the imaginal, through the sensing with soul, or you've heard me or someone else give an example of that movement. And can you kind of see that, in many of those instances, one could kind of reconfigure the conception to see: actually, there's kind of a seed image in there, and that seed image has been related to in the wrong way, and all this difficulty has come out of it? And eros has become contracted into craving, potential imaginal image has become fixated image or papañca. And what may be required, from this perspective, for healing, for liberation, for relief, for easing of the dukkha, is the revealing, the discovery, or creation/discovery, of the imaginal image, the uncovering of the imaginal image at the core of the pathology.