Elements of the Imaginal (1 - 2)

One of the things we would like to do on this retreat is trace or unwind a certain thread, outlining or touching on, pointing to, what we might call aspects of the imaginal. So there is imagination, and there's what we're calling the imaginal. And we want to, just as I said, touch on, really highlight, point out: what are the aspects of the imaginal? What is the imaginal? What does it involve? I'll explain why we're even doing that a little later, but over the days, this will form probably the main thread of teaching on this retreat. For those of you who have been really quite into this, and listening a lot to the recordings from the last few years, a lot of this may be quite familiar. Some of the vocabulary might have changed. Other aspects might be less familiar, or you may not have quite noticed them in your practice. So some will be familiar, but it's a slightly different angle, like I said this morning -- a slightly different way of opening things up.
Okay, so, we have this word 'imagination' in English. Now, all human beings know that when we get into what Buddhists call papañca, it usually involves the imagination, and I'm caught up in some kind of 'fantasy' in the fixated sense, in the small sense. I'm contracted around it. I'm dragged wherever it's taking me. And that is a use of the imagination that pretty much, I think we can say, is not very helpful, not very skilful, and certainly not what we're going to call 'imaginal.' But that exists in the spectrum of what is possible for the human imagination. That kind of -- let' s call it a use of the imagination -- exists for us, and we all know that.

Then we can get into the realm, or we can employ a kind of mindful imagination. For example, in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, in the Buddha's discourse on mindfulness, there is a whole long section on death contemplation in the section on mindfulness of the body. And some of that uses the imagination: imagine your body decomposing. If you can't actually get to your local charnel ground [laughter], actually imagine it, and imagine rotting corpses, your body become a corpse, in various stages of decomposition, being eaten by vultures and goodness knows what, etc. It's actually a mindful use of the imagination, for the sake of renunciation, for the sake of letting go on the path to that kind of liberation. Or when we practise mettā or compassion or muditā, or whatever it is, here's this being, and I'm imagining them. Maybe I don't have a clear visual sense, but I sense in my imagination somehow their particular being, and I wish them happiness and peace, etc.

So these are skilful uses and mindful uses of the imagination. And with all that, as we talked about in the Q & A today, I might actually employ, I might be operating there in my practice with a real embodiment, really have the mindfulness of the body, and the image of the other, and it's a skilful, embodied, mindful use of the imagination. It may or may not be imaginal, but it's helpful. And we can have healing images, all manner of healing images. For example, again, mindful, embodied probably. Not necessarily imaginal. They may be imaginal, and they may not be imaginal. And towards the end of this spectrum, somewhere along that line, we say there is the realm of the imaginal. These kind of images, or this experience of images, is what we are calling 'imaginal.'
Now, some of you know this word 'imaginal' is not that old in the English language, but it's getting quite popular in different circles. So you may have come across different authors or people speaking about it. What I want to say is that the way we are using that word, 'imaginal' -- this is not to say our way is the right way or the only way or the true way; none of that. It's just that there are similarities, overlaps, and differences between the way we are using that word, 'imaginal,' in unfolding these kind of teachings, and what you might have read in Hillman or Jung or Corbin or whatever. Overlaps, but some real differences, okay? And so we talk about, we want to outline, we want to highlight, bring to the attention, for the creativity, for the unfoldment, different aspects or elements of the imaginal. When these elements are there, we could say something like this experience now is (I use these words very, very lightly) authentically imaginal, or this is now the genuine imaginal, or something like that. But very, very light with that.
So we could run through a list, and in fact that's what we're going to do. I'll go through it very quickly tonight, and I'll begin to touch on the first couple of elements. As we go through the week, we're going to go through this list, highlighting these aspects or elements of what's involved in imaginal experience. Before I even do that, I want to actually ask us all to consider and open up our attitude and our relationship with lists like these and teachings like these. They can get, sometimes, for some people, at different times, very dry, or dogmatic, or very rigid, or very tight, or very right or wrong, and all this. I'm really not a big fan of that. But there's something about highlighting distinctions that actually will serve the soulmaking and serve the practice. The list is not even exhaustive. It's not complete, and "Look, that's it now, full stop. That's the testament of soulmaking gospel. It's finished." It's not even an exhaustive list. But what we're trying to do is open up the attention in a way that can open up and deepen and make more full the practice. So, not dogma. Not to be held too rigidly or too tightly. And not exhaustive. As I said, I will go through the list right now, very quickly. I'll just name things. Some of them you'll recognize and be familiar with, and some perhaps you won't even know quite what they mean yet. But I'm just going through the list now very briefly, just as a way of throwing out some seeds. And as we go through the week, we'll both pick up different elements and go through that list.
Aspects of the imaginal: twenty-eight elements. [laughter] It's not an exhaustive list! [laughter] One of the things we'll highlight again: the relationship between different elements, because some of them kind of overlap, they kind of imply each other, and some kind of pull in different directions. So there is a kind of dialectical or oppositional relationship between elements. We'll explain this as we go. All righty. Twenty-eight for now.
(1) Number one is the very fact of the lattice. That's another word I'm going to [explain]. These elements, it's like a constellation of elements, or a constellation of aspects. We're going to use words like 'constellation' or 'lattice.' You know what a lattice is? Not a lettuce. [laughter] A lattice is like, you remember high school chemistry? There's this, like, little balls and attached with rods and ... I'm thinking three-dimensional. It's like a structure, like a chandelier or something like that, a structure where things are connected, elements are connected in three-dimensional space with kind of connecting rods in between. [yogi in background: scaffolding?] Scaffolding! Something like that, yeah. Scaffolding or lattice or constellation. So we'll use words like that. Network. Something like that. So basically, when we say 'imaginal,' what we really mean is not that image of Lord of the Rings, or Dumbledore, or whatever. Dumbledore is not necessarily imaginal, unless all that, all these elements are there. Or to the degree that these element are there, then Dumbledore is imaginal for me in that moment. So I'm just going to rattle through the list:
The lattice itself. In other words, it involves something about the object, and something in the subject and in the relationship with it. That's maybe the most abstract one right now, but I'll put it first.

(2) Second one is energy body, which we've already talked about. For something to be imaginal, there has to be energy body awareness here. And I'll come back to that later today.

(3) Third aspect: love and being loved. An imaginal image loves me, loves you, and I love it. We're going to go into more detail in all of these.

(4) Fourth one: eros.

(5) Fifth one: beauty. Imaginal images are beautiful. The scope of that beauty might be much bigger than a kind of narrow scope. But there's a sense of beauty there. [reading paper] There is no number six! [laughter] Oh, yes, there is. Oh, gosh. I'm going to go through. Okay, let's see.

(6) Sixth is trust. There's a relationship of trust with an imaginal image. Some of these nodes are not obvious at first, and this is the point, to highlight them, to draw our attention to them. And I'll explain why. Trust. [reading paper] This is what happens when you don't write things in order!

(7) Seventh one is soulmaking. An imaginal image actually brings a sense of soulfulness. It opens up the sense of soulfulness. It is soulmaking. The eros-psyche-logos dynamic, the dynamic of soulmaking, gets galvanized and moved into action. So an image that doesn't do that for me right now is not imaginal.

(8) The eighth one is a sense of dimensionality: there's more to it than just the flat surface, the flatland materiality of things. That dimensionality moves into divinity. We could call that two different aspects or nodes of the lattice, or just one: dimensionality shading into divinity. So there's something that feels sacred and divine about imaginal images.

(9) Related to that, ninth one is a beyondness, an unfathomability. There is a sense of something more. This image has something more, some mystery, beyond, I can't quite capture or put into words or get my head around, and actually that's unfathomably deep, that beyondness. It's right there, in and through the image, but it's got a beyondness to it.

(10) An image has soft and elastic edges. Its boundaries are indefinite. Even if in my mind's eye, if it's a visual image, I can see every little micro-hair, and it's sharply delineated visually, it's got soft and elastic edges. We'll come back to what that means. The boundaries are indefinite.

(11) Eternality, timelessness. So again, some of you may have noticed some of this, and some not: an image has a dimension to it that feels eternal, timeless.

(12) There's a sense in the relationship with the imaginal image of reverence. The heart, the soul has a reverent relationship with the imaginal.

(13) There's a sense of grace: something is given me, something is visiting me, in this image, through this image. This image is a gift from the divine.

(14) Humility. This is a subjective node. The heart, the soul, feels humble. We'll explain what that means. Humble in relation to this beauty, this image.

(15) Fifteen: not reduced. The image, I'm not reducing it to, "This means this. This is a representation of this bit of my mind or soul or my history. This represents this in my history, when this happened, or that wounding, or this quality of compassion, or this power." It's not reducible. It cannot be, "It means X or Y." More than that. Or it doesn't only mean X or Y -- let's put it that way. So it can have those individual meanings, but it's always more. Not ultimately reducible.

(16) Number sixteen: autonomy. So the image is not, I am not sensing it, I'm not conceiving it as, "This is just part of me. This is a sub-personality, or this is some element of my psyche." It's its own being in the same way that Joel here is his own being. He has his autonomy. There is a sense of the being has its own autonomy, and in a way, it can act independently. But I also have my autonomy. So the autonomy is double: of self and other, of self and image.

(17) And related to that, seventeen: there is twoness. I realize I'm going very quick. I'm just casting out seeds right now. There is this sense of twoness that we've worked so much with. There's the image, and there's me. There's twoness. It doesn't dissolve in oneness.

(18) There's a quality of theatre. Number eighteen: theatre. This is somewhere in between real and not real, the imaginal Middle Way. It has that quality to it.

(19) Nineteen: we recognize that we create this image and we discover this image, both, or somewhere in between. Creation/discovery. That's part of the gestalt or the whole constellation of the relationship.

(20) Twenty: what we're going to call the concertina. We'll explain what that means. There are other images waiting in the wings of the theatre. This isn't the only image.

(21) Number twenty-one: there's slightly less fabrication. There's this fluidity that we touched on in the Q & A. A little less clinging, so things become less fabricated, more fluid, more malleable.

(22) Number twenty-two is an imaginal experience is not a non-conceptual experience. Logos is involved, concept is involved, as I think we also touched on in regard to the energy body in the Q & A. We'll go through all of this again. I'm aware how fast I'm going. We're going to go through each. I'm just sprinkling some seeds right now.

(23) Twenty-three: what I want to call fullness of intention. I'm not trying to get something from this image. I'm not primarily trying to get something from this image. I'm certainly not trying to win the lottery, or even trying to empower myself, for instance, or my psychological process. I've got fullness of intention. I'm in it for something bigger. My intention is for God, for the divine, for the soul. Not just for me, not primarily for me, so that I can be better at this, so that I can develop this or that. Fullness of intention.

(24) Twenty-four is a sense of duty. Where there's soulmaking, there's a sense of duty. Somehow it comes into my life, with a sense of asking me something. It's a subtle one. We have to be careful with that.

(25) Twenty-five is meaningfulness. So an image is pregnant with meanings, plural. I cannot reduce it to just several meanings. It has a kind of infinite cloud of meaningfulness, which I might not even be able to isolate, "It means this or that."

(26) Twenty-sixth, and I'm not going to really explain this right now, is there's an infinite echoing, an infinite mirroring between the imaginal image and my life. They mirror each other, like two mirrors facing each other and just mirroring each other endlessly in a subtle way.

(27) Twenty-seven: an aspect of what's involved in the imaginal are values. Aesthetic values -- that's in the beauty. But also moral values, so things like goodness and kindness, nobility, courage, even cunning, these kinds of things. An image, if you like, embodies values. It's not reducible to that, but values are involved.

(28) And lastly, a sense of deep participation.

That's twenty-eight, okay? That's a lot, and you might be feeling like, "Oh, my goodness me!" But these are things to notice, and we're going to go through them. A lot of them are already there in your experience. It's a matter of naming and getting familiar with them.
I just rattled that through to plant some seeds. What we want to say [is], we really don't want to be rigid with this, so there's a spectrum here. All of these aspects, and from papañca on one side, and then all these aspects, etc., at what point is the cut-off point to what we are calling imaginal? We could put it anywhere. Am I going to get upset about where it is? It's more that there's a direction that we can open up further as more of these aspects get involved, rather than someone saying, "That is or that isn't imaginal." We don't want to get self-judging or quibble too much about it.

So we're talking about a spectrum, not an on/off switch, or black and white, or "I've failed" or "I haven't." It's a movement. It's an opening. It's a direction. Why are we even talking about this? One reason is just for the sake of clarity, and for the sake of clarity in terms of what we mean when we use that word, 'imaginal,' which is different than what other people might mean in some respects. But also clarity in terms of understanding the whole kind of conceptual framework of what we're creating and discovering here with this Soulmaking Dharma. The more I get clear about all this stuff, the more it will help me get clear about the whole vision, and the whole of what's involved, and the whole concept of what's involved in this kind of path. So that's one reason: for the sake of clarity and understanding and the conceptual framework.

The second reason has to do with actual practice and the art of practice. Knowing, becoming familiar with these aspects, they begin to function as kind of keys. So this particular key, of any one of these nodes, when I activate it, when I turn that key, it opens the door into the imaginal realm. Or if we take the lattice or the network image, igniting one node can then ignite the whole lattice, so that one moves more towards the fully imaginal, the authentically imaginal, the genuinely imaginal. For example, I can pick any element there -- let's say that aspect of timelessness. I'm with an image, and it doesn't quite feel imaginal and deep and that whole kind of richness there, and then I begin to pay attention to the quality of time in and around that image. And I notice, "Oh, it does have this strangely timeless dimension." Hard to put it into words. We'll talk about it. And noticing that illuminates that particular node, that particular element, that particular dot in the lattice, and it's like it comes on fire, it ignites, and then that might ignite the whole thing.

So one mode for practice is just to notice, just to notice these elements. You're not so much making them happen as noticing what's already there that, at first, the consciousness doesn't quite realize. I don't quite pick up on these elements. As I look a little closer, and I see, "Oh, yeah," and then I dwell with that, and I resonate with that element, something comes alive, ignites in the whole lattice. Or you can actually wiggle or jiggle one of the nodes, actually deliberately kind of activate it. For example, the energy body: making that more open, pervading the awareness there activates that node. And that might help us move more into the imaginal. Or you can deliberately start with something that's accessible to you. For example, there might just be, I'm sitting, I'm feeling my life and my being in the moment, and I just feel a vague sense of reverence. I don't even know what exactly I feel reverent to. Or a sense of humility, in relation to who knows what. Some sense is there, or it's accessible to me, or I can find my way into a sense of humility or that vague sense of reverence. I deliberately activate that node. I deliberately ignite that, open that, and that can open the door of the larger network of the imaginal. Or it might be the Middle Way sense that was one of the nodes I outlined, this kind of theatre. So if you're familiar with emptiness practices, if you go and practise some kind of emptiness practice or other, and there's a sense of all things being empty, well, that's close enough to the imaginal Middle Way, and then it becomes much easier for the imaginal to get ignited, opened up. Or the energy body, or the time, like we said. So that's the general concept. We'll go through and we'll cover this again. I'm hoping, I'm trusting that even if it sounds a bit overwhelming and dense right now, you'll actually get the hang of it, and it will be really quite helpful in practice and also with the understanding.
So, first one. I'm going to just do the first two: the lattice and the energy body, just very briefly. The first aspect of the imaginal is the very fact that it has different aspects, that it has different elements. The lattice itself is an aspect of the imaginal -- realizing that, sensing that, knowing that, the network, the fact of its multi-aspected constitution. This imaginal is a multi-aspected thing. What that means is that image is in the eye of the beholder. We say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty and the imaginal have a lot in common, a lot, a lot in common. The more you understand imaginal, the more you understand beauty. And vice versa. So we say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and image is in the eye of the beholder -- meaning this network of relationships, the nodes and the lattice needs to be there. It's dependent on that for something to be imaginal.

And some of those are just here, like energy body awareness or humility. It's part of the subject. It's a node that belongs to the subject, as opposed to the object. So something like the dimensionality of the image, or the divinity of the image, is part of the object, the imaginal object. My humility in that moment is part of the subject. So Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, all that stuff is not inherently imaginal. Some great mythic [tale] -- there are kings and warriors and queens and wizards and dragons, it's not inherently imaginal. I mean, it might be, when that relationship, when the nodes of the lattice come alive. Or something like the hair on my arm. It's like, "It's not imaginal!" Well, it can be, if that comes alive with it. It's not inherently just in the image; it's dependent on that aliveness and fullness of that relationship as well. Okay, so that's the first one.
The second one we've touched on already. I'm not going to say much about it. It's energy body awareness. That's a part of the imaginal constellation. Some of you may have listened on tapes -- I remember it was Nathalie's question in the Q & A a while ago.^[1] Some of you obviously weren't there but will have listened. When there's craving in relation to something or other, even in relation to an image, the energy body is contracted, and I tend to lose the energy body awareness and the largeness of it. Craving contracts. When I open up the energy body, in relation to someone or something or an image, it helps to transform, to transubstantiate the craving into eros. When I open up the energy body awareness, craving opens up into eros. Then I have an erotic relationship with this image, with this other, with this thing. And the eros opens up the imaginal. So that if I can come into full energy body, put my whole -- can I be in relationship to this thing, to this person, to this image, to this tree, to whatever it is, can I be in relationship with my whole energy body? Can I see it with my whole energy body? Can I see with my body?

The more I do that, the more I'm activating, igniting this particular node of the energy body, and the more chance there is of the whole relationship becoming erotic-imaginal. We touched in the Q & A: in a way, we're opening up the sense of what 'energy body' can mean. It's the felt sense here of texture or vibration in this space. But it also involves image, the image of body, and also the concept of body. So that's all involved in the energy body. The concept of body that's involved in the energy body is not limited to our usual ones. I usually see this body, "Am I attractive or am I not attractive according to whatever is the current human fashion in my culture?" If I have got a concept of body that way, that's not going to support soulmaking. Or a purely, flatly materialistic, "I'm just a bunch of molecules that are hanging together for a while in some kind of way that they produce organic life." That's a concept that is not going to support soulmaking. The concept that is active with energy body encompasses, includes, but is broader than our usual concepts of body and matter.
Last thing, and we've said this many times: energy body has a huge range in terms of that felt sense. It can be dense and dark, like the roots of a tree. Like the roots of an oak tree, it's dense and dark, or like stone, or like sand, or like liquid or water, or like air. The texture can feel that way, or like light or like space. The range is huge, absolutely huge. All that is the playground of the energy body.

Okay, so that's the general concept, and the sprinkling of the seeds of the twenty-eight aspects, and the first two just briefly. This will be one of the main threads. We'll just go through and touch on a few nodes each day, and just kind of illuminate them so they can serve to germinate the practice.

Let's have a little quiet time together.