Transcription
Nothing, nothing happens by itself. And I just want to start by saying again, thank you to all of you for being here, for participating, for the fullness of your practice, and your willingness to explore, to question, to open. It's very beautiful. I really appreciate it. And thank you to our wonderful team of managers. Is Linda here? Yeah. And Lea and Stew, taking care of us so well. And to Mark for everything that he's done in the lead-up to this. Nothing happens by itself. And the same is true of soulmaking. It's part of the whole lattice; it doesn't just happen by itself. It needs our participation. It needs our care, our support. That fire, the holy fire we feel within us and without us, needs tending, needs attention, needs fuel, needs support, needs conditions.
So we've used this word, temenos. It's a Greek word that means an enclosed, protected, and sacred space. A vessel, an alchemical vessel. We can see that -- we touched on this in the Q & A -- we can see that in one's own practice. The conditions need to be right in my solitude in order for sensing with soul to have the right support and conditions and vessel in which something can unfold, and actually the unexpected can unfold as well. So we touched on a lot of what those conditions are: the sensitivity, the awareness, the openness, energy body, the emotional care and responsiveness, the attunement. All this creates, in any moment, in our selves, so to speak, a temenos in which there is the possibility of unfolding, of blossoming, of flowering, of the fire stimulating the alchemical process. And that comes and goes, and there's a kind of grace in that. We've said that.
I was talking with someone yesterday. I don't think, as you leave here, and if you're interested in exploring this kind of practice, I don't think it needs necessarily a lot of samādhi, like the mind needs to be really quiet and really still, and you have to do hours and hours of sitting. My guess is you'll discover that that's not actually necessary. I mean, it's fine if that is there. But a couple of minutes, touching into an image -- sometimes an image arises just for a couple of minutes, and it has potency, and its fragrance, its perfume, and its effects permeate the life. It makes an impact on the being. So it doesn't always equate like the deeper meditation, the calmer, the longer time, etc. This sensing with soul, when the conditions are there, is accessible. It's there for us in our life, in the way we sense ourselves, the world, each other.
And then I would say that it may well be the case that a lot of soulmaking, perhaps for most people most soulmaking, most people perhaps most soulmaking happens in relationship, relationship with others. This magic of a spark here igniting a spark there, and some reciprocal feeding of flame and of poetry and of beauty. But that, too, needs a temenos. Some of you will want to, and some of you won't: "Fine, it was an interesting week. Moving on." But some of you will want to share this with others, and will want that support, and will want that input and that flow and that meeting. But there, too, if you're in twos or in a group or something, a temenos is needed, especially if you're sharing images. Images, sensings with soul, soulfulness needs this care. So what does it mean to create a temenos between and in relationship? If I just casually mention an image to someone that's been meaningful for me, and it's the wrong moment -- it might be the right person, the wrong moment; the person isn't really interested, or you haven't taken care of how to be present with each other, maybe even create a formal space where that can be held, where that vessel will support.
So that in itself is a creative exploration, this question: what supports soulmaking? What supports soulfulness? Images can be very vulnerable. Even if one would maybe write the image, and one would think, "Well, there's nothing vulnerable about that," but there's something about, and the sensing with soul, that it touches us so deeply. We don't just put that out willy-nilly anywhere. It's something precious and something -- not necessarily to be hoarded, but to be honoured. So sometimes the formality really helps. To honour something as if it were divine will allow it to become divine.
But part of what happens in relationships is all the messy complexity of human relationships, so that if you're sharing images with another person, and there's something left over between you from yesterday, last year, that has nothing to do with any of this, it's going to be in the field, and it's going to be -- unless it's addressed, opened, explored -- it's going to affect that vessel, that temenos. I'm not going to go into it right now, but there are a lot of skills and arts and prerequisites that enable this kind of vessel to be created between human beings. And can we see that -- we might view, if you're interested, to see that as an exploration, to experiment. Why is it, whatever it is we're doing -- whether it's solitary practice, whether it's moving together, whether it's sharing images or something else, or even studying together; there's plenty of material now to study, and think about the ideas, and try and digest and assimilate the ideas. What makes any of that soulmaking? What supports that? And what prevents that? What gets in the way? What doesn't help to provide that vessel? That's a question. It's a creative, open-ended question to explore.
