Transcription
So we said that today, just as much as possible, if there are questions about the energy body, what that is, and how to practise with it, then this is a good space for that. So, anybody? Yeah, Jill?
Q1: energy body / body bubble, balance between trying new things and what already works
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: Okay, yeah. I'll repeat because usually people can't hear. Jill remembers many years ago with me learning about -- I must have called it the 'body bubble' back then, which is really similar to what we talked about this morning in terms of just expanding the space of the awareness just a bit bigger than the body. That whole region becomes, is sensitized to as, a field of energy or vibration or texture. And would it be right to view that as one way of working with the energy body? Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. For a lot of people, it will probably be the easiest and the most efficacious way in. So something just happens when you open up the awareness. Just like the first thing I did this morning was just that -- open up the awareness, just hang out there. Sometimes you don't need to do the breath or lights or all that stuff. It's just, "Oh, it's already a field of energy." Not for everyone; everyone's different, but oftentimes that is the easiest way to start to get familiar with and sensitized to a certain way of feeling this bodily experience. And then from there, it can expand to all kinds of other things.
Yogi: To clarify, I used it to check in ... [inaudible]
Rob: Yeah, so Jill's saying with this body bubble way of working, she's used it to just check in -- "How am I doing? What's going on?", yeah? That's one way, and a second way is to sort of deliberately infuse that space with what the Buddha would call a skilful quality like peace or happiness. Yeah, both completely great. With the first one, the checking in, that's what I was talking about this morning a little bit, just that this way of paying attention becomes potentially a fine discrimination of what's going on, particularly emotionally. Or, as I said, checking in with an image, just the sense of "My mind doesn't get this yet at all, but I can tell there's something here for me just because of what happens in the energy body." So I'm checking in as the thing is going on, and it's telling me, it can tell me an awful lot. We can get really, really quite refined, develop a refined sensitivity to that.
The second thing, this plucking out a quality -- this is more what I would associate with certain ways when we develop samādhi. One way of understanding what samādhi is is you're really tuning the whole being, the energy body, and the mind, and the consciousness, to a certain quality. So you can think about the jhānas that way. With the first jhāna, the quality that you're just sort of plucking out of the ether, if you like, of the space, resonating to, and just sort of absorbing into, getting into, is this kind of rapture or pīti. With the second, it's happiness, etc. There are many more than just the eight jhānas, many more, and you can be quite creative, and make all kinds of cocktails, and all kinds of business. [laughter] But basically this idea of tuning to certain vibrations or qualities is really, really skilful. It's very helpful for samādhi. It's also part of what goes on in imaginal work, because, you know, what's happening when an image gets going is that there will be a whole constellation with it, partly of not just one emotion, but several emotions -- love, and eros, and maybe grief or tenderness, all kinds of things. You can kind of tune to that whole constellation, or different elements within it. So all this develops with time. It's great.
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: Yeah, thank you. Like I think I said last night, it's a lot. What we're laying out is a lot. And you'll be drawing on everything you know -- mindfulness, and mindfulness of body, and samādhi, all this stuff. It's great.
Yogi: [inaudible] How much should I try ... there's this balance between trying something new and what feels comfortable.
Rob: Okay, so if I understand, Jill is saying there are certain sort of, if you like, things to try with the whole energy body thing that feel really easy, and comfortable, and familiar, and they work immediately; you get a sense that "this is helpful." And there are other things which really don't. Yeah? So the question is partly, "What's that balance between trying new things, and actually just staying with what you know works?" Yeah? Personally, I don't think there's one answer. We have to try new things. Otherwise ... well, you're free not to, of course, but there's a way that we won't expand beyond what we already know. Catherine and I were just mentioning earlier, talking with each other, how easy it is to get into meditation habits -- even of posture. And you see, I sit a certain way, and it's fine, and it works, and I can be mindful, and I can know what's going on emotionally, but it's actually not quite fully open and upright, just the posture. And you know what happens? The whole energy, but also then the experiences that open up will be limited by, in this case, a postural habit, which turns very easily into a meditation habit.
Similar thing with ideas, or attitudes, or stances, or what we're trying to do. It's so easy. Everyone here has plenty of meditation experience. It's just human, you know. But within those habits, we've got lots of good habits, lots of really good habits, and lots of good things we know how to do. So you don't want to throw that out. That's part of your bank of resources and your tool set and your skills. Lovely. And for me, a lot about this practice is just this attitude of daring to experiment and try things. The thing about experimenting in this situation is it's perhaps not just completely like a science experiment where you try something, it doesn't work right, so you just throw it out, because what you try one day might close right there and then, nothing happens, and then two hours later, it's actually perfect. So there's this whole quality, this whole fact of the kind of fluidity of our energy experience, our whole being, and the necessity to respond to that. Do you see what I mean? So I'm not quite sure about this ...
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: Let me just say something. Was it something one of us suggested?
Yogi: Catherine was talking about ...
Rob: So what did the ray of light have ...?
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: So maybe leave it. But if you're talking about light and energy body, then there are plenty of other ways -- like, in a way, the light is all around, or the light's coming from inside of you, or what I mentioned briefly this morning: this body, that bubble, is a bubble of light. All these things. And it might be that, in time, that opens up further possibilities, which at some point include this. But, you know, it doesn't really matter at all. It's not like, "You're not really getting this until you can get that death ray star thing." [laughter] Okay? Yeah? Beautiful. Yes, Dave?
Q2: working with aches and pains, starting with image rather than energy body
Yogi: It's a sort of similar question to Jill's, in a way, about that balance between doing what's sort of [inaudible] more easily. But rather than balancing that and trying something new, it's a balance between that and working on those bits that, through discrimination, you've picked up that "Okay, this feels important, and it's something I'm maybe avoiding or not paying attention to, because it's easier to follow another route." Specifically with the energy body, I find it a lot easier almost to start with image or with emotion, partly just for physical reasons and aches and pains. There's a sense that it's important to find a way to -- especially in the practice Catherine went through with having you first before you go into twoness. That felt really important. [inaudible] I'm very interested in -- yeah, anything you'd have to say about that, how to balance. I know there's hard work to be done within the practice. There's something that feels important that should be tried differently, or that there might be a block on, versus going with what [?] naturally.
Rob: I'm not 100 per cent sure I understand, Dave, so let me see. There's a general point about what you just said, like what's the balance between staying with what works and kind of "Hey, this is good. Why change? If it ain't broke, don't fix it," and kind of having a sense that it would be good if this thing seems important, and it's not quite there for me yet, or I don't quite get it. So there's a general point. What I didn't quite understand was the specifics about the energy body. Do you want to say more?
Yogi: So if I start my practice within the body, within myself, without the sense of interaction with an image or something like that, it can just get very blocked, things like aches and pains and so on. I often find that instead of really banging on that door, allowing images to come in, allowing a sense of twoness, then gets me back round to a place where that's okay. But I also have this sense that there's something very important about not always looking to another, an image, to get that started. That feels important.
Rob: Okay. If I understand, there are a few different possibilities here, because one is like: can I just stay here, and be with my aches and pains, and it be okay? Haven't said anything about energy body; it's just simple mindfulness. So I would say that's a prerequisite. If I'm not willing to just be here in this location with all the ugh that's going on, then I need to work on that a bit, get that. The second possibility in what you mean is that when I start here, it doesn't open up the energy body -- it just kind of stays at this level of aches and pains and a bit of contraction. If that's what we're talking about, then I would say it doesn't matter.
A lot about this energy body business is just familiarity of accessibility. The more you have the experience, the more it just becomes second nature. For me at this point, it's like I just pay attention, and it's there right away. Why? Only just because I've done it so much. So if you develop the familiarity via image, and then, as I said this morning, here's an image, part of what happens when that gets imaginal is the energy body starts to open up, get more energized, harmonized, etc. Now I've got the choice in the balance of attention. I could go mostly with the image; I could balance the energy body sense with the image; or I can come mostly to the energy body, and I can peel off into some kind of samādhi. Does this make sense? Now, that's fine. If that's what you do a lot, what will happen eventually with that is just your body and consciousness, the whole being, will just get used to perceiving the energy body, so that you don't need to go round that way. So if it's that that you're talking about, I wouldn't worry about it. If it's the first one, about "I just don't like hanging out when it doesn't feel so good, or just I'm not really good at sitting here with the sensations" or whatever, then I would say, "Okay, sleeves rolled up. Let's work at that a bit more." Does that sound okay? Good. Yes?
Yeah, what's your name? Mikael? Hi, Mikael.
Q3: the imaginal opening up samādhi, sacredness in jhāna
Yogi: I would like to ask about soulmaking and samādhi. One thing you said today caught my attention, about the fork. If I understood correctly, working with the energy body, one might end up in a fork -- like you decide, "Should I go to the imaginal side, or more to the samādhi side?" In my practice history, I used to struggle a lot with samādhi practice. There was a strong interest, strong calling, but I just couldn't get it. When I started to apply imaginal ideas to my samādhi practice, it started to work.
Rob: Great!
Yogi: And it started to work really beautifully. And today, the more I bring a sense of divinity in different stages of samādhi, or some kind of sacredness in pīti, or the breath, or the energy body or something, the better it works. But this confuses me, because when I first started out, I thought that samādhi is lessening fabrication. Here I am getting more and more fabrication going on, and the more beautiful samādhi I get. So what's going on here? [laughter]
Rob: Let's make a couple of discriminations -- one is the sense of sacredness, and one is how much image is going on. So they overlap. In other words, when there's a lot of image going on, part of the characteristic of the imaginal is a sense of sacredness, okay? But you can have sacredness without image. You understand? So, I would say, it's an interesting thing with just the pure jhānas, without the imaginal. I would say, for myself, definitely, sacredness starts to come in at a certain point. As you get deeper into the jhānas, it's characteristic of that. They can be more or less infused with sacredness, kind of dependent on partly how much you tinge it with image or some kind of conception. So, for example, here's this bliss, and I regard it in that moment as some grace from the divine, okay? Now, the Buddha doesn't talk that way, but the same experience will just be infused more with that characteristic. So you can peel off -- again, this fork business -- you can peel off, and kind of emphasize different aspects.
So it might be interesting, if you want to, to start with image, as you're doing, start with whatever kind of mystical ideas of sacredness, kind of semi-imaginal mystical ideas open up the samādhi, and then -- if you want to; it's not that you have to do this -- but if you want to, just for the sake of your exploration, you could stay with that mix. Again, it can be the whole constellation of mystical/imaginal idea, and sacredness, and whatever the samādhi quality is of bliss or whatever, all mixed together relatively evenly. Or I can start to kind of lean a bit more one way or another.
Within that mix that you're describing, you could lean just into, if you like, the pure sensation of -- let's say it's pīti -- just the pleasantness, and kind of let the more mystical idea or the image be very secondary, or even fade out. What you pay attention to will filter out of the experience and grow. So again, I don't think it matters too much about order. Samādhi, I would say, is dependent on happiness and inspiration. You can nail your attention to your nostril tips [laughter], and you don't blink for a microsecond, and it's lacking in juice and inspiration, and you're not going to get into any jhāna or anything at all. Jhāna is dependent on a certain kind of happiness and inspiration. Now, if it takes something imaginal to open that up for you, great. So be it. But once that's there, then you can kind of play with the relative weighting through the attention. Does this make sense? Is that answering your question?
Yogi: Yes. There are more questions and more questions, but this helps a lot.
Rob: Okay. Should we leave it there?
Yogi: Yes.
Rob: Okay, thanks, Mikael.
Q4: collective energy body sense and images, paranormal vs imaginal
Yogi: I wonder about individual and collective energy body. Catherine yesterday sort of sets the intention with the mantra, and all of us go into the same space, a collective energy body. Could you see it like that?
Rob: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for mentioning that. No question about it. So energy body experience can be individual or collective, and so can image. You can enter into a collective image with another person or a group of people. A really good point. This is what starts to happen when you start practising in these ways. So now we're talking about energy body, but also with image. You start to have a certain range, and then you get into practice, and then it's like, "Oh, hold on, this is a whole other thing now." Collective energy body sense -- could be in a dyad, a triad, could be a whole group of people, you know. And there's also the possibility of the collective imaginal sense. There's the possibility of sometimes when a group shares a ritual, you know, you're often -- it probably won't be everyone, but there's a collective entering into, if you like, or sharing of a certain imaginal sense. There are all kinds of possibilities of what supports it, but to me, if one feels ready to open up to these elements of practice ... Before I say that, there's something to repeat again: the nature of these kind of practices is they start expanding in all kinds of ways. They start growing. "I never even thought of that as a possibility!" This is what Catherine will talk about. Eros-psyche-logos starts expanding and breaking into new territory.
And if it gets interesting to you, it's like, what supports that? We haven't talked much about live dyad imaginal practice in twos, but if you and I were practising in a certain way, what allows us to feel a shared sense of energy body, and what gets in the way of that? All kinds of things can get in the way -- kind of psychological hang-ups, and clinging, and just not paying attention. We could list all kinds of conditions that allow that coming together or that opening out of the experience of a collective energy body, and all kinds of conditions that kind of close it or make it unavailable. And the same with the shared imaginal sense. Does this make sense? So yeah, thank you for saying that, and it's something that Catherine and I work with, but we haven't really put it out there yet. But absolutely. And if you sense that, then that just becomes part of your experience, and if it feels comfortable, go for it.
Yogi: One more question. You said today that you would like to download the information to us but that's quite difficult. But if you have this collective sort of ... would information be able to go to ...[laughter]
Rob: Sometimes, I feel, yes. And there's a level where perhaps that can feel extremely mysterious or kind of like uncanny, you know? Catherine and I were talking about this a while ago. It's almost like when you have electrons in an atom, and they kind of orbit the atom, and they jump. It's called a quantum jump. Do you guys know this? It's like the electrons jump from one state to another. Yeah? So sometimes what can happen is the field jumps together. One electron jumps, you jump, and I just find myself jumping with you, or vice versa. And you kind of think, "Who started that?" [laughter] There's a way, when there's a lot of openness between people, when there's a lot of sensitivity, attention -- again, we could list these. When there is this kind of sensitivity to these kind of things, that kind of thing can happen.
But then, we could make this all, "Wow!" Two things about that. One is, you know, just think about sharing a joke, or us cracking up about something together. What is going on there? There's something of the same kind of thing happening. One understands something [snaps fingers]. How are we going to put that into words, and what happens in the field? Do you understand? There's something, I think, magical and mysterious about that. A similar kind of thing is happening. This is an everyday thing, hopefully. So, you know, this is not something so strange.
Second thing to say, for me, and it relates a bit to what I was saying about realism and all that. I don't know how to say this. I'm really not sure how to say it. But I think the distinction or the mapping out of, say, what we're calling imaginal, and, say, ESP, or remembering past lives, or seeing ghosts and all that, there are distinctions there, and all this kind of overlaps a little bit. I think, for me, it feels, again, that -- and I'm not at all suggesting that you're doing this, but -- if we get a little bit into this kind of 'interested in the paranormal' sort of thing, it might be fascinating and interesting and all that. It won't be the same as opening up the soulmaking. Again, this goes back to the intention thing. There's a way we grasp at this paranormal as something 'real.' It's unusual, and it's kind of interesting, but it's 'real.' The imaginal is more leaning towards the neither real nor not real. That opens up experience in a very different way, with different kinds of sacredness and blessing. There's a subtle distinction. And yet there are relationships, and there are overlaps, yeah. So not at all to say that that was in your question, but just as a general point. Did that make sense? Good. Yeah. Thank you.
Q5: navigating with sense of meaningfulness, soulmaking, unfathomability
Yogi: [inaudible] With the imaginal practice, it seems like it's almost a different energy body than the body I'm used to working with, the release of grasping and all that. Practising for a couple of years with the imaginal stuff, it seems like that's a different skill of becoming sensitive to eros, and becoming sensitive to meaningfulness and the sacred. [inaudible] Less physical somehow. With the energy body I'm used to working with, it feels like there's more of a physical space, but with the sense of meaningfulness and the soul aspect of it, it feels less bodily somehow and much, much more subtle as well. [inaudible]
Rob: Thank you. So Sampo has done a lot of practice with emptiness practices, where the energy body is involved, but it's really involved in two principal ways: one is just registering, "Am I on the right track?," in terms of, as I said this morning, is there letting go here, or is there contraction, and if there's contraction, how can I let go? That's one of the ways. It's a navigating mechanism in the emptiness practices. And the second way is, again, this fork thing, so you can be doing an emptiness practice and then go into some samādhi with the energy body. But all that, as you point out, actually, even if we include all the different kind of tones of samādhi that can be there, it's still a much smaller range than what I was talking about, and what you're alluding to -- the range of what's involved in soulmaking perceptions, and what becomes available in the energy body. Yeah?
So yes, a lot can be more subtle. I don't know about the 'not bodily.' Maybe it's the fact that a lot of the qualities you're talking about -- meaningfulness, and a sense of soulmaking -- are, you could say, mental qualities reflected in the body, you could say, or they're not so tangible like that, maybe, if I understood you right. But basically, yeah. So again, "Okay, I was comfortable with this range of practice. Now it's opened even more, and there are all kinds of colours, and shades, and directions, and possibilities," and getting slowly used to that, and comfortable with that. Does that ...? I'm kind of agreeing with you. Is there a question?
Yogi: [inaudible] Maybe what's hard is that it's a new sort of sensitivity that's required.
Rob: In a way, this relates to some of the other questions where we started. You don't have to push too hard on what's kind of not working, or not as good as I've imagined it should be. So if there's an image, if there's a sense of soulmaking and meaningfulness and all that, you're registering that somehow. The fact that it's not quite as vivid in the energy body as you would [like], that doesn't matter. Just get into it and enjoy it. You recognize that sense of soulmaking, and tune into what feels soulmaking, and just register. Then from that, the experience kind of enriches and expands and gets more. We become more sensitive. But you don't have to push too hard on what feels like "Hmm, that could be better."
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: There might be other qualities ... I guess what I'm saying is you don't have to lean on just the energy body aspect to navigate. There are qualities like mystery. That would be unfathomableness. Let's take just sexual desire when it gets contracted and small-minded -- it's kind of missing that unfathomableness and unfathomability of the object, and of the subject, and of the eros itself. It's kind of missing the mystery. It misses dimensions of beauty, all this. So some of that you can pick up on anyway as an indicator. It doesn't have to always be immediately, "I want it now reflected in the energy body." So trust. It's already there for you. You trust these other indicators. And the other elements of the experience will begin to fill out and come alive slowly. Yeah? Okay? Very good.
Let's have just a bit of quiet before we end.
