Sacred geometry

On Practising with Images (Q & A)

This retreat was jointly taught by Rob Burbea and Catherine McGee. Here is the full retreat on Dharma Seed
PLEASE NOTE: The talks, instructions, and guided meditations in this set are from a retreat, led by Catherine McGee and Rob Burbea, for practitioners already familiar with Soulmaking Dharma. The teachers strongly recommend that you also have an understanding of and working familiarity with practices of emptiness, samatha, mettā, the emotional/energy body, and the imaginal, as well as basic mindfulness practice, before listening. Without this background in practice it is possible that the material and teachings from this retreat will be difficult to understand and confusing for some.
0:00:00
1:10:33
Date26th March 2019
Retreat/SeriesRoots into the Ground of Soul

Transcription

There are not that many questions, so let's see how it goes. But we could also open it up to live questions and comments if that feels good. So I haven't even had a chance to really look at them or put them in a particular order. Let's just see.

Q1: images of self, seeing self as angel

Okay. First one. "A few weeks ago, an image came to me in which the other was me -- not in a sense that the image was me as witnessed by me, interacting with another, but me interacting with another version of myself. In the image I was standing on a landscape, vast and seemingly empty. I felt the soft caress of hands at my back, beckoning me to turn. When I turned around, I saw myself standing in front of me. There was still a self-sense and a sense of other, but also a jolt of recognition that this was me. The self I was beholding flickered in and out of being. Each time, she appeared slightly different, as though seen through a different lens, or the way different people at different times might perceive me in daily life. The energy body felt very rooted during this image, yet at the same time a shock of surprise ran through me like a bolt of electricity, followed by joy washing over me, and a slight indecision as to how to proceed next. I could feel a narrowing in me, a leaning toward the imaginal me, wanting to hold on to her. What felt most soulful to me right then was to bow to the imaginal self and gently turn around. As I did so, I could feel her arms sliding around my back and waist, and holding me in embrace. Tears came at this point, as well as an intense sense of well-being and homecoming. This is the first time I have interacted with an imaginal version of myself, and the surprise slightly interfered with my ability to practise with this image skilfully. Could you say something about this kind of image and pointers for practising with it?"

Beautiful. So I think, in a way -- not to set up expectations, but I would expect at some point or other this kind of thing to happen. Maybe say it better in another way: in some way or another, working with images -- and I think I said this at some point -- the self-sense gets caught up in, invited into, roped up in, included in the soulmaking process. It gets included in what becomes imaginal. And so sometimes it can happen in this sort of more indirect way, where we're working with an object. I gave the example of looking at, let's say this candle flame became imaginal for me, and as I'm enjoying that and lingering with it and feeling the resonances, if I don't narrow my attention too much to the object, at some point I start to see, "Oh, hold on. The image here includes myself." The self pole, the subjective pole, has become image, as well as the candle. And then I can explore. I could lean my attention to exploring the imaginal self that is arising in relation to the candle. So that would be one way, very common.

Another possibility is that the image somehow, even if it doesn't feel like, at the time that I'm working meditatively with it, it doesn't feel so much, I'm not noticing so much of the self becoming imaginal, an imaginal self in relationship to it, implicit in that element of infinite mirroring and echoing and duty and these kind of elements, there's already implication for self-sense, and the actual sense, view, and images we have of ourselves in our lives. So it's not necessarily right then; it's more subtle, and it seeps out into the life, into the being and into the sense of self we have in life.

And then other times, something happens much more like what's in this report, something much more direct, where we really feel or witness the self as image. This can happen in all kinds of ways, but sometimes it is quite startling, etc. In a way, let's say in time with imaginal and soulmaking practice, I would expect the sense of self as imaginal. Going back to the opening and that ritual: it may not have landed then, but I was saying, "You are image. What is it to know yourself as image? What is it to know yourself as angel?" This is what I'm talking about. Something happens, and the self-view, self-ideation, self-sense, self-image starts getting infected, infiltrated, caught up in, involved in the soulmaking.

So what happens when we become imaginal is that very self-sense starts to become imaginal with all the nodes. So we start to have eros for ourselves. We start to love ourselves in a whole different way. We start to recognize our own dimensionality and our own divinity. And of course, culturally, this doesn't fit at all. In the wider culture, you know, to say that I sense my own divinity -- hmm. [laughter] I mean, divinity on its own is a problem, and then to say self ... [laughs] We get such limited and confused and confusing indoctrination about the self in our culture, in our wider culture. On one hand, it's a very egoistic culture, of course, that's very individualistic and caters to and supports a very superficial kind of thinking about the self, a kind of ego-celebration. And on the other, we kind of get shamed for that kind of thing. I didn't say that very well. Do you understand what I mean? You're not supposed to be egoic, and yet it's an extremely egoic culture. You just get this mixed message. Same around sexuality -- it's just confused and confusing.

But at some point, through imaginal work, we begin to sense ourselves as image, and we sense our own blessedness. We have a reverence for ourself. We sense this dimensionality. We sense I am more than what I'm told I am, and that 'more' is not just more widthwise, in terms of, "I'm more because I could, if I wanted to, decide to be an airplane pilot or a brain surgeon or whatever. I'm more." No. I'm more not only horizontally, I'm more vertically, so to speak. And we start to really get a palpable and a moving, a deeply touching sense of our own divinity, that we are the face of, let's say, at least one angel. We are the representation, the emanation of angel in this life, and may be tasked with things, etc. All of this, neither real nor not real, this imaginal Middle Way.

And so, given the usual history we have, both personally, psychologically, and culturally in terms of how we view the self, this is oftentimes -- and I was talking with someone else recently; this was opening up to a whole other level -- it's utterly startling. Done a lot of work, this other person, on self, and been in the Dharma for a while where it's no-self, no-self, no-self, self isn't important. And then did a Diamond Heart approach with more emphasis on self and exploring the self and valuing the self and finding out who you are, etc. And then a whole other level with the imaginal and the divinity of the self, and the sense even of angels looking at the self, recognizing, being seen as angel, seen by angel.

If it's too reified? Oh, boy. [laughs] Then the people around you are in for a rough time [laughter], and probably you, at some point, in for a rough time. But if we can keep somewhere, somewhere in that quite wide range, wide boulevard of the imaginal Middle Way, then there's so much fertility, so much joy, so much healing here, in terms of the sense of self and the sense of existence, sense of what I'm doing here. The sense, also, of life and death. So when I say I'm already dead, it's because I can sense myself as image, and I sense that angelic mirroring or function or emanation or whatever it is, and that makes a difference to everything.

So in some way or another, this is exactly the kind of thing, this journey into the self becoming recognized as image, with all the reverence and the humility and the beauty and the eros. How rare is it in our culture to really know how beautiful you are? That's why I say it to you. We don't really get it. Our concept of beauty is also just so thin. When it goes to a whole other level, levels -- there's no end to it -- this is the kind of thing that can open up, and so many riches outpouring from that.

So if we know that, if we know to expect that, it might be a little less surprising and startling, and so that helps. In some spiritual traditions -- for example, at least the way Henry Corbin interprets some spiritual traditions, Ibn 'Arabi and people like that, in the Sufi and Islamic mystical traditions -- they talk about 'the angel out ahead.' And that angel out ahead is me. So I have, in that metaphysic, I have a kind of angelic counterpart. You have an angelic counterpart. We each have an angelic counterpart. And that angelic counterpart is the face of God for us. But it's us. We are the face of God. So we expect to encounter that if we're practising well and if we're lucky, etc.

There are all kinds of variations of this. Not to, "Ah," then go to the sitting, "Right, okay. Let's make this happen." It'll just happen in its own time. A lot about the soulmaking work is a kind of finding out how it's being prevented, how its natural dynamic, the natural sort of expansion and fertilization and fermentation of the soulmaking process is being prevented by certain ideas, or certain fixations, or certain fixed views, or certain images, culturally, or this or that, or in terms of our meditative capacity. So a lot of the work is actually just recognizing, "Oh, that's a taboo. That's been a taboo in my mind," whatever it is, and recognizing that and maybe softening it. Or recognizing that I have a certain view that's getting in the way, or a certain philosophical view about reality -- all kinds of things. So it may be less about making this happen, this kind of thing, and more about just watching where something might suggest itself and I might, "Oh, I can't possibly do that," or some kind of ideation like Catherine put the question out, "Tell me an idea you have about sacredness, for instance, that prevents the opening to more sacredness."

But in terms of pointers for practising with it, just the same, really, I suppose -- bringing the energy body there, bringing the heart, sometimes asking, "Does it want anything?", in a subtle way; everything that we've talked about with that. I'm not sure that there's anything more specific to add. It might have quite an impact, this kind of thing. You have to kind of pace. All imaginal work, careful of the pacing. It may be that you want to linger longer with it because it's so rich or so touching, so you want to take your time. It may be that you want to deliberately go back to this kind of image. If something like this happens as a one-off, and it might be like, "Wow! That was ... either I couldn't quite get a handle on it, or it was amazing," but it may not be that a one-off experience is enough to really start changing the sense of self as it walks down Newton Abbot high street or interacts in a difficult situation or whatever it is. It may be that dipping in and out, and being with -- let's say I work with an image like that, and then I want, maybe, to linger also in the post-meditative state. I walk into the garden. How does the world look when I've just encountered that kind of divinity, self as divinity? What's my sense of my existence, but also existence? You get a feel for how it spreads out and infects and involves everything else.

That's one of the ways these images start to really seep down into the psyche and have [audio cuts out] life, lives. It's not necessarily in the intensity of some moments of meditation, beautiful as that can be. It might be more in these moments -- I had it before in the meditation; now I'm just sitting, waiting for my tea to brew or whatever it is, and maybe I can just bring the memory of it back, and again, the energy body, and linger, and just notice, "Well, how do I feel? How do things look with the tincture, with the almost homeopathic drops of that image coming in again and again?" The self-sense, of course, is one of the most entrenched things; it's why the Buddha and so many Buddhists give so much attention to the problem of self. The more we shift it in imaginal practice, this way, that way, shift it, sit with it, see what the effects of that view are, come back to another view of self, etc., the more we do that, the more malleable and open the whole sense of self becomes.

And something like this, where we're really, in a very humble way and touched way, recognizing deeply the holiness and beauty and divinity and angelic nature and function of our own selves, that's quite a shift, as I said, from the usual view, and so repeating it again and again. It's not something you need to grasp at or try and hang on to 24/7. No. It can come and go. And it starts to have its effect. Does this ...? Yeah? Is there any more with that? Is that okay? Very beautiful, and exactly the kind of thing I would expect, and incredibly important.

Q2: retaining the sense of the self in images

"Something is unclear to me about the possibility of the self becoming imaginal in relation to an imaginal other and how it fits with the twenty-eight nodes. For example, this morning I encountered an imaginal other person, but I was a bird of prey. My energy body was the bird's body as well as my experience of the other, etc. Should I have also retained a sense of my human self relating to both the bird and the imaginal person? It feels like that would have been a rather different image."

I think I understand. So, you know, with a lot of these things, I don't think there's a right or wrong. One of the general things I would want to say (and I've sort of said it at other times, other talks or whatever, maybe other retreats): if I think back to when I first started playing with all this stuff and exploring it and trying to make sense of it all, the kind of images I had were quite different from the kind of images I have now. They were kind of long sagas with casts of thousands, and very complicated plots and stuff like that, and all kinds of things going on. Now I feel like it's much more -- what's the word? -- condensed. What appears is what's important, and the extraneous stuff has fallen away, it's less complicated. But I wouldn't necessarily at all go back to that self, whenever it was, four or five years ago, six years, whatever, and say, "You know, that's wrong," or something. And I really had to work on the trust. So often, every time there was an image, "Am I doing this right? This can't be right. Surely not that kind of image," or "Maybe this is too this or too that."

Some of you were in the explanation about the elements. Yes, we talk about, "Okay, what do we mean when we say 'fully imaginal,' and can we kind of support it there?", but you also want to trust what comes up. So less about right or wrong, and sometimes you just have to go with what is, and trust that as you attune to what's appearing, and work with it as best you can, and incorporate the teachings, the whole practice will evolve. That's a general point; it's not necessarily pertaining just to this note. But there's something about just diving in and trusting, and not trusting the mind that says, "Nah, this probably isn't right. I'll wait for something better." I actually expect that thought to come up most times. I expect, "Oh, there it is. Okay, thank you." [laughs] And I just get on with it. Okay? So encouragement to trust. And even if we're talking and saying, "Actually, to be fully imaginal, it's more like this, and not so much like this," don't worry so much. Just dive in, get wet, get your feet dirty, get your hands dirty, play with it, be touched. Sometimes you'll feel like, oh, you did a session, it was like, "Well. Pfff. I don't know. Was that worth it or not?" It's fine. You're exercising a lot of qualities just by engaging, and working, and trying to tune, and paying attention. So trust, trust your process.

In this question, "Should I have also retained a sense of the human self," because she had become this bird, this bird of prey, as well as some other imaginal figure, "relating to both the bird and the imaginal person?" They're both options. In other words, you could let yourself be completely that bird of prey in relation to the imaginal other. Actually, you won't ever be completely the bird of prey. There will always be some kind of sense of, "I know that I'm me, as a meditator, sitting here witnessing." I'm not like, "Oh, goodness." [laughter] Like in Kafka's Metamorphosis or something. It's not that it's like, "What am I going to do now? And will they serve me worms and bird food at Gaia House?" [laughter] Don't worry about that. There's always going to be some degree of the meditator/witness watching.

So you have the option of just going fully into -- the self becomes that bird, and then you can trust that in the infinite echoing of things, it will spill over into one's life, in time, in its implications. It will have multiple meaningfulness and multiple meanings in relation to one's life and all that. So that's one option. Another option is, yeah, to take this seat more consciously and watch the two of them, so it's a double image and they're interacting. It's not right or wrong; they're just both options. Yeah?

Q3: art inspiring action, beauty in dark images/emotions

"In the artistic story of the seven stories, beauty as a way to draw souls to new vistas is mentioned. I presume this beauty could include grief, fervour, depiction of harsh realities, such as in war, etc. Thinking of art works of the past. As a sister of justice and truth, could art also inspire souls to action? Many thanks to you both."

So can art also inspire souls to action -- absolutely. Yeah, definitely. I think there's more than one question there, but let's just linger for a second. Yeah, there is. It's funny -- I mean, again, I'll give my opinions as an artist, but they're just my opinions; it's me with the mic on right now. I feel that's one of art's functions, absolutely. But it doesn't need always to be so obvious or deliberate. I listen to a lot of music that has no lyrics to it, no nothing. There's no programme. There's just abstract music. Or abstract art -- you think about a Rothko or, I don't know, de Kooning or whatever, it's just abstract art. To me, if the art is deep and if my engagement with it is deep and it's touching me deeply, it makes me want to live differently. It does something to my sense of values. It does something to my sense of self and what I want to manifest in the world and what's important. It heightens my sensitivity. It opens my heart and my care. There's nothing in a Rothko -- what have you got, three slabs of colour? How is it that that does something to my sense of caring for humanity? What's going on there? To me, it's part of the mystery of art.

And then of course you get art that's much more programmatic or deliberately depicting something that's clearly trying to inspire action or political -- and that's great too. But yeah, art and imaginal, they're almost synonymous for me. They're the same thing. You're going to get the soul being touched at levels that, as Rilke said, you need to change your life. He saw the statue, this depiction of the statue, and suddenly, at the end of the poem, "You need to change your life." To me, certainly music -- it's all the same, it has that degree of impact. So absolutely, either in an obvious way or a less obvious way.

And the question before in this note, "Beauty could include grief, fervour, depiction of harsh realities, such as in war, etc.," absolutely. Again, all these elements of the imaginal that we talk about, they're open-ended. The examples I gave for some of you, for those who weren't in the lounge earlier, let's take two or three of the elements of the imaginal, the nodes: love, eros, and beauty. Very easily we can have, "Oh, love is like this. This is what love looks like. It manifests in this form or in this form." But you can get a very stern kind of love, or a harsh kind of love, or a fierce kind of love, etc. Those are faces of love that sometimes we forget. What happens with the imaginal is if we can hang out and, again, not just believe what the mind is saying immediately -- "Oh, this can't be right," or "It's threatening," or "This image, it seems to want to stab me or devour me or chop off my head or eat my intestines" or whatever it is. "That can't be love." Check it out. You don't have to do anything, but if you linger a little bit, you'll start to notice, "Oh, that's weird -- this expression of my intestines being eaten, it's a certain form of love that I hadn't encountered before." You don't often hear it in pop songs and things like that. [laughter] But actually you can feel it. A lot of this has to do with sensitivity. Your eyes get used to the dark. It's like, "Hold on, wait a minute. There is a kind of love here." And then the sense of what love means and can look like, and the forms and expressions love can take grows. Same with eros, same with beauty, same with all of them, in fact.

So yes, beauty can be terrible, dark, violent, etc., apocalyptic, grief-filled, all of that. Actually, I would say grief, when we're relating to it in a good way, in a way that's helpful, has a kind of beauty in it. There's something about the way the heart is holding and feeling that grief that allows grief to be beautiful. Actually, it's even possible with anger and things like that. But definitely, yes. Is that okay? Is that enough about that one?

Q4: images dissolving; figures moving from imaginal to non-imaginal and back in one sitting

"Can you say more about boundary? My image sometimes has a clear boundary, and sometimes dissolves or partly melts. When it's distinct, is that the imagination before it becomes imaginal? Can a figure be sometimes imagination, then evolving into imaginal and back in one sitting?"

So in terms of this thing at the end, can a figure be sometimes imagination -- in other words, non-imaginal image -- then evolving into imaginal and back in one sitting, absolutely. Again, an image or an object in the world is not inherently one thing or another. What makes it imaginal is the way of relating to it, the way of looking at it, the way of being with it. Yeah? So in one sitting, certainly, something could start off as complete fixation, for example. Here's this person, and I'm really attracted to them and whatever, and I want them, and this or that, or whatever. And it's possible, if I work well, that that craving and reification wrapped up there actually gets softened and transmuted into eros and the sort of theatre-like quality, imaginal Middle Way. And then the thing can become imaginal. Or, for example, I'm with something and it's already imaginal, and then I lose my energy body, or I get a bit reified about it and it becomes a real thing. Then I can just sense some of the depth and dimensionality and beauty and mystery has gone out of it.

It will happen. It will absolutely happen. Eros will go to craving many times, and there are degrees, for example. So that will happen many times. Something that's imaginal becomes flat, something that's flat is allowed to become imaginal again. No problem. The task of practice is to just recognize that. Expect it, recognize it, "Ah, what does it need now? What does it need?" But you start to get quite sensitive to when images are flat images and when they're more fully imaginal in our sense of the word. So absolutely. And it's just a matter of, "Okay, what needs tweaking? What needs supporting? What needs help there?" Yeah?

In terms of the dissolving and melting, how was it dissolving and melting, Rowan? Was it that you were dissolving and melting into it, or it was just dissolving by itself, or was it going to that sort of essence of Aslan thing that you talked about?

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: I can repeat it, it's okay. So Rowan's saying that there was an image, an imaginal figure, and it just dissolved into sort of water droplets, and then she added that was beautiful. And that just happened by itself. And now, here's a question: was the beauty a soulful beauty, or was it just kind of, "Oh, that's pretty"? It was soulful beautiful? Okay. So again, I don't think there's a right or wrong here. What you may want to be interested in is, if that sort of thing happens all the time, okay -- no, it's not? But I'll say it to everyone, yeah. If that sort of thing happens all the time, then you might be thinking, "Okay, well, let's sometimes see if I can keep it back as a figure." But if it happens sometimes, you can just go with it, and then the image has changed but the soulmaking is still there and the beauty is still there, and that's really fine.

So again, your sense of the soulfulness at any time can lead you. If it's soulful, if it feels soulful, if the energy body is involved, if it's touching the being and the soul, then just go with it. Can I share about the Aslan thing? Yeah? So on another retreat, Rowan was sharing that she had an image of Aslan, who is the lion king from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Is that correct? And sometimes in the meditation what happened was that figure would kind of dissolve into a vast space, but that vast space was imbued by the character, the essence of Aslan. So I think for now I would like to keep that as a sort of more rare option, but definitely I'm mentioning it as a possibility. It's not a figure, because the obvious form has gone, but it's still specific, and it's still got the character of Aslan. So there's still personhood and particularity, even though it's not in the figure itself. If those things are there, you're still in the realm of the imaginal. It's great. It's just the form has changed.

So the job with the water droplets might be the same: "Oh, is this now the same essence? Am I touched by it? Or is it a different one?" Maybe it's a different one, and that's fine too. Different feel, yeah. So then the job would be, "Okay, can I tune to that and get the sense of the soul of that?" And the practice would be the same. Yeah? But those water droplets, they might then become alive in a way that water droplets are not usually alive for us, etc. Does that answer? Yeah?

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: Yeah, very good. So the question is, is it worth staying with a flat image and waiting for it to become imaginal, or hoping, or working for it to become imaginal, or should you just wait for something that's obviously more imaginal? Experiment, you know? I don't think anything other than experimenting. You need to kind of taste these things for yourself, and taste what's possible, and discover for yourself what's possible. I guess there's a lot of stuff that moves through the mind that's obviously just flotsam and jetsam of the mind, but some of that -- and as a technique, sometimes, maybe as a last-resort technique, but sometimes what passes through as a daydream, weirdly -- you might be trying to be with your breath, and then this daydream comes, and it feels like, "Oh, that's just a waste of time," and then you start lingering with it and it actually can become imaginal. So it's hard to tell in advance sometimes, but the more you do this, the more you'll get a feel of the potential of something. Is that okay? Yes? Good.

Q5: image losing soulfulness as it becomes more detailed

"Working with an image. I want to know more about it. This desire creates/discovers more details, texture, qualities of its particular face and manifestation. This particularity and its intricacy is meaningful, but sometimes ends up defining the image more and more, closing dimensionality and unfathomability. Still, the particular appearance feels precious. Could you say something about this balance, how to hold both?"

Hmm. I guess I wouldn't be, from the beginning, convinced that it's necessarily the intricacy and the particularity per se that needs to somehow close the image or define it. Does whoever wrote this want to say a bit more, or ...? You don't have to. Okay. Yeah, I guess I would be wondering more about how the mind is then focusing on those particulars and intricacies. So again, you know, let's just imagine I had a visual image, and maybe it's a gate that opens, and I'm somehow moved by this gate. I don't even understand. There's something beautiful about this threshold and these gates. And then, as I'm with the image, maybe the gates have those kind of filigree designs in them -- what are they called? Like you get in some mosques and stuff like that. It's like, "Wow! That's really beautiful." The question, really, is whether the filigree itself feels soulmaking, or feels like a relevant, a soulfully relevant aspect of the image. So really what I want to navigate within an image -- images start getting complex, and what I want to navigate towards is what feels soulful and soulmaking. Everything else is kind of secondary.

So sometimes, especially if you're not used to working with the imagination per se a lot, sometimes the imagination is really not very vivid, and sometimes it's extraordinarily vivid. Sometimes you could close your eyes and see every little hair on someone's chin, for example. Now, it might be that seeing those hairs is soulmaking for whatever reason, but it might just be, "Yeah, okay. It's visually vivid, but so what?" So you have to kind of gauge what feels soulmaking at any time, and that's what you want to gravitate towards and linger with and resonate with. But it might also be that the way that I start to pay attention to some element in an image, or some particularity of an image, is forgetting some of the elements of the imaginal, some of the nodes, or it's a bit too -- I'm startled by the visual detail and I just kind of go like that, and then it becomes a kind of visualization exercise or a concentration exercise. Or it may be that in my relationship with it, it's a bit too craving. I now want something: "Yes, now we're getting somewhere!" So there's something more in the subject pole rather than the object pole that's causing it to become flat a bit. Yeah? Is that okay?

Q6: iconic versus narrative image; narrative images versus images with a narrative backstory

"I often encounter images of a specific moment which has a quality of timelessness but also encapsulates temporal circumstances. For example, two men drinking saké on a porch at night" -- very nice [laughs] -- "and I know that when they were young, they had some strong karmic connection, that they haven't seen each other for many years, and that something decisive is about to happen between them. Would you say such images have less soulmaking potential? How to work skilfully with the narrative element, which opens as I draw nearer such an image? Should such a situation be somehow personified so I can feel its love for me, for instance?"

This is also important. I think some years ago I [audio cuts out] ... helped me with the words, wanting to point this. What's the difference between an imaginal image and a usual [non-imaginal image]? And there's this thing about timelessness. And so I made the words an 'iconic' image, versus a 'narrative' image. A narrative image is, you know, "I'm going to do this, or this person does this, and then they do that, and then I'm going to do this," and there's a narrative. Usually it goes towards either some great catastrophe or some great triumph, happily ever after, etc. So wanting to kind of draw that distinction to point out, actually, we're less interested in that narrative way that the mind uses its imagination -- which can very often be kind of like papañca, you know, like this just hoping, etc. -- and more interested in this kind of eternality, that an image has this timeless quality to it or it's always happening.

However, what you often get is images with -- what I call it is a narrative backstory. So this sounds like what's here. It's like, there's a scene -- two guys on a porch, slowly getting drunk together. Maybe I'm changing that. [laughs] Drinking saké together. But there's a kind of implicit backstory. That's fine. In a way, it's -- let's not mix things, but it's sort of part of the concertina. Let's not use that word, because it will confuse things. But that kind of narrative backdrop, as I understand something about what's already taken place, or how it fits in something, is not a problem.

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So what Karen's saying is -- that's kind of what I meant, yeah, I think, if we're understanding each other. What's specific about this image is it happens at this point, after many years they haven't seen each other, with the history, and before something else is going to happen that's quite charged. The image is implicitly understood in a narrative context.

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: Yes, exactly. So the image is pregnant with this background narrative. It's contained in it. But it still has this quality of timelessness to it. So no problem. That will happen quite a lot. No problem at all. And "Should such a situation be somehow personified so I can feel its love for me, for instance?" I wouldn't rush for something like that. Something's happening there. If it feels there's some kind of soulful thing here, linger with it. You don't have to rush to, "Okay, but where's node number three with the love and all that?"

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: Yeah. But you write fiction, right? [laughter] So this is the kind of thing that I was alluding to. There's nothing wrong with that, absolutely, and it may be that your great masterpiece novel comes out of something like this. No, seriously, it's wonderful. But when we're deliberately practising imaginally, then we have a slightly different intention, and we want to be guided, we want to be navigated by the compass of what feels soulmaking. It feels like, "Oh, if I get too much more into the narrative, that's what I'm focusing on or interested in, then I feel it go flat a little bit. So okay, what do I need to do?" And sometimes it's just, "Okay, just that moment. Just that." And what aspects of that moment, which is already quite a complex moment, what aspect of that? I need to feel the resonances, and so much is about attuning. Attune to the resonances and then just linger with those particular resonances. So it's almost like just saying, "Put the brake on for now, and just hover here like a helicopter or a hummingbird or something." Yeah, like a hummingbird drinking. It's just hovering right there. And there are other flowers, but right here, this is where the nectar is, this is where the soulmaking nectar is, and I hover with that. Yeah?

Another time, you can have a very different intention, which is, "Now is my writing time, or I'm about to go to my writing desk or whatever, and let's just play and see and get the sense of what the story is." Yeah? And sometimes it's a bit like when we were talking about the samādhi and that bird, that eagle. The shift is so subtle that kind of leans it one way, changes your direction one way or another, and changes actually the whole tenor and the whole feel of what then unfolds. It's sometimes really subtle. So we have to get quite subtle at this really fine attunement to where the nectar is in any moment. Okay?

Q7: working with feelings of unworthiness in relationship with an erotic beloved other

"I have noticed that when working with an erotic beloved other, sometimes the image of self gets caught up in the soulmaking dynamic, and other times it shrinks and solidifies and feels unworthy. In these moments, I have made the felt sense of unworthiness primary, giving it the most attention with my energy body and offering more mettā. This is soothing, but I find it takes me out of relationship with the imaginal other. Suggestions for other ways of working with this, ways of igniting certain nodes that keep the twoness and soulmaking with that specific beloved other alive? PS: upon writing this, I am thinking it would be interesting to focus on the loving and being loved and humility nodes. Can I sense the image's love for me? I will try."

Yes, very good. You answered it. So again, in our culture, in some way or another, most of us have been or still are pretty wounded in terms of the sense of self. Or if we're not wounded, we're limited by the cultural view of the sense of self. What can often happen is some kind of, yeah, shame or unworthiness is a common feeling in life for many people or in relationship, and in practice as well, and in relation to an imaginal other. Focusing on the node, the element of loving and being loved would be really, really helpful. In particular, you know, sometimes I would suggest to some people with this kind of question, well, what does the image do in response to your feeling of unworthiness? How does the image relate to that unworthiness? So actually this is fine -- stop, do some mettā, bathe in warmth, let go of the image, etc. But sometimes an image, again, loves us in specific ways that we don't yet know how to love ourselves in those ways, or sees us with eyes that we don't yet know how to see ourselves with.

So it might be I feel unworthy, I feel shame, actually I feel like I can't bear being looked at by this image. The image is gazing at me and it's just too much. I can actually bring my sense of unworthiness deliberately to the image, or my sense of "I actually can't bear your gaze. I feel I crumble in shame, or I want to hide, or I want to bury my head," or whatever it is. I might say to the image, you might say to the image, "Well, you know, you look at me like that, and I have a feeling it's good for me, but I just can't handle it, or I just want to run away and hide," or whatever it is, and see what its advice is. Yeah? So the image embodies soul-wisdom and soul-gaze and soul-love in ways that are beyond what we consciously know. That would be another option, doing that, something like that.

Q8: interacting with actual people who have become image for us

"Any suggestions or things to be aware of when I've done imaginal work with someone in my life, upon engaging with the real person? So far I've only encountered very healing effects on relationships, or an intuitive knowing of the difference between the imaginal figure and the real, but it can still make me nervous."

Yeah. I don't know if 'nervous' is -- I wouldn't encourage [nervousness], but care with this. We haven't actually put out teachings overtly yet about ... I'm not sure who wrote this, but I'm wondering if they mean actually working in real time with the other person, each other becoming image for each other in real time? No? Okay.

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: Yeah. Thank you. So Sabra's not talking so much about what I just alluded to, which we haven't really taught yet, where two people are practising in real time, where they're each becoming image for each other and sharing that and speaking that. That's a whole other level of practice, which I wouldn't recommend at this point, I think, generally, because it can get supercharged with all kinds of eros flying around and all kinds of consequences that sometimes are a little difficult to control, etc. But it's got tremendous potential as a practice, and maybe at some point we'll put out more clear teachings about that.

But Sabra's talking about more like when someone who is an actual person has also become an imaginal figure, and one's working with that image privately, yeah, and should one be nervous about that or take care. Yes. But I tend to be, at this point, more trusting and less suspicious of that than I guess a lot of people would be, you know, who might hear about that as a way of practising, particularly if we talk about all these other elements -- humility, particularly the non-reification thing, the imaginal Middle Way, the theatre-like quality, even just the energy body. All this is going to keep it from being a reified, fixated kind of craving-fest that then impacts the relationship in that way.

I might even go further and say that to have a really deep human relationship, even if the other person is dead or doesn't know that they're an imaginal figure for you, it has to involve the imaginal dimension. So that would be a shift from what we tend to think -- the real thing, the human, and the imaginal is some other non-real thing. But I think more and more that a really deep connection with another, when we really love another and value them and care for them, they're image for us. We have to know how to relate to that and how to handle it. But if we take care of the elements, and the sensitivity in practice and all that, I don't think it will be a problem, and actually I think the opposite -- sometimes these people, we're sort of forced into that kind of practice in relation to a person because they're an object of craving and reified and I can't kind of get over that. As I actually let them become more image -- in other words, let them become more imaginal, rather than less imaginal and more so-called real -- as I let them become more imaginal and let it fill out and really work with that, with the fullness of my being and everything that we've talked about, they gain dimensionality and amplitude, and the pressure comes off "I need this or that to happen," or the 'real,' you know? So it sounds like that's your experience, and I would say that's exactly what I would expect.

Would I give that instruction to absolutely everyone? No, because I don't think some people are ready for that yet, and they don't have enough wherewithal practice-wise to navigate that. But it is absolutely possible. Sometimes it might feel a little hairy, like if there's a lot of craving or desire for someone or something. It can get a little bit like, "Woo, this is really difficult." But it can be done, no question about it. And in a way, as you say, it can be very, very healing. And I would say, again, just to repeat, is that not the fullness of human relating and who we are, that we have these other dimensions, if you like, but they're very different than how we usually think about them? Yeah?

Q9: Freudian monkey business / apprehension about working with weird images

"I was with the image of a grey-haired, kindly older woman who at first embodied sisterly and then more maternal qualities -- this fierce yet tender unconditional acceptance and love. After a while, I began to feel the strong stirrings of sexual desire, maybe not directly towards her but certainly in relation to her. This freaked me out, so I started to instead view her as a lover to avoid any Freudian monkey business." [laughter] I think we have a title for our next retreat. [laughter] Okay. "I have a sense all three women -- older sister, mother, lover -- are the same imaginal image, and yet I also feel they are distinctly different. Could this be the concertina node, or is this one image embodying all these qualities?"

I don't know, in terms of that bit of the question. I think what's important is experimenting, and also what's important in relation to where is the question coming from. In other words, by itself, it may not be that important whether they're one image or three images. You could try it one way, you could try it another. It may be just hanging out with that figure or those figures, and in time it gets clear whether they're one or three, or both one and three, or whatever. I just wonder if the question is coming a little bit out of the apprehension about Freudian monkey business, and if so, then that's where I would put the attention and say don't worry about it. Look, Freud's been dead a long time. [laughter] This kind of thing, I've seen it and heard it so much. It's just not ... Again, it can feel to the mind that's been taught certain things, it can feel like that's taboo, that's not okay, that's weird, maybe it's going to make me even more weird than I am already, etc., maybe people will be in danger around me. I don't think any of these are fears that are really worth being afraid of.

Again, if we can just introduce a little bit of trust, even for a few minutes. The mother in the image is not my mother, you understand? It may look like my mother. It may even be a motherly image. But it's not necessarily my mother. And again, we tend to reduce everything to a certain kind of psychology, very based on family dynamics in infancy, and it's great, and there's so much good work, starting with Freud and all that and everything that came out of that. But it is quite limiting. Once we get into these kind of practices, we're really stretching and blowing certain things open. So, I don't know -- does the person want to say anything more? You don't have to, of course. But I would just wonder whether the question about whether they're one and the same is actually a little bit gaining its charge and momentum from a kind of apprehension as much as anything.

So if you do this kind of practice enough, you're going to, at some point, encounter something that's pretty weird by conventional standards. Some people get more weird stuff than others, and that's fine. There are differences in personality. But one also has to check: am I constraining? Am I just shutting out certain possibilities? That's not to say, "Come on, I want to hear some really weird stuff." It's more like, again, this question: am I getting in the way of something here? And, you know, it's not to steamroll over my fear, but could I maybe just say, "All right, well, I'm going to play with this image for two minutes and just give it enough trust. Maybe there's something here"? And maybe, again, I can feel, "Yeah, it's weird, okay," and I can sense my apprehension, but there's also something soulmaking in it. And if I can just attune to that and just decide, just a little bit of trust, or just two minutes of trust, and tune to the soulmaking and work in the ways that we've talked about, then what seems really weird or pathological or whatever gets redeemed, gets made sacred. It might stay very weird to the conventional point of view, but you start to get more and more of a sense of trust of these things.

Q10: three-part image, or the imaginal concertina coming alive?

"There are three images that seem related and are arising together. I have played with treating each image individually, but the experience is much richer and deeper when taken as if forming a three-part harmony. The energy body feels more full and alive. One of the images is visual, the other are auditory. Is this an example of the concertina element coming alive?"

Maybe, but not necessarily. It may just be a three-part image. And again, I would trust the sense of where the energy body feels alive and where it feels more soulful, etc. The concertina thing is as much to say, it's part of the sense of the pregnancy of an image, that in different ways with images there's a sense of more, more possibility, more othernesses, more beyonds, etc. So the concertina is, in a way, a sort of pregnant sense of more possibility. But also, at the same time, the concertina is a kind of sense of this is not the reality. This image is not the one image. It's not the only image that can be presented. And so it's part of the loosening and non-fixating attitude that's there. But it sounds like this is maybe more like there's an image involving three figures, and they're in a certain kind of relation and I'd say harmony with each other, and that's the image, it sounds to me, at least. Yeah?

Okay. Very good. Thank you. Let's just sit quietly for a minute before tea. If you don't remember anything of the particulars of what we've said today, maybe just this. It's actually a phrase from a Dzogchen teaching: "Trust your experience, but keep refining your view." It applies to emptiness teachings, but it also applies to the imaginal. Trust your experience, even if it feels like, "Mm, this isn't quite ...", or it's a bit different. Trust your experience, and let your view refine with all this richness of teaching and sophistication and discrimination. So trust. Get in. Get your hands dirty. Play and trust, and refine in time.

Sacred geometry
Sacred geometry