Transcription
Again, apologies -- I didn't really have time to order these questions into some sort of logical thread. So let's see what we can do, anyway.
Q1: the meaning of 'twoness' in eros and relational practices; merging with images
"Not strictly on topic, but I'd love to hear your thoughts at some point. You've both emphasized the importance of the twoness. On many occasions prior to the retreat, an image of an adventurer/warrior or samurai would arise. There would be twoness, but often at some point we would merge for a while. I would normally enter them as it were, and then become very active, slashing, fighting, jumping, etc., with lots of energy arising in my chest and through my body. At times I'd be fighting soldiers. We would then eventually unmerge. Any issues/concerns with this merging?"
No. Sometimes it's hard to find the words for the different elements of the teachings. There are at least two reasons why we go on and on about this twoness business, okay? One aspect of what we're calling 'twoness' is really about the balance of attention when you're working with an image, or in a dyad with another person. As we've touched on and as many of you know, what can often happen is we're not very free or flexible within that dyad, within that balance of attention when there's two. So particularly in human relationships -- and again, we haven't talked about it so much yet in the teachings, we haven't put this out there, but there's a whole, you could say, body of teachings about practising, live, in real time, with someone else, and becoming image for each other in the moment, with all the eros, and sharing that, and handling that very carefully, in a very formal way, with boundaries, etc. And again, on this retreat we haven't done much, if any, but the last couple of retreats, we were doing quite a few exercises where people were in groups of twos or threes, sharing in real time what was happening energetically, emotionally, and then also, if they wanted to share, an image, which might have been something that happened yesterday, an image that touched them deeply, something that happened yesterday or something that was actually present right then as they were speaking.
So part of the reason we harp on about this twoness is that, in those kind of situations, it can be very tricky for us as human beings, in this culture especially, to be in that relationship, be in that dyad or whatever it is, or with more people, in a way that's actually fertile, that's not closed down, that doesn't kind of lose my self because I'm over there, or withdraw over here, or some other piece or aspect of my experience just shuts down -- it becomes inaccessible, short-circuited, something-or-other, hard. And so one piece of what we're calling 'twoness' is about that skill in twos, or skill in relationship with other. And one of the basic skills of that whole range of skills is just: can I have both my experience and the experience of the other? How fully can I enter into the openness of relationship and relational possibility there? And it sounds really basic, but actually most of you know how difficult it is, you know, what happens, especially when the person is looking at you, to be seen so directly, so intently, so upfront like that. So that's one of the reasons we talk about twoness, or rather what we're pointing to with twoness and the practice of twoness. That's not really what the note's talking about.
The other is that eros needs twoness, okay? Eros needs, eros involves, what we might call an erotic tension. Some people define eros as the movement or the wish to merge, to unite, to become one, and in the Western canon/tradition that's a long-standing definition of what eros is. We're defining it somewhat differently. And it might all sound like nitpicking or quite subtle, but as I said, the differences in the realms that will open up are huge. So when we talk about eros, there is an attraction. There is some kind of movement towards. But the twoness is retained, so that it's like two poles of a magnet that are attracted but are somehow held apart. So there's a tension there, and with that, there's some discomfort. If the poles of the magnet collapse, you lose the tension -- I mean, the physics analogy breaks down, but if you're in oneness, there are no poles of the eros. And what happens when there's union and merging, etc., is there's a dissolving, a dissolution, a fading of particulars. Everything merges into one something-or-other, whatever that one something-or-other is, one Being with a capital B, one Awareness, one love, one whatever.
It's wonderful. And of course, in the range of mystical experience that's available to human beings, to taste that, to know that, to be comfortable with it, to dip in and out of that -- priceless. Most spiritual teachings will tend towards that, will point towards that, and even raise it up as the highest possibility for a human being, etc. I think what we want to say is that's great and wonderful, and we could talk a lot about that. You'll find many teachings about that that I've given and many other teachers have given. It's great. But there's a whole other avenue of, realm of possibilities that opens up when the twoness is preserved and that erotic tension is preserved, that would otherwise collapse or get dissolved in this oneness.
So when we come to that element of the imaginal, what we're calling 'twoness,' I would also add the word particularity, or retaining particularities. So in this instance, the person, the meditator, is becoming the image. They think, "Well, where's the twoness? I'm not two with the image. I've become the image. I've merged." It's not a problem at all, and this is quite a common way for images to arise. Rather than their being other, we enter them, or they enter us, and we become them. What is still preserved, though, is particularity. So it's not that, in this instance, the person enters this samurai or this warrior and then everything just goes blank. The samurai or the warrior still has particularities, is still differentiable from the environment, from the other soldiers they're fighting. They probably have certain characteristics, look a certain way, feel a certain way, have a certain character, etc. So it's really that that we're pointing to, and the actual locus of the self-sense when we're practising imaginal, it doesn't really matter. So not really any issues at all.
Perhaps if you find in your practice that it's always I am becoming image, or I am entering an image, or it's always other, then you might deliberately want to experiment with whatever the complement to that is. So retaining the image as other, and just play with being more deliberate about that, just to see what happens, or the other way around. If it's always other, it might be interesting to enter the image and become the image and see the world through the perspective and the experience of that imaginal being. There are little tricks to do that. If the image is other, sort of over there, then sometimes looking deeply into its eyes, you can enter it. You enter through its eyes. It's a little trick. Sometimes, curiously, feeling into what the small of its back might feel like is another curious one that can kind of put you in its body. Why that works, I have no idea. [laughs] But these are just little technical tricks. But the main point is, yeah, if you find it's always one or the other, it might be interesting to explore.
And then we had a question as well where there was this self and other, but they could become two others for a third that is the witness of that. So there are all kinds of possibilities, and they're all good, and you should feel free to [audio cuts out].
Q2: concerns about narcissism in working with the self as an object of eros; taboo objects
"Is there any sort of eros in imaginal practice to be wary of? I am thinking of an image I had this morning that became eros for the self by the image of the self, if that makes sense. Is there any risk that this could become vanity or narcissism? Thanks."
So ... no. In other words, we're probably used to feeling nervous about all this stuff [audio cuts out] around the object -- in other words, what the object is. It's my, I don't know, girlfriend's mother, so that's a bit weird, you know, or whatever. Or it's my self, so isn't that egotistical? Or something that seems like, "How can you have eros for something that most people would regard as completely insignificant?" I don't know, could be anything -- a glass of water. We're mostly used to getting nervous about the object, like that object's okay but that one's not. I would say any object can become problematic as an erotic object, and can be entirely unproblematic. It's not in the nature of the object.
[faulty mic swapped out; Rob repeats the original question and begins answering again] So this follows on from other questions we've had, right? We've talked a bit about this. I would say no. We tend to get nervous around certain objects being taboo. In the Christian tradition, to have Jesus as an object of eros was completely taboo for most of the mainstream, but there were contemplatives who were deep into that practice of having Jesus as an object that wasn't taboo at all. If we take this question and we replace eros with mettā as a parallel question, what would you say? Right. But mettā, when I started insight meditation, no one was practising mettā, in the eighties. All kinds of people, including myself, had kind of apocalyptic, thermonuclear explosive experiences that were really unhelpful. [laughter] And that actually lasted quite a long time. Then I moved out of the scene for a while, lot of therapy, other practices, etc., came back, and mettā was a mainstream thing as part of the insight meditation. People had realized, "Oh, this is really important."
And in teaching mettā, what they'd also realize is in the West how important the mettā to the self was. At that time, when people were introducing mettā to the self, people were saying, "Well, isn't that a bit dangerous? Aren't you going to get self-consumed? Self-love, that's not a very good thing," etc. Just the same. It's just the same. We're just not used to thinking this way. And as I said -- I can't even remember now when it came up -- we've got a fractured, confused, ill-educated relationship and idea with self in our society, so that something like this feels dangerous, and something about recognizing the divinity of myself in my particularities, my necessity to God, my necessity to the divine -- it's not just that I am one drop in an ocean of divine light or whatever just like every other drop. It is that. That's great. That's wonderful. Super and great to be able to know that and explore that. But to know this being, in my particularities, as divine, as angel, with all the eros there. It's just not a concept that is supported in the culture.
So the problem is not in the object of eros, whatever that object is. A problem is potentially when those -- if we translate it into the elements of the imaginal, the nodes of the lattice -- it's when those switch off, or some of those switch off, and eros becomes craving, and the imaginal Middle Way disappears into some kind of reification, etc., when there's no humility, when there's no open-endedness of things, when there are not loose and elastic edges -- all these. That would be the problem. So in other words, it's not the object, any object of eros that's potentially a problem. It's, if you like, the kind of eros, or it's what's with the eros, what's in the field, in the relationship of that eros. Does this make sense? It's really, really important.
You will doubt all this stuff. Believe me. Lots of doubt will come up, etc. But something that may help is just make a parallel question with mettā. So no, there's no risk -- or rather, there is a risk, but it's not because the self is the object of eros and has become a divine, beloved other. It's that the eros shrinks, or something gets reified, or this or that. Yeah?
Q3: sanctifying selves, worlds, cosmos through imaginal practice
"Would you say that on some level the imaginal practice could be seen as a method of inquiry or contemplation, and/or a way of gradually sanctifying selves, worlds, cosmos? Thinking of the alchemical vessel in contemplation in mystical Kabbalah."
I would absolutely say that the whole point, the whole main point, for me, of imaginal practice, above healing, above reclaiming one's sexuality, above all of that is a way of gradually sanctifying selves, worlds, cosmos. That's absolutely the point, yeah. Anything else is kind of secondary, I guess is what I would say. I'm not quite sure what "a method of inquiry or contemplation" means. Does anyone want to be more specific, or is that good enough for now? It's good enough? Yeah, so, absolutely. That, to me, is the point. Of course, sometimes the point can get lost, because there's so much material and so much detail, etc., and who knows what someone just sort of glimpsing it from the outside might think, but to me that's absolutely the point, completely, 100 per cent. Yeah. And may include lots of other good stuff on the way, but that's the main thing.
Q4: cosmopoesis from an image involving multiple imaginal selves
"Lying out on the lawn earlier, my body and mind were full of knots and chaos, and everything felt wrong. An image came of another me, who was also my friend, and also my lover. She picked up another, different other me, who was lying on some different grass, in much the same state of unhappy contraction as my physical self was feeling." Okay, so I think I understand. Here this person is, lying on the grass, feeling there's a lot of difficulty going on. An image comes that looks like herself, but the image is on another piece of grass, where another image of herself is lying, and the first image picks up the image of herself. You understand? It's not that complicated, I don't think. [laughter] "I'll call these two other mes psyche. The landscape they were in as well."
When we use a lot of the words we use, just to really keep you guys on your toes, a lot of them have double meanings and they're used in different ways at different times. [laughs] So the word 'psyche' we use to be interchangeable with 'soul.' But we also use it to mean 'image,' okay? So in this case, she's using the word 'psyche' to mean 'image,' and the image here is "two selves, both of which look like me, and the landscape," and that's the image, so it's psyche.
"I'll call these two other mes psyche. The landscape they were in as well. The friend/lover me picked up the lying down one tenderly, then threw her violently down onto some jagged rocks. She picked her up and threw her down repeatedly until every one" -- this really touches me -- "of the thrown down me's bones were shattered. I, the physical one lying on the Gaia House lawn, felt my energy body become the stage in which this all played out. So it was happening between them, those two other mes, but also to me and also inside of me. As I watched the scene unfolding, the physical and energetic knots and chaos I'd arrived with loosened and calmed." It's not in the object. It's not in what the mind -- or the first reaction to the object. Hang out. A little bit of trust. Listen. Feel. See what happens. The mind jumps in too quick: "Gosh, I'm going to start self-harming" or whatever it is, "or go psychotic by my splitting personalities. There are now three of me." [laughter] "One of them is obviously a violent, raging psychopath." [laughter] "And the other's just a neurotic mess" or whatever it is. This is all just mind, you know?
This is partly why energy body sensitivity, when we talk about the node of soulmaking -- one of the nodes is an image, an imaginal image, brings soulmaking; partly implicit in that is bring all the sensitivity, as much sensitivity and delicacy of awareness into being, into relationship, as you can, because that's where you'll feel, "Can I do this? Is this right? Should I follow this?" You feel it in the body. You feel it in the soulfulness. You feel it in exactly what's being talked about here. This mind, we've been indoctrinated in so many ways. And some of that indoctrination, we're not even conscious of it. It happens in our mind in a subconscious way. Anyway.
"As I watched the scene unfolding, the physical and energetic knots and chaos I had arrived with loosened and calmed. The more violent it got, the calmer I felt, and my energy started flowing more freely. I loved it. I loved them and I breathed appreciation for them, and my breath became like bellows fanning the flames of the scene, keeping it alive." So, again, if I just extrapolate a bit. Intuitively, this person found a way to -- remember I was talking about attunement and kind of lingering? It was, in this case, through the breath, that it felt to feel like a bellows, and coming into the relationship with the image -- in this case, through the breath. Now, I wouldn't necessarily have given that as a formulaic answer, but the person found it intuitively, physically. It's like, "Oh, this is part of the tuning. This is part of the sustaining and the lingering of what's soulmaking here." Who would have predicted that? Maybe it works every time. Maybe it doesn't. But one is, again, opportunistic, with as much openness, sensitivity, receptivity, facets of one's being present and aware and receptive, ready, willing to be active, willing to be receptive. Yeah? And then magic can happen.
"I loved them and I breathed appreciation for them, and my breath became like bellows fanning the flames of the scene, keeping it alive. It felt very personal, like who they were and what they were doing was meant just for me," and it is, it was, "and the gift of it made me nearly cry in appreciation. There was an intimacy between us, me and the image, such that when the lunch bell rang and I opened my eyes, I felt I was kissing a lover goodbye. However, the image has lingered. I emerged into 'this lunchtime at Gaia House' reality, but I have not left the image behind, or rather it has not left me. It still feels very close, and I can see it every time I blink or close my eyes. It's like I'm walking in two worlds. The imaginal one is somehow affecting this one, leaking into it, so that Gaia House and the retreat and all my anxieties and preoccupations are smoothed around the edges through having the image beside, inside, all around me like this. Our love, mine with the image, blesses everything else. Can you say anything about walking in two worlds like this, interweaving 'this world' with the imaginal realm?"
Again, not all the details necessarily, but all this kind of thing is the kind of thing I would expect in time. And you could say that this sense of, if you like, parallel worlds or realms that sort of have mirrors of ourselves and of this world [audio cuts out] ... Is just one level of world, which we'll share -- so that tree exists in all the worlds, but at different levels. There are different levels of worlds, or planes of existence, or realms. So I would expect this kind of thing. Often, at times, it doesn't happen until a little further on, but there's no real linear order in this. So I would absolutely expect it. Immediately with that, you can hear in the very idea, in the very concept, in the very sense of it, there's all this dimensionality. This world just suddenly has all this implicit, the dimensionality [audio cuts out]. And what that does [audio cuts out] sense of world, and the sense of self, and care, and sacredness, it's beyond priceless. As an idea, you'll find that in mystical Kabbalah. Someone referred to that. You'll find it in some Islamic mysticism, this idea of sort of levels of worlds. You'll get it in Buddhadharma as well -- talking about other worlds, other realms of being, the deva realm, this realm, that realm, etc.
The person isn't asking -- is there a danger here? No, there's no danger. There's absolutely no danger. There's nothing in here that at all hints of "get away from this world, this world is not worth it, I'm off to that world." There's no escapism at all. There's nothing like that. It does something. It fills out the beauty, the dimensionality, the sacredness, the poetry, the love, the eros for this world. It's something -- I don't know what to say other than just trust it, feels its beauty. There will be eros for this [audio cuts out], tremendous beauty here and how much it's touched the being. And because we love eros and all of that, you're going to want to linger with that sense. Sometimes it will come up very vividly, for a long period of time.
Sometimes, as I was saying -- I can't remember now when I was saying, or in relation to what -- you can bring it up deliberately, or it's just a hint, the echoes of that experience. But those echoes, those moments affect our sense of this world. And we can bring that back deliberately, just for a moment or two -- and it could be anywhere; you could be sitting on a bus, it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be a formal practice. Or it might just come by itself. But it's in the repeats and those moments and those little tinctural sort of exposures, and in the way we let them seep out. So in the note here, it was seeping out into the world. Letting it seep out into the world, into the sense of self, into the sense of others, into the sense of not just the self right now but also the narrative of my life. You understand? It's okay. Remember, we're not shutting out narrative. We're not shutting out self in these practices. This kind of sense -- what does it do when I then consider my death, or the difficulty of my past, or my problems or whatever, when I see it in the context of this multidimensional cosmos? Huge.
Another word, we haven't used it so much, but this would be also an example of a cosmopoesis, in a way. There's an image, and that image, because of the way that it's working, in the soul and in the psyche, it starts to affect the self-sense, it starts to affect -- obviously there's an image there, so the image is already impregnated with soul. And then that seeps out into the very perception of the world. And we talk about cosmopoesis. Poiesis is just a fancy Greek word for kind of artistic creation, like poetry, like writing poetry. So poiesis. 'Cosmopoesis' means 'world-making,' 'world-creating,' or 'world-discovering,' 'cosmos-creating and discovering.' And when an image becomes alive, sometimes it comes alive in a way that it starts to spread to this world. Same world, the tree's out there, dinner is at 5:30, everyone's here. Same world, different world. Cosmopoesis. This world has been recreated through the power of the soulmaking dynamic, through the tinctural power of that particular image, and it's spread out into the land, into the grass, into the sky. So that would be another word. That's very beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.
Q5: can emptiness be imaginal?
Not quite sure which to choose. "Can emptiness be imaginal?" Yes. Does the person who wrote this want to say a bit more about their sense or what they might have been glimpsing or wondering about? They don't have to. I could say something, perhaps. Yeah, Karen? [yogi inaudible in background] Yeah, very good. So Karen's saying sometimes it's all a bit much to do imaginal practice, which is something we should have said on the opening morning, but we didn't. But we said it this morning. [laughter] Yeah! You don't want to go bonkers with this. Sometimes it's a bit much. We could say imaginal practices are skilful fabricating, and what we want sometimes is skilful unfabricating -- so samādhi practice, mettā practice, emptiness practices are all unfabricating; they all quieten perception, whether it's regular, conventional perception or imaginal perception. So it's really important to kind of go between those modes. Really, really important in all kinds of ways, and that movement can be very fluid, as we've touched on, etc.
So sometimes Karen finds that and then goes to some kind of emptiness practice or contemplation. And then finds, at times, that the emptiness itself becomes imaginal. So there are many ways this can happen. Let's say one's working with -- actually, if you don't mind me sharing something from an interview. I can't remember what it was -- we were working with one of your particular figural images once, and then it faded, and there was just the emptiness. There was a lot of bliss with that, and you just kind of dissolved in that, and it was lovely. And I said something like, "That's super, and there's another option," which is not to let yourself dissolve so much. In other words, step back a little bit, and see the self in relationship with this emptiness. Yeah? And by doing that, it's possible that a relationship comes between the emptiness and the self, and the emptiness starts to gain personhood, in a way, and be in relationship to the self, and the self, too, becomes an imaginal self. Does this make sense? Yeah?
So that's a possibility. And then one's kind of steering [audio cuts out] ... More pure emptiness practice and the quietening of fabrication back into something more imaginal. So it's not better or worse, again, but I would be considering things like, does it always tend to that dissolution thing and kind of dissolving bliss thing? And if it does, then it might be good to explore something different. If it just happens by itself, that's really fine. If it always keeps happening that the emptiness fills with stuff, then again, I might think, okay, how can I keep it a more pure emptiness practice and go deeper with that? Yeah? So we could talk about how to do that, but we won't right now. But yeah, that's one of the ways. The sense of emptiness itself becomes an object, and if you love emptiness, it becomes a beloved object, and then there's a way that can have an erotic relationship with that. If you preserve the self-sense a little bit as two, with a twoness between them, the separateness, then that kind of thing is possible, and all kinds of things can ensue from that. Does that ...? Yeah?
[yogi inaudible in background] Yes, absolutely. So Karen's saying is that a legitimate way to deliberately enter imaginal practice, via some kind of emptiness -- or, let's say, via some kind of quietening of fabrication. Absolutely. So you'll find that classically the way Buddhist tantra is taught is exactly that. You do the emptiness, and then you do your visualizations or your deity yoga or whatever. We're a little more fluid, but it's definitely possible. So any of those practices, because they fabricate less, they tend to loosen things. Now, if I go too deep, everything goes quiet. The imaginative faculty, everything, all perception will just go quiet. So it depends. Sometimes you can go deep and you can come out, sometimes you can go just a little bit, if your intention is to do more imaginal. But yeah, that doing that just quietens things but it also loosens things. I used to use this phrase, "Don't proceed until everything has become liquid." It's an alchemical maxim. And emptiness will do that, but so will samādhi and so will mettā. So you dip in, and it loosens things, and then in that looseness, something can arise. Yeah. So it's totally valid.
There's one more possibility. I'll just mention it. I've talked about it before, so I'll just remind. For many people who love the path, and love practice, and love Buddhadharma, and love the promise of emptiness and the teachings of emptiness, even when I don't understand it, or love whatever glimpses they have, and start to practise with emptiness, or even aspire to practise to some degree with emptiness, emptiness or the Unfabricated or whatever, there is eros for that, okay? I want that. I want to know it. I want to move towards it. And one loves it. So it becomes, emptiness itself, or the idea of emptiness, or the idea of the Unfabricated, becomes an erotic-imaginal object. But again, with that, what else will happen? The self will get involved. It's not just object. It's not just other. Self as well. So the self as practitioner, as one who aspires, as one who's moving towards that realization or that mystical knowing, as one who is supported by, borne along, nourished by [audio cuts out] ... That self, and even the tradition, all this starts to become imaginal. We're talking about fantasies of the path and that sort of thing. Does this make sense? So that's another way emptiness can become imaginal, is in a more -- I don't know what you'd call it -- comprehensive way or something. Yeah?
Q6: distinction between eros and craving; allowing eros and soulmaking to flow in all directions, spread to self and world
"I have a technical, practical, psychological and pedagogical question about the distinction between erotic or soulful desire and craving. In my own practice and the work I do with others, I find universally that both flowers share the same root." (So I guess both erotic desire and craving share the same root). "It just needs trusting and following back down the stem, or the onion needs a few layers peeled, to mix metaphors. The sacred jewel is always there either way. So my question is, in practice, what is the scope of usefulness or effectiveness of this distinction between eros and craving? The two things that I see are (1) labelling a desire as craving raises a flag that signals attention needs to be paid to the subjective pole -- has it collapsed and tightened around the object, how is the integrity of the energy body, etc.? And (2) if that way of working is beyond the abilities of the practitioner in that moment, then a new object should be chosen. Or is that too binary? Any clarification is much appreciated."
Hmm. I think for simplicity, yeah, I'd just maybe agree they have the same stem. So craving and eros may well share the same stem. You could say they're stimulated by the same movement. You know, we could actually make a sort of very fundamental postulate and say something: the soul loves soulmaking. It sounds like, "Okay." But actually a tremendous amount follows just from that. So the soul loves soulmaking, and eros is a part of soulmaking. So the soul, there's a natural inclination and movement to soulmaking and to eros and to impregnating things with its eros so that they can bloom, so that psyche can bloom, so that logos can get stretched, all of that. Just playing with ideas, we could put that as a more fundamental idea than, I don't know, attachment theory, or evolutionary theory about what's operating in a human being. We can argue about 'realities.' But what might be quite interesting -- to actually put that as really fundamental: this is what souls want. And then, what follows from that? And what does it imply for developmental psychology, which has a very different set of assumptions, etc.?
But yeah, for now, for simplicity's sake, we could say the root is the same. What happens is we cannot sustain that, basically, because of all kinds of reasons, but often because we're not taught how. We're indoctrinated in a way that we don't have these words. We don't have a word for eros. We just have words for craving or whatever. There are all kinds of taboos. There are all kinds of ideas about what's real and not real, and limits on this or that, so that actually it becomes very, very hard, for many reasons, to allow the soul its love of soulmaking, and allow it to do that. All kinds of ideas, or energetic habits of constriction or short-circuiting or collapsing, or non-attention, or non-care. It takes so much. So many conditions need to be there to actually allow this soul-love of soulmaking to blossom in soulmaking. And one of the things that will happen when it doesn't is it becomes craving, the eros becomes craving. Yeah?
So where I would maybe expand a little bit: "Two things I see," the person has written. "Labelling a desire as craving raises a flag that signals attention needs to be paid to the subjective pole," in other words, over here. "Has it collapsed and tightened around the object? How is the integrity of the energy body, etc.?" I would probably point back to more all of the elements, particularly reification, you know, some of the ones that are more about the object as well. I mean, in a way, there's not really a difference, but. So it could be anything, anything at all in that sense. But yeah, a good working assumption -- even if we take away the assumption that they're coming from the same root (and some people might, "Oh, that's a bit much for me." I'm happy with it, but some people, it might be a bit much), and say something: practically speaking, most if not all craving can be turned into eros and be helped to become eros and open out into everything that that ... And most eros can quite easily collapse into craving.
So the question as a practitioner becomes, "Oh, am I on the lookout for that? Do I recognize when that kind of thing happens? And do I have some things that I can do?" One thing might be: all the elements of the lattice might be relevant, any of them. Another thing -- and I've said this, but it feels important and it's relevant, so I'll say it again. I've said it on other retreats. It relates a little bit to what we were talking about earlier in this session. Here's the beloved other. And there may be an enormous amount of eros there. So easily, all my attention and devotion and eros goes towards the other, and I unwittingly am not allowing the self-sense to be caught up in the soulmaking process, and not allowing the self itself to become an object of eros.
I think of this as a bit like -- I don't know -- let's say some kind of circular tray or something like that, and the eros is all kind of flowing over there. The water's flowing all over there. It's just flowing there. If it's just flowing over there, it's going to tip the balance of this tray. It's just in the object. Sometimes people, it doesn't even occur to them that actually the self can also be seen as divine. I'm so taken by the divinity of that beloved object, and the whole thing is precarious because it's all about the object. If I can then allow -- and this may take some work; it may just be a matter of including the self in the awareness and remembering to do that -- if I can allow the self to be caught up in the soulmaking, in the imaginal, and actually allow the self to become an erotic beloved as well as the object, at the same time, then what happens to this tray or fountain or whatever it is is the water's flowing both sides and it's more balanced. It doesn't capsize.
Then, if we extend that, again, what will happen? Related to some of the questions before, if I allow it, it will also spread to the world. If there's eros, some beloved other, self will become also -- I recognize the divinity and dimensionality of self, self becomes erotically beloved to me. And not with all images, and not always immediately, but then I go out of the meditation, I open my eyes, and hey, just hang out there. How does the world look now, when you've had a particularly beautiful or touching image? Check out the sense of self and the sense of world. You walk out into the garden -- how does the world seem? So that's another way in which this water actually wants to spread in all directions. And then this fountain tray thing becomes much more balanced. Okay, it's not a great ... [laughter] Do you understand the point I'm making? Yeah?
One more thing that can, again, become caught up and should eventually become caught up in the erotic soulmaking process is the eros itself. Self, other, world, and then also elements of the self, the aspects of the self, including the eros. So at some point, all this eros -- whose eros is it? And one looks through the soulmaking lenses, through the imaginal lenses, and one sees. It's my eros, of course. But it's also divine. It's like I'm somehow -- I don't know the words we could use -- the channel, or God's eros, the divine eros, the eros of the Buddha-nature is manifesting through me. And the eros itself, my eros, becomes an erotic for me. All this is helping that fountain tray to become more rich, more full, more balanced, able to tolerate more flow, and larger, etc.
But yeah, in terms of the second point here, there are people I've worked with or known, or people who ask me, "I want to do imaginal practice," and my sense is, "You're just not ready." You know? There are some other mental health issues or all kinds of things, or a person just isn't ready. Someone asked about practising with someone as an imaginal erotic other; sometimes a person doesn't have the practice wherewithal to do this, and it keeps just getting reified, and they have no sense of something that's not reified, for instance, or they don't really have their energy body, or they can't tolerate a lot of emotion. It's like, it's probably not that good an idea to try and practise, in which case, yeah, maybe another object, if one's trying to do that. Is that okay? Yeah?
Q7: one's own body as the beloved, as object of eros
"Catherine spoke about relating to one's own body as the beloved and an object of eros as part of the energy body practice. Could you say more about the fullness of this practice?" So one's own body as the beloved and as object of eros. I probably want to hear more about what's prompting the question. Does the person want to say? They don't have to, because I can say probably quite a lot. But do they want to say? [yogi inaudible in background] When using the body as beloved ...? Yeah? Okay. So Chris is saying that when trying to use the body as object, as imaginal object and beloved other, or we could use the language of sensing the body with soul, some of the nodes didn't really feel like they came alive. So that's always going to happen with any object. There's really a spectrum when we talk about fully imaginal and not, and sometimes you don't want to get too hung up about that.
The thing that I was thinking when I got this note was -- I'll go back to something I said the other day, which is sometimes what galvanizes and empowers imaginal practice is that we're dealing with something that really matters to us, okay? So if I just choose an object, and kind of like, "Well, I'll choose that. That's interesting. Let's see what happens," it might be that in that moment of relating to it, it's actually a fairly neutral object, and you can do things, and it becomes somewhat imaginal, etc. But there's not a kind of soul-need at that point for it to become fully imaginal. So often, again, we go back to dukkha and soulmaking, when there's some kind of pain -- either physical pain, or painful relationship with the body, whether it's about "I'm dying" or "it's ugly" or whatever it is -- then there's enough in the crucible. I still have to make it 'crucibilic,' or whatever that word is. But I have to go through, I have to really feel the pain of the issue. Or it might be the other thing, that I'm suddenly just struck by the miracles of body and gratitude to my body or whatever it is. But again, there's enough charge to start with to sort of galvanize a process. Then there's maybe more likelihood that the nodes fill out that way. I mean, it still might happen the other way. I'm not sure what else to suggest. Is that okay for now? Okay.
Q8: female representations of eros
"I've been trying to find a female representation of the qualities that eros stands for. To have a female archetype, goddess, or whatever, figure, would feel very empowering. Do you know of any female manifestations of this desire, longing, passion?" Maybe. We had a Tārā statue that was ... I can't think of anything straight away, but there's Aphrodite in the Western canon. There are all kinds of goddesses if you look in actual tantra. Rāgaratī is a goddess of the Guhyasamāja Tantra. Rāga means 'desire' or 'lust.' So that's her essence. You can find these.
Two things about that. I think when Jung -- I don't know if it was he that introduced the word 'archetype'; certainly he made it popular -- for Jung, in his psychology, an archetype was not a form. So Aphrodite is not an archetype, or Tārā, or Kuan Yin. They're not archetypes. An archetype is a forming principle, which means it itself doesn't have a form but it tends to shape this or that, including human beings, through its influence. It's a kind of programme, if you like. No, that's too tight. It's a style of forming, it's an intelligence that forms things in certain ways.
What that means is that we look around the world, or you go to a movie, or you read a novel, or you walk down the street and you see someone, or you have a friend, or you have a teacher, or you have whatever it is, and you see someone, and they are manifesting a certain archetype. They're probably manifesting a mix of archetypes. But it may be that it's just as powerful and transformative to start tuning into that kind of thing. This person, or that movie star, whatever it is, that character in the novel speaks to me in this way, and he/she/they embody, manifest something that attracts me, and to go via that attraction. What am I attracted to? I'm attracted to that. I'm attracted to, let's say, the divinity, the goddess or whatever coming through them. So then you're more following your own attraction with it.
But there are figures, yeah, that you could choose. I'm not sure what else to say about that at this point. In a way, oftentimes these things are more powerful when they come either as images for us, spontaneous images for ourself -- they will have more power than someone like Tārā or Rāgaratī or whoever. Or, as I say, they come because we see them in someone else, and we start to really appreciate how that person moves, how that person -- something in their being emanates something, communicates something that touches us. And again, it might be outside of the box of our usual sensibilities and sort of okaynesses, so we have to kind of be on the alert for it, for what doesn't quite fit. And for something to come up spontaneously, again, there may need to be a certain amount of emotion or even wish for that to happen, or distress that it's not happening, or frustration. All those kinds of emotions can function as, sometimes, something that can generate something. So you could try both, you know. But there may well be figures. The Guhyasamāja Tantra has Rāgaratī.
[yogi inaudible in background] Yeah. Right, yeah. Okay. Good, thank you. So Yuka is saying the word 'eros' has a lot of masculine connotations, and it feels hard for her then to integrate it into her being and relate to it. Is there a word that you prefer? [yogi inaudible in background] Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Do you want to try a Sanskrit or Pali word? Like rāga? So Rāgaratī, this goddess, is rāga, for instance. It may be that the word is important. It may be less about the word, and more about getting glimpses and just trusting what glimpses you have. Even if it feels like, "Okay, but surely some of what I'm feeling is not what they're talking about," that's fine. I go back to what I said about trusting, getting the process going by trusting, and you'll, more and more, differentiate in your own time between the different kinds of desire or whatever we want to call them. But you'll know it more from the inside, and from those glimpses, and do it like that. But it might be that you look around you at, in this case, women who seem to embody or express something that attracts you, that you feel has that, maybe.
I think we probably need to stop, right? Because it's almost 10 to 6. Sorry I didn't get to all the questions here. Shall we have a bit of quiet to end?
