Dimensionality, Humility, Duty, and Love

Okay, this evening, I'd like to just make a few brief points, brief, general points about the nodes of the lattice, about what we call the elements of the imaginal also. And then move on to kind of following on from some of the things we were talking about with regard to self, self-sense, and imaginal self, self becoming imaginal, and explore some of the ramifications of what we talked about there, with respect to some of the nodes of the lattice, some of the elements of the imaginal.

So just, as I said, a few brief, general points about the nodes of the lattice, about these -- we have twenty-eight elements of the imaginal. Actually, some of these I've said before, but they bear repeating. So first thing is to remember what the point of that teaching of the elements of the lattice is. It has two main points. One is in terms of discernment, clarity about what is or isn't imaginal in our sense, or what constitutes an image or a sensing with soul becoming more fully imaginal, more authentically imaginal in our language. So that's one point, one reason for that teaching, one purpose it serves. In that sense, there's a kind of aiding conceptual understanding, but also helping in the navigation, in the steering: "What am I trying to get to here?" "What am I trying to support?" may be a better way of putting it, "What openings am I trying to encourage or lay the conditions for?"

Second purpose, intended purpose of those teachings of the elements of the imaginal, the nodes, is also that they can be used in practice, so that by noticing a certain element -- for example, the sense of time, or the sense of ontic status, the reality status, by actually paying attention along the lines of a certain element, that element can be ignited. We can notice something there. And that noticing and that attention can ignite that element and thus the thing, the image, can become more imaginal. But in igniting that element, whether it's the element of eternality in terms of temporality, or whether it's the element of theatre and the imaginal Middle Way, or whatever it is, or love, or beauty, eros, in that igniting, it can ignite other nodes. And sometimes it's a matter of, as I said, just paying attention and noticing, "Oh, yeah, I am loved here. I didn't notice it before. It doesn't fall into the kind of usual appearance of what I tend to think love looks like, but there is love there. Let me pay attention to that and feel that." It might be quite subtle. It might be a really different manifestation.

In the noticing, it brings it more alive, it becomes more prominent, that ignites, and then the other nodes ignite. But it's also possible to kind of deliberately ignite a certain node, just by deciding to or by jiggling, wiggling it in a certain way. So, for example, the energy body awareness -- we can always reopen that, spread that bright awareness in the space of the body, and fill that with sensitivity and presence, and notice if there's an image of the body, etc., and one's actually igniting deliberately that node, and that can have an effect. So sometimes just through noticing, sometimes through deliberate tweaking, jiggling, etc. So there's a double purpose for that teaching. One is, as I said, conceptual clarity, conceptual differentiation from other experiences or paths that may kind of overlap or be sort of similar, so that (A) the conceptual understanding, the understanding of the conceptual framework and logos, but (B) the navigation, and secondly that it's actually helpful in practice, either by noticing an element or deliberately doing something there.

So just check in yourself if your understanding or your relationship with that teaching of the elements has only included part of those purposes, either one's forgot that one can actually use it in practice as part of the art of practice, part of the alchemy, and one's thinking more in terms of definition, or sometimes a person kind of reports, "Yes, I've had that one, I've had that one," etc., as if they're sort of things to collect as opposed to engage and work with, etc. Okay. So that's one point.

Second point is that -- I've said this several times already on this course -- there's no real order in which, there's no uniform and regular order in which these nodes or elements ignite. So what that means is, in the art of our practice, we can be opportunistic: which ones can I notice? Which ones may be available to my engagement, to my activity, to my subtle responsiveness, to my turning them on, etc.? But it might happen in any order. There's no linear, predictable, formulaic order in which these nodes need to be engaged or noticed or played with and in which they tend to ignite. Anything can happen in any order, I think.

Another point -- again, I've said it before elsewhere: they're all connected. So all these elements are connected. It's hard to start talking about one without it kind of beginning to spill over into talking about another one, or a group of them kind of tend to go together or whatever. So they're all connected. There is overlap. They're concepts with soft and elastic edges. They're fuzzy. They're interconnected. The nature of that interconnection, as I've pointed out before, is sometimes a kind of tension of not paradox so much as opposition -- they're pulling in different directions. So, for example, the autonomy of an image may be pulling in a different direction than the fact of it being created, that we're engaged in creating, partly. Sometimes there's a kind of opposition, but they pull in different directions, and that's part of the tension or -- yeah, maybe paradox or mystery of the imaginal and of sensing with soul. And sometimes two nodes kind of overlap or seem to imply each other so that they are close in meaning or overlapping in meaning. So dimensionality and unfathomability, for instance -- not exactly the same, but they relate very much; eros and beauty. We could analyse them all and look at, if we wanted to, the kinds of relationships between the nodes. But there's a general point there.

I want to take this opportunity now that I'm being recorded to say -- there are a couple of corrections I would like to make, or revisions, if you like, to the list of the elements. So one has to do with -- I can't remember; I don't know if they even have numbers, but -- the "not reduced to one meaning." We say it doesn't only mean X or Y. I would like to add, "not reduced to one meaning, or one causal explanation." So we've touched on this before, but if I tend to think, "Oh, this image is here because A, or because B, or because, for instance, it's representing my personal power, or it's representing my compassion, or it's representing some wound that I had from childhood or whatever," that may be part of, included in an understanding of the causal explanation of why this image is arising, but if we reduce it to just that causal explanation (whatever that causal explanation is), then we're limiting the image, limiting the possibilities of the image and, if you like, amputating parts of the image. It will lose some of its life, depth, breadth, resonance, etc., and power.

[11:30] So that's one connection. That element, we can now say, is "not reduced to only one meaning, or only one causal explanation." The second little correction has to do with twoness, which we may -- I'm not sure if I've said this before -- we could expand that one to say, "twoness, differentiation, or retaining particularities." Sometimes we've said the image arises here, in my body. I become, my body and my sense of self become the image, like the tree, or whatever it is, that I shared as an example briefly in one of these talks. It might then be that my sense of self as meditator splits out from it as image. I mean, that will always be there to a subtle sense, because awareness is always in a dualistic relationship with its object. But even more significant than that is the fact that it retains particularities. There's a particular tree, with particular qualities, this tree, particular colours, particular shape, particular geometry, particular feel and aesthetic presentation, etc. So retaining particularities also means, as part of this node (twoness, differentiation, retaining particularities), also means it's not moving towards dissolution, melting, oneness, etc., a kind of loss of features, loss of form, fading and loss of features and form. That is certainly part of soulmaking in the larger sense, in terms of the beautiful directions that the soul and the consciousness can experience and explore, but in terms of imaginal work, mostly, we say it retains particularities, differentiation, and sometimes the sense of twoness.^[1]

Okay. So those were the brief, general points about the nodes, about the elements. As I said, I want to pick up the thread, or some of the threads of what we were talking about in relation to the self-sense and self as image and self becoming image, and just unfold or touch on some of the ramifications there with respect to some of the other nodes. Implicit in, or even obvious in, a lot of what we were talking about in the talk about self, and the angel out ahead, and daimons, etc., is a sense of dimensionality. You know, it's interesting hearing back from people which nodes, which elements kind of make sense to them, and which make sense much less. Someone reported to me, "I don't really understand this dimensionality node," and actually a couple of people reported that. So it may be that a better word is depth. The other day, someone was saying, "Dimensionality? When I hear that word, dimensionality, I think of sort of an X-axis, a Y-axis, and a Z-axis, or length, breadth, and width, as if there's some kind of rectangle there and I'm looking in. They're at right angles to each other. My mind goes there when I hear that word, like dimensions."

So maybe a better word is depth, in the sense that the image or the sense of this object has a depth dimension; it has a sense of moreness to it, of beyonds, of other levels of being, other planes of existence in it, other mysteries within it that are either directly sensible or kind of intuitively sensed, dimly, vaguely sensed. So that might be a better word. Someone else was saying they also weren't quite sure what that meant, the dimensionality, and they found it helpful when I explained one way you can understand it is the idea or the image of, for example, a human being, or an action, as being the kind of projection or emanation or refraction of the image of an angel, or a projection or emanation of an angel, so that this image is a refraction of an angel, or that this human being that I'm seeing now is an emanation, a projection, a refraction of an angel, the embodiment of an angel who exists at another level, so to speak, with another dimension.

And within that -- and I'll come back to this -- to realize that the human, or the self, or the action, or the duty that's involved, all of that can never be a perfect or exact replica of the angel, if we use those words. [17:26] So that's why I use the word 'refraction,' which means when light hits water, it's slightly bent a certain way. It's the same ray of light, but it's given a kind of spin by the water, so the angel is given particular spins by the human being, for instance, or the image. It's not a perfect, 100 per cent mirroring. That's an important point, and we'll come back to it in other contexts and to make other points in terms of implications for our life and our sense of what we value and what we're aspiring to. So a human being, we can have a sense of a human being as refracting an angel, as a refraction, a projection, an emanation of an angel, and that whole idea, because the angel exists at another dimension, so to speak, that whole idea gives a sense, or is an example of a sense of dimensionality, or we could say depth.

An image, intrapsychic image, also can be the image of such an angel. And then the dimensionality is there, the moreness is implicit in the whole space kind of between the image and the angel. So this image, maybe, is not the angel; it's the refraction of the angel, it's an emanation of the angel. The moreness and the dimensionality is also in the kind of bottomlessness or unfathomability of the angel, and that's where the image gets its unfathomability from -- it's connected to the unfathomability of the angel. And as we mentioned, a person, for example, can be the projection, the emanation, the refraction of many angels. Contrary to some of the -- I was saying Corbin, Henry Corbin, sometimes -- it's not really his teaching; it's hard to say, when he writes, is it his teaching or is his teaching, again, a refraction or a spin, his interpretation of the teachings of these different Islamic mystics and scholars through the ages. But some of what he writes makes it sound like there's one angel for each human being. And we're saying yes, it might be one, it might be many more than one, with all the kind of added richness and added complexity and added sometimes difficulty that that brings. Anyway, I think Corbin was very prolific, and as I said, was probably reporting on different traditions and teachings, so sometimes it might be this and sometimes it might be that. It's not important for our purposes. A person, we would say, can be the projection of many angels.

So that might be, for some people, just that idea might begin to give some kind of entrance into the node of dimensionality, or some sense of a possibility of beginning to understand that. And of course, it can open up in different ways other than that and more than that. But this is absolutely crucial, and for many reasons, the sense of dimensionality -- so much rests on this. Again, we'll come back to it, hopefully, if I get a chance to do those talks on ethics. We'll come back to it. But why is it important? If things are just flat, if things are all the same in terms of the level of their being, so to speak, it -- well, it doesn't feel very soulful, for one thing. It doesn't feel very rich and very deep, of course, because the depth or dimensionality is not there. But it also doesn't enable us in our life to have an anchor that's deep -- so an anchor for our being when things are difficult or confusing, when we've lost our bearings, etc. Like a ship at sea, if the anchor that it puts down does not reach and find traction in and connect with something of another substance other than water, that ship just drifts, and it's the same for us as human beings. Without a sense of something of another level, of another dimension, in all kinds of ways -- existentially, psychologically, spiritually, soulfully -- we drift, we lose our bearings, we lose our sense of meaningfulness, orientation, steadiness, courage, all kinds of qualities.

So sometimes, you know, some ways of relating to the Dharma want to put so much, want to pin so much hope on mindfulness, and the practice of mindfulness. And there is a kind of anchor -- we say, "Come back to the breath," or mindfulness, as awareness, is kind of different than its objects, etc., like that. But mindfulness is not really an anchor at another level. It doesn't have so much of a sense of dimensionality. Even if awareness is larger than objects and experiences, mindfulness is impermanent -- it comes and goes. It exists in time. An image or a sensing with soul has this implicit dimensionality, as we're teaching, that we can get a sense of. We can, as I said, begin to notice it, begin to feel it, begin to feels its import and how that sense of dimensionality actually touches the being. And that, if you like, the dimensionality there, is something of another level. So when we need an anchor, when we're lost, when we're confused, when we're agitated, when we're unsure morally, when we're in some kind of crisis, etc., when the winds blow, when the storm waters are surging and swelling, turbulent around our ship, then we need some kind of sense of something of another dimension.

So it's curious, because the normal contemporary, dominant contemporary way of understanding things is to try and find an anchor in some kind of solidity, some kind of obvious insurance or investment in money or a house or this or that, a relationship, etc., and of course, that does provide an anchor to a certain extent, and correspondingly the dominant contemporary mindset and world-view would dismiss images and sensings with soul as being way too unsubstantial, unrealistic, not really there to provide any kind of anchor. But actually, because there's this sense of dimensionality, and that sense touches the soul, it touches the heart of the soul, it provides a better anchor, because it's a different level, it's a different substance. It's not just water; it's something of a different material, if you like, at a different level of being.

Of course, there are many kind of anchors of a different level of being. So the experience, for example, of a cosmic or universal love -- not so much my love, my mettā, my self-love, but the sense of the universe and the cosmos being made out of love, being shot through with love, love being woven into the fabric of the cosmos, that's a perception of a different dimension of being than the usual, habitual, flatland view. Similarly, the sense, the meditative sense or opening to a cosmic or universal awareness -- not just mindfulness, but a universal, cosmic awareness, again that holds everything or that things really are in the depths of their being; they are this awareness, this cosmic awareness -- that, too, both those examples, the awareness and the love, when you have a cosmic sense of them in that sense, there's a dimensionality and, as we've said many times in explaining things in these talks, usually for people there's some kind of sense of divinity with them. A practitioner opening in those kinds of ways starts to use the language of divinity very often, even if they've never felt comfortable with it before. So the dimensionality and divinity are there in those experiences, but neither of them, neither the cosmic awareness nor the cosmic love include the personal, the necessity of my particularities and my unique personhood.

So there's something about an anchor, about the kind of anchoring that images offer us, present to us, give us, that is both a powerful anchor because it has another dimension, another level of being, if you like, another kind of substance to it, but also it's an anchor that includes the necessity of my unique personhood. It speaks to me uniquely. It's relevant to me. It includes my particularities and is resonant with and attuned to and tailored to my particularities. But this principle of dimensionality and anchoring is very, very important. It makes such a difference in life, or it can make such a difference if the sensibility is allowed to open to it, if it doesn't dismiss it out of hand, close the eyes and the senses to that possible sense, etc. If the sensibility is trained, it's right there. As I said, these elements of the imaginal, they're really things to notice. It's almost like you just hang out and then you start to notice, "Oh, yeah, there is that sense. Oh, yeah," and these words that we're putting out for the elements, they're just sort of best efforts at kind of pinpointing or naming these aspects of the imaginal that are there waiting to be more clearly discerned and noticed. So, the importance of this dimensionality.

[29:45] I was practising in a dyad a little while ago. And as I mentioned in the beginning talk, I hope that I can say a little bit about dyad practice. Dyad practice has all kinds of levels. So far, I think, in the recorded teachings, we've just put out very basic dyad practice or triad practice, but people have really loved it and gone for it. We've put out these very basic, almost exercise-like -- aware of the energy body, aware of the emotions, speaking that and receiving it, then sharing an image, maybe seeing the other as angel, etc. So hopefully we'll return to dyad practice and add a bit. People have asked me, and I think I've said in response, there are other levels where the dyad itself can be full of eros -- it's implicit in seeing another as angel, in fact, and being seen as an angel, but the other person can become image for me right now, and I can become image for them, right now, in the present moment, and that's what we're practising with, and that's what we're engaging together, and sharing together, and talking about together, and kind of opening together. Sometimes that eros can be non-sexual, and sometimes it can be sexual. We've expressed caution about doing that kind of practice just because of, in some cases or some situations, how much eros can arise, and sometimes how much sexual eros can arise, and then the necessity to be a little bit careful. It's like, what are the conditions of my life? Do I have whatever it is -- monogamous obligations here, that there's so much eros in this dyad now that I'm a little bit in danger of acting out in a certain way, which will also potentially break the eros in the dyad anyway? All kinds of issues -- can I even handle that energy? So we've been deliberately holding back about those kinds of teachings, or that level of teachings of dyad practice, but it's there, and maybe at some point we'll release more teachings about that. We'll see.

Anyway, that was a long prelude and caution to say: I was practising in a dyad with someone. We were looking at each other. There was a lot of eros there. There was romantic eros, if you like, in the imaginal, the erotic-imaginal. And the image of us as -- I don't know the words, even -- a mystical husband and wife, echoing, mirroring, the emanation of, the refraction of, a kind of cosmic husband and wife there. So very, very beautiful, and the sense of all the elements were alive as it became fully imaginal. But what struck me, at this point -- it was sometime in the last months; I don't know -- was the sense of participation, as I said, and there was a sense of this experience now, and this image now, or this sensing with soul now -- so my sense of her, my sense of us, was retained, it was clear, the forms were retained, but there was a sense of these being echoes, refractions of a higher level, if you like, an angelic level, a cosmic level, or whatever language we want to use. And of course, in that, then, this level, this human level and the sense of it, in opening to that kind of sensing with soul, is that we are participating, participating in the image, which has higher roots, roots in divinity.

So the element of participation was very strong, and grace, and eternality -- this cosmic husband and wife, and their eros, and their love, and their bond, always already happening, and the human experience can open to that, enter into that, and participate in it. This element of participation [is], I think, one of the deepest nodes, most mysterious of the elements of the imaginal. But with that sense of participation and grace and the eternality was a real sense of privilege that really touched my soul. And in a way, I felt that very often, but it felt more clear to me, it felt clearer to me, partly perhaps because of my health situation and my probably dying soon, that all three of those nodes -- the participation, the grace, and the eternality -- but particularly the participation and the privilege of participating, the privilege of participating in this cosmic image, of somehow being part of that, participating in a theophany, in a face of divinity, in something, in an image that has roots in divinity. And that privilege gave me really -- I could feel it, its impact on the sense of dying, and on the relationship to death. So that when there's that kind of sense of privilege, even if it only lasts a few minutes or seconds, even, something is touched so deeply and one really recognizes: I've drunk from a treasure here. I've drunk from a deep and infinite well, and somehow I am part of that. I have recognized that I am part of that. It changes the sense of one's being.

So this enormous sense of privilege, changing the relationship with death, recognizing, you know, a long life -- I still feel quite young [laughs]; if I die soon, I'm dying young -- but recognizing with this really profound sense of privilege that touched my heart and soul so deeply, a long life is not so important. A long life without that, without that sense of privilege and participation, and how that touches the being, and what it says about one's being and about one's existence -- even if one struggles to articulate that -- a life without all that is not so great. A short life with, that includes times of touching or opening to those kinds of perceptions, those kinds of elements and senses, is worthwhile, is very okay. I'm reminded of the Buddha, who said, "Better one moment of knowing the Unfabricated than a hundred years of life without knowing the Unfabricated." It's akin to that.

So it really relativized the whole relationship with death at that time. It's not just that the eternality element was turned on, and therefore there's a different relationship with death, because death obviously is an ending in time, and where there's a sense of eternality it sort of transcends that or relativizes it. This sense of dimensionality, participating in other dimensions, and the privilege of all that, the grace of all that, so potentially profound and impactful in our relationship to all the vicissitudes of our existence, including dying. Now, that's an example from dyad practice, but it might be all images and all sensings with soul actually have that same kind of opportunity in them to really, in the sense of dimensionality, in the sense of participation, the sense of grace and eternality, etc., there's this sense of privilege, and it can really -- there's potentially a sense of privilege, which can be immensely liberating, beautiful, fulfilling, meaningful, etc. That was an example from a dyad practice, but it may be any image, any sensing with soul. It may be extra powerful when it's in relation to an actual, physical, human other, because then there is this kind of transubstantiation or filling out, dimensionalizing of this level of existence, and our humanity; it goes right to the core of our humanity. But I think it's there as a possibility and a potential opening, glimpse, taste, in any sensing with soul.

So you can hear that dimensionality is implicit, and sometimes we make it explicit, in some of what we were talking about with regard to self the other night. But let's follow on and touch on a couple of the other nodes. [40:31] Humility. Humility, as we are using that word, couple of things, like I've said before: each of these nodes will expand in time as we experience it, as we fill it out, as the soulmaking dynamic does its work, and the dough gets kneaded, and the fermentation happens, and the richness, and the complexifying and the deepening -- each node itself will also grow. Our sense, our understanding, our range of experience, each of the elements themselves will also gain dimensionality and meaning. In our paradigm, when we use the word 'humility,' it's in relationship. Humility is in the face of. It's humility before -- in other words, as I said, in relationship with -- mystery, and love, and dimensionality, and unfathomability, and divinity. More commonly, in the dominant secular culture, humility just means a person doesn't think too much of himself, or maybe just daunted by something that they feel incapable of addressing, or carrying out, or understanding, or whatever it is. It's a relative size thing, but it retains just a flatland dimensionality.

I was talking with and listening to someone a little while ago, talking about climate crisis and things like that, and it struck me a little while later, as I was thinking about the soulmaking teachings, that although she had a sense of "I don't understand the complexity of this problem," which is, you know, a pretty appropriate response -- it's so complex psychologically, economically, socially, politically, probably even complex in terms of the earth's weather systems and all that. Or "What to do, what do we do about climate change? What can we possibly do? I'm just one person. It's such a huge issue," or "We're just such a small minority who seem to really want to engage and do something about it." And so there's a kind of -- we could call it humility there. But what was missing in the whole relationship was there was not the mystery, there was not the unfathomability, there was not the dimensionality and the divinity there. So I'm not even sure I would use the word 'humility' in that case. But that, too, you know, I felt like potentially there were whole other levels of and possibilities and breadth to her whole relationship with the climate crisis that might be able to be opened if some of these other, more imaginal elements can be opened, and particularly the sense of dimensionality, divinity, etc., which then would allow a different sense of humility in relationship to it.

So self, dimensionality, humility -- these are all really, really key elements, and very much you can see how they are connected, they have implications for each other, they weave into each other. When we're talking about humility -- again, it gets a certain spin sometimes in our contemporary secular culture, the dominant culture at least, and it can be a kind of self-denigration or self-effacement or that kind of thing. So again, I hope this is obvious anyway, but the way we're using it much more includes a sense of healthy self-esteem. It's not in any way in opposition to that. So that one can feel this kind of deep humility, a beautiful, rich, soft humility that, as I said, is a humility in relationship to mystery, to love, to unfathomability, to dimensionality and divinity, and none of that has any implications or any offshoot into self-depreciation, self-denigration, self-worthlessness and all that kind of stuff at all. So that we can even be proud, in the good sense, of our being, and our direction, and what we've done, and how we are, and what we're oriented towards and all of that, at the same time as we're humble. They're not in any way contradictory.

Let me quote Nicolai Hartmann, who I'll come back to several times -- a German philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century, for the most part: "It would be a mistake to suppose that genuine pride," which, he points out, for Aristotle, in the ancient Greek teachings, the Hellenistic teachings, part of the make-up of a great soul would actually have a healthy pride, there's nothing in that that "excludes a genuine humility. The [person] who is justified in being proud will always, if [they] see [themselves] clearly, have something before which [they] humble [themselves]. But the humble [person] ... must always have something in himself which he prizes," if it's going to be a healthy humility and a genuine virtue.^[2]

I might have pointed this out before, but it's worth saying again, because we're talking about self and self-sense and the image of self, etc. Again, words like humility, and even grace, etc., they're often loaded words for us in this culture, and they can mean different things, or dependent on our past conditioning, and our past associations with such words, they can be loaded problematically sometimes in different ways. But with regard to sensing with soul and imaginal practice, those words and those attitudes (like humility, etc.), the attitudes to which the poise, let's say, an attitude to which those words refer, they can't be too self-weighted, in the sense too focused on self, and certainly not on sin. So that's one of the associations, the unfortunate associations or spins that those kinds of words, humility and grace, have been given through a kind of, I would say, narrowing of Christian teachings over the millennia, so that sometimes when people think of those words they associate them with a sense of sin, worthlessness, feeling bad, and it's very selfy, and the self that has them is a kind of very solid, heavy self. It's contracted, dense, and there's a kind of tight fabrication of self there.

In our usage of those words, it's almost like it's more fertile if the self-sense that feels humble is actually much lighter. Perhaps it's a certain region of the spectrum of self-fabrication. The self at that point, feeling the kind of humility that will be fertile as an element of the imaginal, the self that's fabricated at that point won't be a heavy, solid, weighty, contracted self that's kind of a little bit self-obsessed. There's a certain region where there's a lighter self-fabrication. Again, that ties in with the node of slightly less fabricated. And in that region, the self-sense can still feel humility. So again, there's a self-sense, there's form, but it's light, it's malleable, it's liquid. And in that region of lighter self-fabrication, there can still be a very poignant, and moving, and beautiful, softening humility that is fertile in terms of the whole generation and reception of images. Outside of that range, there may not be that fertility. Imaginal perception won't work. The sensing with soul will be much less possible.

So again, we talk about self as possible refraction of angel, etc., we talk about dimensionality and divinity, we talk about humility, but all of this actually needs to rest on or rest in a certain spectrum of self-fabrication that's not too heavy, too dense, too tightly fabricated. Again, though, the order, you know? We don't know -- it's not necessarily that I have to lighten the self. I mean, it might be that I lighten the self-fabrication and then all kinds of possibilities open up imaginally and with the elements of the imaginal, or it might be they open up and automatically in that there's an ignition of the slightly less fabricated node, and the self-sense lightens. So it's not necessarily linear. But wrapped up, or kind of implicit in our understanding of humility is, generally speaking, a slightly less fabricated sense of self.

I can't remember if I mentioned the other evening the possibility of actually starting with humility, starting even with the sort of light intention to be open and receptive to images should they come, should they be born, should they be given. But actually starting with humility -- there's no image there yet, but still, if the self is not too solid, not too densely and tightly fabricated, and if my sense of other or object is not yet a formed image or a clear image, it can still be, within that sense of a less solid self, or with that sense of a less solid self, there can be a sense of other, beloved other, that may be very vague; some sense of the 'more than me' that's unfathomable, that has mystery and dimensionality. That may be it. There's just some vague sense of an other that's more than me, that's unfathomably deep, that's pregnant with mystery and dimensionality. And just that stance, that poise, that openness, with the self less reified, with a vague sense of other that is already pregnant with those more mystical and soulful qualities, and a relationship or a poise of humility from the self in relation to that, in the face of that, before that -- that may be, in a way, then, you're igniting (to use that language) the element of humility, and out of that beautiful crucible, an image may arise.

Even if it doesn't arise, just to hang out in that space, with the self not so solidified, just with a vague sense or mystical sense of the other that's more than me, that's unfathomable, etc., that's a really beautiful place to hang out. So I don't have to demand, "I want an image. I want a clear visual image," etc. It may come. It may not come. But just to be in that space is doing something to the soul. It's soulmaking. And we could say it's already imaginal just by virtue of those elements being alive in the vague sense of other. There's no clearly sensible image delineated, discernible, but in that vague sense, we could say that's already image, yeah? But whether we call it imaginal or not, it can be, in terms of the soul, and what it's stretching and opening and tending and nourishing in the soul, in the soil, the way it's enriching and caring for the soil, changing the soil of the soul, it's going to be very beautiful and soulmaking and beneficial.

Again, if we just linger on this need for the self to be not fabricated as much or in the ways that it usually is, in relation to humility, and the 'more than me,' and divinity, etc. I touched on one level of prayer being -- I think it's the right word; I should really look it up in the dictionary -- but prayer as supplication. I'm using that word to mean prayer as some kind of ask or request. So people pray -- you know, humanity has done this forever -- prayed to this god or that god for this or that, for the rains to come, for protection, for whatever it is, for healing. It's interesting -- sometimes, and I think I pointed this out, maybe in the Eros Unfettered talks; I can't remember when^[3] -- but sometimes that very stance of asking for something, it's me, this self, asking an other (in this case, God, or the Buddha-nature, or some divinity or angel or whatever), asking for, wanting, hoping for, desiring something. In my case, it might be desiring healing or whatever. But the desire itself can be -- not always, but can be -- a slightly problematic element. Because of dependent arising, we know that desire tends to fabricate, and it can fabricate more sense of self, so that the self-sense that's asking can actually feel, starts off already as feeling separate: "I want. I, a separate self, want something from this separate other, or hope for something," or whatever, or asking for something. And because of the desire implicit, and the sense of the separation and the desire, the self-sense actually becomes, through the action of prayer, becomes more separate from the divinity, because it's fabricated more, and partly what's fabricating the sense of self is a sense of separateness.

One of the possibilities in that kind of situation, if you're engaged in that kind of practice, the beauty of prayer -- and there are so many possibilities when we talk about prayer, but one possibility, if you've noticed that kind of thing happening, is actually to introduce a subtle idea. Again, very delicately introduce a logos that my desire, my wanting, my asking -- or, let's say, my desire -- is actually part of the divine desire. So that my wanting whatever it is -- healing, or this or that -- that's not just mine; I'm already introducing a conception of it as part of the divine desire. Again, I'm participating in the divine desire. This desire of mine is somehow participating in the divine desire, in a divine desire. In introducing that logos, again, we're not exacerbating the sense of self. We're changing the relationship and the conception with desire, and we're igniting the element of participation among other aspects, and then the whole sense of prayer can be a much more soulful experience and can open up in different sensings with soul, etc., the prayer itself, and of course that can spread to what's around you, or your sense of yourself, all of that.

So less separation, because we're relating to the desire in a different way. Instead of exacerbating the sense of separation and solidity of self, which can kind of frustrate or block the sense of prayer, actually, or block its deeper possibilities, deeper soul-possibilities, let's say, in the soul-sense of the prayer, less separation when you introduce that kind of logos, that kind of subtle idea, and you introduce it subtly. So again, these things are not to be clanked around with, or kind of rammed in there, or shouted in the mind, etc. There's really quite a delicate touch that's needed, especially in the realm of conception and logos, when we're working with that in the soulmaking. But because the sensing with soul then gets ignited more, then there's just much greater beauty -- beauty in the sense of prayer, beauty in the sense of self, beauty in whatever's around you, beauty in the sense of the divinity or the Buddha-nature to whom you are addressing the prayer, with whom you are in relationship, etc.

But again, you can hear in all this this dance that I was mentioning the other day, this dance of sort of how much reification, how much fabrication to the sense of self, and we can play with it at different times. If it gets too solid, too tight, too real, too dense, too contracted, too fabricated, the sense of self, it will cut off the possibilities. If it gets too unfabricated, it will also cut off certain possibilities. So if we want the soulfulness of prayer, for instance, in the sense of supplication, we need to dance in that middle ground with form and the liquidity. If we want the angelic dimension, the sense of refraction, projection, emanation from angels, the sense of participating in that, again, we need to dance in this territory where there's form and emptiness, together.

[1:01:47] Let's see. Related, again, implicit in some of the ideas that we were putting out the other night about self and its relationship with angel, the angel out ahead, wrapped up in that, sometimes more implicitly, sometimes obviously, explicitly, is also duty and necessity or rightness.

So someone was sharing with me an image, and the image was of a hysterically grieving woman. It was a very powerful image, obviously, with a lot of energy in it with the hysteria, etc. But we were talking about it, and I think it was obvious to her, even before I talked -- I can't remember -- or we drew it out in the conversation, but here's this hysterically grieving woman, and it does not feel right to imagine bringing her a cup of tea, or a blanket, or calming her down, or giving her a Valium or whatever. In some modes of working with the imagination in psychotherapy or perhaps other spiritual paradigms I don't know, there is that sense of wanting to kind of rectify and normalize the image along the lines of the normal conceptions and assumptions and models that the normal level of mind has. But absolutely, again, you just have to hang out with the imaginal to kind of -- don't buy into that immediate sense, "Oh, this is a pathological image. There's something wrong here. If there's something wrong with her in that image, it must mean there's something wrong with me," etc. Those kinds of immediate, often preprogrammed reactions and assessments of the mind, just let that be, and you get another sense that may be less obvious at first but then comes more to the fore as you get used to it: "No, there's something right about this," and to step in and fix her, you really recognize that that feels wrong. So there's a rightness to the image, and sometimes with the rightness to the image, it's connected with our sense of duty.

So duty, again, we touched on it in the talks about self and angel. The angels want something from us. There's a whole range of what they might want, and what that might imply for our lives, of course. But the rightness of the image has something to do, is connected with the duty, often. Implicit or explicit in some of those ideas about self and its relationship to angel or daimon is a sense of duty. The particularities of an image which seem or feel important, or the ones that feel soulmaking, again, they often harbour, or sometimes hide, or sometimes indicate more obviously the sense of duty. So there was an image that a yogi shared with me of a woman in the process of giving birth, of birthing, on a completely dried-up, devastated landscape, a sort of almost apocalyptically barren landscape, and she was lying there giving birth, birthing. We were talking about this image, talking together about this image, and I was asking her, "There's a twoness there. Is it between ...?" Or perhaps she was asking me about the twoness; I can't remember how it came up, but anyway. "Is the twoness between you and her?", as it often is, the twoness there -- there's the image as other, and there's a sense of self, and the twoness. "Or is it between you and the landscape, or her and the landscape?" Or, as we mentioned as one possibility the other night, "Can you see her as 'the woman,' so that the self and the image separate? Can you actually introduce that? Or is it the woman and the baby, or the child inside her -- is that the twoness? Is there twoness there?"

And the person's answer was very immediate, very quick, "No, it's the woman and the birthing itself." There's the sense of the twoness. There are two in that relationship. That was a significant twoness, the woman and the birthing. When she said that, it immediately gave me the sense that the woman knows that as her duty. So wrapped up in the sense of what felt like, to this practitioner, that's the significant dyadic relationship there, the woman and the birthing itself, and that immediately gave me the sense that this woman in the image knows that birthing is her duty, because of the desolate, destroyed land, and it's her duty with all the dukkha it demands she goes through, puts up with, meets and includes. Gently pointing that out to the practitioner, and she recognized the kind of soul-relevance and soul-truth in that, and it was very touching for us both. In this case, from that sense of duty, then it might be that the sense of dimensionality and divinity opens up from the sense of duty. Can be. So as I said, all these elements are connected.

If we actually just linger a little bit on this question of duty, I started to wonder -- does each imaginal figure, herself/itself/himself, whatever, have a duty it's aware of? We've talked so far about the duty being our duty in relationship to the imaginal figure, our duty given, if you like, by the angel, refracted (better) into our life from the angel, through our participation, through our interpretation, through our choices (because we retain autonomy). But I started to wonder, does each imaginal figure themselves have a duty that it is aware of, and that duty of the imaginal figure is then refracted into a corresponding duty for the soulmaking practitioner? And if that's the case, is it also that it's only more obvious with images that express in some ways a pathology or a dukkha? So those solitary wanderers that I've shared, and other people have shared similar kind of images of solitary wanderers -- there's dukkha there, but they seem to have a duty to keep wandering, and to be solitary, to some extent or to a large extent. Or the images that I used to share a lot of this sort of eternal soldier -- again, there's dukkha there, the burden of the battle, the difficulty, the relentlessness, the fatigue, the danger. Or the hysterically grieving woman, or this woman giving birth in a wrecked landscape. I don't know. And perhaps every imaginal figure's duty is to be itself fully, and somehow express that. So I'm just wondering about these things; I don't know.

And if we're talking about nodes and this sort of thing around duty and different aspects, someone asked, "Is necessity a node?" I can't remember -- or I was wondering. Maybe I was just wondering. I don't remember if someone else asked or if I was wondering. In other words, that this image feels, "It has to be this image. It's necessary." I don't know the answer. Is that a twenty-ninth element of our lattice? I'm not sure. Perhaps. If it were, it would be paired -- we talk about the relationship between different elements; it would be paired in opposition to the self's autonomy and the create aspect of the create/discover. "It's necessary, it has to be this" is a slightly paradoxical relationship with the sense of "I'm creating it," or acknowledgment of creation. I don't know the answer. We could perhaps include something like necessity as a twenty-ninth node, or it might already be kind of woven up implicitly in the node of soulmaking, that an image is soulmaking, and for soulmaking it has to have those resonances that are particular and, as I said, attuned, tailored to this particular soul, and what's meaningful, what's right on the money, with this intelligent sort of addressing and speaking to my situation, my particular soul, my make-up. So perhaps necessity could be conceived of as part of the node of soulmaking and the soulmaking resonances.

While we're on the subject, someone was asking -- recognition, which again may be related to this necessity, is recognition possibly an element? You know, sometimes, for instance in that image I shared of the claim of the god of music on me, there's a kind of recognition. I recognize something that makes sense of an aspect or strands of my life and my struggles, my aspirations, my inspirations, etc. But again, recognition will then be related to infinite mirroring, to meaningfulness, also to humility, and perhaps also values, in a way, perhaps. So I don't know about that. I'm not sure it's necessary to add another one. It seems to me implicit in the infinite mirroring and meaningfulness, etc. Vulnerability was another one we suggested. I think I suggested it the other day, or again someone else might have suggested it might be an element. Yeah, it could be. We talked about it the other day. Or significance was another one -- again, I don't remember if someone suggested it, or if I thought of it. It doesn't really matter. But yeah, so clearly there's a sense of the significance of this image, the significance of this sense, but I don't know whether we need to add that to the list, necessarily, because again, it's implied in the node of meaningfulness, it's implied in the node of infinite echoing and mirroring -- that's why it's significant -- and maybe implied in the node of duty. So I'm not sure. We wouldn't want the list of elements to get too unwieldy. Twenty-eight's already a lot. On the other hand, as I said, I don't particularly want these teachings to be sort of engraved forever in stone and without the possibility of creative discoveries by others at some point.

But if we talk about humility and if we talk about duty, then, as I pointed out earlier with humility -- and also I hope you get a feel for it when we've been talking about duty over the years -- that it includes love. So again, there's this overlap or implication between the elements of the imaginal. Let's talk a little, just a little bit right now, about the element of love. Love, loving and being loved, we said was one of the elements of the imaginal. One of the things that's interesting here, and I don't know whether I've pointed it out -- I don't think I have; that's why I'm saying it now -- one of the things that's important to realize is this love is not mettā. Or rather, it's not just mettā. The love that imaginal figures have for us is not a universal love. It's particular to us. It may include mettā, which is a universal love. Mettā is a universal love for sentient beings, universal in the sense of all sentient beings are included, no matter what, whereas the love that imaginal figures have for us might include mettā, but actually it's not universal. Rather, it's a kind of love of our uniqueness. It's their rejoicing in, if you like, their delighting in, their loving, their celebrating of and gratitude for our uniqueness and some particularity in us. That's different than mettā. Mettā, it doesn't matter how this person is different from that person, or even this person is in some ways more developed, or better morally, or kinder, or more beautiful, or wiser, or more intelligent, or less -- it doesn't matter. But a significant, or the significant characteristic of the love that imaginal figures have for us is different, and it is particular. It's not universal. It's not mettā. It's more than mettā. It may well include mettā.

And neither is it an unconditional love like mettā is. So again, mettā is to all beings equally -- no one deserves more or less mettā, so it's universal in that sense. It's also unconditional. What I was explaining before really explains the unconditionality of mettā as well. It doesn't matter, it's not dependent on, it's not conditioned by this or that quality in the being, or this or that behaviour. So a pathological serial killer is worthy of as much mettā as a Buddha in the teachings of mettā. But the love that imaginal figures have for us is not universal, and it's not an unconditional love, either, like mettā is. Again, rather, the imaginal figure's love for us is, to some extent, contingent on us being a certain way, or acting, or choosing, or feeling, or intending, or sensing in some particular way, which is dear to and somehow refracts those similar dispositions in the imaginal figure. Or we could say the imaginal figure loves our potential, our kind of ideal being.

This is significant, because it's connected to duty, isn't it? They want something from us. They have an ask, a demand, a duty, and the love that they have is wrapped up with that. Sometimes they just celebrate our being, our sensibility, and sometimes they want us to be a certain way in the world -- act, choose, feel, intend, sense, etc. And that way is somehow connected to their way, how they are. This is important to realize when we talk about love of imaginal figures for us, a being loved. And we've pointed out, actually already in this talk pointed out, that love can look really quite different from whatever perhaps more narrow models or ideas of love we have. So it can look quite stern, quite fierce, quite demanding or taxing, or all kinds of things. I've given all kinds of examples over the years. Even the devouring, what seems violent, etc., an image that eats me up and devours me, or cuts me up into little pieces -- all this can be, if I don't get pulled into my immediate, indoctrinated assumptions that my mind has, I start to see: "Oh, there is a kind of love here, and it's not the usual kind." Again, I'm training my sensibility, I'm opening my sensibility and receptivity and my discernment to the range of what love can mean. But the love is not mettā, it's not universal, it's not unconditional. It might include that as a stratum, but it's more than that.

I mentioned Nicolai Hartmann briefly. I want to return to him. If I get to do the talks on ethics, we'll return to him. I'll just mention a little bit right now in this connection with love. He talks about what he calls personal love, which is different than -- really in our language he means love of the being because you sense the image. You sense him/her/them as image. And that imaginal level of a human being that you love, he calls it the ideal, the personal ideal. I hope to explain that language a bit more when we get to the talks on ethics, but. So there's what he calls the empirical personality, which is just -- 'empirical' means what you actually sense, what you see. You see this form, you see that action, you see them be grumpy, you see them snap at someone, you see them be lazy or whatever it is at times. "The empirical personality," he says, "never strictly corresponds to its own ideal value," to the image.^[4]

So there's a sense, when we love really deeply, we have, if you like, the imaginal sense of the other. Now, he tends to think there's just one imaginal sense. Let's go with that for now, a bit like some of Corbin's interpretations of certain teachings. He calls that the ideal personality. "Since [the] empirical personality [he says] never strictly corresponds to its own ideal value [to the image], but love [in his sense, in this personal love] looks exclusively to the latter," to the image, to the ideal -- the ideal is not some preconceived notion of how this person should be; it's a sort of intuitive sense of the angel that they're refracting, if we put it in our language. He's putting it in different language, different concept. He doesn't use the language of images or even the idea of images. So, "it inheres in the essence of personal love [then], to pierce through the empirical person to his ideal value." You see through the everyday sort of foibles and failings of this person. You also see the wonderful things that they do and their beauty, but you pierce through the empirical to the ideal value, meaning to the image, to their angelic nature and what they are refracting in their being there.

"This is at least its tendency," he says. "Its commitment [is to] the ideal of personality," to that image. "It lets [that] stand for the empirical individual, accepting him" -- I'm going to just, for now, retain his gender-biased language; sorry about that. It's a complicated, long passage, so. "It lets [that] stand for the empirical individual," so it's gravitating more, it's orienting more towards what he's calling the ideal of the person, what we might call the image. "It lets [that] stand for the empirical individual, accepting him as equivalent to his highest possibilities, as raised to a power above his actual being. It loves in him what inheres in his essential tendency, the axiological idiosyncrasy of his Ideal." That fancy language just means his particular, unique set of values and sensibilities that reside in his image. We are like we are, we have these kind of values, these kind of sensibilities, these kind of directions, aspirations, propensities, the deep ones, because of the image that we are given, the image that we are refracting, the angel that we are refracting, or we are the refraction of.

"Not as an ideal, but as a trend towards actuality, just as if it were already actualized in him. For it [for this kind of love] the man, as he is, in the trend of the [preference of his ethos, of his being] is accepted as a guarantor of a higher moral Being" -- again, he's using the word 'moral' in quite a wide sense, but let's not go into that right now -- "which of course he is not, but which only in him and nowhere else in the world finds something real that approximates to its own value." So only in us, only in you, is there anything that's approximating that angel, unique. And that's the closest we can come to that angel, if you like, through the human. It's the closest it comes.

"Personal love," meaning this fuller, deeper love that sees, that senses and loves what he calls the ideal person in the other, or what we might call the image, "Personal love lives by faith in the highest that is within the loved one, which despite its inadequacy love senses prophetically. Such love is ethical divination in the pre-eminent sense of the word," he says, the love of the ideal of a particular, meaning the image of a particular individual. And he continues, "the distinctive power of all love which enters deeply into one's personal life [is] that it brings to light the otherwise hidden and neglected essence of one's individuality." So this is a long passage, and I'm taking my time reading it, but I'm mentioning all this because not only is this relevant to human/human relationships where we allow them to be enriched and to open out to the imaginal dimension -- I've said this before: I think real love, deep love of another human being, includes them being image to us and the love of that image, so that we're loving the whole spectrum of their being, the whole spectrum of the dimensionality of their being. So he's talking about love of human to human, which I want to include, but right now I'm talking about the love of images for us, because images love us in that sense, in the sense that he's talking about.

And "the distinctive power of all love which enters deeply into one's personal life [is] that it brings to light the otherwise hidden and neglected essence of one's individuality." It's as if these images, they look at us, they witness us, and they know us sometimes better than we know ourselves. And in their gaze, and in their love, what is sometimes hidden and inaccessible within us is brought to light. Through their gaze, through their love, they know something that perhaps we're not in contact with, and it starts to activate and actualize those aspects of our being, if you like, the inner core of our being, the imaginal dimensions of our being, the images that we are, that we are refracting, that we can potentially refract, that we can choose to engage with more fully. Brings to light and to life, I would say, the otherwise hidden and neglected essence of one's individuality. He continues, "That this revelation can be achieved only in a life of another order than that of the empirical, is because of the gulf between him," between the empirical man, "and the Ideal of himself," in the image. So there's this separation. The image -- that's why I use the word 'refraction' -- it can never be, as I said before, a complete, 100 per cent faithful replica of the angel. There's a gulf between the empirical man, the actual manifestation, and the ideal, the image.

And then he continues, "The loved one feels the power that upholds him." Think about this. I hope some of you will have tasted this already with images. Something about the way they love us -- of course you can feel it and taste it when you're related to with a certain love by another human being, again, when they're opening to and allowing the angelic, the imaginal dimension of your being. They're allowing themselves to witness that, to open to it, to sense it, to relate to it, to love it. "The loved one feels the power that upholds him." I hope you've felt this. I hope you have tasted this with images -- also with other human beings and practitioners. "He feels that the loving glance penetrates his empirical being and points beyond it. Thus he is aware that for the one who loves him he has become transparent.... It exults him above himself," this exults him above himself, "and he feels also that which shames him for not being in actuality as the other sees him. But instead of feeling that he is misunderstood he has rather a sense that he is known to a pre-eminent degree." So even when there's a sense of the image and the ideal of the image, and we feel we're not living up to it, and the image knows that [laughs], we still feel deeply understood, deeply known.

"And at the same time, he's forced to be what the other sees him to be." So there's something, again, in the alchemy of images, of opening ourself to the gaze of an image, to the sense and the conception of the imaginal in the way that we're talking about, that will galvanize all this. It changes our life. It directs us. It gives us power and also gives us courage and inclination to follow a certain direction, or calling, or action, or manifestation in our life. Something very beautiful here. I want to talk about it in both domains, the domain of regarding an image or a sensing with soul, something we're sensing with soul and the way that it loves us, in this way that he's talking about, and/or the human/human relationships, actual human relationships when they're allowed to open, when we don't disallow that kind of opening to those imaginal dimensions.

Now, of course, some of you from a Dharma background will get pretty nervous at this kind of language, when he talks about one kind of ideal of a person. So his language, as I said, the ideal of a personality is roughly akin to our language of the image, the self-image, or the image that the other is seeing in us, or we see in another, or the angel out ahead. We can, for now, just lump them together. It's still empty. So if that kind of language sounds like it's reifying or essentializing a kind of ultimately true core to the self, we can still say it's empty, okay? How is it empty? Well, it doesn't exist in time, like anything. It's a fabrication. If you know the different emptiness teachings, it's composed of parts and wholes, and it's empty because of that, etc. It's also, you know -- I'll come back to this, I hope, in the talk on ethics -- but this language of ideals is old language; people hardly use it any more. But I want to revisit it. So it's never discerned definitively or clearly. We have, as I said, this intuitive sense of the angel that the person is refracting, or an angel that they're refracting. We have an intuitive sense of them as image. But it's never kind of tied down definitively, and it's never completely crystal clear as the empirical version is. And there's something, perhaps, similar there to a kind of existence that's a bit like, if you know from quantum physics, the wave function that hasn't collapsed -- there's a sort of potential there. The probability wave function with the potential of this, whatever it is, particle or electron, is given a certain range and definition, but it's not manifest yet. So it manifests in this translation, if we translate it to our terms -- the angel manifests through our action, through our speech, through our choices, through our sensibilities, through our thoughts, through our heart. But in itself, it's kind of not totally knowable.

Okay. Last thing. [1:36:44] And it's connected, and also I want to continue paraphrasing Hartmann. It's from a book called -- well, he's got this huge book called Ethics, which I'll come back to, but it's from there. He talks about this kind of love is not only a disposition or an emotion or a sort of striving, but it's also a kind of knowing, it's a kind of cognition, he says. So in this sense, a cognitive element, a knowing element, is always contained in that kind of love. "Anyone who means by knowledge only a thinking, reflective, rational consciousness of an object, must naturally find a contradiction [here]. But that is an untenable idea of knowledge, which not even science -- much less life ... -- would admit to be adequate." So there's a kind of knowledge based on feeling, an intuitive knowledge. In other words, when we love this way, implicit in that is we know something about the person, or the image, as I said, knows us deeply.

"In a certain sense," he writes, "the popular saying is right. Love is blind, in so far as it does not see what is before its eyes. More correctly stated: it sees what is not in front of its eyes, what is not really at hand. It sees through." It's the transparency. "Its glance is of the nature of divination. To it the ideal essence behind the actual man is the man proper." So again, we're playing with this -- what's real here? Is the image more real than the flesh-and-blood, human manifestation? Who is the real being here? We'll play with this conception of ontology, play in this range of the imaginal Middle Way. To this kind of love, the ideal essence, he writes, behind the actual man, behind the actual person, is the person proper.

"As regards personality," he continues, "he who loves is the only one who sees; while he who is without love, is blind." He starts with this phrase, "love is blind," but actually he turns it round: if you don't love deeply in this way, if you don't include the imaginal dimension, if we put it in our language, you're actually not seeing properly. You're blinded, blinded by a certain level of what's obviously palpable and sensible and agreed upon. He turns that around. So this gaze, and this kind of love, "discovers the ideal in the empirical." It discovers the image in the human manifestation. And that love, within the limits of its power, creates it in the loved one. So there's a kind of intuitive understanding, and through the love, and through the relationship, it actually fertilizes that and allows that seed to germinate, allows it to actualize, to come to being. So that kind of constructive work of love follows after its discernment. But there's a penetrating knowledge of this kind of intuitive love.

So again, if we come back to epistemology and all that, to say a way of knowing (which he's talking about), a way of knowing is a step further epistemologically than, say, a way of looking, because you're actually saying this is a kind of knowledge, there's a truth to it. So he's very much in that camp. We want to open up that territory, too, because there's such a tendency to dismiss these kinds of things in our culture. Then, how far are we "able to unite the life of the Ideal with a sober view of the actual"? So it's not that we don't see the actual; it's not that the image doesn't see the actual in us; it's not that we don't see the actual in another person, their humanity, their faults, their foibles, their failings, their fallings, etc. How much can we unite the actual life with the actual man? And that combination, he says, "need not be a compromise."

"The whole art of love," he says, "consists in retaining this high point of vision as a perspective and remaining under its spell." So now he's talking about human relationships, but it might also transfer -- we can translate it, also, to the realm of imaginal relationships, that we have to retain this openness to the image that loves us in that way, that we have to let the image, as it naturally will, retain that high vision that it has of us, that perspective, and we are under the spell of that vision. So all that is complicated, perhaps. I hope you get the gist. All that is implicit as part of the possibilities of what we can sense in the love that images have for us, and the beauty of that, the way the soul is touched by that, and opened like a flower opening, and guided, and inspired, and anchored.