Logoi and Leanings

This evening, I'd just like to offer a few pointers, reflections, things to consider and bear in mind about both navigation, we might say, or steering within imaginal practice or sensing with soul, but also between practices. So some things about navigation, and also, secondly, some things about concepts and ideas, and just a little bit about their place in practice, in sensing with soul, etc.

Okay, so with regard to, yes, what we might call steering or navigating in practice, as I said, someone who's doing soulmaking practice has to understand: we're not just talking about imaginal practice. We're not just talking about sensing with soul. Those practices (which are themselves very rich, imaginal practice and sensing with soul) are themselves kind of nestled within or part of a much larger framework of related practices. And they need those other practices at times to support, nourish, consolidate, balance what's going on in the imaginal practice, just to give relief, etc., take the pressure off. As I've pointed out, or sometimes try and remember on retreats to point out at the beginning, you know, it's probably not wise, and it's probably not even possible, to try and do imaginal practice all day long. It needs the balance of samādhi, of emptiness, of mettā, of emotional work, or working with the energy body, etc., so that a person engaged in Soulmaking Dharma and soulmaking practice is actually moving between different practices at different times.

And as always, there's an art to that, a playfulness to it, but also a kind of wise, and attuned, and sensitive responsiveness that's necessary. And then there is, of course, the navigation, the steering within the practices. Now, a lot of this -- what we might call steering or navigation -- you know, sometimes, it's quite clunky, a move from one thing to another. But often it's much more subtle, the way we can shift between practices. So I've given the image many times in different contexts of an eagle or a hawk soaring on the thermals, the warm air currents. And if it wants to move to the right, fly to the right, glide to the right, it's just a very subtle leaning, inclination of the tilt of the wings to the right, the left wing upwards, etc., the right wing downwards, and vice versa. The art is in the subtlety, oftentimes.

Or you know, if you're riding a bike, sometimes the steering happens more by the leaning -- or a motorbike, or a bicycle -- or if you've seen people sailing in relatively small boats, they sort of lean over one side, pulling the sail. The emphasis is slightly different, and sometimes, of course, that's quite dramatic and vigorous, but a lot of this navigation is really quite subtle. And as things develop, as our artfulness in practice and practices develops, we can find that whole moving between emphases, between directions, etc., in practice, or between practices gets correspondingly subtle and more subtly attuned. [4:54]

And a general point, which I can't remember if I've said it elsewhere, but it really bears repeating: sometimes we're, "So when should I do this? When should I do that? When should I just be with an emotion, and when should I try and drop it, or see the emptiness of it, or whatever?" I don't know that there's necessarily, in each instance, a mistake. Or one shouldn't fear a mistake in each instance. Let's say, if we're talking about emotions, and something's coming up emotionally, and it's difficult, and one just decides in that moment to steer away from it: "Don't -- just come back to the breath. I'll just regard it as a bit of papañca, or I'll just see the emptiness of it, and let it go." And one makes that decision. Now, of course, that may not be the most helpful decision, either at the time or in the long run, but I don't have to fear so much about it. If that's the case, it will tend to kind of come back and keep knocking at the door, or something will feel like it's dried up or not working. We'll get the cues and the clues and the indications in our practice and in our life, that "Oh, I need to go back to that and explore it," for instance.

Or conversely, a person might, in a certain instance, decide to go with emotion, and be with it, and explore it, but after a while, again, the cues, the clues, the indications tell me, "Actually, I think I'm just kind of creating a lot of mud here. There's nothing really deeply authentic or real in this particular emotion. It's just the mind kind of spinning and making a mess, as it does." As the Buddha would say, the deluded mind has that tendency and that habit. So in each instance, don't get paralysed in "Should I do this? Should I do that? More samādhi, less samādhi? More imaginal practice, or should I do an emptiness practice?" We can go with something, but if we stay sensitive, and stay receptive to the cues that we're getting back from our experience in relation to whatever choice of direction or leaning we've gone, then we can always change something.

So I don't think fearing making mistakes in the moment is really justified or helpful. What may be a mistake -- or I sometimes tend to think, perhaps the only mistake in navigating between different practices would be to always do the same thing, or only one thing, only one of two choices. So I always 'be with' an emotion, or I always drop it and, say, return to the breath. Either one of those, always, is going to be problematic. I'm not going to learn nearly as much in terms of the total territory of what we can learn and discover and open up in practice if I just do one or the other.

Or some people, some practices, some traditions in Buddhadharma teach: "It's always with a microscopic attention. Always you're kind of burrowing the attention into something, kind of atomizing experience." And in that system, it's held to be, "Well, that's the way that you're going to get insight," and so that the attention is always trying to work in this kind of atomizing, microscopic way. Other traditions, either within Insight Meditation, or borrowing from, say, Mahāmudrā, Dzogchen traditions, sometimes Advaita traditions, always work with a wide awareness. And again, one will almost certainly be missing quite a lot of insight by just doing one or just doing the other. All kinds of things won't become apparent, won't get absorbed, will have partial insight. And there are also other reasons -- energetic consequences from doing just one or just the other, in terms of how the mind feels, how the energy moves in the body, etc.

So sometimes, you know, I just like to say to people: don't fear so much the mistakes in the moment. Look at the kind of overview of your practice, or look at it over time, and if you're always just doing one thing, always just one kind of approach, or one kind of response to some particular area of experience that comes up -- that always doing one thing, I think, would be a mistake. So less fear, more openness to the possibilities, and the diversity, and the range, and the flexibility of approach, of direction, of way of looking, of practice, etc. But that then invites the question of navigating. It brings that question in, and so we have to address that.

So one of the possibilities that can arise, both in -- well, actually, in mettā practice, in emptiness practices, and in imaginal practices -- is that in the opening that happens in any of those practices, in the letting go, in the beauty that we're touched with, it's possible that lovely feelings arise, lovely experiences in the energy body arise, and there, it's as if the path then forks. Potentially it forks. So one option is to lean into those lovely feelings and pay attention to them with the intention of enjoying them, of spreading them, of absorbing into them. And if we lean that way at any time, then we are moving down the samādhi route -- the pervasion, the permeating of body and mind with whatever quality of well-being is present, or has arisen as a result of our practice, or just spontaneously, or whatever.

So when we're doing imaginal practice, that's a common occurrence. When we're doing emptiness practice, that will be a very regular occurrence. Or when we're doing mettā practice as well. And with each of those three practices -- mettā, emptiness, and imaginal -- the instructions would be slightly different. So I don't want to particularly go into that right now, or those differentiations right now, but the samādhi qualities, if you like, or ingredients that come from working with an image, an erotic-imaginal image, will arise quite regularly, some people have found. It's related to the way the image opens up our energy body, and aligns and harmonizes our energy body. Openness, alignment, harmonization of the energy body are all absolutely characteristic of, certainly, the first four jhānas -- but in a way, we could say, of all jhānas and all samādhi. So it's central to what I would take samādhi to mean. [13:26]

If we always do that, so whenever the kind of loveliness in the energy body and the emotional qualities (joy, and peace, ecstasy, etc., rapture), when they arise, if we always lean into them and go into the samādhi, in a way, we're only going to gain a portion of the imaginal's immense treasures. So I'm saying this partly because someone was reporting this to me indirectly. She didn't kind of realize it. She was listening to talks on soulmaking, etc., and playing a little bit, and discovering that, often, these samādhi qualities came up. And they were quite new for her, and so she was leaning repeatedly into the samādhi, almost like using the imaginal to then get these lovely qualities in the energy body and the heart, and then kind of hone in on them, open to them, absorb them, leaning it towards the samādhi, and towards jhāna.

But if we always do that, as I said, you're going to miss a huge portion of the unfathomable and diverse treasures that are there in the imaginal. It would be a bit like, for example, someone making a profound and beautiful work of art, and maybe it's made out of a precious substance -- I don't know, bronze, or gold, or whatever -- and you melt it down and extract the bronze, because bronze, or gold, or whatever it is, because that's worth something. It's valuable. The work of art, though, will be worth more. If it's a great work of art, it's going to be worth more than just the value of the [material]. Its value is more than just resides in the value of the material of bronze, or gold, or whatever it's made from. [15:56] So financially, it's worth more, but existentially, even more so. It will keep on giving if it's a profound work of art. It has that unfathomability which profound works of art have -- you know, closely related, if not the same thing, as imaginal images. They keep on going. They have that unfathomability, that inexhaustibility. They can touch your soul endlessly. So to always go towards the samādhi, take the samādhi fork, is going to limit, actually, how much we open to, recognize, and receive the gifts, the diverse and profound gifts of the imaginal.

But sometimes it's a really helpful thing to do. Here's this image, and there's loveliness coming up because of the eros or whatever, and the beauty there, and the opening in the energy body, and to decide to go, to let the image be secondary, and those lovely qualities in the energy body, in the mind and heart, be primary -- joy, peace, whatever they are, ecstasy, rapture, even if that's quite mellow -- to hone in on them, to open to them, to absorb into them, to really get intimate with them, developing the samādhi. That's really, really helpful, as I said, partly as a balance to the imaginal practice, because it will be too intense and too kind of probably unhelpfully entangling to do imaginal practice all day long; partly because we rest well there, we get nourished and resourced, which influences our view on all kinds of things. There are all kinds of other things to learn in samādhi practice, and part of the kind of -- I almost want to say the 'witchcraft' of samādhi practice, the wizardry of it -- we learn a lot there that bears fruit in all kinds of areas, including imaginal practice. [18:18]

So sometimes doing that is really valuable. Always doing it, we're really going to miss this treasure, just like if we burnt, if we melted down this amazing sculpture that was made from bronze or whatever. And just because we want the bronze, we've missed the art. Yeah? I've missed the profundity of the art and its endless gift, potentially endless gift to my soul, for my soul.

But this is one of the kind of common and classic, almost, possibilities of forks when we're doing imaginal practice, forks in the path where we can lean one way or another. And it will arise quite regularly, I think. What makes the difference -- because sometimes what we get is a kind of, "Well, the image is there, and the lovely feeling is there." And so I kind of have to decide: where am I leaning, exactly? Am I leaning primarily to the lovely feeling in the energy body and the mind and the heart? Then I'm going towards the samādhi. Am I leaning primarily towards the soulmaking aspects of the image, and resonating with them, and opening with them, and the eros, etc.? Then the image is primary. Am I balancing the two? You know, what's the relative degree of balance between?

So all this can be played with. And it could be that one lets the image completely fade, or it just goes to the background while the samādhi qualities are most prominent, or vice versa -- the samādhi qualities, I kind of let them really go to the background, the image, or I hold the two in kind of relative balance. But I should be familiar with moving and working along that whole range. Again, talking about ranges, flexibility, making sure that when we talk about these different ranges, as we did in that talk, "The Spreading of Five Wings," that the whole range is available to us, and we're not kind of always hanging out or preferencing one area of that range. [20:44]

So in moving between samādhi and image, or actually, in moving along the spectrum between, say, pure samādhi and pure imaginal practice, the key factor is intention. So for example, when I'm leaning in the samādhi direction, my intention is to support. At that moment, at that time, my intention is to support, to stabilize, and to enjoy the factors of samādhi, the jhānic factors or whatever, on the one hand. So that's my intention. It's the intention that makes the difference, because the intention directs and primes the attention and what I'm trying to do. For example, I'm trying to enjoy it. It not just directs the attention, but it shapes it, or flavours it, or conditions it, in a way. So an intention that's trying to enjoy has a certain kind of morphology to it, in the sense of it's open, it's tasting, it's penetrating, it's relishing -- all that is wrapped up in the attention. But it's driven by, it's programmed by the intention. This is what makes a difference.

When I'm intending to go down the imaginal practice, and I'm leaning that way, then my intention is for soulmaking. That's why it's important. What nodes need lighting up? Where's the soulmaking factor? In all this complex image or imaginal constellation of the self, and other and the world are involved, where's the sense of soulfulness right now? Can I tune into that? So again, the intention is for soulmaking, and that directs, and shapes, informs the attention. So I might be working with an image, and there's all kinds of lovely feeling going on -- the body is in complete rapture, and it's dissolved into a ball of luminous whiteness, etc. But it still might be possible, despite the intensity of that lovely feeling which could easily go into jhāna, my intention at that moment may be towards soulmaking. The image is still there. I'm aware of what's going on in the body and mind, and the loveliness there, but my intention is towards the soulmaking. [23:25]

So the intention is the primary thing that kind of determines which of these forks we're going down at any time. And that's an important thing to bear in mind. Again, I'm offering these as reflections, things for you to try out in practice, and get a feel for them yourselves, make them personal: "Now I know what that feels like. Ah, I see, I get the feel of that kind of leaning, of that kind of steering. I get the feel of how this or that emphasis or intention, or whatever we're talking about, makes a difference." So everything that we're talking about is there to be incorporated, discovered in your own practice, or deliberately incorporated, tried out, experimented with, until you get a taste for it yourself, and you make it your own. You understand it. You've absorbed it.

So there's this, as I said, possibility of emphasis or leaning between say, imaginal/soulmaking emphasis, imaginal practice, and samādhi. And within imaginal practice -- I've already made this point, but again, it's worth repeating -- with the elements or the nodes, to remember that there's not a kind of formula for the order in which they go in. There's not a predictable unfolding: "First this element lights up. First I do this, and then that." It's not so linear like that. Again, what that means for practice is it throws us back into a kind of openness of possibility. We don't exactly know what will light up first. It means my antennae have to be primed. I have to be receptive. I have to be delicate and sensitive in my attention so that I can notice: "Where is the soulmaking? What's igniting right now? What would be helpful, etc.? What's possible right now out of all the different elements that we can give attention to, begin to notice, or begin to deliberately ignite, tweak, play with, etc.?"

So as I said, I've already mentioned that point, and gave some examples where, if I remember, for instance, the sense of being loved came first, and then an emotion, and then the imaginal sense of the trees, etc. Or for example, we often start, with the instructions, with the energy body, but it doesn't have to come first, you know. So you will find that -- and I've pointed this out many times -- you will find that when an image is imaginal, or is potentially imaginal, has meaning for the soul, meaningfulness for the soul, is potentially soulmaking, that it opens up the energy body, it harmonizes it, it aligns it, etc.

Or the other way around. Explaining now the non-linearity, the other way around, too, can work. And we've emphasized that many times. Sometimes we're working with something. It's not really imaginal. There's not really the sense of sensing with soul there. Open up the energy body, inhabit the energy body, let the body lead, bring that whole sensitivity of awareness to bear, to the whole space of the energy body, and that allows something to become more imaginal. So the imaginal opens up the energy body. Opening up the energy body, inhabiting the energy body can open up the imaginal. There's not necessarily a formulaic, linear order.

Or again, some of the examples I've given just in this series of talks -- one might choose deliberately to focus on the sense of timelessness or eternality, and gently kind of open that out, or shift that, maybe in a kind of more sudden quantum leap, in different ways, some of which I've thrown out. And in doing that, it allows one's self, or some aspect of one's existence, or what one is sensing right now internally, externally -- it allows that to be sensed with soul. It allows the whole thing to become more imaginal. Correspondingly, of course, because timelessness and eternality are elements of the imaginal, that when we are sensing with soul, when something does become more fully imaginal, we will notice, or at some point the eternality element will switch on, will ignite. So just to remember that and what it means, again, in terms of our poise, our stance, our openness, our need for sensitivity, receptivity, opportunism, etc. That is very much part of navigating within imaginal practice.

So also, when we talk about navigating or steering, etc., we're also including this aspect of pacing, which I've said a little bit about over the recent years. But I just want to say one more thing right now about it, with regard to eros and the eros-psyche-logos dynamic. So when we defined eros, we included the pothos element in the definition of eros. We said eros wants more contact, more connection, more touching, more opening, more intimacy, etc., with its beloved, erotic other. And that 'more' was a key aspect that, if you like, drove the whole movement of eros and its stimulation of the soulmaking dynamic, the eros-psyche-logos dynamic. But if you pay attention to your experience, you will notice that eros doesn't always want more right now, in this moment. I mean, often it does, and there's this sense of what we just described, and that 'more' kind of pushes into creating/discovering more of the beloved other, the beloved imaginal object, creating more faces, more aspects, more dimensions, more images within the image, etc., or associated with the image, etc.

But sometimes, the 'more*,'* with eros wanting more, may just be to linger right now with the loveliness and delight of whatever perception is there, the loveliness and delight that are part of the subjective experience of eros, rather than a wanting to reach, penetrate into, open to 'beyonds' unseen -- "More, show me more!" -- or wanting the image to complexify, or to create/discover new faces, new aspects of the beloved. In other words, the eros at those times wants to linger longer*.* The 'more' is in the more time. It wants to linger for more time with the loveliness that it has, with the delight that it has, with the sense of the beloved that it already has, or that it has right then.

So again, we have to be kind of sensitive to and respectful of, "Well, what does the eros want right now? What kind of 'more'?" Often it is that 'more' that will naturally create and discover more faces, more dimensions, more beyonds, that wants to penetrate and open those beyonds, and that unfathomability. But sometimes it's not. It just pauses for a while, so to speak, and it lingers. And again, this has to do with pacing, you know, the pacing of the whole movement of the soulmaking dynamic, the whole movement of what's happening, and what's opening, what's moving, and how, and when, and what kind of rhythms it moves in when we're working with an image, with sensing with soul.

So eros and the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, the soulmaking dynamic, have rhythms. They're not necessarily gradual or smooth. So if you perhaps got that impression from the descriptions we've given, in the past, of the way eros works, and the way the soulmaking dynamic, the eros-psyche-logos dynamic works, just to bear in mind that the rhythms there may not be gradual or smooth. They may be more step-like rather than a kind of smoothly linear graph, if you like. So that step-like rhythm might be more obvious with the logos in general. In other words, the ideas of things, selves, objects, world, reality, etc., logos, our ideation, our concepts and conceptual frameworks tend to move and open at a slower pace than eros or psyche or image. But I'm saying this partly because I don't think I've spelled that out clearly in talks before, and perhaps I've given the impression that it's kind of always in motion with the soulmaking dynamic, and eros is always wanting that kind of 'more.' It does, generally, and for the most part. But as I said, there may be rhythms. [34:31] The river is flowing, and then it comes to a place in the river where it's kind of relatively still, and it pools for a while, and it enjoys that stillness and that pooling, and then it moves on.

So again, the need for withholding a kind of imposing of formulae, the need to listen, to be sensitive, to be open and receptive to what's happening, and to respect that -- or at least be open to respecting it, because sometimes we need to respond to what's happening and make it different, help it to become something else.

And sometimes, you know, we need to kind of impose a sort of slowing down or a kind of stasis in what's happening, in what's unfolding. Sometimes this is for the sake of stability and equanimity in the being. I'm not sure how common it is, but it can happen, and some people might be, for different reasons, more predisposed to it than others, but it can be that something opens up in the sensing with soul, and there's a lot of excitement. And that excitement is, of course, part of the eros, but sometimes, the excitement can fizz in the being, in the energy, and in the mind, and in the heart, in certain ways that just actually mean that what could be absorbed and learnt and opened to is not so well-absorbed, learnt, and opened to. And maybe the being just gets agitated in a way that's not that helpful. Maybe something in the whole stance and structure of the being gets thrown off balance in a way, again, that's not that helpful.

Of course, at times, being thrown off balance is extremely helpful despite the fact that it might feel difficult. We've talked about that -- the stretching, the breaking of the vessels, etc. But sometimes, it can be, again, wise to introduce something, or lean in a certain way, or navigate within the imaginal constellation that's happening, within the sensing with soul that's happening, so that we kind of balance things out, balance the being out, which allows more absorption of the illumination of whatever we're sensing with soul, allows more illumination of the soul, and more digestion for the soul of that illumination over time.

So going back, repeating this teaching about the fountain, and the basin of the fountain, and that needing to kind of -- obviously, the waters of soul needing to kind of balance out, the waters of what becomes imaginal needing to balance out, and at least to include self, other, world -- not with every image; of course not. But again, over time. And sometimes within one image, again, we might find, "Something's out of balance here. Something doesn't feel quite right. Or I can't quite tolerate this." For instance, the eros is so much leaning towards the other, in its gaze, in its belovedness, in its erotic charge and dimensionality, and that's tipping the being over in some ways. And so we can counterbalance that -- not diminish the eros, but actually, in a way, add to it by allowing ourselves, or helping ourselves to become erotic object for ourselves. The self becomes imaginal, so that there, the eros can flow both ways. There can actually be more eros, but it's balanced. The eros flowing towards the self balances the eros towards the other and the world, etc.

Included in the world also, we might say, "Well, what's the sense of the world right now? What kind of world? What kind of cosmos? What's the cosmopoesis here? What's the perception of things?" And included in that is the perception of time. So again, one might balance things out by just paying attention to, "What kind of perception of time is happening right now?" And maybe that, the perception of time, time begins to get sensed with soul. And again, there are all kinds of possibilities there, and timelessness, or the kinds of perception with time. And that allows the eros and the soulmaking to flow in that direction and fill out in time. And that also, again, balances out the flows of water here, so that there can be enough equanimity, enough stability, in the moment and over time in practice, that things are digested, absorbed -- they don't just kind of get bowled over by some amazing experience that was, "I can't decide whether it was more amazing or just more agitating."

Sometimes what happens for some people is, the whole sensing with soul -- for instance, one's sensing something in nature, or some kind of universal process of the arising of appearances, or something about the cosmos, something about consciousness, and the whole sensing with soul -- it's hard to say what's sensing with soul and what's insight. Maybe there isn't a boundary there. And again, with the insight, there can be a lot of excitement and a lot of turbulence sometimes. And so, you know, going back to the different teachings we've given, perhaps there might be certain of the elements at that point. If that's what's happening, I don't want to throw the whole experience out. There's a lot of insight here. There's a lot of opening. There's a lot of beauty and amazement in the sensing with soul.

But perhaps if I just noticed, for instance, the sense of grace, and I give that a little bit more attention, or the sense of being loved, there can be soothingness in both those qualities. We're pervaded by this grace. We're held by it. We're given something. Or being loved, you know, usually -- not always, but usually -- it has a kind of soothing quality. So just some attention. Doesn't have to be all the attention, but some attention to those kinds of qualities, or as I said, maybe the eternality can soothe things and allow things to be more stable, more sustaining, more digestible, and in that way, more fruitful, more soulful, more fruitful for the soul.

And also, the balance of attention, like we said, with self/other/world -- can I play with this balance of attention, and actually feel more the sustainability and stability come into the experience right now? Of course one has to remember, sometimes -- I don't know how common this is, but sometimes if there's really a lot of excitement that's happening with a certain experience, you know, sometimes the excitement means we can't remember so well, but I do think this kind of thing is very possible. I've seen it to be so, and in interviews, just guiding people gently, it's very possible. It's part of the art of steering.

Again, we're still talking about steering now, and steering for the sake of soulmaking, of course. Or if I'm steering in emptiness practice, it's steering for the sake of those insights making a difference. Yeah, so we talked about intention being key in steering, and other factors. But something also to bear in mind is these two factors of energy body, and also ideas or conceptual frameworks, and how significant they are. So they're the primary factors that allow soulmaking practices -- and also, we could say, emptiness practices as well -- to realize their full potential. Energy body we've talked about. It's involved in the steering. It tells me when something is potentially soulmaking, even if my mind is objecting or horrified by something or thinking, "Oh, this is not very interesting," or "boring," or "It's probably rubbish. It's probably irrelevant." The energy body can tell me. I can read the energy body, and with this harmonization, alignment, opening, etc., it's telling me I'm on the right track here, no matter what my mind is saying, and I can go with it and trust it. So it's part of the steering.

But it's also, again, part of what allows the digestion, almost like the mastication, the chewing, the absorption of the soulmaking experience. It allows us to open to it more. It allows the sensing with soul -- whatever we're sensing, the imaginal object of the eros -- to penetrate the being, to touch the being. It's working. It's kneading the dough of our body and our being, and not just our body, but through our body, our consciousness, and our soul. So that's part of, as I said, also with emptiness practices, because we feel, in the body, the release that a certain emptiness way of looking or insight way of looking brings. And that allows us to really absorb that insight, and to feel the freedom of it, and to feel the liberation of it right then, and to absorb it more long-term. So, energy body's involved both in steering and allowing or supporting the soulmaking and emptiness practices to realize their full potential. But also the ideation.

So the conceptual framework or the ideas supporting soulmaking and imaginal practice, or if we're talking about emptiness practices, the ideas that are underpinning them, supporting them -- those are absolutely key. So we can have an experience in either one of those practices, either imaginal practice or emptiness practice, and the experience itself -- if we can even talk about "an experience itself," as if it's separatable from other conditions and surrounding factors -- but we might have some experience, and that experience itself may be therapeutic to a certain extent (it may feel therapeutic, it may feel healing, it may be interesting, it may be amazing), in either of those two practices, soulmaking or emptiness. But it might not be either fully imaginal or soulmaking, or delivering of liberating insight into emptiness, again, because the ideas that are supporting it are not -- ideas are excluded, or they're narrowed down, or they're not conscious enough, etc. Or they're too -- well, let's say that for now.

So as you can tell, over the years of the talks, there are a lot of ideas that support the whole soulmaking logos. And if they're not operating, in a way that, in the time of practice -- doesn't necessarily mean they're at the forefront of my mind, but if they're not operating in ways that support the practice, then yes, I might have something that feels, to a certain extent, healing. I might have something that's "Wow!", if I tell my friends about it or whatever. Might be something that's like, "That's really interesting." But there won't be the fully imaginal, fully soulmaking potential there. I won't receive that.

And similarly with the emptiness: something might fade through some practice, but if I kind of haven't got some portion of my mind understanding the idea of why that fading is significant -- "It fades when I do this, or when I drop that, or when I don't do this" -- and this teaching about dependent arising. So yeah, sure, if there's some painful papañca, painful story, painful history, body pain, etc., and it fades, we feel, "Great! That was really helpful, amazing that it faded," etc. But if I'm not linking it up, if it's not undergirded by certain, again, lightly held concepts and ideas that are appropriate, that are the ones that are helpful -- well, it won't be helpful, or rather, it's that the help of it will be limited. [49:21] I doubt I will have any kind of long-term benefit from it.

So energy body, but also very much ideas, concepts, logoi, conceptual frameworks, etc. And that, as I said at the beginning, is the second sort of aspect that I want to go into, offer a few things, reflections and considerations about tonight. So yeah, the importance, certainly, of conceptual frameworks, but also of individual concepts. We use this word 'logos' for either one concept or one idea, or a much larger frame of ideas, framework of ideas, like, for example, the Soulmaking Dharma is a whole conceptual framework. Or you know, even, I guess, Theravādan, the way a certain tradition practises in Theravādan Insight Meditation is also a whole conceptual framework there. It's a whole network of related ideas that together form a kind of hopefully coherent framework and a helpful framework. So by 'logos,' I can mean either of those: either one idea, or a whole framework.

And so, you know, we've stressed the importance of this, and how a kind of limited logos or inappropriate logos/logoi, or a narrowing down, or rigidification, or holding on to some logoi can block and inhibit the whole soulmaking process. It can block the whole soulmaking dynamic from growing and fertilizing. It can also block anything from becoming image, or it can block us from sensing with soul at any moment. So in this series, I've mentioned already a couple of times: if, for instance, this dukkha or this image, I'm consciously or unconsciously regarding it as being a result of one cause -- only one cause, whatever that cause is, something in my history, or this or that, or it's a representation of one part of my being, or one quality of my being, whatever it is -- that limitation, that reduction to only one causal explanation will inhibit the sensing with soul.

And again, find out for yourself. Recognize the difference, how it feels different. Again, something might feel very healing, very touching to the heart -- let's say, a dukkha that I look at from the perspective of an explanation of something that happened in my history, and perhaps in my family, or whatever -- and I might work with it, perhaps with a therapist or whatever, and I can feel my heart is touched. It helps me. It makes a difference. I can recognize, I can understand something about myself. I can move on. I can implement some other way of seeing and relating in time, etc. So it might be really helpful. It won't be sensing with soul. It won't become imaginal. And when things are imaginal, as I said, they have a certain flavour. [52:59]

And we want to really get familiar with what it feels like to be in the territory, to be towards the more fully, more authentically imaginal. So you begin to taste all these things for yourself: "Oh yeah, that's what happens when something's gone flat now." You can feel it. And in time, you can even feel it in another -- you're talking with someone else, and you feel when they've gone flat, when their perspective gone has gone flat, and therefore not dimensionalized, not imaginal. So do get familiar with the tastes, the flavours, the feeling, the sense of these different areas of our existence, all of which are important.

You know, flat experience, therapeutic, flat experience can be really helpful, as I said. Or again, I might be relating to a figure in the imagination as "It represents my mettā," or whatever it is, or "my compassion," or "my self-empowerment," whatever. And that can be really helpful. You know, it might empower me that way. It might help me develop mettā -- great, really important. But if I decide, you know, if I limit the kind of explanation of what that image is, or what that sense is there of the object that I'm sensing with soul, then the whole thing can't really take off. So the power of ideas to both inhibit and limit the sensing with soul and the soulmaking dynamic, but also to stimulate it, and to open it, and to fire it up, to ignite it.

So with regard to causality, might it be that it's possible to have, again, a flexibility and a range of how we're conceiving in any instant? So we're opening the range, or opening a range with respect to the notion, the idea, the logos of causality -- could say particularly around dukkha, but actually around anything. So if we use the example of dukkha, to say it's caused from the past, caused from some event in the past, this dukkha in the moment that's giving rise to this image, or just the dukkha itself -- that would be one kind of causal explanation that looks to the past. It's very normal. It's the most common understanding, or the most common assumption of the mind when it's confronted with any object, that its causes lie in the past. [55:53]

For a Dharma practitioner, as I see it, it's really, really important to understand the dependent arising in the present, meaning, the way I'm looking at this right now, the perspective through which I'm sensing, or with which I'm sensing this thing, this object, this aspect of myself, whatever it is -- that conditions what I perceive and how the object is. So there's causality in the present, dependently arising in the present. Dependent on what? Dependent on, yeah, sure, all kinds of external factors, but also and primarily, for the purposes of insight for a Dharma practitioner, dependent on the way of looking. So we could say "caused from the past" is one kind of possible notion of causality. "Caused in the present," yeah? And that's very unusual, how we tend to think, because we tend to think a cause needs to precede its effect. But actually, with the profound understanding of dependent arising, they go together. They dependently arise together, the way of looking and the object perceived. [57:08]

Or a third option would be what we might call 'teleological' or 'teleologically caused' -- in other words, caused, so to speak, by the future, by the angel out ahead, by something that soul is pulling me towards, if you like, or, if you want another way of framing it, that soul is pulled towards by the daimon, by the angel. This dukkha is the angel's grief. It's the angel's dukkha. It's the angel's judgment. It's the angel asking too much of me, or what feels like too much right now. It's stretching me hugely. It kind of seems too big for me to handle at present. I mean, usually it's not, but it can feel that way. And so that's a very different understanding of the dukkha: the dukkha is coming from the angel, coming from the demands of the angel, coming from the calling of the angel, coming from the ask of the angel. Or it's the angels themselves: this angel looks with a kind of fierce moral indignation or a wrathful gaze, etc., and that feels like dukkha. Or this angel is grieving whatever it is, maybe grieving the plight of the planet, plight of the earth, and the grief feels so deep. Whatever it is. So this third possibility, teleological causation: there's a telos there, a goal, an end, the angel out ahead, something we're being propelled or pulled towards.

So again, is it possible to open up that range, that range of possibility, and to exercise some flexibility in picking up and putting down, including, focusing on these different causal explanations, and trying them out? And they will make a difference. They will make a huge difference to how something is sensed, what the experience actually is that unfolds.

So again, we could add that to our list in "The Spreading of Five Wings." I can't remember if that one was already in there, or we could certainly add it. So just like the range of perceived sort of density, or substantiality, or insubstantiality of the energy body as a range, or the pathology, pathologizing or non-pathologizing images, the openness to the range, right now, to the range of causal explanations. And sometimes these are just unconscious, so you can actually make them more conscious and deliberately play with that. But there is that possibility, opening up the logos away from the typically narrowed, constricted range of causal explanation that goes with our contemporary culture, or the dominant culture, at least. There's the possibility of that flexibility, that openness, that playing, that investigation. Yeah? Really important.

So in a way, the causal explanations have also to do with the nature of time. We say, "How can you have a cause in the future? That doesn't work," we would tend to think. But there's something here to open up. There's a lovely passage regarding the conceptions of time from -- well, Henry Corbin's reporting it. I can't quite remember where he's reporting it from, so forgive me for that, but he talks about it in his book, Temple and Contemplation, and it's to do with, some of you will know the story from the Old Testament of Moses as a baby. The story goes, the Pharaoh of Egypt -- I don't know -- had a premonition, or an intuition, or a rumour that a son would be born to the Jewish people, and would be destructive for the Egyptian people. Something like that, can't remember exactly. Would be a threat, or would liberate the Jewish people from their enslavement and their utility as a workforce for the Egyptians, for the Pharaoh.

And so he received this warning somehow, and he -- if I remember the story, it's been a while -- so he tried to kill all the male infants to prevent this prophecy, or whatever it was, unfolding in those ways, and so retaining his free workforce, essentially, and his power. What happens is Moses's, if I remember, mother and his sister hide Moses in a little kind of, I don't know, wicker or woven willow, or something, some kind of little cradle, or crib, or basket, a little ark that floated, and hid him in the bulrushes on the Nile, on the River Nile. So this little cradle was floating there on the bulrushes, out of sight. And the story goes, then, that his sister Miriam was working as a servant, I think, for the Pharaoh, and found the cradle, and they adopted Moses for Pharaoh.

Of course, if Moses had stayed there in the water, then eventually it would have sunk, and he would have drowned. So what Corbin reports here -- as I said, I'm not sure where it comes from -- is that

one of the symbolic properties of Water is to typify the sense of time and of engulfment in time.^[1]

So according to some kind of system of symbology, "one of the symbolic properties of Water is to typify the sense of time and of engulfment in time." That means engulfment in the inexorable movement of past, present, future, the sort of usual linear sense and interpretation of time, the usual interpretation and reading of history, of past, etc., and of events in time.

Pharaoh's aim [he continues] is to make all male children who sink into time [sink into water] succumb to the indifferent uniformity of all that is encased in time.

So in other words, this "indifferent uniformity of all that is encased in time" is just to sink in flatland, basically to be engulfed by a flat perspective on everything. Time is just what it seems to be, to the flat view. And Pharaoh's aim is

to prevent them from rising to the height of the worlds [of other worlds] that can be revealed.

In other words, the worlds of the angels, of the demon, the worlds of the archetypes and the myths, the worlds of the angel out ahead, the world where everything is -- this is always already happening, the worlds of eternal time, hierophanic time. Pharaoh's aim is that

they are to drown in the waters of secular, one-dimensional history.

One way of reading events, it's also Corbin's main point here, is about one way of reading the Bible or sacred literature as just a historic document, a collection of stories, some of which may be true, some of which may bear some relevance to so-called 'fact,' etc., some of which may be made-up, but they're all taken as literal rather than as symbolic and multidimensional, and endlessly open to interpretation, to an infinitely fertile hermeneutics, etc. "They are to drown in the waters of secular, one-dimensional history." And so, in this "little 'ark'" -- perhaps Pharaoh had drowned the children, and that's why it's making this danger of water, I don't know -- this

little 'ark' ... preserved [Moses] from the flux of historical time.

We should say, "from the perspective of that usual flux of historical time."

What Pharaoh wanted, on the other hand, was that only "normal man" should survive.

So according to this interpretation, he was afraid of someone who could see more than just the linear, flat view and interpretation and sense of time.

What Pharaoh wanted, on the other hand, was that only "normal man" should survive -- the man who conforms absolutely to the norm of a world which [he says] does not wish to know that it is in exile.

But also does not wish to know that there are -- what he really means is, there are other dimensions, that there is hierophanic time, there is the sense of the eternal, and a whole perspective that, instead of regarding the eternal as just unreal imagination, what is eternal, what is timeless actually emanates or projects this world. The events of this world, the events recorded in the stories of scripture or whatever are potential symbols, opening up this other world, and the power of that, and the beauty of that, and as I said, the anchoring of that, the rooting of that. [1:08:41]

So again, you know, we're talking about causality, which is obviously tied into our notions, our views of time, and the possibility of opening that up, shifting it. Not dogmatically replacing one with the other, as if there is no causality from the past -- of course there is -- as if events don't happen in linear time, or can be sensed that way, and it makes sense to understand them that way. But that's not the only way we can sense things. And if it is the only way, then we're impoverished by that. We are limited by that. Our soul and our soulmaking is grossly limited by that, inhibited.

But more widely, we can, again, stress the real indispensability of concepts and conceptual frameworks for soulmaking. So we've got as one of the nodes that, you know, an imaginal experience is not a non-conceptual experience. There are concepts operating there. They may be subtly in the background. They may be at the foreground. They may have initiated the whole process. They may result from the process. They may be just woven in with the whole thing. But concepts are operating. And more widely, as I said earlier today, a whole conceptual framework is necessary for a certain kind of fertility of imaginal practice. It won't really be that soulmaking without a conceptual framework that supports it.

So I remember talking with someone who came to a retreat, and she reported in an interview that she had been practising with the imagination, and "being with" images, etc., for years. But it all kept kind of collapsing into, it seemed to me, a very kind of unfertile soup. So she would be drawn to it, and then just, the whole thing would seem ridiculous to her, or she would just get very confused, or it would all really stagnate. Nothing really blossomed much at all despite years of good intention, and practice, and curiosity.

And as we were talking, it became clear to me that there was no conceptual framework supporting the imaginal there, or supporting a really fecund and rich working with image and sensing with soul. Rather, you know, she had been a long time in the Dharma, in a certain tradition, and so the conceptual framework that she was bringing to kind of meet the experiences of images was actually a much more typical Dharma conceptual framework -- for example, "everything is impermanent" -- as well as typical modernist views about reality, what's real and what isn't, etc. And there was also, mixed with that, a certain -- let's call it "loyalty," I'll put it in inverted commas -- "loyalty" to Buddhadharma, actually "loyalty" to "being a Buddhist," or identifying with "being a Buddhist."

And the absence of a really coherent and supportive conceptual structure for the imaginal, and to open up the imaginal and the sensing with soul, together with this kind of infection or infiltration, with just, as she viewed it, typical Dharma conceptual frameworks about whatever it was -- impermanence, etc., and death, and the meaningless, sort of the existential fact of impermanence, and the pathos of that, that kind of secular existentialist Dharma, together with modernist views about what was real or not. And all that kind of just led to this stagnation and kind of circling in doubts, etc., for years.

It's so crucial. And I know that some people struggle with the conceptual piece, or it seems a bit heady, or whatever. But again, see for yourself. Without it, the sensing with soul, the imaginal practice will either lack a lot of dimensionality and power, a lot of range, a lot of depth and possibility of what can open up, or it will veer into a path that kind of looks, ostensibly, similar at one level -- some kind of shamanism, or energy healing, or whatever it is -- all of which is fine. People have their choices of what they do. But if we actually want to really support what we're talking about by sensing with soul, and the imaginal, and those words, then the conceptual framework is crucial.

As I said earlier, same with emptiness practice or whatever: the conceptual framework makes a huge difference. People can have all kinds of experiences. As I mentioned, someone could have an experience of the Unfabricated. Everything fades completely. There's a complete disappearance. And I've met several yogis who have reported to me in interviews something like that, but they don't seem to have got any liberating insight from it, because they haven't tied it to a conceptual framework that understands emptiness and dependent arising. Sometimes, fortuitously, they do. There's the opening of a mystical experience, and it does something to their sense of this world and this self, etc. Other times, it doesn't. It's not helpfully underpinned by a conceptual framework that allows this opening and absorption, and gives things their place and their power. So this is really worth bearing in mind.

And some of you may have had this experience. You can see just how important conceptual frameworks are, sometimes when you're working in a dyad and doing soulmaking practice -- for instance, sharing an image or working with an image together. You can notice, or you will notice how a limiting conceptual framework, even if it's held unconsciously by only one of the people in the dyad, by only one of the pair. It's amazing: two people are working. One person's conceptual framework is more full and more supportive of the whole sensing with soul paradigm, and the other's is not. There are some limits to it, or it's very partial, or it's not really there at all, but they like images, and they like hanging out, and they like the sense of intimacy, or whatever it is. Or there might be some one piece of the conceptual framework that one of the people is not even realizing how they're unconsciously limiting a logos. And it limits the experience for both partners. It actually limits what can arise as image and energy, etc., for both people in the dyad, even though only one person is holding this view, and they haven't even said that they're holding the view. And maybe they don't even realize that they're holding the view.

Something in the magic of dyad practice, and the kind of connection there, the mystery of the connection there shows us just how powerful the conceptions and conceptual frameworks are, which suggests that it may really not be a good idea to try to engage in, at least, soulmaking dyad practice -- you can do all kinds of dyad practices with people: you can do the balance of attention thing, you can just talk about how you're feeling, you can do Insight Dialogue, you know, there are all kinds of things you can do in dyads -- but if you want a soulmaking dyad, and you're trying to do that with someone who doesn't share or know the conceptual framework, it's actually going to fall flat, and be limited, and probably be frustrating, and maybe even a bit painful for you, or for them, or for both of you. So it's probably not a good idea. I'm not saying that because "this is a religion, and we want people who, you know, have the credo and the religion" -- not at all. It's just to say, "Look at this. Isn't this interesting? The power of concepts, the power of conceptual frameworks to limit or to open, to inhibit or to support and make deeper and widen the soulmaking perceptions, etc." It's certainly important for oneself, and if one needs any more convincing, one can see how it works in dyads as well.

But there's, again, something to consider in terms of advice, that it may really not be very satisfying or fruitful to try and do these soulmaking dyad practices with someone who doesn't share or doesn't know the conceptual framework. Now, I can understand the impulse, because people might hear it, and you feel, "This is so super exciting, all this stuff," and you have a friend, and it's like, "Oh! They like practice, they're good at intimacy," or whatever. But it may well not work because there isn't the shared logos, and the sharing of a logos that's actually supportive. So it's something to really consider. And that has to do with temenos, and also caring for your soul, caring for soul in general, or caring for practice, and also caring for your relationship with whoever that person is. Like I said, if you feel frustrated and unfulfilled, they pick that up and there can be a strange feeling, and they feel, "Oh, somehow I'm being rejected here," or "I'm not good enough," or whatever it is. It's something to really consider. So the importance and the centrality of logos, concepts, ideas, and conceptual frameworks, how, as I said, indispensably, they need to be present or woven into soulmaking practice. Yeah?

Let's just say something about the way that can work. So again, when I was explaining how the eros-psyche-logos dynamic works -- which I've done quite a few times, and Catherine also has some very lovely explanations of it -- I think we kind of put it as if eros comes first, and then it inseminates and fertilizes and complexifies psyche or image. And in so doing, when psyche and image is expanded and opened up and diversified that way, our sense of this or that thing, or this or that object in the world, or aspect of ourselves is opened that way through the experience of the image, then over time, the logos gets expanded too. We actually start questioning our views of reality and what a thing is: "Maybe it could be this thing as well. Maybe there are other ways to see things." So from the sort of initial impulse of eros, through the expansion of psyche, then the expansion of logos. But again, it doesn't have to work that way around.

And hopefully this is obvious by now, but again, it's worth saying: there may be eros for logos. In other words, a person starts to, the libido starts to flow towards either a certain idea or logos in general, and perhaps after years of resistance, or kind of wanting to push away conceptualization and intellectualization and all that, for all different kinds of reasons, a person starts to actually fall in love with logos, meaning fall in love with the whole realm of concepts and potent ideas and poetic ideas, and what they can do in the soul -- maybe for one idea, maybe for that whole realm, maybe for the whole conceptual framework of soulmaking, for example. But when there's eros for logos, the logos is ignited as well. The eros ignites -- instead of inseminating psyche, it's like the logos itself becomes image. It becomes an erotic-imaginal beloved other -- a logos, or the logos, or logos in general. Logos is ignited through eros' passion for logos, and that engenders more creation/discovery of other concepts and conceptual frameworks. Yeah? So rather than logos always trailing in third place, and expanding last as a result of the expansion of the eros, and then the psyche or image, it could be that eros impregnates logos, and there's this passion for logos. Logos is ignited and gives birth to more creation/discovery of more concepts, more conceptual frameworks, etc.

And of course, the whole soulmaking dynamic, the whole eros-psyche-logos dynamic might itself be stimulated into expansion when the logos itself is directly stimulated, or stretched, or shattered, or ignited by something. You might read something, you might hear something in a talk, or something someone says, or an idea that's shared, or a thought or concept that arises spontaneously in the mind. So there's an example of an idea coming, and the mind or the soul basically being impacted by that idea, something breaking open in the whole realm of ideation. And then logos expands, and then eros and image can come from that, etc.

So there are all kinds of possibilities there. And I gave some examples in this series already. So if we go back to that example of me reading about these ten Sefirot, the teachings from, the Kabbalistic teachings about the -- well, some would say, "the inner nature of the Godhead," some would say the teachings, it's about the emanation of God, or the energy of God, the manifestations of God, either way -- and the possibility of regarding them, too, because, to quote the passage from the beginning of Genesis, "humankind made in the image and likeness of God," that our human psychology, our soul, also has refractions, mirrors that structure of the ten Sefirot that the Buddha-nature has, that the divinity has, so that there's a kind of parallel process, or even a connected process there.

Well, all that's an idea. It's quite an elaborate idea, and one can take that idea and begin with that in practice. One is actually deliberately taking an idea that's attractive to one, and putting it in the [laughs], putting it in the "gun chamber," so to speak, and seeing what comes out of that, what shoots out of that in the looking. So that's an example of quite an elaborate idea. It might be a much less elaborate idea. There are all kinds of possibilities, and I'm sure over the years I've given many, but that's one from these, so far, in these talks.

Or I also shared another one, where I said I was talking with Catherine. And we were talking about, or she was sharing with me this idea of "I am soul," and she was sharing what that meant to her, and how that stimulated a certain direction of exploration in her practice, and I was listening to that. But I was left with this phrase "I am soul," and I worked with it myself, but it took me in a different direction than what she was talking about. So there's a kind of germinal idea, this seed of an idea: "I am soul." And I think I was even interpreting it, what those three words mean, meant. It was taken up in my soul, in my mind, in my being, in practice, with a different interpretation than Catherine had elucidated to me and explained to me about her practice.

So like seeds in nature, they float from one flower or plant or tree to another resting place, and they give birth there. And the form that they give birth to might be slightly different. Just so, we share ideas, and we inseminate each other, and we are inseminated by the ideas of others, but what arises from those sort of little germs or seeds might be quite different than what had transpired or arisen in the source of those ideas, where we heard them from, where we read them from. [1:29:02]

So I'd shared this "I am soul," this idea -- phrase, really -- that I got from Catherine. And I shared only partially about that, so I want to say a little bit more about it. In a way, there were a few ideas wrapped up in it, and that's partly what I want to emphasize. So "I am soul," as I think I already explained when I mentioned it first, it kind of relativized the relationship with and the view of the ontological status of body and matter. "I am soul," the sort of weight of the principal identification -- I was playing with a different identification: "I am soul." And "soul" as this, as I said, loose definition, this organ of perceiving in soulful ways, this instrument that wants to perceive and does perceive in ways that are soulmaking. But that kind of then relative diminishing of the ontological status, or the primary reality-sense, or degree of reality of, say, body and matter, did something to perception, which became less substantial. In other words, it was fabricated less. It was fading to a slight degree. It loosened and liquefied the whole of perception. And then with that, other elements came in, like the fullness of intention, etc., and so there was a real malleability with regard to perception.

So that was one: in these three words, "I am soul," an idea that Catherine was communicating to me, it was picked up differently, and it also kind of became a constellation of ideas, a constellation of logoi. Not quite a framework, but it was more like a few ideas were sort of coalescing together, stitched loosely together in a way that was very fertile, because the second one -- I can't remember if I shared this the first time around, but -- was that "I am soul," and what is the nature of soul? It's that there's an open, two-way participation between God or Buddha-nature and my soul; that God, Buddha-nature participates in my soul, participates in that sensing with soul, in that organ of soulful perception, that instrument of soulful perception, and (two-way) my soul participates in God, in the Buddha-nature. So that was a second idea, or a kind of double idea, the double participation, that wove its way into this, and mixed with this other idea that kind of relativized the ontological status of soul, and body, and matter. So they became mixed together. But then actually, a third idea was woven in with this: that I and all that is happening (meaning my narrative, and I think at the time I was doing this, what was particularly prominent was the sense of my illness and dying, etc.), I and all that is happening, my narrative and all that, and all I perceive, including others that I was looking at, and the surroundings, all of that is soul. I could say "my soul." I could say "the soul."

So you get the sense how there are all these kind of sub-ideas that are wrapped up in a loose and light ideational structure. There wasn't a great deal of sort of intellectual grinding and pondering, and sort of heavy, "Okay, let me really focus on that idea." It was all very light. It's very delicate. They're like little drops of tincture in the waters of soul, and they colour things, and they shape things, and alchemical reactions start happening from dropping this tincture in, or we could say "dropping a seed into the water," or whatever. Things start flowering. But actually, it's a kind of mix, a loose mix of strands of ideas. So in that last sub-idea, the perception of sensing with soul there is kind of similar to emptiness practice, perception of self and other not being separate. So some of you who have done some emptiness practice know that's a kind of staging post or important perception or way of looking at certain levels of self and other, subject and object -- not separate. So it's akin to that. It has some similarities.

But here, in that sub-idea, the difference from the emptiness idea is it's not universal. Again, the particulars are retained and important. And even more than that, they're necessary to soul. The particulars, my particulars, my narrative -- it's not just that things get equalized, and kind of universalized, and a little bit faded in the non-separateness of subject and object, of self and other, in what is perceived. Rather, all these particulars are retained and sensed as necessary to soul, necessary to Buddha-nature, necessary to God. Necessary to God, this dukkha, this narrative, maybe even this tragedy, if one looks at it a certain way. It's retained and necessary, but somehow beautiful, precious, ensouled, divine, and lighter for that view. There is a relief of suffering with it.

So again, there's even another aspect of the idea. And as I said, all these kind of seeds begin to coalesce a little bit, loosely, and give rise to the perception, the sensing with soul. If we go back to the original "I am soul," I wasn't so much thinking all this in some kind of mental, verbal process. It was just, I was holding this idea, "I am soul," and that three-word phrase, really short words, "I am soul," it's almost as if it functioned as a kind of -- what would we call it? -- as an orientation and a stimulant to the sensing with soul. But it contained, as a sort of silent subtext, all these other ideas, these sub-ideas. Subtexts -- they're kind of written in small print, so to speak. They're implicit but powerful. Yeah?

So when we say "idea," again, we don't necessarily mean some kind of slow, laborious cranking of the mental cogs, etc., with a lot of wordiness. They can be really, really subtle. They function like little seeds or germs, or like a yeast or something -- poetic ideas, poetic seeds, but they include subtexts that slant and direct the sensing and the opening in different ways. Some of those ideas, when this works -- and again, if you try it out, some of the ideas will still be very powerful, even when they're very vague. They're not completely worked out ideas, or completely coherent, or I'm not really clear about exactly what I mean when I say that. But it still has that power. The ideation is functioning enough to have power, but not so much that I've worked everything out, and certainly not so much that it becomes, as I said, this kind of overly clunky, laborious pondering, or cogitation, or thinking through something. You know, that might have its place at other times, but when we're actually engaged in practice, or employing ways of looking, then the ideation -- this goes for emptiness practice as well -- the ideation needs to be very light, feather-light, you know, really like little drops of tincture, or a seed or something.

So there are subtexts, there are coalescences of sub-ideas. They may be vague ideas and concepts, and they may be illogical. It may be that they don't make logical sense. There are some philosophers of science who are wanting to open up different kinds of logic just because of what's been discovered in quantum physics, and with subatomic particles. So usually logic would say, "A thing cannot be A and not-A." It's called "the law of the excluded middle": either it's A -- either it's this, or it's not-this. But it can't be both at once. But when physicists look at the behaviour of subatomic particles, sometimes even molecules (so larger than atoms), and they see, actually, somehow, it's called "the superposition principle," it somehow seems to be in a state where two contradictory states or conditions are existing at once. And so that's one example, but other findings, as well, suggest a need for a new kind of logic. Other people, like the philosopher J. N. Findlay, just in the kind of phenomenology of everyday experience, he's kind of like, "Look, even everyday experience doesn't really add up, and needs a different kind of logic to kind of understand it better or fill out better what's going on."

But as I said, there are subtexts, possibility of vague ideas, and possibility of ideas that don't even seem logical. This idea of subtext is also common in emptiness practice. So I think I might have mentioned in this series already: the way of looking that sees "just a perception," and looks at things, decides to look at everything as "just a perception, it's just a perception." Actually, there needs to be a consciousness of what is the subtext for what I mean by "just a perception," because it could mean something like "it's not solid, it's just of the nature of awareness." That would be one possible subtext for the emptiness way of looking, "just a perception." Or it could be "it's just a perception -- in other words, it's fabricated by the way of looking, by clinging, etc.," and that's a slightly different subtext, and they will have different deliverances, and different degrees of liberation. They will take you to different depths, the second being deeper than the first.

So this idea, when we're talking about ideation in practice, and incorporating concept into perception, into ways of looking, again, needs to be very light, and the subtext needs to be conscious, but not too heavy that it's clunky, and we need to retain a kind of agility with it. But these ideas, like I said, they flow from/between human beings, what we read, what we hear, something in conversation. Sometimes, even mishearing something or misunderstanding something ends up, you know, implanting -- some misunderstanding or misinterpretation ends up being a very powerful and fecund seed in one's consciousness. Someone said to me the other day, "You know, I can't get on with guided meditations, or people suggesting this, or 'You do this, this, this,' but somehow I listen to you talk, and you share this or that, and I somehow absorb a certain idea, and somehow I adapt that idea, and I try it out in practice, and it opens up sensing with soul." So formulae for using certain ideas might work, formulae for guided meditations might work at times, or for different people. But there's also this kind of possibility of more opportunistic seeding and stimulation of ideas between people.

So you know, as always, we create/discover. We create and discover these possibilities, sensitive and responsive to the soulmaking, the resonances, and the sense of soulfulness, and that allows us to navigate. So an idea, we might discover it, and so it's given to us. We might create a certain idea. We might meld, as I gave that example with the "I am soul" -- you're actually bringing together in this very gentle weave, very light touch, bringing together certain ideas, and kind of seeing what alchemy happens when these ideas are lightly entertained and then allowed to shape and influence and determine and fabricate the perception, the sensing.

So as always, the navigation has to be in response, in sensitive response to, "What actually feels soulmaking right now? What feels that it's opening that?" All these possibilities and many more, obviously, are there, just to give you a little idea tonight.