Cultivation and Grace in Soulmaking Dharma

Hello, everybody, and welcome. Lovely to be with you -- some of you again, and some new faces that I don't know, so that's lovely too. Maybe let's just start with a few moments of silence together to gather ourselves. Dropping into the body, filling out the body with awareness, really inhabiting the whole space of the body. Within that awareness, just noticing how your heart is doing right now. Whatever it is, gross or subtle, easy or difficult, how is the heart, and its reverberations in the space of the body, the field of the body? However it is, can there be a sense of connection and care, kindness, in relationship to whatever is there in the heart right now?

Still connected to the whole body, still connected to the heart, becoming aware of the presence of this small Saṅgha together, virtual Saṅgha online. Becoming aware of each other, not losing touch with your body, your heart, this community together for a little time tonight. The bonds there of curiosity, of love, commitment, intention. So connecting with a sense of your intention for this time together tonight. It's already there. Just bringing it back into consciousness, feeling the alignment of your energy body with that intention, intention of being together in this way tonight. Body, heart, soul and Saṅgha, connected, present.

I've done, I think, two of these in the last week already, but I still feel relatively new to this kind of online form of being together in this way, teaching online. I feel relatively new. Some of you may be very, very familiar with it already. It seems it's quite easy to kind of lose the connection with the heart, to be just in the head, looking at a screen, or lose the connection with the body, etc. I don't think we need a sort of regular, communal mindfulness bell, but it might be just having that as a sort of sub-intention as we go through the time together, to check in with the body, check in with the heart -- just how's it doing, am I connected in these ways? Very gently like that.

I said the other day -- and of course, some of you weren't there -- sometimes when we're together in this way, in a group, it can be a little daunting to ask questions, or we get a bit nervous about asking a question. It's actually quite a small group tonight, so maybe that's less of a problem; maybe it's more of a problem for some people. But I really want to acknowledge that, that it can be difficult to ask questions. It can be difficult to take the risk that we might be perceived as maybe stupid or too much of a beginner or too big for our boots or whatever it is. It may also be that we feel like we have a question that we can't quite find the words for. So I really want to encourage all of us to just take the risk, just nudge up to that edge if you feel like there's a question brewing, and just, if you can, tip over the edge, feeling your feelings about that. Because your question will almost certainly be helpful to other people, almost certainly. Whatever it is, it's very likely to be helpful to someone somewhere, and especially as this is being recorded, it's almost guaranteed to be the case.

Secondly, I feel that questioning is an art. It really is an art. And I don't mean to be glib in saying that. I mean that we can develop our capacity to ask questions, to ask the questions that will pry something open for us, that are attuned, that will pierce deeper into something. And that art of asking questions, and the right questions, the sensitive questions, the important questions at any time in relation to anything, that will be developed, that can be developed, but it will only be developed if we try. So if I don't quite know what my question is, well, just try putting something out, and that way that art gets developed, the muscle gets developed, and maybe in the back and forth we can crystallize a little more clearly what the question is. So just an encouragement, an invitation to really trust, if you have a question, to ask.

[7:42] So this topic tonight, when I first saw it -- I don't know who suggested it -- I was a little unsure what it meant exactly, but yesterday and today, a couple of things occurred to me. We could just open it up to questions straight away, or I could say a few things and hope that they will be helpful, and then we can have questions. I don't have that much to say, really, and I'm not quite sure, whoever suggested it, what they had in mind. Maybe I will start just saying a few things and see if that's helpful to seed the field a little bit. It might not need it. Is that okay? So I'll start with that and then we'll open it up.

Like I said, when I first saw "Cultivation and Grace in Soulmaking Dharma," I wasn't quite sure what it meant. The main thing that occurred to me was that it probably meant, or I wondered if it meant, more the sort of polarity a little bit between doing in practice, intending, efforting, kind of working, having an intention to do or an intention in a certain direction, taking an initiative in practice, claiming and exercising agency on the one hand (cultivation -- maybe that's what it meant), and on the other hand, grace as meaning gift, a gift that is coming to me, coming to you, for no reason -- I haven't deserved it; it's what I call inexplicable gift. So it doesn't come about through my doing. It doesn't come about through my intention. It doesn't come about through my work and my effort. It's just given to me. So I wondered if that was the principal thing. That was principally what occurred to me. I wondered if it was the main thing behind whoever offered this theme.

So there's this tension there, and I want to say a few things about it. Connected with or parallel to that particular tension in Soulmaking Dharma, or even woven into it, is a much bigger issue potentially, that I'm not going to go into tonight but I do want to mention it: just the whole relationship with being and doing in meditation practice or spiritual life. What is my bias in terms of being and doing? What are my conceptions and assumptions regarding being and doing in meditative practice, in a spiritual path? What are my habits? So not even just what are my assumptions, but what are my habits? So this doesn't just refer to Soulmaking Dharma; it refers to any kind of spiritual path, aspect of a spiritual path at all.

So sometimes people view things only in terms of doing and working hard and making something happen. Oftentimes, though, we can or we go through periods in life getting quite enamoured with a kind of non-doing, a mode of non-doing, as if that's somehow more spiritual or superior, or that's the appropriate mode -- being, not doing, somehow in meditative practice. Some of you will know that I've actually talked a lot about this before and it's something I feel quite strongly about. Why can't we keep both of those options open, both of those leanings open -- the so-called non-doing or being, and the doing? If we're talking about spiritual life or meditative practice, why does it sometimes get shrunk down into one, for instance non-doing or being? And then that leaves out the whole realm of doing as something non-spiritual, or it doesn't really fit in my path. And our life is full of doing, so there's something, for me, quite important about can we keep open the whole of our humanity, and can the whole of our humanity be part of the path, be involved in the path.

[12:14] Anyway, some of you more familiar with Soulmaking Dharma will know that when we talk about the soulmaking dynamic and the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, what it will do inevitably, if it's left to ferment and expand and deepen in the way that it wants to, is it will start to involve, it will start to subsume, every aspect of our being, every element, every face and factor of human consciousness and a human being. So even if we are staunchly against -- let's say I'm staunchly against doing, if I just engage the imaginal practices and the Soulmaking Dharma, something starts to expand, and then those aspects of my being that are related and involved in doing start to get included, and that starts to feel like it's holy and it's important and it's necessary to God and the rest of it. So the whole journey will anyway start including that, even if we've started with a disinclination. But we could start just opening out. Anyway, that's a whole other subject in terms of the bigger Dharma, and I actually don't want to go into it; this could be another subject.

When we come to Soulmaking Dharma, we outline these elements of the imaginal. There are twenty-eight kind of elements of the imaginal. And just a brief recap of what they are. Partly they're descriptors of what it means for something to be imaginal. They're elements. We sometimes call them aspects of the imaginal. Sometimes we call them nodes of the lattice. But these are the kind of indicators of what is perhaps more fully imaginal, and grace is one of them. And just a reminder: they're descriptors, so they're things to kind of point us in the right direction. If we want something to be fully imaginal, these are the kind of things we want to look for. In looking for them, in noticing these different elements, it also tends to ignite other elements, and the whole thing that we're working with tends to become more imaginal. So they're both kind of a little bit definitive, or they kind of give, they point, indicative, in the direction of where we want to go if we want things to be more fully imaginal. But they also each become keys for our practice. So if we want something to ignite more imaginally, to go deeper imaginally, we can start attending to these different elements. Which one, right now, in my attention to it -- maybe just noticing, maybe tweaking it, maybe encouraging it -- will help the whole thing to ignite and become more fully imaginal?

As I said, one of them is grace. We delineated grace as one of the elements of the imaginal. So I actually looked it up just in the dictionary. A few words are connected. It's related to gracia, which just means 'what's pleasing,' okay? But one of the meanings is a more theological meaning, and it means, as I said earlier, something is given to me for no reason. It's a grace. We can talk about a grace as a gift from the divine, but not because I have done anything, not because I've worked hard. It's an inexplicable gift. But certain words are wrapped up together in that, we can see. So our word 'gratitude' is related to that. Gratis, also, in Latin, is I think 'free.' Something is gratis, it's free. So all these are part of this particular meaning of what we mean by grace. Something freely given, something for which the natural response, the organic response, is one of gratitude in our hearts, in our souls. In Italian, grazie is 'thank you.' Gracias, I think, in Spanish. 'Gratuity,' 'a gift,' one of its meanings.

So it's not because I did this or that, but something is given to me. Now, I want to qualify this. That's the basic point, but I want to qualify it in a number of ways. [17:19] One is, sometimes in imaginal practice, of course, we feel, in relationship, let's say, with an angel or an imaginal figure, perhaps given love or given succour or given healing or given something through that presence of the angel. It's, in a sense, freely given, but it's also because of something, it's in response to something, and usually it's in response to something in the way we are living and choosing, something in our life, something in the intention and directionality of our life, of our commitment, and of what we are choosing to try to manifest. Something in that is, let's put it this way, trying to live out with integrity the image of who I am at another level. It's living out my daimon. My life is faithful to the expression of an angel at another level. If you don't understand, we can go back to this; it may be just a seed for later.

And in response to that, the angel sees that and loves me for it, and blesses me for it, and gives me something for it. And it might be that my decision to do that -- whether we're talking about activism, whether we're talking about a creative project, whether we're talking about a kind of ethical integrity, whatever it is -- it might be that my choosing to do that comes at a great cost in my life, socially or in terms of relationships or financially or whatever. And that whole package is part of what the angel is seeing and blessing and thanking us for, and in thanking us is giving us something. And we can feel blessed by them. So sometimes, having said that grace is this inexplicable gift for no reason, sometimes we are given something for a reason and we can feel that and it's part of it. So that's one qualification.

Another one is -- I said there's a kind of polarity, which I'll come back to, between doing on the one hand, and what's given, grace, on the other hand; kind of will on the one hand, and what's just received for no reason on the other hand. As things get deeper, though, it should be that we're able to, or it occurs to us, or we can just drop in the kind of tincture of a poetic suggestion of an idea that my doing, my will, my desiring, my effort, my work, my creative impulses, the intelligence I bring to that, the responses I make -- all of this seems like it's me; it's not the angel, it's not the divine, it's not God. But actually we start to be able to see all that, my cultivation, through a certain way of looking. Not just as an idea, but with this possibility of a real sensitive, agile, delicate way of looking. We start to be able to see all that that looks like mine, and my efforting, and my work, as the operation of the divine through me, the operation of the angel through you. Whose will is it? Whose work is it? Whose effort is it? Who made you so that you have this desire? Whose desire is it? How did it get planted in you? Why is it you bother so much? Who gave you the tenacity and the steadiness and the patience and the willingness to keep showing up through what is difficult? So we start to be able -- either it comes to us, or someone suggests it, or we can deliberately put in this idea that this soul is inclined this way, is willing to work hard, is willing to cultivate, and that very willingness and that very capacity is itself a divine infusion, a gift from God, however you want to put it. Does that make sense? Yeah?

So grace is one of the elements of the imaginal. When we talk about these different elements or nodes of the lattice or whatever, they all kind of are in relationship with each other. So you can't really isolate any of them. Can't isolate grace from, for example, the node of dimensionality shading into divinity. So when we use the word 'grace' as an element of the imaginal, already implicit is a sense of divinity, a sense of receiving something from some other dimension, some higher or more profound dimension, some divine dimension -- even if we don't really have an idea what that is. So wrapped up in our meaning of the word 'grace' is already notions like divinity and eternality, a gift from God, from the Buddha-nature, from the divine, from the angel, whatever. There's also eternality wrapped up in there, and that's a little more complicated in how that shows up, but let's put that aside for now.

[23:31] I want to qualify it a little bit more. Anything can be sensed as a grace. We're not just talking about intrapsychic images, sort of images of angels or whatever it is. Anything in my life, anything I sense in this world, in this material world, can be sensed with soul. I'm not just talking about intrapsychic images. I'm talking about any perception at all can become, once those elements come alive, once I'm relating to it in the ways that sustain soulmaking, anything can be perceived as a grace, even the painful, even the difficult, even extreme dukkha, even death, even chronic pain, the difficult, the unpleasant, all of that. It's not seen as grace through some kind of rationalization in my mind. It becomes a grace through the delicacy and the art and the sensitivity of the meditative process. Sometimes thinking about, "Oh, I could see it this way, and then I could kind of see it as gift because it's given me this and that," sometimes that's helpful, but we're really talking about a whole other level here.

I'm not sure how many people were there last time when we talked about ontology and ways of looking and things -- this business about ways of looking has to be very, very delicate. We're not talking about big, clunky ideas, sort of plodding through the mind. We're talking about really, really subtle, delicate sort of presences in the consciousness that are ideas, partly, concepts, but they're really, really subtle. There's not a lot of thought, and they can be very agile. In that process, in that more meditative process then, theoretically or potentially everything can be perceived as grace, or anything can be perceived as grace, even if it's deep dukkha, eventually.

Okay. A few more subtle points here, but I think they're really important. So, as I said, grace implies a divinity, or let's call it a divinity in the vaguest, most general sense -- some other dimensionality that's part of what it means to be an image or have an imaginal sense or a sensing with soul of something -- the divinity, the Buddha-nature, whatever it is. Even if we don't really know what those words mean, it has that sense, that flavour, that beauty to it in the perception. Usually, maybe, let's say usually, and on one level, when we have a sense of divinity, it tends to be reified. We tend to think of it or assume it's real, it's something real. So most theologies, most religious practices, talk about God and either he/she/it is the most or the only real thing, or it's one real thing among others, but it's always real. So it's very rare to get a divinity, it's very rare to have a practice and a conceptual framework that relates to divinity but doesn't actually reify that divinity. So we're on this imaginal Middle Way with the emptiness potentially -- divine, neither real nor not real; still incredibly potent, still the most important thing to my whole existence, to my life and death, but neither real nor not real. As one goes deeper into that, there's a whole mystery.

But this is quite difficult for people, because it's like, "How am I going to have a sense of devotion to something that's not real? Usually when I think of divinity or when I have a sense of divinity, I think, 'This is real.'" Not a problem at one level, but certain problems might arise with that. When the object, the divine in this case, is real, there may then be a corresponding, a correlative reification of the self. So then I have a real divine and a real self. I'm not then in the imaginal Middle Way, the neither real nor not real -- neither my sense of self, nor the sense of the object here. And so easily at that point, it can become something about ego. So I start with a sense of grace, wrapped up in it is a sense of divinity, and very easily it can veer off into something that's actually grasped by the ego.

So some of the elements of the imaginal are really aspects of each other or they're different shadings of each other, and some kind of pull in different directions -- there's a creative tension between them. For example, the first node of the lattice is the fact of the lattice, and included in that is the understanding that an image depends on my way of looking. If something's imaginal, it depends on my way of looking, which brings some agency, which is different than it's just a grace, it's just given to me. So there's a creative tension there, a polarity between my doing -- through my care and finagling with, adjusting of the way of looking so that it supports the imaginal on one side -- and what's just given to me as grace. There's already a creative tension there. My autonomy in this process, that's a part of a node there.

But actually I'd like to highlight a couple of others, which I think are really important. And some of those nodes have already this balance in them. So we talk about create/discover -- it's already got that balance in it. But I'm thinking right now that the sense of grace needs to be filled out by and balanced by nodes like humility, okay? So the 'real or not real' thing sometimes is difficult for people, but humility also softens the self. That's a quality of humility. And again, when we say 'humility,' we mean it in relationship to something of a different order than we are, of a different dimension than the conventional way of understanding things. So humility is in relation to something like the divine, or the Buddha-nature, or the angel or whatever. But the elements like humility and reverence, they temper and soften the relationship of the self to this divinity even if the divinity is considered real.

The reason I'm saying this is sometimes people have an experience that arises, and it seems to be -- say it was imaginal, and it was wonderful, and it was beautiful, and it was just a grace, it just was given, and there's a sense of divinity. And sometimes what's missing are the elements of, for instance, humility and reverence. There's a reification. There's a reification of self and of the angel or image and the gift, but there isn't these qualities of humility and reverence, and something's missing there. Something of great import and beauty, I think, is missing.

Last point. Another element of the imaginal that really is important -- I think we mentioned it the other day; I can't remember ["Ontology and Conceptions of Reality in Dharma Practice," question five] -- that really is important in balancing grace, especially when there's a kind of reification, which is fine, is this element of fullness of intention. It's so rare. It's so rare for a person to really have in their practice and in their life, these days it's so rare for the main intention of practice and of life to be for the sake of God, for the sake of the divine, for the sake of the Buddha-nature. We've received so many benefits from psychotherapeutic processes and spiritual processes. If you're here tonight, you've put a lot of work into your process. And that's great. It's really important to care about my process, my spiritual journey, my realization, my attainment, whatever. But it's possible for a kind of -- I don't know what you'd call that -- seismic shift, when something rebalances, and the main point of balance for the intention for my practice becomes "it's for God," in whatever language you want to use there.

Of course, one can slip out of that, or not be used to it and then taste it for a little bit. But this, too, this fullness of intention, if we explore that element for a while, actually that's our gift to God. That's our gift to the divine. This is for the sake of the divine. So that when there's a sense of grace, we have a sense of receiving an inexplicable gift, but balanced by various other factors -- and right now we're talking about the fullness of intention. This fullness of intention is my complete giving of my being and my life, my intention, my dedication, to the divine, for the sake of the divine. So there's, to me, an incredibly beautiful reciprocity of gift and giving. Do you understand? Does it make sense?

That's connected with another node, participation, and as I've said in different talks, that's perhaps one of the deepest nodes. It starts to blur language in terms of what it even means. But this gives you a little hint of it, these beginnings, this profound reciprocity of total giving in the grace both ways. So we can talk also about things like balancing the sense of image, non-reification of self, other, and world, but there's also a way of talking about it just in terms of the elements. And as things deepen, yeah, that element of participation comes in more, so that the element of participation includes a sense of grace. And if that element of participation is not there at the beginning, if we just tune into the sense of grace, tune into some of the other nodes, like all of these things, the fire of grace starts to grow, and it starts to ignite the fire of participation. That one starts to burn, and then we have a real, deep sense of that.

So I'm going to look at John's note in a minute, but that may or may not have had anything to do, John, with what you originally had in mind. [laughs] But that's what occurred to me when I just saw the title.

Q1: differences between cultivation and making things happen

Rob: [35:52] Shall we read your question now, or your comment, John? Does that make sense?

Yogi: Sure. I suggested the topic, so I was just responding to you earlier.

Rob: Okay. Shall I read it out? Do you want me to?

Yogi: If you want.

Rob: "Hi Rob, I suggested the topic. I am a farmer and I see many parallels in cultivating the mind and cultivating the earth." Beautiful. "The way you speak of soulmaking and imaginal practice also seems very relevant to me. So I thought it would be interesting to look at cultivation in a broader sense -- what I choose to manifest in the world and the difference between cultivation and making something happen." Do you want to say a bit more about that, John? Only if you want to.

Yogi: Well, I guess when you're cultivating habits and things like that, you sort of give them the fuel they need, but you're not explicitly forcing anything to happen. It's sort of the same in the field, farming, where you're just creating the conditions for something to manifest on its own. I mean, there's more I could talk about with that, with parallels between farming and cultivating the mind, but I just wanted to hear what you thought about that with the imaginal practice and cultivating these imaginal images.

Rob: Yeah, thank you. I think it's beautiful, what you're saying, and really important. There's a sense that all we can do is really take care of the conditions -- so water and good soil and all that. And when we say that an imaginal image depends on the way of looking, it really means that we need to care for those conditions as much as we can. So, in a way, there really is a kind of development of art. We can get very good and very sensitive and very subtly responsive reading what the conditions are and what response might help. So we can really develop our sort of techniques, if you like, and facility, but to me, there will always remain this ... it's not completely in our control. And if that goes, then I think a lot goes. Either extreme -- either "it's all up to me, and I'm going to master this, and I'm going to figure out how to just make things happen at my whim and at my control," if it's that, we've lost the soulmaking, we've lost the soulfulness. But also if it's just, "I'm just passive and I'm not doing, not doing," I also feel (A) less will happen, it won't be anywhere near as fertile, but (B) we'll also have lost the soulmaking, partly because of what I said before -- that our very responsiveness is part of the soulmaking, can be seen as soulful and beautiful.

So you're a farmer; you could see, well, in a way, you're -- maybe not part of the land, but you're certainly part of the earth. So one part of the earth is responding to and caring for another part of the earth. The soulmaking is the whole thing. The response itself is part of the system. It's not like the land is something different, and I'm not doing anything. The whole system is part of it. I think it's beautiful, yeah, really beautiful. I think sometimes what's also lovely is just -- we can talk about this maybe polarity between, let's say, cultivation and grace, and it's fluid; there's not a fixed point of balance there, "I'm going to find it right there, and just stay there." It's always fluid, and we're always wobbling anyway, and what each situation needs is different. So to look at one's both long-term patterns and biases, but also in the moment, and kind of responding, maybe leaning a little more this way for a while, a little more that way, you know?

So I imagine -- I don't know; I've never been a farmer or anything remotely like that. But there might be certain situations -- maybe you've had a storm or a drought or too much water or something. You need to get out there. And maybe you need to get out there in the middle of the night and start -- I don't know what it is, bailing water out of a ditch or turning the hoses on or something, making it irrigate. And it's hard work. That's in response to a certain condition. It's not like it's always going to be like that. So the whole thing is very fluid, and that's part of the -- again, to me the beauty and the art of it is that our very responsiveness and our flexibility and our willingness to be sensitive and read, "Do I sit back now? Do I just open and receive? Do I do this? Do I try really hard?", all of that is part of the beauty and the kind of mystery and the grace of the whole thing. My capacity to do that and occupy, at different times, any position on that range, to me is a grace. It's like, wow, aren't human beings amazing, aren't souls amazing, that we can have that sensitivity and that flexibility and that attunement and that range? So I think it's gorgeous, yeah. Do you want to say more?

Yogi: One of the other interesting parallels that I sort of make in my head is when you're feeding plants, you're kind of drawing on what's in the soil and what was in the soil before. It's what feeds the new growth. And you can add some energy or whatever, but the purest thing that you could create would be coming from what's already there.

Rob: Right. Yeah, lovely. Beautiful.

Yogi: I heard somewhere the term 'imaginal' came from something like a butterfly, like a cocoon, a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, and the imaginal part is the part that remains the same through that process. I don't know where I heard that. Do you know exactly where the term comes from?

Rob: I thought it was coined by Henry Corbin, a French scholar of Islamic mysticism. I thought he coined it -- I don't know when, in maybe the fifties or something -- just to make a differentiation between 'imaginary' as something that had more kind of reality to it, basically, than the imaginal. But I've never heard what you just said, so I don't know. I'm not sure.

Yogi: Okay. I'll try to figure out where I heard that. But yeah, the dependent arising that sort of creates new things, and how to sort of cultivate the life that's sort of emerging from these past actions and ... I see a parallel there in my thinking about the whole thing. I don't even know how, with these sort of connections I'm drawing, if it's even -- I think about it a lot when I'm out on the farm, and I don't know -- I can't tell if it's just like I'm massaging my interest or if it's really relevant or if it's relevant to my understanding personally. You know what I mean? It can seem like kind of intellectual games on the one hand ... Do you understand what I'm saying?

Rob: I do -- I think I do. But, you know, sometimes we're on a thread and we can feel that it's important and it's alive. And it might be very intellectual, but it feels there's something important for me. I may not even be clear why it's exactly important, or it may be clear. And sometimes we're on a thread and I don't know yet if it's going to be important, you know? So I think what we can do then is be willing to stay with these kinds of things and see if it bears fruit, if it starts to become soulmaking, you know? So yeah, I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss it and judge it. Something is interesting you there, and kind of gripping, got your interest and curiosity. So I would just be careful -- it's very easy to say, "Oh, that's just intellectual, or that's just an ego trip" or whatever. I'd just be a little careful of that myself. I think part of this soulmaking business is it's going to be creative; individually it's going to be creative for people, so it's going to be creative for you. And part of being creative is being willing to go on a bit of a goose chase -- is that the right phrase? And just kind of follow threads that in the end feel like, "Well, that was a bit of a waste of time." If I'm not willing to take those kinds of risks, then I end up not actually being that creative. So we don't know if it will, but I think there's something about being willing to stay with it and not distrust yourself too easily, perhaps. Yeah? Okay.

Q2: working with synchronicities in soulmaking and imaginal practice

Rob: Is that Yasmin? Yeah?

Yogi: [47:02] I've got one of those not-very-well-formulated questions. So I wanted to ask something about what gets called maybe synchronicities. It's something that happens a lot, but I'll give one example, quite recent. When I was doing some work in a one-to-one with Catherine recently, and there was some image there, and that image, the sort of imaginal experience was very powerful for me, and I was left with that image kind of following me around for the next couple of weeks. It was really -- I was working with it formally, but also just in my day that image would come or I would kind of look for it, and I developed my relationship to that image. There was a creature in that image, like a particular creature that I was feeling a strong connection with. And then it was my birthday and I went to visit my mother, and she gave me a bracelet made from the skin of this creature.

On one level I was a bit grossed out -- I was like, "Oh, my God," you know, "This is a weird present!" But it just kind of -- it was like a mainline into that image. So kind of holding this bracelet and receiving it from my mother just took -- like the ordinariness of the scene in my mother's living room just opened up, so that I just fell through layers and layers of meaning to reach the same kind of place as I had been in in the imaginal work. And it felt very powerful, you know? It felt like this was grace, this was a gift, this was kind of like my angels saying, "Yes, you're on track," or something like that, or "Follow this." And then -- this happens quite a lot; that was kind of one thing. In a way there's part of me that was like, "Oh, this has happened again. This is almost ordinary how these things happen, how the world around me becomes imaginal in these ways." But then, the next day, I kind of held the bracelet, and it still sort of felt very meaningful, and it still connected me to this image. But then the next day, a bit less so. There was this kind of choice that I felt that I could kind of cultivate a relationship with this actual bracelet as almost a portal, or I could just kind of leave it and just let it be another item in my home. That's kind of the story, and the question being, what's useful or what's possible?

Rob: Thank you for sharing that. Can I ask you -- before your mum gave you that bracelet, had your connection with the image been waning a little bit?

Yogi: Yeah, I suppose until you asked me that just now, I hadn't realized it, but maybe it had been less present.

Rob: Okay. The reason I'm asking is -- so 'synchronicity' is a term Jung coined. And actually he debated it a lot with this physicist, Wolfgang Pauli. One of them -- I can't remember which -- suggested that synchronicities happen when we start to not be conscious of something that's important. So something slips into the unconscious, and then the world, as psyche, as larger psyche, starts to remind us of something. If we don't need that reminding, the world won't give us -- it won't materialize something that way. So I think that's part, or at one point it was part of their whole idea of what synchronicity was, that it actually involved something being unconscious, something has slipped into the unconscious or is not yet conscious or whatever. So that's partly why I was asking that.

I don't know. There's so many different directions. If we sort of step back and say, "What are the intentions?" That's up to you, what your intentions are with this. It's completely up to you to decide what your intentions are. But it's a slightly different intention, for example, my intention is to cultivate my relationship with this particular image, okay? That might be your intention. Then the question is, does this actual material object, the bracelet, does that help it or not? And if it might help it, how might it help it? Okay? But all that's basically coming from the intention is to further and deepen my relationship with this image so it becomes more imaginal and works on my psyche, etc. At that point, when a synchronicity like that starts to happen, one could actually have another intention, which is, "Well, that's pretty interesting, isn't it? Something is different about the universe, perhaps, than what I've been taught in school, that we're surrounded by matter that doesn't participate in any meaningful way, that there's separation of matter and mind and all that." And that sense of that, or that possibility of that, or the idea of that, that itself might start to get really interesting in terms of what it's saying about reality and the whole modern notion of things.

Now, that idea and that sense can start to become a whole exploration. In itself, it's not imaginal, okay? Now I'm on a different track. (Tell me if this is getting too complicated.) Secondarily -- let's say I have this image, but now I'm really interested in this whole synchronicity business, and mind/matter and psyche, and is psyche just in here or is it actually everywhere. That becomes really interesting. Okay, that's not imaginal now; it's something else. There are grey areas of overlap, but let's just say for clarity that it's something else now as an exploration. Certainly the intention is different at first, because it's not specific to that image -- I'm now exploring a more philosophical question, a larger philosophical question. But my relationship with that question might become imaginal. I might start to see myself at the edge, in a creative exploration, part of someone kind of pushing against the oppression of modernist Western views. There might be in itself a sense of the mystical and the sacred in the very fact that something like that could happen, and there's eros towards that idea, you know?

Why I'm saying all this is it kind of depends on what your intention wants to be. Does this make sense to people, what I've just outlined about the differences? Yeah? So I don't think there's a right or wrong here. To me, it's all super interesting. If there's a wrong, I would say it's -- for me, and this is just my personality, and of course I'm the one answering right now -- if there's a wrong it's kind of letting all that get too jumbled up. So it's possible that one can actually pursue maybe all three of those things, you know? But to be kind of clear and discriminating what's what, and what the differences are, and what the different intentions and assumptions are. I think what tends to happen, if it all gets just jumbled up, and it's like it's just imaginal or it's just whatever, things tend to just get very blurry and stagnant and not be as fertile as they could be in the long run. It might feel super interesting and exciting, but it starts to all become a kind of soup of cool, New Agey, mystical stuff, and maybe doesn't open as many doors and possibilities in the long run. So, for me, it's quite important to be really interested. Of course there are grey areas; that doesn't mean you have to make rigid, finickity, artificial distinctions, but there's something about really being sensitive to both intention and territory.

So, for example, when we talk about the elements of the imaginal, in a way, what we're doing there is delineating a certain territory that kind of opens up that territory. If we don't delineate it so well, that territory won't open up. Does that make sense? I really don't think there's a right or wrong here. I think you should go with whatever you want to explore, and that could be all of it. But for me, one possible mistake would be not being sensitive in that way to differences of conception, differences of territory, differences of definition, and also what your intention is at any moment, really. What do you think?

Yogi: Listening to that, it sounds like one option could be that the sense of the world as different from what we were taught at school and the way that things interact in the world as psyche, the cultivation of that kind of view isn't necessarily soulmaking -- it's interesting, but it could become soulmaking. Because that's kind of, I think, why that bracelet feels so special to me, because it shifts me into a way of living with a deeper meaning than the sort of mundane. But I'm not quite sure what you mean by that could become soulmaking.

Rob: Actually what I said before is it could become imaginal. So here's -- I don't know if it's a subtle distinction, but it's an important distinction: I would say imaginal, in the way we're using it, is a subcategory of soulmaking, okay? So that soulmaking is any time something in our soul, in our sense of things expands, and in a way that there's eros for, that's exciting, that's opening our ideas and our sense of things. So that might come about through exactly this. Now I have a different sense of the universe, and maybe I start reading about it, and maybe intellectually but also in the sense. So something is soulmaking; my whole soul and sense of things is getting stretched, expanded, yeah? I mean, it could also come about [for] someone doing jhāna practice -- they're entering new territories, and it's like, "Wow! This is amazing!", or emptiness, or whatever it is. Or even just hearing about basic mindfulness -- depending on your background, that might be like, "Wow!" It's not imaginal at all, but it's soulmaking in the sense of expanding with meaningfulness, with desire and all that.

Now, within that, something like that, anything like that -- my relationship with mindfulness, my relationship with emptiness, with jhāna practice, with this idea of what the world is and what psyche is and matter and mind, and my exploration of whatever that particular thing is -- that can become image. I can become image for myself. The path, whatever my path is, whether it's this exploration, whether it's Buddhadharma, whatever it is, the path becomes an image. The goal becomes an image, imaginal. So self, on a path, in relationship to some kind of tradition of others who are also interested in that or have been or will be, and the goal of that path -- that all starts to become imaginal. I am my own image or I'm part of a larger image. So that would be imaginal, but it can be soulmaking with the image. And when it's imaginal, it is by definition soulmaking, but you can also have soulmaking without imaginal. Does that make sense? It's okay? Do you understand? Okay. What do you think, Yasmin? Anything more with that?

Yogi: That's really, really helpful.

Rob: So I really want to reiterate that it's really up to you. You need to retain your autonomy here about what you're excited to explore. If I just add this as well: I would hope that this whole Soulmaking Dharma business, in time, starts to really grow tributaries, but really strong tributaries based on these clear demarcations. I may or may not live to be part of it, but there are explorations of just what you're talking about, this kind of synchronicity, and where that overlaps and where it doesn't with imaginal, and what that implies about matter and mind and consciousness and soul and psyche. I would hope, in time, if the Saṅgha can mature and understandings can mature and there's integrity, that that actually becomes part of what the whole tradition (or whatever it's called) of Soulmaking Dharma, it becomes another branch there. I would really hope that. To me, it's fascinating, absolutely. I've personally put it a little bit on the back burner, because I feel like I have a duty to sort of do the imaginal thing and put that out there, but it's something that I'm really interested in, and as I said, I hope that in the ripening over time that the soulmaking tree will grow different branches and they'll all be strong and connected to the tree and make sense -- "It's that branch, not that branch" -- and all that. So that's a kind of hope and wish, if that makes sense. Yeah? Lovely.

Q3: picking up on and expanding a soulmaking perception

Rob: Is that Roxanne?

Yogi: [1:03:26] Hi! Your hair looks great.

Rob: Thank you! I'll tell my hairdresser.

Yogi: [laughs] So I had a question, but it feels like it veered off slightly from when you were talking in the beginning about grace. So I kind of came up with a new question. I notice that there's a feeling of grace energy sometimes between me and maybe another person, or even animals, or even it could be an object. There's this energy of grace that also feels connected to divinity -- like they ... it feels very close. And I guess while you were talking in the beginning I was reminded of that and I got curious about how to cultivate and work with that. It might not be fully imaginal, but when you just described soulmaking and delineated it from the imaginal, it definitely feels soulmaking. I'm noticing that I have it especially with animals -- like I walk past a dog, and I'll stop, and it'll be barking, and I'll smile at the dog and the dog will stop barking, and kind of just look at me, and there's this strange, really awesome sense of grace, like it's a sentient being. And I keep having that experience, in particular since I've been doing the soulmaking and coming to retreats. So I wonder -- is there some way to -- what is that for? [laughs] I don't feel like I'm asking this question very well, but yeah, just ... maybe cultivating that grace more? Maybe if there's a difficult situation with someone that I can start to guide that or fine-tune it somehow, or when it starts to kind of lessen, maybe there's a way that I can expand it a little bit more.

Rob: Yeah, possibly. I mean, that's definitely possible. I wonder, too, if it just -- we don't know where it's going to go. So at the moment, you're just at a certain stage with it. It sounds like it's really worth hanging out with it a bit more. That might mean in real-time. Of course, you might not be able to get the dog to stay there, you know, or whatever. If it's a tree or something, you can hang out with the tree longer. But explore more of those kinds of experiences. Sometimes there might be the possibility of even bringing them back to your consciousness, into the meditation after that particular moment has gone. But in hanging out with that, again, nothing exists in isolation. So there will be grace there, but you already said there's a sense of divinity. So already, like I said at the beginning, actually all these things are kind of connected.

So it might be just hanging out with that sense, either live with another being, like you said, or in the meditation, and just letting it fill out more -- in other words, letting yourself open to it and tune to it. Like I've said sometimes in other situations, like your eyes need to get used to the dark, and then you start to see, "Oh, there's more in the dark here than I thought. I can see more things in the dark." Yeah? So in what you're calling grace, you've already said there's something else, the divine, and it might be there's a whole bunch of things. What you really become sensitive to is all kinds of elements there. And part of the question is, what's my poise in relationship to this? How am I being touched by it? How do I come at this? How do I position myself in relationship to it? That's something too.

When we started introducing the word 'sensing with soul,' this is kind of what we meant. I would use the words interchangeably, imaginal and sensing with soul. But sensing with soul was really introduced so that it could be clear that we can have these kinds of multidimensional and multi-aspected, sacred kind of relationships with things and beings in the world that are not just intrapsychic. And once we start exploring that, again, related to Yasmin's question, actually then this whole kind of question about what's real and what's not, it starts to open up that question, back to ontology now and this whole question of what's real and what's not real. But one of the things that will happen, I think, if you start to open to sensing with soul with objects in the natural world, or John was talking about a farm and the land and plants and all this stuff, is that it will start pushing the ontology a bit more towards seriously considering, "Maybe this is really real, what I'm feeling," and it goes more in that direction as a natural evolution, you know?

So it's like, this imaginal Middle Way, it's not a tightrope; it's a boulevard, and it's quite wide. We can kind of move at different times and different places. But I think, in a way, that's all relative to, again, what the dominant modern Western view of things is. With dogs, people tend to be a little -- people talk to their dogs, all that stuff, so the view of most modern Western people regarding what's real with dogs tends to be already quite that way relative to some other things. But generally speaking, there's a kind of opening up of more like seriously considering different kind of senses of what's real, and that may be part of it. And that may be part of also what you play with as well if you're able to -- actually just explore, what is it if I see this more as kind of neither real nor not real, and then lean a little bit more into the real? What effect does that have? There are all kinds of possibilities, but it really sounds like something beautiful is happening, and it's kind of calling you, it's inviting you to spend more time with it and explore it. But I'm not sure -- was there a more specific question in there that you were wondering about?

Yogi: No, not really, because I just came up with it while you were talking and it felt meaningful to me so I thought I would ask it.

Rob: Yeah. So does that sound okay, what I said?

Yogi: That sounds great. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Rob: Yeah, it's really beautiful. Another way of saying something is: when we feel like something is meaningful to us, there's a desire to explore it, to be in relationship, to know it (that's what we call eros), and that thing, that meaningfulness and desire and the object itself, is kind of calling us to more sensitivity and exploration, you know you're on the right track, and it's going to be soulmaking. It's going to be beautiful. There are going to be discoveries. You can feel it; it's kind of eliciting our sensitivity, our responsiveness, our attunement, and you could say that's part of the sign that something is going to be fertile and soulmaking. Yeah?

Yogi: Yeah, thank you.

Rob: The meaningfulness, the desire, and that kind of -- it's asking me to kind of attune. That's part of the eros. It's giving me that as well, and that's part of the grace. Yeah? Yeah, lovely.

Q4: mixing practices of emptiness, the imaginal, and creative process

Rob: Jacqui, do you have your hand up?

Yogi: Yes. It's a bit of a complex question.

Rob: Is this the one that you wrote to me?

Yogi: Yes. Can you remember it?

Rob: Well, I have it. I've got it on my phone. I can actually read it if you like.

Yogi: Right, yeah.

Rob: Would you rather say something or would you rather I read it?

Yogi: I think probably because it's a bit complex, it's probably better to read it. Okay.

Rob: [1:12:39] I've got it on my phone, if I can find it. "Dear Rob, this is a question I would submit to the next seminar, but I may not get a chance to ask, and also it feels a bit complex for that forum. I have been enjoying a meditative state, on and off the cushion, which I guess is what you call vastness of awareness, for some time. This expansiveness of consciousness is very enhanced by, for example, gazing at the sky, and more recently, when I am on a beach, especially one with a sense of expansiveness. This has an effect on the energy body: it feels more alive, vibrant, light. The visual image of sea, sand, horizon and vastness becomes very compelling and I feel absorbed by it. There are all kinds of other experiences which accompany this vastness -- ease, joy, awe, a lack of distinction between interior and exterior, and landscape feels absorbed into body. There is a sense of mystery and beyondness. I experience a sense of wholeness and want to stay in this experience. The sense of awe and mystery are especially strong -- also the sense of it not being quite real at times, theatrical. I was going to ask you "where to?" from here. Although wonderful, I have felt a bit stuck here. Seeing that the vastness, too, is empty, might be one way to go. Any other suggestions?

"But my first question had been a bit overtaken by more recent experiences. The vastness has become peopled by imaginal figures. These figures literally live in the vastness on a remote imaginal beach. These people are unfolding a kind of narrative which I am recording, and it's manifesting as the beginnings of a very long story/novel! I am now quite familiar with the small group of characters, and they seem to have a life of their own. They seem to need to exist and unfold. The themes are very much about opening consciousness to different, more sacred conceptions of reality, and climate and ecological emergency, and human psychology. I am, in short, doing a piece of creative writing! I have found this imaginal space strangely liberating and it is pretty well replacing my sitting practice. It seems to give me very similar benefits as sitting. It feels very right to be in this space and to be giving this creative process time and space. However, I am a bit concerned that I have taken a wrong turn in my practice and I'm not progressing my deeper understanding of the Dharma. I find I can, at points during the day, take myself back to this sense of vastness and the imaginal characters, and have an immediate sense of freedom. I'm hoping this makes sense to you and you can offer some advice."

Okay. Thank you. It's great. Again, Jacqui, I would come back to the question of intention rather than right or wrong. As souls, as minds and consciousnesses and human beings, we have so many different potentials. So we can go in so many different directions and cultivate so many different things. What we often maybe can't do is go in multiple directions at once. So sometimes we go in one direction at the cost of another direction, at least temporarily, if not maybe more permanently. So I think it's kind of up to you. If you, for instance, are at a point in your life where it feels like actually it's important to write a novel right now, and it's important to write this novel, for whatever reason (we could unpack that), but if that's what you decide, then it sounds like this is a process where it's happening and you could follow that process. That's how some people, or some people at periods of time, view their meditative practice -- it's primarily feeding a creative process, which is going to manifest in the world. It's fine. There's no right and wrong here; you can use it however you want.

If what you're wanting is to understand emptiness deeper, then yeah -- I mean, it might somehow -- one of these characters might start teaching about emptiness maybe; I don't know. But it's kind of unlikely that going there is going to take your emptiness -- either practice or understanding -- much deeper. The question of whether it will deepen your imaginal practice is -- it might and it might not. But all this is up to you. It's not up to me to say what you should do or what's right or wrong at all. It's really up to you. But if we go back to, for example, the teaching about the elements of the imaginal, what deepens any image into being more fully and more genuinely imaginal, one of the things is the attention to the elements of the imaginal. And if I get too caught up in the creative process, actually my attention to those elements and my care for them and my seeing which ones are there and which ones are not tends to get lost. Something else is happening that's involving imagination, clearly, but it's gone on a different track. It's not necessarily deepening the imaginal and the understanding of the imaginal, or this particular image as imaginal.

So I can deepen this image as creative imagination, and maybe that creative imagination is helpful for the world -- it gives some good advice or something; I don't know. Or a moving novel or whatever it is that touches people. But it's not the same as it being imaginal, necessarily. So, going back, I feel like the whole territory of what we're calling the imaginal, it would be very easy for it to get dissolved, mixed with other stuff, and kind of get lost. So it's a bit like an opening. The teachings feel like, "Well, why can't you just be a bit more broad?" But once you go through this opening of the imaginal, what we're calling the imaginal, it opens up into huge territory. It might feel like it's a bit constrained by all these particulars -- there's this element and that element and what about the self. But that's kind of a doorway to a much larger territory. Narrow is the gate to this much larger kind of kingdom, if you like.

The way you're relating to it right now doesn't sound so much like it's going in the direction of the imaginal, either the deepening of this particular image into more imaginal, or the deepening of your practice of the imaginal, but that's okay, you know? And neither does it seem like it's going in the direction of deepening your emptiness understanding, but that's really okay. It's really up to you what you want with this thing, and it might be that you can do this thing in this way, and have care for one of those other practices -- either emptiness or imaginal -- on the side; you just have to be a bit more disciplined with your time and your intention, clear what you're doing when.

So that's a basic answer. We could say much more. But how does that sound?

Yogi: Interesting. Not really probably what I wanted to hear! [laughs] I feel like the landscape is, for me, imaginal, and these people or characters exist within this imaginal landscape. So it has for me a soulmaking quality, and the process has felt very right in kind of protecting this space, this sense of spaciousness. So my life can be very busy, but when I touch this, I'm back in the sense of space.

Rob: Yeah, thank you. I really get that. I kind of had the sense this wasn't exactly what you wanted to hear from me, but going back to what we said with Yasmin, it's like, at the moment it's mixed -- there's a sense of spaciousness and relative emptiness; there's some aspects of it that are quite imaginal; and there's a whole creative process going on. To some degree, you've got three great ingredients, three wonderful ingredients that all feel important to you.

Yogi: With the creative process, I try to allow it to unfold rather than do it in a kind of "I'm intentionally writing." It feels like it's more meditative and allowing things to come. So it feels like it's, in part, a discovery, what needs to unfold.

Rob: That's beautiful. And that's sometimes how creative processes can be, more like that. I would still say you've got three lovely things, or three things that are quite important to you, each of them to a certain extent. Maybe the creative one, you've got to as full an extent as you ever could want. At the moment, it's great. As it goes on, the cost of keeping all three will be a kind of blurring and a kind of inability for things to get deeper, to get more -- specifically the imaginal and the emptiness. There's no right or wrong here; it's really your choice. It's more like you come to a crossroads. Maybe you're walking on a path and it forks into three, and they all seem like they're kind of going in parallel, and you say, "Oh, I'll just stand, and maybe they're so thin that my legs can straddle in between." But then they start to diverge, and then I have to kind of choose. Then I say, "Well, maybe I'll kind of ..." Okay, the analogy breaks down! But kind of in between two paths, I end up going neither to place A, B, C. I'm just lost in the woods. But again, it's me answering now; that's the way I tend to think about things. If we want a process, whether it's the process of exploring emptiness or the imaginal or the creative process, to really go deep, there are ways that we need to kind of prioritize and delineate and care for it and understand it. Without that, there's a danger that things are great for a while, and they get a bit blurred, and then it just starts to stagnate. Maybe not the creative process here, but the other two, definitely. But, you know, you could do this and then come back to something, or, as I said, do things in parallel. It's really up to you.

Yogi: I don't know whether it was because I was in this vastness of awareness, having this experience a lot in meditation and in nature, and then I got bored with it so I peopled it, or -- I think I didn't quite know where to go with it.

Rob: Are you saying you're wondering whether you got bored with it and peopled it, or you definitely did get bored and peopled it deliberately?

Yogi: It didn't feel like that, but ... I think I had to do something with it.

Rob: Again, it depends what you want. I'm conscious of time, so we'll have to wrap up soon. But someone asked the other day about they're in the vastness of awareness, it's wonderful, and how to deepen it. I think I said -- and maybe it came up in the other group I did in Finland ["Nirodha Sangha Emptiness Clinic"] -- there's a chance that things can just deepen in emptiness practice, they just deepen by themselves. And if I want something like the vastness of awareness to deepen, it might be that I need to be a bit more deliberate and kind of careful about what I'm doing so that it can deepen. Then the question is what, you know? So that's where some more specific guidance and actually deliberate intention might be really, really helpful. Sometimes it will just deepen by itself. In this case, as far as emptiness is concerned, it hasn't. Something else that's wonderful has happened, but it hasn't deepened the emptiness. So like I said to a couple other people, you can be in that space of vastness of awareness and just kind of hope that the next, deeper level will open up, and it might, or it might not. There are ways of being a little more -- if that's what I want, I can help it to do that. So, up to you, really. Really up to you. But there's no reason why you can't have your soup, your mains, and your dessert. You can have all three things if you're just a bit more careful and deliberate about what you're doing when. If you mix your soup, your mains, and dessert -- people do that, but you also lose quite a bit, don't you, in the sense of the meal? That's the kind of thing that I'm saying.

Yogi: I feel like I probably needed more guidance in what to do next.

Rob: Exactly, yeah. I think so. It sounds like that. And I know you're meeting with someone, so [inaudible] if that's what you want. I think we really need to end. I just want to honour the time frame that we agreed to, because people might have other commitments and need to go. Can we take just a few moments together in silence again? Again, just letting your heart, your consciousness, your sensitivity extend to the community here, our small gathering online, togetherness, held together by our interest, by our passion, by our openness. Gratitude for that. The preciousness of that, togetherness. Okay. Thank you, everybody, for being here, and being here with your open heart, open mind, and curiosity, and energy, and questions. Really appreciate it. Okay, very good. Bless you all.