An Intro to Soulmaking

Reflections on Imaginal Practice

Peter Mohrbacher

I recently sat a one-week meditation retreat in Devon. It was a deep and delicious dive into the meditation practices of ‘Soulmaking Dharma’ developed by teachers Rob Burbea and Catherine McGee at Gaia House.

Three days into the retreat on a blustery autumn evening, we sat together in silence around a crackling fire in a dark, wood-panelled room. I couldn’t help but feel that we were witnessing — and participating in — a significant development of the Buddhist dharma teachings, and really of our most basic understanding of human existence: why it’s all happening, what it’s all for…

Soulmaking is deep stuff. Rich, profound, unutterably beautiful. Not necessarily accessible, however! So I want to share my reflections on this powerful little movement, starting with the basics of what soulmaking is, and how one might go about actually practicing it.

We’ll start with the genius who set it all in motion (who turned the wheel of the dharma, as Buddhists say).

Rob Burbea, who sadly passed away in 2019 due to pancreatic cancer, was surely one of the most accomplished and extraordinary meditation teachers in human history. Following the Buddhist path of emptiness to its very depths (a journey which he masterfully guides us through in his book Seeing That Frees), he then began to develop an utterly radical and exquisitely rich body of teachings that invite us to direct our meditative, psychological and devotional energies in the direction of form, not emptiness: towards the specific, the unique, the personified.

This flower. This idea. This dream-image. This very person before me…

All of this was prompted by a creative explosion of ideas upon reading James Hillman’s Re-Visioning Psychology; Burbea spent the rest of his life developing an entirely new current of meditation practice and a robust conceptual framework (or Logos, as he calls it) to accompany it. The guy was a spiritual, intellectual and creative titan, and I believe that we are really only just beginning to digest the implications of his teachings.

Soulmaking Dharma, in his own words, is a paradigm that enables the “reclamation, restoration and expansion of sacredness”. And it can do this because it is so thoroughly rooted in insight into the emptiness of everything, that it allows us to reconnect with our innate senses of sacredness, soulfulness, meaningfulness and beauty, without getting caught in the conceptual trap of believing we are attaining to “absolute truths” or “ultimate reality”.

This is because, as emptiness (and also postmodernism) teaches, there is no ultimate reality. But rather than this leaving us in a meaningless void where everything is unreal and therefore worthless (which very many postmodernists, stuck in Nietzsche’s “God is dead” paradigm, believe), we are instead invited to contemplate and participate in the boundless, unfathomable in-between: the imaginal realm, where nothing whatsoever can be said to be real, nor unreal. Resisting all attempts at definition or comprehension, the empty, open, and boundless nature of all things is laid bare, and thus so too is their unfathomability, divinity, and mystical beauty. “Reality” is then seen and known to be so inseparable from image, mythos and fantasy that the whole thing opens up like a blossoming flower, and the cosmos is revealed as an ever-unfolding imaginal play of infinite possibility, in which all living beings (and buddhas) participate…

So, with that little taster dissolving on your imaginal tongue, let’s dive into some possible answers as to the how and why of soulmaking / imaginal practice. This first article will look at how, and the second article will look at why.

How?

This retreat was particularly helpful for me in that it gave me a better sense of an answer to the question: what do people practicing soulmaking actually do?

I’ve been listening to Rob’s talks for several years now, but still haven’t been quite clear about how one might spend a practice session that is focussed on soulmaking. Now I at least have some sense of the possibilities, though there is really no way of knowing what more advanced or intuitive practitioners are up to (note to self to survey the soulmaking community sometime)!

Something helpful that crystallised on the retreat is that one could make a delineation of two broad streams of soulmaking/imaginal practice. These are:

1. sensing with soul, and
2. working with intrapsychic images.

This is certainly not an ultimate distinction as the two can certainly overlap (as we will see), but let’s use it for now, and take a look at each one in turn.

Sensing with Soul

• “Sensing with soul” is equivalent to “perceiving imaginally”. Sensing with soul can be thought of as a “seventh sense”, in addition to the six familiar sense doors of sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste, and mental formations. In imaginal practice we attune to this sensibility, open to its depths and revel in its beauty. As we learn to trust the intelligence of the imaginal, we allow it to guide us on our journey.
• When one is sensing with soul, the outward form or appearance of phenomena is preserved, but other “soulful qualities” become perceivable. These qualities are the “elements of the imaginal”, also known in the soul making world as “the imaginal lattice”: 28 qualities of soulful perception that, when all are activated, comprise a “fully imaginal” encounter or perception. These qualities are:

1. Trust
2. Beauty
3. Reverence
4. Imaginal Middle Way
5. Loving and Being Loved
6. Eternality
7. Dimensionality (shading into Divinity)
8. Soft and elastic edges
9. Concertina (other images waiting in the wings)
10. Soulfulness
11. Energy body awareness
12. Grace
13. Logos (ideas / concepts are involved)
14. Values (are involved)
15. Slightly less fabrication
16. Sense of Eternality
17. Both Created and Discovered
18. Autonomy of Self and Other
19. Unfathomable Beyonds
20. Meaningfulness
21. Fullness of Intention (to serve soul/soulfulness/the imaginal)
22. Participation
23. Duty
24. This Lattice of Elements
25. Not reducible to a single meaning
26. Infinite echoing and mirroring
27. Humility
28. Eros (or Loving Desire)

(To unpack these fully, listen to the talks in Foundations of a Soulmaking Dharma. It is well worth the time. To my mind this is essentially a checklist of all the things missing from our meaningless postmodern lives: a set of keys to a kingdom of limitless psychic riches.)

• When sensing with soul, appearances as we conventionally sense them will stay the same, but the “soul sensitivities” of the imaginal lattice will also be activated. So: we’re looking at an apple with our sense of sight, but we also begin to sense its beauty, its divinity, our love for the apple, the apple’s love for us (perhaps an expression of the love of the earth or cosmos) and the resonances of this encounter in the subtle/energetic body (or as Rob sometimes called it, the poetic body).
• We are now beginning to sense the apple as image. No longer as a really-existing entity but as an imaginal being, deity or angel. Completely and thoroughly fabricated and empty. Importantly, this does not mean it is unreal. That’s the unfathomable quality of the “imaginal middle way”, in which all appearances are recognised as being neither “real” nor “unreal”. They are inconceivable, indefinable, inexpressible. In this way, fully attuning to the imaginal nature of the apple will also reveal its emptiness: its fabricated, dependently arisen nature. The apple does not have any inherent or independent existence, separate from the way of looking (or separate from awareness, which is itself empty). In this case, as we open to seeing the apple imaginally, the sense and conception of what the apple actually is changes accordingly. What we used to think of as an object (the apple that actually exists) is revealed to be the manifestation of a particular way of looking (most likely, the materialist view that perceptions such as apples are “made of matter, are not alive, have no consciousness, etc.”). With a different way of looking, a very different apple appears – even if it “looks” exactly the same to the conventional visual sense door.
• As we expand the range of our soul sense, we open to beholding all appearances as empty forms. Imaginal, soulful and divine. While this notion is inconceivable to the intellect, but is embraced by the human heart and soul. While it might sound exotic, sensing with soul actually seems to be a very natural capacity for many people – it has simply been repressed, denied or forgotten. So we have to do a bit of intellectual homework to unravel the knots and blind spots in our metaphysics, in order to regain access to our innate imaginal sensibilities. This is precisely what the Soulmaking Logos is intended to help us with.
• The imaginal way of looking is no more true or real than the materialist one, but it is certainly richer, more meaningful, and more soulful. As we gain flexibility through practice and experience, we gain the ability to freely move between such ways of looking, knowing that they are all empty, and thus escape getting caught in the trap of reifying (taking as real) appearances such as apples, bodies, selves and souls. This is a ticket to deep, deep freedom and unspeakable richness of experience.
• During this retreat, I did a lot of experiments in what I call ‘working the lattice’. Practically speaking, I realised that we can “imaginalise” any activity, form, appearance or perception by consiously introducing the lattice elements into the mindstream, and attuning to any resonances or energetic shifts that occur, particularly in the subtle body-sense. In my experience there are a few “easy wins” that pretty much instantaneously catalyse a shift in perception and in the sense of self towards soulfulness and image. I found the lattice elements of “beauty”, “participation”, “trust”, “grace”, “unfathomability” to be particularly accessible “ways in” to sensing with soul. Just softly dropping them in to the mindstream opens a door – and if you’re paying attention, you can lever it open, little by little. To behold any human as beautiful and unfathomable, pretty much instantly begins to shifts our perception of them out habitual ways of seeing. I would highly recommend experimenting with how the simple exercise of seeing beauty in others changes your experience of life – and your sense of self!
• Once a few lattice elements are “activated”, one can linger in the richness and soulfulness of such perceptions as more and more of the lattice “lights up”. What was once seen as “mundane” or “profane” is now experienced as deeply meaningful, profound and even sacred. When the lattice is fully online – all elements are noticeably present – we will experience a “fully imaginal” encounter. There is little doubt that this is going to be a profoundly life-affirming meeting.
• All ordinary perception has the potential to be sensed and perceived imaginally and soulfully. When we realise this, we open up to the possibility of living a life that is totally immersed in senses of soulfulness, sacredness, meaningfulness and beauty. There is no limit to the depth of such senses; the adventure into soulful living is infinite and unbounded. And it is beckoning to all of us…

Working with Images

The second primary mode of soulmaking / imaginal practice.

• For many practitioners, imaginal practice involves deepening, exploring and enriching one’s relationship with “intrapsychic” images. Spending time dwelling, abiding, conversing, communing, exchanging with one’s internal psychic figures and images. These images are not sensed by sight, sound, touch, smell, or taste, but appear within one’s ‘internal’ vision. It’s worth noting that it’s actually a bit of a conceptual constriction, to say such images are “internal”. Definitely we do not want to say “it’s all in our heads”, which would be to denigrate the imagination to a status of being a less-valid way of knowing than sensory perception (Burbea calls this epistemicide). It’s really worth challenging and questioning our assumption that “the psyche is within the human” (or within the brain), and to instead explore the alternate view that “the human is embedded in the psyche”, and that in relating to psychic images, symbols and figures, we are relating to the intelligent otherness of the imaginal – reawakening to our soul’s home in an infinite psychic matrix. This readily becomes apparent to anyone who is touched by the depth and richness of the autonomy, meaning and intelligence that is expressed by certain images gives one a definite sense that “this doesn’t come from me, not entirely…”. The sense of communing with imaginal others grows until one is actually quite comfortable talking to, negotiating with, and calling for aid from one’s daimons, spirit guides, or angels. And, thank God, we are free from ever claiming that these entities are real. Because emptiness has taught us that they are neither real nor unreal, and are both created and discovered. Just like us! The deeper we enter into relationship with the imaginal, the deeper we realise that we too are imaginal beings, communing with an infinite variety of imaginal beings. “Ye are Gods”, so Jesus taught. May we see it, and revel in the freedom, and give thanks for the sheer divine gift of it. Again, the rigorous grounding in the conceptual framework of emptiness is what assures us that we are not engaging in schizophrenic pathology, but actually following the divine creative imagination where she is beckoning us (which, to begin with, is beyond the imaginative desert of Western materialism and its violent assumption that all that is imagined is worthless). The irony here is our failing to see that not only the materialist worldview but the world of matter itself is the product of the imaginal realm and the soulmaking dynamic: all reality is the work and play of a divine creative intelligence in whom all beings participate, whose boundless love and scope of vision we are only just beginning to fathom! More on that here.
• As we dwell with our images, we dwell with other beings. Significantly, soulmaking sets us free from the Western psychotherpeutic model that assumes that all images and symbols are unintegrated pieces of the self, which then simply need to be “integrated into the self”. When we open to the otherness of the imaginal, this ego-centric and individualistic model begins to dissolve, and we are opened to the vastness, complexity, diversity and intelligence of the imaginal others… we take our rightful place in a psychic community of apparently limitless proportions.
• Now practically speaking, the most obvious thing to say is that working with images will likely involve sitting and lingering with images, staying highly sensitive to how they influence and resonate in the subtle body field, and using these resonances and energetic shifts to “feel out the lattice”, or simply allow the image to do its work and reveal its depths of soulfulness and meaningfulness. One could either enter into samadhi or metta meditation, trusting that in these states of less fabrication, images will often come to us, OR to consciously take an image, perhaps from a dream or past encounter, and to sit with it, open to the possibility of the soulmaking dynamic. There may well be communication with imaginal figures, either verbal or non-verbal. Many experience exchanges of song, music, chant or rhythm.
• One begins to find that one’s images have an immense degree of responsiveness to one’s personal needs, sufferings, neuroses, desires and obsessions. They reply, soothe, and guide. They instruct, correct and invite. They give you just what you need — just what you long for. And then some.
• Particularly helpful in working with images is opening to the current of loving desire, or Eros. This desire longs to enter into deeper and richer relationship with our imaginal angels. Rob offered this as an extremely helpful sub-practice; listen to this talk to pick it up.
• It’s definitely worth listening to Rob’s talk “What is an Image?” to open up our understanding of images, and realising that they do not have to be auditory but can also be auditory, kinaesthetic, or . Anything goes, really… the key questions are is it juicy, is it beautiful, meaningful? Does it feel sacred? Does it set my soul alight?
• As Yahel Avigur, longtime student of Rob’s and pioneering Soulmaking teacher, puts it: when it comes to imaginal practice “the primary concern is the quality of the conversation with the imaginal”.
• Lastly: there is no limit to the depth, complexity, vastness and scope of our imaginal encounters. We are apparently able to open to — and participate — a limitless array of mandalas, dimensions, buddhafields, and inexpressibly vast and complex realms of imaginal patterning. For a demonstration of the potency of the imaginal capacity, I would draw your attention to the life of Tibetan master Dudjom Lingpa who was born as a nomad and directly received visionary instructions and teachings of astounding clarity and precision from all manner of enlightened beings.

Peter Mohrbacher

A Last Word

Really, these two streams of “sensing with soul” and “working with images” aren’t separate at all. Sensing with soul will gradually reveal the imaginal nature of all “ordinary perception” and all profane appearances. We begin to sense that conventional reality is the cosmopoesis (world-making) of default ways of looking… in other words, the cosmopoesis of unconscious and unquestioned fantasies, which themselves are generated and mediated by images and imaginal figures. And in turn, through deeper and richer communion with these images, we attune to the fundamental way in which they not only colour the appearance of the world, but are actually the generative factor(s) in any perception of the world arising whatsoever.

Images (in conjunction with Eros and Logos) generate the entire experience of “being a self in a world (full of others)”. Working deeply with images will open up the view of self as image, other as image, world as image. So in a sense we don’t really “do imaginal practice”, rather than open ourselves to the perception-generating soulmaking dynamic that is already in motion, and has manifested the appearance of entire universes through its Eros. Seeing this opens us to the possibility of the entire cosmos being ensouled, alive, erotic, imaginal, and divine. Isn’t this what we are yearning to see, experience — and participate in?

As Burbea says, “soul is longing for self, other and world to become image”. Because then we have opened the door to relating to anything and everyone as sacred, meaningful, and beautiful. The only limits to this adventure are the limits of imagination, which are themselves imaginary — or imaginal — and therefore open to begin reconciled and expanded, ad infinitum.

Image is not only the ground of the dharma but of all perception and experience. And it is a groundless ground, neither real nor unreal, neither empty nor not-empty, existent nor not-existent. In the boundless void of the Buddha’s middle way, we are left free to weave cosmic mandalas of limitless complexity and beauty. Free to make art. Make love. Make soul.

I’d recommend getting into these Rob Burbea talks for more (it’s really just scratching the surface, but you have to start somewhere). Probably it’s a good idea to make your way through a retreat over some time, following both talks and guided meditations.

• Retreat: Path of the Imaginal
• Talk: The Way of Image
• Webpage: Soulmaking Dharma
• Talk: Logoi and Leanings
• Talk: Sensing with Soul (Catherine McGee)
• Retreat: Foundations of a Soulmaking Dharma
• Talk: Questioning Awakening (foundational philosophical piece for soulmaking)

Enjoy! I’d love to hear how you get on…

I will soon share a second article reflecting on the why(s) of soulmaking dharma.

Stay tuned (subscribe/follow) for more reflections as I continue copying up my notebooks!

Disclaimer: It’s worth saying that this article reflects my own limited and unfolding understanding of soulmaking and emptiness, so please don’t take it as authoritative. The Hermes Amara Foundation was set up by Rob to continue sharing his work after his death, and they are steadfastly dedicated to preserving the integrity of the teachings, such that soulmaking does not get misinterpreted or misused (a very real danger for such a radical body of teachings). This makes me hesitant to write to freely about soulmaking. But at the same time, I feel a calling to unpack and share my reflections: to increase the accessibility of this deeply beautiful and liberating paradigm, doing my best all the while to maintain the rigour that Rob did in his teachings. He sets a very high bar with this, so while I certainly aspire to be logically watertight, I can’t help feeling that my tendency for poetic excitement might lead me astray into reification (oh, the horror!). So I invite you to read all of this with critical mind and open heart, and if in doubt, to keep going back to the source: namely Rob and Catherine’s talks, and the Buddhist emptiness teachings. May they serve you well and nourish your soul for many lifetimes to come!

Peter Mohrbacher