Transforming Life Through Imagination: The Secret of Blake’s “The Crystal Cabinet”

Unlock the secret of transformation through imagination with William Blake’s “The Crystal Cabinet.” In this video, I explore how Blake’s vivid metaphors—the crystal cabinet, the golden key, and the mystical portal—reveal a timeless process of inner change and self-discovery. As a modern romantic realist, I blend personal reflections with a detailed literary analysis to show how the power of the imagination can elevate everyday life, reshape our views on love, and inspire creative growth.

In This Video You’ll Discover:

The hidden symbolism behind Blake’s “The Crystal Cabinet”
How our imaginative faculties serve as a gateway to deeper emotional and creative experiences
Ways to balance romantic idealism with practical reality for a more meaningful life
Personal insights on using art and literature as tools for transformative self-exploration
Chapters: [00:00:00] Introduction: Embracing Imagination’s Power
[00:03:29] Personal Reflections: Art as a Transformative Force
[00:07:59] Reading “The Crystal Cabinet”
[00:10:22] Decoding Love, Affection & Inner Realities
[00:22:17] Unveiling the Metaphors: Cabinet, Key & Portal
[00:37:45] Conclusion: Building Your Own Creative Life

Join me on this journey to discover how the imaginative spirit can transform life—and perhaps inspire you to unlock your own inner creative potential. If you enjoy this exploration, please like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more insights into art, literature, and the transformative power of the mind.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:31:09
Unknown
I consider myself a romantic realist. By that, I simply mean someone who believes in the power of the imagination to elevate our lives, but also the importance of being reality oriented. Many times I think that in today's culture in particular, we think of it as an almost an either or proposition. Either you are very romantic, which means you disconnect from reality.

00:00:31:11 - 00:00:55:01
Unknown
You fall in love easily. You fall in love not with the actual person, but with the thought or the idea or the image in your mind of that person. Or you are really hyper realistic. You're practical. You're thinking about economics. Only you are, you know, thinking about money and finances and getting as much stuff as you possibly can before you die.

00:00:55:01 - 00:01:24:24
Unknown
Because of course, that's the point of life and that there can be no merging of the two. And that seems to me to be most one of the most bizarre propositions that it's either or. Why would it be either or? We clearly have an imaginative faculty. It is for something more than mere frills. Going to the movies and going into outer space because of the movies, and seeing people with lightsabers or dwarves.

00:01:24:27 - 00:01:50:27
Unknown
There's something the imagination is capable of doing in your actual life. Troubadour. I try to help you develop the tools of extracting the wisdom from great literature for your own life. And that's what I'm going to do today with this poem, the Crystal Cabinet by William Blake.

00:01:50:27 - 00:02:02:05
Unknown
So what I want to do is I want to just read the poem and you're not going, you know, very likely you might hear some pretty things that you think are nice, but you won't really understand a lot of what's going on.

00:02:02:11 - 00:02:25:03
Unknown
And that's okay. That's part of, you know, the the point in the sense that's part of the experience of poetry is the unlocking of it. It's the using of a golden key, as we'll see here in a moment to, to open up and understand, but not for the sake of understanding. So there's nothing wrong with understanding for its own sake.

00:02:25:04 - 00:02:50:08
Unknown
There's a kind of pleasure. We can call this esthetic pleasure and the appreciate appreciation of beauty, particularly literary, artistic beauty. And that's a pleasure in and of itself. Just like you can have different pleasures when you eat different and better types of food, if you have, you know, a certain Mexican dish that you like. You go to one restaurant, it's pretty good.

00:02:50:08 - 00:03:28:27
Unknown
You go to another restaurant, it's even better. And then you go to a really nice restaurant. It's phenomenal. It blows your socks off and that's esthetic, you know, appreciation as well as you can have different levels of appreciation, enjoyment and things will hit you in different ways. And this is something that takes time to develop. But more than that is there is something deeper the meaning, the integrated view of the poem or the artwork or the novel, whatever it is that you can extract, you could juice out of it and actually apply to your real life.

00:03:29:00 - 00:03:51:24
Unknown
Now I want to just start. I'm not going to tell you all the details or all the story behind it, but I want to start with a little bit of a personal story here. So and this is very personal. So if you're uncomfortable with that you might want to click off now because it'll make you uncomfortable. But you know, a while ago I won't say exactly how long, but a while back I had my heart broken and I thought I would.

00:03:51:25 - 00:04:15:15
Unknown
I thought the mechanism within me to fall in love, to, see a woman and and really be moved in the way that I had always been as a romantic was killed. It was dead. I thought it was never going to come back. And then not that long ago, I met a woman that it did start coming back for, just just meeting and hanging out with her and spending on.

00:04:15:15 - 00:04:52:00
Unknown
And just any interaction with her really showed me. I started falling for her and it showed me, okay, this is coming back. It can happen. And the process of falling for this person and I don't, you know, just I doubt anything's even going to happen. It's more just the effect that I have for her. Whether something is compatible is another another question in these situations which we're not going to focus on today, the compatibility of relationships is a whole other question and discussion and, a series of events that needs to occur, which I, you know, hopefully will happen, but you never know.

00:04:52:03 - 00:05:13:23
Unknown
And but that doesn't take away the affection. I think all of us have had that experience of having an affection for somebody, and maybe they won't know it. And that's okay. And that's part of life. As you go through life, and especially if you're going out into the world and you're enjoying your life and you're experiencing the world, you might start developing feelings for somebody.

00:05:13:25 - 00:05:33:16
Unknown
That may never actually be able to be progressed. You know, and this happens in all kinds of things in our life. We may really want to just take five years and just travel the world and do, you know, whatever we want and, you know, just, sit in Malta and go down, the Amalfi Coast or whatever.

00:05:33:16 - 00:05:51:23
Unknown
And you just, like, travel around, go to Italy and art museums and hopefully you can bring that desire, that longing into reality. And that's what you should hopefully strive for. But sometimes it may not happen right now or in the way that you want. And you have, you know, reality is a little bit more tricky sometimes. So my point is simply that we have this mechanism.

00:05:51:23 - 00:06:19:10
Unknown
And, you know, the focus I want to have on is the the inner mechanism that we have. We see something, we desire something. Let's put it in the, you know, for me and for you in the context of a person. And if you're you know, heterosexual, homosexual, that's not really important. The important thing is the affection you feel for another person, that the sight of them even kind of, does something to you.

00:06:19:12 - 00:06:43:12
Unknown
What that does, how it works, how it operates, what you should do with that. Those are all important questions. So I just wanted to kind of set up some of these things. And you know this I've been thinking about this because it happened to me or is happening to me now, actually, I've kind of like this process of really finding myself having strong emotional affections for, you know, a young lady.

00:06:43:14 - 00:07:05:13
Unknown
So and, you know, so I always like to explore these things through art. I think that's the best place to explore these things. I you can explore them with a therapist, or a friend. And those are good places, too. But I think we in our society tend to miss out on the most beneficial, important thing, which is the exploration of your self through art.

00:07:05:13 - 00:07:29:27
Unknown
That is one of the deepest values you can get out of art is that art is for contemplation sake. It gives you an image, a bubble to take and to you know, put into your mind and think about and see and play around with and explore and move around. And this is not something that some people have the power to do in other people's don't.

00:07:29:27 - 00:07:59:03
Unknown
It's merely a matter of practicing and, you know, experience with art. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to read the poem the Crystal cabinet. And, you know, as you see, it's not super long, but we're going to then go through it stands up by stanza and kind of talk about some of the meanings, the tools that you can use and, the ideas that will hopefully pull out something really much more important for you are much more, you know, relevant to your life.

00:07:59:03 - 00:08:19:01
Unknown
And this is the realist part is I think there's a reality to what you can experience or not just what you can do, but what you can, learn and discover about yourself and about the world and about, and about reality and human existence in particular. Okay, so here we go. I'm going to do a reading of the crystal cabinet.

00:08:19:01 - 00:08:48:01
Unknown
I'm going to go through it. If you don't understand it, that's okay. In fact, you shouldn't. It'd be weird if you're first time hearing about me. You understood it right away. Okay, here we go. The crystal Cabinet by William Blake. The maiden cut me in the wild. Where I was dancing merrily. She put me into her cabinet and locked me up with a golden key.

00:08:48:03 - 00:09:27:19
Unknown
This cabinet is formed of gold and pearl and crystal shining bright. And within it opens into a world and a little lovely moon night. Another England. There I saw another London with its tower, another Thames, another hills. And another pleasant Surrey bower. Another maiden like herself. Translucent, lovely, shining, clear, three fold each. And the other closed. Oh, what a pleasant trembling fear.

00:09:27:21 - 00:09:59:04
Unknown
Oh, what a smile. A three fold smile filled me. That like a flame I burned, I bent to kiss the lovely maid. And found a three fold kiss. Returned I straps I strove to seize the inmost form. With ardor fierce and hands of flame. But burst the crystal cabinet. And like a weeping babe became a weeping babe. Upon the wild and weeping woman.

00:09:59:04 - 00:10:22:06
Unknown
Pale, reclined, and in the outward air again I filled with woes. The passing wind. That's it. So when you're looking at a poem or a piece of literature, or a piece of art, you want to look at the totality. It's one of the nice things about some of these shorter poems is it's a little easier to to grasp the totality.

00:10:22:06 - 00:10:42:06
Unknown
If you have a 1200 page book novel. It's a little difficult sometimes to grasp all of it at once. Other tools to kind of integrate and source that. But we'll get to that some other day. So we have what looks like a kind of a story here, right? It's an interesting little story. We have this maid in a woman court.

00:10:42:06 - 00:11:09:22
Unknown
So the narrator's talking in himself caught me in the wild. So you can think of this as, you know, you're out at work, or you're out with friends, or you're at whatever, and you're out in the world and you see a woman, right? And she catches you in a sense, and, if you ever have been struck by the beauty of a woman, and particularly not just the lustful outer form, but her, you actually get to know her a little bit and you're struck by her as a person.

00:11:09:25 - 00:11:26:11
Unknown
You know what? That kind of feels like that because you're all of a sudden you're thinking about her a lot more. She's on your mind, you're wondering what's going on with her. And it's like, okay, this is a lot. And it feel it can feel, like being caught in the wild where I was dancing merrily and she.

00:11:26:11 - 00:11:44:14
Unknown
And she put me in. So instead she put me into her cabinet and locked me up with the golden key. And it feels like. And again, with women, being attracted to a man, it's the same thing. Or man. A man at the point is not the necessarily the heterosexual part of it, although I think there is something unique there sometimes.

00:11:44:17 - 00:12:09:18
Unknown
But the real point there is the, the feeling of affection, the stronger affection that you have for somebody, the more it does kind of feel like a trap in the sense of like you can't get out if you really like that person, you're drawn to them and, you know, I think a lot of us, there's a lot that go into where we might have, you know, people might have like, fear mechanisms that that push that type of person away.

00:12:09:18 - 00:12:32:27
Unknown
Once they start feeling that, they start pushing it away and they run away or something, all kinds of things can happen with that. But in general, I bet almost all of you have experienced something like this where you're just kind of going about your day, everything's fine and then boom, you're struck by this person. And then as you get to know that person, if you have that opportunity, it becomes more and more like she's trapping you or he's trapping you in this cabinet.

00:12:32:29 - 00:12:50:04
Unknown
Whether they do anything or not is, again, not the point. I want to stress that it's just them existing. This is the feeling of affection that you, you know, you want to go do something else, but you feel like this pull toward that person and they start to it starts to feel like you're kind of taken over in a sense.

00:12:50:06 - 00:13:15:14
Unknown
And she locked me up with a golden key. So I think this is kind of a metaphor for, imagination. So that's another thing we'll get into in a little bit. But talking about on the literal sense where we have this cabinet that's you're being trapped in by this affection. Now, this cabinet is formed of gold and pearl and crystal shining bright, and within it opens into a world and a little lovely moony night.

00:13:15:16 - 00:13:38:03
Unknown
So we have a portal now. So, you know, if you think about, you know, the, the Narnia tales or even Harry Potter and, what is it, 90 three quarters like? There's a portal that takes you from the real world into this imaginative world. And I think that's what's kind of happening here. And what brought him there is this woman that caught him in the wild, brought him into this cabinet that has a portal to another world.

00:13:38:06 - 00:14:03:11
Unknown
What kind of world is it? What's another England? There I saw another London with its tower. Another Thames? That's the river and other hills and another. It's pleasant Surrey bower. And just if you don't know, a bower is a great example of this whole process, which, if we have time, I'll get into a little bit. But, a bower is basically a poetic term for, a tree with shade for usually for, you know, to, for two lovers.

00:14:03:11 - 00:14:24:19
Unknown
But it's, it's a, a good example of the elevation of language that you can just have a shady tree, which is kind of a more literal, explanation of what this is, this item. Or you can have a bower which has this whole poetic connotations to it, and I think elevates the experience of this to a shady tree.

00:14:24:19 - 00:14:41:26
Unknown
And there's like, ants and you get all that sticky and bad things happen because their bark come down and, you know, it's actually a little too hot and you're not. And that's the reality versus the, the, imaginative world of it is that it's this perfect bower that protects the two lovers. So that they can enjoy a moment alone.

00:14:41:28 - 00:15:02:26
Unknown
And so what's what's the realness to it? Is it the is it the the sticky bark, you know, getting dirt in your shoes and in your shirt. And that's what it's where, like the ass brows and not fun. Or is it this perfect bower that's like a sanctuary for two lovers. Which one is it? And, you know, that's that's what we're going to talk about and a little bit about imagination.

00:15:02:28 - 00:15:27:16
Unknown
So let's continue that another maiden like herself. Translucent. Lovely. Shining clear. Three fold each in the other. Closed. Oh, what a pleasant, trembling fear. So now he sees another maiden. But it's like herself. So it's. It's a maiden that's like herself. And that you should think about what is. What does that mean? I, I'm going to postulate something here of one of the, you know, one.

00:15:27:16 - 00:15:50:11
Unknown
I think it's an indication of the great danger of the imagination. And this is something that romantics, like myself, need to learn. And I've definitely learned this the hard way over years and years and years of heartache, especially when I was younger. Just one of the dangers of being a romantic is falling in love. Not with the person, but with the imagined person.

00:15:50:14 - 00:16:10:29
Unknown
So taking the, you know, you take some little trait or little thing of them, and then you blow it up into this thing that isn't actually them. And it's not the reality of them. It's how you've imagined them. And that is a real danger that, that romantics have. And idealists. I'm a romantic, is a kind of an idealist.

00:16:11:01 - 00:16:37:00
Unknown
And that they have is that they can disconnect and float away from reality and just look at the thing that they want, and then they do that. And I heard a really a psychologist say this, and I think there's some real truth to this, that when you would fall in love with the imagined person, or when you fall in love with a person's potential, which I think is similar, where it's like you see somebody and you see how great they could be, and sometimes you ignore who they actually are.

00:16:37:02 - 00:17:04:24
Unknown
The danger is or excuse me. What that means, in a sense, is you are falling in love with your own imagination, which is a kind of narcissism in and of itself. And that's true. And, you know, I think we tend to really beat up on this narcissism thing. And that's because it's a really bad idea. But, there is something to the way your mind works that's really important to how you experience the world.

00:17:04:24 - 00:17:23:26
Unknown
So you shouldn't also throw it away. You don't want to throw away the self. So you know, but that that's a great danger to be aware of. And, you know, especially if you're already leading toward the romantic and I'm trying to convince you to be more romantic. So but that means you need to have the, an understanding of the dangers of it.

00:17:23:29 - 00:17:41:24
Unknown
Okay. So that I think is part of what's going, going on here is that he's saying there's another no. Now, he's not talking about the dangers. To be clear, what he's talking about here in this stanza and in this in in the above stands as well. It's that he goes to this portal, there's this imaginative world where he sees another London and he sees another maiden.

00:17:41:24 - 00:18:08:27
Unknown
So it's not the maiden necessarily that he, that captured him initially. You know, the maiden caught me in the wild. Put it. Once he goes in the cabinet, he goes to the portal, there's a maiden like herself, and she's translucent, lovely, shining clear. And then there's this trembling fear. That's a pleasant one. And I think a lot of us who've been, enamored or starting to fall will when start to fall in love.

00:18:09:00 - 00:18:29:17
Unknown
There is a kind of trembling fear, and a lot of people run away from that fear. And that's, I think, one of the things that's happening in our, society today is that we're not able to, like, we're we're basically all turning into cowards. We're not we're not willing to, push past the fear to actually go on the adventure with somebody.

00:18:29:17 - 00:18:55:01
Unknown
And now some people are there are obviously people in relationships. But I think more and more there's a lot of people who aren't. And I think that's a form of cowardice. Okay. Then it's going on. He says, oh, what a smile, a three fold smile. You know, we'll talk about the three fold thing a little bit, maybe filled me that like a flame I burned, I bent to kiss the lovely maid and found a three fold kiss return.

00:18:55:01 - 00:19:20:24
Unknown
So in this portal he kisses her and he finds a three fold kiss. Return. So a lot of kisses return basically. Right, I strove, so I want to. There's an important thing here. We now have an active thing. So he strove. Is a kind of change that we're getting because we're getting the made in court. The. The cabinet is formed of gold.

00:19:20:26 - 00:19:45:15
Unknown
She put me so things are happening to him and then and there's and then there's descriptions and then he takes an action, like there's that. I been to kiss and then I strove is a very powerful, forceful action. And I strove to seize the inmost form with ardor, fierce and hands of flame. So once he takes that action like that, what happens?

00:19:45:15 - 00:20:07:14
Unknown
But burst the crystal cabinet and like a weeping babe became. So he becomes like a weeping babe after he takes real action, to enact his desire in the sense and, you know, to to not just kiss her, but to seize the inmost form. And you should ask yourself, what? What do you think he means by that?

00:20:07:22 - 00:20:32:20
Unknown
There's something, I think, really deeper than even when I began talking about happening, a weeping babe upon the wild and weeping woman paled, reclined, pale, reclined, and in the outward air again I filled with woes, the passing wind so he becomes a babe and becomes a baby, a weeping baby, an infant in the wild. It's almost like he's being born now.

00:20:32:20 - 00:20:53:10
Unknown
Now that this event has occurred, it's almost like he comes out of the portal into the real world, weeping. And then there's a weeping woman, pale, reclined, almost like a pregnant woman. It's an interesting, you know, an interesting experience here. It's like, okay, who is this? And I don't think it's the maiden from earlier. It's a weeping woman, pale and in the outward air again.

00:20:53:10 - 00:21:20:25
Unknown
I filled the with woes, the passing one. So it's almost, you know, like there's a kind of, you know, in this poet's mind. William Blake, who I do think. But he did believe in the universality of the soul, that the soul has existed before the body, that it's almost like it comes into existence. As you go through this portal and and it's caught by, you know, something magical about being caught by the the the maiden as you're dancing.

00:21:20:25 - 00:21:48:05
Unknown
Maybe that's the father's name, but let's let's pick on another last thing that I want to extract for you, to help you get some more. Something out of this. What I think is going on in this poem that is unique and interesting and important for us to contemplate, whether you agree with it or not, is different. And that is this idea of the mechanism of the imagination.

00:21:48:05 - 00:22:17:05
Unknown
The romantic imagination is what I've been focusing on. So as I've been saying, you have this woman who's captured you, but what, you know, captured the poet. But what the poet is actually emphasizing here is that she puts him into this cabinet. And I think the cabinet can be a metaphor. I mean, it seems pretty clear to me that this is a metaphor of you move from this out in the world, you're getting caught in the world and put in this cabinet.

00:22:17:08 - 00:22:42:16
Unknown
And that is the mind, the imaginative, romantic or just the imaginative mind. That's what the cabinet is really. It's your overall inner soul consciousness. But it's that's what the cabinet is. And that's where you live. You you live in your mind. You're constantly thinking, feeling, emoting. Whether you bring that into words or not is a different story. And you're locked in with this golden key.

00:22:42:16 - 00:22:59:28
Unknown
Now what the golden key might be, I mean, it might even be better, as I'm saying this, that the cabinet is more like your just your overall mind and your inner self and the golden key that because that's what unlocks the cabinet, gets in and out into the real world. That's probably the imagination. So that's what I'm going to say.

00:22:59:28 - 00:23:22:05
Unknown
And as I'm, as I'm, you know, thinking through this myself is the cabinet is your inner self. It's your mind, your consciousness, it's the inner world of yourself. The golden key is the mechanism, the the, you know, metaphor thing that unlocks the mind and interacts with the world. And then how that occurs is, you know, going to be different for every person.

00:23:22:05 - 00:23:38:16
Unknown
Of course, now the cabinet he's talking about is formed of gold and pearl and crystal shining bright. So he does a good job of like, you can kind of almost picture a cabinet, you know, the Indian in the cabinet if he has no the any of the cupboard if you know that one. And with that it opens into a world and a little lovely moon in night.

00:23:38:18 - 00:24:04:15
Unknown
And so again, this is that portal. So now, now we have that portal and then you see a different world, and you see this kind of, you know, this maiden who's probably the maiden from earlier, but someone, but slightly different. Now I want to talk about this. Striving to seize the inmost form with ardor, fierce with desire, with longing, with, the powerful, passionate emotion.

00:24:04:18 - 00:24:36:06
Unknown
Fierce and hands of flame. Right. So and so he's trying to grab on to whatever this thing is, that he's, you know, feeling powerfully. And this is, you know, I said I'd get back to this. The three fold smile. I think he's basically saying three fold to, you know, a couple times, actually, to emphasize or to to kind of evoke a, probably a Christian, but really, I'm going to abstract it to a divine.

00:24:36:08 - 00:25:09:25
Unknown
So there's a kind of divinity that he's trying to reach now. And that's actually what's relevant for this poem is that that he sees the poet, sees the imaginative process, for instance, falling in love with the woman and seeing the beauty of her and the, the, the bohrs rather than the sticky bark and the dirt and all that stuff that that imaginative power you have that all humans have, whether they exercise it to what degree or not, that this is a divine thing to this poet.

00:25:09:25 - 00:25:32:04
Unknown
And, I think that's part of what he's trying to express. Now, I'm an atheist. I don't think that, you know, it's divine, but I do think he's capturing something important about how our mind actually works. And this goes back to the romantic realist, aspect I was talking about where I so I think this is a good metaphor.

00:25:32:06 - 00:25:50:21
Unknown
I think this is a, you know, it's a unique metaphor. We've heard a lot of metaphors about the mind, you know, the the, what is it? The the elephant in the man on the elephant writing. The the rider on the elephant or the rider in a bowl? Or there's all kinds of things where people try to have metaphors for the mind.

00:25:50:23 - 00:26:08:14
Unknown
Another one I heard from a poet was the, a kingdom where it's like a kingdom. My mind, to me, a kingdom is dire. I think it is. It's the poet and the he draws all these metaphors about, you know, you have this king and queen. You have people coming in and out, you know, you have diplomats, things like that that you can have.

00:26:08:20 - 00:26:30:24
Unknown
And how you interact with the world is determined by what kind of kingdom you're going to run and things like that. And that's a metaphor. So it's all these kinds of metaphors, I think the crystal cabinet, you know, crystal, so you can see through it, but not fully. There's, there's a it's it's a kind of blurry or distorted view of the world, in this case.

00:26:30:27 - 00:27:03:07
Unknown
And it takes work, I think, to understand, understand the world. So my take on the imaginative powers of humans is that we have the ability to, control our own golden key. So when you're, you know, when you when you're. The way that I look at romantic, imaginative powers is that it's not, just something that happens to you or something that is done to you or something that you either have or you don't have.

00:27:03:07 - 00:27:31:01
Unknown
You know, there's either romantics, so there's not romantics to me. What what it is, is a, a a faculty that all people have, which is a way to as we're interacting with the world through the medium of our consciousness, we're using words, ideas, images, metaphors, abstractions, and how we manipulate those is going to determine how we see the world.

00:27:31:04 - 00:27:55:17
Unknown
And that doesn't mean that you're manipulated. Reality. Reality is that's my view. My view is that what is is that, the tree is made up of certain molecules that has, you know, a bark that feels a certain way, that looks a certain way in the reality of how the light, you know, prisms from the sun strike the earth and strike the tree.

00:27:55:19 - 00:28:14:20
Unknown
That then affect how the mechanism of your eye, which has a certain nature to it, that's sight. And that's, you know, when you feel it, that's feeling. And all those things have a nature and that's reality. And you know, when you see a tree, you come up. We have the word in this tree in other languages they have different languages and you.

00:28:14:22 - 00:28:40:02
Unknown
But what you can do with that is you can, you know, elevate it through these stories and mode. And the elevation thing is what I'm really interested in. That's what I think is the most important aspect of this. And the elevation is a choice, and it's something you can or can choose not to do. It's, you know, in which stories you want to tell and which stories you don't want to tell is up to you.

00:28:40:05 - 00:29:05:02
Unknown
And that's what's really important. And so when we think about love, the, you know, romantic love, we all have the capacity. We all feel affection for things in the world, or you're broken if you don't feel no affection for her parents, for friends, for a job, for a, you know, friend at work, for a lover, or, for a pet or anything.

00:29:05:02 - 00:29:30:26
Unknown
If you're no affection, then there's something wrong with you. You definitely are deeply depressed. You got a therapist, and you know there's a lot you need to go work on. And I wish you luck. But you you are probably, have feelings of affection about the world. Well, that's what essentially the fundamental emotion of love is that that feeling of a positive affection for some object or even some emotion you feel.

00:29:30:28 - 00:29:55:00
Unknown
Well, what do you do with that? Right. That that's the human element. And every culture has different instincts and are different stories and images and methods and behaviors that they push down on you. Living in a modern world means that we have the ability to choose these different things, that we have the ability to choose which stories and metaphors we like versus others.

00:29:55:00 - 00:30:36:14
Unknown
Which ones do we want to pursue or not? But that takes a certain kind of high level, movement. And the way that you think about the world and that is the, the power of the imagination is the ability to, or the power of the mind over the imagination is one way, I think maybe to put it now, the so it my, my point is, in a sense, is that what you have with this poem is a particular metaphor for seeing how your imaginative process, particularly with love, might feel like.

00:30:36:16 - 00:31:06:06
Unknown
So one, we have a visionary experience that is transformative and that I think is, a powerful experience that we all have when we fall in love. And that's why I think, you know, love is so, important to human beings because it's a moment of visionary transformation if you choose to experience it. There's also something in here, oops, that we can see with the there's a kind of duality with beauty and suffering.

00:31:06:06 - 00:31:30:19
Unknown
That's a particularly Blakey, an idea. But there's something about, you know, the maiden and then they kiss, and then, he wants to have that whatever that thing that you feel there. And that's it becomes intense. And he wants to grab onto it. And that's what burst the cabinet, which means burst the, you know, his whole hold on the imaginative, world that he's trying to build here.

00:31:30:22 - 00:32:01:00
Unknown
And the real world in a sense. So what this poem is doing is giving a kind of view of the journey that the imagination can feel like. And that's my overall point. Is that what the imaginative world can feel like for yourself is similar to what Blake is identifying in here, where it feels like you get caught by something, your mind is tracked onto something.

00:32:01:00 - 00:32:20:24
Unknown
Maybe it's an idea. Maybe it's a woman in here. It's a it's a maiden. You know, and and, that that thing now grabs onto you, puts you into this cabinet that's, you know, locked away with the key, which is some kind of mechanism between you and the world. And now you're in this crystal cabinet and there's there's a portal.

00:32:20:24 - 00:33:00:25
Unknown
So you kind of have this, that kind of experience of something else. And that, again, is the tree versus the bower. The bower is a different kind of entity, not in reality, but in the way that your mind interacts with reality. And that's what is critical. And this is why, things like love or how much you enjoy or hate work or what, it's not some random power of the mind, but it, you know, because you can't make yourself hate love something you hate, but you can elevate the world and pursue those, the, those elevated things in a certain way, which is not really the focus of what we have here.

00:33:00:25 - 00:33:31:27
Unknown
The focus I have here, and this poem is just the power of the imagination, imagination to do this, to to put you into a realm. And you don't have to go to movies to do that. Movies, theater, paintings, poems, literature, those are the training grounds for your consciousness and thus your imaginative faculty, the training grounds and one reason why so many people are so unimaginative, so unromantic.

00:33:31:29 - 00:34:00:14
Unknown
They can't, they can't see an elevated sense of themselves or the people around them in a good or bad way. They just have no capacity for this, because we don't train in the arts very well today. And you have people like highly successful business people who have no capacity to see what they're doing and the meaning of what they're doing, because that's what imaginative, idealism allows, is it's actually the building of meaning.

00:34:00:16 - 00:34:28:18
Unknown
You can't you can't experience meaning in your relationship if you don't have an imagination, because you're it's just going to be, you know, physical manifestations of, chewing and putting food in your mouth, and swallowing and, you know, the procreation because you need to have kids. Because that's what's important for biological recreation, all these things.

00:34:28:25 - 00:34:54:18
Unknown
That's the physical manifestation. Those are great, as I guess, but biologically, we're. But we're more than just mere physical ized animals. We have this capacity of the imagination, and that's what this imaginative realm is, and that's what he's talking about here. And so what we're seeing in these different things is Blake's vision of how this all works together.

00:34:54:20 - 00:35:27:10
Unknown
Now, there's a lot to be said about the imagination, and I try to explore this a lot in other works, other poems. So I hope you'll follow me on Twitter studio. I think that the reading of the literary canon is really useful, in the Western. But the world literary canon of the great works of literary art through all of history, is really useful in the development and training of your mind, and it's what will allow you to find and enjoy meaningful relationships.

00:35:27:12 - 00:35:52:18
Unknown
Because the glue that keeps, a good romantic relationship together in an enjoyable, happy way. So two people could definitely cohabitate miserably, which I think is basically all modern marriages. But to have the meaning, you need the romance and you need the imagination. I don't think you could do it without that. You're just cohabitating and you're just, not even friends with benefits.

00:35:52:18 - 00:36:15:03
Unknown
Even friends with benefits is more romantic than just cohabitating with somebody because you need the tax benefits, which I think a lot of people actually do think of it that way in some regard. Or your work is, you know, you should pursue a work that is meaningful to you. And, how you do that and how high you can reach is going to be different for each person.

00:36:15:03 - 00:36:33:03
Unknown
Same thing with the romantic love. You're not going to be able to reach, you know, the the greatest, you know, most powerful, beautiful woman on the planet. Unless you're one of the more, you know, beautiful, powerful men on the planet. Right. So there's a kind of limit to each of these things that are based on reality. But you should be striving for more.

00:36:33:03 - 00:37:24:21
Unknown
And it's the imaginative faculty in your mind that is actually the thing that design or makes this meaning possible. So that's, what I think you're seeing here in this poem is the journey of that. Now, I'll just end with this. That Blake seems to be indicating in his view, which I don't really agree with, but, but there is a great danger in this, but his view seems to be that the brass spine of this, deepest of emotional, affective, affective affection, source sources which for him is a mystical or, yeah, mystical, divine world outside of reality that that's not possible, that that will shatter the fragile cabinet.

00:37:24:24 - 00:37:45:15
Unknown
Which again, is I think the self in a sense, is what the cabinet basically is. And that will make, you know, that will destroy all meaning and things like that. And I don't agree with that with his basic assessment of that. But that is his assessment, I think, and it's important to acknowledge that. And then, you know, come up with your own and I can come up with my own.

00:37:45:17 - 00:38:04:15
Unknown
When I talk about other poems that I think have a more solid view of what I'm talking about here, but I hope you check out more of the work that I do at troubadour Dot studio. I hope you'll read the Crystal cabinet, and I hope you will get caught in a couple crystal cabinets and maybe one of those cabinets will work out.

00:38:04:15 - 00:38:17:20
Unknown
And you'll not only be caught by the maiden, but the man will be caught by you. And you could build a great, beautiful crystal cabinet together. And that's, hopefully what you're looking for. And, I'll see you next time.