This week really got me thinking about time and development.

This was because I was thinking about what happened 22 years ago, this week, when Andrew Cohen, the founder of EnlightenNext, woke up once and for all when he met his teacher in India, after a long and one pointed spiritual search.

On his first meeting, his teacher said to him that, "You don't have to make any effort to be free", and that was enough to catapult Andrew into the beginning of a radical awakening. I had the good fortune to meet Andrew Cohen not long afterwards and he catalyzed a powerful awakening experience in me, just as he did in a number of other people. At the time, I was ecstatic and I thought this was the end and the conclusion of a perfect story. I had come home and had all my questions answered. What more could be added to that? - nothing was lacking; it was fullness and emptiness rolled into one.

But I gradually learned that this was only the beginning of the real story, since Andrew didn't stop there. Yes, this was for him a genuine permanent liberation, which can't be added to; after all, the infinite and absolute is infinite and absolute! Yet over time he began to see that although the ground of our being is timeless and unchanging (the experience of which I was just referring to before), we are all part of a vast evolutionary process, and that as human beings, we need to develop and evolve.

 And that is exactly what he started doing and is still doing - consciously evolving - and I have been closely involved with him and the development of his unique evolutionary approach to spirituality these last twenty plus extraordinary and eventful years. Ken Wilber has said that most people develop through childhood and adolescence until their early 20's, but then unfortunately most of us ‘flatline' the rest of our adult life, with not a lot of transformation, bar some stirrings in our 50's, if we're lucky!

Andrew's teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment has grown out of these last 22 years and it is constantly evolving. It makes sense when we realize and start to let in that the whole nature of the universe since the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, has been one of constant relentless evolution, both inner and outer, and it's still going, of course. So while our absolute Self is without any doubt beyond time and place, the other half of the picture is that as embodied human beings, we've got a lot of developing to do. And what could be more meaningful, thrilling and fulfilling.

Andrew is a great example of continuous transformation: come and see for yourself when he's teaching Sat and Sun 11^th and 12^th April at our beautiful ( yes, I'm proud of our place) EnlightenNext centre in Islington, London.

Day 7 & 8

Andrew now takes us through a major shift - to be more accurate, an absolute shift - from the ground of being to the authentic self; from focusing on the unmanifest nature of God to the manifest nature of God - to Eros, the evolutionary impulse.

          I'm not even going to attempt to transmit the extraordinary talk that Andrew gave on awakening to the authentic self and becoming an agent for conscious evolution.

 What's new in Andrew's contribution of Evolutionary Enlightenment, is the authentic self dimension. Traditionally, Enlightenment teachings are about the ground of being dimension and have no answer to the question of what is the relationship between the unmanifest ground of being and the world. The reason is blindingly obvious when it is pointed out. You see, the ground of being is about having absolutely no relationship to experience, to the world, so of course it has no answer at all as to its application in the world! It's all about transcendence of the world.

But when you awaken to the evolutionary impulse, the authentic self, to God as process, your self is radically released to be totally identified with the process. As Andrew says, it's the post post modern way to be here completely, incarnated in the world, and not be lost in ego.

The Discussion groups: ecstatic urgency

The discussion groups are on the subject of the authentic self, naturally enough, and as I've said before, I'm leading the group who are all long term committed students of Andrew. This group is very familiar with having experiences of the authentic self, whereas for the new people, this is most likely a very unfamiliar experience.

The new people start by getting used to the idea of only speaking impersonally in the discussions, which is a tremendous help to accessing the authentic self. Otherwise the engagement will almost certainly be in the value sphere of the ego. It takes quite some grounding in the values of the authentic self before one can include the personal dimension in the discussion without defaulting to habitual values of the ego.

The different groups report remarkable experiences of the authentic self which become more pronounced as we all hear from first the new people, then the group of practitioners, then the global students, and then the core students, and finally the senior core students - (the group I'm leading).

People describe powerful shared experiences of the authentic self, and how the subject travels from person to person so that it doesn't matter who is speaking. People find themselves finishing the sentence for someone else!

          As Andrew says, in a perfect world it ought to be the case that people with more experience actually do express themselves with more depth and live to a higher standard that reflects their actual knowledge and experience.  

          With my group, who have had countless flights into the dimension of the authentic self, and who are all committed to the evolution of consciousness, we decide to only speak in a completely implicating way. The agreement is that we will each only speak from and as the process, or the authentic self itself. In other words we won't speak about it - no descriptions that are in any way removed from actuality.

  It makes sense that if we are to continue to develop, we each have to always put ourselves on the leading edge of wherever we have come to.

 Our discussion group has a fierce - you might say ferocious! - passion as people speak from the fact that each of us is the very creative process itself, and what an awesome and unthinkable ecstatic responsibility that is.

It feels like there are on one hand, more and more individuals in the group, because each person stands out as a real conscious agent - a player - who is not following anyone. And at the same time it feels like there are no individuals at all in the group, since there is only the one authentic self, one process, being expressed. There is no gap between self and other, which is felt as ecstatic intimacy, and simultaneously there's a greatly enhanced autonomy. Pretty remarkable, I think! Once you're in the non dual realm of the authentic self, these paradoxes become regular features, but I'm still amazed!

          When anyone speaks from the ego and its value sphere, there is an immediate response from the egoless passion of the authentic self, which has completely different and opposing values, as I talked about in previous blogs. So there is no toleration whatsoever for ego. The focus is not on individuals, it's on the process; the process going forward is all that matters to the authentic self, and so the response is only to care for the process of the evolution of consciousness. The authentic self has no relation with, or interest in, the personal self and its history.

 And in this environment of the value sphere of the authentic self, any whiff of ego stands out vividly e.g. talking about ‘my process' instead of the process; or removing oneself in any way, so that one takes the ego's safe position of describing the process rather than daring to be the process. 

          We continue with more discussions and each time, it feels like we are speeding up and hurtling faster down the road to create the future, discarding ego unceremoniously at the side of the road! I know that doesn't sound kind to the sensitive self, but it's actually a fierce joy, (and we are consenting adults!) and anyway, why would we want to cherish the only obstacle to the evolution of consciousness and culture?

Andrew emphasizes that this teaching is not for the individual; it's about the evolution of the process. And it's really the only viable solution for our postmodern narcissism.  Meditation and/or therapy can't do it - they're still about you! Only caring for a higher purpose that far transcends our narcissism, while supporting our hard won individuation, can possibly succeed. And that's the purpose of Evolutionary Enlightenment.

Day 5 & 6

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

Andrew tells us how he has found himself spontaneously changing the day to day plans for the retreat and trusting his gut as to what is the most authentic way to structure the time, rather than rigidly adhering to a pre arranged plan. It certainly feels right to me and although not what I had imagined a retreat on Enlightened Communication would look like, I feel that we are actually learning a lot about this very subject from new angles. Being an evolutionary approach, after all, you would expect it to be constantly evolving!

For the last two days Andrew has been having us go deep into the ground of being. We've been contemplating the value sphere of the ego, especially the collective aspect, and now we're switching to the ground of being, which is the next of the 3 dimensions of the self that I wrote about earlier.

 It's an exploration of what it means to go to zero, since this is the foundation and part of the Enlightenment dimension ( i.e. the liberating non relative dimension) of these teachings. The ground of being is that deepest part of our self that is already inherently free and has absolutely no relationship at all with the world and has never entered into the stream of time. It's what traditional Enlightenment is all about and this dimension is absolutely foundational in Evolutionary Enlightenment as well.

 The nature of the subject is making me want to just abide in Being rather than blog about it, but, here goes... I'll attempt to keep writing.

In spite of the inward nature of the subject, we still have discussion groups and start with the subject of: "The joy of having nothing, knowing nothing and being nobody"

This first group didn't really hit the mark and go deep enough, so Andrew has us meet more to go further still.

It's all too easy to take a habitual approach to this subject, which can be seen as the domain of meditation i.e. you meditate and have an experience and then come out and return to ‘normal'. But here we're approaching the ground of being from within its own value sphere, and from here, it's a radically different view and a vital perspective to have.

So what we're doing is looking at ‘not wanting' from that part of oneself that wants nothing.

          The later discussions are extraordinary, starting with Andrew's guidance to dare to seriously consider wanting nothing and having nothing for real. E.g.

What about ending wanting now?! What about the end of desire, now, this evening?! Dissolution!

Even just to contemplate this seriously, put us instantly in touch with that part of ourselves whose nature is free of wanting. Suddenly there is a rising tide of ecstatic freedom sweeping through the room, and people express their sense of liberated abandon. We recognise that this has always been our deepest home and our deepest self nature, already full and desireless. There's a magnetic pull into infinite being and depth, and the world evaporates, and from the point of view of this part of oneself, any form of wanting or desire just feels unpleasant.

As one man remarks to Andrew, "The very definition of joy is not wanting!"

At the end of the meeting, I joke that from this perspective, many of us would be eager to don sannyasin robes, and renounce the world if we had a pile of saffron robes to hand out! You can see the attraction of why traditionally people have left the world, as we go deeply into the Self absolute or ground of being and examine everything from that perspective.

I think many of us are awed by the profundity and implications of what we experience and see how important it is that the ground of being dimension becomes a fundamental reference point in our self structure, and not merely an experience that you dip into in meditation.

Andrew's distinctions of the 3 dimensions of our being that are entirely different and unconnected takes on more reality and significance with each day that passes.

Day 4

The Art and Science of Enlightened Communication

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

The deep snow is melting and it's a positively balmy day, with the temperature soaring to 6 or 7 degrees C - well OK, not quite Spring - though I did just glimpse the first Robin, but it's relatively much milder.

Today Andrew takes several individuals through the process of exploring their deepest value spheres that make up part of our sense of self: the collective ego, to illustrate how it works for everyone, since we only partly understood it yesterday.

And today there is a clear sense of everyone really getting what he is pointing to, as he uses people's experience to illustrate the process, such as the moving story of an Indian man describing his personal evolution through traditional values, to modern values and now to postmodern values. Andrew draws out how the world appears to you at each of those stages and it's not an individual issue. The purpose is to see how one may still be quite emotionally invested in values that one hasn't chosen, that were absorbed from family and culture. If you haven't brought these values to the light of awareness, they may well still be having a big inhibiting effect on one's availability to be able to evolve.

The Discussion: where the rubber hits the road

So in our discussion group today, we continue with this investigation and there is immediately a unitary shared sense of the thrill and liberating potential of this endeavour.  

An example will hopefully make practical sense of what I'm saying:

A Danish man describes how the values that he absorbed from the Scandinavian very post modern milieu that formed his sense of self, is felt as ‘the need to have my own space'. He says that it's not so that he can do anything particular with this sense of space, but it's almost like a sacred right.

 ‘I must have my own space and time for myself'.

This is a classic postmodern expression of the value sphere that life is for me and revolves around me - there is no higher value, purpose or authority than me, the individual.

He could see the emotional investment in this value; that it is still important to him and affects how he organizes his time, even though for someone like himself, who is committed to evolutionary development, it's an irrational motive that is contradictory to his conscious desire for transformation and obviously has an inhibitory effect.

The felt need is to carve out the time for himself but there's nothing he wants to do with it, once he's got it - it's actually boring!  It's eye opening to see how we still can have strong feelings about these values even though they are not at all how we now want to live.

 He says that ‘Life is a hobby' - you try something out for a while, and then drop it and try something else - and because of the cradle to grave social welfare system in Northern Europe, you are always looked after, whatever happens. So life is not real - it's a hobby.

My reflections on all this

It occurs to me that Andrew is leading us through some kind of evolutionary post post modern deconstruction of the self, in order to free us up from outmoded cultural structures to be able to chose our own values.

 As a former Buddhist and fan of the Buddha's scientific method of investigation, I fantasize that this might be an approach the Buddha would take if he were here in 2008 and applying his famously rigorous deconstructionary analysis of the self sense! Of course there was no knowledge available of the evolutionary view or of collective self structures in the Buddha's day, 2500 years ago.

It strikes me that what we are doing is looking at the value spheres of the collectively formed self sense from an overarching evolutionary perspective that sees us in a continual process of development. But what is remarkable, to me at least, is that we are not just getting a cognitive understanding; we are focusing very personally on the emotionally felt values we each hold, and bringing them into expression, but it is being done from a very impersonal viewpoint. So we are not getting fascinated with the personal dimension or with anyone's personal story, or psychology; these are not individual issues, they are collectively formed layers of our identity.

The point of the exercise is to enable us to be fully available for a higher purpose, to be able to create our own self structures and to free to evolve.

          The sense of liberation that each of us feel from seeing firsthand the evolution of the self structure, is very palpable.

Of course, now the challenge is to change because I've had enough experience to know that the idea that ‘seeing is freeing' is usually not true per se. We need to apply conscious intention to actually make it so

Day 3

The Art and Science of Enlightened Communication

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

Today Andrew continues on the subject of ego and its value spheres, since this is for most, if not all of us, a very new way of looking at our experience. (I suggest you read previous blogs on Day 1 and 2 first, if you've dipped in here)

The mission for our discussion groups today is for each of us to speak about the values that we deeply hold from our upbringing, from our particular cultural background. At first I thought that it would be easy, since haven't we all transcended and integrated all this already? I mention this to Andrew. I soon have to eat my words!

What Andrew is trying to get at, is not a description or story of our life or merely a psychological interpretation. He specifically means what is the picture of life that we hold, which may have been formed decades ago in our formative years of childhood, or adolescence or at key times later on. In other words, locating the ‘shoulds' that define our values.

The point is that unless we can become conscious of the values that we have adopted, they will still be operating and affecting our behaviour in powerful and significant ways. We will be unaware of why we act irrationally in certain situations, and will keep tripping over without knowing why; in effect, our evolution is held up. As Andrew makes clear, ego is not only narcissism and is not only individual. Ego, importantly, is also collective and we inadvertently cannot but embody many aspects of the culture milieu in which we are born and grow up in. The fact is, we are programmed far more than we tend to realize.

The Discussion group: going back to go forward

In our discussion, each of us speaks in turn and we find it is much harder to do this than we had imagined! And us group leaders are no different! Because these values are so close to us and unexamined, we struggle to be able to articulate them clearly and to make the subject into an object i.e. to be able to objectify and look at our closest and oldest beliefs about life, which often are in total contradiction to our chosen life of evolutionary spirituality. Often we would talk around the core values or describe symptoms, and it would take the group to point out the underlying core value, because we could feel the whole gestalt of what was being alluded to.In this exercise, we're not interested in all this stuff for its own sake, but solely so we can liberate our development.

For example, one woman working for EnlightenNext could see now how her hippy spiritual beliefs from decades ago, still influence her view today e.g. spiritual things should be for free, even though EnlightenNext is short of money!

For myself, I grew up in a privileged postmodern environment which was completely secular and what I absorbed was that life was for me to do what I wanted with; to learn or explore entirely according to my interest, and there was no higher value than this. I see that I still have the sense that I shouldn't really have to work hard or struggle or need to achieve anything; just to be me is some sort of sacred reason for life already. I see how this unexamined value affects the present and definitely runs counter to my passion for perpetual development!

I think we all were amazed and humbled and thrilled by the way Andrew is always developing the teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment and how this new avenue, which involves a specific psychological angle but is in the context of evolutionary advancement, has tremendous liberating power. Because if consciousness is still held in outmoded cultural structures, there can be no true revolution in consciousness and culture - which, after all, is the goal.

The art and science of Enlightened Communication is multifaceted - and keeps evolving too!

 Day 2

The Art and Science of Enlightened Communication

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

I was going to start with the progress of the discussion group I am leading, but again I have to give a little context first or it will read like gibberish!

 It's a serious retreat and the meditations are already deep, still and powerful. Today Andrew expounds on a key part of Evolutionary Enlightenment: namely, that there are 3 dimensions to the self and the importance of clearly distinguishing between them:-

The Ground of Being

The Ego

The Authentic self

But what he was emphasizing today is that these 3 dimensions have absolutely no connection with each other. Yes, I did mean what I typed - no connection whatsoever - I know, it sounds worse than schizophrenia! But it's so true in my own experience. We unwittingly assume a continuity and consistency of our self sense, that doesn't bear close scrutiny.

And also importantly, that each of these dimensions has its own specific value sphere. For example, the ego's value sphere revolves around its own narcissism and selfishness and not caring for anything but itself when the chips are down. While the authentic self cares passionately about creating the future but has absolutely no interest in the ego's concerns, fears and desires.

And the ground of being has no relationship to time or the world in any shape or form.

Think about it though - when you have an experience of the ground of being, say in deep meditation, you really don't care at all about the world or anyone. It doesn't mean you're callous or in a callous, uncaring state; it's just that the value sphere of the ground of being is one that inherently has no relationship with the world or with time. Looking in this big impersonal way at the deeper cultural spheres of our experience is quite eye opening and clarifying. 

Fascinating stuff!

The "Discussion group" - for want of a more adequate word.

So this is what we explore in our discussion group today, and right from the start there is a one pointed focus in the 20 participants. Incidentally, when I say ‘discussion group', the words sound rather mediocre and dull - at least to me. But the way I view the ‘discussion groups' is that they are like a crucible for creating and advancing an awakened intersubjective consciousness. I remarked today that you couldn't have a more conducive setting: each person committed to developing and communicating beyond ego for the sake of the evolution of consciousness; being in this ideal retreat environment in silence, contemplating and meditating in a very serious and one pointed way. Then coming together, there is bound to be a creative synergy.

 After all, when do groups of people ever gather for the single express purpose of evolving consciousness between them? It's certainly not happening at my local pub! Actually someone once did try to tell me when I was giving a talk about this subject, that yes, of course, this is the usual quality of communication down at his local pub. I asked him for the address and he became strangely reticent!

Back to the discussion: there's quite a shift today in that various people from the word go, are taking responsibility for the direction and quality of engagement. This is so vital for a collaborative leadership, where each person's authentic autonomy is all in the service of pushing towards ever greater depth. 

We focus in on the simple (intellectually at least) but mindblowingly profound fact of the 3 dimensions of self being so absolutely different and unconnected. While many of us know about this, I don't think we have ever really grokked the full significance of this fact.

 It clarified why just having experiences of the authentic self or ground of being are not transformative in themselves, because the experiences often remain in distinct compartments and are not even remembered when we are in the state of ego. It emphasizes the need for a shift in allegiance of one's centre of gravity of the self sense, in order to affect real lasting transformation.

How far can we go in this retreat? I don't know but I really want to go further than I/We have ever gone  

The Art and Science of Enlightened Communication

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

Day 1

What a fortunate position to be in - embarking on a 9 day intensive with Andrew Cohen in Western Massachusetts. There's nothing I love more than diving into an exploration in consciousness in a setting like this, with like minded people, free of distractions, and the snow is falling thickly, enveloping the beautiful grounds in a deep silent mantle, which makes it even more conducive to an exploration of interiority.

 I'm not even going to attempt to chronicle all that Andrew manages to convey in his extended teaching sessions with everybody; it's just too much for a blog.

What I'm thinking to do instead - and this may change as this retreat unfolds - is to follow one key thread: to blog about the daily discussion groups that we are having. But for this to make sense for anyone who wasn't present, I need to give a little context and backdrop to the discussions.

You see, Enlightened Communication isn't some new fangled technique; it's the art and science of how we collectively can actually evolve consciousness together - and this further emergence of higher consciousness can't be accomplished alone. And it's developed out of 20 plus years of Andrew's experience with thousands of people and is the fruit of Evolutionary Enlightenment. It's a serious and very purposeful endeavour, and I hope you will get a sense, as this blog goes along, of why I think this really is the ultimate adventure.

 What happens on the Retreat

Andrew gives a 3 hour tour de force to open the retreat, with a searing evocation of the deep time evolutionary process and how the Universe is evolving through us, and how we are responsible for the creative process. In fact, we are the leading edge of the interior development of the kosmos, and its future development is entirely up to us. Quite a starter!

 The format of the retreat is that Andrew gives a long teaching every morning and then after lunch we divide into a number of groups to hold formal discussion groups on the subject of the morning session. We then all meet back together with Andrew and report on the outcome and he can respond and take it further. With meditation to start and end each day, and everyone being silent except in the discussion groups, it creates an extraordinarily focused environment to learn the art and science of Enlightened Communication.

 Enlightened Communication Discussion groups - the launch

Evolutionary Enlightenment is about constant development and that's the expectation from the discussions: they are goal oriented and the expectation is that we move forward every time and that each individual is consciously committed to get somewhere - and by somewhere, I mean vertical as opposed to a merely horizontal  shift. This is definitely not an, ‘I'm OK, you're OK' context, for the simple reason that evolution implies transformation and perpetual development.

To add to this evolutionary tension, Andrew has us in groups that reflect our varying experience and knowledge of his teachings - ranging from a brand new group, to the group that I am leading - where each person has from between 10 and 20 years experience. And the expectation for my very experienced group is naturally and rightly far higher than for the newer folk. Otherwise, of course, it couldn't be truly authentic, could it?

.

Our first discussion in the smaller group of about 20 people that I am leading is tasked with each person speaking very clearly about exactly what we are attempting to do on the retreat and in the discussions. Since everyone in this group has a great deal of experience and some are my peers, Andrew instructs me to be very exacting. As people speak, I find I have to be quite ruthless in insisting on clarity, rationality, authenticity and speaking in a way that conveys both a bigger perspective and an experience of what we are attempting to do together. It's all too easy for any of us to be sloppy and lazy and feel that we already know - especially if we do actually have a lot of experience.  

But, to their credit, people soon bounce back after being pulled apart and now there is a real authenticity throughout. Also, the true import of what it means to embody the vast creative process, which is actually our deepest identity, becomes the context for our dialogue, and now it is galvanizingly authentic. Now some of the things we had previously spoken about, become recontextualised, as we are all looking and speaking from the view of the authentic self, which is only interested in development and in creating the future. In this awakened intersubjective consciousness, there is no room whatsoever for the view of the ego.

This has ended up being a bit long, but what to do? Now I've set a little context, further posts can be more concise.

"What do you hope to get from this day?" I started by asking everyone who came to the seminar on the art and science of Enlightened Communication.

The response was staggeringly uniform though many of the participants had never been before and had never met each other.

"I want to learn how to communicate beyond ego and/or create the future," was the sincere and passionate reply - of course, not always in those words, but said in all different ways. As the person presenting the seminar and facilitating, I knew it was going to be successful. And it certainly was.

By the time we reached the end of the day and the group of almost 50 people met in a single circle, stretched around the top floor of the London EnlightenNext centre, there was an instantaneous shared awakened consciousness pervading the proceedings. It always amazes me how so many human beings can be utterly focused and present, so that instead of all those people talking making you feel frazzled, it's entirely the opposite - more like the combined feeling of the relaxation of a sauna and facial with an exhilarating awakeness. And there's the mindblowingly fascinating paradox of how it really feels like there is only one person in the room, while simultaneously each person feels more authentically and deeply, a freed up individual.

            We spent the day moving between small groups of five or six people and then back into the one larger group, which was very effective in getting everyone to be full participants in creating a deeper collective consciousness together.

getting-started

Groups-from-above2

I tried a novel way of introducing ego (the one and only obstacle to Enlightened Communication). In discussions like this, the way ego manifests is as the sense that one "already knows" - which makes one unavailable for anything new and shrinks one's context like nothing else.

So my colleague Arjan Kindermans and I recorded several comedy skits on ego, each one bringing out a different aspect of ego, in the particular form of already knowing that I have encountered thousands of times in similar discussions. Each little vignette is a distillation of countless dialogues over the years, and it is these that I played to the participants.

I joked beforehand to everyone that I feared I might get lynched by the group but actually they appreciated the funny side of the skits, even though they are close to the bone. In fact various people found them one of the best parts of the day.

Everyone contributed to prove that communication beyond ego is really possible and in my book, that's definitely part of creating the future.

And what could be better than that?!

Do listen to Andrew Cohen talking on Enlightened Communication

Thursday 17^th January at 8pmGMT and later on that night at 2amGMT as a free live webcast

I'm sure it's going to be an extraordinary introduction to the subject