I’ve just returned from an extraordinary weekend in western Massachusetts, USA, where the world headquarters of EnlightenNext are located. I was there to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Andrew Cohen’s, the founder of EnlightenNext, meeting with his spiritual teacher. This seminal event marks the time when Andrew began to teach and the birth of what was eventually to become the spiritual teaching known as Evolutionary Enlightenment.

With hundreds of students and evolutionaries coming from around the world, we celebrated this momentous occasion with a three-day-long series of events, including festive dinners, virtual workshops, meditation and much more. One of the most profound and joyous events was the remarkable free 11-hour webcast last Saturday—a marathon of interviews that Andrew conducted with 27 spiritual luminaries about their meetings with the spiritual teacher or mentor who had transformed their lives. Listening to one beautiful, moving story after another, I felt that you couldn’t help but be struck by the universal thread of Spirit which runs through and clearly is driving these tales of human transformation. The whole webcast is available for free as an mp3. All you need to is register here.

What is the nature of the non-relative dimension of reality, of ourselves? Is it emptiness or fullness? Not something which many of us tend to ask ourselves. Through my initial years of Buddhist practice, I tended to always think of the truth as being of the nature of emptiness, infinite space, sunyata, transparency, no self (anatta),and my meditations were in that direction.

Yet I was always intrigued by the way yogic and vedantic paths would speak of the absolute nature of reality as fullness, bursting, completeness, no lack, love. But I never contemplated what it all might mean.

It wasn’t until meetng Andrew Cohen and hearing how he had wrestled with this conundrum, and resolved it, that i began to understand experientially what the whole picture might actually be.

Last night at our weekly ‘Evolution & Meditation’ evening in London, we explored this subject and by doing so, both apparently opposite qualities became more pronouced in our experience, and more so still in the meditation period which followed the discussion.

I think we all got a real sense of what Andrew Cohen means when he says that fullness and emptiness are in actuality two sides of the same coin:

the non relative nature of ourself is always beyond all categorisation and can be experienced as both or either.

But what was most important to me, was coming to a deeper understanding of spiritual self confidence. And for that to be based on a conviction in the infinite nature of the deepest dimension of ourself, whether it is felt and experienced as fullness or emptiness.

It’s really true, though it runs counter to the way I often habitually think. Many of us are naturally enough looking for peace, to give us respite from a tumultuous world. And I’m no different.

But I’m coming to realize that spiritual self confidence is actually a better foundation and anchor than peace for an engaged life. This was the subject of our Tuesday Evolution and Meditation evening this week at EnlightenNext in London, and it was a powerful and profound time together exploring this subject. Spiritual self confidence is an uncommon term and it’s clearly very different than just self confidence.

Peace is a feeling, and feelings come and go, as we all know. But you don’t need to have a supportive feeling or experience all the time to have spiritual self confidence. And that’s why it’s liberating. Because it’s based on knowing beyond the mind; it’s not that you know any ‘thing’ in particular, it’s prior to my thoughts, feelings, emotions, and prior to my whole personal story. It’s knowing the infinite ground of being which is the deepest dimension of ourselves and of the universe itself.
All this was really coming alive between us during the evening as we talked; the meditation which followed was, I felt, a expression of the inherent limitlessness that was being pointed to. And at the end of the evening I came away feeling we had barely begun to plumb the depths of the subject.

On 11 April, EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen will be speaking live in London at our centre here in Islington about this very subject, “Spiritual Self Confidence”.

Also if you are interested in attending one of these Evolution and Meditation evenings you can find out more details here.

What a day at EnlightenNext this Sunday!

EnlightenNext partnered with the Vegetarian Society for an open day of talks, cookery demonstrations, veggie tastings, featuring all manner of stalls representing the leading edge of healthy living. It was held on all five floors of the EnlightenNext centre in London and we had almost 600 people come and visit for the afternoon.


There were so many innovative, healthy, and above all, tasty offerings to sample, that I’m sitting here quite full up! Ranging from the folks from Innocent ( of Smoothie fame), to medieval vegetarian food, to Rude Health and Cool Herbals, to name a few, it was a cultural smorgasbord of a gathering. And though the subject was all around vegetarianism, the spontaneous discussions many of us found ourselves in, often revolved around many aspects of how do we all create the next step of how to live? I was reminded of how vegetarianism in the West has historically been such a movement in the forefront of social change as described in books like Tristram Stuart’s, the Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians.

Our regular Tuesday evening train picked up speed last night. I call it a moving train because it feels like we are engaging each week with a movement in consciousness which is developing as we give this our attention. There must have been about 40 people and quite  a number hadn’t been before and what I find interesting is how we are not starting again each week but that people can seemingly easily pick up the developmental thread and jump on board. The general theme in these last weeks is on how Enlightenment is evolving, and within that , we are exploring different aspects each week.

The topic last night was, What is the purpose of Life? And we looked at this perennial question from what I think is an interesting angle. From the outside we can each have so many different opinions and theories, but we were looking at the question from the interior –from the fact that we are all inseparable from the life process. From the heart of the life process, which we experience as the creative impulse or spiritual impulse, then we found we had something a lot deeper and more experiential to say about the purpose of life.

As more people joined in the discussion, there was an extraordinary focus and freedom; not arguing or agreeing but creatively engaging together because everyone genuinely wanted to go further together. And this continued way afterwards while many of us continued engaging over veggie food downstairs at the EnlightenNext centre.

I could technically call this quality of synergy that was happening: intersubjective awakened consciousnesss beyond ego.

But I like the elegant and simple term that Brian Eno, producer and musician, has come up with for this, which is scenius : a collective creative process, the incubator for the communal form of the concept of genius; a cultural happening.

To quote Eno: ‘I came up with this word “scenius” – and scenius is the intelligence of a whole… operation or group of people. And I think that’s a more useful way to think about culture, actually. I think that – let’s forget the idea of “genius” for a little while, let’s think about the whole ecology of ideas that give rise to good new thoughts and good new work’

So simply, I think scenius is how we can go forward and create a new culture together.

Do come and take part with Andrew Cohen, founder of EnlightenNext in an afternoon here at the London centre on the Evolution of Enlightenment coming up soon on Sunday Feb 6th

Some of you reading this might have attended Andrew Cohen’s recent day seminar in London, sponsored by Alternatives. It was an exciting and uplifting day, as it invariably is with Andrew. There were a number of high points in the workshop and one that stuck in my mind was Andrew’s response to one participant’s down-to-earth question about spiritual practice. The questioner wanted to know how to bring about a real shift in ourselves so that we start to embody the higher values of Evolutionary Enlightenment in our lives. For those of you who weren’t able to be there, you can listen to Andrew’s very full — and practical — response in this clip.

In short, the best way to bring evolutionary values in the world is by becoming an engaged participant in the developmental process yourself. And becoming an active agent of evolution means engaging with like-minded people who share the aspiration to create deeper values. One of the best and most practical ways to do that, I believe, is by joining the EnlightenNext Practitioner Programme, which is just now getting underway as ‘Revolution 2’ of the Discovery Cycle (click here for a description of the programme, with a complete explanation of all the benefits of each of the three levels available).

I am thrilled by how well this evolutionary process worked last year for the development of all us who took part. This gives me tremendous confidence in its potential. Also, if you become a Practitioner before 1st November, you can take part in ‘Spirit Is Higher Week‘ and be able to join a special conference call with Andrew Cohen on 3rd November. This call is exclusively for Practitioners and is a unique opportunity to engage directly with Andrew. So don’t delay becoming a Practitioner!

Another great incentive to becoming a Practitioner without further delay is to be able to participate in Jeff Carreira’s Essentials Course. This year-long monthly course is an excellent introduction to the philosophical context of Evolutionary Enlightenment and the core tenets that underlie its spiritual practices and forms of engagement. Go here for all the details.

I also want to bring your attention to Andrew Cohen’s European Retreat that will take place 26-28 November in Germany, just outside Frankfurt. Going on retreat, it goes without saying, is surely one of the most valuable and powerful opportunities for engaging deeply with Evolutionary Enlightenment. This link will provide you with everything you need to know.

Before I close I also want to be sure to mention that if you live in the UK, you can take advantage of the many activities we offer at the EnlightenNext UK Centre in London, including twice-monthly Saturday “days at the Centre” where there is the opportunity to take part in the Essentials Course mentioned above, the always varied weekly Tuesday Evolution and Meditation evenings, and a number of other benefits for Practitioners.

To sum up, what I’d like to make clear is that I sincerely believe we need to create a movement of those of us who want to change ourselves but also, more importantly, to recognise that we need each other in order to create a culture based on deep and lasting evolutionary values.

I do hope you’ll enrol in the Practitioner Programme today!

‘Self is culture’ is an apparently simple yet very profound statement which Andrew Cohen has often made.  The deeper I go with an evolutionary view of life over the years, the more I am coming to see for myself how deeply my sense of self is formed by culture. The good news is of course that by seeing how unwittingly we have absorbed and been moulded by the values of our culture, there arises the opportunity for us to begin to consciously choose higher values. Then we not only evolve consciousness but simultaneously transform culture and society.
Something I just read brought this to mind: I was just looking on the BBC website at a report by Mark Easton about a new survey, and it makes interesting reading. It’s from the Legatum Institute, which is a think tank, and it has published what it calls the global Prosperity Index. It’s trying to capture what we mean by social progress and to measure a nation’s well being rather than by solely  focusing on economic growth as a measure.  And it compares 110 countries.  Ok, I am someone who enjoyed reading encyclopedias as a kid. But apart from being interested in this sort of comparative knowledge, I want to make another point.

Well, I looked at the data about my country –  Britain, as I was curious, and nationality is one important part of what has formed and conditioned our self and our worldview. People often think that nationality is just a superficial difference in accent or language because you happen to have been born on different spots on the earth.

The significant of cultural conditioning is something which Andrew Cohen has pointed out for many years when he teaches in various countries. I used to think he was joking, but I’ve come to see over the years that there really are significant differences in outlook, worldview, and values in different countries.

For example in my country, I’ve been fascinated to recognize the particularly cynical and pessimistic view which seems to often permeate British culture. There’s a lot of talk here  about ‘Broken Britain’. My theory is that one reason for this is that us Brits haven’t got over losing our Empire. So from being the most powerful country in the world, we’ve slipped to being a very average Western country. But since we’ve never dealt with this , we have  an underlying attitude that we reached our zenith and that  it’s all downhill from now on, so why bother? The whole subject of how to make the shift from postmodern cynicism to a new realistic evolutionary idealism has become an ongoing investigation for me and I’ve been writing and speaking on the subject.

Anyway, to get back to the survey: Britain is ranked 13^th in the world on the Prosperity Index, but what is interesting is the British view of ourselves as opposed to the objective facts. And this pulls our ranking down, since people’s perceptions of their country also affect the rankings in this survey.

First several facts, quoting from the survey: Britain has the fourth-largest proportion of people who give to charity; we have ‘high levels of safety and security’; Britain has “a highly effective government”, a “robust democracy” and “low levels of corruption”. Britain ranks 5^th in the world for entrepreneurship  and opportunity and has a high level of innovation. It is the 5^th largest market in the world.

Yet when it gets to the British view of ourselves, something else emerges. Britain comes 74th in the world in terms of confidence in our government. A below global average percentage of us believe that hard work will get us ahead, in contradiction to our 5^th place objectively in the survey for opportunity and innovation. While we objectively  have “high levels” of safety and security, the UK comes 40th in terms of citizens feeling safe walking home alone at night.

This is what the Legatum Institute said about about Britain: “Of the 110 countries covered by the survey, Britain ranks a staggering 101st on public confidence in financial institutions, 98th on optimism about job prospects and 93rd on expectations of future economic performance – the kind of ratings usually found in the world’s poorest countries.”

Our perception of ourselves puts us a little below Rwanda and around about the ratings for countries like Sudan, Yemen, and just ahead of Zimbabwe.

Nuff said!

Hmmm…. Something doesn’t add up for sure. But this is to me another indication of how an underlying cultural layer which makes up part of the cultural self – in this case a general national pessimistic attitude can colour a whole nation of modern and postmodern ‘individuals’ who generally would probably feel that they are largely free thinking, independent and who make up their own minds.

I can feel the same thing in myself: even though I know that I actually am very privileged and have the good fortune to live in an affluent, free, civilized country, I often catch myself murmuring how this and that is falling apart and we’re in decline, when it’s not actually true.

Borrowing from Lord Kitchener’s famous WW1 poster, I’m broadening it to something which I’m sure we all feel affinity for and care about. And I want to share a new initiative here at EnlightenNext UK that I’m thrilled about, which I feel enables us to actually serve the evolutionary process in a tangible way. We need to co-create the next step together. And that’s what EnlightenNext is all about. It’s about becoming an agent of evolution.We all are evolutionaries* in the sense that we feel a growing need to create a future of higher values and deeper relationships, and know that it’s up to us to do it. There’s a dawning realization that none of us can do it alone.

But how to assist and even start to steer this grand endeavour of evolution practically?

Well, I’m really excited about one new way to do just this, that a few of us at EnlightenNext in London came up with and are now launching. It’s quite simple but I feel it connects the dots to link local to global and individual to collective, in an elegant way.

Yes, there is a programme  about all this – soon to be posted – and I will mention some of the elements, but it’s not a cut and dried thing, and I wouldn’t want it to be like that. I’m talking about what turns me on most and I would guess turns you on too: and that’s a growing evolutionary movement which depends on the people involved to create where it goes. You see, for starters,  we’ve got this incredible building in the centre of London that is almost uniquely made to be a hub for evolutionaries. If you haven’t been, you’ve got to see it. There’s so much potential dying to be actualized. Then there’s the experience of nearly 25 years of Evolutionary Enlightenment in  guiding the way forward skillfully. And there are plenty of interested creative people – and many of you have been asking me about how to develop individually and collectively, and how to get traction and  to get the wind behind our sails, as it were.

So we are rolling out a very low cost local membership scheme here in the UK to provide this traction and offer ways to engage, and events which further our understanding and practice of evolutionary enlightenment. As well as this, we’re opening up the facilities here to provide a catalyst for you to engage in your own way to further your own development with other evolutionaries.  And there’s a bunch of other benefits thrown in too.

Also, I’m really fired up by the annual Being and Becoming retreat which was held in Colorado this past August. Why?  Because of the tremendous success evidenced in all the participants tangibly experiencing their own development. And the evolution of the shared values between them – which in my book is even more important. This success was in no small part due to the ongoing monthly virtual workshops which many of the practitioners of evolutionary enlightenment took part in during the previous year leading up to the retreat. So I feel a powerful confidence in the fact that it’s really working – and it’s not easy to achieve ongoing evolution in real time with real people! The local membership links with the global practitioner programme and if you want to become a global practitioner, and take part in the upcoming monthly workshops, then you get the local membership for free. And we are figuring out with some of you how this can work for you, wherever you happen to live in the country.

So if you want to know more, this whole package is being rolled out for when  Andrew Cohen teaches in London on Oct.17^th, and we’ll post it on our website.

* Here’s a definition of the word, for those who are curious

ev·o·lu·tion·ar·y / [ev-uh-loo-shuh-ner-ee]

–noun
1.  someone who sees and feels that the future is in our hands
2. a person who feels compelled to change the world from the inside out

–adjective
1. pertaining to evolution or development; developmental:..
2. of, pertaining to, or in accordance with a theory of evolution.
3. pertaining to or performing evolutions.

Integral to the livelihood and well-being of EnlightenNext UK is our trading arm The Window, an events venue service. This business supports EnlightenNext, which is a UK charity and enables us to provide our events at low cost. My partner Kyrsten Perry and her staff run The Window with great professionalism and creative entrepreneurship. As part of her outreach to the Islington community where our Centre is located, Kyrsten has established a relationship with a local college who send their 17-year-olds for work experience to us. The principal of the college wants to help raise the expectations of those kids who often come from difficult backgrounds. He deliberately sends them to our charity because of the values we hold and so that they can experience a workplace environment in which people are actually happy working.

Recently a job became available at our premises and we let the college know that their students would have preference. One of the lecturers was visiting our place shortly afterwards and he related a conversation he had had with a student who was looking for work. The lecturer told the youth about the job opportunity and this young man had spent a day of work experience at our place in the past.

“So, are you going to go for an interview, since they are likely to give you a job?” he asked.

“No,” said the young guy “I don’t want to work there. People are too happy.”

The lecturer was shocked and dismayed as he cares deeply about advancing his students, and it was sad for him to hear this.

This story really makes me think: how is it that a 17-year-od in London with all of his life ahead of him doesn’t even want to be happy? It’s a puzzling phenomenon and one of several incidents I’ve become across lately that make me ponder on the current culture of our country.

‘Order Out of Chaos: Possibilities for Transformation’, the title of the 33rd annual Mystics and Scientists conference proved apt in unexpected ways right from the start. I was at this conference, organized by the Scientific and Medical Network (SMN) and held at the University of Winchester in Southern England. But chaos intervened in the form of the erupting Icelandic volcano which grounded all air flight in Northern Europe, with the result that some speakers couldn’t physically get to the conference. Some joked that it was the revenge of Gaia to stop us flying and protect the planet. But video links were set up and order quickly restored.

SMN, in its aim to forge a creative understanding of the complementary roles of mystical and scientific approaches to reality, could be said to be the UK equivalent of IONS; both were founded in 1973, and I had listened to Marilyn Schlitz, head of IONS, say as much, in a presentation organized by the SMN in London, only a week previously. SMN conferences are friendly informal affairs, and there’s plenty of time to chat with the very erudite crowd they attract; all on first names terms, you find out later that Jim or Bill you’ve been chatting with over tea, is some famous cosmologist or physicist.

What especially drew me here was the evolutionary dimension as represented by speakers Simon Conway Morris and Stuart Kauffman, who bring quite different approaches to the subject of evolutionary emergence, and provoked many more questions than they answered.

Stuart Kaufman, a biocomplexity theorist, speaks with such conviction and passion that he sounds like a believer, though he states right away that he doesn’t believe in a supernatural God. Marveling at the almost infinite complexity of self organization in biological organisms, which makes prediction impossible, he asserts that there is no law which can describe the becoming of the biosphere. We don’t know what will happen and we don’t know what can happen in the evolution of the biosphere. In its place we have endless, ceaseless creativity which has brought forth everything. And he’s happy to call this creativity ‘God’, in the sense of a natural God. He exclaims that we need a new Enlightenment: we need Einstein and Shakespeare in the same room!

Then Simon Conway Morris lays out a powerfully convincing picture of evolutionary convergence at a profound level throughout creation, all delivered with a razor sharp English wit. He argues that evolution is predictable and that human beings are inevitable in our universe, the expected result of evolutionary patterns deeply embedded in the structure of the universe. Humans inevitable? – sounds extremely deterministic to me. And yet he’s clearly no materialistic ‘genetic fundamentalist’ who say we are all puppets of our genes. His view as an evolutionary paleobiologist is deeper and more mysterious, as he’s pointing to the nature of the underlying structure of the universe which makes evolution happen the way it has and does. It was news to me that apparently birds evolved at least twice, maybe four times, and the camera eye which we humans have, has evolved separately in squid and even jellyfish. Convergence is common and occurs at molecular levels too.

Did I really hear him say ‘Evolution is a search engine for the universe to become self aware’? I’m almost doubting this as I write , but I noted it down at the time, since it was such a striking phrase. It sends me into a contemplation just considering this! Speaking to Simon afterwards, it’s clear he holds a spiritual perspective and he believes there is an intelligence in the universe which is an increasingly emergent quality and that genes can’t possibly explain everything.

I’m left with a fascinating creative tension between the two views: evolution is predictable and evolution cannot possibly be predicted.