ANDREW COHEN
a Half Day Seminar
Saturday, March 10th 2012, 1:00-6:00 pm

BOOK NOW for our early bird special £45

For twenty-five years, Andrew Cohen has been redefining spiritual awakening for our contemporary world—a world characterized by exponential change and an ever-expanding appreciation for the processes of evolution. During this seminar, Andrew will guide you through an in-depth exploration of his original spiritual path, practice, and philosophy, which he calls “Evolutionary Enlightenment.”

During this seminar you will:

• Engage directly with Andrew Cohen through question-and-answer sessions;

• Discover a unique perspective on how your own development can contribute to the evolution of the whole.

The essential message of Evolutionary Enlightenment is simple, yet profound: Life is evolution, and enlightenment is about waking up to this fundamentally creative impulse as your own deepest, most authentic self. Cohen defines this essential spiritual impulse as nothing less than the powerful force of creativity that has been driving the evolution of the universe since the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago. By engaging with Cohen, you will learn how to access this spiritual force within yourself and experience directly the powerful—and deeply rational—teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment.

In preparation for the seminar, we recommend that you read Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening, his newly published book, available for purchase at (link). Alternatively you will be able to purchase a book after the seminar and get it personally signed by Andrew Cohen. (Delicious Vegetarian meals on sale for £10 available before and after the seminar).

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ANDREW COHEN video On Oneness

More about Andrew

Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, bestselling author, and founder of the global nonprofit EnlightenNext and its award-winning publication, EnlightenNext magazine. His original teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment redefines spiritual awakening within the context of cosmic evolution and highlights a new understanding of God or Spirit as the creative impulse toward change in both self and culture. After a transformative meeting with the renowned Indian Advaita Vedanta master H.W.L. Poonja in 1986, Cohen began teaching internationally and almost immediately started reshaping the larger cultural conversation about the purpose and significance of enlightenment in our time. Andrew’s work has brought the timeless depth of enlightened wisdom into the twenty-first century and significantly redirected its purpose and promise–calling not for transcendence of worldly attachment, but for a deep and heroic responsibility for the evolution of the world. His bestselling book, Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening, is the product of his 25 years of spiritual teaching and since its publication in September, 2011, it has already garnered praise from some of today’s leading spiritual and cultural figures as one of the most important spiritual works of our time. Andrew lives and works at the EnlightenNext headquarters in Western Massachusetts and spends much of his time travelling around the world giving retreats, seminars, and public talks about Evolutionary Enlightenment.

Other States of Emergence

Cosmic Interior by Patrick Bryson

In the last decades, other pioneering work has been done by David Bohm and Otto Scharmer, whose methodologies you might know from their wide application in business and corporate settings.

Twentieth-century theoretical physicist David Bohm pioneered what is now called “Bohmian Dialogue”. Bohm described this as “an arena in which collective learning takes place and out of which a sense of increased harmony, fellowship and creativity can arise.”.  Dialogues are held in groups of twenty to forty people, facilitated by an experienced participant, but avoiding any sense of leadership or hierarchy.  There is no agenda; the main purpose of the dialogue is to allow people to “explore the individual and collective presuppositions, ideas, beliefs, and feelings that subtly control their interactions”, thus unhinging these fixed beliefs and allowing for an emergence of a shared, participatory consciousness.  Bohm saw this style of dialogue as critical to the survival of humanity, given the extreme levels of dispute and violence that rule the world, and which “point to a deep and pervasive defect in the process of human thought”. 

These three methodologies might seem similar because of their intersubjective nature as well as their focus on the emergence of consciousness.  But does that mean they are the same?

Although all three provoke heightened awareness of emerging consciousness, a closer look reveals some important differences.  Firstly, there is a difference in context.  Bohmian Dialogue seems to be built on the premise that human thought has a defect that threatens the continuation of humanity and needs to be “fixed”.  Enlightened Communication and Theory U, on the other hand, are built on the premise that human beings have the capacity to develop into a higher consciousness, which happens in a context of evolution of consciousness.

But there is a subtle difference between these as well.  Theory U creates circumstances for participants to tap into this higher consciousness and design new solutions to complex problems, but does not aim to develop the individuals beyond that point.  After the workshop, participants go home and implement their solutions.  Enlightened Communication, on the other hand, was withdrawn from public offerings because it was recognized that a lack of development in participants had become an obstacle to the purpose of the very state experiences produced.  This indicates that inherent to this state is a purpose that transcends the individual’s and even humanity’s needs, and calls for the development of consciousness itself, through the development of the individual.  In the words of Chris Parish: “One starts leaning towards being more interested in what we can create together than in what I can be…  This is the evolution of consciousness itself”.

Seeing the Obvious/Invisible

Here, we might be seeing both the success and the challenge of the Enlightened Intersubjective.  This state enables relatively inexperienced individuals to get in touch with the emergence of an exciting new consciousness.  But not everyone seems able to appreciate the evolutionary purpose that goes with this experience, and it takes careful training to ready an individual for turning the experience into the very transformation that experience calls for.

Again Integral Theory can help us understand why.  As Evolutionary Enlightenment is a very new teaching, and the state of the Enlightened Intersubjective has been proven to be easy to experience but hard to “hold” in any consistent way, one wonders what is required to “see” at a level where one can stabilize it.  After all, the realization that consciousness evolves as the interior of the Kosmos is relatively new, so it only makes sense that many would not be open to this insight yet.

In a previous article I have written that when looking at recently emerged post-metaphysical forms of enlightenment, the concept of kosmic address is helpful to understand why what seems obvious to some, seems invisible to others.  “Ken Wilber defines kosmic address as: Kosmic address = altitude + perspective.  This means that kosmic address is as much about the object as it is about the subject”.  My proposition is that depending on the sufficiency of one’s altitude (or level of development) and stabilized access to states (meaning the conscious capacity to enter certain spiritual levels of awareness), this new spirituality is “seen” from either a 3^rd, 2^nd, or 1^st-person perspective, which means: various degrees of appreciation and ability to internalize and integrate what is seen.  In the case of the Enlightened Intersubjective, with an Orange or early-Green Altitude and access to subtle awareness, one can “stretch up” enough to appreciate this state in the 3^rd or 2^nd-person, meaning that one can either have an “arms-length” appreciation of it, or engage with it to some degree.  However, such an experience will hardly lead to transformation, as it cannot be sufficiently internalized at that level.  In order to embrace this state as one’s own genuine 1^st-person experience that leads to transformation, one needs to have both a fully integrated cognitive complexity to understand evolution (anywhere from the late Green Altitude upwards) and the spiritual depth to relate directly to the causal/nondual realm (anywhere from stabilized access to the causal realm upwards).

Conclusion

Spiritual States have traditionally occurred in the great spiritual traditions with Being or transcendence as their apex.  With the arrival of evolution into our understanding of enlightenment, the Enlightened Intersubjective, a state that occurs between individuals as a surge of consciousness/Becoming while being grounded in the traditional ground of Being, seems to be the emergence of a new Spiritual State.

These days, various forms of emergent consciousness are being used to solve humanity’s problems, however the particular nature of the Enlightened Intersubjective is that it inspires and facilitates further evolution of consciousness, putting the evolution of the individual in service of that.  The Enlightened Intersubjective creates a condition in which Enlightenment can be directly brought into the mundane dimensions of life as a heartfelt, concrete reality that deeply inspires the individual to open up to a radically expanded perspective.  Widely establishing the mastery of this state would therefore greatly serve the development of human consciousness and culture.

But in order for this to be widely and successfully used, two things will be needed.  Firstly, we need sufficient altitude growth to post-Green levels that recognize the emergence of consciousness; something that cannot be taken for granted in levels of development below Green because of the cognitive complexity that is necessary to embrace such an idea.  Secondly, we need a wider embrace of the spiritual dimension of State-Stages in our general culture and discourse; our current culture is still quite hostile to this idea and generally pushes spirituality into the realm of the religious, occult, and improbable.

Although innovative Green and post-Green business methodologies are starting to move in this direction, a greater evolutionary understanding will be necessary to promote the wide use of a state that not only appreciates emergence, but facilitates the development of emergence.

This was the last of a 3-post article.

Do you want to experience an Enlightened Intersubjective that is going to blow your mind? Book now for the EnlightenNext Midsummer Renaissance, a fabulous mix of philosophical dialogue, music, art, and entertainment celebrating the uncharted heights of our human potential!

The Enlightened Intersubjective and its Properties

In my last post, I wrote about Enlightened Communication. But this way of communicating invokes a very specific state, which I call the Enlightened Intersubjective, and which has very specific properties. First of all, it is an intersubjective state. This means that it does not occur in one individual, but is invoked between individuals. Andrew Cohen writes: “What was once a subjective experience becomes an intersubjective experience. Because we meet in the Authentic Self, the difference between the one and the many disappears and the enlightened mind becomes the one voice speaking to itself”. Or in the words of Chris Parish: “Emergence happens betweenpeople.  At this point in evolution, we can’t be fully human without other people. Historically, the fact that human awakening happens between subjects is still a relatively new discovery”. 

Evolutionary Biologist Rupert Sheldrake

Referring to Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance, Chris calls this consciousness a field rather than a static property: “Consciousness really is not subject to time and space at all… it is nowhere and everywhere, you can’t grasp it… It is not separate from us, [or] between us… it is more like a field”.

So does this consciousness only occur between people?  Using the lens of the four quadrants of Integral Theory reveals that more dimensions are active than obvious at first sight. It arises in the collective interior or Lower Left, but this is paired with a strong individual interior experience in the Upper Left. And, assuming that this state is related to Sheldrake’s morphic field, the interior experience would coincide with collective exterior, or Lower Right, networks of morphogenesis, which is channeled through the individual’s individual exterior, or Upper Right neurological capacity. So even if the Enlightened Intersubjective may arise in the Lower Left, it actively connects all quadrants or dimensions of our experience. But then what is cause and effect; what is the “home” of this unusual phenomenon?

Enlightened Communication Pioneer Chris Parish

The answer might be in the fact that this field is far from static. Participants describe getting in touch with this consciousness as a dynamic surge. Andrew Cohen describes it as “a tidal wave rushing in, a consciousness that seemed to collectively surge forth… and then, just as quickly as it rushed in, like all waves do it would return back to its source and disappear”. I dug up a letter I once wrote to Andrew Cohen (in December 2002): “As soon as we sat down, I felt a surge wiping the room clean of all self-centered motivations, and when we spoke, a [wild] current was created that took us far beyond what we could understand”. Chris Parish describes it as a strongly felt “self-arising impetus to move forward”. If looked at from an Evolutionary Enlightenment perspective, this consciousness holds the dynamic expression of what Andrew Cohen calls the Evolutionary Impulse. And placing this dynamic emergence in the context of the quadrants, we can see that while catalyzed by the collective act of human communication, it emerges or, in Ken Wilber’s language tetra-arises, in all quadrants simultaneously.

Yet this wild emergence is not the only dimension. According to Chris Parish, “people often say that after these discussions, or even in moments of quietness between thoughts, they feel that their experience is deeper than a whole day of meditation; it is totally at peace”. One participant says: “We were as One Body. This unity destroyed all boundaries between meditation and communion, speech and silence”. Another participant describes what Chris calls an “interplay” of Being and Becoming: “When someone spoke, it was like they stepped forward from some unborn place to become. As soon as they finished speaking, they seemed unborn again, and my mind could not remember who had just spoken”. What we are seeing here is the state of Being, or the empty ground of Enlightenment, which seems opposite to the dynamic surge of emergence described previously.

Nonduality? Paradox? New State?

Are these the properties of mere randomly occurring phenomenological states? If that were the case, there could not be the coherence in all the various descriptions from participants. Phenomenological states are states like being happy, angry, or bored; states that come and go, subject to internal and external influences, but without specific structure. In my own experience of Enlightened Communication I can have an experience of the Enlightened Intersubjective that is unequalled in its exhilaration, yet go through a phenomenological experience of anxiety (about not “knowing” the right answer), fatigue (because of a late night), or irritation (because of an annoying participant); but the coherence in participants’ descriptions of seemingly contradictory state experiences points to the existence of a structure behind them.

It is here that I turn to the classical state-sequence of the great traditions, which have been brought together in a theoretical framework for the first time by Integral Theory. Pioneer Daniel P. Brown, who compared three major Eastern traditions and found great similarities in the stages of spiritual realization, identified the sequence of “gross preliminaries and training, then subtle experiences of light and luminosity, then variations on formless absorption or causal “black near-attainment”, [and] then breakthrough into nondual realization”. Depending on the tradition, these are stages of increasing embrace of the non-manifest, or divine, or primordial nature of Spirit. Although one can peak-experience any one of these states, when training them in a spiritual tradition they tend to occur in this specific sequence, and can even be invoked at will.

I tried holding the Enlightened Intersubjective against the light of this sequence. In beginning an Enlightened Communication session, participants often walk in fresh, and we can assume that they come in from a gross state of awareness. But by beginning the discussion and requesting from each participant to leave their personal issues behind and focus on a spiritual text, a discussion unfolds that quickly takes everyone into a subtle dimension. Participants are encouraged to focus as much as on what is said as on what is not said but sensed between them; rather than focusing on the gross reality of words spoken, one tunes into the source they come from. The more the subtle field of consciousness becomes a felt reality, the more participants are able to tune into it and gain confidence in its reality.

And here, we are getting to the point. On the one hand, participants gain enough confidence in the subtle reality of the field of consciousness that they gain access to the state of “deep meditation” that Chris Parish described. This sounds very much like opening a door between the subtle and the causal state. At the same time an emergence takes place, causing animated, sometimes fiery discussion, described by participants as the “surge” or “current”. How do these two phenomena go together? The nature of the causal realm is that the manifest dimension of reality falls to the background; one gains confidence in a non-manifest reality, and as one enters the causal realm, one lets go of the manifest. But here, in the Enlightened Intersubjective, one feels rooted in what Brown called “formless absorption”, yet passionately engages in manifest form and one’s own creative emergence as a human being.

Could it be that the Enlightened Intersubjective is a quick road to nondual awareness? This might be so, but it still does not solve the problem of the trajectory taken: the nondual state classically only takes place after absorption in the formless, or cessation, experienced in the causal state, which is usually a hard-fought state that requires a painful process, called dark night of the soul, of letting go of one’s attachment to the manifest. Here, there is no exclusively non-manifest realm, nor is there a dark night to go through; what we are seeing is the highly unusual and previously unknown simultaneous occurrence of two seemingly opposite states, which build on each other yet are distinct, and arise in one process rather than as separate, static qualities.

I think that we are seeing a new state phenomenon, which, given that Enlightened Communication takes place in the context of a new evolutionary spirituality, would make sense. The traditional sequence of gross-subtle-causal-nondual seems to now include the possibility of gross-subtle-causal/evolutionary-nondual. Logically, with the emergence of a new, evolutionary enlightenment, the spiritual states themselves would be evolving, too.

Next: Part 3 - Other States of Emergence, and Seeing the Obvious/Invisible

Do you want to experience an Enlightened Intersubjective that is going to blow your mind? Book now for the EnlightenNext Midsummer Renaissance, a fabulous mix of philosophical dialogue, music, art, and entertainment celebrating the uncharted heights of our human potential!

Introduction

painting by Patrick Bryson

Over the last few decades, a very new insight has been gained: the fact that consciousness is not static, but emergent. Several methodologies have been developed that make use of this fairly newly discovered phenomenon, and I have been intrigued by these.  I have been a long-term participant and facilitator in one of them (Enlightened Communication, which was developed in the context of the teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment) and received training in another (Theory U, developed by Otto Scharmer).  This involvement has made me aware of some distinct qualities in the state invoked by Enlightened Communication, which in my view makes it a candidate for being a Spiritual State, as seen in the context of Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, and a very new one at that.

By Spiritual States I mean the sequence of meditative states in several great traditions, first identified by Daniel P. Brown and then more widely popularized by philosopher Ken Wilber.  These states all show an increasing embrace of oneness with the nature of Spirit, or, in some traditions, ultimate unity with God.  They can be trained through spiritual practice, they can be consciously invoked, they occur in a very specific order, and they have transformative potential for the serious practitioner.

I think that the state invoked in the art and practice of Enlightened Communication is such a distinct spiritual state, and I call it the Enlightened Intersubjective. Enlightened because of its connection to the empty ground of Being that runs through all known Spiritual States.  And Intersubjective, because this state exclusively occurs between people, in active engagement, with a strongly emergent quality, setting it apart from the known, more solitarily experienced, Spiritual States of the great traditions.

In this paper I will explore the nature of this state and compare it with the states invoked in two similar methodologies, Bohmian Dialogue and Theory U.  This will shed an interesting light on the various uses for these states, and the impact they can have on our world.  I will use the lens of Integral Theory, of which, for the sake of brevity, I assume a basic knowledge in the reader.  But if I am assuming too much, you can find all necessary explanations in Ken Wilber’s  great book Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World.

But first, let me disclose a few assumptions.  Firstly, spiritual states are hard to measure and any approximation is usually guesswork, which, depending on one’s level of experiential expertise, might be more or less accurate.  My writings here are not based on measured facts but on assumptions informed by published and unpublished work, a recently conducted interview with pioneer of Enlightened Communication Chris Parish, and personal experience.  Secondly, I am of the view that any Spiritual State cannot be seen as separate from the context it arises in, and will discuss these states as such.  And thirdly, as I have been a student of Evolutionary Enlightenment for twenty years, you might detect both a depth of understanding and unapologetic evolutionary bias in my views on spirituality!

That being said, I hope that this exploration will be enjoyable, and will add to the development of the field of twenty-first century spirituality.

What is Enlightened Communication?

French Priest and Paleonthologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, with an ancient turtle

Enlightened Communication is a communication process that has been developed during the last decade in the context of Evolutionary Enlightenment, the spiritual teaching of Andrew Cohen.  Building on twentieth-century spiritual giants like Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard the Chardin, this teaching takes Enlightenment into a new, evolutionary context.  We have evolved to a level of cognitive complexity that allows us to understand the phenomena of deep-time and evolution, and this casts also a new light on Enlightenment.  Andrew Cohen explains that if life is not a static, circular event, but something that evolves, then Being, or the formless ground, can’t be its only apex anymore; we now understand life as a process with Being and Becoming, or the creative drive, as its two faces in eternal interplay.

Instructions for Enlightened Communication are simple: usually a brief text is used to provide focus to the discussion, which occurs in a controlled context facilitated by one or two leaders.  Participants are asked to refrain from either speaking about personal issues or being abstract.  This is a remarkably simple way to put the Ego, or limited self, to the side and let a more authentic response emerge from each individual. Andrew Cohen writes: “Suddenly all participants find access to a kind of knowing and cognitive capacity that has nothing to do with any prior accumulated knowledge.  They find access to the source of wisdom itself”.

Indian Activist and Sage Sri Aurobindo

Enlightened Communication started as several spontaneous waves of revelation that occurred in focused dialogue between students of Evolutionary Enlightenment, which some of the very writers and readers of this blog have been a part of.  With increasing experience, this gradually got honed down to a very particular style of discussion with clear guidelines, which for several years was widely practiced in public events all over the world. Chris Parish, the Managing Director of EnlightenNext London, in particular pioneered this method and took it all over the world. Usually these discussions are organized in groups of between four and twenty people, although as conference call technology advanced up to fifty people from all over the world started to participate.  And the remarkable thing is that, in my own experience, even with that many participants, these discussions are disciplined, spacious, and extraordinarily profound.

Contemporary Spiritual Teacher Andrew Cohen

Although the public Enlightened Communication Groups were very popular, after several years they were modified into less obvious forms. The reason for this was that people struggled to turn the experiences into true transformation, because they lacked the tools to integrate and internalize them into their entire being.  Realizing that these discussions were becoming counterproductive to the very wisdom revealed in them, it was decided to only hold them in their most distilled from with a those who actively engaged with the teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment.  “This is a very subtle emergence. Living by it is much more demanding [than experiencing it]”, says Parish: “It takes a lot of development… you have to become more interested in in the development of this consciousness than you are in yourself”.  This strategy indeed helped to integrate this emergence into the general discourse, practice, and even business culture surrounding Evolutionary Enlightenment.  According to Chris Parish, “it is now the reality of the field of consciousness that we inhabit and create together.  And now this consciousness challenges us to develop an autonomy that doesn’t come from the separate self-sense… and that’s a new thing to develop”.

Next: Part 2 – The Enlightened Intersubjective and its Properties, and Nonduality? Paradox? New State?

Do you want to experience an Enlightened Intersubjective that is going to blow your mind? Book now for the EnlightenNext Midsummer Renaissance, a fabulous mix of philosophical dialogue, music, art, and entertainment celebrating the uncharted heights of our human potential!

At this time many of us here at EnlightenNext are thinking about and eagerly anticipating the upcoming long retreat with Andrew Cohen this August. The Being and Becoming Retreat is a major milestone in EnlightenNext’s yearly calendar. This year it will be held in the beautiful hills of Tuscany. You can read all the details here

To focus our collective attention on the power and purpose of going on retreat, we’ve decided to devote next Tuesday’s Evolution and Meditation night at the London Centre (14th June 2011) to a discussion about going on retreat and its benefits. This evening will be FREE for anyone so please do consider joining us. We will be able to engage together, watch some great clips from last year’s retreat and get a deeper sense of what it means to be able to transform our lives in order to create a better future for humanity.

So please do come along! And invite anyone else who you think may be interested and wants to learn more. If you live too far away to come on Tuesday, don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss any questions you may have or simply to speak together more fully.

“London goes beyond any boundary or convention. It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London.”         ~ Peter Ackroyd

When we look at the big picture and witness as Londoners where we have come from and what could be possible I think this quote serves as a beautiful guiding light. The historical roots of London are nourished with an enormity of cultural riches that lay the ground for what I believe can be a truly positive and limitless future. And yet as a culture we seem to be suspended in a mixture of uncertainty and cynicism about where we are heading and if we are going to make it ‘there’ at all! For more than 20 years the work of EnlightenNext UK has been exploring strange phenomena like these and now we are compelled to bring the conversation out of the lab and into the hustle and bustle of London’s streets and coffee houses!

In 15 locations around the Boroughs of London we have set up a monthly meetup point arranged through our page on the website – meetup.com. We have just completed our third month of this experiment and it has been very encouraging to see it gradually take shape as a hub for creative meaningful conversation. What makes the conversation so interesting is our belief that evolution is not just a continuous process that happens ‘out there’ – it is also ongoing ‘within us’. So where is the evolutionary process taking us? What is the next step for humanity? What is the next step for our local London? These are just some of the questions we explore and in doing so we further our own evolution at the level of consciousness and culture.

The decision to bring the conversation out into the wider population of London has arisen as a direct result of the natural development and careful nurturing of a maturing evolutionary culture at the UK centre in Islington -> I have witnessed with wide eyes the growing confidence and increasingly creative zest that the UK team is expressing more and more now and to which I am humbled to be a part of. I also see this reaching out to all Londoners as an act of love for our wider humanity and the life process itself.

This perspective, given the right conditions, will certainly begin to overcome in a very meaningful and comprehensive way the limitations and tensions we experience in everyday life. So please tell me more about this perspective I here you ask! Well as I hinted at earlier it looks at evolution as an internal as well as an external process which is a major component in the field of evolutionary spirituality. What I find greatly exciting about this perspective is not only does it attempt to answer all the questions we may have, that stop us from evolving in all areas of our life, but, it, as a philosophy also evolves. Over the last 25 years spiritual and cultural pioneer, founder of EnlightenNext and creator of the profound Evolutionary Enlightenment teachings Andrew Cohen, has played a major role in driving the evolution of evolutionary spirituality to its present dynamic and vibrant state.

The way in which the teachings evolve occurs only when we are intent on letting go of our own hang ups about ‘the way the world is’ and open up to the possibilities of insight we can discover when coming together in a collective space of spiritual and cultural inquiry. This is a form of communicative practice that enhances the collective intelligence, and begins the emergence of what could be referred to as a Supermind. In my experience this frequently results in multiple individual and collective insights that we would never get to on our own…

This has to be one of the defining reasons behind my own interest in Evolutionary Enlightenment, it, itself has the humility by design to evolve and remain relevant to the times. This design only works however with our participation – we must actively engage to become more aware of what ‘our times’ are. To get you thinking about ‘our times’ before our next meetup lets very briefly go into some of the themes we discuss…

1) We are seemingly in a time of hyper-individualism. With the works of thinkers such as Freud the 20^th Century marked the age of the individual. This movement was extremely positive and with the 60s civil rights movements heralded the greatest levels of autonomy history has ever seen. However in ‘our times’ in a culture of ‘whatever’ and ‘anything goes, as longs you don’t hurt anybody else’ and the ever increasing superficial identities we can assume, the age of the individual has seemingly carried itself to precarious extremes! As described by Thomas de Zengotita in the EnlightenNext article ‘Mediated’:

“As representations grow in variety, sophistication, and intensity, they create ….a “psychic sauna” of experiences, sensations, and options that we glide over the surface of, like “a little god, dipping in here and there. . . .” In a mediated world, the flattered self is the center of the universe—the consumer, the viewer, the holder of the remote control—able to opt in or out whether it be in regard to a television set or reality itself.”

2) We are seemingly in a time of confusion in the face of complexity, upheaval and unrest. Since the beginning of the mid-80s the information age has begun a speeding up of technological and societal development which can now seem daunting and increasingly complex. Add to this the converging of multiple global crises including the ongoing financial crises and unrest in the Middle East and we have a melting pot of existential concern.

3) We are seemingly in a time of cynicism. In times of hyper-individualism and confusion we can often feel isolated and as a result we can become naturally closed off to any possibility that we can have an impact on events seemingly outside of our control. Part of this cynicism seems to be generated from the failings of institutions including those that are religious and spiritual – to stay relevant to our times. Traditional institutions in many ways just don’t address the complexities of 21st century life anymore and new age spiritual groups often offer safe retreat from the complexity we face and in that – only appeal to our longing to feel at peace – rather than create any real change in the individual or culture. These are just a few reasons for why cynicism is so prevalent in our postmodern culture.

So now I must ask you some questions!

• Could there be more to evolution than what mainstream science would have me believe?
• Is there a creative potential in me that can be found when I let go of my personal hang ups?
• Does it seem that coming together collectively to find solutions to our life concerns, can begin to dissolve cynicism and start to create meaningful change?
• Would coming together like this help me to overcome and face the complexities and isolating forces of a hyper-individualized London?

Having leaned into what some aspects of ‘our times’ appear to be and the possibilities that may come from engaging with others in this new way I am reminded of another beautiful aspect of this teaching that speaks to people that aren’t necessarily believers in ‘God’ or ‘Spirit’ as a wise old man in the sky ‘up there’. Good news! As I am sure you can tell by now neither do we! Instead I would describe spirit in evolutionary spirituality as: your highest and fullest Self, your creative potential at its absolute limitless peak. Andrew Cohen calls this the Evolutionary Impulse, and it is this – come the time of our next local meetups – that I feel very excited to give full expression to, with and between my fellow Londoners! Can we discover, nurture and cultivate this Evolutionary Impulse, our highest Selves at the heart of an ‘infinite London’ and create a new and inherently positive culture? I know We can!

If you would like to join us at one of these inspiring monthly local meetups and go deeper into the many questions and themes that I have only begun to introduce to you here click on one of the meetup icons on this page and choose from any one of our 15 London venues!