For this week’s podcast we present a far-reaching inquiry into the different absolute dimensions of Spirit, ranging between an examination of THE postmodern existential problem of being itself, the definition of non-duality, and the evolution of enlightenment.

You can listen to the latest podcast produced from last week’s session by clicking here:

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

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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.

A very big part of the transformational process, from the perspective of evolutionary enlightenment, is going back to before the beginning and discovering a source of pure motivation that is uncorrupted by ego. In this week’s podcast from the Tuesday Meditation+Evolution evenings at EnlightenNext we hear from Andrew Cohen introducing the subject, and from Patrick Bryson as he tackles questions ranging from the true nature of intuition and motivation, a victimised vs. non-victimised relationship to life, and how discovering this deep source that is within us all relates to the global crisis we are in.

This blog was submitted by Carole Chapman:

As I left the busy noisy streets of Islington and entered the EnlightenNext Centre a wave of calm came over me. As soon as I stepped through the door I felt a sense of homecoming, a sense of peace. I’m here for this week’s Meditation+Evolution evening – and the topic tonight is ‘Practising the art and science of stillness’.

Patrick, a long time student of Andrew Cohen, commenced the evening with a reading from Andrew’s latest book Evolutionary Enlightenment, where he speaks of our deepest inherent nature as being free and the mind as a mechanical process.

Together we meditated. Almost instantly I was aware of the stillness in the room, the stillness of my body and the stillness I am inside. It seems each week I attend the more profound my experience… I was drawn to go deeper… touching depths unknown to me when I meditate alone.

The following discussion, the evolution part, brings forth a unified awe at the freedom and peacefulness obtained by assuming the posture of stillness.

We then listened to a short audio taken from day 10 of this year’s ‘Being’ Retreat in Tuscany. Here Andrew explains that our felt experience of meditation is irrelevant… it is irrelevant whether our experience is good or bad. Noble effort is what is important. His words reminded me of what I have written on my wall at home, ‘Every ounce of noble effort is sacred’ and that my deep desire is to live a sacred life. Again Patrick led us into meditation. The stillness was liberating.

As we moved from the meeting room to enjoy a delicious light supper there was an agreed sense of not wanting to speak but to remain with the stillness and peace. Soon we let that go and joy with laughter permeated our rich conversation.

I have found that the shared Meditation+Evolution evenings not only support my personal practice, they overflow into my week. As I walk in my local woods I contemplate the strength and stillness of the trees, rediscovering oneness. The oneness of my inner and outer experience.

On Tuesday evening we continued with our weekly inquiry into the relationship between meditation and enlightenment with Patrick Bryson. This time we were inquiring into the nature of Mind, a very interesting subject and key to understanding and developing one’s meditation. (On previous weeks we learnt how to meditate and explored the qualities that are found).

The evening began with a short audio from a recent retreat with Andrew Cohen in dialogue with a woman about meditation. In Evolutionary Enlightenment, the goal in meditation is ‘to have no relationship to the content of consciousness’, or to the movement of the mind. The woman explained how difficult it is to have no relationship to the content of consciousness. Andrew agreed with her and said that it was difficult if we haven’t discovered for ourselves that the true nature of mind is – very simply – a mechanical process.

Following this illuminating exchange, we meditated for 20 minutes and afterward each person discussed what they found in their experience. Initially we found that most of us are unquestionably identified with the movement of our minds, that it IS really difficult (and takes practice) to learn how to leave it all alone. Through the course of inquiring into our experience with Patrick, and being fully engaged and interested in what was happening, a deeper interest in what lies beyond the mind was activated and people started speaking in different ways about their discoveries of freedom, a sense of limitlessness, and the dissolution of any restricted or small sense of self – leaving behind the often mechanically conditioned ways we tend to think about ourselves. This was an active inquiry, coming from the source of meditation itself, and not from the mind, and there was a profound and ever-deepening discovery of unity and non-separation between us as we went further and further into the always fascinating terrain of the nature of enlightened awareness.

I’m really looking forward to next week when we will explore: The Primary Freedom that is discovered through meditation and how important this is as a new foundation for life.

This week’s Enlightened Evening topic that we looked into was “The Nature of Consciousness is Lightness of Being and Joy”.

Patrick Bryson, one of Andrew Cohen’s senior students, led the group of us gathered in the EnlighenNext Centre in London into a deeply intimate investigation of consciousness and also more subtle and profound perspectives on our experience. After he set some initial context as to how the evenings usually proceed, and the vision and mission of EnlightenNext, he then played a very moving audio of Andrew Cohen speaking about this topic from the last Being and Becoming retreat in Tuscany. Andrew was saying in the dialogue that the nature of consciousness IS joy and lightness of being and that we will experience that if we simply put our attention on that and not on the movement and meanderings of our own minds. He went on to say however that if we do put our attention on the movement of our minds, we would NOT experience lightness of being and joy. It’s pretty simple and easy to understand this, but it’s challenging and subtle when you actually try to do it!

And that’s exactly what we did next. We all then sat very still, with the express aim to have no relationship to our minds and to directly experience the nature of consciousness for ourselves. When Patrick ended the period of silence I felt like I was in another dimension, where I lost track of time, felt very light, and yes very joyous! What was also interesting was when we attempted to speak about it together afterwards. The more we made the effort to really articulate our deepest experience it became clearer and more obvious that consciousness and this inner dimension is something we actually share – and talking about it together revealed more facets and dimensions of it. Looking forward to continuing next week!

What if we could, at will, access that which is ever-new, so that our lives can be a reflection of the perfect unity that lies at the heart of life? Patrick Bryson, a long time student of Andrew Cohen, posed this question at the start of Tuesday’s Evolutionary Enlightenment Evening as one way to understand the practice of meditation.

These days it’s common to approach meditation as a method to relieve stress but in Evolutionary Enlightenment, learning how to awaken to the ground of one’s being is specific in that it can create a deep, unquenchable source of strength and confidence for life if we are willing to trust and make the right effort.

Listening to a short audio clip of Andrew Cohen speaking about Being from the recent retreat in Tuscany was a revelation. In only a few minutes one could understand the non-difference between the revelation of enlightened awareness and the practice of meditation. When we strive and learn how to have no relation to the content of consciousness, we discover a profound truth for ourselves that simultaneously lies at the deepest level of our own being and at the source of life itself.

After practicing this together, we spoke about the various challenges and discoveries that people attending had encountered during the silence. Patrick responded by pointing out that the experience of struggle that can be inherent in this approach does not in any way interfere with the deeper reality of already being, that everything is already as it is, untouched by our mind’s activities or our emotional responses, however we may qualify them, as positive or negative.

When we relax at an existential level we discover the deepest part of the self that is already free. This is the discovery of non-dual awareness, an ungraspable yet deeply meaningful encounter with life and reality.

We took the discussion deeper. Something intriguing happens when we deliberately and intentionally decide to devote time to focus on Nothing. Beyond being only a pleasant experience, if we peer more deeply, we can find that there is something more than just ‘emptiness’; there is something significant and subtle that can become a compelling, ever new source of endless fascination.

I recognised a quality of pure goodness, and the more I saw that, in my own experience, the more positive IT and I seemed to become, as if consciousness was becoming even more aware of the pristine quality of itself through me.

When the session ended I was sitting on the edge of my seat, bursting with positivity. It felt like we were just getting started and I didn’t want the dialogue to end.

On Tuesday evening we had our first public event at EnlightenNext London after Andrew Cohen’s annual Being & Becoming retreat in Tuscany. Inspired by this powerful event Chris Parish introduced and transmitted the foundational understanding that underpinning everything that is, there is an infinite ground from which we all have originated. Drawing on his 40 years of experience and practice within various Buddhist teachings as well as his 25 years with Andrew, Chris showed the highly attentive audience that ‘The art and science of stillness’ as defined by Andrew Cohen is both very simple and profoundly subtle practice and insight that gives us immediate access to our very own source of spiritual strength and inspiration.

Chris showed us that when we authentically draw on the traditional wisdom and science of meditation while understanding that we exist within an evolving universe, we can step out of the seemingly endless prison of our mind that is locked into a purely psychological relationship to experience. And it is the understanding that meditation is not just an experience but a position of freedom that makes us available in a much deeper way for engaging in life with growing creativity and commitment.

After a short audio of Andrew Cohen explaining how to meditate from the recent retreat in Tuscany, we put it to the test ourselves as a powerful timeless dimension filled the room. Chris explained that when we sit down to ‘have no relationship to the content of consciousness’ a door opens (if we just do it) transforming this abstract phrase into an ongoing fascination with the ever new and infinite nature of being.

In the dialogues that followed the meditation we were all able to go into the subtlety and paradox of discerning with our rational minds what it means to leave our minds aside for a few moments and directly engage with the source of our being. Chris explained that ‘It doesn’t really matter what our minds are doing’. This is such a refreshing discovery and not what we are usually told in more traditional approaches to meditation practice, which generally tell us that a still mind is the goal. But unless we discover for ourselves that we are not our thoughts it is understandable that we will conclude that our sense of identity is one and the same as our mental process.

Someone asked about mindfulness, which is a buddhist term. This opened up into a fascinating exchange about how the cultural context in which we learn to meditate influences the outcome. Mindfulness is about the practice of awareness, which is very important to cultivate, but if this is taken in isolation (ie; purely as a technique and not connected to the depths of our being) it can make us petty and controlling of ourselves, stifling our spontaneity and creativity. The point of meditation in the context of Evolutionary Enlightenment is to let go in order to discover the source of our being so we can learn how to freely engage with life. These are important conversations and guided by Chris’s deep knowledge and experience engages us with the power of meditation not just as a self-help relaxation technique but as a direct engagement with enlightenment here and now.

Every Tuesday you can learn about the ever-evolving nature of Evolutionary Enlightenment and, as well as benefiting from the wealth of knowledge and experience of Andrew Cohen’s senior students, you can meet many like minded evolutionaries passionate about co-creating a new way to be together.

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!

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!