Andrew Cohen delivered his eagerly awaited talk Monday night on Spiritual Self Confidence. He commenced the evening by unexpectedly announcing that, instead of spending the necessary two hours explaining the broad principles of his teachings, he had decided to limit himself to an hour so he could take questions and answers. Cohen explained he was going to ‘discipline’ himself to achieve this.
The result is that his familiar quick-fire delivery went up a notch as he transported the audience into the deepest and most authentic sources of spiritual self-confidence. He noted that he first used the term in a dialogue with Deepak Chopra in New York earlier this year in response to the notion that peace should be the ultimate end-point of human spiritual aspiration. Whilst not downplaying the importance of peace, Cohen went on to vividly portray the perennial characteristics of enlightenment and it’s qualities of no time, no mind as well as the infinite dimensions of consciousness. However he perfectly illustrated his point, about the goal of peace by leading the audience through what he termed an anthropomorphic theological fantasy.
Counter-intuitively stating that we were all there before the Big bang because nothing had come into existence; therefore, we must have all been there. He asked the audience to imagine what it would be like to dwell in infinite peace and nothingness for billions of years of no time? Would not it seem that something needed to happen? Cohen proceeded to describe the stupendous eruption that flared forth from that nothingness, creating an explosion in motion that over 13.5 billion years led to matter, life and consciousness.
As consciousness became more complex and humanity emerged, grew and developed, life conditions improved immeasurably for many as technology and civilization advanced. Cohen suggested that everybody present in the audience were amongst the luckiest people, with the highest levels of education, personal liberty, political freedom and relative wealth ever incarnated in the history of the planet. So given that it took an eternity for the Big Bang to occur and 13.5 billions years for the miracle of human consciousness and communication to emerge, did it make sense that the ultimate and only goal of the spiritual quest was to disappear back to that place of infinite nothingness?
Instead Cohen exhorted his audience to wake up to how privileged their existence is and the sheer miraculous immeasurable time and energy and that had gone into producing their individual experience of self, consciousness and culture. Contrasting this immense perspective with the suffocating personal preoccupations of today’s contemporary self, Cohen brilliantly cast the audiences eyes forward to the momentous goal and obligation to participate in the conscious evolution of the universe. The sheer positivity and ecstatic urgency to bring this new order into being is the ultimate goal of spiritual longing. This undimmed wellspring of indomitable spiritual confidence, is in turn is non-separate from the monumental propulsion that set the whole process in motion at the beginning of time!
Andrew Cohen was true to his promise, having condensed his introductory talk into a high-octane compression of ecstatic evolutionary idealism; he finished the evening by responding to a number of excellent questions from the audience with similarly compelling sentiments.
Andrew is right. To face each task in front of us sustained by infinite peace and at the same time to allow the evolutionary force of life to flow unimpeded into all our actions and relationships means to participate in love and ecstasy made manifest.
Cheers Dave for sharing. It was definitely a high octane event! Following on from this one of the Q or more like a comment from a man who felt that perpetual psychotherapy was needed as a higher obligation to the whole – was particularly interesting. I agree with Andrew that people can get caught up in the need to self-analyse as a kind of unconscious excuse to delay their contribution to the life process rather than than boldly claim “I am ready” for the battlefield. I suppose any psychotherapy on the battlefield would only be carried out if something within us was getting in the way of our wholehearted participation, but then that could equally be called contemplation and psychotherapy wouldn’t be such an accurate term anymore. What do you think & which Q stood out for you in particular?
“Counter-intuitively stating that we were all there before the Big bang because nothing had come into existence; therefore, we must have all been there. He asked the audience to imagine what it would be like to dwell in infinite peace and nothingness for billions of years of no time?”
This is a totally inaccurate teaching to how LIFE really works, it is very much a human projection of the process. LIFE is a pulsating ever present process. It is a constant unfolding process of total unified oneness.
Thanks Dave, Kathryn and Mark. I attended this event about “Spiritual Self Confidence.” I was the guy who asked the question about psychotherapy!
I found Andrew Cohen’s talk compelling. His argument that spirituality should not simply be about attaining peace but that there is also an imperative to align oneself with the urgency of the evolutionary impulse was one that resonated with me.
However I found myself differing on a subtle yet perhaps important point.
I engaged in a brief Q&A with Andrew about the role of psychotherapy in the context of spiritual development. Andrew Cohen felt that psychotherapy could be useful in a limited sense of pulling oneself together to get ready for the real work “on the battlefield” but that it shouldn’t be used as an excuse for copping out into a kind of eternal narcissistic self analysis and navel gazing.
In the circumstances of the question and answer session it wasn’t easy to put my argument across succinctly. The problem of talking about psychotherapy is that it immediately conjures up images of Woody Allen types who are endlessly attached to their neuroses!
I felt that Andrew’s remarks were in response to this kind of image. Therefore seeing the last person’s comments I’d like to take this opportunity to outline my perspective of evolutionary spirituality which would also embrace psychological work on the relative ‘self.’
As it is quite long I’ve posted it here: spiritselfconfidence.weebly.com
Best wishes,
Andy
Its important to emphasise that while Andrew explains to us the two sides of the same coin ‘being and becoming’ in the form of an ‘anthropomorphic theological fantasy’ I personally feel that the beginning of time (becoming) is a human projection i.e. – if it is the other side of the coin – how could it ever not be there? A coin can not have one side… However Dave is emphasising this portrayal as a anthropomorphic theological fantasy which gives us mere mortals, who may not necessarily be residing in a more expansive state of awareness, the opportunity to see these two sides from a rational human perspective – that modernity affords us all. It is always true that there is always two sides of a coin and yet to some that can feel a little too paradoxical to stomach! While this may not appeal to those who engage very deeply in such matters – there is in fact truth, in both perspectives I have stated herein, that resonates at different levels of awareness in our own psyche. Whenever it started or if it started at all is to me very much secondary to the most important and relevant point – that our inherent nature is both absolute being/peace and absolute becoming/creativity. We can no longer reside in the now, be here ‘now’ spirituality of the 60s it is time to unleash with spiritual self-confidence, our absolute creativity as the sacred process itself…