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| Andrew Cohen's Blog | |
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May 12, 2009
The Other Side of the RainbowI really am living in a new world. And it’s one I’ve been striving extremely hard to give birth to for over twenty years. I became a teacher of enlightenment at the ripe old age of thirty. Ever since then, it seemed obvious to me that unless the uncontainable positivity and inexpressible glory revealed when one experiences higher states of consciousness actually becomes manifest in and through one’s own life and actions, then spiritual experience doesn’t really mean anything in the end. But I soon found this was not as obvious to others as it was to me.In those early days, I was teaching publicly every night. Each and every evening was a profound and powerful adventure of direct awakening to consciousness itself. One after another, people who came to hear me speak were having the most amazing experiences. As a matter of fact, the atmosphere around me became so spiritually charged that for a while there, I’m embarrassed to say, I actually thought becoming an enlightened human being might be as easy as showing up to see me. At least that’s how it seemed. It really, really did. Alas, like so many other teachers, I soon discovered that for most people, these dramatic experiences were in fact nothing more than mere glimpses of their own higher spiritual potentials. They were ecstatic and bliss-fueled rides to the other side of the rainbow, where all things become possible and one has no doubt that heaven has indeed come to earth. Those were the days . . . Well, actually, they weren’t. They were extremely exciting and deeply thrilling times. But in the end, they were nothing more than a really good Fourth of July with the best fireworks display you’ve ever seen. And that was because I found, with very few exceptions, that most of those who were around me didn’t want to pay the price to make that other world they were glimpsing a permanent place of occupation. I spent the first five years as a teacher blowing people’s minds and showing them where God lived. I spent the next ten years trying in every possible way to get them to pay the price to make the radical leap from higher-state experiences to genuine spiritual attainment. Ken Wilber puts it beautifully when he says that the task is to transform “higher states into permanent traits.” I couldn’t have tried harder or put more energy into this ultimately challenging aspiration: To get others to want this as much as I did. To get others to see what I see—not only the glorious potential of a new world, but the urgent necessity to make it manifest, here and now. To have not merely students who are followers or devoted disciples but students who are real life-partners in the grand endeavor of the evolution of our collective interior. More than once I wondered if I was mad or crazy, because it was pretty clear that nobody was seeing the miraculous possibility that I was seeing. I experienced many dark nights of the soul and struggled often with doubt. But then, slowly but surely, what had been up until then only an intuition and an awakened vision that was available to me, started to become available to others. It took many years before it stabilized. First it would emerge like a tidal wave rushing in, a consciousness that seemed to collectively surge forth, consuming the awareness of all those associated with me. And then, just as quickly as it rushed in, like all waves do it would return back to its source and disappear. And, as hard to believe as it may sound, I would be one of the only people who seemed to remember what had happened. The reason is that Spirit, experienced as consciousness, is a higher and more subtle domain than our ordinary waking state. That’s why it’s so easy to temporarily awaken and see the face of God for oneself and then to not only lose access to that awareness but to even forget that it actually happened. Over the last two years, to my deepest relief and inexpressible joy, I find I have been released from the torment of all those years. And the reason is that what I was seeing all that time has now emerged and become stable between enough of us to make all the difference in the universe. We’re not coming and going anymore. We’ve arrived. And the reason this means everything to me is that it means we can finally move forward. Post a CommentBefore commenting, please note that this is a moderated forum and all comments are reviewed before posting. In the interest of furthering the topic of discussion, comments that do not comply with the comments policy will not be posted. Please take a moment to read the guidelines. Due to the time needed for review, comments will not be posted immediately, but please do not double-post just because your comment did not appear right away. |
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Dear Mr Cohen,
I tried to discover the point of this article… Can you help me? I’m confused. What is the message, expressed in one sentence?
Further: In the last two sentences you say: “we arrived” and the “we can finally move forward”.
Where arrived? Move forward to where? And isn’t this a contradiction?
Best, John
This is very interesting to read this, I feel how happy you are about it and that this are not just words, you really feel fullfilled and happy with it as a human being. This makes me trust more to go deeper in what you are teaching and I am sure, that other people feel it the same way. Meeting you really made a big change in my live and that I experience more and more a big unpersonal love from God in and behind everything.
Wow! It’s amazing to see the evolution of your work over the past 23 years, Andrew, and to know that enough people have now stabilized in an “evolutionarily enlightened” stage--not simply a state--that the real work can begin. It’s unbelievably thrilling to imagine what can happen as this perspective ripples out to more and more people around the world, and our burgeoning endeavor becomes a full-blown cultural revolution. Impossible, mad, crazy, delusional? Perhaps. But if the past two years are any indication, I don’t think so.
Andrew, Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Thank you to you and those who have persevered with you for pushing for this all these years. Because of your work, commitment and spiritual vision my own life has become transformed with the deepest sense of meaning and purpose. And with that transformation has come the powerful desire to help bring this revolution in consciousness and culture into the world, to put my life alongside yours as a stepping stone into a better future for us all.
With love and respect, Mike
This sounds a little like the quote from “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a Kempis, where he states “Jesus hath now many lovers of His heavenly kingdom, but few bearers of His Cross”. ie It’s easy to walk the path at times of ease and intoxication but to go beyond that and be willing to walk through all the ups and downs is another stage entirely.
Dear Andrew,
I just read your blog on my iphone in Melbourne Australia via Twitter, and was compelled to respond immediately. There is a diverse group of individuals here passionately interested in evolving consciousness and culture that are magnetically and naturally and rapidly being drawn together, some powerful and highly creative and beautiful human beings, and I have no doubt that this is a nonlocal emergence connected to this stability in consciousness you are speaking about. Thank you for your profound perseverance.
With love,
Jan
As someone who shared those early times, who found himself among all those not yet ready at that time to make “higher states into permanent traits”, I do indeed confirm that old Indian saying, “Never underestimate the power of the teacher”. In my own experience trusting someone who clearly knew, and knows, more has reaped unending opportunity to move forward. I find Andrew to be such a teacher because I have never seen him back off, or back down.
Thank you!
Andrew, it’s so significant that this shift has happened and that you finally have true partners in the evolutionary dharma. When I think about it, I’m filled with gratitude for you holding the vision through all the dark nights, and for everyone who has paid the price before me to stand for Spirit themselves.
Turning the higher state experience into our permanent center of gravity truly is the pot of gold--the gift that we can give the world through ourselves.
And it will be an explosive movement forward! How thrilling and humbling it is to be a part of this movement, propelled forward by what you and your senior students have worked so hard to create. I am with you! And deeply grateful.
This success legitimizes everything you and your students have been doing for the past twenty years, and relieves me of the burden of skepticism.
Andrew,
I understand what you mean by seeing god and then forgetting. It is so easy to do. Without the real transformation I do not believe god really cares. I may have had many experiences. I am not afraid to talk about on certain occasions. Yet, I do not believe they really mean anything. The goal is to awaken. I do not believe there is any other goal. I hear what you are saying in your post and I am deeply moved. I am deeply concerned for the future of the human race. I hope that we can stabalize something.In order to bridge us to a new way of life.
how amazing when we experience these profound revelations of consciousness. such a positive life force to move forward with. there is so much negative stuff at this time in history and through the past. such a relief to feel the lightness of being. while engaged in my spiritual practice, and even more so recently with enlightennext the future holds limitless unimaginable possibilities which manifest in unpredictable ways.
Thank you for your wonderful insights,
Dear Andrew,
Since a near-death experience as a child I’ve been looking for someone who “knew” what I knew and in 1997, when friends first took me to hear “this Andrew guy” speak they told me he would scare me down to my toes. Well, to the contrary, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was jumping out of my skin with joy because I had finally met another human being who “knew”. Who really “knew” and here he was. I knew I wasn’t crazy! You were proof! That was the greatest day of my life!
Inexplicable subtlety, subtlety way beyond imagination but you “know” and you have never wavered and have given everything for it and I know that you would die for it if you had to. I can’t thank you enough for being true to the Truth for all of us. You are truly an inspiration and you show us all how it is done.
With love, Mary Anne
�More than once I wondered if I was mad or crazy, because it was pretty clear that nobody was seeing the miraculous possibility that I was seeing. I experienced many dark nights of the soul and struggled often with doubt.�
This really struck a chord with myself and my wife. In our work we have noticed that when an individual expresses interest in evolving, there emerges an intuition of this phase of awakening you mention here, and it is in the face of this resistance that they will often turn tail and run back to the world of the unhealthy-ego.
Falling through the well of melancholy is often misinterpreted by the separate self as a permanent aspect of human existence. But, when the focus shifts to the Witness, the overwhelming realization is that when gratitude is no longer being clung to, the willingness to express the passion of being fully human in awakened relationships becomes entirely possible.
In profound gratitude of your service to the humanity!
It’s evolution itself!
Again, thank you for your unrelenting passion and intelligence in continuing to ground us and coax us to live like we’ve never lived before. I am also seeing this unrelenting passion in the eyes of your students, of whom I am so grateful to live in the presence of, who help me not to forget.
I appreciate the work that you are doing, and you are attracting people who share your sense of urgency and those who value your pushing towards �creating the future� as evolutionaries. Evolving our collective consciousness with your leadership and work.
However, I wish to play �devil�s advocate� and perhaps you will clarify and respond on the viewpoint
I offer here, and answer my question.
Why the urgency?
I know much of humanity appears to be insane, in chaos, primitive, and mostly operating on the surface of �mind� operating from duality and ego, evolving slowly but with the potential to self-destruct.
It depends on how one looks at it. Maybe this world of souls being humans are here to experience this �insanity�, to experience over and over again what the egoic duality attracts, until we each finally learn our Life lessons and our soul becomes liberated. Then perhaps we are able to move on to another plain � if that is �how it works�.
Maybe we each need to experience pain, suffering and the contrasts of happiness and sadness in this �material� world. Some say we are privileged to be here and have this experience, however crazy it may appear to be. This is where we can gain wisdom. This, some believe, is what we �requested� as souls needing/attracting certain Life experiences in order to evolve.
Who can say that any of it is �not OK� as it is?
Synchrodestiny seems to be operating on this planet. The Kosmos responds by default to every thought and feeling that vibrates from us. Once we know that, and once we understand how duality and ego operate, we know that each of us is MORE than their dualities, even if many do not know it themselves.
We know that each one of us is the Whole, each ‘self’ has deep within us an eternal essence. We can then communicate from that eternal essence and honor the experiences of duality that are expressing themselves around us, and drop or dissolve our personal resistances to this, surrender to the ISness of it. All this amazing diversity and every amazing creation is part of the same Kosmos, and all �spiritual� is it not?
So who or what are you out to save before time runs out? Humanity? For if there is an urgency about this task, then there must be an experience of �time� and its� limitations to stimulate that urgency.
Why all this attention on a future that is not real and not here?
Is �everything OK� on this planet? Is this world of �humans� evolving at its own desired pace, which could be honored while every stage of evolution is allowed and accepted by those of us with some awareness, who are able to lovingly grant beingness to all. Can we continue to hold a space for consciousness to view itself from every angle, however horrific this perception might appear to be?
Now I am going to be really cheeky (but I do love you) and ask � Andrew, is this urgent mission of yours really �the emperor�s clothes�, draped over some �personal resistance� about time limits relating to the ‘future’ evolution of consciousness (or lack of) that Andrew Cohen himself is not acknowledging?
Does it have to be accomplished before you die? I don’t understand.
Or perhaps this gift of the linear time experience is also with us to invoke the sense of urgency that helps motivate us to evolve?
Maybe��.. Perhaps all of the above is true. I don�t know but I am interested in your view and the views of others.
In appreciation,
"what I was seeing all that time has now emerged and become stable between enough of us to make all the difference in the universe. We�re not coming and going anymore. We�ve arrived. And the reason this means everything to me is that it means we can finally move forward”.
ok…
what is the plan?
what are you and your students actually doing?
And you are helping us arrive and move forward. It seems that all my life, i.e for over 35 years, I have been looking for a way to put it all together, a way that makes sense of our lives at all levels, and with yours and Ken Wilber’s teachings we finally have found a beginning.
Andrew, my profound belief is that we not only have arrived but that moving forward to create a new and different world will radically shake the structures of the old one in a far greater way than the collapse of the world banks or the United Kingdom’s trust in it’s politicians.
I was at your talk in St Andrew’s Church in Cheltenham yesterday evening. I am the lady that asked for your thoughts on developmental theory and levels of consciousness. I very much appreciate and believe the reply that you gave me; and with all due respect it was a standard reply. I believe that as you stated the more healthy we become at whatever level then the better; and the more healthy we become the greater the chance that we could disintegrate heathily from one level and wobble into the next and higher level rather than do a Darth Vader move. We cannot become more healthy, nor can we evolve without the structures that hold that healthy evolution. Without structures that hold it it is simply a state experience that does not become a permanent trait.
I also totally understand that as yet all evidence shows that we must go through all levels; not skipping any, even though we may limp along a little as we retain some unresolved trauma and shadow elements from lower levels. This evidence is gathered from what has been, from the past but what if that does not have to be how it is in in the future?
Life evolved such that mammals are not born as an egg and then hatched but hatch in the womb and then are born. Evolution has allowed that human babies are born with a level of intelligence that enables them to start making sense of things very rapidly. When they are born they already have a fully developed nervous system and Cerebrum and are able to think. What if as we evolve to become aware, to become Conscious, that in itself creates structures that will enable humans to be born already at a higher level? What if it is only our own structures of consciousness that cannot hold this and therefore don’t allow for it as yet?
I have no way of proving this, neither do I altogether know why it is such a strong conviction of mine but I believe we are at, or reaching an evolutionary jump point and that old structures of consiousness may also disintegrate and be replaced by new ones. I meet many people in their late twenties or early thirties who clearly are at higher levels of consciousness; they do not seem to follow the developmental patterns of reach your mid twenties and stop developing until you have a mid life crisis around 50. Indeed you did not follow that pattern! All around me, in tradditional orange businesses, people surprise me regarding how they are feeling the urgency for the world to change but don’t know to what. They only know it is not about them but is bigger than them. This amount of creative energy moving surely must have an astounding effect.
Thankyou again for the talk last night. I greatly appreciated it. I truly am feeling ‘ecstatic urgency’ which is much greater than I am. Then again, may be I also am mad or crazy
Still some work to do Andrew..
As you very well know..
Thank you for efforts and dedication and for reminding so many people that living out our true essence of being truly IS not only better but simpler.
There IS a ‘higher we’. An untainted version of (all) our true self’s.
Existing as part of this Earth All. Regardless of any and all ‘circumstances’ - and time.
Nameste
This extraordinary ordinary resonates in me. How you touch people and then hold out the living reality of your vision is a unprecedented example that gives me hope and encouragement to meet others in this shared utopia. I yearn constantly to meet in this mutual field of our joint consciousness. There is a unknown secret that allows for access without disclosure. Unbeknown to many this joy and love is a steady reminder that it’s not far away. You make it known. How we all should be grateful for your efforts and patience. Much love, Bjorn
It is as if in being to pay the price, others can finally follow - conciousness is not so dense and the rainbow is prevelant in day to day life now.
Like you I am finally feeling and knowing the shift in others who are ready and able to make the comitment to knowing themselves deeply and totally.
Thank-you Andrew and all of those willing to make this a viable living choice for mankind
I’m infinitely pleased if we have, indeed, arrived, but I have to wonder: when did the waves cease crashing and retracting, and to what do you point as evidence that the enlightened states are here to stay?
This is such an extraordinary validation of evolutionary enlightenment. To see other partners finally holding teachings in this radical message will surely now start the unstoppable forest fire.
Seems fascinating, I can’t say I’m interested in the movement, but it would be great to see what it is that you’ve been working on for so long looks like. I’m curious though, how do you intend for this movement to live on past the life span of you and those involved?
Thank you, Andrew! It will be wonderful to see you in TUscany.
With Love,
Carl.
i have recently had a huge awakening and am lost in where now. i live in adelaide australia and would love some advice. cheers