Evolutionary Enlightenment
Creating Heaven on Earth
Aug 25th
Gen Ys road tripping the Being & Becoming Retreat
On Monday, we finished the second annual Being & Becoming Retreat with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen. On the first day of this retreat, Andrew told all 300 people there was an audacious goal for the ten days that we would spend together—to create heaven on earth. Andrew described this 21st century heaven as a place where everyone is sane, happy, rational, very, very inspired and where everyone surprises each other with the leaps forward they take every day.
In those ten days, that miraculous vision became a reality. Everyone on the retreat was transformed, and in my own experience the amount of joy, clarity and the sense that anything is possible was profound.
After the retreat, 7 of us younger Gen Ys decided to take a road trip together. We rented a gigantic Chevy Yukon and we’ll be driving and blogging around Colorado for the next week to continue creating heaven on earth and see what it takes for people are age to be generators of this kind of possibility.
We’ll be posting multiple updates throughout the day, so keep reading and let us know what you think!
Love — Eric, Reid, Emily, Bergen, Tineke, Spencer & Jeremy
Fate, Synchronicities and Volitionality
Jun 11th
For some strange reason, perhaps because I’ve always lived very close to my dreams and authentic creative impulses, I’m someone who’s become accustomed over time to experiencing synchronicities on a regular and ongoing basis. It’s baffled me at times, thinking that there might be something out there talking to me and telling me what to do, yet over and over again, when I try to follow whatever these messages seem to be telling me, I’m usually left even more confused than when I started when I’m left empty handed in the end. Luckily I’ve developed the maturity and come to a place now where I generally just leave these events alone and let them pass, which is the same position that I cultivate in relationship to my thoughts while meditating (a practice I’ve developed through Andrew Cohen’s teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment).
You can see the postmodern (individualistic ‘everything is about me’ way of being) conditioning I carry in those earlier responses, when I’ve thought synchronicities seem to be telling me something about myself. Within those interpretations, there’s also a sense that I am the star of a surreal mystery movie and everything that is happening is just part of a film I’m starring in. When I’m constantly faced with the fact that my imagination in relationship to these events simply ran wild into no man’s land, I’m confronted with the fact that everything actually isn’t about me at all, not even these synchronicities.
Read the rest of this entry »
Spiritual Struggle Is Not a Bad Thing
Dec 30th
I was recently reading through the back posts on this blog and was struck by how many of them are about entitlement, narcissism and the need to be making serious effort. Because these topics aren’t talked about too often, the experience of reading all these posts was a little bit like getting yelled at without fully understanding why it was happening. But since I’ve been seeing why it’s so important to understand these issues in my own life recently, I thought I’d try to clarify a bit—because Merge is meant to be an inspiration for taking charge of creating a better future, not just a beat-down of the post-modern Gen Y self 
Life is difficult. In particular, trying to change oneself is extremely challenging. Some societies are very deliberate in emphasizing this fact. In Buddhist countries people are brought being told stories about monks who had to scrub floors and carry water up hills for years on end before they had made enough effort begin the process of spiritual transformation. Read the rest of this entry »
Meditation as a means to Consciously Evolve!
Dec 16th
In an evolutionary context, meditation is seen as a means to a higher end. At the same time, paradoxically, we meditate for its own sake with no expectation to gain anything from our efforts. It becomes more and more apparent that over time, through our determined and dedicated practice, a greater purpose for meditating is awakened within us that absolutely transcends the personal. We start to see that as we go beyond our separate sense of self, or ego, it enables us to more fully align with and take responsibility for the part of us that is none other than the driving force of the Universe.
By transcending the limiting parts of ourselves in meditation that come in the form of thoughts, feelings, memories, and time, we awaken to a deeper dimension of the Self that is limitless. As we give more weight and attention to the Self Absolute, or the ever-present Ground of Being, it becomes our fundamental reference point for acting in the world. When we are no longer acting on behalf of the limited ego, we become vehicles through which the creative passion of the evolutionary impulse, or Authentic Self, that emerged from that empty Ground fourteen billion years ago, is free to express itself in this world. Read the rest of this entry »
Spiritual Transformation Is Not a Psychological Process
Oct 28th
Here’s a recent quote from spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen that we thought was powerful, thought provoking, and worthy of some serious discussion:
Spiritual Transformation Is Not a Psychological Process
Authentic spiritual or mystical transformation is not a psychological process. Mystical teachings go deeper than that—they refer to the nature of consciousness and the structure of our deepest interiors. They are not just helpful psychological principles and practices invented by the human mind—they point us to the discovery of natural or inherent laws that become apparent to anyone who awakens to the deeper and more subtle dimensions of the interior of the cosmos. All authentic teachings that come from mystical insight are really describing subtle principles, structures, and laws that already exist in your own deepest interior, which is the interior of the evolving cosmos we are living in. Most people don’t awaken in such a way that they are able to perceive these subtle laws or structures, so when they hear mystical teachings they interpret them as injunctions or instructions. And they can be used in that way. But they really represent a deeper and more subtle dimension of reality itself. And when you begin to look at mystical or enlightenment teachings as laws and subtle structures that actually exist, your relationship to them changes significantly. You realize that if these are actual laws or structures, rather than ideas that someone came up with, then they represent an absolute truth, and if there is any integrity in your self and soul, you have to deal with them. So then these principles become the path, and you walk in a straight line. And you will see development occur. If you adhere to them, you can’t go wrong.
Andrew Cohen
I Can’t Live Without It
Jun 17th
On this past Friday’s Howie Rose Show (Burlington, VT), we hosted classical flutist, jazz musician, and senior student of Andrew Cohen’s teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment Rodrigo Tarraza to speak about meditation and why he can’t live without it. Specifically, we wanted to know about the relationship between meditation and creativity.
What he had to say was both moving and surprising. According to Tarraza, meditation and creativity are both completely related and completely unrelated. Rodrigo spoke about how when he meditates he really doesn’t care about being creative at all and that when he’s engaged in the act of creativity, he isn’t focused on coming from any kind of meditative state. Making this distinction is important, he said, because in order to be fully creative or fully immersed in the emptiness of the ground of being in meditation, you need to be able to give your self completely to both. He stated over and over again how in meditation you have to be willing to go all the way, to let go of the world and the mind completely, for the sake of meditation itself.
Perhaps his most interesting point he made was that there have been many extraordinarily creative people who have never meditated before. And there are many profound meditators who are not creative. But for him, the committed practice of meditation has helped to cultivate a deep trust in life that allows for a new way of being and most importantly, creates the space for a new way of working creatively with others. This topic is so significant for us postmodern narcissists, because as Rodrigo pointed out, our minds are crazy!
Make sure to watch the short video clip of Rodrigo speaking to Andrew Cohen about meditation at a retreat all set against a backdrop of him performing with his jazz fusion band, Unfulfilled Desires. It’s very cool.
Out of the Swamp Radio Show (6/05/09): The Kosmocentric Perspective
Jun 6th
On this past Friday’s Howie Rose Show on Burlington, Vermont’s community radio station, The Radiator, EnlightenNext’s Diane Bensel and Joel Pitney spoke with their hosts about why it’s important to have a cosmology and described what the kosmocentric perspective on reality is.
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