Andrew Cohen - N° 1 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec. 24 | Feb. 2025

It's easy to think about something. It's hard to think about nothing. For the true seeker after enlightenment, nothing becomes an absolute metaphysical reference point that you think about all the time. Not nothingness, zeroness. And you know about it because you've been meditating every day. you're very familiar with at zero point and something you feel emotionally very comfortable with it feels so free. So if you're doing serious spiritual practice this nothingness will become place you feel very much at home. It's not new to you. It's very familiar. It's like your parents like your mother. If you're not emotionally familiar with nothingness, with the awareness of eternity, if you're not familiar with nothingness, the ego gets very frightened by it because the ego gets very frightened when it can't locate itself. Most people have a GPS. So the ego's always self-locating. I'm here. I was there. So now I'm here and I intend to go there. So I always know where I am in time and space and history. in my story. As long as I know where I am, where I've been, where I'm going in my story, I feel confident. So when you have a revelation of nothingness, the GPS disappears and you don't know where you are anymore. You can't see yourself in relationship to any other place because you're now you're suddenly everywhere and nowhere. So if you're attached to your ego's identity, that will feel very scary. If you're attached to your ego's identity, it's going to feel scary. If you're not attached to ego's identity and you want to be free, I want to be free. It feels like freedom itself now. And if you if you're very serious, you become addicted to that freedom. You become uh obsessed with it. You don't want to let anybody interfere with your freedom. What you experience is in infinite space. When you die, where are you going to go? When you're going to die, where are you going? To some to something or nothing? What's the first stop? Let's guess together. What's the first stop when you die? Glimpse of eternity. Before you get to look at your next karmic destination, when you die, what's the first stop? I imagine it's a glimpse of eternity, right? Can you handle it or we'd be too scared? In Tibetan book of the dead, they say a lot of people can't handle the glimpse of eternity. So all of the spiritual work we're doing and all the meditating we're doing, letting go of the mind, letting go of form, letting go of the world of form, letting go of our karmas, prepares us for death, prepares us for the leap into the unknown. And I'm being and I'm an evolutionary dharma teacher. So I'm quite convinced that all experience is part of a continuum. I don't know where the continuum ends and begins but I'm convinced that we're part of a continuum. If we're part of a continuum means the story is potentially an eternal one. So death is not the end of death. That means death is not the end of anything. Just turning a page. So if when you die you're freaking out emotionally and spiritually, you're going to be panicking. You'll be in a terrible state of consciousness. This is another reason we want to become very good at going from something to nothing and feeling very comfortable with the nothingness. Being very comfortable with it, feeling very free, very familiar. Oh, I know all about this. This is my happiest place. From this point of view, death isn't so bad. Matter of fact, it's a big relief, right?