Andrew Cohen - N° 22 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec. 24 _ Feb. 25

Most people who have a sudden experience can't can't sustain it. So I think it's better to support sudden awakening with gradual awakening with consistent practice and study and introspection and spiritual work. We can learn how to drive the car manually when it starts moving automatically. Then we're ready to let go of the wheel because there's two there's two approaches. One is spontaneous consciousness awakening to spontaneous flow consciousness. One's a manual manipulation of consciousness. We want to get good at both. Which means we're prepared to make effort when effort is necessary. We're prepared to let go unconditionally when that's what's called for. So some people are very rigid on either side. So my guru was bundi and he was the sudden awakening guy and from his perspective sudden awakening and spontaneous enlightenment is the highest truth and the only truth and anything else is fake wasn't the real thing. We can have some hardcore Zen practitioners who feel unless unless we practice hard work and selfdiscipline and rigorous practice it's not the real thing. So I think everybody's right. A complete path in my opinion would think would contain both. We're ready for whatever happens. We're ready to let go if that's what's necessary. We're ready to do the hard work if that's what's called for makes sense. We got all our bases covered because then because if we're going to sustain the state of enlightened awareness, we're going to have to be willing to give everything to succeed. So, we have to be very big-hearted and big-minded about how it's all gonna unfold and ready for anything. I believe if we're convinced that we want to do this and we're convinced we're going to succeed and nobody can stop us, including life circumstances. But if we're if we have too many preferences, which is not a new idea, they're never going to make it. There are a lot of people in tu with my guru had really powerful spontaneous higher state experiences in his presence that were really profoundly transformative for them temporarily and it lasted for a while but then they kind of fell out of heaven. They fell out of that state and a lot of them don't know what to do with themselves. What what do I do now that I've seen now that I've had the awakening experience in such a profound way that I'm convinced it's the most real and beautiful thing that's ever happened to me but I've lost touch with it. What do I do now? Buji is gone. So many of them remain kind of lost and lost in the desert which is sad and painful. So Punju was the best at what he did. He was the best sudden awakening teacher I've ever seen. Not that I've seen everybody, but I have never heard of anybody more radical and outrageous. And he was very few people can sustain that kind of absolute position for very long. So I I'm a firm believer that it's up to us and I believe that the foundation of the spiritual life lived in earnest is the the cultivation of the unconditional absolute irrevocable intention to be unconditionally liberated in this life no matter what. If we can cultivate that absolute intention and willing to back it up with action we're going to succeed. As I said before, nobody able to stop us. But uh I think the notion of what you we're calling absolute liberation is kind of a little bit dangerous way to speak cuz what is absolute liberation anyway? Either we either there's a profound degree of liberation that that's more or less constant or there isn't. But as long as we're functioning through through a body, mind and personality that is manifest and subject to changing conditions, the idea of absolute liberation is a little bit hard to see what that would actually mean. So one of the things I'd like to say is that the experience of unconditioned consciousness is the experience of unconditional liberation because the nature of consciousness is liberation. So the nature of consciousness itself is perfect. It's an experience but we can never be be that perfection. So we can experience perfection but we can never be it. So the the nature of consciousness has to always is perfect and unconditionally liberated as you say that's the nature of consciousness as it is. But it's impossible for us to be perfect expressions of perfect liberation because our body minds and personalities our works in progress are far from perfect. So what ends up happening is the result is some combination of the relationship between absolute consciousness and its and its expression of perfection liberation and the imperfection of our body, minds and personalities. How that all looks when it goes together. So some people look great and they look great consistently over periods of long periods of time. Some people look great for a few weeks and then they then they crash and burn. But what happened? It was all going great and I don't know what happened. I slipped and toe. So we have to be careful I think with this notion of unconditional liberation or perfect liberation or fully liberating. It's a dubious concept. To me it's a mythic idea that's been outdated because a profound state of enlightened awareness is can be comparable to to another state of enlightened awareness in another person. So we can be more or less enlightened because we can more enlightened or less enlightened than someone else. But to be perfectly liberated as long as we're engaged with this body, mind and personality is kind of a dubious concept. Doesn't really make sense to me. So how well can we do in the context of this body, mind, and personality that is inherently imperfect? It's a vehicle and it's a work in progress. Hopefully, it's an evolving work in progress. It's developing and becoming more conscious and more self-aware and more in control of itself if we're doing our practice well. But it's always going to be a relative attainment in that case. Consciousness itself is not relative. But in the nature of the attainment of liberation, it's always going to be relationship to the body, mind, and personality. Yeah. So I know there's the Buddhist concept of the reaching the yand shore. I've arrived on the other on the yand shore. I never return to return again to samsara. That's the idea of kind of a final attainment of a of a Buddha or arant. And with yoga and vanta there's the idea of the jan mta. So these are these are all notions of what it means to have arrived. So I think of I think of the idea of having arrived. If we would reach what we could speculatively call 51% on the other side that 51% identified with my true nature, with my true self, with my authentic self, with the God impulse in myself, more than 51% and not less than 51% is enough to be on the other side, to realize some degree of stabilization on the other side. A lot of people have glimpses, temporary glimpses. So they know they're nowhere near 50%. They're usually around 20%, 25%, 30%. Which means there's a powerful degree of spiritual self-confidence because of the kinds of experiences they had. So they believe in God. They realized in their own god nature, but they're not necessarily stabilized on the other side of 51%. So I think the stabilization begins to become a possibility where we cross the 51% mark. Then we want to build on that and go to 60 65 70%. It's more I think it's more reasonable or realistic because if I say anybody who really wants to can get to 51%. That's reasonable because anybody who really wants to can get to 100%. Very unlikely. I don't I don't know if 100% actually ever existed any body mind and personality. So we're working with with odds here and we get to see how well do we do. How well did I do today? How well did I do yesterday? How well did I do last year? How well did I do 10 years ago? How well did I do my last lifetime? So it's a developmental process of becoming more capable and more conscious and more enlightened. Hopefully it's a new way to think about all this. is for taking evolutionary principles in mind and applying it to the context of moa and enlightenment. We want to be as reasonable as possible while striving for the highest at the same time. That's my approach. Because if we're very idealistic or we're reaching very high, we'll be really testing our limits, testing our capacity, our spiritual capacities, reaching for the stars. If we don't reach for the stars, we'll never get to 51% anyway. So, we want to reach as high as we can, be very reasonable about what we're trying to do. And uh finally, we want to make sure that we succeed. That's important. Well, the way I make decisions is through this first principle of the teaching which is clarity of intention. I want to be free more than anything else. Enlightenment comes first. I won't let anything interfere with that. So then all the relevant questions in my personal life come up as always in relation to that equation. Do you want to go to point A or point B? Will that take me closer to my own liberation or bring me farther away? Do I want to make this choice or that choice? Will it take me closer, farther away? So, you need to become a fanatic. I I believe to succeed, to stay on track, onepointed fanatic, obsessed. In other words, if you become if you become a musician who's obsessed with becoming a great musician, you practice 10 hours a day, people think that's wonderful. But if you become obsessed with enlightenment or meditating 10 hours a day or going to see all these gurus for help, people think he's lost it. Because people don't take consciousness seriously or its promises all the promises and evolutionary promises inherent in consciousness. But we need to become a onepointed fanatic and then these the decisions you make will all be supporting your primary choice, primary direction. So the ego is always seeking what's going to be more pleasant for me. If you want to be free, it's got nothing to do with what makes things more pleasant. In other words, illumin makes things more real, more absolute, more unconditionally real. And who's ready for a life like that? Very few people. I want to feel more comfortable. I don't want to be free. I want to feel a little bit more comfortable. That's not freedom. That's a life of fear. As human beings, as fully embodied human beings, we're subject to certain kinds of cravings and desires and get hungry and thirsty. We need to sleep and crave for human contact. So these kind of naturally arising biological psychological needs are not inherently any expression of any lack of liberation. So when we hear some of these more extreme versions of no craving, no desire, no, it doesn't sound human anymore. It sounds like some kind of strange cut off state when becomes impervious to life and to life. So it to me it doesn't really make sense. It's it's too extreme. And I think human beings have done a lot of damage to themselves trying to experience it in a state of desirelessness. Now the thing is the state of samadei itself the state of the state of transcendental awareness makes us feel so happy and so full that we stop desiring other things except to be in that state. So that to me would be a positive expression of the desirelessness. What's the most meaningful picture of liberation that includes the fullness of our humanity that doesn't exclude it, but it fully embraces it? Doesn't doesn't try to erase it. Doesn't feel it's wrong to be human, wrong to have certain kinds of feelings and natural desires and yearnings. So, we have to figure that out. I'm sure if we had a reasonable conversation, we could probably come to some pretty good conclusions. It's when it's when we're out of balance, when the system is out of balance and out of integrity to certain cravings become too extreme and we get in this distorted, unh wholesome addictive states and consciousness that which we hurt ourselves to hurt other people or not in a state of balance or integrity in body, mind and soul. So what's the most balanced relationship between being and becoming between the inherent freedom of these higher states and our striving to become a more integrated human being? That makes more sense. But I think the idea of being a disembodied consciousness, it's free from any kind of bodily sensations or psychological or emotional preferences is insane. And from my point of thinking, it's a preodern idealistic picture of of a time in human history when people were having a lot of trouble accepting their biological experience. They felt that sex was some something dirty or something very disruptive. That doesn't make any sense anymore. Crazy kind of patriarchal extremism which is very anti-life and dangerous. So what it would look like when what I'm advocating would be profound balance and integration as a natural state in compar comparison to most people a state of profound integration and wholeness stable state of happiness and well-being a reasonable degree of self-control and clarity of mind and a very positive self- reggard. Does that make sense? So the new ideal therefore should be integration, the wholeness, sanity in a context that's very life affirming. A lot of the traditional ideas about enlightenment I feel are historically outdated. So now is a time in history where it's very much about embracing our humanity, not resisting it, but what does it mean to fully embrace it in the context of conscious liberation? It's a very profound question. Nobody knows the full answer to that question, but that's what's on the table. So one extreme that a lot of people go to is in the effort to become more fully embodied is an over identification with our emotional and psychological states of consciousness, with our feelings and our woundedness and all this kind of thing. making too big a deal out of it. So how can we embrace the challenge of being an awakened human being with all the inherent complexity involved with that and not get trapped in the complexity but be an expression of wholeness and sanity and integration in spite of all the comp complexity that we all are become trustworthy and uh beautiful. This is a beautiful human being. They must be enlightened. They're so beautiful. I want to be around them because of the fullness and the integrity of their nature.