Andrew Cohen - N° 17 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec. 24 _ Feb. 25

The awakening to enlightened awareness, the awakening of consciousness beyond ego gives us the experience of a new beginning. That's why it's enlightenment is so important right now. So what that means is no matter what may have happened in your life, no matter what may have happened to you up until this point, whether you're a young man or an old man, young woman or an old woman, from the perspective of enlightened awareness, all things are still possible for you. The ego doesn't feel that way. The ego feels that I failed at this, I failed at that, this didn't work, and that didn't work. So my time is running out. There's no hope for me. God doesn't love me. But in the awaken to enlightened awareness in the flash of higher consciousness, we direct the experience a part of us has never been hurt, wounded or traumatized, victimized by anything where all things are still possible. No matter what your ego tells you about yourself, the ego for most of us is full of negative self judgment. This isn't possible. That's not possible. I can't do this. I can't do this. I failed at this. I failed at that. Right? So when you awaken to enlightened awareness, you realize in a flash of awareness that all things are still possible. Infinite possibilities exist before you. And if you're infused with that kind of energy and that kind of intelligence, that kind of spiritual self-confidence, we can move mountains and change the world. Does the world need to be changed right now? I think so. But if we're going to change the world, we need the energy and intelligence. We need to awaken to the energy and intelligence within us that'll make it possible for us to change the world. Right? Most people feel, well, the world needs to change, but I don't have the strength to do it. I don't have the energy to do it. I don't have the spiritual self-confidence to do it. So the reason that enlightenment is important now is not so you can be happy. It's not so you can be happy but so the world can receive the benefit of your liberation. It's a different motivation for liberation. So enlightenment in my way of thinking becomes important and for new reasons because the world desperately needs liberated hearts, minds, and souls to help transform the whole mess that we're all in together. So it's not enlightenment for me and my happiness. Enlightenment for the sake of the evolution of the consciousness of the whole world. The old enlightenment was about my enlightenment. What I call the old enlightenment, the old vanta going off to a cave and cultivating my own perfect freedom, my own happiness. irregardless of the state of the world. In the old enlightenment, we can let the world go to hell. It doesn't matter because we're free. But in the new enlightenment involves the necessity of us becoming bodhic sattas, which means we care more about the evolution of consciousness and the evolution of the co the cosmos than we do about ourselves. So the spiritual life and spiritual practice becomes a great noble endeavor, transformative endeavor. We're trying to make we're trying to transform the interior of the whole universe and make it a more livable place, a happier place and more sane place. Right? So then living a spiritual life then becomes a moral obligation. I have to do this for everyone else's sake, for our sake, not for my sake. That's why I call the teaching evolutionary enlightenment, not the evolution of the interior of the cosmos. And the evolution the interior of the cosmos won't evolve unless you want it to through you. So in this way of thinking, enlightenment becomes a personal spiritual obligation, not something I'd like to do or something that would be nice for me. Wouldn't that be nice? If I went to India and got enlightened, it's not it's not it's not about what's good for me. It's what's it's about a higher purpose. The discovery of a higher purpose in life where we find nobility, dignity, self-respect, purpose, cosmic purpose, and a raise on death to a reason to exist. Right? If you go downtown and ask a lot of people why they're here, they why they exist. They have say, "I have no idea." Why are you here? I have no idea. What do you think God wants you to be doing? I have no idea. I don't know if God exists and God doesn't exist. I certainly doesn't know what he wants me to be doing. Because from a perspective of evolutionary enlightenment, what we do and why we're doing it is the most important thing. Not how we feel or what we think. What we're doing and why we're doing it is the most important thing, not how we feel or what we think. Does that make sense? So the spiritual enlightenment gives us the power to do the right thing for the right reasons at the right time because we're not afraid anymore of life. Not afraid of our own mind, not afraid of anybody else's mind anymore. But we become uh inspired spiritual warriors for a higher purpose. Sounds very romantic, but it's true. If we've got the courage, you have to have the courage to take yourself seriously for the right reasons. Most people take themselves seriously for all the wrong reasons, egoic reasons. So in the pursuit of enlightenment, awakening to enlightened awareness, we pursue take ourselves seriously for the right reasons. If you don't take yourself seriously, whoever whatever God is won't take you seriously either. You have to believe in yourself. Believe in your own value, your own worth, your own worthiness, your own inherent goodness. You have to believe in yourself. Nobody can do that for us. We have to believe in ourselves for oursel. We don't can't let leave it up to what other people think. What do you think about yourself? That's the most important thing. So in the spiritual transformation I'm speaking about you have to love yourself and believe in yourself for everyone else's sake not for your own sake not for your own happiness not for your own happiness so you can be a vehicle for transformation right and when you really take it out it becomes comes a a spiritual, metaphysical, moral obligation. Every day time becomes a gift through which we can live the dharma and make the world a better place. So we feel lucky to be alive because if through this life we're living, we've been given. We can practice the dharma and through practicing the dharma for the sake of a higher purpose, we can make the world a better place. That becomes our reason for living. So now we have a reason to exist. And when you have a reason to exist, you feel grateful for the gift of love and grateful for the opportunity to make a difference. So you see, thinking like this fills in all the gaps. Then you don't have to think about your neurosis anymore, your fears, your doubts, your traumas, your insecurities. They don't matter anymore. When we stop thinking about oursel and our woundedness and start thinking about everyone else and the interior of the universe, we start feeling a lot better. Postmodern psychological disease called narcissism is a most of us are narcissists is a result of too much time to think about the ego. too much time to think about me. If you keep thinking about your ego, you're going to go drive yourself crazy. Eventually, you'll have to go see a therapist and you're going to lo spend a lot of money. So the miracle of enlightenment is that the the the deepest part of you what's called the self ra calls the self is already free already whole already liberated. This is what most people don't believe that the self is already liberated. Doesn't have to be liberated. It's already liberated right now. You just have to find it. When you find it, you realize that the self you truly are has always already been liberated, waiting for you to discover it. But it's looking in the wrong direction, which is outside. Let's look inside. You follow? It's a big shock when you realize it's always been the case. I've always already been free at the level of the self, but I didn't even know it. I thought I was trapped. I thought I was miserable. I thought I was stuck. But I never really was. Isn't that ironic? Is that painfully ironic? So this is why with the enlightenment approach, freedom doesn't have to be cultivated. It has to be discovered. Discovering what has always already the case. It's always been that way. The rational mind won't accept it. Won't believe it. If what you're saying is true, why am I so unhappy? Because you don't see it. The minute you see it, you'll be happy in a second. And it's not about overcoming anything. It's about seeing in the deepest truth that exists. I always make the distinction like Tibetans do between relative reality and absolute reality. So your ego lives in a world called relative reality. yourself exists in a world of absolute reality. Relative reality is relatively real, absolute reality is absolutely real. So while relative reality, the world of your ego is real, the world of absolute reality, the world of the self is absolutely real, which means it's much more real than than the ego is real. When you discover that, you let go of the false self, of your attachment to the false self, because you realize it's only relatively real. It's not absolutely real. It's not absolutely real. It's only relatively real. But my true self is absolutely real. It's trustworthy. It's solid. All I've got to do is do it sooner rather than later. How long does it take? How long does it take? How many times do we have to wake up and see the distinction between the relative reality and absolute reality? to finally believe it and accept that it's absolutely true. Do we need to wake up one time? Brahman woke up once. Do we wake up need to wake up 10 times or a 100 times? A lot of people these days wake up but they always fall back to sleep. So if you wake up for real, you have to test your awakening. And the testing is done. Making sure you don't fall back to sleep. Even if you're under pressure, you stay awake no matter what. Not easy, but it's got to be done for everyone else's sake. How's the master doing today? I'm sorry, he's sleeping. So the personal awakening is just the beginning of the path. In my way of thinking, we all have to become bodhicattas sooner rather than later. Which means seeking enlightenment for a higher purpose for the sake of the whole universe, never for ourselves alone. It requires a huge amount of renunciation. A huge amount of renunciation. What would happen if you woke up every day and you realized that the fate of the interior of the universe, the whole cosmos was depending upon you and you weren't crazy? Most people think that way could probably be seen as being quite crazy, very pathologically narcissistic. But what if you weren't crazy, but you felt this huge burden on your shoulders? Not my will but thy will be done. Right? Not for me but for all of us. So when you think about your life, do you think about your personal life in terms of your future? Do you think about your own personal future? What's going to make you happy? What do you think will make you happy? Or do you think about deeper things? There's relative happiness and absolute happiness. Relative happiness has a beginning and an end. Absolute happiness has no beginning and no ending to it. It's absolute. It's supreme. In the awakening to enlightened awareness bestows upon us supreme happiness. There's nothing higher and deeper, more real. The experience of supreme happiness relieves us of all desire, not anything else. And when you experience supreme happiness, you know what you're experiencing because everything else disappears. Does all desire disappears because you're so fulfilled. And the difference between that kind of experience is because what you're experiencing is not just a state of consciousness, but it's a danger of reality itself. So you're temporarily totally aligned with resistance with the totality of reality. Makes you supremely happy. That's the state where you say I'm I know everything. You wouldn't say it out loud because people think you're crazy, but that's what you still think because in that state, you know, you actually that's what it feels like you know everything or you're having the experience of knowing everything. Not everything in the form of thoughts. but of knowing absolute knowing of the totality of reality. So that kind of knowing relieves you all the burdens you're carrying, all the doubts, all the fears, all the dual, all the duality, all the bad memories, all the resentment, all the woundedness just disappears. But then once you have that kind of experience as I've been explaining to be able to sustain it you have to respond to it. You have to become a giver not a taker in terms of a a mythic fantasy. Imagine if God's whoever whoever God is. Imagine he or she's watching waiting for us to wake up waiting for us to care. So try and imagine what it would be like to know everything but have no thought. When you would be having the experience of knowing everything but there wasn't any thought. It's transational cognition. You're having the experience of knowing everything. You don't think anything. That's the state of freedom. So what you're knowing then is not something you're knowing nothing. Metaphorically nothing. Nothing is the absence of something but it's not nothing. So it's the everything in the nothing where the spiritual power comes from and there's nothing left out. Everything is included right now. Right now. Right now. No future involved. If you want to be liberated, you have to let go of the future. So you make room for this knowledge to reveal itself to you now, which means all your plans have to disappear because they all exist in the future, making room for the infinite inside yourself. So, I know that some of what I'm saying sounds too good to be true, but I'm not exaggerating. I'm speaking from my own experience. What I'm saying is actually true. It's real and it's available to anybody who wants it. Badly enough, all you have to do is give up the future. That's all. Small price to pay for liberation. It's only everything from the ego's point of view anyway.