Andrew Cohen - N°12 - LAST RETREAT - January 2025

So it's interesting that seems to be the what you're describing which makes sense to me that the experience of gross reality is a shock to to your system when you've been experiencing subtle reality. Makes sense. No, it's a good sign. Means you're going deep. Some people go so deep they enter into a state of more subtle consciousness and it takes time to come out of. It's not a bad thing. It just proves that you're going very deep. So you should just be you should just take time to come out of yourself and just take the time you need so you don't hurt yourself. Nothing wrong. It's it's a sign of your own depth being experienced. When you wake up, you start seeing more about reality. You said, "This is a journey from the gross to the subtle. From the subtle to the more subtle, and from the subtle to the more subtle, subtle to the more subtle. It seems like it's almost infinite, even though it's probably not. Well, you should follow it. See where it's going to take you. Sounds beautiful. Continue. Try to go a little deeper. See what's waiting for you. in your own depth because not everybody can go deep so easily. Most people find it very hard to go deeply into their own experience of their own consciousness because they're so distracted by the thoughts. So this if you're not so troubled by your thoughts and you can go deeper than most people can go more quickly. And remember as I keep repeating what I teach, enlightenment is the result of the transcendence of the mind with the thought stream. Very simple. That's how it happens. So as you're going deeper, keep letting go of thought. Keep letting go of gross objects. Then when you let go of all the gross objects and start letting go of the subtle objects, till there's none left, till there's nothing there anymore that you can locate as being separate from you and just try and stop thinking. See what happens. Just pay attention. That's all you have to do is pay attention and stop identifying with object. A subtle object can appear more fascinating than a gross object, but it's still an object. from the perspective of enlightenment. So as you go on this journey of ever greater depth, just keep trying to let go of everything which takes a lot of discipline and practice. You can find your own enlightenment this way. You should believe that because it's true. That's why I always tell everybody to take themselves seriously and take their own potential for liberation seriously. You should do that not as an ego trip but as this form of spiritual self-confidence and your journey. Depth inspires the aspiration for greater depth. Right. Oh, this is real. Wow, that's interesting. I always thought it was interesting, but I never believed it was real. Now I'm finding out this is real. Let me look more deeply into this. I always say we want to go from wrong relationship, unenlightenment to no relationship to right relationship. It's never just no relationship. No relationship just leaves you nowhere. Doesn't tell you what to do. Should I Should I get up? Should I sit down? Should I eat? Should I sleep? Should I laugh? Should I cry? Doesn't tell you anything. Just tells you to let go. doesn't tell you what to do once you've let go. So the right relationship answers the question what you should do once you've let go. What the right thing for you to do is you need that answer. Marriage, we all need that answer. So the teaching needs to give us that answer and it does. So we go from wrong relationship to no relationship to right relationship. It's a three-step process. This teaching does doesn't leave you alone with your ego figuring what to do next. That would be terrible to take everything away and then throw you in the desert by yourself and leave your let your ego decide what to do. That would be cruel. That would be absolute cruelty. So the teaching answers the question when it takes you from wrong relationship to no relationship which is what you're exploring to right relationship. The s the simple equation is if I want to be free more than anything else, what's the right thing for me to do? Should I go back to Israel? Should I stay in India? Do I want to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend? Do I want to get a job? Or do I want to go live in a cave? All these questions you can ask if you know what you want. If you don't know what you want, you don't know what to do. If you know what you want more than anything else, and you're very clear about it, you know what to do. You know what the right choice is to make. But if you don't know what you want, you don't know what to do. And the problem is for many of us, we're very lucky because we can do many things. I can go here. I can go there. I can have this. I can have that. I don't know what I want to do. I can do all these things. I'm very lucky, spoiled, postmodern individual. I can do so many things, but I don't know what I want. So, I don't know what to do. I feel burdened by the enormity of the choices I have. I don't feel they don't have to make me happy. They don't make me feel free. They don't make me feel powerful. They make me feel overwhelmed and burdened, right? That's this weird karma of this baby boomer generation and and your generation also. We're burdened by the luxury of having so much choice and opportunity instead of feeling liberated by and so fortunate. I'm the one of the luckiest people that's ever been born. I have so many choices. Our generation in history has had so many choices like we do. But we don't experience it as a gift. We experience it as a burden. So if you decide you truly want to be unconditionally free in the spiritual sense of what it means, then you'll know what choices to make and have something to work with. Do I want to be free more than anything else? Should I do this or should I do that? The answer should be pretty obvious. That's a direction. Then you make it practical. Well, what does it mean to be free? You keep on talking about wanting to be free more than anything else. What does it mean? Then we have to figure out what it means. And we all have to make up our mind what it means for us because we have to make practical choices about about life. We all have to make practical choices. We have to decide what's more important than other things and what what these choices actually mean. What does freedom look like besides it being a word and a feeling? What does it look like in relationship to the opportunities we have in life? What does it look like? I can say one thing, it looks good. But in relation to specific questions, in relation to our personal karmas, we have to struggle with what it means for us personally. And if you want to be free, you can say, well, what does freedom have to do with this issue, that issue, this desire, that desire? And we can figure it out very rationally and find out the way forward. You have to work for it, but then you'll be this is how you self author your life. This is how you take responsibility for your own karmas. And remember, we're all subject to the incredible multi-dimensional cultural conditioning of our own background and our own history. So very few of us experience freedom of choice. Because if we're so conditioned, you should do this, you should do that, you should do this, you shouldn't do that, you should do this, you shouldn't do that by your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, your grandparents, your culture, everybody's telling you what to do and how to do it and what life is all about. We don't have any time to figure it out for ourselves. So that the teaching makes a statement that it's possible to be free in the first place. I didn't know that it's possible to be free as a goal. Oh, very interesting. So first we discover it's possible to be unconditionally freed after spiritual attainment. And once you discover that level of your own experiencing, you want to find out what does it have to do with my human experience, money, sex, power, past, future, pain and suffering, joy. What does it have to do with real life? And you have to go through these questions yourself. Sort your life out. It's very doable. Then you take responsibility for creating your own future. Isn't that beautiful? If we do it, we have to do it. But the teaching gives us an opportunity, a possibility, a way to create our own destiny. We create it through conscious because making conscious choices if we do the work, take responsibility for it and not do what other people tell us to do because because they tell us to do it, including our friends, so-called friends. Modern India is very similar to modern Israel. So much pressure from the family, so much pressure from the culture of what you should do. It's hard to be independent under so much pressure from the culture and from the family. In India and in Israel, it's very hard. So much pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure. You should do this, you should do that, you have to do this, you have to do that. And it's hard under so much pressure to sort all this out on your own. Very difficult. But anyway, so the teaching presents this perennial possibility of enlightenment. It teaches us that enlightenment exists. It's possible to be free. That's what the teaching presents. It's it's a perennial truth. It's not it's thousands of years old. This discovery, the Buddhist discovery, Ram Mahari's discovery. It's possible to be free. Oh, it's possible to be free. Does that apply to me? Yes, it could apply to you if you're interested in it. Oh, really? I can be free. Even me? Yes, even you say. Oh, that's very exciting, very interesting. Then we get excited about it. Then we have to we have to ask ourel what it means to be free in relationship or to all these practical issues of life because the practical realities of life don't go away. They don't change just because we want to be free. We have to sort through them all. Otherwise, we're just going to end up doing something or other. Karmas will happen and we'll just adapt. A lot of people just end up adapting to the karmic circumstances of change rather than making big choices that determine their destiny. Right? Isn't that true? So, we don't want that to happen. Please God, don't let that happen. I don't want to be a victim. It's much easier to just let it happen than to do it. The revelation of the possibility of enlightenment opens the door to infinite choices to be free, which is so beautiful. That's why what the word represents is so profound. It's so creative. It's so liberating. It doesn't just mean happiness. It means there's a way forward. That makes sense. That's why it's so beautiful. It's unique to each one of us. You see how life is so gracious. This is what I said the other day. We're not alone here. There is a way forward if we if we dig for it spiritually. There's a way forward for all of us and the ego doesn't know that. The ego feels very left alone, isolated, abandoned, lost, confused, frightened, fearful, angry, victimized. But you realize life has presented all of us with a way forward with these spiritual insights. These insights are universal for all human beings. We discover them because that's a great gift. Life is not leaving us alone to figure everything out by oursel. Isn't that good news? It's called salvation. Our education does not prepare us for life in this way. I mean the good thing about the traditional mythic religious path is it does like if you become a sedic Jew it'll prepare you for life in a traditional context that takes a lot of things into consideration but it's a very narrow path in a postmodern world very few people want to live in such a narrow context life is much more complex modern world seems to to me much more complex for them than that particular path offers us from my limited point of But the classic mythic traditions do prepare us for life and do educate us give us a path forward. But whether these ancient conclusions work for the postmodern postmodern context is another question. I don't think they do because the world we're living in today is much more complex than the world was 3,000 years ago. Life was much more simple 3,000 years ago and the historical context was much simpler. So there's a enormous amount amount of complexity we're all faced with and our spiritual path has to be able to help us deal with that complexity also. Right? Who's doing the talking? Is it the ego doing the talking? Is it the true self doing the talking? Is the happy ego doing the talking? Is the negative ego doing the talking? So we have to be careful. We all have these different forces inside ourselves. We have to be careful what we say. So, so, so we can say crazy things and we don't we didn't think we meant to, but the negative ego intended to do it. If we're going to take responsibility for our potential for consciousness, we have to take responsibility for our behavior, including unconscious behavior. So, what's the motive for speaking in the first place? If you're not sure what the motive for speaking is, it's better not to speak. It's better to wait. When we do the discussion groups, we teach you to be very conscious of what you're doing, what you're saying, and why you're saying it. And then we speak a lot about the context in which the discussion is happening. So we tell people not to just say anything at any time for any reason. Speak in context. Speak in context. Speak in context. Always speak in context. Know where we've been and where we want to go. Speak in context. Speak in context. Meditation is very healing. No the practice of no relationship as I've been insisting since the beginning of the retreat is very healing. No relationship is a source of healing. I believe in the enlightenment context. Not understanding. No relationship is the source of healing. Not understanding. Repeat. Healing comes from no relationship. Not from right understanding. Healing. Healing. Wholeness. Freedom. I'm okay. It's okay. I'm okay. It's okay. There's nothing to worry about. We don't have to work it out. We don't have to resolve everything because it's okay. It's not a problem anymore. That's healing. So I'm declaring in my imperfect understanding that in the enlightenment context, it's the letting go that's the source of healing. Not a right understanding, but the let the fundamental letting go. It's all where all the healing comes from. Then it's not a problem anymore. Whatever it was, the problem goes away emotionally. you can move on and you feel very grateful. Wow, that's what a relief. Thank you God. The ego says I don't know about that. So this is why I keep repeating this no relationship dharma is so important. It's the foundation of everything. It's the foundation of the whole teaching. I keep telling people to just pay attention and let go. You know the reason for paying attention? The reason for paying attention is to make sure you let go. Pay attention and let go. So you're not paying attention in this meditation context for the sake of paying attention. You're paying attention to make sure you're letting go. You're being your own policeman. Isn't that interesting? But a lot of meditation teachings tell you to pay attention for its own sake, which is always a good idea. But in the enlightenment context, you want to pay attention to make sure you're doing your duty, which is letting go. So you're watching, am I letting go? I forgot. I was thinking about something else. So then you correct yourself because you're paying attention. Very simple, right? And then what happens when you start spontaneously letting go? When you keep paying attention starts happening spontaneously, you don't have to do anything anymore. happens by itself. The thing is you don't have to worry if you're saying if you're telling yourself like in a mantra like fashion, let go of the content of consciousness. Let go of the content of if you decide to do that, it might be a good thing to do. But you don't have to worry that it's going to distract you because when the momentum develops of letting go, letting go can become its own self-generating momentum. you'll stop repeating the mantra by yourself because you'll start feeling the momentum of bliss, the momentum of joy, the momentum of freedom and you'll just stop repeating it because you because it's happening. So don't worry about it. It's important in meditation. We don't try and make things happen. We just want to concentrate on the letting go part. Not controlling our experience. We're just letting go. And the more we let go, stuff will happen. Especially this inner momentum of already spontaneously letting go. It's a state of free fall and you don't have to do anything except just enjoy the ride. So if you want to repeat that phrase, it can't be bad. So it's the right instructions. You can also repeat having nothing, knowing nothing, and being nobody. You see, it's good to repeat these teachings, especially the important parts of the teachings. It's not good to repeat them with your conscious mind, but it's a way to reinforce their your understanding of them because uh the secret to freedom is is already in the teachings. If you memorize the teachings and you always know what to do, the information in your brain, your ego can't say, "Well, I really didn't know, but I thought you memorized the teachings." And then you say, ask them to repeat what the teachings are. and then they'll tell you what the way the way to freedom is. So we want to put oursel in an impossible position where we always know what to do and even then we'll make mistakes but at least we limit the possibility. So the main thing is try in the meditation don't try and control your experience. All you want to be busy with is just the letting go part. Then let what happen whatever happens happens. Either your mind will become quiet or it'll become agitated. It doesn't matter. Just let go. Don't worry. If it becomes agitated, don't worry about it. It doesn't matter. It's all absolutely fine. As long as you don't get disturbed by your own mind's agitation, you'll be you'll be in good shape. Like I was telling somebody the other day uh that the ego wants to see if you can be agitated, you can be frightened. And the e if the ego sees you can be frightened or agitated, it won't leave you alone. But if you demonstrate to the ego that it cannot touch you, it'll get tired of trying to detract your attention. It'll give up sooner or later. So giving up the duality is giving up the fear of the small self. It's great spiritual strength, spiritual self-confidence. So therefore, we want to practice not being afraid of our own ego. If you're afraid of your own ego, that's like living in hell. Like living in a jail cell with the door open. So we don't want to be afraid of our own ego. So we have to practice being unafraid. Anybody can do it if they want to. It's easy to be afraid of your own ego. It's understandable why we are. I'm not blaming anybody. But if you want to be free, you have to stop being afraid. Choose to not be afraid of your own mind. Otherwise, we self-sabotage. We destroy ourselves that way. So don't do it. Which would mean for example to give a mundane example if let's say your mind was tor was in a particularly nasty mood. So it was torturing you for the whole hour of meditation and then when the meditation was over you were fine. Nothing bad happens. I didn't kill myself. The world hasn't gone to hell. Everything's fine. It was just annoying. That's all it was. It was nothing. It wasn't nothing bad happened. So, don't worry about it. We can all do it now. All right. So, what are you waiting for? In the position of no relationship, there's no waiting. This is the whole point. When we take the inner position of no relationship, there's no waiting involved. Something you're doing now. No waiting for anything to happen. What's the point? If something happens good, if nothing happens bad, it doesn't make any difference. You're having no relationship to whether something happens or whether it doesn't happen. You don't need to wait for anything to happen. That's your freedom. So, you're not you're not attached to your experience anymore. Otherwise, the ego gets into the driver's seat. And what you're describing is the eagle getting into the driver's seat. Let me see if I can improve the situation. Drive a little bit faster. Say a little bit more on the left side. Try to you're trying to generate certain kinds of feelings, certain kinds of thoughts that you think are higher and deeper and more meaningful. But just ego a take taking control of the journey. Don't let that happen. Having nothing, knowing nothing, being nobody's back to before the beginning of everything. Zero follow. Smart spiritual guys like you are subject to these kind of tendencies. It's the smart guys who really have a good understanding of the dharma. Let their ego start being the the inner master and the inner guide. So, we want to try and do something about that. So, we want to get the ego out of the front seat and make it get in the back seat. Treat it like a child. Make sure your true self is in the front seat or your authentic self is in the front seat. But don't let the ego sit there. Don't let the ego control your experience. So, you remember yesterday when Hans and Ann were asking me about my experience? I I couldn't answer that questions I think in a satisfying way. All I could say was I don't know. That's my that's my reference point. My reference point for my experience of inner freedom, the capacity to share the dharma the way that I do, which demonstrates spiritual freedom and creativity and insight and liberation, joy and happiness. It's coming from not knowing, not from a particular kind of feeling or experience that's located any particular place in my body or anywhere else. I don't know. So don't underestimate what I'm pointing to. >> It's really big. It kills the ego. In a second ego die. If you have the courage to not know all things are possible. Now it takes a lot of courage to be that trusting of God. I'm so glad you found a friend you'll never be able to see. That's renunciation, man. It keeps you free and keeps you pure and it works every time. It works for anybody. Takes a heroic spirit. Be willing to not know. And I'm doing this for 35 years now. The strength and my freedom comes from not knowing, not from controlling my experience, not from trying to make anything happen. So the spiritual ego is a spiritual materialist and a spiritual narcissist. You follow wants to have something spiritual experience like a kind of personal possession. like a badge. I told you all that um my teacher was transmitted this absolute dharma to a lot of people and the first time they had the experience it they changed their life. They they had very powerful experience of bliss and joy and liberation and happiness but they didn't how to let go of it. Most of them didn't have to let go of it. They ended up being lost because of it because they wanted to recreate the experience. Recreate the experience. Recreate the experience. Relive the experience. I wanted to have it again. If you want to have it again, you got to let go of it. So that's a catch 22. Most people don't get you tell them that they don't understand what the hell you're talking about. So you get into a trap and then you then you're confronted with your own lack of faith in the very thing you want to happen, right? So you have to kind of practice being like like dumb which is I have no idea. And the other thing we have to learn how to do all of us is stop judging ourselves so much. And if we're intelligent seekers and a lot of you here are very intelligent sophisticated practitioners. It's too much self- judgment. I'm doing this right. I'm doing this wrong. I'm not doing this right. I'm not doing this wrong. There's a better way to do this. There's a worse way to do this. If we do this, we act like we know what we're doing. If we're not liberated, we don't know what we're doing. Right. Right. It's true for all of us. So, you have to stop habitually judging yourself as if you know the right way. Have the humility to have no idea. It's much harder to have the humility to have no idea than it is to pretend that you know, that you're still lost. You see, it doesn't really work. You follow what I'm saying? I'm speaking to myself too. I'm not judging anybody, but we have to stop judging oursel. That's the that's the issue here. So if it looks like a mess, let it be a mess. But don't make any judgment about it and it won't be a mess anymore. It's the judgment that creates the problem. The conscious and unconscious judgments about oursel in our state of consciousness now and our progress, what we believe is our progress or lack of progress. It's how we screw ourselves up all the time. I have no idea. That's what's going to save you. Not being an expert about something you haven't realized yet. So be be disciplined with this dharma and have the courage to have no idea. Again, a fresh and new every single day works. But the ego has a lot of resistance to this. It's amazing. I'm so glad you found a friend you'll never be able to see. Very absolute. So the enlightenment position as I understand it is having nothing, knowing nothing and being no one every time back to before the beginning of everything. Same old thing. Same old thing. very trustworthy. Let me tell you, very trustworthy. It'll keep you safe and happy because you can always say, "I don't know and mean it." Isn't that a great luxury? This teaching gives you the luxury of always being able to say, "I don't know and mean it." What do you mean you don't know? I really don't know. Having nothing, knowing nothing, being no one. Why do you feel there has to be no effort and no contraction? We're just meditating. We're, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to meditate for an hour. That requires a certain artificial willpower. We're going to sit still and we're going to have no relationship to the mind. So, we're practicing enlightenment. We're not experiencing enlightenment necessarily. So the art and the practice of meditation most of the time is a will and effort. Now we know that the goal of enlightenment is spontaneity, spontaneous enlightenment which which it also happens but that doesn't happen on on command. What did Ken Wilbur always repeat? He says he said something like enlightenment won't get you enlightened but it'll make the accident proud. That's what he meant. That's what he means. I never understood it at the time, but I understand it now. So therefore, if you're if you're practicing enlightenment artificially, he goes, "I'm mimicking it artificially. I'm making effort, which creates a little bit of stress to sit beautifully to let go of my mind, to experience a little bit of physical stress, some emotional stress, but I'm practicing enlightenment. I'm not experiencing enlightenment. And I'm hoping that through all this practice, it'll help me make me more available to awaken to enlightened awareness when I'm lucky enough for it to reveal itself. So therefore, if you're practicing enlightenment in a meditative context that you're faking it, I call it fake it till you make it. Fake it beautifully. Sit beautifully. Look like a Buddha. Meditate like a Buddha. Sit still for long periods of time. Well, but the thing is uh you have two possibilities. Either you're going to do something or you're going to do nothing. So for all of us the same it's the same possibility. So we can either choose to do nothing which is have no relationship or choose to do something which is then we can to practice visualization practice some kind of very sophisticated complex meditation process. So all kind of things we can be busy doing. So either we can choose to do something or choose to do nothing and doing nothing is the end goal and far as I'm I'm concerned. So I like to start people off close to the end and see how they do. But you don't need to make it so stressful for yourself. Why can't you just let go of all this stuff? But but you feel uncomfortable only because you think you shouldn't feel uncomfortable. But there's no wall there. When the wall appears to be there, what you didn't let it bother you. So if the wall appears or the wall disappears, it doesn't make any difference. So then you make room for the stress and for all the superior thoughts. This shouldn't be happening. This is not the right way to do this. I shouldn't feel this way. This is the wrong direction. Even though I'm not happy and I'm suffering, I know better. Doesn't really make sense. So, you're letting your ego go into the driver's seat and tell you how to do it. Which is exactly what I meant when I was speaking to Henrik. Remember five minutes ago, I said we have to stop judging ourselves. I'm doing this right. I'm doing this wrong. This is good. This is bad. No judgment. Very good. So, this is beautiful. Please don't forget this. It's pronunciation remember I don't know self judgment I've been doing this for 10 years 20 years 30 years I don't know it's it's terrible because I'm saying this is this is the curse of kind of knowing too much we end up judging ourselves all the time what should be happening what should be happening what's right what's wrong and we s we torture ourselves it's it's a bad habit So it's good to learn how to see this in just one big piece. So I have no idea where where does no idea bring you back to what to zero. Zero is the only safe place in the enlightment context. Zero is the only safe place because zero represents the ground of being which you exist prior to anything else. It's a place where nothing ever happened. You weren't born yet. So the place where nothing ever happened, you weren't born yet is the only safe place there really is in the universe for your soul. Right? So that's why we want to return in our metaphysical aspirations want to return back to zero. So that's why for example when we're having these question and answer sessions or if I'm giving talks the discussion groups we're going to do over the next week we always return back to the meditation position which represents going back to zero or going back to before the beginning. Well, we always then want to go back to before the beginning as a reference point as a starting as the ending point. That's the starting point. Forget all the shoulds. So, can you give up the judgment? Everybody's crazy including we're all crazy. Llama Surya does he was a llama for for 10 years. I think might still be. But he has one great line. He said, "Everybody's crazy." And I always thought this is very profound which means we're all crazy. We are our ego is all our ego is my ego is crazy. We are all nuts. So if we realize I am nuts at the level of ego I'm crazy and you stop resisting the truth because it's never going to change anyway. If you say if you accept it that's not a problem. We're all crazy at the level of ego at the level of true self or authentic self. We're not crazy at all. So by by assuming these metaphysitions that I'm advocating for all of you, they're very simple. By assuming these metaphysics, we can cease to be so crazy. Stop trying to control our experience so much and begin to trust and trust the process much more. Trust the process. And it's through the experience of trust that stuff begins to fall into place. Everything falls into alignment naturally and effortlessly when we learn how to trust. Absolutely. It's absolute trust sets us free. Not all this controlling business. It just keeps us crazy. But absolute trust is the ego's worst nightmare, right? That's what the ego say. Oh baby, forget that. I'll never trust any anything or anyone. Absolutely. And you'll never be free. So that's the goal is absolute trust. And that's what changes everything. Follow. So I very much appreciate everybody's level of seriousness and sincerity. It's very moving everybody. Thank you everybody. Thank you very much.