Andrew Cohen - N° 31 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec. 24 _ Feb. 25

Human beings have potential for goodness and for evil. We all have that potential outside us individually and collectively. We are the forces at work here, you and I. And nothing's happening to us. It's something we're choosing to do knowingly or unknowingly, consciously, unconsciously. These voices are acting out through us. For example, for me, I'm Jewish, right? And so I've thought a lot about the Holocaust my whole life. How could such a thing happen in Germany where people are so intelligent, so sophisticated. Now look what look what's happening in Israel? It's unimaginable. It's unthinkable. It's unbearable. So I'm worried about the future for all of us. Look, half of my country voted for Trump. It's very blinding truth. He didn't take power if he was voted in the second time. I'm worried about the effect of technology it's going to have on could lead to human extinction in the short term, not the long term. Then the forces activating the technology is speeding up. It's happening faster and faster and faster. It's like we're driving the car off the cliff and we're pushing down on the gas. Greater intensity. We don't seem to be able to stop ourselves. It's not rational behavior. And that's a it's a hard truth to hold in my mind. I can't hold it very long. It's too big. It's too overwhelming. What do you think about all this? It's very overwhelming and confusing, right? The thing is that so many people are losing their minds. So many people are losing common sense, decency, denying simple truths. We have to make an effort to keep our simple sanity alive during this time, not to get swept up in all the madness. And we have to somehow face it. Facing something that's impossible to come to terms with. Nobody can come to terms with all this. It's too complicated. It's too overwhelming. It's too confusing. We have to try to come to terms with it anyway and not lose our way and try to be strong forces for for truth and goodness and beauty in the midst of all this chaos. But we can't stop this on our own. But we can make an effort to stay very sane, very awake. I'm not avoiding it. But it's going to get worse before it gets better. But there's going to be more madness and more chaos and destruction before it before it can come to an end. So somehow, and I I haven't accomplished this myself, but somehow we have to prepare ourselves for that which is unimaginable because we're probably going to live through it. But people compare this to the end of the Roman Empire. So there's a level of chaos and confusion. It seems inevitably that's what was going to unfold. And so we should use our time spiritually to to become more and more more strong. Do our best. Do our best. It's the best we can do. I'm only going to die in peace if I know that I did my best. But a lot of people don't believe things are as bad as they are as they are. That we don't know how to think about an apocalyptic time. We haven't been trained to think about it. It's overwhelming. We have to teach ourselves how to think about these things. I put it without too overwhelmed. I realized this was real about uh seven or eight years ago. It kind of hit me. Oh my god, this is real. It's really happening. That I knew it intellectually, but I didn't really let it hit me. ke kept it I kept it at a distance. A friend of mine who's a spiritual teacher he he has a way of describing this position of avoiding the truth facing the truth and coming to terms with the truth. So he gives three stages according to his philosophy and he says when you're avoiding the truth you're in a state of consciousness that's pretty tragic. It's there, but you don't want to face it. So, it's pretty tragic. When you're facing the truth, it's so overwhelming it destroys you. You can't bear it. It destroys you. So, then he calls that tragic. You're lost emotionally and psychologically and spiritually. You've lost in the tragedy. You lost your center. Then the third stage is you come to terms with the truth of how dangerous it is and how real it is. But you but you found your center again. You found your strength. You found your objectivity. you find this clarity. It's called post tragic. So when it's post tragic, you you face the worst part of the truth and you're not running away from it. You're facing it completely, but you're not being destroyed by it. You're not being allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by it. So pre-tragic, tragic, and post-traic. And I'm somewhere between tragic and post tragic. Not that post tragic yet. I'm a boomer. You know that. I'm a baby boomer. I lived through the 60s and the 70s. We thought that was that was no that was never going to happen again. Something so profound. I realized that was nothing compared to what's happening now. And I try to pay attention to what people are saying, what people are thinking. Nobody know there's nobody that I bred was how to come to terms with what we're all dealing with as a species which we're facing something that's inconceivable and nobody knows what to do about it how to make sense of it. So it's this paradox of seeing seeing these painful truths and bearing witness to them without becoming nihilistic. That's a spiritual challenge. But remaining positive and light-hearted while avoiding nothing, facing everything. That's a spiritual challenge for all of us. But not to be overrun by this temptation to fall apart, to give up, and to give in. It's been a 14 billion year process of development since the beginning of the universe. So the beginning of the universe there was nothing and then this whole process began and after the 8 billion years life emerged. Life used to be very simple. It's become very complex. The process has been very successful and extraordinary miraculous. So if it has if it has absolute meaning no matter what people are doing we have to bear witness to that truth in the face of an overwhelming opposition in vant they say we say I am that so either you're the creator of the universe and this is all you're doing or it isn't. Is it a dualistic out in the sky that's doing it all or are we embracing a non-dual realization where we are the doer so I prefer to take the second I am the doer and endeavor as you were speaking about this bodhic saf the context of this bodhic satic aspiration to take this responsibility for totality of reality knowing I'll never be able to do because I'm just one person one individual person among billions There's only so much I can practically actually do. But I can even even in my spiritual aspirations attempt to take responsibility for the whole world even though I know I can't really do it. But that can be my spiritual motivation, my spiritual intention. But I mean to repeat for all of us right now being a beacon of positivity and hopefulness and kindness and spiritual liberation in the midst of so much chaos and destruction. It's enormous spiritual challenge for me. It is for all of us. So this is a very precarious time to be alive and it's a hard time to think clearly. We all need to work to think clearly we going to be beacons of sanity. Simple profound sanity in a crazy world. Keep in mind this distinction between pre-tragic tragic and post-traic. So pre-tragic is when you're aware of something terrible is happening or is going to happen. It's a terrible truth. It's unavoidable and unchangeable. You you've been made aware of a terrible truth that's going to happen or it is happening. It's unchangeable, but you're very afraid of it. It's right there, but you're turning away. You're scared of it. That's pre-tragic. Tragic is when you are in the midst of in the midst of the thing itself that's tearing you apart. You're frightened, lost, angry. Well, you want to give up or been confused and utterly darkness and tragedy. It seems like there's no there's no way out. All there is is a tragedy. That's tragic. The pre-tragic and tragic. And post tragic is when you face whatever it is that's happening with all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul. You face it until you're facing it. Because you face it, you're no longer overwhelmed by it. You can see with a measure of objectivity doesn't make it less painful, but it makes it more bearable and easier to understand and come to terms with have a more of a liberated positive relationship with it even though it's terrible. It's called post tragedy. You're no longer trapped in the tragedy. You're not avoiding the tragedy. You're not in denial of it at all, but you're you've come to terms with it. It's no longer completely overwhelming. You're you're facing it. You're accepting it. It's part of reality about denying it or avoiding this. It's a very helpful way to think about this time in history because usually to feel better, you want the problem to go away, right? But when you come to a post tragic perspective, you begin to feel better even though the problem doesn't have to go anywhere. So we want to work with these distinctions so we can get to the point when our perspective is post tragic. It's embracing kind of higher higher level of sobriety.