Andrew Cohen - N°5 - LAST RETREAT - January 2025

So we have to keep in constantly keep in mind in this conversation difference between relative truth and absolute truth. What Ramen called the true self is an absolute self. What I call the authentic self which we have been to call the psychic being is an absolute self and in this teaching in this context this enlightenment context your liberation your inner freedom your freedom from bondage and suffering neurosis psychosis narcissism self-hatred psychological misery is found not through psychological integration but through the awakening to the deepest part of yourself which is not relative but is which is absolute But the solution in the enlightenment context is always enlightenment itself. Is that clear? In this particular context, in this particular approach to happiness, enlightenment is always the only solution we're looking for. That being said, the frontal self we're calling the ego. And in this teaching, we're making we're making a distinction between what I call the happy ego and the unhappy ego. The happy ego is self-actualized. Self-actualization comes from your discovery that you are a worthy person. You're worthy. You are likable, lovable. You have selfrespect. There's something inherently good and decent about you. And most importantly, you're capable of doing things well. It means in some areas of life, you're capable of success and victory. I'm calling that self-actualization. I'm not a complete mess because I realize I have good qualities. I'm lovable, likable to some degree. I'm worthy of other people's respect. But this kind of thing, so this this we're calling the happy ego. This comes from a measure of self-actualization. This is an expression of ego strength, positive ego strength. If you're going to be free, if you're going to be liberated, you have to have a strong ego in the positive sense. Without ego strength, you're not going to be able to sustain the presence of the true self and authentic self coming through you. You won't be able to carry the the weight of it. So, it's important that your positive ego is welldeveloped, that positive ego is indeed happy and available to your frontal self. Enlightenment itself don't do the job because enlightenment have to work through a self structure. Enlightenment is a state of consciousness. It's not a self. So when enlightenment appears in your being, it enters through these self structures. The state of consciousness that enters into the world through these self structures. So the simple point I'm trying to make is that the enlightenment for it to remain alive and stable in you, you have to achieve a measure of self-actualization which is positive self-regard. A measure of positive self-regard that's stable for the enlightenment to remain stable in you. That the positive self-regard has to be more than 50% of who your ego represents. More than half it has to be in good shape. You don't have to be in perfect shape. You have to be in pretty good shape. Good mental stuff needs to be good shape otherwise the higher state won't be able to remain stable within you. So a measure of psychological well-being is prerequisite for to be able to sustain enlightened awareness. So people who are very mentally damaged, hurt, wounded, traumatized, victimized, angry, hurt, frightened, confused for good reasons, can't hold the consciousness of the true self or the authentic self. They're too fragile. The self is way too fragile, too damaged. So enlightenment is not the solution. If you are severely mentally damaged and handicapped, these spiritual higher states of consciousness are not going to help you in the long run. But someone in that condition has to find a way to realize self-actualization and self-esteem, positive self- reggard in a way that it becomes stable and compensate for all the damage that's been done. So in this context all of our problems come from the woundedness, the victimization, damaged parts of ourel. That's where all the trouble comes from being wounded and not not having enough self positive self-guard and this emotional damage. So it's a serious problem and enlightenment won't save you from it by itself. You have to get your ego in fighting shape. [laughter] So there are a lot of people who are attracted to gurus and enlightenment and esoteric systems as a way to liberate themselves from egoic pain and suffering. It won't doesn't work in the long run unless your ego is strong enough to carry these higher states. So what I want you to understand is that the true self is in an absolute state of consciousness. The authentic self is an absolute state of consciousness. The positive ego is a relative truth and the negative ego is a relative truth. So for a lot of people, the work of cultivating positive self- reggard initially is much more important than experiencing higher states of consciousness. If you want to be happy and free, you have to get your wounded ego taken care of. Higher states won't solve that problem in the long run. They can temporarily make you feel better. But all the problems will return once again. Once the higher state disappears, dissipates be in the same mess and you wonder what happened. You'll think God doesn't love me. Very simple what I'm trying to say, but it's it's true. We have to get our ego in good shape to be able to carry the burden of awakening, which is a big burden. When you wake up to the true self and the authentic self, your life gets much more complicated, much more complex. You're carrying a much bigger burden than without the higher state. You have to be prepared to embrace such a burden. That only comes from having a very strong ego. I've seen this demonstrated many many times in my past history as being a teacher. My students with the stronger egos and healthier egos had more positive self-regard were able to sustain their awakening much more with much more independence and strength and consistency than people who had weak egos tossed all over the place by life. So the higher state of consciousness will save you or liberate you when your ego is strong enough to bear it. Enlightenment has to be carried by strong ego positive sense of what that means. strong positive self- regard that's going to container for the higher state. All these things work together. How you cultivate positive self-regard? That's a very complex question. I don't know the answers. Psychotherapy can help you, but it won't necessarily do the job. But finding way to respect yourself at an egoic level is very important. Now the other thing I wanted you to understand is that as I said before these higher states when they appear they enter into the world of time and space through these cell structures. The cell structure is the vehicle through which they enter into the world through us. So these higher absolute states of consciousness are hanging on these cell structures as they appear in the world. not just floating around independently but they need to come through you whoever you are in all your imperfection. It's very important to say these things go together. Now if you are an individual who has unique access to these higher states and is capable of having extremely deep realization of these higher states the time when the self structure itself will completely disappear what will be seen to coming through your body mind and personality is mostly this higher state with very little remnants of your personality left that's very rare someone like a ramen would an example of that for example. But when that happens to you and it happens to me sometimes the world suddenly feels very far away and you you feel the the truly infinite nature of who you really are what your true self is all about. You can't relate to the anything personal anymore. Literally can't relate to anything personal. It's didn't mean anything. The self sense is so expanded and so enormous that your personal story has completely disappeared has suddenly has no meaning and the vibrancy and the fullness of your true self is overtaking everything. This is very rare though for most of us when we have these kinds of experiences. It's a combination of positive ego and true self intermingling as a felt experience. But if you go very deep and the self enters through you with the great power the uh the god consciousness can disappear almost altogether that can be very scary or very exciting depending on who you are because then you suddenly seem to not be there anymore even though of course you're more there than you ever were before but other people could find it So it's important that you understand the difference between a state and a self. It's very difficult to understand these things as you start paying more closer attention to your own experience. But uh one of the big points I'm trying to make and why I keep repeating it is that a big part of spiritual work is doing what you need to do to cultivate positive self-regard. That'll still make your life much more easy to deal with. You need to love yourself and accept yourself and all your imperfection right now. And if you can't do that, you need to do whatever you need to do to be able to do that sooner rather than later. lead the higher spiritual work for the future because uh it's a terrible thing to wake up and then fall back to sleep. And if you find yourself in a position where you keep on waking up and keep on falling back to sleep, you start losing confidence in your own ability to to stay awake, that's bad. And in this context, it's um I think it's much more important to to do things that will help you feel better about yourself rather than constantly analyzing yourself and scrutinizing yourself, trying to understand yourself. You learn how to do things that are going to make you strong and develop self-confidence. It's not esoteric. It's too abstract. It's very practical. It's focused and objective. Then when you have these higher states, they're going to stick because your self is going to be strong. Your frontal self will be strong. Your positive ego will be strong. You'll be able to stick to become stable. It's a very weird thing when people want to experience higher states of consciousness, but they allow their neurosis to sabotage their spiritual becomings. It's very weird. There's a lot of people like that in town. So there's a difference between what's what I'm calling self-actualization and self-trcendence. The enlightenment that I'm speaking about comes from self-trcendence alone, not from self-actualization. Self-actualization in this context is the embrace is the awakening to this ego strength of the selfrespect, positive self-actualization. You become independent and strong. as a unique individual. So you can't meditate your way to self-actualization. You have to do something. It's going to help you become stronger and reliable to yourself and to other people. It's better to make it practical rather than esoteric. And the other thing is that the uh the ability to be able to surrender to the state of absolute freedom. The ability to surrender to the state of absolute freedom comes from your how much self-positive self-regard you have. You need to have a very strong belief in yourself in order to have this the courage to let go of your ego unconditionally, radically and absolutely. Most people when they experience these higher states and they realize what what they're involved with. They get very scared of the implications of ego debt, not prepared for it. Said, "Nobody told me it was going to be this scary or it was going to involve this much self-sacrifice by not knowing." So, you need to have a strong sense of self to have the courage to let go of your small self. So, like I constantly repeat, it's like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute or jumping out of a boat into the middle of the ocean without your clothes on forever. You have to be ready for the leap like that. It doesn't happen by itself. So, you need to have a strong ego and positive selfard. The ego's trying to let go of samsara. It's a big it's a big leap. So, as you're spending these days with me and spending time meditating and being quiet, I'd like you to think about the difference between higher states and and these different self structures we're talking about, not learning how not to confuse them and seeing how they work together to create certain kinds of experiences and certain kinds of feelings. Very few people experience self-actualization with enlightenment, with awakening. I'm one of the few people who I know who has. I don't know why that's the case. It's embarrassing to tell you, but overnight everybody told me I was God's gift to humanity. My guru told me I was God's gift to humanity, and everybody fell in love with me over a period of days. So, my self-doubt and self-hatred didn't couldn't withstand the intensity of the love and the affirmation was overwhelming every day, more and more and more. So my self-hatred and my woundedness couldn't survive the love explosion. And also I was teaching every day. I could feel my own strength growing all the time as a realized person. So my small wounded ego couldn't survive the love bombs and the revelation of wisdom seemed to come from nowhere. But in any case, as a foundational truth on the path to profound liberation, you have to be convinced that you're okay as you are right now. You got to get over all the misery and all the pain and all the suffering and all the doubts once and for all. You can't drag it out. You can't drag it into your enlightened future. You got to drop it. Are you egoically strong enough to drop your attachment to self-hatred, into egoic pain and suffering, into misery, into woundedness, into all of that? Takes courage. And part of the reason it takes a lot of courage is because the ego still thinks I have to be perfect before I let go. Most people think I have to be perfect before I let go. So, you don't have to be perfect. You just have to love yourself enough to believe you're okay. It's very simple. It's excruciatingly simple. It's kind of heartbreakingly simple, isn't it? You just have to realize you're good enough as you are. You always have been. You just let it in. So, there's a deep degree of self-acceptance that is very important. So, we're not trying to be perfect. We're trying to be good. to try to let that in. The quest for perfection is fruitless and you'll never get there. Nobody's ever gotten there. But it's really very simple what needs to happen. Can we accept ourselves as we are in all our imperfection? that be good enough to begin to really respect ourselves if we are without needing to become perfect. And that's the answer is yes. You'll never be able to sustain these higher states for very long because you'll fall back into the garbage of your self-hatred again and again and again. So it's a hell realm. Make sense? Very practical dharma. And as I was saying yesterday, we want to get to a point where when we have accepted ourselves as we are. Doesn't mean we don't want to improve. I want to improve. We all consistently want to improve. But we've gotten to a point where we finally accepted ourselves as we are not constantly working on it. But we've arrived at a reasonable degree of selfrespect. And you need to be able to say it and mean it. I've arrived at a reasonable degree of selfrespect. I'm good enough. I have no doubt that's the case. And stand in that truth publicly no matter what people think. A lot of people think learning how to be vulnerable and transparent and honest about your psychological pain and suffering is a sign of spiritual growth. It is at the beginning when you're when you're a beginner. It is necessary. When you when you develop on the path, we need to stop doing that. Stop exposing our weaknesses and uh indulging in them in public. It's demeaning and it pulls everybody down into hell. You have to be willing to close the door to that kind of self-indulgent behavior. It doesn't do anything good for anybody except make it okay for us all to enter the swamp, [laughter] a sticky swamp of mutuality. No thanks. You have to realize that everybody's a mess on some level. So it doesn't what your feelings are doesn't matter. It's important that you learn to respect yourself and and a positive self- regard in spite of it all and talk about that not what's wrong but about what's right will change everything for you. What I'm speaking about doesn't take forever but it'll enable you to make great spiritual progress in a reasonable degree of time. But you have to be serious about this. You have to be very determined, very serious, very committed to the goal of your own liberation in this life. So every day we get an opportunity to cultivate ego strength. Aren't we? Life gives us opportunities every day to cultivate ego strength, to demonstrate ego strength, right? So do it. That's spiritual practice. Don't wait to be happy in the future because you might not make it. If you wait if you continue to wait to be happy in the future, you might not get there. If you learn to accept yourself as you are now, you can make it. Don't keep on waiting for magic to for God to save you. If you can save yourself in the ways that I'm describing to you, then these higher states will stick and you won't be so afraid of the higher states. You won't be afraid of unconditional freedom anymore. You will be very attracted to the possibility of unconditional liberation in this life. You'll be ready to let go of everything else because you're strong enough to do it. You've it's come to an end. You start to get bored by your own neurosis. They don't care about that anymore. Or anybody else's. If you get bored by your own neurosis, you get bored by other people's too. People love to talk about their misery. You shouldn't talk about your pain and your fear unless there's a real problem that you got to deal with. There's a real problem you have to deal with. It's unavoidable. Then do it once in a while. If it's important enough otherwise keep your mouth shut and bear it and be happy. Life sucks. Life's very difficult, isn't it? At times very challenging, very disappointing. People are so unpleasant and aggressive and lost. It's very important to learn how to be positive in the midst of all the negativity. It's important to learn how to be positive in spite of everything. I'm not saying that things aren't difficult or wrong or terrible at times. But you want to learn how to basically be positive most of the time. Not out of some naive idealism, stupidity, but because it's the most intelligent attitude to have in relationship to life. It's not a form of escapism or denial, but it's just trying to live the highest truth to the best of your ability as an imperfect human being. So try to be happy anyway. You know, even if you think you have not achieved happiness yet, try to be happy anyway. You can do it if you want to. It'll help you to achieve happiness as your natural state. Remember your true self is always happy. Your true self is always happy and always peaceful and undivided, unconlicted. Your authentic self is always positive and very energetically ready to go all the way baby here and now. Nothing to wait for. So with you cultivating the capacity to be happy as your own spontaneous inclination, that all gets a lot closer to you. Now, the ego, you'll notice, gets a thrill out of being, I don't feel like being happy today. I feel like being negative. It's terrible. It's self-indulgent. It's miserable, dark, and ugly. You're saying you don't care about any. You don't care about the world. You don't care about other people. You don't care about anything except your miserable ego. So, don't indulge in your ego. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. The spoiled ego says something like, "Nobody tells me what to do. I do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it because I feel like it. That's my freedom. Good luck." So, you should feel an obligation to do better than that. You'll never find happiness in that kind of behavior. As I've been repeating over the last few days we've been together, that these higher states of consciousness reveal to us the true nature of things, the ultimate nature of things. The eye is true. And so if you've experienced these higher states enough to know what the ultimate state of reality is, what the true state of things is, that's all the reason you have to be happy. Did you know that God is good, life is good, to exist is good always already now, right? Bad things may happen, terrible things may happen. That doesn't change the ultimate truth. The ultimate truth is always the ultimate truth and relative truth is always relative truth. relatively speaking, bad things are happening as they sure are right now. Doesn't change the ultimate truth. If you're spiritually conscious, that's why you're happy because you're in touch with the ultimate truth. You're not denying the relative truth. You're not avoiding it. You're pretending things don't aren't bad that are bad. But you're not you never lose the biggest picture. You're not pretending to be happy, but you're in touch with the highest truth changes everything. You have to spend time on these on these points in yourself. Think about them, dwell upon them, meditate upon them, pay attention to them. The negative ego is always going to tell you what's wrong, right? Just very good at that. The negative ego is always going to tell you what's wrong. The negative ego is always ready to complain and to tell you what's really really really bad, right? It's not it's not your friend. The positive ego is your friend. The negative ego is not your friend. The negative ego is your woundedness. So try to not get too involved with it because it's not a trustworthy friend. So at the beginning it looks like you have to work things out in order to be happy but eventually you'll realize you don't have to work anything out. You just have to embrace the highest truth to be happy right away. Don't have to work anything out. You don't need to understand more. Just need to embrace the highest truth. So the enlightenment path is all about awakening to directly experiencing and embracing the highest truth on its own terms. not on your ego's terms, then you'll be happy because the highest truth makes you very happy. That's the good news. And to me, what I can't get over, what I can ever forget is is that the the natural state of affairs in the cosmos, it's very positive. Doesn't mean that bad things don't happen, but the urge to exist is unbearably positive. God wants to exist in and as form looking something like you. So if God wants to exist in and as form looking something like you something good must be happening, right? Can you handle it? But you hate yourself too much for that to possibly be true. What's the answer? Most people hate themselves too much for that to possibly be true because they say, "Well, if God thinks that I'm worth loving, then he must be crazy. Isn't that tragic? That's that's tragic." No, that's that's the ego pain. It's so tragic. Make you feel that bad. So, these higher states are very important because that's when you go from being merely human to superhuman. You experience the spiritual power and the infinite truth revealed in these states. You realize what it means to be more than human. Shin talked about the knowetic beings. So the universe gives us this opportunity to realize who we are as being much more than merely human. So when you experience these higher states, you get the inspiration to do whatever you need to do to become superhuman compared to most people anyway. So you see it, you feel it, then you want to become it and you're on a different track. So it's much more interesting aspiring to become superhuman. than dwelling on the past and our pain and suffering. No, much more challenging. It's much easier to complain about your past than to embrace the potential for being superhuman. Right? And what's beautiful is that this potential for being what I'm calling superhuman is built into the system part of God's plan. If he has a plan in these higher states you glimpse what the plan is. So he or she whoever created this life world built into the system this possibility of super self-actualization super self-realization enlightenment it's built into the system waiting for us to realize it and to awaken to it. So you're following God's plan so to speak to use Christian language and that's amazing. When you have these higher state experiences, you realize that this possibility is built into the system. So who created the system? Embedded in the system. All these super potentials, they're just waiting for us to actualize them. You go, "Wow, the creator is a genius and so full of positivity." Isn't that amazing? But we have to do the work of course. But I keep repeating this. Forgive me for I don't want to bore you. But the fact that this is built into the system means that creator had this in mind the whole time apparently. So if you think God doesn't love you is leaving you out on the street all by yourself. That's the ego's belief. It's what your ego think. It's not the truth. God hasn't abandoned us. We've abandoned him. If you want to find out who he or she is, you have to give he or she your full attention to see who he or she really is. Then you'll change your mind. You say, "Nobody's ever abandoned me. It's been my attention that I've abandoned him or her. Allowed my mind to become small, narrow, and narcissistic, dwelling on my negative ego. my negative ego feels. That's all I think about is how bad I feel about what's happened to me, my lot in life, how much I suck, the people suck. And of course, you're going to feel bad if you think that way. So anyway, the fact that this unthinkable positivity, this super potential is built into the system forces you to become a believer. That's for me. But everything I'm saying has to be proven. If it's just this is just talk, it doesn't mean anything. Needs to be proven. But I think we can say that the greatest realizers throughout history are part of that proof. Ramen is part of that proof. A lot of these spiritual hippies that come here, they're so miserable. They're so they're so depressed that they come in because they believe that this Ramina person was an expression of purity and love and in this sick world realizing that the one person could be so beautiful gives them a little bit of faith right it's not his advice or realization I don't think for most people that makes the difference it's the fact that he looks like pure love right so it makes people feel the whole world isn't bad because ramen exists is help for humanity because of him. Something like that. So these super potentials are built into the system. It's important. The reason why I stress no relationship is because we need to disentangle ourselves from our conditioned mind and from our conditioned ego. So you need to practice no relationship with great intensity to begin to disentangle from the mess. And I think only then are we in a position to be able to deal with it and correct it. But usually we're so entangled with it. We're so trapped in the mess that we can't really do anything about it. We're trying in the mess itself. So no relationship creates space. And the thing is that the as I've been explaining that the experience of the space is healing. The space itself is healing without having to do anything about the problem. The space is self-healing. enormously healing. I'm very biased towards the enlightenment position. So I'm very biased. So in the way I'm teaching you, it's entirely possible that the space itself will be enough to solve the problem completely. Might not. You might have to just do some extra work. But enlightenment gives us about the possibility that the space itself can be the ultimate solution without having to lift a finger. It's creating the space. the problem can somehow become transparent and then ultimately disappear. The space itself is the ultimate healer in this liberation context. Maybe you don't have to do anything except cultivate the space and it's not a problem anymore possibly. It doesn't always work that way, but it can work that way. When it works best, the space takes care of the whole problem. By coming on a retreat like this and understanding what it means to take no position and discover the space I'm speaking about, they go, "Oh, wow. This is a whole different way to look at reality. Space is liberation. Space is peace. Space is freedom. I don't have to do a damn thing except let go. You see, my point is the enlightenment dharma is not psychological. It's very specific. It's very narrow. And freedom in the enlightenment context is one through simply letting go of ignorance consciously or unconsciously. Letting go is the whole deal in terms of solving our problems. not to working anything out or trying to come to terms with anything, trying to understand anything. We're dealing with your problems. And now it's entirely possible as you've been saying that sometimes we do manage to let go of it to some degree. We might have to do a little extra work. Sure. But in the enlightenment context, the letting go is the whole thing. And most of the time, nothing more is needed because when you let go, you realize the problem is not as bad as you thought it was. problem is not as bad as you thought it was. Not so overwhelming, it's not so frightening. I'm trying to make everybody's life easier, not come out more complicated. Some of these basic truths are very hard for people to really let on because they're too simple. So, it can be that simple. They say, "No, it can be that simple." No, it can't. Yes, it can. The ego can't deal with the simplicity of it. It's too ridiculous. So I think the question of women's liberation, it's a big question in and of itself that we want to open up when we look at the whole question what it means to be liberated in a post-modern cultural environment. It's a big discussion. A lot of different people have lots of different ideas about it. Now I feel I'm on the spot. So the real answer is I have no idea. But um I can give you some of my esoteric thoughts about it. But if I share my esoteric thoughts, it's based upon my being transparent with you that I really don't know the answer. So what my answer is not authoritative. I'm not sure about what I'm saying. But if we look historically, it's more it's men are the hunters and the men leave home to climb mountains and to seek for God and to fight wars and change the world. No. And women for most of human history have been staying home and taking care of these children and making sure this culture doesn't totally fall apart. So women have been trained to hold things together while men go out and destroy everything and learn new things. Right? It's a basic idea. So women are not culturally conditioned to be adventurers in the same way to be seekers after liberation or climbers of mountains or fighters of wars. And women have the instinct where we want to hold things together, keep things together, more reluctant to tear things apart. When men when they make up their mind, I'm I'm leaving, they just go. So I think there's there's a built-in conditioned attitude to hold things together and to keep the world in one piece which is very positive. This is for thousands and thousands of years of cultural conditioning. So for women to self-actualize and become autonomous self- authoring highly individuated unique individuals is a very new idea historically speaking in terms of human development. 30 years old, 40 years old, 50 years old, it just happened just because a lot of women who appreciate feminism and feminist ideas that the historical truth that needs to be embraced 40, 50 years versus thousands of years of conditioning takes a long time to overcome and come to terms with. So I think uh as more women begin to go through this process of individuation and self- authorship there will be more more women that are embracing this kind of very different relationship to life. A lot of women instinctively were afraid if things fall apart. They would instinctively do what they could to hold things together was part of the evolutionary process at a certain point. If you want to embrace that which is new, you have to willing to let go of that which is old, which involves letting some things fall apart so something new can emerge. And women seem to be more reluctant to do that, more terrified of that possibility even though it transcended their personal situation. So I don't think there's anything wrong. I just think that men have more freedom. Culture has given us much more freedom, autonomy, and independence for thousands of years. For women, this idea of freedom is a is a very new idea. A lot of postmodern women think they're free because of postmodernity, but they don't see that their own relationship to life is a product of thousands of years of conditioning. So, I think radical autonomy and real liberated independence is a new and very beautiful idea for women, but it needs to be cultivated. It needs to be worked on by serious women. they realize what the stakes are because of the influence of feminism over the last 30 40 years. A lot of women think they're already free. This is usually never true. As I said on the first day, we're all massive conditioning. Men are used to being selfish, for better and for worse, to being autonomous for better and for worse. This idea of care, of caring for the whole, of keeping things together. Women are much more culturally conditioned to care to care for the whole. They feel a sense of responsibility. Whereas there there are beautiful men and have the same capacity, but in generally speaking, men are much more up for themselves. Those are gross generalizations. I realize that, but there's truth to what I'm saying. So I'm very much a believer in women's liberation, but it's a it's got to be seen as a as a as a big project in a kind of in the context of thousands of years of cultural evolution. That's it needs to be seen in a big in a big context and the solo enlightenment journey is not something women usually have done. The rare exemplars of women have done that but very very rarely. And for example, it's very interesting that in India where enlightenment comes from, not in every case, but usually the when enlightenment happens for a powerfully awakened woman in India, it's usually through the mother archetype. And it's very rare that a woman awakens free from the influence of these deep cultural archetypes. So like I said the other day, I met this realized woman named Vimlata who was was a follow of J. Krishna Murdy and she was an extraordinary example of someone who was very much a powerful woman but she was not uh trapped in any kind of ancient archetype as an expression of her of the femininity. So I think embracing kind of the where this women this new women's liberation is a big part of what I hope women will do. I personally feel that uh if this next stage in cultural evolution that we're all trying to find our way into is going to emerge, women have to find their own freedom first. I don't think men and women can truly be equal unless women find their own unconditional freedom first from the patriarchy. This patriarchy has been this dominant cultural influence for eternity. And you nobody can liberate themselves from these influences overnight. This is a long process. I felt for a long time that for culture to change at this deep level, women need to find their perfect freedom through their relationship with other women first as a way to free themselves from this deep influence of patriarchy over thousands and thousands of years. Easier said than done. And also women are uh they're physically much more vulnerable than men are. So historically speaking, women have needed protection from nature and from other people. It's understandable. And uh it's biological vulnerability that women experience. Men know nothing about it. women realize that they're that they're vulnerable to half the human race can overwhelm it more or less anytime they want to. So it has to be terribly frightening and you have if that's if that's true and it is true consciously or unconsciously women have we're going to have to come up with some kind of survival strategy to deal with that if I'm physically weaker if I can't protect myself physically I'm going to have to find another way to gain power self-p protection and this brings up all kinds of challenging questions I don't trust these biological instincts impulses absolutely I think they're not so trustworthy So what you're saying may be true, it may not be true. Maybe in order for you to self-actualize fully as a woman as seeking for enlightenment, maybe you need need to act on this desire to to bear children. I don't know. But but at the same time, it might not be true either. As soon as you explore it, maybe it is true, maybe it's not true. Be open. So if you can do this, if you can do both and embrace the challenge of being a mother in the complexity of this world system and also not sacrifice your spiritual aspirations, I would think it would be fantastic. It would be amazing and I would applaud you. But it's going to be much harder. That's what you have to realize. I believe you if you can bring up enlightened children who are extraordinarily autonomous and creative and inspired to save the world and they were influenced by your love for evolution and they have you to thank for it. It would justify everything you're feeling. If you can bring enlightened children into the world, you're achieving the greatest good. You know what greater gift can you give to the world than that? I agree. Sounds good to me. I haven't fall but we got to do it. Got to do it. Now part of the challenge which I just mentioned briefly a little while ago is that uh with postmodernity and with post postmodernity in terms of adult development narcissism seems to increase which means most modern adults become more self-absorbed and more concerned with their own own needs. The bearing children is a very selfless act. You have to be really willing to give all of yourself to your children for five, six, seven years selflessly and with great commitment. And it's harder for us to do than been for our parents' parents. They took it for granted. Narcissists have their own needs. We as narcissists have have our own needs. That's where I see the conflict coming in. The issue with this question has to do with time. How much time do you have to devote to consciousness? And the greatest luxury and I'm sure hope you a lot of you feel this on the retreat that you have time now to get to your own the evolution of your own consciousness. Even just to come meditate together like we had a beautiful meditation this morning together. Fact that we have the time, we've made the time, we've created the time and the space to sit quietly together in this way is a big deal. is to just to give the time to something so inscrable and unimaginable as consciousness is just to create the life conditions where you can devote yourself to consciousness which is so mysterious and ungraspable is a big big deal. Most people are just too busy. They don't have the time to devote to consciousness. They don't barely have time to survive. Right? This takes time to calm the ego down and to gain some real depth. Put one foot in front of the other. Because the question for us pursuing this kind of enlightenment possibility is for most of history, most men and women had no freedom or autonomy in being themselves. They were merely following their roles. being a man or woman, a father, a mother, whatever it was, there was no time or room for independence or creative becoming for most people. People were living according to roles that were given. So this self- authorship of the human experience is a very new possibility. It was only very rare rare people in the past. But now when so many of us are coming into this time of infinite potential that they're trying to catch up with all of this. So self- authorship of the human experience it's the self- authorship is a big responsibility and opens all kinds of brings all kinds of questions to the table we can't take anything for granted so much is possible we have to be very aware of how are we freely choosing to make certain choices or are we being compelled to make these choices are we aware of the difference in oursel it's not always easy to tell the So part of the uh part of the spiritual evolution is learning how to distinguish truth from fiction. And the problem is with these strong feelings make us draw certain kinds of conclusions about what they mean. So in the same way strong feelings of pleasure and desire can make us feel certain things are so important. In the same way was as with the wounded ego. A lot of feelings of pain and fear and suffering can make us draw certain conclusions that we find when we wake up were never true. So we want to learn to be very to scrutinize our own inner experience of intense feelings both positive and negative with great intensity. Is this as true as it seems to be? Just because I feel it strongly does it does that mean it's true? No. But most people get fooled by strong feelings very quickly because because of the strength of it, they're convinced it is truth when it's just a strong feeling. I really feel bad. You have no idea how bad I feel. It's okay. It'll pass. It's not what it seems. But on another note, do you feel how reality is speeding up? Everything's getting faster and faster. Do you feel it through the level of culture, level of innovation, level of change? I feel it very destabilizing because I feel like we're thinking about evolution and change on a train that's moving faster and faster and faster. It's hard to stay at the edge of it. So much is moving so quickly at the same time. 10 years ago, it felt very different. It felt like the train was moving at a reasonable pace. You can think and talk about these things without feeling overwhelmed by what's always already happening around us. Now it's all happening. It's like you can feel the momentum from the back. So what does it truly even mean to be contemporary right now? It's not even very clear. The subtitle of everything that exists, everything that does not exist is what God is. But everything that exists, everything that does not exist has a vibration as expressing itself in a way that we can experience its nature as a the totality of reality as a feeling is as a kind of knowing that is inherently absolutely liberating unimaginably liberating. It's an experience of ultimacy and absolute truth. The mind can't understand imagine that's what I mean by it makes sense well the thing is when speaking about the nature of God we have to think we have to be careful because we qualities you mentioned are very familiar to us and they almost imbue this absolute principle with a kind of human sensience when the god principle is beyond human compreh ention. It's beyond human imagination. We can't imagine that what it is. It's too vast and too complex and too inconceivable. So I trying to describe this in a way in which we can't imagine what we're talking about. But we know it's a source of ultimate positivity. That's all we know. What it actually is, we can't describe it because it's beyond our minds ability to grasp. If we don't keep it that high, we're lost in our human imagination, human projections. That couldn't be what God is. Otherwise, we're we're describing God in a way that is very anthropocentric to human. But what the God principle is is beyond anything we can imagine. It's knowable, but not in a way we can understand with the mind. We have to keep the God principle free from human projections and human anthropomorphic tendencies. So that we can believe in God without being trapped by what it means. I like to use the word God because it makes some kind of enlightenment people uncomfortable because they think if you use the word God, you're always talking about the mythic God. I'm not speaking about the mythic principle. But there is an absolute principle in reality which forces all of us to come to our knees sooner or later. Not my will but thy will be done. It's a truth that destroys the ego in a second, whatever that is. And we need to know that it exists. So we're doing all this discussion and practice so we can get to a point we have intimations of it. We can have intimations of this absolute truth and it humbles the ego completely. It's the only thing I know that really humbles the ego. There's the intimations of this absolute truth. Changes everything. You say, "Well, what is it?" You say, "I don't really know what it is, but it's everything and nothing. I have known everything and nothing." And it brought me to my knees. I couldn't understand it, but it was overwhelming. It and it's instantaneous liberation. It's magical. So abandoning God would mean abandoning our faith that this principle actually exists. Because like I said, if you want to do this, you have to believe in enlightenment, which is the same thing as believing that God exists. And the second is believing in your own capacity to be worthy of the experience. That's important. So abandoning God means we're abandoning our faith that God exactly exists always. It takes a lot of faith and spiritual self-confidence, right? I'm so glad you found a friend you'll never be able to see. So, you need to have confidence in the in in the truth that God exists. No matter what, no matter how things appear here on earth, no matter how bad it gets, this absolute principle is still the ultimate truth no matter what. So giving up on that, if you give up on that, you really fall back into the ego's small little world of fear and pain and nihilism and doubt. So it takes a lot of spiritual courage to never lose our faith, right? It's important. We always have to give the God principle the benefit of the doubt. Even if we can't see it, it takes courage and faith and we need each other's help to do that because we need to remain strong when things get very difficult because that truth is kind of uh it forces us to be true. The ego wants to also run away from that.