Andrew Cohen - N°2 - LAST RETREAT - January 2025

So remember meditation is the enlightenment of no relationship. So what you should be doing in the meditation practice is having no relationship to the content of consciousness which is thought. That's how you get enlightened in the traditional context. So relationship means two. No relationship means zero. Traditional enlightenment is the contemplation of nothingness. Infinite nature of the ground of being. How do you gain access? By having no relationship to the content of consciousness. No mind objects. Have no relationship with any mind objects which is thoughts. Concentrate on the space that exist between all your thoughts. How much space is it exist between two thoughts? Infinite. So if you concentrate on the space that exists between thoughts and concentrating on the nature of the infinite. Enlightenment is a revelation in the nature of the infinite. So concentrate on the space exists between thoughts. Concentrate on the space not on the thoughts. What are we doing all day long usually? Thinking about thoughts, right? So why are we unhappy? Because we're concentrating on that which is relative and limited all the time. Thinking about one thought or another thought, thoughts, thinking about thoughts, mind objects, thinking about mind objects. So when you concentrate on the space that exists between thought, you get relief because you're concentrating now on the infinite nature of space. and get spiritual relief and release. What a relief to concentrate on the nature of the infinite. I'm free. And when you become aware of that which is infinite, you start feeling good. The infinite makes you feel happy. Think about thinking and you'll become unhappy, tense and self- concerned, anxious and fearful, all kinds of other lovely things. Concentrate on the space between the thoughts and you'll begin to experience spontaneous happiness. Enlightenment is the revelation of spontaneous joy which is the nature of the infinite space that exists between thoughts and self-rising spontaneous inherent joy and happiness. self-existing, inherently self-existing. Nothing to do with you personally. It's not personal happiness. It's not personal happiness, but your happiness. It's cosmic joy. It's how God feels about herself. How does God feel about herself? Happy. How do you know? Because when you become aware of God consciousness, you begin to feel happy because you realize nature of God, him or her is joy. Not personal joy, transcendental joy, the inherent happiness, spontaneously present all the time. The secret is to stop thinking about ourselves, stop thinking about our ego, stop thinking about fear and desire. Stop thinking about the past. Concentrate on the infinite nature of the absolute as in your own experience. You don't have to look outside yourself in this experience. As you look inside yourself, it's all there all the time. Infinite space means infinite freedom. Isn't that beautiful? So simple, isn't it? You've heard it all a million times. Did you believe it? That's the question. Do you believe it? I believe it. Sometimes you have to be patient a little bit to discover these things. But it doesn't take too long to realize, oh my goodness, it's true. When I think too much, I get sick. So to me, this tells us a lot about how we should be living our life. If we think less, feel more happiness. Tells us a lot about what our relationship to life should be based upon, right? So the way you can solve your problems in the enlightenment context is is by having no relationship to them for a while. If you have a very intense relationship to what you believe are your problems and feel tense and frightened, insecure like you have to figure it out. You have to work it out. But if you can practice no relationship, the problems fall away from the center of your awareness. You go from being here to here. Oh, not so bad. here to here. Then a lot of things that troubles us are not so not so difficult anymore to deal with, not so overwhelming, not so frightening. How does that sound like a good idea? Fact there's a no relationship. Now remember, enlightenment is about ego transcendence. So your ego loves to be in relationship with thoughts. Your ego wants to be in a relationship with thought all the time. Your ego loves relationships. Your true self doesn't like relationships with thoughts, but your ego does. So part of you wants the attachment to history and to thinking. Part of you doesn't want that. So what does the presence of God feel like? Feels infinite. I want to help you to understand what is ego, what is spirit, what is God. Most people don't know what the difference is. So the presence of the infinite, that's what God is. It's very simple. So if we start paying attention to our experience, sometimes we can feel peaceful, but there's no presence of the infinite. You're just feeling peaceful. Sometimes you can feel much deeper sense of peace just vibrating with the presence of the infinite. That's the presence of God, the absolute. And when the mind starts to disappear, when there's a feeling I could stay here forever, never to return back to the way things were. Right? So in being enlightenment, presence of the infinite is peace. The experience of peace and becoming enlightenment, presence of the infinite is the awareness of infinite creative potential. So it's a very big difference when you're aware there of I'm aware of creative potential versus being aware of infinite creative potential. It's a very different experience. So God is the experience of peace. It's a peace that vibrates with the presence of the infinite, the presence of eternity, destroys the mind. And becoming enlightened is the awareness of creative potential that's infinite. It's immeasurable. It's unimaginable. It's overwhelming. So God is the experience of the infinity. The experience of the presence of that which is infinite very simple. So God consciousness is the experience of the presence of the infinite as being and as becoming. So I want to encourage all of you to when you have these different kinds of feelings to begin to analyze these feelings, scrutinize them, understand them, pay attention to them. Is this just a feeling of peace or is it more than just a feeling of the presence of peace? Is where the presence of the infinite? Is this just an awareness of greater potential? The awareness of infinite greater potential. Infinite creative potential is liberating means all things are possible. No matter what has happened in the past, all things are still possible right now. So making your life very easy. So when you experience the awareness of infinite potential, you will be instantly liberated from your past. No matter what has happened in the past, it doesn't matter. Suddenly all things are possible now. That's the good news. All things are possible now. No matter what's happened in the past. So the experience, the presence of the infinite of greater potential is the key to liberation. All things are possible for you still. And it's when you recognize it as a spiritual experience as a higher state of consciousness. Doesn't matter what's happened before. God forgives everything. Gives you infinite possibility for total and unconditional liberation. Now good deal, huh? So I wanted to just repeat this a few times. I want all of you to pay attention to your experience. Repeating what I said already. When you feel peaceful, is it just peace or is it that peace vibrating with the presence of the infinite? When you experience the awakening to your own potential for creativity, is it just the potential or is it infinite potential? Infinite potential is unlimited without measure. It's liberating right now. I want you to understand that this talk of liberation and enlightenment is real. It's a state of consciousness. It's a conscious experience of freedom from karma, from history, no matter what's happened. So a lot of people can have these kinds of feelings, but they don't recognize what they are. So in order to recognize what they are, we have to become, we have to study our inner experience. Pay attention what's happening inside me now. What does it mean? What does it feel like? We have to become like a spiritual scientist studying this experience of consciousness. When you feel unhappy, you should pay attention. Why am I feeling unhappy? You're obviously dwelling on some conscious or unconscious thought about limitation about what's not possible. Just a thought. It's not objective reality. It's not absolute reality. It's not infinitely true. It's a relative truth that just the presence of one limiting thought. And it can color your entire experience of consciousness. So if you're a true seeker after enlightenment, you have to constantly deconstruct your experience. Constantly constantly discovering and rediscovering, rediscovering your own potential for unconditional liberation here and now. It's always there. It's our relationship to our experience and it opens the door to liberation or not. You have to be very sophisticated, mature, intelligent, very self-reflective. Self-reflection is a big part of the path every day. Are you paying attention to your inner experience? Are you deconstructing your experience? Are you paying attention to what's happening? Are you just being thrown around like a rough seat of your own mind? Dwell on the infinite part. Don't dwell on the suffering. It's presence doesn't mean anything unless you wanted to. When I was talking to you the other day when I met you, I was aware of the fact that you seem to think the presence of memories of pain and limitation. Your awareness of the presence of memories and pain of limitation meant you weren't free. It's not true. The difference between freedom and bondage is your relationship to your experience in the present moment. Not the content of your experience. The content of your experience is always going to be relative most of the time. Your relationship to your experience has to become nonrelant. Who decides whether you're free or not? Look at my body's a mess. I'm okay. I'm suffering more than you. [laughter] Is it stopping me? It's not stopping me. >> Sometimes I can hardly walk. Am I crying? Am I talking about my suffering and my limitation or talking about freedom? What am I expressing when I speak? Am I expressing limitation and fear? See, so it's our relationship to our experience that proves everything, not the nature of our experience. That you're very careful. You can let your ego be your master. The ego is deciding what's what. Don't listen to it. The ego pretends to be the master. truly an obnoxious child. ego wants power of her you doesn't want you to be free want you to be a slave is what I'm saying very simple and very clear no therapy necessary you just have to believe it that's all could it really be true is this true could it really be true? Yes, it is true. Could it be so simple? Yes. But a lot of us can't bear the simplicity of the possible. It's like here, take it. Can't be that simple. It must be more complicated. You know, it's that simple. Take it. Can't be that simple. Must must be no more to it. No, there isn't. Take it. I haven't read enough books yet. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. But the secret to enlightenment lies in the space between the thoughts, not in the thoughts. What's in the space between the thoughts? Everything and nothing. What is everything and nothing? The infinite. All knowledge of liberation comes from the infinite. Doesn't come from anything that's not infinite. It's an absolute space with absolute freedom. It's unconditional. It's without conditions. Doesn't care what your history is. Doesn't care what your name is. Doesn't care who you think you are. Father, it's good news. How could I be free because I'm not perfect? The infinite is not asking any of us to be perfect. Is willing to say yes. Is that a relief? We don't have to be perfect first. God is not asking us to be perfect. He's just asking us to say yes. I trust you unconditionally. That's all he wants. A lot of people think I'm not ready yet because I'm still imperfect. I'm not perfectly pure. I'm not perfect. As if the ego would know what perfection is anyway. So when you say an unconditional yes, it's like unconditional surrender. When you say yes, you don't know what's going to happen, but you're saying yes anyway cuz you're trusting the friend. You can't see without conditions now. Follow you future. Make sense? Very good. Now you just have to do it and you're going to be a good shade. What I what I'm trying to say is that if you let go and trust in this infinite possibility, your heart will relax, your mind will relax. So what I'm saying is if you can expand your perspective beyond all these relative distinctions, include everything including the discomfort, the discomfort will eventually disappear. This isn't it. This is not the real thing. It gives the ego power. But let all that go. Very innocent. I don't really know. I have no idea. It takes a little while to decondition our robotic relationship to life because we're conditioned robots now [laughter] and are habitually habitually drawing conclusions. I have a pain in my head. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. I have a pain in my heart. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Because the the door to liberation is not not already knowing. I don't already know. I am familiar with the feeling I'm having, but I don't already know what it means. Versus I'm familiar with the feeling I'm having and I already know what it means. So, we have to learn how to not already know. And we already know when we think we know based on past experience. So when you cannot already know based on past experience, everything is open. Even if the experience is familiar, you suddenly you won't already know what it is. Then it leaves infinite space for more perspectives. Not already knowing what it is. I don't already know what it is. I don't already know what it is. Think about the difference between I already know I already know I don't already know anything. It's a state of infinite receptivity without limitation. It's a liberated metaphysition because you see because you see I get to look like an like a master, look like an expert because I assume that position makes it possible for me to appear like a master. That's what makes it possible because I'm doing the very thing I'm asking you to do. So it makes me look like I know what I'm talking about. It's as much of a surprise to me as it is to anyone else. I don't I don't feel like I know what I'm talking about, but I seem to. I'm able to help other people. So, I don't already know. That's all you have to consider is not already knowing. When we already know anything, the door is closed. And we don't already know the door is open. Can you feel the relaxation in that? So if you don't already know, all things are still possible, right? That's the whole point. If you already know, the conversation's over. I can't get through to you because you already know. So there's no point in having conversation. But if you don't already know, there's infinite room for the unknown. And if the unknown includes the infinite, well, that's an interesting possibility then, right? That's everything I'm saying. Not already knowing makes all things possible. It's already the word already changes everything. I've already heard this before, man. Can't tell me anything new. These [laughter] smart guys are really into the already knowing problem. If you don't already know, you stay humble. Experiment with it. You'll see it opens up. It'll open up hidden spaces inside your heart. Everything I'm doing here is very intentional. This is a very intentional path. I say what's the meta position of pure motivation of the human being? I don't know, but I want to know. I [snorts] don't know. Infinite potential. I want to know. I'm interested what I can't see. Why are you not worthy? What what makes you unworthy? Have you killed anybody? Have you done terrible things? You a bad person, an evil person? That's called the postmodern condition. Is that an original feeling? So if you realize it's a postmodern predicament, doesn't mean anything about you. This means you picked up bad mental habits from your culture. Doesn't have anything to do with you. Which means even if you feel that way, you don't have to take it seriously. You know what it is. It's not the truth. It's all part of the same same cycle. It's a bad mental habit that you've learned from your culture. It's called self-hatred. It sucks. So, so do you, is anybody forcing you to hate yourself? So why are you doing it? But it's just a mental habit has no self- nature. Just a habit. Doesn't mean anything. Just a conditioned reaction, a conditioned response. Don't believe it. When it comes up in your experience, you're smart enough old enough to see that this is the postmodern condition. You've been conditioned to react this way. It's unhealthy, unh wholesome, and sick. And most modern millennials and boomers have suffered from the same problem. It's called self-hatred, self-loathing. It's a dark culturally conditioned habit. So, you should feel, I suggest, I would inspire you to feel a spiritual obligation to free yourself from this terrible habit. And you can do it through the use of your own awakened willpower. Say, "I don't believe you anymore. I don't believe you anymore. I choose not to believe you anymore. I choose to have no relationship with you anymore because you're dark. You want to destroy me. I have nothing to do with you. You can do it. I do it. I suffer from those feelings, too. Do I look like it? There you go. So if you're earnestly practicing the dharma, if you're earnestly practicing the dharma, you will look good. Doesn't mean you will always feel good. You might sometimes feel bad, but you'll look very good. You look free. If you're practicing the dharma earnestly and sincerely, you'll look very free. You'll act very free. How we feel is not the bottom line about who we are. So when you wake up, you begin to understand that we're all a bundle of conditioning. Layer of conditioning upon layer of conditioning upon layer of conditioning upon layer of conditioning upon layer of conditioning upon layer of conditioning upon layer of conditioning. It's very complicated with these complex conditioned beings. Layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of unconsciousness, conditioned behavior. It's impossible to see it all. myself sensing to be trapped in a matrix of conditioning. So don't take all of your feelings so seriously because most of it's just conditioned habits. It's not you. If you think it's you, then it's you. But it becomes you. But if you know it's not you, it's just a habitual feeling, habitual thought. Doesn't mean anything about you. Doesn't have to mean a damn thing about you. So this is why a big theme in this teaching is the intention for liberation and choose not to believe in these thoughts anymore because they're so deeply conditioned. They might not go away all all at once. But you have to be a warrior, not care if the the thoughts are present or whether they're not present. You know what the truth is. If you know what the truth is, you can act free. Even if you're feeling constricted emotionally, that's what counts. It's what you do that counts, not what you think, not what you feel. What you think doesn't matter. What you feel doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what you do. We are what we do. We are we are what we choose to do. Consciously and unconsciously. The sum total of our choices to act is who we become. So I believe God or the creator of the universe gives all of us a measure of freedom to make choices. Not infinite freedom but we have a small little measure of freedom a little bit to work with. And the spir we do the spiritual practice to increase the amount of freedom we have to make choices. Increase our conscious. The more consciousness we can cultivate the more freedom we're going to have to make choices to be free. That's what spiritual practice is for to cultivate our capacity to make the choice to be free. So even when we feel overwhelmed, confused and lost, we still want to cultivate our capacity to be free. Even even then, even when we feel lost, doesn't matter just a feeling. It's just a feeling. Because I feel these feelings, it means X. And I'm trying to tell you, if you want to be free, what you feel doesn't mean a damn thing. Doesn't have to mean anything. The ones who don't make it don't want it badly enough. I have a very absolute position there. If we want it badly enough, we're going to get it because we want it badly enough. Ramen Mahari said, "A true seeker has to want liberation the way a drowning man wants air. There has to be a desperation. Most people aren't de they're interested in moka that's very interesting but they're not personally desperate they're not existentially desperate in my own life I came to a point where I realized unless I attained liberation life wouldn't be worth living for me it was a matter of existential urgency and then I felt very desperate about it I wasn't kidding around it meant everything to me I was traveling around in India in those middle 80s I was meeting other seekers They were interested but they weren't desperate. They're usually interested because they were in India so they're interested in spiritual things. They went back home they lost interest. It's like a passing phase. It's like anything else in life. So I personally believe we have to want liberation the way drowning man wants there. Then we will succeed. No one will be able to stop us because it's between you and God in the end, not anyone else. And if you're if you feel desperate about it, you'll make the kind of choices in your life that will make awakening much easier for you. You'll choose relationships that put liberation first, not second. You'll stop the compromise about your values, your true choices. You'll stop compromising. You'll always put liberation first, never second. You'll build up a kind of momentum that'll lead you to your own emancipation. So if you want to be liberated, you can't worry about the painful feelings that come sometimes, bad feelings, shame and fear, regret, all those things. They're your feelings that you have to deal with. They're your problem, not anyone else's problem. So, we have to be willing to bear them with dignity and not take them seriously. If they're real, then you have to take them seriously. But if they're not real, they're just a result of your conditioning. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean a damn thing. Many of us children of postmodernity have been led to believe consciously or unconsciously explicitly or implicitly that we are not supposed to have suffered. Suffering the fact of suffering is somehow unfair. It's unfair that I have suffered. It's inherently wrong. Should never have happened. Says who? Suffering is a part of life. Now look around. We used to have a beautiful cat named Sheila a year ago. She was so beautiful. We we picked her up from the street. She lived with us for two years and then she got caught in a trap here and her head was almost completely severed. So life sucks. The creative process is full of suffering and pain and beautiful things also. But pain is part of the pain and suffering is part of the creative process. It's just part of the whole process. And that's thinking that it shouldn't be part of the case doesn't make it go away. Learning to accept that pain and suffering and trauma for example is to be expected. The universe was created in a big explosion, a big act of violence, right? cosmic explosion. So so much about the creative process is violent and we have to realize that suffering is part of life. If we're going to take birth, we're going to suffering is going to be a part of it. I'm not saying suffering is good. But I'm saying that if we think about it that it's to be expected, we have a different relationship to it. If you expect or feel that you should never these things should never happen and we're always going to be a victim. But if you realize that this is part of life, then you feel much less victimized by it. Follow doesn't mean some things aren't painful. It's still painful, but you're but you're not victimized in the same way. The suffering is a part of life. Grief is a part of life. Terror is a part of life. It's all part of the life process. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying it's part of what is. So if it is part of what is and we try and deny it, we're going to suffer. But we come to accept it. We'll suffer a lot less. And I think that there's a test for all of us that if you're a spiritual aspirant, you need to be able to embrace the suffering that life gives you with dignity and self-respect, right? To the best of your ability. The goal for all of us in the spiritual context is not to be a victim. Can you do it? It's not easy. It means you're going to suffer. But can you not be a victim? Being a victim is like poison. It's eating poison. But it takes a lot of courage and a lot of determination, a lot of conviction not to give into the victim mentality. It's hard. But you can do it if you want to be free. If you want to be free, you can do it. And when you realize you can do it through your own for force of your own spiritually inspired will, you gain what I call spiritual self-confidence. I can do it. I'm strong enough to defeat samsara. I'm strong enough to defeat samsara. I can do it. Then you get spiritual self-confidence. That's what people say. What happened to you? You're different. You seem a lot stronger. Yes, I've woken up. I've taken responsibility for my the entirety of my karmic chain. Take We take responsibility for ourselves, for all of our karma, the good and the bad. I own it. Not anybody else's fault anymore. It's all me. No matter what happened to me, it's all me. my karma not it's not your problem anymore it's my problem that sets me free other people too but you have to have a heroic spirit to do this a lot of people think well I got enlightened now I'm happy all the time [laughter] it's a feel-good drug it doesn't work that way show me that person ramen was a freak of nature you can't compare yourself to someone like that. He's not normal. But everything that I teach is something that that you can do if you want to do it. But it's very demanding. But it works. It works. We can learn not to be victims. We can we help to liberate other people from pain and suffering. Also, I think if you're spiritually evolved, if you are actually spiritually mature and spiritually evolved, we have an obligation to be strong. Be self-confident and kind, be transparent, be authentic, be the real deal in public. So you have to be very tough, independent, outrageous, audacious, a nonconformist. If you want to be free, you have to tell everybody else to go to hell. Who cares what other people think? Have you not noticed that most people are crazy and deluded? Who cares what they think? I'm serious. Just pay attention. You'll see it's true. Try to be sane in an insane world and you'll feel really crazy. So the victim cannot walk this path. Isn't that cool? The leap from the personal to the transpersonal is the primary shift. I mean I think I'm I'm share what I'm sharing here is my experience. What I'm teaching is what my experience is. It's a metaposition. It's a position of freedom. As a meta position and as an experience I'm not distinguishing between the metaposition and the experience itself. They're both the same thing. And so I'm in a flow. Something happened to me when I met my guru and I've never been the same. It opened up a door in consciousness. It changed something in my soul. And and and what's different is I have no doubt about it. I never doubt it. That makes all things possible. There was a transformation that I experienced has remained unchanged for 35 years. So I never doubt it. So my my practice is never to doubt and I never do that. I never even think about it and just being me. This recent heart operation seriously made me aware of this part of my body, this part of my soul. is when they cut open your chest and start working on your heart. It's some mysterious violation of your physical form at the deepest level. It's more intimate than someone touching your genitals. I fel I suddenly was feeling after the operation that's something profound that happened to me and to my soul because of this operation. And I could feel this connection between my heart and my soul in a way I never felt it before. felt very vulnerable, very vulnerable, unbearably vulnerable. And I never and I was in the hospital for two weeks. I had two heart operations. I never was scared. When I came back here after a few days, I got terrified. I said, "What the just happened?" [laughter] And I felt overwhelmed by fear. Oh my god, what did I just do? Remember I said it doesn't matter what you think, doesn't matter what you feel, only matters what you do. And ideally with moka, with enlightenment, the activity needs to become unself-conscious, unself-conscious behavior, unmediated by the ego mind. That's the only thing that's important. Otherwise, there's always stuff happening. I feel this, I feel that, I think this, I think that goes on forever. They're all just It's all just relative phenomena, relatively real, but ultimately meaningless. But non-separation is not an experience. It's a nature of reality. In the way that I teach, we want to really look into this not knowing as a primary vantage point relationship to the totality of your experience. If you can learn how to be rooted, fundamentally deeply rooted in not already knowing all the time, no matter what's happening, it'll free you from all this cognition. I think I'm here now. I'm there. This is happening now that's happening. Doesn't matter. If it's important, you'll know it for otherwise forget it. Just relative phenomena. What does it leave you with? It leaves you with nothing. Isn't that the goal? With enlightenment, zero, no relationship. Can your ego bear it? Not knowing. People that are intelligent and know they're intelligent have have more trouble with this particular aspect of the teaching. So the goal is to be left empty-handed. My guru used to keep a notebook punit in his notebook and keep all of his recent insight. He had lots of insights. He had a very active enlightenment. So he's always having realizations. Amazing. So he'd write down one realization after another realization after another. He'd write them all down. When the notebook was full, he threw it threw it in the street. The switch from unenlightenment to enlightenment is basing your self-nature, your knowledge of yourself on not already knowing versus knowing this or knowing that. That's the big shift. So you need to become very comfortable having no idea as being yourself versus I know this and I know that. Then you get a new beginning every day. You get a new you get another chance to be free. We all get a chance every day to be free again. So how we cultivate this capacity is through contemplating the nature of zero. Learning how to return to that place again and again. Getting into feel very comfortable having nothing, knowing nothing and being no one. as a state and as an inner focus. Remember I said the perfect metaphosition is I don't already know but I want to know always. A lot of the Zen type dharma talks about not knowing. They don't talk about wanting to know. So we need both. The not knowing in my model is the emptiness part, the unmanifest. The wanting to know is the manifest creative part. It's the creative fully engaged relationship with the totality of reality. So if you want to be fully engaged with the totality of reality, you have to want to know what's the right relationship to this moment. what's what's the best and most appropriate relationship to this moment. Could be this, could be that, could be the other. I want to know what the right relationship is because the right relationship will enable me to do the right thing for the right reasons at the right time. And I want to be able to do that. It's because I'm an imperfect vehicle. I'm an imperfect human being. I'm sometimes going to make the wrong choice. So I, as much as possible, I want to learn how to make the right choice as much as I can. That's why we have to always be paying attention to what's happening.