Andrew Cohen: The Spiritual Challenge of the Metacrisis

so you all know that we're living in extremely challenging times for all kinds of reasons and because our species is facing so many multiple crises at the same time it has begun to dawn on most intelligent sophisticated thoughtful sensitive people that were entering a completely different time of history many of us have begun to realize that there's no way back to the extremely secure period of human history between the late 50s and early 2000s we're in a very different time we're in the middle of a time of breakdown a time of great concern for our individual collective futures it's become obvious that uh the future is going to be enormously difficult for many many many people and for the environment and for those of us who have the courage to face into the truth it's extremely frightening and emotionally psychologically personally collectively philosophically and metaphysically completely overwhelming if we really begin to look closely at the truth of the facts of what we're facing but what i want to talk about is if we're if we're if it's true that we're in a period of potential collapse what is the right perspective what is the right attitude what is the appropriate inner posture in relationship to such an unusual time in human history that is going to affect all of us in one way or another unavoidably and it is the impending reality of total insecurity that i'm speaking about so of course we all like to think that the world space that we're living in is safe and secure and it's natural and understandable that we would be expecting that because that's how the world has been for a lot of us for most of our lives so many of us have gotten used to privileges comforts and possibilities of human experience that most human beings could never even have imagined most of us have been able to travel anywhere we wanted to go do anything we do do anything we could think of really most of us have probably never starved never had to worry about where our next meal was going to come from and had been afforded a [Music] high level of education so most of us on this call are probably among the luckiest people that have ever been born and we've gotten used to things being pretty good and why not so most of us have never lived through a war we've never lived through a period of collapse and real existential challenges because likes of which we're facing now so i don't want to talk about why we're in this mess because i'm sure you all have your own ideas about it and i'm certainly not an expert but the question is if we're if we're if we are if if we are those who are interested in spiritual enlightenment spiritual liberation awakening to the highest truths from the highest perspective what would what is the most appropriate attitude in relationships to the existential challenges that we're all facing that's what i want to talk about a little bit because we're all going to have all kinds of thoughts and feelings about what's happening about what's going to happen as it happens and i think how we're going to be responding emotionally psychologically and even spiritually is unpredictable because no none of us know how we're going to react and how we're going to respond to a crisis until the crisis actually befalls us that's how we find out what we're all that's how we all find out what we're made of when true when when the rubber hits the road in our lives so so what's difficult about this situation is um as other thinkers have pointed out we're facing a potential for a kind of total insecurity collapse and destruction on a level that's probably basically pretty close to historically unprecedented and so i think a big part of a real spiritual practices is cultivating a moral philosophical and metaphysical framework that will help us to keep our balance and to remain strong in the face of the overwhelming challenges that lie ahead because the thing about huge challenges that frighten us is that they they test our deepest convictions about the nature of life and death about the meaning and purpose of existence so one of the things i try and do in my teaching work is a big part of my own practice is to teach myself and to teach other people how to think big how to think with big perspectives big inclusive perspectives that can hold a lot of complexity so we can learn how to see anything and everything that occurs within within our within our inner experience and all around us in the world that we're living in from the biggest vantage points in the biggest perspectives possible now in our deepest moments in our deepest and highest moments in our moments of greatest insight and especially during moments of revelation it becomes apparent to us that we're part and parcel of a process that way transcends the immediacy of the present moment and whatever may be have seeming to be happening in our present circumstances we become aware of a context that's literally infinite vast extraordinary miraculous and profound and that's when the life-changing revelation occurs when we when we begin to awaken to a context it's no longer relative but one that is absolute so it's this moment in the experience of revelation when that which is relative is recognized to be merely an only relative it is so life-changing and that only happens when we wake into a context that's not relative but it's absolute until we see the relative in the context of the absolute relative context always seems like that that is all there is it's all it's all consuming the relative context appears to us most of the time it's being absolutely and totally real and there's nothing beyond it nothing true or more real but when we awaken to a transcendental absolute context suddenly the relative is seen for what it is that which is merely relative or that which is only relatively real when we see that which is relatively real in the context of that which is absolutely real it's always profoundly and inherently liberating beyond measure so the challenge here is can we see even this extraordinary experiment of life on planet earth in the context of that which is relatively real i'm not saying it's not real but i'm saying what's happening here in this process outside of an absolute context is merely relatively real and not absolutely real so can we see this experiment that's occurring here on planet earth this experiment of life as a small extraordinary experiment in a vast unlimited cosmos and can we begin to understand that what happens here it's not the beginning or the end of anything can we begin to grasp that um this process gave birth to life on planet earth is infinite especially from the perspective of revelation there's there are no beginnings and there's no endings and there's no such thing as death so this is the biggest perspective that there is as far as i understand as far as i know and can we awaken enough to always be on some level cognizant of the fact that god are the absolute principle that created the universe in his creative universe right now always instantly transcends that's that which she created and is constantly giving rise to because that is the highest truth so the way not to get caught not to get trapped is to realize that again and again and again and again and to remember that again and again and again and again not not so we would not in any way so that we would avoid and deny anything that's true i'm not talking about spiritual bypassing at all i'm speaking about teaching ourselves through dedicated spiritual practice dedicated spiritual practice of meditation and profound profound contemplation to awaken to this infinite context again and again and again and again and to reach into this infinite context again and again and again until it's not so far away from our awareness not to escape but to be awake so this perspective this highest truth is something that we all need to work on through dedicated spiritual practice hard spiritual work because if we're truly to become enlightened men and women this highest truth needs to become the meta context for all of our human experience so what i'm speaking about now as i've been as i've been saying is the highest vantage point that i know of and in order to realize it and to any and to be able to stabilize ourselves in any way in relationship to it it requires an enormous degree of letting go of all of our relative attachments it requires enormous courage spiritual courage spiritual ambition to really let go of it all because if we can truly let go of it all we will find a most stable place that exists in the universe and beyond the universe and that's the place we want to have access to as much as we possibly can so this is the highest vantage point in the highest perspective and we'll talk about that more but then there's a relative perspective which is equally important and the relative perspective which is equally important has very much to do with how the ego your ego my ego your frontal self my frontal self our frontal self the frontal personality our human personality our flawed and fragile vulnerable sensitive at times intelligent loving personality is going to get through this so a big part of spiritual work a big part of spiritual work is as you all know learning how to transcend the ego not easy everybody talks about it it's hard work few of us really succeed in getting that far with the transcendence process because it's so damn hard and such a big deal and so hard to see but the ego in you and the ego and me is very fickle the ego has good days and the ego has bad days the ego has good days and the ego has bad days the true self and the authentic self never has a bad day the true self and the authentic self always sees the sun that always lays beyond the clouds but the ego has good days and bad days and the bad days when those clouds are very thick and it can't seem to see beyond them on a good day the ego will be your best friend our best friend everybody's best friend in a bad day that he will be our worst enemy and your worst enemy in a charged spiritual context in a spiritually charged and vibrant spiritual context the [Music] transition the metamorphosis we're seeking to accomplish is going is getting the ego to move from a very selfish self-centered self-concerned narcissistic orientation to the experience of life where it cares largely only about itself and its own feelings its own desires its own fears and its own concerns to when it begins to care about other things much bigger things so the ego's a problem because it's because of its narcissistic inwardly focused self-concern and it's a very hard thing to overcome which means i care about me not about you not about us i care about me not about you not about us i care about me i don't care about the environment i care about me i don't care about life really so the most beautiful the most beautiful thing to witness is when someone in the process of waking up transcending the small self begins to discover higher care when they stop the when they when they wake up from the relentless hypno inner hypnosis of being constantly fascinated and focused on their own self-concern and begin to begin to begin to care about other things like other people about animals about nature about life so one way to describe this ego transcending process is going from it's going from self-concern to higher care and i often i in the past i've often challenged people saying how much do you really care how much do you really care because i think a a test of our how liberated our heart and our soul and our mind truly is can be clearly clearly and easily recognized by witnessing how much the other person actually really cares in my own work i've noticed it's a it's a it's a herculean transformation to see someone make the transition from egoic self-concern to awakening to a care for consciousness itself i care more about consciousness than i do about the small self it's a huge leap so the question is how much do you care how much do i care how much do we care and that is one of the biggest spiritual questions in relationship to what we're talking about today is how much do you care what is your capacity to care dependent upon and what and when is it when you stop caring because everybody's got a threshold i don't care anymore i'm sorry i just don't care i don't care is the signature of the unenlightened ego when it's gone to hell so from a certain point of view we could say that when we when we care absolutely about life about love about consciousness about other people about all sentient beings about truth meaning purpose okay when we begin to care desperately and passionately about all those things we're spiritually conscious think about some of our greatest modern saints people like martin luther king and mahatma gandhi what was so remarkable about them was their public demonstration of how much they actually cared they cared so much that they put their own life at risk over and over and over again because they cared more than they were concerned about their own safety you know their own welfare that's a sign of higher consciousness so how much do you care how much do i care how much do we care that's kind of where the rubber meets the road and so what i wanted to say was that when life puts pressure on us it challenges our capacity to care with a very big heart with a big solid with a big mind and when we become frightened and overwhelmed and confused our capacity to care generally deteriorates and if you'll notice when you get very frightened when you get very frustrated when you get very angry you get very victimized you suddenly realize that you don't give a damn and when you begin to not give a damn anymore that's when you become dangerous that's when we become dangerous i just don't give a damn so think about it think about yourself think about your relationship to your own mind your own feelings your relationship to philosophical principles and moral principles to meaning and purpose into the experience of life how much do you care and how much is your capacity for care dependent upon how you feel on any particular day so caring is the expression of enlightened awareness deep and profound caring it's an active enlightened awareness so what i want you all to kind of to think about for a minute is that caring in a way that i'm speaking about it is kind of like a spiritual obligation when you wake up you find that you do care and caring will make your life more challenging because the more you care the more responsibility you will embrace you'll take on your will and body so the more you the more you care the more you're going to be carrying on your own shoulders not just for your own sake but for everyone else's sake you'll be doing it because you feel you have no choice not because you should you find you're doing it because you have no choice so notice that um to repeat to notice that when things get very difficult and we are when we're under a lot of pressure for whatever reason we feel under a lot of existential pressure emotional pressure psychological pressure moral pressure philosophical pressure sometimes we feel it's just too much it just this is just too much whatever it is maybe we're sick maybe somebody would love a sick maybe we've lost our money in a bad investment maybe somebody's betrayed us maybe we've done something very stupid whatever the reason doesn't matter the point i'm trying to make is that the ego has a breaking point and the ego and when the ego breaks in the wrong kind of way it no longer cares and even worse it doesn't care that it doesn't care so when you care you feel responsible and you can you make the effort to be careful and [Music] mindful because you realize the stakes are very high when we live a conscious life so when you know you're living when you're aspiring to live a conscious life you make the effort to be more careful to be more kind and to be more thoughtful but when it all when caring becomes too much of a strain on the frontal self on the person and the ego and the personality and the strain gets to be too much i can't take it anymore i can't take it anymore i can't take it anymore we get to the point when we feel we're about to break and then when we break we say we realize that we don't care and the the interesting part of all this and the terrible part of it is that when the ego doesn't care anymore when the ego feels i don't have to care anymore it feels liberated from all moral and spiritual and even personal obligations because when you care you've got to follow the rules you have to be true you have to be righteous you have to be you have to be enlightened you have to be a righteous soul if you care and if you care that you care and if you know how important caring is but when you don't care anymore and you don't care that you don't care all that falls away you're free you don't have you don't you don't have to give a damn about and so this is this is what i call a state of uh unfreedom or negative freedom positive freedom it's a freedom to care negative freedom is the freedom not to have to care and the ego when it when like when people have a breakdown it's very from a certain point of view um from a certain point in a certain perspective it's very liberating because you don't have to care anymore you don't have to be responsible because you have decided that it's all too much and without when it all becomes too much for you then we can decide to give up when we give out when we give ourselves the freedom to give up or the option of giving up and we take that option it's like a huge burden falls off our shoulders in the wrong way for the wrong reasons of course but it's like it's like a huge huge weight would be carrying falls away the weight of all that responsibility the weight of right righteousness and purposefulness and higher consciousness and truth love meaning purpose and morals and philosophical principles all falls away now we're free not to care my definition of evil is not not caring but but not caring and even worse not caring that we don't care so try and feel when i say i don't care and i don't care that i don't care try to feel in that the negative freedom inherent in that position it's very liberating for your ego for the small self for the part of ourselves we want to be free from if we want to awaken so what does this all have to do with what the the subject of this talk is because none of us know what's going to happen in the future but it's not looking good it's looking like it's going to be as i was saying enormously challenging overwhelming terrifying and frightening and so what i wanted to what i wanted to to advocate was can we can we all work spiritually on ourselves with great diligence and great purposefulness so that we will not be broken by whatever happens it's easier said than done i don't know what's going to happen i don't i don't know what my own breaking point is either so can we work to cultivate a kind of inner strength and in a conviction that's unbreakable no matter what's happening in our outer life what's no matter what's happening in the real world and in in in the life that we're living no matter what's happening can we endeavor strive to become unbreakable in relationship to our highest principles or our our highest moral philosophical and metaphysical principles no matter what easier said than done so despair and destruction despair destruction ruination and loss understandably give rise to feelings of nihilism [Music] and can we can we work to gain such an access to this highest truth to the highest truth that could so spiritually empower us that we would never be tempted by nihilism ever again no matter how bad things got no matter how bad things got no matter how bad things get can we can we become so firmly established in the highest truth that we can never be tempted by nihilism and the relative freedom that nihilism affords us ever again because that's the spiritual solution that we never lose faith that we never lose faith in the highest truth no matter what happens in the real world of relative reality which we are always consciously and unconsciously participating it may we never lose heart and not never lose faith and not blind faith but faith that's based upon profound revelation direct experience of higher consciousness can our inner confidence be stronger than whatever the outer reality to actually be easier said than done when everything is falling apart can we always be can we remain cognizant and conscious of who we really are and where we really are what's actually happening in the biggest context easier said than done but i think that's the spiritual challenge at hand for all of us you have to remember that the truth can be lost when people forget about it so a significant part of the awakening process has always been and will always be bearing witness bearing witness to the highest truth that you have seen that you have known bearing witness so when everybody else for understandable human reasons falls into forgetfulness will you be so firmly established in this higher perspective that you won't forget and that you'll be willing to you'll still be able to bear witness because again remember the truth can be forgotten it has been for the universe to remember its own deepest truths it needs awakened human beings to bear witness to it that's the whole point of evolutionary enlightenment and what's so unique and significant about it is the role that the awakening human plays in the evolutionary process and in the evolutionary context there's the all-important recognition that the evolutionary process bears witness to itself and awakens to itself in the highly complex self-reflective mind of the awakening human so i'm not only speaking about bearing witness to evolution to the progress that the cosmos is making puts in the deepest and highest truths which means the ultimate identity of this whole process will we be here to bear witness when others are forgetting because otherwise this miraculous self-knowledge knowledge of the self will be forgotten when things start going wrong gen gen generally what happens is the consciousness of the collective spirals downward into survival mode and when we're concerned mainly with survival and not with evolving we tend to forget these higher principles and higher truths so at higher levels of development what makes life worth living what makes the experience of life feel like it's worth living and higher levels of development is not comfort it's not material comfort what is self-knowledge so when you get frightened watch your mind and see how in moments of weakness understandable weakness that the ego is begging for the freedom to let go of caring and when you let go of caring you don't have to be responsible anymore because you feel it's not your problem that's the definition of hell when things start going wrong caring is much harder it's spiritually so much more demanding so much more demanding for the soul but that's the work at hand to care more than anything else in spite of what may be going wrong i heard jamie wheel give a talk about the same subject uh about six months ago on youtube and i remember it struck me very deeply when he said what the spiritual quality that we need to cultivate in this particular time in history is courage that we all have to find the courage to be strong in the face of overwhelming insecurity but i think at the same time we need to protect our own hearts work through the spiritual work necessary to protect our own hearts and refuse to break in the face of the enormous temptation to do so you