Andrew Cohen - N° 27 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec. 24 _ Feb. 25

Many of us were brought up in a secular context where we didn't have a higher context for existence. But we had this self that needed to self-actualize. But what was the context going to be for self-actualization? For a lot of us who grew up like me in a secular context, you didn't have any idea. And also in the 60s and 70s and the 80s and the 90s psychology became very popular. A lot of people began to give a lot of attention to that ego story. I'm obsessed with the ego story. Nobody told them that they weren't. Their ego story was not the most important part of who they were. And it became a a real disaster when everybody started focusing on the ego story instead of transcending. And it's even worse for the millennials. The Ken will be called this the sensitive self is even more sensitive than the sensitive self of the baby boomers. So my guru said as nirvana has no beginning and no end. So samsara has no beginning and no end. So the story of the small self is a narrative. I my small self has a narrative. There's a story about Andrew's life and his his pain, his suffering. You have your story. We all have ours. And because of our culturally conditioned narcissism, obsession with the story of the small suffer, we become trapped in that story. And it's usually a story of pain and suffering and misery and victimization and hurt, resentment, anger, frustration, alienation. And once you get trapped there, you start thinking about it all the time and worried about how you feel all the time. And if friendship takes place in the context of sharing that reality with each other, one gets more embedded in without even realizing it. So it's become more encrusted, more real is the reality of my existence which is the story of the small self. That's absolutely horrible. I've also personally in my life observed most people who are therapists and even very good therapists. If you get to know them and speak personally to them, you'll find that they're still very trapped in their own story. They might be very nice people, but they're still trapped in the damn story. So, because I'm sorry has no beginning, no end. It's like getting like getting lost in a swamp in the small cell which is an eternal swamp of hell. This is my perspective. So from the enlightenment perspective, we just want to get out of the swamp and into a completely different relationship to reality which is nirvana where that where that story has been transcended in a very deep and profound way in a way that changes us forever in a very dramatic way. To me that's the ultimate solution to the problem of being trapped in the swamp of the smaller soul. You have to want out completely. And to want to be free unconditionally, radically, absolutely, and completely, and really mean it with all of our hearts. These days, a lot of people want to understand the problem. I say if you don't understand the problem, you want to transcend the problem. As long as you're trying to transcend the problem, you still think the problem is real. The awakening to enlightened awareness reveals to us in these higher states that the problem is not real. Because the ego is just a relative self. The true self is the self absolute like Ramen says to all of us. And take your pick. Which has more value? The self that is relatively real or the self that's absolutely real? What's the answer? Which has more value? The self that's relatively real. The self that's absolutely real. When we realize that, we become very serious about our liberation. We stop playing games with the small self. Start focusing absolutely on the big self like becoming a syasi metaphorically or literally. We stop listening to the ego. Stop playing its games. Stop being seduced by it. We start daring to embody the truth of the big self as we understand it as we experience it. We start standing for that publicly in the world. Having the courage to kind of bear witness to the highest truth in a world of disbelievers. And then we want to bear witness with our life and the way that we live it. The self is real. The ego is not. We just need to transcend the small self all together. We don't need to take it along. It's bad karma. [laughter] Bad habits. Small self is just a bunch of bad karmas. Bad bosses, right? Why would you want to take them along? It's a bad trip. See the thing is that um I it's very good to contemplate the meaning and significance of the difference between samsara and nirvana. I don't live in a nirvanic state all the time but I regularly experience its bliss and its glory. I said it's unbearable because it's too much beauty, truth and goodness. It's living physically unbearable. When you have those kind of experiences on a regular basis, you understand what light what's possible in this human experience. So we want to make nirvana a real presence in this world and a real possibility for people, not just something we read about in ancient spiritual literature. Let's make it real. People are scared of because if you're really invested in your ego story, if you accept the truth about enlightenment, you have to give up the story. A lot of people don't like to give up the story because they don't like to be someone who's not not the wounded one, victimized one, the one who's been hurt, wounded, traumatized, victimized. The one who's got an excuse not to show not to be ready for prime time. [laughter] What if we gave up all of our all the excuses not to be ready for prime time right now? Then we have to show up in all our imperfection ready to rock as if as if lighteners were humanly possible. Whether it is or not, we don't know if we're going to show up that way. Now to me, spiritual life begins when we become finders. Seeking is a drag compared to being a finder. you find yourself living a different life in a different context, a different reach, a different purpose. So the true self either has no story or it's a glorious story of infinite greater potential and ecstatic possibility coming from the heart of the universe and screaming to be realized through this body, this mind, this personality, that body, that mind, that personality. So it's like you're awake always to the spiritual vision of the highest possibility. You're focusing on that not not your ego story but the story of the enlightenment of the whole universe. So if you're thinking about it you're envisioning it you're trying to catalyze it living in and for that possibility. That's what it's like to be a bodhis safa to kind of have a bodhic safic motive actualizing itself to us and find a source of great dignity and selfrespect and then one's here for a reason and a purpose. So what I personally what I try and do and this is just me. This is my way is when I work with people I try to get them to stop thinking about their egos all the time. Just stop thinking about it. Stop. Just stop doing that. If they want to talk about it, I kind of when people want to talk to me about their egos, I literally get a sick feeling in my stomach. I start feeling spiritually nauseous. I keep talking. I start feeling worse and worse. I don't say I don't tell anybody. I start feeling sick. I'm trying to tell them stop doing that. Don't say it because the ego wants to pull us all down into that world of pain and suffering and misery and division and karma. But we all want to try and be mirrors for each other, mirrors for our higher potentials. We want to reflect our higher potentials to each other because if I can do a little better than you can do a little better and so pulling each other up. Let's take this as seriously as we possibly can. No, not for our sake, but for everyone else's sake, right? The conditioning becomes a problem when you don't see it. And you become conscious of the conditioning. You see it. If you see it, you can take responsibility for it. You don't have to act out of it. Even if you feel it, that if you're unconsciously conditioned, you're unconsciously acting out of condition, there's no way out. It's like being in hell. So being aware of the conditioning is the first is the first step out of it and you can take responsibility for it, not act out of it and be free. The idea is to act like you're free even if you don't feel it. The thing the thing to do about the ego is to stop paying attention to it. It's like a little it's like a mosquito. The ego wants your attention. If you give the ego your attention, it'll get stronger and stronger and stronger. And if you stop giving the ego your attention, it'll get smaller and smaller and smaller. So the spiritual practice, the spiritual sad is learning how not to give the ego so much attention. Learning how to ignore it, learning how to bear it without reacting. Make sense? See, you know everything. You know a lot. Very good.