Help
Sign In
andrew cohen
May 2009 
Some thoughts on Meditation after a Retreat
Posted on Jan 22nd, 2007
by 
Jeff
Jeff
I think it might be possible to be happier than I am right now…but I don’t know how. I just finished a 10-day retreat guided by Andrew Cohen. This was a silent retreat which involves a very tight schedule of meditation and chanting that begins each morning at 4:30am and ends in the evening at 10:30pm (with of course breaks for meals etc…)
There were thirteen of us on the retreat and during the 10 days Andrew met with us 3 times. During these meetings Andrew used the experience that we were all having in our practice to guided us into ever-greater depths of understanding and experience in meditation. I have been a student of Andrew’s for 14 years and I have never understood his teaching of “having no relationship to thought” with the clarity and subtlety that it came through with in these meetings.
He kept stressing how meditation is the act of assuming no position to anything that arises in consciousness. His instructions are simply to be still, to be relaxed and to be attentive. It soon became clear that anything that you could possibly do besides these three things would have to be the result of having drawn some conclusion about what you “should do” based on something that had arisen in consciousness – in other words…not meditating.
We are all used to being Master’s of our own house, so to speak. We are compulsively engaged in the activity of drawing conclusions about “how we are doing” and “what we should be doing” and then making subtle and gross adjustments and corrections. Andrew’s instructions for meditation ask you to surrender all of these conclusions and just let everything be as it is…no matter what you may think or how you may feel about it.
Andrew was emphasizing that for most people the experience of “no relationship to thought” isn’t enough to lead to permanent transformation and therefore in the long run the practice of assuming no relationship to thought when you are not having a particularly deep experience is going to be more helpful in life. For me something profound happened when he spoke this way. Even though I have heard him say similar things many times, I realized that my motivation for doing it was still in the hopes of having “an experience” that would transform me.
My strategy wasn’t going to work! I have had very powerful experiences in meditation already, so why would more be the answer? From this point on I became much more interested in those times in meditation when I wasn’t having any particularly enlightened experience - when I was just being banged around by my thoughts and feelings. And it became totally engrossing to just be still, relaxed and attentive to it all without wanting it to change. This was completely liberating…not to my feeling state which often remained a hectic mess…but to me.
My understanding of this profoundly subtle practice grew tremendously in our meetings with Andrew as he explored with us the difference between:
1. The Practice of Meditation – or – the act of assuming no relationship to thought.
2. The experience of having no relationship to thought that you can sometimes “fall into” during meditation.
3. And most importantly, what your actual relationship to thought is.
You can practice meditation/having no relationship to thought without ever having had the experience of it. You can have the experience of it without ever having practiced. And neither of these necessarily tells you what your actual relationship to thought is.
In Evolutionary Enlightenment the objective is a deeper engagement with life, which means taking risks. As Andrew put it in one of our meetings with him as you “bounce around” your experience of living, making decisions, you discover what your relationship is by looking at the affects that your choices are having.
Access: Public
“You can practice meditation/having no relationship to thought without ever having had the experience of it. You can have the experience of it without ever having practiced. And neither of these necessarily tells you what your actual relationship to thought is.”
That's powerful!!! I don't understand it all, but reading it creates a lot of space to look freshly at my on meditation practice. Thanks!
Wow. I don't think i've ever heard Andrew speak about meditation in the way you've written here at the end, the three points that Steffen copied. It's SO interesting, this distinction. I want to pay attention to this more to find out more deeply what it really means…
Also I am struck by how my own experience on retreat back in June was how I kept seeing how much I wanted to make the simple meditation instructions more complicated than they were! I really appreciate what you say about why we're doing that and what it means, how we're drawing conclusions about some aspect of our experience…there is such austerity in doing nothing at all with any of it… have to read this again, and meditate… :-) Thanks Jeff. Oh, and PS you LOOK ESCTATIC!!
Thanks for the post Jeff- Andrew Cohen's guidence through the 10 day silent meditation retreat was incredibly profound. As we spoke with Andrew about our experience of meditation it became clear that most of us were still seeking for another feel good temporary/state experience of the Ground of Being and not really interested in the profound implications of how such an expereince will support our own development. That is where the teaching of evolutionary enlightenment is so powerful because there is a specific developmental context to place these powerful experiences in- in order to interpret them. Otherwise, as we all found out - every profound revelation of Oneness, Peace, Bliss and Unity Consciousness that can be expereinced in meditation will be interpretred through the perspective and framwork of the Ego and this happens fast - b/c Ego says “that powerful experience is mine and now I get to be someone special with that.” So if we are passionate about our own higher development, the perspective we take and how we interpret our experience is vital.
Right on, Jeff.
“From this point on I became much more interested in those times in meditation when I wasn’t having any particularly enlightened experience - when I was just being banged around by my thoughts and feelings.”
That is a brand new opening for me as well, I'm really just starting to take that seriously. While on that same retreat as you, there were times when my thoughts and feelings were very loud and uncomfortable. Having the understanding to not make a big deal out of them, to really not make a big deal out of them, but just keep doing the practice was MUCH more valuable to me than any of the experiences of bliss or meditative absorbtion. When I did the practice as Andrew taught it–which is to have no relationship to experience–during uncomfortable experiences of mind, I found I was able to keep going and not move or shy away. That gave me confidence and trust in the truth of who I am at the deepest level, which is so valuable.
Of course, the experiences of stillness that emerge after about five or six days of completely unplugging were nice, too. For instance, I didn't really think before doing this retreat that I really could spend my whole life in meditation, but after a while, I could simply never go back to the world and remain transfixed by the experience of consciousness forever. I didn't know I had/am that kind of depth. That also has big implications for life in the world; if the deepest part of who each of us is literally needs nothing from the world, then there's nothing to fear, and nothing to gain or lose.
I too was thinking about what you said, Jeff, in terms of those times of not having any particularly enlightening experience and being interested in that. I realized that during those times, I was still waiting for something. I was “having no relationship” to it, and believing that this is a valuable experience for me. But it hit me that I was not simply being interested, and really letting it be. What a difference, to be interested and have no relationship to it. It then occurs to me that I can't really know what my actual relationship to thought is… because, you say I discover it by looking at the choices I have made. Wow. I really have to contemplate that one!
Hi Jeff, as you know I was there as well..:-)
I kept wanting to write something about those 10 days, but I keep coming up to the same nothing-ness that informed me so deeply during the retreat.
As much as I can honestly say it was the most profound time of my life so far, the deep and sustained contemplation of that nothing-ness is having even more tremendous impact on the world of time and space now. It is as if I have been given a new tool to interpret the very same old experiences in a very new and different way. That's the way to Liberation.
I came out of the retreat straight into an airplane and straight into my office in Amsterdam. I kept telling my astonished colleagues that I had the best time of my life and that everyone should do something like this sooner or later. And I knew they knew exactly what I was talking about. That was remarkable.
The fear to “lose” the experience is there and the joy to know that I can let it go and be left with nothing is wild. Everyone should do this retreat!