Spiritual Authority

Over the past three weeks I have been traveling in Copenhagen and Australia. During that time I conducted a three-day training for students of Evolutionary Enlightenment who have now become teachers, two weekend seminars on the teaching and three talks – one at a university, one at a company and one at a chapter of the Theosophical Society. Call me a little slow on the up take, but it wasn’t until the final talk at a University in Australia’s capitol city of Canberra that I recognized that I was becoming a spiritual authority.

Of all of the events that I conducted this one had more people that had no experience with Andrew Cohen’s teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment. The audience was both attentive and respectful, at the same time I knew from the start that they were justifiably not going to take what I told them on faith. I gave a talk similar to what I had give on two other occasions.
The talk I was giving was an introduction to some of the foundational concepts and insights upon which Andrew Cohen has constructed Evolutionary Enlightenment. I first spoke of the nature of consciousness as a field explaining that although we commonly imagine that consciousness originates from somewhere within us, this teaching is based on the recognition that human beings exist within a field of consciousness. The second insight that I present is the recognition that the field of consciousness is not static – it changes and evolves over time which has been well observed by those that study the history and development of human culture. Finally I argue that at our moment in evolutionary history it is our recent discovery of the evolutionary process of which we are an inextricable part that must drive the further evolution of consciousness. These three insights create the foundation upon which I present the shift in awareness that lies at the heart of Evolutionary Enlightenment and a kosmocentric perspective as I understand it.

I realized from the first night that I spoke that I couldn’t present this as a theory or philosophy with which I was intimately acquainted. I had to express my own understanding of these things, backed up by my own experience and the reality of everything that I was doing to use these insights as the basis upon which to build a new human culture. I realized more deeply than I had ever before what Andrew has been trying to create with his closest students for over 20 years. He has referred to that possibility as “autonomy in a context of natural hierarchy.”

Andrew’s call with his students has never been exclusively to create a new generation of teachers with a similar realization to his own. He has always said that he needed partners in the creation of a new world. Being autonomous means that ones own talents, interests and efforts have to be the foundation of what one attempts to express to others. I can’t simply explain the teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment and expect people to listen to me. I have to speak about the teaching in the context of the fact that I am actively devoted to manifesting the goal of that teaching. In my own case I am directly engaged in helping people develop their understanding of Evolutionary Enlightenment by creating educational programs and by facilitating individual engagement with the teaching and with Andrew Cohen himself. People didn’t want to hear from me about Evolutionary Enlightenment only, they wanted to hear my experience of Evolutionary Enlightenment ad that experience includes everything that I have worked on, created and developed in this teaching.
In speaking to audiences I find that I am fueled by three sources of confidence. The first is the trust and recognition of my teacher, Andrew Cohen that has developed over the 15 years that I have worked closely with him. The second is my own experience and understanding of Evolutionary Enlightenment itself. The third is the confidence, conviction and most importantly success that I have experienced in my work to help create a new culture based on this teaching. What I was propelled by over these weeks was a deep confidence, not based in being somebody in particular, or having the highest realization, but on my own commitment to what I am doing. With that at my back I felt that I was able to face anyone and talk simply and clearly about Evolutionary Enlightenment because I was only talking about what I actually believed and what I was actually doing.

Getting back to that last talk that I gave and the powerful moment that illustrated all of this so clearly to me – I had just finished delivering my talk and asked for questions. The questions were more challenging than I had experienced in the two earlier talks – not unfairly so by any means, but challenging none-the-less. One question was asked of me by a woman who had been listening intently from the front row. She felt that in the way I was speaking I was separating humanity from the universe. She looked me right in the eyes and demanded to know why “I” was doing that. So there I was rightfully being asked to justify my position. I didn’t feel flustered; I simply looked straight at her and explained “my” experience. We talked it through and came to the realization that we weren’t really very far apart in our views after all.

In thinking about this afterward I thought very much about the “autonomy in a context of natural hierarchy” that Andrew has been asking for. I saw that students of this teaching have the opportunity to create a powerful kind of spiritual authority – one that is based not only on the direct experience of Truth but also on what one is doing to enact that Truth into a new future. Because I was training teachers, developing programs, exploring new mediums for global spiritual engagement and a variety of other things, I was able to speak with an authority that commanded respect even if I was still justifiably expected to prove myself. Because I was able to speak about the accomplishments of my own efforts people accepted the validity of the teaching and my relationship with Andrew as my teacher without challenging it. Why? Because it is working and I could speak about that.

What I have begun to see on this trip has broken down yet another unconscious source of division that I hadn’t even known I was holding. The separation between the teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment and the products of that teaching. The fruits of the teaching are the teaching, I had previously been focused on how to train people to teach Evolutionary Enlightenment. I now recognize that any way that one is working with that teaching can be used as a platform for teaching it. for teaching it. The editors of What Is Enlightenment? Magazine have long been giving talks about what they have learned from creating each issue. I wonder how powerful it would be to hear them talk not just about the content of the issues, but on the process of creating them. Their work on the magazine is Evolutionary Enlightenment. There are students of this work who are trying to transform business organization, public education, penal systems, even personal development. Their work is also the teaching.

I am beginning to see teaching Evolutionary Enlightenment outside of the context of what you are doing to bring that teaching to life as only the first step in learning to teach this perspective. The second and more powerful is to speak about your own experience of creating a new culture with these teachings. As architects of the future we can speak about our own experience of truth with a profound authority.

Jeff (During a brief layover in Dubai after a 10 plus hour flight from Perth)