It is the end of the third day of Andrew Cohen’s annual summer retreat held this year in Tuscany, Italy. Andrew has been teaching nearly six hours each day. Every time he speaks his words point relentlessly to the reality of our place in the cosmos and our inherent responsibility as awakening humans to perform our function as the only vehicles that the universe has to understand and recreate itself.

What has emerged in these three days is a reconfiguration of his first tenet – clarity of intention. In a series of talks centered on this tenet, Andrew has explained how our own intention to evolve ultimately must be aligned with and recognized to be not separate from the original intention of the universe to create a manifest realm in its own image. That intention was our original intention and it was definitely clear.

Of course, Andrew took everyone from the reality of our ultimate intention as the universe itself right back to our intention as the individual human that we are now and what we intend to do with this very lifetime. He spoke about how it is possible to work very hard for something and to be completely earnest in working hard for it and to fail anyway. This is because we only succeed if we intend to succeed and many of us, much of the time, only intend to try. If we only intend to try, we will not succeed.

If anyone has ever wondered about why they have worked so hard for something and still not attained it this brutally simple distinction may explain it. If you intend to try, even if you intend to try hard, trying is all you will do. If you intend to succeed you will.

Hearing Andrew speak it occurred to me that not only do you have to think about if you intend to succeed or not, you also have to be clear about what you intend to succeed at. Is my intention to succeed at some part of a bigger project? Do I intend to succeed only at helping? Or do I intend succeed at completing the Universe Project and ushering in a new era in history? If that as my original intention, where do I stand with it now?

This is how Andrew presented the first tenet over these past few days. No longer do I want to be free…not even do I want to evolve…but now do I want to create the future of life itself. He called this a kosmoscentrically goal oriented relationship to life.

Day four of the retreat is coming to a close and I am writing from what has become a collective eruption of the authentic self. Andrew Cohen spoke with everyone this morning and directed that they should spend the afternoon talking together so that they would have the experience of the authentic self. There were no organized group discussions. Andrew just said we should all enter the chaos.

He then gave an impassioned talk on the authentic self and the evolution of culture. He explained that the authentic self is not an individual, but a force in consciousness and that the only way for the individual to sustain the connection to that force was to create a culture that valued the authentic self's emergence. He said that the evolution of the individual is useless unless a culture that could support and provoke further evolution was the result then went on to describe the "we-space" of shared values that we all live in and how we cannot separate ourselves from the culture in which we live.

Throughout this retreat Andrew has emphasized the cultural aspect of the teaching. Yesterday when someone asked about what they should do when they "went home" Andrew challenged everyone about the meaning of the word "home." Home isn't a place, or a geographic location, he insisted, it is a cultural value system that we share with those we spend the most time with. When we say "go home" we are talking about returning to our old values and a cultural support system that holds those values. If you really want to see where you are at and what you value look at who you spend time with and the values that you share with them.

Until today the atmosphere of the retreat has been quiet and serious, but as soon as people left this morning's teaching everyone started talking. Every other day has been warm and sunny, but this afternoon a thunderstorm broke out and a few people told me that they didn't think it was a coincidence. The lobby of the hotel was full of groups of people all sharing in one thrilling investigation into the nature of the authentic self. It was like an enlightened cocktail party as people moved from one circle of conversation to the other. Wherever you ended up you just seemed to pick up on a new thread of the same conversation you were having with the group of people you just left.

In one of the discussions that I took part in a man talked about how struck he was by the way that Andrew had described the intention of god to create the universe as the original clarity of intention. He described how this perspective meant that there was no excuse not to follow through on your own intention to create the universe because you were already in the middle of the job. As we stood and spoke we looked around and we could see that the same excitement and interest was pouring out of everyone's eyes (and there were probably over two hundred people in the lobby) and we marveled at how everyone's intention to be here and to participate was the very same intention that was not coming from any individual but from the universe itself.

We happened to look out the window and we all recognized that the force that was animating us to explore this new terrain was the same force that was making the grass grow or the sun shine. We stopped in dead silence in one completely non-dual experience of recognizing that there is one creative force that is moving everything and we as human beings evolving at the level of consciousness are simply the most sophisticated material vehicle currently available. All a blade of grass can do is grow, but we can think, understand, talk and create an inter-subjective "we-space" that is as much a part of us as our minds and bodies.

There is only one thing happening all being powered and directed by one creative force. We actually "saw" the universe project.

Some thoughts inspired by Andrew Cohen’s talk this morning on retreat in Tuscany, Italy.

What is the universe project?

Everything and everything else. Everything you see and everything you don’t see. The world, the sun, every plant, every insect, animal or living thing… every rock, mountain or spec of dust… and everything thought, feeling, sensation, motivation and psychological impulse… not to mention everything created by humans, every house, every chair, every social structure…EVERYTHING. Anything you can point to is the universe project and anything you can name. It is all the manifest world of creation, outer and inner, that was initiated and is propelled by the only force that there is…consciousness and its intention to create a manifest domain in its own image.

The whole thing is an extension of that conscious intent. A tree is an extension of conscious intent, so is bird and so is an automobile. An ecosystem is a form of conscious intent and the human mind is as well. We are a river of conscious intent relentlessly bursting into manifestation. It is literally an explosion of consciousness solidifying into ever more complex forms. That is all that is happening. Beyond our individual psychology, beyond all of our ideas about ourselves, beyond the thought that we are an individual human being…beyond all of that we are ultimately only the conscious intention to create the universe. We are god.

But we as god have had to take the biggest risk that there could ever be…human being. We have taken our magnificent creation, the universe project, and placed it in the hopelessly confused, profoundly conditioned and endlessly fickly hands of humanity. As consciousness has molded itself into one successive form after another, each more complex than the last – from energy to matter to life – each step has brought a quantum acceleration in the speed of evolution. And now, to take the next quantum leap in evolutionary potential god/I has/have created self-aware consciousness in the hope that it would not get permanently deluded in identification with its newly discovered individual psychology – that it would not be terminally lost in conditioned patters of feeling, thought and behavior. Maybe, just maybe the first species to become self-aware would wake up to its true Self – as the god-energy that initiated and powers the movement of the entire universe into the future. Perhaps some few would blink there eyes open and SEE reality.

But even less likely, that some significant number of those that do wake up would have the vision, integrity, concern and passion to make the enormous effort to consistently respond to what they see. To remain awake by taking action not as the individual personality that they had thought themselves to be, but as god him or herself come to life in the world. If only a few would find the courage to respond beyond the nearly perfect illusion of personal fear and desire and break free of the well worn paths of individual and cultural habit. If only a few would insist on their own freedom, not for themselves, but so that they could act on their original intention to create the universe.

This would mean that a few, a precious few, would be willing to undergo the personal ordeal of moral soul development. That they would hold fast to their intention to evolve through all of the many storms of emotional distress and intellectual confusion that always accompanies change. The would take completely responsibility for everything in this or any lifetime that has shaped their conditioned emotional experience and for any unconscious motivation that arises as intent to act.

At this time the entire future of the evolutionary process rests in a precarious place – a human beings capacity to care for something beyond itself – for a possibility that renders all else meaningless. God as us has had to take the biggest risk by placing the future of its creation in our hands and we as god must take the same risk by acting in accordance with that which is larger than we can possibly imagine.

What is the Universe Project?

What isn’t?

From this mornings teaching on retreat with Andrew Cohen

For the past two days Andrew Cohen has been asking retreat participants to think about when it will be there time to take full responsibility for what they know about themselves and what they know about the meaning and significance of life. When will your time be up? This morning a dialog with an unusually sincere woman who was grappling with this question allowed Andrew the perfect opportunity to expand on what he meant when he referred to the post modern state of moral depravity.

The woman began by explaining that she has had many experiences of realizing that the fate of universe rested in her hands and that it was entirely in her capability to decide to act on that. When pressed she admitted that she must have had that revelation 30 to 50 times and each time she knew without doubt that it was true. She said that she realized that her excuse for not acting was that she was waiting to have another experience of revelation that would convince her. She then added that she also knew that she had already had the experience and that having it again wouldn’t convince her anymore than it had the first 30 to 50 times.

As if that wasn’t enough, she said that she could see all of this clearly and knew that it was terribly wrong and that she didn’t care about that either. Andrew told her that what she was describing was exactly the post-modern state of moral depravity that he has been referring to. He explained that at lower levels of development moral depravity might look more gruesome – serial killing or conscious genocide – but for the worldcentric, post-modern human being the state you could describe as “I don’t care and I don’t care that I don’t care” in relation to our highest understanding about life and truth…in this case the necessity for conscious evolution.

This state of conscious apathy is exactly why we are facing all of the problems that are now threatening human existence and the world in which we live. Getting people to care about the future is the movement toward a kosmoscentric perspective. This effort to “evolve the soul” is what Andrew declared was the only thing he was truly interested in. The amount of spiritual experience that a person has does not ultimately lead to any development or evolution and will not make someone a better person necessarily at all.

Developing morally at the level of the soul is hard work. It involves great effort and the willingness to take big risks because the only way to develop morally is to act in accordance with the highest truth we know even when we don’t feel connected to it, or even want to. This is the most important part of spiritual work. Having deep experiences is easy, but growing the strength of our soul by consistently responding to what we know is hard work. For those of us who know that it is up to us and us alone to evolve the consciousness of the cosmos it means becoming absolutely committed to making the leap from a worldcentric to a kosmoscentric level of development.

More thoughts inspired on retreat with Andrew Cohen.

Throughout this retreat Andrew Cohen continually referenced everything to the ultimate goal of Evolutionary Enlightenment. He was unequivocal about the fact that this teaching is designed to take the worldcentric, post-modern individual to a kosmocentric level of development and that this leap in the individual could not be separated from a concurrent shift in culture that must also be facilitated. Over and over again Andrew described his vision for how the evolution of the individual and the evolution of culture could never be completely separate.

In the beginning the creative impulse initiated the process that would create the manifest universe. As that impulse to become began to take form it also began to evolve – starting as energy and then energy forming into matter. After an enormous period of time something miraculous happened and some form of matter came to life. Life evolved and eventual came to hold consciousness that would eventually develop into what we experience as human consciousness. At some point that consciousness connected to a brain and nervous system sophisticated enough to begin to apply conditioning to the experience of the organism.

Initially that conditioning was based on the experience of feeling. When an organism was placed in a dangerous situation (assuming it survived) fear would be imprinted in the brain in such a way that the next time that organism was in a similar situation the experience of fear would reawaken and drive the animal away… a primitive, but effective guidance system. Overtime the brain developed to the point that it became capable of thought and at some point the first self-concept appeared in some primitive brain. That self-concept recognized itself to be a “thing” separate from everything else. For the first time in consciousness the idea of a separate thing was born.

Fast forward to us. The consciousness that pours through us has to travel through a highly sophisticated brain with an extremely individuated sense of self. Our minds have been deeply conditioned not just by the events of our own lives and perhaps those of previous life times, but also by the culture from which we come. The individual sense of self cannot be separated from the culture it exists within. For any evolution to occur that would be truly meaningful, it must occur within culture. The enlightenment of the individual is meaningless. It only exists as long as that individual is alive. But if that evolved individual is able to catalyze the evolution of the culture in which they live then all other individuals will begin to become conditioned in this more highly evolved culture. That is the goal of Evolutionary Enlightenment to help catalyze a shift to the higher cultural consciousness of a kosmocentric perspective.

How can this be achieved? Culture is the relationships that are held between people. The effort to evolve culture involves helping to facilitate relationships between people that are evolving. This simple concept was the call to arms that Andrew gave throughout this entire week here in Tuscany.

Final reflections on the Retreat

I am back in the US and over my jet lag after being on retreat in Italy with Andrew Cohen for eight days. Now that some time has passed I am reflecting on the retreat and everything that happened there from a different point of view. In the middle of it naturally you enter an alternate state of consciousness that is extremely powerful. You are living in a swirl of insight and understanding that is utterly thrilling and the only thing that breaks up this state of ecstatic revelation are periods of deep and profound meditation. A wonderful experience to be sure, and very valuable, but it is somewhat one-sided at the same time.

Now, sitting here, it is time to consider what it all means, or rather, what am I going to make it all mean. As the memory of the retreat amalgamates in my mind the single message that was coming through loud and clear is what remains most obvious in memory. What was that message? Well, in a word I would say it was the question “When?”

When are those of us who “know” going to decide that we are ready to take the evolution of human consciousness to the next level?  When are we going to realize…for the last time…that there is no one anywhere better qualified to evolve than we are? When is the time to work on ourselves going to be over and the time to change things going to arrive?

This line of questioning was alive in the background of every talk on Evolutionary Enlightenment that Andrew gave during his retreat. It was at the heart of every answer he gave to every question he was asked. It was present in the buzz during the lively mealtime conversations. And on the last day of the retreat when Andrew Cohen and his jazz fusion band Unfulfilled Desires ripped out a rockin’ two hour set to a crowd of excited and surprised retreat participants the same question seemed to be ring out behind each note and bang with every crash of the drums. When? When? When?

The answer to that question can only come from each one of us naturally. When am I going to decide that it is time? When have I prepared enough to go to battle? When does practice end and the game begin? In the world in which we live there is only one answer that makes any sense…now!

The time is now! That is the message that I have come away from this retreat with. The time is now and it will always be now. I look at the year behind me. I look at what Andrew Cohen has accomplished, what I along with many of my compatriots have done, and I want 10 times more to happen in the coming year.

It is time!

We are all trained. We have done the meditation, studied the great works, learned about ourselves, our world and its problems. If we all decided right now, together, that this is it! That it is our time to take hold of the reigns of creation and build a future better than we can imagine. If we all decided to do this together, and if we acted on , moving mountains would look like child’s play.

Think about it. If we all knew beyond doubt that every other person like us – every other person who cared about consciousness, higher development and creating a new future – was going to “do it” that would give us enormous strength and confidence. If we knew that millions of people were going to act together to change the world, if we really knew that, wouldn’t we join in? Of course we would. So what is missing? Trust. We don’t trust that everyone else is going to move, so we don’t either.

I am going to move further than I have before. That will be my response to being on retreat…movement. Is anyone else ready? Let me know!