May 25, 2010
Identifying with the Evolutionary Impulse (Quote of the Week)
The evolutionary process is going somewhere. And now, maybe for the first time in history, we can decide with more conscious awareness where it’s going. But our ability to do that depends entirely upon who we understand ourselves to be. What part of our self are we identifying with? Is it the personal psychological ego, or the conditioned habits and beliefs of our culturally created self-sense? Or is it the deeper, more authentic self that we discover when we awaken to the impulse to evolve? When we make the effort to identify more with the vertically moving energy of the impulse to evolve than with the horizontal pull of the personal ego and cultural self, everything changes. We transcend the enormous weight of our own predetermined conditioning and open ourselves up to the liberating experience of that part of the cosmos that is trying to evolve through us in every moment. We make ourselves available to that powerful telos, and when we do we become profoundly transformed. Now our attention has shifted from the conditioned past to the ever-ecstatic immediacy of the possible, here and now.
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Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, cultural visionary, founder of EnlightenNext, and the author of 
” There is no dissolution or creation, no one in bondage, nor anyone pursuing spiritual practices. There is no one desiring liberation nor anyone liberated. This is the Absolute truth” anyone who has not realized this is a fool which includes me
I see a clear attempt in this quote to bridge the unbridgeable and to conform the evolutionary enlightenment idea to the religiousness of the Buddhas. However, when such an attempt is purely mental gymnastics and mere playing with words, it simply shows a deep confusion of the mind to intellectually perceive and describe something which is far beyond its grasp. This confusion can be noticed in the following contradictory statements:
1. Either “The evolutionary process is going somewhere” and we look for “where it is going”, or we do not project anything in the future and we simply live in the present “here and now”.
2. Either we keep identifying ourselves with so and so something or we live in the present moment “here and now”. Because to live in the here and now excludes every possibility for identification. All identifications of ours are from the mind and to be “here and now” means to be of no – mind. The present moment is so alive and vibrant of being that the mind cannot exist in it – mind can only exist in remembering the past or projecting that past into the imagined future. That is why all the Buddhas of all the times have insisted on our being Here and Now, where mind is simply transcended.
3. Either we identify ourselves with our self or we understand that there is no self (ego) at all. Moreover, self / ego cannot be divided into different parts – it is all the same illusion and falsity. “The personal psychological ego” is those same “conditioned habits and beliefs of our culturally created self-sense”, our personality is nothing else but our conditioning by the others, what we believe to be our personality is given to us by the others. What is our real nature is our individuality, the flowering of our inner being.
4. There is neither such a thing as “the deeper, more authentic self “nor “that part of the cosmos that is trying to evolve through us in every moment”. All these are mind notions and concepts, completely out of reality and existentiality. What ever is, it is Now and Here. Just open all your being to it, totally and wholeheartedly. Then you will not need any purpose (telos) to live, any reason to being. You will simply be, utterly yourself, enjoying the beauty of the HereNow.
I don’t believe that “enjoying the beauty of the Here and Now” is the purpose of Existence. That kind of thinking, and it is thinking, Aliya–to interpret purpose–bespeaks of wrong thinking, to me. What you are actually saying when you project such a purpose onto Existence is a belief in a dual existence of which we are merely passive enjoyers. Makes no sense. What makes more sense, is that what we are is integral to the entirety of Existence Itself, i.e., that we are the flower that we smell. If that is the case, then, Life cannot be about passive enjoyment.
Caroline,
You say: “I don’t believe that “enjoying the beauty of the Here and Now” is the purpose of Existence”.
Believing or not believing have nothing to do with the real knowing. Belief simply means I do not know, that is why I have to believe (or not to).
The real knowing is not thinking either, because the real knowing is always Now and Here, and thinking is always taking you somewhere else.
Now and here is all that we have and this is the door to our knowing and the bliss and enjoyment coming out of this knowing.
Aliya,
You say: Now and here is all that we have and this is the door to our knowing and the bliss and enjoyment coming out of this knowing.
Your focus is, without exception, on human beings, the “us” in your equations. Can you step out of your androcentric bias for a moment to observe the bigger reality which transcends your solipsistic self absorption?
P.S. There is no Life without Desire.
P.P.S. This might help clarify. http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/articles/the-spectrum-of-desire/
Dear Caroline,
How can you see “the bigger reality which transcends solipsistic self absorption” if you are not able to see even the immediate reality (and the only one reality) Now and Here?
Do you really exist in another moment than the present one? All your past, future, lointain cosmic projections, (it does not matter how “bigger” you make them), your desires, they are all your mind projections, not real, not existential.
The only reality is your being Now and Here, pregnant with the longings of your heart. Note, not the projected desires of your greedy mind, but the longings of your heart make your life fulfilled.
Instead of projecting yourself onto Big Cosmic Dreams of Conceptual Oneness of which you yourself know/experience nothing, you better look for where your heart is and is there one???
That’s exactly right, Aliya, it’s the heart. And just what is this heart, Aliya?
The problem with modern man is that we have forgotten the language of silence, we have forgotten the way of the heart. We have completely forgotten that there is a life which can be lived through the heart. We are too much hung up in the head, and because we are too much in the head we cannot make any sense out of love.
It becomes more and more problematic.
The mind should be trained to be a servant of the heart. Logic should serve love. And then life can become a festival of lights
The heart is always right —
if there is a question of choosing between the mind and the heart —
because mind is a creation of the society.
It has been educated.
You have been given it by the society,
not by existence.
The heart is unpolluted. – Osho
Hello Aliya;
I have been really enjoying the comments here. What you are sharing strikes a deep cord. I think you are saying that the mind cannot help but percieve the Absolute as a nothing, or an impossibility. For me it brings to mind the mystery that lies at heart of what Jesus is quoted as saying. (The “Father” in this context being the Absolute.)
John 5:19 – Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise.
Hi Caroline, re: ” There is no Life w/o Desire”
There’s a strain of warning caution re: desire in traditional teaching. Buddhism believes it’s the root of all trouble.
I maintain when the objective is to do good and has worthy goals, that differentiates from desire that has egoistic self-gratification as its sole aim. Though even spiritual desiring can have a negative aspect, we know that keeping things in perspective is important to avoid obsessiveness but is the desire to attain higher consciousness in the effort to be a better person negative?
As in all things, there can be a positive and a negative aspect to anything. No absolutes.
Except the Absolute!
And when the Absolute is, nothing else is, not even your ego.
It is only through searching, seeking, desiring, that the ego exists; it exists in the tension between that which is and that which should be.
The moment the “should” disappears, the ego collapses. And the mechanism is very simple. Seeking, searching, you live in the future, which is not; and the ego can exist only with that which is not, because it itself is not.
If you are in the moment, in the present, the ego has no possibility of surviving even for a single moment.
The absence of the present, that’s what the ego is.
But the truth is that no one ever lives according to this “should” of yours, not even you, nor could one. And for good reason–it is simply not possible. All we can do is grow in consciousness, it’s a journey, step by step, and Time happens to dominate the sequence. There can be no “acceptance of the Absolute” without “awareness of the Absolute” and we simply cannot have awareness of the Absolute. Therefore, how can you possibly extol it as a reality?
In other words, it’s all about the climb.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O61ekg9MZT0
Of course, you, Caroline, are right for yourself when you say: “we simply cannot have awareness of the Absolute”.
Because you do not know what awareness is at the first place.
And there is no way that you know as you claim that “I don’t believe that “enjoying the beauty of the Here and Now” is the purpose of Existence”. Because it is what awareness is – to be in the Here and Now, to be aware of the Here and Now, to watch the Here and Now, to be aware of the REALITY.
For people like you it reveals impossible, because you are identified with your mind thoughts. Here and Now either you are totally, the whole of your being, or your mind thoughts are,and that means your thoughts are taking you away, somewhere else, in the past, in the future, in some other places, with some other people, and so on and so forth. Then you simply miss the Here and Now; and you simply miss the AWARENESS, the CONSCIOUSNESS.
I agree, Frank, there are different kinds of desires. When people go off on a tangent, such as believing that all desires are bad, Life may as well just throw in the towel. Don’t know if you saw this in an earlier post of mine above but I thought this article expressed the distinctions pretty well. http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/articles/the-spectrum-of-desire/
Hi Caroline:
TY for reposting that article and glad you also make the distinction. I’m leery of any absolutes, even the Absolute that Aliya talks of, though I also would like to believe there’s that one at least.
Best regards, aloha, Frank
It is not a question of believing it, Frank, it is a question of knowing it through experiencing it.
Numbers are additions of one into one ,
zero is subtraction of one from one .
once zero,you are always zero even after
applying all mathematical calculations.
zero is religion where all numbers are lost.
Wonderful quote…reminds me of a story from Vedanta. Here it is,
“A prince went upto Swami/Priest Rama Tirtha and put his question “O venerable sir, who is God? Where is He? Please take me to God. I wish to see Him.”The Swami answered “Dear prince, if you wish to see God I will have to tell Him who you are. So please give me your visiting card.
When a man wants to see a high dignitary does he not send his card first? I will place your card in the hands of God I am sure He will see you.” The prince thought the request was quite reasonable, quite in order to comply with. So he took a piece of paper and wrote his name “ Sri Gajpati Raju”. The Swami read it.
He returned the slip saying “This is your name . God will like to know your who you are and not your name.” The prince took back the slip and wrote in another” Prince of VIjayanagram”. Again the Swami remarked “ But that is your status”. The confused prince wrote a third time” Administrator of VIjaynagram”. “ That is your position ,” rejoined the Swami.
The prince thought, over deeply and wrote finally “Man”. “ No, that is your species”. The prince wrote no more. He agreed with the Swami,” I am only giving you my descriptions, qualifications and attributes. I do not seem to know who I am ?” So saying the prince reflected deeply. He began to introspect. He started the process of self analysis.
“ Am I the physical body?” “No. The body belongs to me. It is my possession. I am the possessor of my body. I remain changeless while my body undergoes constant changes. Physicians prove that after every seven years the body of a man is entirely changed. Every particle of the body is replaced by a new particle. This body is in continuous flux. I am not it. Then who am I.?”
Continued below….
The prince continued his investigation . “ Am I the mind? Or the intellect.” “No” , he contemplated. . ”It cannot be . They are also continually changing. They are all mine. I am apart from my mind and intellect.”
The Swami then gently told him,” oh Prince you are your Self. You are not your body ,mind or intellect…..”
The Prince was astonished. He mediated and realized “ How silly I had been. I wanted to meet God. I wanted to know God. Now I find My own Self, my supreme nature, my Atman/Soul is God”.
lesson from Vedanta–Introspect and analyze yourself. Think deeply… you are the kernel and not the shell.
During the journey some one asked
what are the instructions you will give
to your driver, possibly these-
1-keep the car clean from outside.
2-keep the car clean from inside.
3-drive carefully’
4-give fellow passengers a comfortable
journey.
these are the instructions you all get
in in your nature when you get the
life in your body or the car from the
creator of nature, that is simple to
understand.
follw the instructions and you will
find happiness in your journey.
so keep the body clean from outside
or healthy,keep it clean from inside,
drive carefully means do not hurt
anybody,give fellow passangers good
journey means take care of your
family and the society.
when the driver is good , driver need
not to worry about the owener, the
owener will worry about the driver,
you become good driver, the creator
will remain always with you.
your body is like a car, you are driver
of car, creator is sitting with you
inside, to keep car clean you travel
comfortably between life and death
of body, to keep drive clean creator
come closer.
life is a rare opportunity for dirver to
come closer to owener to become
owener.
distance has no meaning,
meaning is how you cover it.
car music is within the car only.
if we understand the cycle of procreation in human race , we will be able to understand the procreation of cosmos.
a man energies the millions of sperms which is big bang in mini scale represents time ,like electron in woman’s space which is like black hole ;proton connected to neutron which is dark matter in neucleus .each sperm journey to meet egg to fertilise is journey of creation and destruction.the similar way the cosmic intelligence energies billons of cosmos in the hope one will become living planet earth. earth is hope of cosmic intelligence.
body becomes hard and turns cold after death but does not shrink.
presence of soul keeps the body warm as one distance oneself from soul one turns hard and cold that why many time we refer
certain crimes as cold blood crime.
car is body ,left brain runs on road of robotics.
driver is soul ,right brain static in neutral space.
if driver remains in the neutral gear while car runs
in suitable speed gears as per the situation on the
road is wisdom.
people inquire is there life after death,and to be sure there is life before death.
let us talk how we can live life ,better and warm on our living planet earth.
ego =energy go
ear =energy arrive
gear= god’s ear
people are searching me in
telephone directories,not
knowing to lift the receiver
to hear dial tone which is
I am.
Hello Aliya, re: “May 31, 2010 at 3:11 pm
It is not a question of believing it, Frank, it is a question of knowing it through experiencing it.”
Would you pls comment on your experiencing the Absolute if you’re able?