Living on the Edge (Think About This)
Since their first conversation was published in the Spring 2002 issue of EnlightenNext magazine, editor in chief Andrew Cohen and integral philosopher Ken Wilber have produced some of the most original spiritual thinking of the past few decades. Through twenty-five “Guru-Pandit” dialogues, Cohen and Wilber have continuously challenged the status quo of contemporary spiritual culture in their ongoing exploration of a new integral and evolutionary Enlightenment. In the following audio clip, they reflect on what they’ve learned over the years about what it takes to be a true spiritual and cultural pioneer:
[podcast]http://magazine.enlightennext.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Guru-Pandit-TAT-2.mp3[/podcast]
Don’t miss Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber speaking about the evolution of Enlightenment during our free virtual seminar, “The Evolutionary Worldview,” on Saturday, May 15th.
Click here to register for this free event! (Even if you can’t make it on the 15th, you can get still get a full set of the MP3 recordings of the day by registering now.)
Filed Under: Consciousness • Cultural Evolution • EnlightenNext Editors’ Blog • EnlightenNext magazine • Evolutionary Enlightenment • Evolutionary Spirituality • Integral Philosophy • Spirituality • Think About This
Hey Joel, Good clip…
Create a paradise out of ether….throw in some wildlife, volcanoes, and windstorms, some koalas, and waterfalls, and add sunlight, leave the stars in place. Come back some billion years later, and find pollution, disease, war, famine, fatigue, fright, violence all mixed up amongst them.
Yet there will still be beauty, still ones who act with kindness and humility, still some who live with gratitude and faith…I call them evolutionaries!! Actually they carry the load for ones who don’t care…
Actually, they carry the entire planet.
Thank you Andrew and Ken for being leading lights along our evolutionary path. There are many pioneers across the globe sharing this with you. I work with the Enlightened or Ascended Masters and they have continually shared with me that we are the co-creators on this path and and we are all creating it together and we are writing the story as we walk along the path just as we have always done. This is simply a new and very interesting chapter. In the past we may not have been conscious of writing our story, but today we have the potential to be conscious as we create it because there are so many amazing way showers such as yourselves to awaken us, including the Ascended Masters.
It is very polishing people’s ego to declare them on “the leading, pioneering, evolutionary edge of something great and unusual”, “which needs them to be heroic individuals and to take over the risk for changing the world”.
Everybody’s ego feels boosted by the call for heroism which will transform the world, the others. And if we look down the ages, at the human history, we will see that great heroes are possible only in times of war. If any politician wants to be a great leader, a great hero, then war is a necessity. Just look: from Genghis Khan to Tamerlane to Nadirshah to Alexander the Great to Ivan the Terrible to Napoleon Bonaparte to Adolph Hitler to Benito Mussolini to Joseph Stalin to Churchill to Roosevelt — what makes these people great heroes? It is war. If there had been no wars there would not have been great heroes.
So to call people to become heroes looks to me as calling them on a war against existence. Because it seems existence has not been developing as it should have done. So, here we are, the great heroes, the great pioneers, the great leaders, coming to change existence and to order God what to do.
In the same time, even though we call people for heroism, we however, take our precautions and warn people that this seems to be an unchartered territory, whereas no “panel of masters” exist (?), no books (?), so we better do it together. “We have to work it together!”
Then what is the result – blind people are leading and working together with blind people. But still pretending to make the world a better place to live???
For this human world to become a better place to live, human beings need to transform themselves, each and every one of them, but not through strengthening the ego and trying to manipulate and over power others by setting in front of them imaginary non existential ideals, but by individual transformation of every human being as his own authentic individual responsibility. This individual metamorphosis and flowering of a human being does not need blind followers but authentic and free intelligent people, not heroes and warriors against existence, but utter awareness and clear understanding of the existence within and without.
Raising awareness and reaching the super consciousness is what is needed for contemporary people and the way towards it is one – meditation or in other words watchfulness, witnessing.
And there are people, luminous beings who have reached and who have shared it with us out of pure compassion. That is why Prophet Muhammad says:
Know yourself and you will know your Lord.
That is why Socrates says: Know thyself!
But to know yourself you can only if you have the courage to look directly and honestly into your eyes, to accept yourself the way you are, not an imagined improved version of you, but the real you. And for this you need first to love yourself. Because love is what will prepare the soil for the flower of real knowing to grow up. Therefore the emphasis of Buddha is “Love yourself and watch”.
Only love can make you know the Truth. “Because the Truth is utter intelligence, not a belief. Truth is the fragrance of your hidden life sources; it is the experiencing of the enlightenment of your consciousness. But you have to free space for the truth to happen. And this true space for the truth to happen is to accept yourself the way you are” – Osho Not to repress or deny anything in your being, but to become aware of it. This awareness is what meditation is all about.
hey, it’s good to mention this all but “watching yourself” is just a fade out from the “sorrow / worries / attention to oneself” what michel foucault made clear,
watching yourself is like watching tv, it doesn’t realy change something and stays passiv!
Watching is never a passive act, it is utter alertness, awareness, consciousness. The watcher or the witness is your inner most being, it is what you are. The witness witnesses everything without and within – people, noises, actions, thoughts, feelings.
You, your inner most core of being can in no way be compared to a TV. If you do, it means you lack love and respect for your true nature, for your true being. It means probably that somewhere in your childhod you have been distracted from yourself, conditionned against yourself.
All you can do now is to bow down to your inner being in deep love and reverence.
Hi Peter,
If I may, I submit that self-examination and “watching yourself” with the objective of evaluating, monitoring your actions and a way of self-correcting if necessary is the way to avoid the kind of complacency and stagnation of those involved in spiritual advancement.
It would be arrogant to believe one is so perfect that that process wouldn’t be important. Unless you are already so Enlightened!
;)
Everything you say is beautiful. However,how should I put in practice what you are saying?
I am not a business person,I simply wish to sit down with people/friends, and explain for instance, religious problems that occur pretty often in discutions, and because they are at mythological level, how could I explain or try to make them understand,without hurting their feelings,what I think? I can not believe in the Old Testament being the word of God, I can not believe in resurection (may be only in a symbolic one), neither in redemption…what’s that? for the first sin? nor in Son of God who sacrificed himself for our sins…etc. Although I do believe in something which is beyond me, and mostly in don’t do to others what you would not like to be done to you.
You all talk, and talk but you do not seem to go down to practical things, give examples HOW TO, etc. Sorry for my simplistic English, hope you understand where I wish to get! Try to use a bit of didactics, do not be only theoretical.
Wish you the best things in the world, Irina
Hey Irina, your questions are a mirror image of my thoughts as well…many questions still unanswered, its difficult to believe in cosmic common sense if it cannot address common concerns.
Have you signed up for this http://www.evolutionaryworldview.com/
hopefully we both will get answers to our questions, otherwise we will pick someones brains…..
Aliya will never offer you any examples. She lives on a superior cloud; examples would necessitate her coming down to mundane mother Earth. Oh, she’ll talk about birds, bees, flowers and trees, but again, only in the abstract as though she read it in a book somewhere. Hers is a path of separation, not connection. She doesn’t realize the major duality that controls her perception of reality–the duality of self and other. To her, its all about self, her self; but this self that she talks about at length, is simply an illusion of grandeur–the ego that she rails against without respite. Speaking about projecting! Aliya, look at the self as being empty–I think that that is also a Buddhist precept.
the name aliya sounds female, but are we assuming things here? only aliya has the answer
Dear Caroline,
Instead of projecting yourself and your prejudiced opinionated mind on Aliya, would not it have been better if you had paid more attention and love to Caroline herself?
Spiritual growth never happens through others, Caroline, through objects outside of you (even less so through the objects you projected over Existence, not the real ones); spiritual growth is subjectivity, it s always about You.
Aliya,
You say: Instead of projecting yourself and your prejudiced opinionated mind on Aliya, would not it have been better if you had paid more attention and love to Caroline herself? Spiritual growth never happens through others, Caroline, through objects outside of you (even less so through the objects you projected over Existence, not the real ones); spiritual growth is subjectivity, it is always about You.
Again, Aliya, you are trapped in your dualistic thinking about self and other when in fact there is no such duality. The idea that we are separate is the lie that you keep engaging in. But the only way we can realize the true connections between self and other is to think about them, and thus build those synapses in the brain.
Many times you have said that I don’t love myself. My love for myself and my love for others are not two different things, Aliya. The subjectivity that you talk about cannot be split–there is only one subjectivity. And as Life evolves on this planet, this subjectivity likewise develops.
Hi Caroline, re: Aliya’s commenting
I find her too doctrinaire and a bit too ready to contradict any and all comers. She seems too sure of her opinions by half, IMO, and sounds like she’s reading from tracts. I wonder if she has had personal experiences that can back up her claims? If she were more suggesting truth than proclaiming it I’d be more interested in her comments.
Aloha,
Frank,
It’s deeper than that. Aliya’s in the business of erecting a wall around herself. What better way of doing that than attaching an airtight definition of self–one that comes from the almighty OSHO himself and that refers to this self as The Master? Who can argue with that?
However, of all the ways of dealing with one’s insecurities, that one is the lousiest–hiding behind a coward. Step outside of the farce, Aliya, and then see who your friends really are. Search inside yourself instead for the courage that it takes to meet the world as it comes, not as it’s been predigested by someone else.
In contrast to a teaching that leaves its victims muttering its precepts as though their very soul has been devoured–the path of connection, on the other hand, places one In The World. The World, to include everything, is Existence unfolding. We need to respect that World, i.e., Existence, with all the courage that we can muster. Each one of us is called to read it from the deepest part of ourselves, and respond.
Hi again,Caroline, re; your post about Aliya
If we can lay out a spectrum of spiritual consciousness and development, I’d say that those who need outside guidance are at the point somewhere in the beginning of middle, more advanced than say those who don’t really think about spirituality in any serious way. But to hang on to that kind of digested thought, accepted widely though it may be, is less developed for me than say those who have doubts but are still holding on to spiritual values, not having become cynical though their faith in organized religion or even the existence of God may sometimes be cast aside in their disgust, disbelief or cynicism. So then there’s always the possibility of advancement based on the need for a more accurate assessment of spiritual conciousness, not in any faulty way but more in the way of development of consciousness and “truth”. It’s to be hoped more become motivated to pursue truer ways than their present development allows.
Dear Caroline,
You say: “We need to respect that World, i.e., Existence…”
And how do you plan to respect that World, Caroline? By jumping upon alive human beings, abusing them and gossiping about them? That I call real “farce” and mere cowardice. Because only one who is terribly afraid of the perspective to meditate and to look honestly and deeply within herself is ready instead to do anything else, even starting wars against the whole World but to avoid her own being.
Yeah.. :-) but imagine a beatiful flower would it matter to you if it was grown in shit?
Im not direktly adressing Frank, but talking about Elia is a perfeckt example of the way we work, i guess the most are here course they are interrestet in universel truth,but very fast one gets carried away, thats why we need so much discipline. Seek the truth, question every answer you get, be self-aware and no matter your socalt worste weeknesses, being self(accepting)aware will be the strongest asset you have. Make your castle of truth, vision and faith but dont bother to try and protekt it every time some one has other ideas but eccept that there is another point of wiew and all these points makes it possiple to build amazing things. Differens is nesesery to find oneness, course they are one in the same.In being able to experience the univers/we needs differences.That we are different makes us beautiful/interresting, creation with a purpose.Its easier to Love the differens in you or to love the differens in others, when you se the purpose. Seing that a system like our universe baced holografic unity can only exist through the consept of love(acceptance) as the ground thought, energi, idea whatever (every kid in the yard can play together) the opposite of love needs something to be against and that is not possible in a system of unity. So then you can se that love is the truth, and it is your medium to the system(universe).If you made your mind that love is the one and only and it can only be this way, you have a good starting point in your search for the truth.
Some of my thoughts, i want to be amazed.
my writing has some errors, but enyone court up in that has to remember whats important. Info made of shit? or info made of Flowers? hehe
Joscha Lücke. Denmark
Hi Joshua,
TY for your generous response. In addition to the Love, what is as important would be Respect for other opinions and recognize we are all involved in seeking truths, no one can rightfully claim a monopoly on that, especially on a site such as this one.
Aloha, namaste!
Sorry for my duplicate post above. It didn’t appear for awhile so I re-posted. Sorry Aliya, I’m not ganging up on you, only expressing an opinion.
Hi Irina,
You complain of not feeling any purpose to your discussing with others. I wonder if you’re familiar with the technique of communicating using the Socratic method, asking questions to your interlocutors with the objective of leading the discussion into areas that will allow the interchange of ideas that hopefully will lead to clarification and maybe edification on their and your part. You can find out more about this useful online or in books but it starts off with a leading question from you that will allow the interlocutor to state their position, show you where their coming from and what they understand that differs from your understanding. The rest of the exchanges will go on hopefully productively.
Sometimes it may end agreeing to differ. It should not be at all acrimonious, kept with an objective tone.
Hope this is helpful.
Aloha, namaste!
“Hurts more bothers you less.” Thank you for articulating that Ken. I observe, lately, that when an emotional pain feels at times “unbearable” the next moment comes…and with it deep peace and no need to belabour the pain, but there is a residue of great compassion.
I find Ken and Andrew’s articulation of what it feels like to be a pioneer – based on personal and collective experience – life-affirming and supportive. It’s great to hear this kind of sharing, because often the people around don’t ‘get it’ and are unable to reflect back this awareness, so you can wonder if perhaps you are mad. Without any kind of understanding at this level, it’s like living a nightmare, and facing – and facing up to – the pressure from others to conform or accept the status-quo is enormous – the overwhelm is absolutely no exagerration. ‘A burden shared…’ and ‘the truth will set you free’ are phrases which spring to mind here.
Hi marie,
I wonder if you’re experiencing what I did at some point in my spiritual development in the beginning shortly after becoming Awakened where I was half-tentative about the truths I had come to attain and the need to share the excitement, thrill and corroboration of having truly been graced with the blessing. You express an earnestness that speaks to your sincerity. Continue well, finding others to share spiritual concerns, and being brave to confirm your discoveries, self-evaluating your self along the way.
Best regards, aloha, namaste!
It’s exciting to be considered a pioneer but I would like to submit that though evolutionary consciousness (EC) is not on the tip of the populace’s collective tongue, that it is the cutting edge of what’s on the spiritual development historically but existant for ages as proclaimed by sages through the ages, including the recent past and the present.
New Dimensions’discussed the book “The Power of
Collective Wisdom” that I found very valuable in that it propounded what appeared to me to confirm Perennial Wisdom in a very pragmatic modern-day way. If their ideas were the platform for a spiritual campaign to be adopted universally, I’d sign that declaration readily. I encourage all to check this out (The Power of Collective Wisdom) online!
One can either consume the world or not. The weak ones want it delivered to them on a silver platter. All I can say is, think for yourselves. What a bunch of followers all of you are!
Ah, Caroline! Who are you addressing saying: “All I can say is, think for yourselves. What a bunch of followers all of you are!”
Are you projecting or something? Careful who you lump into your statement!
Extraordinary evolving Dialogues of efficacy!
Precisely the living example of who we can expand ourselves to become.
The ongoing comments appear to contain common layers and stages infused with both irritants and wisdoms. We are scrambling in fecund mud while seeking the vision of selfhood reflected in growing pearls…
Those slings and arrows, Ken, may well be from edgelings seeking eros and leadership. How can one turn and relate~ teach~love them/us through integral action?
Is there anything more integral than love? And why should we talk of integral actions instead of just loving?
What integrity is ever possible without Love and Compassion?
Hi Aliya,
In all your comments I haven’t found your addressing whether you are speaking from a personal or an intellectual second-hand manner? Are you able to address this?
Aloha, namaste!
Dear Frank,
“Speaking from a personal or an intellectual second-hand manner” are not two different phenomena, but all the same speaking out of the superfcial mind.
I have already several times mentionned it in my comments that I share my being, my own experiencing in every single word I pronounce/write in here.
However, it seems difficult for you to understand such a deep sharing. It is because you listen to me through the veil of your mind conditionning and mind sees notning but its own prejudices all around.
Aliya, TY for your response. Your comments carry the conviction of a believer but what they lack for me is the kind of personal tone rather than the proselytizing one you adopt, IMO.