A new way of looking at our experience

Day 3

The Art and Science of Enlightened Communication

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

Today Andrew continues on the subject of ego and its value spheres, since this is for most, if not all of us, a very new way of looking at our experience. (I suggest you read previous blogs on Day 1 and 2 first, if you've dipped in here)

The mission for our discussion groups today is for each of us to speak about the values that we deeply hold from our upbringing, from our particular cultural background. At first I thought that it would be easy, since haven't we all transcended and integrated all this already? I mention this to Andrew. I soon have to eat my words!

What Andrew is trying to get at, is not a description or story of our life or merely a psychological interpretation. He specifically means what is the picture of life that we hold, which may have been formed decades ago in our formative years of childhood, or adolescence or at key times later on. In other words, locating the ‘shoulds' that define our values.

The point is that unless we can become conscious of the values that we have adopted, they will still be operating and affecting our behaviour in powerful and significant ways. We will be unaware of why we act irrationally in certain situations, and will keep tripping over without knowing why; in effect, our evolution is held up. As Andrew makes clear, ego is not only narcissism and is not only individual. Ego, importantly, is also collective and we inadvertently cannot but embody many aspects of the culture milieu in which we are born and grow up in. The fact is, we are programmed far more than we tend to realize.

The Discussion group: going back to go forward

In our discussion, each of us speaks in turn and we find it is much harder to do this than we had imagined! And us group leaders are no different! Because these values are so close to us and unexamined, we struggle to be able to articulate them clearly and to make the subject into an object i.e. to be able to objectify and look at our closest and oldest beliefs about life, which often are in total contradiction to our chosen life of evolutionary spirituality. Often we would talk around the core values or describe symptoms, and it would take the group to point out the underlying core value, because we could feel the whole gestalt of what was being alluded to.In this exercise, we're not interested in all this stuff for its own sake, but solely so we can liberate our development.

For example, one woman working for EnlightenNext could see now how her hippy spiritual beliefs from decades ago, still influence her view today e.g. spiritual things should be for free, even though EnlightenNext is short of money!

For myself, I grew up in a privileged postmodern environment which was completely secular and what I absorbed was that life was for me to do what I wanted with; to learn or explore entirely according to my interest, and there was no higher value than this. I see that I still have the sense that I shouldn't really have to work hard or struggle or need to achieve anything; just to be me is some sort of sacred reason for life already. I see how this unexamined value affects the present and definitely runs counter to my passion for perpetual development!

I think we all were amazed and humbled and thrilled by the way Andrew is always developing the teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment and how this new avenue, which involves a specific psychological angle but is in the context of evolutionary advancement, has tremendous liberating power. Because if consciousness is still held in outmoded cultural structures, there can be no true revolution in consciousness and culture - which, after all, is the goal.

The art and science of Enlightened Communication is multifaceted - and keeps evolving too!