A Story (and a true one too!)

This week really got me thinking about time and development.

This was because I was thinking about what happened 22 years ago, this week, when Andrew Cohen, the founder of EnlightenNext, woke up once and for all when he met his teacher in India, after a long and one pointed spiritual search.

On his first meeting, his teacher said to him that, "You don't have to make any effort to be free", and that was enough to catapult Andrew into the beginning of a radical awakening. I had the good fortune to meet Andrew Cohen not long afterwards and he catalyzed a powerful awakening experience in me, just as he did in a number of other people. At the time, I was ecstatic and I thought this was the end and the conclusion of a perfect story. I had come home and had all my questions answered. What more could be added to that? - nothing was lacking; it was fullness and emptiness rolled into one.

But I gradually learned that this was only the beginning of the real story, since Andrew didn't stop there. Yes, this was for him a genuine permanent liberation, which can't be added to; after all, the infinite and absolute is infinite and absolute! Yet over time he began to see that although the ground of our being is timeless and unchanging (the experience of which I was just referring to before), we are all part of a vast evolutionary process, and that as human beings, we need to develop and evolve.

 And that is exactly what he started doing and is still doing - consciously evolving - and I have been closely involved with him and the development of his unique evolutionary approach to spirituality these last twenty plus extraordinary and eventful years. Ken Wilber has said that most people develop through childhood and adolescence until their early 20's, but then unfortunately most of us ‘flatline' the rest of our adult life, with not a lot of transformation, bar some stirrings in our 50's, if we're lucky!

Andrew's teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment has grown out of these last 22 years and it is constantly evolving. It makes sense when we realize and start to let in that the whole nature of the universe since the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, has been one of constant relentless evolution, both inner and outer, and it's still going, of course. So while our absolute Self is without any doubt beyond time and place, the other half of the picture is that as embodied human beings, we've got a lot of developing to do. And what could be more meaningful, thrilling and fulfilling.

Andrew is a great example of continuous transformation: come and see for yourself when he's teaching Sat and Sun 11^th and 12^th April at our beautiful ( yes, I'm proud of our place) EnlightenNext centre in Islington, London.