Hurtling into the Future

Day 7 & 8

Andrew now takes us through a major shift - to be more accurate, an absolute shift - from the ground of being to the authentic self; from focusing on the unmanifest nature of God to the manifest nature of God - to Eros, the evolutionary impulse.

          I'm not even going to attempt to transmit the extraordinary talk that Andrew gave on awakening to the authentic self and becoming an agent for conscious evolution.

 What's new in Andrew's contribution of Evolutionary Enlightenment, is the authentic self dimension. Traditionally, Enlightenment teachings are about the ground of being dimension and have no answer to the question of what is the relationship between the unmanifest ground of being and the world. The reason is blindingly obvious when it is pointed out. You see, the ground of being is about having absolutely no relationship to experience, to the world, so of course it has no answer at all as to its application in the world! It's all about transcendence of the world.

But when you awaken to the evolutionary impulse, the authentic self, to God as process, your self is radically released to be totally identified with the process. As Andrew says, it's the post post modern way to be here completely, incarnated in the world, and not be lost in ego.

The Discussion groups: ecstatic urgency

The discussion groups are on the subject of the authentic self, naturally enough, and as I've said before, I'm leading the group who are all long term committed students of Andrew. This group is very familiar with having experiences of the authentic self, whereas for the new people, this is most likely a very unfamiliar experience.

The new people start by getting used to the idea of only speaking impersonally in the discussions, which is a tremendous help to accessing the authentic self. Otherwise the engagement will almost certainly be in the value sphere of the ego. It takes quite some grounding in the values of the authentic self before one can include the personal dimension in the discussion without defaulting to habitual values of the ego.

The different groups report remarkable experiences of the authentic self which become more pronounced as we all hear from first the new people, then the group of practitioners, then the global students, and then the core students, and finally the senior core students - (the group I'm leading).

People describe powerful shared experiences of the authentic self, and how the subject travels from person to person so that it doesn't matter who is speaking. People find themselves finishing the sentence for someone else!

          As Andrew says, in a perfect world it ought to be the case that people with more experience actually do express themselves with more depth and live to a higher standard that reflects their actual knowledge and experience.  

          With my group, who have had countless flights into the dimension of the authentic self, and who are all committed to the evolution of consciousness, we decide to only speak in a completely implicating way. The agreement is that we will each only speak from and as the process, or the authentic self itself. In other words we won't speak about it - no descriptions that are in any way removed from actuality.

  It makes sense that if we are to continue to develop, we each have to always put ourselves on the leading edge of wherever we have come to.

 Our discussion group has a fierce - you might say ferocious! - passion as people speak from the fact that each of us is the very creative process itself, and what an awesome and unthinkable ecstatic responsibility that is.

It feels like there are on one hand, more and more individuals in the group, because each person stands out as a real conscious agent - a player - who is not following anyone. And at the same time it feels like there are no individuals at all in the group, since there is only the one authentic self, one process, being expressed. There is no gap between self and other, which is felt as ecstatic intimacy, and simultaneously there's a greatly enhanced autonomy. Pretty remarkable, I think! Once you're in the non dual realm of the authentic self, these paradoxes become regular features, but I'm still amazed!

          When anyone speaks from the ego and its value sphere, there is an immediate response from the egoless passion of the authentic self, which has completely different and opposing values, as I talked about in previous blogs. So there is no toleration whatsoever for ego. The focus is not on individuals, it's on the process; the process going forward is all that matters to the authentic self, and so the response is only to care for the process of the evolution of consciousness. The authentic self has no relation with, or interest in, the personal self and its history.

 And in this environment of the value sphere of the authentic self, any whiff of ego stands out vividly e.g. talking about ‘my process' instead of the process; or removing oneself in any way, so that one takes the ego's safe position of describing the process rather than daring to be the process. 

          We continue with more discussions and each time, it feels like we are speeding up and hurtling faster down the road to create the future, discarding ego unceremoniously at the side of the road! I know that doesn't sound kind to the sensitive self, but it's actually a fierce joy, (and we are consenting adults!) and anyway, why would we want to cherish the only obstacle to the evolution of consciousness and culture?

Andrew emphasizes that this teaching is not for the individual; it's about the evolution of the process. And it's really the only viable solution for our postmodern narcissism.  Meditation and/or therapy can't do it - they're still about you! Only caring for a higher purpose that far transcends our narcissism, while supporting our hard won individuation, can possibly succeed. And that's the purpose of Evolutionary Enlightenment.