The Ultimate Adventure

The Art and Science of Enlightened Communication

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

Day 1

What a fortunate position to be in - embarking on a 9 day intensive with Andrew Cohen in Western Massachusetts. There's nothing I love more than diving into an exploration in consciousness in a setting like this, with like minded people, free of distractions, and the snow is falling thickly, enveloping the beautiful grounds in a deep silent mantle, which makes it even more conducive to an exploration of interiority.

 I'm not even going to attempt to chronicle all that Andrew manages to convey in his extended teaching sessions with everybody; it's just too much for a blog.

What I'm thinking to do instead - and this may change as this retreat unfolds - is to follow one key thread: to blog about the daily discussion groups that we are having. But for this to make sense for anyone who wasn't present, I need to give a little context and backdrop to the discussions.

You see, Enlightened Communication isn't some new fangled technique; it's the art and science of how we collectively can actually evolve consciousness together - and this further emergence of higher consciousness can't be accomplished alone. And it's developed out of 20 plus years of Andrew's experience with thousands of people and is the fruit of Evolutionary Enlightenment. It's a serious and very purposeful endeavour, and I hope you will get a sense, as this blog goes along, of why I think this really is the ultimate adventure.

 What happens on the Retreat

Andrew gives a 3 hour tour de force to open the retreat, with a searing evocation of the deep time evolutionary process and how the Universe is evolving through us, and how we are responsible for the creative process. In fact, we are the leading edge of the interior development of the kosmos, and its future development is entirely up to us. Quite a starter!

 The format of the retreat is that Andrew gives a long teaching every morning and then after lunch we divide into a number of groups to hold formal discussion groups on the subject of the morning session. We then all meet back together with Andrew and report on the outcome and he can respond and take it further. With meditation to start and end each day, and everyone being silent except in the discussion groups, it creates an extraordinarily focused environment to learn the art and science of Enlightened Communication.

 Enlightened Communication Discussion groups - the launch

Evolutionary Enlightenment is about constant development and that's the expectation from the discussions: they are goal oriented and the expectation is that we move forward every time and that each individual is consciously committed to get somewhere - and by somewhere, I mean vertical as opposed to a merely horizontal  shift. This is definitely not an, ‘I'm OK, you're OK' context, for the simple reason that evolution implies transformation and perpetual development.

To add to this evolutionary tension, Andrew has us in groups that reflect our varying experience and knowledge of his teachings - ranging from a brand new group, to the group that I am leading - where each person has from between 10 and 20 years experience. And the expectation for my very experienced group is naturally and rightly far higher than for the newer folk. Otherwise, of course, it couldn't be truly authentic, could it?

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Our first discussion in the smaller group of about 20 people that I am leading is tasked with each person speaking very clearly about exactly what we are attempting to do on the retreat and in the discussions. Since everyone in this group has a great deal of experience and some are my peers, Andrew instructs me to be very exacting. As people speak, I find I have to be quite ruthless in insisting on clarity, rationality, authenticity and speaking in a way that conveys both a bigger perspective and an experience of what we are attempting to do together. It's all too easy for any of us to be sloppy and lazy and feel that we already know - especially if we do actually have a lot of experience.  

But, to their credit, people soon bounce back after being pulled apart and now there is a real authenticity throughout. Also, the true import of what it means to embody the vast creative process, which is actually our deepest identity, becomes the context for our dialogue, and now it is galvanizingly authentic. Now some of the things we had previously spoken about, become recontextualised, as we are all looking and speaking from the view of the authentic self, which is only interested in development and in creating the future. In this awakened intersubjective consciousness, there is no room whatsoever for the view of the ego.

This has ended up being a bit long, but what to do? Now I've set a little context, further posts can be more concise.