Gaia Community: Chris Parish's Blog

Evolution, History, Culture and Me

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:09:15 GMT

chrisflag500

Some thoughts and reflections on human development focusing on England/Britain particularly (since I happen to be English) and seen through an evolutionary lens.

Here's a link to a public debate on the subject, ‘Cynicism: the British Disease?' where I was one of the speakers. I unfurled the Union Jack flag during the short introduction, not because I am a rabid nationalist or a member of the BNP, but to prove my point that we British have a weird relationship to our identity at this point. The flag is a symbol of our relationship to our nationality and we are averse or embarrassed by the sight of it.
http://www.enlightennext.org/membership/index.php?q=node/3309

In the last several years I've become more and more interested in the state of our collective culture in Britain, and over these last few months, the subject of why I am as I am, and why we are as we are, in this country, has become a real fascination. I want to set down some of my discoveries and conclusions in several blogs and see where it goes. I realize that I can't separate my own makeup from the cultural milieu that has had such a formative influence on me. It's always tempting to brush this away with the conviction that , ‘I'm an individual who makes up his own mind', but it's ever more clear to me these days that we are far more (infinitely more, to be more precise!) influenced by our environment than our self image prefers to admit.

I had a thought to subtitle this investigation, ‘The Evolution of the English: Predicament and Potential', though I have to admit that Spiral Dynamics maestro Don Beck captures it much better in his phrase, ‘From Rule Britannia to Cool Britannia to Integral Britannia'.

Put simply, and generalizing : As a national culture in the UK at this point of time, we seem to be stuck; we are cynical and indifferent with no real creative cultural story or direction or higher values to aspire to; disconnected from our creative national past and avoiding the history that led us to this predicament. Dystopically reveling in our amazingly developed sarcastic wit, we are not actively and consciously following the national collective evolutionary thread or current nor using our many undoubted highly developed capacities and talents. I feel we need to discover what evolutionary qualities and contributions can we as a nation, bring to the global table? Despite my critical remarks here, I'm actually passionately interested in how we as a nation can move forward and evolve, and dare I say, I'm proud to be British.

But in order for us to develop and evolve and create a new culture based on deeper values, we need to know where we are now, and also where we've come from. Britain has had an illustrious past, playing one of the largest parts, and arguably the largest, in forming the modern world of any nation. No, I'm not trying to go backwards and dwell on how ‘the sun never sets on the British Empire'. But I'm interested in where we have got to now and why we are here and how we can go forward collectively. Just as there is a thread or current which runs through each individual's life, and which we can become more and more awake to, so there is a creative evolutionary thread in the history of a nation, which we need to connect with and see what new expression that can take in the 21^st century.

As I said, generally we are by and large pretty cynical. I know it's a common feature of all postmodern cultures to be ironical and cynical, but our English version has an extra edge; it's something more than that. I've lived and worked for years in Holland and Germany and the States, East and West Coast as well as Australia, and while cynicism is a definite feature in these countries too, I am struck by the difference back home: we are just more vehement and negative.

Unless one is such a cynical realist that all this just seems like a rational and balanced point of view, it has to be said that the British are at this point in time, quite slanted towards cynicism as a nation.

But why? Why do we generally tend to have such a negative slant and take perverse pleasure in pulling things down; pointing out so with such sarcastic wit what's wrong with just about everything?

And it's not just ‘that culture out there'; it's me too, heaven forbid! Culture doesn't exist out there apart from the individuals who form and sustain it by our shared views and values. Like myself, most of us don't see ourselves as being cynical. It's just the received cultural conditioning that we absorb unwittingly by osmosis due to being in our particular environment at this point in time.

I would wonder why I tended to downs, "Yes, it certainly was a momentous event when the USA created the Declaration of independence, but mind you, it wasn't much of a celebration for slaves or Native Americans. I don't recall them getting a mention in the said document......", I find myself saying to an American colleague in a discussion about culture, when we happened to be talking about the event which still inspires and informs Americans today. I wonder afterwards why I said this? Why do I habitually tend to deliver barbed sarcastic put downs? This didn't seem to have anything to do with anything that had happened to me in my individual psychological past.

The popularity of British books such as, ‘Is it Just Me or is Everything Shit?' with its fascinating sequel, ‘Is it Just Me or is Everything Shit Volume 2?' strikes a similar chord.

It sounds perverse but I enjoy reading obituaries; not because I'm morbid, but because it is the only socially acceptable literary avenue where the writer is allowed to be uncynical and praise the achievements of the deceased subject; a rash act which would normally raise questions about the writer's gullibility, judgment and grip upon his or her rational faculties.

Have you noticed how whenever you read an article about some new gym routine or diet, or yoga class, the writer has to establish their credentials of objective sanity by saying what a lazy slob they personally are, and although they may enthuse about the new routine, they have to end the article by making it clear that they will return to being a couch potato stuffing on junk food and retaining the beer gut.

A feature of British life that I'm not enamoured of, and that I've pondered on long and hard, is how we don't seem to care or be bothered about whether things work; whether we give good service, whether we receive good service; shoddiness and the more benign ‘muddling through' is quite normal and accepted. Yes, we love to complain, but we don't intend to do anything about it, or fix things, so it is all part of the same attitude in the end. Here's a British experience of what I mean that I wrote down after a recent return from abroad :

"Landing at the busiest and one of the most poorly rated international airports in the world, Heathrow, in London, after an overnighter from the States, I blearily go to refresh myself in the grey half-light that passes for dawn, in the Arrivals toilets. And above the wash basins, there it is, and I know I'm home: a big permanent and helpful sign bolted onto the wall: Warning: extremely hot water, be careful! And it's true. I know scaldingly hot water will surge out like a fire hydrant if I turn the tap, shooting out of the curve of the wash basin all over my trousers to leave me looking like Mr. Bean

I've been travelling all over the world for decades, and this sign has, been welcoming me home to England for at least 20 years.

Why, oh why, couldn't they just change the thermostat and make the water a bit less ridiculously hot?

But no, easier to engrave a sign on the wall. Yes, I'm back in the U.K, G.B, England, Britain. I know it's confusing to foreigners who we actually are. I'm English, though technically half Scottish, but I think the Scottish part must be a recessive gene. And I'm already complaining; one of our national hallmarks. And already attempting to be witty with a sarcastic edge: yet another characteristic."

As I said, I spent considerable time pondering on why we are as we are, and I suddenly realized one very important reason for our ‘couldn't care' and cynical attitude. This isn't the whole picture, but I do believe that it is a significant element:

We haven't got over the loss of the Empire. We've gone from a period of around 250 years as the most powerful and influential people and country in the world: the richest, ruling the oceans with the biggest naval power ever; leading in science and technology; ruling about 60 (!)countries; the epicentre of the whole world. And our status now?:

A small rainy island off the coast of continental Europe, a middling power in the shadow of America and other rising super powers. Psychically we unconsciously know that we have reached our zenith and it is all downhill now. We will never be preeminent again, never as rich, influential or powerful again. It's all downhill now so why bother? Why care or stretch to achieve? It's only going to get worse anyway. Far easier to not care and be cynical. We've tried it all, been there, done it; it didn't work You Americans think you can rule the world; Ha, ha! you'll end up like us. It's all a joke anyway. Safer to be sarcastic and always look to what is wrong and to point out how it won't work anyway.

This sounds simplistic, obvious, old hat, I know. But the more I've contemplated this, the more I deeply feel it's true. The loss of Empire is obviously not the only factor, but I do believe it is a key one in our current malaise. Although we've had a number of decades to adjust to our reduced circumstances, we haven't because this is hard to face. The Empire is an embarrassment to us postmodern liberals, so we can't incorporate it and move on healthily. After all, who would now justify colonizing about 60 countries around the world and telling them what's best for them! And don't get me wrong, I'm no imperialist retrograde. But this is our national history and civilization has evolved by empire building over thousands of years and hopefully we are getting beyond empires now, as we evolve.

I deeply feel that we need to own the fact of the Empire as part of our collective history and then move on. Otherwise we can't reconnect with the evolutionary thread of the nation, and feel a positive self esteem, honouring the creative achievement of our many great forbears who advanced human civilization, and acknowledging and embodying the positive characteristics that we are endowed with.

What is the next step for this post industrial, post colonial country drawing on the potential inherent in so many creative, intelligent, multicultural people?
http://www.enlightennext.org/membership/index.php?q=node/3309

Tags:

The Higher We

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:28:50 GMT

Check out this one and a half minute video clip
about The Higher We that a couple of my friends just made
It's very simple but I think it transmits a lot

The Higher We

Tags: Higher We, Andrew Cohen, collective intelligence

A Story (and a true one too!)

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:46:47 GMT

Time and Development

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.

Tags: evolutionary enlightenment, EnlightenNext

Hurtling into the Future

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 04:32:14 GMT

Day 7 & 8

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

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.

Tags:

The joy of wanting nothing!

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:47:54 GMT

Day 5 & 6

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

Andrew tells us how he has found himself spontaneously changing the day to day plans for the retreat and trusting his gut as to what is the most authentic way to structure the time, rather than rigidly adhering to a pre arranged plan. It certainly feels right to me and although not what I had imagined a retreat on Enlightened Communication would look like, I feel that we are actually learning a lot about this very subject from new angles. Being an evolutionary approach, after all, you would expect it to be constantly evolving!

For the last two days Andrew has been having us go deep into the ground of being. We've been contemplating the value sphere of the ego, especially the collective aspect, and now we're switching to the ground of being, which is the next of the 3 dimensions of the self that I wrote about earlier.

It's an exploration of what it means to go to zero, since this is the foundation and part of the Enlightenment dimension ( i.e. the liberating non relative dimension) of these teachings. The ground of being is that deepest part of our self that is already inherently free and has absolutely no relationship at all with the world and has never entered into the stream of time. It's what traditional Enlightenment is all about and this dimension is absolutely foundational in Evolutionary Enlightenment as well.

The nature of the subject is making me want to just abide in Being rather than blog about it, but, here goes... I'll attempt to keep writing.

In spite of the inward nature of the subject, we still have discussion groups and start with the subject of: "The joy of having nothing, knowing nothing and being nobody"

This first group didn't really hit the mark and go deep enough, so Andrew has us meet more to go further still.

It's all too easy to take a habitual approach to this subject, which can be seen as the domain of meditation i.e. you meditate and have an experience and then come out and return to ‘normal'. But here we're approaching the ground of being from within its own value sphere, and from here, it's a radically different view and a vital perspective to have.

So what we're doing is looking at ‘not wanting' from that part of oneself that wants nothing.

The later discussions are extraordinary, starting with Andrew's guidance to dare to seriously consider wanting nothing and having nothing for real. E.g.

What about ending wanting now?! What about the end of desire, now, this evening?! Dissolution!

Even just to contemplate this seriously, put us instantly in touch with that part of ourselves whose nature is free of wanting. Suddenly there is a rising tide of ecstatic freedom sweeping through the room, and people express their sense of liberated abandon. We recognise that this has always been our deepest home and our deepest self nature, already full and desireless. There's a magnetic pull into infinite being and depth, and the world evaporates, and from the point of view of this part of oneself, any form of wanting or desire just feels unpleasant.

As one man remarks to Andrew, "The very definition of joy is not wanting!"

At the end of the meeting, I joke that from this perspective, many of us would be eager to don sannyasin robes, and renounce the world if we had a pile of saffron robes to hand out! You can see the attraction of why traditionally people have left the world, as we go deeply into the Self absolute or ground of being and examine everything from that perspective.

I think many of us are awed by the profundity and implications of what we experience and see how important it is that the ground of being dimension becomes a fundamental reference point in our self structure, and not merely an experience that you dip into in meditation.

Andrew's distinctions of the 3 dimensions of our being that are entirely different and unconnected takes on more reality and significance with each day that passes.

Tags:

What self am I?

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:25:54 GMT

Day 4

The Art and Science of Enlightened Communication

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

The deep snow is melting and it's a positively balmy day, with the temperature soaring to 6 or 7 degrees C - well OK, not quite Spring - though I did just glimpse the first Robin, but it's relatively much milder.

Today Andrew takes several individuals through the process of exploring their deepest value spheres that make up part of our sense of self: the collective ego, to illustrate how it works for everyone, since we only partly understood it yesterday.

And today there is a clear sense of everyone really getting what he is pointing to, as he uses people's experience to illustrate the process, such as the moving story of an Indian man describing his personal evolution through traditional values, to modern values and now to postmodern values. Andrew draws out how the world appears to you at each of those stages and it's not an individual issue. The purpose is to see how one may still be quite emotionally invested in values that one hasn't chosen, that were absorbed from family and culture. If you haven't brought these values to the light of awareness, they may well still be having a big inhibiting effect on one's availability to be able to evolve.

The Discussion: where the rubber hits the road

So in our discussion group today, we continue with this investigation and there is immediately a unitary shared sense of the thrill and liberating potential of this endeavour.

An example will hopefully make practical sense of what I'm saying:

A Danish man describes how the values that he absorbed from the Scandinavian very post modern milieu that formed his sense of self, is felt as ‘the need to have my own space'. He says that it's not so that he can do anything particular with this sense of space, but it's almost like a sacred right.

‘I must have my own space and time for myself'.

This is a classic postmodern expression of the value sphere that life is for me and revolves around me - there is no higher value, purpose or authority than me, the individual.

He could see the emotional investment in this value; that it is still important to him and affects how he organizes his time, even though for someone like himself, who is committed to evolutionary development, it's an irrational motive that is contradictory to his conscious desire for transformation and obviously has an inhibitory effect.

The felt need is to carve out the time for himself but there's nothing he wants to do with it, once he's got it - it's actually boring! It's eye opening to see how we still can have strong feelings about these values even though they are not at all how we now want to live.

He says that ‘Life is a hobby' - you try something out for a while, and then drop it and try something else - and because of the cradle to grave social welfare system in Northern Europe, you are always looked after, whatever happens. So life is not real - it's a hobby.

My reflections on all this

It occurs to me that Andrew is leading us through some kind of evolutionary post post modern deconstruction of the self, in order to free us up from outmoded cultural structures to be able to chose our own values.

As a former Buddhist and fan of the Buddha's scientific method of investigation, I fantasize that this might be an approach the Buddha would take if he were here in 2008 and applying his famously rigorous deconstructionary analysis of the self sense! Of course there was no knowledge available of the evolutionary view or of collective self structures in the Buddha's day, 2500 years ago.

It strikes me that what we are doing is looking at the value spheres of the collectively formed self sense from an overarching evolutionary perspective that sees us in a continual process of development. But what is remarkable, to me at least, is that we are not just getting a cognitive understanding; we are focusing very personally on the emotionally felt values we each hold, and bringing them into expression, but it is being done from a very impersonal viewpoint. So we are not getting fascinated with the personal dimension or with anyone's personal story, or psychology; these are not individual issues, they are collectively formed layers of our identity.

The point of the exercise is to enable us to be fully available for a higher purpose, to be able to create our own self structures and to free to evolve.

The sense of liberation that each of us feel from seeing firsthand the evolution of the self structure, is very palpable.

Of course, now the challenge is to change because I've had enough experience to know that the idea that ‘seeing is freeing' is usually not true per se. We need to apply conscious intention to actually make it so

Tags:

A new way of looking at our experience

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:29:30 GMT

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!

Tags:

Going in deep….

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:24:53 GMT

Day 2

The Art and Science of Enlightened Communication

On Retreat with Andrew Cohen

I was going to start with the progress of the discussion group I am leading, but again I have to give a little context first or it will read like gibberish!

It's a serious retreat and the meditations are already deep, still and powerful. Today Andrew expounds on a key part of Evolutionary Enlightenment: namely, that there are 3 dimensions to the self and the importance of clearly distinguishing between them:-

The Ground of Being

The Ego

The Authentic self

But what he was emphasizing today is that these 3 dimensions have absolutely no connection with each other. Yes, I did mean what I typed - no connection whatsoever - I know, it sounds worse than schizophrenia! But it's so true in my own experience. We unwittingly assume a continuity and consistency of our self sense, that doesn't bear close scrutiny.

And also importantly, that each of these dimensions has its own specific value sphere. For example, the ego's value sphere revolves around its own narcissism and selfishness and not caring for anything but itself when the chips are down. While the authentic self cares passionately about creating the future but has absolutely no interest in the ego's concerns, fears and desires.

And the ground of being has no relationship to time or the world in any shape or form.

Think about it though - when you have an experience of the ground of being, say in deep meditation, you really don't care at all about the world or anyone. It doesn't mean you're callous or in a callous, uncaring state; it's just that the value sphere of the ground of being is one that inherently has no relationship with the world or with time. Looking in this big impersonal way at the deeper cultural spheres of our experience is quite eye opening and clarifying.

Fascinating stuff!

The "Discussion group" - for want of a more adequate word.

So this is what we explore in our discussion group today, and right from the start there is a one pointed focus in the 20 participants. Incidentally, when I say ‘discussion group', the words sound rather mediocre and dull - at least to me. But the way I view the ‘discussion groups' is that they are like a crucible for creating and advancing an awakened intersubjective consciousness. I remarked today that you couldn't have a more conducive setting: each person committed to developing and communicating beyond ego for the sake of the evolution of consciousness; being in this ideal retreat environment in silence, contemplating and meditating in a very serious and one pointed way. Then coming together, there is bound to be a creative synergy.

After all, when do groups of people ever gather for the single express purpose of evolving consciousness between them? It's certainly not happening at my local pub! Actually someone once did try to tell me when I was giving a talk about this subject, that yes, of course, this is the usual quality of communication down at his local pub. I asked him for the address and he became strangely reticent!

Back to the discussion: there's quite a shift today in that various people from the word go, are taking responsibility for the direction and quality of engagement. This is so vital for a collaborative leadership, where each person's authentic autonomy is all in the service of pushing towards ever greater depth.

We focus in on the simple (intellectually at least) but mindblowingly profound fact of the 3 dimensions of self being so absolutely different and unconnected. While many of us know about this, I don't think we have ever really grokked the full significance of this fact.

It clarified why just having experiences of the authentic self or ground of being are not transformative in themselves, because the experiences often remain in distinct compartments and are not even remembered when we are in the state of ego. It emphasizes the need for a shift in allegiance of one's centre of gravity of the self sense, in order to affect real lasting transformation.

How far can we go in this retreat? I don't know but I really want to go further than I/We have ever gone

Tags:

The Ultimate Adventure

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:44:41 GMT

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?

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.

Tags:

Communicating Beyond Ego: Yes, it really happened!

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:19:02 GMT

"What do you hope to get from this day?" I started by asking everyone who came to the seminar on the art and science of Enlightened Communication.

The response was staggeringly uniform though many of the participants had never been before and had never met each other.

"I want to learn how to communicate beyond ego and/or create the future," was the sincere and passionate reply - of course, not always in those words, but said in all different ways. As the person presenting the seminar and facilitating, I knew it was going to be successful. And it certainly was.

By the time we reached the end of the day and the group of almost 50 people met in a single circle, stretched around the top floor of the London EnlightenNext centre, there was an instantaneous shared awakened consciousness pervading the proceedings. It always amazes me how so many human beings can be utterly focused and present, so that instead of all those people talking making you feel frazzled, it's entirely the opposite - more like the combined feeling of the relaxation of a sauna and facial with an exhilarating awakeness. And there's the mindblowingly fascinating paradox of how it really feels like there is only one person in the room, while simultaneously each person feels more authentically and deeply, a freed up individual.

We spent the day moving between small groups of five or six people and then back into the one larger group, which was very effective in getting everyone to be full participants in creating a deeper collective consciousness together.

getting-started

Groups-from-above2

I tried a novel way of introducing ego (the one and only obstacle to Enlightened Communication). In discussions like this, the way ego manifests is as the sense that one "already knows" - which makes one unavailable for anything new and shrinks one's context like nothing else.

So my colleague Arjan Kindermans and I recorded several comedy skits on ego, each one bringing out a different aspect of ego, in the particular form of already knowing that I have encountered thousands of times in similar discussions. Each little vignette is a distillation of countless dialogues over the years, and it is these that I played to the participants.

I joked beforehand to everyone that I feared I might get lynched by the group but actually they appreciated the funny side of the skits, even though they are close to the bone. In fact various people found them one of the best parts of the day.

Everyone contributed to prove that communication beyond ego is really possible and in my book, that's definitely part of creating the future.

And what could be better than that?!

Tags:

Enlightened Communcation Live Webcast by Andrew cohen

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:47:57 GMT

Do listen to Andrew Cohen talking on Enlightened Communication

Thursday 17^th January at 8pmGMT and later on that night at 2amGMT as a free live webcast

I'm sure it's going to be an extraordinary introduction to the subject

Tags: enlightened communication, Andrew Cohen, collective intelligence, EC

A Very Brief History of Everything

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:54:10 GMT

Finally here's the painting that Kyrsten promised,
titled "A Very Brief History of Everything"

She says she was inspired by my poem, "An Evolutionary Song of Myself".

A Very Brief History of Everything by Kyrsten

Tags:

An Evolutionary Song of Myself

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:03:29 GMT

This poem has been knocking on my door wanting to come out for some days now, so I had to let it out.

I've been thinking about the evolutionary process, the authentic self and the extraordinary impersonality of the whole thing - and how simultaneously our deepest humanity is found here.

The theme of the Universe Project conference calls at the moment, ( BTW: join up and join in - it's free) is the authentic self, and somehow I've attempted to capture in a few words, the grandeur and deep time implications of what it all means.

An Evolutionary Song of Myself

With gratitude to part of myself: Walt Whitman

I am all that's come before

All 13.7 billion years of what has come before

Every minute of it.

To be the growing edge of this unthinkable continuum

now reaching into potentials uncharted

I am the growing result, the synthesis of all that has been.

I am the whole wave front of Life

All the experience, responses, reactions, understanding, advances, sorrows, joys, cul de sacs,

Everything that's come before,

It is my cells, my tissues, my physical form, coursing through my veins, my brain and mind

Can I be big enough to let in who I am?

Movement toward and reaction against, desire and fear, from my earliest stirrings as consciousness.

Unicellular organism becoming community of cells and organs

Emergence from the oceans

Unconscious habits still from the age of reptiles

The quickness of noticing movement, the colour vision from the birds

The socialness of flocks and herds,

The warmth and fur of mammals

The fear and desire for safety in the mouse's eye

The complex web of relationships of my primate relatives.

The struggle of hominoids ever questing forward.

The lust, aspirations, empathy, hatred, violence, curiosity, instinct

Language, communication, consciousness, development, all interwoven

To become the fabric of my view, my brain, my intelligence

When I speak, I speak for all that came before

Consciousness pressing onwards

All is in me and I am the accumulation, distillation,

This-point-in-time culmination of all that is before

though there is no end.

All the advances of humans, so hard won at great sacrifice are embodied in me

The recipient of all that came before.

All human history is in me in some form.

And then to become conscious of consciousness itself, only those few short thousand of years ago

What a tremendous step in my development!

The tribal, social, family, national, individual, all have become reflex structures in my consciousness

I am the mixture and synthesis of all the emotions, sensations,

conscious, semi conscious or habitual, at multitudinous and varying levels of development in me

All is in me competing, clamouring and compelling for expression,

all in the spectrum of my experience.

Including the most recent demand to be heard, of the voice

who insistently claims to be an independent entity with his own separate life to live.

And I am awed and blessed to be able to know now that

- again as beneficiary of those pioneers who most recently came before -

I am this Life Process.

Is my heart big enough to hold it all?

Who am I?

I am ‘that' - but ‘that' is the evolutionary process itself

And there's telos, directionality, behind the whole movement.

How can I say so?

Because I am keenly aware of it in my heart,

As after all, I am the process itself.

And I can choose what to express and where to direct the precious gift of conscious awareness

that is ever able to emerge, as the vessel and the perspective gradually expands.

Everything is there in this incredible unfolding from the beginning of creation.

But who I will be and how the process develops now depends on my conscious choices

The universal call of the creative impulse is to be more conscious, ever deeper,

more transcendent and inclusive, more transcendent and exclusive.

I am all that's come before now launching out to be all that is to come.

Tags: evolutionary consciousness, deep time, Universe Project

Universe Project call

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:02:48 GMT

Fire Poem

Here's the poem that I promised I would post on the Universe Project conference call this week.

It was a great call where we were exploring the qualities of the authentic self - that passionate urgency that is the creative force of the cosmos in the awakening human.

Rather than give a description, I read out a poem I'd written last week. I was on a great two day leadership course where one task was to write a ‘Fire poem' expressing your passion and purpose. Mine was about the authentic self and the Universe Project.

If you'd like to join the Universe Project (it's free and connects you to a broad movement of development of consciousness and culture), sign up here and you'll get details of these free calls I'm referring to.

And listen to podcast of the call.

My Cosmic Agenda

I feel the quickening, the pulse, the current, the call of the Life force itself:

In the clap of the wood pigeon's wings cutting through the air

In the explosion of song of the Robin in the apple tree

In the astounding crimson of the Japanese maple against the compelling green of the Box hedge

The ivy questing up the brick wall

They are the current of Life, of the creative process itself and they express it fully

They are it, but they don't know it

And then the staggering realization that I am this creative eruption and unfoldment too.

I am the torrent of creation itself

And being human at this extraordinary point in time,

I know that I know and I can choose.

14 billion years of evolution all contained in me, in us, pulsing through my heart and veins,

calling out for more, more, ever more, compelling, commanding.

I feel the passion of the Universe in the depths of my heart and soul

And it says - or I say? - I can't tell the difference - it's all the same thing.

I must! I must! I must!

Must what?

Learn, stretch, find out, explore, become more conscious, develop without end

Not for me, but so that the Universe becomes ever more conscious of itself through us.

Ecstatic urgency to become the eyes and ears of the evolving cosmos

To be on the edge of the unformed surf

And to come together in the passion of creative friction with others

To prove with my own example that a different human culture is possible.

This is my passion.

This is my life.

Kyrsten's Painting inspired by my Fire poem

Tags: Universe project, authentic self, development of consciousness

His-story is My-story

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:38:14 GMT

I'm having the growing sense of really being more the evolutionary process than being an individual. Of course I am very much an individual too, but what I mean is that I am starting to find my true individuality from the undeniable perspective that I (and we) are the vast evolutionary process itself.

Just having been on a week's retreat with Andrew Cohen in Italy very much highlighted this growing awareness and realization. I find myself becoming interested in history and culture in a way I never was before and seeing it as the extraordinary struggle of the human spirit to evolve and develop. Being in Renaissance Italy gave me plenty of food for thought along these lines.

It's my history - our history now - instead of dry facts, and it gives us postmodern sophisticates a sense of awe and appreciation for what we are the growing tip of; that we are the recipients and benefactors of all the hard won development, and we stand on their shoulders. I feel like I'm peering out of the enveloping postmodern narcissistic and pretty blasé world view to see the deep time view. And with this realization comes a sense of obligation to take it further ourselves.

I always remember the far-out Jazz legend Sun Ra, in an interview, saying that he wasn't interested in history. History is "his story" but he was interested in "my story". He didn't mean it in this way, but all history is my story and your story too.

Soul Development

It's from this perspective of recognizing that human development rests on my shoulders, that soul development takes on real meaning, since it's all up to me. (and you). And unless we each develop strength of character and a much deeper care, there's no way we will take on this task. This was a key topic introduced by Andrew Cohen on this retreat.

Conference Calls and the Universe Project

I am having (free) conference calls every Thursday evening (UK time) together with Kyrsten Perry presenting different aspects of evolutionary enlightenment, followed by question and answer and discussion.

And the subject at the moment is soul development.

The calls are under the umbrella of what is called the Universe Project - which is for anyone who broadly supports and cares about the evolution of culture and consciousness.

You're welcome to get on the calls and you get the call-in info automatically when you join the Universe Project. This only takes a few moments and again is free.

Check out last week's call on soul development on this podcast.

Tags: Universe project, soul development

Enlightened Communication Interview

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:35:45 GMT

Enlightened Communciation

Here's a link to an audio interview I did with Brian Rittenhouse after a retreat with Andrew Cohen earlier this year in the States:

Podcast

Tags: enlightened communication, Andrew Cohen, collective intelligence

A Diary of a Retreat with Andrew Cohen

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 16:24:18 GMT

Evolutionary Enlightenment Summer Intensive

I wrote my impressions of last summer's 10 day Evolutionary Enlightenment retreat in Montserrat, Spain. I was revisiting it and thought it may well be of interest to those thinking of attending this summer's retreat in Tuscany, Italy, with Andrew Cohen and just for general interest too.

It's my experiential account but it also chronicles the development of this intensive day by day for the 10 days. It's long but I was so thrilled that I got sort of carried away writing at the end of each day!

Check out: Retreat blog.

Tags: andrew cohen, evolutionary enlightenment retreat, intensive

The MANY as the ONE

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:20:59 GMT

Sunday Conference Call 24^th June

This Sunday's conference call discussed this recent blog entry of Andrew Cohen's at the request of one of the regular participants. The power and uniqueness of Evolutionary Enlightenment is all in this interplay between the One and the Many - the joy and ecstasy of no separation simultaneously with freed-up individuality.

It can sound theoretical so I shared my experience the evening before at the EnlightenNext London centre where we hosted a wedding party as part of our venue rental business which financially supports what we do.

Wedding Party as manifestation of the MANY as the ONE?

This evening was an ecstatic experience and though most people at the wedding party had no idea about EE, everyone was swept up in a field of extraordinary positivity, and were very moved and exclaimed how they had never experienced anything like this before. It wasn't just an uninhibited party (though it sure was that too!) - it was super efficient, flowed seamlessly, with the EnlightenNext staff and volunteers ensuring a very high quality of food, service, care, ‘seemingly' effortlessly (of course it takes a lot of work too).

To be honest, I realized afterwards, that this party really was an expression of Evolutionary Enlightenment, and there was no conflict between the Many and the One, and more than that, both unity and autonomy were magnified and manifested further.

So back to the call : Not that we came to an ‘answer' to this huge issue of the Many and the One - after all, this is an ongoing creation, paradox, and discovery - and it will no doubt constantly evolve as we evolve.

Yet as we talked, we could experience the very thing we were discussing as we discussed it and the call finished with a clear presence of the sacred.

Perhaps the most important thing to stand out for me on this call, was the power of conscious attention: when we put our attention on consciousness and its expression individually and collectively, an intersubjective field instantly comes to life. It's that close and only depends on us.

By the way, we also have "What is Enlightenment?" ( the magazine) Salons regularly now at the London EnlightenNext centre, discussing the issues raised in the magazine and the larger cultural context

Tags: What is Enlightenment, Many and One, Andrew Cohen blog

Foundations of Egoless Communication

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Wed, 16 May 2007 23:16:18 GMT

Listen to the Latest Podcast

An ongoing series of conference calls where the thread we're exploring and discussing is what it takes for people i.e. us, to be able to relate beyond the separate self sense or ego.

Clarity of Intention: the single most important basis for living and relating beyond ego - and the most overlooked.

In this call we inquired into Clarity of Intention, which is the very foundation of Evolutionary Enlightenment. It can seem sort of obvious and even like a truism, but when you look into it, it is an eye opener and is infinitely deeper. To start to reorient oneself at a deep level so that one actually is becoming more and more interested in the unknown and less fixed on holding on to we do already know, is a profound shift in our motivation. This is the level of clarity of intention and another way to put it is that to really transform as human beings, we need to make a shift in our centre of gravity: from the part of ourselves that we habitually identify with; to move from being based in the position of the ego = known/secure/fixed/self centred, to the deepest part of ourselves, the authentic self.

Podcast on Clarity of Intention

Patrick Bryson and I set the general context and give an interwoven intro and then people are free to discuss and question.

Tags:

Evolution is something you do: A Conference call

http://chrisparish.gaia.com — Tue, 08 May 2007 20:52:53 GMT

Development of human consciousness, and how a group of people can practically do this together was the aim of this call I held with a number of people who had recently spent a day with Andrew Cohen.

A quick background: Andrew Cohen held a day intensive at the London EnlightenNext centre a week or so ago, and in my opinion it was the most extraordinarily powerful day I can remember.

What made it so great was that the folk attending were unusually interested and sincere and asked very profound questions, and this enabled Andrew to be amazingly free and abandoned in his responses. The symbiosis and uninhibited explosive inquiry was off the scale.

So I put it out to the people who attended that day, inviting them to continue this depth of meeting by joining an experiment in conscious evolution by conference call.

Introductory Conference call

We held the first one this Sunday and this was sort of an introduction and we talked of the possibilities that we could go further in together.

I led the call along with my good friend and colleague at EnlightenNext London, Patrick Bryson. After years of giving talks and leading seminars by myself, I am more and more excited by jointly leading events instead of doing it solo, since the unique aspects of Evolutionary Enlightenment only really emerge between people. It's in the intersubjective dimension that one can experience that enlightened consciousness which has the potential to reveal solutions to human conflict and provide a basis for a radical new human culture.

And when I lead jointly with someone else, I find that the way we work together is (hopefully - you'll have to judge this for yourself) a growing expression of what it means to be fully uninhibitedly, autonomously oneself and yet be able to interact in a seamless way as One, free of competition.

Egoless Communication

So the thread we're trying to follow and develop in these calls is egoless communication (aka EC, Enlightened Communication). And in order to make this something which is sustainable and not heady or airy fairy, I know that we have to build the foundation of a much greater context for viewing our experience in, and to learn to really recognize ego and authentic self in ourselves and others. In Evolutionary Enlightenment there are a lot of tools available to do just that.

This first call was just setting the ground and it was a good start. It takes a little while to get into it and it needs a certain commitment. Really I think there is no sustained development without commitment.

We're attempting quite a task in starting to reorient the way we think about ourselves: so that we more and more see ourselves not as a separate person who is a consumer of experiences and understanding, but rather as waking up to the fact that more importantly than being an individual, we are the leading edge of the vast process of evolution itself. That's quite a different way to think of myself.

Not surprising this might take more than a little stretching and perseverance!

The Potential of conference calling

Phone conference calls can be a tremendous medium for conscious development together, contrary to what you might think. Especially here in Europe, they seem culturally alien and I find that if they're thought of at all, then they are associated vaguely with some sort of American tele-marketing exercise.

I wrote about this phenomenon after having my own old notions shattered, of what I had thought about the phone as a medium. The main limitation is, as you've probably guessed, my/our limiting ideas.

See Ultra-Broadband Communication

Tags: consciousness, EnlightenNext London, EC, egoless communication