From an early age I experienced, like many people, the desire for something different than the reality that manifests so convincingly all around us. After the necessary attempts to pray to a god that my parents didn't believe in I read, at the age of eleven, a couple of pages in a small book about Zen Buddhism. Even now I still remember the astonishment that my parents had not told me, an eleven year old, that Zen Buddhism existed, it seemed too important to me to be left out of one's upbringing. Slowly I began to understand that apparently there was a state of consciousness that was deeper and more real than the one I found myself in every day, fascinating...

Fast forward; twenty-four years later I still had the same dream, I was only twenty-four years older, I was busy...

At some point I really started to make effort to see through the illusion that we call ‘my life' or even ‘the world'. Every time I could see clearly, when there was an opening through which I could see where I was, where I wanted to go and what would be the next step to make my dream come true, I took decisions that steered my life in the direction I wanted to go in; deeper, more free, happier, not because of something but because of no-thing. And those clear moments were almost always after a retreat with Andrew Cohen, like the one in Tuscany, Italy, this summer.

The dream I had, in which I initially, unknowingly, didn't really believe, became reality bit by bit. There is indeed a deeper dimension that is always accessible for anyone who, more than anything else, wants to become more conscious. It is possible for anyone with some courage and a little bit of humility, to live in accordance with the deepest we have ever experienced, and to do that while we still have time, so others can enjoy us the way we are at our best...

If you want to know more about this life-changing retreat you can click here.

I think we do, I definitely do, and I think we need to do it in the biggest possible context. I think most of us get lost in trying to deal with the shadow in a personal context and loose a lot of time that way.

The shadow is the part of us that we don't (want to) see and as a result of that we usually act out of it. It can be desire that we project onto some else. Ken Wilber illustrates this with the story of the man who wants to clean out his garage. The man in this story had the plan to clean up his garage for months and months and one day he finally decides he is really going to do it, but hardly started he comes upon a pile of old magazines and starts to read... After a few hours his wife pops her head into the garage to ask her husband how it is going, the man looks up from a magazine and starts shouting at her to get of his back and leave him alone. He projects the desire he feels to clean up his garage onto her, and as a result feels his wife is putting pressure on him, hence the anger towards her. Now that's a great way to explain what shadow is.

So what is the Myth of Shadow Work that I am referring to? It is the myth that many, many people subscribe to nowadays, that working on our shadow in a personal context can help us to be free, or bring us closer to enlightened awareness. A lot of the shadow work that I have come across is about focusing on aspects of ourselves that are not necessarily pretty, and transforming those, or stopping to judge those parts of ourselves.

What do I have against that? I think first of all this approach is endless, there is always more to see and to transform because we are never perfect, and all that time we don't feel we need to reach for our highest potential because we are not ready yet. It also makes these parts of us seem much more real and important than they actually are. And finally, I have not met anyone that benefitted from this approach in such a way that I felt that they were an inspiring example of freedom and self-knowledge.

My experience tells me that enlightenment is about a leap of faith, a radical leap out of the personal context altogether. We have to dive in at the deep end, care for Life, for the Development of Consciousness, for the Sacred. If we do this we will find the wakefulness to not act out of our unconscious motives, because we care. Caring is, of course, something entirely different than planning to care in the future and that is why I don't feel we have time for the kind of shadow work I mentioned above, even if it would work...

So let's go back to the man and his garage; if he would just get on with it and get that darn garage cleaned out, he would see that the pressure he felt from his wife was his own desire to clean up his garage. But if he would start to focus on his anger, laziness and need for clean garages, and tried to integrate that to become a more whole person, his garage would probably stay a mess for a long, long time to come. And his marriage would probably disintegrate in the meantime...

I find life unspeakably thrilling, I love the discovery that we don't need to work on our ego first to be wholehearted participants in Life. I find consistently caring to the best of my ability for some time now, has given me a perspective on ego or shadow, that enables me to learn and let go on the run, without dropping the ball or bailing out. And this is what I want to share, because the world needs caring, giving people, for whom their shadow is not a game. People that care so much it hurts, that are willing to burn in order to create an enlightened future.

Being a strong man is something that has become suspect in Northern Europe, for many years the liberation of men had to do with finding our feminine side. We did a great job here in Northern Europe, we definitely found it!

The last two Sunday afternoons I spent with groups of men, in Denmark and in the Netherlands, talking about this predicament of being feminized, spineless men. In both gatherings every single man recognized that this is who we are. All of us are, when it comes to our relationships with women, the weaker sex. And none of us seemed to know anyone from our own culture for whom that wasn't the case.

We have learned to be understanding and un-oppressive, being the head of the family is something we have long outgrown, and we have taken this all the way; we got into the habit of letting women make almost all the important decisions.

I found it is very hard, if not impossible, for a woman to respect a man like that, yet most of us are like this (even those of us, like myself, that seem quite macho and sure of  ourselves have, in the way we relate to life, the same angst and weakness). What do women do when they don't respect men and feel they cannot trust them? They become (excuse my French) controlling b**ches. It's hard to blame them, if a man lets a woman take almost all the life decisions, she is forced to take matters in her own hands. And lets face it, you wouldn't consult a person whom you don't respect if you need to make decisions that you find important would you?

So what is the good news? Well, in these conversations I mentioned before, we found facing this predicament a great source of strength! It is extraordinary when a group of men like I just described come together and pierce into the root of almost all of their problems, into the root of their sense of slavery and prisonership, from the point of view of wanting to be free from it, wanting to be a real player in life. A kind of impersonal strength emerges out of the collective that seems to empower every individual.

We were not talking about going back to being traditional men, we also were not seeking to overcome our condition by psychologically facing the causes of it, we were simply, as we were recognizing this, so personally felt, weakness in ourselves and each other, finding new ways to be a man, new ways to be together,  where strength and vulnerability, openness and autonomy were all present at once. Usually we either feel on top of life and are quite arrogant, or we recoil and become passive spectators, but in these meetings we are exploring ways to be a man who is free, strong and engaged, and not the self-centred consumer or the victim of life that we tend to see ourselves as.

"Why did God create the universe?" a bright young man asked me as I was presenting the exciting, cutting edge path of Evolutionary Enlightenment to a small audience in Arnhem, Holland, as if I would know. In the silence that followed his face changed and as he was looking me in the eye he said: "I am actually talking to myself am I not?" "That is true", I responded unpremeditatedly, "This is the only way for God to get to know him, her or itself."

We discussed how Life seems to be creating higher and higher expressions of itself and we recognized our conversation was part of that process, part of the evolutionary process recognizing itself.

I could see that, at least for a moment, that realisation was real to him, which made the evening worth it. What would happen if we all would have no doubt that we are the process, that we created the universe. What if we emotionally could bear the implications of the fact that our desire to be free and evolve, is the evolutionary impulse, the same impulse that created the whole universe?

This seems an inspiring metaphor, but when you start to see through the ego, through our stubborn insistence that the individual we seem to be, has it's own separate self existence, and realize that that impulse to be free and evolve is actually who we are on the deepest, most real level. Then you can't help realizing, whether we like it or not, that we did initiate this whole process and that we are responsible for it. It is almost too much to write, but that doesn't make it untrue. And what I love about it is the unbridled, undivided enthusiasm for life itself that this realisation can catalyze in us.

This is what Andrew Cohen calls the ‘Universe Project', your project and my project that we started about 14 billion years ago and that we are responsible for today...

When I think about meditation, I think about deep experiences of stillness and bliss, I think about clarity, focus and simplicity. I have lots of positive images and emotions that I associate with meditation. I am even teaching meditation in our EnlightenNext centre in Amsterdam on Wednesday nights which I am always enthusiastic about.

But during this retreat I realized that it isn't all these positive associations and all the liberating experiences that are most important about meditation. Past experiences cannot make a person Free. Having deep spiritual experiences, which anyone who meditates deeply enough, can and will have, are important, and give you the confidence that the spiritual dimension is real, but they rarely, if ever, set anyone free...

I saw in myself how I was sitting down in meditation, hoping to have a particular experience of depth and expansion, and if that wouldn't happen, too bad... maybe next time. I realized during this retreat, that there is a radically different way to look at and practice meditation that my spiritual teacher Cohen has always been advocating... I was simply too much of an experience-focused, self-centred individual to appreciate it. (click here for a 14 minute video about this cultural fenomenon)

I found myself, in my desire to become a free, trustworthy man, more interested in the position of meditation, than in the experience of it. What does that mean? The experience of meditation might be peaceful stillness, limitless space, resting in eternity and other happy feelings, (it might also be a very busy mind, no space whatsoever and lots of anxiety). But the position of meditation is that it all does not matter. Not having any relationship to bliss or anxiety, space or no space, leaving it all alone yet not avoiding any of it, being fully awake and at ease in the face of peace or inner war, that is the position of meditation which, by the way, is also the position of Enlightenment.

So all I did, as the ten days went on, was practice that position, which is, as Cohen teaches it, to sit still, pay attention and be at ease. I continuously had to renounce the temptation to do something, change something, manipulate my inner experience or even stop my thoughts. I did this with the most consistency that I could muster up, I realized, before I started this retreat, that my life depended on it. And at some point it became clear to me that I was actually creating my own ground. What I mean by that is that instead of my thoughts and emotions being the ground that I stand on, no-relationship to all that is the ground and this makes space for the Big Mystery that we are all enveloped in all the time, but that we are so often unaware of. By being still, attentive and at ease, I was, very intensively, practicing an enlightened posture for life. And as a result one gets to see Life clearly, in all it's glory, not just the objects like things, people, thoughts and feelings, but more importantly the deep fulfilling mystery that everything emerges out of in every moment and that we can ultimately recognize to be who we really are. A limitless, vibrant, always new field of living, free awareness that has no problem whatsoever and is perfectly full and empty at the same time, not needing anything, ever...  I am not an Enlightened individual, and I probably never will, but practicing the posture of Enlightenment is something I and anybody who wants it, can do!

I feel something is different now; I feel in a way I have never before, that my freedom is in my own hands, that it is not depending on any experience, in the past, the present or the future, it is simply dependent on my own willingness to take that very simple but profound position in every moment with the greatest consistency that I can muster up.

And the point of it is of course; this freedom frees us up to be part of the Cosmic project of moving (our own) consciousness up to a higher level that we are all, consciously or unconsciously, in the middle of and that each of our hearts long for whether we are aware of it or not...

My friend Rob van Viet and I did this retreat together, with some other members of EnlightenNext, we did a conference call to speak about it a couple of days ago, I put this call up as a podcast as it seemed to have such a profound effect on all of us to talk about meditation in this way, please listen by clicking here.

What is it like to be a close student of spiritual visionary Andrew Cohen? With 80 of us we spent the weekend in Lenox, Massachusetts where we have our main center. We spent the two days, for which people came from all over the world, in one big dialogue with Andrew about the evolutionary changes and actions that arise out of the perspective of enlightenment and about the moral framework that we develop in, once we stop denying the big evolutionary context we exist within.

What does that mean for how to live? What does that mean for those of us that are interested in creating an egoless culture, like you might, since you are reading this? It means that we have to come together, because it is between us, that, if the ego is not expressed, enlightenment comes to life. Than we can experience this perspective and see everything and everyone through enlightened eyes. We cannot do this alone, but together we can create this higher consciousness by collectively exploring our interest in freedom and evolution.

In his upcoming book Cohen writes: ‘if we can't share this new perspective with others, it is only a matter of time before we lose it'. That is so true, isn't it? He goes on to explain that it is very difficult to keep new structures in consciousness alive in yourself if the culture around you is of an earlier stage. You will fall back in the old because it is all you have to fall back on...

Now, from that shared perspective, (which I also recently found, is something you need to keep alive with others at all times if you don't want to fall back in the illusion of ego), what do you do?

You see, it is not just about being together and exploring something infinitely thrilling, it is about how you live, what you eat, how you move, how you raise your children, how and where you work, etc. Enlightenment is a perspective that changes literally everything.

The point of the 80 of us exploring this with our teacher this weekend is so that a core of people that have dedicated their lives to this possibility, actually create it together and then keep venturing further into this new territory, like a group of revolutionary thinkers starting the Western Enlightenment. Because if a group of people live this way, the revolution in consciousness and culture that we are endeavouring to bring to this world with our organisation EnlightenNext, exists. And when it exists as a living structure between people, this new consciousness can develop and spread. We can start exploring and living this with more and more people without necessarily having to do things that those initial pioneers had to... That is how these changes always happened throughout history, did they not? And if we, you and I, are successful, we will prove the ego to be the outdated dinosaur that it actually already is... Wouldn't that be great?

As I was thinking about it again just now, it hit me that enlightenment or consciousness, (which is what the first night was about a week ago), and the context that the experience of enlightenment or consciousness emerges in, are two sides of the same coin. That is why last night was such a powerful experience. Speaking together about the big 14 billion year evolutionary, cosmic context that we have emerged in and are an expression of, is a shared enlightenment experience that uplifts and liberates one from the suffocating limitations of the personal and cultural ego.

The inner and the outer are not two different things, one enlightened and the other unenlightened, they are both expressions of the vast, absolute, limitless nature of life and whether we go in or out with our attention, whether we focus on life, or on eternity beyond life, what we find if we really pay attention is the same liberating perfection that allows us to be first and then to think and act from that place of freedom and expansion.

I needed to write this down to understand why I am so happy. And I realized that it is only when we develop that life reveals it's inherent positive nature. The ecstasy that is the ground of all that is emerges only when we reach to express it.

Recently someone wrote me: "You are doing it all wrong, all anyone can do to develop is hang like an apple on a tree and let the sun shine on you." I disagreed with her, and I still do. I think it takes focused effort to develop, and I don't think anything is more rewarding and brings one more in touch with the bliss of being, especially here in Holland, being happy is so alien to us that unless we reach for it and do what we need to do to stay happy, we are going to keep believing that something is fundamentally wrong...

            It took many years and a lot of love, compassion, pressure and help for me to be willing to live in reality and express what I have recognized to be ultimately true and important. Now I don't want to go back to sleep, the momentum to do so is there, for sure, but I don't want to and more importantly, I feel I have no choice. If I was on my own, if my actions would have no effect on others, if where I stand would not help create a field, for better or for worse, between us all, than, sure, I would have a choice. But since that is all not true, since I am not just me but we, I feel I have an obligation to you who is reading this, to be happy and sane.

            A real teacher does not only show us reality, they embody it; a relationship with a real teacher or guru, enables us to have a relationship with reality that is beyond our perception and comprehension. We recognize that the teacher is in touch with a dimension that we want to know or have known once or twice in the past, and through our relationship with him or her we can relate to that deepest part of ourselves that otherwise eludes us.

            The surrender to that relationship, I found, is what makes everything possible. By giving ourselves unconditionally to the relationship with a teacher of liberation, we loose the burden of choice, the torture of doubting reality and wondering if we should follow our True Heart. If we surrender in such a way, the heart wins and the mind becomes a tool of the heart.

            The gratitude that my teacher, Andrew Cohen, feels for his teacher, I feel for him, because he was always there, like a mountain rising up out of an often rough sea, wanting nothing from me, but offering a relationship in time and space that enabled me to become a vehicle for infinity myself. In one way it is a very simple human connection, yet at the same time it is a door to God from which there is no way back into the darkness of ignorance and selfishness that I always wanted to see beyond.

            And finally, it seems to me that this kind of surrender and heartfelt gratitude is what makes a human being truly independent. Suddenly, I found, you stop relying on knowledge and other external sources and a river of wisdom, that is always available to all of us when we dare to let go of the ego's compulsive, illusory grasp on life, starts flowing though us. I discovered that it is only then, and not before, that we find the guru inside of us...

Andrew Cohen will be teaching in Amsterdam Monday night April 16 at 19.00. You are warmly invited to come.

The course I am currently teaching in Amsterdam is going really well. It went well right from the beginning, we were all in a flow, finding out together about what enlightenment is and speaking about the cultural context that we share and the cosmic, evolutionary context that this all takes place in but that we often are asleep to.

The third night we had a bit of a struggle, I told people about Andrew Cohen's meditation instructions, and my own recent experiences with meditation. I explained that you don't have to do anything when you meditate; it made people, especially the men, a bit edgy; ‘How do you do that, nothing?' It is hard to accept that it is that simple, but once you get it, or better, do it, life changes radically, here is a note that one woman sent me after the class on meditation:

‘I have to thank you for the gift I got. I'm usually always judging everything and everyone and in particular myself the most. I'm harsh on myself when I do things the wrong way. I mentally punish myself. Regarding to meditating I experienced the same thing. I used to meditate and could never be satisfied with the way I did it or the results I got.

During class you shared your experience on how you felt that you always saw room for improvement in how to meditate and that in a way the/your meditation was never good enough.  And that as of this week you could let go of that belief. This had huge impact on me. Such an easy thing to do, when you see it. Now I too let go of this belief/thought on meditation and in return I feel more peace and relief.. It's all about doing it and not about how to do it!'

Last week we talked about the difference between ego and authentic self, this is a term that Andrew Cohen came up with to describe the expression in time and space of the absolute self, or limitless void that we experience in meditation. This is a force of nature, the true meaning of the word love, that emerges from the void as soon as we take our attention off our ego's fears and desires. The emergence of that force of love in myself, others and in groups of people is what I live for. After the enlightening, energizing and deeply inspiring class we had about this, one of the participants wrote me something I found very powerful because he is simply describing what he has been experiencing after the class and with that gives a beautiful illustration of the difference between ego and authentic self;

‘During the last week I am experiencing a profound shift in the way I relate to the world. I normally have a strong urge to fix things. I set very high standards of living for myself and my environment. This is not always easy, as one can perceive the world easily as imperfect. In fact, I think that from an ego perspective you always can and will find the flaws, thereby finding evidence that things are not yet good enough. And again the ego has found something to fix.

It is as if practicing meditation on a regular basis slowly, but powerfully, let's dissolve the inevitable need to focus on ‘what is not'. Instead I become more and more satisfied with ‘what is'. And, at the same time, I experience more and more drive to come into action. Not to fix things, but to do things. To make my life, the life of others, or even the world slightly better. Herein I see that connecting to the ‘ground of being' on a regular basis enables me to act and perceive the world from a different perspective. I see this as the authentic self, which is in his nature almost the opposite of the ego, creating life and setting a context in a way that is intrinsically good and perfect.'

This liberating, transformative investigation we are doing together makes me feel very lucky to be alive...

The problem with the post-modern ego is that it gets in the way of things that are more important. My last blog is a good example of that; I thought it was the best post I had written so far, (In fact I probably thought it was the best post ever written :) ) when I just reread it I was blushing to see my own ego frozen in cyberspace.

The ego seems to come up inevitably when we take steps towards our own freedom and evolution, how could it not, after all, freedom is what threatens it. I am experiencing that a lot, and so are many people that were in the courses that I wrote about in earlier posts. A group of them spoke about this last Friday and found it very liberating to find that this is not a personal experience, that it is not a problem that has to stop us from evolving. What I am excited about is that a lot of them are forming a network now, and they are using the principles of Evolutionary Enlightenment so ego does not get in the way between them. A group of them are getting together regularly (read Irene's blog, she writes about it beautifully), some of them have skype calls, we recently did a weekend together and they are starting to form some holons or groups, to do with specific issues like work, and parenting.

I have been getting increasingly inspired by seeing this emerge and by seeing so many of my new friends develop so rapidly from when I first met them back in Autumn. The network is gradually growing and is beginning to span Holland and the North of Belgium. To me it feels a bit like a positive tsunami, an unstoppable wave of interest in freedom and change. You are warmly invited to find out about this network and join it if you like, so we can develop together which eventually hopefully ends up becoming a culture that takes over the old (as tends to happen in history :) ).

So as I mentioned in the previous post, we will be doing a conference call on March 5 from 20.30 till 21.30, and I will organize them regularly. You are also very welcome to come do the Evolutionary Enlightenment course that I am teaching in Amsterdam in the weekend of March 10, 11 (register), or the one on 5 consequtive Thursday nights in Rotterdam starting March 15 (register), or come to the free intro evening (info)There is much more, but we can speak about that on the call... You can email me at info.amsterdam@enlightennext.org and I will send you the numbers.