The night before last I started a new series of the introductory course on Evolutionary Enlightenment. The evening went very well, great actually, people responded a lot and I think we all enjoyed the class. It may sound trivial but I don't think it is; coming together to look into big questions like what Enlightenment is and what the effects of our post modern, sophisticated, yet self-focused culture are on our capacity to experience and embody our highest human potential as we did this evening, is such a grand and important thing to do, and enjoying it is like saying ‘yes' to life. If we enjoy such a thing we must already be looking from the best part of us, the part that actually aspires to be free and to care.

While I was teaching this class downstairs at EnlightenNext in Amsterdam, some people that did the course last year were having a conversation upstairs. As I mentioned in a previous entry in this blog, a lot of the people that did this course have changed in impressive ways over the past few months; I wish I could show you how dramatic the changes in quite a few of them are, because I think it would be like a case study against cynicism that is so in fashion in our culture. Believe you me, it would be 1-0 for enlightenment! But anyway, the point I wanted to make was that when the class was over, the people from upstairs came down and the groups were like magnets, it only took seconds for them to connect as if old friends met after years of separation. (I think years of separation might have been true, but they definitely weren't old friends :) ), but you see, to me it clearly shows what happens when we go beyond the personal; boundaries fall away, interest flourishes and our full humanity becomes available.

An interesting detail about this evening was that I had just come back from a thrilling weekend with Andrew Cohen in Massachusetts, talking about what Enlightenment looks like in all four of Ken Wilber's quadrants. I had just come off the plane that morning, (if you fly that route sometimes you will remember that that means skipping a night) and went straight to work before teaching this class. But you know, the authentic self does not sleep, if you focus on that part of you, you will feel the ecstatic urgency that is it's hallmark and you will, I found out, have energy and see clearly!

If you want to read more about the weekend with Andrew that I mentioned you can click here to read his latest blog.

If you want to find out how people liked the course I am teaching, you can click here for a 4 minute video about it.

And finally, if you are interested in enlightenment, development and the creation of a culture beyond ego, please look here for the dates of the upcoming courses.

"Oh, I see" one of the participants of the course on Evolutionary Enlightenment I am teaching said, as his eyes lit up, "my spiritual longing is the evolutionary impulse. I always thought it was my longing!"
Everyone in the room experienced this enlightening insight with him. His insight wasn’t just his insight, we were doing this together. Together we were expanding our perspective on life, on ourselves.
What would it be like if we would be able to share this inquiry with more and more people, expanding our consciousness because we know that life passionately wants it and the earth desperately needs it, and becoming enlightened in the process. Excuse me? Am I touching on a taboo subject here? Is enlightenment maybe something we are allowed to philosophize about but are not supposed to take seriously as something that our lives really revolve around? Maybe that is just me.
But doesn’t the world need more enlightened people? And if so, who? they?

I am on a mission; last night in a teleconference about meditation that I was conducting one woman said: "I am listening and enjoying it and successfully fighting my feelings of being evangelized." I loved it when she said that, because you are, as you are reading this blog, being evangelized. We all need to be evangelized with a new moral context for our human lives, don’t we? We all should reach for our highest, most enlightened potential right now, shouldn’t we? Should I not say ‘should’? Do we have time not to say ‘should’? I don’t think so.
If you are still reading this line and have not clicked away in repulsion or disinterest, I think we should work together. I am convinced that we have to take enlightenment out of the closet, out of the spiritual centers, out of the course class rooms. I think it has to hit the street, become the new way to be, ‘evolution is something you do’ Andrew Cohen’s new lecture series is called. And we need to do this together with all of us who can stand the pressure of being evangelized because there is so much to do, so much to discover and so much to learn from one another so that we can move this process forward!

Please join me on a conference call about this March 5 from 20.30 till 21.30. Mail me at info.amsterdam@EnlightenNext.org with ‘call march 5’ in the subject line and I will send you numbers and information. (the call will be in Dutch).

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.