By Yael Treidel
The Call of Freedom
I met Andrew in December 1993. I was 28 years old, I had everything I thought wanted more or less, and yet I was quite confused. I had been confused since I was a teenager because somehow life didn’t totally make sense to me. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing here and nothing that I tried resolved my confusion. Meeting Andrew Cohen moved something very deep in me. I couldn’t understand what was happening but about a month later I was on my way to India for a 2 week retreat with Andrew.
On the 3rd day of the retreat Andrew gathered all the new participants together and asked us if we had any questions. I told him that I felt totally stuck and that nothing was happening. After a short exchange he explained to me that it was my ambivalence in relationship to spiritual liberation. He was very clear that starting on the path to freedom is a huge deal and told me I needed to make up my mind one way or the other. I knew without any doubt that he was right. I felt deeply that if I took one more step toward that which had pulled me to come on this retreat, my life would change forever and it would be irrevocable. It was the most thrilling and frightening moment of my life. That night I decided that I was going to do it – I’m going to set myself FREE!
I stayed with Andrew for 15 years and my life, indeed, changed forever. Throughout this whole time I had no doubt that what we were all doing together was the most important thing I could be doing with my time, and I still believe it was.
I was always quite involved and over the last 3 years I was the manager of the EnlightenNext center in Tel Aviv. My years with Andrew were the most significant and evolutionary years of my life. During this time I experienced unbelievable depth, unity, inspiration and breakthroughs, as well as incredible challenges and struggle. Before I speak about why I left and where I am at with it all today I want to say something about the effect of those years on me.
I think that the best of who I am today is the result of my time with Andrew. Being with a Guru, in the 21st century and in the West, is not to be taken for granted. Through my relationship with Andrew I discovered trust, both in him personally and, more importantly, in Life itself, to a degree I never knew before. Through working with my brothers and sisters I discovered unity I never knew existed. I discovered the power of transcending ego together and the incredible creativity that can emerge in a group of people who are coming together beyond ego. I discovered who I am beyond my conditioning, my emotions and thoughts, and I absorbed into my cells a sense of responsibility for the Life process we are all sharing.
The Scientist and the Guinea Pig
Andrew Cohen is a radical. He is a radical cultural scientist who is trying to create what he believes (and I agree with) would be the culture of the future. Radical vision calls sometimes for radical measures. The main thing is that all of us, and I repeat, each and every person who joined Andrew in this radical experiment, knew exactly what he or she was getting into. Andrew never promised anybody that it’ll be easy or pleasant, on the contrary, he promised to challenge us to the max, and then a little bit more… This is why I chose him as my teacher, because I wanted to be involved in something revolutionary, something that was going somewhere new.
The “New Age” self-acceptance kind of spirituality never attracted me. In joining Andrew I chose to be the guinea pig as well as the scientist. All who had been with Andrew a few years and became part of the “inner circle” chose to do so. Nobody was ever forced.
When I eventually decided to leave, it was because I felt that the next step that I needed to take in that context was beyond my capability. It was further than I wanted to go and my fighting spirit wore out. Before continuing I would like to explain what the “next step” I am referring to is.
One of the radical things that Andrew was trying to reach in the creation of this new culture is a collective that is united to the degree that few collectives had ever been. A collective that is made up of autonomous, independent thinking people. This is a huge challenge! I don’t know if there is a place in this world where this actually exists in the way that it now does in Andrew’s organization/spiritual community EnlightenNext. For most of the years that I was with Andrew that wasn’t the case. Andrew kept pushing for it but hardly any of us managed to find and sustain our autonomy. It usually ended up with us either succumbing to the status quo or going on a power trip. But despite the tremendous challenges and dynamics involved in attempting such a collective evolution, the group of us who stuck around kept trying. In more recent years things started to shift as some of the more committed students managed to make a leap and find true spiritual independence. I wasn’t one of them but I saw it happen. I saw what these students were manifesting and I knew it was real.
I want to emphasize that this is a very big thing. Students who left before this shift happened did not witness or experience it. When I try to explain to people why I left I say that it was because I failed to evolve to the degree necessary to meet my peers in what was then happening, given my years with Andrew and my role in the organization. When I say that people always ask me how I knew that I wasn’t able to meet my peers (my peers were the senior women in the community). I always say that it was actually very clear. For many years Andrew worked very closely with the women, helping us to see deep impersonal structures in us that limit our evolutionary development so that we could choose to transcend them. Our individual and collective female ego put up a tremendous fight against the attempt to break it. This is something that I may write about in a different article as it definitely deserves a whole consideration in itself!
One of the things that Andrew pushed us women to do is to break free from our relational relationship to life and find our own core and our own personal autonomy. We had a fierce resistance to going to that place of aloneness. But when I was with my peers, in the months before I left, I heard something different. Each of these women started to express their unique, independent and deeply liberated voice. They didn’t collapse or recoil, individually and collectively, under the pressure to transform. I am not saying they were all “enlightened”, but what was emerging was the most profound expression of unity, autonomy, stability, depth, care and strength that I had ever seen in a group of women before, or since. I was incredibly inspired by it as well as being challenged to the core of my being. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my own autonomy within the group, and the more I tried to force it the further I divorced myself from my sisters.
The Vision Lives On
Leaving a committed ideological group is always traumatic to those who stay and to the person who leaves. When I left I felt like a failure and traitor, but now I look at it differently. As I said, Andrew is pioneering a radical experiment and by definition, not everyone can make it. Andrew always compares what he is doing to building a vanguard, and I think he is right. The number of soldiers who are accepted into these selected units is higher than the number of soldiers who finish the training. Those who don’t make it all the way in the vanguard unit can do two things: they can quit altogether (and even justify their failure by condemning the “system”), or, take what they’ve learned and join the 2nd tier units. That way their training is still meaningful and they contribute their part to the great fight. I obviously support the later approach…
When I left EnlightenNext, I didn’t leave the vision behind. I still feel that consciousness and culture needs to evolve and that I am responsible for making it happen in which ever way I can. I know that I am here to give and contribute. I’ve been privileged to have one of the best trainings (if not THE best!) in the world, and it is not mine to keep. The compulsion to give it is stronger than I ever imagined it would be.
Currently I live in Israel and I am getting more and more involved here. There are two main issues I am focusing on:
Education: The educational system in Israel is a mess and at the same time, these youngsters are going to be the ones to shape our future. This is why I decided to become a certified teacher and become active in the field of education.
Women’s Development: This is an issue I am endlessly thinking about. Since I am in Israel I am focusing on Israeli women. During my time in EnlightenNext I learned so much about the impersonal structures in women. It made me sensitive to the need for women to do the work in order to liberate ourselves from within, as well as to how utterly challenging this is. Since I’ve been back in Israel I have become very interested in the structures that affect Israeli women. Although, for the most part, these structures are similar to the structures in women in the western world in general, there are also significant differences. They have to do with the affect of Zionism and the fact that we still live in a culture where the military and religion are the strongest institutions. I strongly feel that women have to affect culture much more. In order for this to happen it is vital for us to have much more awareness of where we are really at and what stops us from making an impact. This is why on top of “studying” the subject as myself, I have gotten involved with a few projects addressing these issues. Some I have joined and some I have initiated.
My relationship with Andrew today:
Trying to write about it, I find that it is quite complex: A relationship with a Guru goes so deep, that I don’t think it ever really ends. Therefore, even though I am on my own, living my life in my own way and according to my terms, Andrew will always be my Teacher. That’s because the deepest and the highest in me is totally connected to my time with him and to the teaching of evolutionary enlightenment.
I left and I feel at peace with my leaving. That doesn’t take away from the enormous gratitude that I feel for everything I have received and from the continuous love and appreciation for what Andrew Cohen and the people with him are doing. I truly hope that in my work I will be able to support that radical and inspiring endeavor.
Yael Treidel can be contacted at yael@guru-talk.com
