By Rod Stanbrook
When I met Andrew Cohen in Seattle in 1990, I was elated and tremendously relieved at seeing myself and those around me brought to such clarity through the lucid transmission from Andrew. Over the subsequent years of being a student and living in the community, those experiences – being transported to higher states of consciousness, the levels of trust between people, wanting like nuts to finally be free, and gratitude – were put to the test like nothing I’d ever experienced or could have imagined.
Prior to meeting Andrew (I had been a spiritual aspirant for some years before this meeting), I had always been convinced that through some particular realization or experience, the light would suddenly get turned on. The Red Sea would part, instantly washing away all my old obstructions, inhibitions, and dilemmas. Clarity would magically descend, and the legendary third eye would blaze. Something a little naïve about that? Well… yes! As I settled into the slow and grinding process of Real Spiritual Work, it became obvious that it was going to take a little more boot and polish. And as the days stretched into years and the explosive experiences stretched into community lifestyles and the sometimes joyous, sometimes harsh reality of a student / teacher relationship, my grandiose hopes were dismantled rather consistently. You see, I was a typical post-modern spiritual seeker and drop-out, and what got revealed was a brand of arrogance that was not so readily deciphered nor easily relinquished.
In being with Andrew and being swept up by the deep, renewed desire to believe in a comprehensive spirituality and become its beneficiaries was, for me and many others, a convincing aspiration, if not identity. As a boomer, former hippie, and spiritual aspirant, I was looking for a kind of righteous community which would confirm my higher inclinations and embrace me as a committed member. We all loved the notion of being members of such a “noble club”. I trusted Andrew because of his own palpable authenticity and integrity, and I trusted the fundamental recognition of a higher consciousness that all of us shared. Even if this path would doubtless present us with difficulties, what could be better than being guided by a profoundly straight-forward and liberated individual?
One of the common threads shared by all of us was that we were discovering together the reasons why we could not fit in to the traditional religious structures or all the prolific new-age belief systems. A number of us who came to Andrew had had past experiences with teachers and communities that either did not embrace the realities of the 20th/21st century, or found themselves compromised and corrupted by the evolutionary magnitude of it. As Andrew penetrated into the spiritual, psychological, and cultural terrain of our time, I began to understand what he meant when he said that we had become “finders”, that we were no longer “seekers”. We had all landed in a radically new and yet pragmatically simple vortex. What we had come upon through Andrew was a way to make sense of our western, highly sophisticated, worldly existence. In this spiritually unembellished setting, such questions as to why were we all here at this particular historical juncture and how we could make sense out of our confusing, alienated, and emotionally tangled lives were answered with disarming care and penetrating simplicity. In my own rather cataclysmic early meeting with Andrew, I suddenly knew that “Here it was, right in my own cultural and colloquial backyard.” Finally I had found a teacher who was a product of my own culture and who understood me. I thought that surely some kind of divine, caring and benevolent force had rescued me. I trusted that whatever wasn’t quite clear and transparent in me would ultimately get rearranged and spit out the other end…
Entering into community life with Andrew at our helm was all pretty outrageous stuff. We all went through an initial period of deep re-evaluation of cherished beliefs about pretty much everything, including fundamental relationships and many old priorities.
At first it was difficult for me to acknowledge that I had entered into something which was clearly different from my past, including my former “spiritual life”, and that I could no longer even connect with many old friends from my former life. It was as if suddenly I had begun speaking a different language. In many ways, looking back, this early time with Andrew was a lot like the 60’s revisited. But this time something methodically new had been added to the equation: we were no longer floundering around, blindly led by our impulses and by “what feels good”. We knew that Andrew was opening up and revealing something that had been missing, misguided or corrupted in many other societal and spiritual movements. This “new story” meant that the teacher, the community and you (which included everything you did and said) represented a perspective that even had to do with something as significant as the evolution of the entire human race!
It was all very new and unknown for us. Suddenly all of us “casual ex-hippies” found that we were in fact responsible for a lot more than we had ever thought. It was clear to us that our cherished idealism from the 60’s had unfortunately been obscured by a lack of seriousness and itinerant detours many of us took during that period. Meeting Andrew awakened our dormant idealism, and our passion for new and fresh possibilities. We now found ourselves headed out on a very new course, a course that revealed a lot of rough terrain where our awakening idealism met the test of upholding a very high and explicit moral standard that was being simulateously awakened.
Andrew made clear to all of us in fairly short order that he was not one to let the ego off the hook—ever! He breathed sacred fire, and he meant business. I have never known anyone like Andrew who accepted his own very tough mission with such full willingness and absolute dedication to “doing the job”. No one I have ever met has demonstrated the integrity to continuously find fresh and creative ways to unravel the ego, and to stand fearlessly over a very long period of time against its personal and collective rage. And as I slowly became more familiar with the recalcitrant force of my own ego, the news began to dawn on me that I was in trouble!
The thing that always got to me, and probably what I feared the most, was this matter of “transparency”. And because the situation that was forming around Andrew was not at its core a therapeutic practice, transparency had a different purpose from anything I had known before. Andrew’s work was always centered around a collective awakening. Here were a number of people coming together through the shared realization of unity with all of our egoic pretense and barriers in the mix, and it was all coming up against an immovable and yet transparent force. The motive to want to be Free, both individually and collectively, ultimately pointed to a very real and demonstrable shift in consciousness and purpose – that a new and still unknown kind of “Oneness” could begin to emerge in time and space through the Many. For me, this distinction is central to any discussion which attempts to clarify the extreme dilemmas and confrontations which are inherent in the Guru/disciple relationship.
If these distinctions have any real power, then I think this is where unity, peace, clarity, compassion, kindness, equanimity, charisma, intellectual prowess, and spiritual attainment meet the real world. It’s no wonder that there are very few who are willing to take on the individual and collective ego. “Time will tell” Andrew would often say to our profuse exclamations of commitment and intention. With those words we knew that we were all going to be slowly and inexorably passing through a process of introspection and scrutiny where there was literally no place to hide. This is, of course, why were all so attracted – like moths to a flame – and also why we were often frightened to death.
In the ensuing fifteen years, during which I worked directly with Andrew as his student, I had no doubt whatsoever that I was deeply blessed to have met him and to be privileged to be intimately involved with the community that had spontaneously manifested around him. A sacred trust was being built, a profound and ecstatic camaraderie was disarmingly shared and a hands-on perspective into the nature of the human evolutionary process was startlingly revealed.
The often shocking revelation of the contents of our egos was not always pretty. In fact, what we were seeing could not have been in starker contrast to our beloved self-images of “good and caring” spiritual aspirants. As much as I was startled by my friends’ fall from grace when they “stonewalled” our teacher, blatantly refusing to acknowledge what was right under all of our noses, I found myself loath to be transparent when it was my turn to be in the spotlight.
Stymied and under pressure, the backlash of fear, anger, self-righteousness and mistrust put my higher and more noble longings in some unreachable and resentful shut-down. Without exception – and this fact says something about the level of transparency people were being held to – everyone who had entered into this sacred covenant ultimately had no place to hide. The higher one soared, the more responsibility one was called to shoulder. Being impeccable with one’s word and deed became of critical importance.
For myself, as many untenable situations unraveled, from my ego’s point of view, it all seemed pretty baffling and unreasonable. The dissection and fine scrutiny of a particular indiscretion seemed way over the top. In the face of deep humiliation, I began inwardly whining: “Why me all of a sudden? What have I done that has been so diabolical? I never said I was perfect!” How could heaven descend so quickly into hell?! Whatever it was, we all got to know the recesses of a cornered mind and the costumes of ego.
To appreciate and continue to love your teacher at a time like this when he is starkly reflecting the structure of your own ego back to you can be bare-knuckled tough! It’s hard enough when your spouse or partner catches you red-handed in the throes of inescapable compromise. But I discovered that having to let in this clear and excruciating reflection of the fundamental sham and pretense of my own ego, a reflection given by someone from whom I had experienced nothing but steadfast and uncompromising integrity—well, that was a different story. The forces of good and evil were now shown to be alarmingly black and white. Evasiveness can then become not just a personal survival mechanism but a collective, “Lord of the Flies” maneuver. Looking for allies in the most familiar and idealized recesses of the past, the frantic, dislodged mind can summon up a very distorted picture, or shut down in inert defeat as if only it has the power to interpret reality. Inwardly, where before there was ecstatic revelation pouring forth in a joyful meeting of heart and soul, now the air was so thick that I could taste my own panic.
At such telling times, one does really find out what one is made of. The spiritual brothers and sisters, with whom one has shared this kind of complete transparency, are now there to witness the truth and depth of one’s commitment and humility. How one responds becomes part of your collective narrative, and for the ego, there is no worse situation. It’s very much like a “checkmate” that is veering towards a “stalemate” because the ego is refusing to acknowledge that it has been fully exposed and trapped. For the merging of real transcendence and integrity to become stable and embodied, the truth is, whether we were up to it or not, we all knew that this was the price that had to be paid. The extraordinary communion of our deepest realization had to be actualized and given authority by our own selfless surrender and transformation. We knew this implicitly and this is why we held each other to it.
One day I was sitting on the lawn in front of Andrew near his house. It was at one of those times when I was stuck in some endless labyrinth of self-concern. I knew that his guidance was the only thing that could part the clouds and let the light in. He simply and accurately described my pattern of not being willing to be upfront, honest and come clean with him and the other men about a particular incident. In retrospect, what he was pointing out was not all that devastating. At the end of this talk, he said this movement to hide from responsibility was in fact no different from how I was the first time he had ever seen me in a public teaching where I met him. I was flabbergasted, for at that first evening, then over ten years ago, I had said nothing, sitting at the back of the room amongst a hundred or more people. He said I would lean to the side to screen myself behind someone else from his gaze in order to avoid any direct eye contact or engagement. I asked him how he could remember such an obscure incident amongst the thousands upon thousands of interactions he has had with so many people. He answered that he always remembers what’s important.
What I can see now about what was ultimately revealed throughout all of this “down and dirty work in the trenches” we all engaged in for many years, is an increasingly steady and deeply shared understanding—an understanding of an authentic field and impersonal view, a continuum of one, indivisible human experience. With this understanding comes a kind of gratitude that is not then just shown through devotion, prayer and service. It’s gratitude for honouring your own existence and the rich tapestry of our relationships into which we are all inter-woven at a soul level.
Three or four years ago now I made the decision not to continue as a committed student of the teachings and with the body of students living directly around Andrew. At the time, it was like so many times before when the ante, the commitment, the resolve was being raised, and each of us had to decide where we stood with what was being called forth. In ways which are difficult to describe, but which we all knew were intimately true, I and others at different times were faced with the clearest view of our hang-ups and divided condition.
And more poignant and humbling, we now had no doubt about the immense amount of resolve, spirit, and heart which were required for such an outrageous mission to succeed. I knew at the time that I wasn’t willing to fight, or surrender, or push myself through the gauntlet of what I perceived was needed to rise to the occasion at that particular point. So very much was and is at stake in this grand evolutionary experiment. The stark truth is that the path had become too steep, and the air too thin. I couldn’t hang in there, and I know a lot of people who also couldn’t. I think our stories, knowing each other as well as we do, are really not that much different. All of us who have spent part of our lives participating in Andrew’s work know that one helluva lot of effort, pain, bliss, communion, and love has been poured into this process.
At certain junctures on a genuine spiritual path, especially in a communal context with a living Guru, one knows that there is a line being drawn that is excruciatingly clear and mutually seen and recognized. Everything is revealed in stark relief, not only about oneself, but about where one really stands in relationship to an outrageously real choice to commit one’s life, ongoingly and authentically, to the pursuit of actualizing a liberated human consciousness in which the One and the Many become indistinguishable. To give one’s lifeblood to make certain that that consciousness will be ultimately victorious, not only as inner revelation but as a living, breathing reality in the world of time and space, is a singular matter. When one gets to this point in the journey, it is not about being “vindicated” or “righteous”. It is way beyond trying to interpret an exciting new “model of reality” and impose it on oneself. At this point everything has accelerated way beyond one’s mostly sorry story about how one might have been “maligned” or had ones ego exposed in the process, a story which one might be trying desperately to convince others of—others who have really no idea of what was being squeezed and why, and who are viewing what will always be a rare process of Sacred Alchemy through the conventional eyes of the world.
A number of us former close students are now coming together as a local volunteer activist group, motivated by social concerns and global issues. After some time of disorientation and finding our feet outside the community, we wanted to meet in the depth and transformation that we all experienced. Leaving our wounds and weapons at the door, we are beginning to rediscover through each other the perspective and driving consciousness that is an inherent part of who we are. From recent experiences and interactions over the last year with people who have chosen to re-evaluate their experience and connect with one another through an honest and positive outlook, it is proving to be stimulating, creative and dignified in ways I could have never imagined.
Nothing prompted us to come together other than our own impulse to do so. Whether it was through a particular political engagement, or an environmental/social activist bent, or just an affiliation with one another that we felt wanted to be explored and pursued, the depth of a mutually-shared internal process is surfacing and influencing how we are together. It is filtering into our work and livelihood. We were being impacted by all that we learned and discovered in our work with Andrew, and we are finding that all of this is pointing towards coming together at a higher level. By not avoiding past disputes and phobias, we are seeing how much of what makes up our world can be affected by the context in which we have learned to come together. The value of this inherent “field” which we invoke and participate in keeps bringing us, and others, together. And it keeps leading to a space which is paradoxically both familiar and also highly unpredictable. The meetings, engagement, projects and ideas we get into are not necessarily smooth and thematically coherent. Within our particular volunteer group, made up largely of former close students, there is quite a range of directions and interests. But over the ten months that we have been meeting regularly, we have all been moved by the acknowledgment that what we all are deeply interested in is not just past experiences, or some “method” or esoteric philosophy. The powerful undercurrent that keeps convincing us that something central to us all is continuously being revealed—something which cannot and will not be held back—is giving us, throughout all its twists and turns, a space, a pause, and a reflection to acknowledge how very deep our collective understanding truly is, and hence how much we have to give.
As I continue to immerse myself in this current phase of the “work”, which many of us are now exploring, I have been interested to find that something is emerging in our own understanding about the work of conscious evolution itself. I find myself seeing and understanding with greater clarity and perspective so much about these critical times we are now living through. There is a lot to reflect on and embrace—what I and so many have all gone through together, what I have consistently found myself drawn to in this lifetime and why, the structures and entrenchment of ego—these, and other powerful forces, are all culminating in my present experience, and these forces are not separate from the whole. And there is a lot to look forward to—the outrageous and critical juncture we have come to as a human race shows how much more is now required from all of us, and how important it is that we all continue to rise up to function and participate in a new way, a way which honors all of the incredibly profound training we have shared together. The test seems to be whether we can honor this call. As Andrew has often said, “Time will tell.”
Rod Stanbrook can be contacted at rod9948@gmail.com
