As a student of Andrew Cohen’s I spent six years in a formal celibacy practice that transformed me into a sane human being. Having grown up in Los Angeles in the 1970’s, I had had a very “liberal” education on sex. Though I didn’t feel at home as a “valley girl”, in many respects that is indeed what I was. Sex, drugs and rock and roll were driving forces in LA culture, and in my peer group it was anathema to reach your Sweet Sixteen still, well, ‘sweet and innocent’. This sexually charged environment was reinforced by my experience as an only child of a single mother with nearly no male family members, which left me feeling starved for male attention. And then there was my first high school job working as a cashier in a large men’s clothiers, and needless to say, my Sweet Sixteen was right on schedule!

Following high school and months of solo travel, I attended a very progressive California University. In those days at the University of California Santa Cruz, the co-eds studied naked in a big meadow next to our co-ed apartments, and women strutted around campus unselfconsciously topless. Though this was the end of the 70’s, in Santa Cruz the free love era of the 60’s lived on. I had relationships, but they tended to be brief, dramatic, or a combination of both. Though I wouldn’t have admitted it to myself at the time, the whole arena of sexual relationships was empty and traumatic.

At the age of 31 I met Andrew Cohen while traveling in India. Though I was pursuing spiritual teachings, I wasn’t looking for a spiritual teacher… but when I heard Andrew speak I knew that he was the embodied answer to the authenticity and integrity I had longed for since childhood. He immediately clued in to my excessively sensual relationship to life and suggested celibacy to me early on. It was a shocking notion to me, and not something I was readily willing to consider. As unsatisfying as my sexual relationships ultimately tended to be, my identity as a woman was completely tied up with my sense of sexual power.  I still believed that someday I’d find “the one” who would make me happy, despite the rather clocklike recurrence of bad endings. It just seemed so “unnatural” to give up sex.

I remember a very significant conversation I had with Andrew, about six months after I’d moved into one of the group houses in Marin County, where Andrew lived and taught. I had just returned from a cross-country sales trip for my fledgling business, and was frustrated with myself for having succumbed to a meaningless one-night stand. I went to speak with Andrew and ask to become celibate, as by this point I felt the only way I was going to gain control over myself would be to more or less lock myself away in this formal practice. (In those days, celibate practitioners in Andrew’s community shaved their heads to reinforce the renunciation and to take time out from the “image” game, and I felt that this would effectively curtail my ability to play the field.) Andrew’s response to me was completely thoughtful and caring. He told me that renunciation was not something one could impose on oneself, that I would never succeed that way, but that I should just start to pay attention to what was driving me—what was motivating my choices. This advice was a watershed for me. I started to get in touch with a variety of psychological motivations that actually had nothing to do with sex. No wonder I wasn’t getting what I really wanted – I hadn’t even been straight with myself about what I was really after! And then I started to see how conditioned and unfree I truly was. When sexual impulses arose, I had such a limited range of responses. I acted like a robot—quite predictable—a pawn of biological forces. The longing to have the freedom to respond as a whole human being and not just as a woman with an out of control libido, led me to a genuine desire to take time out from the whole arena of sexuality.

What makes Andrew one of the most powerful teachers and guides for this practice is his own deep inquiry and exploration into the topic of sexuality, as well as his profound integrity.  I seriously doubt that there are many communities (if any) – spiritual or otherwise, that have had more sexual integrity than EnlightenNext. In more than 20 years there has been almost no sexual corruption among Andrew’s students whatsoever, and that is only due to Andrew’s lead. He has spoken often about the overwhelming power of the sexual impulse, about how much humility one must have in the face of it, and of the tremendous benefit of taking time out to gain perspective. One need only look to the number of enlightened teachers in the 20^th Century who were brought to their knees by indulging in inappropriate sexual relations with their students. And the Catholic Church is the latest example. There is simply so much cynicism in the world today because people have not seriously looked into the whole arena of sexuality for themselves.

I never dreamed I’d spend a full six years as a formal celibate, and honestly, most of the time it was extremely challenging. We discovered, surprisingly, that women struggle much more in the practice than men do. Men may believe that if they don’t have sex they’ll die, but once they committed to the practice, they had more integrity than the women. Andrew was often stunned that the women would continue to dress immodestly, or that our conversations in celibacy meetings would be anything but “cool” in relationship to this hot topic, or that we would blatantly break the practice by satisfying ourselves.  He wouldn’t hesitate to berate us quite sharply… always with a view to the fact that this practice, when taken absolutely seriously, could have the power to enlighten. And there was no sense in doing the practice if one wasn’t making every effort to act with integrity.

In my time as a celibate we never really embraced the true renunciate life as Andrew envisioned it, free from wanting and gender identity. Nonetheless, the practice of renunciation (because it definitely required practice) strengthened me more than any other spiritual practice I’ve done before or since. It gave me a core of self-respect where there had been none, and has truly afforded me a liberated response to the sexual impulse rather than the robotic and conditioned response I described before. It gave me backbone and humility. Now I can’t imagine a life where I had’t had the opportunity to experience the liberating power of renunciation.

There is so much to be said about the freedom that comes from ceasing to identify with sexual power, and how much confidence is gained by learning to sit still through the fires of desire and rest in coolness. Andrew always said that celibacy and relationship should ultimately be one and the same practice, and after three years in a wonderful relationship, I now understand what Andrew was always pointing to. Gone is the attraction to drama and destructive passion, and in its place are trust, care, and the freedom from needing another person to “complete” me.

While I ultimately decided to leave Andrew’s formal community a couple of years ago, this practice lives in me, and it often occurs to me that if I had not met Andrew and learned the beauty of celibacy, I would most likely have been destined to repeat the mistakes of my mother, grandmother, aunts and friends, victimized by the ferocity of the sexual impulse, instead of living a liberated relationship to it.

I was moved to write about my many years as a student of Andrew Cohen mostly for the sake of all the many well-meaning seekers of higher consciousness and evolution who are sincerely endeavoring to know and understand more about the process of true spiritual transformation.  Having plunged deeply into an authentic path of transformation myself, I know well how confusing and challenging this twisty path can seem. But I am writing this because I am still convinced that aspiring to become a human being who is a bright, full, and consistent  expression of Love and Truth is the most important, as well as the only truly meaningful, endeavor that any of us could commit ourselves to in this lifetime.

There are many confusing aspects to this ever -fascinating spiritual journey. A great deal has been written about its challenges and pitfalls by those who have dedicated themselves to following their deepest heart’s longing.  Many of the accounts (in various blogs and books) about walking this path as Andrew Cohen’s student or disciple, have been expressed with great intensity, negativity and extreme distortion by some of his disgruntled former students. I feel strongly that what Andrew Cohen is bringing into this world towards promoting an emerging evolutionary spiritual field—a field which has deep transformative implications for the whole planet—is of great historical significance. It is for this reason that I am compelled to share my own story as Andrew’s student for over twenty years.  I still regard the many years I spent with Andrew as the most fortunate and meaningful time of my life.

I met Andrew in 1987, the very first time he came to teach in Israel.  I was 26 years old, and doing my third year of physical therapy studies. At that time I was involved with an Israeli teacher who was teaching his own version of Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way. I was not looking for another teacher, and I definitely did not want a “guru”, nor did I believe that it was even possible for ordinary people in our times to become “enlightened”, whatever that meant.

On the contrary, I regarded seeking enlightenment—including my boyfriend’s practice of daily Zen meditation— as a selfish and futile endeavor which fundamentally had to do with avoiding accepting full responsibility for living in this world. I was deeply opinionated and arrogant, like nearly all of my fellow Israelis. This deeply ingrained arrogance is something that I only came to appreciate more fully, in all its deeper serious evolutionary implications, over the course of my twenty plus years as Andrew’s student.

I was completely unprepared for the seismic explosion of awakening that occurred in Andrew’s presence the very first time I sat with him. At that time he was giving three hour “Satsangs” (which means “communion with Truth”) daily, in the living room of a friend’s house. That first evening he meditated the whole time. I deeply resented having to sit still and meditate for that long. I felt denied the opportunity to ask him anything. I had only come because I felt my boyfriend had dangerously “flipped out” after having met Andrew and I felt that it was my responsibility to save him from losing his way. For about an hour, I was fiercely battling with Andrew inside my head. Then at a certain moment I suddenly recalled the Sufi stories I had read about how only the ripe student would find the true Master. They said that the true Master usually comes in disguise, and I just considered the possibility that I was being tested in this way by the sudden appearance of this young, confident, and well-dressed young man from New York.

It was at that point that I lost all sense of my body, of my surroundings, of time, and of the reasons for my being there. All familiar points of reference disappeared, and there was just empty space that could have easily lasted forever. I, as I knew myself to be, was nowhere to be found.

I had no idea how to make any sense of this experience. I was scared to death. I didn’t feel that I could trust what had happened, although I desperately needed to make sense of it. The next day I asked my closest friend from the Fourth Way group I was involved with at that time, to accompany me to Andrew’s next Satsang.  It was in the direct and laser-like fashion that Andrew answered her questions and those of other people that I was able to recognize that he was teaching something radically liberating—something I had been actually searching for myself for a very long time, and something which I hadn’t consciously known I was even looking for until then. I had suddenly fallen into something which I had believed was actually not even possible for people like myself.

This direct experience of my true nature in Andrew’s presence turned everything around for me. It was like finally coming home, deeply at peace within and oneness with everything around me. It also made effortless sense of all my previous sense of estrangement, my struggles and fears. My many personal doubts and philosophical questions about life were suddenly placed in a vast context. A deep love was unleashed, as well as a new purposefulness in which everything that I had been doing up to this point in my life completely paled in comparison.

I was compelled to follow this thread as far as I could. It is the radical nature of this liberating singularity that not only set my heart on fire back in 1987, but which continues to this day to be the anchoring principle of my life’s priorities, in all of its many different and often confusing expressions and implications.

I knew already then that engaging with a teacher like Andrew was a rare opportunity, and that he was a very serious teacher, even though he had a very small “following” at the time. I also somehow knew he truly wanted nothing from me but my freedom, although what this meant and how deeply it manifested revealed itself only gradually over time.

The Unavoidable Battle with the Post-Modern Ego

In the beginning Andrew was teaching traditional “personal enlightenment”. Most of us at that time were swept up in the strong current of our powerful awakening experiences. We found ourselves drawn to be together to share this radically new clarity and love. We came from many different countries and were of various ages and backgrounds—a truly international gathering of aspirants. I hadn’t expected this collective element of the teaching, just as Andrew hadn’t either at first. This discovery of the power of “collective consciousness” was something that grew organically.

Although he never consciously sought it, already early on Andrew came across a very significant discovery. The enlightenment experience is so delightful because you get to experience yourself beyond ego.  But Andrew observed that the unself-conscious way we were with each other was evolutionarily more significant to the world than all our personal experiences.  We used to go to “Satsang” many nights in a row. We stayed up late ecstatically exploring the Dharma together, all boundaries and separation dissolving. It truly felt like heaven on earth.  To this day I feel the bond of brotherhood and sisterhood between us goes even deeper than family ties, because we’ve all willingly engaged in this unknown experiment with all our soul and passion, knowing full well that there were never any guarantees. And yet we happily wanted to be the “guinea pigs” for this new world coming into being as us, in us, between us, despite the fact that we were hardly able to see beyond the spiritual fireworks in the way that Andrew did.

The seeds of the more impersonal evolutionary teachings were there from the beginning, but our own preparedness for humbly carrying this unlimited impersonal and collective perspective was woefully absent. It was only beginning to dawn on Andrew and the rest of us back then what a truly enormous matter it was, in fact, to really take full responsibility for our own egos and neuroses.  Since the very beginning, Andrew has never stopped repeating the warning that the deep spiritual experiences we were all enjoying, however affirming and powerful they were, were merely the beginning of this journey. What truly mattered was our own ability and willingness to live these Teachings as a full expression of our own understanding.  It became increasingly clear how deadly serious we needed to be to close the gap between what we knew was possible, and how we actually lived our lives.

It never ceases to amaze me how many times I’ve found myself arrogantly thinking that I’ve already understood this simple fact, only to realize later, usually with Andrew’s or my friends’ reflection, that if I had in fact been taking this and myself seriously, I would have stopped making the same mistakes and creating confusion and havoc for myself and others over and over again.

When I met Andrew, I didn’t know myself too well. My arrogance, stubbornness, and emotional nature were quite a challenge for everyone else—not just for me. I was with a group of very impressive people—many of whom were more serious, skilful and experienced in life and groups than I was. Even though what we were meeting in was beyond our personalities, there were differences between us. I found out pretty soon that there is very little which is more frustrating to a spoiled, post-modern narcissist like myself, than having to face into the stark fact that I was actually not God’s gift to humanity.  Nor was I even the charming, sensitive and nice person that I thought I was. Of course, such a confrontation with reality is exactly what one would gratefully embrace if one was endeavouring to free oneself from ego. And being together in such an intimate and focused environment, where ego sticks out like a thorn, is a perfect opportunity to see oneself more objectively in order to be able to move beyond one’s false ideas and limitations.

But I was much more fascinated by my own spiritual drama, and I was way more out of my comfort zone than I dared to admit. So with my stubborn Israeli determination to hold on at any cost, I clung to the romantic notion of “being in the fire of transformation.” But when it boiled down to it, well…the tough black belt karate practitioner was nowhere to be found! The truth is that for most of my years with Andrew and the community, I took a back seat at a safe distance. I didn’t stay in the fire for long enough to change in a truly fundamental way. I moved in and out of the “core” community, but I was never among Andrew’s closest students.

One of the many remarkable things about Andrew is that he is the least cynical person I have ever met. He never stopped holding my potential, and all his students’ highest potential, in view always reminding us that “Freedom Has No History.” He would be ready to re-engage at any sign of a genuine spark of interest that I would show in wanting to break free of my conditioning. He was willing to respond even after long periods during which I was lost in unbelievable depths of denial. “Playing dumb” was one of my specialties.  Many variations on this theme of the confrontation between the Spiritual Master and their disciples have been chronicled through the ages.  At first, I had even had the outrageous thought that somehow I would be different. But I found out so much the hard way.  As Andrew diligently performed the role I had asked him to play as my teacher—helping me to see my own limitations so I could transcend them—the whole business lost its romantic allure for me. I would do almost anything to “get a break.” I was willing to stoop very low in my willingness to destroy everything I cherished most. What was revealed was not the pretty picture that anyone would want to see reflected in the mirror, by any means. So I completely understand why some people backed off and decided to run away. I fell apart too, quite a few times, and also tried to run away. The only difference between me and Andrew’s negative and disgruntled former students is that, as hard as I may have tried, in all fairness at the end of the day, I cannot ever blame Andrew for my own inadequacy and lack of integrity.

Andrew’s skill as a teacher developed over time. He learned about the complexity of the human condition in his work with all of us. There was so much he was up against with many people like me who weren’t willing to take responsibility for their own ambivalence. Often in our work together, the initial incident might be something relatively small and apparently trivial—something which didn’t need to mushroom into a serious issue. But when the student resists and avoids what is being revealed about them, we all learned that everything can and does escalate way out of proportion. Andrew and others would literally spend hours considering how to best bring a person back to their senses, and only when everything else failed would more extreme measures be considered. Many of the public critical allegations of uncompassionate or “abusive behavior” made by some very disgruntled former students describe some of these intense situations without giving any context for the preceding circumstances which ultimately led to taking more extreme measures. And when this context is absent from the picture, understandably there is much that looks confusing. Just to give one very small example of my own—some time around 2004, Andrew requested that I stop writing him about myself. However, I kept finding incredible excuses not to comply with his request, although I did understand why he had me do it. So he had to stop me from communicating with him altogether. This might seem harsh or unfair if taken out of context, but given how many years he tried to help me lose interest in my own internal dramas, and how relentlessly I continued sending him lengthy personal letters, what more could he do if I wasn’t willing to play ball?

There were many different and more extreme examples that I know of, even if I wasn’t personally involved, but everything Andrew did was all done with the deepest care for our own liberation. Andrew spent countless hours carefully considering fresh ways to respond to the ever-growing and cunning resistance of the post-modern ego which we all shared.  I simply cannot accept the fact that some of my brothers and sisters, who have made public allegations against Andrew since they left, consistently leave out the context that led up to those specific situations. Instead of finding the willingness to look at their own resistant egos, they viciously blame Andrew. I can say this because I have been tempted many times to take that route myself. But between me and me, I had to face that it was my own stubbornness that actually left Andrew little choice other than having to take more and more extreme measures to try to get me to stop pretending, playing games, or whatever ego strategy I had picked up at the time. Infuriatingly, I would only be willing to cop to it all later. It was always on my terms and in my own time, not when it mattered to Andrew or to others.

Ego is literally like ONE spoiled brat; once you get to know your own nasty version of it, you know them all. And the more you understand how it operates, the higher the stakes and the more you get tested. It’s quite common nowadays to say we can’t transcend ego, especially not in this direct way; we need to ‘make friends’ with it and not be so black and white about it. As good as that might sound, from my own direct experience, it is only when under pressure that you have the shocking privilege of discovering how truly dark and one-pointed the ego’s fundamental agenda in fact is. The message comes in clear and strong that you can’t really play any games with ego, if you are serious about sustaining the liberated perspective and positivity of your deepest spiritual insight. If you ever stop taking ego seriously, before you know it, everything you knew suddenly starts feeling like a memory.  Your eyes lose their luster, your skin turns dull or gray, and you crawl back into your hole like a rat. No one and nothing can reach you.  Your teacher or your close brothers or sisters turn into your enemies, and even your own passionately stated intention can suddenly seem fake and dubious to yourself.  We all witnessed each other over the years being transformed before our very eyes—from bright-eyed and passionate people, aflame with the joyous possibility of liberation, into virtual monsters. Sometimes the denial of our own egos would build over a long period of time, and we would even see each other behaving like crazy people whom we could barely even recognize.

Transformation is such a serious business. Most people have no idea how serious it really is. In our post-modern times, it is so rare to find an authentic teacher like Andrew—a teacher who is utterly willing to risk themselves and their reputation in the unavoidable battle with their disciples’ post-modern, nasty egos.  I would not have learned to appreciate any of this if I had not experienced it directly in myself, and had the opportunity to realize the critical role of a true Teacher in helping us see through and transcend our ego’s limitations. I hope that what I have written here will help the sincere seeker of Truth to know something about not only how “deadly serious” this evolutionary work in fact is, but that such true and authentic Teachers are available now, in our own lifetime, for those who are ready to take this next step.

The True Gift of the Ego Teachings

A couple of years ago I actually got serious about living the teachings. The person who showed up was surprisingly and significantly different from what anyone had ever expected, including myself!  I would like to talk about this as I feel it has significance beyond solely my own personal ‘story’. What occurred unequivocally portrays the powerful dynamics of the Evolutionary Enlightenment teachings. My own long process shows clearly what a reasonable teacher Andrew actually is—contrary to so many distorted accounts by some of his former students—and how completely right he has been all along in the simple but implicating statement that if one truly wants to change, one will find the way to do so.

A few years ago, Andrew began to describe the miraculous and revolutionary nature of the Authentic Self that had been powerfully awakened in all of us when we met him. After the initial meeting with one’s Teacher, the clock starts ticking. Something radically new has been awakened in us, and from this point onward, we can no longer claim ignorance. The “good news” is that even if we don’t give ourselves fully to the attempt of living in full accordance with the Authentic Self, the depth of understanding and our conviction keep growing with time, so it needs no warm-up to reveal itself whenever we’re willing to surrender to its call. Although I understood this intellectually, experientially I was still mystified, and even felt victimized by the demand to rise up to be an expression of something I didn’t feel I had the capacity for.

So here I was, on one hand passionately loving these teachings and very much supporting them. On the other hand, I had never mustered the seriousness and care for the whole situation to take full responsibility for the depth of the teachings within me. I was not alone in this. There was a whole group of us, about 20 people, who had demonstrated a great deal of loyalty and passion for the teachings for many years, but who had not yet changed in the fundamental way that Andrew was calling us to.  Andrew just couldn’t give up on the potential we all had to be a much fuller expression of our own understanding.  So he decided to invest a whole year of incredible care and effort in this group, encouraging everyone to take a stand within ourselves, to step over all our internal barriers so that we could enter into a new paradigm that would benefit not only ourselves, but really our whole environment.

During that time, I showed surprising depth of understanding and leadership ability. But when it boiled down to leaving the past behind, stepping up into a different reality and taking full responsibility for myself, I did not want to do it.

I would like to slow down here to paint this out in detail, because like many people have done, it is all too easy to blame Andrew for my recoil. “You are asking too much from me!  What you want is unreasonable and humanly unattainable!” or “If you didn’t push me so hard I would most certainly come through!” In this line of thinking, I can continue to save face and convince myself of my intention to succeed at some time in the future. I can continue telling myself that these were not the right circumstances and that I still had more “stuff” to take care of before I could be accountable.  “I’m just doing the best I can. I still have the best of intentions, but, hey, nobody’s perfect.  I’m on my path. Chill man, I didn’t kill anybody, did I? I just need more time to learn to love myself. What’s the point in being so hard on myself?”

This state of affairs might sound all too reasonable to the part of ourselves that doesn’t care that much about anybody else. But how about taking a hard look at the human toll of this approach? Imagine that a person came to you seeking help with their intention to stand on their own feet, and you literally spent hundreds of hours mentoring them, patiently bearing with them throughout their steep learning curve. For years they persistently tell you how much they appreciate your guidance and trust you, promising to “get it together” and stand alone. But fundamentally after many years, nothing really changes. They only keep finding endless excuses for never quite making it, continuing to respond just enough to raise your hopes, when basically they are simply manipulating the situation so they can continue to use your energy. Although they are completely capable and intelligent and have seen and understood everything they need in order to change in a fundamental way, they are revealed to be at heart not that interested in applying everything you have so patiently taught them. Imagine also that what you are trying to create is a very important project—a project which in fact has to do with the evolution of the human race, and whose success depends on each person accepting full responsibility for themselves. And although they all insist that they deeply want to change, they only continue to drain your and everyone else’s energy—for years!  This stinks, doesn’t it?

This story is all too familiar because the post-modern ego is so close to the bone that most of us are not really even bothered by any of this. And I wasn’t disturbed by it for years either. If it weren’t for Andrew’s insistence that our situation had to change, I know for a fact that I would have continued to be an eternal taker, consuming energy and resources without much conscience. I would be no different from everyone else around me whom I usually blame for the pitiful state of the human condition. I have no doubt that I would never even have seen the lack of integrity of such a stand, because I would have been way too busy with my own rationalizations. One can only see this when one steps out of ego, which is rare. Ego simply cannot see itself, and it is never the ego that wants to change.

There are very few teachers like Andrew who have the commitment, courage, and care to take on the painful process of supporting their students’ development of conscience. This means as well that he had to be willing to personally bear the enormous resistance of the ego’s refusal to change. This is no joke. One doesn’t have the opportunity to really see one’s ego clearly in normal circumstances, although sometimes special life conditions can provide the enormous pressure which is required for these deep structures in our psyche to get revealed. In our very fortunate cases, Andrew himself, in his unwavering mirroring of our own deeper potential, accepted full responsibility for exerting the enormous amount of evolutionary tension required to make us conscious of our “post-modern ego”. And until you really see the strength of your own narcissism, eyeball-to-eyeball, you have no idea what a “tough nut” this is to crack!

A  Miraculous Shift of Perspective and Transformation.

I want to speak now about a time during the winter of 2007 at Foxhollow which was a challenging period for the women. Even though there had been significant breakthroughs in the collective development of the women, many of Andrew’s most senior women students who were expected to have the spiritual maturity to provide leadership and inspiration for the less experienced women, were painfully unavailable and unaccountable for accepting responsibility for their sisters. Also, the third EnlightenNext Israeli centre was going through another crisis of leadership, and I suddenly felt it was no longer fair to defer my responsibility for the whole situation as I had for almost 20 years.

Just as Andrew had been saying for years, once I stopped playing games, all the clarity and singularity of vision that I needed were right there. The excuses dropped and I saw with unflinching directness, from other people’s point of view, how much I had been willing to distort my own potential and ability, simply in order to avoid taking responsibility for the whole situation. All the separation and awkwardness I had always felt with others dropped away. Many people commented on how much my face had changed, and how much lighter and softer I was. But this was not my own internal experience. I kept feeling ashamed about how badly I had treated people for years—how stubborn, superior, and unyielding I had been. I saw clearly how willing I had been to lie and manipulate others to get my own way. I actually started to face the magnitude of the female ego. Up to that point I had been more than happy to leave this for the other women to face, all along distancing myself from them and maintaining my stance of superiority towards them. I began to see through their eyes how hard and undermining I had been for so long. The pain of my own thick skin and hardened heart haunted me. Suddenly, the care of so many of my sisters who had previously tried to help me,(and whom I had mostly resented for years), felt like the most incredible expression of love and support. I was deeply grateful to see this literally turn around 180 degrees. I don’t think I’ve ever really forgotten this, even when I lost sight of this liberated perspective. Since then, I can no longer go back to blaming others for my own condition the way I used to.

The most profound part is that I discovered that I wanted to bear all that I was seeing about myself. I knew I had to bear the consequences of many years of denying my conscience. My willingness to let in the truth of my own situation kept me “on the straight and narrow”. It was by far the most liberating and strengthening experience I’ve had in my life, even more than when I initially met Andrew. And it was significant because now a conscious choice needed to be made, for a greater goal, even if it was very much with Andrew’s invaluable support and care. I was and am still deeply grateful to Andrew for not giving up on me. Looking from the other side of the equation, I actually did nothing to deserve the depth of clarity and freedom I found myself experiencing. The only thing that happened was that finally, for once, I actually listened and let it in that my game was up—and that I, yes “little old imperfect me” was needed indeed. I didn’t really expect to be taken this seriously, and in spite of all this clarity about my own ego, I still had a huge amount of catching up to do on all the other more exciting aspects of the teachings. But this wasn’t a problem for anyone else, as long as I didn’t lose sight of what I was seeing and understanding.  Some rare glimpses of humility were actually made available to Israeli consciousness!

The Unforgettable Sisterhood with Women

I could hardly believe what a different world I had the great fortune to step into at that time. I had never been so thrilled to be in women’s meetings. I couldn’t believe what was going on—there was such an incredible depth, wisdom, care and passion being shared among us. At times it seemed that my heart could hardly bear the excruciating strength of love and awe I felt towards my sisters. Women I previously feared, I now came to deeply appreciate. With some of the women who were my peers in years with Andrew, I found myself losing all sense of boundaries. I finally felt that I had all the courage I ever needed to be victorious and lay down my life for the success of the new women’s liberation everywhere.

Although Andrew was totally involved with our development, we were self-organizing to a great extent. I had never seen this before in our women’s groups. Our teacher no longer needed to encourage us to be interested in our own freedom. Even the fact that we had different capacities in terms of self-expression did not hinder the natural hierarchy from expressing itself.  All the various holon (natural groupings based on the length and depth of experience with the teachings) structures made total sense. It was very beautiful to witness how a woman like me who had been with Andrew for so many years and had experienced totally different kinds of relationships with the women and with Andrew, was able to fully participate in all of this, even if my personal expression was less developed. My authentic appreciation for this remarkable shift with the women was apparently contributing to everyone’s ability, particularly the less experienced women, to stay very sober and continue to appreciate what a seriously challenging terrain we were exploring together.

It has become very clear that most of us were lacking in knowledge about the historical context of the women’s liberation movement. We had little respect for everything that women before us had gone through to bring us all to our current very fortunate place and freedoms in our society. It was also apparent that some women, mostly those who had worked more closely with Andrew on the What is Enlightenment? (now EnlightenNext) magazine, were more accustomed to using their cognitive capacities to a much greater extent than the rest of us. These women organized study groups to develop both our historical knowledge and cognitive objective discrimination which was all very thrilling.

We were preparing for the first ever women’s retreat that was making public Andrew’s many years of work with the women. It was continually humbling to recognize what a stretch this was for all of us—how much being out in the spotlight with our whole being was truly taking us into unexplored territory. Many times we had the sense that we were going against our own ‘nature’, almost against our own biology.

Having the incredible support of our sisterhood made all the difference. It was amazing to be able to be so vulnerable together. We all gained strength in seeing each other stretching to meet this challenge. Our own ongoing experience kept reinforcing Andrew’s belief that the next step for women’s liberation had to do with our ability as women to come together, leaving behind the old biological and cultural survival structures that for millennia have kept us fighting among ourselves in order to find our ‘best mate’ and preserve the status quo. We no longer needed to succumb to these primitive structures. Every day that we came together in higher support for our liberated potentials was a victory in action, truly at the edge of what was becoming possible for female consciousness at this time.

It was thrilling to simply be together to learn from everyone’s experience and knowledge, and to nurture the leadership capacities. The lack of “back-stabbing female competition” was delightfully absent from our exchanges, and we were immersed in our shared exciting project. It was a sheer joy to come together, not from the perspective of being/having a problem that needed to be fixed, but from an utterly positive recognition that we had a lot to learn, and by doing so we were literally creating “new grooves” in women’s consciousness.

I felt that my deepest dream had come true, and that I was living in heaven every day—a kind of heaven that was totally alive and thrilling. Of course, I had to continuously watch my nasty ego’s expected protests that “this cannot last” and “this is not to be trusted.” But now, renouncing my ego I no longer perceived as such a burden—it simply was a reasonable price to pay for making all this possible. And even though eventually, I did painfully succumb to my ego’s resistance, retracting my promised support of our sisterhood and shared mission for continuous evolution in that collective context, I still feel that this period of sisterhood with women in the new women’s liberation movement has permanently destroyed the deep seated cynicism and fundamental mistrust I had always felt with women, and has had an immensely positive impact on my being. I have tremendous respect and gratitude for my sisters at EnlightenNext who are continuing to push their own edge and evolve together, continuing to show what’s possible for all of us.

My commitment to the evolution of women continues now in a new context, together with my Israeli spiritual sisters, with whom I now work in two women’s circles in Israel. One of them includes some very mature, Israeli women who advocate for women’s liberation, and the other a mixed Palestinian/Israeli women circle, in which we strive to embrace as fully as we can this very new potential for women’s liberation. Glimpsing this potential would never have been possible without Andrew’s unwavering insistence over many years that we women rise up to express the beautiful and radical nature of our own deepest spiritual recognition and dare to leave behind the self imposed limitations of the women we’d known ourselves to be.

Esther Kassovicz can be contacted at esther@guru-talk.com

I met Andrew Cohen in 1991 in Amsterdam. A friend had told my husband and I about Andrew Cohen, this remarkable young teacher. The ‘Satsang’, as it was then called, took place in someone’s living room. Andrew was simply sitting in front of a crowd of about 30 people, answering questions. I had no particular expectation or intention; I just wanted to meet this man to make up my own mind. To my surprise, I was very much struck by the impact he left on me. He was emanating a sense of resting in a deep confidence and vulnerability. And although he spoke quite fast at times, and seemed almost insecure and searching for words, his modern-day-language-answers were passionate and alive, and went straight to the core of the matter.

Simply listening to and watching this man I felt deeply touched and excited in an unknown and mysterious way, and at the same time an irrational fear started creeping up in my chest. And all of this occurred after having seen Andrew for a couple of hours for the first time in my life! For an unexplainable reason I immediately knew that this meeting would change my life and answer some of the deepest questions I had…

So far I had lived a very protected, cosy, straight forward, and square life with no worldly worries, raising two beautiful little children with the perfect husband at my side, it couldn’t have been better. But after meeting Andrew, I had a growing and nagging sense that there was a totally different depth and positivity to life, pointing to another perspective altogether, which at times felt completely terrifying and threatening.

For some years before meeting Andrew I had pursed Vipassana Meditation with S.N. Goenka, an Indian teacher and I had travelled in India for quite some time. I had had some powerful spiritual experiences and had gained somewhat of a spiritual understanding in Asian philosophies. But meeting Andrew had opened up a whole different quality of depth and understanding. It felt like being infected with an inner longing for something so much greater. This longing eventually led me to give up my cosy life and, together with my family, we moved three years later to the city of Cologne to start a community with a bunch of people, who more or less had all known Andrew as long as we had.

Everything that happened in the ensuing 15 years was the most exciting, outrageous and demanding experience I had ever encountered in my life. As a “formal student” I was, under Andrew’s constant guidance and with the help of a committed group of students, privileged to plunge into and investigate the depth of the human soul. Andrew not only showed us the perfection of Life and the potential of absolute love, intimacy and care that is possible between human beings, but he also challenged us to live up to our deepest recognition and understanding of the Truth. Under enormous pressure very deep conditioned structures and layers in consciousness were revealed that flew in the face of so many of our strongly held ideas, on every level: emotional, psychological, cultural, and spiritual.

This kind of surgery into the unknown structures of the human predicament took an unbelievable amount of work from Andrew’s side. Although each one of us students had asked him to be our teacher, he had to fight an unbelievable battle with us, individually and collectively, to get us to face and live the deepest truth of ourselves. This battle was an epic one fought in the depth of our own souls and hearts. I was unbelievably privileged to witness a collective investigation into nature’s laws, laws that are hidden in deep layers and structures of our individual and collective consciousness, psyche and soul. For example, Andrew had to help his German students a great deal to even begin to start looking into the horrific events of the Holocaust. Why did he do this? Because there was so much individual and collective avoidance of our collective cultural history and conditioning and most of us were not willing at all to come to terms with it.

When it came down to looking at my own ‘German conditioning’ it turned out to be an extremely challenging task to confront the depth of potential evil that was latent in my own soul. At the same time however, the way out of this hellish conditioning revealed itself bright and clear, waiting to be walked in humble humanness.

It also was extremely challenging to raise my children in the EnlightenNext community as all the ideas about motherhood, partnership and all the concepts about what it meant to be a ‘good mother’ or woman were shattered completely. This turned everything I had thought about myself so far upside down, but made perfect – and liberating – sense! I struggled with a lot of what I had seen and learned was true in order to not face my own selfishness and simply change for the better. But in spite of my own resistance, I have found that I have changed tremendously and also my children benefited a great deal from growing up in Andrew’s community and became strong, open-minded and interested young people. They both love and respect Andrew deeply.

Andrew is an absolute and uncompromising teacher who cares to an inconceivable degree for the purity of his deepest understanding of the Life Process itself, constantly exploring and questioning everything. I never saw Andrew taking anything for granted, always questioning and asking the biggest questions possible. With this kind of inner posture he poses an uncompromisingly confrontation in matters of truth and heart: it is a kind of attitude we as human beings are not used to, it is simply too human! This individual and collective exploration into these matters was both extremely challenging and thrilling at the same time, because it revealed so much about what is actually possible between human beings.

Andrew masterfully guided us each step of my way in this unbelievable endeavour. However, in spite of powerful insights and experiences I finally had to face that I wasn’t really willing to keep going into this never ending and completely unknown territory. I wasn’t big hearted enough to lay down new pathways for the future as a morally advanced human being, to truly surrender into a trust in Life that would ask everything of me, emotionally, psychologically and intellectually.

But looking back I am so absolutely grateful to Andrew for showing me and the children a different way of being that has changed our lives for the better in so many ways. Throughout the years I saw many of my spiritual brothers and sisters falter and run away, some of them turning their back on Andrew, but I never had and still don’t have the slightest doubt, that it was themselves they were running away from. And having learned a great deal about Ego, the one and only perennial enemy when it comes to true spiritual transformation, I am not surprised that some of them, even years later, are still not willing to face their own selfishness and cowardliness, and are still blaming Andrew or the community for their own defeat.

From my own experience I can say that Andrew has always conducted himself with complete integrity, vulnerability, selflessness, love, and passion for his vision, and for those that asked to be his students. He sometimes came up with the most bizarre, creative, challenging and unusual ideas possible in order to help us face our Egos, but his intention in doing so always shone loud and pure and clear.

N. Schmidt can be contacted at ns@guru-talk.com

I am one of Andrew Cohen’s oldest students having met him in 1986 when he had been teaching formally for only around six months. His teachings have changed enormously over the years, but the seeds for everything that have unfolded were there in the early days. My purpose in writing now is really two-fold.  I would like to write primarily about those early years to attempt to give a sense of what it means to be in a relationship with a true Guru. This is no small matter and in some ways could take a lifetime to fully express. I would also like to address the accounts given from some of Andrew’s ex-students which so glaringly omit the recognition we all had of what Andrew was taking on in us and the enormity of the task.

To get us to temporarily let go of our conditioned way of acting based on fear and desire was not difficult, but to get us to truly change, to live up to what we had experienced and knew to be true, that was a whole other story. I cannot begin to tell you the amount of time, energy and love that Andrew poured into each one of us to help us to evolve, let go and truly change.

The Real Deal

When I met Andrew in 1986, I had been very seriously involved with Vipassana Buddhist meditation for ten years. In spite of all the extensive and intensive practice that I did with many teachers starting with Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield and ending with Christopher Titmuss and Christina Feldman, I did not find my life more enlightened, free or sane. What I found was a desire to continually go back into retreat and meditate. I would experience a lot of peace, bliss and insight on retreat, but when it was over, I had not fundamentally changed. After ten years, I had even begun to teach meditation, but inwardly I had become disillusioned and quite lost. I found as well that this gap also existed in the teachers that I knew; in other words a gap between what they were teaching and how they were living.

When I truly met Andrew and recognized who he was (and that took awhile given my background and suspicion of gurus) it was like nothing that I had ever experienced before or since. I knew beyond a doubt that my life as I had known it was over. I had come home, a home that I had yearned for all my life. I experienced a profound trust and letting go and an intimacy with all Life; with oneself, others and with Andrew. One could call it Love, this intimacy, but it was not a personal love. Andrew was the focus for this “event” but it radiated out to all those who were around him. The intimacy and love between all of us who were with Andrew during this time was beyond anything that any of us had ever experienced and at the same time it was totally natural. From my own experience I knew for the first time what it meant to be a disciple of a true Teacher, a true Guru, and that it was like no other relationship. I would flash upon the biblical scenes of Christ and his disciples (even though I was not brought up as a Christian) and I understood what they must have felt.

When one merges into Life with this degree of trust—trust in the unknown, in that which is beyond the mind, beyond time and space—then we recognize for perhaps the first time how much mistrust and cynicism has been our on-going state and how much self-aggrandizement we have habitually indulged in. Only after meeting Andrew, did I recognize what a superior position I had taken as a spiritual seeker/meditator.

I had met many teachers before Andrew – both from the East and West, but I had never met anyone like Andrew. Besides working and meditating for two years at a Meditation Center in Western Massachusetts which was heavily focused on Vispassana Buddhist meditation, I had lived at a Zen Farm in California for about 6 months and did a number of Zen retreats in the Soto and Rinzai tradition. I had also been to Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado for two summers when the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was teaching, and I had worked at a meditation center in Wiltshire, England for a year and consequently did a year-long retreat there. During these ten years, I met many teachers, both from the East and West and from an assortment of Buddhist traditions. Fundamentally the teachers from the West were sincerely dedicated and many of the teachers who I met from the East were very impressive, but still I can say without hesitation that Andrew was different.

What was it that was and is so unique about him? For one thing I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the Real Deal, and by that I mean that he is living what he is teaching. He is the ultimate expression of integrity in every aspect of his life. He really lives from a deep place of not knowing and at the same time always strives for perfection in everything he does.  I think it is very rare to truly live from a place of not knowing without the rigidity that often comes from being steeped in a tradition, especially when this is combined with an unusual degree of wanting to find out for oneself what is true. In a way he is a blend of the Western modern man of reason who always wants to find out what the truth is, not settling for superstition in any form, and at the same time is totally immersed in the ungraspable mystery of Life. He manifests the unchanging nature of the ground of being and simultaneously is always leaning forward, changing, learning and developing. This I had not experienced in any of my past teachers.

Another factor that has always struck me is the depth of Andrew’s simple humanity. He has so much heart, uncompromising and at the same time so very flexible, soft and full of humor. You knew that he was, and would always be, totally straight with you. This is a very rare quality and one that inspires so much trust. When I say Andrew is always straight I mean that you never feel that the important things are left unsaid. There is never any pretence, hidden agendas, or what I would call shadows; he is transparent. Andrew naturally responds very directly to life and to people. His directness is coming from a penetrating clarity and a desire for the highest to be expressed in his students. And although his teachings have changed enormously since the early years, he always responded to the aggression of the ego, to pretence, neurosis, any place in us that wants to be special, separate or hold onto a problem. Since most of us do have masks or shadows of pretence to whatever extent, at first this degree of undefended responsiveness could be very disarming, and perhaps even alarming, but no matter what one’s responses were at any given time, it fundamentally inspired such a deep trust. It also gave one “permission” in one’s contact with Andrew, perhaps for the first time in one’s life, to be that direct and straight with oneself and others.

“Not One Drop of Selfishness”

In meeting Andrew an incredible change took place in us in all directions, inner and outer, as the awakened Heart took precedence over the egoic Mind. But in spite of that, for all of us, the ego would eventually resurface and regain control. As a Guru Andrew was endlessly creative in how he worked with us in order to wake us up and help us face the truth. I remember with one close student who was very uptight and full of self-doubt, Andrew had him sit up front next to him while he was teaching in the most loving way. He was given a cup of tea. They both actually had cups of tea! And every time this man would indulge in self-doubt, he was instructed to have a sip of tea. When the man took a sip of tea, Andrew would take a sip too. It was very sweet.  Andrew was trying to help him to relax and let go and it worked!

Very early on Andrew challenged me because after everything had been revealed to me—and I had experienced more bliss, ecstatic joy and oneness of being than any human being could ever ask for—I went back into the neurotic mind that always wants more, compares and indulges in paranoia and self-doubt. When one has tasted and realized such oneness, then retreating back into the neurotic mind and all that that entails is selfish.  How one responds to such a deep realization of oneness reveals everything about our basic condition. In the Light, all the darkness and ignorance gets revealed very quickly.

I didn’t see myself as a selfish person, and from a conventional point of view, I would not have been considered selfish. I had done a lot of volunteer work with the elderly and dying for example. But in the light of the higher consciousness and higher aspiration for liberation that I was experiencing, yes, I was very selfish. And looking back now, it is quite impersonal. I am part of a whole generation of selfish people—post-modern narcissists—for whom the realm of one’s own feeling experience and the freedom to do what I want in “my” life is of utmost importance. I had always lived my life as I wanted and indulged in my emotions in a big way.

I had already known Andrew for over a year. I had been given so much – more than any human being could ever want in this life time.  Many times there was the sense that I could die now because everything was so perfect but still it wasn’t enough, I wasn’t satisfied. Rather than being grateful, I wanted more, more bliss and affirmation. Andrew responded by asking me to write him every day without one drop of selfishness. I did that for close to two weeks and at first it was a real struggle as I could only write one sentence, but by the end of those two weeks something had cracked in me and my heart opened. The heart opening was in relationship to Andrew but really our relationship to Andrew was a microcosm of our relationship to all of life, to the unknown and to limitless possibilities. When that happened, I was filled with gratitude and love and only wanted to give endlessly. In that ecstatic state, the best of us comes out and for quite a long time afterwards the heart took precedence over the mind and all its endless preoccupations.

Everything is Seen

There are so many incidences that I could relate about myself and others that illustrate how Andrew tried everything and experimented in so many ways to wake us up to what we had realized and to change. The relationship with a true Guru or Master is like no other. I had no experience of a Guru from my past and never sought a Guru. The mere idea of having a Guru was distinctly unattractive to me. Even if I had never known about the corruption of so many Gurus, I still would have found the idea totally foreign and scary. It represented a loss of independence and discrimination, the idea of being a blind follower. This is no doubt very much the cultural conditioning of the Western mind. So you can imagine it was a real turnaround for me, to meet and acknowledge Andrew as my Teacher and Guru. It really felt like a choiceless decision. It turned my life upside down in the most glorious way. I was afloat in unknown waters and life took on epic proportions.

The relationship with a Guru is based on trust and a knowing that the only thing the Guru wants is your liberation and your willingness to live your highest potential. It is said a Guru is a dispeller of darkness. Everything eventually is seen in a Guru’s presence – things about yourself that definitely don’t fit your self-image. Nothing that Andrew has ever said to me was untrue but, almost from the very beginning, it was often a shock to some degree because it did not fit my self image of the “nice, good spiritual” person who really does care.  It can be totally excruciating to hear the truth of who we are. In the conventional world this truth would never be revealed because we live in a collusion of compromise never daring to believe that anything more grand and exquisite for human beings and life could be possible. It is a precious gift to hear the truth from a true Guru. In spite of how excruciating it is, you do always know that he or she really does see you, the heights of what you are capable of and also what is in the way, the ego and all its self-deceptions. And you also always know that the Guru’s motivation is pure and that makes all the difference. It’s quite amazing to actually know that a Guru’s motivation is pure because there is so much corruption in many teachers, not all, but many. In meeting what I am calling a true Guru, you see with new eyes the glory of what is possible, a previously unimaginable goodness in life and its potential.  You see this because of the Guru’s own state, where he or she is dwelling.

The ‘Untrue” Self

When Andrew really started taking on our egos and pride, which is traditionally the greatest hindrance in the spiritual journey, and after we had been with him for quite awhile and we still weren’t changing, one of the tools that Andrew used with his older students was to give us names that epitomized our core condition, our core way of operating in the world that was based on survival and compromise; not on liberation of the self, maturity or sanity. This core condition in many ways, as I reflect upon it now, was based on our own personal conditioning and also on the collective ego, or that which is formed by our culture. I was given the name “Dizzy.” Andrew really hit the bull’s eye in terms of capturing my fundamental condition. I was horrified and ashamed. It captured my modus operandi on so many levels: the dizzy dame, dumb lady who asked stupid questions, disorganized, losing things all the time, lost in my own world of feelings and thoughts and not willing to be straight, simple, direct and transparent. This was the persona that I put out to the world when underneath there was a smart, perceptive human being who understood and saw much more than she expressed. She also was in need of a lot of development and was lazy and didn’t seem to think it was important to be organized and together in the world. She was the “sensitive” creative being who didn’t have to be that grounded and practical.

When Andrew first gave me my name, and for most of that year, I didn’t budge from a stance of embarrassment and lack of interest. The only way one can change is by beginning to get interested in really getting a full view of who we are. Andrew has always said that we can’t see ourselves objectively and this is true, but with his help and the help of others, we actually can, but we have to be individually motivated to do so. Also we cannot quickly grasp the full extent of what is being reflected as often it’s so close to us, but the important thing is to be interested. Nearing the end of that year, I did finally start getting interested and a lot got revealed in unexpected and sometimes quite mysterious ways, and by the end of the year Andrew took my name Dizzy away. It wasn’t like I had totally finished with this condition since it is so core, but I had begun to change. The “vessel” as they say in Buddhist literature has to be purified to be worthy to be a conduit of freedom and integrity and that is on-going. A lot changed for me. For a time I manifested a degree of simplicity, clarity and lack of pretence that was simply because I started to face into myself. It was in some ways quite miraculous, but it certainly was not the end of the story. The human condition, as I said earlier, is huge and it can’t be taken for granted and we can’t rest on our laurels and that is what unfortunately many of us did.

The Female Ego and True Women’s Liberation

At a certain point Andrew really starting honing in on the female collective ego.  Even though on some level we all knew about the ego and had faced into our own “personal” egos to one degree or another, this was on a whole other level; it was personal and collective. It first started to become apparent when we had so much difficulty and resistance as women to meeting together in a higher perspective. But it really showed its face when Andrew brought this fact up with us. He was met with a huge NO from all of us! It wasn’t as if we literally said “no” but on a visceral and almost preconscious level this was our collective response. We showed absolutely no interest to find out what this was about. It was so huge and so close to our skin because what Andrew was touching upon was just the tip of the iceberg.

It was the female collective ego that had been developing over centuries and, in terms of our real awareness of it, had also lain dormant for centuries. This was Big. It was like the discovery of the New World, but in this case it was about the female psyche and ego and our response was: “Don’t get near this. This is our secret”. It was a secret even from ourselves but we also did know something about it. I think we all had intimations that we weren’t really as “trusting” or “good” as we presented ourselves to be, but this had to be kept a secret. It was part of our make-up as women: the pretence, the façade, the subterfuge where appearances are more important than anything else. It was also part of our sexual power over men, the main power that we had. We could not admit to not being fundamentally “good” and, even worse, to being aggressive, mistrustful and dishonest. Maybe we could do this on a personal level but not on a collective level. Andrew started to crack into that secret and you can imagine how difficult that was. The face of female Pride reared its head up and said “You are not getting near me. No way!”  This response was visceral and on a totally irrational level. The feeling was that if we were exposed in this way, we would literally die.

For a very long time Andrew kept telling us how uninterested we were in looking into what was going on, and that in itself was devastating to our self-image of being these fundamentally “good” and caring spiritual human beings. How could we not be interested? And for a long time we really didn’t even believe it to be true. Yet, at the same time, we were terrified that it was true. We tried to carry on as before but once the “secret” was out of the box, more just started to be revealed.

For many reasons based on our biology and our past history over eons, women have developed a very complicated ego to survive in a world in which it was literally not safe. We learned to be very manipulative in order to survive. Our survival depended upon looking good, “winning the man,” being seen in a good light. Out of this conditioned core of fundamental insecurity comes a craving for affirmation. Of course men have their own particular culturally and collectively conditioned ego to deal with, but men aren’t so attached to being fundamentally “good” since that has not been so culturally valued. Also men have been out in the world in a way women have not been for centuries, and consequently have developed a much higher degree of objectivity. Women are particularly conditioned to be very feeling-based. Feelings reined supreme over rationality and objectivity. So while this is understandable in the big picture of human evolution, it made it very difficult for us as women to clearly navigate our experience together. It was almost impossible for us to trust each other when we were just with other women. Under the façade of niceness, there was a fierce unacknowledged competitiveness. Most women (and men!) have no idea that this exists. This was a huge condition that had to be faced and transcended in light of a much higher aspiration for human beings, men and women, together. We began to see that transcending these collective structures was so essential if we were going to be able to evolve and create a new awakened culture together of a whole different order.

As you can imagine cracking into the depth of this uncharted terrain was a major undertaking for Andrew. He had no idea that these deep structures that collectively bound women into a web of collusion and compromise were there, until he discovered them himself through us. He had no precedent in spiritual tradition with which to deal with this either.

Over the years there would be breakthroughs with us women which we could not sustain. We were dealing with not only the individual ego that has formed through our personal history, but with the collective ego of the female gender. The difficulty for us women was our mistrust and competitiveness, but probably the biggest obstacle to transcending this in ourselves was our prideful refusal to let go and really see our “personal” experience from an impersonal perspective.

You cannot imagine how much it took from Andrew over years and years, first to get us to acknowledge this conditioning (which was not personal but which we all took personally), and then once acknowledged and looked into, to get us to the point where we actually wanted to change. And even then it was a whole other leap to actually change. It is one thing to get one woman to transcend her condition, but it is quite another to get a collective of women to change. It was a monumental task – a huge battle – and for a long time it was not clear at all if it was going to happen. There were no guarantees. If it had been left up to us, we would have never gotten interested, period. So many of us continued to “fall” in the face of this challenge and express gross ego in the worst way and fundamentally not care. It is only because of Andrew’s relentless desire to liberate us as women that some of us did finally change and a true sisterhood has emerged in which women are expressing an authentic autonomy and interconnectedness that was unimaginable before.

For myself, as I look back now, my way of dealing with being confronted with ego, and particularly aggression which I really didn’t want to see in myself, was to project this aggression onto many of my own sisters. I became “weak,” cowering and inept which was really all a façade to cover up my own unwillingness to face myself impersonally and fully acknowledge my own aggression, lust for power and mistrust. I opted for a passive aggression where I could blame and resent others. I was a coward. A coward doesn’t stand up for herself, she doesn’t show her cards, but underneath she knows so much more. This is really an untenable position to take because it does not allow for any authenticity, any true meeting with others. This position of cowardice which I took to the extreme was also an impersonal stance with some of the women, meaning it was the same conditioned reflex that manifested in many of us. Others took a different stance, had a lot more courage, but also were often coming from wanting to be in a powerful position. In either stance, one is holding on to oneself, still wanting to have power. This was a whole dynamic that had to be seen, acknowledged and transcended, and finally it did change, but, as I keep saying, it would take an enormous degree of relentless “hammering” from Andrew before it actually did.

Projecting the Shadow

Dealing with the refusal to really face ourselves and change is an ongoing part of any genuine spiritual path. It is often what seems like an endlessly arduous task of climbing up a steep mountain with the summit shrouded in clouds. All we know is that we have to keep going or fall. Because staying on the “straight and narrow” demands such ongoing humility and relentless honesty with ourselves, we are often tempted to seek relief by projecting our “shadow” onto others, for example “my sisters are out to get me” or “Andrew is punishing me” etc.  But this projection, which can very insidiously distort the actual facts of what is occurring, is a direct result of the refusal to take responsibility for our own condition. It doesn’t take much to go there and lose true perspective on what is happening, especially in an excruciating and challenging circumstance. When this shape shift occurs we then become the “victim” and everything gets distorted very quickly, faster than the blink of an eye. The delicacy and subtlety of what we are involved in with this relationship can be so easily distorted when we are not clean with ourselves.

It is exactly the knowledge of the dynamic I have just described (and this is something that was exposed between us repeatedly) that I find so seriously omitted from the accounts of some of those who have left and still harbor so much resentment. They don’t acknowledge their own refusal to take responsibility for their shadow. From being a student of Andrew over time one does learn about this distortion that can easily happen and therefore even if one decides not to change, one really doesn’t have any excuse for not taking responsibility for ones own distorted perceptions. We were taught how to be objective and rational by a training and practice that we had all been so fortunate to receive. We also all knew very quickly after being with Andrew that what we were embarking upon was ENORMOUS—it was and is a heroic task and that is what thrilled the best part of ourselves.

This Relationship is for Life

I am not one of the core students now which means I am not part of the on-going group of students who directly receive guidance from Andrew and are now really partners with him. But one thing I know for sure: he is no longer doing battle in the way he had to do for so many years. The ego, individual and collective, is not in control anymore. It’s a major victory and what is emerging is a truly evolving transformed community of autonomous, profoundly interconnected human beings that are caring deeply about creating a new future with higher and deeper values.

Andrew is still however my teacher. This relationship is for life. To deny it would be to go against my heart and soul. I only have profound gratitude for everything that Andrew has done, not just for myself, but for the evolution of the whole human race. As long as one stays connected to Andrew, the teachings and the depth and breath of what one has realized and recognized in meeting him, then development and evolution is always possible. I feel tremendously passionate and committed to this life of the Spirit that is ever new, ever changing and ever reaching for deeper and higher values of goodness and truth. I have learned and continue to learn so much. My conviction in what is happening is unshakable and the resounding positivity that has always been the pulsating lifeblood of Andrew’s vision now makes truly significant and profound change possible for us all.

Judy Fox can be contacted at judy@guru-talk.com

Meeting  Andrew Cohen

Sitting cross legged, cramped in a living room of a home somewhere in Amsterdam in 1986, I was among the many people who had traveled to Holland to see this new spiritual teacher called Andrew Cohen. I had seen him teach in the UK and had been far more affected by his authenticity and the power of the reality of what he was teaching than I wanted to be. I was of the school “be a light unto oneself”. I was deeply skeptical that a young American from NYC could be enlightened, much less a genuine Guru. I went to Holland to find out what on earth I was going to do with what was stirring inside of me.

Back in that living room tea was being served and there was a profound silence as we all drank. I found myself telling Andrew about the fear I experienced when he had been speaking about dying completely into Enlightenment. His reply was to tell me that I had, for the first time, walked to the edge of the cliff and looked over—but that it was up to me to jump. I sat there staying with what he said, not backing away. I heard Andrew say “good”. He knew somehow—and at that point I made a choice at a soul level to jump. I fell, into the abyss of consciousness, overwhelmed by the understanding that we are all One and the voice of that Oneness which is LOVE. Cynical “me” was thrown headlong into the wondrous life of a spiritual seeker becoming a finder. Thus began a spiritual odyssey that matches every great story ever told, and which has still in no way ended.

Andrew Cohen: American Guru & Human Being

I was a student of Andrew Cohen for 23 years. For a good part of that time I was one of his close “committed students” whom he trusted to run centers and be an example to other students of courage, independence, and humility. I was one of Andrew’s close students because of the risks I took, the independence I showed, and my consistency in relationship to my intention to live according to my own evolving understanding of how to live my deepest spiritual experience. I worked closely with him and was privy to seeing what a real human being he was. I had the opportunity to observe Andrew Cohen over many years. Over and over I was moved by his integrity, consistency, profound interest in LIFE, and deep care for his students’ rising up to their greatest potential.

Andrew always listened to different viewpoints on all matters, and would alter his plans and points of view according to what he was hearing and learning. I saw first-hand how much he anguished over students whom he knew had been deeply affected by their own recognition of truth and had started to live according to a higher view, but then would fall prey to the power of their own egoic structures, fears, and desires. There were many times he would be unable to sleep. I and others would sit up with him as he tried to work out how to help his students deal with whatever variety of egoic resistance they were currently doing battle with. He received endless letters from us all. He read every single one (and still does!). He was always the first to respond to even the smallest glimmer of true heart from anyone.

I have never met anyone like Andrew Cohen – so real, always interested, always looking to the future and not resting on any success, no matter how significant. When I say that he anguished over us – it was our souls, our spiritual development that he deeply cared about. He cared that we fully embodied our highest attainment and then that we each took it further, with our own independent interest. I so often had the sense when I worked closely with him that he bore our karma on his shoulders until such time as we were willing to shoulder it ourselves. And for this he has been condemned, for caring too much and believing that enlightenment, evolution and genuine change is really possible for the likes of you and me.

It is a much harder thing to believe that Andrew Cohen is the “real deal” in this post modern context where it would be actually a relief to find Andrew is, like so many other Gurus, on a megalomaniacal ego trip. Because as individuals we are then conveniently let off the hook! Why? Because suddenly we don’t have the positive tension of a LIVING example. Just that fact alone creates a rub which provides the friction needed for radical change. In Andrew Cohen, it is safe to say we all met our match. How many of us get our highest aspirations taken seriously by someone who is himself an example of living a life in truth? And then, how many of us stay true to that aspiration when we find that the price to be paid is: whatever it takes. Period. This means giving up all our cherished ideas about ourselves as well as unflinchingly facing our small-minded, selfish, petty, nasty, and even cruel selves. When the unpleasant news begins to dawn on us that we are not the heroic warriors of our own spiritual Hollywood that we all wanted to imagine ourselves to be, and when we are having our butts kicked by the Guru who we said we wanted to take us on – who are we going to blame? An interesting question, and one that reveals a great deal about not only the fundamentally gross state of the human condition, but also the profound delicacy of the spiritual quest.

True Battles with Ego

To admit one has an ego is one thing. To be serious about facing the structures of ego within oneself as they manifest in a personal, gender, cultural, and even collective sense is an endeavor that ups the ante to another level altogether. To embark on this daunting task with a spiritual guide,  a Guru that you have committed yourself to,  is way beyond any known stratosphere. Here we enter a realm where all bets are off. You are left alone with your own spiritual conviction, depth of experience, your own dense egoic structures, and a guide to whom you have said “YES, this is what I have wanted all my life”.

When we find out who we really are, or maybe, more accurately, that we are not who we thought we were, the challenge is then to face the truth of the human condition in and as ourselves, and to evolve one step or huge leaps at a time. It is an enormous undertaking—far bigger than anyone can imagine. Those of us who committed ourselves to being students of Andrew Cohen did so because we knew that this was bigger than simply a personal enlightenment experience. We knew that we had stumbled upon a spiritual revolution for the 21st century where we no longer needed to look back at the teachers from the traditions, useful as they have been. We had found a Guru who spoke our language and understood the struggles of the modern day seeker.  Andrew was able to communicate the timeless wisdom of the ancient spiritual traditions with sparkling clarity, directness, and realness.

Some of us, when we found ourselves not up for this greatest of all evolutionary challenges, after having consciously chosen to make ourselves grist for the mill of evolution, left the community. Inevitably we would then have to come to terms with what was revealed to us about ourselves, the fact that we are now saying that we don’t want to go all the way with our chosen Teacher, despite our earlier declarations, and to deal with the fact that Andrew took us more seriously than maybe anyone ever had in this life. Those who left then have to find a way to come to terms with everything that happened, which means trying to understand whether everything that Andrew did to get us to face ourselves, to break individual or collective ego, was in fact justified.

I, for one, have no doubt that everything Andrew did served to allow me to reach for the highest part of myself. Andrew called me not only to evolve in a radical way into a truly mature human being, but to profoundly expand my world view and the significance and purpose of my life. This view is something way beyond anything remotely personal, and continues to evolve.

It is because of my own grappling with my decision to leave that I find it heartbreaking when I hear other ex- students of Andrew condemning him and reporting alleged acts of “abuse” as having “damaged” them. Many of the things I hear that they claim happened actually did, and some are outright lies. But more than all the so-called details, it is utterly wrong to be writing about these things with no context of the enormity of Andrew’s vision for the entire human race, and with the sole intent to smear Andrew and portray oneself as a helpless victim. I feel a deep sense of outrage that people I not only knew so well, but with whom I shared intimately in some of the most sacred and delicate times of our own lives, have become such distortions of themselves, expressing such a transparently one-dimensional view. To see their descent from a subtlety of understanding and expression of the highest dharma which they have experienced deeply to tabloid press-like smear tactics is painful. However, it’s not too hard to understand, as this is the easy way out. It is a simple, clear example of how gross ego is, and how its function is to destroy anything that reveals a higher standard or view where ego has no place and can no longer exist. It is as if they have forgotten their own intention to reach for something higher, and are denying their own deepest understanding in order to justify their own failure. So they all sound the same—angry, hurt, dark, and cynical. And worst of all, they are even convincing, because their complaints appeal to the “sensitive” post-modern self and the simplistic and cynical view that all gurus are corrupt, and that radical evolution is not really even possible.

Believe me, those who continue to have an “axe to grind” with Andrew like William Yenner the author of  “American Guru” are no angels and no victims, as I am certainly not. All of them have revealed gross egoic tendencies of selfishness, cowardice, manipulation, anger – just as I did. And yet there is no mention in their tales of woe of the gross ways they behaved in a sacred context when their egos were squeezed, or of how they mistreated their close brothers or sisters.

What affects me most is that each one of these people has expressed a level of humanity and view that I find painfully absent in their statements. What brief mention is made in any of their accounts of the ‘good times” and intimacy we shared has been reduced to something small and deeply personal. There is not even a trace of the big heartedness and independent intelligence that they each have expressed, in some cases far more eloquently than I will ever be able to. This is, to me, more testimony that ego is the most destructive, evil force known to man, capable of annihilating the critical steps our human race urgently needs to take to expand beyond a personal world view.

Women’s Liberation with a 21^st Century Male Guru

One of the most profound aspects of Andrews teaching is his teaching on women’s liberation. I think it might also be one of the areas for which he has been most criticized, and it is definitely an approach to women that has sparked much controversy. He has been accused by many of being chauvinist and misogynistic—at the very least!  But my experience is entirely the opposite, despite the fact that facing the female ego has been, and continues to be, the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Anything Andrew has found out about egoic structures has been through his ongoing observations of his students. Early on he saw that we women did not fundamentally trust each other. We found it difficult to come together in a shared higher view, and tended to see things through a strongly personal perspective. When he brought his observations up with us women, although intellectually we knew that what he was saying was true, on an emotional level there was a unanimous wall of refusal to believe it. For the first time I saw the force of ego in a collective form.

It is not easy to be a student of Andrew Cohen. As a woman you are certainly not going to be admired for your beauty and your charm. You will not be invited to any “goddess worship” parties!  Andrew refused to allow us to default to the fundamental victim status that comes from the biological reality of being the physically weaker sex. For ages we had learned to justify using sexual power and manipulation to get what we wanted. We hid behind men, and learned to be covertly (and not so covertly!) fiercely competitive and mistrustful of other women. We came face-to-face with the ease with which we would lie to protect ourselves. We saw that we had, in fact, spent our entire lives up to this point lying whenever it was convenient. All of us expressed a fundamental lack of interest in embodying an awakened perspective when it came down to embracing the totality of our conditioning as women.

Andrew was calling us to be co-creators with men in the evolution of a new kind of human being. We “saints” and “very nice women” were confronted with the seamy underbelly of our actual condition. What was being revealed about us as women in this context of evolution flew directly in the face of the established female roles of the Goddess, Mother, and Matriarch. We were challenged to look way beyond all of our inherited cultural beliefs such as “men are selfish brutes, and women are sweet, nurturing, and delicate”. So not only were we up against our own view of ourselves, but we were challenging the deeply entrenched status quo that has kept the world turning for centuries. It is no small wonder that we had a battle of epic proportions on our hands!

There are very few teachers or scholars who have had the courage or willingness to expose the underbelly of women’s conditioning in an effort to free us from all of these constraining structures so that a desperately needed new paradigm can reveal itself. The leap Andrew was calling us to was not so we could place ourselves on yet another pedestal, nor was it about our own personal individual enlightenment. It was a leap which involved facing and transcending the biological and cultural roles that have defined the feminine, so that we could actually dare to start to redefine the feminine and begin the heroic task of moving culture forward, creating a new consciousness that the likes of Carl Jung and Gerder Lerner had only dreamed of, or briefly seen. Perhaps we had not originally signed up for this awesome task, but the discovery that one’s personal yearning for Enlightenment has led one to be the guinea pig in the huge churning edge of Creation is something I shall be ever grateful to Andrew for.

A New Women’s Liberation: My Own Story

My own battle with the female ego began a couple of years into a standoff, and ongoing crisis, between all the women and Andrew. Early on his vision was of a truly independent woman, able to stand alone and express a liberated self-confidence which needed no affirmation from men. This was a woman who could come together with other women in deep trust and with a steady focus on a higher goal. For a long time Andrew’s vision was just that—a vision. Early on he described our collective response to the actualization of that vision as a “visceral NO”. We fought him tooth and nail, despite all our stated intentions to the opposite.During this time it appeared that I was steady, maintaining a view and living a standard of being a woman who cared deeply about enlightenment and supporting my sisters in rising up to a higher center of gravity. There was a period of months when every woman who had shown leadership had “fallen” in the face of their own egoic tendencies. I was left alone carrying the burden of an objective, higher perspective. I was an example to all the women that it was possible to face one’s ego and not collapse, because I knew that a higher perspective was at stake. But slowly cracks started to appear. I became attached to wanting to be “the One”, to being seen as special. I became addicted to a lust for power. I would have outbursts, expressing a dark intensity that could really hurt, scare and even damage people who were struggling already with their own evolution.

One day Andrew met with me and confronted me about this intensity that so issuing from impure motive in myself. He told me that it was unacceptable to treat anyone like that, especially because of the position I held. I knew the game was up and that my time had come to let go of something which was an expression of the darkness of the entire human race as myself. The rage and actual physical NO that arose in me was a thousand times more destructive and violent than anything I expected. This was even despite the fact that I seen many other women fall in the face of the same force.  And also despite the fact that Andrew had warned, explained, and helped us over and over to understand what we were up against when we chose to live in a context where human evolution and the transcendence of ego is the shared intention. The brighter the light that one stands for, the greater are the forces of darkness invoked both within and without. In the context I was living in I became like a devil because what I did was so destructive and I was rightly depicted as such.

All the women who had looked up to me as an example watched me fall prey to the same conditioning that they themselves were struggling with. Because I had held myself as an example, and had been demanding that they meet me in that as well, the effect was devastating. The women were now without a rudder. Andrew Cohen is an example of someone who unwaveringly holds a higher view, but he is not a woman. So for each one of us women who had been stable expressions of liberated womanhood, we were responsible for all of the women who were looking to us. Now, as a result of my demise, there was no woman to be found who was willing to face herself and hold a higher view that was more sacred than one’s self-image. This was a huge crisis, not just for us women, but for Andrew. He saw far more clearly than we did at the time that women’s evolution as a whole, and true “women’s liberation” was deeply in jeopardy.

The stakes were now unimaginably high. Andrew Cohen, being the relentlessly creative teacher that he is, had to come up with something to try to break the stalemate and get evolution moving. Thus the women’s locker room at Foxhollow, the principal center of EnlightenNext, was a room that became a crucible for one of the most profound teachings on the condition and Liberation of women that I know of. Many letters that we wrote both individually or collectively about our struggle went up on the walls. This room became a mirror of who we really were. Every day there was some new revelation. Cartoons went up depicting our various behaviours – all the ways that we acted out habitually and mechanically from our conditioning, as well as letters that showed our anger (we quickly found out that the adage – “there is no fury like the wrath of a woman scorned” was real!). Our profound disinterest in higher matters, when push came to shove, was a shocking revelation. It was excruciating to have this blatant and constant reflection in our every day lives, this revelation in minute detail of how small-minded and petty we could be with each other. Some of the most intense letters and cartoons showed how readily and casually we would condemn another sister. Who us? We were spiritually evolved, not the trailer trash of talk shows. How wrong we were! Cartoons of me and the way I was behaving appeared on the walls. My letters in response to the cartoons went up on the walls for all to see. The revelations of my disingenuousness and my fake attempts at redeeming myself were clearly reflected in those letters, exactly like the mirror that Andrew intended. Letters that I and others wrote that expressed a breakthrough into higher view also went up. There were also letters from women who had felt (and rightly so) betrayed by me up on those walls. The women’s locker room was like a hall of mirrors, some kind of ongoing and “in your face” reflection that was difficult to avoid, despite how strongly all of us wanted to avoid it all.

One would think to read and directly experience the humiliation of such an austere reflection would break one’s heart and engender enough humility to face oneself and start to change. But, as we were all finding out, the human attachment to ego is a far deeper thing when placed in a context of really transcending it for real as opposed to “accepting it”, “unconditionally loving oneself”, or whatever other jargon is so freely used these days to justify continued compromise in spiritual circles. Andrew Cohen is the only person I have known who never compromised with himself or with us. The more I peer into this the more it seems to me that he is being condemned by some simply for having taken us, and our claims that we were deadly serious, for real.

So what happened to the locker room? Why were the cartoons and letters taken down? Because victory started to be won by the women. Not a personal victory but a victory where women worked together to hold a higher view and to rise above selling each other out. We began to stop being so destructive and personal. And as soon as this side of the women revealed itself, Andrew had all the letters and cartoons taken down.

This higher view, perspective, experience came in waves, fading and re-establishing itself, each wave stronger and more evolved than the one before. Other crises and victories have happened over the years since. But in the last few years there has been a consistent expression of an evolutionary view being expressed, lived, and cared for by women. What is manifesting is a maturity in women that is not often seen. It has been unimaginably hard fought for and won. For those of us that endured the ordeal of the locker room of letters and cartoons—a crucible of excruciating purification for those that came through the other side—we were the front line of women, the “infantry” so to speak. We were the first wave to come face-to-face with the structures of the female ego on a collective scale. We were the ones who struggled through our dense resistance to make the first steps, thanks to Andrew’s fierce insistence, which continue to allow the emergence of a radically new kind of human female.

Now Andrew Cohen’s early vision of a truly independent woman who could stand alone and work together with other women in a context of transpersonal unity and creative purpose is becoming an actuality. Some of the women who have left Andrew have become fierce critics, particularly of his use of the locker room of cartoons and letters, and now label his refusal to compromise as “abusive”. They could not be more wrong. I will be the first to say it was excruciating going to that room every day and seeing what letters were up that revealed more horrors of the woman’s condition, or a cartoon of oneself depicting the truth of how conditioned and egoic one really was. There is no one who can say I was lightly treated in that room – by far the opposite! And it could not be further from the truth that I have been damaged by being shown the truth of who I am.  Having my condition revealed so graphically means that I never ever forget what I am capable of. When I see the force of ego raise its ugly head, I recognize it as a structure of resistance to something higher. I smell it and know it for the destructive force it is. This means even to this day I have the gift of making a different choice—a choice for something unknown, fresh, and Free. If Andrew had put his arm around me, told me everything was okay, that I was the good person I believed myself to be, if he had stopped short of pushing me to the very edge, the world, and I, would be far worse off. I would be living in a world of illusion instead of REALITY. And thus the possibility of being involved in the gritty wheels of genuine transformation would be lost, sold out to a life of comfort and denial.

Reality Check

So because of all this I feel so deeply that it is an abuse and violation of all that is Good and True that the detractors of Andrew, some of whom were as close to him as I have been, now portray themselves as “injured victims”. The deepest truth is that their own heroic struggle collapsed in the face of having met their Match – which in the end is always our own True Self.

Debbie Wilson can be contacted at debbie@guru-talk.com

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 3^rd 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 21^st 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 2^nd 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