Enlightenment Is Not Personal to Andrew Cohen
I’ve been reading a lot of Andrew Cohen again. He’s one of the contemporary spiritual teachers who bears further examination. Though somewhat erratic in the early days, some of his best writings were some of his earliest. Sharing below, courtesy of the Wayback Machine, a gem from 1991:
Enlightenment Is Not a Personal Matter
When you think about Enlightenment, it is important that you include other people in that idea.
Transcendence will be yours when you begin to accept responsibility for the condition of the whole human race. When you give yourself up in unconditional surrender, automatically you rise up beyond the very limited perspective that most of the human race remains forever lost in. You come upon an infinitely greater perspective in which all questions disappear.
The by-product of Enlightenment is that you cease to suffer the way you suffered in the past. But the most important benefit is for the whole race. Why? Because someone actually will have stopped. When this happens, there is an explosive reaction that is magnetic.
If you feel disturbed by all the conflict and suffering that you see in the world but are unwilling to come to the end of conflict within yourself, then you can be sure that you are not serious.
from Enlightenment Is A Secret © 1991 Moksha Press
It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it, that if we want to gain personal enlightenment, that we need as Buddha teaches, to gear all of our acts "for the supreme liberation and enlightenment of all beings"? While we may only succeed in enlightening our ownselves, surely a critical mass of enlightened beings at some point in time may have the potential to effect a mass change of being.
Stay tuned for how and why we "Sleepwalk" through Life…
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