Andrew Cohen takes us on a journey of self-discovery unattached to any specific spiritual path. He starts by laying out ‘the five fundamental tenets of enlightenment’, before addressing the perennial obstacle of ‘wanting’.
The first tenet is clarity of intention which brings about a simplicity in out lives. This sounds simple and yet is immensely difficult to achieve. Our modern lives appear complex and the notion of simplicity can come across to many people as decidedly boring. This is why the need for clarity of intention is so fundamental. But this can only be achieved if that clarity of intention is the intention of liberation; to be free more than anything else. This means every choice we make must be made to support our journey to recognise our freedom.
But being so focussed will inevitably bring us into conflict with ourselves, our ego, those around us, and society at large. In this respect we need to learn to ‘not care’ what others think, including the ‘others’ in our own head, those voices we hear but don’t own. This has an edge of selfishness about it. The need to be highly self-centred in the short term, to achieve a selflessness in the longer term. But inevitably things get in the way; distractions and self-deception.
This takes us to Cohen’s second tenet ‘the law of volitionality’, which is that we need to take responsibility for everything that we do, including taking responsibility for those inner voices. There is no ‘other’ in our head. It is us! When we come up against ‘contradictory impulses’ we need to recognise the habit we have of following these. We need to recognise that we choose to allow the distractions and our self-deception to lead us to make wrong choices.
But all our choices come from one place, one self, and that self becomes what it chooses. This is karmic momentum; the choices we make equal self-generating future choices. Only having clarity of intention can allow us to start to compulsively make right choices; making a habit out of making right choices. This is how we create a shift in our karmic momentum.
But how do we actually do that? Through the third tenet, by ‘facing everything and avoiding nothing’. This is the only way to free ourselves from ‘fear-driven habits of avoidance and denial’, to counter our self-deception. We do this through ceaseless self-enquiry, directed mostly at the darkness within ourselves, those shadow aspects we’d rather not own, or take responsibility for. We must question every choice and every action from the perspective of absolute devotion to liberation.
This is no small or easy task, and we can only achieve it if we have a passion founded on one clarity of intention; liberation. Even then our connection to our subjective experiences can make us get lost or confused. The forth tenet then helps us gain a degree of objectivity, that is, ‘the truth of impersonality’.
All human experience is one. Although we might experience differences in the intensity of the experience, and put a personal slant on to it, the experience itself is the same experience as everyone else’s experience of that thing. That is, we might experience longing, or lust, or love, or fear, but the feeling is the same for each of us. It is only the ego that thinks otherwise.
The fifth tenet ‘for the sake of the whole’ sounds like a complete reversal of the first tenet, and yet is a direct consequence of the preceding tenets. If we are embodied consciousness (non-duality) how can liberation only be for ourself?
The perennial obstacle on the journey is desire, endlessly wanting, and the ego, incessantly wanting to be separate. It is only through the act of simplicity that we are able to gain the courage to end this habitual pattern based on the belief that something is missing or wrong. In the ‘ground of being’ we learn to ‘let everything be’.
Bringing it all together
On the path to liberation, for Andrew Cohen, there is no need for initiation, or complicated techniques and rituals, or esoteric knowledge, mysterious and obscure systems and practices. Cohen offers five tenets, the first two are the intention, an absolute focus on liberation and the law of volitionality. The third tenet, face everything and avoid nothing, is the means to do this; this is when we live the first two tenets. Tenets four and five are the outcomes; the recognition of the truth of impersonality and that the journey is for the sake of the whole.
Meditation is the most important practice on this journey, where stillness is a metaphor for liberation. And self-enquiry, where we free ourself from the personal, from the ‘desire to become’, and the ego’s need to be separate. All we need to do is live the five tenets ‘without conditions, at all times, in all places, through all circumstances’.
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See my personal development / personality profiling book DISCover the Power of You published through John Hunt Publishing Ltd, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-78535-591-2
And for those who enjoy historical fiction, stories of underrepresented life’s, see my first novel Fermented Spirits published through Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022. ISBN-13: 978-1398437159