Every week, as a way of setting the context for the class we are about to begin, we do an overview of the previous classes to see where we have come to and where we are headed. It's becoming my favorite part of the class. One of the greatest gifts of these teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment is that it shows us how to locate ourSelves in the midst of a surging sea of postmodern narcissistic conditioning and the overwhelming complexity of the world and times we are living in. And the more we learn - the more accurately we can see and place ourselves - the more powerfully we can take responsibility for our lives: for who we are now and who we want to become, and for what the world is now and what we want it to become. In the last four classes I have felt almost overwhelmed at the surge of consciousness and potential that emerges as we continue to reach for a perspective on ourselves and our predicament, from the highest and deepest understanding we have come to up to that point.

This class was a deep investigation into Andrew’s teachings on the Ego and Authentic Self and our actual, in the moment experience of these two completely contradictory relationships to living. Learning to discriminate between these two expressions of ourselves is one of the most important foundational elements of Evolutionary Enlightenment. Which brought us to a huge discovery: the fact that we exist before these two options as the chooser, the one who decides in every moment, which life-stream or path we are going to follow, and therefore who we are going to be. Bringing light to this chooser, as Andrew says, allows us to choose the Authentic Self over the Ego, and it is this movement – from Ego to Authentic Self - which sets the ground for a new culture, a new moral theology and, in my opinion, changes the world as we know it.

 Last week Jeff Carreira had a guest spot in my class introducing a new slide he had developed – it went so well we decided to teach the last two classes in this session together. There is something really amazing to teach something you love so much with another who is also completely passionate about it. There is such freedom to be your self, distinctly different in personality and expression and in some cases, even in understanding, and yet at the same time experience the complete absence of boundaries and other. By the end of the class it felt like we were all in a moment that would never stop, where consciousness itself was our only identity.

And there is only one more class to go! But the good news is that Jeff will be teaching the second level right afterwards for 5 more Tuesdays, and I will be assisting him – so this particular adventure in the pursuit of Evolutionary Enlightenment won’t be over soon!

The other completely exciting news is that 5 more classes in Evolutionary Enlightenment are starting up world wide this week, with 17 more to come......so if you feel a tremor in consciousness at any point it might be due to this.....

Wow, I feel like I've just run through the tape at the end of a race! Or, since the first class I taught all those weeks ago felt like jumping out of an airplane, this feels like I've just landed, both feet firmly on the ground...and looking up into the sky I can see all my fellow teachers of Evolutionary Enlightenment at various stages of freefall..it's not imagination, it's really happening, and consciousness is moving, expanding, and changing as a result. What an  adventure this has been, into the realm of authentic engagement - giving what I've got in terms of life experience in these teachings to the class in real time, and pushing the edge of my development as a teacher...and class 5 really embodied both these aspects. We covered all of the 5 tenets, going into what the rules of engagement would be for living an Enlightened life, with a kind of serious intent that that was only possible because of the depth we had gone to together in the previous 4 classes. There is so much in these tenets, Andrew often says he never gets tired speaking about them and he's been teaching the tenets in particular for over 10 years now! We grappled with the absolute context in living the tenets, the position of freedom first before all else, and my experience was that that created an openess and receptivity inthe room - all the other tenets seem to flow out naturally from there and make perfect sense.

By the end of the class I experienced the kind of bonding that happens when you all push through something, individually and together, that brings you all higher and further than you have ever gone before.  There was an ecstatic tension in the air and people hung out  for a long time after the class. I realized the personal goal of bringing my first class, step by step - and I think better and better -  through the entire foundation of these beloved teachings. :)  Joy!  It releases a passion to only do more, and more and more.....the teachings are true and real and practical - change, transformation and evolution is possible and there is a noble endeavor, in this post post modern world, to be engaged with that could change the world……!

Many of the people in this class will be coming back for the next 5 weeks to take Part 2 of the course, which Jeff Careirra and I will be teaching, so stayed tuned for further updates in this ongoing pursuit of authenticity and the evolution of consciousness...

The last two plus weeks have been a full tilt head on collision/dance with this evolutionary life – no rest for the weary or the wicked :) or those passionate about the evolution of consciousness… Between Jeff Carreira’s business course adventures at UBS and Deutsche Bank, Andrew Cohen’s teachings in NYC and the opening of the NYC EnlightenNext Center (whilst Jeff and I taught an impromptu 2 hour EE class to 20 acupuncturists here at Foxhollow)……Andrew’s talk with Deepak Chopra the next day with an audience of 1000 (while another group of us was busy breaking the Foxhollow bubble by partaking in a day of practice and paradigm cracking meetings at the Cambridge EnlightenNext Center…)……teaching the first class of Part 2 of the EE Course – the whole class swimming in the field of consciousness together……the posting of Andrew’s blog on www.ac.org ………The Evolutionary Enlightenment Intensive this past weekend (my hat for that event was a chef’s cap)…..the flurry of visitors from allover working together in our kitchen, asking questions, engaging enthusiastically with what they had learned on the retreat and putting it to the test……and then, another week gone round, the second class of Part 2 of the EE Course – The Universe Project.

And what a class! Jeff employed some unusual means to get us to see how we see and what it is to be awake and aware, conscious, that our consciousness is the consciousness of the Universe. In this class you just have to let go of everything and let your imagination run wild - it takes a leap to get that we are trying to conceive of something we haven’t yet got the wiring to do. I keep thinking what it must have been like for the first organism to see – it must have been responding to something in its experience that it wanted more of - and seeing was that next step in conscious awareness. We are at that place now in trying to understand who we really are at this moment in our history as the Universe itself…trying to develop new organs of perception simply through reaching for something we can feel but not see, barely imagine or intuit but not yet grasp…

Jeff and I also hit a new level of freedom in teaching together – a deeper level of letting go to our individual passion for what we are doing - a new layer of self consciousness fell away in myself and also in relationship to Jeff as being other… and only two more days until the next class where we will start to go into the 6 principles…!!!!