In addition to my autobiographies, beginning in my mid-thirties and with my first major adventure travel experience (to Russia), I had started an email list entitled “Marc’s life and travels” – an “intimate journal of Marc’s life, travels, adventures, relationships, business activities, philosophies and other narcissistic ramblings.”  Over the years since then, anybody I met with whom I felt any affinity I recruited to my mailing list, and eventually I developed quite a following, including people who had forgotten ever meeting me (and vice-versa) but kept track of me through my newsletter.

I got a tremendous amount of pleasure from writing it, and received a great deal of positive feedback and acknowledgement.  A few angry unsubscribes as well – if a writer isn’t provocative or challenging in some way he’s not worth reading, to my mind.  Eventually I had over 300 people signed-up to “Marc’s life”. I wrote about everything, including fairly intimate details of my sexual adventures, ha.  How could I not, really, when my romantic and sexual adventures have been the greatest source of meaning and transformation in my life?

Anyway, “Marc’s life” has been a very profound source of fulfillment and connection to me over the years, so much so that I recommend everybody do it (create a personal newsletter).  Of course, if every one I know wrote me a long travelogue of their life every month, it might become a problem (and for this reason I am very grateful to people who take the time to respond to my letters).  However, I can think of at least a few dozen people (including everyone in my family, hint-hint) that I would be very happy to receive a regular newsletter from, and pretty well everyone in my life I appreciate getting the occasional “ping” (ie, “I am  alive and I am thinking of you”).  Writing is, at core, a very efficient means of communication – it only takes a few minutes to read and absorb a communication that might have taken the author an hour to write.  It’s not a replacement for in-person meetings or telephone, of course, but it has an important role to play.  I know at least one person, for example, who has created a workshop on the writing of love-letters, which he considers one of the most important and underused tools in seduction and romance.

Which brings me to another, very important point.  The kind of writing that I do – personal transformational writing – requires an audience to work its magic.  An audience of one, perhaps, but an audience nonetheless.  It’s not really necessary to get feedback for this kind of writing to work.  Feedback of course is nice, but the only thing that is truly necessary for me is to know that there is at least one person out there who has an interest and who has taken the time to read it.  All of my autobiographies have gone out to 20-30 people in my life, and if it hadn’t been for that intent, I would never have bothered writing at all.  I don’t care much for journal writing – I only do it now when I am bored and I have nothing else to do.  There are entire schools dedicated to journal writing (see Ira Progoff “At a journal workshop”). All writing should be for publication, even if it’s only to one’s intimate circle (or perhaps for reading at the writing workshop itself).  It has occurred to me to teach a course on writing one’s autobiography – now that would be a trip.  They do that in Salt Lake City, I almost signed-up as a teacher when I was there.

One of my favorite sayings is from the Course in Miracles: “No one is healed alone”.  Committing to paper my inner journey to share with others heals me.  I hope that in some way it feeds you too, dear reader.

I don’t recall ever making a decision, or having an “aha” experience, that I was born to be a professional writer.  For one thing, I am a practical kind of person, and the thought of actually being able to make a living by writing always struck me as unrealistic – and especially to be able to write full-time about the things that really interest me, which is my own and other people’s growth and development, and human relationships.  For another, I  have no gift at all for writing fiction.  I can only write about things that happen to me and people that I know.

The style of writing that I am interested in – and very passionately so – is spiritual autobiography.  I remember being totally transported by Carl Gustav Jung’s “Memories Dreams Reflections”, Swami Rama’s “Living with the Himalayan Masters”, Martin Grey’s “For those I loved”, Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi”, Max Eastman’s “Love and Revolution”, Gandhi’s autobiography, Winston Churchill’s “My Early Life”, and many more.  All of these books changed my life.  When I find some modern author who can write well in this genre, such as Elizabeth Gilbert in “Eat Pray Love” and “The last American man”, I spend entire days and weeks in ecstasy.   There is nothing so fascinating to me as to read the intimate story of the lives of creative people.  Especially people that I admire or who have accomplished things that I consider remarkable.

And so, I never thought that my own life would be interesting enough to write about.  At least not until I had matured considerably beyond what appeared to be a bit obsessive pre-occupation with myself.  I thought that some day I would get myself a “career” (and/or a life :-), and then I would retire and write my memoirs.  By that time however I would be living on a pension – or maybe Social Security – but in either case I would not need an independent income, right?

Recent events however – especially writing for these blogs Adventures in Relationship and Community and Lifestyle Design Blog – have convinced me otherwise.  I have no doubt anymore that I am born to be writer, and that it is certain that I will derive a full-time income from it, and well before I “retire”.  I can’t say where this irrational conviction comes from, as I haven’t made a dime from writing yet – well, a few dimes perhaps, I have sold a few website development contracts through my personal mailing list (see below) – but there you have it.  I am now broadcasting this to the Universe.  If you believe in “Law of Attraction” (which is really nothing other than common sense – those things that we pursue with deep pleasure and purpose and passion usually come to pass) – then you will understand my purpose in declaring this.

But whether you think I am a fool or not, you may still find interesting the story of my development as a “writer”.

My first significant writing happened in my late 20s, as I was recovering and trying to make sense of a relationship with a woman who had turned my world upside-down, leaving me face-to-face with the emptiness of my life and my values up to that point, and started what turned out to be a very long, painful depression and crisis-of-meaning.  (As an aside, all the most important transformational events in my life have been directly related to the women I have loved and who have loved me, however briefly).  As always when I write deeply, the writing poured out of me like hot lava during the course of a 10-day period, a period in which I barely took the time to sleep, eat or drink, in which the outside world dissappeared, and which, when it was over, left me with the absolute conviction that this was the most important thing that I had ever done in my life.  This is always how writing has been for me.   I have never had anything resembling “writer’s block” and writing has never been anything other than a transcendent experience for me.  This is how these two blogs were written as well, and this is my feeling now as I am writing this article.

Because I had such a powerful experience writing my first autobiography, I made it a practice to write another chapter every 5 years or so, or whenever I felt sufficient life experience had accumulated that would warrant a recount or a coming-to-terms with.  Each one of my subsequent chapters in my autobiography (one written in my mid-thirties and one in my early forties) was a transcendent experience similar to the first.  Each one was (you guessed it) centered around a woman (or two :-).  The last time I did this sits very clearly in my memory still.  I was recovering from (yet another) love affair, this latest one had pushed me to the very limits of my psychic endurance, and when the writing was done, the relationship was over.  Complete.  I hadn’t talked to her for 3 years by that time, but she had been in my consciousness daily and hourly for those three years.  After I was done, I had made peace with it and moved on.  Shortly thereafter I quit my job, travelled back across the country stopping at various ashrams and spiritual retreat centers along the way, and had a number of powerful experiences that led ultimately to my marriage and to starting a completely new phase of my life.

[Click here for Part 2]

Then I replied to him as follows: first, that “teaching to no appetite” (ie, the tendancy to take on the role of a teacher without permission, or to coach someone where there is no “request for coaching”) was a very unattractive trait, one that I was all-too-often guilty of.  Second, that I had been given more than my fair share of arrogance, ego-inflation and narcissism, and that I needed to hear these things for my own good.  Third, that the need to continually relinquish our roles and self-concepts was absolutely essential to spiritual growth, as I understood spiritual growth; and that I had a pretty strong attachment to seeing myself as a leader of the consciousness development movement of the 21st century.  However, I added, there may come a point in life, where the need to start teaching becomes a moral imperative; when we are in possession of ideas and practices that have the power to change lives, and when we see around us every day, the results of these ideas and practices, in terms of increased joy, vitality and spirit-connection of ourselves and of the people that we touch.

Shortly after this incident occurred, the shoe went onto the other foot.  A man whom I had met at a men’s gathering, and whom I perceived as an “attention hog”, I took aside and asked whether he was willing to take feedback from me, and whether he would be willing to not respond immediately (I was clear that, if he needed to respond immediately, I would not give him the feedback).  He agreed to this and I told him that I experienced him, in every group that he joined, as taking all the attention onto himself, and that made me uninterested in relating to him.  He seemed a bit shocked, but he kept the agreement, thanked me, and I walked away.  Later he wrote to me thanking me again for the feedback.

Giving and receiving negative feedback is a very tricky thing.  At best it requires a strong stomach, at worst it can be an abusive practice.  I was pleased that both of these interactions seemed to have gone well and brought me closer to the people concerned.  Ultimately that is the “litmus test” of whether or not it’s appropriate to give negative feedback.  Often, negative feedback is as important for the sender to express as for the receiver to get (and this needs to be taken into consideration when we are the recipient of it).  In the second incident, for example, even if the man had been unresponsive to my feedback, or reactive to it, it would still have brought me closer to him, because I would no longer have felt resentful of his presence, and if he started to behave like this in a group that I was in, I would remind him directly of my feedback and tell him he was doing it again, and he would have an opportunity to respond and it might provoke an interesting conversation.

My new 40-hour office job as a technical writer, that I was so fearful about taking on, has been a totally unexpected blessing.  Yes it’s long hours, and yes the work itself does not enthrall me, but I am enjoying my boss and relating to the other people there, and the financial stability it is bringing has initiated a whole new era of happiness and productivity in myself and in my household.  Truthfully, it’s been intoxicating, all the creative and positive energy it has released and all the possibilities that have opened up as a result.  I am going to the gym every day for a pretty intense workout, I have started a two new blogs that have been high-power fun, we’re growing our community through expanding Mark Groups and booking events at our house (we’re hosting a full-weekend event here for the first time in September, a core-energetics workshop).  Things with Rebekah and the kids are better than they have ever been.  I am also doing extensive research into Andrew Cohen and other leaders in Evolutionary Spirituality and writing about it.
So, thanks for asking :)

Note that the previous “Marc’s life and travels” email list will be subsumed by the blog (where you can subscribe using an RSS-to-email service called Feedburner), and “Marc’s life” is going to be shut down within the next few issues.  If you want to stay subscribed to “Marc’s Life” you will need to re-subscribe from this site.

You may be glad to hear that rather than sending out a “brick” every 3 months, I will send out shorter articles every few weeks.  Also, since the blog is a public site, I will no longer be sending you the intimate details of my sex life :).

The basic philosophy I am presenting is that living in a group is a pathway to liberation.  Liberation itself is a state of mind, which happens to be one-and-the-same as a joyful and passionate engagement with the world, yet beyond attachment to form.  Please check out some of my articles and add the same delightful and insightful comments to the blog that you have been replying to my emails!

Much love,
Marc

I am just at the beginning of this inquiry (full disclosure: I have not yet taken a class with Cohen or with EE) but here is what I have found to be intensely exciting about the teaching:

1) The fundamental idea of evolutionary spirituality is that both mind and matter are a manifestation of a universal consciousness (God for short, although Cohen avoids the word due to cultural associations), that we are an inseparable part of (both cause and effect), and that this consciousness (us) is evolving at an ever-accelerating pace.  So for example, that this force of consciousness made a decision to “embody” (take form) 14 billion years ago, its been only about 3,000 years that people started reflecting on it (a tiny blip on the time scale), and its been just a few decades that we are starting to seriously look at the implications, for us and for the world, of this decision (of consciousness to take form) and our responsibilities inherent in that, as the only organism capable of reflecting on ourselves.

2)This is not mere abstract philosophy, there are immediate profound and practical consequences.  To begin with, once we truly “get” (and this “getting” has to be experiential, not intellectual) that we are all One consciousness – that we are all, so to speak, cells in the body of God – the existential despair that we all carry so long as we think of ourselves as separate and independent individuals simply vanishes.  Our obsessive / narcissistic preoccupation with ourselves simply goes away, and we are liberated to live lives of much deeper meaning, passion, contribution and love.  In particular, our lives gain a sense of urgency and a global significance as we start to work effectively and creatively to undo the damages done to our world and our society by so-called “progress”.  Our lives no longer become only ours to live – they become part of the collective, and our engagement with the collective is what gives our lives meaning and pleasure.

3)That this freedom from self-consciousness (or ego) and this creative, joyful and passionate engagement with the world IS the very process of “Enlightenment” (consciousness reflecting on itself).  In other words, “Enlightenment” in the 21^st century can no longer be about removing oneself from the world (meditating in a cave for 10 years), or seeking connection with the Absolute in a way that is not engaged with our care for the world.  Care for the world, within an “enlightened” context, IS our enlightenment.  “Enlightened context” means that are not motivated by ego but by higher values (such as an individual’s passion for growth and self-transcendence).  Cohen refers to this connection as the “Authentic Self” (as opposed to the “Ego”).

4)Along the same lines as the the above, that enlightenment in the 21^st century is basically going to come about through people coming together and communicating in deeper ways.

There are currently active EE communities in about two dozen cities (I am guessing) in the US and worldwide.  Groups get together and attempt to connect and dialogue in a way where personality (or ego-consciousness) is absent.

Although I have not met Cohen, I have read 3 books by or about him (both positive and negative) and I have done extensive online research, with the goal of deciding whether I should get involved with his group.  I want to clarify that my opinion here is only mine, and, as you can see from below, it is partly just gut-level / instinctual.  I believe that all opinions on this topic are valid for the individual speaking them, and that it is important that all viewpoints be heard. Important both to the Evolutionary Enlightenment movement itself to examine, and to people who are considering engaging the movement and are looking for information.  Failure to do this is a failure of the very integrity so prized in EE.

The conclusion of my research is that I can’t say whether EE is a cult or not; however there are so many  serious ethical problems that Cohen refuses to deal with credibly, and major personality (ego) issues which preclude my ever taking him as a guru.  I still think of Cohen as a spiritual genius and a gifted teacher and I consider myself a student of Evolutionary Enlightenment, which I place inside the overall framework of the Evolutionary Spirituality movement.  “Enlightenment” however, it is not – I would say it’s more about building Cohen’s platform – and given the well-documented history I believe that any prospective student of EE should seriously consider this information before engaging.

I am going to summarize below a small part of the large body of evidence concerning Cohen’s reported abuses of power and complete failure to respond credibly to any of the charges.  Mixed in with this are my own, gut-level responses to his own writing, followed by my assessment of the value of this inquiry for myself.  Writing this article has been an extraordinary month-long research effort for me that has given a return way beyond what I had hoped, in terms of clarifying my own search for an authentic spiritual path.  I hope it does the same for you, or at least that it is helpful in some way.

1) One of the more serious issues has to do with his treatment of Jane O’Neil, who donated two million dollars with which Cohen purchased Foxhollow in the early 2000s (I believe).  This is told on What Enlightenment blog, of how other students were forbidden to talk to her during the decision process, how she was subjected to relentless pressure while in a rather fragile mental condition, and coached on every aspect of dealing with her uncle, from whom the inheritance was obtained after selling assets at considerable financial loss due to the time pressure of Cohen needing the funds.  Cohen has never expressed any remorse or made any public apology for this, or offered to return the funds, that I know of (or apologized for any other action in his career that I am aware of).

2) The first third of Cohen’s “Autobiography of an awakening” I found intensely exciting.  The last two thirds absolutely horrified me, as it reads as a long victim story of how how his guru betrayed him and how hard it is to be a teacher, of how his students, who lack his good fortune to have been totally awakened at once like himself, resist his teaching, how nobody understands the majesty and power of his teaching, etc.  An interesting parallel is Swami Rudrananda (”Rudi”) in John Mann’s book “14 years with Rudi”, who also talks about the difficulties of being a teacher, but there is not the same feeling of victimization – Rudi is grateful to have the opportunity of being a teacher and expresses it eloquently.  Rudi was also betrayed by his own guru (Muktananda) in at least as bad a way as Cohen was, and he took it in and moved on.

3) Cohen’s “Declaration of integrity” does not read as a statement from a mature conscious individual, who recognizes he can make mistakes and who suffers occasionally, as we all do, from narcissism, grandiosity and ego-inflation.  Instead it is an attempt to explain the behaviour of his detractors by various means, they “failed” as students and needed to make excuses, that gurus like him don’t live by the kind of rules that ordinary people live by (and so we are not qualified to judge him), that his extreme commitment to his mission causes him to be intransigent of mediocrity and that people get offended by that, etc… The document is very transparently narcissistic (as I experience much of Cohen’s more personal writings) – there is zero expressed concern or assumption of responsibility for legitimate ethical concerns around his actions.  What is glaringly lacking, in particular, is “sorry, I fucked-up”.

4) Andre Van Der Brack’s book “Enlightenment Blues” talks about Cohen’s temper tantrums, atmosphere of fear around him, and his sometimes brutal techniques to “awaken” his students.  Cohen cannot be  blamed for all the crazy ideas and feelings aroused in his students (for example the decision by some of his women students to do prostrations / immersions in a frozen lake in winter for 45 minutes).  However, Cohen supported this action, which seems quite telling, and there are dozens of incidents of verbally and physically violent and/or shaming behaviour that Cohen initiated in the name of “getting rid of ego”.  For example, Cohen’s telling Andre Van Der Brack, before Andre left EE, that he was “evil” (Van Der Brack’s book occurs as sober and sincere, I do not believe that he would lie).  Or read the absolutely heart-breaking Story of Caroline Franklyn on EnlightenNixt and also Wendyl’s Story or Simeon Alev’s response to “Declaration of Integrity”.

5) Cohen’s defense of the “guru principle” and his frequent expression of the need for “hierarchy” in spiritual work.  I can understand the need for “discipline”; but I have a sneaking suspicion that when Cohen talks about “hierarchy” he is referring to the need for his students to accept as a God (ie infallible) an individual who appears, at least from the outside looking in, to have all the characteristics of a major character disorder.

There is a very interesting thread on Rick Ross’s anti-cult site, relating to Adidam (Da Free John, a highly abusive guru who was also a student of Rudi) that really opened my eyes to this kind of problem.  The idea is that an individual can have all kinds of spiritual powers and charisma, but be emotionally and morally undeveloped.  In other words, we frequently confuse spiritual powers and charisma for true enlightenment.  Another very interesting resource is Alan Kazlev’s article on Integral World “The Wilberian paradigm – a fourfold critique” and also his post on Sri Aurobindo’s “Intermediate zone” of spiritual development.

I have noticed, among members of some personal growth / transformational organizations, a tendancy to resist and deny information on the ethics and personality issues of their leaders.  I have seen the same thing in the case of the (now-deceased) Harvey Jackins of Re-evaluation Counseling.  Their reasons for doing this should be fairly obvious – that more than anything, people want to belong (to love and be loved) and to feel that their lives have a deeper purpose and meaning.  Membership in a world-changing (or culture changing organization) and the powerful and deeply meaningful experiences to be had from that, can be very intoxicating, and so for people to consider issues that would put their membership (belonging) at risk, and/or challenge the legitimacy of the endeavor, can be very painful.  For some more profound reflections on this topic, including an interesting analysis of the benefits to be had by studying under a flawed guru, read Simeon Alev’s article.  This article also poses the fundamental question as to why Cohen refuses to apologize to anyone, admit wrong-doing, or return money that was taken under ethically dubious circumstances, which would seem to be the rational thing to do and would allow the movement to progress unimpeded by all these allegations, that must be painful for Cohen to deal with and ultimately limiting (and possibly fatal) to EnlightenNext. To me this represents a fundamental lack of courage, self-awareness, or both, on the part of Cohen.

In any case, the way that I have solved this problem for myself (the problem of needing to belong somewhere), is that I have started my own cult :), an intentional community where I now live.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, for me, my housemates don’t view me as a God, and if I ever get too arrogant or too full of myself my wife will just tell me to get off it (and if I don’t respond to that, she has other ways of making my life so miserable I will come back begging for mercy soon enough).  If I were to take anyone at all as a guru at this point in my life, it would be my wife.

And if, in this decision of mine (to be wary of self-proclaimed “gurus”) I have permanently eliminated the possibility of enlightenment in this lifetime – if through this decision I am simply stuck in my lower-level Wilberian “Green” (egalitarian) meme and will never get to Stage II development – so be it.  We’ll see who has more fun at the end of the day.

Although I can joke about these things, underneath it I am heartbroken that one of the most inspiring and charismatic spiritual figures of the 21st centrury is building a movement in which I cannot participate in any meaningful way.  Even though EnlightenNext is doing some great work, some powerful and world-changing work, the entire organization is thrown out of integrity by the absurd claim of Cohen’s enlightenment, the shared belief system around that, the conspiracy of silence around Cohen’s personality problems among his students, and some vicious attacks, by both Cohen and his acolytes, on any person who challenges it  – see for example Craig Hamilton’s response to Susan Bridle, which response I will [a bit saracastically] summarize as “how dare you small-minded and pitiful individual challenge our Great Teacher who gave you so much and is building this great movement” - a point of view that reveals the same level of narcissim and ego-inflation as in Cohen, no surprise.

So I am left with trying to find an authentic spiritual path on my own, or with the help of more traditional spiritual movements (for example the Goenka Vipassana movement which is still amazing but doesn’t have the global vision that EE does).

There is a bitter-sweet feeling around all this.  I just feel grateful that I am able to make these observations from a distance and that I am not one of Cohen’s victims myself (and no-one can accuse me of attacking Cohen in order to justify my own failures :-). And yet there is no question that Cohen has helped a great number of people, quite aside form the extraordinary power of his ideas.  There is a kind of paradox in this that is going to require much more work and introspection for any of us to fully understand, I think.

As I continue to reflect on these ideas I uncover more subtle distinctions.  The sheer divisiveness created by these issues makes for very interesting conversations.

Every historical world-changing movement – be it the American Revolution, the French Revolution, late 19th century anarchism, Marxism and communism, the 60’s counter-culture, etc – created, among its adherents, a tremendous excitement and intoxication, a feeling of being on the “leading edge of culture”, a feeling of the “historical certainty” or the inevitable nature of the shift, a kind of dogma about it etc.  Practically every one of these movements failed in its early idealistic promise, and many went totally bad.  Does this mean that these movement did not contribute something to the culture, or that they were not personally transformational for the people involved? Obviously not.  There is definitely something wonderful about being identified with a cause that one feels to be just, that one’s whole community is also identified with and gives one validation for, and where one feels that one is a leader in a world-changing movement.  Hey, I have had these same thoughts myself at times :-).

The problem with Cohen, and where the issue becomes less ambiguous, is that Cohen’s claim to complete  enlightenment, his demand for submission to the teacher as a pre-condition for enlightenment, and many other elements of his belief system, are absurd.  Judging Cohen by his actions and even by his own writing, he is a complete and utterly transparent narcissist.  An individual such as Cohen who hasn’t done his shadow work and therefore projects it out onto the world cannot become the avatar of the new world evolutionary paradigm.  Personally,  I believe that Cohen’s manifest goal is to build his platform, not to inject more love in the world, and that authentic spirituality does not jive with treating people like shit the minute they oppose you.  I also don’t believe that the pursuit of love is compatible with the pursuit of power.  Love happens through simple acts of kindness and compassion, not in the infatuation with large ideas or the obsession to build a world-changing organization. The entire Evolutionary Enlightenment movement, therefore, is based on a fantasy, a delusion.

All this should be manifestly obvious, but it is not, apparently, to Cohen’s dedicated students.  This information cannot get through to them because it would challenge their self-concept. They are not interested in this information. They are too happy living their fantasy.

One could conjecture on what pathology these students are manifesting in order to be able to hold these beliefs, but I am not going there.  We all have variations of some pathology and mine is no better than yours. Even though deep inside I may think so :-).

But even if all this were so, does it negate the value of Cohen’s teachings?  I think not.  There is a lot to be said for living in a happy delusion – many great works were accomplished while in that state.  I for one, will not say that living an exciting fantasy is worse than living an empty and meaningless existence.  There is no question that Cohen generates a tremendous excitement in his entourage, that many people around him are transformed, that many go out into the world and do wonderful things with his teachings.  Who am I to judge another person’s spiritual path or to say what is right for their development in the moment? And I am certainly in no position to stand in judgment of other’s delusions (pathologies).

I just hope that they go into it with eyes open.  That is the only purpose of this article.  Because there has been a great deal of actual harm done by Cohen.

This inquiry continues to fascinate me.  These are very complex questions that I do not feel equipped to answer.  I will close with this thought, however: who among us is actually injecting love into the world – and who among us is just talking about it?

Because to my mind that is the test of an authentic spirituality.

“The true test of your spiritual success is the happiness of the people around you.”

– Rudi