Do You want to be free more than anything else?

This is a response and reflection piece to the 5 Tenants of Andrew Cohen.

Tenent 1: The Clarity of Intention

Aka you are the creator of your own life and destiny. Or as Cohen states, “it places the spiritual quest directly in your own hands.”

Its creating space within your body and your life that allows you to recognize who you are and the capacity of your impact. Your impact is defined by how you choose to act and proceed with both conscious and creative action.

If you set your intention to connect to the greatest part of yourself; which is inifinitely linked to the spirit of the whole, you begin to blossom into the life that existed when the concept of you was first created.

As Cohen states, “Clarity of intention is the foundation of the spiritual life, and it states that your desire for freedom, your impulse to evolve, has to become more important to you than anything else in this world.”

The outcome of the quest is a matter of your own personal jurisdiction. How you choose to move forever forward towards a more evolved state of being rests in your desire to tune your personal frequency to your authentic self. To drop the Y — from (Y)OUR, so the concept of YOURs shifts towards the concept of OURs.

The only thing that you are in obligatory ownership of is the responsibility of your own creative actions.

Tenet 2: The Law of Volitionality

Simply stated, “If you want to be free more than anything else you must be willing to take absolute responsibility for your own self.”

As Cohen States, “The power of the second tenet entirely depends upon accepting the fact that on some level, we all always know exactly what we are doing. “

It declares:

If you want to manifest the revelation of wholeness, nonduality, and enlightenment in this world, you must actively take responsibility, right now, for everything you are doing in the present moment, for all you have done in the past, and for the conditioned responses that arise as a result of things that others have done to you.”

The goal is to remove yourself from your Ego — the sense of self that binds us to a karamic cycle. When we let go of the personal, to recognize that we are just a piece of this evolutionary expereince, we catch sway in the momentum towards a more evolutionary self. An Evolutionary self is one that operates from a place of boundless advancement and freedoms, rather than turning over on ourselves in a karmic bubble of inertia.

Its removing yourself from a victim mentality. Not everything is about you, or the perception of you or your ‘self image.’ We have a tendency to look at ourselves the way we want others to see us, most of which is superficial and detached, a boring box that binds us to an image that is misaligned with the awesome childlike creators that we are.

The goal is to realize our authentic self. To understand that love is a state of being. To internalized love the holy spirit into a state of being, is a constant fluidity and vibration that we feel as emotions of freedom, joy, and love.

Tenet 4: The Truth of Impersonality

It states:

Every aspect of your own personal experience can be seen from a perspective that is completely impersonal. And it is from that vast universal perspective alone that true liberation can be found…The personal is simply the veil that creates the illusion of separation that is ego.

Its us sheilding ourselves from the selfish space, the justification of ‘reward’ or behavior based on a vicitimization — “life has been so hard, blah blah blah, I deserve this” type of internal conversation.

Its removing us from a centric based space of what Cohen references as ‘unique’. On a ‘personal’ and lighter note, I remember being in Mrs. Christkauch’s second grade class and us learning the word unique, while cutting out snowflakes. And as an awkward blonde 7 year old with a bowl cut perm and blue glasses, I remember beaming. I had not yet entered that adolescent stage of social saturation in my life, nor did I see myself as different. I just saw myself as me, and I thought I was awesome.

In all common thought, unique is just another word for different. At some point in time we were all slipped a social roofie that told us that different is ‘less than’ or ‘bad.’ When in fact that different is not ‘less than’ or ‘bad,’ but rather ‘unique.’

So in reflection and with a smile I look at the truth on both sides of it. All of our life experiences are different, but even in that expression of everyone’s personal we are still bound by the fact that we are all unique, we are all different. But human experience & the experience on this earth - our access to clean water, air and soil is a shared experiecnce and one what we can work together to share and better understand.

The Truth of Impersonality leaves me asking the questions of myself why we create the seperation in ‘work’ and ‘life’? Or business versus personal?

Why do you do the work you do? What impact, effect, and affect does it hold in your life?

Why do you hold so tightly your life that you were born into? Is it about the work, time and energy you have put in? Or have you ever stoppped to think that it may be something bigger? That the quality of your life is innately attached to the others? That when we are not aligned with the greater good we feel unrest because others are living in unrest?

Do we have the ability to live a life of beauty, wealth, and love on a universal scale?

Which leads us to the most important question, “Who do you work for?”

If you work for the sheer interest of ‘yourself’ ‘yourego’ what impact do you have in the end? We know that “one man can change the world” by speaking and taking action, this can swing on either side of the pedulum. But its a matter of concious momentum & how we choose to swing it.

Time is a construct. Yoga, fashion & art all pull from both the past and the future to showcase the cusp of the present & to demonstrate the fact that we have a choice to move, but the how we choose to move through the struggle rests in self realization. We can choose enlightenment or we can choose to step back in time.

Tenet 5: For the Sake of the Whole

As Cohen states:

it becomes more and more apparent that we are all part of a vast evolutionary process, and that the aspiration for freedom is nothing less than the expression of the evolutionary impulse itself within the human heart and mind. “I want to be free not just for my own sake for the sake of the whole.

We release ourselves to whole heartedly commit ourselves to the collective evolutionary process.

I had a brilliant professor in college give us a scenario of a mural. If you stand your nose against the wall, what you are able to see is only the painted space that is right in front of you, but if you take 3 steps back, the space widens and picture changes. Another 6 steps, and the image again shifts, and another 9, its another picture entirely.

Its about proximity, lens, and light. How we choose to see one another in a larger frame and context. Our ability to take a step back hinges on access — where we have the physical and social ability to create and explore outside of our box. All humans have the ability to move and be moved, but the internal conversation is about empowerment — making space for self reflection, plans and action, and the social conversation is about creating access to physical spaces, education, and relationships.

All of our bloodlines have resilency and fight, if that were not the case, we would not all be here. What we need to come to realize now is that liberation comes not in death, but in life.