Silent Retreat with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen

I have just completed a 10 day silent retreat at the Enlightennext Main center in MA USA, and it was a totally life transforming experience. I set off with twelve other students of Andrew Cohen’s to follow a strict regime of meditation, chanting and physical practice starting at 4.30 in the morning until just before 11pm each day. All that we were asked to do from Andrew is to follow the program and to completely leave the mind alone. That means to not draw conclusions about anything at all. I have been a student of Andrew now for about eight years, so know the breadth of his teaching well, and this part is a foundational aspect of his teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment. It goes like this; you cannot simply jump from ignorance to a right view and action just like that. First of all you have to let go of everything and return to zero, as Andrew puts it, to then be able to respond to life in a way that makes total sense and can express something much higher, deeper and wholesome. And this is done through being still, totally at ease physically and having no relationship with thought and feelings, which are the basic guidelines for the mediation. From the outset it was powerfully deep. We obviously didn’t talk to each other, and meals were taken care of for us by the Enlightennext centre staff so we effectively had no distractions at all. All there was was the mind and feelings! Everything was there at different times - peace, joy, frustration, bliss, tiredness, boredom, lust, fear, doubt, physical discomfort etc. But as all of this was going on, the practice just continued, day in and day out untouched by any of it. Time and time again I would be lost in thought, thinking I have blown it, dwelling of past mistakes or worrying about the future, and I would suddenly remember to not draw any conclusions about it, and as Andrew put it to leave the mind completely alone. It was always liberating to do this….again and again and again….Pretty soon, it started to make sense in a deeper way….no relationship equals psychological and emotional freedom. This is the fundamental difference between psychological approaches and true spiritual practice. Spiritual practice is so deep, it goes right to the core of you, and challenges what you cling to. No relationship is the same as not knowing, in a very real way about your life and your future – a very different approach that sorting through personal issues! Andrew Cohen is a true spiritual master and guided us throughout the retreat. Being his student I felt that I was armed with deep knowledge that is just part of me now. This knowledge enabled me to keep going during strong emotional reactions, good and bad - states of self doubt, fear, and also ecstasy. When you start to see, time and time again, the entire foundation of the way your view the world change dramatically, with no seeming outside influence, you start to wonder – what is going on here? What can I trust? It became clearer that what Andrew was doing was providing a lifeline through ignorance, delusion, fear and attachment. All that you had to do was let go of the mind no matter what and you could find a ground of ecstatic simplicity in yourself. This simplicity is like being much more aware, totally immersed and attracted to that which lies beyond your mind, and discovering the very ground we are always in. Towards the end of the retreat we went further and deeper collectively. This was experienced with heightened intensity when we chanted together. It makes you aware of so many different dimensions all at once and the subtle interplay between them - you, the others, the group as a whole, the meaning of the chant, and the profound interconnectedness. It’s only the experience of meditation that makes this kind of unusual attention possible to align with. In fact it got so powerful, intense and deep at one point that I just had enough and didn’t want to keep going - I just wanted a break! Then I remembered the instructions – ‘don’t draw any conclusions about anything’, ‘just leave the mind completely alone’, ‘take the risk to let the whole world completely go’. No matter what, no matter what!! This is just what happens when we push forward so much, and is just a natural reaction. Andrew also said to the group when we met with him that this retreat is ‘Training for Life’. Spiritual practice is about doing the right thing when you don’t feel like doing it, and this was the most fundamentally empowering and liberating discovery – because it means that you can change.