NY Times review of books yesterday published this review of Jeffrey Sach's new book, Common Wealth.

Sachs is a very smart economist at Colombia University. From the review, it appears he argues that we are likely to find ourselves, as a species and as a global civilization, in serious trouble, if we don't turn it around. This much is not news, and Sachs lays out steps to get us on a new track.

The reviewer's central critique is striking: Sachs doesn't adequately address the "psycological and political" terrain of the solutions needed. I get from the review that "psycological" means "human condition", all the "fear, neurosis and desire" of humanity that inhibits our capacities for "rational, commonsensical" behavior -- and that we all know can mess up even the best laid plans.

Sachs is an impressive thinker, and certainly understands all this obvious stuff. I'm not critiquing him. Instead I'm just pointing to something just as obvious -- for humanity to flourish beyond the four historically unprecidented and deadly serious challenges that Sachs identifies (population, food production, climate change, and anachronistic institutions), we are going to have to evolve not materially, but at the level of consciousness.

The challenge of our times is not to create a better widget to feed more people (though we need to do this), but a new understanding of what it means to be a human being.

One way of describing the leading edge culture in DC is that the people who are part of it care about the future. They are articulate and know how to debate, and don't shy away from intense passions and all the creative friction they create.

These characteristics were on full display last Saturday night in a What Is Enlightenment? magazine Salon that I led.

It was a raucous event with many strong views presented and challenged. We spoke about how our spiritual convictions shape our participation in the world. Can o worms! "God is love." "no, god is unity!" "why are you so sure that the universe has a purpose?" "what does peace mean?" etc. Full-on debate in a variegated field of dogma and authenticity. Add a marine recruiter, a young woman who drove 4 hours, a woman who coordinates oversight of the CIA for the Senate, a fiery and dignified widow of a congressman, a high level government consultant or two or three, an ardent nihilist, a committed Buddhist, a author of four spiritual books, a Senatorial candidate for Virginia, several people from A Course in Miracles group, various adherents of Integral theory, or evolutionary theory, or new age theory, or some other theory, and add passion, well-argued dialog, a great deal of respect and laughter, stir it up and you get the concoction we created on Saturday night.

An unbelievably wild and joyful evening. 55 people, 2 1/2 hours thriving together in that fuzzy photo, and 30 people out for dinner afterwards.

The meaning of language is certainly woolly. Amidst all the inquiry about God, human purpose...what it all means, anyway...sometimes two people thought that they disagreed. Yet most everyone else saw clearly that they did not. Yesterday Andrew Cohen published his weekly email (Quote of the Week). I was completely struck on how it summed up what most of us were in fact reaching for:

The Mind of God

It is a perpetually enthralling revelation that we are, at all levels, products of time and the creative process. But it is literally enlightening to begin to experience at the deepest level of the Self that we are truly one with the mind of God -- that energy and intelligence that originally chose to take the eternal leap from Being to Becoming fourteen billion years ago.
                                                                                        -- Andrew Cohen

A new acquaintance in Washington, DC wrote me about her concern of promoting Andrew Cohen's upcoming talk and day seminar. She pointed out that most people are something less than comfortable with spiritual authority, especially if that authority takes the form of a spiritual teacher. And especially in DC, as she wrote, because "the waters have been so muddy for so long around this town that few feel at all clean anymore... Everything that is said is expected to be spin; everything is mistrusted."

She continued:

"...the Guru-bit is very hard to swallow.  We are longing for I-Thou relationships -- we do not want to have a middleman; we do not want to be followers of a guru.  This is the breakdown as I see it. The word "guru" has to be re-languaged and disarmed.  It must be clearly stated that the metaphoric white flag of surrender (of our ego-selves) will only be directly given to Source, not through an intermediary...  My sense is that this has to be addressed to truly reach the DC community.  How Andrew Cohen (and you) deal with this will make all the difference..."

I responded:

"Yes, for us post-moderns, authority in the realm of spiritual matters is a bitter pill to swallow. We are jaded, and for good reason, but more importantly, we are individualists, and seek for ourselves, to have our own independent relationship with the sacred. Boy do we! Andrew walks this line very well as he insists upon partners and not followers. Of course, unless the individual embraces freedom and the obligation to speak for, act for, care for the whole of the life process, there can be no liberation. And yet there is a real hierarchy - some of us have gone further than others. What I have found, imbued as I am with our narcissistic culture, is that bowing down to the fact of God (or whatever name you use...) - as oneself, as guru, as omnipresent consciousness - is all the same...This is a subtle point for if the teacher has absolute integrity, messenger and message are one - you bow down to the sacred principle and you also bow down to the teacher. If you don't, it's impossible to independently and courageously take responsibility for the highest as oneself. So surrender and independence, in the end, are the same thing."

This gets at something important: whether we need, and implicitly, whether we are willing to trust, in the authority of a spiritual teacher.

It might be possible that despite the fact that we live in an era where personal truths are sacrosanct, and despite the fact that countless spiritual authority figures have fallen on their faces, and despite the fact that past religious myths (and moral coda) struggle to find relevance -- there are spiritual visionaries with the courage and heart to walk their talk.

We need them. Especially in DC.

I can't imagine a better life than one dedicated to working together with others to cultivate in the most serious and inspiring way our collective capacity for creating a world beyond ego.

I have absolutely no doubt that this is possible, a testament to my daily life in which I and others are immersed in a living experiment to map the contours of such a world. This is the promise and goal of the teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment, and the vision and passion of teacher Andrew Cohen.

What we are discovering is that there is a leading edge to consciousness, a farthest point where we form our highest and deepest understanding of human purpose. That edge is where the future is forged, where we stand on a creative frontier and take this whole project of human life or, really, the entirety of the Life process, to the next level.

As my zaadz bio describes, 15 years ago I abandoned my post in tropical forest conservation to pursue a higher calling. The impetus to do so was, to no small degree, the result of my work with the conservation and international development institutions in DC. How power is wielded in a vacuum of authentic leadership...what a mess! It convinced me that a significant minority of human beings had to evolve beyond the only real obstacle, which is the ever-selfish and all-too-compelling belief that we have the right to live only for ourselves. When you step back and look objectively, the extent to which good intentions and good works are undermined by ego is nothing short of tragic.

As goes the saying, you don't know how bad it is until you see how good it can get.

So, years later, it was surprising to me to discover that one of the highest concentrations of What Is Enlightenment? magazine readers in the US is in the DC area. I had to ask myself why. Having led WIE Salons and Evolutionary Enlightenment Seminars in DC over the last several months, I'm formulating an answer to this question.

Every city possesses a unique collective set of agreements that create, in sum, its culture. In DC I've noticed:

1.  People care about the future. Granted, imperfections abound, but clearly idealism has brought many tens of thousands who seek to influence the institutions of power that are concentrated here like no other city on earth.

2.  Honest inquiry matters, consensus matters, intelligence and heart matter, and finding out what is true matters. It's a political culture: people articulate their positions clearly, and they listen to others. There are consequences to the use of power, and people know this.

3.  And because there are consequences, there is a very well-honed BS detector. This creates capacities for discernment that are essential if we're to build a future on the foundation of the best part of our humanity.

4.  DC is a culture of power, and there is a demand for leadership. Permeating the consciousness of the city is the awareness of a crying need for a new moral context - or philosophical premise - for human life in the 21^st century. The old myths have been discarded, and new ones that measure up to the unprecedented challenges of our time are needed. People know this, if only barely, but they know it, and they feel the responsibility to find an entirely new approach.

Yes, there are countless exceptions, but when you think about it, these qualities are clearly part of the beam-and-girder structures of the culture that frame, in part, how life unfolds in DC. And how life unfolds in DC is important - this city exerts an enormous influence over much of our planet. Strengthening these fundamentally positive and life-affirming characteristics strengthens the best part of our humanity, and we can't underestimate the positive ripples from doing this.

I think this is why people turn to the magazine for its substantive moral, philosophical, and spiritual inquiry. They know that what they do matters, in ways small or large, and they know that an intimate relationship exists between the transformation of the individual (you and me) and the future of life on earth.

Just a reminder: Andrew Cohen is coming to DC in May.



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I wanted to share a couple of insights since my partner, Katherine, and I, both students of Andrew Cohen's for over 14 years, got into a relationship a few months ago. The first is that it is utterly great to be in a committed relationship. I want to start there, because what I say next might be considered a little controversial.

Our culture characterizes the union between two people as puzzle pieces fitting together perfectly, as soul mates who "fill in the missing colors / in each other's paint-by-numbers dreams" (Jackson Browne, The Pretender). That was certainly how I always imagined it: the journey realized, finally made whole by filling the hole in the center of my being, ultimately affirmed by being seen through her eyes as that someone special.

In our oh-so-secular world, the pinnacle of life is often held to be the sexual-romantic bond. And if the matrimony is in a spiritual context, the pinnacle is even higher.

Again, I have to confess, standing where I am in the land of post-nuptial bliss, it is pretty nice. But paint as we might, we both know that we can't fill in each others colors. In fact, we don't even try. And this is in striking contrast with the strongly cherished belief encoded into our psyches - hers, mine, and everyone else's - that we can reach ultimate fulfillment in the arms of another. That we deeply, often invisibly, hold this to be true makes sense. Life has been making more of itself for hundreds of millions of years, and we are hard-wired to keep the program going. But as powerfully seductive as the idea is that only two parts can make the whole, it is just not true. That perfect other can never fill "the God-shaped hole at the heart of our being." The part of the self that calls out for wholeness requires not a union with another but for a union with the whole of the life process.

I sort of knew this before getting into this committed relationship, but being together now is a constant revelation of why previous efforts at committed relationship never worked: they were built on totally false premises. Worse, as written into the plotline of every daytime TV drama, these failed efforts were a set-up from the first twinkle in my eye for conflict. "What do you mean, you don't love me anymore?!" Isn't it just a bit curious that all too often people bond as friends and lovers, build a life and family together, and descend into bitter estrangement? Sleeping with the enemy, wanting fulfillment from another, then demanding it...it is all so desperate, when you get right down to it.

So what I find exciting, and this is the second insight, is that the play of these forces arises in a context, that of awakening to one's purpose - and to the only true source of ultimate fulfillment - which is to be here to create a new world, and in this case a world in which the sexual bond, with all of its inherent attachments, is entirely free of conflict because you enter into it already whole and want nothing from it.