A collection of recent talks at Manifest Nirvana
In this provocative talk, Andrew Cohen draws on more than three decades of experience as a teacher to contemplate the unreasonable nature of spirit. In a cultural context which seems less ready than ever to embrace authentic spirituality, how can we create the appropriate “set and setting” for an uncompromising and radical journey to self-transcendence?
Andrew Cohen looks at what it means to deeply honour the truth of enlightenment by moving beyond personal trauma, while still embracing the painful truth of our fragmented and imperfect human body-mind. How can these two apparently different selves peacefully co-exist?
If we want to mature in our spiritual practice, it’s profoundly important to stand courageously behind what we have realised, by letting go and by responding. Only then can we develop spiritual self-confidence, and allow ourselves to be transformed by our own deepest revelations about the nature of reality.
Andrew Cohen invites us to connect with the liberating and joyous impulse to fully engage with life, free from fear or limitation. With gentle guidance, it’s possible to discover a level of trust and surrender that immediately reveals the ecstatic energy and deep intelligence of our own authentic nature – the creative principle of the cosmos itself is alive within us as a latent potential, waiting to be unleashed.
Andrew Cohen invites us to dive into inspired uncertainty as a way to hold the overwhelming complexity of the relative world. Can we find the courage to deeply interrogate our subjective experience, and recognise that in a relative context there is no final truth?
What would it mean to be a woman or man, of whatever orientation or sexual preference, who is completely free from any form of conscious or unconscious neurotic identification with sexuality or gender? In a culture that seems ever more in love with its own reflection, how can we stand courageously for authentic freedom, while transcending and including all superficial differences or distinctions?
Andrew Cohen invites us to discover a state of awareness which opens up new and unimagined potentials for human relatedness. When we can share the totality of the human experience from this transpersonal perspective, we become immersed in a different kind of intimacy that embraces a vast cosmic context, while simultaneously transcending and including the personal dimension.
Andrew Cohen underlines the importance of developing the deep spiritual self-confidence we need to live at the very edge of the evolving cosmos – to realise our own latent potential to become heroic change-agents who will dare to stand for and bear witness to that which is higher.
Andrew Cohen explores the intersection of free will, destiny and awakened consciousness through the lens of Evolutionary Enlightenment. He argues that while much of our experience is indeed governed by deep forces of conditioning – and simultaneously driven by positive and negative karmic momentum – we do nevertheless have a small, but all-important, measure of free will that can be dramatically enhanced by spiritual awakening.
Andrew Cohen explores the promise and perils of seeking perfection, and asks us to interrogate these delicate questions from the highest possible perspective: when we have tasted perfection in higher state experiences, what does it mean for our fragmented and ever-imperfect world? How do we embrace the apparent contradiction of these two very different realities? And can we minimise the perils and maximise the promise of these higher states?
