What Is the EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle?

An introduction from evolutionary pioneer Andrew Cohen

Dear friends,

I want to tell you about a thrilling new initiative we hope you will want to participate in. It’s called the EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle. It’s an exciting, perpetually developmental, integral forum and collective process in which as many people as are interested can actually participate in the most important cause there is—the evolution of consciousness and culture.

Whether you are new to EnlightenNext, or long time associates or readers of EnlightenNext magazine (formerly What Is Enlightenment?), I would like to take this opportunity to warmly invite you to participate in a broad cycle of transformative events and forums that my students and colleagues are creating. I firmly believe that if we want the world to change in a significant way, and if we’re serious about creating a better future for us all, then it’s up to those of us at the leading edge—which means people like you and me who have been blessed with education and free time—to make sure it happens. We have to be the ones to create the future.

Before I tell you more about the EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle, I’d like to tell you a little about my background and how I came to understand that the evolution of our individual consciousness is directly related to the evolution of our collective culture and to the world that we create and share together.

I became a spiritual teacher in 1986, when I was thirty years old, after having been a dedicated seeker for eight years. In those days, I didn’t really know much about the complexity of the evolutionary process, but I did know what consciousness was because when my seeking came to an end, IT entered my being so deeply that I was no longer the same person.

What I soon began to discover, however, was that awakening to consciousness doesn’t necessarily, in and of itself, clarify for us how we are supposed to deal with the ever-increasing complexity of human life. I found that awakening to higher states frees us from the world but doesn’t automatically tell us how to live in it. This is especially true for those of us who live in the current postmodern cultural context where, for many at the leading edge, traditional belief systems have been superseded by an emphasis on the rights of the individual above all else.

If we are going to awaken spiritually, outside of the interpretive structures of traditional belief systems, then we need to come up with appropriate new ways to translate what the infinite nature of consciousness actually has to do with the reality of our life conditions at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It was my attempt to find the answer to this important question that led me to start What Is Enlightenment? magazine more than seventeen years ago.

The exciting inquiry that this magazine is dedicated to has gradually changed in its emphasis as I’ve developed in my own understanding as a spiritual teacher. While initially I was concerned principally with the experience of enlightenment and what its significance was in our post-traditional context, as time passed, my own perspective on what I was trying to do deepened. Slowly but surely, I awakened to the evolutionary perspective. I discovered the obvious and awareness-expanding truth that my own inquiry was occurring within the larger context of a developmental process that began with the big bang fourteen billion long years ago. I began to see that the universe has an interior and an exterior and that the exterior is matter and the interior is consciousness. I came to recognize that my capacity for awareness was itself the product of time and that everything that we are, have been, and can be is all part and parcel of a process that is, even at this moment, awakening to itself through our very own hearts and minds.

I came to appreciate more than ever how the spiritual experience is the most important and powerful vehicle through which human beings connect most intimately with the process that has given them life. And it became more and more apparent that the way we interpret those experiences is principally informed by our cultural beliefs and shared values. It became impossible to avoid the direct relationship between the values and beliefs we share and cherish and the ways in which we consciously and not so consciously interpret every dimension of our experience—from the gross to the subtle, from the mundane to the profound—in every moment. What makes this even more complex is that many of these values are culturally conditioned and therefore are not necessarily very apparent to us. As all this became clear to me, it also became obvious that unless we make a concerted effort to evolve our shared values at the very same time as we cultivate our capacity to awaken to deeper states of consciousness, it will be impossible to individually and collectively evolve in a comprehensive and truly integral manner.

All of our work at EnlightenNext is dedicated to bringing the light of awareness to this delicate and all-important multidimensional process. We are also deeply committed to facilitating the actual evolutionary transformation that I am speaking about. Indeed, our work is driven by a passion to push this process forward, at its leading edge. The EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle is our attempt to facilitate, for as many people as possible, a direct awakening to higher and deeper dimensions of consciousness beyond ego and the conscious evolution of our individual and collective value spheres. It’s our bold endeavor to put all the pieces together. We want to help to define—in partnership with many friends, co-evolutionaries, and fellow seekers of truth and meaning—what the next steps for all of us actually are.

In order to facilitate this exciting project, we are going to initiate an annual series of activities centered around two yearly events that present opportunities for the deepest growth and collective development. One will be a month-long spiritual retreat dedicated to the mystical awakening of consciousness at both the individual and collective levels. The other will be an annual international conference, dedicated to being a forum that brings together leading-edge thinkers, philosophers, and visionaries from every possible field of endeavor who are committed to the transformation of our world in the context of conscious evolution. Throughout the year, we will also be hosting a variety of programs on culture and consciousness—online, in print, at all of our eleven centers, and in major cities around the world.

What is unique about this idea is that both of these major events will be directly and integrally connected with one another. We are going to track the actual connection between individual and collective inner development and the evolution of our shared values—and how that affects the new world we are trying to create together. All of the revelation that is experienced and shared at the spiritual retreat will provide the ground of awakened consciousness upon which the conference will be built. The most important themes that are brought to light in the conference will be carried into the spiritual retreat as questions for deeper contemplation and inquiry by the collective, as participants experience higher and deeper states of consciousness.

The theme of the EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle—the evolution of consciousness and culture—will always remain the same, but our understanding of what that actually means will perpetually develop. And that’s the whole idea!The developmental relationship between the retreat and the conference consciously and directly engages with the actual connection between the inner and outer dimensions of life. This will be a real-time, public, and transparent process of individual, collective, and intersubjective conscious evolution and engaged inquiry. This trajectory, from inner to outer, back to inner and back to outer again, will recur in twelve-month cycles—always within an ongoingly developmental context.

What will make this initiative truly significant is the strength of our collective intention to endeavor with all our hearts, minds, and souls to create a better world for us all. So once again, I warmly invite you to participate in some of the events, programs, and forums we are already holding around the world today and be part of this exciting new initiative that we will be launching in the coming months. By signing up as an “Evolutionary,” you can stay connected to the ever-evolving edge of this growing movement of passionate, like-minded spiritual activists who feel responsible for creating our future. I hope you will join us today!

Andrew Cohen

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