Dear Friend,

The realisation of “Cosmic Conscience” represents a tipping point in the path and practice of Evolutionary Enlightenment – an inner threshold that, once crossed, changes everything.

It is that moment in your own evolution when you begin to care more about the process as a whole than you care about your ego’s fears, desires, or concerns. It’s the essential shift of identity that the whole teaching rests on: from ego to Authentic Self.

When this occurs, your motive for pursuing enlightenment evolves from one that is fundamentally self-centered, to one that is focused on the evolution of consciousness itself. This shift is profoundly significant – not only for your own higher development, but for the evolution of our shared culture.

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From one perspective, the evolution of culture can be described as a gradual widening of our circles of care and concern for something greater than ourselves – from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric and beyond.

Cosmic Conscience enables us to develop the widest possible circle of care. We awaken to a much deeper sense of responsibility – not only for the welfare of our fellow human beings and the plight of our planet and ecosystem, but for something even bigger.

We begin to experience a felt sense of “cosmocentric” care. We become more identified with the evolutionary process as a whole and less concerned with other notions of self.

This kind of care is not related to your ego, your ethnic background, your religious orientation, or your culture. These are all very real dimensions of who you are, but cosmocentric awareness comes from a deeper and higher part of yourself that is fundamentally free from all of that.

What uniquely emerges at a cosmocentric level of development is a felt sense of ecstatic urgency about the evolution of consciousness itself. There’s a deep identification with the evolutionary process, and a profound care for where all of this is headed.

How often have you experienced a level of care for life itself so overwhelming that it completely transcends anything personal? When you feel this unique upward pull at an emotional level, it’s a significant evolutionary event with profound implications for our shared culture.

When you start to emotionally respond to life from this part of yourself, something extraordinary begins to happen. You have no doubt that there is something infinitely bigger than your own personal spiritual aspirations, and it is calling you.

You may have started out on the spiritual path wanting liberation for yourself – to become an enlightened human being. But when you pursue this goal seriously in an evolutionary context, sooner or later the narrative changes direction. It shifts from “I want that” to “that wants me”.

It’s a truly religious feeling – an authentically devotional sentiment in a completely post-traditional context. That’s the beauty of it: the over-inflated postmodern ego always wants for itself, and the only thing that can really turn the tables on its endless craving is the startling recognition that the very thing you were seeking wants everything from you. It turns your whole world upside down.

I believe that realising Cosmic Conscience is a powerful route to building a culture that is founded on a fundamentally different value system; a real solution to the postmodern predicament of narcissism and exaggerated self-importance, and a way to begin working together without habitually defaulting to competitive ego-based interactions.

At this pivotal moment in our cultural conversation, I can’t imagine anything that could be more appropriate or more liberating for those of us at the leading edge – and I can’t imagine anything more desperately needed for the evolutionary process than for a small but significant number of us to cross this momentous threshold.

– Andrew Cohen

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