I’m adding Cohen to group of those who give us many insights, but here is an especially “Meaningful Living” article worth reading.

I’ll give you this quote to wet your appetite.

“Another very important dimension of spiritual practice is the cultivation of what I call spiritual self-respect. That is because spiritual self-respect is ego-transcendence. We must do whatever we need to do to respect ourselves so that we can respect each other. It’s more important to respect yourself than to “love yourself.” In a spiritually awakened context, respect for self always means respect for God or Spirit. Respect for that which is higher is transformative because it instantly ennobles and dignifies our separate personalities. That’s very different from having to love your ego in order to feel comfortable being who you are.”

The following quotes are from either EnlightenNext’s Quote of the Week or their Think About This email.

“Your Best Friend and Your Worst Enemy”

The ego, or individuated self-sense, is both your best friend and your worst enemy. It is your best friend because, in the most positive sense, it represents your capacity to individuate—to see yourself as a unique, autonomous entity and to bear witness to your own experience with some measure of objectivity. Individuation is what makes it possible for you to be a conscious agent of evolution, a vessel for Spirit in action. The more profound our individuation, the more powerfully Spirit can shine through us. However, ego is also our worst enemy. And this is because, for too many of us, over-identification with our separate individuality obscures the deeper and higher spiritual dimensions of our being. It is very important to understand this paradoxical nature of ego if you, as an individual, want to take responsibility for creating the future, as yourself.

~ Andrew Cohen

“Evolutionary Becoming: A New Orientation”

Of course, there have always been rare individuals and inspired geniuses who, animated by the pulsation of the evolutionary impulse, are ever-reaching for that which is new, who have felt compelled to make significant progress and create new pathways in their particular fields. But what I’m speaking about here is not a particular kind of genius or talent—it’s a certain attitude and aspiration in relationship to the whole process of being alive. This shift in values that creates the conditions for perpetual emergence is a fundamental shift in orientation that is just beginning to dawn on us as we awaken to the fact that we are part of a process that is going somewhere. And it’s not merely a personal shift; it is a very deep cultural change in the human psyche as a whole.

~ Andrew Cohen

“A Greater Purpose”

I don’t believe the purpose of life is to just be happy. Why would God take fourteen billion years to produce highly evolved sentient life-forms that would ultimately develop the extraordinary capacity for self-reflective awareness, simply in order for them to be able to experience happiness? It’s my conviction that we are here for a reason, that there is a grand and great purpose to our presence in this universe, and that none of us are going to truly find what we are looking for unless we get over our misguided pursuit of personal happiness and connect with that greater sense of purpose—that ultimate reason for being.

~ Andrew Cohen

“Already Free”

Scientists tell us that when time began, fourteen billion years ago, something came from nothing. When you awaken to the ground of all Being, in a deep meditative state, you realize that when something came from nothing, the nothing didn’t disappear. That unmanifest, unborn dimension is the ever-present ground out of which everything is still arising in every moment. It is what the Buddha called “the deathless,” and what others call “eternity consciousness.” When you awaken to this dimension in your own awareness, you will find yourself always already resting in the eternal moment before time began. This is the recognition that liberates: Prior to everything, I already am. The experience of this recognition is not one of becoming liberated. It is of being already liberated. What you realize when you awaken to that ground is that there is a part of each and every one of us that is already free—from everything. That part of yourself, which is the ground of Being, has never been bound, trapped, or limited in any way. That’s the part of yourself that I want you to discover. It’s not the part of yourself that needs to become free. It is already free, right now.

~ Andrew Cohen

“Redefining God”

Using the word God is always tricky as it’s a very charged term that means different things to different people. I like to use that word to represent the idea of an absolute principle. In an evolutionary context, we could choose to describe that absolute principle as “the energy and intelligence that initially created and is continuing to create the universe.” In the way that I understand it, that driving force is more an impulse than it is a divine being. In that impulse, there is no predetermined plan at work. It is a directionality, a momentum, a reaching towards. This definition of God does not depend on any kind of metaphysical belief or faith. All we need to do is look into the truth of our own experience and what science has revealed to us. 13.7 billion years of cosmic evolution has given rise to 3.8 billion years of biological evolution, which has given rise to tens of thousands of years of cultural evolution. We’re on a moving train. We’re all part of a process that’s going somewhere. We don’t have to believe in a metaphysical deity to feel the drive of an evolutionary impulse as a tangible energetic presence in our own experience at different levels. At the lowest level, the sexual drive can be recognized as an evolutionary impulse. At a much higher level, the uniquely human compulsion towards innovation can be recognized as an evolutionary impulse. And finally, at the highest level, the spiritual impulse, which is a compulsion towards higher consciousness, can be recognized as an evolutionary impulse. Something miraculous is going on here and it’s trying to happen in and through all of us in every moment.

—Andrew Cohen

“Questioning Our Spiritual Values”

Those of us who are interested in the spiritual dimension of evolution and how it affects our shared culture, need to start questioning so many of our assumptions. Today, although we are well into the twenty-first century, too many of our progressive psycho-spiritual values and practices haven’t changed very much in the last thirty or forty years. Back in the glory days of the late 1960s and 70s, when a real cultural revolution was sweeping the Western world, diving into our psychological interiors—developing sensitivity, inclusivity, and compassion—and mystically awakening to the oneness of all things were truly bold and radical steps forward….

I strongly feel that what is needed in our time is a psycho-spiritual perspective and practice that is very different. Indeed, there are much deeper and more culturally relevant ways in which we need to connect, spiritually and philosophically. Now, instead of being so concerned with healing the wounds of the past, it is time for a spirituality that is fueled by an overwhelming sense of urgency about what’s possible in the future. It is time to move beyond an approach to spiritual practice that too often has become reduced to just another form of narcissistic self-absorption. In a culture so infatuated with extreme individualism, it is time to get over ourselves, once and for all, for the biggest reason that there is: to awaken wholeheartedly to the evolutionary impulse, so that we can create the world anew.

—Andrew Cohen

“A Source of Infinite Renewal”

Those of us who are interested in the future need perpetual access to mystical empowerment and spiritual energy—a source of infinite renewal that will enable us to bring into creative action the highest evolutionary potentials we have glimpsed. It’s one thing to have an intuition of what’s possible, but it’s another thing altogether to have enough spiritual self-confidence to translate that kind of inspiration into action. And the place we find that confidence, that fearless willingness to take responsibility for creating the future here and now, is through awakening to what I call the evolutionary impulse—the ever-present energy and intelligence that gave rise to the entire cosmic process.

                                                                                                                              —Andrew Cohen