Have you ever had a mysterious attraction to a particular historical figure without really knowing why. . . until one day you find out something about their life and “bam!” it all makes sense? I recently had this experience with the twentieth century design pioneer Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) .
I always knew “Bucky” was amazing. [Read more →]
Categories:Bright Green • Consciousness • Evolutionaries • Spirituality · Tags:architecture·awakening·Buckminster Fuller·enlightenment·geodesic dome·green design·mystic
When the evolutionary impulse is manifesting in our experience as either an inspired act of creative genius or as a surge of spiritually illuminated wisdom or insight, it temporarily becomes the self, the Authentic Self of the individual. In those moments, we become animated by that same inspired energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process. This is when the ego is displaced by the presence of a higher consciousness and the self becomes illumined by that consciousness. When this shift of identity occurs, the Authentic Self becomes the driver of the personality and the personal self takes a back seat. In Evolutionary Enlightenment, first awakening to the evolutionary impulse and then striving wholeheartedly to become a living example of its expression, which is the Authentic Self, is both the path and the goal.
Categories:Evolutionary Enlightenment • Evolutionary Spirituality • Quote of the Week • Spirituality · Tags:Authentic Self·enlightenment·Evolution·Evolutionary Enlightenment·Evolutionary Impulse
In the following excerpt from her groundbreaking article, “The Divine Feminine Unveiled,” EnlightenNext magazine senior editor Elizabeth Debold describes the challenging and sacred role that women need to play in the evolution of culture: [Read more →]
Categories:Cultural Evolution • Divine Feminine • Gender • Think About This · Tags:Culture·divine feminine·elizabeth debold·Evolution·feminism·women·women's liberation
When you awaken to the evolutionary impulse behind the entire cosmos as your very own Authentic Self, you find yourself living in a new world. It’s not the small, personal world that your ego or separate self-sense has lived in since the day you were born. You may still exist and function in that world, but deeply, it’s no longer your home. Your home is the vast process that began the day the entire cosmos was born. When this kind of shift occurs irrevocably, the idea of living “for a higher purpose” doesn’t even make sense any more, because at an interior level, you and that purpose have merged and become one. You have become the actual manifestation of that higher purpose. It’s no longer external to who you are. To a significant degree, you and that higher purpose become indistinguishable. That’s what Evolutionary Enlightenment means. Your entire life becomes permeated by that evolutionary impulse, because that is who you have become.
Categories:Evolutionary Enlightenment • Evolutionary Spirituality • Idealism • Quote of the Week • Spirituality · Tags:Andrew Cohen·cosmos·ego·Evolutionary Enlightenment·Evolutionary Impulse·process·purpose
Imagine what it must be like for Caster Semenya, the top South African female runner who was in the news recently because her sex has recently been challenged. By “sex” I am not referring to her sexuality, but to the physical, biological characteristics that determine whether one is male or female. That basically comes down to whether one has testes or ovaries. Her fantastically impressive victory in the 800 meters in Berlin recently raised questions about her sex—questions that she herself shrugged off as “a joke.” Semenya has no penis; all of her life, she has thought she is a girl—a very athletic girl who loves to run and compete. Actually, to say that she “thinks she is a girl” probably misrepresents that unthinking sense of simply being who you are, living the life that you have, in the context of the roles and values that are given to you as a male or female within your culture. That’s gender: the sociocultural expectations based on sex, usually related to different roles in sexual reproduction, related to normative notions of masculinity (for males) and femininity (for females). [Read more →]
Categories:Cultural Evolution • Culture • Gender • News • Postmodernism • Uncategorized · Tags:Caster Semenya·Cultural Evolution·Culture·feminine·Gender·Herculine Barbin·hermaphrodite·intersex·Kaate Bornstein·masculine·Michel Foucault·sex identity·sports
One of the most challenging virtues for any smart, progressive, sophisticated person to cultivate today may be the quality of inspired conviction, or the utopian belief that something radically new and different is possible. In fact, we live at a time when the ideal of living passionately for anything beyond our own personal happiness or maybe that of your family and friends often seems naive, traditional, or even dangerous.
But it hasn’t always been this way. [Read more →]
Categories:EnlightenNext magazine • Evolutionaries • Evolutionary Spirituality • Idealism • Philosophy • Postmodernism • Religion • Think About This · Tags:belief·Charles Sanders Peirce·conviction·Eros·Evolution·faith·Friedrich Nietzsche·George Bernard Shaw·Henri Bergson·Postmodernism·postmodernity·Terry Eagleton
Authentic spiritual or mystical transformation is not a psychological process. Mystical teachings go deeper than that—they refer to the nature of consciousness and the structure of our deepest interiors. They are not just helpful psychological principles and practices invented by the human mind—they point us to the discovery of natural or inherent laws that become apparent to anyone who awakens to the deeper and more subtle dimensions of the interior of the cosmos. [Read more →]
Categories:Consciousness • Evolutionary Enlightenment • Evolutionary Spirituality • Idealism • Integral Philosophy • Quote of the Week • Spirituality · Tags:Andrew Cohen·Consciousness·Kosmic grooves·non-psychological·process·spiritual transformation·subtle structures·transcendence
Earlier this month, EnlightenNext magazine’s Carter Phipps and Tom Huston joined over 800 techies, futurists, and artificial intelligence buffs at the 2009 Singularity Summit in New York City to explore the latest thinking in quantum computing, robotic brains, and other “transhumanist” topics. One of the conference’s keynote speakers was inventor Ray Kurzweil — his 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near, predicts a point in the near future when accelerating technological evolution will irreversibly transform human life. In the following audio clip from an EnlightenNext interview, Kurzweil describes his theory of accelerating technological and cultural evolution: [Read more →]
Categories:Consciousness • Science • Technology • Think About This · Tags:AI·artificial intelligence·brain·Consciousness·Evolution·futurism·futurist·nueroscience·quantum computing·Ray Kurzweil·robotics·Technology·Transhumanism
The universe is more interested in you than you are in it. Why? Because the universe is trying to evolve, at the level of consciousness, and consciousness can only develop through you. Human beings are the vehicles through which consciousness can take the next step. From this perspective, we are merely pawns in a much larger process. Spiritual awakening is not about you or me—it’s about the evolution of the process itself. [Read more →]
Categories:Consciousness • Cosmology • Cultural Evolution • Evolutionaries • Evolutionary Enlightenment • Evolutionary Spirituality • Quote of the Week · Tags:Andrew Cohen·conscious evolution·enlightenment·Evolutionary Enlightenment·Kosmocentric·perspective·process
On Thursday, September 24, a new TV series debuted on ABC (in the U.S.) called FlashForward, based on a novel by the renowned Canadian science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer. Revolving around a mysterious event in which every person on the planet, at the exact same moment, experiences their consciousness leaping six months into the future, the show is already getting some very good reviews and upped the dramatic ante with an extremely good second episode last week. The third episode just aired tonight (which I’ll have to catch online tomorrow). For a taste of the show, here’s a nice vid from Time featuring author Sawyer on the set of the TV series he inspired:
[Read more →]
Categories:Consciousness • EnlightenNext magazine • Pop Culture • Science · Tags:Consciousness·FlashForward·LHC·quantum physics·Robert J. Sawyer·science fiction·time travel·TV
If you’ve never read anything by the French philosopher and scientist Henri Bergson (1859-1941), you are definitely missing out! Most famous for coining the term élan vital–or vital force–in his 1907 book Creative Evolution, Bergson was trying to reclaim the theory of evolution from the mechanistic and deterministic worldview that was starting to take hold in many cultural and philosophical circles by the end of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He argued that there is a creative, living force driving the evolutionary process. And his bold claim that free will and human choice were not only real, but products of the evolution of life, won this philosopher surprising fame in the public eye. His inspired talks filled lecture halls, he won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, and his writings were very popular during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Here’s an excerpt from Creative Evolution: [Read more →]
Categories:Cultural Evolution • Evolutionaries • Evolutionary Biology • Evolutionary Spirituality • Idealism • Philosophy • Spirituality · Tags:creative evolution·creativity·elan vital·Evolution·french·god·Henri Bergson·life·Philosophy
When we experience a profound awakening to the evolutionary impulse, we can never really go back to the way things were before we tasted its magnetic and ecstatic promise. We can’t go back to the unenlightened values and convictions of the personal self, nor can we continue to be spiritually inhibited by the powerful materialist convictions of modernity or the persuasive relativistic assertions of postmodernity. That’s because now we see and feel the pull of the possible and it will not let us rest. Because of what is becoming visible on the horizon of our inner vision, we are captivated by the immediacy of the potential within our reach.
To receive these weekly quotes by email, or to read past quotes, visit spiritual teacher and EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen’s website here.
Categories:Cultural Evolution • Evolutionary Enlightenment • Postmodernism • Quote of the Week • Spirituality · Tags:Andrew Cohen·Eros·Evolutionary Enlightenment·Materialism·Modernism·Modernity·Postmodernism·postmodernity·Values
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Andrew Cohen, Editor in Chief
Carter Phipps, Executive Editor
Elizabeth Debold, Senior Editor
Ross Robertson, Senior Assoc. Editor
Tom Huston, Senior Assoc. Editor
Joel Pitney, Associate Editor
Megan Cater, Assistant Editor
