For the spirituality to explore one must unfold and explore its consciousness. It is our newly gained self-reflectivity that give us the ability to be aware of ’self’, as a formless being. One of the more thought provoking ideas he mentioned was “If thought disappears then time disappears. If time disappears then the world disappears. But you still exist.” …anyone?
Evolutionary Spirituality can be described as the creative or Utopian impulse that reaches for perfection. “It is not about the NOW”, Cohen says, “it is about the COULD BE”. In his opinion it is awful not to reach for perfection…. which immediately made me think about maximizing/satisficing. Cohen sees it that 4 billion years of evolution has inevitably led to our growing awareness of self… I think it is not inevitable but more of a question of defining point NOW and then re-interpreting history accordingly.
It is, by the way, interesting to see that Don Beck’s perspective on the Sprial doesn’t talk about Cohen’s third tier, even in his latest publication. The underlying principles of the third tier, that are very much present in other parts of the Spiral where not being mentioned, or at least I missed them. The absence of the underlying principle resulted in a very much ‘beliefs’ driven presentation.
Although most parts of his views really resonated with me, I must conclude that Cohen is in a totally different paradigm than I am. I can’t suppress the feeling that Cohen uses the Spiral presented by Graves, Beck and Merry for his own use; his personal spin-off. Nothing wrong with that, but I am doubtful whether it can be seen as the ‘official’ next step on the Spiral. It seemed to be more of a ultimate state of being, something to strive for, but not likely to be reached in any society in my lifetime, for I believe that spirituality can still only be part of life, not life itself. But as Cohen puts it: “it’s the difference between being and becoming”… I had a wondrous evening.
stefan, i like your post and i definitely share the same paradigm as you. it is very hard to ‘feel’ or ‘envision’ or ‘become’ what he says. but, i can imagine that in certain events, or certain phases of your life, you stop thinking and you become. does cohen have examples that he uses to describe these sensations?
(it is even difficult to talk about what he sees because i don’t have the words in this paradigm:))
Well, I think the paradigm he describes is a ultimate goal, something to reach for. It is not something to be seen easily in society as a whole, but something for some individuals to experience. Lots of what Cohen said resonated with me to some extend but what really happened was that the attendees at this seminar seemed to be co-exploring this next phase together. They were co-exploring this new metaphor to which none of the individuals themselves had the answer. (like Peter Merry’s statement “emergence happens in the space between us”)
I reckon that I am not fully into the paradigm Cohen describes, so for me it is still hard to give an answer to your question. Like what you said seems to be pretty much on-spot: “I don’t have the words in this paradigm”. It could very well be that the critique I posted comes from not understanding the theory fully, I’m aware of that.
Note:
Don Beck his book/ spiral theory is for a huge part based on large scale research. So even the new tiers are not imagined, they are based on research-panels etc. Al his levels are present in the current paradigms. On the contrary Cohen’s theory is based on reasoning and small-scale tests and he is seeking for the road ahead. This is not making Cohen’s levels or tiers less valuable, it might just explain why they haven’t been adopted in the book. Don en Andrew do a lot of presentations together so I don’t think that they disagree =)
If one would really try to understand the Spiral Theory, the work of Ken Wilber would be a necessity, I guess.
The state of ‘becoming’ is a very Buddhist state of mind.