Living on the Evolutionary Edge
by Andrew Cohen • Lennox, MA

Most human beings are born and die within a preexistent cultural context that we don’t necessarily feel is up to us to define. Without even knowing it, we tend to do what everyone else is doing. But at this particular time in history, for these new evolutionary stages, structures, and potentials to emerge, it requires rare and heroic men and women who have awakened to the conviction that this next step needs to happen and that we’re the ones who have to take it.

How many of us are willing to bear the emotional, psychological, philosophical, and spiritual overwhelm of being real pioneers? It’s all too easy to sit back, observe the evolutionary challenges confronting our world, and fall into a state of despair or cynicism. It takes courage. And it takes spiritual self-confidence.

Spiritual confidence is an unshakable confidence in the inherent positivity of the life-process itself – at the very edge of the evolving cosmos, in all its chaos and complexity. Having this kind of confidence is of the utmost importance for anyone who cares deeply about the way things are – and even more so for those who want to create something new, who would dare to be the one to stand for and bear witness to that which is higher.

Being an evolutionary change-agent means actively endeavoring to move the entire process forward through your own transformation. It won’t be easy, but I have no doubt that for those of us who have glimpsed the glory of our higher potentials, this is what we are here to do. I am convinced that the awakening of the spiritual impulse in our own hearts and minds is actually an evolutionary trigger – God’s quiet voice imploring us to relinquish our attachment to our culturally conditioned relativism, our materialism, and our narcissism. Why are we being called? So we will take responsibility for the evolution of our own consciousness and culture, in such a way that raises the bar for all of us.

When we’re talking about pushing that edge, there’s always going to be an element of enormous risk. Evolution is a messy process. There are no guarantees. So anybody who really wants to strive for something new is going to have to be willing to make mistakes, take wrong turns, and even to fail. The simple truth is this: If not failing is more important to you than genuinely succeeding, you’re never going to make it. If you want to succeed, you must have the spiritual self-confidence, heroic will, tenacity, courage, and commitment to fearlessly engage with the evolutionary process until something profound, mysterious, and extraordinary happens that cannot be undone.

When you are living this fully and fearlessly, the unmanifest potential of the near future flickers into awareness and even in brief moments, seems to actually become manifest in the present moment. And when we meet others in this same heightened state of consciousness, together we can see and feel, directly cognize, and intuit a compelling future that is possible to create here and now, in the present moment – not as a remote ideal but as the most screamingly imminent potential imaginable. Finding those other individuals who feel as passionately as we do about the evolution of consciousness and culture, liberates and uplifts our spirits and gives us the inspiration to take bold steps we otherwise might not have the courage to take.

Indeed, we are compelled to be the future that we can see – the future that is emerging in the field of our awareness so clearly that it seems we are already there. But this poses a greater challenge than may first be apparent. Because you can see it so clearly, it is easy to assume that the higher levels of consciousness you are experiencing already exist, and all you need to do is step into them. But in fact, most often, what you are seeing is only a potential, not an actual preexisting level that simply needs to be reached.

This is very important to understand. The future is not a given. What’s going to happen is not already known and is not predetermined. The higher stages of consciousness and culture that lie in front of us do not yet exist. The newly emerging potentials in consciousness and culture have not yet appeared with enough consistency to become self-existing levels, or new “habits” in the interior fabric of the cosmos. They only come into being to the degree that you and I consciously participate together to develop those higher capacities in ourselves. The awakening human bears such a profound responsibility to be an evolutionary pioneer – to be the one who is literally living in that place between the present and the future.

Living in that place means that the next stage of development exists in your own awareness as an ever-present but as yet un-manifest potential, right now. With this emerging intuition of the future, your consciousness expands and you have the experience of being intensely awake. Why? Because your conscious, living relationship with the future enlightens your relationship to the present moment, fills it with conscience, purpose, and direction. And then your active, participatory relationship with life today becomes an expression of your creative responsibility to give rise to the new world of tomorrow.

Excerpted from Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening by Andrew Cohen (Select Books) ©2011 EnlightenNext. All rights reserved.

Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, cultural visionary, and founder of the global non-profit EnlightenNext and its award-winning publication EnlightenNext magazine. Since 1986, Cohen has been traveling the world giving public lectures and intensive retreats on his original, contemporary spiritual path and practice, Evolutionary Enlightenment. Through his writings, his teachings and his ongoing dialogues with philosophers, scientists, mystics, and religious leaders from almost every major tradition, he has become known as one of the defining voices of the new evolutionary spirituality.