Andrew Cohen

The contemplation of consciousness__hich is the contemplation of no-thing whatsoever__s endlessly fascinating. It__ like staring at a candle in a dark night__ou find yourself mesmerized by something that is unchanging yet infinitely compelling. You feel drawn into something you don__ understand rationally but that your heart or soul grasps completely. You are drawn into it, and as you are drawn into it, the only thing you experience as real is the eternal or timeless nature of Being itself. You find yourself in a state of rapture, because the deepest part of yourself has been released from your ego__ endless fears and concerns, and drawn out of the time process altogether.

It is true that women tend to be more identified with their bodies because in this crazy world, both men and women measure women's value as human beings in relationship to their physical appearance.

Almost all the ideas we have about being a man or being a woman are so burdened with pain, anxiety, fear and self-doubt. For many of us, the confusion around this question is excruciating.

One of the most extraordinary things about being a spiritual teacher is the rare privilege of being able to look deeply into the very souls of many human beings at the same time.

The secret of enlightenment is the absolute, unequivocal conviction that it exists.What does that mean? It means you have discovered an unshakable confidence in the fact of nonduality__n the perennial mystical revelation that IT_IS . . . and I_AM_THAT. A confidence in that which can never be seen or known is the very ground of the enlightened state. Being is ungraspable, it__ unknowable, it__ ever elusive, and yet it is the only place you can find true confidence in life. Why?_Because it is the very source of life itself.The conscious experience of Being, which is what enlightenment is, has always been the ultimate answer to the most fundamental spiritual questions: Who am I? and Why am I here? Those who have tasted enlightened awareness find that in that experience, any trace of existential doubt and all the questions that go along with it instantaneously disappear. It__ not even that they are answered, but rather, the questions lose their meaning. When you locate the nonrelative, or absolute, nature of consciousness in the depths of your own self, it is experienced as a clarity that is empty of content; a weightiness that is full of nothing in particular; a profound knowing that dissolves all questions. In that questionless state, you find yourself profoundly rooted and radically free, supported by an absolute confidence in the knowing of no-thing that changes everything. The experience of that empty ground is the answer__he one answer that always liberates each and every one of us. You simply know, unequivocally, before thought, that I am. That__ the only answer:_I_AM. There is no why.