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A Different Kind of Transparency

Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher and author who discusses the concept of transparency. He underwent a "dark night of the soul" in his early twenties that led him to pursue spirituality. In New York, Cohen felt he had to hide his spiritual interests when asked about his work. However, in India he felt relief being able to openly discuss spirituality without social pressures. Later, Cohen fully embraced his identity as a spiritual teacher and public proponent of higher truths.

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36 views2 pages

A Different Kind of Transparency

Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher and author who discusses the concept of transparency. He underwent a "dark night of the soul" in his early twenties that led him to pursue spirituality. In New York, Cohen felt he had to hide his spiritual interests when asked about his work. However, in India he felt relief being able to openly discuss spirituality without social pressures. Later, Cohen fully embraced his identity as a spiritual teacher and public proponent of higher truths.

Uploaded by

Khay Nochefranca
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A Different Kind of Transparency

by ANDREW COHEN
AUGUST 5, 2012, 1:22 AM

There’s a lot of talk about transparency these days. In the internet age we are letting it all hang
out—whatever it is—for better and for worse. And it looks like there’s no going back.

Democrats want to know about Mitt Romney’s bank accounts and tax returns, while many
government agencies from all over the world want to see Julian Assange and his ilk put behind
bars for eternity. On Facebook, painfully personal and intimate details of people’s private lives
are on display for all to see, whether they like it or not. It seems that “transparency” is becoming
a new obligation.

As a spiritual teacher, I uphold our individual and collective capacity for transparency as an
important human value. But when I think about transparency, it is of a different order altogether
than what has been in the news of late - to me it means being willing to be public about our
deepest values in a cultural context where our perspectives may not be recognized or
understood. It also means actually being the person we appear to be.

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When I was twenty-two, I went through a “dark night of the soul.” I was lost, depressed, and felt
trapped in the narrow confines of my own psychological world. I was also haunted by a short-
lived spiritual experience that had revealed to me a glimpse of a completely different dimension
of reality than any I had ever known. In desperation, I totally changed the direction of my life and
became a “seeker.” This was a big leap into the unknown for me, as I had grown up in a fiercely
secular family. The perennial quest for higher truths, meaning, purpose, and spiritual depth
became the guiding principle of my life.

The only problem was that I was living in Manhattan. And in New York, when people ask you
what you do, they’re not trying to unearth your deepest values. They want to know how you
make a living, and if you make a lot of it. If you’re doing something more “alternative,” like music
or art, what they really want to know is whether you are famous or if you’ve made it. When
people asked me what I did, after I told them about my day job, I would proceed to tell them
about what I was really interested in, and in most cases the atmosphere became instantly
uncomfortable. It was as if they didn’t know where to look.

That was why, several years later, when I made my first trip to India, I found myself
experiencing an unexpected sense of existential relief the minute I stepped off the plane in New
Delhi. It wasn’t because I’d found what I was looking for, it was because in that ancient culture I
was permitted to put spiritual values before material ones. And I could be transparent about it. I
didn’t have to hide or pretend. I could “come out of the closet,” so to speak, and be who I really
was.

A few years later, I did find what I was looking for and my identity went through its final shift. A
refugee from a culture of secular materialism, I was now an unabashed and public proponent of
higher truths, meaning, purpose, and spiritual depth. But it’s easy for me to be transparent about
who I am these days because I stopped experiencing the need to pretend or to live up to others’
expectations a long time ago. Indeed, it’s a big relief to be able to be an open book.

Who is Andrew Cohen?

Andrew Cohen (born 23 October 1955) is an American guru, spiritual teacher, magazine editor,
author, and musician who has developed what he characterizes as a unique path
of spiritual transformation called "Evolutionary Enlightenment."

Cohen has conducted retreats, given talks, participated in conferences and collaborated with
others. He was awarded a silver medal from ForeWord magazine's 2011 Book-of-the-Year
award for his book Evolutionary Enlightenment. In 2012, Mind Body Spirit magazine listed him at
Number 28 on their 2012 top 100 most spiritually influential people alive today.

On June 26, 2013, Cohen announced on his blog that he would be taking "a sabbatical for an
extended period of time," after confrontational exchanges with his closest students, who helped
Cohen to realize, as he put it, that "in spite of the depth of my awakening, my ego is still alive
and well."

Reference:
Cohen, A. (2012). A different kind of transparency. Huff Post. Retrieved from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-z-cohen/a-different-kind-of-
transparency_b_1818434.html
n.a. (2014). Andrew Cohen (spiritual teacher). Wikipedia. Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cohen_(spiritual_teacher)

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