Beyond Awakening

To a New Republic of the Heart

by

“My Guru Experiment: Twenty Years with Andrew Cohen” with Tom Steininger

tom-steiningerThis Sunday, October 5th at 10am Pacific I’ll be joined by Tom Steininger for a conversation entitled “My Guru Experiment: Twenty Years with Andrew Cohen.”

In 1993, Tom met spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and fairly soon after joined his community that was then in Marin County, California. He became a close student of Andrew, the leader of EnlightenNext Germany, and produced a German-language version of Cohen’s magazine, What Is Enlightenment?  Or as it was called in later years, EnlightenNext magazine.

What motivated someone who had completed his PhD with a thesis on Ken Wilber and Martin Heidegger and was a successful radio producer and therapist in Vienna to drop everything and move nearly 10,000 miles to be the student of a contemporary guru? More importantly, what led him to stay when Cohen’s methods and the culture around him were revealed to be seriously flawed? These are some of the questions we’ll be digging into on Sunday.

Tom had a first-hand experience of what he considers a profound Higher-We breakthrough in 2001 at the EnlightenNext ashram in Western Massachusetts—and also of the problems of a closed pyramid hierarchy led by an imperfect and often careless guru.

He now runs the successful German progressive-spiritual magazine Evolve and the weekly webradio show, Radio Evolve. He participates in several innovative and dynamic collaborations with other thought leaders and spiritual teachers. As one of the leaders of EnlightenNext Germany, he has been developing and refining the insights and practices from EnlightenNext’s Higher-We experiment into a new dialogue practice, which he calls “Evolutionary Dialogue.” Based on more than 20 years of collective work in EnlightenNext, this dialogue process is a new contribution to the practices of multi-perspective dialogue and Higher-We emergence.

This promises to be a fascinating and timely dialogue, coming as it does after the collapse of the global EnlightenNext network; and while Andrew Cohen is still on sabbatical to work with his own mistakes and shortcomings as a teacher and leader. Listen in as Tom shares about his 20 year “guru experiment,” and together we explore the light and the shadow sides of a radical spiritual endeavor with a powerful “guru.”

About Tom Steininger

Dr. Tom Steininger studied philosophy at the University of Vienna with a special emphasis on awareness issues and social evolution. He worked for the Austrian Radio (OE1) and as a freelance journalist. He is a founder and current editor of the German Evolve Magazine for consciousness and culture and was the longtime senior editor.

Tom taught at the Master’s Program for “Conscious Evolution” at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut, USA in collaboration with Don Beck, Susanne Cook-Greuter, and Allan Combs. Today he heads EnlightenNext Germany / Switzerland and moderates the Webradio Radio show “Radio Evolve.” Tom lectures internationally and teaches courses on evolutionary spirituality.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:

Sunday, October 5th at 10:00am Pacific; 11:00am Mountain; 12:00pm Central; 1:00pm Eastern

*Find Your Local Time

Please Note: There will be a limited number of lines available on the live conference call, so we encourage you to listen online if possible. To make sure you can get through by phone, we encourage you to dial in early.

ACCESS INSTRUCTIONS

To download the audio after the teleseminar is complete go to the Beyond Awakening Audio Page
We look forward to your attendance!

Sincerely,
The Beyond Awakening Team