Andrew Cohen Quotations

To campaign against colonialism is like barking up a tree that has already been cut down.

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.

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.

Most men are very attached to the idea of being male, and usually experience a lot of fear and insecurity around the idea of being a man. Most women are very identified with their gender, and also experience a tremendous amount of fear and insecurity.

When you come together with your other half, you immediately experience a sense of wholeness and completeness.

When a human being becomes so still that they begin to lose awareness of their gender, and they are simply looking into that abyss where there is no notion of self whatsoever, the world disappears. And that's really the only place to go. It's the only place to remain.

Everybody wants to get enlightened but nobody wants to change.

Our relationship to reality and to our experience is all based upon the ideas in our mind that we're always trying to live up to.

Men are recognizing that they have been forced to conform to a very narrow and rather two-dimensional picture of maleness and manhood that they have never had the freedom to question.

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.

A lot of people in spiritual life use the awareness of difference, and the spiritual glorification of difference, as a justification to indulge in that which is ultimately unreal.

Our true nature is free of any and all notions of gender, of any notions of difference whatsoever.

We really have to be willing to find out who we are instead of rebelling for the equal rights that we've been denied, that we do deserve.

The excitement that you were feeling about a special, unique path for yourself as a woman is all part of your identification with and attachment to being female. And that's ultimately all ego.

It is not enough to be well-intentioned; one must strive to put those intentions into action in a capable way. One must consider the effect his actions will have on others. Looked at like this, to persist in ignorance is itself dishonorable

I'm not convinced that what are traditionally considered to be male energies or qualities or female energies or qualities really have as much to do with gender as many people think they do.

I am already inherently full and complete as I am. Man doesn't need woman and woman doesn't need man in order to experience his or her inherent fullness.

In my experience, men are not necessarily less sensitive or compassionate than women are, and women are not necessarily any less aggressive or competitive than men are - as a matter of fact, often they are more so!

We have been very conditioned by the cultures that we come from and are usually very identified with the particular gender that we happen to be a member of.

We're making far too big a deal out of our sexual preferences. It's just another form of narcissism, and I think it can be a big problem and a tremendous obstacle.

I'm suspicious of any man or woman who approaches their own liberation with any kind of gender bias

Hopefully, America will really get a sense of how justice can be served in this country. And hopefully, they'll forget the Simpson trial.

There's nothing tantric about my particular view on life.

What you're getting excited about is not A face, but a feminine face.

None of this means necessarily that DeLay is going to be indicted. But a deal like this only strengthens the government's hand.

Great Things About Being...' is a provocative and often dead-on look at stereotypes created by popular culture, and provides a tongue-in-cheek and satirical perspective that most anyone can relate to.

For the very first time, the Fab Five rush in to help straight guys with the most important decision and event of their lives - marriage. Tying the knot has never been this much fun!

Whatever else this means, it means an even more complicated prosecution of Lewis Libby because it either requires the government to disclose sensitive information to the defense team.

That clarity is not going to happen and the ambiguity helps the White House, which now can hold indefinitely and without charges another U.S. citizen without having to worry about any restrictions from the justices.

I think it's unfortunate that we don't spend time talking about our role in the world.

I think at the end of the day, the jury feels sorry for her a little bit, with all the emotional and mental problems she's had, the physical problems, and I think they discount her testimony in total.

I think prosecutors and the judge are going to see the case as a perfect vehicle to send a message that this sort of conduct, whatever the motives, just won?t be tolerated. And I think that push is going to be more powerful than any argument that they get a lot of leniency because of their age or anything else.

We are disappointed with our results lately and the morale is a bit down but the will is there to turn things around.

We got to play four quarters of lacrosse. We have to be on top of our game.

We tried to be more aggressive and more physical. It worked against Walton (March 30) even though we lost (7-6).

This scenario ? sending the case back down for more consideration ? was discussed at length during the oral argument on the case so I'm not sure that the parties here are terribly surprised that the Court would punt on the merits and perhaps avoid the issue altogether. The Court frequently does this, in cases large and small.

The police can't do anything to compel this family to talk, they can't do anything legally. The family, anyone, has a Fifth Amendment right not to talk to police and I imagine these folks are going to exercise that right and they have every right to do so.

Whenever a human being ceases to live for themselves and begins to care about that which is greater than themselves, the personality begins to experience ecstasy, joy and spontaneous liberation. And that's found through doing, through action, through giving, through deeply embracing the human experience.

This is our challenge at the beginning of the twenty-first century - we need to find the courage to see our own spiritual yearnings in the biggest possible context, in such a way that is going to compel us to finally transcend our self-concern. We need to find the heart to come together in such a way that will enable us to face the challenges before us. And to do this, we need a new spirituality. We need a new enlightenment.

In the new enlightenment, the reason we are driven to become one with the life-process is not merely to experience some form of mystical oneness with everything. We strive to become one with it for the biggest reason there could be - so we can ultimately take responsibility for where it's going.

We are all capable of greatness when we know without any doubt that we are directly connected to a higher purpose.

What would it be like to communicate from a part of your own self that is absolutely free from self-consciousness, that is fearless, uncorrupted, and passionately interested in the truth?.

We have to be willing to give up all the injustices of the past that did exist - and that do exist right now. When we become interested in liberation, we then become interested in that which transcends time.

Its taken 14 billion years for matter to gain the capacity to become conscious of itself. If this is true, it wouldn't make any sense that the whole point of enlightenment would be to escape from the whole process at the very instant that the universe is beginning to awaken to itself.

As far as I'm concerned, the spiritual life is just like any other endeavor-you can succeed or fail. And when the goal is actual evolution beyond ego in an intersubjective context, success or failure is plain for all to see.

Freedom has no history.

If you know only one language, you're a prisoner, stuck in the tyranny of that one language.

Spiritual experiences and their results are not meant for the individual. They are for the evolution of the whole race.

When you awaken to what I call the Authentic Self, which is the spiritual or evolutionary impulse, what begins to emerge is the dawning recognition of the fact that each one of us, at our highest level, is that Authentic Self, which is actually the same energy and intelligence that originally inspired the entire creative process. You begin to intuit and feel directly connected to the very impulse that initiated the whole event fourteen billion years ago and is driving it right now.

I believe that any individual who has spiritually awakened in our time, to the degree that he or she finds a higher and deeper motive for living, is going to be driven to fight the good fight in one way or another... And in order to fight the good fight, we have to engage, we have to get into the ring, not just stand outside it and be philosophers.

The mess of the human condition is that fundamental trust has not yet been realized. The true value of profound spiritual experience lies in the discovery of that fundamental trust.

Stillness is training for action.

There was just too much evidence, from too many witnesses, pointing too many fingers at Ryan and his colleague for either defense team to have been able to portray it as a coincidence or a witch hunt or anything short of widespread corruption. And that's why we see this verdict.

Anyone who wants to be truly free must be willing to stand alone in the truth.

The authentic self is the best part of a human being. It's the part of you that already cares, that is already passionate about evolution. When your authentic self miraculously awakens and becomes stronger than your ego, then you will truly begin to make a difference in this world. You will literally enter into a partnership with the creative principle.

The executive branch maneuvered this result deftly.

Those of us who have transcended mythical belief systems know without any doubt that there is no God up in the sky. But when we awaken to what I call the evolutionary impulse - the mysterious passion to evolve, to become, to develop on every level-we rediscover who God is.

In an evolutionary context, the goal of the spiritual life is not peace; it's perpetual development. Evolutionary enlightenment is about the ecstasy that compels us to create the future. And it's not a future that's going to unfold by itself while we go back to sleep. It's a future that we forge the hard way through direct, conscious, intentional engagement with the life-process itself.

When you meditate you discover over and over again that you are not a prisoner of your mind.

We come at this in a proactive way, at a very high level. We're saying you can save money by managing your information in a proactive and smarter way up front, by thinking about what information belongs in the repository and also by having the right tools to manage that information.

This ruling will encourage other people in other states who may have been contemplating similar assisted-suicide laws to go ahead and get them on the books ? and as long as those other laws are similar to the Oregon law they ought to pass the constitutional test. And I wouldn't be surprised if these efforts begin immediately.

There has to be because what has been talked about publicly is a terribly weak case; one that even an eager grand jury would not have embraced the way this one did.

Each time you go before a grand jury as a target or a subject or a person of interest ? or anyone else other than a plain old witness ? you put yourself in legal jeopardy. And now Rove will have done that five times. So today is not a good day for him no matter what his lawyers eventually decide to say about it.

Even the roof is burned off the office and Wally still made it.

You end up not being able to handle that in house, and it gets thrown over the wall to an outside counsel. Once you throw it over the wall, they charge you a tremendous amount of money by the hour to review that information.

We went through a lot of pain, and spent a lot of money just for data processing costs on some pretty routine discoveries. That got my attention.

First he says he wants to die a martyr and now he is begging the jury to spare his life and telling the panel that his dedicated lawyers are out to get him. It doesn't add up and perhaps that's exactly what he has in mind.

So this is a case where Padilla loses the round in court but actually gains some measure of freedom. Padilla wins by losing. He gets out of military custody now and presumably into an environment in some jail somewhere where he will have more complete access to his lawyers and a better chance not just to see the allegations against him but to prepare his own defense.

A lot of people on all sides of this fight were hoping the Court would step in and answer the question of what the president could do or not do to these so-called enemy combatants.

People should be excited about the music being played rather than who's playing it.

We have to be willing to give up all the injustices of the past that did exist - and that do exist right now. When we become interested in liberation, we then become interested in that which transcends time.

This really says something about the role of science education in this country and begs us to question how we are teaching evolutionary theory.

If prosecutors are looking for a face-saving way out, this is it.

I'm not sure that jurors are really going to care about the niceties of mental illness when they hear someone mock 9-11 that way. It's such an inhuman perspective on a tragedy, so full of spite and hate, that jurors may decide there is no place on this earth for this guy.

I intend to work with my department to take what has happened and make something good come from it.

Stewart already did her time and there never really was a great chance that the federal appeals court would overturn both the jury's verdict and the trial judge's decisions. So this sews up this case on another losing note for Stewart.

The judge didn't order the feds to suddenly release all sorts of classified or secret information. All the judge did was to tell the Justice Department that it has to speed up its response to a request for information about the National Security Agency program. And the information that initially will be released will be very unspecific. The big battles are yet to come over how much of this stuff eventually is made public.

Canadians want liberalism without Liberals, or preferably Conservatives without conservatism.

Clearly, there is more to this story than what has been made public; than what defense attorneys or the prosecutor have disclosed. There has to be because what has been talked about publicly is a terribly weak case; one that even an eager grand jury would not have embraced the way this one did.

The court almost had to take up this issue again. It was clear in 2003 when it said that you could not limit this procedure unless certain exceptions were in place. Congress then enacted a law without those restrictions and now the court will have to decide whether the justification for the Congressional action is constitutional or not. It should be a very close case, almost certainly a five-four ruling.

The unanimous ruling tells me that there wasn't a lot of patience or sympathy by the court for the argument by the law schools. And I would think that this finally ends the long-running legal debate on this issue.

The key battles in these cases are likely to come early when the government challenges the claims and then argues that the data that might prove what the plaintiffs have alleged cannot be disclosed due to national security concerns. So right off the bat we'll see a legal defense, not a factual one.

The problem for Cunningham at sentencing is that he can't really argue that his many years of public service warrant leniency since the charges against him, and what he pleaded guilty to, go to the very core of the quality and integrity of that service. He's in a no-win situation at sentencing and he probably knows it.

It makes me feel like I'm doing mitzvah.

It's a very broken business process. Companies just don't have tools to do this in the right way. Sometimes the cost of discovery can be higher than whatever settlement ends up getting paid in a lawsuit.