The term “Authentic Relating” usually refers to a process of speaking transparently and explicitly about our feelings, perceptions, and responses to other people – a non-judgemental forum for relating to each other, where our innermost truths, however painful, can be shared in an atmosphere of openness and acceptance.

Psycho-spiritual processes like these promote a sense of personal intimacy, and within a specific and limited context, an authentic and profound experience of shared humanity. There can be a very positive dimension to this – for example, when previously unrecognised shadow material surfaces, we are able to process it in healthy ways, and hopefully move past it.

But there’s a different kind of authentic relating that comes about as a result of deep awakening to enlightened awareness. When this kind of awareness emerges and becomes stable, our perspective changes completely. We begin to see ourselves and others from a cosmic and transpersonal vantage point, way beyond the personal ego or separate self-sense.

We become capable of a radically different kind of communication, and discover an inherently transcendent experience of relating and relatedness. A new awakened, enlightened and liberated potential is revealed and expressed, at ever higher levels of our shared and evolving humanity.

In this elevated condition, we begin relating to the personal dimension in such a way that we are not limited or imprisoned by it, and our experience of it becomes ever more objective. With our attention radically liberated, we are free to explore the miraculous potential of enlightened, intersubjective communion.

Andrew Cohen invites us to discover a state of awareness which opens up new and unimagined potentials for human relatedness. When we can share the totality of the human experience from this transpersonal perspective, we become immersed in a different kind of intimacy that embraces a vast cosmic context, while simultaneously transcending and including the personal dimension.