Existential Risk and the Evolution of Love: Articulating the New Story of Value in Response to the Meta-Crisis

One Mountain Oral Essays Volume 23

Existential Risk and the Evolution of Love: Articulating the New Story of Value in Response to the Meta-Crisis | One Mountain Many Paths Oral Essays Volume 23 | Dr. Marc Gafni

Existential Risk and the Evolution of Love offers a transformative philosophical vision for addressing the crises currently threatening humanity’s survival. At the core of this work is the concept of Existential Risk—a term encompassing the social, environmental, and technological challenges we face today. Marc Gafni proposes a bold response: the creation of a new Story of Value that sparks a Planetary Awakening in Love through the collective power of Unique Self Symphonies.

The concept of Unique Self reveals the intrinsic value in each individual’s unique expression of the deeper Field of Value, calling us to contribute our distinct gifts to the evolution of love. As we unite in Unique Self Symphonies, humanity plays its part in the cosmic unfolding of love, giving rise to Homo amor—the new human and new humanity.

This volume of “oral essays” calls for a CosmoErotic Humanism, an interconnected vision of Reality, grounded in First Principles and Values that reflect the Field of ErosValue. It challenges the collapse of traditional value systems and invites humanity to reconnect through a shared narrative that fosters global intimacy, cooperation, and co-ordination. Rather than resorting to denial, domination, or doomerism, Gafni argues that embracing Outrageous Love offers the only true path forward, one based on clarified desire. Only by awakening to our Unique Selves can we navigate the existential risks of our time and step into a future shaped by the ongoing evolution of love and ever-deepening intimacy.

Published by World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers. 

Book details:

Title: Existential Risk and the Evolution of Love: Articulating the New Story of Value in Response to the Meta-Crisis
Author: Dr. Marc Gafni
Series: Oral Essay Series – Volume 23
Publisher: World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
ISBN-13: 979-8888340387
Formats: Paperback, e-book, audiobook.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1    THE WHOLE WORLD IS WALKING ON A VERY NARROW BRIDGE: THE PANDEMIC ACCENTUATES THE FAULT LINES IN SOCIETY

  • First Principles Are Needed to Move Through This Moment
  • We Walk Through the Contraction, and We Collect the Joy
  • Waking Up and Growing Up
  • Prayer and Meditation: Dogma or Realization?
  • Evolutionary Love Code: The Pleasure of Transformation
  • In the Pandemic We’ve Lost Not Only Pseudo-Eros, We’ve Also Lost Our Sources of Eros
  • The World Needs First Principles and First Values
  • There’s Something for Me to Do, and It’s the Greatest Thing in the World
  • There’s an Action You Can Take That’s Yours and No One Else’s

CHAPTER 2    THE CHALLENGE: THE META-CRISIS, THE RESPONSE: UNIQUE SELF

  • We Need a New Story—A New Worldview From Which Everything Emerges
  • We Are Here to Tell the New Story of Value
  • Evolutionary Love Code: Unique Self Symphony in Response to the Meta-Crisis
  • Silence and Chant Open Up the Eye of Value
  • The Infinity of Intimacy: The Personhood of Cosmos
  • Encapsulating Unique Self
  • Unique Self Is a Direct Hit to the Death Star of Existential Risk
  • Unique Self Responds to the Question of Who Are You?
  • Unique Self Answers the Question of Who Are You?
  • Your Unique Gift
  • Unique Self Symphony
  • Unique Self: Reality Intended Me
  • Unique Self and Unique Self Symphony in Response to the Meta-Crisis
  • Unique Self Responds to the First Shock of Existence
  • Your Story Is Chapter and Verse in the Universe: A Love Story
  • The Plotlines of Cosmos Are Towards More Uniqueness

CHAPTER 3    THIS POIGNANT MOMENT OF NEURO- CULTURAL PLASTICITY: A TIME BETWEEN WORLDS AND A TIME BETWEEN STORIES

  • The First Practice of Chant: We Are the Music
  • The Way of the Heart Includes the Mind and the Intellect
  • The Way of the Heart: Reality Is Eros
  • We Live in a Time Between Stories
  • We Have the Capacity to Create a New Superstructure Worldview to Change the Vector of History
  • Value Is Real, and Value Evolves
  • The Potential Future Is Vast—There’s So Much More Value to Come
  • The Future Depends on What We Do Now
  • Neuro-Cultural Plasticity
  • In Response to Nihilism, You Get Closed Societies
  • The Current Trajectory Is Towards the Death of Our Humanity
  • Up Till Now, We Have Not Presented a Coherent System of Value in the World
  • Placing Our Lives on the Altar of History
  • Turning to the Divine to Partner With Us

CHAPTER 4    THE ULTIMATE META-CRISIS IS GOD’S CRISIS OF INTIMACY

  • Listening to the Goddess
  • Evolutionary Love Code: Outrageous Love
  • I Become More Me in Our We—All the Way Up and Down the Evolutionary Chain
  • We Live in a Participatory Universe
  • Divine Kenosis
  • God Needs the Human Being
  • Our Hearts Don’t Just Break, They Break Us Open Into Divinity
  • God Needs You to Live Your Story
  • I’m Not Willing to Be Written in the Book of Life Without You
  • Our Hands Are God’s Hands

CHAPTER 5    THE META-CRISIS OF GOD, PART TWO: SHE DESPERATELY NEEDS US TO TAKE OUR UNIQUE RISK (WITH Q&A)

  • Evolutionary Love Code: Outrageous Love
  • When She Speaks It for Us
  • The Unique Self Is a Unique Configuration of Outrageous Love
  • The Outrageous Act of Love of the Infinite Intimate
  • The Infinite Intimate Needs You Desperately
  • You Have to Take the Leap
  • It Is This Set of Realizations That Births Homo amor
  • Questions and Answers
    • Is Homo amor an Atheist?
    • How Is This Different From Codependency?
    • How Not to Get Stuck in the Trauma Space, and How to Move Forward?
    • Love Everybody Madly

CHAPTER 6    THE RESPONSE TO PERSONAL CRISIS AND META-CRISIS IS THE EVOLUTION OF RELATIONSHIP AND THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE: THE RISE OF WHOLE MATE RELATIONSHIPS

  • God Loves Stories
  • Choosing to Tell the Most Accurate Story
  • A New Chapter in the New Story: Whole Mate Relationships
  • Evolutionary Love Code: We Are Confronted by Crisis
  • Every Crisis Is Solved by a New Structure of Intimacy
  • From Role Mate to Soul Mate
  • Soul-Mate Contract Without a Role-Mate Dimension Doesn’t Work
  • The Meta-Crisis Begins to Be Resolved by a New Form of Relationship

CHAPTER 7    THE URGENT NEED FOR WHOLE MATE RELATIONSHIPS, PART TWO

  • Outside the Field of Value, No One Is Human Anymore
  • There Is a Straight Line From Postmodernism to School Shootings
  • We Desperately Need to Reconstruct the Field of Value
  • Evolutionary Love Code: From Role Mate to Soul Mate to Whole Mate
  • The Tragedy of Soul Mates
  • I Love You Means I Choose to Need You
  • Reconfiguring Reality by Reconfiguring Humanity

CHAPTER 8    THE NEW STORY OF VALUE BASED ON FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES

  • We Have Been Living in a Post-Truth Society
  • From Cosmo-Phobia to Cosmo-Erotic Humanism
  • Story Is Everything
  • We Need a New Story Based on a Shared Grammar of Value
  • First Principles and First Values Are the DNA of the New Story
  • The Universe: Not a Fact, But a Story
  • Tell Me What You Desire, and I’ll Tell You Who You Are
  • We Live in an Intimate Universe
  • Desire Evolved
  • From Prepersonal to Personal to Transpersonal

CHAPTER 9    A NEW STORY OF VALUE DEMANDS A NEW LANGUAGE OF VALUE: FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES, PART TWO

  • Intimacy Is the Ground of Reality
  • Intimacy = Shared Identity in the Context of Otherness + Mutuality + Recognition + Vulnerability + Willingness
  • The Field of Value Emerges From the Field of Intimacy
  • Reality Is Structured by First Principles and First Values
  • Reality Has Interior
  • Reality Is Personal
  • Reality Has Direction
  • We Are Inside the Story
  • The Story Is Not Happening to Us; the Story Is Happening Through Us
  • Evolution Is the Evolution of Intimacy
  • Reality Is a Story of Eros

CHAPTER 10    FIFTEEN PRINCIPLES OF COSMO-EROTIC HUMANISM

  • The Universe Is Not a Fact; It’s a Story
  • The Universe Is Intimate
  • Eros = the Evolving Force of Attraction and Becoming
  • Reality Has Interior—It Is Consciousness
  • The Human Being Is the Leading Edge of Evolution
  • Every Human Being Is a Unique Self
  • Unique Self = Unique Configuration of Eros
  • Your Unique Gift Is Required by All That Is
  • Your Story Is a Love Story
  • You Are the Personal Face of the Evolutionary Impulse
  • We Live in a Participatory Universe
  • The Universe Is a Love Story
  • The Universe Is a Story of Intimacy
  • We Are All Part of the Unique Self Symphony
  • The Evolution of Love = The Evolution of Intimacy

CHAPTER 11    THE FIFTEEN PRINCIPLES, CONTINUED (WITH Q&A)

  • How Are the Principles Practically Applied?
  • How Do We Live the New Story of Value?
  • What Is the Practice of Cosmo-Erotic Humanism?
  • Where Do We Start When the World Is on Fire?
  • What Happens When We Fall Off the Narrow Bridge?
  • Can You Say More About the Unique Self Symphony?
  • How Is This Different From Collective Mind?
  • What Is the Role of Dharma?

CHAPTER 12    RADICAL PARTICIPATION IN THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE: THE UNIQUE SELF SYMPHONY

  • Every Human Being Is a Unique Tone
  • When You Don’t Play Your Note, the Symphony Can’t Be Heard
  • Unique Self Symphony = Evolutionary Intimacy
  • Playing Your Note Changes the Score of the Universe
  • The Conducting Wholeness of Eros
  • Homo amor Is the Music of the Future
  • Unique Self + Unique Shadow + Unique Gift = Unique Obligation
  • Symphony Is Not Uniformity—It’s a Higher Order of Coherence
  • Intimacy of Purpose = The Shared Evolutionary Context

CHAPTER 13    FEEL YOU FEELING ME: THE NEW HUMAN AND THE NEW NAME OF GOD

  • The Most Effective Altruism Is Telling a New Story of Value
  • The New Story of Value Lives in Us
  • Evolutionary Love Code: Invoking the Possible Human
  • Anthro-Ontology: How Do You Know What You Know?
  • The Core of Homo amor Is My Capacity to Feel You
  • Ever Deeper Loops in the Mutuality of Feeling
  • The Divine Is the Infinite Intimate

CHAPTER 14    FROM HOMO ARMOR TO HOMO AMOR: HEARTBREAK IS A STRUCTURE OF THE INTIMATE UNIVERSE

  • We Need to Evolve the Systemic Source Code in Which We Live
  • We Live in an Evolving and Participatory Cosmos
  • Evolutionary Love Code: Intimacy Is Always Broken and Then Recovered
  • Heartbreak Is the Natural State of an Alive Human Being
  • Prayer Affirms the Dignity of Personal Need
  • Your Need Is My Allurement
  • To Live in the Depth of My Heartbreak
  • Evolution of Tears
  • From Homo sapiens to Homo amor
  • From Homo Armor to Homo amor
  • The Evolution of Heartbreak Is the Evolution of Intimacy
  • I Am Willing to Feel Even What I Cannot Entirely Heal
  • PART TWO: From Heartbreak to Desire to Need to Value
  • We Need to Move From the First Innocence to the Second Innocence
  • Embracing the Heartbreak
  • Clarified Desire = Dignified Need = Value
  • PART THREE: Heartbreak in Interior and Exterior Sciences: Autonomy—Communion, Attraction—Repulsion
  • There Is Eros to the Broken Heart

CHAPTER 15    THE FOOTBALL RESPONSE TO THE META-CRISIS: STEPPING OUT OF THE POCKET FOR THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE

  • We Have to Become the New Story
  • When the Pocket Collapses, a New Possibility Is Created
  • When the Pocket Collapses, the Play Is Over
  • There Is No Story of Value Because the Field of Value Has Broken
  • Why Is There a Global Intimacy Disorder?
  • The Collapse of the Pocket in the Story of Value
  • We’ve Got to Step Out of the Pocket and Extend the Play
  • Reinitiating the Evolution of Love
  • Evolutionary Love Code: Step Out of the Pocket and Create a New Possibility

CHAPTER 16    THE RESPONSE TO EXISTENTIAL AND CATASTROPHIC RISK IS THE DAWN OF DESIRE

  • Evolutionary Love Code: The Dawn of Desire
  • Four Responses to Existential and Catastrophic Risk
    • 1 — The Doomer Response
    • 2 — The Denial Response
    • 3 — The Domination Response
    • 4 — The Desire Response
  • The Fourth Response to the Meta-Crisis: the Dawn of Desire
  • Seeing The Storyline: From Unconscious to Conscious Evolution
  • Need and Desire Are Isomorphic at Fundamental and Aspirational Levels of Evolution
  • I Am a Unique Feature of the Field of Desire
  • Clarified Desire Equals Value, and My Clarified Desire Is Unique
  • The Dignity of Desire
  • Clarifying Our Desire in Response to the Meta-Crisis
  • Desire Is Prayer, Prayer Is Desire
  • Reality Is the Desire for Ever More ErosValue

CHAPTER 17    FROM CRISIS TO CROSSING: AVERTING EXISTENTIAL RISK OR PREPARING FOR “THE DAY AFTER”?

  • Love or Die: Crisis Is an Evolutionary Driver
  • Only a New Story of Value Can Change the Vector of History
  • Will the New Story Avert the Meta-Crisis, or Is It for the Day After?
  • The Ultimate Appetite of the Universe Is for Ultimate Beauty
  • Between Dystopia and Utopia
  • Great Things Are Happening All Over the Place
  • We Need to Cross to the Other Side
  • Motivational Architecture for Change
  • Taking Unique Risk
  • Passion Is the Only Truth

CHAPTER 18    TOWARDS THE POST-TRAGIC HERO, PART ONE

  • I Cannot Be Welcome in the Universe Unless I Am a Hero
  • Democratization of the Hero
  • The Glimmerings of the Hero
  • Evolutionary Love Code: Homo amor Is the Post-Tragic Hero
  • Baraye—For the Sake of the Whole
  • When I Am Aroused, I Am the Hero: Reality Is Making Love
  • You Know and I Know That You Are a Hero
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About the Authors:

Dr. Marc GafniDr. Marc Gafni is a leading public intellectual and teacher impacting the source code of global culture.

Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist and passionate philosopher. He is known for his “source code teachings”, including Unique Self theory and the Five Selves, the Amorous Cosmos, A Politics of Evolutionary Love, A Return to Eros and Digital Intimacy.

He is author of twenty five books, of which the first ten have been published, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment.

He holds his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University, as well as Orthodox rabbinic ordination.

He teaches on the cutting edge of philosophy in the West, helping to evolve a new ‘dharma’ or meta-theory of Integral meaning that is helping to re-shape key pivoting points in global consciousness and culture, with the aim of participating in the articulation of what Dr. Gafni together with Dr. Zak Stein and colleagues are calling CosmoErotic Humanism.

At the core of CosmoErotic Humanism is what Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein are calling ‘First Principles and First Values’, Anthro-Ontology and a “Universal Grammar of Value”.

This is the ground of a new shared universe story and a new narrative of identity for the new human and the new humanity. This is what they are calling the emergence from Homo sapiens to Homo Amor.

This shared story rooted in First Principles and First Values can then serve as the matrix for a global ethos for a global civilization.

Gafni is considered by many to be a kind of Einstein of Philosophy who is leading a team of thinkers articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.

Dr. Gafni is the Co-Founder together with Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion where he serves as its co-president. Together with Dr. Zak Stein, they are co-leading a team of thinkers, articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.

In 2014 Dr. Gafni co-initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and Rise Up movie, whose method and movement is to bring together key thought leaders and change-agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of Success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Outrageous Love.

Over the past 30 years, Dr. Gafni has developed evolutionary and activist programs rooted in his commitment to what he has termed “participating in the evolution of love.” Together with author and social innovator Barbara Marx Hubbard, he is working on a series of new works revolving around Evolutionary Spirituality.

Read more… 

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Dr. Marc Gafni Official Website: 
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https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/

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Join the community Who We Must Become: 
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