World Spirituality Unplugged: From Jerusalem to Tibet with Love: Marc Gafni and Dalai Lama in 2008

Marc Gafni (from his 2008 dialogue with the Dalai Lama):

To love someone is to see them with God’s eyes, to perceive them at their highest place, like — as His Holiness said — the mother who sees the baby. The mother,  no matter what the baby does when older, always sees the baby as divine. Therefore we call God in Hebrew mysticism, Kabbalah, the divine breast of the Mother who feeds us all.

So we are all, like God, trying to see Other with God’s eyes. So to love is to see with God’s eyes, not an emotion, but a perception. … That’s our basic idea. So we say we can train people to love. Because if love is an emotion, we can’t train an emotion. But we can train a perception. We can train people to see.

So good Hebrew teaching is to train people to see… and to give… The Hebrew word for “love” also means “to give” and “ecstasy”… Ecstatic emotion that comes from giving. In Hebrew tradition, I first give, and if I give, I love. That’s just a gentle wisdom from Jerusalem to Tibet. Thank you so much for your wisdom on loving…

Note: This post originally appeared on Marc Gafni’s Tumblr page.

World Spirituality Unplugged: From Jerusalem to Tibet with Love: Marc Gafni and Dalai Lama in 20082022-07-06T03:20:19-07:00

World Spirituality Unplugged: Four Audiences for World Spirituality

Recorded in 2010, Marc Gafni’s “Who’s Out There? Dual Citizens?” explores the audiences for a World Spirituality.

There are two broad groups of people out there we need to understand as we lay the foundation for spirit’s next move, an emergent World Spirituality.

Group One. People who are part of an ethnocentric religion (“We got the truth, you don’t,”) 70% of the world is hanging out over there.

The second group is people who have for whatever set of religion moved beyond the world religions. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, whatever. They no longer view themselves as part of the classical religions. Moreover, they don’t feel comfortable in the classical religions. They don’t feel held, addressed, compelled, invited.

Why? Lots of different reasons. Some of them may have actually internalized the critique of the religions introduced by modern thinking and post-modern thinking ” and we’ll look at those critiques and where they are relevant and overstated. But whatever those critiques are, they have been incorporated into the Zeitgeist, the very fabric of our contemporary context.

Watch the video and read further below:

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People grow up today in a world without feeling they needed to be part of a religion. That wasn’t true before. Three hundred years ago that was a given. What the modern and postmodern critiques have done is enable the possibility of people to grow up and say they are beyond religions or spirituality, to say that they are beyond that. That’s group two. They don’t practice any spirituality or religion. They are living their lives generally guided by reason. They are global citizens fully removed from the religious or spiritual context.

Group three. Tens of millions of people are primary candidates for World Spirituality. Actually this group of people which might be you and might be me are already practicing a sort of World Spirituality. They are drawing from this and that seminar they went to, piecing together with bubble gum and tape some sort of spiritual life. They are citizens of the world. They don’t feel limited. They may live in a country and have some sort of loyalty, but the way they feel is that they are global citizens. Their practice is put together from different places. It is not coherent, but they are trying to find their way without rooting themselves in any particular religion. They don’t feel comfortable in any particular religion.

Group four. You may well be part of this fourth group as well –most people listening to these conversations on World Spirituality fit into group three or four. They are what we like to call in the Center for World Spirituality, dual citizens. You are a member of a particular religion: let’s say Christianity. But you are trying to evolve Christianity, you are trying to engaged in some movement of renewal of Christianity, even as you are deeply connected to Christ, Christ Consciousness, the great teaching that has come down to you. Or you might be Islamic or Buddhist or from a native religion. You are part of a religion and yet that religion doesn’t exhaust your identity. It’s not the only true religion. You practice in that system. You’re a citizen in that system. While at the same time, you’re part of the larger context of the world scene. You are a citizen of a particular religion, and a citizen of a World Spirituality.

A World Spirituality will speak to all four groups in different ways.

It will challenge the first group if it’s compelling and deep: the people who are committed to only one religion as their only and exclusive practice. What critiques do they have of a World Spirituality that are valuable and compelling?

It will challenge the second group if it offers a genuine possibility of moving beyond a religion of reason: a religion of reason leaves people profoundly empty and directionless but they don’t want to go to the religions. They aren’t aware that there is an alternative. It will speak powerfully to them if science and religion are appropriately integrated.

It will speak to group three – people who are naturally already trying to piece together their deep engagement with spirituality. It will help them organize their core principles. They are practicing some sort of de facto practicing some sort of world spirituality but are confused. They have a new seminar every three weeks. They’re trying to piece it together with their friends, but they’re not sure what values to pass down to their children.

What we want to do through World Spirituality is to offer a cogent, cohesive vision to help people guide their way as we begin together to unfold this new move of spirit.

It will also speak to the dual citizens because it will offer people a cogent vision of World Spirituality that is informed by and influenced by their chosen tradition as well as move beyond it into a World Spirituality.

World Spirituality is a compelling necessity of spirit’s unfolding for all four of these groups of people living today.

World Spirituality Unplugged: Four Audiences for World Spirituality2022-08-02T08:23:16-07:00

World Spirituality Unplugged: World Spirituality is an Evolutionary Emergent

In this 2010 video, presented in our World Spirituality Unplugged series, there is a rousing call to see the “revolution in possibility” which is an evolutionary emergent in spirituality. From Marc Gafni:

In the world, everyone agrees that we see this evolution from simple to complex, greater levels of complexity, of depth and consciousness. This vision of a World Spirituality is an evolutionary emergent – it’s something new, has never existed before. There are glimmerings of it, hints of it, and in other conversations I will share with you the hints, precursors, the foreshadowings of this World Spirituality that is now bursting forth”

This World Spirituality, Gafni says, allows people to be both part of their own tradition as well as part of a global movement that goes beyond it.

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World Spirituality Unplugged: World Spirituality is an Evolutionary Emergent2022-07-06T03:20:20-07:00

World Spirituality Unplugged: “All Religions are Not the Same!!!”

In this 2010 video from the Center for World Spirituality archives, Dr. Marc Gafni articulates a vision for World Spirituality based on a ranking of worldviews into a new hierarchy of truth, beauty, and goodness. He says, in part:

There are two people today. Ethnocentric = my nationality, my religion, my group has got it going on. Augustine: there is no redemption outside of the church. There are about 30 percent of the world that have transcended: trance-ended. That’s how I like to teach that word. To end the trance of. They have ended the trance of the ethnocentric context that says our system is the superior system. A lot of people who are holding that belief including many people who are very loving and beautiful are still holding that belief.

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World Spirituality Unplugged: “All Religions are Not the Same!!!”2022-07-06T03:20:20-07:00

World Spirituality Unplugged: Marc Gafni Teaches Jewish Mysticism

From the World Spirituality Unplugged archives: a 2-part audio teaching by Marc Gafni on Kabbalah, delivered in English in the spring of 2006 at a spirituality conference in Midtown Manhattan. In the first 10-minute introductory segment, Marc brings the audience members (with several hundred in attendance) into a meditative posture and introduces chanting.

Marc Gafni:

The Hebrew word for God, the God force, whether you are a theist, or not a theist, in talking about the force of the universe, the word is breath itself. In breath. YAHH… Breath in breath. YAHH…

Listen to the audios in this playlist:

World Spirituality Unplugged is a regular column on Spirit’s Next Move featuring timeless material from the extensive multimedia archives of the Center for World Spirituality.

World Spirituality Unplugged: Marc Gafni Teaches Jewish Mysticism2022-07-06T03:20:20-07:00

World Spirituality Unplugged: “What is a purpose-driven business?: John Mackey and Marc Gafni in Dialogue, Part 2”

This is the second installment of World Spirituality Unplugged, a regular new column on this website which will feature highlights from the Center for World Spirituality’s substantial audio and video archives. The audio clip posted here (less than 10 minutes) is an excerpt from a 2010 dialogue between John Mackey and Marc Gafni, originally recorded for the Future of Love Teleseries, an online event co-sponsored by CWS.

Marc Gafni, as you are well aware, is the Director and Scholar-in-Residence for the Center. John Mackey is not only the Chairman and CEO of a $4 billion Fortune 500 company, he is also Co-Chair of the Board of the Center for World Spirituality. Mackey was named the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Of The Year in 2003. John is a strong believer in FLOW principles, including free market principles and empowerment management. He is also one of the most influential advocates in the movement for organic food. Whole Foods was the first grocery chain to set standards for humane animal treatment.

Following an earlier discussion on “What’s love got to do with business,” the duo continue in a conversation about conscious capitalism.

(more…)

World Spirituality Unplugged: “What is a purpose-driven business?: John Mackey and Marc Gafni in Dialogue, Part 2”2022-07-06T03:20:21-07:00

World Spirituality Unplugged: “What’s love got to do with business?: John Mackey and Marc Gafni in Dialogue, Part 1”

World Spirituality Unplugged is a regular new column on this website which will feature highlights from the Center for World Spirituality’s substantial audio and video archives which are more relevant than ever before. The short clip posted here (about 5 minutes) features an excerpt from a dialogue between John Mackey and Marc Gafni, recorded in 2010 for the Future of Love Teleseries, an online event for which CWS was a co-sponsor.

Marc Gafni, as you are well aware, is the Director and Scholar-in-Residence for the Center. John Mackey is not only the Chairman and CEO of a $4 billion Fortune 500 company, he is also Co-Chair of the Board of the Center for World Spirituality. Mackey was named the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Of The Year in 2003. John is a strong believer in FLOW principles, including free market principles and empowerment management.  He is also one of the most influential advocates in the movement for organic food. Whole Foods was the first grocery chain to set standards for humane animal treatment.

Early in the dialogue, John Mackey offers a definition of business that situates it right at the heart of human care and concern:

Marc: As we talk about love today, we’re talking about it not from a Christian perspective, or from a Jewish perspective, or from a Muslim perspective, or a Buddhist, or a Taoist, or a Native American, we’re talking about a perspective which transcends and includes them. And by “transcend,” I mean trance-end. We end the trance of one particular understanding, we receive what’s best and deepest in it, and link it with an understanding of the understandings available all over the globe and history, in a way that was never really available before. That’s the context that we’re talking about. We’re not going to be referring to it any more today. In that context, from that place, we’re talking about love and business, love and commerce, love and capitalism.

When the average person walks down the street and thinks about love and then they think about business, they think what do those things have to do with each other. Business: isn’t that about making profit? Love: that’s that spirit feeling that I have that’s all about sacrifice, things that have little to do with the material. We got a few emails from people saying: Love and Business? What’s that about? We wrote back: Tune in and listen and find out.

It’s delightful to be with you. What would your response be to those people? How does love actually act and show up in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person? 1st – love that you feel moving through you; 2nd – interpersonal love, love in the space of the We; 3rd – love as the force of the universe. How does that show up in the world of commerce and business. John, be our teacher.

John: Okay, Marc. It’s sort of an odd question: what does love have to do with business? There’s sort of an assumption that business and commerce and capitalism are not fully human activities. That they are held apart in some way. That’s part of the problem. We have this stereotype of business based on metaphors of greed and selfishness based on this belief that it’s all about profit and money, and therefore it’s less than human. If that’s really what business is, then I think people would be right to condemn it. But that’s not been my experience with business. Business is as much a human activity as anything else. Human are engaging in it. Love is appropriate in business. In fact, love is essential in business if it’s going to reach its full potential.

Marc: Say more about that, John. You’re saying that love lives in business. Love is one of the natural human activities, so this split is a false split. From your own personal experience or from a meta-frame, how does love show up as a force or deep factor as you do business?

John: The first thing to understand is that business is almost always done as community, meaning a business or company is a group of people that are working together. They are working together to create value for other people. In fact, the very essence of what business is is voluntary exchange creating value for other people. That’s not only ethical, but when you go down to the roots it is a profoundly loving act – it can be and should be. We create about other people, and we’re cooperating in order to create value for them. I see business as fundamentally based on voluntary exchange between people for mutual benefit. A company has employees that work together, creating value for customers. Customers exchange voluntarily for a business. That exchange creates value for the suppliers that are exchanging with the business, which creates value for investors. The whole activity of commerce, when you move away from the caricature, you discover that at its root it is people in community creating value for each other. That can be and should be a profound act of love, care, and compassion.

Marc: What a gorgeous definition of business!

Listen to the whole audio for Part 1.

World Spirituality Unplugged: “What’s love got to do with business?: John Mackey and Marc Gafni in Dialogue, Part 1”2022-07-06T03:20:21-07:00

Ken Wilber Supports Center for World Spirituality

Listen to Ken explain why CWS is one of the most important organizations in the world today.

Note: As of 2014 we have changed the name of our organization from The Center for World Spirituality (CWS) to Center for Integral Wisdom (CIW).

“The emergence of a World Spirituality based on integral principles is one of the great and urgent invitations for the evolution of consciousness in our time. The Center for World Spirituality is leading the way in this bold adventure. I am honored to be active as part of the leadership of CWS. I am convinced that over time CWS has a pivotal role to play in the evolution of consciousness through the development and dissemination of a World Spirituality based on Integral principles.”

Ken Wilber Supports Center for World Spirituality2022-07-14T06:37:55-07:00
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