Topics include:
ISE 3 Ken Wilber on Kosmic Creativity · Marc Gafni: Success 3.0 – A New Outrageous Love Story & Writing Outrageous Love Letters · Dr. Marc Gafni
Andrew Sweeny writes about this dialogue:
Dr. Marc Gafni is a Rabbi, an integral philosopher, and—and by his own description—an outrageous lover, as any good philosopher should be.
I spoke to him about his book A Return to Eros and the need for eros in spirituality, politics, and life.
In this conversation, I will query him about ‘the murder of eros’, based on the final chapter in his book—and ask him how spirituality and religion can integrate the erotic, beyond mere hedonism or repression. As Marc says, ‘We need to take sex seriously.’
ISE 3 Ken Wilber on Kosmic Creativity · Two Keynote Speeches by Dr. Marc Gafni on “Lines & Circles” and “Evolutionary Love” · Dr. Marc Gafni
In this video, Dr. Marc Gafni explores the New Universe Story, including the Narratives of Unique Self, Ordinary Love, Outrageous Love, Unique Self Symphony, and the Erotic and the Holy.
A Renaissance of Mystical Judaism: The Living Wisdom of Body, Mind, and Spirit: A Video Dialogue from the Integral Spiritual Center · The Journey to CosmoErotic Humanism: Mini-Series with Layman Pascal and Dr. Marc Gafni Part 3: The Mystery of Love & Eros · Dr. Marc Gafni
Marc Gafni on Eros with Marc David and Emily Rosen · The Journey to CosmoErotic Humanism: Mini-Series with Layman Pascal and Dr. Marc Gafni Part 2: Soul Prints · Dr. Marc Gafni
Mordechai Lainer of Izbica is my chosen lineage master. My prayer is that I have honored him with a correct and proper understanding of his trans-mission and teaching. I believe that I have. Though this personal introduc-tion is not meant to fully outline his teachings, a few remarks may orient the general reader and guide the initiate.
First of all, this book is both an academic study and a transmission of an esoteric doctrine. Part of the disguise of this work is its presentation as a piece of academic scholarship.
Of course, on one level it is precisely that, for which I have to thank Professor Moshe Idel. At some point in 2001 or so, Professor Idel told me off-handedly that I needed to do an academic doctorate at a good univer-sity in order to insure that my non-academic writing and teaching be taken seriously. He very kindly accepted my request that he act as my co-advisor at Oxford University. I am in his debt for his gracious, insightful and often penetratingly brilliant remarks, which guided the unfolding of this work in an academic context.
Having said that, the academic framework is just that, a framework—and something of a fig leaf—for the deeper teaching of Lainer, which I have humbly and perhaps audaciously tried to unfold in this volume.
When I was thirty-one, living in Israel near Tel Aviv, Prof. Moshe Halamish suggested that I study and write about this great master. I had barely heard of Mordechai Joseph Lainer, and was wholly unfamiliar with his writings collected in two volumes under the title Mei Hashiloah (MH). Halamish’s prompt was the beginning of my relationship with Lainer, which deepened and shifted again many times over the years. At the time, thanks to Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who was deeply connected to Lainer’s teaching, the Torah of Izbica was just beginning to gain currency in cer-tain neo-Hasidic circles in Israel and the United States. At some point,
I realized that I felt a soul root connection with his teaching, and began to teach his Torah to my own circles of students.
This period of teaching Mei Hashiloah lasted about ten years. Some five years into this teaching period, I spent one year of 16 hour days in the li-brary at Oxford in an intense, in-depth encounter with Mordechai Lainer.
In approaching the master and his text during that year, I followed the three-stage path of textual reading taught by the Baal Shem Tov. First, in a state of what the Baal Shem calls hahna‘ah, reverential submission to what one is learning, I read every passage again and again, praying that I might realize Lainer’s deeper intention and receive his transmission. Second, I moved from submission to what the Baal Shem calls havdalah, separation. In this stage of havdalah, I deployed a method of analysis which involved two basic steps. As I read, I made a list of key topics, words and texts in Lainer. I subsequently gathered every reference to that text, theme or image, searching for the underlying pattern. At the same time I learned, together with my friend Avraham Leader, many of the original Zoharic sources that would have influenced Mei Hashiloah, to get a sense of how he was reading the tradition, what he changed in his interpretation, and why.
Eventually, stage two yielded to stage three, which the Baal Shem Tov calls hamtakah, sweetening. Hamtakah involves an erotic ‘nondual’ merger with the text, which occurs when the reader and that which is read become one. It is at this stage that the deeper intention of the Lainer’s Torah became startlingly lucid, delightful, and beautiful, and the entire teaching opened up with radical clarity and joy.
As I continued my teaching in the world, I sought, as every authentic student does, to both teach and evolve this Torah. One expression of this process was the book Soul Prints (Simon and Schuster 2001) and the Soul Prints Workshop, (Sounds True 2004) which I published dur-ing the years 2001–2003. Another is the book you have before you. This academic work of mystical hermeneutics is complimented by the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice 6:1 (Suny Press 2011) and Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment, (Integral Publishing 2012).
Daily Wisdom: Tears of Transformation · Value is Real | One Mountain Oral Essays | Dr. Marc Gafni · Dr. Marc Gafni
What is the world?
What is my mind?
Can I really know love?
Can I really know what is out there, what reality actually is?
How do we move humanity forward at this time of great existential crisis?
These are questions Zachary Stein asks in his paper Love in a Time Between Worlds: On the Metamodern “Return” to a Metaphysics of Eros as he turns the reader’s attention towards a metamodern metaphysics, or a new way at looking at reality.
Metamodern being the era of time we are now in where we are aware of the scope of the crises we face together and we are aware of the lack of a powerful cultural narrative.
“The term metamodern is used simply to describe the structure of what is emerging “after postmodernism;” it points out the new personalities, cultures, and theories that are able to critique and integrate the insights of both the modern and the postmodern.”
Metaphysics being the stories we tell about ourselves and about the universe.
“Believe it or not, there are metaphysical systems that survived postmodernism and popped out of the far end of the 1990’s with “truth” and “reality” still intact. These include object-oriented ontology and dialectical critical realism, among others. Metaphysics can be practiced after Kant and Darwin only by theorizing beyond what is thought of as acceptable in postmodernism and late-stage capitalism, as I discuss in the first section below.”
CosmoErotic Humanism, as is expertly detailed in A Return to Eros, by Kristina Kincaid and Marc Gafni, is a species of metamodern metaphysics, or, simply put, we need to embrace telling the most ultimate stories about ourselves, and about the universe. If we don’t do that, we will stay stuck in hyperobject problems, problems that are huge objects, extended over mass space and time, and effecting us all the time, like global climate change, racism and ineffectual politics.
From respecting science as an indispensable form of knowing, to seeing that science is always contextual and truth always tentative; that reality always holds deeper truths, to a systems view of life, to panpsychism, that consciousness is everywhere in the universe and “as real” as matter and space, Stein opens the door for us to personally more deeply enter into these big questions in our own lives and communities.
Kristina Amelong
Daily Wisdom: Even God must be Becoming · Story as a First Principle and First Value of Reality · Dr. Marc Gafni
The Shechinah is the feminine Divine. Her name means Indwelling Presence, “the one who dwells in you.” She is presence, poetry, passion. She is the sustaining God force which runs through and wombs the world. She is the underlying erotic, sensual, and loving force that knows our name and nurtures all being.
Shechinah captures an experience, a way of being in the world, for which we do not yet have an English word. For this is a way of being which we in the West are hard pressed to articulate. It is the experience of waking up in the morning full of utter joy for the arrival of the day. It is weeping over the splendor of the sunset or the scent of the ocean or the fragility of a newborn. It is a way of living in love.
Enlightenment of Fullness: An Article by Dr. Marc Gafni · Dr. Marc Gafni in Azure 1996: On the Commandment to Question · Dr. Marc Gafni
There are three primary levels of consciousness through whose prism we experience our lives.
We will call these three levels the pre-tragic, tragic, and post-tragic.
Common Ground: Eros & Spirit: Wisdom of the Spiritually Incorrect · Unique Self and Levels of Development (Rob McNamara) · Dr. Marc Gafni
It is the collapse of Eros that leads to what we have called the murder of Eros. Wilhelm Reich called this “the murder of Christ.” By “Christ” he meant Eros or life force. This is one of the most common but hidden dimensions of human existence. To live an erotic life, we must guard against the murder of Eros. This is a fundamentally denied yet ever-present human impulse. Human beings may be ready to confess many sins, but all feign innocence when accused of the murder of Eros. And yet this primal impulse is as old as civilization itself. Despite our genuine moral evolution in many regards, this fundamental human compulsion has changed little. What has changed, however, is that because the murder of Eros is no longer socially acceptable, the impulse is carefully disguised.
Common Ground: Eros & Spirit: Wisdom of the Spiritually Incorrect · Essays from the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice – Volume 6 Number 1 · Dr. Marc Gafni
This work was written by Drs. Marc Gafni and Kristina Kincaid and is one of the core source texts for the new meta-theory of the Center which we call Cosmo-Erotic Humanism. It has been widely recognized as a seminal work.
“A Return to Eros is a tour de force of the kind that comes along once in a generation. The way this volume brings Eros to consciousness as the fundamental force, direction, and “purpose” of reality on all levels and all quadrants, really is the discovery that now underlies, directs, and “explains” the sacred purpose of cosmogenesis, the birth narrative of the New Human. It’s the second coming of humanity for the first time in history incarnate as a fully embodied sacred sexual being. It’s the early stages of the next evolutionary unfolding. A Return to Eros forms the basis of evolutionary spirituality. It captures the glory of its conscious experience from the inside out in the sexuality and Eros of the evolutionary unique self.”
– Barbara Marx Hubbard
It is the collapse of Eros that leads to what we have called the murder of Eros. Wilhelm Reich called this “the murder of Christ.” By “Christ” he meant Eros or life force. This is one of the most common but hidden dimensions of human existence. To live an erotic life, we must guard against the murder of Eros. This is a fundamentally denied yet ever-present human impulse. Human beings may be ready to confess many sins, but all feign innocence when accused of the murder of Eros. And yet this primal impulse is as old as civilization itself. Despite our genuine moral evolution in many regards, this fundamental human compulsion has changed little. What has changed, however, is that because the murder of Eros is no longer socially acceptable, the impulse is carefully disguised.
The sexual models the erotic is true for both the pleasure of Eros and its pain. We have talked much about how sex models Eros in all of her faces, including pleasure. Now we turn to the pain of Eros. Here, too, the sexual models the erotic.
Sexuality leaves so many mortally wounded in her wake. There is so much pain from what is supposed to be the source of so much pleasure. We are confused about sexuality. And that confusion is the source of much of our distress, as Persian poet Hafiz attests below in his poem “A Barroom View of Love.”
None of the four old philosophies about sex are sufficient to inspire us or even hold us in our sexuality. Sex is not merely negative or positive. Sex is not just neutral, nor is it merely sacred because it creates babies.
Erotic Mystics from the hidden tradition of Solomon’s temple taught a secret doctrine. Sex is the source of all wisdom. Sex is an expression of the erotic impulse of existence itself alive in us-the yearning for contact, pleasure, and aliveness. The Sexual however is not the sum total of the erotic. Rather, the sexual models the Erotic. The sexual teaches us how to live an Erotic life in all dimension of our existence.
It is these secret doctrines that were later taught by Mary Magdalene and that sparked excitement around bestselling novels such as The Da Vinci Code.
Deep understanding of the sexual becomes the portal to accessing aliveness in every dimension of our reality. This realization demands that you live sexually without shame and shows you how to re-eroticize all areas of your life.
A Return to Eros: On Sex, Love, and Eroticism in Every Dimension of Life, from Drs. Marc Gafni and Kristina Kincaid, reveals the radical secret tenets of relationship between the sexual, the erotic, and the holy. They reveal what Eros actually means and share the ten core qualities of the Erotic, which are modeled by the sexual. These include being on the inside, fullness of presence, yearning, allurement, fantasy, surrender, creativity, pleasure, and more.
A Return to Eros shows why these qualities of the erotic modeled by the sexual are actually the same core qualities of the sacred. The relationship between the sexual and the erotic becomes clear, teaching you how to live an erotically suffused existence charged with purpose, potency and power.
To be an Outrageous Lover–not just in sex but also in all facets of your life–you must listen deeply to the simple yet elegant whisperings of the sexual. This book will forever transform your understanding and experience of love, sex, and Eros.
Daily Wisdom: Spiritual realization carries a terrible burden: an obligation to communicate · Whole Mate: The Future of Relationships | by Dr. Marc Gafni and Barbara Marx Hubbard | Foreword by Aubrey Marcus · Dr. Marc Gafni
Watch Sally Kempton introducing Dr. Marc Gafni at the Integral Spiritual Experience 2.
The second Integral Spiritual Experience event, attracting about 500 participants from around the world, centered on The Future of Love as part of an Integral approach to spirituality.
Let me say a little bit, not to introduce our speaker, because he needs no introduction, but really, to honor him. It’s a great privilege to be able to honor your friends, and really to speak on behalf of all of us on the Integral Spiritual Experience team and for all of us in this room, just to recognize the place that Marc Gafni holds for us. He is, as I said before, the master of the revels—revels, not rebels, although there’s that as well in the heart of all great heart masters.
He’s the intellectual center of Integral Spiritual Experience. He’s the one who has held the vision of this event, which we can’t call a conference, this extraordinary space between the worlds that we occupy here. He’s also a cutting-edge spiritual teacher, as Tammy Simon, his publisher, said. He’s a visionary genius, love muffin. He’s one of the most brilliant Integral evolutionary philosophers around. Like Ken and Deepak, he has that capacity to see through into the patterns of existence, and he has the courage and audacity to speak the new paradigms.
Last summer, I was having lunch with Marc and Michael Murphy, the founder of Esalen, who’s also one of the cutting-edge prophets or heart master Integral evolutionary theorists of his generation. He said, very rarely do you meet someone who changes the game. Marc, he said, you are changing the game. Part of what we are experiencing here in this evolution through the three stages of love, which is the conversation that he has brought into the Integral discourse in the past year, as he brought the conversation on Unique Self into the Integral conversation in the years before.
So with all that, the deepest truth that I experience about Mark, as Diane said this morning, is that he does really have the most robust heart of anyone I know. I come from a lineage of heart masters, and I pride myself on being able to recognize one when I see one. So when I tell you, as I think you already know, that Marc is a heart master, I know what I’m talking about. So, I’d like you to join me in welcoming our heart master, Marc Gafni.
John Welwood and Marc Gafni: The Phenomenology of Unique Self – In Dialogue with Buddhism: An Intimate Conversation · The Universe Is a Love Story: Marc Gafni on Daniel Kazandjian’s Podcast · Dr. Marc Gafni
This early draft of an essay was written in 2014 by Dr. Marc Gafni.
It will later become part of The Phenomenology of Eros by Drs. Marc Gafni and Kristina Kincaid.
The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reaches up into the topmost summit of his spirit.
—Nietzsche
Language, taught the Cherub Mystics,[1] is the building block of Reality. The word “fuck” says something that no other word is able to express. When you stop to consider, you begin to realize that fuck is one of the most fantastic words in the English language. And it says something very deep about Reality.
In some sense fuck is very much like the word God. Both words are considered unspeakable, other than in the right context. Speaking God’s Name is a sin for many religions because it holds an intensity of meaning that is beyond the ordinary. Moreover, we are not quite sure what the word “God” means. The mystery of meaning around God’s Name is part of its evocative power. And finally, the word God means different things to many different people in many different contexts. It is even strangely used as a curse word, as in “Goddammit!” What God means to you directly depends on your level of consciousness. Indeed, the God you do not believe in does not exist.
You begin to see that there is some similarity between God and fuck. Fuck, like God, is not to be spoken in ordinary circumstances. Pronouncing the word is not allowed in many contexts. Moreover, there is great confusion around the meaning of the word. Like God, it means many different things to many different people in many different contexts. The range of possible meaning is part of its evocative power. Fuck, like God, is often used as part of a curse. And like God, there is no easy stand in for the word.
“Fuck” is an incredibly painful, beautiful, and magical word. Fuck is irreducible and not easily moved aside by imitators. It evokes pleasure and pain, as well as hate and love. So just to lovingly “fuck with you” a little bit, let’s look at some of the meanings of the word fuck. In broad brushstrokes, we might say that there are at least three general senses of the word.
In this opening section, we are going to “fuck around” a bit, in no particular order, with all three of these meta meanings of fuck, and in doing so unpack something of why the word fuck is so “fucking” important.
The first sense of fuck—as an intensifier—might express radical amazement. “That was fucking awesome!” In this sense, fuck is used to connote the intensification of experience. As noted above, it is “Holy Fuck,” or just simply, “Fuuuuuuck!!” that most succinctly capture this sense of the word. This sense of fuck can express intimacy, wonder, and allurement.
You might also say, on the negative side of things, “I’m fucked,” “She fucking sucks,” or “He is a fucking asshole.” A “fucking asshole” is a more intense form than just an ordinary “asshole.” Or, in the more positive sense, “He is a fucking saint.” Again, “a fucking saint” is significantly more saintly than a regular, run-of-the-mill saint. But in both cases, fuck is an intensifier, evoking a heightened experience or expression of reality.
Another expression of fuck is as a particularly potent way of saying “hello.” “Hello,” in its ideal form, creates connection between conscious beings. In many languages, the word “hello” is also the name of God. For example, “Shalom” in Hebrew means both hello and God’s name. Famously, the Sanskrit form of hello—Namaste—means “I bow to the God in you.” It is in this context that we understand the intensified contact made through a fuck-based greeting like “How the fuck are you?” or “It is so fucking good to see you!” This last example already points us towards the second sense of fuck.
This second sense of fuck is about moving towards, making contact, being open, alive, and awake—“Let’s fucking do this.” This second sense of fuck also expresses the playing with, breaking open, or re-ordering of the ordinary boundaries of reality. For example, to “fuck with you,” means to confuse your sense of order, to throw you off balance. This usage can have a playful sense or a more sinister sense. It might show up as, “I was just fucking with you,” as in “I was just playing with you.” Or it might be deployed as “I am going to fuck with you,” as in “I am going to penetrate the apparently well-defended boundaries of your world and turn everything inside out.” “I am gonna fuck you up” generally expresses the more aggressive quality of fuck. In both senses, fuck is a verb. This sense of fuck implies an intensity of action, which intrudes on the ordinary sense of reality and boundaries in an either playful or violent manner. A sophisticated use of this sense of fuck, “let’s fuck it open,” almost ecstatically points towards the playing with or breaking open of boundaries. But this pointing towards a broken-open or broken-down reality might also be an adjective, as in, “this is so fucked.” The second sense of fuck as rupturing from, either by stepping away or moving towards, often confrontationally, often expresses itself through rage, aggression and alienation.
The third sense of fuck is the ultimate question, as in, “How the fuck?” In this sense, fuck expresses inherent unknowing in Reality. This could be said with a positive sense of wonder and awe or with a desperate quality of confusion and terror. Fuck holds both. In this sense, “What the fuck?” is similar to the phrase “God knows,” as in “God knows, but we certainly do not.[3] Notice again that fuck and God live in an overlapping field of meaning.
Fuck might also indicate a very sharp expression of questioning, as in “What the fuck is going on here?” Or it might express a sense of mystery, as with the phrase, “Fuck if I know.”
Are you getting a sense of the magic of the word “fuck”? We are having a “fucking great time” writing this section of the book!
Continuing on, fuck can also express an almost religious sense of awe or amazement in the face of surprising and mysterious revelation. This might show up in the classic phrase “Holy Fuck!” Or, in case you wanted to underscore the point, you could double on the word fuck, as in “Holy fuck, that is fucking awesome!!”
All of these express different dimensions of both radical aliveness and encounters with mysterious sources, both of which are fundamental to the experience of Eros.
On the other side of the street, there are a host of meanings of fuck that express the sense of things gone wrong. Fuck in this sense expresses disconnection, alienation, and even degradation. Failing in a relationship might be expressed as “I fucked up my marriage.” Being taken advantage of might be “I got fucked over,” or “I got totally fucked by the company.” This indicates a sense of having been exploited or objectified—fuck expressing disconnection. Fuck might indicate a sense of unrelenting and even brutal demand: “Just fucking do it before I kick you in the fucking balls.” Here again, the quality of this expression depends on context. This might stem from a hidden love, as in the tough coach, or a brutal alienation, as in the corrupt prison guard. Fuck might also indicate a sense of exasperation, as in “Aww fuck,” or a demand that someone sever contact immediately, as in “Get the fuck out of here.” Alternatively, fuck might be an expression of extreme hostility, “I am going to knock your fucking head off,” or apathy, as in “Who gives a fuck?” Fuck might also express a sense of things gone terribly wrong, as in “This is really fucked.”
Another deployment of fuck is used to intensify the sense of disconnection, bringing together the first and second senses of the word: “This mother fucker was so fucking weird that I think he was fucking insane.” You may even say that kind of expression includes the third sense of mystery. But back to the positive side of things for a microsecond, “mother fucker” can also indicate someone who is wildly gifted or competent. On the even more dramatic rupturing side of fuck are the words of a popular tee shirt: “fuck you, you fucking fuck.” The repetitive deployment of fuck indicates an extreme loss of contact—fuck as alienation. The other person is no longer human; they are literally alien to you. The sense of fuck as expressing a breaking of connection appears in many modes. “I don’t give a fuck” indicates I have no empathy or love left for this person or situation. “You stupid fuck” is an extreme form of severing contact from the humanity of another person. “Don’t fuck with me” means do not engage me, as in “stay out of my face or I am going to fuck you up.” “This is really fucked” means this is not how things should be in a good universe operating according to moral principles. “What the fuck are you doing?” reveals a complete lack of alignment with the actions or motives of another.
All of these meanings of fuck, however, need to be understood in light of fuck’s most common meaning, which is of course sex. In the sexual sense, fuck can be an active verb. “Jane is fucking John.” Or it can be a passive verb: “Jane was fucked by John.” It can be a noun, as in “John is a great fuck.”[4] But at the core of things, fuck expresses a dimension of the sexual experience that is not captured by the many meanings of love.
Fuck contains within it an inexorable urgency far bigger than the casual pettiness of personal whim. This is the sense of “Fuck me now,” or as it is often said without the temporal qualifier, “Fuck Me!” Sometimes, the ecstasy of the sexual leaves out even the word “me,” and fuck, by itself, becomes the central mantra of the sexual.
Now, the conversation takes a somewhat more serious turn. For fuck is serious business indeed.
Fuck speaks to a primal, radical, and irreducible need. Fuck, in all of its expressions, seeks to articulate a dimension of lived Eros, which is both prior to and beyond all language and culture. Fuck cannot be denied. It is a demand which, on the one hand, lives in us and, on the other hand, is sourced in forces much larger than us. Its potency is precisely in its impersonal quality. It is exactly the paradox of that impersonal quality awakening personally in us that is the heart of both fuck’s peril and power.
When we choose fuck, then Fuck becomes conscious of itself in us. This is movement from unconscious fuck to conscious Fuck. It is in that moment that Fuck awakens as the sacred. When we deny fuck, then fuck demands its pound of flesh, virtually always devolving into its more pathological forms. Unpacking the depth of these qualities is the journey of the Phenomenology of Eros.
The sexual usage of fuck is the penultimate expression of the sense of fuck, which is about contact and connection. It is in this precise sense that the sexual models the erotic. Or said differently, the small-lettered fuck of the sexual models the erotic, capital-F Fuck of Reality.
We (the authors) often tell our students, “Find your Fuck” or “Feel your Fuck.” What this means is find and feel your radical aliveness. Find your purpose. Feel the evolutionary impulse throbbing in you. Feel the ecstatic, divine impulse for contact, intimacy, and connection pulsing[5] in you, as you, and through you. To find your Fuck, however, is not to be disconnected from Reality. Rather, to find your Fuck is to let the Fuck of Reality appear uniquely in you and as you.
Reality is allurement. Your identity is the unique constellation and quality of your allurements. Distinguishing between your authentic allurement and your pseudo-allurement, and then enacting your allurement in your life, is the very purpose of your existence. Reality desperately needs your enacted allurement. Reality needs you to Find Your Fuck. Your purpose is your telos. To find your Fuck is to find your telos—your ultimate aim.
To find your Fuck, you must first feel your Fuck. The feel of your Fuck is your Eros. It is in the sexual that you can learn to feel your Fuck. As we are sexually, so we are in the rest of our lives. The secret of the Cherubs whispers—the sexual models the erotic. Sex models Eros.
The sexual is but an expression of the core drive for contact that animates and drives all of Reality. In this very sense, we also speak of the “goodness of Fuck.” By the goodness of Fuck, we mean the radical goodness of the sexual, awake and alive in you, as the model of Fuck in every dimension of life. This is the new sexual narrative that we call Sex Erotic.[6]
Eros is a combination of Love and Fuck. Love and Fuck are not separate; they are different faces of the same experience. If they expressed the same quality of the same experience, however, we would not have two words.
Love and Fuck are not just any two words. They are two of the most popular words in existence (right up there with “God”). We have both words because they are not merely synonyms of each other. They are two aspects of the same experience; they are distinct but inseparable. This leads to the realization that Love + Fuck = Eros.
Eros is the experience of radical aliveness moving towards ever greater contact. Love and Fuck are the two qualities of Eros. Love is tender, passionate, and even fierce. Fuck is the inexorable, urgent desire that ceaselessly drives towards contact. Love is the passionate longing to embrace. Fuck is the unrelenting urge to merge.
When love loses the quality of fuck, then our lives become disconnected from the larger stream of life. Love becomes pallid. We wonder—secretly shamed—why love does not fill us. We suffer from the denial of fuck. The denial of Fuck is not a detail; it is the ultimate denial, and therefore the abuse and suffering it generates is equally large. We know that Fuck cannot exist without love; the denial of love brings monumental suffering. But we have forgotten that love cannot thrive without the feeling of Fuck.[7]
Fuck is the core nature of Reality—all the way up and all the way down the evolutionary ladder. When Fuck awakens in us, it expresses itself as the radical drive for contract and connection. It is not a uniquely human impulse, but rather the impulse of all of Reality becoming conscious of itself in us. When we feel our Fuck, we feel radically alive and at home in the Cosmos. We are filled with an unmistakable Eros and telos (ultimate aim). We begin to live purpose-driven lives, which drip with the nectar of Eros itself. Our lives become telerotic.
Our bodies and hearts know that Fuck is our birthright. Fuck is not merely an intensifier of the ordinary. Rather, it points to the extraordinary—the true index of our deepest desire.
The failure of Fuck is the loss of aliveness, which Wilhelm Reich correctly diagnosed as the “emotional plague of mankind.”[8] It is not the loss of a particular privilege or experience; it is the deadening of all experience. The disconnection from Fuck is cause for the loss of our unmediated knowing that life is good. When we become alienated from Fuck, we forget our true identity and lose our dignity. We forget that we are good children of a Universe that desires our transformation.
It is in the dignity of Fuck that we recognize the glory of our true situation.
It is in the dignity of Fuck that we are personally addressed by Reality.
It is in the dignity of Fuck that we know that we are needed, desired, and chosen by All-That-Is.
It is for all of these reasons that the loss of Fuck is more than merely painful. It is intolerable. We cannot stand it. The result is a two-stage process of disintegration.
The first stage is the exile of Fuck. We exile the great Fuck of Reality to the exclusively sexual. The fuck of the sexual attempts to hook us up to aliveness. But when Fuck is limited to the sexual, the hook up does not work. We wind up with some version of four incomplete Sexual Narratives:[9] the narrative that sex is positive, negative, neutral, or sacred (because it makes babies). But in all of these narratives the fuck of sex is disconnected from the larger Fuck of the Cosmos.
The second stage of the downward-spiraling process is the degradation of Fuck. Fuck becomes a curse word. “Go fuck yourself” expresses the desperate pain of a person caught in the illusion of a flatland universe without fuck. Our own exile is reflected in the exile of Fuck into its degraded expression, “fuck.”
The loss of the larger sense of Fuck reduces it to the mere fuck of sex. This, by its very nature, creates a rupture of contact and severing of connection that fosters the abuse of sex in all of its forms. Sex is abused when it is cut off from the larger context of Eros in which it lives. When sex is disconnected from the larger Fuck of the Cosmos, it cannot help but collapse in on itself because we are asking far too much from it. Sex then often implodes into every form of addiction and abuse.
It is only when sex becomes a portal to the unique potency that flows through us from Source—what we have called Sex Erotic—that the dignity and delight of Fuck is restored. When sex is cut off from our total being, from our deeper wholeness, and we ask it for favors it cannot grant, then fuck becomes a curse word.
We are using the word Fuck with great intention, a dash of delight, and complete awareness and gravitas. We are using the word Fuck because the word itself matters. We are using it not to provoke or be superficially daring in some juvenile attention grab. Rather, we are using the word Fuck because we know that bypassing the energy of Fuck is a disaster. Bypassing the word and energy of Fuck fucks things up in big ways, in pretty much all fronts of life. The energy of Fuck is held in the word Fuck. In the mystical traditions, part of the emergence of new consciousness is when people begin to pronounce the unutterable—the Name of God. We need to restore the dignity of fuck by uttering the word Fuck not in a casual way, but as an iteration of God’s Name.
We need to liberate the great Fuck of Reality from the narrow fuck of the merely sexual. Fuck has been exiled into the sexual. But this is only the first exile. In the second exile, fuck has been banished even further. In this second exile, fuck is not identified with all of the sexual, but only with its degraded forms expressed in pornography, rape, violence, and dehumanizing sex. It is only by entering into the full desire of Fuck—and realizing that it is the primal desire of Cosmos for contact and connection awakening in us—that we are able to embrace the fully dignity of Fuck. God is Fuck.
Freud wrongly reduced all Eros to sex. He thought that culture was lower-case fuck in disguise, and that it covered up libido straining for expression. And yet all Fuck yearns for Infinity. This is the new sexual narrative of Sex Erotic, whose earliest seeds come from in between the sexually intertwisted Cherubs in the holy of holies of the Jerusalem Temple.
The Universe feels and the Universe feels Fuck. In that precise sense, Fuck is the Name of God. The greatest human desire is to participate in the Fuck of Reality. But we are afraid of the feeling of Fuck. It makes us feel out of control or vulnerable in a way we would rather deny or repress. But it is only by entering the feeling of Fuck, and tracing it back to its original Divine Source, that we begin to live the erotic life. The feeling of Fuck is the incessant desire of the Universe to contact new forms of itself in order to birth new creations from the joy of that contact.
There were legions of well-meaning people, liberal and conservative alike, who all told us not to use the word Fuck/fuck in this book. But they grew ever more insistent and shrill when they heard that one of the core realizations of the erotic life can be summarized in three words: God is Fuck. Never mind that this truth is rooted in the most central teachings of both ancient mysticism and modern science, as we will see. Never mind that it is true, they said. “This is a truth that cannot be spoken.” Even the people who got it said we should not say it. “Don’t say it because it is
too dangerous,
too shocking,
too easy to confuse with vulgarity,
too provocative,
and just too… much.”
There was a great demand to leave this teaching out, or at the very least to “tone it down a notch” by not using the word Fuck/fuck.
Why don’t we just say that “God is Love?” The reason, as we have already pointed out, is that God is Love is only half of the story. First, God is Love, for most people, implies an anthropomorphic god, entirely separate from Cosmos, who loves you much like your grandfather might. Or, in a more mystical reading of God is Love, it speaks of a caring, kind, and compassionate Cosmos.
But the quality of “God is Fuck” is not only soft and gentle; it is not all sweetness and light. This Love that drives the Cosmos is outrageous and fierce. This love is animated by an inexorable force that lies at the very Heart of the Cosmos. This is not a polite or well-mannered desire.
This force is a raw and primal desire for contact. It is the desire for Fuck. Fuck will not be bypassed and will not be muted. Fuck is a desire, which refuses to be ignored or denied. It is this raw desire for Fuck that animates all of Reality, including you.
At the core of Fuck is the very essence of life and the holy itself. Therefore, we need to liberate Fuck and not bypass it. As is already becoming clear, the liberation of Fuck has absolutely nothing to do with promiscuity, and certainly nothing to do with any form of demeaning objectification or abuse. It’s precisely the opposite, actually.
This entire Phenomenology of Eros body of work can correctly be understood as a Meditation on the Name of God.
A central practice of the erotic mystics, recorded in the texts of the interior sciences of virtually all the great traditions, is to meditate on the Name of God. The Sufi Masters meditated on the Ninety-Nine Names of God, the Hebrew Masters on the Seventy-Two Names from the Kabbalah, and Christian practice in Christ does the same.[10]
Let’s turn to the fascinating realization of Fuck that forms the core of the twin forms of gnosis: mysticism and science. Mystics talk about this in their way, and science talks about this in its way.
The ancient Hebrew mystics, for example, say it unabashedly: The Name of God is Fuck. The only way to embody a sex beyond shame is to realize that the Name of God is Fuck.
The classic name of God was spelled Yod He Vav He (YHVH):
The first two letters (moving from the right because Hebrew text reads opposite English texts)—Yod and He—are the masculine and feminine; not man and woman, but masculine and feminine, or what we call lines and circles.[11] These are the two primary forces of Cosmos. The Universe, in every moment, every situation, every person, every entity, every dynamic, is the play between the line qualities of autonomy and independence on the one hand, and the circle qualities of attraction and allurement on the other. Science reminds us that it is the constant dance between attraction and repulsion that shapes the structure of Reality. Reality is the play between the line qualities of thrusting forward and directionality on the one hand, and the circle qualities of including and connection on the other. This is the Fuck of the Cosmos, which is the Name of God.
The Yod enters the He. We call this “constant Fuck,” following the wisdom of Solomon. It is the “sustained” or “perpetual” Fuck that lies at the center of Reality. The force of Fuck is the force of desire itself, built into the source code of Reality. Science says the same thing in its language. Desire, or what the cosmologist Brian Swimme calls “cosmic allurement,” is the essence of Reality itself.
Attraction, or allurement, is built into the very structure of the Universe. For example, the standard model of particle physics explains that electromagnetism causes atoms to form. Atoms are the basis of matter. A molecule is made up of atoms. Stable atoms have an equal number of positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons. This balances the electrical charge of the atom. But if the electrical charge of the atom is neutral, then what makes neutrally charged particles come together? How do the particles stick together? How do these atoms come together to form the molecules that are the building blocks of material reality? The answer is Fuck.
In most of the known elements, e.g., hydrogen (H), lithium (Li), and sodium (Na), the orbital electron shells[12] of the atoms are what science calls incomplete. Simply said, that means that the outermost shell of these incomplete atoms is not fully filled. Incomplete atoms are really hungry for a configuration of intimacy with a completely filled outermost shell. They are relationship hungry. They desire relationships. They are allured to other atoms with likewise incomplete shells. This is Eros. This is Fuck. This attraction, this allurement, is the base for the formation of molecules that make up all matter. This is the sustained Fuck. The Yod that is constantly entering the He.
There is, however, a second form of Fuck, in which human beings play the primary role. The last two letters of the Name of God are the Vav and the He. The Vav only enters the He when human beings arouse the Divine Fuck. You arouse the Divine Fuck when you live the unique quality of your full Eros and aliveness in every dimension of your life.
The Great Fuck of the Cosmos has been forgotten. We forget that we live in a Reality whose core principle is allurement. We have lost our memory. For the Greeks, the loss of knowledge is the source of all evil. For the erotic mystic, it is the loss of memory that is the source of all evil. Our failed memory of Fuck is the source of great pain and confusion. On the one hand, we forget that, in accordance with quantum theory, Reality is coming in and out of existence in every second.[13] Some mystics call the interior of this same phenomenon “constant creation.” Constant creation comes from fierce and Outrageous Love—what the Mystics call Zivug Matmedet, or Constant Fuck—which Fucks Reality into being in every second.
It is not only that we have forgotten. Our denial of Fuck is so desperate and intense that we have forgotten that we have forgotten—what the Greeks called “Léthē.” And yet, in the midst of our amnesia, we yearn to participate in the Fuck of the Cosmos. Anything less will not satisfy us. We yearn for what we have forgotten. The result is, however, that we cannot explain our yearning to ourselves. We no longer understand our innermost drives. We have lost touch with the radical yearning for intense contact that is the axiomatic desire of Reality, alive in us.
We need to remember that if God is Fuck,
then it is no less true that Fuck is God.
Fuck must be engaged with rapture and reverence,
not only when it is sweet and tender,
but even when it is raw or rough.
All fuck is part of Fuck.
The fragrance of Fuck is always a rumor of Divinity.
God is Fuck,
Fuck is God.
[1] The cherubs are two figures that live atop the Ark of the Covenant in Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. According to the sacred text, the voice of God “speaks from between the two cherubs,” (Numbers 7:89). What is not known from the sacred text, other than to initiates in the esoteric tradition, is that these two cherubs are locked in ecstatic sexual embrace. The voice of God speaks from between the sexually entwined cherubs. The “secret of the cherubs” will continue to be a theme throughout this book.
[2] Another way to imagine fuck as breaking boundaries is through the embodiment of destruction or deconstruction, as in “I’m fucked up” (my sense of reality is deconstructing) or “my car is fucked” (my car is in really bad shape).
[3] “What the fuck” indicates disorienting uncertainty which may still be seeking to orient to the situation, while “God knows” has a quality of giving up on ever understanding a situation or dynamic. Both, however, overlap in their quality of disorienting uncertainty.
[4] (Osho, The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, English Discourse Series, Talks given in 1987) Chapter #23: “Knowledge is the corpse of knowing.” Section: “What is the most important word in our language?” There is also a book that published these talks in 1988, with the same titles.
[5] This is how we come to understand the nature of Eros as seeking greater evolutionary wholeness, as we will see. Eros, felt as aliveness, moves toward ever greater contact, intimacy, and connection.
[6] On the new sexual narrative that we call Sex Erotic, see Gafni, Marc and Kincaid, Kristina, A Return to Eros: The Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive, BenBella Books, Inc, 2017. For some excerpts, see here: https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/drs-marc-gafni-kristina-kincaid-excerpts-from-a-return-to-eros/.
[7] We want to remind the reader of the sometimes unconventional deployments of Capitalization, in this case seen most clearly in sometimes capitalizing, and sometimes not, the word f/Fuck). This is an invocation of divine quality into otherwise ordinary words.
[8] See Reich, Wilhelm. The murder of Christ: the emotional plague of mankind. Vol. 1. Macmillan, 1953. See also Reich’s People in Trouble: Volume two of the emotional plague of mankind. Vol. 2. Macmillan, 1976.
[9] On the four sexual narratives, see Gafni, Marc and Kincaid, Kristina, A Return to Eros: The Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive, BenBella Books, Inc, 2017. For some excerpts, see here: https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/drs-marc-gafni-kristina-kincaid-excerpts-from-a-return-to-eros/.
[10] For a contemporary expression of this practice in the Christian tradition, see https://www.cofchrist.org/spiritual-practice-meditating-on-gods-name.
[11] On lines and circles, see for example Isaac Luria, Sod Iggulim Ve-yosher. Jerusalem 1964. For a discussion of this Lurianic distinction, see Marc Gafni, The Mystery of Love, Atria, 2003, “Chapter Eight—Circle and Line: The Dance of Male and Female.” For classical Kabbalistic texts expressing the masculine feminine polarity in the Name of God, see, R. Moshe Cordevero’s Pardes Rimonim (Orchard of Pomegranates), R. Yosef Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah (Gates of Light), See also Sara Schneider’s Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of the Masculine and Feminine, a carefully annotated translation and rudimentary analysis of a classic set of mystical Hebrew texts related to this trope.
[12] The orbital electron shells are a simplified model pointing towards the erotic dance of the electrons around the atomic nucleus. In that model, developed by Niels Bohr in 1913, an electron exists in the lowest energy shell available, which is the one closest to the nucleus.[For more about the Bohr Model of Electron Shells, see, for example, here: https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Book%3A_General_Biology_(Boundless)/02%3A_The_Chemical_Foundation_of_Life/2.05%3A__Atoms_Isotopes_Ions_and_Molecules_-_Electron_Shells_and_the_Bohr_Model.]
[13] The quantum vacuum, for example, tells us that some elementary particles and waves simply leap into existence. A quantum vacuum is the quantum state with the lowest possible energy. According to our present-day understanding, it is however never truly empty but rather contains electromagnetic waves, gravitons, photons, dark energy, and virtual particles that pop in and out of existence. Microwave technology invented for radar in the world-war era was co-opted to great avail in physics experiments interested in measuring particle interactions. The Lamb shift experiment was based on a discrepancy between theory (Dirac equations) and experiment in measuring two energy levels within the hydrogen atom. It was discovered that the cause of the discrepancy was interactions between vacuum energy fluctuations (free electrons) in the Maxwell field and hydrogen electrons bound to the proton as they revolved around the proton.
Integral Leadership Collaborative Keynote Marc Gafni: Your Unique Self – Giving Your Gift · Download Chapter 1-5 of First Principles and First Values · Dr. Marc Gafni
Eros is the full aliveness of reality living awake in every moment.
Eros has four faces; Eros is to enter the inside of the inside of every moment of every encounter of every situation. Eros is to experience the fullness of presence in every dimension of reality. Eros is to participate in the yearning force of being which is experienced as the ecstatic evolutionary impulse awakening in you, as you and through you. Eros is wholeness, the lived truth of the inner connectivity of the all with the all.
The sexual models, in its most epic forms, what it means to live erotically in all of the non-sexual dimensions of our life. The sacred sexual is our teacher, our guide.
Tantra, in Sanskrit, meaning to expand, is the expansion of erotic living, beyond the sexual, into every facet of reality.
Eros is life itself, awake, alive, aware, activist, perfectly still and madly in love.
The fall of the temple symbolises the exile of the Erotic energy. Where did it go? The erotic is exiled in the sexual! We have to understand, that the sexual models the erotic, but it doesn’t exhaust the erotic.
The Sexual Models the Erotic in four major ways. In each of these ways a major face of the eros is modeled in the sexual. The goal of tantra, which in Sanskrit literally means to expand, is to expand these qualities in our lives beyond the merely sexual into every arena of our lives. The goal of tantra is to live erotically in all of the non sexual dimensions of being.
The first is the way of interiority. It is in the sacred positions of the erotic sexual entered and received as the highest form of practice, embraced as surrender to love, that all the false positions we covet in life are revealed as the paltry fare of pseudo Eros. A fare which leave the soul parched and desperate for true nourishment. It is in the erotic sexual that we are most obviously invited to fully abandon the superficial games of fractured ego and fragmented identity, enter the interior castle of reality. It is only on the inside of reality that your heart is set free and you are able to see deeper then the flatland of surface vision. Eros is Interiority modeled by the sexual.
The second is the way of Presence. The erotic sexual invites us to a realm which we do not recognize easily in our daily struggles to prove that we exist. In the erotic sexual existence is a given. We feel beyond feeling to the deepest feeling where our existence is radiant and alive- obviously not in need of explanation. It simply and joyously is. Eros is our opening to the fullness, alive and alove presence, that always is, always will be and always is. This opening is modeled by the sexual.
God is Shechina. Shechina in many Zoharic passages means Presence or Eros. Eros is Presence. The Shechina is always present, alive in and as everything. Most people never enter the healing expanse of the Shechina which is all around and in them because they are contracted into false hopes. They are building edifice complexes to the survival of their brand. They are lost in the superficial pleasure which is mere sex.
One can have sex one’s entire life and never ravished open to Shechina. So people settle for a family and white picket fence not as manifestation of Shechina but as protection against the emptiness of a life in which they are never lived by God. One can either die open to God, to Ayin, to Sunyatta, in the fullness of the erotic sexual and in every minute of existence, or spend life running from your petty death which can never be outrun. Life means to be fully present without clinging to past, resisting the present or grasping for the future. In such a life eternity is realized.
You can either be present as love or be absent and suffer. In Hebrew mysticism, exile is called “Egypt.” “Mitzrayim Egypt” literally means the place of narrowness, the place where you heart closes. When you close you suffer. Israel is called Merchavim, the wide place, the vast expanse, the place where you open. Redemption is opening in love. It is the sexual that models this opening for us. There is really only one choice to make, to open and live or close and die. Openness is presence. Closure is absence.
If you close, if you clench your fist to hold on to your comfort you will be betrayed. Everything you know as your life will one day disappear. To have is to close. To be is to open. To be or not to be is to open or to close. To be a human having or a human being. To be always and ever alive or already dead.
Can you feel it as you read. You can, can you not. The love and openness pouring through you, arousing you to cry out in rapture. And you must do this even as you suffer; and at some point the suffering will yield to tears and then to bliss. “I am open,” you must cry out. Take me God. Take me now.
Let yourself open all the way and know that only then, in your radical openness and vulnerability are you safe. Protect your balls and they will be crushed. Again the sexual models the erotic which is the holy.
If you get lost in Egypt, in the narrow images of your constructed reality you will never touch joy and never experience rapture. You can either die to Shechina in ecstatic pleasure moans of ecstasy, or whimper, die and rot in the earth. Teaches the Hassidic master the Maggid of Mezritch, late in this life, revising his earlier ascetic dharma, ‘If you only feel the Shekina in the arousal of your sex then you are already dead. If the arousal of your sex ravishes you open to God you are being born.’ Sex models the fullness of presence. The lover in Psalms says to the God who is the all, in what for the Kabbalists is understood as a blatantly sexual moment, “Open for me your gates…I will enter them…I will moan your praise.” The sexual models the erotic. Love is beyond limitation. Limitation is death and love is death to be born. Love without limitation and be surrender absolutely and your will be born to your true ecstatic nature.
In the erotic sexual we show up, we are present in ways we barely even imagine possible in the routines of our daily pettiness. Every gesture, every caress, every shiver of our body, every fleeting touch is invested with the infinite love fullness of alive presence.
Wholeness:
The third way is the way of wholeness. In the erotic sexual we realize that we are so much more then pathetic egos encapsulated in skin which will one day rot under the earth. We realize that invisible lines of connection weave of in an awesome and gorgeous tapestry of wholeness which is holiness. The wholeness of reality expressed in the interconnectivity of being glimmers in the fabric of our sensual couplings. Subject and object laugh when they remember their apparent alienation. In the sensuality of their laughter which embraces all paradox and nullifies all illusion, wholeness is achieved as subjectivity and objectivity dissolve into oneness which is love. Eros is the realization of wholeness modeled by the sexual.
The fourth way is the way of yearning. In the erotic sexual we are invited, even driven to taste of the sweet nectar of this wholeness which heals all of the painful splits, through the magic of yearning. We yearn to merge with other knowing that it is in the union that full rapture and ecstasy wait. Eros is the participation in the yearning force of being seeking to realize itself for the sake of itself. Once again the sexual models the erotic.
As we have said, the model for being an erotic lover – in all facets of our existence – is the sexual. I see you and you are gorgeous, magnetically dazzling, to me. I yearn for you – all of me wants to break down and dissolve the barriers between us, to enter the inside, where the world stands still for a moment, and I am inside the chrysalis of all reality. You-nified.
Since being a lover is modeled on the sexual, we understand that love too is a perception. Moreover, love is a Perception-Identification Complex. I perceive the infinite specialness, the God point in you, and identify that highest point in you as the Real You.
In the understanding of the quantum spirit, I understand that my perception not only discloses a reality that exists, it actually brings this particular reality into existence. “I love you” means both “I perceive you in your beauty” and “You become even more beautiful under my gaze.” Remember, love is a verb. So just as when I shine shoes, they become shinier, when I love you, you become lovelier.
Built into our spiritual hardwiring is a great desire to realize the beauty and divinity that is our birthright. The experience of falling in love is a true perception of this. It allows us a glimpse of union; of what life might be when the thick walls of ego dissolve. We understand, nevertheless, that those walls will always be raised again.
Though but a poetic paradox, it is true that that which is razed, will be only raised again. Ego separation will, sooner or later, always snap back into place. It is precisely at this time, that the real work of loving begins. We seek, by doing the work, to reclaim the heights we glimpsed in the initial ecstasy. Those heights, and even greater ones.
Marc Gafni and Dada Nabhanillananda · Download an Early Version of CosmoErotic Humanism Based on Hebrew Wisdom: The Erotic and the Holy: Kabbalistic Tantra for Everyday Living · Dr. Marc Gafni
By Marc Gafni
Note: The following article appeared in the December 2012/January 2013 issue of Common Ground Magazine.
If you stop to think even for a short moment, you realize that sex really is the great mystery of our lives. Two groups, however, suggest very different approaches to sex, and both of them are wrong.
One powerful group of forces is arrayed in culture to prevent us from getting sex. They tell us that sex is somehow wrong, immoral, or sinful. Even when we think we have gotten free of them, they pop up again inside our hearts or heads, wagging their fingers disapprovingly. And they remind us constantly of all the trouble sex has gotten the world into ”” from the Trojan War to the Clinton/Lewinsky drama. Not to mention the trouble it has gotten you and me into””emotionally, psychologically, personally, professionally, and physically. You have to admit that the sexual conservatives have a point. If you want to keep life simple, clean, and orderly, forgoing or limiting your sexual experience might be an excellent choice. If you like spiritual exercises, take a few minutes to list all the times sex has gotten you into trouble.
Lots of conventional moralists and organized religion fall into this category. Religion wants to affirm love and passion as virtues but to divorce them entirely from sex. So moralist religion works hard to erect boundaries that will protect us from the pitfalls of sex. Yet while we all know that sex requires some discipline, and that context and commitment count, most of us know in our hearts that the moralists are wrong, and that sex is ultimately””and overwhelmingly””good, and not merely a side benefit of achieving loving relationship.
To read the entire article, download it as a PDF file.
What is evolutionary enlightenment? Marc Gafni and Andrew Cohen in dialogue · A Special Gift from Our First Live Sacred Retreat: Truth and Laughter · Dr. Marc Gafni
By Dr. Marc Gafni
Summary: The four faces of eros, described by Marc Gafni in this excerpt from Mystery of Love (2003), are 1.) being on the inside, 2.) fullness of presence, 3.) desire, and 4.) interconnectivity of being. As Marc describes, with its mystical role in these four expressions, the face itself is the truest reflection of the erotic. In the flow of eros, we access the experience of being on the inside of God’s face, which Marc explores here through the Temple mystery of the sexually entwined cherubs atop the Ark who are positioned face to face; the Hebrew word “panim,” which means “inside, face, and before;” and the erotic experience of having a true face-to-face conversation. This significant passage from Mystery of Love invites you to embody the erotic which is modeled but not exhausted by the sexual more deeply in your own life.
Eros has many expressions. Each expression is hinted at in the temple mysteries. There are four faces of eros which, when taken together, form the essence of the Shechina experience. In this essay, we will explore the erotic understanding which forms the matrix of the secret of the cherubs and informs every arena of our existence. As we shall see, at the very heart of Hebrew tantra was a very precise and provocative understanding of the relationship between love, sex, and eros. This will open us up to a whole new understanding of our sexuality and will show us the way to erotically reweave the very fabric of our lives in more vivid patterns, sensual textures, and brilliant hues.
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
The cherubs in the magical mystery of Temple myth were not stationary fixtures. No, these statues were expressive, emotive. They moved. When integrity and goodness ruled the land, the cherubs were face to face. In these times, the focal point of Shechina energy rested erotically, ecstatically, between the cherubs. When discord and evil held sway in the kingdom, the cherubs turned from each other, appearing back to back instead of face to face.1 Back to back, the world was amiss, alienated, ruptured. Face to face, the world was harmonized, hopeful, embraced. Thus, face to face in biblical myth2 is the most highly desirable state. It is the gem stone state of being, the jeweled summit of all creation. Face to face, to be fully explicit, is a state of eros.
How do our unique perspectives of the world color our relationship with beauty, creativity, and transcendence? Join Alex Grey, Diane Musho Hamilton, and Dr. Marc Gafni for a cutting-edge dialogue on Creativity and Unique Self.
Alex Grey has become one of our most iconic and immediately-recognizable artists, and somewhat of a poster-boy for a genuinely integral approach to art, life, and spirituality. Many of his prolific works have been featured and reproduced all over the world, ranging from magazine covers, party flyers, and blotter acid to high-profile album covers for Tool, David Byrne, the Beastie Boys, Nirvana, and Michael Hedge.
In this discussion, Alex shares his own personal path to Unique Self, describing how his creative process is directly informed by an intimate realization of radical and unqualifiable emptiness, combined with his unique and irreducible perspective of the world. Alex talks about how his passion to create springs from an almost Bodhisattva-like yearning to serve, and how this devotion to service is one of the defining characteristics in the emergence of Unique Self.
Only by cultivating a path for ourselves that honors the paradoxical simultaneity of emptiness and perspective can we discover the real potential of our artistic gifts. In Alex’s case, this path has allowed him to fully and fluently express a deeply personal vision of the universal””illuminating a spiritual anatomy that is common to all of us, but uniquely recognized and rendered through Alex’s distinct perspective.
Whether you are an artist trying to carve out your own creative path, or just a casual admirer of beauty in its many effulgent forms, you will not want to miss this intimate and insightful discussion!
Alex Grey, a renowned visionary and spiritual artist and author of The Mission of Art. In the foreword to The Mission of Art, Ken Wilber stated: “Alex Grey might be the most significant artist alive. One of his most well known works is the Sacred Mirrors series of 21 life-sized paintings, taking the viewer on a journey through body, mind, and spirit. The Sacred Mirrors present the physical and subtle anatomy of an individual in the context of cosmic, biological and technological evolution. After painting the Sacred Mirrors, he applied this multidimensional perspective to such archetypal human experiences as praying, meditation, dying, kissing, copulating, pregnancy, birth and nursing.
Diane Musho Hamilton combines decades of work in in conflict resolution with depth of experience in sitting meditation. She often says that “mediate” and “meditate”, share the same purpose: to bring what is divided or in dispute into harmony. In mediation, one brings disputing parties to agreement. In meditation, one brings body, speech, and mind into coherence with the environment. With extraordinary warmth, depth and insight, she encourages us to work with our differences, while discovering our fundamental unity. Diane is the author of Everything is Workable: A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution, (2013, Shambhala Publications), The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone (March 2017, Shambhala Publications), and soon to be released, Compassionate Conversations: How to Speak and Listen from the Heart, in-press with Gabriel Wilson and Kimberly Loh (May, 2020, Shambhala Publications.)
Marty Cooper & Marc Gafni: Depression & Unique Self · Pacific Coast Church 2012 Unplugged: Awakening to the Personal Face of the Evolutionary Impulse · Dr. Marc Gafni
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