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Looking for more on the wisdom tradition that aligns you with your deepest creativity? In a three-part excerpt from the long version of Soul Prints, Marc Gafni writes that we can transform and raise our passion and artistic creativity into a powerful drive for the sensual and the holy, realizing that, in a redeemed world, they are one and the same. As long as our spirituality remains vapid and empty, we indeed need to repress the more primal, creative passion, lest it overwhelm us. Primal passion unrealized is soul print or Unique Self destiny unrealized.
You can view Part II of this essay in full by clicking here>>
You can view Part III of this essay in full by clicking here>>
by Dr. Marc Gafni
from “The Way of the Dragon“ in the long Soul Prints.
Part I.
In biblical spirituality, information about God is relevant for one reason only. Information about God is information about us. We are commanded to be little Gods – to imitate God. Just as God stood at the abyss of darkness and said let there be light, so are we commanded to stand at the abyss of our darkness and say let there be light. A little bit of light dispels so much of the darkness. Further, just as God is a creator – creating, sculpting, painting, composing a gorgeous physical world – so, too, are we invited to create, to sculpt, to paint, and to make music.
Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo created. And yet, creativity is still viewed as suspect by much of the religious community. Art per se and artists to be sure are suspected of being amoral at best and, more probably, immoral. Acting, painting, sculpture, song are held in both high esteem and moral disdain. Why? The answer, which we have already introduced in our earlier discussion, emerges from an understanding of the deep linguistic and conceptual relationship between the biblical myth terms Yetzer and Yetzirah. Yetzirah means creativity; Yetzer is best translated as primal instincts, including but not limited to libido (Freud), the drive for power (Adler, Nietzsche), and the need for meaning (Frankel). In the Hebrew language, which is the ultimate source of all biblical myth thought, Yetzer and Yetzirah are the same word, linked etymologically and conceptually. The point: I cannot create without connecting deeply to my most primal instincts.
In my earlier twenties, I attended for a short time a prestigious drama workshop in Greenwich Village in New York. When we would be preparing for a murder scene in a play, we would do exercises to help us access the murderous rage lurking untapped in the corners of our souls. I cannot create drama about murder without unlocking the murderer in myself. To create anything – and certainly for the ultimate creation, the creation of myself – I need to be able to access the most primal passions of my being. Herein lies the attraction and the danger. My primal instincts when not integrated into my fully developed self are often not channeled properly and can potentially destroy worlds. Witness Germany. My mother, who was there, told me almost every day as I was growing up that the same people who gassed Jews in the morning, listened, with great primal passion, to Mozart in the evening.
In response to this psychological reality, Biblical myth spirituality taught: “Who is heroic, he who is (Kovesh) conquers his Yetzer.” And if the price is also to sacrifice certain forms of creativity, so be it. Better to be moral, holy, and not creative, than creative and immoral.
And yet having to choose between the primal passion of creativity and morality is far from satisfying!!
Visit centerforintegralwisdom.org for more wisdom teachings from Dr. Marc’s writings and the other teachers of the Center for World Spirituality.
This event on Evolutionary Tantra was held last week at the Wisdom School, co-founded by Shalom Mountain and the Center for World Spirituality, which is the locus for Marc’s teachings on the east coast of the United States.
This was the 10th Wisdom School that has gathered in the last several years, each one with its own theme and exploration of a particular dimension of Enlightenment. Each Wisdom School is dedicated to the practice of evolving the Source Code of Consciousness in a particular area of spiritual practice or enlightenment inquiry. This Wisdom School shared the same theme as the recent program held at Venwoude Retreat Center in February, The Seven Tastes of Sexing. The Shalom Mountain retreat was led by Dr Marc and facilitated by two close friends and students in the private study circle, Jeff Hilliard and Shelly Reichenbach. Jeff and Shelly are Shalom Mountain leaders and have been studying closely with Marc at the Wisdom School for a long period of time.
Jeff Hilliard and Tom Goddard are leading the development of the Unique Self process, in its particular expression at Shalom Mountain. Jeff, Tom, Nance and Marc, along with a group of leaders, are very excited to be actively engaged in developing the first Unique Self process led by Shalom leaders. Marc has taught Unique Self extensively over the last few years at Shalom Mountain, and is now working together with this fabulous leadership group of teachers in transmitting the dharma and empowering Shalom to take up the Unique Self teaching in their own gorgeous Shalom fashion.
News from The Seven Tastes of Sexing program at Venwoude Reteat Center, Feb 8-10, 2013We are delighted to report that The Seven Tastes of Sexing Tantra Weekend (Feb 8-10, 2013) at our retreat center in Holland, the Venwoude Retreat Center, was simply stunning. Marc taught eight major dharma sessions with exercises and intimate move teachings offered beautifully by Leon Gras and Sujata van Overveld. Sujata and Leon did a wonderful job deepening the space through the practice of intimate moves, taking the dharma and making it embodied and alive and breathing in the very cells of all the participants.
Marc transmitted a dharma that he has been working with for the last four years which provides what we think is the most advanced dharmic understanding of the nature of sexuality. 
Marc outlined eight major forms of sexing, and led us on an embodied visionary journey to access the unique contours, tastes and substance of each of these forms of sexing. The net result of this tantric immersion was a profound transformation of the nature of the sacred sexual experience for every one of the participants.
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.
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By Marc Gafni
Note: The following article appeared in the December 2012/January 2013 issue of Common Ground Magazine.
The true nature of your values is always revealed in death. In eulogies, both in what is spoken and unspoken, there is something of the essential nature of your life and loyalties. Sometimes, however, before you die you are strangely privileged to declare where your ultimate loyalty lies.
It was September 11, 2001. The planes had just crashed into the Twin Towers in Manhattan. Victims had moments to use their cellphones. No one called asking for revenge. No one offered philosophical explanations or profound insights into the nature of reality. People did one thing and one thing only: they called the people close to their hearts to say, “I love you.”
“I love you” is our declaration of faith. Implicit in those words is everything holy. Yet we no longer know what we mean when we say it.
It used to mean, “I am committed to you. I will live with you forever.” Or it might have meant, “You are the most important person in my life.”
But it no longer seems to mean that. And when you no longer understand your own deepest declarations of love, you are lost. You become alienated from love, which is your home. Despair, addiction, and numbness become your constant companions.
To read the entire article, download it as a PDF file.
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