Essays and Articles

This workshop will introduce the Unique Self Emergence Process through practices that are immediately applicable in your life. You will leave this intensive with a clear map to guide your own Unique Self emergence, one you can work with immediately. By engaging in a series of core practices, participants will gain an embodied experience of the three states of consciousness that characterize the journey from Separate Self to Unique Self. You will also gain a vision for how the Unique Self Emergence Process might be used to facilitate emergence in individuals, couples and groups.

In this two day workshop you will:

• learn the basic principles of the Unique Self Teachings.
• explore how Integral Theory, Developmental Psychology, the Enneagram, neuroscience, as well as the ancient and modern spiritual traditions, are woven into the process
• discover how the USEP’s core practices facilitate the journey from Separate Self to Unique Self.

Join us in an experience that will open your heart & imagination to the creative possibilities of the process.

WHO: Change Agents (coaches, therapists, consultants, spiritual directors & clergy) who are interested in the USEP and in the certification program that begins in January 2018.

WHEN: Friday September 22nd from 9:30 am – 9:00 pm and Saturday September 23rd from 9:00 am – 4:00 pm

COST: $40.00, which includes snacks & lunch

RETREAT FACILITATOR: Barbara Alexander and a team of certified USE Facilitators

DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION:  September 13, 2017

>>> For more information <<<

>>> For a downloadable flyer <<<

>>> Register <<<

In October 2016, a powerful Unique Self Tantra Training Program starts at our CIW Partner – The Institute of Integral Evolutionary Tantra – that offers profound personal growth through an in-depth experiential and conceptual learning matrix.

The program is a combination of the ancient art of Tantric wisdom traditions, the best of Integral and Evolutionary Theory, along with cutting edge transformative embodiment practices.

Wake Up to your Outrageous Lover, become an Outrageous Eros Practitioner, and support others in full bodied erotic living.

The Institute of Integral Evolutionary Tantra in New York City is led by CIW Board Member Dr. Kristina Kincaid. IET teaches, coaches and mentors individuals to take the next step in self-transformation. IET was created to develop cutting edge Leaders, Projects and Initiatives of conscious collaboration in the world. IET understands that in order to respond to the challenges that face our planet today, it is imperative to create a WE-space, where we as individuals and individual systems realize that enlightened consciousness is beyond ego, and is the essential next stage of self-transformation.

For more information go to www.IntegralEvolutionaryTantra.com or call 1-917-734-2197

We are delighted to have just completed our 6th annual board meeting of the Center for Integral Wisdom. The meeting took place over three days in Mill Valley, CA.

It was particularly gratifying to have the participation of all of of the leading partners in the Center for the last six years.

The theme of the meeting was “Integrity and Intimacy”. Fifty leaders of the Center participated. There were over thirty distinct talks reporting on all the key projects and initiatives of the Center. Each project involves the articulation, writing or recording of a distinct meme of evolutionary thinking on topics ranging from economics, identity, medicine, education, relationships, and conflict, to the evolution of public culture. Many board leaders felt that this was one of the most powerful and poignant weekends of their life.

One of the topics that was emergent in the Center’s vision was a new commitment to the evolution of public culture. There was much conversation about an upcoming symposium the Center is hosting, entitled “Sociopaths, Scapegoats and the Madness of Crowds: Anatomy of a Smear Campaign – On the Evolution of Public Culture.”

The Center renewed its commitment to the core principles of fairness, justice, fact checking and restorative justice, which are core to the evolution of consciousness and culture.

Part of the annual agenda of the board is always to appreciate the outgoing board team which is completing their terms, and to welcome the new leadership team — both professionally and in terms of the board leadership who are beginning their tenure.

It was particularly special to thank John Mackey for his outstanding service as board co-chair. As is the tradition for outgoing board chairs when they conclude their terms of service, John gave his closing talk to the the board and welcomed Barbara Marx Hubbard as the new board co-chair who gave her first opening talk. This passing of the baton that takes place whenever a leader terms out and a new leader begins their term is a particularly moving moment of partnership and community. Both John’s and Barbara’s talks, which were about the nature of genuine integrity, were particularly powerful.

We look forward to our best year ever. We are fully committed to evolving the source code of culture and consciousness. We are fully committed to the evolution of love.

The Center for Integral Wisdom team wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving!

There is so much that we at the Center are grateful for this year, from the many friendships around the world and the Outrageous Love we all share to the projects, large and small, that we have completed or are still in full swing:

• Our WebPlex launch

• The Pleasure Map course and its first live class with people engaging pleasure on whole new levels

• An awesome board meeting in March

• Books, courses, and activist projects in play

• Talks and workshops given at conferences or churches, our in-depth Wisdom School at Shalom Mountain, and the 8-day Summer Festival of Love in Holland

• And so much more…

On a global level, the outrageous pain seems to grow more and more intense with millions of refugees fleeing from war, hunger, and violence, ongoing terror in many places around the world, as well as the quiet desperation of loneliness and disease. With that we are even more committed to fulfill on the mission of the Center: to articulate, evolve and deliver a new, Integral narrative for living – which transforms each individual, culture and life itself – creating a world of Outrageous Love, through Outrageous Love.

“The only response to outrageous pain is Outrageous Love,” as CIW Co-Founder Marc Gafni reminds us. This starts with resisting “the gravitational pull of UnLove” in our personal relationships and turning them into authentic Unique Self encounters.

“To enter a Unique Self encounter, you must resist the gravitational pull of UnLove. You must identify as part of the larger field of love. You experience yourself as part of the seamless coat of the Universe. This is the source of your authentic power. This will allow you to receive hurt inflicted by others as a wound of love and not as an insult. You wear your hurt as a battle scar in your struggle for love. You bear it with pride and dignity. You are freed from the compulsive need to inflict pain on the one who hurt you in order to prove you exist. You know you exist because you are in divine communion, that is to say, identified with the larger whole beyond your particular part nature.

The trance-ending of ego into Unique Self-realization is animated by the quality of love. Love motivates and manifests the spontaneous action of care and compassion. Egoic self-contraction is the quality of fear. Fear motivates and manifests the reactive rituals of egoity.

To live and act as love means to keep your heart open through the pain of heartache and hurt.

To live and act as fear means to allow the pain to close your heart. You can practice love by practicing opening your heart even when you feel hurt.

Rather than turning away, closing down, and striking out, you keep your heart open. This will help you act skillfully instead of reacting clumsily in these situations.

When you practice opening as love moment to moment in the face of the hurt, the power of the past weakens. Old wounds are in the past. If you open your heart in the present, time after time, the power of the past recedes.

You will probably always feel the pain when you meet UnLove in relationship. But you do not need to feel the closure, which deadens your heart and your life force. You can continually practice love rather than closing down into UnLove. You can feel your self-contraction and choose to change the way you react.

You are not a victim of your past. When you stop either ignoring or overdramatizing past events, you also stop unconsciously using life trauma from the past to avoid giving the depth of love that is yours to give in the present moment.

The pain of the past may have come to you through another. Your present reaction is yours. You are doing it. You must assume responsibility for your own complex of reactivity. Reactive emotion and reenactment do not need to be a fact of your nature. You can take your armor off. You can unguard your heart and trust yourself to live and love from an intense armorless vulnerability. This is the safest place from which to live.

For some people, especially those with fortunate childhood circumstances, opening through hurt is not so hard. For others, it may be the work of a lifetime. For all of us, it is perhaps the most important work we can do for our own love and freedom, and the love and freedom of the others in our lives.

To be weak in love is to exclusively identify with your separate self, which is always already insulted and empty with craving.

To love is to know that we are all lost and found in the same reality together. To love is to stay open in gratitude and joy even as you know that love breaks your heart.”

Marc Gafni, Your Unique Self

Read more about the Sixth Law of Unique Self Encounters>>>

From our hearts to yours, we send you love and light this Thanksgiving season.

In deep gratitude and evolutionary partnership,

The CIW Team

We are BEYOND THRILLED to announce the launch of our website: MarcGafni.com.

In this new design we have organized for you some of the best and most cutting-edge content you can find today on Evolutionary Spirituality Reloaded: Radical Teachings on Outrageous Love, Kabbalah, Integral Wisdom, Eros, and Unique Self–all of which are totally open.

You also have access to the older Hebrew Wisdom lineage teachings of Marc (including a lot of teachings in Hebrew).

Imagine what it would be like to source your life from the depth of your most potent creativity, aliveness and joy. Imagine what it would be like to have everyday access to that heightened experience of yourself, where you are wildly creative, purposeful and delighted with how you are showing up in life. Imagine having clarity about who you truly are and knowing the precise steps you need to fully become that person.

Who would you be? What would the impact be on the quality of your life, and everyone and everything you care about?

What would it mean to know that YOU are an irreducibly unique expression of the love-intelligence and love-beauty, the animating Eros of all of reality that at this very moment lives in you, as you and through you? That Your Unique Story has the potential to change the course of Humanity?

Welcome to a new ‘dharma,’ or meta-theory of meaning – a radical vision of Outrageous Love, that is paving the way for the evolution of consciousness that gives you a whole new access to living a life of passion, meaning and inspiration that you had always dreamed was possible.

Welcome to MarcGafni.com!

Dr. Marc Gafni is not only the co-founder and president of the Center for Integral Wisdom but also a visionary thinker, social innovator, passionate philosopher, and author of ten books, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment, the two-volume Radical Kabbalah, and the recently published Self in Integral Evolutionary Mysticism: Two Models and Why They Matter and Tears: Reclaiming Ritual, Integral Religion, and Rosh Hashana.

Next weekend Dr. Kristina Kincaid, Director of the Outrageous Love Project at CIW and Co-Founder (together with Dr. Marc Gafni) and Director of the Integral Evolutionary Tantra Institute, is going to teach a workshop on “MEETING YOUR DARK ATTRACTION AND AWAKENING TO THE DIVINE NATURE – AN EXPLORATION OF FANTASIES IN SEX AND LOVE” in New York City. The Integral Evolutionary Tantra Institute is a division of the Center for Integral Wisdom.

Bicyclist do it with ten speeds, Scuba Divers do an in depth exploration, Rock Climbers do it against the wall, Rockstars do it loud and Politicians do it to everyone. What exactly is this thing we do called Sex and why are we so obsessed with it? What makes it so pleasurable, titillating, frightening or shameful? Most of us think the other is satisfied, while we feel frustrated in our own desire and longing.

The primary processes of sexuality are energetic patterns, which are then mediated through the body. Most of us are not even aware of these energetic habits, such as the difference between being separate or merged or even our own preferences and those of our partners. Unencumbered from such habits, sex can become fresh, alive and open, an art form, a physical prayer, naked, unafraid and raw. Beyond self union, lies a greater union, a total orgasm with the whole, with the Universe, with Source.

This journey will be an exploration of how to gain a conscious choosing over what and how your sexual energy moves. From pleasure to sharing, to heightening the Spiritual embodiment of your sexuality, we will be in conscious exploration and discovery of these energies in you and how they affect your relationships. The Outrageous Eros, Awakened Sexuality Project is for participants who are longing for a deep spiritual journey and a strong willingness to venture where angels fear to tread. We will be working in the deep unconscious, uncovering where you turn away from some of your greatest gifts by delving into what has been deemed unspeakable and taboo. Through exploration of sexual fantasies, untamed passions, conscious play, body work, breath work, movement, intimacy, connection, respectful service and a deep honoring of our unique and individual way of loving.

Sunday August 30th, 2015 10:00am-5:00pm at 150 W 28th St. #1803, NYC

AN EXPERIENTIAL WORKSHOP ON SHARING AND EXPLORING YOUR SEXUALITY

When we experience ourselves as sexual beings, open to our full flow, with energy pulsing through our bodies, we become more creative and feel more deeply connected to ourselves and to others. In this dynamic, interactive evening combining individual work with group process, you will learn techniques to liberate this energy and access more pleasure in your life. These techniques will be demonstrated through individual body readings with select participants who choose to take the risk of revealing a sexual issue and are willing to work through it in a supportive environment with expert guidance.

Dr. Kincaid uses the teachings of Dr. Marc Gafni, Integral Evolutionary Tantra, and the principles of Core Energetics to open up physical blocks and places where life energy doesn’t move. In Core Energetics — a powerful body-based process — sexual energy and life force energy are one and the same. Join us with Core Energetics techniques, body readings, deep truth, wild goodness, radical personal transformation and, if you dare, the evolution of your own personal enlightenment.

Dr. Kincaid is the Director of The Institute of Integral Evolutionary Tantra, New York City. Kristina is on faculty at The Institute of Core Energetics and holds an M.A. in Energy Medicine and a Doctorate in Theology from Holos University. A graduate of the Institute of Core Energetics and the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, she also holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin.

SPACE IS LIMITED. REGISTER NOW! TEL 917-734-2197

REGISTRATION FEE: $20.00

SATURDAY JULY 11^TH 2015

7:00-9:00 PM

150 WEST 28^TH STREET SUITE 1803

NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10001

IN CONJUNCTION WITH DR. GAFNI & THE INSTITUTE OF INTEGRAL EVOLUTIONARY TANTRA

Summit Powder Mountain, July 3-6, 2015 in Eden, Utah

Marc Gafni and Kate Maloney (CIW Executive Director) are attending Summit Powder Mountain, where Marc was invited to offer a special presentation at 2pm on July 5 on “Beyond Venus & Mars: The Next Step In Masculine & Feminine”.

This invitation only event quickly sold out. During the weekend attendees will see and hear a series of discussions on on a variety of topics – from maintaining a strong company culture to cyber security. We’re thrilled that the work of the Center will be a presence at this event, with Marc’s teachings on the evolutionary masculine and feminine adding an important voice to the mix. Among the speakers and contributors at Summit Powder Mountain will be Eric Ryan & Elliott Bisnow, Brian Vickers, Sarah Jones.

Summit‘s mission is to build community, catalyze entrepreneurship, address global issues, and support artistic achievement, in an effort to make our world a more joyful place. The mission of the Summit Series, Summit’s flagship event series, is to unite the leaders of today and tomorrow in surreal settings and immersive experiences designed to catalyze positive personal and collective growth.

Summit Powder Mountain is one of the events in the Summit Series. Summit Powder Mountain aims to rethink the great American mountain town around a community focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, arts, and altruism. Tucked on the southern side of Powder Mountain, in the town of Eden, Utah, it’s a new kind of neighborhood, where friends, family, and the change makers of today and tomorrow gather in an environment created to catalyze personal and collective growth.