Three Faces of Love Telecourse Streaming Page
“Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself… –Khalil Gibran
What kind of love do you really long for? What kind of love do you yearn to give? What have you imagined for yourself and for those you care about? When was the last time you challenged yourself to confess what’s true – not as an ideal, but as your lived reality, as your life? Are you ready to challenge yourself to grow in and as love? Are you prepared to admit that your loving is stalled at the status quo, and that it is up to you to change it? Do you want to evolve your love consciously? What would happen if you committed to a conscious, developmental practice of Love – not sentimental, not overly emotional or personally fixated, but one of genuine transformation that changes you, those you love, and the world.
If you are longing for this, you are ready to join Diane Musho Hamilton and Dr. Marc Gafni in this recording from 2009 for a journey into intimacy, vulnerability, and the vast wilderness of the heart. Abandon limited self-discovery, and enter into a rapturous world where, through conscious engagement, you become an instrument of Love’s Evolution. “
Stream the audio here:
Video Podcasts
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Revolutionary Codes For The Future of Relationships w/ Marcus & Vylana Marcus
Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast
Join Aubrey and Vylana in conversation with Dr. Marc Gafni.
In Aubrey’s voice:
How many relationships do you know that are truly inspiring?
For many people my relationship with my wife Vylana is one of those unions.
But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. In this radically vulnerable podcast we disclose for the first time the details of our own crisis of separation, and how we came back stronger than ever with the help of Rebbe Marc Gafni and his blueprints for the future of relationships. How do you overcome jealousy? How do you resolve conflict? Why are so many people choosing between deadness or dishonesty? What is ‘donkey smuggling’ and how does this prevent intimacy in communication? For anyone interested in diving deeper on relationships with Vylana and I, check out our Romantically Fit masterclass offered through Fit For Service.
Download the first chapters of the book “Whole Mate: the Future of Relationships” by Dr. Marc Gafni and Barbara Marx Hubbard (Foreword by Aubrey Marcus) and be the first to know when these new books on the future of relationship are available for sale:
https://worldphilosophyandreligion.or…
About Dr. Marc Gafni:
https://worldphilosophyandreligion.or…
First Principles and First Values (book):
FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES
Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary
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Thought Leader Dialogues Podcast
Join some of today’s most inspired visionaries, thinkers, teachers, and entrepreneurs as we explore what it means to consciously participate in the evolution of ourselves, our culture, and our world.
Welcome to the Thought Leader Dialogues Series
Here you get immediate access to more than 100 dialogues (most of them audios, a couple of videos) with some of the most renowned thought leaders in their fields.
This series started in 2010 with a dialogue series on The Future of Love and another one on World Spirituality: Spirit’s Next Move. Some of the earlier and most of the later dialogues were on the (professional) applications of the Unique Self teaching in different areas.
And the series is still going on.
The dialogues are hosted by Dr. Marc Gafni and some of the leaders of The Center for Integral Wisdom.
Unique Self Dialogues
In these extraordinary dialogues, some of the most well-known and well-respected spiritual teachers and leaders in their fields discuss the ways that the emergent Unique Self teaching informs, enhances, and enriches their own understanding of the spiritual path or their area of expertise.
This emergent perspective on spiritual living seeks to “democratize enlightenment,” making it a genuine possibility for the masses. But not only does the Unique Self teaching make enlightenment more accessible to people, it also incorporates the personal dimension that goes beyond True Self.
Participate in the Democratization of Enlightenment and Awaken Your Unique Self!
World Spirituality & Religion Dialogues
In this series on World Spirituality: Spirit’s Next Move, Marc Gafni, Mariana Caplan, and many of the most renowned spiritual teachers, thinkers, and scholars from different traditions and beyond explored the emerging field of World Spirituality based on Integral Principles.
Evolutionary Love & Eros Dialogues
This series started in 2010 in preparation for the Second Integral Spiritual Experience that was lead by Marc Gafni, Sally Kempton, and Diane Hamilton. We include some of these dialogues in this broader series on Love & Eros.
Please join us and this remarkable group of spiritual teachers, authors and luminaries for this exciting inquiry into humanity’s deepest longing.
An excerpt of the original text announcing the Future of Love series:
“I Love You.”
Consider the impact that these words—spoken in the right place, at the right time, by the right person, in the right way—have had on your life. In our time, so many of the old words of the sacred have lost their capacity to move us, dethroned by the rigorous critiques of modernity and post modernity. But the authentic expression of love always holds a radical power to touch and even transform our lives.
We sometimes wait our whole lives to hear “I love you” spoken with total authenticity.
We may wait even longer to be able to say it. But to hear or speak these words sincerely is a complete affirmation of all that is sacred. For many of us today, the words “love” and “meaning” are virtually indistinguishable.
Yet, what do we mean by “love?” Is love simply the tender feeling you have for a friend or a relative, a lover or a spouse? Or is there something more profound about love’s meaning, something that accounts for its power to transform a life, in every way?
Love is more than just a feeling. Enlightened teachers through the ages have told us that love is the dynamic ground of all reality. If that’s true, then love can be seen as the actual force that drives evolution—the force the Greeks called Eros—as well as the enlivening joy that opens the heart.
So what is love, when we see it from both a personal and an evolutionary perspective? How do we find it, nurture it, and sustain it?
Modern science and philosophy point out that all levels of reality are evolving. The world of today is wildly different than the world of yesterday. Matter, body, mind and even spirit are in flux. When we understand the profound evolutionary context of life, we realize that love must be evolving as well.
Wow: The Evolution of Love—What a wild, important and profound idea!
Simply put: the meaning, purpose, and vision of love is changing.
In our time, the great truths about love—taught in different languages by teachers of every tradition are being re-shaped by modern and post-modern considerations. In this unique conversation, we engage these truths through an integral lens.
During this remarkable series of teleseminars, we’ll be exploring questions like:
- Which skills and principles of Integral Love can immediately raise your level of consciousness, and transform your relationships?
- How does the dance of the Integral feminine and the Integral masculine affect almost every facet of your life?
- Why is love the most crucial ingredient in effective shadow work, which we engage in to heal the unresolved emotional trauma of our past?
- How does love impact the evolution of consciousness in the life of an individual and the life of a community?
- How is love impacted by the level of consciousness of the lover and the beloved?
- What is the relationship between love and spiritual enlightenment?
- What are the structural patterns in the evolution of love?
- How does our conscious participation change the evolution of love?
- What new requisite skills are needed to forge deep, lasting relationships—the new human capacities that have the power to deepen our realization and to liberate our true and unique self?
- What new gifts for the world can and must emerge from this radical inquiry into the nature of love?
- What does love mean between a spiritual teacher and student?
- How might love manifest in a business or organizational environment?
These are just a few of the questions we’ll explore in the conversations in this free tele-series.
Unplugged Dialogues
In this section, we have gathered some of the older dialogues between Marc Gafni and other spiritual teachers and scholars. Some of these are raw in terms of recording quality.
Most of them happened before Dr. Marc officially coined any of the words Unique Self, World Spirituality or the Democratization of Enlightenment. Yet, we still find them worthwhile to listen to.
Also included here is the video recording from Marc’s visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, which is also part of the World Spirituality Dialogues.
Participation Is Free
Why? Because it is our gift to you and your evolution.
Dialoguing with Marc and the other hosts of the series are a highly distinguished array of some of major voices speaking today. Each dialogue partner is a leading-edge figure in his or her own right—and each with much to say about the past, present, and future of love, the emerging of a World Spirituality based on Integral Principles, or their respective fields of expertise.
Video Dialogues on World Spirituality & Religion
Audio Dialogues on World Spirituality & Religion
Video Dialogues on Unique Self
Audio Dialogues on Unique Self
Video Dialogues on Evolutionary Love & Eros
Audio Dialogues on Evolutionary Love & Eros
Video Dialogues on Education & Psychology
Audio Dialogues on Education & Psychology
Video Dialogues on Politics & Society
Audio Dialogues on Politics & Society
Unplugged Audio & Video Dialogues
Integral Psychology, Internal Family Systems, Imago Therapy, & Unique Self – Videos & Audios
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A Biographical Essay on Marc Gafni by Spiritual Teacher Sally Kempton – Long Version
To watch Marc Gafni teaching is like watching a spiritual juggler working with fireballs. He’s an electrifying speaker, larger than life teacher, made for the big stage, yet able, in a small room, to draw a group into a shared experience of community and insight. One-on-one, his students attest, he can be a catalyst for life-changing transformation. By turns challenging and tender, Marc ranges comfortably through a forest of references—quoting Aramaic texts and Jung, drawing on films and popular songs, throwing out insights like sparklers. When you come away from spending an hour with him, you’ll often find yourself looking at an old subject in an entirely new way.
Privacy, Post Modernism, Sex, Teachers and Students: On Sex, Ethics and Injury
by Marc Gafni
I want to share some brief insights on these important and often confusing topics. I have promised a full book on sexuality, which I hope to be able to offer in the not-too- distant future. I had written an early draft and outline of this book several years ago, but laid it aside simply because I was writing on other topics. In the meantime, let me make a few remarks about sex, privacy, and student-teacher relationships.
1) There are many potential models of sexual engagement. One of them is committed monogamy. This is a wildly beautiful deep and profound context for sexual expression.
2) Sexuality can also take place in a holy and wondrous way in post -conventional contexts, which are not familial or monogamous.
3) Sexuality within the monogamous and post- conventional contexts has many different textures, which I have written about in a chapter of my upcoming book, Your Unique Self, The Future of Enlightenment. Sex can be vital, tender, raw, rough, sweet, personal, cosmic, primal and much more.
4) We have to overcome the implicitly anti sexual bias, which often subtly defines any conversation about sex. This deeply ingrained bias is alive and well even fifty years after the sexual revolution. We remain ogling, prurient and less then our best selves when we talk about sex, particularly in regard to public figures with whom we have complex energetic relationships. All too often, people hear about a story of sexuality and project onto to it their personal shadows about sexuality, all of the stories of genuine abuse that they have ever heard, and more.
5) Most of the time teachers should not be sexual with people in their circle. It simply causes too much confusion and hurt.
6) However, sometimes a teacher may choose to engage a mutual sexual engagement with someone in his or her circle. {Junpo Roshi has already written a series of three excellent blog posts on the subject.} I have written and posted about this in the public sphere and talked about in several talks over the last years. This is my public position, and I stand in it. In this regard, transparency is essential. I have written clearly that I believe such relationships are possible. My views are posted on my website as videos and written blogs. I have talked about this in public many times.
7) A teacher must be transparent about his or her core beliefs and not hold a hidden belief while teaching or practicing the opposite. And if a teacher makes a mistake it should be owned and apologized for, just as when anyone else makes a mistake.
8) Any teacher makes mistakes. No teacher is an exception to this. Still, we should expect from our teachers a level of attainment, love, goodness and depth that is beyond well beyond the norm.
9) In teacher-student relationships, power is distributed in many and varied ways. In the relationships that I recently engaged, this was true as well. In both relationships, I did not hold formal institutional power. At the same time, the more interior forms of power were distributed along complex and paradoxical lines. That is the nature of virtually every authentic relationship. However, let me say beyond a shadow of a doubt both persons were and are powerful adult women. One of them was a senior student of mine. With neither was I involved in any form of psychological counseling at the time of the relationship. As the written skype and email records show, the relationships were the product of a mutual initiation and engagement.
10) Speaking again in general terms: Assuming that the student is a full and powerful adult and that the teacher is not teaching radical obedience but a more gentle form of transmission and mutuality– there is at times room for beautiful and sacred erotic love and contact between a teacher and those in his or her circle, if it is desired and held in mutual love and desire on both sides. To say it simply: it is possible for a teacher to date students, and this can be ethical even if it is held privately.
11) The notion of the powerful teacher and impotent student is an outdated myth. If the student publicly complains about a teacher, the teacher may fall or at least be badly hurt. False complaints are relatively easy to file and notoriously difficult defend against. So the balance of real power in the raw secular sense of the word actually favors the student. A student may hold a position in governance bodies that support the teacher, or in institutions that support the work of the teacher, in which case the teacher is actually in some real sense the client of the student. In such a case, the teacher may be vulnerable to the student in a number of material and psychological ways.
12) Part of a mutual relationship, however, always involves the parties being willing to be vulnerable to each other. It is in holding and protecting each other’s frailty that the poignancy of authentic engagement is born. And this is true in polyamorous contexts no less then monogamous contexts.
13) As many power feminists have pointed out, even if there is a power imbalance that does not mean the relationship was wrong or abusive. We must reject the negative interrogations of power that the overly egalitarian “green meme” of consciousness has suggested.
14) People engaging sexually can do so in a transparent way so that their whole community is fully aware of and witness to the relationship. Or a sexual relationship can – by mutual agreement of both parties-be held in a private container.
15) Both transparency and privacy are genuine values, which need to live in dialectical tension with each other. Let me transparent about this. Transparency is not an absolute value. Nor is privacy. Idolatry for the old mystics meant the absolute fealty to one value. When one value -whatever it may be – is freed from the need to compete with other values, idolatry is always produced. And the end result of idolatry is always some form of injustice, evil or other forms of ethical malaise.
16) It is true that privacy is not easy, and that both parties who agree to privacy are cut off from forms of support and connection that might otherwise be available to them. Privacy should only be entered by mutual consent. However, privacy fosters a level of intimacy and safety that at times may be difficult to achieve in more public or transparent contexts.
17) The modern form of idolatry is extremism. Extremists virtually always believe in a good value. But they can never get too much of their value. Their value, be it choice, life or transparency becomes an absolute.
18) Transparency is a good value. It must compete –in dialectical tension–with privacy.
19) Privacy is an essential value for many reasons. One of them is precisely because of the great post modern- insight that “context” is everything. When one is transparent, the most that can really be shared is the technical facts. The nuance and feeling tone of context and intention is virtually impossible to share in a superficial way. This is one of the reasons why privacy is such a key value. Paradoxically, to share facts without deep context and feeling tone is to tell a lie about the interior of reality. The quiet dignity of privacy is sometimes to be preferred.
20) At the same time, it is critical not to use privacy as a way to cover up sexual abuse or the like. Privacy is sometimes – but not always- appropriate in situations where the post conventional is too nuanced to be subject to the eyes of a prurient and non discerning public.
21) What is called the Green Level of Consciousness holds an essentially contradictory position from which great brutality often arises. On the one hand, Green says that transparency is an ultimate value. Containers per se are regarded with suspicion at best, and as virtually evil at worst. The facts that you might on rare occasion not share something with a close friend or colleague because you have a higher commitment to privacy in a particular context that is considered a form of betrayal. This way of thinking results from the false idolatry–holding up transparency as the only and ultimate value. It also contradicts a second value of Green. Time and again, Green consciousness reminds us correctly of the postmodern insight that “Context is everything”. Without getting into the limits of that insight at this time – allow me to make one point. If context is everything, than transparency is often a lie–because the one thing that is virtually impossible to transmit is context. If you do manage to transmit it to one or two close people, once a story is repeated down the line of gossip, the context in its entire critical nuance and texture is completely lost. So, when you are being transparent about something – let’s say a relationship – you are often only able to transmit the facts but not the context. Hence, you wind up essentially lying about the fullness of the relationship. This is one of the many reasons for the preference of privacy.
22) All of this does not make privacy into an undisputed value. The need for privacy needs to live in relationship with the need for transparency and in each unique situation the appropriate balance must be reached by mutual agreement between the parties.
23) One of the huge problems with holding a container of privacy in a relationship is that it almost always necessitates lying. Yet in certain circumstances, lying can be the most ethical decision. You really have to look at it in a case-by-case context.
24) One thing I did not consider seriously enough in engaging this relational possibility in a private context was the fact that it meant I would not share the relationships with people who were close to me. I have reflected upon this in the last few weeks, and believe that this by itself may be sufficient reason to argue for transparency. Many have made that point. I am not yet clear on this issue.
25) To recapitulate- dating or sexual engagement between people, including the occasional engagement between the adult powerful teacher and the adult powerful student, who are consciously choosing to engage in dual relationship may be transparent or they may be held privately. Both are legitimate options, depending on the inner context of the situation and on a multitude of variables, which need to be weighed wisely and in holy authenticity from what the Integral world calls a Second Tier, or integral perspective of consciousness.
26) Which way is better- privacy or transparency or some mixture of the two–depends on many variables which must be examined in depth in every situation.
27) My l preference in life has always been for personal privacy. Other then when I am public, I am by nature private, and painfully so. I love my privacy and love the depth of ease and gentle surrender that a container of privacy allows.
28) Sadly, I have realized that for me – personally –that is simply not an option.
29) Because of this I have made a commitment- from this moment forward- to hold my personal life transparently to the community.
30) I do not think that love is a Zero Sum game. I think that one can genuinely love more then one person in a profound, personal, and passionate manner. I have said this time and again in public talks. Our loves lists are too short. I think polyamory is a genuine option for some people at particular points in their lives. Not for everyone or even for most people, and not at every point in life. But for some people at particular stages of life, polyamory is a genuine ethical and holy option.
31) Eros and Sex are awesomely beautiful.
32) No one model works for everyone. People must be free to develop their erotic lives. We need more connection and Eros, not less.
33) Erotic contact and encounter must always be rooted in the ethics of radical love, radical mutuality, radical giving in which giving and receiving are one, and which always intends its pleasure for the sake of the all as well as for the sake of each other.
34) People hurt each other in relationship all the time. When we hurt each other we should apologize and do our best to make amends. There is no relationship without hurt, yet there is no love without forgiveness
35) Hurt cannot be allowed to be deployed as a cover-up for malice.
36) Men and women often use romantic or sexual hurt as a cover to accomplish their agendas of malice and power often under the noble guise of protecting the weak.
37) People should not work out personal issues between them in the nasty and often muck-racking world of Internet blogs. We know by now that there are vigilante bloggers who do not bother to check facts, which regularly publish distortions from unreliable sources, which have no accountability, who often have hidden personal agendas, which are self-appointed judges without responsibility or authority, cannot be allowed to formulate or manipulate communal policy.
38) Sometimes a blogger is intelligent on one set of issues but completely disreputable on another set of issues. See Harold Solove’s book “The Future of Reputation” on the damage done by vigilante Internet blogging that ignores the simple standards of fairness and decency.
39) In my life, several months ago, I stepped out of the domestic romantic container that I was in with my partner – by mutual and loving agreement.
40) After that time I had two relationships with powerful adult women.
41) I shared these relationships with a close woman friend and advisor in these matters.
42) I stand for the beauty and goodness of those relationships. And I apologize always for any way in which I could have showed up better. Or caused hurt. And ask for forgiveness for the inevitable hurt that happens in the complexity of it all, even when we have the best intentions.
43) By mutual agreement – I entered into these relationships in the context of privacy.
44) That seemed like the more gentle and honoring way to hold the relationships.
45) I stand in my truth of the goodness and possibility of such relationships.
46) I have also come to the final conclusion in my life -as mentioned above – that for me personally – holding a relationship privately creates vulnerability and potential hurt, rather than safety and privacy. One of the reasons is that when something is held in container -it creates a difficult situation when someone in my close circle asks about the relationship. Loyalty to the container demands privacy. But for a close friend not to be told the truth about the relationship undermines trust, with all of the pain and fallout that ensues as a result.
47) Because of that I have committed to hold all future relationships transparently- if future relationships is the direction I choose-. I have also made a personal commitment to my inner circle at CWS and to Ken and his circle to check in with them before engaging a relationship to ensure that all of us feel that the person is appropriate. While this is an extreme measure I initiated it to insure my colleagues a sense of safety. None of us has the emotional energy to engage this again.
48) I myself have not made a decision as to my direction. I am in deep conversation with my Zion’s mom about what the nature of our future relationships ought be. We love each other very much and have very different visions of the next part of our lives and where we should be spending out time. We our both committed to Zion and are exploring with enormous love, pain and mutual respect what right relationship should be between us.
49) Finally – I am willing at any time or place to engage in public dialogue on this topic in a way that honors the issues, is not witch-hunting, but seeks genuine clarity.
50) I am fully willing to apologize for any mistakes I may have made and would hope that the same would be true of others.
51) Attached here are a number of documents, which may be helpful.
52) This first is a link to Mariana Caplan’s chapter about the issues in Israel five years
ago.
53) The second is a link to a letter by Sally Kempton and Ken Wilber about these same issues five years ago. http://www.marcgafni.com/?p=3004
54) The third is a link to an article I published in the Integrales Forum Journal, a respected Integral journal about my position on the possibility of a teacher dating students– the same issue discussed above in this blog post. http://integralesleben.org/de/il-home/il-integrales-leben/anwendungen/religion-spiritualitaet/if-paper-on-the-discussion-about-spiritual-teachers/
55) The fourth is a link to a video on the CWS website where I discuss the possibility and even desirability in certain contexts of dual relationship between teacher and student. https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/2010/09/a-new-model-of-the-student-teacher-relationship/
56) Article on the nature of Malice http://www.marcgafni.com/?p=54&lan=english
A CWS Board Statement of Unequivocal Support for Dr. Marc Gafni
A Statement of Unequivocal Support, from a Special Committee of the Board of Directors for the Center for World Spirituality, in Response to Attacks directed against Marc Gafni, D.Phil. in the Blogosphere During September 2011:
We, the undersigned, do without any reservation whatsoever, support Marc Gafni, D.Phil as a teacher and leader of the Center for World Spirituality. We find it unfortunate that the blogosphere has become a place where allegations are made, and where rumors, distortions and simple untruths are so easily spread, all without the benefit of finding of fact.
We have done due diligence on this matter. Members of our group have deeply heard the perspectives of everyone referred to in the spate of blogosphere attacks in Sept 2011. Between us, we have gathered what we believe to be all the relevant evidence possible under these fragmented circumstances. As one of our teachers said about these events, there is “So much flame, so little fact,” and much confusion between “facts and interpretations of facts.” We have gathered all the relevant subjective and objective information possible under these circumstances. So it is with genuine confidence we give our full support for Marc Gafni. We trust Marc’s leadership and remain solidly convinced of his integrity, especially as he faces the challenges of leading a change movement in a world characterized by fear. Further, each of us personally recommends Dr. Gafni to any organization, church, synagogue, spiritual or cultural center, or to any context which seeks to benefit from his teachings.
The Center for World Spirituality remains fully committed to its consciously creative mission under the joint stewardship of Dr. Gafni and the circle of board members, colleagues and students who have stepped up to lead. We know Marc to be an inspired teacher, a visionary leader, a human being engaged in life with an open heart and a passionate creativity. That passion, along with a remarkable intellect, and a deep formation in one of the world’s great spiritual traditions, moves him to a profound understanding of the human condition and the movements of Spirit unfolding within and around us.
We look forward to the years ahead as Marc’s creative insights into the Unique Self, World Spirituality, and the Enlightenment of Fullness, unfold into a corpus of written works, and as they come to greater expression through the world wide gatherings which make up the Center for World Spirituality.
Signatories:
Mariana Caplan, Ph.D., Chahat Corten, Wyatt Woodsmall, Ph.D., Marty Cooper, Warren Farrell, Ph.D.*, Lori Galperin, Mike Ginn, Tom Goddard Ph.D., Leon Gras, Sally Kempton, Heather Ussery-Knight, Victoria Myer, Dr. Gabriel Cousens, MD, PhD, Kathleen J. Brownback, M.Div., MBA, Wyatt Woodsmall, Ph. D.
*Dr. Warren Farrell also added his own personal statement in this regard:
To Whom It May Concern,
This is to express my unequivocal support for Marc Gafni, D.Phil. as a teacher and visionary leader of the Center for World Spirituality. In my work with him as a friend, co-facilitator of content, and Board member of the Center, I find him to be one of the world’s truly extraordinary men. He blends integrity with skills of leadership, vision, creativity, and charisma. He harbors a renaissance intellect and comprehension of history, religion and spirituality–and harnesses that into the hearts and souls of those whose hearts are open and whose souls are wise enough to be deepened.
Marc Gafni is one of the world’s change agents. Virtually all change agents, whether Martin Luther King or Gandhi, will be subjected to attempts at assassination–character assassination and sometimes literal assassination. Unfortunately, the internet has allowed such attempts to be magnified when aimed at a leader’s character. This propensity of people without vision to try to ruin the person rather than challenge the ideas has long been with us. As Mark Twain put it, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” With the internet, a lie can travel all the way around the world while the truth is finding its shoe.” In the process, it is easy to lose the message of a visionary leader.
Marc continues to make a commitment to lead; I for one, am making a commitment both to continue co-creating with him and to never allowing myself to be sidetracked by those whose feel it is easier to kill the messenger than create a more visionary and informed message.
Warren Farrell, Ph.D.
A Brief Note of Closure in Regard to the Blogosphere Explosion in Sept 2011
by Marc Gafni
Hi Everyone,
I hope this note finds all of you well and thriving in all of your worlds.
Today, I am writing a brief note of closure in regard to the blogosphere explosion of a few months back. The core of what I want to tell you is contained in the last couple of paragraphs. If you want to cut to the chase, you are welcome to scroll down to the paragraphs titled What is My Response and Responsibility.
But, first, with your permission, let me cover some general contextual points. These are important to provide an Integral all-quadrant context for the major point of this blog post below, without which the last section might be subject to inappropriate interpretation.
A special committee of the CWS board of directors has already posted a public statement about these events, and circulated a more detailed private statement for anyone who needed more information. I thank the board for their profound support. I want to thank not only the board, but also my entire circle of close friends and students who support me today. There are representatives in my inner circle of heart and work from literally every stage of my life. My own evolution has taken me from Jewish orthodoxy to more progressive ethnocentricity to World Spirituality. I am deeply honored and gratified to have close friends, students and supporters from every stage of the journey.
I will not be entering into a point-by-point discussion of the events behind the stories. What I will say here is that there were many untruthful statements and comments posted in some blogs. Active behind the scenes were some of the same folks who, over the years, have supported other untruthful statements regarding my actions. (See Mariana Caplan’s article on False Complaints, which gives some of the background.) Some used untruthful statements to accomplish their own “political” ends, always of course under the fig leaf of more virtuous motivations.
It is fair to say, as is often the case, the actions and motivations that truly moved the blogosphere explosion arose in all four quadrants and were virtually invisible to the public. To share it all in depth as a way of exposing the injustices that occurred is tempting, but it would not serve the greater good in the long term. Said simply, on many substantive levels, how this went down was outrageous and wrong. And it is no less true that making people “wrong” rarely opens a path to healing and transformation.
On a heart level, I want to share that there are people who were involved in this who I have loved in the past and love today. I miss them and hope that at the right time and place we will find the path to a higher rapprochement.
In terms of my core response today, I have opted to focus my energy and love on the movement for World Spirituality based on Integral principles. That said, a detailed four quadrants private report was given to the leadership of the special committee of the CWS board that reviewed the situation.
Internet Discourse
Most of us are aware by now of how Internet discourse operates. As Jurgen Habermaas, Lee Segal, and other discerning readers of culture have noted, the blogosphere is a place where anyone can say anything, with no professional or ethical accountability required. As a result, devastating accusations are routinely and carelessly thrown about. Often, as in this case, no attempt is made to hear all sides, or even to check facts. As Ken Wilber has pointed out, there is often gross confusion between facts and interpretation of facts. Too often, as a way of propagating slander without being held responsible, the identity of someone posting comments on a blog is hidden under a cloak of anonymity or a pseudonym. It is all too easy for one person to post under a number of pseudonyms to create the impression that his or her opinion is widely shared. This has been the case in many of the blogposts that appear on the web about my personal life. Even when blogging is not anonymous or pseudonymous, the writer’s personal agendas in all four quadrants remain effectively hidden. In short, the blogosphere makes unchallenged character assassination far too easy.
Some spiritual teachers and other public figures choose to ignore the websites or blogs that attack them. Others have engaged in extensive refutation. However we choose to respond, these issues affect anyone in the public sphere whose private life is easily made public. Human relationships are complex enough as they are. The blogosphere unfortunately becomes a context where information becomes distorted, magnified, exaggerated and lied about through the agendas of others””all without any genuine accountability.
The Transparency vs. Privacy Question
That said, some substantive issues and opportunities for clarification have been raised by these events, especially about the issue of privacy vs transparency in personal relationships between spiritual teachers and members of their community. I have already written extensively about this in an earlier blog post on Privacy and Post Modernism and an article on Sex, Ethics and Injury.
There are situations in which holding privacy is legitimate and even necessary. (In fact, even those who have spoken out for transparency in this situation are themselves engaging in decisions of privacy in regard to aspects of their own personal relationships, motivations, self-protective or ambitious agendas, or other key contextual facts, persons, and drives which motivated their actions or statements in this situation.) In many arenas of life””therapeutic, financial, and legal, for example””privacy is an essential part of an agreement made between parties; breaking confidentiality is a violation of the intended good, and is regarded as unethical. When two people are dating, especially in the early stages of a relationship, holding privacy is simply a way of ensuring that the relationship is allowed to mature before being made public even to one’s own circle. There is nothing ethically transgressive or ”˜secret’ about this kind of privacy. People have a right to make mutual decisions about when to share a personal relationship, as well as with whom and at what stage to share it.
That said, these events demonstrated to me that it is usually not a good idea for a public figure to hold his or her personal dating relationships privately. First, because, by definition, it necessitates a certain amount of dissembling. Second, because, as I have come to realize more deeply, sometimes even when the privacy is mutually and lovingly agreed upon, some people may still come to find it psychologically painful to hold. Third, holding privacy about a romantic relationship may create alienation in other relationships in both people’s circle of intimates.
If I am ever at a crossroads again where I need to consider privacy vs. transparency I will factor all these issues into the equation in a new and deeper way. And then I will – in a loving and mutual way – make a joint decision about how to proceed. My inclination on the one hand is to be fully transparent at this point however that I am making no grand or sweeping declarations for transparency over privacy. They are both important values in many spheres of life and it would be bad heart and bad mind to dogmatically and simplistically value one above the other in any absolute sense. The one thing that I will promise is that, to the best of my ability, my public teaching and private action will be consistent with each other.
I have a second inclination, different then the first, which is to adopt -going forward -a radical transparency. That would mean absolutely nothing held privately in my life in the realm of sexuality, which is where karma is always created. If I adopt that position, I would be fully faithful and in integrity with the privacy of any of my previous relationships in life. But I would shift my position away from my natural desire to hold personal privacy. The reason I would do this: Because it may be that in the case of my particular life and karma this is what my teaching requires. Specifically, because this has been an issue in my life and has created vulnerability for myself and the dharma, I may be obligated to give up my personal preference for privacy on the altar of leadership and the kind of trust that only radical transparency engenders at this particular moment in culture’s trajectory.
I am deeply considering these paths, and listening to the feedback of close spiritual teacher friends and colleagues and praying to God for guidance in choosing the path of deepest integrity.
Paths of Engagement
It is also worth noting that my own belief is as follows: neither monogamy nor polyamory nor celibacy are in and of themselves ”˜the’ ethical or appropriate path for a spiritual teacher. Any of these paths can be engaged ethically, lovingly, and with commitment and integrity. On the other hand, any of them can be engaged in a way that is destructive and disrespectful. There are many married teachers whose marriages are a sham and whose current relationship dynamics are neither good nor true nor beautiful. And there are non-monogamous teachers, whose personal and often privately held love relationships are good, true and beautiful.
I believe that some form of conventional monogamous marriage is preferable for many, –though not all–people at many, –though not all–stages of life. Clearly the gay community has something to say about all of this. And shifting traditional structures of society have something to say about this. And love is evolving in many surprising ways. At the core of things, it is not the external form that is essential in love, but the interior face of that form. Having said that, the external form is highly relevant. We just cannot be dogmatic and try and make – in a fundamentalist way- one core external form, fit all people.
Let me state formally that if in the future I enter into a monogamous commitment, then I will honor it and live in it to the fullest. If that is the right path for me then I will enter into it with full delight and even ecstasy. If I do not enter into that path, and choose to love from a different place, then I will enter into that path with full delight and even ecstasy. If that is the case, then it is not impossible that I may date women who are in my circle. If that feels uncomfortable to someone in principle, than it might not be wise to join my circle of teaching.
This has been my core position to date, a position of which I am considering a revision. I am in deep heart inquiry around this. The reason is as follows. My calling and commitment on this planet, held with utter delight and passion, is to help birth a World Spirituality based on Integral Principles with Unique Self Enlightenment and Evolutionary Love as its core first principles. To do that I want to help build a tent with many rooms for as many people as possible. Perhaps that means that I need to sacrifice something in terms of my own lifestyle and teaching on this issue. Perhaps leadership in this case means that – at least for me in my personal practice – I make an absolute commitment not to date anyone in my circle -simply because the confusion and controversy surrounding this issue gets in the way of the larger vision of World Spirituality and Unique Self Enlightenment. There are a group of people that I want to feel at home in our tent for whom this would be helpful. That is one path. There is another group of people that feel that I should explicitly and overtly embrace a post conventional stance in regard to sexuality and love and live it fully and transparently, and that this is what the dharma and karma demand of me.
The inner truth is that both these voices live within me.
I am profoundly traditional in many ways. Classical and conventional monogamy and relationship have great value and speak deeply to me both in terms of my values, teachings and personal preference.
I am also profoundly post conventional in the way I love. I love many people deeply and can with delight engage more then one person in deep love, mutuality and eros.
The reason I have always held my relationships privately is that this is not the issue that I ever wanted to stake my teaching or my life upon. I live in both voices and both positions. The way I have historically resolved the inner dialectic between these voices is to focus my public teaching on Unique Self Enlightenment, World Spirituality, Stations of Love and even Eros. And to hold my personal life in its post conventional dimensions, privately.
To put it mildly – this strategy has not worked. Almost all of my public projects as a Rabbi and later as a Spiritual Teacher of World Spirituality have been met with profound success. At the same time the holding of privacy in my personal relationships has clearly not worked for the reasons I described.
Whatever choices I make in how I conduct my personal relationships, I am committed to doing it with the highest degree of transparency possible, and also to being transparent about my degree of transparency.
Update to this blog essay.
After considering the various sides of this issue I have come to some conclusions in terms of my personal course of action in the context of Center for World Spirituality.
First, I remain convinced that a fully ethical and beautiful amorous relationship can develop between a teacher and student. This is particularly the case when the teacher is not in a guru role but instead has intentionally set up a kind of appropriate dual relationship of mutuality and empowerment with the student. Many leaders in the Integral scene as well as other spiritual teachers and writers share this position. Many of course do not.
I have larger concerns than simply teaching my circle of students. I seek to foster and articulate a World Spirituality, and I have concluded -after much deep internal reflection and conversation with colleagues and partners, that I must sacrifice my own sense of privacy and personal relationships with students in favor of a more statesman like position. As we attempt to create a World Spirituality tent in which many people from different perspectives and levels of consciousness feel comfortable, it feels important that as a leader in this movement, I shift my position for the sake of the larger whole. The articulation of a World Spirituality based on Integral principles is far too important a goal to stake it on this issue. For this reason I have decided that going forward I will proscribe from myself dating someone is who is in a formal teacher-student relationship. This will be the formal policy of the Center for World Spirituality.
In such a context I will consider the possibility of ending the teacher or work relationship if such a dynamic emerges in which dating seems appropriate. I will also not proscribe the possibility of doing authentic tantric work within the context of that relationship if the person is a powerful and grounded adult person. While I may never enact this exception, in principle I am not willing to rule out this possibility in an absolute manner.
I will do so, however, only with a number of provisos designed in order to insure that we do not experience the kind of negativity around these issues that has arisen in the past. These are as follows. I will hold no relationship purely privately. Any relationship I have will be with the knowledge and blessings of my own circle of intimacy including my partner and close personal intimates. Second the nature of the relationship will be written up in a sacred covenant between myself and the person. Third, a designated board member and highly respected therapist have agreed to hold the container with me in discerning whether such a relationship is wise. This is in order to create a second set of perspectives to insure the full integrity and dignity of all involved. The person engaged in such a sacred relationship will have full access to these persons so that they have a place to discuss the relationship and do not feel like they are carrying a burden of privacy which is difficult to bear. If a person engaged in such a sacred relationship asks me to hold it privately, then outside of this close inner circle I will honor that request fully.
I also want to emphasize that this is not a World Spirituality position. World Spirituality is not a set of rules or dogmas. It has many participants which embrace a wide spectrum of positions. I am not willing to stake world spirituality on the principle of “dating students”. I am also not willing to endorse a position which creates a dogmatic rule that never allows such relationships. Life is far more complex and nuanced than that. I am not defending or opposing this possibility and World Spirituality has no position on the matter. I personally will live my life in a way that has full integrity, with my teaching, with my partner and intimates and with the degree of appropriate transparency necessary in my inner circle that will give everyone a sense of the responsible love and safety required to protect the integrity of all involved including the teachings themselves.
Life is about turning suffering into art, pain into new potential, disaster into dharma and fate into destiny.
In that vein I am also committed to writing at least two core books about Eros and Sexuality. In these books I will share what are -at least in my own understandings, beautiful and critically important breakthroughs in living and understanding and evolving the nature of eros, sexuality and love. That project is already under way.
All the above was written to provide an all-quadrant context for the main point of this blog post.
What is My Response and Responsibility?
When there is a crisis or difficulty in anyone’s life, there are always factors involved in all four quadrants. However, after explicating these factors and recognizing the full extent to which distortions occurred, the questions that still remain for any individual must be, “Is there a way that I contributed to this?” “Is there a way that I was not sufficiently developed or aware?” “Is there something that is in my purview to evolve, something that may have contributed to the conditions that created the difficulty?”
No matter how others may have behaved””and even when one’s own actions have been distorted or even lied about””the fact remains that our power and capacity to transform any scenario for the good lies in the way we respond. I have often said to myself and students that even if one has only X% responsibility in a situation, (or contribution system, as I have called it), one must take 100% responsibility for that X%.
However, in answering these questions, we have to be extremely diligent and careful. In today’s climate of “new age” spiritual-growth thinking, there is a certain seductive hubris which urges us to take responsibility for factors and circumstances that are clearly beyond our control and purview. One must exercise discernment and care in taking on only appropriate responsibility–no more and no less than is accurate. It is an abuse of one’s own personhood to take on too much responsibility. For the false characterizations and egregious claims that have been reported, I take absolutely no responsibility. I had full right to date the people I dated and to hold the relationships privately, and I stand by this right and the essential ethics behind my actions, even though I would not do it this way again.
At the same time, I have felt an obligation to ask how my own internal “stuff” might have contributed to the outcome.
I am engaged in a process of on-going self-inquiry and inner work. I believe that this is the invitation and obligation in any pivotal moment of a person’s life. It is a special necessity for a spiritual teacher who invites people to their own highest evolution. To this end, a major part of my internal response to this blogosphere explosion has been to seek feedback from colleagues and spiritual friends who I invite to challenge me and engage me in the process of inner work.
I will continue to do this inner work, I would imagine, indefinitely. The unfolding of a World Spirituality based on Integral Principles is a serious responsibility. If there is anything in my consciousness which needs to evolve in order to better serve the evolution of this dharma as well as the people I care about in my personal life, then it is my privilege and obligation to engage my own evolution with every possible tool of human development. To challenge myself, to deconstruct old patterns, to go deeper than what seemed possible yesterday, and to hopefully model for my circle a path of growth and evolution along all lines of development–this is the core path of response I have chosen.
In my source lineage, Kabbalah and Hassidism, one of the great masters of Chabad chassidism, known as the Rebbe Rashab, went at a particular point to work with Freud about issues in his own development. His disciples hid the record of this encounter thinking that somehow it tainted his spiritual attainment. Recently a gifted Habad adherent who is also a world renowned psychoanalyst, Joseph Berke, came across the records and published an important article about the encounter between spirituality and psychology at their best. In this tradition I have engaged a professional mentor.
After reviewing the reasons why I was correct in what went down, I then asked him the following question. What, if anything am I missing that perhaps you can see clearly with your tools that I cannot see with mine? To do so is my core obligation and honor. It is both my obligation and privilege to explore this path as part of my response. An obligation to myself, to my source lineage of kabbalah, to the future emergent lineage of an evolutionary world spirituality based on Integral principles and to all of my students and supporters of the vision.
To know more deeply every day the faces of interior and exterior reality and live more fully as love, that is evolving both outside and inside: this is my delight and my commitment.
Marc Gafni
Center for World Spirituality
About Our Vision, Mission, & CosmoErotic Humanism
The Center for World Philosophy and Religion
The vision of the Center is a world united in and through diversity by a New Story of Value that dignifies humanity and welcomes us home to the Universe. We imagine a world that keeps the sacred covenant between generations guided by a memory of the future. Our hope is that our writings and teachings will serve to catalyze a now necessary reweaving of the human story. We call this New Story CosmoErotic Humanism.
CosmoErotic Humanism is a world philosophical movement aimed at reconstructing the collapse of value at the core of global culture. Much like Romanticism or Existentialism, CosmoErotic Humanism is not merely a theory but a movement that changes the very mood of Reality. It is an invitation to participate in evolving the source code of consciousness and culture towards a cosmocentric ethos for a planetary civilization.
CosmoErotic Humanism addresses three core questions: Who? Where? What?
- Who am I? Who are we? [Narrative of identity]
- Where are we? [Universe Story]
- What is there to do? What do we want? What is our deepest heart’s desire—both personally and collectively? [Eros and ethos]
This movement is a strong, fluid, and emergent response to the meta-crisis, fundamentally understanding that existential and catastrophic risks are not just rooted in flawed infrastructure (technological and other systems), social structure (law, education, politics), but primarily in failed superstructure—specifically the collapse of an implicit, shared worldview, what we call a shared Story of Value rooted in evolving First Principles and First Values as a context for our diversity.
The core of CosmoErotic Humanism is therefore a new Story of Value rooted in First Principles and First Values that integrates the validated insights of the interior and exterior sciences—across premodern, modern, and postmodern thought—ultimately recasting cosmic evolution as a Story of Value, in which our stories are understood to be chapter and verse in the larger narrative arc of Reality—the CosmoErotic Evolutionary Love Story of the Intimate Universe.
These evolving First Principles and First Values embedded in a Story of Value are grounded in a comprehensive set of meta-theories, encompassing psychology (and a theory of self), epistemology, scientific metaphysics, education, ethics, theology, mysticism, sexuality, Eros, and ethos.
CosmoErotic Humanism offers some of the first words on the possible emergence of world philosophies and world religions adequate to our time of civilizational crisis and transformation—rooted in a universal grammar of value as a context for our diversity, weaving humanity into a shared story of inherent yet evolving Cosmic Value.
A core set of frameworks guide this work, including:
- Integral Theory (Wilber)
- Unique Self Theory (Gafni)
- meta-psychology and personal myth (Stein, Gafni)
- educational theory, developmental theory, and metrics (Stein)
- classical sciences (Bloom)
- anthro-ontological value theory (Gafni, Stein, Wilber),
- metaphysics of Eros (Gafni, Kincaid, Stein)
- and Conscious Evolution (Hubbard, Gafni)
- among others.
From these emerge a New Story of Value rooted in First Principles of Cosmos.
It is our mission to offer this New Story into the world during this critical junction of history. The Center is dedicated to the creation of an integral planetary culture, capable of guiding humanity through the current evolutionary crisis. The publication of the Great Library of CosmoErotic Humanism in the coming decades serves this mission by advancing an integral worldview that is truly inclusive of premodern, modern, and postmodern truths.
Contact Us
P.O. Box #714
St. Johnsbury, VT 05819
United States
+1 (415) 857-1943
Leadership
There are different groups of individuals who provide leadership or vision for the organization in different capacities.
Each organization [Center for World Philosophy & Religion, Office for the Future, and Foundation for Conscious Evolution] has a distinct legal board, which makes its decisions. All the decisions are made collectively by the appropriate board and board leadership. The listing below includes present and former board members, research fellows, faculty, and officers of the organization.
We have intentionally not broken them out by designation, as all of these people contribute equally needed value to the overall missions of these distinct organizations.
We are in the process of changing the name of The Center for Integral Wisdom to Center for World Philosophy & Religion.
The Center for Integral Wisdom is a 501C3.