2012 June

The Democratization of Enlightenment (Part 5): Three Images of World Spirituality

June 6, 2012 at 11:47 am by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

“Let’s try to envision World Spirituality for a second. Let me suggest three images. The first would be an orchestra, a great symphonic orchestra, in which every instrument is playing its music. From the diversity of instruments, what is yielded is a great symphony. In the premodern world, the religions believed that their instrument was the music. But the postmodern world has taught us is that the instrument is the critical context that shapes the music, the texture, the sound, the tonality of the music, but the spirit is not the surface structure. Spirit is the depth. And all the instruments are playing music. From the diversity of this music, of the instruments, comes the symphony…”

Filed Under: All Posts, Belief & Practice

“We’re all just walking each other home.”

June 6, 2012 at 11:23 am by Joe Perez Leave a Comment

By Joe Perez

“We’re all just walking each other home.” ― Ram Dass

For Ram Dass, the story of the spiritual journey as a walk home among friendly people is an important one.

It’s a story that resonates with me more since I turned 40 than earlier in my life, when I would have been more likely to say, “We’re all choosing our own adventure.”

Journey from the Source to the Unknown Self — the great adventure of Life — is also an important story, no disrespect intended to Ram Dass.

The return journey from the Unknown Self to the Source — homeward-bound — is equally important.

These are also what I call the Two Prime Directions of Love, the outward, other-directed drive of Eros, and the inward, same-directed drive of Agape.

My own story about the spiritual life is it’s hard to make universalizing statements about life such as “We’re all just walking each other home.” We are both coming and going, giving and receiving, reaching outward and falling back. We are generally caught in time, and yet we also can recognize a timelessness to existence.

We’re all just walking each other home?

Maybe.

We’re certainly telling stories to each other about what it means to be a human being and have a life worth living. We are also certainly examining those stories in relationship to one another, you listening to me, I listening to you. And it’s in the telling and re-telling of useful, memorable, and true stories that we find ourselves — stories as paradoxically unique and as universal we all are.

Photo Credit: moriza

Filed Under: All Posts, Belief & Practice

Notes from the Venwoude community days event (part 2)

June 5, 2012 at 10:45 am by Chahat Leave a Comment

By Chahat Corten

Hello friends,

First pardon my English. I will do my best to share with you what wonders happened here in the last two weeks at Venwoude, our world spirituality community and center in Holland.

The visioning process at Venwoude Integral Practice Community at first presented itself as an impossible and complex painful challenge, which we really did not think we could meet. This was a key moment in our community in which things might have begun to go down and the community would begin a slow downward process or maybe just maybe a miracle would happen. But no one knew how it would happen. It truly did not seem possible.

And it happened!!! Wow did it happen!!! These last two weeks have been an enormous succes! What Grace how all of our paths came together in this way. The miracle has many parts to it but at the center of it all it had a name: spiritual teacher and artist Marc Gafni.

To many of us it occurred that it had to be precisely Marc that wove the magic of these days. When Marc walked in it seemed that there was really no way out. The complexity of the personal issues, and financial issues and emotional structural issues just did not seem workable. We had worked with other people and tried ourselves to work this and it just seemed impossible to come to a major breakthrough. But we were sure ready for one.

What happened here with Marc in a period of two weeks is really difficult to describe but I think it is fair to say that he almost worked a miracle. His tools were a brilliant clear mind, what he called loving outrageously, deep skills at facilitation, beautiful dharma talks and many individual meetings and deep listening. All of that was woven together in a kind of magic weave that — truly and absolutely transformed the community at some very deep levels in these two weeks.

A structural breakthrough was set in a legal form: a board and wisdom council were created, working for a committed period of three years. And it is now clear in a way that was totally unclear two weeks ago that this will be able to sustain this community to be here another 25 years.

In the first night Marc had everyone state their intention and what special medicine had to be given to the process. Everybody’s intention and medicine was hung on the wall. And all gave their commitment in the first evening to holding this intention during the proces.

It seemed like a simple start, but many times my commitment, to submit and serve, to stay on track those days was of staggering importance. The amount of goodness in the room allowed for blunt criticism of all leaders, which is of course in the end is always quite relaxing 🙂

In day two Marc led a four hour process in which the room would talk and he would listen to all the voices and then from the voices he would express a core value with each time woven perfectly all the voices in the room, each time he wove the voices into a core value and it happened almost twenty times the whole room would just sit back and say Wow!! Yes Yes Yes!! The Core values are formulated!

A miraculous process in depth and subtleties, like clear, clear, clear … in one extended morning session! This usually takes places weeks or days but it was like Marc has brought a clarity, light and transmission to the process that just opened everyone’s heart and mind.

A lot of old issues appeared, were touched and fell off the table, right in the heart to be held in the process, where each contribution appeared to be exactly the right one…..! There was a lot of grace available at the time.

And Marc in his obvious and clear mediating role between the worlds, picked up the expression of all necessary contributions, no matter how covert and we phrased it accurately and precisely in words that reflect the depth, the heart and the clarity that we looked for. So we formulated the most wondrous core values, both in English and in Dutch. Then the very next day — in a two hour process that Marc created we chose a board of directors who would be responsible to those core values.

So just to see the whole trajectory. Marc did two days of deep teaching with the whole community, then one day of individual meetings with communal leaders and then four hours of core values and then two hour of elections and it was done. There is a sense of deep breakthrough and elation in the community now. What is so amazing is that Marc did it in a way which increased the autonomy of the community. He poured deep love and light and wisdom into the community without in any way moving to take it over. If I never believed in second-tier consciousness I do now. Marc was deploying, as it seemed in a very relaxed way, a range of intelligences — from emotional intelligence to social intelligence, to dharma intelligence, to systems intelligence — all woven like an art form. I guess this is what people mean by second-tier. When you really see it in action it is quite amazing.

deep deep bow

Then we concluded last night with a festive and ecstatic evening with the wider community in wich the Wisdom Counsel was initiated and held by the whole community. From there the wisdom council invested the board members and they gave there commiment for three years.

Marc in his awesome dharma talk and story telling-mode invited us to create a community of ‘Messiahs’ or ‘9-cow-girls’. It was a beautiful talk on what it means to create an evolutionary WE space based on wisdom and outrageous loving. He talked about the Unique Self of the Venwoude community and how our work with sexuality gave us special gifts and special respsonsilbity and special ability and how this will probably become THE major and important technology in evolutionary WE-space development in the next age on this planet 🙂

An invitation to LOVE each other outrageously! There is magic, pure magic on the threshold of Venwoude’s 25th year of existence!

Thank you, thanks to our founder Ted Wilson, thanks to all patriarchs and matriarchs, thanks our world spirituality teacher in residence Marc Gafni, thank you all loving supporters, thanks all participants.

Thank you beloved friends,

Chahat

Filed Under: All Posts, Spiritual Community, Unique Self

The Democratization of Enlightenment (Part 4): Who does World Spirituality address?

June 5, 2012 at 10:06 am by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

“Who does a World Spirituality address? If we discern carefully, World Spirituality is transformative to the four major types of people in the world. First, there are the hundreds of millions of people who are post-traditional. They’re the people who can no longer locate themselves within a great tradition, a classical religion. Their experience, the way they’ve been brought into the world, their cultural exposures are such that they can’t locate themselves in a religion or a great tradition, and yet they are profoundly engaged and extremely compelled by Spirit…”

Filed Under: All Posts, Belief & Practice, Unique Self

The Democratization of Enlightenment (Part 3): Why World Spirituality, why now?

June 4, 2012 at 11:28 pm by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

“Why now? Why is a World Spirituality based on Integral principles which has as its core the democratization of enlightenment, which is the natural emergent of the Unique Self consciousness, why is it a possibility in a way that it never was, and why is it an urgent necessity in the way it never was?”

Filed Under: All Posts, Unique Self

A Place where everybody knows your Original Face?

June 4, 2012 at 11:11 am by Joe Perez 1 Comment

By Joe Perez

There’s a recently redesigned and expanded Starbucks Coffee within walking distance from my home in Seattle. I used to go in there quite a bit, but gradually the place has become so busy and noisy that it’s impossible to find a good seat (sometimes it’s even been standing room only), so I’ve found alternatives.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say the Starbucks was ever a “home away from home,” but it was the spot where I first attended a Seattle Integral meet-up, and where I met many business clients for a while. Now I’ve come across an article in Forbes claiming that Starbucks may be making their coffee shops intentionally a bit uncomfortable so that they drive away people who linger too long in one spot and bump up the customer churn rate.

A Starbucks company spokesperson isn’t exactly denying the claim, so it looks like there’s some truth to it. And it ought not surprise anyone. Starbucks is a publicly held company with an obligation to increase profits. But what does it say about Starbucks customers — which is just about everyone in Seattle and hundreds of millions of people throughout the world — that it matters so much to us?

Alice Walton, writing in Forbes:

The new “let’s make it slightly uncomfortable” model has a larger effect on the psyches of the customers – those who come to work or to play – than we might think at first. This is because the coffee house plays the central role of “Third Place” in our lives – home being the first and work being the second – and Starbucks has always been vocal about its desire to be this third place for its customer. What’s interesting is that humans actually really need this place, and we’ve needed if for practically our whole existence, according to some.

About 20 years ago, Ray Oldenburg, PhD, who wrote a book called The Great Good Place, argued that there are a number of attributes that make a third place a third place: It has to be convenient, inviting, serve something, and have some good regulars (which, he says, is actually more important than having a good host). People have had third places throughout history, and they’ve ranged from taverns to coffee houses to barbershops. They’re definitely better than street corners. Third places are different from first or second ones because we go to them in our in-between time – their voluntariness is what makes them so special and unique.

For millions of people who are not regular church attendees, the coffeehouse is increasingly playing a social role similar to that which churches used to play. We go there to meet people who we know and like. We go there to read a book and listen to soft music. We go there to break bread and drink beverages that alter our state of consciousness. Nobody forces us to go, and we can walk out at any time.

With nearly 20,000 Starbucks locations throughout the world (according to Wikipedia), the coffee giant is not in danger of eclipsing organized religion anytime soon (comparing to about 271,000 physical Catholic churches alone). But I wager that in modern countries Starbucks is adding coffee shops much faster than the Roman Catholic Church is adding new churches, and the Roman Church has had a bit of a headstart.

The world is thirsty for spirituality, and for many of us our heart longs to have Third Places that transcend the boundaries of any one particular organized religion. Coffee shops are substituting for churches at a time when religions have floundered at articulating an earthy, embodied, Fullness-loving vision of spirituality that makes them better places to go to hang out.

It’s a pity that it takes the profit-driven behavior of companies like Starbucks — making seats more uncomfortable, pumping up the volume of the music so it becomes more difficult to study and hold a conversation — to remind us that a beverage retail store cannot truly substitute for a House of Worship. Is it too much to ask that one day we might all walk down the street to our favorite neighborhood spiritual center to hang out with friends and meet new people in love with Life and Love, a place where it is not only okay to Be Yourself, but an expectation and obligation?

Filed Under: All Posts, Arts & Culture, Spiritual Community

The Democratization of Enlightenment (Part 2): Structure of this Teaching

June 3, 2012 at 1:03 pm by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

“What is World Spirituality? How do we realize this vision of World Spirituality? Who does it address? And why is World Spirituality so essential and possible today, an opportunity that hasn’t existed in 2,000 years?”

Filed Under: All Posts, Unique Self Tagged With: enlightenment, unique self

Daily Wisdom: Inside, Outside

June 1, 2012 at 1:25 pm by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

From my book, The Mystery of Love:

Love is all about insight–in-sight. It is the ability to see in, to the inside of the inside, to the Holy of Holies that is your lover. Eros is being on the inside. Thus, love is an erotic perception of the highest order. Naturally you have to move way beyond sexual seeing. Sex only models eros. To be an erotic lover you have to understand that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

When something is far from you, you have to open your eyes really wide to see it. As it gets closer you squint your eyes, when it gets really really close, you close your eyes. Seeing with closed eyes is when we perceive way beyond seeing. The adjective close and the verb close are the same word. Closeness–intimacy–higher vision–all happen when we close our eyes. We move beyond sight and invite the other faculties of perception to guide us. Smell, sound, touch, and taste all become alive in a deeper way when we close our eyes.

Photo Credit: presta

Filed Under: All Posts, Daily Wisdom

Exploring the Unique Self and beyond …. Searching for God’s place (Part 3)

June 1, 2012 at 11:20 am by Hans Jecklin Leave a Comment

By Hans Jecklin

This post continues from Part 2.

On my walk around the old pitoresque city of Fribourg, I suddenly got struck by an inspiration: The old images of God have been de-mistified long ago — I started to talk in my head – but many of us still experience a fear of being judged or even punishment by an unconscious authority that is being projected to the outside of ourselves: if it is not God whom we fear, it is society with its threat of exclusion, if we do not fit expectations.

But where could we imagine or locate God or — if we prefer — that all-encompassing force of eternal love and wisdom that is the origin of all that is? I believe to know a spiritual map with only “my” Unique Self and the Prior Unity of all cosmic potentials between myself and the ONE. But there is no room for God, especially if I understand my experience of the ONE as merely the state of oneness at the edge of that huge black (w)hole from which the cosmos manifests and where it might collapse into in a far ahead future; maybe manifesting a new cosmos on the backside of the hole?

And if I imagine a creative pulse from matter to antimatter between the two sides of the black hole, it would be logic — according to the law “as above so below” — that not only the tiniest particles of matter, or my energy centers, but also galaxies and the cosmos all live in (or even: from) this pulsation of expansion and contraction. This image of an all-inspiring cosmic breath is present in most ancient cultures around the planet, but it also exists as a vision for those cosmologists that expect the expansion of the universe to reverse at its culmination — in millions or billions of years — into a huge contraction. The bigger the organism the longer must be the time spans of out — and in breath: a cosmic day of Brahma lasts according to the Hindu knowledge 4,320,000,000 (4.32 billion) solar years; whereas at the quantum level pulsation happens in immeasurable time fractions.

Can we imagine God as a presence beyond the widest in- and out-breath, beyond unimaginable dimensions of trans-cosmic galaxies? With the whole “creation” breathing in a holarchy of pulsations from the seemingly eternal down to the tiniest?

While these imaginations take place, I realize that — even while walking — I have changed in a different state of consciousness. And I suddenly perceive the picturesque old town of Fribourg. sitting on top of the cliff above the Saane river canyon as a kind of theatrical stage set or even as a doll house, I used to play with as child. The state that has taken me in is huge, of absolute grandeur. And it is at the same time so real and intense that I must have stumbled over a dimension I had not known before. God — or trans-cosmic intelligence in whatever form — has found me again, as an unquestionable REALITY. I feel being part of a great pulsation that breathes me and vibrates on all subtle levels from spirit to vital.

Filed Under: All Posts, Belief & Practice, Health & Medicine, Unique Self Tagged With: god, states, unique self

The Democratization of Enlightenment (Part 1): Introducing Evolutionary Mysticism

June 1, 2012 at 9:59 am by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

Filed Under: Belief & Practice

Welcome Tony Robbins, Claudia Kleefeld, Mark Schwartz, Richard Schwartz, Bill Little, Lori Galperin, and Charles Randall Paul

June 1, 2012 at 9:30 am by Joe Perez Leave a Comment

By Joe Perez

The Center for World Spirituality is delighted to tell you about the newest members of the Center’s Wisdom Council, our amazing group of advisers and dialogue partners.

The new members are:

Richard Barrett is founder and chairman of the Barrett Values Centre and an internationally recognized thought leader on values, culture, leadership and consciousness. An author, speaker and social commentator on the evolution of human values in business and society, he is also a Fellow of the RSA, a United Kingdom-based enlightenment organization.
Lori Galperin, MSW, LCSW initially earned her undergraduate degree in Psychology and later completed her graduate degree in Clinical Social Work at Tulane University. She is an accomplished contributor in the fields of marital and sexual dysfunction, sexual compulsivity, sexual trauma, dissociative and eating disorders. Lori lectures nationally and internationally on these topics and has authored various journal articles and book chapters.
Claudia Kleefeld holds her Bachelor of the Arts from University of Southern California, Los Angeles and a postgraduate degree from The Byam Shaw College of Art. She is a painter and photographer incorporating sound, photography, video, the spoken word and written word into her work. She makes art that considers humanness, examining the voice of the individual as it correlates with the external world.
Dr. Bill Little received his PhD in Physics from Georgia Tech in 1969 and was teaching at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey where he first heard about Religious Science. He returned to New York to continue his Ministerial studies and before long he came back as the Minister at the Monterey Church where he remained until 1987. In 1989, at the request of many friends and supporters, he began Pacific Coast Church. Dr. Bill was awarded a Doctorate in Religious Science in 1986. Also, just for fun, he teaches mathematics at Monterey Peninsula College.
Charles Randall Paul is president and chairman of the Foundation for Interreligious Diplomacy, an organization promoting and facilitating communication between people experiencing conflicts inspired by religious differences. He has an M.B.A., Harvard University and a Ph.D. from The University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought.
Anthony Robbins is a world authority on leadership psychology, peace negotiator, humanitarian, strategic advisor to world leaders, successful entrepreneur, honored business strategist, award-winning speaker, internationally best-selling author, authority on peak performance, and innovator in psychology and intervention. His nonprofit, the Anthony Robbins Foundation, provides assistance to inner-city youth, senior citizens, homeless, and feeds millions of people in countries all over the world.
Dr. Mark Schwartz, Sc.D. earned his doctorate in Psychology and Mental Health from Johns Hopkins University and is a licensed psychologist. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Schwartz has achieved international recognition for his contributions in a variety of clinical arenas, including the treatment of intimacy disorders, marital and sexual dysfunction, sexual compulsivity, sexual trauma and eating disorders.
Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and author who has pioneered the application of systems concepts of family therapy to this intrapsychic realm. Dr. Schwartz co-authored, with Michael Nichols, Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods, the most widely used family therapy text in the U.S. He founded the Center for Self Leadership (CSL), which has evolved a comprehensive approach for working with individuals, couples, and families.

Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: wisdom council

Why discipline and will power are completely outdated, and an evolutionary alternative

June 1, 2012 at 9:09 am by Kristen Ulmer Leave a Comment

By Kristen Ulmer

This may surprise you, but discipline, perseverance, setting an intention, drive, the will; all those celebrated states usually taught by sports coaches, are completely outdated. Same with goal setting.

Here’s why. I remember having to perform a difficult ski photo shoot while still recovering from an injury. I wanted to maintain status and sponsors so I “sucked it up” “did it anyway” “refused to give up” “pushed through the pain and fear.” Sounds powerful right?

Such willed effort is fine in a pinch: I skied great that day, but here’s the problem: doing something I didn’t feel like doing was the first step toward future burn out and ultimately resenting my sport.

There’s a better path.

Let’s say you don’t feel like going the gym but force yourself to go anyway. Sound familiar?

Picture a hose. All day long feelings and experiences flow through that hose. In this case ‘should I go to the gym?’ shows up. Next comes ‘no I don’t want to!’

Now picture you’re a corporation made up of 10,000 different employees. The mind is one of these employees. Throw in determination or a fitness goal and the mind becomes very clever at suppressing any employee who gets in its way, in this case; ‘No I don’t want to.’

She puts duct tape over ‘No’s’ mouth and throws her down the basement stairs. You trot off to the gym feeling victory over perceived ‘negativity.’

The mind does this enough times and guess what? The employee of ‘No I don’t want to’ isn’t taking the abuse quietly. She isn’t dying in the basement. She’s fighting back, plotting, building strength, having to do her job in a covert, pathological way and will even scream now in order to be heard.

Your hose is now kinked, and a war has started. You are now at war with your self. And you can’t see it because it’s being carried out in your subconscious.

But you can feel it. Repressed experiences and emotions remain in our systems and run our lives covertly, sometimes for decades or even lifetimes. They come out in the most disruptive ways — straining our relationships, causing injury, showing up as disease and body aches. They pinch off the possibility for happiness to enter. Over time you become burned out. All because the mind and the will refuse to be intimate with anything negetive ot working against a master plan.

What if, instead you had a consciousness practice, where you could first see how the mind and all her buddies act as slave drivers. To see it is to stop it. Stop that war. In today’s evolutionary world, next you welcome your emotions and experiences as they flow through the hose, and this way your mind instead sets you free.

What would you do with that freedom? Could you just listen to the wisdom of each moment as it flows through the hose, rather than crack a whip?

If I could go back and feel that pressure to ski injured over again, I would have honored fear and pain instead, and chosen my ‘No.’

How about you? When you think you should go to the gym and ‘No’ shows up, would you let her be this time? If so, she’ll only speak for about 15-40 seconds before she’s gone and another employee shows up.

It might even be this time: Yes.

Photo Credit: jontunn

Filed Under: Featured, Health & Medicine Tagged With: fitness, psychology, self-help, sports