Most Recent Posts on Spirit’s Next Move
Daily Wisdom: Distinction between Unique Self and Ego #16: Yes or No
by Dr. Marc Gafni from Your Unique Self.
©2012 Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles
Your ego is always contracting and saying, “No.” Even when your ego says, “Yes,” it is only because it is afraid to say, “No.” Your Unique Self is always expanding and saying , “Yes.” Even when you say, “No,” it is only to make room for a more authentic “Yes.”
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For the full discussion of this distinction, visit the CWS website.>>
Daily Wisdom: Distinction between Ego and Unique Self #15: Bigger or Smaller
©Baby’s Hand Holding Mother’s Finger by gubgib, www.freedigitalphotos.net
by Dr. Marc Gafni from Your Unique Self
When you are in ego, people feel smaller when you walk into the room. They feel invisible before you. The result is that they feel depleted and in danger. When you are in your Unique Self, people feel bigger when you walk into the room. They feel seen by you. They feel your desire to love and give to them.
Click here to read the full post with our further discussion>>
Wisdom for Your Week: A Conversation with Marc Gafni and John Mackey on Shadow
© Bird And Shadow by Bill Longshaw, www.freedigitalphotos.net
In this last video of our seven-part dialogue series, our two authors (Your Unique Self and Conscious Capitalism) discuss the issue of shadow – both in the context of our personal life as well as in the context of business. In our modern world the narrative of business seems to have become the shadow story, while its heroic part of creating value for humanity and the world has become hidden.
Additionally Dr. Marc Gafni brings the Unique Shadow into the discussion that can be easily recognized as the personal core-issue in each and every one of us that hints to and – when looked at – leads us back to our unlived Unique Self.
Don’t miss this or any other video of this series on our website or the Whole Foods Blog.
John Mackey is Chairman and CEO of Whole Foods Market, as well as the Co-Chair of the Center for World Spirituality Board of Trustees.
Click here for the CWS website link to the full post and video discussion.>>
Daily Wisdom: Distinction between Unique Self and Ego #14: Friendship or Pseudofriendship
©2011. Photo courtesy of David Castillo Dominici.
by Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self.
When you are in ego, you might help friends who are successful and even friends who are down, as long as it does not threaten your position. But you are not capable of truly delighting in your deepest heart in a friend’s large success. When you are in Unique Self, your deepest heart delights in your friend’s success, even if there is nothing in it for you at all.
Daily Wisdom: Betrayal or Loyalty – Distinction between Ego and Unique Self #13
©Heart Rotto by Idea go, www.freedigitalphotos.net
by Dr. Marc Gafni from Your Unique Self
The ego betrays. The Unique Self is loyal. When you are in your ego, and things go bad, you are willing—in your fear—to betray virtually anyone. Your ego is easily identifiable by the shallowness of its integrity. If you live in Unique Self and things go bad, you find your way, through thick or thin, to a deeper center of spirit.
Read our further discussion here…
Daily Wisdom
Greater is the Light That Comes from the Darkness
by Marc Gafni
Carl Gustav Jung offered a profound direction in understanding shadow. His core teaching, drawn from many sources, is that we cannot be whole human beings without recognizing and incorporating our shadow energy. Jung has an expression that he uses constantly to express this idea: “In the Shadow is the Gold.” By this, he means to say that most of what is valuable in the human personality—the gold—can be mined only from the shadow. But what does that mean, and why should it be so? It is to this all-important question that we now turn our attention. We will seek to fundamentally evolve what shadow means and how shadow work is done! At this point, I am going to unpack directly from the original tantric sources a radical new teaching on shadow integration.
So let us begin. In the book of Genesis, one of the oldest texts of Unique Self teachings, the creation myth is expressed in the words, “God said, Let there be Light. And there was light.”
Light, with its unique frequency for every person, is—as we have already noted—one of the primary mystical symbols for Unique Self. In the third-century mystical esoteric texts on Genesis, it is taught that this original light that initiated the creative process was too much for the world to bear, so “God hid the original light. The light will be revealed to the righteous in the world of becoming.” In a similar way, contemporary neuroscience suggests that we deploy only a fraction of our mind’s potential for consciousness.
Some centuries later, the Zohar picks up the thread of the earlier teaching. “Where was the original light of creation hidden?” ask the masters. To which the masters respond, “The original light was hidden in the darkness!” “Where does the original light still appear in the world?” ask the masters once more. “In the person of the enlightened ones,” responds the text. And who are the enlightened ones? The enlightened ones, the righteous ones, according to the masters of Tantric Kabbalah, are the ones who have incarnated their Unique Self. The implication of the text is this: to realize your Unique Self, you must follow the path of the light hidden in the darkness.
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Ken Wilber and Marc Gafni in Dialogue: Unique Self Therapy (Part 8)
Marc Gafni and Ken Wilber continue the Unique Self dialogues with a segment of great interest to anyone concerned about healing modalities. Beginning with the opening question, “What would a Unique Self therapy look like?” and continuing on to groundbreaking discussion of nondual spiritual practice, this exchange provides numerous insights. From Wilber’s perspective, the essence of Unique Self therapy is uncovering the lies that we tell about ourselves, including lies about our grandeur. Wilber and Gafni concur that the Tibetan Buddhist practice of yidam (or “divine pride”) offers valuable wisdom that can be adapted for use within an integral Unique Self healing context.
This clip is a 16-minute excerpt which follows immediately from Part 7 on Unique Shadow. In the previous conversation, the pandits conclude that uniqueness paradoxically appears as a spontaneous level of consciousness at “second-tier,” the structure in which consciousness becomes more capable of looking at itself. They saw that key in charting the Unique Self’s position and understanding the nature of shadow is understanding is the relationship to levels of consciousness.
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Marc: This is exciting. This is going to allow for the emergence of … here’s our next topic. What would Unique Self therapy look like? We’re working with as you know the board chair of CWS, Lori Galperin, and her clinical co-director Mark Schwartz, the leaders in treatment about developing a sort of Unique Self therapeutic modality. We’re now testing it. How would that work? What would that mean? This will be a key piece of the story: to be able to, for someone who is relatively healthy, to be able to chart: where am I in my level of consciousness? To be able to see the level of consciousness and bring levels of consciousness directly into the Unique Self conversation as part of an actual enacted therapeutic modality. That’s exciting.
Ken: I agree. There are any things involved in the therapeutics of the Unique Self. One of them is certainly coming face-to-face with the fundamental lie or lies that one has got caught up with in the course of one’s life, facing those, and attempting to determine the particular level that they come from, just because that helps to clarify the structure of the lie, the type of lie, when it happened, the relationships that were probably part of it. What sort of talents do you seem to have? People will lie about their talents just as frequently as they lie about their negatives. Maslow called it the Jonah complex. We’re afraid of our greatness as much as our negatives and our smallness. That fear of greatness is simply the fear of your own Unique Self. That’s a terrible position to be in. [Read More...]
