Unique Self, Perspective & Integral Theory

Zak Stein on the What, How, and Why of Metrics

Zak Stein, the Center for Integral Wisdom’s Academic Director, held a great talk at our 2015 Board Meeting about his main research subject of metrics. The talk was introduced by Marc Gafni and followed by a Q&A session.

Some questions he addressed:

The surprising ways that metrics influence our everyday lives
How metrics enable or eradicate uniqueness
How simple metrics can support our personal evolution

Listen here:

Also enjoy this brief talk about the Mystery School of Love at Venwoude (Holland) by Board Member Chahat Corten. Join us for the Mystery School coming soon!

Unique Self Coaching Expands in Europe and US

The first participants in the Unique Self Coaching Collective have successfully completed the 9-month certification program that masterfully weaves Integral Coaching and Unique Self Realization into a new and beautiful program of deep Self-Inquiry practices that is very teachable to other coaches for use with their clients.

Unique Self Coaching was developed by Integral Master Coaches Barbara Alexander and Claire Molinard with the support of Dr. Marc Gafni. They have upcoming 9-month certification programs in Europe and the U.S., and youâ€™ll find more information on their website.

â€œWe believe that everyone has a unique purpose and that joy arises naturally when one lives in the reality of their unique calling as a gift to the world. This is what it is means to be living as a Unique Self. Our vision and greatest hope is that Unique Self Coaching may serve as a skillful means to facilitate the emergence of the Unique Self in men and women of all ages so they may live happier, more successful and purposeful lives in service to the world.”

Integral Master Coaches and Founders of the Unique Self Coaching Collective, Barbara Alexander and Claire Molinard

The Metrics of Human Consciousness by Richard Barrett

Richard Barrett‘s long awaited book The Metrics of Human Consciousness has been released on amazon.

This book has been a major CIW Think Tank project over the course of last year.

From the Foreword by Dr. Marc Gafni, Co-Founder and Director, Center for Integral Wisdom and Dr. Zachary Stein, Academic Director, Center for Integral Wisdom:

The genesis of this book dates back to the time when Richard met Marc at a conference on Conscious Capitalism, held at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California in 2012. Richard was at the conference to present a paper on measuring the consciousness of leaders and organizations. Marc was at the conference to present a paper on the concept of the Unique Self. Very quickly, the conversation between the two of them turned to developing a metric for measuring the consciousness of the Unique Self.

After the conference Marc broadened the conversion with Richard to involve Zak Stein, the Academic Director of the Center for Integral Wisdom, and Ken Wilber, on of the co-founders of the Center. After several conversations, we (Marc and Zak) asked Richard to begin to explore the possibility of constructing a Unique Self metric. Richard accepted the challenge and joined the board of the Center as senior scholar. This books represents the first output of this exercise.

…

Richard Barrett offers us an exciting new direction for measuring consciousness. He has proven that the insights these measures bring can significantly improve our individual, organisational and societal performance. The work of the Barrett Values Centre stands as a testament to what can be achieved by seriously applying ourselves to the measurement of conscious.

Part of the ongoing conversation on these topics was this beautiful dialogue between Ken Wilber, Richard Barrett and Marc Gafni on the nature and necessity of Personal and Societal Transformation:

[Read more…]

The God of the Encounter: The Glory of the Personal, Part 6

by Dr. Marc Gafni

(part 6)

Two Faces of All That Is

This is the animating impulse that moved eastern spiritual teaching, motivated by love, to seek to free you from the illusion of separate self. Their great mistake was to jettison Uniqueness along with separateness by conflating the two in a way that was both unnecessary and wrong. This confusion of separateness and uniqueness forgot that you could be both part of the whole and a distinct part at the same time. The recovering of that memory is essential to healing the fractured and broken self. The dignity of the part can be held even as your are connected to the whole. You are part of the seamless coat of the universe. Seamless, but not featureless.Â You can transcend your exclusive identification with your part nature, the ego, even as you identify with the larger whole. But that does not mean that your unique part nature is absorbed in the whole. Rather, it is integrated in the seamless coat of reality without compromising its unique features. [Read more…]

The God of the Encounter: The Glory of the Personal, Part 5

by Dr. Marc Gafni

(part 5)

***

God in the First Person:

“All at once I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant, I thought of fire and immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next I knew that the fire was in myself. Directly afterward there came upon me as sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is on the contrary, a living presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have an eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal, that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain.”

~R.M. Bucke

God in the Second Person addressing man:

I will be united with you in marriage forever

I will be united to you in marriage through justice and righteousness

I will be united with you in marriage through overflowing love and compassion

I will be united with you in marriage in complete trust

And you will erotically know the divine

Hosea the Prophet: 2: 21- 23

Only someone who lacks both of these realizations can identify all that is as merely a process or impulse. Realization teaches that the all that is expresses as a process or an evolutionary impulse, but that God is process plus personal, not process minus personal. [Read more…]

The God of the Encounter: The Glory of the Personal, Part 4

by Dr. Marc Gafni

(part 4)

It is precisely this fellowship of prayer and prophecy, which we might refer to as the second face of God. In this pointing out instruction, God in the first person would be the face of god you feel flowing through you in meditation. God in the third person would be the face of God reflected in your radical amazement at the wonder and infinite intelligence displayed in every nook and cranny of existence. God in the second person is in the mystery of the encounter between God and Man. A relationship of intimacy is revealed between the finite and the infinite.Â All of the infinite power, glory, and intelligence of the first person and third person of the divine were felt and revealed as relationship in the second encounter between the prophet and God. The precise flip side of prophecy is prayer. In their essence, they are the same. Both are expressions of the fellowship between man and God. The difference is simply this. In prophecy, God initiates and God invokes. In prayer, man initiates and man invokes. [Read more…]

The God of the Encounter: The Glory of the Personal, Part 3

by Dr. Marc Gafni

(part 3)

The sense of peril resulting from direct contact with the divine ground has nothing to do with any ideas that the people are sinful or the god wrathful. It is more like the famous question of the Bhagavad Gita: “Suppose a thousand suns should rise together in the sky,â€ what would happen to our reality? How can the individual hope to survive contact with Source? Source incarnates all the energy and power in the Cosmos and infinitely beyond.

Presence by its very nature overwhelms all individual existence. [Read more…]

The God of the Encounter: The Glory of the Personal, Part 2

by Dr. Marc Gafni

(part 2)

The most powerful expression of this realization is in the prophetic encounter with the divine mystery. This encounter runs like a thread from Abraham and Sarah to Moses, Miriam, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the larger legions of prophecy. As Americaâ€™s second president John Adams has already noted, the best of everything Western man knows about freedom, love, ethics, and responsibility emerges from the great encounter between the finite and the infinite. [Read more…]

The God of the Encounter: The Glory of the Personal, Part 1

by Dr. Marc Gafni

(part 1 of 3)

The realization of the personal which has been derided as the separate self or ego is so important that I want to ask you to enter this even more deeply with me. You need to feel a sense of this realization in your own being. You need to feel the love and care implicit and explicit in the loving personal address of the Cosmos. [Read more…]

Ten Commitments of World Spirituality Based on Integral Principles by Marc Gafni

The Commitment to the Enlightenment of Fullness:

The journey begins with a recognition of the fullness and depth of reality and to the specific experience and innate dignity of every human life. Every human being has an innate right to participate with joy in the fullness and depth of reality. [Read more…]

Wisdom for Your Week: A Gift for You from the Summer Festival of Love at Venwoude

Marc Gafni teaching at Venwoude

The second annual Mystery School of Love has begun and is already in full swing. More than 150 people have come to celebrate with us this yearâ€™s theme: â€œReclaiming Eros.â€ Many participants were here with us last year and are excited to be here again!

The festival revolves at its core around Dr. Marcâ€™s several hours of Dharma transmission each morning. In the beginning of the day, spiritual teacher Chahat Corten â€” a leading luminary at Venwoude and a direct dharma student of Dr. Marc â€” begins the morning with a day-opening ceremony. Dr. Marc then meets with the twenty or so teachers gathered on the faculty of the Mystery School. Included are leading teachers who are each in their own right bright stars and key leaders of the Venwoude community where Dr. Marc serves as the World Spirituality Teacher in Residence. We will post a bit later a special piece about all the the wonderful teachers, each worthy of note and great appreciation.

The center of the emergence is the field of radical dharma and outrageous love that is woven and rewoven by Dr. Marc. The attendance at the festival has doubled in the last year and we expect that to keep doubling every year. Dr. Marc weaves a field of precise and powerful–truly “source-code-changingâ€–teaching, which transforms minds and explodes hearts. Dr. Marcâ€™s mind and heart seem to merge as one and he lives for everyone as an overflowing and brilliant weaver of meaning, meta theory and grand narrativeâ€”even as he opens up spaces of genuine enlightenment that seem to shift the earth beneath people’s feet. It is an enlightenment teaching pure and simple, and the process is, as Dr. Marc calls it, Loving Your Way to Enlightenment!

To give you a little taste of it, we want to share with you just the first few minutes of Marc Gafniâ€™s opening dharma talk, where he sets the frame by giving us 6 principles and commitments for the upcoming week. This is before any of the real dharma got started – this was the first hello:

[Read more…]

Unique Self and Shadow: An Introduction

Naked Female On Rocks Facing Lightening by Victor Habbick

Â©Victor Habbick, www.freedigitalphotos.net

Â â€œAny part of your story that you do not live,
lives in darknessâ€¦
part of your story is in shadow.
To come home you must recover and
embrace the memory of your fullest self.
Until the story of your life is lived
you will go on yearning for it.â€
Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self

It is so exciting to be on this journey together with all of you, our readers and participants in courses and retreats, my wonderful colleagues and friends, and my beloved teacher and friend Dr. Marc Gafni, who has invited me to team up with him in this sacred endeavor of writing this series of articles, which will ultimately become a book, as well as in this holy adventure of Integral Wisdom, World Spirituality, and Unique Self.

[Read more…]

Distinction between Ego and Unique Self #22 â€“ Love or Fear

From Your Unique Self by Dr. Marc Gafni.

(c) 2013 photo courtesy of Sira Anamwong

The isolated ego is the root cause of murder, war, and virtually all human suffering. The ego feels its own fragility, its limits, and its ultimate powerlessness. As a result, the ego grasps for ways to assert power and experience aliveness. This causes the acting out of all forms of shadow. When you deconstruct your mistaken identity with the separate-self ego, and instead identify with your distinct path in the seamless quilt of the Uni-verse, the fear dissipates and the love returns. When the contraction of ego uncoils, your Unique Self experiences all of the goodâ€”personal love, responsibility, compassion, ethical action, activism, and all the restâ€”that you previously thought was accessible only through your assertion of a separate self.

The choice between personal love and immersion in True Self is a false choice. There is no contradiction between them whatsoever: The Westâ€”motivated by love and the desire to end sufferingâ€”affirmed the separate self because it thought this was the only way a person could gain the goods of the encounter, namely personal love, responsibility, contact, intimacy, accountability, compassion, and care. This was a mistake; all of those goods may be realized through the encounter between two Unique Selves who are not separate from each other, but consciously part of the same seamless coat of the Uni-verse. Personal love does not require two separate selves.

Further Discussion:

Here is an excerpt from Dr. Marc Gafniâ€™s writing on the relationship between personal or relative love and absolute love.Â As he says above in this distinction, â€œThe choice between personal love and immersion in True Self is a false choice.â€ Elaborating on this further, Dr. Marc says: [Read more…]

Unique Self Stations + Perspectives: A Chart by Kerstin Tuschik

Below, you will find a link to a chart created by CWS Web Scholar Kerstin Tuschik, elaborating on the Stations of Self in Dr. Marc Gafni‘s Your Unique Self (p. 54) by adding first-, second-, third-person perspectives. She says: â€œI have found these Stations in myself and given voice to what these aspects of consciousness have to say about how they see me, you, us, and the world.â€ Kerstin’s chart was developed for theÂ annual “Integrales Forum” conference this year, held June 14-16. The conference was themed “Wir gestalten Zukunft” = “We are Shaping the Future.” Sean EsbjÃ¶rn-Hargens and Barrett Brown were connected for the event via skype. Steve McIntosh and Elizabeth Debold were there in person, and more than 20 presenters from Germany were also in attendance. Bence Ganti was also present, and he discussed Integral Europe and the Integral scene in the US. He also lead a workshop on the Integral Flow Experience

Kerstin’s chart below was presented for a project market at the conference, and copies were also given to participants. Kerstin co-lead a workshop together with Cordula (Mears-)Frei, entitled “Voice of the Future: Evolution of Love” and facilitated an Open Space workshop.

Click the pictures below for a .pdf copy of the “I-You-We.pdf chart” created by Kerstin or Dr. Marc Gafni’s original “Stations of the Self” (p. 54) chart.

[Read more…]

Wisdom for Your Week: Thought Leader Dialogue between Richard Barrett and Marc Gafni: The Unique Self and Societal Development: The Path of Societal Transformation

Corporate Social Responsibility In Word Collage by David Castillo Dominici

Â©David Castillo Dominici, www.freedigitalphotos.net

Listen to Richard Barrett, founder and chairman of the Barrett Values Centre and author of many booksâ€”e.g. What My Soul Told Me, The New Leadership Paradigm, and Building a Values Driven Organizationâ€”and Marc Gafni as they talk about an exciting new role that nations and our democratic systems can play in the evolution of consciousness, when they awaken to their Unique Selves, and what that might mean.

You can also listen to the first two parts of the dialogue and read a summary or partial transcript here:

[Read more…]

Distinction between Ego and Unique Self #20 — Past or Present

From Your Unique Self by Dr. Marc Gafni.

The ego lives in the past, thinking it is the present. Therefore, the ego unconsciously confuses past with present. The ego is unable to create intimacy, which means meeting each other in the fullness of the present moment. To make real contact, you must be personal and present. Only the Unique Self can make contact. For the Unique Self, the present moment consciously includes the past and anticipates the future.

The ego confuses the past and the present. When you are confusedâ€”thinking you are present in the present while you are actually lost in a past tranceâ€”you are unable to act effectively, lovingly, or powerfully in the situation that you are in. And the past remains always unhealed. Several years ago a friend and board member of my organization called me, angry at not being included in a particular email loop. Her anger was full of intensity and flaming aggression, which was vastly disproportionate to the ostensible exclusion from the email loop. I considered asking her to resign from the board, as this was not the first time such an overreaction had occurred. Of course, what was coming up was not her present exclusion, but a very old sense of being excluded. She held this sense of being left out from her early childhood as a girl with four brothers who were better loved by their father.

This inability to discern the past from the present has made her unable to effectively navigate her professional or personal world, because she is always prone to dramatic overreactions that undermine many key relationships. The Unique Self does not confuse the past with the present. When the past comes up in the present, the Unique Self recognizes it for what it is: the past coming up in the present.

The Unique Self then uses the present moment to heal the past. The Unique Self recognizes that the patterns of the past have no true foothold or power in the present.

Further Discussion:

As Dr. Marc says above, the ego confuses the past with the present, and the Unique Self recognizes the difference, escapes the pastâ€™s dominion, and uses the present moment to heal the past. So, what, then, is the relationship between Unique Self or ego and the future?Â Dr. Marc teaches, quoting Gabriel Marcel, that hope is a memory of the future.Â He says: [Read more…]

Distinction between Ego and Unique Self #19: Paradox or Splitting

Sunrise Over The Sea With Pier On The Foreground by tratong, www.freedigitalphotos.net

by Dr. Marc Gafni from Your Unique Self

The ego is always splitting. It always sees dualities, and it cannot hold paradox or complexity. For the ego, others are either enemies or friends. Actions are either good or bad. The separate-self ego has a very hard time stably holding perspectives other than its own for extended periods of time. The Unique Self can naturally hold paradox. Contact with the transcendent within the large field of divine reality allows for the holding of opposites. Sacred outrage and equanimity live in paradoxical harmony within the Unique Self.

Further discussion:

Here we meet with one of the paradoxes of the Unique Self teachings, which is that we can wake up to realize Unique Self (as a state experience), since it is our very essence, which is always already present, yet, to really live it in a sustainable way, we need to also grow up to higher levels of consciousness and complexity.

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. (Niels Bohr)

Â [Read more…]

Distinction between Ego and Unique Self #17: Justice or Injustice

(c) 2011 Photo courtesy of Salvatore Vuono.

by Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self.

The ego is angry at what is done to it. It very rarely feels the same outrage at what is done to someone else. The Unique Self is not merely outraged against injustice done to its own person; it is hurt and outraged by any and all injustice. The ego often fights large causes of injustice as a way to bolster its grandiosity. Unique Self ï¬ghts the battles of injustice in its own backyard, even when there is potential collateral damage to its own power and status.

Further Discussion:

One of the things this distinction reminds us of is the importance of responding to real hurt in the world.Â In one call from the Living Beyond Complexity telecourse Dr. Marc Gafni co-taught with Clint Fuhs, Nicole Fegley, and Zak Stein, Marc spent one entire phone call expounding upon the â€œproblem of evilâ€ in the world, also referred to as a â€œtheodicy.â€Â In the course of the call, he explained that the level-three response to enormous suffering in the world is to cry out â€œWhy?â€ in pain, to feel the pain, and to question the injustice behind it, which is part of the tikkun, or fixing, of the injustice.Â In one of his earlier manuscripts entitled Uncertainty, (a book that will be rereleased along with his manuscript for Certainty), Marc explores the Talmudic teaching on this.Â An excerpt of that discussion is reprinted below from the chapter entitled â€œThe Path of Wrestlingâ€: [Read more…]

Distinction between Ego and Unique Self #11 â€“ King or Servant

Fallen Leader by podpad, www.freedigitalphotos.net

by Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self.

Ego is the servant pretending to be a king. You are avoiding stepping into your Unique Self for fear of being a king. Your ego thinks it is God but does not really believe it, so your ego insanely tries to make itself the God it knows it is not. Your Unique Self knows it is God, so it acts in the world with majesty, audacity, and grace.

Further discussion:

We can take a lot of different perspectives on today’s issue. Let’s try on a couple of them. [Read more…]

Satisfaction and Greed: Distinction between Unique Self and Ego #4

By Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self

Your separate self is driven by greed. Greed is not the want of anything specific. Rather, it is insatiable want that creates perpetual anxiety. Insatiable want is a structure of the egoic mind, which seeks more and more identity enhancers to confirm its existence. Satisfaction and ego are opposites.

Give the ego everything, and it will not be satisfied. Give the Unique Self anything, and it will be grateful and satisfied. Satisfied, not resigned. Satisfaction emerges from the fullness of whatever the moment brings.

Satisfaction comes from contact with Being and from doing your radical, intense best in the world of Becoming without attachment to outcome. Being is all one, so any moment of Authentic Being gives infinite satisfaction. Becoming is an expression of the evolutionary impulse and not merely of the egoic drive to achieve. So for Unique Self, your very best is always good enough. For your ego, your very best is never good enough. This is why the ego is the source of all your suffering. It always wants more to fill its greed.

Greed, however, is not a root evil. At its core, greed is your egoâ€™s distortion of a quality of essence, the quality of pure infinite desire. Infinite desire is the natural expression of the endless creativity of essence.Â It is this quality that creates constant yearning, especially the yearning to grow, to create. This yearning, however, lives in paradoxical harmony with satisfaction.

For more on distinctions between ego and Unique Self, check out the upcoming Unique Self telecourse starting April 24.Â This is a not-to-be missed course on the new spiritual book and teaching that everyone is talking about!

Further discussion: [Read more…]

Houston Integral group in mid-discussion of Unique Self Enlightenment

The Houston Integral Consciousness Meet-up Group is meeting on Thursday, March 7, for a discussion of Marc Gafni’s Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment. According to their Meetup.com page:

We had such a lively discussion amongst group members, we decided to continue discussing Marc Gafni’s book,Â Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal EnlightenmentÂ again…

All are welcome…

Cheryl Norris, an organizer of the group, says this meeting is the second on the topic of Unique Self following an “awesome” initial meeting this week in which “fun was had by all (big grin).”

The Houston group had studied different evolutionary teaching on the nature of self including the teaching of Evolutionary Self which are based on the original teaching of Authentic Self.Â For a number of reasons the learning felt incomplete, she said. One of the group members read Marc Gafni’s Your Unique Self and felt that it addressed some of the key concerns. A lively conversation ensued.

Marc looks forward to talking more deeply with the study group to understand the important distinctions between Unique Self and Authentic Self. Some of these issues were discussed in part in a dialogue between Andrew Cohen and Marc Gafni published in an article in the Journal of Integral Theory & Practice (6:1).

There have been a number of discussions of Unique Self and Authentic Self, and here references to a Â a few of them.Â There is the aforementionedÂ dialogue between Marc Gafni And Andrew Cohen, a related article by Zach Stein, a blog post by Chris Dierkes, and information about a dialogue between Mike Wombacher and Dustin DiPerna on Evolutionary Spirituality and Unique Self. Another important recent conversation is a dialogue between Tom Steininger (representing Authentic Self) and Sonja Student (representing Unique Self), published in the German magazine EnlightenNext Impulse and inÂ a version published in English translation on Spirit’s Next Move, the CWS blog.