Read how Dr. Marc Gafni is honoring his “partners in crime,” the Co-Founders of the Center for Integral Wisdom: Ken Wilber, Sally Kempton, Mariana Caplan, and Lori Galperin. Or watch him in the video below (transcribed and edited by Joe Perez).
Welcome to the Center for Integral Wisdom Founders portal.
My name is Marc Gafni. We founded the Center for World Spirituality in 2011.
Ken Wilber is the premiere integral philosopher in the world today, a wonderful human being, a huge heart. We met in 2003 or 2004 and spent our first meeting talking for five fours about levels of consciousness. We prayed together and started a lifelong friendship that has had twists and turns and survived pain and has a depth to it and integrity and a goodness to it that is unimaginable and unsurpassed. I want to give deep honor and gratitude to the co-visionary founder.
Sally Kempton, my best friend in the world, my dharma sister and awesome being in the world. She is one of the great teachers of meditation in the world having developed a system called Awakened Heart Meditation. One of her books Meditation for the Love of It: Her publisher Tami Simon said it was the best meditation books she ever read. A more recent and equally awesome book Awakening Shakti carries the deep lineage energies of her main tradition Kashmir Shaivism. She has been a central key co-conspirator to animate the Eros of this vision. I give a deep bow of love and appreciation and gratitude to Ken and Sally.
Mariana Kaplan is the mother of my son Zion. She had this radical commitment to have a child and I stepped up somewhat post-conventionally to partner with her in having this child. She has written some seven books standing at the cross-roads of psychology and spirituality. I would recommend Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path. She is developing a new field of thought called Yoga and Psyche. She is a wonderful human being, a shining and radiant presence. She co-founded with me the center and was a key force in its initiation.
Lori Galperin, my partner, stunning, gorgeous human being who is one of the five or six leading trauma therapists. She is a deep soul who feels the pain of the world and spends her life as a healer. Her formal structure is with her colleague Marc Schwartz: they started in the field of sex therapy, and they discovered there were deep traumas. They have also gone into eating disorders and other areas. They have taught 75,000 therapists and started a trauma clinic. They are deeply wise healers, and Mark and Lori are masters of several interdisciplinary areas that they have integrated. She has been the Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees. She is also joining with me and others in writing a new manual on intimate relationships as well as developing and writing about the new field of Unique Self Recovery.
Welcome and deep honor to the co-founders … and there are many wonderful people actively engaged in the CIW. If you go to the Scholars page you will see more of them.
Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary thinker, philosopher, wisdom teacher, and provocateur. He is the initiating thought leader, together with Ken Wilber, of World Spirituality based on integral principles, and is the leading theorist and teacher of Unique Self Enlightenment. He is the author of ten books, including Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment, which was named #1 Spirituality in 2012 (USA Best Book Awards).
Gafni, known for his rare combination of brilliant mind and overflowing heart is articulating a new ‘dharma’ – a meta vision of meaning that is helping pave the way for the evolution of consciousness. He is the Co-Founder, together with Ken Wilber and the other Co-Founders in this portal of the Center for Integral Wisdom, an activist think tank dedicated to evolving and articulating a shared global framework of meaning and responsibility.
What’s the “bigger game” Marc is up to in the world?
Marc’s prayerful commitment is to participate in and help to catalyze the articulation of a shared global framework of meaning and responsibility–which is the urgent need and great planetary adventure of our time. Such a framework honors the singularity of every great wisdom tradition, even as it identifies the underlying depth structures and unique contributions of each. When taken together, these begin to articulate an authentic “users guide to the universe.†The Center for Integral Wisdom is the great renaissance project of our time, inviting outrageous love in response to outrageous pain, audaciously and lovingly demanding that each of us step up to being All In For All Life.
The Center for Integral Wisdom is engaged in a series of “source code evolving” landmark projects in the areas of Conscious Capitalism & Entrepreneurship, Unique Self, Eros, World Spirituality, Gender, Relationship, Medicine, Education and Psychology. We believe that these projects will help to unfold–for the first time in the post-modern era–a shared vision of meaning: an authentic world philosophy based on Integral Unique Self principles.
Our work in the world is focused in several areas: leading-edge scholarship, books & white papers, large scale virtual courses and public events, and other projects which are collectively re-shaping key pivoting points in consciousness and culture.
Marc’s favorite quote:
There is nothing more whole than a broken heart.
Marc’s favorite “little-known” book:
Ecclesiastes: Written by King Solomon chalk full of stunning advice on life, relationships and business.