
Evolutionary Church
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Unique Self in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice
The Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, Vol. 6, No. 1, devoted an entire issue to Unique Self in 2011. You may purchase the full Unique Self issue at MetaIntegral. Here is an excerpt for you to download: The Evolutionary Emergent of Unique Self By Marc Gafni The best single … Learn more...

Unique Self & Spirituality
Unique Self is the lodestone of a new generation of enlightenment teaching capable of synthesizing key insights of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern wisdom. Seen by leading voices as a Next Chapter in Integral Spirituality, it helps to change the source code of human existence. Video … Learn more...

Unique Self & Creativity
After the egoic self-contraction is dissolved, after I discover the One Self, and after I identify my own Unique Self expression, how do I create with originality? Creativity is the conscious emergence of novelty out of the Ground of Being. Unique Self acts creatively as it evolves. Q … Learn more...

Unique Self & Shadow
The call to integrate the shadow is a hallmark of contemporary psychology and schools of personal growth. And yet puzzles remain which are uniquely reachable through an approach which includes Unique Shadow, the unlived story. Unique Shadow is the supreme gateway to Unique Self. Q & … Learn more...

Unique Self & Politics
Beyond the old style zero-sum politics and moving past win/win bi-partisan politics, there is a new approach to government that is truly transpartisan. Unique Self is an essential technology for developing a new integral political wisdom capable of solving the world's problems. Q & … Learn more...

Unique Self & Psychology
The alleviation of personal suffering requires for greatest efficacy a therapy that works at the level of identity. What is the purpose of my life? How can I realize the values and direction that are uniquely my own? Unique Self is emerging as a revolutionary new technology for … Learn more...

Marc Gafni on Evolutionary Unique Self & the Unique Self Symphony (Part 31)
Continued from part 30. The next step is to wake up. Wake up to your true nature as an irreducibly unique expression of outrageous love. Who are you? You are an outrageous lover. What does an outrageous lover do? An outrageous lover commits outrageous acts of love. Which outrageous acts of love does an outrageous […]

SELF IN INTEGRAL EVOLUTIONARY MYSTICISM: Two Models and Why They Matter (Marc Gafni)
Marc Gafni’s new book SELF IN INTEGRAL EVOLUTIONARY MYSTICISM has been published: Two major works have been written within the framework of Integral Wisdom about the nature of Self and God. While they share important features, namely the evolutionary context of the conversation and a vision of Self beyond Ego, their interior visions of the […]

Unique Self, Unique We & Relationships
Relationship is a gift which is the highest obligation of essence. The Unique Self encounter is the practice of holding a piece of another person's story and receiving a piece of your story from them. Seen in this way, Unique Self fundamentally re-visions all types of relationships. Q … Learn more...

Unique Self & Sexuality
In this overview of the seven levels of sexing, we invite you to examine the deeper and most profound forms of human sexuality. At the highest level, Unique Self sexing rejoices in the uniqueness of the sexual partner not as a separate self but as a unique expression of essence. Q & … Learn more...

Unique Self & Parenting
How can a child grow into the Light of her or his Unique Self without parents who live the truth of their own stories? Family is part of our Unique Obligation in the world. Parenting from a Unique Self matrix challenges some traditional ideas about the roles of parents and children. Q … Learn more...

Unique Self & Education
Students of all ages are consumed by the burning question, "Who am I?" Conventional teaching methods are not well suited to address this existential concern. Unique Self is a non-dogmatic, humanistic, values-based tool with the potential to shape education for generations to come. Q & … Learn more...

Unique Self & Business
A new Unique Self conversation is emerging among thought leaders in conscious capitalism. We are now witnessing the emergence of a new appreciation of the role of business in liberating human beings out of suffering into their essence both as individuals and visionary organizations. Q … Learn more...
Evolutionary Church with Barbara Marx Hubbard & Marc Gafni
Participate in Evolutionary Church Every Saturday 9-10 am PT Online!
Listen to our latest recordings here:
Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up Series with Lisa Engles & Marc Gafni
This weekly series of dharma video clips inquires deeply into the reality of the Self, the nature of Love, and the Eros of Evolution. Enjoy the Series!
This is a playlist. You can skip a video by clicking the little arrow on the video:
Featured Dialogue
Ken Wilber & Marc Gafni: Unique Self as Evolutionary Emergent
In this exciting set of dialogues between the Center for Integral Wisdom’s two co-founders, Ken Wilber and Marc Gafni, on the evolutionary emergent of Unique Self, like in Marc’s book, Your Unique Self, Marc and Ken ground Unique Self theory within the larger context of Integral Meta Theory.
Unique Self Videos
Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up Series with Lisa Engles & Marc Gafni
This weekly series of dharma video clips inquires deeply into the reality of the Self, the nature of Love, and the Eros of Evolution. Enjoy the Series!
This is a playlist. You can skip a video by clicking the little arrow on the video:
Marc Gafni on Unique Self – Part 1. Core Teaching of Unique Self
Let’s talk about the core teaching of Unique Self. Unique Self is the understanding that you are at the level of essence – not merely at the level of social, psychological, and cultural conditioning – you are ultimately unique, you are an infinitely unique expression of All-That-Is, an expression that never was, is, or will be ever again. That uniqueness of essence is your Unique Self.
13.7 billion years of evolution conspired in an infinite number of configurations to yield the precision, the gorgeousness, the grandeur of your Unique Self. And Unique Self lives at every level. Check your biology: the unique cellular signature. Take a picture of your immune system. You think that you’re standing next to someone and think that you’re only different in your exterior, but actually your immune system and entire biological signature is a wild ecstatic expression of uniqueness. Uniqueness lives at the biological, uniqueness lives absolutely at the social, cultural, and psychological levels – how you relate to the world at large, what we call the world of form – but Unique Self is more than that: Unique Self is your unique expression of your essence, it’s your unique perspective of your enlightenment.
Marc Gafni on Unique Self – Part 2. Answering the call
What does it mean to answer the call?
To answer the call is to respond to the call that lives in you, as you, and through you, of your Unique Self. The unique individualized expression of essence that is you calls you, invites you to find your vocation—the claiming of your unique voice in the world. To find a voice that is yours, not imitative, you have to inhabit your Unique Perspective.
Your Unique Perspective is your particularized way of looking at the world, the angle at which you look at reality that opens a space of insight open only to you alone. There are shared spaces of insight; we can all look at the same book or bush, but ultimately we are all looking at it from a different angle. We have a common language. Your perspective is inescapable; it is the prism through which you experience reality.
What emerges from your Unique Self / Unique Perspective is a set of pleasures, unique skills that you have in the world, unique proclivities, capacities, all of which come together to reveal Your Unique Gift. It is available to the world through no one else but you. To know that you have a Unique Gift which is desperately needed by All That Is. No one else has the capacity to give that gift. This is a realization that changes everything.
Marc Gafni on Unique Self – Part 3. Reclaiming obligation at second tier consciousness
What does it mean to answer the call?
To answer the call is to live a values-driven life, a purpose-driven life. It’s to incarnate the values of your life in the unique and gorgeous way that you are able to, that only you are able to do. To do so is to fulfill your Unique Obligation.
When we hear the word “obligation” in our post-postmodern context, we cringe. It makes us contract. We feel like we spent so many years in therapy getting beyond the obligations that violated us. But actually the only genuine freedom is the freedom to fulfill your Unique Self. Anything else is a form of slavery.
To actually fulfill your Unique Self—which is to meet the unique obligation of your life—that’s what it means to be free.
There’s a five-fold doctrine of Unique Self obligation.
Imagine you’re shipwrecked with Mother Teresa alone on an island. Mother Teresa was a great woman, and she was tough, an inordinately difficult woman. She’s completely impossible. She drives you nuts. You know you’re not going to be rescued. It’s just you and her on this island for the rest of eternity.
She goes scuba diving and breaks both her arms, and she can’t eat. Do you or don’t you have an obligation to feed her? I’ve asked this question the world over and 99.9999% of the people say yes…even though if you let her die you will never be found out and it will not affect the world. Why?
- There’s a need.
- It’s a genuine need. It’s not frivolous.
- You have the capacity to address that need.
- You’ve identified the need.
- You’re the only person in the world who has the ability to both identify and fulfill it.
When these five obligations are met, you create obligation at a higher level of consciousness—what we sometimes call second-tier consciousness. When all these things are in play, you have fulfilled your Unique Self obligation and you are at ease. You have a right relationship to the world. You are fully inhabiting your story.
Imagine if you were able to live in the world with that experience…at every moment in your life. There’s a song you can sing, a way of being and becoming, that is yours alone. That profound realization, that awakening to your Unique Self, creates in every moment of every day a profound sense of obligation that enlivens you and transforms your life to one filled with a plentitude of meaning, sensual Eros, as you live a life of enlivened play in the world giving your Unique Gift.