Thought Leader Dialogue in 3 parts between Richard Barrett and Marc Gafni on Unique Self, Organizational Leadership, and the Destiny of Nations

Marc Gafni on Evolutionary Unique Self & the Unique Self Symphony (Part 30)

Continued from part 29.

An Invitation

Everywhere one looks there is outrageous pain. There is public pain and private pain. Seventeen million slaves exist in the world today—that’s more than there were at the height of the slave trade in the US two hundred years ago. Today 17,000 children die every day from starvation and twenty million children die of starvation every year. Billions of people are brutalized by loneliness and alienation.  The list of public outrageous pain goes on and on.

Then there is the private outrageous pain. This is the stuff from your personal life that hurts so badly. It may be something that was done to you or that you did. It might be the pain of betrayal, where you were either the betrayed or the betrayer. Or both. It might be the pain of a part of your life that is unlived or unloved. When you really face the pain, it is excruciating. So your turn your face away and get busy. We’re so frightened by outrageous pain that we’ve completely shut down. We close off our hearts because ordinary love cannot hold the pain.

The problem is, that we only have one heart. We cannot consistently shut down our heart and still remain openhearted. We think that we can selectively open our heart only to the channels of life whose programming appeals to us. That, however, is not the way the heart is designed. When you shut down you lose the signal and nothing comes. The result of repeatedly closing our hearts in face of the pain is loss of aliveness, depression, addiction and an unrelenting yearning for more.

The first step on the journey to awakening as an outrageous lover is to not hide from the pain. As a first step we need not to solve it, but turn our face towards it. Not all the time, but for only five minutes a day. The evolutionary mystics called this, “participating in the pain of love in exile.”

To carry out this practice, ordinary love is not strong enough to allow us to hold the pain. We need a larger love, wider and deeper love. That is outrageous love. But for now just locate outrageous love. Take a brief moment to think back on the largest love you have ever felt. Remember how in the embrace of that love there was room for everything? Now step into that love and double it. Triple it. Quadruple it. That is enough to locate the feeling tone of outrageous love. You can only respond to outrageous pain with outrageous love.

Now, from that place of outrageous love, think of a pain you are avoiding. Turn into the pain and stare directly at it for two or three minutes. Do not turn your thoughts away. Do not avert your gaze. Hold the outrageous pain in outrageous love.  That’s it. You have already done it. This is the first step to awakening that most people never take. Congratulations!

To be continued…

Taken from a first draft text from the forthcoming book The Path and Practice of Outrageous Love by Marc Gafni and Kristina Kincaid, this series elaborates on a critical advancement of the Unique Self Dharma that Dr. Marc has developed after Your Unique Self was published.

Marc Gafni on Evolutionary Unique Self & the Unique Self Symphony (Part 29)

Continued from part 28.

One of the laws of reality with which we began was, “we live in an intimate universe.” To be intimate meant to be both witnessed, recognized, seen and addressed. But it also meant mutuality. Both mutuality of action and mutuality of identity. Evolutionary intimacy is realized through the symphony of evolutionary Unique Selves each committing outrageous acts of love. In this, the human becomes God’s partner and a mutuality of partnerships is formed. Deeper still when the human being awakens as Evolutionary Unique Self realizing that he or she is an irreducibly unique expression of the love intelligence and love beauty of all that is – with unique outrageous acts of love to commit – the mutuality of identity between the human being and God is achieved. The human being becomes God’s verb.

You are an Outrageous Love Letter. The actual process of writing can help, but you are a LOVE Letter. Your life is a love letter. Your everyday actions are a love letter. Your energetic vibration in the world becomes a love letter.

In this vision personal love and intimacy and activism are seamlessly merged which is the critical need and invitation of our generation. The natures of the challenges that confront us are insoluble in the old top down model of government and the ruling elites. It is only a bottom up model of a self-organizing universe rooted in the Unique Self principle of Outrageous Love that shows us a profoundly hopeful path forward.

To be continued…

Taken from a first draft text from the forthcoming book The Path and Practice of Outrageous Love by Marc Gafni and Kristina Kincaid, this series elaborates on a critical advancement of the Unique Self Dharma that Dr. Marc has developed after Your Unique Self was published.