CIW Europe

We are the European division of Center for Integral Wisdom (CIW), founded by Dr. Marc Gafni and partners in 2011 in San Francisco. CIW understands that its role, broadly speaking, is that of a think tank committed to evolving the source code of human existence.

In the endeavor to build a Hub for Integral Wisdom and a World Spirituality based on Integral principles – honoring all of the great spiritual traditions plus the accomplishments of the modern and postmodern sciences – Europe has a very important role to play.

Leaders within CIW are coming together to create a focal point for activities in Europe. Like in America, the European focus is thought leadership, while simultaneously laying the foundation for future work in teaching/training and community-building. Our work is already begun with the collaboration between Center for Integral Wisdom and the European Divisions of the Center in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and other European countries..

People who want to be part of this movement in Europe can contact us directly and find their way in. Our intention is to create different national and regional groups as well as project-teams working on different subjects, and to coordinate all of this into one big symphony while balancing autonomy and communion of all the different “voices.”

One of our key projects that is already an outcome of this collaboration is the annual

Mystery School of Love in Holland

At the Center for Integral Wisdom, our mission is to evolve the source code of culture by evolving the memes and distinctions that are at its core based on “The Universe: A Love Story” principles. Together we articulate, evolve and deliver a new, Integral narrative or “Dharma” for living – which transforms each individual, culture and life itself – creating a world of Outrageous Love, through Outrageous Love.

While our goal is to penetrate both mainstream culture and the world of the academy through a set of books, courses, and media, the core process of evolving the source code happens most clearly in our Mystery Schools.

As our Academic Director Dr. Zachary Stein has stated so beautifully in a previous blog-post:

“Across the centuries, mystics have convened mystery schools on the edges of civilizations and worldviews. Intentionally small and remote, peopled with trusted initiates, these schools have been the storehouses of innovations in consciousness, sourced in ancient traditions, guided by a memory of the future. Off stage and out of sight, a few have always been preparing seeds for planting in the compost of the rapidly degenerating culture of the so-called civilized.”

Mystery School is where we come together as evolutionary mystics, the Wheel of the Dharma turns, new dharma is coming down, SHE dances, and we can literally feel the source code shift.

Intiated in 2012 by Chahat Corten together with Marc Gafni, she still holds it in her big heart and her Evolutionary Satsangs every morning of Mystery School. In 2017, Mystery School has taken its next step. Directed by Claire Molinard together with a team of holy and audacious rock stars, Mystery School has become independent of the place where it started. Dr. Marc Gafni is the main Teacher-in-Residence who opens the dharma gates every morning. He is joined by a group of international embodiment specialists who make sure that the dharma gets anchored in every cell of the body.

>>> Join Us Next Time <<<

The Team of CIW Europe

CIW Germany

Kerstin Zohar Tuschik

Kerstin Zohar Tuschik serves as Executive Director for CIW as well as Chair for CIW Europe within the Board. She is also an empowered Senior Teacher for Unique Self and offers coaching and teaching (mostly online) based on Integral Wisdom Distinctions. Her professional, academic, and experiential background ranges from professional stage dancing and its didactics, physics, human resources development, project management, coaching, and alternative education to personal and spiritual growth. She has been on a conscious spiritual path for more than 20 years always yearning for unity, love and consciousness, studying different practices and approaches with various teachers.

Integral Theory has helped her to connect the dots. Through her dedication to this field, she met Dr. Marc Gafni and connected deeply to his vision of a World Spirituality based on Integral Principles, his trans-lineage path dharma on Unique Self, Eros, and the New Enlightenment of Fullness, and his dharma transmission of Love and Eros. Studying with him and representing Center for Integral Wisdom in Germany and Europe while working with this international trans-lineage sangha is a deep pleasure and joy for her.

“How I relate to World Spirituality,” by Kerstin Zohar Tuschik

As a child I remember thinking how God could be so cruel to let billions of people grow up in religions in which they were doomed to eternally burn in hell as the Christian faith I grew up with was trying to make me believe. At Age 13, I wrote into my diary that I wanted to find the union of body, mind and soul which I felt was lost in the world I lived in. Age 14, trying to build my own integration of physics and spirituality, I told my friends: “God is Love. Love is Energy. And from this Energy in the Big Bang EVERYTHING came into being.” And I couldn’t quite understand why most of the adults I knew weren’t as concerned with questions like this as I was. So, I decided to never become as superficial as “them,” a vow that seems to have given me direction for most of my life.

Growing up in Germany, born in 1964, I grew up in an atmosphere of collective guilt for the abuse of power that had happened in my country that also triggered a personal shame for being one of “them”. I asked myself again and again how something like this could have happened. I saw separation all around me (between religions, nations, groups of people, human beings) and even within myself That separation seemed to be at the core of all the atrocities that had happened in Germany and that I still saw happening all over the world. It felt like an almost physical split tearing me and my heart apart. And so I began my search for unity, love, consciousness, healing, and integration.

Studying with different teachers for more than 20 years, learning various methods and tools of psychological and spiritual growth, healing many of my own wounds and supporting others healing theirs, I also became painfully aware of all the inconsistencies of the underlying myths and stories – be they religious, scientific, or so-called spiritual. Through Integral Theory, I was finally able connect the dots of all the partial truths. Yet, the Integral Movement seemed to get lost in analysis paralysis and political in-fighting all too often. Integral is a map, not a territory; a framework, not the content; and it is hard to create a movement around a shared map.

Meeting Dr. Marc Gafni in June 2011, I finally came home. His deep rootedness in Kabbalah with the profound teachings on Love and Eros combined with his wide knowledge of diverse spiritual traditions, modern science and post-modern philosophy form the basis of the dharma of this trans-lineage path of World Spirituality based on Integral Principles finally provided me with a path that has both depth and openness. It is deeply rooted in the traditions as well as integrating the best knowledge and wisdom of premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity while constantly evolving itself.

This is what I want to contribute to. This is the community and movement I feel deeply honored to be part of.

CIW France

Philippe Joannis

Philippe Joannis, President of CIW France, studied mathematics, computer science and business administration before earning a Master of science – from ENSIIE Paris – France). He then studied philosophy at University of Paris Sorbonne – while being a street magician and a bridge competition player. He finally joined Apple Inc and held various business positions before leading Apple Education in France. He became president of Micro Conseil International – an international sales and marketing company based in Paris working with more than 45 countries.

Philippe likes to play with perspectives and to create connections between people, ideas and worlds – magic, psychology, business, photography, music, rhetoric and marketing. He is committed to connect the French speaking community and the World Spirituality vision and to contribute to create a true global movement . Philippe lives near Paris with his wife Cécile and their five children.

Claire Molinard

Claire Molinard M.Sc, PCC, Vice-President of CIW France, is an Integral master Coach™ and the Co-Founder of Unique Self Coaching Collective. Along with Barbara Alexander, they have designed a Unique Self Coaching process that facilitates Unique Self emergence based on the Unique Self teachings and Integral theory. Initially trained as an Acupuncturist, with graduate Studies in Chinese Medicine, Philosophy and literature, Claire has lived and worked in various places of Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the US. Her spiritual journey spans from studying Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga in her early twenties to Ken Wilber’s philosophy and Integral Theory. As a Unique Self lineage holder, Claire is committed to coaching individuals and change agents to embody their Unique Self. As a long term Zen practitionner, Claire feels deeply sourced by both transmissions, and is most at home in the trans-lineage movement articulated by Ken Wilber and Marc Gafni at the Center for Integral Wisdom.

“How I relate to world spirituality” by Claire Molinard

I grew up with a sense of deep longing for merging with God in an agnostic family who did not meet my persistent enquiries about the source of all that is. So as a child, I made up my own ways of revering the Divine: I invented rituals and prayers, and often felt the Sacred Presence in Nature. In my early twenties, my quest for knowing God took me to study with various spiritual teachers. Over the years, I studied Aurobindo and the Mother’s Integral Yoga; took refuge in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition; received Jukai with a Zen Buddhist Roshi; was initiated to Reiki energy work while going deep into Taoist philosophy through studying and practicing traditional Chinese Medicine for many years.

The WCS vision deeply resonates with my sense of being a world citizen with a multiple Spiritual nationality in an evolutionary context. Its message confirms to me both my awareness that the future of Religion needs to be grounded in an Integral developmental framework as well as what I have always felt in my heart: that the Divine is not limited to one faith or one religion but instead, God has many faces.

CIW Netherlands

Chahat Corten

Chahat Corten (1955) is one of the founding members of Venwoude, an internationally acclaimed Dutch community and retreat center dedicated to heart-based living, personal growth and spirituality. From its beginnings in 1988, she stood with her late life partner Ted Wilson in holding together and developing this dynamic, experimental, on-the-edge organization.

Thoroughly cooked in the complexities of intentional communal living, Chahat blends penetrating wisdom in the realms of relating, intimacy and sacred sexuality with gentle compassion, holy laughter and ecstatic creativity.

In her wondrous life journey, she had the privilege to meet and study with numerous great spiritual teachers from all over the world. All these doorways into the miracle of our existence have shaped her unique realization of emptiness and fullness, wisdom and love, culminating in her deep, wide open heart.

Together with Marc Gafni, Chahat birthed in 2012 the Mystery School of Love, with its stunning Summer Festival of Love in Holland, an 8-day cutting edge event on Love, Eros, Intimacy and Sacred Sexuality (see www.thefestivaloflove.org).

In 2016, after dedicating 28 years of her life to Venwoude, giving it her all and drinking in all its great blessings, Chahat followed a calling to move on. She first spent a year abroad (in Bali and the USA) and now lives in Amsterdam,

Supporting and guiding people to live from the Radiant and Unique Self Quality that is each and every-ones True Essence is her deepest passion.

Chahat has been empowered as a World Spirituality teacher.

“How I relate to World Spirituality” by Chahat Corten

Being on a great adventure which is this life, it more and more becomes crystal clear to me that it can not be other than that human beings need to get together in the deepest sense we can possibly imagine. That is to say if we really want to create a world where there is loving space for all. This dazzling process of truly aligning Heart/Mind/Body according to the Intelligence that drives it, is of utter beauty and utter urgency.

On this long time journey of studying and practising with many beautiful teachers, and be committed as one of the founding members of and experimental, intentional community around themes on love, Eros, intimacy and sexuality for three decades, I found in the Center for Integral Wisdom an incredibly inspiring international platform. The combination of being on the one hand a think-tank which studies and updates the necessary conceptual frameworks and on the other hand being an initiating force for Practice Communities, Mystery Schools of Love as you might say in several places on the globe, I feel very challenged and honored to be giving my Unique Self Expression in the context of the Center for Integral Wisdom.