On A Return to Eros
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In this translineage conversation, Sianna Sherman, Sally Kempton, and Dr. Marc Gafni talk about how they each view Eros, Shakti, radical aliveness and how we can go about embodying this sense of allurement in our lives.
Sianna Sherman is an internationally celebrated yoga teacher, evocative storyteller, and passionate speaker at conferences and festivals throughout the world. She is the founder of Rasa Yoga, Mythic Yoga Flow®, and co-founder of Urban Priestess® – a platform that serves the empowerment of women. She was featured in Yoga Journal as one of the 21 top teachers shaping the future of yoga. Sianna has a unique ability to touch the human heart through story, transmission and devotional practice. As a globetrotting yogini, she leads high-vibration gatherings, teacher trainings, workshops, sacred site retreats and pilgrimages as an offering of Love. Sianna is an innovative, visionary spirit with a deep devotion to Soul Alchemy, and her teachings are a true convergence of science, mysticism, art and yoga. Her vision is to serve for the Benefit of All Beings & awaken magic into the world!
Sally Kempton teaches meditation as a process of inner exploration, in which we learn to integrate heart, mind and body in order to experience our natural state of wisdom and love. Sally also offers a wide variety of classes on yogic wisdom texts, as well as hands-on, contemplative practices for moving through psychological obstructions, understanding the intricacies of inner life, and how to apply spiritual principles to relationships, work, and life in our time. Students say that her classes create an atmosphere of support and joy that allows deep exploration. “Sally’s classes are deeply transformative,” a student says. “Her guidance is gentle and loving, yet challenging in all the right ways. She brings yogic teachings out of the books, and into real life in a way that makes it totally practical.” Though Sally offers many courses for beginning meditation students, she is also regarded as a ‘teacher’s teacher’, whose approach inspires long-time practitioners to free themselves from routine meditation practice, and move deeper.
Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist, passionate philosopher, and author of ten books, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment, the two-volume Radical Kabbalah, the recently-published Self in Integral Evolutionary Mysticism: Two Models and Why They Matter, and Tears: Reclaiming Ritual, Integral Religion, and Rosh Hashana. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University. He teaches on the cutting- edge of philosophy in the West, helping to evolve a new “dharma,” or meta-theory of Integral meaning that is helping to re-shape key pivoting points in consciousness and culture. Together with Dr. Kristina Kincaid he authored the recently published book A Return to Eros that is the topic of this dialogue.
Enjoy!
Transcript
Marc Gafni:
Oh, my God, welcome, it is so good to be here with you Sally, Sally Kempton and Sianna, Sianna Sherman. Two goddesses incarnate, and teachers and transmitters and what an absolute delight to be with you. We’re here to talk about Return to Eros, which is so critically crucial exciting, delighted, honored to be with you. Sally, I turn to you.
Sally Kempton:
Okay, so the first thing I think we need to establish is exactly what is Eros? Maybe Marc you could give us any definition of Eros that really goes to the heart of it, just so everyone will be on the same page in this conversation.
Marc Gafni:
Fantastic. Thank you, Sally. When we speak of Eros, we’re talking about something which is core to reality. Eros existed for at least 12 billion years before there was sexuality. We know that. Eros is the experience of radical aliveness, moving towards ever greater contact, and ever larger wholes. That sentence, which is birthed over 20 years is the nature of reality, the experience of radical aliveness, moving towards ever greater contact and ever larger wholes. That basic movement is the nature of reality itself. One could actually say, since God is reality and reality is God, God is Eros. Reality is Eros. God’s not only Eros, God’s Eros, right? That actually shifts everything.[Read more…]
AN EXPERIENTIAL WORKSHOP ON SHARING AND EXPLORING YOUR SEXUALITY
When we experience ourselves as sexual beings, open to our full flow, with energy pulsing through our bodies, we become more creative and feel more deeply connected to ourselves and to others. In this dynamic, interactive evening combining individual work with group process, you will learn techniques to liberate this energy and access more pleasure in your life. These techniques will be demonstrated through individual body readings with select participants who choose to take the risk of revealing a sexual issue and are willing to work through it in a supportive environment with expert guidance.
Dr. Kincaid uses the teachings of Dr. Marc Gafni, Integral Evolutionary Tantra, and the principles of Core Energetics to open up physical blocks and places where life energy doesn’t move. In Core Energetics — a powerful body-based process — sexual energy and life force energy are one and the same. Join us with Core Energetics techniques, body readings, deep truth, wild goodness, radical personal transformation and, if you dare, the evolution of your own personal enlightenment.
Dr. Kincaid is the Director of The Institute of Integral Evolutionary Tantra, New York City. Kristina is on faculty at The Institute of Core Energetics and holds an M.A. in Energy Medicine and a Doctorate in Theology from Holos University. A graduate of the Institute of Core Energetics and the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, she also holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin.
SPACE IS LIMITED. REGISTER NOW! TEL 917-734-2197
REGISTRATION FEE: $20.00
SATURDAY JULY 11TH 2015
7:00-9:00 PM
150 WEST 28TH STREET SUITE 1803
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10001
IN CONJUNCTION WITH DR. GAFNI & THE INSTITUTE OF INTEGRAL EVOLUTIONARY TANTRA
Click to Flyer Enlarge
Please join Sally Kempton and Marc Gafni at Esalen October 18-20 for an astonishing weekend experience of Evolutionary Love Practice.
There are two practical inquiries that will sit at the core of all of our sacred play:
What does it take to live your life in love?
What does it mean to be lived as love?
The 4th Annual World Spirituality Retreat
“Falling in Love with the Divine: Devotion and Tantra of the Heart”
October 18-20
During this weekend, we (Sally Kempton and Marc Gafni) promise to help you discover some real answers to these questions, which are rich with potential to transform the rest of your life.
Back in the 70s, a little book called The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment swept the spiritual world. Its message was simple: Enlightenment does not require heavy effort and asceticism. It only requires that you choose love in all circumstances. Making this simple insight alive and real in your life is the change that changes everything.
We each individually realized this insight during times when we were searching for light in the complexity of our own lives, and something deep within us recognized that choosing love in all circumstances is the secret. We also both knew that just deciding to love in all circumstances is not enough.
You can’t just decide to love. You need to find out how to kindle love in yourself. You need to practice love. You need to understand the different forms and levels of love. And you need a way to keep kindling your love-core ”” through meditation, through chant, through contemplation, and through “outrageous acts of love” that change not only your relationships, but you yourself.
That’s what this weekend retreat – “Falling in Love with the Divine“ – is about: Loving Your Way to Enlightenment.
Click on Flyer to see an enlarged version!
We are excited to announce a programming change to start off the weekend workshop, “The Radical Path of the Outrageous Lover.”
On Friday, October 4th, from 7:00-9:00 pm, Stuart Black replaces Warren Moe in the evening dialogue with Dr. Marc Gafni, entitled, “The Future of Love, Sex, and Eros!”
Stuart Black was the Director of the Core Energetics Institute for over two decades and is currently serving as President. He was also the creator of many classic Core Energetics events such as Take A Risk and the Core Spiritual Service.
Mr. Black and Dr. Gafni will spark a spirited and entertaining dialogue on The Future of Love, Sex and Eros!
At this key time in history we are called to evolve and embody Love, Sex and Eros! The sexual is the ultimate spiritual master. Deep understanding of the sexual is the ultimate guide to accessing the spirit in every dimension of our reality. To be a great Lover ”” an Outrageous Lover in all facets of your being ”” you must listen deeply to the simple yet elegant spirit whisperings of the sexual.
This event is a co-production with our Teaching Center Institute of INTEGRAL EVOLUTIONARY TANTRA in New York City.
Workshop: Oct 4 – 6, 2013
Fri 7–9 (free evening session)
Sat + Sun 10–5:30
Free Dialogue Evening! LOVE, SEX & EROS
Friday, Oct. 4 from 7-9 pm between Dr. MARC GAFNI
and WARREN MOE, Director, Inst. of Core Energetics
“Evolutionary Intimacy and the New Enlightenment”: (more information below)
“Falling in Love with the Divine – Devotion and Tantra of the Heart”: (more information below)
Venwoude Summer Festival of Love 2013 © Chahat Corten
The Center for Integral World Spirituality is a vibrant community of Virtual Presence and Evolutionary Love Gatherings. We share tremendous Holy Purpose in bringing Unique Self teachings into the world. The Eros that unites us is grounded in simple truths of Unique Self teachings with which we all deeply resonate.[Read more…]
“Falling in Love with the Divine: Devotion and Tantra of the Heart”
Photo by CIW Board of Trustees member and Managing Director Steve Raymond
Prepare to transform your relationship to the divine!
Two of our beloved and transformational World Spirituality heart and wisdom masters and teachers will merge their gifts to help you unfold your own secret heart-tantra. Awakened Heart meditation teacher and author Sally Kempton joins Dr. Marc Gafni, Unique Self author and Kabbalistic lineage holder, for this ecstatic and unique offering at Esalen. Last year, we were joined by many outrageous lovers, some seeking expression for the divine through their primary love partnerships and some seeking to deepen their own heart mysteries for themselves. Esalen is situated on the breathtaking Pacific Coast, and the organic, healthy offerings there will rejuvenate your body, heart, spirit, and soul as you fall in love with the Divine and awaken to your soul’s destiny. Register soon for this wonderful retreat/workshop before it fills up![Read more…]
©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. 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 “problem of evil” in the world, also referred to as a “theodicy.” In the course of the call, he explained that the level-three response to enormous suffering in the world is to cry out “Why?” in pain, to feel the pain, and to question the injustice behind it, which is part of the tikkun, or fixing, of the injustice. 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. An excerpt of that discussion is reprinted below from the chapter entitled “The Path of Wrestling”:
This content is restricted to site members, you need a FREE membership to view the full content.
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New users may register below Click here.By Dr. Marc Gafni from Your Unique Self.
(c) 2012 Courtesy of Stuart Miles
When the ego’s heart breaks, then the heart closes and contracts. When the Unique Self’s heart breaks, the heart opens through the pain into greater love. For your ego, the interior face of the kosmos is at best a concept. For Unique Self, the interior face of the kosmos is the infinity of intimacy.
Further Discussion:
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Marc Gafni and Sally Kempton workshop at Pacific Coast Church
Everyone of us wants to be a lover. We want to love the people in our lives. We want to love ourselves. And we want to love the world. But, what does it really mean to live as a lover? And is love something we can practice?
In this workshop, we’ll explore three powerful and necessary skills that let us receive and give love–in any and all circumstances. Powered by Marc’s revolutionary insights and concept-busting humor, Sally’s gift for bringing meditation alive, and Marc and Sally’s shared capacity for heart-to-heart transmission, this workshop will be illuminating, heart-softening, dynamic and fun.
Where: Pacific Coast Church, Pacific Grove, CA
When: Sunday, April 14, 2013 1:00PM to 4:00PM
Cost: $50.00 at the door
We have two exciting teachings on the Peninsula coming up on March 17 and April 5.
Marc and Sally are now in the third class in their series of nine monthly classes at Pacific Coast Church, “Loving Your Way to Enlightenment: Living the Way of the Lover.” Last month, Sally shared her wonderful wisdom on Hindu feminine deities based upon her newest book, Awakening Shakti, and led us in a deeply warm contemplation and communication with our Inner Beloved.
On this Sunday, March 17, Marc will be returning from teaching at the Wisdom School of Shalom Mountain, and leading us along the “The Path of Outrageous Love.” Deep
thanks to Dr. Bill Little and the staff and members of Pacific Coast Church. (click flyer to enlarge)
We are delighted that Marc has been invited to share an evening hosted by The Pilgrim’s Way Bookstore on Friday, April 5th, 7;00pm, with the talk held across the street at the Carmel Art Foundation, on Dolores between 5th and 6th. The title of the evening talk is “The Seven Levels of Pleasure in Unique Self-Realization.” Life is meant to be pleasurable, and we will explore Pleasure as Spiritual Practice. Marc’s recent book, Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment, won the 2012 USA Best Book Award in the General Spiritual category.
How do you live a life of spiritual awakening as well as outer abundance, inner freedom as well as deep intimacy? How do you serve the world selfessly, yet passionately celebrate your life?
A new book, Awakening Shakti: The Transformative Power of the Goddess of Yoga, provides a much needed and immensely valuable perspective.
The sages of Tantra have known for centuries that when you follow the path of Shakti””the sacred feminine principle personified by the goddesses of yoga”” these gifts can manifest spontaneously. Yet most of us, women as well as men, have yet to experience the full potential of our inner feminine energies.
When you know these powers for what they are, they heighten your capacity to open spiritually, love more deeply and fearlessly, create with greater mastery, and move through the world with skill and delight. In Awakening Shakti, you will learn how to recognize and invite:
- Kali, bringer of strength, fierce love, and untamed freedom
- Lakshmi, who confers prosperity and beauty
- Saraswati, for clarity of communication and intuition
- Radha, who carries the divine energy of spiritual longing
- Bhuvaneshvari, who creates the space for sacred transformation
- Parvati, to awaken creativity and the capacity to love
With a wealth of meditations, visualizations, mantras, teachings, and beautifully told stories, Awakening Shakti provides a practical guide for activating the currents of the divine feminine in every aspect of your life.[Read more…]
When you invoke the goddess, she begins to reveal herself as a subtle Presence in and around you. You sense her in the breath, and she gives you the subtlety to sense the flow of energy in your body. Maybe she lends power to your meditation, or deepens the love in your heart, or manifests as a graceful push to unexpected success in your endeavors. The more you tune yourself to the Goddess, the more you feel her presence empowering your life. The goddess, Shakti, is power itself, the very force that gives life. But, its important always to tune yourself to her liberating face. When there is something important and difficult that needs doing, ask yourself if it is in service of your highest evolution. Ask yourself if it will increase the store of love in you and in the world. Clarify your motivation. Then, ask for help from the Shakti. Ask that her blessing flow through your actions, and enlist even your mistakes to the service of love and healing.
Daily Wisdom from Sally Kempton’s Awakened Heart:
In this wild new year, I’ve been finding that asking the right question is even more useful than making a resolution. Here’s one I’m working with: ‘What do I really want?’ I notice that when I ask the question deeply, moment to moment, the answers are often surprising. What your personal, historical self wants is often different than what your impersonal self–the soul–wants. What your heart wants is often different than what you think you should want. So, asking this question at deeper and deeper levels can help you recognize the pull of the soul’s longings, while also honoring the wants of the personality-self. As you keep asking the question, and bringing to consciousness the different layers of longing inside you, they begin to integrate.
See more updates from Sally on Facebook.
From Sally Kempton’s Awakened Heart:
Someone asked me to write something about appropriate effort–effort that doesn’t involve struggle. Here are a few thoughts, and I’d love to hear what others have to say.
Appropriate effort starts with clarity of intention. The intention will create directionality to what you do. Once you’ve made the intention, notice the objections and doubts that come up, and ask yourself, “Can I let them go?”
Notice the resistance. Notice the stress. Notice the expectations, hopes, fears. Keep asking, “Can I let this go?”
Ask for help from the invisible world. Learn to sense the slight shift in the field when your request is received.
Then do what you have to do, with full presence. Presence is the secret. When you’re making effort with full presence, your effort has a feeling of inevitability and power.
For me, the secret of acting with appropriate effort is to ask myself, “If this were the last act of my life, how would I want to do it?” That question always brings me into full presence, without fear for the outcome. It lets me bring my whole self into what I’m doing–and savor the process.
From Sally Kempton’s “What is Love?”:
Individual Love
All of us, throughout our lives, constantly do what I did project onto other people and things the feelings of love that actually come from within. “It was the music,” we say. “It was Ned (or Sarah, or Jeannie). It was the surf! It was my teacher’s presence!” Yet the yogic view is that all of our experiences of human love are actually glimpses of the Great Love. (“God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,” Rumi wrote. “It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open.”) It is only when love gets filtered through the prism of the human psyche that it begins to look specific and limited. It becomes veiled by our thoughts and feelings, and we start to think that love comes and goes, that we can feel it only for certain people, or that there’s not enough love to go around. We can’t help doing this.
Our senses, mind, and ego, hardwired to give us the experience of separateness and distinction, set us up to think that love is outside us, that some people and places and things are lovable and others are not, and furthermore that love has different flavors: mother love, romantic love, love of movies, love of nature, compassionate love, sexual love, love of the cozy feeling of being under the covers at the end of a long day.
November 9-11, 2012
Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA
Falling in Love with the Divine: Devotion and Tantra of the Heart
Weekend Workshop with Marc Gafni and Sally KemptonThis is a weekend of heart-awakening practice–powerful teachings and methods for opening up your hidden capacity for relationship to the Beloved–both within yourself, in the people in your life, and in the world.
It’s been said that the path of love is the easiest of all paths to enlightenment. Relational spiritual practice–devotion–has been part of every spiritual tradition. There are skills to be learned if we want to walk the path of love, and we need to know how to apply them not only in ecstatic moments or times of intimate connection, but also in the moments when love seems far away and difficult to access.
Through talks, meditation, chanting, partner practice and contemplation, we’ll unfold a series of practical steps to an awakened love practice.
Click here to register.By Dr. Marc Gafni
Summary: The four faces of eros, described by Marc Gafni in this excerpt from Mystery of Love (2003), are 1.) being on the inside, 2.) fullness of presence, 3.) desire, and 4.) interconnectivity of being. As Marc describes, with its mystical role in these four expressions, the face itself is the truest reflection of the erotic. In the flow of eros, we access the experience of being on the inside of God’s face, which Marc explores here through the Temple mystery of the sexually entwined cherubs atop the Ark who are positioned face to face; the Hebrew word “panim,” which means “inside, face, and before;” and the erotic experience of having a true face-to-face conversation. This significant passage from Mystery of Love invites you to embody the erotic””which is modeled but not exhausted by the sexual””more deeply in your own life.
Eros has many expressions. Each expression is hinted at in the temple mysteries. There are four faces of eros which, when taken together, form the essence of the Shechina experience. In this essay, we will explore the erotic understanding which forms the matrix of the secret of the cherubs and informs every arena of our existence. As we shall see, at the very heart of Hebrew tantra was a very precise and provocative understanding of the relationship between love, sex, and eros. This will open us up to a whole new understanding of our sexuality and will show us the way to erotically reweave the very fabric of our lives in more vivid patterns, sensual textures, and brilliant hues.
The First Face of Eros: On the Inside
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
The cherubs in the magical mystery of Temple myth were not stationary fixtures. No, these statues were expressive, emotive. They moved. When integrity and goodness ruled the land, the cherubs were face to face. In these times, the focal point of Shechina energy rested erotically, ecstatically, between the cherubs. When discord and evil held sway in the kingdom, the cherubs turned from each other, appearing back to back instead of face to face.1 Back to back, the world was amiss, alienated, ruptured. Face to face, the world was harmonized, hopeful, embraced. Thus, face to face in biblical myth2 is the most highly desirable state. It is the gem stone state of being, the jeweled summit of all creation. Face to face, to be fully explicit, is a state of eros.
Photo Credit: greekadman
By Sally Kempton
Practice can change your relationship to emotions, so that instead of being swamped by certain feeling states, you can hold them, contain them, see into their essence, and ultimately, use emotions in the service of your liberation.
Many years ago, I walked into the kitchen of my guru's ashram, and found him shouting at the cooks. Force- waves of anger were bouncing around the room, almost visible to the naked eye. Then, in mid sentence, he turned, saw us standing there, and smiled. The energy in his eyes went soft. ”˜How did you like the show?” he asked. Then, chuckling, he slapped the head cook playfully on the back, and walked away. The cooks giggled, and went back to work, galvanized by the energy he had injected into the afternoon.
That moment changed my understanding about emotions. The clarity and fluidity with which he had shifted from intense anger to good humor was only part of it. More interesting, I felt, was the fact that he had been using anger as a teaching tool. Was he really angry? I don't know. All I know is that he seemed able to ride the wave of his anger with perfect easiness, and let it pass without a trace.
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By Sally Kempton
Cross-posted from Patheos.com.
Meditation makes you more self-aware. That's one of its biggest gifts, even though we don't always like what we see. When meditation is really working, it has a way of showing you unknown parts of yourself””pockets of your psyche that are beautiful and sublime, but also parts of yourself that are not so tasty. In fact, there will be periods when your life seems to bristle with situations that seem designed to reveal your most embarrassing reactive patterns and unskillful ways of coping. And I'm not even talking about big crises, just about the normal irritations of life.
Maybe you get the flu, or your back goes out, and you realize how cranky you feel when you're physically uncomfortable. Maybe you notice the impatience in your voice when you talk to your teenager. Or, as happens regularly to a friend of mine, the moment of truth can come from a co-worker asking you pointedly if you would be acting so prickly if you'd meditated today.
The gift of meditation in these situations is that you have resources that can let you shift out of these patterns””sometimes right away.
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