The Difference Between Ordinary Love and Outrageous Love
Watch this awesome dialogue between Nijole Sparkis and Marc Gafni from her awesome interview series "Heal the Shadow in Your Relationships 2!" Read the beautiful introduction Nijole wrote in her email to the participants of this series announcing this interview:
Click here to learn more about this powerful interview series!
GET BLOWN OPEN to the irreducible unique expression of Love Intelligence awakening as YOU. The clarion call to Shadow integration is much more than just knowing that you have drives that are darker than you want on the front page of the New York Times, and being aware of it. Shadow integration is actually an expression of profound enlightened consciousness.
Beloved cutting edge wisdom teacher Dr. Marc Gafni says your Shadow is your unlived life. And when you don’t live part of your life, you lose a critical dimension of your own Life Force. When you lose your Life Force, your energy devolves, your whole system protests & says “Give me back my essence!” Live your story! Live the missing piece of your story. And when you don’t do it, your system acts out. It acts out with Shadow qualities - pettiness, anger, contraction, rage, jealousy, or promiscuity which violates your own interior values.
Dr. Marc shares with us:
- The huge distinction between Shadow and Shadow qualities
- How the Oneness of the Universe may be seamless, but not featureless
- A live case study of how to follow your Shadow back to the Light!
- The solution for women who attract abandoning or non-committal men
- The solution for men who attract non-receptive or angry women
- The difference between love, romance, and infatuation
- How to live from Outrageous Love rather than Ordinary Love
... and so much more!
You CAN re-connect with your True Self, be nurtured by your aliveness, and create LONG love lists!
Wishing you Blown-Open, Outrageous Love,
Nijole (Neola)
P.S. Some of what I LOVE about Dr. Marc Gafni: He has inspired many, comforted the afflicted, and afflicted the comfortable. He reflects back to people their most gorgeous selves, shares teachings of love, pricks egos, and calls others, by his very being, to truth and integrity. For some Marc is a teacher, for others a spiritual friend, for still others a spiritual artist, and for still others a revolutionary catalyst of social change and evolution. Marc Gafni’s teaching is filled with love of people, love of God, and love of all of creation. It is also scholarly, hip, serious, deep, funny, profound, sometimes startlingly original, and always invested with the intent to transmit not only insight but also, and especially, an open heart.
Enjoy the interview:
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Unique Self Essay by Julia Press, M.S.W.
Let me begin by telling you that until about a month ago, I had not known of Marc Gafni. My husband introduced me to Marc's Internet videos on Unique Self. With enthusiasm he told me that Marc was saying so many of the things I have been bringing forward to our gathering community. Upon watching the videos, the joy that burst forth from within me was beyond description. I immediately sent away for YOUR UNIQUE SELF and RADICAL KABBALAH, Books 1 and 2. I feasted on these sacred writings on each of the following three weekends. Page after page, Marc was describing the very experiences and understandings that have unfolded over the years of my own being's evolution and in my work midwifing souls on the path of consciousness. I felt I had known Marc for years. For me, there is the added nectar of Marc's saturation with Kabbalah which has been and is in great part my own portal and path into the deep mystical realms of understanding and living life.
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©Victor Habbick, www.freedigitalphotos.net
“Any part of your story that you do not live,
lives in darkness”¦
part of your story is in shadow.
To come home you must recover and
embrace the memory of your fullest self.
Until the story of your life is lived
you will go on yearning for it.”
Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self
It is so exciting to be on this journey together with all of you, our readers and participants in courses and retreats, my wonderful colleagues and friends, and my beloved teacher and friend Dr. Marc Gafni, who has invited me to team up with him in this sacred endeavor of writing this series of articles, which will ultimately become a book, as well as in this holy adventure of Integral Wisdom, World Spirituality, and Unique Self.
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©2010 Salvatore Vuono
In the final installment of this three-part essay below, which is excerpted from the long version of Soul Prints, Dr. Marc Gafni writes that we can transform and raise our passion and artistic creativity. We transform them into a powerful drive for the sensual and the holy, realizing that, in a redeemed world, they are one and the same. As long as our spirituality remains vapid and empty, we indeed need to repress the more primal, creative passion, lest it overwhelm us. Primal passion unrealized is soul print destiny unrealized.
From Part I: "Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo created. And yet, creativity is still viewed as suspect by much of the religious community. Art per se and artists to be sure are suspected of being amoral at best and, more probably, immoral. Acting, painting, sculpture, song are held in both high esteem and moral disdain. Why? The answer, which we have already introduced in our earlier discussion, emerges from an understanding of the deep linguistic and conceptual relationship between the biblical myth terms Yetzer and Yetzirah. Yetzirah means creativity; Yetzer is best translated as primal instincts, including but not limited to libido (Freud), the drive for power (Adler, Nietzsche), and the need for meaning (Frankel). In the Hebrew language, which is the ultimate source of all biblical myth thought, Yetzer and Yetzirah are the same word, linked etymologically and conceptually. The point: I cannot create without connecting deeply to my most primal instincts."
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©2013 photo courtesy of satit_srihin
In this three-part essay, excerpted from the long version of Soul Prints, Dr. Marc Gafni writes that we can transform and raise our passion and artistic creativity into a powerful drive for the sensual and the holy, realizing that, in a redeemed world, they are one and the same. As long as our spirituality remains vapid and empty, we indeed need to repress the more primal, creative passion, lest it overwhelm us. Primal passion unrealized is soul print destiny unrealized.
From Part I: "Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo created. And yet, creativity is still viewed as suspect by much of the religious community. Art per se and artists to be sure are suspected of being amoral at best and, more probably, immoral. Acting, painting, sculpture, song are held in both high esteem and moral disdain. Why? The answer, which we have already introduced in our earlier discussion, emerges from an understanding of the deep linguistic and conceptual relationship between the biblical myth terms Yetzer and Yetzirah. Yetzirah means creativity; Yetzer is best translated as primal instincts, including but not limited to libido (Freud), the drive for power (Adler, Nietzsche), and the need for meaning (Frankel). In the Hebrew language, which is the ultimate source of all biblical myth thought, Yetzer and Yetzirah are the same word, linked etymologically and conceptually. The point: I cannot create without connecting deeply to my most primal instincts."
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From Your Unique Self by Dr. Marc Gafni.
©2013 photo courtesy of Sira Anamwong
The isolated ego is the root cause of murder, war, and virtually all human suffering. The ego feels its own fragility, its limits, and its ultimate powerlessness. As a result, the ego grasps for ways to assert power and experience aliveness. This causes the acting out of all forms of shadow. When you deconstruct your mistaken identity with the separate-self ego, and instead identify with your distinct path in the seamless quilt of the Uni-verse, the fear dissipates and the love returns. When the contraction of ego uncoils, your Unique Self experiences all of the good—personal love, responsibility, compassion, ethical action, activism, and all the rest—that you previously thought was accessible only through your assertion of a separate self.
The choice between personal love and immersion in True Self is a false choice. There is no contradiction between them whatsoever: The West—motivated by love and the desire to end suffering—affirmed the separate self because it thought this was the only way a person could gain the goods of the encounter, namely personal love, responsibility, contact, intimacy, accountability, compassion, and care. This was a mistake; all of those goods may be realized through the encounter between two Unique Selves who are not separate from each other, but consciously part of the same seamless coat of the Uni-verse. Personal love does not require two separate selves.
Further Discussion:
Here is an excerpt from Dr. Marc Gafni’s writing on the relationship between personal or relative love and absolute love. As he says above in this distinction, “The choice between personal love and immersion in True Self is a false choice.” Elaborating on this further, Dr. Marc says:
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©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”:
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©2012 Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles
Your ego is always contracting and saying, “No.” Even when your ego says, “Yes,” it is only because it is afraid to say, “No.” Your Unique Self is always expanding and saying, “Yes.” Even when you say, “No,” it is only to make room for a more authentic “Yes.”
Further Discussion:
The following is excerpted directly from Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment (pp. 357-59), Chapter 25, “Say Yes”:
In Hebrew the word “yes”””kein””means “integrity.” Yes is the ultimate affirmation of our integrity. The question of your existence is whether you can say Yes to the unique destiny and adventure that is your life. That is self-love! From the place of ego you remain perpetually unsatisfied. Located in Unique Self, everything fills you.
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by Dr. Marc Gafni from Your Unique Self
When you are in ego, people feel smaller when you walk into the room. They feel invisible before you. The result is that they feel depleted and in danger. When you are in your Unique Self, people feel bigger when you walk into the room. They feel seen by you. They feel your desire to love and give to them.
Further discussion:
Don't we all recognize that? Somebody walks into a room, and we immediately feel smaller? And in somebody else's company we feel great, empowered, seen, and loved?
But why is this so? Aren't those feelings of smallness and our dependency on other people's acknowledgement related to our own bad self-esteem, as much of the New Age popular psychology makes us believe?
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In this last video of our seven-part dialogue series, our two authors (Your Unique Self and Conscious Capitalism) discuss the issue of shadow – both in the context of our personal life as well as in the context of business. In our modern world the narrative of business seems to have become the shadow story, while its heroic part of creating value for humanity and the world has become hidden.
Additionally, Dr. Marc Gafni brings the Unique Shadow into the discussion that can be easily recognized as the personal core-issue in each and every one of us that hints to and – when looked at – leads us back to our unlived Unique Self.
John Mackey is Chairman and CEO of Whole Foods Market, as well as the Co-Chair of the Center for World Spirituality Board of Trustees.
Don't miss this or any other video of this series on our website or the Whole Foods Blog.
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by Dr. Marc Gafni from Your Unique Self
The ego betrays. The Unique Self is loyal. When you are in your ego, and things go bad, you are willing—in your fear—to betray virtually anyone. Your ego is easily identifiable by the shallowness of its integrity. If you live in Unique Self and things go bad, you find your way, through thick or thin, to a deeper center of spirit.
Further discussion:
Betrayal: Isn’t this something from the soap operas on TV, but not something that we would ever do to another person? Can’t we all just relax and say: look at how advanced I am in living my Unique Self?
On the other hand: Haven’t we all had experiences where we felt betrayed? How do we react when we feel betrayed?
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In the sixth video of the seven-part dialogue series, Marc Gafni (author of Your Unique Self) and John Mackey (co-author with Raj Sisodia of Conscious Capitalism) define and discuss jealousy, malice, resentment, and envy in the framework of business, Unique Self, and Conscious Capitalism. In this discussion, they reach the conclusion that every negative emotion has its own hidden virtue and that there's no negative emotion without a higher form. Join them as they unfold this understanding while pointing to the way that envy can be made conscious, can be understood with compassion, and can be transmuted into a higher form. As Marc says in the dialogue, when we are living from Unique Self, envy falls away and entrepreneurial creativity blossoms. Don't miss this or any of their other discussions from this series, which are available on our website and at the Whole Foods blog.
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©2012 "Worried Young Woman On Bed" Courtesy of David Castillo Dominici
In your ego, you cling to every petty detail of your story. You never let go of any of your wounds. Your mantra is “I hurt, therefore I am.” Therefore, your ego can never wholeheartedly forgive. If it does, the ego's forgiveness is a tactic, not a sacrament. Your Unique Self forgives freely without giving up your own truth.
From the evolutionary context of your Unique Self, you realize that you have a Unique Gift to give to All-That-Is. You are animated, driven, and drawn by that larger vision and obligation. This allows you to place your wounds in a larger perspective. Your Unique Self is not a victim. It is an audacious player in the Great Story of the evolution of consciousness. This larger perspective allows you to begin to let go of the story of your wounds. As it is replaced by the greater story of your Unique Self, delight and obligation begin to emerge.
From the place of your Unique Self, you are able to intuitively balance your outrage at injustice with an intuition about when to give up being right and move on. Because you are able to give up being right without giving up your core identity, it becomes infinitely easier to forgive.
Further Discussion:
As Dr. Marc reminds us, life is what we do with our hurt, which means that we can choose to be victims or we can choose to be players in the evolutionary context. In Your Unique Self, Marc writes, “Hurt is not an objective reality that gives you license for cruelty under the cover of ”˜I was hurt.' Hurt is a state, and it is interpreted through your stage or level of consciousness. As you evolve, your relationship to your wounds naturally shifts. More than any other single barometer, what you do with your hurt reveals to you and others your genuine level of consciousness. When you feel hurt, the masks of piety and the guises of liberation from ego are stripped away, and your naked heart is revealed to yourself and those with eyes to see” (426).
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Your ego is a slave that wants to be free. Freedom is the quality that we call autonomy. Your ego, however, understands and experiences freedom/autonomy as freedom from external influence. Only then does ego feel free to do what it wants. Unique Self is free. Unique Self understands and experiences freedom as the freedom to live your Uniqueness and give your deepest gifts in the world.
When you feel yourself demanding your egoic freedom, stop for a moment and feel into it. Do not cover over the emptiness that lies at the root of your desire for freedom and autonomy. Feel into the emptiness. Feel into the hole.
For example: Perhaps you are in a relationship that you want to leave. You are chafing to get out of the relationship. But as you contemplate this, stay in the discomfort that you can palpably feel””which lies at the root of this desire. For now, do not give the feeling words. Instead feel the quality of the vacuity and emptiness that arouses the desire.
If you stay in it long enough, the emptiness will begin to fill up with being and presence, with your Unique Being and Presence.
(c) April 2011 Courtesy of Graur Codrin
What happened?
You have discovered that the root of your desire to be free from another was your disconnection from your own personal essence, your Unique Self. When your Unique Self filled the hole, the desperate desire you felt to leave the group””or the marriage or the job””faded away. That does not mean that you should necessarily stay in the marriage or the job. It does however mean that you will make the decision from a grounded place of full presence as your Unique Self, and are therefore far more likely to make the right decision.
Further discussion: Three Steps in to the Distinction
“This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them anew each day.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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by Dr. Marc Gafni from Your Unique Self
The ego is not erotic. Unique Self lives in Eros. To live in Eros means to live with fullness of presence and with a felt sense of wholeness. It is to yearn urgently and ecstatically, without grasping and to experience interiority, the feeling of being on the inside. This is the experience of Unique Self. The ego lives with the feeling of always being on the outside. It fragments, grasps, and never shows up fully present to other. Unique Self lives in Eros.
For further discussion:
What is Eros? And what does it mean to live an erotic life?
Well, clearly: It is not sex!
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(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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by Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self
The Unique Self is in joy. Joy is the natural by-product of living your Unique Self story. The ego is rarely happy and often plagued by an underlying feeling of fear, deadness, or depression. The happiness that the ego does experience is of a heavier and less richly textured quality than the joy of the Unique Self. The joy of the Unique Self is lighter and freer, often verging on the ecstatic.
For further discussion:
“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.” ~ Erich Fromm
Joy has become front and center in our everyday psychology. And we often feel that there is something wrong with us when we don't feel happy all the time. The pursuit of happiness is even one of our constitutional rights.
But what do we mean by that? And why is joy called a by-product here if it is that important?
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Enlightenment requires your ability to discern between your ego story and your Unique Self story. Your separate-self egoic personality has needs. It wants to make itself feel secure. So your ego tells you a story about yourself that makes you feel safe, valuable, and worthy. The inability to feel safe, valuable, and worthy is a devastating experience for the ego, one it will ward off at virtually all costs. So the ego hijacks everything that happens to you, and everything that you do, into a story about its own goodness, value, and worth.
The ego has a simple if ingenious mechanism for doing this. It disguises its ambition, its drive for power, or its insecure grasping, and converts them into narrative material that supports its own positive self-image. This is how the separate-self ego story develops. It is this story that teachers of True Self correctly tell you to leave behind when they say, “To be enlightened, you must let go of your story.”
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by Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self
Your ego thinks that there is never enough to go around. It always needs more to feel like it exists at all. Your Unique Self knows that it is enough. Your Unique Self knows that there is enough to go around.
Your Unique Self strives for more, not to fill the emptiness but as an expression of the fullness of its being””bursting forth as the evolutionary impulse of the kosmos.
For more on distinctions between ego and Unique Self, check out the upcoming Unique Self telecourse starting April 24. This is a not-to-be missed course on the new spiritual book and teaching that everyone is talking about!
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By Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self
Your separate self is driven by greed. Greed is not the want of anything specific. Rather, it is insatiable want that creates perpetual anxiety. Insatiable want is a structure of the egoic mind, which seeks more and more identity enhancers to confirm its existence. Satisfaction and ego are opposites.
Give the ego everything, and it will not be satisfied. Give the Unique Self anything, and it will be grateful and satisfied. Satisfied, not resigned. Satisfaction emerges from the fullness of whatever the moment brings.
Satisfaction comes from contact with Being and from doing your radical, intense best in the world of Becoming without attachment to outcome. Being is all one, so any moment of Authentic Being gives infinite satisfaction. Becoming is an expression of the evolutionary impulse and not merely of the egoic drive to achieve. So for Unique Self, your very best is always good enough. For your ego, your very best is never good enough. This is why the ego is the source of all your suffering. It always wants more to fill its greed.
Greed, however, is not a root evil. At its core, greed is your ego's distortion of a quality of essence, the quality of pure infinite desire. Infinite desire is the natural expression of the endless creativity of essence. It is this quality that creates constant yearning, especially the yearning to grow, to create. This yearning, however, lives in paradoxical harmony with satisfaction.
For more on distinctions between ego and Unique Self, check out the upcoming Unique Self telecourse starting April 24. This is a not-to-be missed course on the new spiritual book and teaching that everyone is talking about!
Further discussion:
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