Books Available

Highlights of available books and other media by our Think Tank Scholars:

Highlights of Marc Gafni’s Published Books, Audiobooks, and DVDs

A Return to Eros: The Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive – by Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Kristina Kincaid

This book has been the response of our think tank not only to the smear campaign against Marc Gafni but also to almost every major problem we are facing on planet earth right now. If we as humanity want to make it through the second shock of existence and for the first time ever create a truly humane civilization that deserves its name and really thrive, we need to Return to Eros!!!

Discover the secret relationship between Erotic, the Sexual and the Sacred.

None of the four old philosophies about sex are sufficient to inspire us or even hold us in our sexuality. Sex is not merely negative or positive. Sex is not just neutral, nor is it merely sacred because it creates babies.

Erotic Mystics from the hidden tradition of Solomon’s temple taught a secret doctrine. Sex is the source of all wisdom. Sex is an expression of the erotic impulse of existence itself alive in us-the yearning for contact, pleasure, and aliveness. The Sexual however is not the sum total of the erotic. Rather, the sexual models the Erotic. The sexual teaches us how to live an Erotic life in all dimension of our existence.

It is these secret doctrines that were later taught by Mary Magdalene and that sparked excitement around bestselling novels such as The Da Vinci Code.

Deep understanding of the sexual becomes the portal to accessing aliveness in every dimension of our reality. This realization demands that you live sexually without shame and shows you how to re-eroticize all areas of your life.

A Return to Eros: On Sex, Love, and Eroticism in Every Dimension of Life, from Drs. Marc Gafni and Kristina Kincaid, reveals the radical secret tenets of relationship between the sexual, the erotic, and the holy. They reveal what Eros actually means and share the ten core qualities of the Erotic, which are modeled by the sexual. These include being on the inside, fullness of presence, yearning, allurement, fantasy, surrender, creativity, pleasure, and more.

A Return to Eros shows why these qualities of the erotic modeled by the sexual are actually the same core qualities of the sacred. The relationship between the sexual and the erotic becomes clear, teaching you how to live an erotically suffused existence charged with purpose, potency and power.

To be an Outrageous Lover–not just in sex but also in all facets of your life–you must listen deeply to the simple yet elegant whisperings of the sexual. This book will forever transform your understanding and experience of love, sex, and Eros.

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Radical Kabbalah, Book 1: Enlightenment Teaching of Unique Self, Non-dual Humanism and the Wisdom of Solomon: Great Teaching of Ethics and Eros from Mordechai Lainer of Izbica (Integral Publishers, 2012)

Marc Gafni’s two-volume academic treatise on Radical Kabbalah lays the groundwork for key dimensions of the Unique Self teaching. Compared by Prof. Richard Mann with the work of Elaine Pages on the Gnostic gospels, called “magesterial” by Sally Kempton, and described by Zack Stein as a work that comes around “once in a generation,” Gafni introduces in this work the enlightenment teaching of what he terms non-dual humanism.

Based on a deep re-reading of over a thousand Aramaic and Hebrew texts, Gafni first outlines the core teaching and then traces the esoteric intellectual history of non-dual humanism in five major matrices of the Kabbalah In the vision of non-dual humanism the potential democratization of enlightenment opens up as a genuine option in which every human being is called to lives lived “as Source.” Sean Esbjorn Hargens cited this work as a classic example of what leading scholar Jeffery Kripal calls Mystical Hermenutics in which the scholar practitioner brings his full Eros and love into unlocking and evolving vital lineage sources and sharing them with the world.

Radical Kabbalah, Book 2: The Wisdom of Solomon as the Matrix of the Enlightenment Teaching of Non-dual Acosmic Humanism and Unique Self (Integral Publishers, 2012)

In the second volume in the Radical Kabbalah set, Marc Gafni cracks an esoteric code deep within the Kabbalistic tradition which identifies “wisdom of Solomon” as being the source of the teaching of non-dual humanism. Gafni then shows that this teaching of the wisdom of Solomon, i.e. non-dual humanism, did not originate with Mordechai Lainer of Izbica. Rather it has deep roots in earlier Zoharic and Lurianic te – xts all of whom received and transmitted the non-dual humanism teaching of the wisdom of Solomon.

Nevertheless, it remained to Mordechai Lainer of Izbica to fully explicate and evolve the radically empowering implication of this ancient teaching. In this volume Gafni carefully and rigorously uncovers the hidden teaching of the wisdom of solomon as they appear in encoded within hassidic writings waiting to be discovered.

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Your Unique Self (Integral Publishers, 2012)

Underlying the vision behind democracy is the recognition that every individual has dignity, adequacy and worth. This democratic understanding of the worth and standing of the individual lies at the core of what the West calls enlightenment. The Western idea of enlightenment, rooted in the great vision of the Biblical prophets, is generally understood to have entered mainstream consciousness through the political democratic movements of the mid 18th century. Western enlightenment is primarily concerned with the democratization of political power.

Classical enlightenment, sometimes called Eastern enlightenment because it was greatly emphasized in the East, is about the individual merging into the greater one. The appearance of separate self is an illusion, which must be overcome as the individual realizes that one is really not separate at all but part of the one. The goal of Eastern enlightenment is moving beyond the grasping ego and desperately seeking separate self by attaining a state of consciousness in which the illusion of separateness was dissolved in the greater one.

This path of classical enlightenment is seen as the path beyond suffering. Unique Self enlightenment brings the Eastern and Western understandings about enlightenment together, into a higher Integral World Spirituality embrace. Unique Self enlightenment is based on your commitment to transcend separate self into the one, even as you realize that that essence sees through your unique perspective. Unique Self opens the door to the potential democratization of enlightenment. To awaken to your Unique Self is to be lived as God, which, in truth, means to be lived as love.

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Self in Integral Evolutionary Mysticism:
Two Models and Why They Matter (Integral Publishers, 2014)

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 quality of the Self beyond Ego are profoundly different.

Both of these visions of Self, or key dimensions of the two versions, have been adopted, directly and indirectly by many spiritual teachers. In Self in Integral Evolutionary Mysticism, Marc Gafni articulates the two models, their shared features, their differences and why — as we seek to articulate an Integral Wisdom — these differences matter so desperately.

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Tears: Reclaiming Ritual, Integral Religion and Rosh Hashanah (Integral Publishers, 2014)

Marc Gafni’s poignant and evocative volume Tears invites the reader into a radical paradigm shift in understanding religion and ritual. It takes as its case study the Jewish holy day of Rosh Hashanah, the Hebrew New Year celebration. Gafni then re-reads the entire corpus of liturgical literature on the New Year and reveals a key hidden theme – crying. Specifically Gafni identifies twelve major forms of tears and the archetypes that enact these forms of crying.

Gafni’s role as a leading voice in the evolution of Judaism is fully crystallized in this volume. He lives and breathes the sacred texts, imbued by and transmitting their energy even as deploys the ecstatic scholarship of the master, reverentially yet boldly evolving their meaning.

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The Journal of Integral Theory & Practice (6:1), 2011

The Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (JITP), the official source for material related to Integral Theory and its application, devoted an entire issue to Unique Self. In this issue, Marc is the guest editor and writes two core articles on Unique Self, one emergent from Mordechai Lainer, and the other on the core Unique Self teaching, which are a cornerstone for World Spirituality teaching. Included in these articles is one by Zak Stein, which compares Gafni’s Unique Self teaching with Andrew Cohen’s Authentic Self teaching.

Loving Your Way to Enlightenment (Marc Gafni with Chahat Corten, Self-published, 2014)

Love is so confusing. What does it mean? Is it an emotion? Who should we love? How should we love and how much? What is the relationship between romantic love, impersonal cosmic love, sister love, evolutionary love, and Outrageous Love? How do love, sex and eros relate to each other? Why is a right understanding and experience of love the core of education, medicine, sex, business, politics and just about everything else?

Read this book and let your love life be expanded and transformed forever. Fall in love all the way! Loving your way to Enlightenment is a compilation of Marc Gafni’s first two years of Venwoude’s Wisdom School teachings.

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Your Unique Self: An Integral Path to Success 3.0

Special Edition by Marc Gafni & Kate Maloney.

In order to genuinely move beyond ego, beyond the false self-or even more precisely, beyond exclusive identification with ego-you need authentic and sustained contact with the transcendent, with the intention of facilitating your own evolution. You also need rigorous and unflinching self-inquiry, which includes some process of sustained shadow work. Prayer, chanting, contemplative study, and meditation are part of the path. In my early years, as for many young teachers, they were my entire path. But beware of parts pretending to be wholes. These paths may not be enough for you. They were not enough for me.

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The Erotic and the Holy Audio Workshop

What can erotic love teach us about the Divine? In modern Western thought, the sexual is often seen as being the opposite of the spiritual. Yet when we understand and access the rich interplay between the erotic and the sexual, we can tap into limitless reservoir of spiritual wisdom. “The sexual models the erotic,” Marc Gafni explains, “but it does not exhaust it.”

Now, with The Erotic and the Holy Workshop, this groundbreaking Kabbalistic sage invites you to accept Eros as your spiritual teacher – a teacher that will guide you with sweetness and tenderness toward “being a lover” in every aspect of your life.

The Erotic and the Holy collection includes 57 audio files, separated into 7 chapters — a staggering 7 hours and 30 minutes of material. You can download the complete workshop in one mp3 file. You will also receive a special 40-page PDF that includes The Erotic and the Holy experiential exercises to supplement your home workshop experience.

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Lilith: Re-reading Feminine Shadow {co-author with Ohad Ezrahi, Hebrew} (Modan, 2004)

In Lilith, Marc Gafni provides insights into the deep context in sources of Hebrew wisdom for this core idea that that the exile of the Shekinah is in one expression, the exile of the erotic into the sexual. This idea is possibly best expressed in the Raya Mehimna and Tiqunei Zohar literature. Based on the biblical verse “and a maidservant that inherits her mistress” (Proverbs 30:23), the Shekina in exile is said to be the state in which the maidservant has inherited her place.

This book represents an integration of ideas from Marc Gafni and Ohad Ezrahi. At his request the first writer during the physical writing was Ohad. It was co-authored by them and published with intention as a shared book reflecting their partnership at the time and the shared intellectual content in the core of the book. This is reflected in the joint publishing of the book, the shared content, and the signed contracts with the publishers and dozens of extant letters between the authors during the process. For more info, click here.

For a downloadable, unplugged pdf of the unedited raw translation of the book, click here>>>

Soul Prints Audio Workshop

“Just as in the physical world you have a fingerprint that is unique to you, so in the realm of spirit you have a soul print that belongs to you alone,” teaches Marc Gafni. Now, the voice behind the bestselling Soul Prints presents an in-depth audio curriculum that invites listeners to engage the fullness of their individual potential. From wisdom on recognizing your soul print to cultivating true presence with oneself and others to integrating personal darkness and light, The Soul Prints Workshop offers Marc Gafni’s insightful guidance for each step of your spiritual journey.

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Mystery of Love* (Simon and Schuster, 2003)

The core ideas in The Mystery of Love began germinating when Marc Gafni encountered a Talmudic passage, some twenty-five years ago, which described the sexual drive as the Lion of Fire residing in the holy of holies in the temple. As Marc Gafni notes on the Scholar’s page, Raphael Pattai’s work on the Temple and Eros, Saul Lieberman’s important identifications between the mystery of the Song of Songs and the Holy of Holies in the Temple, as well as Idel’s deployment of the term Kabbalistic Tantra, all were important to him. Read more…

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Re-claiming Certainty* {Hebrew} (Modan, 2003)

This book suggests that the most important spritual practice of a human being is to realize what Marc Gafni calls the core certainty of being, similar to what Da Free John refers to as Divine Communion, as the essential and ongoing human experience. This teaching offers a re-understanding of the core nature of religion, moving from the old model in which religion claims to teach “It is True,” to a new paradigm in which religion reminds us that “I am True.”

Re-claiming Uncertainty as a Spiritual Value* {Hebrew} (Modan, 2003)

This book is about reclaiming the spiritual value of Uncertainty. In the wake of quantum physics we have begun to dance with uncertainty. Now that Newton has given way to Shrodinger, the modern scientific community has a way of expressing the confusion inherent in the world. Quantum Physics, despite the elegance of its imagery and astonishing scientific breakthroughs, does not ask what seems to be the crucial question: what if Mrs. Schrodinger loves her cat? What can she be going through while her dear pet is inside the potentially lethal box? Biblical consciousness is concerned not only with the metaphysics of uncertainty but first and foremost with the experience of uncertainty.

Soul Prints: Your Path to Fulfillment (Simon and Schuster, 2001)

A charismatic American philosopher and teacher, Marc Gafni has become an important voice on religion and spirituality through his enormously popular weekly television program in Israel. Now, his universal message comes to America, fully realized, in his first English-language book.

Marc Gafni follows in the tradition of Rabbi Harold Kushner and Ram Dass, bringing wisdom to everyday experience and using spiritual stories to teach us how to live happier lives. The secret is to “live your story,” and we do this by identifying our Unique Selves — our “soul prints.” Only then can we connect on a deeper level with the world and with those sharing it alongside us.

Soul Prints speaks to all readers, regardless of religious beliefs or practices. Using the power of myth — Biblical and folk — and drawing on his own highs and lows, Gafni offers advice on how to overcome the obstacles of an increasingly disconnected world to form bonds based in truth and love: connections that begin with our true selves.

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Soul Prints DVD (Public Broadcasting Special, 2001)

In a 73-minute lecture which was a Public Broadcasting Special, Marc Gafni educates an enthusiastic studio audience about the principles and practices of his “soul prints” philosophy, which would later become the basis for the Unique Self teaching. Culled from his lineage in Kabbalah as well as other religious and philosophical traditions, the essence of the teaching is instruction in how we can live our life the way it was destined to be lived. In this vision, individual and collective paths to inner peace ultimately find harmony. Unfortunately, the video was poorly edited and the result is that the richness, subtlety and depth of the Soul Print teaching became was degraded. For this reason, today it is a work that Marc does not recommend.

First Steps in Judaism {Hebrew and Russian} (Israel Ministry of Education, 1998)

This book was published in conjunction with Israel’s the ministry of education with the intent to provide a non-fundamentalist alternative to the basic Judaism guides which were being heavily propagated by fundamentalist strains in Orthodoxy. It was intened as a Hebrew/Russian guide on basic Judaism for new Russian immigrants.

Readings in Genesis, Audio Series (Milah Institute, Israel, 1997)

These lectures on the book of Genesis were given in 1997 in Jerusalem to overflowing audiences. The talks, which will soon be made available on the Center for World Spirituality website, are a deep dive into Marc Gafni’s later call to the source code structures of the Book of Genesis. A second set of talks on the Exodous are now also under preparation. These talks stem from the period in Dr. Gafni’s life where he was teaching within the ethnocentric context of the Jewish community. The lectures are liberal universal interpretation of Judaism which nonetheless provide insights relevant both within and beyond the Jewish context.

Review of Radical Kabbalah by Dr. Zak Stein for the “Integral Review”

Books  by Dr. Marc Gafni Available on Amazon.com

>>> Follow Dr. Marc Gafni on Amazon.com <<<

>>> Essays and Book Excerpts by Dr. Marc Gafni on Academia.edu <<<

Select Articles & Essays by Marc Gafni

• “Reimagining Humanity (Semi-Final) with Dr. Zak Stein”
• “Three Steps to the Democratization of Enlightenment”
• “The God of the Encounter: The Glory of the Personal”
• “The Future of the Holy: From Sex to Eros” (Spanda, 2012).
• “The Evolutionary Emergent of Unique Self; A New Chapter in Integral Theory” (Journal of Integral Theory and Practice: 6:1, 2011).
• “Unique Self and Non Dual Humanism”(Journal of Integral Theory and Practice: 6:1, 2011).
• “The Path of Yearning” (Parabola, 2006).
• “On the Commandment to Question” (Azure, 1996).

Tikkun Magazin 2000 – 2003

• “On the Erotic and the Ethical” (Tikkun, 2003).
• “Homo Imaginus and the Erotics of Imagination” (Tikkun, 2003).
• “You never know” (Tikkun, 2002).
• “From Athens to Jerusalem” (Tikkun, 2001).
• “Soul Prints: Live Your Story” (Tikkun, 2001).
• “Called to Rise” (Tikkun, 2001).
  
• “Do Not Ask Israel to Atone” (Tikkun, 2001).
• “Shofar of Tears” (Tikkun, 2000).
• “Unique Pathology” (Tikkun, 2000).
• “Holy Relationship” (Tikkun, 2000).
• “The God of Maybe” (Tikkun, 2000).

Highlights of Ken Wilber’s Published Books

Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World (Shambala Reprint Edition, 2007)

Integral Spirituality is being widely called the most important book on spirituality in our time.

Applying his highly acclaimed integral approach, Ken Wilber formulates a theory of spirituality that honors the truths of modernity and postmodernity—including the revolutions in science and culture—while incorporating the essential insights of the great religions. He shows how spirituality today combines the enlightenment of the East, which excels at cultivating higher states of consciousness, with the enlightenment of the West, which offers developmental and psychodynamic psychology. Each contributes key components to a more integral spirituality.

On the basis of this integral framework, a radically new role for the world’s religions is proposed. Because these religions have such a tremendous influence on the worldview of the majority of the earth’s population, they are in a privileged position to address some of the biggest conflicts we face. By adopting a more integral view, the great religions can act as facilitators of human development: from magic to mythic to rational to pluralistic to integral—and to a global society that honors and includes all the stations of life along the way.

A Brief History of Everything (Shambhala, 2001)

A Brief History of Everything is an altogether friendly and accessible account of men and women’s place in a universe of sex, soul, and spirit, written by an author of whom New York Times reporter Tony Schwartz says: “No one has described the path to wisdom better than Ken Wilber.”

Wilber examines the course of evolution as the unfolding manifestation of Spirit, from matter to life to mind, including the higher stages of spiritual development where Spirit becomes conscious of itself. In each of these domains, there are recurring patterns, and by looking closely at them, we can learn much about the predicament of our world—and the direction we must take if “global transformation” is to become a reality.

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution (Shambala Second Revised Edition, 2001)

In this tour de force of scholarship and vision, Ken Wilber traces the course of evolution from matter to life to mind and describes the common patterns that evolution takes in all three of these domains. From the emergence of mind, he traces the evolution of human consciousness through its major stages of growth and development. He particularly focuses on modernity and postmodernity: what they mean; how they impact gender issues, psychotherapy, ecological concerns, and various liberation movements; and how the modern and postmodern world conceive of Spirit. This second edition features forty pages of new material, new diagrams, and extensively revised notes.

Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy (Shambala, 2000)

The goal of an “integral psychology” is to honor and embrace every legitimate aspect of human consciousness under one roof. This book presents one of the first truly integrative models of consciousness, psychology, and therapy. Drawing on hundreds of sources—Eastern and Western, ancient and modern—Wilber creates a psychological model that includes waves of development, streams of development, states of consciousness, and the self, and follows the course of each from subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious. Included in the book are charts correlating over a hundred psychological and spiritual schools from around the world, including Kabbalah, Vedanta, Plotinus, Teresa of Ávila, Aurobindo, Theosophy, and modern theorists such as Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, Jane Loevinger, Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan, Erich Neumann, and Jean Gebser. Integral Psychology is Wilber’s most ambitious psychological system to date and is already being called a landmark study in human development.

Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber (Shambala Second Edition, 2001)

Here is a deeply moving account of a couple’s struggle with cancer and their journey to spiritual healing. Grace and Grit is the compelling story of the five-year journey of Ken Wilber and his wife Treya Killam Wilber through Treya’s illness, treatment, and, finally, death.

A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality (Shambala, 2001)

Here is a concise, comprehensive overview of Wilber’s revolutionary thought and its application in today’s world. In A Theory of Everything, Wilber uses clear, nontechnical language to present complex, cutting-edge theories that integrate the realms of body, mind, soul, and spirit. He then demonstrates how these theories and models can be applied to real-world problems in areas such as politics, medicine, business, education, and the environment. Wilber also discusses daily practices that readers take up in order to apply this integrative vision to their own everyday lives.

Highlights of Barbara Marx Hubbard’s Published Books

Highlights of Mariana Caplan’s Published Books

The Guru Question: The Perils and Rewards of Choosing a Spiritual Teacher (Sounds True, 2011)

The spiritual journey is perhaps the most personal experience of our lives–but does that mean we have to go it alone? With The Guru Question, award-winning author Mariana Caplan brings you a unique and much-needed guide for deciding whether you need a dedicated mentor to help illuminate your path to awakening–and if so, how to navigate the deep complexities of the guru-disciple relationship.

For those seeking a teacher worthy of their trust and devotion, or anyone who has been frustrated by their experiences with a spiritual teacher, Caplan offers candid, practical, and daringly personal examination of the student-teacher dynamic.

Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path (Sounds True, 2009)

The spiritual path is like any other road-it’s going to have its share of potholes and detours. Safe travel requires a quality rarely taught yet critically important in today’s world: discernment. In Eyes Wide Open, Mariana Caplan supports us in cultivating the acute judgment and discrimination that will help us to live a spiritual life with intelligence, clarity, and authenticity.

Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment (Hohm Press, 1999)

Author and anthropologist Caplan plunges into the complex domain of contemporary spirituality where she boldly faces the grave distortions and fraudulent claims to power that characterise the spiritual path in our times. Dozens of first-hand interviews with students, respected teachers and masters, together with broad research are synthesised into a treatment of the modern spiritual scene to assist readers in avoiding the pitfalls of this precarious pass.

Highlights of Sally Kempton’s Published Books and CD’s

Awakening Shakti: The Transformative Power of the Goddesses of Yoga (Sounds True, 2013)

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 selflessly, yet passionately celebrate your life?

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.

Shakti Meditations: Guided Practices to Invoke the Goddesses of Yoga [Audiobook] [Audio CD] (Soundstrue 2013)

Everything new that comes into our lives—every change that unfolds—emerges out of Shakti, the universal force of creation and transformation.

Shakti Meditations provides an immediate way to experience the many gifts of this divine feminine power. Taught by expert meditation teacher Sally Kempton, these guided inner practices use India’s goddesses of yoga as gateways for discovering and inviting the many dimensions of Shakti.

Like rivers flowing through us, each deity carries its own unique energies to help empower and guide us in our spiritual, relationship, career, and creative paths. As we meditate upon them, their virtues and energies begin to arise in such forms as:

• Durga, for strength, protection, and action
• Lakshmi, for abundance and self-compassion
• Kali, to ignite our courage and clear inner obstacles
• Saraswati, to spark creative inspiration and clarify communication
• Maha Devi, to draw us closer into spacious and liberated consciousness

This 4 Audio CD set is for yoga lovers, healers, meditators, and anyone who needs to call on the power of the feminine. Shakti Meditations gives listeners a powerful method to explore this limitless source of light and energy within us.

Meditation for the Love of It: Enjoying Your Own Deepest Experience (Sounds True, 2010)

Meditation is like a love affair with your innermost self. At times it can be ecstatic and entrancing, other times simple and still—and sometimes you might not even feel its profound effects until later.

Now with Meditation for the Love of It, Sally Kempton shares practical secrets to help us turn meditation into an unconditional embrace of the fullness of our experience—on and off the meditation cushion. With the gentle wisdom and compassion of one who understands the nuances of practice, she opens us to the joy of exploring the deep and mysterious inner landscape of the heart, mind, and body.

Beginning Meditation: Enjoying Your Own Deepest Experience (Sounds True, 2011)

What if there was a way to learn how to meditate without the struggle? On Beginning Meditation, master teacher Sally Kempton welcomes newcomers to a practice that is predicated on maintaining genuine interest and pleasure in the fullness of our experience. With a nurturing and accessible style developed over 40 years of teaching meditators of all levels and backgrounds, Kempton shares her unique meditation philosophy then takes listeners breath by breath through guided practices including:

• “Focus on a memory of love” to realize a love independent of external conditions
• “Connecting with the inner teacher” to bless and energize your practice
• “The space between breaths” for accessing the still point within that opens us to the heart of the universe
• “Your awareness pervades the world,” a powerful technique for resting in a state of expansive consciousness

When we decide to begin a meditation practice, Kempton explains, we enter into an intimate new relationship with ourselves–a relationship that can become the platform for both inner stability and inner transformation. Here is a stepby- step program for starting a practice infused with love and the spirit of adventure with Beginning Meditation.

Highlights by other Think Tank Scholars

Beyond Mars and Venus: Relationship Skills for Today’s Complex World – by John Gray

The author of the most well-known and trusted relationship book of all time returns with an updated guide for today’s generation.

Two decades ago, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus revolutionized the way we thought about love and partnership. John Gray’s work has helped countless readers improve and even save their relationships. But as society evolves, relationships do, too. It’s time to move beyond Mars and Venus, toward a new relationship model for modern couples.

Today, men and women are no longer trapped by rigid societal roles. Now more than ever, we have the freedom to be our authentic selves. Women can access their masculine side, and men can embrace their feminine side. This new freedom is a good thing, but it also brings new challenges.

Men and women still need the right tools and skills to help build stronger relation- ships. While previous generations sought “role mate” relationships, based on the more rigid gender roles of the time, today’s couples need a new kind of relationship: a “soul mate” relationship. These more emotionally satisfying relationships require a deeper understanding of our partners’ individual needs. In Beyond Mars and Venus, Gray teaches you how to strengthen your bond and grow in love together, so you and your loved one can meet each other’s needs in the best way possible, bringing you lasting happiness and a fulfilling partnership.

John Gray is also on the board of our think tank. This book has been developed in close relationship with CIW President Marc Gafni and Board Member Warren Farrell.

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The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It – by Warren Farrell

What is the boy crisis?

It?s a crisis of education.
For the first time in American history, our sons will have less education than their dads.

It’s a crisis of mental health.
As boys become young men, their suicide rates go from equal to girls to six times that of young women.

It’s a crisis of sexuality.
Sex is a minefield for our sons. They’re bombarded with mixed messages, afraid of being either too sensitive or not sensitive enough.

It’s a crisis of fathering.
Boys with less-involved fathers are more likely to drop out of school, drink, do drugs, become delinquent, and end up in prison.

It’s a crisis of purpose.
Boys’ old senses of purposes, being a warrior, a leader, or a sole breadwinner, are fading. Many bright boys are experiencing a “purpose void,” feeling alienated, withdrawn and addicted to immediate gratification. Compounding this issue are addicting video games that lead to distraction and ADHD.

So, what is The Boy Crisis?
A comprehensive blueprint for what parents, teachers and policy-makers can do to renew our sons’ sense of purpose to help them become men, fathers, and leaders worthy of our respect.

Warren Farrell is also on the board of our think tank. This book has been developed in close relationship with CIW President Marc Gafni.

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Evolving Christianity: Life After Faith Crisis – by Rev. Samuel Alexander

The bulk of western society in stranded in a vast spiritual wasteland. That’s not too surprising the, (albeit necessary) deconstruction of traditional faith The modernist deconstruction of traditional religion, while needed, has had a profound impact. I write not to deny that, but to say one thing: We need not fear that wasteland because there is a rich landscape of spiritual life on the other side. Belief in an interventionist God is not required in order to lay hold of a rich, transformative Christian faith, one that is faithful to the Scriptures, proclaims a God of grace transforming all our lives, and is most certainly a gospel worth sharing. “God is love,” the scriptures say. I am among those who believe that love is the creative impulse animating creation’s evolutionary story. Everything evolves; we are not living separate from the power of that love. No, we are One and so we are sourced, empowered, inspired, even obligated to live into our own unique role. That is our destiny; that is our purpose. We are not static false selves destined to remain the same— dismal, broken, forever and ever, amen. No, we are destined to become unique creatures who reflect the reality of God’s love in a new life. An evolutionary Christianity is realistic about the enormity of that task, but hopeful too, because it recognizes the power of creation unfolding within us, driving transformative change. We will discover that the scriptures themselves reveal that the creative power of love does not so much act upon us as it is expressed through us. This is the Gospel now proclaimed beyond the modernist deconstruction.

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Love Beyond Imagination: Writing Outrageous Love Letters (Pauline Botden)

This book is a joyous reflection of an invitation given to me by Dr. Marc Gafni, brilliant teacher of Unique Self Enlightenment, to write Outrageous Love Letters. For 3 years now this is my daily practice. Writing Love Letters and writing them Outrageously opened my heart in a way I could have never imagined. It transformed my ability to find Love even in the very painful situations of life. This book contains both my experiences and a selection of the Outrageous Love Letters I wrote. I wrote it to invite you to join me in this practice.

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Future:

A Series of Outrageous Love letter books published by a number of leading practitioners who have extensively engaged the process of writing OLL.

Humanity’s Second Shock and Your Unique Self (Mauk Pieper; foreword by Paul de Blot; afterword by Dr. Marc Gafni)

Every human being meets with pain in his or her life. When we discover this, it shatters our expectations. Our main reaction to this ‘First Shock’ is avoidance. In our collective life, this avoidance represents the consciousness of the Separate Self or ego. In trying to impose its will on the unfolding of life, this Separate Self makes things worse rather than better. It may end up destroying the life that has been given to us as human beings, as well as life on Earth in general. Our waking up to this dilemma is what Mauk Pieper calls our ‘Second Shock’. This book urges us to ‘rethink’ the evolution of our consciousness and offers a glimpse of a new, emerging level of consciousness that is able to process this Second Shock, giving rise to ‘realistic hope’ for a better world that is in alignment with the evolutionary impulse.

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Metrics of Consciousness (Richard Barrett; Foreword by Zak Stein & Marc Gafni)

This book explores the new thought emerging from Richard Barrett’s paper on the Metrics of Human Consciousness. This book contributes to the goal of developing some form of “Unique Self metrics”, a topic that Richard, Zak Stein, and Marc Gafni have discussed in separate dyads intermittently over the last two years.

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Social Justice and Educational Measurement (Dr. Zachary Stein)

Social Justice and Educational Measurement addresses foundational concerns at the interface of standardized testing and social justice in American schools. Following John Rawls’s philosophical methods, Stein builds and justifies an ethical framework for guiding practices involving educational measurement. This framework demonstrates that educational measurement can both inhibit and ensure just educational arrangements. It also clarifies a principled distinction between efficiency-oriented testing and justice-oriented testing.