Excerpt from the most recent article to be found at iEvolve.com, the Center for World Spirituality:

Before beginning our journey, however, it may be of value for the reader to have at least a very bare outline of the three reasons I hold uncertainty to be ethically and spiritually essential. These underlying motifs will guide our entire discussion.

1) First, only by holding uncertainty can I attain higher certainty. The embrace of false certainty always prevents me from reaching the higher clarity and vision that is mine.

2) Second, we hold uncertainty in order to avoid the seduction of false certainty.  False dogma, be it religious, national, spiritual, or secular, is the ground out of which the dynamic of human evil always feeds. Most of the evil in the world is committed by people who are one hundred percent convinced they are right. People who hold uncertainty as a spiritual value rarely perpetrate massacres. Uncertainty is one of God’s protective mechanisms against hubris and it’s devastating consequences.⁶ Indeed, the cruel shadow side of modernity, which killed no fewer than a hundred million people in the last century, stems largely from its refusal to hold intellectual uncertainty. Instead of holding safek (uncertainty), moderns feel the need to claim their safek as Vaddai—clarity. Modernity, however, has ample precedent in almost all of the religious systems which history has produced. Uncertainty is sublimated by excessive and often fatal displays of religious or secular zeal and certitude.

3) Third, I need to hold uncertainty because only in uncertainty do I reach spiritual authenticity. This third level of uncertainty is never resolvable in favor of higher certainty.  This uncertainty is higher than any certainty and is reflective of the deepest nature of both spiritual and physical reality.

From Uncertainty
Dr. Marc Gafni

6. See  Abraham Kuk who expresses this notion in one of his letters.

For the complete article please go to:

http://www.ievolve.org/2012/04/the-israel-moment-reclaiming-uncertainty-as-a-spiritual-value/

In our previous 3 posts we introduced a provocative Hebrew wisdom masters koan, “Great is teshuva, for in it intentional sins become great merits.”

Here is the third and final interpretation to help animate this koan in our lives.

The third understanding of the power of teshuva:  the spiritual time machine.  Teshuva literally means “to turn or return.”  To return to where?

It could man to return to the scene of the crime and not do it again.  If adultery with your best friend’s wife is the sin, then it means that you have the same opportunity–sexy and willing woman, available apartment, alibii, and the same level of attraction–but this time you set a sacred boundary.

Or it could mean something else entirely.  It could mean that you return not only to the same situation and even the same place, but also that time itself warps and you return to the same moment.  When the desire to make amends is driven by love, be it love of God, self, or other, then time warps and makes herself available.  The mystery of love modeled in the sexual is that time is not absolute.  It bends to the will of love and eros.

The Mystery of Love
Marc Gafni
Page 301

In our previous post we introduced a provocative Hebrew wisdom masters koan, “Great is teshuva, for in it intentional sins become great merits.”

Here is the first interpretation to help animate this koan in our lives.

First, there is the great erotic principle of yearning.  Sin in Hebrew mysticism is a force of separation and division.  Sin separates the human being from her divine source.  The further you pull away, the more powerfully the force to return builds.  As Isaac Newton said, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  The greater the separation, the deeper and more powerful is the yearning to return.  (Imagine a rubber band that is pulled taut and then released.)  The energy of the fall is transformed into yearning, and the person winds up being a much better person than had they never fallen.  In this way through the process of teshuva–implying recognition, regret, and future commitment–intentional sins are transformed into virtues.”

The Mystery of Love
Dr. Marc Gafni
Page 300

“Great is teshuvah, for in it intentional sins become great merits.”

Hebrew wisdom masters koan

Here is the second interpretation to help animate this koan in our lives.

Let’s go to the second stage and take it one level deeper.  When we step back from darkness, we don’t want just to shut it up in a closet and slam the door.  On the contrary:  When we engage in real teshuva, we want to “turn” the energy of darkness to good.  Everybody knows that the energy of evil is, at least at first blush, more vital and committed than the energy of the good.  Try to create a chain of calls to let people know about he human tragedy in East Timor.  Although people have been murdered, tortured, and brutalized, it is not easy to mobilize support.  Now, drop a rumor about some sexual dalliance of a public figure, a totally spurious rumor with no hard evidence to support it.  Well, everyone knows you don’t have to mobilize anyone.  The rumor will be all over town in twenty-four hours. That’s why the temptation for a journalist to cross the line from legitimate investigative reporting to yellow journalism that feeds on an alleged sexual scandal is so hard to resist.  Everybody wants to hear about it.  This is the vital energy of evil.  It is pseudo-eros, which feeds the emptiness and requires integrity to resist.

With all this in mind the concept of teshuva become more clear.  The goal is not repentance but transformation.  Of what?  Transformation of the vital energy of evil into a powerful and potent force for the good.  When this happens then the intentional sins are not just erased, they also become merits.

The Mystery of Love
Dr. Marc Gafni
Pages 300, 301

We should not think of our past as definitely settled … my past changes every minute according to the meaning given it now, in this moment. — CZESLAW MILOSZ

The most potent expression of the healing power of time circle consciousness is the mystical idea of teshuva, which is a word we have encountered before.  Literally meaning “returning,” it describes the process by which we make amends and try to fix the mistakes of the past.  Mis-takes are the times when we misperceived reality or ourselves and were not at our best.  As we saw early on, love and perception are virtually synonymous.  So mis-takes are the times we weren’t able to be lovers.

There is a provocative koan of the Hebrew wisdom masters where they say, “Great is teshuvah, for in it intentional sins become great merits.”  What is radical about “teshuva” is that not only are past sins erased, but they are also mysteriously transformed into great merits.

The Mystery of Love
Dr. Marc Gafni
Pages 299, 300

NOTE:  Look for a continuation on this topic on this site in the next few postings

The body leads to the soul, and the soul leads back to the body.  ”When I look at the I of my body I find the I of my soul.  When I look at the I of my soul I find the I of God.”  The Sufis have a wonderful saying–”Say your praise to Allah and tie your camel to a post.”  What this really means is, touch the fullness of God and let that inspire even the simplest service.

The Mystery of Love
Dr. Marc Gafni
Page 324

Recently people have been asking me what I mean by the phrase, “Answering the Call,” which I have been talking about so often during my talks about the democratization of enlightenment teachings in these past years. So when I woke up this morning, before I was fully awake, I jotted down a couple of words on this topic…

Once you understand that your uniqueness is not a historical accident but an intentional expression of essence, then your realize that enlightenment is a genuine option for every human being. Including You. When you realize that your Unique Self is the God having a You experience, everything in your experience of your life changes.

Once you understand that your uniqueness is not the haphazard result of your cultural social or psychological conditioning, but all of these are necessary conditions for the emergence of the personal face of essence which is You, your essential experience of your life transforms. You move from a desperate need to escape your life to the radical embrace of your life.

When this happens, fate is transformed to destiny. Desperation becomes celebration. Grasping becomes purposeful action and resignation becomes activism. The contracted smallness of your frightened suffering self becomes expanded joyful realization of Your Unique Self. At such times, the irreducible human uniqueness of every human being is the invitation to enlightenment. For the full and authentic expression of your uniqueness living in the world as God’s verb, that is, essence living in you, as you and through you, is the essence of enlightenment.

It is from this place that you Answer the Call. It is from this place that you give the world your desperately needed Unique Gifts, those endowments that derive from your Unique Self. This is what I mean when I talk about Unique Self enlightenment.

Dr. Marc Gafni

For more on this topic, please go to:

http://www.marcgafni.com/?p=4133

Newest Thinking on Unique Self, from a dialogue with Bert Parlee and Marc Gafni, at the recent Integral Leadership Collaborative.

Excerpt

• When we live on an Earth in which there’s enough food and
resources to feed us all five times over, and 20 million children
die of starvation every year, and we’re talking about being sane?
Normal consciousness is insane.
• So enlightenment is about sanity. Sanity is about love. Love is
about the force of attraction. Love is about mutuality,
recognition, union and embrace. Love is the realization that we’re
all bound by invisible lines of connection; that we’re all part of
a larger whole; and if you’re not eating, then I’m starving.

• So enlightenment is about love. And the way to get to love is to
love your way to enlightenment. What does that mean? We’ll talk
about that later.

• The difference between “Bert” and “Marc” – we’re both men,
about the same height and weight, same general age category. To
mistake between me and Bert is a pretty minor mistake. A few
details here and there. Basically, we’re the same general genre
happening. It’s not that blatant of insanity.

• But to actually mistake your separate self as being all you are,
and not realize that you are a True Self, which is an in-
eradicable and indivisible part of the seamless coat of the
universe? The gap between that lack of realization, that illusion,
that limited sense of self? That’s truly insanity. So that’s
enlightenment, and it’s why we care about enlightenment.

From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it

Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face
that I was looking for

Today I have found you
and those who laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did

I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty
and wish to see you
with a hundred eyes

My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold

I am ashamed
to call this love human
and afraid of God
to call it divine

Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden
You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow

My soul is screaming in ecstacy
Every fiber of my being
is in love with you

Your effulgence
has lit a fire in my heart
for me
the earth and sky

My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer

Rumi

… you can move beyond your ego, your ego which is your separate self, your small self,  you can move beyond your exclusive identification with your ego and you can realize, oh my God, Oh. My. God., oh my, I am part of the divine.  Oh my, I feel in myself this love welling up, this care for someone else welling up.  I am crying in a movie, I see a flower that just blows me out of my mind, I have this deep yearning for someone outside of me,  to connect and be with that person, I feel this deep empathy and this deep open-heart space when I see that someone suffers.  I have this great joy when I know that I have done the right thing …
A taste of the 7 minute video with Dr. Marc Gafni:

To hear the complete teaching, click on this link:

http://www.ievolve.org/2011/09/living-as-love-beyond-small-self-with-dr-marc-gafni/