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Integral Life Spiritual Center

Thirty-One Leading Spiritual Teachers Form Integral Life Spiritual Center

Dear friends,
For many, the vision of integral spirituality is one of a world in which humanity can finally, after many millennia, come to appreciate and embody the mystery of reality in a powerful, compassionate and sophisticated way that honors the many ways people know and understand Spirit. When religion is ostensibly at the root of so much global conflict, this even may be a key to long-term human survival.

And yet this vision of spiritual evolution has felt out-of-touch when it has not taken its work of the heart and put it into motion in the challenging conditions of a fast-paced world. Like you we seek to bring a higher degree of integration between the head, heart and hands of spiritual evolution at the forefront of contemporary culture. It is with this intention that we are honored to announce the formation of Integral Life Spiritual Center.

Born out of the rich heritage of the former Integral Spiritual Center and finding root in the emerging Integral spiritual tradition, ILSC is designed to be an energetic body that convenes leading spiritual teachers, scholars, activists, business and civic leaders and others to focus on a grounded yet advanced spiritual understanding and practice in community, conversation and civic affairs.

Fellows and Members of ILSC – including Brother David Steindl-Rast, Jean Houston, Caroline Myss, Neale Donald Walsch, Lama Surya Das, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Dr. Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Joan Borysenko, David Abrams, Alan Wallace, John Friend, Gershon Winkler, Gabriel Cousens, Gangaji, Eli Jaxon-Bear and many more of our dear friends – are drawn from diverse spiritual traditions and walks of life and include teachers and leaders who are both new to the integral community and who have been with you for years.

In particular, Integral Life Spiritual Center’s mission to bring spirituality “off the mat and into the world” is fulfilled in four primary ways:

By speaking out and collaborating to take effective action against human rights abuses, including human trafficking, genocide and global climate change.
By offering the vital conversations about the future of spirituality and religion in the next millennium by guest editing one issue annually of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice and offering to the Integral Life community leading-edge dialogues between Fellows that can deepen, clarify and evolve our understanding of Spirit’s depth, invitation and trajectory.
By convening the global integral community at our annual flagship event Integral Spiritual Experience.
By sharing a vision of integral spirituality with leading edge religious, cultural, political and academic communities around the globe.

Though we have a passionate vision of what can become, we understand that your participation is the most important part of the story. Won’t you join us?

All of the great spiritual traditions teach that true enlightened consciousness must express itself in radical commitment to alleviate and ultimately end suffering. It is with this deep intention, with a goal of forging more compassionate and understanding ways of knowing and embodying the wisdom of all of humanity’s relationships to Spirit, that Integral Life Spiritual Center has been formed.

All ways love, over and over,

Dr. Marc Gafn

Diane Hamilton

Sally Kempton

Robb Smith

Ken Wilber

P.S. There are many ways to get involved with ILSC if you wish to do so. You are the key to advancing integral spirituality in the world.

Learn more about

Be there with the Global Integral Community at the {almost sold out} “

Integral Spiritual Experience

Giving in Love: Part Nineteen: Marc Gafni

Giving in Love: Part Nineteen:

Marc Gafni

April 22, 2009

Give To Them a Story For those, who even after the last few blogs, are still unsatisfied and find it too painful to give in an undiscriminating way, I ask a simple question: how would you like to be asking for money on the street? Much as we honor the holy beggar, it certainly is not the easiest way to make a living. To be a lover, you have to engage in the spiritual practice of harchavat hadaat. Literally translated, this means the “expansion of consciousness.” Taught by 19th century mystical master Nachman of Bratzlav, it involves widening your narrow field of vision to incorporate more of the other person’s story. Say that someone smashes into your car from behind. You jump out of the car and furiously race to the door of the offending vehicle. Fuming, you open the door, see the other driver and exclaim, “MOM!!” Your anger cools in an instant because the faceless offender has recovered a personality. Mom! She has a story. When you open yourself up to her story, your feelings of love and empathy overcome your anger. You want to give and support her. You have been transformed into a lover. So when you encounter the beggars on the streets of Jerusalem, you have to open your self to their stories. Imagine them as a relative, a child, or a person on their dying day, or a person on their birth day! Vision in a millisecond the imaginary details to their story. Allow them to have face! this is what it means to realize your enlightenment – you can have the deepest kensho in the world, realize what the buddhists call emptiness, – if you cannnot deeply feel the place of another- the pain and the joy…. – then you are just lost in your narcissism -sadly frozen in the absolute. To learn that level of radical empathy is the true work of the divine human being who seeks realization or even just simple decency and integrity.

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Giving in Love: Part Eighteen: Marc Gafni

April 20, 2009

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On Being Charitable and Being Choosy… “One Second,” I say before my tourist friend can run away, “Let me tell you a story of the Great Master Zusia of Onipol.” Zusia had a disciple who would visit him occasionally, and donate funds towards his support. The disciple became very wealthy. At some point, the disciple discovered that Zusia himself had a master whom he would go visit, the Master of Mezritch. Reasoned the disciple, surely the master is greater than the student. And with that he stopped visiting and supporting Zusia, switching his allegiance to the master. From that point on his business began to fail, getting worse and worse as time went by. Realizing this was no coincidence, he went to visit his original master Zusia. “Holy master,” he said, “surely even you agree that your teacher from Mezritch is greater than you. So why should I not be allowed to give my support to the higher master!?” Zusia responded with a twinkle in his eye. “You see, my son, God is our shadow. His dealings with us are but an imitation of our dealings with others. As long as you gave without judging first to see if the person was worthy or not, as long as you would support someone as undeserving as Zusia, the universe imitated you and was willing to support you without checking exactly what you deserved. But once you became selective and began to support only those who you thought deserved it, the universe also became more selective in choosing where it send its support.”

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Giving in Love: Part Seventeen: Marc Gafni April 19, 2009

Giving in Love: Part Seventeen:

Marc Gafni

April 19, 2009 There is a teaching that if you have a hundred different coins, you should give them to a hundred different people. Even though the money will have little real life impact on the recipient’s economic reality, the very act of giving to every hand you meet could have real life impact on your reality. Even small change makes for change. Simply put, giving is at least as much for the giver as it is for the receiver. ‘The rich need the poor more than the poor need the rich. Unfortunately, neither is conscious of it.”

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Giving in Love: Part 16: Marc Gafni

April 16, 2009

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One of the most counter intuitive dictums of Hebrew wisdom reads “Greater is one who does out of command –(metzuveh) than one who does even though he is not commanded (Eino metzuveh).” Logically, the opposite should be true. Is not the one who does good because of his own moral feeling superior to the one who gives out of a sense of obligation. Respond the wisdom masters – No!

Imagine that one person encountered a poor man on the street and was greatly moved by her plight. Even though he had given her ten percent of his income to charity that year- his heart was so moved that he gave him a hundred dollars. The next year the same two people encounter each other on the street. The poor man is still poor.

This time however our Good Samaritan is in a foul mood and barely has room in his heart to notice the poor man. However he remembers that he has not yet fulfilled the Tzedaka – ‘Just’ Giving – obligation of ten percent of his income. So he perfunctorily gives him a hundred dollars out of a sense of obligation.

Which act of giving was higher? Primarily the second. For in the first case the giving welled up out of his separate sense of self. I who am fortunate will give to you who are not. However in the second case his giving welled up from an essential connection between him and the poor person.

He felt Metzuveh. Usually translated as ‘commanded,’ Metzuveh also has the sense of Tzavtah, meaning ‘To be together with’. In that light let’s re-read the dictum in a beautiful way. “Greater is one who gives out of a sense of Metzuveh –interconnectivity- non dual realization – than one who gives out of sense of’ ‘eyno metzuveh’- disconnection and alienation.

gorgeous day to everyone …..

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Giving in Love: Part Fourteen: Eros and Agape: Marc Gafni:April 14, 2009

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In the language of the Kabbalists, giving moves you from narrow constricted consciousness to mochim de gadlut, expanded consciousness. This is critical to understand because what it means is that agape and philia lead to Eros. In the Greek thought which formed much of Western consciousness, agape and philia represent what are generally called the ‘non-erotic loves’ of giving, caring and concern. In Hebrew mysticism, agape, philia and eros collapse into one erotic continuum. Care, concern, and giving are inextricably intertwined with passion and ardor. Once you give to a person you always start to love them. Is there is someone you simply do not like at work, but have to ‘put up with’ all day? Bring them a present. And witness the subtle shift in your own, not to mention their, attitude. To be a lover, then, means to be there even when the feeling is not. In the good months and the bad months, in the heat of passion and in the cold dreariness of life at its toughest. When you say “I love you,” what you are really saying is that you will stay even on the days when you can’t fully access the depth of that passionate love. To stay does not mean to stay in whatever the context of yesterday may have been. It may mean to stay married, it may not. To stay means to stay open, loving and committed to decency, integrity, goodness, forgiveness; to stay means I will not move to hurt or de-humanize you. To stay means we will be deep friends and family forever and you will not let the wounds of love turn you into a murderer even if i can get away with in public. To stay I means I will always love and give towards your highest unfolding even if we have not stayed “together”. That is the gift of true love. Eventually it is only in the dynamic of commitment that the heart opens in a way that outlasts the vagaries of time and the fickleness of human emotion.

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Giving in Love: Part Thirteen: Marc Gafni

April 12, 2009

Give First, Love Follows

“Giving is not only the litmus test of love; it also leads to love,” teaches the holy Baal Shem Tov. “If you want to be loved, be a lover.” Raised on the love ethic of western capitalism, we view love as the necessary prerequisite for caring. Only when you love someone will you be ready to really give to them.

For the Hebrew mystics, it is precisely the opposite. Don’t wait to be a giver until you are a lover. Be a giver and you will become a lover.

In the act of giving to an other, you invest yourself – literally! – in them. They become, in a small way, part of you. This allows you to focus on them in a far more concentrated and sustained fashion.

Focus creates attention and listening, which is, of course, the essence of perception. Since love is at its core a perception, then giving is both the essential expression of loving as well as the path to loving.

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Giving in Love: Part Eleven: Marc Gafni

April 7, 2009

In Every Detail

One of the most gorgeous things about relationship is that it is so clear that every small act of attention and giving weaves another strand in the fabric of the relationship. There is no such thing as a casual favor or fruitless giving. Everything goes into the mix. Every act is deposited into that great bank account of love. In fact, in every interaction of our lives with whomever, whenever, about whatever, worlds are at stake. Loving or non-loving responses in the most random of situations can change the course of your life. #Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. –Richard Feynman, physicist “Two men were sitting together on a train traveling from Warsaw to Lemberg. A long ride…one older and the other younger. The younger asks the older very politely, “Excuse me, sir, could you tell me what time it is?” No answer. So the younger man repeats the question, this time a little louder. Again no answer. A third time he repeats the question, but this time it is already clear he is being deliberately ignored. He is a bit hurt since he cannot understand what he did to deserve such rude treatment. “What, sir, could I have done to insult you so that you ignore my simple question?” he asks. “You haven’t done anything, son,” comes the response, “but there is no way I am going to give my daughter to a guy who doesn’t even have a watch.” When we were young, we simply didn’t get the story. When we are older we can already fill in the missing dialogue! The older man says to the younger man…If I tell you what time it is we may start talking. If we start talking we will get to know each other, maybe even become friends. If we become friends I will invite you to my home for dinner. If you come for dinner you may come on an evening when my daughter is home. If she is home the evening you come, you may fall in love with each other and want to marry. And I will not let my daughter marry a man who does not even own a watch! It was only when we got older that we realized that from this initial exchange would ensue a conversation and then a relationship that could lead to the younger man marrying the older man’s daughter. Every small act potentially creates or destroys world of love.

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Giving in Love: Part Seven: Marc Gafni

March 31, 2009

A Light Motif

Now the core intuition of all the great systems of the spirit is that love is captured best by the image of light. Kabbala teaches that the light which fills the vessels of creation is love.

The word Torah itself – an all-encompassing Hebrew term meant to refer to all divine wisdom – means light. (Interestingly, the Hebrew word for light – Orah – is also the basis for the English word aura.)

This idea is not just a nice image;

it has fantastic implications for the nature of giving. Usually, when I give you something, it means that you now have it and I do not.

Not so in reference to light and love. One candle can light a hundred candles without losing any of its own brilliance. It is for this reason precisely that light was held to be the incarnation of love.

When you give in love, much like a candle, you are able to illuminate many people without ever losing any of your own luminescence.

Giving love only creates more.

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