A Political Pilgrimage to Your Highest Self

Marc Gafni

Dr. Marc Gafni is a cutting edge evolutionary visionary, a provocative spiritual artist and teacher, academic, public intellectual, author, social activist, and lover of people. He holds a doctorate, written on Nondual Humanism in Kabbalah taken at Oxford University under the co-supervision of Prof. Moshe Idel. He serves as the founding co-director and teacher in residence of iEvolve Global Practice Community. He is also the founding co-publisher of Incorrect Inc, scholar in residence at Pacific Coast Church, and lead teacher at Shalom Mountain Retreat Center Wisdom School.

In this dialogue, Rabbi Gafni explores the source of human conflict by examining the powerful intersection of the personal and the political domains. Having made his home in Israel, the often-violent consequences of that intersection are a daily reality—”the mother of all conflicts” is always waiting just outside his door. In trying to understand the root of this region-wide struggle, an important set of questions to ask is: who are these individuals that are necessarily the vehicle for political action? What is their identity and how does that identity either defuse or perpetuate the crisis in the Middle East and the world?

In his acclaimed book, Soul Prints, Rabbi Gafni encourages readers to “live their story” and identify their “soul print”—the infinitely unique spiritual signature that defines an individual. One’s soul print can be thought of as one’s deepest identity, an identity that includes—but is not limited to—the challenges of living and loving in a community that may be in grave conflict with others. By radically embracing the uniqueness of our soul print, Rabbi Gafni suggests that our personal identity can be recognized as part and parcel of I AMness, the fundamental identity of all.

Resting as that I AMness, one’s soul print isn’t dissolved, it is liberated into its fullest expression, free from the partiality of lesser identities. As Ken puts it, the transcendental identity, or Self, is “personal plus,” not “personal minus.” Rabbi Gafni goes on to use one of the most influential biblical figures to illustrate this point—Moses.

Commonly understood to be the author of Deuteronomy (“These are the words that Moses spoke”), many scholars have said that it was because Moses was so utterly absent, so utterly selfless, that the divine voice flowed through him. Rabbi Gafni suggests otherwise: “It’s not that Moses was so absent that the God-voice flowed through him, it’s that Moses was so present in his Moses-ness, so fully there, that he merged with the divine voice and the divine voice flowed through him”—personal plus, not personal minus.

Rabbi Marc and Ken touch on an enormous range of topics in their pursuit of the understanding of how one’s finite self relates to the infinite Self of I AM. Dancing with the wisdom of Kabbalah, Zen, the Zohar, Nagarjuna, Krishnamurti, Descartes, and other sources, it soon becomes clear why an integral approach to spirituality is so desperately needed. I AM does indeed transcend all lesser identities, but within that divine embrace are the irreplaceable truths of personal self, interpersonal culture, and objective nature.

How relevant is the question of identity when chaos and conflict may erupt at any moment? Well, perhaps fundamentally important, but feel free to listen to this dialogue and decide for yourself...