My Opinion on the Marc Gafni Situation

Dear John -

As one of the people I spoke with at length about our shared experience of Marc, you have my gratitude for the courage and wisdom of your expression. Leadership carries extraordinary privileges and extraordinary responsibilities, and I am heartened to see that integral organizations and leaders are expressing the clarity and wisdom that people rightfully expect of them.

Gassho.

Loving regards,

Robb

--

Robb Smith

http://twitter.com/RobbSmith

Thank you, another very balanced post. Marc should not be upset with this.

"And, yes, we really do need to figure out sexuality and this spiritual teacher stuff from a healthy Second Tier perspective."

Surely a third tier perspective would serve better ?

This is worth a read. 
http://integrallife.com/member/jun-po-kelly-roshi/blog/defense-promiscui...

I have to a agree with one part of Marcs response,  that we as a society have a collective sexual shadow. Among the many and it does need addressing  I'd be curious to see what David Deida had to say.

Namaste

Al

I feel strongly that integral needs to integrate ethics and integrity much better. I also have felt for some time that people would have to be in some very deep kind of denial to accept Marc as a leader or teacher. But my view towards Marc personally shifted as I read your post. I feel that the door is wide open for him, at this point, to become a humble repentant ordinary person. I think I will extend forgiveness and empathy to him when he grows into this role.

Abuse free zone please

This anger was really not intended to be directed at you like that.

What I meant, in part, is simply that there is no need to create enemies where there are none. From what I can see, there is no one attacking you, personally, save, myself, in a way, right now, and for this, I apologize. But I am harmless. There is no one to defend against.

At any rate, may god bless.

Regards to you, my brother.

Barbara, I've a both/and feeling about this.  There is part of me that wants this issue to go away as each post seems to pour salt in a gaping wound.  What's the point, I wonder.   Is it really necessary for another teacher to offer one more personal experience?   

Another part of me is shaped and informed by years in the Catholic tradition in which an attitude of clerical hubris, lies and defensiveness damaged the integrity and good work of a lot of decent people.  Whether it's fair or not, we had to attend to the fallout.  Communities of disillusioned and disheartened people wanted answers to their questions.  The press wanted a juicy story.  I can remember fielding calls from the press, parents of kids I taught, parish staff members and people terrified to tell their stories for fear of repercussion.  While the characters and back story are different, I walked away with a powerful sense of how the actions of one leader can have a seriously adverse influence on the dynamism and efficacy of a community.

I've not met Marc Gafni nor been exposed to his work and from where I stand, this unfolding of events impacts more than just Marc and those with whom he is in relationship.  It goes beyond questions of post conventional relationships, sex and spirituality.   It affects an entire community of teachers and practitioners who must deal with the personal, social and financial repercussions long after the tabloids have gotten bored, moved on and gone home. 

With all of that said, I appreciate your calling out any zealot tendencies towards self-righteousness that each of us has lurking in the shadows.  It reminds me to pause and consider the impact of anything I post or write.  Marc's a human being worthy of kindness and simple decency.   His work has often been a sort of wellspring for a lot of people who were in a spiritual desert.   

As all this unfolded, I looked at Marc's site to read some of his work and was impressed by what I read.  He quoted a poem by Charles Reznikoff which struck me:

Not for victory

But for the day's work done

As well as I was able;

Not for a seat upon the dais

But at the common table.

At the common table we all are…his story is ours and ours is his.  

He then writes, "We are invited to intimacy with the textured surfaces and complex patterns of our story..rupture and dislocation mark the spirit-scapes of our lives.  In retelling my story I connect the dots, patterns emerge, images begin to crystallize and some haze of unconscious living is dispelled. I begin to know myself--and so begin to know God."   

In this time of rupture and dislocation, perhaps we all are knowing ourselves better and more intimately.  And your post reminds me that kindness is a good thing.    Leslie 

Thank you so much, John, for your statement, as courageous, balanced, to-the-point and humble as always. I had been awaiting your statement with some impatience, and am shocked to read about the reasons why it took you so long. I do hope and pray (not to God under that name, but as Tibetan Buddhist, I have also a good address for my second person prayers) that all comes out well. I pray for you, that you will not have to pay too dearly for you courage and honesty, I pray for Marc that he will take your advice and own up to the results of his actions, I pray for all the women involved and their families, I pray for all the other teachers - integral or otherwise - to get the message, I pray for the integral community to take this as an opportunity for further understanding, growth and maturity.

One of the highlights of this years integral conference in Germany for me was the world spirituality prayer led by Marc in a catholic chapel. Somehow, the memory and power of that is in no way diminished by the recent events.

Love...

Hanna from Germany

Keeping it alive, eh Robb? “A dear friend with a wise and compassionate perspective” you say in your Facebook post announcing this latest missive? My God, look how you’re treating him. With each post, pro or con, another slice out of Marc’s heart. Jon, you say that your post constitutes the “wounds of a friend” that are faithful? Oh please. The wounds of a friend are constructive in nature – that is what the proverb means. There is nothing, absolutely nothing constructive about what is happening to Marc right now. And I dare say nothing constructive happening to the women involved either. The use of incendiary labels like “dysfunctional, manipulative, narcissist” betray your real motives – and they are not compassionate. This helps no one; least of all the “integral community.” Justice has been sacrificed in favor of a sensationalism permeated by competitive overtones. Robb says he determined a year ago that ISE 3 would be the last partnership with iEvolve. Let’s see, do you suppose there might be two sides to that story? It’s been appalling to watch as one after another “integral leader” piles on in the name of honesty, when in truth each post is a complex weave of personal protection, betrayal, honest disagreement and yes, honest concern. There are no honest brokers here. I have avoided writing because now, neither am I. Whether you’re on the “pro Marc” side or the con, this episode is destroying trust and with it any semblance of community.

So how about this? From this moment forward, everybody be quiet. No more posts. No more comments, except to say who in the integral community you would trust to listen objectively to all that has happened, testify to what they see, and how they believe the community might proceed in regard to the situation. Right now, anything else is the pot calling the kettle black.

--

dear john,

I am sending you much love as always. 

Let's for now clarify a couple of things. First, when I talked to you before you posted it was in front of a forum of people, one of whom was listening closely to the conversation. There was no threat of  a lawsuit not any sort of other threat. So let's be gentle and accurate here my friend.

What I said to you was that you were missing lots of information in all four quadrants and that you should not post until you had really heard all perspectives in all four quadrants.  

Sally Kempton whom you imply supported your realization that you needed to post in fact did the precise opposite. She spend ninety precious minutes when she was exhausted talking to you, explaining that your characterization of me was highly inaccurate. Not only did that not dissuade you but you imply that she supported your post. A little bit slippery here my friend. 

To the point. I love you John. We have a long context to our relationship which clearly influenced the nature of your post on many levels. The entire context is missing from your post. In that sense your post contains not only content lies but very dramatic and glaring context lies. But let me ignore that for the time being.

Let me address your core point directly. Simple fact. Addiction is one prism. I know it is your favorite prism and the one you like and probably know best.

But it simply does not fit here. I have lived for long stretches of time within monogamous containers. I do not have a problem -thank god - disciplining my sexuality. If I did I would seek help for it without shame.

I am fully curious and passionately interested in what my part was in the contribution system that created this round of internet explosion. It is also clearly the case to any discerning reader that this issue became wildly disproportionate to its true size because the blogosphere blew it up, and then with no small amount of thinly veiled agenda and  malice referred to as a "debacle" and "scandal".  

Strange when the sense of debacle and scandal itself has been created by the very blogosphere players that were describing it as such. The key player in this were each motivated by their own interests and agendas in all four quadrants. 

All of that however does not mean that I am without responsibility. To suggest that would indeed be narcissism on my part. Whatever my part is in the contribution system that created this conversation, I want to own one hundred percent of it. If I have a blind spot that did not see the potential danger in the complexity of my relationships nor the vulnerability and pain engendered by privacy and containers then I want to see it and own it.

All that said, it is the motivations that are still presently hidden from the public eye that blew this up way beyond any reason, decency and proportion. Sad to say. 

I have written a much longer and more nuanced response to your post John which I will send you before I post so you can tell me if I got anything wrong. 

In the meantime I am sending you much love.

Marc Gafni

Thank you John, Thank you.

You, Robb, Tami, are giving the example of leadership in this chaos. 

I think this is a crucial moment in the history of Integral.

And I see even more than what is evident at stake here:

In the background, there is a struggle, between an ultra-liberal, ultra-post-modern (SDi green + red)
Meme that calls itself Integral and sing the same old song we hear from free-love hippies since the
60's ("doing whatever you want and nobody telling you what to do as long as it
gives you pleasure since who are they to judge me?"), advertising UNconventional as POST-conventional, while committing the most basic developmental fallacy of transcend and EXCLUDE (exclude traditional perspectives, exclude conservative valid concerns, exclude psychosexual research, exclude wisdom traditions advice, basically exclude anything that otherwise could stop them for doing what give them pleasure)...and a true Second Tier perspective that transcends but includes both traditional, conservative, and liberal views, and can act from a second simplicity where things are actually pretty simple to discern again, and where self-sacrifice for others is always more important than self-pleasure or self-anything, for that matter.

Let's remember something important: Green is capable of taking myriads of perspectives into account, as much as Second Tier levels can.  

Taking multiple perspectives does not define Second Tier.

In fact, it is a basic quality of Post-Modernism, that is, First Tier thinking. 
Nuance is almost a signature in post-modernists, as is chronic delicacy, lack of boldness, 
moral blurriness, and judgment-phobia. The typical depiction of Green is taking a myriad of
perspectives into account, and then getting overwhelmed by the complexity of them, without any ability to integrate them and synthesize them into simpler clear views, what disables any capacity for action, let alone, leadership or radical change.

What do define Second Tier, on the other hand, is the capacity to RANK those perspectives and discern the ones that are BETTER, to recognize the UNIVERSALS underlying them that apply no matter when, where, or to whom, and to ACT and LEAD others through an almost spontaneous integration of all these.

In my opinion, both Robb and John posts demonstrated this "seemingly simple", "seemingly non-nuanced", on-the-money second-simplicity kind of thinking.

Not that they are not capable of more complex elaboration. It is just not needed.

From a true Second Tier perspective, things look pretty simple in this otherwise very obvious and simple case.

And following the voting, I am so happy to see that things are been made clear and people are
able to see what is Green in Integral drags and what is Integral fighting lovingly toward Integrity
and Purity of Heart.

Love

Federico

 PS: on a more lighter note, I have been thinking yesterday that there is only one hero that can save us now...
from the far west, coming in his old tired horse...Wyatt Erp...is your time to speak!!

PS2: a couple of people have criticized the emphasis on "sexual stuff" instead of on the dishonesty and lack of intelligence in choosing. I think all is important. If we cannot define a second tier framework for healthy, safe sexual relationships, then we will find once and over again, both in teacher student relationships and all relationships, dissapointment, betrayal, and lack of moral development disguised as Integral or Post-Conventional something. We HAVE to come up with our own, Second Tier, moral framework for judgements in the Sexual-Relationship arena, define our role models, and define our Experts. I suggest Masters and to some degree the work of Ucick is a good start. 

--

Marc Gafni

"The best way to approach this story is to become Abba Moses. Contemplate the story for a few years. If you're lucky, the story will end up interpreting you."

http://integrallife.com/member/greg-mayers/blog/3rd-tier-response?show=all

Heres to Creative Movement in Stillness.
Namaste

Al

This is ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

totally, utterly, completely, absurdly,

inappropriate.

But that's just my humble opinion.

Kolberg's Moral Development scheme is flawled. It has been demonstrated wrong in longitudinal 
stadistical research. People do NOT move from one stage to the next. Often times they DO go
back to "previous" stages. And the whole idea of stages was challenged as a whole by those
research. The research that support him was made on different adults tested at different ages -cross section-, but
not following the development of same adults over time -longitudinal- (contrary to the usual
depiction Ken uses about developmental studies). 

On the other hand, Kolberg's moral development is actually just moral THOUGHT development,
not moral behavior, as he himself clearly noted.

Meaning, a person with post-conventional morals still can be a Hitler. A person with pre-conventional
morals still can be a Mother Teresa. Because what makes us moral, ultimately, has nothing to do with thought.

Enter the spiritual metaphisical view, the only one that can explain morals (Kolberg, and Wilber, doesn't).

It is very basic: In the subtlest level of mind, that you can enter on Emptyness of Time Samadhi, you deconstruct
the construct of time and so abide in a dimension where all events, past present and future are there present
as potentials. Many of us have experienced this and any serious meditator get to this level of mind at some point in their practice.

Althought not every person has concious access to that dimension, EVERY BEING is connected to it.

In other words: every body knows, uncosnciously, everything that will happen in the future.

THAT is the basis of morals. In Actuality, when you are going to commit any karmik action (any action) you KNOW, in your deepest heart of hearts, the repercusions it will have, simply because they are not really going to happen in the future, they are happening right now.

Althought not everybody can SEE those repercusions in terms of a vision like shamans can, everybody can have a "moral feel" of the repercusions of their actions.

This is the simple feeling that we have as kids when we kill an insect for the first time.

You don't actually have the knowledge to know you are killing, or even understand what life means.

And yet it is clear for you that you are doing something BAD. Why? because it is not true that the insect is going to die in the future or that you are going to learn about death in the future. The truth is that everything is happening at once. It is mindblowing. there is no time.

Moral Behavior, hence, can only be measured in terms of how honest we are with ourselves in terms of that information that we ALL HAVE about what will happen with this or that action we are undertaking, AND the capacity for STOPPING us from doing it, no matter what, if it would cause harm.

The more you follow this moral intuition the better you get at it and the stronger the perception gets. 

Integral doesn't understand morals. Integral directions on it are fundamentally wrong.
Ken's idea of basic moral intuition just doesn't work, simply because morals are not about moral "thought", it is not about thinking, or taking more and more perspectives.

A kid of 4 years can be more moral than a so called third tier master, regardless of the amount of
perspectives they can hold in their cognition.

Morals are EASIER than all of that. Is just purity and innocence of mind and heart. (Sounds Green? it is actually Turquoise)

Why? because with innocence, transparency, you are ABLE TO HEAR that voice, or in other terms, you are able to "see" those seemingly future events happening, and then see the bad seed in your potential action.

Purity, as a capacity once you know that, to stop yourself from that. Wanting to be Pure of action.

That basic desire of wanting to be pure that changes everything is the very basis for a Buddha or a Jesus Christ.

Together this is what morals is about.

That's why, the more we get into theory, lines, levels, and discourse, the more we get further and further away from resolving this.

FEEL into what happened. And you will know Marc is on the dark side right now, not that he IS that, but he is TAKEN by that.

And if someone calls that higher levels of consciousness, I'm sorry but is the duty of the ones that are truly higher to set things correctly.

That may include the use of certain forces, like firing from the Integral ecosystem anyone who does not understand this simple moral disease.

I prefer a cleaner, smaller integral group than a broad, toxic integral scene.

Let's just remember that Ken will pass away sooner or later. If this circus is what will represent his views then,
we are lost.

Love,