Integral (Sex)Fascism in Germany?

Hello Schach  (and Layman, Joe, and Stanley),  

I would like to address the questions you raised:

> What SPECIFICALLY were you guys concerned about when you made this rule?
> What were you imagining could happen or might happen?
> What were the dangers you felt compelled to address?
> Are we or are we not creating in Germany a morality police under the rubric of Integral?

Let me first repeat that, although I am using the “we” pronoun, I am speaking for myself, although I think that I am also covering at least in part the perspectives of my colleagues and friends at Integrales Forum.  

When we say:
“Until further notice, IF as an organization as well as individual members of the board will not take part in CWS and IF will not work together with Marc Gafni as a spiritual teacher. The main reason for our decision is our conviction that the leader of such an organization as CWS should exhibit a high degree of integrational capabilities in order to bring different religious and spiritual movements and personalities of the world together.”
 

… this is not so much a rule but a decision. We are not saying that teachers generally should or should not do this or that. What we are saying is that FOR US (a small group of people) it does not work, and give our reasons why we think it does not work. We should have made this more clear, I think.

In one of his statements Marc says: “… If that is the case then it is not impossible that at some point I will date women who are in my circle. If that feels uncomfortable to someone in principle that it might not be wise to join my circle of teaching.”

We feel uncomfortable, for personal reasons, but – much more important – for cultural reasons.

In Germany there were, and still are, massive cases of abuses over decades coming to the surface. This goes for clerical authorities, and this goes for pedagogic authorities. Pedagogic institutions with a high reputation, representing an important branch of “leading edge” pedagogic (“Reformpaedagogik”), were only recently found to be places of systematic abuse over many years. For some reason the victims were silent, but they are no longer. And this is not a hysteria, it is a sad fact, and our government is giving priority to this, and rightly so. 

So the public is alert, with all that goes along with that: overreactions, missing distinctions, lumping everything together, shadow projections, false accusations, sweeping statements … With all that in the cultural background, for many people there is no doubt that there should be a clear distinction between a teacher-student relationship and a love relationship. Therapeutic, pedagogic and spiritual organizations have rules where this is mandatory.

When we invited Marc and Diane in 2010 to our annual conference, we received many mails from our partners, friends, members and people we did not know, with severe critique and personal storys. We gave our arguments and explained our invitation. Some people turned away from us. A good collegue and therapeut, which we invited to the conference for a workshop, cancelled his appearance.
Marc and Diane were here, and we enjoyed them in person and their teachings.
We invited Marc again in 2011 to our conference, and again had a wonderful time.

Then came new information, and the dissussions, which were never ended, rose up again. So we began to evaluate the new information and arguments, and got involved into many hermeneutic circles.

The most difficult and painful part is to know the truth. When we talk and listen to one party, the situation seems to be clear. When we talk and listen to the other party, the situation seems to be clear again, but both situations don’t fit together. The truth is somewhere in between, and, even more difficult, it may also be at one of the two ends. A decision has to be made, and it will probably do injustice to one of the parties involved, or even to both. This situation, we believe, is not only our situation, but the situation of anyone in cooperation with Marc and the CWS, except the extremes at the two poles of the argument (“its all the students” fault or “its all the teachers fault”).   

Taking this all together, and in consideration of the ongoing controversy and Marcs statement quoted above, we decided to leave his circle of teaching.

So we came to our statement regarding our collaboration with Marc and the CWS, and, allow me to repeat this again, this applies only to us, Integrales Forum, in our cultural and social situation, and for today. We never say that this is something everybody should do, and of course we don’t say this is integral, or an integral sample. But I can say that we tried to cover as many perspectives as possible, we studied a lot of material carefully, and we discussed the situation with people from both ends of the spectrum. We also looked for shadow projections in ourselves, and continue to do so.

And of course, there are places, groups and “cultures” in Germany where Marc can teach, who have a different perspective than we have. We are just one place, and we are not the only place with integral ambitions in Germany, and never claimed to be that. We are doing the best we can to promote integral, and are more than happy if people are doing it better than us - in Germany or elsewhere. We want to bring Integral forward and hopefully not our egos or restrictions that hinder and restrict the lifeflow. And of course, we can be wrong and make mistakes.     

Let me add my personal view to this: I am a guitar teacher, and I know a little bit about a teacher-student relationship and a “sangha” of teacher and students. I keep my private sphere and my public sphere with my students as two distinct things. I love my relationships with my students, and I believe the main reason why my students come to me is not my technical authority, but something in the inner quadrants. The teacher-student We is a wonderful thing, or at least it can be. I draw a distinct line between teaching and intimate relationship, because that works best for me, and it is part of my social responsibility. But again, this is only my rule, and I would never impose that on anyone else.

Thank you Schach for your questions, which helped me a lot to clarify this for myself. 

Michael