This post is collected from a raw transcript from our weekly broadcast of One Mountain, Many Paths, quoting Dr. Marc Gafni. It is an articulation of the 'First Principle and First Value of Past, Present and Future.' It speaks of Unique Self as the sense organ which can hear the call of the future.
"We can't we be an Outrageous Lover and a revolutionary without integrating our Unique Self and particularly our Evolutionary Unique Self. The essence of being a Unique Self is to live in radical commitment to the call of our past, present and Future Selves.
The past, present, and future are First Principles and First Values of reality. The past calls us, the present calls us, and the future calls us. We are called by our past self, by our present self and by our future self.
Unique Self incorporates all three.
Each call has a shadow expression and each call has a light expression. Homo Amor responds to the call of the past, the call of the present, and the call of the future, in every instant of eternal time.
Responding to only one or two of these calls generates distortion. Clarity and sacred power only emerge from the full response to the holy trinity of past, present, and future calls.
So what does this actually mean in our lives?
At this point Dr. Gafni pointed towards what he identified as three distinct sciences that respectively address past, present, and future. [FYI: This set of distinctions - past, present and future - will be addressed in more depth in a key chapter of Barbara Marx Hubbard's and Dr. Gafni’s forthcoming book].
The following is a super abridged version of some of these ideas which we will dive into ever more deeply this week.
Psychological Science focuses on the past.
Psychology locates the dysfunction of the present in the trauma of the past. The depth of this realization opened up a massive new space for healing and transformation in the world. The focus was on healing your past story. Any part of the past story that was not addressed and healed was thought to undo the present. It was a great evolutionary leap forward. But it also has a shadow. The shadow of psychology is its obsessive focus on the past. This creates what I want to call "a tyranny of the past." In truth the greatest slave driver is the belief that yesterday determines today.
Enlightenment Science focuses on the present.
Enlightenment science says almost the opposite, "Move beyond your story. Don’t look at the past. Liberation is available in the present. That’s the full power of the eternal now.” And of course this is true.
The problem is just like psychology bypassed the full experience of the eternal present, enlightenment science bypasses the need to address and re-narrative the past. You can not bypass the call of the past.
So both psychological science and enlightenment science are true but partial.
Homo Amor honors both of these dimensions. But Homo Amor introduces a third crucial frame of time. Homo Amor is called by the future. If psychological science demands that we recover a memory of the past to become whole, Homo Amor demands that we recover what I want to call “a memory of the future” to become whole. The science that - at least at its leading edge - hears the call of the future is what is often called evolutionary science, but particularly the specific expression of it as Emergence Science.
Emergence Science focuses on the future.
Emergence science says, "I don’t just have a past self that needs to be reorganized and reconfigured, as important as that is. I don’t just have a present self which I need to enter into its fullness in order to be liberated. I’m actually called by a future self."
I not only have to recover the memory of my past, I have to recover a memory of the future.
It’s only the call of the future that can lift me up. When I’m stuck in the mud, I can’t be pushed out, I have to be pulled out by the vitality of the future that inheres in the present and calls me forward."
We have to take responsibility for the future.
We stand before existential risk and catastrophic risk, which is the risk that there could be no future. If we can’t hear the voice of the future then we naturally cannot take responsibility for the future and consequently there may well be no future. It is that simple.
The nature of existential risk is that it demands that I step out of the present and actually hear the call of the future. We can’t be Homo Amor as individuals or as a community unless we can actually respond to our Future Self. There is an individual communal self and a communal future self. We must hear them both in order to be Homo Amor.
When Homo Amor says, “I am evolution,” it means "I’m responsive to my Future Self, I can feel and hear the tug of the future."
Evolutionary Unique Self is the call of evolution that lives in me.
Unique Self is the antennae, Unique Self is the sense organ which sensually feels into the future and can hear the call of the future.
Evolutionary Unique Self realizes that Hope is a Memory of the Future
Homo Amor is filled with hope, because Homo Amor experiences evolutionary possibility, the possibility of possibility, which is the greatness of tomorrow, the call of the future, our Future Self. That is a First Principle and First Value of Kosmos.
First Principles and First Values are structures of reality, they are the threads that weave the new story which in turn becomes the ground for a Global Ethos for a Global Civilization.
To discover what this First Principles and First Value of past, present and future actually means in our lives, please enjoy this clip below where Dr. Marc Gafni shares three mystical stories that 'unhinge us' from our normal assumptions and invite us to experience this truth of the call of the future, - 'anthro-ontologically’ - inside our own deepest personhood."
This blog post consists of almost all direct quotes from Dr. Marc Gafni, collected from the raw transcript of the featured clip below, which is created from our free weekly broadcast of One Mountain, Many Paths, happening live every Sunday at 10 am PT.
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Receive a deeper transmission of this important teaching by listening to this featured clip.