This is an almost unedited and unplugged version of Dr. Gafni’s conversation from the previous weeks of One Mountain, Many Paths broadcast. Thus, the style of the piece is the spoken word and not a formal essay. Dr. Marc Gafni explains what is meant by Dharma and Yoga of Cosmo-Erotic Humanism and Homo Amor.
Only changing your story changes your Reality. Changing the source code story that animates and drives Kosmos, is the only thing that can change Reality.
Change the story and change reality. Change your story and change your reality. But your story is rooted in a larger universe story. That universe story which you hold, sometimes consciously and more often unconsciously, fosters your narratives of identity, your narrative of communion, your narrative of power, your narrative of desire and your narrative of purpose. Of course by “change your story” we do not mean to arbitrarily change your story. We mean to up level your story. To up level your Universe Story and all of the implicit narratives that flow from it. That is what we mean when we talk about evolving the source code of consciousness and culture. Which itself is the evolution of love. When we up level we make three core moves.
First, we integrate new information that has not been on the table.
Second, we integrate the best validated insights from all the major streams of wisdom.
Third, when we weave them together with the time honored and eternal law of reality, drawn from the interior and exterior sciences, we begin to notice, to disclose a new pattern of intimacy in Kosmos.
The new pattern of Intimacy is a new pattern of coherence. It is that new pattern, which becomes the matrix for enacting a new pattern for civilization. It is in that precise sense, we draw the following three conclusions, each of which are self-evidently true in light of the previous sentences.
First, a new story is a new configuration of intimacy. Second, reality is evolution. Third, evolution is the evolution of intimacy. Or slightly different, reality is the progressive deepening of intimacies.
The Moral Imperative to Tell The New Story
At this moment in which we’re poised between utopia and dystopia, the overwhelming moral act is to tell the New Story. The New Story is the expression of the Eros of Kosmos. The Eros of Kosmos, as it always does, is bringing together separate parts into larger wholes. The Kosmos is trying to tell a story.
We’re at a very particular point in history. We’ve entered the Anthropocene, where human action will shape our future. We are telling the New Story. In doing so evolution becomes alive in us. We become aware that evolution moves in us. That’s called “Conscious Evolution.” Conscious evolution does not mean that evolution awakens through us. In some very real sense the self organizing intelligence of evolution has always been awake. Rather, conscious evolution means that we become conscious of the core truth of our identity. We are evolution in person. We are the storyteller and we are lead actors in the story.
The Next Step in Conscious Evolution
The next step of conscious evolution is the realization that reality is not only a fact it is also a story. But it is not an ordinary story. It is a love story. But it is not an ordinary love story. It is an evolutionary love story. Or what we often call an Outrageous Love story. Outrageous Love is not love as mere human sentiment, but love as the heart of existence itself. Reality is an evolutionary love story. Reality is an Outrageous Love story. The universe feels and the universe feels love. And when we awaken to our true nature, we will feel that Evolutionary Outrageous Love moving through us. We realize we are not only Homo sapiens. We are awakening to our truth as Homo Amor.
That’s not a fanciful conjecture. It’s not made-up. It’s actually the deepest understanding of Reality we have. This new story is what we call the Dharma.
The Dharma of Cosmo-Erotic Humanism and Homo Amor.
It’s only the Dharma and Yoga of Homo Amor that will evolve Reality to its next level of culture and consciousness, which is the next level of love. Dharma without Yoga, won’t take us home. And Yoga without Dharma won’t take us home. The new Dharma must be the best story of coherence and value ever told. The new Yoga must be the best practice of intimate coherence and value ever enacted. Through Dharma and Yoga transform into the new human and the new humanity. We become Homo Amor. We become the evolutionary love of Kosmos.
What is Dharma and what is Yoga?
So what do we mean by Dharma and Yoga? And why do we need both Dharma and Yoga? Said simply, Dharma means the best story about Reality ever told, based on the best integration of all the leading streams of science – external and internal, exterior and interior sciences – from the traditional period, premodern period, the modern period and the postmodern period. All of those, for the first time in history, woven together in a new whole, greater than the sum of the parts, that tells us where we are. Dharma simply means “the Universe Story,” the story of Reality and all the narratives that implicitly emerge from that universe story.
Dharma is based on a set of First Principles and First Values. Values like Eros, intimacy, the evolution of intimacy, goodness, truth, freedom, fairness.. The First Principles and First Values are the matrix of the New Story, which in turn becomes the matrix for a new pattern of civilization, what we are calling a Global Ethos for a Global Civilization. They’re the building blocks, but they come together in a particular configuration of intimate coherence with a particular plotline. That plotline drives the story.
We can’t transform ourselves without up‑levelling our story or up‑leveling our relationship to our story. If you want to change yourself, you must step out of the old story you’re living in, step out of the way you’ve organized and explained Reality to yourself, and tell yourself a better story of your life. And that story must not be just the personal story of your life. The personal is the Kosmic even as the personal is the political. Your story is part and parcel of the larger universe story.
In your personal life changing your story might mean moving from a victim story, to a story in which you’re a player. But not only a player. Also a participant in the great mystery. Changing your story might mean move out of a materialist story. If you’re stuck in a materialist story, in which Reality is only material and everything else is an illusion, then true meaning making is impossible because meaning itself is an illusion, which your very being and the way you live every day tells you is not true. You must know the simple truth that when you die it’s NOT all over and your life is not a tale told by an idiot full of sounds and furies signifying nothing. Changing your story might also mean moving beyond a fundamentalist story in which God is only or primarily the true God of your religion or even more narrowly of a particular sect of your particular religion.
If you want to change your life, you’ve got to change your story and if we want to change culture, we have to change the story of culture and we can only change the story of culture if we change our global story. Local changes will not take us home anymore. And we cannot change the global story unless we first change the universe story. It’s only the transformation of story, the evolution of story, that evolves Reality.
Change your story, change your world.
[This blogpost is almost all direct quotes from Dr. Marc Gafni collected from the raw transcript of the featured clip below, which is created from the free weekly broadcast of One Mountain, Many Paths, happening live every Sunday at 10 am PT]
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