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 clarifies two pointing out instructions that validate Unique Self and prayer as reality have a "you" experience.
If you really get these next two pointing out instructions, they change everything.
The first pointing out instruction starts with the question: how do you approach yourself; how do you approach the voices in your head? All of us live with the voices in our head. More than we live with anyone else. We're in dialogue, voice dialogue if you will, with the voices in our head. And the voices in your head are thinking about one primary subject. They are thinking about you all the time. You and all your voices spend most of their energy thinking about YOU.
Psychology and Enlightenment
Psychology has done very good work in trying to clarify the voices and given them names. My friend and colleague, Professor Richard Schwartz has created an entire system called: Internal Family Systems. In Internal Family Systems, IFS, you learn to access the family of voices inside you, and you speak to them and ask them questions. Richard’s process is deeply related to an earlier process that Hal and Sidra Stone created, called Voice Dialogue. You access the voices of the Protector and the Controller and the Wounded Child and the Innocent One, and you talk to and as these voices. Walt Whitman was not wrong when he wrote, “I contain multitudes”.
These leading schools of psychology discerns between these voices, listens to them, facilitates you speaking in each of the voices, and even more profoundly: facilitates dialogue between the voices. In doing so you give each voice its due, even as you assure that no single voice unconsciously hijacks the steering wheel of your life. And that is one important way to engage your constant thinking about yourself. Discern between the different voices, distinguish between the healthy and unconscious form of each voice, clarify the voices in dialogue with them and facilitate their dialogue with each other.
But according to Enlightenment teaching all of those voices are problematic. Psychology deals with the voices by making the unconscious conscious. By being aware of them and being in dialogue with them, the voices clarify and even deepen and evolve. That's really important. That's the leading edge of psychology. It’s necessary, but it's insufficient.
In Classical eastern enlightenment, and many modes of Western mystical enlightenment, all those voices are considered to be “monkey mind.” In this view, they do not need to be clarified, but to be transcended. These are the voices of the Separate Self, the ego self, and the False Self. They are not your true authentic essence.
Just like psychology however, enlightenment teaching understands that what all those voices share in common, is that they're thinking about you almost all of the time.
Psychology says clarify and discern your different thought patterns about yourself. Enlightenment says dispel them and the illusion of self they falsely conjure.
But again, what they both agree is, that you're always thinking about yourself all the time.
Psychology says clarify the different voices that are thinking about you.
Enlightenment says you have to move beyond those voices and stop thinking about yourself. You have to actually step out and feel the wider world.
Classical mystical enlightenment is making an incredibly important contribution. Psychology is making an incredibly important contribution. We need both of them. But both are insufficient.
Principle of non rejection
One of the core principles of the new universe story, that we call CosmoErotic Humanism, is what we refer to in the dharma as the principle of non-rejection. That means that fundamental universal human experience of reality and self, virtually always are holding some vital and even sacred quality. There is also a spark of holiness in all of the broken vessels of human experience. It is the principle of non-rejection that runs through all of Leanord Cohen’s lyrics but especially his most well known.
it doesn't matter which you heard,
there’s a blaze of light in every word,
the holy or the broken Hallelujah
Unique Self Pointing Out Instruction: Your Obsession With Yourself Is God's Obsession with You
As Separate Self, that's the first of the Five selves, you should do the psychology work, that's really important. As Separate Self, you clarify your story. As True Self, as in the Classical Mystical Enlightenment, you move beyond your story. You live in no story, you're one with consciousness. True Self means the singular that has no plural. There you do the work of dispelling the voices as having no genuine ontological reality. You transcend the voices into your true identity as consciousness. True Self. But actually, you got to move even beyond True Self.
True Self is the seamless coat of the universe in which you are a part. It is the impersonal beyond the personal. But beyond True Self is Unique Self. Unique Self is the personal beyond the impersonal. Unique Self is consciousness plus personal. It is as Unique Self that you realize the depth of the truth, that in fact you're always thinking about you. But as Unique Self that's not a problem. It's not a pathology, as psychology so often terms it. It's not ignorance as enlightenment theory - much of mystical teaching - suggests. Not at all. Now open your hearts friend and let me share with you, with your permission - if your heart is really open!
Ready?
You're always thinking about yourself because God is always thinking about you.
Your thinking about yourself IS God thinking about you.
Your obsession with yourself is God’s/Goddess’ obsession with you.
The reason you're utterly focused and always thinking about you, is because Divinity, the Kosmos, in her personal face, is always screaming: “YOU, YOU, YOU! I'm madly in love with you. I'm not just in love with you, I'm MADLY in love with you!”
That's what Rumi writes about all the time correctly. And it's what the Kashmir Shaivism mystics understand correctly. And it's what the interior scientists of Hebrew wisdom understand in their deepest realization correctly. Divinity, the personal face of all of essence, knows your name. The Infinity of Intimacy is madly in love with you, and is thinking about you all the time.
You are a thought form in the mind of God.
So here’s the pointing out instruction.
Don't think about it, just feel it directly.
Your thinking about yourself all the time, is God thinking about you all the time.
When you are thinking about yourself, you are eavesdropping on God thinking about you.
In that realization loneliness disappears.
Your self-obsession is the self-obsession of Self, with a capital S, thinking about yourself. Because your Self participates in the Self of Kosmos. That's what “Tat Tvam Asi - Thou-Art-That” means.
Not just you as consciousness, but your holy and your broken Hallelujah. Everything about you, every detail.
“It doesn't matter what you heard, there's a blaze of light in every word, the holy and the broken Hallelujah.”
Prayer Pointing Out Instruction: The Field of LoveIntelligence Always Hears You
I've shared this pointing out instruction many, many times. Let's hear it as if we're hearing it for the first time. We listen with the ears of an Outrageous flame heart, we listen for wisdom, not information. It's not just information, we want wisdom. As Hebrew mystic Art Green writes beautifully, the Tree of Knowledge needs to be connected to the Tree of Life. We've become all about information. We split the Tree of Knowledge from the Tree of Life. The split between information and wisdom is reenacting the fall in the Garden of Eden. The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life are one.
Here we go. Listen with the ears of wisdom. Bypass all of the channels of mere information.
Here is the pointing out instruction:
Can we hear each other talking?
Yes, we can.
Why can we hear each other talking?
Because we have ears? Yes.
But it's not just our ears that hear. We hear because our ears are a function of something larger. You hear through the field of intelligence that is you. We can hear each other talking, because we are each unique expressions of the field of intelligence.
But wait, if you hear me through your intelligence which is indivisible from the larger field of intelligence - could it then be that only you hear me talking and the field of intelligence itself can't hear me talking?
Of course not.
Your intelligence is located in the broader field of intelligence. It's inextricable from the broader field of intelligence.
Just like we are in the physical world inseparable from the larger field. We’re inseparable from the cascading Higgs boson fields and all the forces of the world of physics and then of all of the biosphere. All of it lives in us. Our unique incarnation is inseparable from the larger field of physical incarnation.
So too is our intelligence inseparable from the larger field of intelligence.
That's self-evident in the sciences.
So we can hear each other talking, because Reality having a you-experience, that field of intelligence, hears me as you. But then it is also obvious that the larger field of intelligence hears me as well. Because my intelligence is not separate from the larger field. So I hear you, so does the larger field hear you. The Infinity of Intimacy hears me. And the Infinity of Intimacy desires me uniquely. She's thinking about me all the time. And is always saying to your prayer.. Welcome Home.
That's prayer. That's the holy and the broken Hallelujah.
You're welcome in the Universe
These were two pointing out instructions.
Your obsession with yourself is God's obsession with you. Yes, identify the voices clearly. Yes, liberate the monkey mind. But then, embrace your Unique Self, which is God being you, thinking about you, obsessing about you.
God, the Infinity of Intimacy, the larger field of intelligence hears you.
Both of these together inform you of the same core certainty of being.
You're welcome in the Universe.
You're being held.
You’re being held in every moment.
In every moment, you rest in the arms of She.
Every place we fall, we’re falling into her hands.
We're always welcome.
[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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