375 — What’s Missing from Culture: A Model of Self — Answering the Question of, “Who am I?”
We bring together two models of Self formulated in CosmoErotic Humanism
This piece is a lightly edited transcript of a live talk [December 17, 2023] given by Dr. Marc Gafni on the weekly broadcast One Mountain, Many Paths, founded by Gafni and his evolutionary partner Barbara Marx Hubbard. Thus, the style of the piece is spoken word and not a formal essay.
Edited by Elena Maslova-Levin. Prepared for publication by Jamie Long.
Summary: To respond to the meta-crisis, we need a new shared story of value. The foundation for this story of value is a new answer to the core question, Who am I? We need a new model of Self, because the culture now operates off a very narrow and shallow notion of Self.
In this episode, we explore and bring together two models of Self, formulated in CosmoErotic Humanism based on the empiricism of interior wisdom traditions and the advances of exterior sciences.
The Four Selves model includes separate self (the source of Western Enlightenment and all dignities of modernity), True Self (the wisdom of Eastern Enlightenment), Unique Self (which resolves the contradiction between the separate self and the True Self and turns it into a paradox) and Evolutionary Unique Self — a Unique Self which sees themselves in the evolutionary context, as a part of an evolving field of Desire and Eros. It realizes that the True Self is not just the field of awareness (as taught in Eastern wisdom traditions), it is also the Field of Desire — not just being, but also becoming.
The Three Selves model includes psychological self (defined or liberated by the past), mystical self (liberated by presence in the Eternal Now), and future, or evolutionary self (calling in the future).
By holding these models together, we discover that they are the same model: psychological self is a facet of separate self, mystical self is True Self, and Unique Self and Evolutionary Unique Self call in the future.
We need to deepen our understanding of Reality
In order to emerge, in order to transmute, in order to transfigure — in order to actually do what I’m born for, which is to become fully human, which is a process of profound and kind of gorgeous transformation — I have to be able to deepen my understanding of Reality.
I’ve got to deepen my knowing.
I’ve got to deepen my ability to have deep currents of wisdom.
I need to — particularly in this moment of abject confusion in the world — to be in a very deep Dharma, a very deep systemic vision that allows me to understand Reality as deeply as I can — and then, from that place, to hold the mystery.
To be in a Dharma, I have to study. I can’t just consume information in this strange postmodern way, where the postmodern mind says:
- There is no storyline.
- There is no essential, inherent connectivity.
- There is no inherent telos.
- There is no plotline. It’s not going anywhere.
The postmodern mind’s exterior expression is the internet — where you’re reading, and then there’s a link, and you jump to something else. And then there is another link, and your attention is hijacked, and it goes someplace else. And then you do a little doom scrolling, and then you move someplace else, and two hours have gone by.
Everyone recognizes this experience. The internet is structured and built that way. The structure of the internet is the exterior manifestation of the interior experience of the postmodern mind — as opposed to the deep experience of reading —
- where I am following a plotline,
- where I’m on the inside of the inside,
- and I am able to feel Reality, and map Reality, and find my place in it, and sense its fragrance and its plotline, and its direction, and its Eros, and its telos.
Instead I am jumping around, tugged at, pulled to and fro. And the aftertaste is disorientation and confusion.
The structure of the internet is the exterior expression of postmodernity’s deconstruction of a Field of Value. The Field of Value is a narrative, it’s going somewhere, which invites the human being to aspire.
- I’m reaching for something.
- I realize that I’m part of the Field of Evolution, and I want to transform.
And my transformation is real.
My transformation is the aspirational architecture of the cosmos.
When I don’t aspire, when there is no aspiration, then there is no plotline to Cosmos. If there is no aspire, there is conspire, and conspire is conspiracy theory:
Since I don’t see the plotline, but it cannot be that there is no plotline because something must be organizing this, something must be guiding the action (because you can sense that there must be a storyline, you have the sense of storyline deep in your first person), we go to conspiracy theory — we fabricate plotlines.
Not all conspiracy theories are fabricated plotlines. Some conspiracy theories are true, and they’re labeled conspiracy theories to deflect from their truth. But there is also a large body of conspiracy theories that jump from this fact point to that fact point, and then to the next fact point, all of which are independently valid, but do know how to put them together. They sense that there must be a coherent plot line, but can’t find one, and this manifests conspiracy theory.
How to study Dharma
We come together in One Mountain, Many Paths, in this time between worlds and time between stories, and we are committed to actually evolving the source code. We know that the only ultimately effective way to respond to the meta-crisis is to tell a New Story of Value — a new superstructure of Reality, which naturally raises all boats and allows us to see new possibilities of infrastructure and social structures: the way we do technology, the way we do politics. A New Story of Value, this evolution of the cultural source code, redefines economics, redefines technology, redefines politics, and raises all boats. We make this Da Vinci move just like they did in the Renaissance — in that time between worlds and time between stories.
I am — with respect and honor and invitation and love and delight — suggesting that you have to develop a way to study. One of the ways that I study is:
- Step one: I listen deeply. I take it in. I recapitulate it. I review it. I swallow it, so that it’s part of me, I know it. It’s not only knowledge in my mind. It’s not only knowledge in my heart. Like the Rastas say, it’s in my bones. Or as the Hasidic masters say, it’s in my toenails. It’s the knowing that I have in my toenails. It’s in me.
- Step two: Once I’ve swallowed it, once it’s in me, I can add to it. Then I can step out and look at it. It’s in me, and I can say, “Oh, let me add something to that. Let me clarify that. Let me challenge this in order to make this more clear.”
It’s such a beautiful paradox.
On the one hand, I’m fully open to receive. Some people listen, and they’re listening for what’s wrong. They’re actually not listening. They’re not letting it in. They find what they think is a chink in the armor and they lose the capacity to actually listen with mad love — and that’s what we have to do in relationship.
When I listen in relationship, I’ve got to listen with mad love, take it all in, absorb it — and then from that place, okay, now maybe we can evolve it.
This way to listen to Dharma is not an abandonment of self.
- I’m listening from my deepest self. I take it in. It actually reconfigures, reformulates my self. That’s level one. We would call that surrender — full submission, surrender. I swallow the Dharma.
- Then step two would be, I step back. I rewrite it with the same sentences, but I changed the order. That’s the recapitulation. Or I review it carefully. I’ve stepped out and I look at it really deeply. That’s level two. That’s called havdalah. I separate from it, and I look at it, and I reorganize it. I operate on it.
- And then you can do level three. Level three is called sweetness. It means I can actually add something. My voice adds something to the symphony.
I can begin to contribute originally, but I only get that if I do step one and step two. It’s critical. Without that, I can’t become a master. I can’t become a person who knows how to do sensemaking.
It means I can’t become the New Human.
I can’t speak my voice into the Unique Self Symphony.
Deconstruction of value leads to deconstruction of facts
What’s our intention here? We want to evolve the source code of consciousness and culture in response to the meta-crisis in this time between worlds and time between stories.
I talked to my daughter this morning in Israel for about an hour and fifteen minutes. She is deeply enmeshed in the fabric of Israeli society. She is devastatingly good and devastatingly brilliant. And I said to her that I’m blown away by her unbearable grace, both in life, as a parent, and also as a figure in public life in the last several months.
My daughter is eminently practical. She speaks with a matter of fact yet deep ethos, like “This is what needs to be done. This is what’s happening.” She doesn’t talk about things like the Field of Value. And I realized that the ability to have a conversation about Israel, about Gaza — about anything — requires both fact and value. Fact itself is a value: the notion that you have to have the facts before you can say anything about something is itself a value.
Pre-modern reality was all about values, and every religion said we own the values, we have the direct revelation. Facts don’t really matter.
If science was in the way of the value of the church, science was put aside. If discoveries in researching the human body contradicted the dogma of Galen’s medicine — which was the church dogma of medicine — then science was put aside.
It was all about value. Facts didn’t matter.
Along comes modernity, and modernity says, “Value is made up, only facts matter.” David Hume: “You guys made up value. What matters is facts.” And everyone thought, “Okay, now we’ll be able — through facts — to create science, and we’ll create a shared narrative of progress.”
Along comes postmodernity. And really, at its very core, postmodernity says, “Facts don’t matter because a fact is a value, and values aren’t real.” Postmodernity says, “Not only are values contrived, but facts themselves are a value. The notion that facts matter is a value, and values have been deconstructed, so facts don’t matter anymore.”
Now what’s left is the story that you make up.
If all that’s left is the story that you’re making up, and your story becomes your identity, then you cannot create peace.
You cannot create coherence.
You cannot create intimacy.
You cannot create a world that works for everyone.
You cannot create justice. You create a world of radical polarization and unimaginable suffering — what we see in so many parts of the world.
All of that together — this deconstruction of value, which created a deconstruction of fact, which created everybody lost in their own individual story without any ability to see the whole and create a shared story for the whole — generates the meta-crisis. The meta-crisis is the explosion of the planetary boundaries, which undermine the substrate we need to survive based on individual interests. Country against country, company against company — rivalrous conflict governed by win/lose metrics drives the meta-crisis. The inability to create a coherent narrative will inexorably lead either directly to the very death of humanity or to the death of our humanity, the creation of a totalitarian state to create order generated by some version of artificial general intelligence, which in a short period of time locks in its value structure on the whole system. That’s where we’re going.
We need a New Story of Value rooted in both value and fact
The response to that has to be a revolution. It has to be a revolution of a Copernican nature.
We have to completely re-vision how we vision.
The beginning of it is that there actually is a Field of Value, that value is actually real.
We reclaim value rejected by modernity.
- We accept all the reasons that modernity rejected value.
- We get the problem.
- We solve those problems.
- We create a new vision of value.
That’s what we’ve done here at the Center. And the first book on that is coming in about two weeks, called First Principles & First Values.
We have a New Story of Value.
We live in the Field of Value — and from that Field of Value, we can tell this New Story of Value.
And this New Story of Value becomes a global story, a global narrative, a shared story. This story is based on both value and fact together. We begin to have a world narrative. That doesn’t erase diversity, but it’s a context for diversity.
It’s a world story of value as a context for diversity. We can have a conversation.
Dick Nixon and John Kennedy, in the United States, on the opposite side of the political aisle, can be really good friends because they have a shared story of value that they both participate in.
We need a shared story of value rooted both in fact and value that every human being on the planet — from China, to Russia, to Afghanistan, to Israel, to the United States, to South America — can participate in. Everyone has a seat at the table.
And we can actually empirically validate that story. It aligns with our understanding of interiors and exteriors, based on the deepest possible human research that we can do.
And that story evolves. It’s an evolving story. It’s an evolving story of value. It’s the new Tao — but it’s an eternal Tao, which is also an evolving Tao.
That’s our context.
You might think, “Okay, I got that already.”
What happens is, you begin to actually swallow it. When I’m saying it again, I’m not saying it again at you. I’m not giving a talk to you — I am reorienting it in my own heart, mind, body. I do that, just so you know, multiple times during the day and during the night because that’s how I ground myself. I know that there are some people, even some of the people who are my closest students and friends, who think “All right, we’ve heard him talk about that.” They turn off. “Let’s wait for the new thing.”
Mistake! Mistake! Don’t do that.
Every time we recapitulate it, we’re doing something new. We are deepening.
I have originated — I’ve had the privilege, with She, of originating — a lot of this Dharma. And I recapitulate it for myself all the time because this is not a talk. This is not information on a podcast. We are practicing by locating ourselves and articulating this New Story of Value.
To locate myself, I need to know the answer to the question of who I am.
There are two basic ways into that question — two models of self. One we call the Four Selves, and the other we call the Three Selves.
Four Selves
What’s the Four Selves model? I’m going to assume that everyone knows this, but I want to touch it briefly and I want to add something exciting to it.
Four Selves means that when I say Who are you? you can answer in four ways.
Separate self and the Western Enlightenment: I am a puzzle piece
One way is the classic answer given by Western society: I am a separate self.
I’m a good citizen of the world.
The boundaries of me are my skin. I am my skin encapsulated ego. That’s the end of myself.
I can see things, I can know things, but basically I’m a separate self.
The way we often talk about that is: I am a puzzle piece.
There might not even be a puzzle. I’m just an individual puzzle piece. There might be part of me that yearns for the larger puzzle, but that’s an illusion. That’s a delusion. I’m a separate self. That’s what I am. I am a separate self.
That is how the West understands who I am. It’s called an ego self.
To be a healthy ego self, a healthy separate self, is the job of Western psychology. I go back to my early childhood, and I see where I was traumatized, and I try and work out my relationship to my mother, and to my caretakers, and to my culture. I am trying to work out the appropriate flow of energy within my separate self.
That’s the basic answer to the question of self.
That’s the Western understanding of enlightenment. The Western Enlightenment said, “Who are you? You’re a separate self.” — and all dignity, and all goodness, and all truth, and all beauty of modernity come from that realization.
That’s modernity.
And the pre-modern idea that I am part of some larger people is absurd. That’s a violation. That’s what causes suffering. The notion that I’m part of this larger whatever is nonsense.
I am a separate self. I am not intrinsically part of any country, any people. I am a separate self.
That notion of identity was a momentous leap forward in many ways. It created the notion of modern human rights. All human rights are based on this realization: I’m a separate self, and I have distinct boundaries, and I have rights. These are universal human rights. Fantastic.
That’s the separate self.
True self and mystical enlightenment: I am the puzzle
The Eastern Enlightenment said, “No, no, no. There is another level of self. Separate self, that’s not actually who you are. That’s a mistake.” Not just Eastern Enlightenment, but mystical enlightenment across traditions. Mystical enlightenment said, “That’s not who you are. That’s a mistake. That’s an illusion. Who you really are is inseparable from the field.”
What’s the field, the field of what?
In classical Buddhism, let’s say Theravada Buddhism, it’s the field of awareness, True Self.
I am inseparable from the field of awareness.
Who I really am is not the story of my separate self.
The boundary of the separate self is an illusion. And that boundary itself — which the Western Enlightenment says ends suffering — is, according to the Eastern Enlightenment, the source of all suffering. You only move beyond suffering if you realize that your true nature, your True Self is that you’re one with the field of awareness.
Now let me add to that. I’ve tried to — in the last ten-fifteen years — to challenge that notion of True Self. The True Self means not just that you’re one with the field of awareness or consciousness, you are one with the Field of Desire. You are one with the Field of Eros.
The experience of True Self is of being interconnected and inextricably connected with the entire field.
You can feel the whole field.
The whole field feels you.
I am interconnected with the whole field.
I have so much power just by being here. I can actually play in this field. This field plays in me.
And it’s not just the field of awareness. It’s the Field of Desire. It’s the Field of Eros. It’s the Field of Outrageous Love, if you will.
That’s the True Self. And I rest in that field.
That’s the second answer to Who are you?
Unique Self: I am a puzzle piece that completes the puzzle
The problem is, there is a contradiction between these two answers.
The Western Enlightenment says I am a separate self — and realizing that I am not part of a larger field is how I transcend suffering. We established universal human rights by establishing the dignity and centrality of the separate self.
The Eastern Enlightenment uses the same word, enlightenment, but it says the exact opposite is true. What is enlightenment? The realization that I’m not a separate self, that I’m one with the field (generally the field of awareness). It can also mean — more deeply, more profoundly — that I am one with the Field of Eros, with the Field of Outrageous Love, with the Field of Desire. But I’m one with the field.
So which one is true?
We’ve begun to understand that actually we need to bring together these two positions and create an intimacy between them. Instead of these two positions being at polarity with each other, we need to hold them together. We need to move from polarity and polarization to paradox and realize that I am both separate self and True Self — and separate self plus True Self creates something.
If you get that there is actually dignity to separate self, and there is dignity to True Self, you realize the following:
I am part of the field, but I am also distinct — and that distinction is my uniqueness.
I am actually, in some profound and real sense, unique. I have a unique perspective that’s unlike any other.
My separate self is by itself an illusion, but it’s pointing to something — which is my irreducible uniqueness.
True Self plus my irreducible uniqueness equals my Unique Self.
That’s a deeper answer. Who am I? I am a Unique Self.
What does it mean to be a Unique Self?
I am an irreducible unique expression of the field of consciousness, but I’m even more than that.
I am a unique configuration of Desire. Because if True Self is the entire Field of Desire, then my Unique Self is not just my unique perspective, or my unique quality of consciousness, or my unique awareness — it’s actually my unique Field of Desire.
My Unique Self is both my particle and my wave, together.
Evolutionary Unique Self: I am a puzzle piece that evolves the puzzle
Then I realize that my Unique Self lives in the context of evolution.
It is not just that I am a unique expression of eternity. True Self is eternity. True Self is beneath time and space.
No, I am more than that, I am Evolutionary Unique Self.
As I am living in an evolutionary context, reality is not just eternity — it’s evolution.
- It’s not just being — eternity.
- It’s also becoming — the evolutionary impulse.
I am a unique expression of the evolutionary impulse. I am Evolutionary Unique Self.
I am not just Unique Self. I am Evolutionary Unique Self. I am the personal face of the evolutionary impulse.
Let me just recapitulate that again.
As a separate self, I am a puzzle piece. I might be yearning for a larger puzzle, but no, there’s no real larger puzzle. I’m just a separate self. Is that crazy making? Of course it’s crazy making. It causes mental breakdown because I am yearning to be part of this larger puzzle, but the classical reductive materialism tells me there is no larger puzzle, I am just a separate self.
It is crazy making, but it’s also true. It’s true, but partial. I am a separate self. Separate self is real in the mind of God. It’s just not all I am.
Then I move beyond my exclusive identification with separate self. I don’t reject separate self. Most enlightenment teachings teach, “Reject separate self, reject your story.” No, I don’t reject my story. I don’t reject separate self. I move beyond exclusive identification with separate self.
And I realize I am True Self. True Self means there is no puzzle piece. There is just the one, the puzzle of the one, the one of the puzzle, the one puzzle, the one. And there’s no puzzle. There’s just the one. We get rid of the puzzle pieces. There is just the one puzzle.
The problem with True Self is that when I look closely, I see these little lines between the puzzle pieces. I have this experience of separateness. And I’m told by my teachers that that experience is an illusion. It’s not true, but I feel that it is real. I am Marc, in some sense. And I cannot deny my story. That’s also crazy making. That also causes a mental breakdown in its own way.
I’ve got to resolve those two, and go from the polarity between them to paradox.
I am actually a Unique Self, which means I am a puzzle piece that completes the puzzle around me, Unique Self. But then I realize: No, no, no, it is not just that I fit in and by my very existence, I complete it. No, no, no.
It’s not just my being completes the puzzle, but my becoming evolves the puzzle.
I am a puzzle piece that evolves the entire puzzle. I’m Evolutionary Unique Self.
Those are the four selves.
This is key. This is the core. We settle into it. It’s just like in a marriage. I don’t say, “Oh, I said I love you yesterday.” We create moments. We go deep into it. We feel it.
Three Selves Model
The second model of self, we call the Three Selves. The three selves are the psychological self, the mystical self, and the evolutionary/future self.
These two models are actually one, and that’s what I’m trying to explain here.
Psychological Self: defined by the past
The separate self, in one of its faces, is the psychological self.
What’s the psychological self?
The psychological self is defined by my past. All of psychology, as Martin Seligman pointed out, points to yesterday, to the past. In other words, the Western psychology realized the past is a key to everything.
What happened yesterday?
What’s my early childhood?
What’s my trauma?
What’s my relationship to my mother?
When Freud was working with his mentor Breuer in Vienna, there was this large group of women with hysteria, who were dismissed by society as being somehow insane and beyond the pale. Breuer had this realization that maybe they had been abused. Maybe there has been a violation in the past, which is now showing up in the present.
There was this realization that the past is not just gone.
The past lives in the present.
My early trauma, my early conditioning, my early culture, my attachment style with my mother or my father. Am I avoiding attachment? Am I anxious attachment? Am I disorganized attachment? This is what’s called Attachment Theory, which emerged from John Bowlby, after World War II in a monumental work called Separation and Loss, and was picked up by Mary Ainsworth in mid ’60s. If you want to read a very, very good book that recapitulates this conversation well, read a book called the Language of Emotions by Martha Nussbaum.
Psychological self says the past rules. The key to unlocking the present is in the past. Go back to the past and rework.
Rework the moment of your birth. Was I wanted or was I not wanted?
Rework your early childhood.
This is all unimaginably important. One of the great contributions to the evolution of consciousness made by the West is this notion of Western psychology, the language of emotions that comes from the past.
The dimension of reality which rules in the separate self is the past. I am defined by the past. Antecedent causation causes almost everything. If you’re only a separate self, that’s what you are. You are a separate self and the past rules, then it’s the past that you need to work with in order to unlock the present.
The past is in some sense causative, in many ways that are invisible to you. The notion that, for example, you have free will is not simple for a psychological separate self, especially if you are a materialist. In other words, you are simply the material structure of your body. You’re a separate self. You’re defined by the past. The notion that you would be able to choose would be a little bit absurd because everything in the material world is determined by antecedent causation. Today is formed by yesterday. A separate self — in a classical materialist cosmos, or a dualist cosmos in which spirit is outside of the world, but the world itself is material — is determined by yesterday.
There is a fantastic movie, The Adjustment Bureau. I want to recommend it to everyone, read The Adjustment Bureau (it was a book originally), but see the movie. It is about freedom. The assumption is, well, if you are a separate self, you are defined by yesterday. There is no freedom.
To sum up: the psychological self is an expression of the separate self.
What’s the primary frame of time that matters for the psychological self and the separate self?
The past.
Mystical self: Eternal Now
We go from separate self to True Self. And True Self is almost identical to what we call mystical self, or the enlightened self.
The mystical self says, “Don’t worry about the past. Fire your psychologist. That’s completely overrated. It’s not where you should be. You should focus on the present. Step into the eternity that lives in the present.”
The present is not the here and now moment. The present is the full presence of eternity, which is beneath space and time. It’s Eternal Now. It’s here right now, which takes you into the Eternal Now. As I am here present now, and that opens the door, the portal, into the Eternal Now. That’s the mystical self.
The True Self and the mystical self are actually the same.
If I can actually step into the fullness of the presence, which lives in the present, I will be liberated. While the separate self, the psychological self says, “I’m liberated by my engagement with the past,” the mystical self says, “I’m liberated by engaging with the present.”
It’s beautiful. So be here now. The Power of the Now. God’s name is Now — Yod, Hei, Vav, Hei — the last three letters of God’s name is now, present.
The spiritual practice for transformation of the separate self and the psychological self is doing psychological work. The contemporary spiritual practice is therapy, and therapy has become a spiritual practice all over the Western world. Like in many spiritual practices — there’s not a lot of competent rabbis, priests, ministers, and imams — there are not that many competent therapists. And the difference between a really good practitioner and an average one is the world. A therapist, a psychologist is a form of a modern religious practitioner.
The practice of liberation for the mystical self is not therapy. It’s not psychology. It’s some sort of practice that takes me into the fullness of the present.
It might be the ecstatic dance movement of whirling dervishes in Sufism.
It might be the Zazen sitting practice of Zazen Buddhist practices.
It might be a chanting practice of Hebrew mysticism that takes me into the fullness of the present.
It might be other kinds of silence practices.
It might be nature practices that take me into the full spaciousness of the Field of Eros and Desire. I can actually feel the field. I might sit and gaze at the ocean. Around the world, people from all walks of life go to gaze at the ocean. It’s an intuitive practice. I can step into the fullness of the Field of Eros, of Desire.
This field of True Self already has in it this quality of desire. It’s not just constant. It’s also Desire. It’s being and becoming even at the level of True Self — but it’s not that I’m trying to become. I am just part of the field. I am inseparable from the field. It’s the realization that I’m part of that field. It’s not necessarily that there’s something to do there. It’s just that I realize my identity as a part of the field.
I am awareness. I am consciousness. I am Desire. I am Eros. I am Outrageous Love.
It’s more than I am that I am. For the last 15 years, in teaching and in writing, I’ve rejected the notion of I am that I am. That’s a limited version of True Self, which is inaccurate. That’s only one face of True Self. It’s the way it’s usually taught. It’s not accurate in terms of realization, in terms of Dharma. True Self is also I am Desire. I am one with the Field of Desire. I am one with the Field of Eros. I am one with the Field of Outrageous Love. I am being and I am becoming.
But I am one with the field. I am one with the Force.
How many people have any affection for Star Wars? When they are stealing the plans for the Death Star (which will then inform Star Wars Episode VI), and one of them keeps saying, “I am one with the force. I am one with the force. I am one with the force.”
That’s True Self.
Future/Evolutionary Self: the call of the future
Now Unique Self — and it gets very beautiful here — Unique Self calls the future in. It’s a different moment.
Unique Self, by its nature, is also future self. It’s very beautiful and it’s very deep.
When I am in my Unique Self, I have this experience of being not just present and one with the field. I am unique. I am not just desire; I am not just one with the Field of Desire — but I have a unique configuration of Desire. My unique configuration of Desire is trying to call in a specific future. There’s a future self that enters into my present and calls me forward. That’s my Unique Self. Unique Self and Evolutionary Unique Self together are what we call, in the second model, future self or evolutionary self, which means that the future is now introduced.
If psychological self/separate self is the past, and mystical self/true Self is the present, then Unique Self and Evolutionary Unique Self is the call of the future.
If you look at the four-letter name of God — from right to left — the letters two, three, and four are Hei, Vav. Hei. You see the name of the letters at the bottom. So Hei, Vav, Hei means hoveh, present.
What is that? That’s mystical self. That’s the eternal present.
Yod, the first letter, always represents in Hebrew, Ehyeh. It’s always future. It’s that which will be. People always quote I am that I am from God’s conversation with Moses. But of course, that’s not what it says. It doesn’t say any place, “I am that I am.” That’s a wrong adaption of it. It actually reads, Ehyeh. Asher Ehyeh, “I will be what I will be.” It’s future. Ehyeh, “I will be what I will be.” That’s the Yod. The Yod is Ehyeh. That is the future.
So, what is the name of God? The name of God is a conjunction of the future self and the mystical self.
What’s crazy exciting is that we just took these two models of self, which we’ve done many times — and, for the first time, we put them together. The Four Selves and the Three Selves are actually one model:
- Psychological self is a facet of separate self.
- Mystical self is another way of talking about True Self.
- Future self is a dimension of Unique Self and Evolutionary Unique Self.
The culture is operating off a very narrow notion of self
All of that is missing from the Barbie movie. The only thing that lives in Barbie is a materialist desiccated separate self. There is an impoverished story of self, which is an impoverished, superficial, shallow answer to Who am I? We’re lost in the shallows. We’re lost in the shallows of self. The surface notion of self that informs all of Barbie is separate self. That’s it. That’s all that’s there. Of course, it’s not even a healthy separate self. It’s a broken shadow form of separate self. That’s what the Barbie movie is based on.
It’s unimaginably important to understand that the entire culture is operating off of this very, very, very narrow notion of self, which ignores empiricism.
It ignores all of the empirical realizations of True Self and mystical self in all of the interior sciences, in all of the great traditions across all eons of time. The realization of True Self and mystical self by the most subtle and speculative minds through time are completely ignored.
It also ignores all of the evolutionary sciences, which basically understand that the person is part of this larger system — systems theory, complexity theory, chaos theory, evolutionary theory, emergence theory. It ignores all expressions of becoming, the realization of the sciences that there is a future that’s calling the present into its next phase of emergence — what Whitehead called the lure of becoming, the allurement of creative emergence. That’s the call of the future.
I just want to get this — just how shocking it is. We put a movie into the center of culture, which essentially ignores who the person is. It ignores all of the empiricism of True Self (mystical self), located in the classical interior sciences, and it ignores all of the empiricism of evolutionary science, systems theory, complexity theory, chaos theory and sciences — and gives us a desiccated notion of self. That’s what Barbie does at the start.
The beginning of the response to the meta-crisis is actually a new answer to the question, Who are you?
This is who we are. This is where we are. This is our location. It’s beautiful. And this is core, it’s foundational. And if we never, God forbid, met again and you got this, it changes everything.
And remember that as Evolutionary Unique Self, I participate and play my instrument in the Unique Self Symphony. That’s what Unique Self Symphony is — when I have a unique instrument to play in the Unique Self Symphony that calls forth this evolving music, which calls forth this evolving symphony, which calls forth the future.
My deepest heart’s desire is the desire of evolution itself
Let me locate this in a prayer formula, which puts it all together.
Who are you?
You are an irreducibly unique expression of the LoveIntelligence, LoveBeauty and LoveDesire of All-That-Is that lives in you, as you, and through you, that never was, is or will be ever again other than through you.
As such, you have a unique story. You have a unique perspective. You have a unique past.
They come together in your unique present to allow you to give your unique gift to the future, to your unique circle of intimacy and influence that can be given by no one that ever was, is, or will be other than you.
And as such, you are the creative evolutionary force of Outrageous Love, of Eros, of Evolutionary Love that stands on the abyss of darkness and says, “Let there be light.”
You are a unique configuration of wave and particle. Particle is your separate self. Wave is: you are part of the wave of past, present, and future. Your wave and particle come together and you form a unique configuration of Eros, intimacy and desire.
Oh my God! Wow!
And you have this direct experience: not only do I trust the field, but the field trusts me and the field needs me. I am held in the timeless time and in the placeless place. And yet, I am the evolutionary impulse itself uniquely incarnate, in me, as me and through me, and my deepest heart’s desire is the desire of evolution itself.
It’s from this place that we’re going to pray now.
We are going to do a moment of prayer, like we always do every week with the holy and the broken Hallelujah. But can you feel the difference now?
I pray one way if I’m only separate self. If I’m only separate self, I throw myself on the Divine and I say, “Help me”. I’m a broken separate self, or I’m a dignified separate self — but I’m praying as a separate self. It’s me, I am here, God — or whoever I’m talking to — is over there and I’m talking, I’m saying, “Please help me.” And it’s beautiful and true.
But then, as True Self, I am in the field with the Divine and I am part of the Field of Eros. I’m part of the Field of Love. I’m part of the Field of Evolutionary Love. It’s like one part of the field turning to another part of the field and saying, “I’m part of you. Help me. Hold me.” It’s like cells in one part of the body asking cells in the other part of the body to help them flourish and thrive. It’s an entirely different conversation. We’re deeply aware of each other, and we feel each other, and we’re saying, “Feel me feeling you as I feel you feeling me.” It’s a prayer of an entirely different intimacy.
And then, when I pray as Unique Self and Evolutionary Unique Self, I say, “I pray, let me be your partner. Not only do I trust you, but I know that you trust me, and I want to partner with you, and I’m going to give you all I have and I’m going to literally be your partner, Divine. I’m going to be your partner, Infinite Intimate that knows my name, Infinite Intimate who I am a unique configuration of.”
I need all those selves to be together in prayer.
- I pray from separate self, from psychological self.
- I pray from True Self, from mystical self.
- I pray from Unique Self, Evolutionary Self, calling in the future.
Let’s step into prayer.
Heal the brokenness. Heal the pain. Heal the hurt. Heal the incompleteness. Heal everything that needs being healed.
And then, if I’m praying from True Self and from mystical self, and I feel my fullness with the wider field and I turn to the wider field of life and I say, “Hold me and help me and let me know that I’m with you and let me know that I’m not alone and let me rest in you.”
And if I’m praying from Unique Self and Evolutionary Self and I know that my deepest heart’s desire is the heart’s desire of evolution itself of Divinity herself, I say, “I’m going to partner with you. No matter what, I’m going to cry with you, Divinity. I’m going to cry with you, Infinite, and I’m going to laugh with you, and I’m here to partner with you.”
There is one Truth
What does it have to do with Ukraine?
Everything.
It has to do with everything.
This is everything.
This is the shared Field of Value that we all have to be part of. You see, when we all live together in this Field of Value, in this story of value, which is fact.
My friend and our board chair at the center, Aubrey Marcus, just went to Jake Paul’s fight. He is an influencer fighter now. Aubrey texted me and said that they won the fight and that when Jake wins a fight, the way he expresses it, he says, “Facts. Facts.” And that his whole gang, they say ‘facts’. What they mean by facts is, “Oh God, we got to reclaim facts. We’ve got to reclaim the real. There’s something that’s real, fact.”
Facts, meaning it’s true. It’s true, but we have to reclaim truth, and truth means there is a one Truth. One Truth is not a dogmatic truth that I impose upon you. There is one Truth. There is one Goodness, and there is one breath, and there is one Love. It means that we are not so fragmented; we just don’t actually experience that we’re all unique instruments of a one music and that music is a story.
There is a shared Story of Value, and that which unites us is so much greater and that which divides us. And it’s only a shared truth that can respond to the meta-crisis.
What we need to do is — if we want Torah, a new Dharma to come forth from Zion — we need to actually tell the story of Value.
Holiness doesn’t live in a particular piece of ground by itself. That piece of ground has to be a ground of Value. The single most vital moral imperative for Israel and Gaza, and for Russia and Ukraine is to demand that everyone do the deep work.
But we cannot just demand it. We have to actually do the deep work ourselves, and write it up, and write a great library, and tell a story that’s translated in all languages.
Right now, if I had to give a book to leading Russian intellectuals and say, “This is a good story of value that you can actually rest in,” I do not know. I don’t have a book to give anyone. That’s why we wrote a book on First Principles & First Values — and we’re just beginning. There are little fragments here and fragments there. We don’t have a great library.
We stopped writing.
We exploded in the progress of exteriors, and we stopped evolving in our interiors, and the gap between interiors and exteriors widened and widened, and we created exponential ways to destroy ourselves without developing commensurate exponential wisdom to allow us to use and deploy those technologies.
That’s what we’re doing. The most activist thing we can do to respond to the meta-crisis is to begin to create a coherence in the world, to move from polarization to paradox. We each have unique and distinct instruments in the symphony. We’re all playing music and the story that we’re telling now — this is the music. This is our music. We all bring our holy and broken Hallelujahs.
Every nation, every people, every person, every religion, every country has —
- its version of separate self (win/lose metrics);
- it has its True Self, its own deep mystical truth;
- it has its Unique Self, its unique gift,
- and it has its Evolutionary Unique Self, its contribution to evolution.
All the four selves live not just in a person. They also live in the collective. And then we come together, and we become a Unique Self Symphony.
Oh my God! That’s worth being alive for.
Let’s take us inside to prayer to the holy and the broken Hallelujah.
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