– Marc Gafni’s students, collaborators, and supporters speak out for the sake of restoring integrity. This comment by Helma on Being Marc Gafni’s Student was first posted to the Center for Integral Wisdom statement on centerforintegralwisdom.org. You can read the statement below or listen to the audio. –
I am a student of Marc for 4 years. The first time I heard him teach was incredible. I listened to many teachers all through my life. But none of them reached me really.
After this first teaching my heart was opened and my spirit was light. Instantly I felt at home in his ‘language’. My heart recognized this intense sanity and I felt hope for a better life, hope for a better world.
For many years I didn’t like my life and most of the time I was depressed. Deep down there were only tears and sadness.
In our talks Marc slowly showed me what depression actually is, taught me to sit with the sadness and let it tell its story. And he helped me learn to love myself in all of this.
In all our meetings he taught about Love. Not only he talked about it but certainly lived it by being patient, loving, tender, careful, respectful, sometimes by shaking me up. He always stood beside me, no matter what.
At first I thought ‘he is too good to be true’. But after reaching to me this way for month after month I slowly started to believe that people can be that loving and open and caring and alive. My whole view about life, the world, love, shifted from the depressed and dark way of looking at it towards seeing a world, as he calls it, of outrageous beauty. In my words a world of beauty, light, love and space.
All the therapy, medication, meditation and listening to teachers taught me a lot, but it never gave a spark of this loving reality. And still I am learning in this.
These last weeks I read with astonishment all the writings about Marc. What touched me the most was the fear I felt in most of the articles. Fear of his love, fear of his passion and his intensity, fear of his power.
Didn’t I sometimes feel overwhelmed? Yes, sometimes I did and his teaching or energy was almost too much. But every time it happened I knew that it was my contraction that couldn’t receive the love or truth or aliveness. And that was very painful and scary and sometimes it brought me to despair. But at the same time I always knew that I had to listen. Listen to the sanity and the loving goodness that were coming to me from his teaching and what I heard between his words. And that I had to learn if I would want to receive that love and aliveness in my own life.
Reading people calling him a psychopath that you should be warned of… I still can’t get it.
I only know Marc by being his student and through his teachings. So I can only speak from my own knowledge. I am so totally grateful for all the love and wisdom that I received in the conversations with Marc. And I am so glad that I can give some of this love and wisdom to the people I meet.
Helma