– Marc Gafni’s friends, colleagues, and supporters speak out, supporting Marc Gafni, for the sake of Outrageous Love. This response by Claire Molinard, Board Member of CIW and Co-Founder of Unique Self Coaching, was first posted as a comment to the Center for Integral Wisdom statement on centerforintegralwisdom.org. You can read the statement below or listen to the audio. –
I am a board member of the CIW and have been collaborating with Marc Gafni and others on a number of projects for the last three years. Over this period, I have personally and consistently experienced Marc’s greatness and goodness as a leader and teacher.
Marc’s unstoppable commitment to evolving the source code of culture through bringing transformation and healing in the world is extraordinary and I am proud to say that under his leadership and with my colleagues and friends at CIW, we are creating new meaning, new spaces of mind and heart and truly integral discourse. Of all Marc’s qualities, his most obvious one for all who work with him is undeniably his huge heart and kindness. Marc is amongst the most loving persons I’ve ever known and his capacity to make everyone feel personally loved and addressed is palpable and contagious to all in his circle. At CIW, we consciously practice this way of loving and appreciating each other’s uniqueness through the ways we work and interact with each other.
As a woman, I have felt deeply offended in my own feminine power and self-authorship to see how some key actors of integral and other spiritual circles have set themselves in the role of defenders of women through the recent allegations and accusations against Marc. I have observed with great sadness the consistent failure to check facts (in all four quadrants) and the persistent refusal of any dialogue, discussion or healing from the accusing parties. I have been struck by the stark determination of some to destroy Marc’s reputation and his life work by all means through the exploitation of the Internet – including the misuse of online petitions – violating every basic principle of justice and leaving no chance or place for the accused to defend himself. I have come to recognize this way of acting and mob thinking as a form of spiritual fundamentalism led by people advocating the opposite through their adherence to integral and other spiritual values, and the personal and hidden agendas of some of these people.
The only way I have been able to make sense of this amorphous aggregate of criticism, righteous indignation and hatred has been by looking at it through the lens of archetypes, and I’ve come to see last month’s “psychopath hunt” (our modern version of witch hunting) as a backlash of shadow forces naturally reacting to the very force of love and light that Marc is bringing to the world through his transmission of teachings on Eros, Outrageous Love and Unique Self. Clearly, Marc’s capacity to create vibrant and evolutionary communities, and to powerfully formulate new ideas, is greatly disturbing to some, to the point of making him not just a threat but the personification of evil itself. And as we know, this isn’t the first time.
Today there’s a great opportunity for all to see what this repetition is calling us to be individually, and together. The trap of “us and them” is a classic one which we need not repeat and fall into. I am personally much more interested to reflect on what Reality is calling us to be and to do, as a response to the outrageous pain of all parties. How do we penetrate the complexity of the pain that is at play right now through this collective drama? What outrageous acts of love are ours to realize as a collective and/or personal response to that pain? How do we turn fate into destiny?
Today, more than ever, I am committed to embodying the teachings of what Marc calls Outrageous Love and Unique Self in my life and transmitting them through my work. I am proud to be part of CIW and deeply grateful to Marc Gafni for his profound and direct transmission, his integrity, and his life commitment to bringing down the force of Love in the world.
These are important times of revelation, and we must stand strong and fierce as an “affront to shame”.
Claire Molinard M.Sc., PCC
Co-founder of Unique Self Coaching Collective
Integral Master Coach ™
Paris