Free the Slaves! by Marc Gafni
We all grew up believing that we live in a world in which people are longer used by other people as slaves. The degradation of an individual from a thou to an it, we thought was a feature of a world we have long outgrown.
This is a false and dangerous belief.
This belief is false because there are, according to the best estimates, 28,000,000 slaves in the world today. 28 million people for whom there is no underground railroad, no civil rights movement, no basic human rights, no dignity, no decency, and if we remain disengaged, precious little hope.
This belief is dangerous because Human trafficking can only work if the slaves remain invisible to the public eye.
It is only by removing the veils of ignorance that we can -as modern day abolitionists-
FREE THE SLAVES!
In the spiritual world there is much talk about wholeness and non-duality. As spiritual teachers we have much to say about the interconnectivity of all that is. Many of us have experienced ourselves in meditation, chant, prayer or states of grace, as part of the seamless coat of the universe. We teach of the Bodhisattva vow. We extol the virtues of goodness and seek to incarnate the qualities of compassion, empathy, and radical love.
And yet - paradoxically most of us live in very narrow and constricted worlds. We do our meditation, teach our dharma, write our books, build our small spiritual schools and empires - hopefully for the sake of Spirit, God and Love -and yet, there is very little that moves us to stop business as usual.
Another class, another meditation, another book or magazine article or lecture tour or teaching. Most of us give teaching to middle and upper middle class nice people looking for a deeper sense of meaning and direction in their lives. And all of this is very lovely. I think…
And yet, when does it become time to stop business as usual? When do we allow the reports of hundreds of thousands of women and children sold into sexual slavery every year, often physically brutalized, repeatedly raped and otherwise degraded, to actually affect the way we live our daily lives?
When do we allow the faces of the millions of people with no hope, born into slavery and destined to die in slavery, to penetrate the veils of our consciousness sufficiently that we actually begin to act.
Three years ago I experienced a profound loss of power. I was caught in a web of events, which stripped both my voice, power and ability, for a time, to chart the course of my life with dignity and authority. For a period of time I experienced a profound sense of powerlessness, hopelessness and sheer terror.
Through, grace, prayer, love and friendship I was able to come through that time. I was able to recover my voice, my natural power and dignity as a human being, and to once again become the author of my own story.
However, I was blessed with many resources both internal resources of soul, spirit, training and lineage, and external resources of funds, relationships, supports and people of integrity and influence. Very few of the twenty-eight million virtual powerless slaves devastated in our world today have access to most of these resources.
I made a commitment to myself and to God in my darkest hour that I would spend the second half of my life, not merely teaching, not merely giving transmission, sacred, precious and ecstatic as those engagements are, but that somehow I would find a way to help. A way the help the powerless find their power, to help the slaves find their freedom, to help the degraded find their dignity and to help all those that are mute with fear find their voices in love.
It is that Spirit that we have begun the Integral Life Spiritual Center, the natural outgrowth and continuation of the important and groundbreaking work begun in the Integral Spiritual Center convened by Ken six years ago.
We will continue in our attempt to unfold a Trans-lineage spiritual practice community.
We will seek to engage in profound and evolutionary-edge conversations that might help shape the contours and guide the trajectory of Sprit into the next millennium.
We will seek to humbly gather the International Integral community at our annual International practice and transmission event, Integral Spiritual Experience.
But all of this is not enough. When we hear the anguished of the oppressed and see their battered and degraded bodies we must seek to find a way to dry their tears, to heal their wounds and to unshackle their chains. Nothing less can ever be enough.
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Marc Gafni
About Dr. Marc Gafni, Ph.D.
Dr. Marc Gafni is the co-founder and teacher in residence of iEvolve: Global Practice Community (Co-founded with Diane Musho Hamilton, Sally Kempton- Durgananda and Sofia Diaz, and Executive Director Kelly Sosan Bearer), as well as the Director and a fellow at the Integral Life Spiritual Center of Integral Life. Marc is The Teacher in Residence- although he is not in Residence } - of Shalom Mountain Retreat Center Wisdom School. {Shalom Mountain is a forty year old Retreat Center with a couple of thousand active members in Upstate New York founded by the wise Spiritual Elder Dr. Gerry Judd who empowered Marc in his role as Teacher at Shalom Mountain.} He is also the co-founder and Editor of Incorrect Inc. Publishing movement; Co- Founder with Mary Lainer, as well as the Scholar in Residence of Pacific Coast Community Church (under the direction of Dr. Bill Little).
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