Trans-lineage Integral Awakening with Marc Gafni

Step into the Heart of Trans-lineage Practice…

The future of our world depends on the great realization of love: that which unites us is infinitely greater than that which divides us. For the first time in the history of the human race, we are able to rise beyond the place of our birth, our religion of origin, our family circle and choose to live our highest truth. This truth transcends and includes all of our personal history even as it invites us to our singular and unique evolutionary destiny.

The Spiritual teaching for this age must be drawn from all of the great traditions of Spirit, pre-modern, modern, and post-modern. These great understandings must be lovingly integrated into a space of open heart, community and insight that has the power and the compassion to guide us on the next stage of our personal and global journey.

The lineages are the great teachings of Spirit developed by the great communities and masters of all the ages, in all parts of the world. Translineage means that we are moving towards transcending and including the Great Heart, Mind, and Body truths of all these lineages into an evolutionary integral Spiritual teaching. This is a down to earth, elegant, gorgeous teaching which embraces* all facets of your Unique Life.

Until very recently, you, like many other people received the lineage transmission of the Spiritual system that was dominant in your place of birth. You may have received it consciously. More likely, like most people in modernity, you received it unconsciously.

By lineage transmission we mean the absorption into your being of the great ideas, insights, maps, heart and mind knowings of a great tradition of Spirit, by whose lights you could orient and guide your life.

Usually the Spiritual transmission that you received was confused and diluted at best. You did not know quite how to integrate the apparently contradictory insights of modernity and post- modernity with what you understood to be the great truths of the wisdom traditions.

Reality Considerations

What are the lodestones that can guide your ethical, Spiritual, and psychological journey through life?

Or…

Are you tragically destined *to stumble around on your own, alienated and isolated from larger currents and contexts of meaning?

How do you integrate the deep knowing of your heart aflame with the sober detachment of third-person study such as Science?

How do you weave together your profound desire for the Eros of sacred community with the prized autonomy and vaunted pseudo-skepticism of Western education?

And if you are to find your way back to the space of inner insight held by the lineages, which lineage to choose?

Historically you have been limited to the particular truth of your lineage. The problem is that this particular truth all too often seemed to deny or contradict many of the intuitively important teachings you heard from other paths.

You responded to this conscious or unconscious confusion on one of three core ways.

1. Sometimes you abandoned Spirit altogether and turned to the brilliant- if flatland – guides * of third-person objective knowledge. You looked to psychology to guide your inner process and for relational love to illuminate your heart. You looked to science to provide order and implicit meaning in your life.

But it did not quite work.

You greatly honored the wisdom of science. You appreciated the dignities it afforded you. Yet it’s flatland limitation and exterior functional orientation could never address the deepest yearning of your heart. **Without a firm grounding in the depth of Spirit you expected too much from your “Special Relationship”. In fact you became addicted to your “Special Relationship” expecting it to be a panacea for all of your dis-ease. The result: Your Special Relationship collapsed under the weight of pressure it was never meant to bare.

2. Sometimes you abandoned the core insights of modernity and post-modernity and aligned yourself with the goods of an old religion.

Even though you knew that it did not quite all hang together…

In your calculus, the goods of community, ethical guidance and personal relationship with the source of all being outweighed the shadows of the religious system you chose.

So you compartmentalized your life with the modern and post-modern person showing up in the world and the pre-modern old time religionist showing up at home and in church.

More often then not you took the third way.

3. You became a dilettante consumer of Spirituality from wherever you could get it.  At the same time that  you absorbed the truth of modern science you imbibed  the post-modern critiques of all objective truth. You never really worked it out. Your heart sometimes opened, but most of the time remained closed. You had occasional wondrous experiences of community, but most of the time you were alone. You were not sure how to even begin to integrate your Spiritual knowing and beliefs into a coherent system by which to guide your life. So you latched on to some aphorisms, perhaps a practice here and there and started to try and navigate your way through life. 

A Better Way to Live

For the first time since the advent of modernity and post-modernity we can confidently tell you that there is a better way to live.

We call this way TLP: Translineage Path; Practice for the Future.

Translineage Path, TLP,  is the next wave of Spirit. It is the clear direction of Spirit’s evolutionary trajectory.

It is the way of heart aflame. It is the embodied way of ethical being. It is the way of wide and deep mind. It is the way of sustained Spiritual practice and constant acts of kindness and loving. It is the way with direction, intention and purpose.

Translineage Mysticism recognizes that while  for the first time in history you can access all of the core insights from all the great traditions – this by itself is often more confusing then helpful.

You are filled with contradictory insights, paths and life directions. How do you put it all together into a system of knowing, being and becoming that you can move, motivate and transform your life?

How do you integrate these great truths from all the great streams of knowledge into a higher Integral Evolutionary Truth that is pulsating, alive, compelling and aflame with the transformative heart of compassion?

How do you find a way to weave devotion into meditation, into third-person objective study, into selfless service, into Nature Mysticism, into community, into parenting, into running your life or company, into life?

How does this become a seamless but not featureless unity, which is worth swearing by, even as you know that it is always evolving and re-configuring?

Part of the answer at this moment in time is the Translineage Path.

The core image of the Translineage path is that of a symphony. Each lineage plays their instrument to perfection. Perfect Mastery. At the same moment each lineage listens deeply to the music of the other. From the merger of listening and mastery, from the diversity of the all the instruments played in harmony, wells up the Music of the spheres.

This is the music of Translineage Path.

In this system of integrated knowledge you will experience states  and go through stages of Spiritual advancement just as you would in any great Western or Eastern discipline of Spirit.

In the potpouri of dilleatante spirituality that defines the western alternative spiritual scene there is no sense of committment and surrender to a path.

In some of the eastern and traditions as they have been transplanted into the United States there is sometimes to much surrender and to little autonomy.

The Translineage path intends totranscend and includes both poles in a higher integral understanding.

1) Gross/Physical Dimension: Translineage Path Covenant

The covenant is a private ceremony in which a teacher accepts an individual as a student. Students make a personal donation in appreciation to their teacher.

2) Subtle/Energetic Dimension: Translineage Path Vows

The commitment ceremony is a public confirmation in which the student empowers and is empowered by the teacher of the Translineage Practice Community. The lead teacher gives the student, the 10 Translineage Mysticism Commitments to Practice and a Translineage Mysticism name. Partners, family and friends are welcome to the ceremony.

3) Causal/Pure Spirit: Translineage Path Initiate

Initiation is the ceremony of ordination marking the passage from layperson to what we call an Initiate.  In this ceremony, students fully empower and commit their lives to the truths of spirit that they discover on the the  Translineage Path.

4) Nondual: Translineage Path Associate Minister: Partial Transmission

5) Integrated: Translineage Path Minister: Full Transmission

Recognized and accredited by the State of California

Spiritual Artist, Dr. Rabbi Marc Gafni will lead the iEvolve Translineage Path Practice stream.

The lineage is transmitted by a lineage master. The term means different things in different traditions. We use it to mean someone who not only knows, but also has absorbed into and incarnated in their being, the wisdom of his or her lineage. This does not suggest that a lineage master is perfect or incapable of making mistakes.

It in no way suggests you give over your personal authority and responsibility for your life to your teacher.

What it does suggest is a passionate commitment to love, truth, courageous transformation, unflinching integrity, ruthless honesty that is demanding and forgiving, even as it merges with unending compassion, selfless service, wide and deep mind and heart.

It also suggests a mastery of levels of inner depth, wisdom, meaning and heart, which the teacher— with all of his heart and mind — is committed to gifting to you.

Much as some of the classic traditions, Dr.. Marc has accepted a group of students.

Unlike those traditions, Dr. Marc will both give genuine transmission as a teacher even as he co-creates with his autonomous students, a study track that meets their unique needs of heart, body and mind.

We reject for our community the image of the teacher as Guru even as we reject for our community the image of teacher as pal or buddy, who just happens to be teaching.

In our community we believe that the teachers must incarnate both Spiritual attainment, humility, willingness to own mistakes made, a commitment to constant deepening, giving over of his life fully to the Mystery, profound natural Spiritual authority, profound respect for his students autonomy coupled with radical delight at all he can learn from his students. This dialectical balance requires a profound and mature autonomous student who can both be a student and master at the same moment.

You absolutely can be a full practitioner in a particular lineage and study with a particular teacher AND be a full Trans-lineage Path student at the same time.

There are three core tracks of study available.

1. Translineage Path Private Students – Weekly, 90 Minute, Private study sessions

For more information on private study with Dr. Marc Gafni, click here.

2. Translineage Path Online Telecourses– Class runs 8 consecutive weeks for 90 minutes. For more information, click here

3. Translineage Path Intensives and Retreats – 1 weekend intensive in the Spring of 2010, and 1 weeklong retreat in the summer of 2010. Information coming soon!

The Translineage Path track is a fully integrated program of iEvolve: Global Practice Community headed by Dr. Rabbi Marc Gafni and Diane Musho Hamilton Sensei. Our senior Trans-lineage faculty includes Sally Kempton, {formerly Swami Durgananda} and Sofia Diaz who are co-founders of iEvolve.

The Sacred Teacher Student Covenant: Privilege and Responsibility

1)    The student commits to purify and open their heart and mind to receive mind and heart transmission

2)    The teacher commits to purify and open his heart to give heart and mind transmission

3)    The teacher will own his Spiritual responsibility and authority even as the student owns his Spiritual responsibility and autonomy

4)    Teacher and student recognize both the fixed nature and the fluidity of their roles. A deep commitment to honor and uphold the teacher is taken on by the student even as the teacher commits to guide, honor and love the student.

5)    From the moment that the covenant is initiated there will be no sexual relationships between teacher and students.