Loving Your Way to Enlightenment: The World is a Waiting Lover
Below is a live teaching from our awesome Beloved-teacher-friend Dr. Marc Gafni, transcribed by Chahat Corten  in her book Loving Your Way to Enlightenment.
This Gafni Unplugged quote is from a live teaching given at the monthly dharma session with the circle at Venwoude in Holland.
The only thing that will comfort us is to fully open up, take everything in, and give everything back as radically as a radically alive lover. It’s the only way to look. Don’t look back. It’s love or die.
So you’ve got to be willing to fall in love! But it’s not… I’m going to fall in love only with you. It’s I’m going to fall in love with everybody in the room, and I want you to fall in love with me. Did he really say that? Of course! I want you to fall in love with me. And not just with me, but through me or directly, I want you to fall in love with every single person in the room. With each other. And we will all fall in love with God together. It is the same.  Oh my God, that’s the only way we can meet each other! Let me say it again!  I want you to fall in love with every single person in the room. With each other. And we will all fall in love with God together. It is the same.
That doesn’t give me authority over you! You are always going to be self-authored. If you lose your own self-authority and you disappear, then I can’t love you, and you can’t love me or each other. You’ve got to be you and I’ve got to be me for us to love each other. But, we do want to influence each other.
You know this is what we all do: we stop. We don’t allow ourselves to influence each other. “I’m not being influenced,
©2012 photo courtesy of sattva
no not me. No, no I am not being influenced. No, I have not done that for a long time. I’ll just take what I can. I’m not going to let him in man, no way!’”
So let me make it really clear here: I am going in! I want in! That’s always why I am talking to you, and I want you in! I want to open the door for you to get in!
God is where you let Her in, God is where you let Her in! My master Mordechai Lainer of Izbica asked the students: “Where is God?” And one student said, “God is in the vast spaciousness.” He said, “Nei, nei, no, no!” He asks another student, “Where is this God? Where is God?” And the student said, “God is in the Holy Commandments.” He says, “No, no, no! So where is God?” And one student said, “God is in Gaia, in the earth, alive and awake.” And he said, “No, no where is God? God is where you let Him in.”
From Loving Your Way to Enlightenment, contributed by CIW Senior Editor and World Spirituality Teacher Chahat Corten.
Chahat Corten is a Holland-based spiritual teacher and one of the founding members of the Venwoude Integral Practice community, Her expertise and passion is especially strong in sacred communal living and modalities of spiritual practice including gentle, holy, and ecstatic creativity merged with penetrating wisdom. Chahat has been empowered as a World Spirituality teacher and a Unique Self Method Teacher. She is also a Senior Editor for the Center for Integral Wisdom.
::Meetings and Skype sessions in the Venwoude Circle::
Once a month, Marc Gafni offers teaching/meditations through Skype to the wider community of Venwoude. The Circle, as the wider community is called, is a group of dedicated practitioners. The Circle is a strong and supporting sangha of practitioners, all connected in deep Love of the Truth and in offering their Unique Gifts to our world.
