Audio 4: Your Unique Acts of Outrageous Love

The Greatest Story Ever Told: Audio series with Barbara Marx Hubbard & Marc Gafni

Dr. Marc Gafni:

Welcome everyone to episode four of the greatest story ever told. The universe: a love story. I’m here with my beloved friend, Barbara Marx Hubbard. This is Marc Gafni in podcast four. What we’d like to do at this point is to first, as we do in symphony, to recapitulate. Where have we gotten? What have we said? To recapitulate, and whenever you recapitulate, we’ll also add. We’ll deepen. Particularly we want to begin to present what we think is a thousand, billion, quadrillion percent based on the best models we have today in science: evolutionary sciences, chaos theory, complexity theory. Based on the best anthropological and sociological models. Based on the best psychological models. The best understanding we have of self. Who am I? Who are you? The answer to the greatest question ever asked, the question of who are you?

We’ll start with the recapitulation. We’ll enter into that question of who are you. I’m going to try and outline the deepest vision we can share with you, because that’s a key part of the story. When we’re talking about the universe, a love story, and we are primary actors in that story as the best understanding of reality that we have today, we need to understand if you and I are primary actors in the story, why is that true? Who are we as those actors? What’s our role? What’s the nature of the self?

Here we go. We had a statement that we introduced last time which is really simple. It captures worlds and we’ll be talking about it all through these podcasts. The statement is what’s called an eastern thought as sutra, or in western thought a verse, or an axiom in scientific thought. It is as follows, “We live in a world of outrageous pain. The only response to outrageous pain is outrageous love.”

We know about outrageous pain. 17,000 children die a day of hunger or hunger related diseases in a world that has enough food to feed every child four times over. We know about outrageous pain. We could talk about it at infinitum. It’s critical to look at pain in the face, not to avoid pain. In this new universe story, we reject the idea in eastern thought that says, “Pain is just an illusion.” It’s really easy to make pain an illusion when it’s someone else’s pain. Pain’s real. We reject the idea that pain is punishment for sin, which is deep in western thought. We reject that pain is just a function of a random cosmos, which is in the dogma not of science but of scientism that we talked about earlier.

How do we respond to outrageous pain? Right now we’re not talking about the why there’s outrageous pain. The world’s a mystery. We’re going to bow before the mystery in this moment. How do we respond to outrageous pain, which is the biggest question. Not let’s work out some theology or some metaphysics or some pseudoscience or some pseudo-new age thought. No, how do we respond to outrageous pain?

We respond to outrageous pain through outrageous love. By outrageous love, we mean evolutionary love. Evolutionary love and outrageous love is different than what we called ordinary love. Ordinary love is a strategy of the ego. Ordinary love is a way to achieve security or comfort, legitimate, important goals. It’s not outrageous love. Outrageous love isn’t merely a human sentiment. It’s the heart of existence itself. That’s the emergent understanding from the best of all the exterior and interior sciences available at this moment in time, at this moment in history.

Once we understand that, we understand, “Wow. The world’s motivated by evolutionary us, evolutionary love.” All the trajectories of evolution, the plot lines of the universe, a love story that we talked about in the last two podcasts are driven by the underlying, by the meta-plot line, by the overarching thrust of the story, which is love, which is us. The trajectory of evolution is no less than the trajectory of the evolution of love. Not ordinary love, not merely love of the human construct in its romantic or sexual variety, but outrageous love, evolutionary love that moves the whole story.

What’s our place in the story? Our place in the story it to awaken to that reality. To become aware of that reality. Reality is allurement. Outrageous love all the way up and all the way down. To begin to see and to feel from photosynthesis to the beauty of the natural world, to the symphony of mitosis and meiosis. The entire periodic table of elements doing their ecstatic and elegant dance. To the light years over eons of time. The dazzling complexity and gorgeous beauty of a cosmos that’s so clearly alive and intelligent and driven and held together by allurement.

Evolutionary love. Outrageous love. We have to awaken to that reality and realize we’re not separate from the story, we’re part of the story. We are part of the story of evolutionary love. We awaken as outrageous love. If we want to say it audaciously, because the new story’s not politically correct, it’s spiritually incorrect. We want to say it audaciously and let’s be audacious because that’s where truth lies. Let’s push the edge here. Push the edge here to really say it clearly, we want to awaken as outrageous lovers. Outrageous lovers is not about sexing. You can be celibate and an outrageous lover and having tons of sex and not being an outrageous lover.

Outrageous lover is a posture in life. I awaken as an outrageous lover. What do I do as an outrageous lover? Outrageous lovers commit outrageous acts of love. Outrageous lovers are evolution awakening in them in person. Evolution awakens as Liam in person, as Barbara in person, as Marc in person. The universe is having a Barbara experience. The universe is having a Merlin experience. The universe awakens as you in person and you have the ability to stand as it were at the abyss of darkness and say, “Let there be light,” because your unique frequency of light can address the contraction, the darkness in a way that no one that ever was, is, or will be can address.

You awaken as outrageous love. That’s what it means to awaken. We democratize greatness. We democratize enlightenment. Enlightenment means not sitting on a hill in Nepal or in Jerusalem or in a backstreet of Beirut. Enlightenment means I become aware of the true nature of reality. Enlightenment is sanity. I’m sane. I have a sense of the true nature of reality. The true nature of reality is allurement, attraction. The true nature of reality is evolutionary love because the deepest depth understanding of reality according to the best sciences available is that the universe is a love story and you’re personally implicated in that story because you have outrageous acts of evolutionary love to commit that no one but you that ever was, is, or will be can commit other than you.

That’s who we are up until now. I just want to add one piece that we’ve talked about already, but I want to deepen in and then Barbara and I want to talk about this together. We asked in the last podcast, “Which outrageous acts of love should you commit? Which outrageous acts of evolutionary love should you commit?” There’s so much to do. How do you know what to do? What compass guides you? How do you discern? How do you find your way?

Here, the great question emerges. You find your way by answering the great question. The great question as we began the podcast today is, “Who are you?” Who are you? Here’s the best answer we have based on the best sciences, interior and exterior, available from all the traditional period, from all the modern period, from all the post-modern period all integrated together. This is the best answer we have. It’s so stunning. It’s so beautiful. It just blows my heart open. It blows my mind open. It blows Barbara and my together … It’s just wow.

Here is it. Who are you? You are an irreducibly unique expression of the love intelligence and love beauty that is the initiating and animating energy of all that is that lives in you, as you, and through you, that never was, is, or will be ever again other than through you. As such, you have an irreducibly unique perspective on reality. Your angle, your perspective is irreducibly unique. Your irreducibly unique perspective creates your unique capacity to give your unique gift. Your unique gift addresses a unique need in your unique circle of intimacy and influence that could be addressed by you and you alone. No one else that ever was, is, or will be can give your unique gift that speaks to a quarter of the world that UNloved, capital U-N, UNloved. Only you, only your evolutionary love can transform that moment, that quality, your unique quality of intimacy, your unique perspective. You have a unique gift that addresses a unique need in your unique circle of intimacy and influence.

That is what it means to awaken. To know that. When we come together, we begin to form a symphony of unique selves, a unique self symphony and a politics of evolutionary love. Which is a bottom up politics, not a top down politics. A bottom up politics. Whichever human being understands that I am a unique expression, a irreducibly unique expression of that love intelligence, and I have outrageous unique acts of evolutionary love to commit. I was born on purpose. I was born for the delight, the joy of committing those outrageous acts of love. All of reality needs my service. All of evolution awakes my awakening as the cutting, leading edge of evolution committing my evolutionary acts of love. Barbara, beloved.

Barbara Marx Hubbard:

You know Marc, listening to you, I’m realizing that this very day we founded something called the evolutionary church dedicated to the spiritual reality of that irreducibly beautiful expression of each person’s outrageous love as a gift to the world. As you were talking, I was putting it in the context of feeling that internally as the source of creation for all of billions of year of evolution that it took to get to you and me and that impulse that’s irreducibly you. When you say it’s outrageous love, is it another way of saying God is love? The source of the process of creation that is you expressing has to be called sourced, spirit, God, one, wholeness, universe, however we say it.

As you’re talking, what I’m realizing’s happening to the persons who say, “Yes,” to outrageous love, say, “Yes,” to expressing the highest possibility of their own gift is that we are evolving ourselves as we do this through evolving the world is a beautiful part of this reality. When I say, “Yes,” to the impulse in me, which let’s say is an evolutionary communicator to co-create the best I can, the ideas that help people evolve toward a world to our potential.

When I’m doing that, there’s a feeling of nature. I am being self-actualized. I’m being observant. There’s something beautiful to add to your thought, Marc, of this irreducible unique expression. It’s both of service to the world, to others, and some deep service to actualize yourself. I think it’s important in these dialogues that we look from the macro, large scale to the micro. I just want to ask you, when you become this irreducibly expression, what happens to you personally, Marc?

Dr. Marc Gafni:

What happens to you personally? That’s such a great question. I think what happens, in my experience, I would love to hear what happens to your Barbara. Lady B. What happens to you? Give us the whole story, but I’ll give you my short version. For me, it’s only the knowing that evolutionary love lives uniquely in me that makes being alive such a worthwhile experience. It’s actually the realization that I’m irreplaceable. Not in a sense of ego. The ego says, “I’m irreplaceable. I’m the only one who can do it.” We got to let that go and realize wow, we’re part of this larger world, this larger symphony. We have so many collaborators, so many partners.

Yet, when we let go of ego, and ego’s the sense of being a separate self, separate from the whole, disconnected from the whole. “It’s all me. I’m irreplaceable.” That kind of egoic sense of being so special. We got to let go of that. We don’t let go of that into this strange idea of oneness where I lose my individuality. Actually realize I’m part of the larger, as they say in systems theory, I’m part of the larger, seamless code of the universe. That seamless code of the universe is seamless but not featureless. I am a unique feature. I get to reclaim, Barbara, the sense that I’m special.

I’m not special because I’m better than you, I’m special because I’m irreducibly unique. From that place of being special, I can then meet you, Lady B, I can meet you Barbara and I can say, “Oh my God. Oh my God she is awesome. She’s a rock star.” I can be totally devoted to you. We can reclaim love, devotion. We’re so afraid to be devoted to each other because we’re afraid that if we’re devoted, we’re going to lose something. What it awakens in me, and I’d love to hear what it awakens in you love, what it awakens in me is the sense of the inherent value of my life. That I’m not extra. It awakens in me a sense of responsibility, but kind of the joy of responsibility, not this kind of weight in a bad sense but weight in the sense of gravity. Gravitas, weightiness.

Finally, it arises in me, it arouses in me the sense of devotion. Just the delight of being in devotion. What about you love? How does that feeling arise in you, you irreducibly unique and beautiful one?

Barbara Marx Hubbard:

It makes me feel joyful and grateful. When I’m doing what that impulse is … Let’s say when I’m committing an act of outrageous love like right now, this is an act of outrageous love right now. How am I feeling? I’m feeling deeply inspired by the impulse inside me and it’s making me feel like a whole being, a whole presence of unique person. It’s making me feel, it’s not the word proud of myself, but just grateful to be alive. Then it makes me feel connected with you. I’m feeling a love for you because a unique expression of myself and unique expression of yourself is what we call joining, genius.

I am so much more by expressing this with you, co-creating with you, and thinking of all our listeners. For just a moment, to think of co-creating with the people now listening to this who are internalizing it and imaging who they are and saying this to somebody else. What begins to happen is what you cal a unique self symphony. We begin to play a whole new music. Then you get to feel part of a community. That’s a very big word here.

There’s so much loneliness in this world. What overcomes loneliness for me, because I don’t have a live-in partner, I’m 86 and a half, 87, a lot of people at this age are alone. How do I get over aloneness? It’s by saying yes to that irreducible impulse, expressing it, and it finds at least one other to express it with. Then when I’m expressing it with another, it’s like two or more gathered in my name, then comes a greater power. Then comes joy. Then comes a sense of communion, community. Then comes the whole reason for being alive.

This is what we’ve been calling the emergence of the new person. The person is the one who said, “Yes,” to this irreducibly magnificent, outrageous love. As you do it, you begin to emerge yourself. It’s self actualizing, self evolving. It builds community. It builds love. It actually heals the world. There is no greater yes than we can give Marc for what you’re saying. That’s what I feel.

Dr. Marc Gafni:

Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Wow. Let’s end here everyone. What a perfect place to end with Barbara’s, Lady B with your beautiful description. Let me just with your permission just say one sentence that will bring us into next week. We’ll pick it up next week. What Barbara says, everyone, which is so essential in evolutionary science and in systems theory and chaos theory and complexity theory, she says, “It’s to our uniqueness that we join.” That’s critical. Uniqueness doesn’t separate you from everyone. That’s the paradox. When you’re separate, separateness divides and alienates. Uniqueness is the currency of connection.

It’s through our uniqueness, it’s through unique structures on the subatomic level, through unique molecular structures, through unique cellular structures that actually new wholes are formed. Barbara, as you and I, in devotion to you love, as we join in this moment, in this movement in unique self symphony, and as everybody listening joins with the people around them to actually live on purpose, giving your unique gift, living your unique self, you’re not just doing some form of self actualization in a kind of minor way. You’re actually fulfilling, you’re aligned with the very evolutionary impulse itself that drives all of reality that seeks to become awake and alive in you. You’re actually beginning to give the gift that can’t be given by anyone that ever was, is, or will be other than you.

As a unique self, you are personally implicated. You’re actually the star of the universe, a love story. Your love story. Your outrageous acts of evolutionary love are essential to the story. Here’s the paradox: so are everybody else’s. From the place of uniqueness, I don’t need to usurp your place. I get to be in devotion to Barbara. Thank you everyone. So it is this week. Barbara, give us a last word blessing. Can I ask you for that beloved?

Barbara Marx Hubbard:

Yes. I just like to go back to the argument, the universe, to see the most outrageous act of love is the creation of the universe out of nothing at all. When you say it Marc, I feel the outrageous love inside of me and you and everybody else having been ignited by that explosion. When we say, “Yes,” to each other, the ignition, the original igniting turns on in us and we commence and we turn on and we show up as who we truly are.

Dr. Marc Gafni:

That’s awesome. No words after that. Thank you, Lady B. End episode four. Have a great week, everyone. We’ll see you on podcast five next week.

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