On Being a Spiritual Teacher or Spiritual Artist; On Changing my Name and the Hate Blogs of History: Part Two: Marc Gafni

[english]

marc gafni
published on marcgafni.com
please share comments on info@marcgafni.com

Truth be told, being a spiritual teacher or a spiritual artist in a particularly direct and open way is not at all easy. Your job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

Depth is too easily dismissed as facile charisma. Primal jealousy breeds malice.

And radical love and open heart will always be translated by some in ways that it is not intended.

I have been teaching my whole life. The overwhelming relationship I have had with thousands of people has been wondrous, life affirming, profoundly loving, and beautiful.
What a privilege for which I am grateful with every fiber of my being.

And from the beginning of my path there were always a small group of people who responded negatively. Everything I did they interpreted negatively, through small eyes and small heart. And I am sure that parts of me which were not whole, which were distorted or not yet evolved or just plan off, served as a hook for their projections and critiques.

I am a work in progress and I hope that I am evolving, refining, deepening, correcting, doing Teshuvah, returning to my most aligned self, every moment of every day.

But the driving force was always a kind of primal malice. I am thankful to psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Berke who in personal conversation and in his published work helped me understand this dynamic in a far deeper way then I ever had.

There were always more primal forces at play in these interactions then anyone would admit. Since malice can never truly be owned by the uninitiated, it goes by many more noble names. In the name of righteousness, nationalism, protecting women, perfecting society, all manner of evil is loosed in the world.

There was, in the case of some teachers and colleagues and very occasionally in certain students, sometimes a sense that we were being nourished from the same soul root and somehow they felt that my nourishment was both undeserved and even worse, at their expense.

The Veneer of civilization is very thin. When one is driven by primal malice, which one has no way of owning, one will say and do almost anything.

Strangely the bearers of such malice are driven by a similar energy to the hate blogs.

The difference is that the bearers of malice hide behind the veneer of respectability. However behind the scenes they work directly with the hate blogs in order to get the hate blogs to do there work for them.

Some respectable folks have tried {unsuccessfully} to intimidate supporters and friends of mine by linking there names to hate blogs. Others have called up those who ran hate blogs, told them unspeakable lies, and then slunk back into the world of respectability, waiting for word that their hired character assassins, the suicide bombers of the Jewish community, aimed at the community itself, had done their dastardly deed.

Let me share with you a few of the canards of the hate blogs just so you get a sense of the whole thing.

1) rumor has it that Gafni joined the sadomasochistic community in Salt Lake.
2) Rumor has it Gafni is now attracted to prepubescent children
3) Gafni is now going under the name Marc Israel
4) Gafni changed his name from Winiarz to Gafni “in order to hide his identity”. (The truth, by the way, is that Gafni hebraicized his name from Winiarz to Gafni, when he moved to Israel, like thousands of others have done — remember Barry who became Barrack – and that both names are mentioned on the author page of his book Soul Prints and in his other books as well as being mentioned in countless speeches and talks – not a great way to hide your identity — but then again truth or logic has nothing to do with the logic of hate blogs).
5) Gafni is dangerous to little boys and girls
6) Gafni is a confessed child molester or a confessed rapist

Now while all of these canards come apparently from one particular source on the web, a source that once said on National Television that there is a national Jewish Satanic cult that murders babies, none the less, they are picked up by a web of like minded blogs and repeated without question.

For the Jewish people throughout time to respond to the hate blogs of history by saying that these accusations are not true is to give them too much dignity. What are the Jews supposed to say…”No, we are not devils. No we do not molest and kill Christian children and suck their blood.”

At a certain point, in a magnificent play of karma, the hate blogs, together with three or four other factors, created the hermeneutic prism which allowed natural mistakes which I made to be demonized, distorted, false claims to be reported or distorted in the press, and for all of this to coalesce in an absurdly serious sexual hysteria whose result was my spiritual murder.

The great news however is that there is a lot to be said for being dead for two years. It is only in such radical pain and death that certain gifts can be received and life can be reborn. But that is all too intimate a conversation for now, so let us return to it at a another time if you will….

Back to our topic:

How does one respond to the absurdity of hate blogs?

If at all…

This question comes up again and again in history. It’s most recent incarnation, as I have said above revolves around the Internet.

On of the unacknowledged shadows of the Internet is the proliferation of hate speech. People hiding behind anonymity or the impersonal nature of blogging, have re-introduced the old and worn bigotry of hate speech, back into the center of culture.

A blogger can say anything about anyone – For example, a website might say clearly or imply that Bill Clinton killed Vince Forster, his friend and staff member. Another blogger might repeat neo-Nazi canards about the “Jews sucking the blood of the world”. A third blogger might say as we have noted “Rabbi Gafni is attracted to pre-pubescent boys, a child molester, a confessed rapist or whatever sick fantasy the webmaster or mistress may have dreamed up or allowed to be published that day.

In fact blogs of these last two natures not surprisingly link to each other. The hate blogs, which attack persons in the way I just described, are often linked to neo-Nazi and other hate sites. Not surprising at all. The core energy is the same.

It involves latching on to natural characteristics of others, blowing them out of proportion and then demonizing them as the incarnation of abuse and evil.

All of these are real examples of hate speech. Not rooted in the world of rational decency or fact, they cannot be responded to as such.

For a host of reasons it is virtually impossible to file suit effectively for Internet libel.

So what to do.

1) To ignore it. Definitely the best route. I have a friend who is a well-known spiritual teacher who was attacked with severe claims of abuse for many years. He is a tough teacher who calls people on their shadow and is, I am sure, imperfect himself.

But the claims of abuse, which I asked him about directly, were far more understandable when he explained the depth and particulars of each relationship he had with the people making the complaints.

Without that it was just out of context Internet libel that hurt him personally for many years. His response; Stay the course; stay focused on your mission and do not give any response to Internet abusers.

Good Advice….

2) To sue: Sometimes a possible route.

3) To Laugh – Always a good idea – something like, “No it is not true that I am a child molester, really I am into barnyard animals but shhh..Don’t tell anyone!”
Or as a group of my woman friends suggested to me in laughter “We will start a website called “satisfied and speaking out.”

Now laughter which points out the absurdity without getting drawn into the energy of hatred

…that is really a good path and about that we will have to write more at another time….

******

Posted by Marc Gafni

[/english]
[hebrew][/hebrew]