On the Marc Gafni controversy: Don’t assume you know more than you do!

Earlier this year, while writing a lengthy poem, I was doing research into the Salem Witch Trials and the Middle Ages, especially the wars between Christians and Muslims, and it hit me more clearly than ever before: most of the supposed “evils” of religion are actually the fault of well-intentioned people who thought they knew the whole story about reality when they only knew a partial view. My, how it seems prideful humanity so slowly learns lessons of the past.

Yesterday, I spent hours on the phone with Marc Gafni. I’ll get to that.

Honestly, until a few days ago I never paid a lot of attention to the controversies around Gafni (or other attacks on the character of several popular spiritual teachers) for reasons that I won’t go into here except to say one thing. In my view, conventional society has epic sexual shadow and virtually no ability to distinguish pre-conventional sexual promiscuity from postmodern polyamory and post-postmodern styles of sexual relationships. (As a sexual minority — I’m the author of Integral Books/Shambhala’s Soulfully Gay – I’m very sensitive to society’s sexual shadows.)

All that began to change when the recent charges against Marc exploded on the blogosphere. I really, really didn’t want to have to wade into these murky waters. But the integral community I cared about deeply was in pain, grief, and anger. So far as I know, it might even be the most serious controversy faced by several prominent organizations such as Integral Institute, Integral Life, Center for World Spirituality, and Sounds True (a publisher friendly to Integral authors). So I read the blogs and began to form opinions.

I have less skin in the game than many of the other writers, and had never written anything before publicly on Marc Gafni. I am completely open to discovering truth, wisdom, and shadow on all sides (including my own shadows). I am willing to call bull-shit when I see it, and sniff out people engaging in bad-faith discourse, and the postmodernist vices of “victim mentality” and absolutizing values such as Truth and Transparency while failing to acknowledge the ways in which real world complexities sometimes require tradeoffs with other values.

I’ve already said where I stand on some of the relevant issues. As of September 20, five days ago, here’s what I concluded:

All in all, I’d characterize [Robb Smith's] approach as clarity within complexity, a forward-leaning orientation that isn’t afraid to acknowledge that there is messiness and ambiguity not easily tackled in a blog post…. [W]hen I read the responses of Diane Hamilton, Tami Simon, Marcy, and even Marc Gafni himself, I am proud of the caliber of intelligence and compassion and level-headedness displayed by all. Nowhere do I get the feeling that Integral Leadership is defending a fiefdom or angling to defend a lucrative niche or sweeping shadows under the carpet.

The major players in the drama exude sincerity and a strong desire to do what’s right, not fear or anger. Nowhere do I get the sense that anyone is acting merely to defend his/her own behavior instead of acting with genuine concern for bringing into the world a greater truth and goodness that is wanting to emerge.

Gafni’s own passionate defense of post-conventional relationships, polyamory, and post-postmodern analysis of power dynamics is a compelling read … even if one wishes that the author wasn’t such a highly interested party to the astute analysis. One isn’t quite sure whether Marc is a fire starter, or a man who mostly shows up at the scene of a burning bush.

I don’t know if Marc read my last sentence — “One isn’t quite sure…” — when he decided yesterday afternoon to give me a phone call. He said he’d just come across my comment in response to John Dupuy’s blog post on Integral Life and he wanted to talk. I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me. I’m not one of his students, and don’t care to be. But as someone who hasn’t made up my mind about the whole controversy, he seemed to feel that I would give him a fair hearing.

This is a controversy without a context

So yesterday I spent hours listening to Marc, asking clarifying and critical questions, and getting a feel for the issues involved in the controversy. I also began to get a sense of the enormous — devastating, actually — personal and professional toll the blogosphere attacks have had on him, his loved ones, and the organization he leads. And then I started the process of reading E-mails and documents that he forwarded to me. They painted a picture that appears to show that the prevailing narrative of Bill Harryman and the anti-Marc Gafni faction contains maliciously seeded distortions and lacks a great deal of context … lacking so much context, in fact, that in his view it is a malicious lie.

I think I have pretty good bull-shit detectors. I don’t think I have anything to gain from coming out as a “Marc Gafni supporter.” In fact, as an Integral author, I could face negative consequences and recriminations if I were to take the losing side of a turf war or pissing contest. A potential publisher of my future books could choose not to work with me; I might lose opportunities to teach at Integral Spiritual Experience or similar events in the future. These fears have crossed my mind, though I really don’t think any of these outcomes are likely.

So what I have to say at this time is: a full story behind the Marc Gafni controversy has not come out. There are layers and subtexts of complexity involved in the interactions between all the players in the drama, and some of them involve actions which were apparently made from shadow-directed places. The intentions behind public statements are not always easy to discern, but I can say that the recent events involve personality tensions and differences of opinion about the direction of the Integral movement that have been going on for five years.

The recent controversy manufactured by Harryman does not arise in a vacuum. Remember, the matter involved nothing more sinister than a man separated from his wife (who knew that he had no intention to be monogamous) who dated two adult women who each gave full consent to both the relationship and keeping it out of the public eye (until one of them turned against him for reasons that are not public knowledge.)

People who get in a tizzy because the women were arguably students of his wouldn’t bat an eye if he entered into a legal business transaction with a student using a Non-Disclosure Agreement, but this controversy involves sex, teachers, and students. We are all sexual beings, students of life and the Universe, and all teachers. Talk about the very definition of shadow.

Where’s Ken Wilber in all this?

Ken Wilber has not made a public statement, but then again why should he?

There is so much muck, crud, venom, and seeds of hatred in the shit-stew (one Integral Life blogger compared Marc Gafni to Hannibal Lecter just yesterday), Ken may be thinking: “What good can come from stirring the pot?”

I haven’t talked to him about this. Have you? He’s sort of a busy guy who is dealing with serious health issues.

He is following the controversy and has already made his views known privately to some people, I have good reason to believe, and I don’t know but I guess that he will make a public statement if he believes it is needed.

I don’t know exactly what he would say today, and if I did I wouldn’t want to appoint myself as his spokesman. But it’s worth remembering that about five years ago he did wade into the controversy about the anti-Gafni allegations and he said:

The evidence makes it abundantly clear that the horrendous claims made about Marc on what can only be described as Internet vendetta or hate sites hidden beneath the fig leaf of victim advocacy, are without a shred of truth.

(He also made an analogy between anti-Gafni accusers and neo-Nazis that was probably calculated, Wyatt Earpy-style, to drive the postmodern/conventional contingent of the Integral movement absolutely bonkers. The flexible and multi-perspectival ego does not get so easily offended by colorful analogies, but folks with prickly and defensive egos get excited enough to start witch hunts, inquisitions, vendettas, and even violence.)

I haven’t studied all the details about the allegations about Marc from Israel five years ago, and not sure how deeply I want to wade into that controversy. But what I can say is that my bull-shit detectors are on high alert and much of what Marc says (but not all) strikes me as at least plausible. Everything about Marc speaks to me of a man who is worthy of giving enough of the benefit of the doubt to listen with compassion and love tempered with a willingness to challenge him to own his role in the mess, repent of what needs repented, and move on.

I cannot say the same thing about Bill Harryman and some other anti-Gafni accusers who have been poisoning the blogosphere. Their blog posts and comments have a stink about them that is unmistakable. Self-righteous posturing. Refusal to address honest criticism in favor of ad hominem (For instance, Bill Harryman called me a “tier bigot” for challenging his green/postmodern concept of victimhood and noticing that he’s an intellectual property pirate who is hypocritically smearing Gafni as a plagiarist). Refusal to hear Marc out; ignoring what he does say. Instant willingness to characterize anyone showing sympathy to him as the latest manipulated victims of a Svengali-like nymphomaniac sexual predator. Uncritical acceptance of every unsavory allegation about Marc’s character (because how can so many things they read on the Internet possibly be wrong?) and a willingness to repeat Internet gossip as if it were a fact.

The execution of Troy Davis and the persecution of Marc Gafni

How anyone can believe such putrid un-integral posturing without having a shred of doubt about its truth or completeness is worth contemplating.

The Integral community doesn’t always have very Integral values, does it? I found out recently that if someone so much as suggests, “You know, Marc may be worth listening to,” on Integral Life, you will quickly get your comment denounced as “Not Useful” by the throngs. Come on.

How can people who in one breath vilify the Georgia officials who executed Troy Davis (a man likely to have been innocent) turn around and the next moment assert their certainty about Marc Gafni’s guilt about deeds that nobody has suggested are in any way criminal?

Not all the facts about the controversies have come into public view, and frankly I don’t think all of them ever will. Don’t we all have better things to spend our precious awareness on than who slept with whom, who knew what when, and who kept a secret and why? I’ve already read more than I care to know about Marc’s pillow talk.

I am not writing this post to defend Marc or anyone else. I do not accept every perspective offered by Marc as the unvarnished truth. But I would like to say out loud: hold your horses, people. Have some intellectual humility. Unless you are one of a handful of confidants of the aforementioned personalities, and probably even then, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE FORMING OPINIONS ABOUT.

Do you know who lies behind the anonymous character attacks on Marc Gafni, and why their words are really so angry and mean-spirited? Do you see how a small number of very vocal people with hidden agendas and unacknowledged shadows can manufacture controversy and inflate half-truths into The Master Narrative?

If I don’t know the truth, what makes you think you do? If people who have known Marc Gafni and his accusers for years struggle with knowing the full truth, what makes you think you do? If Ken Wilber is choosing for now to remain silent publicly, what makes you so sure making loud and hostile accusations is really so integral and wise?

There. I’ve gotten that off my chest. I’ll have more to say about Integral Ethics (and maybe more to say about the Marc Gafni controversies) once I’ve done some more homework. I’ve got hours of reading to do, chats/interviews to request with some of the personalities involved, and I have no pre-conceived idea about what I’m going to find out.

If your opinion about Marc Gafni isn’t All Quadrants and All Levels, maybe it should be

I’m willing to suspend judgment and let a more objective timeline emerge as I piece together various facts and try to sort out the Four Quadrants and All Levels of ego-development. That’s what Integral is supposed to be about, right? It’s largely about recognizing that perspectives taken without a comprehensive and inclusive view are partial, and need to be put into context. (In fact, Susanne Cook-Greuter’s developmental model labels the Teal altitude/Yellow vMEME/”Integral” level of ego-development maturity as “Context-Aware,” which is the term I prefer to use.

Here’s one perspective that helps to provide some of the context you would do well to consider. It comes from Marty, a psychotherapist and someone who knows Marc Gafni and finds him credible. In other words, he’s just the sort of person who the anti-Gafni mob routinely characterizes as a duped Kool-Aid drinker.

As you read, pay attention not only to the substance, but also the tone, openness, nuance, and decency. He writes on Bill Harryman’s blog regarding his post on sexual victimization:

My point is that, many of Marc’s critics feel it’s fair game to undercut anything he or his supporters/friends/colleagues say as (to summarize), “What do you expect of a sexual predator and his minions?” If everything he says is de facto to be questioned, suspect, why isn’t this also applicable to his accusers? In other words, if his (and his students, etc.) self-report is held as just that, why not everyone else in the “discussion”? Because someone cries foul, why does that de facto mean they are being truthful or accurate? I’m not, AT ALL, saying that’s true by definition. Please pause and hear that. And…what is said about Marc is true of every other human: people can lie, and people can distort to suit their conscious and unconscious agendas….

You know, weirdly enough, I really feel a respect for your [Federico's] conviction that I haven’t felt with any of the blog posts by William or other commenters. I think you’re multiply wrong, but sense that you’re not actually malicious in intent. (But I get you don’t seem to care for sarcasm. Which makes me sad.)

So: my bad for conflating what you’re defining as promiscuous with polyamory, in misunderstanding your point. I don’t see Marc advocating promiscuity–can you point that out in his writings or recordings or interviews or whatnot, because I haven’t seen it, i.e., as a shallow emphasis on multiple sex partners–but I agree promiscuity is by definition a shallow sexuality. I don’t particularly judge it–it’s just what it is, and that’s fairly shallow. And as a hypocrite for endorsing monogomy (at CWS event): I don’t think he was saying that needs to be true for him (or anyone else) all the time, did you? You read it as duplicity?

Also, you and others need to stop speaking about the two women “who were hurt.” Obviously the non-student feels hurt, but go back and read Marcy’s description, and PLEASE do not assume you know more than you do. It’s so disrespectful of her and of her taking responsibility for her actions, disempowering in the name of empowerment. (And as for her writing sounding the same as Marc, for Christ sake, she’s a student of Marc’s! I often sound like Wilber in writing style, not because he’s dictated what I then put my name on, but because I’m as student of his! Again, sheesh.)

Ok. So, I think you’re being too theoretical, and overreaching your own knowledge of the persons involved. Theoretically, and generally, I agree that most people probably are not able to have healthy polyamory, or rather, deep polyamory. In my experience personally and clinically, it usually is some form of covering up, bypassing, etc….

Also, I wonder how old you are, because at 42, I probably can’t count anymore how many times I’ve been an asshole towards people, particularly the ones closest to me. I could probably count on a hand how I wasn’t sincere, open, forthright, etc., just today. This is what we humans do, and as a therapist (are you studying to be/acting as a clinician, hence working with Masters?) my job is less to eradicate those actions as to encourage people to hold their own complexity, including their (and I’m assuming your) very, very dark places. Maybe you’ve attained saintliness, but in my experience, that kind of categorical statement about oneself means there’s bypassing going on. But I suppose you can have the benefit of the doubt.

Also–and this may be quibbling–the goal is to integrate the 1st tier levels, not overcome them. There’s no dominance of one level over another in integration.

So with Marc, can he fuck up and hurt people, and does he have a shadow? Of course. Has he shit to atone for? I’m sure. As a teacher (as me as a therapist) does he have high standards? Of course. But to call him “sick” goes way too far. Many will testify (as I did above) to his goodness, and value as a teacher, and kindness, etc. And you can’t simply write that off–well, you can, but it’s dishonest to simply respond with, “What does one expect from a bunch of tools?” Please be respectful in that way.

See for yourself how Marty’s sort of civil, subtle, restrained, measured, compassionate, multi-perspectival, multi-quadrant sensitive perspective is pretty typical of the “Marc Gafni defenders.”

See for yourself how, on the contrary, the “anti-Marc Gafni” cohort routinely writes inflammatory, one-sided, self-righteous, caustic, pouty, “I am one of Marc Gafni’s victims” diatribes now filling up the blogosphere’s comment boxes.

Draw the appropriate conclusions about how seriously to weigh the various points-of-view as best you can determine. Ask yourself, who sounds like the “adult in the room”?

Yes, reasonable people can disagree about whether Integral organizations should continue to hire Gafni for top leadership positions. But the intellectual arrogance piling up on the blogs is sickening.

More facts and perspectives will come out, more healing will take place, public and private meetings will be held, policies will be developed and instituted — I’m pretty sure — and we will all move on … soon enough.

Remember Socrates: “I know that I know nothing.”