Sounds True or Sounds False? An Open Letter to Tami Simon on the Marc Gafni Controversy

The Context: My First Impressions

Tami Simon is the CEO of Sounds True, a Colorado-based multimedia publishing company dedicated to disseminating spiritual wisdom. She is also a person I have met once personally and believe firmly to be of enormous integrity and outstanding character. It is precisely because of her impeccable reputation that when she speaks out against a spiritual teacher, people listen.

On or before September 21, 2011, she gave a statement to Bill Harryman’s Integral Options Café (IOC) blog, the full text of which is in Appendix A of this post. Her remarks seemed straightforward and clear at first blush: After Dr. Marc Gafni, a spiritual teacher and author, lost her trust for a variety of reasons, she cancelled the publication of his forthcoming book and ended her association with him.

The ripples from her remarks to IOC soon took on a life of their own: hundreds of incendiary blog posts and comments were lit, subsequently exploding into a major blogosphere-manufactured apparent “sex scandal” that has enormously damaged Marc Gafni’s reputation in the Integral world. Soon Integral Life, one of Marc’s most high-profile partnerships, distanced itself from him.

Until the past several days, I had never interacted with Marc and knew him only via the Integral Spiritual Experience event last January (where I also met Tami). I am an author and acting now as an independent journalist (a.k.a. blogger) interested in helping to shed light on this significant development, not taking sides in a “Blog War.”

Marc has told me his side of the story, including information which has not yet been made public and other information that he is willing to say on the record. His narrative confirmed some facts that I had surmised independently or learned from others, and the totality of my findings (so far) has raised many important questions. It has also led me to the suspicion that the prevailing narrative of the controversy in the blogosphere may very well have strayed from the truth in important ways.

These are my first impressions of Marc, for what they’re worth.

I experience spending time with Marc as a co-creation of a generative and vibrant energy radiant with warmth and sorrow and fierce love. Tentatively (owing to the brevity of our relationship), I share Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton’s estimation of Marc’s remarkable gifts, including his charisma, brilliance, goodness, insight, warmth, empathy, generosity, and a devotion to love others and serve the world. I have never met another man quite like him.

Marc’s parents survived the Holocaust, with his mother still living and his father passing away only two weeks ago. It’s a long story, but let’s just say that in Marc’s spiritual autobiography, he has experienced terrible betrayals from people that he loved most and gave his heart to, and yet he continues to hold it open, reaching towards infinity. As a result, genuine divine Eros emerges in his presence in a way that is rare in the world … but such golden light is not without its shadow.

To be brutally honest, as I interviewed him and conducted research for this blog post, Marc selectively revealed information to me that made it more difficult for me to get to really see him for who he is, warts and all. He previewed an advance draft of this blog post and counseled me repeatedly and adamantly against publishing it, expressing a level of fear bordering on panic, convinced that it would cause his old enemies from Israel to emerge on a new vendetta to hunt him down and destroy him. He showed an excessive concern with managing what people thought of him, and he showed me his mighty force of personality with all his strong opinions on the right course of action and a persistent willingness to converse at length in an effort to persuade me to his point of view.

I have weighed these impressions into what I have to say, and I have no doubt that these tendencies of his have over the years led others to the conclusion that he is manipulative, secretive, untrustworthy, controlling, and even coercive. I personally never felt at all manipulated, controlled, or coerced. Not a single time. However, I don’t judge someone who may have felt otherwise in similar experiences with him.

Once Marc gave me a clumsy editorial suggestion for changing the verbage of this post in a way that could have created the impression that he was asking me to lie for him. To be perfectly clear, he never asked me to lie for him and I would not have. I was not taken aback. Instead, I thought it flattering that he trusted me so much to recognize his editorial suggestion for what it really was: a spontaneous expression of flowing co-generativity emerging from a causal field holding our presence, enacted through our excited exchange, and one which got lost for a moment in its eagerness to spin a greater truth at the expense of a smaller detail. I said something like, “Come on, Marc! We can’t get ahead of the story!” and that was that.

I trust Marc Gafni. I trust him with heart and soul. I am relaxed and comfortable with him. A week ago, when I knew much in the rumor mill about Marc but had never spoken to him personally, I would not have expected in a million years that I would be saying such a thing. But in our hours of discussions recently I have come to see a magnificent source of light and love that the world is fortunate to have in its midst.

At the same time, I have spoken to a woman involved in the present controversy who has a different take on Marc and I totally appreciate why she and plenty of others might have come to a different feeling. You see, I get the sense that Marc’s most worrisome baggage may be a reluctance to let people see him for who he truly is and to trust full-heartedly that he does not need to resort to distortions and evasions in those moments when he is most vulnerable and frightened of the condemnation of others.

Marc’s sexual/affectional orientation is essentially polyamorous. (Polyamory is for him, as for many other polyamorists, not merely a lifestyle choice but an involuntary condition of his constitution.) Marc’s polyamory isn’t a secret, but at a deeper level of psychic integration I am convinced that Marc is still living in a closet, clothed in layers of denial that he loves differently than most other people in the world and the hard reality is that there are many people who will never fully accept him for that.

I so much wish he would just say once and for all, “I swear never to hold another intimate relationship in secrecy, and never again encourage another person to keep secrets. And I will be fully and proudly who I am, love who I choose, however many partners I choose, whenever I choose, however I choose, and I will explore responsible post-conventional sexual/amorous relationships without regard to what my community or the world at large thinks. And I will strive to be my first and most powerful source of accountability.”

That would be music to my ears. But it would be no magic wand that would wave away the knottiest complexities of human sexuality and human ethics. As a woman affected by the “sex scandal” recently reminded me, so often what is most sacred is what it is because it is also private. Like moth orchids, some ecstasies perish in too much sunlight. All ethical dilemmas within spiritual communities are not going to be solved by requiring everyone to set their Facebook privacy settings to zero and relationship status to “It’s Complicated.”

Following Tami Simon’s statements to IOC, many hundreds of blog comments and articles have been written about Marc Gafni in recent weeks without an adequate context that only by bringing a fuller picture into public view can any semblance of a more adequate story be seen. Some of these revelations may be painful and uncomfortable. But it would be a grave public disservice to walk away from this public discussion now while a dark cloud hovers over Marc’s reputation (not to mention the impact to Ken Wilber, Integral Life, and other organizations and communities that align themselves with him or did until Tami Simon’s letter appeared).

On September 30, Tami Simon declined a request for an interview with me. Robb Smith, CEO of Integral Life, initially agreed to speak with me, but we did not speak before this post went to press and he did not respond to an interview request on October 2 [corrected]. I have spoken with the two women who were mentioned in Tami’s remarks to IOC. I have, as I said, spoken to Marc. I have also spoken or corresponded with a few other people with first-hand knowledge of the events.

After a difficult deliberation, I have decided to omit certain facts about the station of one of the women in order to respect her confidentiality, even though I continue to believe that the facts about her station are deeply pertinent to making sense of what really went down. I am sorry to disappoint those of you wanting to know her story, but I will not be telling it on her behalf.

Tami, Marc, and a few others were provided with an advance draft of this blog post and given the opportunity to comment. Please consider carefully the partiality of the facts and perspectives you are about to read. This blog post contains more questions than answers, and such answers as are to be found are incomplete. It is a summation of my first impressions, not the last word.

An Open Letter to Tami Simon, CEO of Sounds True

Dear Tami Simon,

Will you please help me get to the truth about the controversy resulting from your remarks about Dr. Marc Gafni that were recently published on Bill Harrymann’s Integral Options Café blog?

I honestly don’t know what to think about much of what I’ve read. I don’t want to take anyone’s side, yours, Marc’s, his accusers, his defenders, anyone’s. But this controversy is painful and injurious to the spiritual community and organizations that are important to me, and I want to figure out what’s going on.

I will not at this time go into the allegations of improper relations against Marc from Israel; however it is worth mentioning that his checkered biography makes Marc an especially vulnerable target for attacks on his character or conduct. Your remarks about Marc barely go into this territory and these allegations have been discussed in great detail by others and abundant information on them is already widely available online. Accordingly, I’ll bracket a discussion of this important part of the context for the moment.

Knowing the truth does require knowing the context. In my experience — and this is a huge teaching of the Integral philosophy — the more inclusive and comprehensive the context in which something is known, it’s generally for the better. If context is missing from a truth claim or moral judgment, it makes it impossible to assess. Sometimes something that sounds true upon first notice looks false from another, more expansive perspective.

Not everyone agrees with Marc’s teachings on sexual ethics, and nobody claims that he has exercised perfect judgment in his recent behavior. In fact, upon hearing a first-hand account by one of these women, I found myself disheartened at the relationship’s messiness. She relayed to me additional anecdotes gleaned from numerous conversations she had with other women who had been hurt in relationships with Marc, and I grew even sadder. (I also spoke to a woman with an extraordinarily nuanced and complex relationship to Eros, one who cherishes Marc for his vulnerability and honesty, and who is positively grossed out when people leer at public figures “caught having sex,” not by anything Marc has done or said.)

He has deeply apologized in person to the woman who was hurt (the one who was not a student), and I have not heard him speak ill of you or that woman in any way. He feels devastated about the recent events, but his concern is infinitely more about risks to the teaching of an Integral Enlightenment of Fullness than about his own emotional travails, strained friendships, or financial losses.

Let me get right down to it, Tami. I have learned that your statement selectively revealed damaging details about Marc’s personal life while omitting other details which show a man with a long public record of clear and subtle statements about sexual ethics who has, from what I’ve seen, lived in complete integrity with his public teachings. Furthermore, it appears that you approved a book for publication in which he again reaffirms the moral teachings with which he has lived in integrity.

I am still scratching my head, asking what this controversy is really about. Considering what I’ve learned, it seems the entire scandal really boils down to your statement, “I do not trust Marc Gafni.” In my experience, trust in interpersonal relationships is dependent upon an array of gross, subtle, and causal dimensions and is always a two-way, co-responsible affair (actually it’s a Four Quadrant affair, but I digress). And yet I have seen nothing from you to acknowledge your own responsibility for any aspect of the controversy.

You have every right to publish whatever books you choose. But through your public statements you have gone beyond exercising editorial discretion into the realm of “accuser,” leveling public charges (some would say smears) against Marc that are enormously consequential, given your impeccable reputation for goodness of character.

According to Ken Wilber’s Foreword to Marc Gafni’s Your Unique Self, the book whose publication you have cancelled, Gafni’s teaching could very well be a seminal turning point in humankind’s understanding of Integral Enlightenment. I have learned that the book is the first of a series of ten books (including a potential collaboration with Ken Wilber) that might become one of the foundations for The Next Chapter of Integral, and an enduring source of light and wisdom so much needed in the world today.

If your remarks have contributed to a narrative of “scandalizing” Gafni to the point where people regard everything he says as suspect or somehow (bizarrely) that his teachings are now discredited, then we must take very seriously the possibility of permanent damage to the entire Integral movement and even the fate of the future course of humankind’s spiritual evolution.

I’m sure that I’ll be criticized by some for wildly exaggerating the harm, but I would rather err on the side of Spirit than the side of spinelessness. Spirit, in its own unpredictable and impenetrable ways, often works in history by selecting particular individuals to deliver seminal messages at precisely the right time and place. The messenger’s eminent humanity often poses an obstacle for some in recognizing and appreciating the pivotal moment.

Whatever else he might be, Dr. Marc Gafni is such a messenger. I can say with absolute certainty that his work is too important to be thrown aside over those sides to his “human, all too human” character which are difficult for us to accept. He deserves the respect to have his perspective taken into account and the questions raised by his version of events addressed with seriousness. He also deserves to be challenged on any aspect of his current behavior which falls short of his own high standards for himself and the standards of the communities he serves. Anything less is simply not Integral.

I am hopeful that our leadership will take the time to learn a more complete picture of your remarks that will be indispensable for evaluating their truth. [corrected] I hope they conduct a proper assessment of whether Marc Gafni has lived in integrity with his teachings and is capable of acting in the best interests of his students and professional alliances.

Therefore, I feel the public is owed a better understanding of the context in which you formed your judgment regarding Marc Gafni’s trustworthiness. I will say frankly that after talking with all the people that I have and reading what I have, I very much doubt a key element of your story, and the conclusion seems indisputable that your words were distorted by unacknowledged shadows that have not yet come into public light.

You have declined so far to speak with me. Accordingly, I’ve prepared a list of questions to ask publicly. Your candid answers to them will help me to broaden my perspective on your remarks concerning Marc Gafni. Will you please help me, my blog’s readers, the Integral community, and the world to know the truth?

Much love,

Joe Perez

Important Questions for Tami Simon

1. In the publishing world, it’s very common for publishers and authors to have disputes before a book is published. Unless there’s a lawsuit, almost nobody ever puts out so much as a press release. The deals just fall apart and the world never hears about them.

(a) It comes as a surprise to me that you have chosen to make a public statement on your decision not to publish Marc’s book or support him as a teacher. Why did you?
(b) I have learned that there is another prominent spirituality author whose media project you cancelled over ethical concerns; however, you made no public statement that I can find. This author, like Marc, has extensive negative claims made against him on the blogosphere. Indeed, he, unlike Marc, has seen entire books published by others devoted to making allegations about his ethics. On what grounds did you treat Marc’s case differently?

2. Why did you choose Bill Harryman’s Integral Options Café (IOC) as the venue for distributing your remarks? IOC frequently links to your blog at Sounds True, and Bill Harryman says he’s corresponded with you.

(a) I think it’s pretty obvious that Bill is on a mission to vilify a variety of spiritual teachers he believes to be abusive gurus including Marc Gafni. Do you agree with Bill’s vituperative statements that Marc is a “predator” and “perpetrator,” words that are used to describe rapists and other horrific criminals?
(b) Are you aware that Bill has admitted to intellectual property theft? It seems odd to me that a reputable publisher such as Sounds True whose business relies on intellectual property would choose such a questionable/ironic venue as IOC to make an announcement regarding the ethical standards of people you want to associate with. We’ve all made decisions we later regret. Is it possible this was not the best decision?

3. I have learned that there is an intermediary who has funneled information between you and Bill Harryman about the sexual relationships between Marc Gafni and two women, and that she is a former lover of Marc’s who may be the person most responsible for the active ongoing attempt to demonize Marc by spreading disproven or distorted rumors about him. I don’t want to go on a fishing expedition here, but one might wonder if something is being “shrouded in secrecy” (to use a phrase that you deployed against Marc Gafni).

(a) Were you the source of this intermediary’s knowledge of Marc’s sexual relationships with two women, and did you encourage her in any way to reveal the information to Bill Harryman?
(b) Will you name this person publicly, so that the public may learn what there is to know about her, evaluate whether she is credible, and thereby assess if there is anything to see here?
(c) Will you tell us what the nature of your relationship is with her?
(d) How did she influence your views of Marc Gafni’s trustworthiness in the days before you terminated your business relationship with him and made your remarks to IOC?

4. According to a statement made by Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton in 2007, there is an exhaustive study which establishes that the legal complaints made against Marc in Israel are false complaints and “without a shred of truth.”

(a) Have you read the study? If you haven’t read it, why not?
(b) If so, did you read it before or after terminating your professional relationship with Marc?
(c) Please tell us your opinion of the report.

5. In your remarks on IOC, you stated that a couple of years ago Marc Gafni told you that he was not going to be involved in sexual relationships with students, but are you aware that since 2007 he has posted an essay entitled “Sex, Ethics, and Injury” on marcgafni.com in which he argues that in some cases, albeit rare, consensual sex between a spiritual teacher and an adult student is morally acceptable; furthermore, he has never publicly repudiated these statements to this day. I have spoken to Marc and he has stated for the record what he remembers saying to you (in Los Angeles several months ago as you were taking a walk together) is a general remark that he would not create any sort of scandal.

(a) Is it possible you have mis-remembered the conversation with Marc or mis-understood him?
(b) If in fact Marc’s promise to you was to keep out of scandal, can you hold Marc entirely responsible for creating a “scandal,” (defined by Google’s dictionary as “an action or event regarded as morally or legally wrong and causing general public outrage”)? Marc, after all, was not the person responsible for communicating the matter to the public. By making your remarks to IOC, a website known for trafficking in gossip and scandal on spiritual teachers, it looks like you partially were.

6. You said that you appreciated the content and message of Your Unique Self, which until recently was to be published through Sounds True. I assume you have read the book.

(a) Did you notice that there is a footnote in which Marc once again defends the moral acceptability of teachers and students having intimate relations in rare cases? (see Appendix B, below)
(b) Did you talk to Marc about this part of the book? If not, why not?
(c) Can you appreciate how someone looking at your new charge that Marc broke his alleged promise to you alongside the context of Marc’s several public statements might be doubtful of the truth of your claim, or at the very least confused? Given the depths to which Marc is committed to his views and the frequency with which he has publicly repeated them over an extended period of time, I find it incredible that he would have made a private promise to you (i.e., never to sleep with a student) which is at odds with his many public claims about sexual ethics, and that you would not have noticed the discrepancy. If what you are saying about Marc’s alleged promise were true, it seems to me that you would have either pressed him to disavow his public statements or that you were unaware of Marc’s public statements all along. And if you were unaware of Marc’s public statements, might Marc reasonably have assumed that you knew about them (including what he wrote in the book you approved), and therefore he would naturally have had a different view on whatever agreement there might have been between the two of you?

7. In your remarks on IOC, you say, “[N]ew and incontrovertible information came to light that made me aware that Marc was involved in a sexual relationship with a student and that the relationship was shrouded in secrecy.” In fact, this relationship was with Marcy, who in the days following your remarks posted a lengthy reply on Integral Life saying in part:

“I am a fully empowered adult woman who has been working on behalf of what I want to bring into the world. In the natural course of doing so, I have stepped into many different roles and ways of relating, and done so in the most responsible way I know. One of these included for a time an intimate dynamic with Marc that expressed itself sexually. To suggest that this violated our student-teacher relationship, or that I was in any way victimized, is actually a degradation of the feminine, and of the masculine too.”

I have also spoken directly to Marcy who affirms that she trusts Marc implicitly and is horrified at the way their relationship was distorted in the blogosphere. My question is multi-part:

(a) You are presumably aware that Marcy is not only an adult student of Marc’s, but also aware that she is a Board Member of a non-profit organization for which Marc is a co-founder. You didn’t mention this fact in your IOC remarks. Is seems relevant to me that the relationship dynamics between Marc and Marcy were far more complex than a simple teacher/student power imbalance. Indeed, Marc has publicly argued that for a variety of reasons Marcy had more power in the relationship than he did, and I think maybe he’s got a point. Why did you choose to omit this important context?
(b) What is a “student” and what is a “teacher”? Am I a student of Marc Gafni’s because I heard his keynote and yours because I attended your workshop at Integral Spiritual Experience 2? Are readers of my books or blog my students because they learn things from me? Are life coaches and counselors “teachers” in relationship with their private clients or persons who attend their workshops or lectures? It’s difficult for me to know where to draw the line. As Marcy told me, if she had dinner with someone as part of her normal interaction with them in a variety of contexts, does that mean that she had an “eating relationship”?  With these questions in mind, exactly how much of a student of Marc’s was Marcy, and did you bother to find out before making your allegations public?
(c) Did you speak with Marcy prior to making your remarks to IOC, and did you inform her that you would be bringing your allegations about her relationship with Marc public? If not, why not?
(d) Are you sorry that as a result of your IOC remarks you have forced Marcy against her desires to have her intimate relationship exposed through public remarks that will live forever on the Internet in the context of a sordid “sex scandal,” words which can never be erased? Have you apologized to Marcy? If not, do you want to do so now?
(e) Tell me about the phrase you have chosen to describe the relationship between Marc and Marcy: “shrouded in secrecy,” a phrase which has been repeated multiple times online by bloggers/commenters seeking to demonize Marc. What specifically does this phrase mean to you, apart from the fact that the adults involved wished to keep the relationship private?

8. In your remarks on IOC, you claim that a woman “often … witnessed Marc telling lies to cover his tracks.” Since you don’t mention any specific lies it’s hard for me to determine if there’s any truth to this comment, you know. There’s nothing to investigate, nothing that Marc can say in his defense. What I think is that despite our best intentions we all tell lies. All of us humans, anyways. One study says that men on average tell lies 42 times a week, and women about half that number.

(a) Say more about the ethical standard on honesty you are holding Marc Gafni to.
(b) Certainly if Marc was by mutual agreement holding a relationship in a private container it would require some degree of lies or evasions. Yet I wonder, is it really worthy of all the approbation that has come to him?
(c) Are there other authors who have been published by Sounds True who, to your knowledge, have told lies or who have had sexual/amorous relationships that you deemed improper? Did you terminate your business relationship with them?
(d) If tomorrow you were to learn that another Sounds True author told a lie or engaged in a sexual/amorous relationship that you deemed improper, would you terminate your professional relationship with him or her and promise to make a public remark on the topic just as you did in Marc Gafni’s case?
(e) Do you have a policy regarding the ethics of Sounds True authors? Can I read it?

Finally, and this one comes from my heart:

9. How can there be a healing of these fresh wounds between you and Marc? I have heard him say that he loves you and hopes that you will forgive him for mistakes he’s made and that he hopes you can accept his friendship. I know that he is reluctant to make a public apology so long as the stink of the recent toxic blog posts lingers in the air, but he wants healing so very much for everyone. Is there any chance you will forgive him? If you feel you share any responsibility at all for the enormous suffering he has been going through, or have compassion for the many tears he has shed, would you consider apologizing to him? What needs to happen for healing to take place now, and is there anything I can do in my capacity as a blogger or friend to help this process along?

Related posts on Awake, Alive & Aware

• UNIQUE LEAK: Ken Wilber to Address Marc Gafni Controversy (9/29/2011)
• Ongoing questions in the Marc Gafni controversy (9/28/2011)
• On the Marc Gafni controversy: Don’t assume you know more than you do! (9/25/2011)
• Exposed! On Bill Harryman’s exposé on Marc Gafni’s personal relationships (9/20/2011)

Appendix A: The Full Text of Tami Simon’s Remarks to Integral Options Café

Tami Simon via IOC:

When I first started working with Marc a couple of years ago, Marc and I spoke openly about his history and what he claimed were false accusations against him related to alleged sexual improprieties. Several influential people spoke up in his defense and equally several people warned me not to trust Marc. I came to believe that whatever had happened in the past, Marc was beginning a new chapter in his life. Marc explicitly stated to me that he was not going to be involved in sexual relationships with students, that even if he deemed such relationships to be consensual, he did not believe that engaging in relationships with students would support his efforts to be an effective teacher. In considering publishing Marc’s work, the most important thing to me was the actual quality of the written work. When he submitted “Your Unique Self” in its edited form, I appreciated the content and message of the book. The quality of the book combined with the force of his conviction regarding how he would conduct himself as a teacher moving forward convinced me to take a risk on publishing his work.

In the past several weeks, new and incontrovertible information came to light that made me aware that Marc was involved in a sexual relationship with a student and that the relationship was shrouded in secrecy. There was an obvious lack of alignment between Marc’s words to me and his actions. I learned about Marc’s sexual relationship with a student from another woman who was having a sexual relationship with Marc. This woman was also asked by Marc to keep her relationship with him a secret. In talking with this woman, I learned how emotionally damaging this secrecy was for her, how it cut her off from emotional support and connection. I also learned quite a bit about how she felt manipulated by Marc, about how often she witnessed Marc telling lies to cover his tracks, and how upset she was to find herself caught in such a web of lies.

Discovering this new information, it became clear to me that it was not in integrity for me personally or for Sounds True as a company to publish Marc’s books or to support him as a spiritual teacher in the world. I do not trust Marc Gafni. I do not trust what he says, and I do not trust that he acts in the best interests of his students or his professional alliances.

~ Tami Simon, Sounds True

Appendix B: Excerpt from Marc Gafni’s Your Unique Self (forthcoming) and Related Links

The following passage below is written by Marc Gafni in a book which Tami Simon approved for publication via Sounds True:

While sexual intimacy in the context of a dual relationship between teacher and student, when specific contexts and conditions are met, may well be appropriate and ethical it also involves a great deal of potential dangers. This point was well made by Ken Wilber in a recorded dialogue at the German Integrales forum in 2010, and has been made by numerous feminimst writers including bell hooks, Christina Hoff Sommers, Laura Kipnis, Daphne Patai and many others. I discuss this issue in my article, “Spiritually Incorrect, Sex Ethics and Injury,” see http://marcgafni.com and Integrales Magazine (forthcoming). As I, and all of the aforementioned writers point out, sexual intimacy between teacher and student may also potentially endanger both the teacher and the student. It requires a particularly evolved student and a particularly evolved teacher to successfully navigate this territory. In this sense, one might argue that if the Unique Self teaching is to be lived out in its entirety, it requires a particular kind of student and teacher whom are able to hold the complexities of dual or multiple relationships without falling into the classical egoic traps. This is rare, for all people are geniuses at self-deception. It is for this reason that I generally recommend not engaging sexual relations between the student and teacher. The exceptions to this rule are in the realm of the post-conventional, and therefore by definition need to be looked at individually and cannot be taught in public articles or teachings.

Other Links Related to Marc Gafni

• Privacy, Post Modernism, Sex, Teachers And Students: On Sex, Ethics And Injury By Marc Gafni (9/13/2011)
• “Spiritually Incorrect: Some Remarks on the Teacher-Student Relationship by Marc Gafni” (6/14/2011)
• “Integrity, Spiritual Teachers, and a School for Integral Spirituality,” a Position Paper by Integrales Forum. (6/13/2011)

Postscripts

In writing this post, I am extremely grateful for everyone I spoke to in the past week as well as my companion MT for his emotional support. Also, I would like to thank Bill Harryman for his courageous blog post which brought the entire matter into the light.

CORRECTION: This post omits a statement in the first draft which incorrectly stated the relationship between Tami Simon’s letter and Integral Life’s decision to distance itself from the Center for World Spirituality. Also, I have clarified that Robb Smith and I did not speak before this blog was first published, not that an interview request was declined.

Joe Perez is a Seattle-based writing professional and author of Soulfully Gay, the first autobiography in the Integral Spirituality tradition. His blog posts have been published on numerous Internet publications including Awake, Alive & Aware and +kenwilber.com, where he wrote, “What Good Religion Journalism Looks Like.” He is also a Career Management Coach and Principal of Writing Wolf.

© Copyright 2011 by Joe Perez. All rights reserved, excepting short excerpts which may be freely reproduced. Contact the author for permission to reproduce the article in full.

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