This piece is a lightly edited transcript of a free weekly live talk. Thus, the style of the piece is spoken word and not a formal essay. Edited by Jacqueline Clark.
The Mystery School for the New Humanity: Who We Must Become
Four Circles of Intimacy
Who We Must Become—this mystery school for the new humanity that we’re launching—it’s been a long time in the making and it’s insanely important. We’ve said before that only mystery schools reshape humanity. In other words, historically, it’s the institution of the mystery school that has reshaped human consciousness at every stage of humanity.
There’s the public institutions of commerce, of governance, of economics, of public policy. Beginning in Europe at a certain point, there’s things called universities. In China, there’s very, very sophisticated forms of official study and exams that you need to take in the 10th century, 11th century, 12th century. To get into civil service in China is a very, very elaborate Chinese system, way before Western universities.
These are the public forms of the transmission of information,
but that is not where culture moves forward.
That is not where love breaks through.
It’s not where Eros finds its way.
It’s not where the creative advance of novelty, of the evolution of love, where new emergence happens.
New emergence always happens when there is a small group of people that are radically committed, that are loving each other deeply, and that are looking at the world and saying, Oh, my God, we’re going to take responsibility for the whole thing.
In 1985, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie did We Are the World. It was about world-centric consciousness, about we’re the world, that every hungry person has to be fed.
Then, in 1995, Michael Jackson realized, oh, we are the world’s not enough. We left out all the animals. We left out this broader field and he does this thing called Earth Song. It’s very beautiful and those are both really important. Those express, very beautifully, world-centric consciousness, world-centric intimacy, and cosmo-centric consciousness, cosmo-centric intimacy.
We’ve talked about that before, and we’ll talk about it in great depth, those four levels of intimacy, those four circles of intimacy.
Egocentric, me and my family.
Ethnocentric, me and my tribe.
World-centric, my tribe is humanity.
Cosmo-centric, my tribe is humanity, the whole biosphere and all the animals, the oceans and the entire galactic world.
But in the end, the real song, the real earth song is a mystery school. In other words, in the end, the music has to be played, not just in the declaration of a song, although we need songs for the revolution.
We need music for the revolution and the music of the revolution matters enormously.
The revolution is based on the deeper music of intimacy, the deeper music of dharma, of the distinctions around who am I, where am I and what ought I doing.
How should I do it? Why am I here?—the basic Story of Value that we live in and the up leveling of that story. The evolution of that story.
There’s an egocentric story. That’s a small Story of Value.
Then there’s a tribal Story of Value.
And then there’s a world-centric Story of Value.
Then there’s a cosmo-centric Story of Value.
The upleveling, the ability for Michael Jackson to do Earth Song in 1995 came from 500 years of mystery schools that were based on 500 years of mystery schools before.
The Great Purpose and Great Destiny of My Life
A mystery school is playing the innermost music, the innermost demand, the innermost ecstasy, the innermost Story of Value which answers the great questions,
Why am I born?
Why am I here?
Why am I alive?
Who must I become?
Who must we become in order to thrive, but even in order to survive, in order to fulfill our fundamental destiny as human beings?
Who must we become in order to discern that destiny, to fulfill that destiny, which is the only source of joy—the only source of aliveness, the only source of Eros, the only source of delight?
We’re like, oh my God, I’m on purpose.
Think about it for a second, my friends. I want to just do a one second pointing out instruction.
Just think, for a second, about your life without purpose. Remove purpose from your life for one second—no purpose—just think about it for a second.
I have no purpose. It’s painful, actually.
I go to the movies, I eat cheesecake, I make love, I read novels, I take walks and I’ve got this great life. I’ve got great real estate, I have a great house. I’m looking good.
I’m feeling good. But really,
I’m feeling like shit. I’m depressed. I’m devastated.
It’s empty. It’s random. It’s meaningless.
I would much rather be in the overwhelm of trying to navigate my life’s purpose and trying to find my way and trying to chart my destiny and trying to discern the unique depth of my purpose than have everything.
The pain of my life, the devastation of my life, the great curse of my life is to not be challenged to rise to the great purpose and great destiny of my life.
Joy Is a Byproduct of Who I Must Become
I’ll just give an example. We’ve all heard of the Garden of Eden. Garden of Eden story—big story in Western mysticism and Western esotericism, in the Western canon—the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
In the Garden of Eden, who never leaves the garden? Who gets exiled? —The snake!
Adam and Eve are exiled from the garden. Who never leaves the garden? —The snake.
Originally, the snake has legs. He’s not walking on his belly. It’s a snake with legs. What is a snake with legs? —A dragon.
The snake is a dragon breathing fire with purpose and depth and wonder—it’s what the mystics call “the way of the dragon.”
But then the dragon loses her legs, loses its legs. The text reads al gechoncha telech, you will crawl on your belly, ve’afar tochal kol yemei chayecha, you will crawl on your belly and you will eat the dust of the earth. You’ll eat the ground.
Now, the mystics say, oh, my God, that’s the greatest gift. You’re going to have no financial challenges. You’re going to be in the garden. Your sustenance is going to be that which is closest to you—the dust, the earth. All of everything you need to eat, you’re going to have an endless supply of. You’re in the Garden of Eden. You own the garden, and that is your curse. To be in the Garden of Eden unchallenged is the ultimate depression.
The ultimate depression is to be unchallenged in the Garden of Eden.
The more intense the challenge, the more intense I realize that I am needed, that there’s that which needs to be done, that only I can do, that I have a destiny, that there is a who I must become. That Who I Must Become is the charge of my life.
It’s only when I realize that who I must become is the charge of my life that I awaken into joy.
Joy is a byproduct of who I must become.
Here’s the crazy thing. Your local psychologist is not going to tell you who you must become. Psychology is important. It serves certain functions that are unimaginably important, should be done in appropriate time and place with good people to work out certain things. But at its core, psychology is broken.
Psychology doesn’t have a Story of Value. It bypasses the issue of an inherent value. It locates everything just in early childhood and says that it all went wrong there and let’s redo those scripts and it’ll all get better. That’s not true.
That’s not true. It’s deeper than that.
Psychology is not going to tell you who you must become.
The old pre-modern religions are not going to tell you who you must become.
Reading literature is not going to tell you who you must become. Literature is contradictory and confused. I love literature. I love reading literature. I love teaching literature. I love writing literature, but literature by itself is insufficient.
We need to articulate, for the 8 billion plus people on a planet, a Story of Value which has a unique trajectory of who I must become and a shared trajectory, a shared vector of who we must become. That’s what a mystery school is for.
A mystery school is to do the hard, crazy work together of taking responsibility for the whole at this moment of meta-crisis, at this time between stories.
I call it a time between stories, Zak calls it a time between worlds. We put those two phrases together and they’ve spread around the world today.
We live in a time between worlds, we live in a time between stories.
Those sentences have resonated with a lot of people. I see them used all over the place today, which makes me really excited. People got like, oh, we’re at this time between worlds. We’re at this time between stories.
In this time between worlds and time between stories, we need, in order to respond to the meta-crisis, to generate a new Story of Value that tells us something about who we must become.
It’s not a dogmatic story.
It’s a story that lives deep inside of us. It lives in us, as us, and through us.
That’s who we must become.
I just want to invite everyone, oh my God, in mad devotion, become part of the mystery school. This mystery school is going to be the center of this great project to respond to the meta-crisis. Responding to the meta-crisis is a very big deal.
We Tell a New Story of Value
My true belief is that the notion that it won’t go down, I think, is not true. I think the natural trajectory, based on where we’re going now, is that it will go down in not more than 100 years.That is what I think is going to happen.
I think the chances for human extinction in the next 100 years are at 95%,
unless we become Who You Must Become,
unless we tell a new Story of Value,
unless we establish that value is real,
unless we download this new Story of Value into the very source code of humanity.
I apologize for that kind of very precise prediction.
If you want to read Roman Yampolsky, he’s a very, very good guy. He’s at the University of Rochester. He’s the guy who invented the term AI safety. He did a recent interview a little while ago with Lex Friedman where he articulated this vision. He’s a very, very serious guy.
Roman Yampolsky does not know how to solve the value problem. He’s articulated the value problem well. I think he’s stuck—not because he’s stuck—he’s reflecting the kind of general consensus. In the next few weeks, I’ll play you some clips by him; we’re going to address him directly. But on that Lex Friedman podcast he basically says, he thinks 99%, 100 years, game over. His reason: value broke down.
He thinks it can’t be solved, but that’s because he’s not thinking about it carefully. It’s not his job to think about it carefully. It’s his job to do AI safety. It’s his job to be a brilliant data scientist.
It’s our job in this mystery school, in this place, in this time.
It’s not happening in Oxford. I left Oxford. Zak left Harvard. It’s not happening at the university, it’s not happening at the Sorbonne, it’s not happening at the University of Beijing.
There are isolated pockets of people at the leading edge who are thinking seriously and we’re trying to find each other. That’s what’s happening today.
The system breaks down. The caterpillar that wants to become a butterfly, turns itself over. It’s bloated. It’s collapsing. Its immune system is collapsing.
There are just a few imaginal disks that understand that the real crisis is a crisis of imagination, and then we begin to tell a new story.
But we’re not making up a new story. We’re not declaring a new story.
We’re making new distinctions about the very nature of the Cosmos.
We’re making new distinctions about the nature of the Cosmos that are self-evidently true, that you can feel them in your body.
We know that they’re true in our body.
Those distinctions, when we link them together, will come together as a new Story of Value.
That new Story of Value will emerge as a butterfly that will then go and re-energize the flowers that have gotten devastated, and re-eroticize the Field of the Real that’s gotten degraded. That’s what the butterfly does.
This is ours to do.
I mean this so, so tenderly. I really, truly mean it so tenderly. I know that people think, like, he’s crazy—I’ve been saying some version of this since 2009, 10.
Everyone’s like, the guy’s crazy. Let him stick to Dharma, talk about Unique Self. He’s pretty good at Dharma, that Gafni guy. Why is he talking about this other stuff? But it’s actually not the case that I’m crazy.
The threat is real and our response is not to become doomers, It’s not to deny. But it’s also not to dominate.
Our response is da Vinci.
Our response is the dawn of a new era.
Our response is to discern.
Our response is to distinguish, to distinguish new distinctions.
We are ontological activists for the sake of the whole, distinguishing the nature of Cosmos. In doing so, we are playing a larger game.
We are taking responsibility together in this mystery school for the evolution of love.
It can’t get much more serious than that.
It can’t get much more purpose-filled than that.
Can it get much more purpose-filled than that?
That is purpose.
There’s unimaginable joy in that, unimaginable joy.
To be clear,
if it doesn’t work and there’s an extinction of humanity, it will not be an extinction of goodness, truth, and beauty. It will not be an extinction of spirit.
It means that this era, this epoch of humanity will end. And it will end in great suffering, in great pain that is unnecessary. That should not happen.
We have the capacity to participate as partners with the Divine in the evolution of love. We have the capacity to feel the unborn children—the trillions of unborn children. That’s what we’re here to do.
Every week we tell a new chapter in that new Story of Value. That’s what we’re going to do this week.
Sin Means that What I Do Is Valuable
This week’s Evolutionary Love Code:
There is no more wondrous human quality than sin.
The greatest shame in the world is to not have the capacity to sin; and therefore to forgive is not always to love, for love is not merely a feeling but a perception. Or said differently, borrowing the phrase from Max Scheler, a ‘value-ception’—love is a perception of value. Love between human beings is a Unique Self-perception: a perception of the irreducibly unique configuration of ErosValue that is the ‘other’, who is always the Beloved.
Let’s see if we can break through in some serious way here, with full honor, full tenderness. This is some heavy stuff we’re about to go into.
We need these distinctions.
We said last week, we love sin.
Sin is a great human capacity. We love sin.
Billy Joel’s critique of sin and Only the Good Die Young—we looked at that text last week as a great critique. He says, God, I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. He’s talking about the pre-modern notion of sin where—
sin is about crushing the human being
sin is about emasculating human dignity
sin is about this God, who demands only blind obedience, who is going to catch you out on what you did wrong and count it all up and send you to hell.
Billy Joel says, hey, Virginia, come on, let’s go! Let’s get some aliveness going on and Catholic girls, they wait much too late. Only the good die young. I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
Billy Joel is critiquing the pre-modern notion of sin. That’s really important. Billy Joel expresses, beautifully, the deconstruction. It’s the deconstructive project. We’ve got to deconstruct the old idea of sin. What does Billy Joel not do? —He doesn’t begin the reconstructive project. We need to reclaim sin.
Why do we need to reclaim sin? —because sin means that there’s value.
Sin means that what I do is valuable.
Sin means that it’s worth evaluating what I do. Or let me say it differently:
Sin means the Cosmos cares about what I do.
Sin means I have impact.
Sin means I have power.
Sin means what I do matters.
Sin means I count and therefore I’m accountable.
No one wants to live in a world where I don’t have the capacity to sin, but we’re not going back to the old notion of sin. We’re claiming this new notion of sin.
Sin Means There’s Gravitas
Now, what does sin do? That’s two. Now we’re leaping forward. What does sin do, this quality of sin, which is about human adequacy and dignity?
If I can’t sin, I’m powerless.
If I can’t sin, I have no impact.
If I can sin what I do matters, wow!
There’s this very beautiful movie that Dr. Kristina Kincaid is working on—we showed it at the mystery school two years ago.
The first two-thirds of the movie is about her story of the experience of abuse, her own experience of sexual abuse—actually her grandfather—and how she turned that into a life journey.
She turned that devastation into destiny.
She turned that violation into gift and turned that hell into becoming a healer.
It’s a very important piece of work. But what her grandfather did was a sin. It wasn’t just impolite. It wasn’t rude. It wasn’t a social violation. It was a violation. It was a fundamental violation. In other words, it was sinful. It’s a sin. It’s a violation.
Torture is a sin.
Making false claims about people in a court, or in the court of public opinion, is a sin.
Raging at someone, when that rage is not a sacred rage, but it’s just a loss of one’s own control, and then in that rage, degrading the other person is a sin.
It’s a violation of human dignity, and human dignity is a value of the Cosmos.
Sin means there’s gravitas, and if there’s no sin, there’s no greatness.
If we can’t gash the Cosmos, then we can’t heal the Cosmos.
Our capacity to be taken seriously, our capacity to impact, to transform, to fix, to heal, to evolve is inextricably linked with our capacity to violate and to sin.
Sin Damages and Sin Stains
Now what does sin do?—it gets very tender and very beautiful. Sin does two things.
Sin damages, and therefore it obligates the restitution of damage, so sin creates a debt. Sin creates a debt.
What happens? You’ve damaged someone. Someone’s been damaged. “Damages.” If you’ve done damages—let’s say in civil court—to someone, there’s a debt that’s incurred. That’s one: debt.
Number two, though is: Sin stains.
In the Solomon lineage, we would say that sin is metameh, which means sin stains. There’s a stain, and sin damages. Because it damages, it creates a debt, an obligation, a debt. Those are two distinct things. Those are not the same. This is deep. It’s deep. It’s beautiful. This is utterly confused; and we can’t live our life, we can’t have culture, that doesn’t have the possibility of engaging sin and transforming sin. But first we have to recognize it.
The reason there’s a meta-crisis is because we don’t have an experience of sin.
The violation of the environment is not understood as sin.
It’s a ‘political issue’, it’s win-lose metrics, that leaves billions of people below the poverty line in the world—and a billion-plus people without water isn’t a sin. It’s just viewed as some sort of ‘social issue’.
The experience of torture, perpetrated in Sudan, systematically, that’s a ‘social issue’. No, no, no!
There’s sin!
The reason there’s a meta-crisis is because we’re not willing to own our power, to own the fact that we impact, that we can actually rape. We can rape reality. We can coerce reality. Instead of making love to reality, we rape reality, and then reality is traumatized, and then reality withers and dies. That’s what Michael Jackson’s Earth Song is about.
Sin does two things. Sin stains and sin damages and therefore obligates. I want to try and understand the distinction between them.
Sin stains, what does that mean? Let’s answer what does that mean.
I’ll give you an example. Stain means that there’s a metaphysical blemish. I’m going to try and give you what that means.
Sin Means to Miss the Mark
There is an institution called witness. A person could be witness in court. To be a witness in court is based on a person’s fundamental integrity.
When a person in the Solomon lineage commits certain forms of sin, they’re no longer a valid witness in court. When a person commits certain kinds of sin, then there’s a stain of character, and therefore we no longer trust the person legally to be a witness in certain kinds of court cases. It’s very important. It’s a third, fourth century text that I’m citing for you.
What does that mean? That’s not about damages. That’s not about damage, that’s not about damages that you owe—It’s a stain.
There’s a stain in character, and your capacity to be a trusted witness is based on character. If there’s a stain in character, unless you can remove that stain, you are unable to be a trusted witness.
Now there’s a way to remove that stain. There’s a way to transform. But before you address that stain, there’s a metaphysical blemish. There’s a stain. There’s a blot on character, that’s what sin means. Sin’s a big deal and you do not want to live in a world where sin is not a recognized possibility.
We don’t want the medieval notion of sin. We’re with Billy Joel, Only the Good Die Young. We reject, we deconstruct the premodern notion of sin, for sure. But we also reject the postmodern idea that there is no sin, because
the postmodern idea that there is no sin is based on the idea that there is no value
If value’s inherent and value is real, if value is the valor and the valence of the valence of the Cosmos, which is the validity of human dignity and integrity, then to violate value is a violation, which is sin. In the original Hebrew comes from the world of archery, and it quite literally means to miss the mark.
To miss the mark means there’s a mark!
You don’t get to do the neoliberal, psychotherapeutic, subjectivity where life is a form of therapy, and basically, there’s no mark—there’s no place you’re supposed to go, there’s no destiny, there’s no demand. You just live your life, and then you paint a bullseye around your life, and you deceive yourself and claim to have hit the mark. No, that’s nonsense!
No, there’s a mark, and to sin is to miss the mark, and that mark is metaphysical. That’s the call, it’s the purpose, it’s the destiny.
It’s the date with destiny, which is the great romance of my life. It’s a big deal.
Independently of damages—forget about damages—sin stains.
Forgiving the Debt and Removing the Stain
For example, and I mean this just tenderly, and I don’t want to keep using Dr. Kincaid, Kristina’s example, but I’ll just do it one more time—In other words, Kristina can’t forgive her grandfather in a way that removes the stain. That can’t be done—I want to really understand that deeply—only he can do that.
To remove the stain, I have to engage in my action. I have to engage in an action of transformation, in which I recognize the violation.
I recognize it, unflinchingly, I don’t explain it.
Sometimes I’m talking to someone I say, hey, that didn’t work, you messed that up a little bit, my dear friend. They’ll give me seven explanations—just stop explaining!
I have to recognize that. I first have to recognize what was the dynamic: I fucked that up.
I have to recognize that clearly. Once I recognize it, I have actual recognition. Then I can regret it.
I can have remorse and then I can even rewrite in some way what happened in a way that removes the stain. That’s called teshuva.
Teshuva is to return to the dynamic after recognizing what I did. I have to ask for forgiveness. I have to ask for forgiveness for sure.
If someone forgives me, that can’t remove the stain. I have to ask for forgiveness because that’s part of my process of return.
I have to recognize,
I have to have remorse,
I have to regret,
I have to return,
and then I have to reauthor.
I have the capacity to reauthor the past, based on that deep process of human transformation. And part of that reauthoring is to ask for forgiveness.
But forgiveness can’t remove the stain.
Let’s say if I was hurt by somebody. If I was hurt by somebody in some deep way, let’s say I was abused—let me talk about myself—I don’t want to keep coming back to that example.
Let’s say I was abused, someone abused me, someone said things in public about me that were categorically false for, I don’t know, 40 years—that’s abusive..
I can forgive those damages—I can, or not,—whether I should or not, we’ll talk about.
But theoretically, I could forgive those damages. I could say, wow, you hurt me, I forgive those damages. You’ve damaged me. you’ve hurt me.
I can forgive those damages because sin does two things. Sin damages and creates a debt.
A debt is a juridic idea in civil court, you ‘affect damages.’. You’ve ‘done damages’ to someone. You’ve created a debt and so you have a right. That debt can be forgiven. That’s a term in law.
If there’s a debt, the debt can be forgiven.
So, if someone abused me, let’s say by saying false things about me in the public space for 40 years, just for an example, I have the right to forgive that debt because that person’s sin— that’s a sin—that sin caused ‘damage.’ I’m the person that was damaged. So, I have the capacity to forgive that debt.
Now, whether I’m obligated to or not is a different question. But I have the right to. I have the right to forgive that debt. But I can’t remove the stain.
In other words, whoever did the sin has to go through a process of transformation. Inside, they have to recognize, wow, I did this wrong. I was abusive in a very serious way.
I did this wrong.
I regret it.
I recant it.
I have remorse for doing it.
I ask for forgiveness.
I move for restitution,
all the R words.
The person who did the abuse, who did the violation, they have to act to remove the stain.
So, if I forgive Jack the abuser, I can forgive Jack the damages in terms of the debt, the cosmic debt, or the debt that Jack owes to me; I can forgive that debt.
Sin does two things. Sin damages and therefore creates debt, one. That debt can be forgiven. I can forgive that debt.
But even if I’ve forgiven the debt, I can’t remove the stain.
Whoever the abuser or the violator was, he/she has to remove their own stain.
Let’s say I hurt someone. Let me now not be the person who was hurt. Let’s say I hurt someone, let’s say you hurt someone. We hurt people and then we do it again, writes Bono.
If I hurt someone, two things happen. If that hurt is a genuine violation, that’s a sin. I’ve effected damages, I’ve created damages, so, I have to ask the damages to be forgiven. One.
The Practice of Teshuva
Then, two, I have to go through a process where I go through an internal transformation and I engage in a process of teshuva.
I return to that original desire that caused me to violate.
I reauthor that action.
I reimagine, reauthor,
I recapitulate that action in the palace of my imagination
I do it differently than I did it the first time, after fully recognizing the dynamic the dynamic of the violation, the dynamic of the sin.
I recognize the dynamic of the sin, I ask for forgiveness, I do everything I can to make restitution, but that’s not enough—that removes damages.
But then I have to go through an internal process, and I have to re-live that action in the drama of my mind, in the palace of my mind, in the palace of my imagination. I reenact that moment.
Let’s say I have a child and my child said, hey, mommy, would you save me first before anyone in the world because you love me that much? I reenact that in my mind. Maybe I said to my child, well, I’m not sure because I’m a liberal Buddhist and I’m not sure I should save you first because maybe that’s not right. All my kids needed to hear from me was, was of course I’ll save you first, because they were four years old. They just needed to feel that radical love from mom in that exact moment.
I may go back and reenact that and hear my child asking that question. Then literally, in my palace of imagination, pick up my child and embrace them and say, of course, of course I’ll save you first—because that’s what the four-year-old needs to hear.
I’m going to reenact that, or I might go back to a moment where I went into a rage.
I might go back to a moment of where I betrayed and I reenact that.
Again, there are two processes. Now it gets very beautiful. Sin does two things.
Sin obligates. There’s a damage that’s done. Therefore it creates a debt.
The debt can be removed if it’s forgiven, one. Forgiveness addresses the debt created by the damages.
Sin stains. It’s a metaphysical stain.
The stain is removed by teshuva—by me going through a process of return, self-transforming and becoming a different person—reconfiguring my interior desire and then reenacting that action in the palace of my mind and the drama of my psyche. I reenact it and reauthor that act as a different person.
That gives me ability to get underneath the vector of time, to literally go back in time and rewrite and reauthor that moment. We’ve talked about that capacity, to step under the vector of time and to literally rewrite the past through teshuva.
Teshuva means to return—which means to return to the moment of violation—to literally reauthor the moment and in doing so remove the stain.
Now, teshuva also requires asking for forgiveness because sin does two things. Sin stains and sin obligates.
I have to ask for forgiveness. I’m saying, please forgive the debt. Please forgive the debt that was incurred by the damages. Please forgive the debt that was incurred by the damages and the hurt that I did to you. Please forgive.
That’s an absolute moral demand on me and that allows the debt to be forgiven because, when someone asks for forgiveness, they have a right to be forgiven. That’s a fundamental human right. That’s a fundamental human right. We have a right to be forgiven. I’ll get back to that in a second. If someone truly asks for forgiveness—they ask not once, not twice, they ask three times in the lineage—and we see that they clearly recognize the dynamic that they created, there’s true regret and true remorse, then they have a right to be forgiven. That’s a right. Wow!
There Are No Sinners in the World
That means a person has the capacity to heal and transform every sin.
I’m not a sinner,
I’m not broken and
I’m not lost in shame.
I’m not drenched in sin.
I’m not fallen.
I’m not any of those things.
I’m neither fallen nor drenched in shame, nor lost in sin, nor a sinner.
Sinners don’t exist in the world. Sinners don’t exist, There are no sinners in the world
There are people, beautiful, gorgeous people, who have committed acts that are sins. But there are not sinners.
There are no sinners in the world; sinner is a designation. That’s why AA is wrong. There are also no alcoholics in the world.
No, it’s not, hi, my name’s Jack,I’m an alcoholic. No!
I’m Jack and I’m a Unique Self.
I’m Jack and I’m an irreducibly unique configuration of gorgeousness,of desire, of intimacy, of wonder and of beauty, and
I have an alcohol challenge, which is real.
I may have this alcohol challenge my whole life, but that is not who I am.
That is not who I am. That is an influence of broken structures, of medieval Christendom and medieval religion that entered AA:
I’m Jack, I’m an alcoholic. No!
I’m Jack, I’m a sinner. No, no, no!
We’re with Billy Joel on that, I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. No! It’s deep.
No, I’m a gorgeous human being. I am Homo imago dei, I am Homo amor. I am beauty itself. I am goodness, truth and beauty. I am adequacy. I am dignity. I am wonder. I am amazement. I am God’s joy. I’m God’s unique intimacy.
I f****d up, and I’m going to clean that up. But I’m not going to be drenched in shame. I am not a sinner. There are no sinners in the world. I am not a sinner. I am a person who has sinned. That distinction is everything. This notion, I’m Jack and I’m an alcoholic—I understand why AA did it, but it’s ingesting of this notion, I’m a sinner. No, no, and no, and no, and no again!
No, I’m beauty, I’m goodness, I’m wonder—oh, and I committed a sin. In committing a sin, I damaged, and by damaging, I incurred debt, number one. Number two, in committing a sin, I stained my own soul.
So, for example, I’m no longer accepted—if I did certain kinds of sin—I’m no longer accepted as a trusted witness.
But here’s the thing. This is beautiful:
After I went through the process of teshuva, of return, I am once again, a fully valid witness.
I have restored my character.
I’ve restored my integrity.
I have restored my radiance—radiance can be restored.
I can return to the place where radiance ruptured and
I can turn that rupture into rapture.
I can rectify the rupture and I can restore my radiance. That is what teshuva means.
I Have the Capacity to Transform
For a period of time, I’m not a valid witness because I have sullied my personhood, I have stained my metaphysical integrity. But now I have the capacity to remove that stain.
Not only do I have the capacity to remove that stain, I have the capacity to even integrate that stain into the new beauty of my life.
I have the capacity to take that sin, find its source energy, liberate that source energy and pour it into my new personhood in a way that transforms my personhood and I become more.
I have a greater destiny and a deeper destination than I ever could have possibly reached had I not sinned. Wow!
Sin is real. Sin means the Cosmos cares, one.
Sin means value has been violated. If there’s inherent value, then sin is a possibility.
Sin does two things. Sin damages and therefore incurs debt.
Sin stains. It’s a metaphysical stain on my personhood, on my beingness, if you will, on my quality of intimacy, on my character, on my soul.
We respond to the damages and the debt that are incurred, by forgiveness. That debt can be forgiven. The stain can’t be forgiven.
If I stained my soul, no one can forgive it. It can’t be done. I have to do that myself because I’m beautiful, because I’m powerful, because I impact, because I have adequacy, because I have dignity. I self-transform.
My capacity to transform is, I have the capacity to remove that stain and to become more radiant, more beautiful, more profound, more depth than I ever had before.
I can remove that stain, I’m never a sinner—that’s never the quality of my being, rather, I have sinned, and that can be transformed. It must be transformed. That’s teshuva, that’s return.
Wow. There’s a huge set of distinctions. It’s a huge set of distinctions. Let’s go one more step.
Being Attacked on Social Media
We haven’t yet talked about the right to be forgiven. I want to put that aside for a second.
I want to put the right to be forgiven aside, we haven’t talked about that yet.
I want to talk about something else for a second. Let’s go back to the example I used earlier.
Let’s say, that someone has made a false claim about someone in the public space, which is obviously a huge issue in our public culture today with our broken information ecology, where people, bandy about claims of every manner and kind.
The very notion of integrity and reputation is at risk in a way that never has been in human history.
When I grew up people used to say, Don’t worry about headlines attacking you. They would say, Today’s headline is tomorrow’s fish wrapping.
Today’s headline is tomorrow’s fish wrapping meaning, someone says something about you, that’s a headline in a newspaper, but tomorrow your grandmother’s going to wrap the fish in that newspaper. So, who cares?
That’s no longer true. In a world of the internet, in which lies live forever, that’s not true. We’re living in an entirely new world, unlike any other world that has lived in any other prior time in history. It’s a very, very big realization.
Say someone attacks you, a random person you’ve never met, or you met once 50 years ago.
If someone decides to attack you—this happens all the time, there’s thousands of case studies—so, if someone attacks you and you don’t have much of a Google profile because you’re not really doing anything, you’re not a public person, let’s say, that attack on you will rise to number two or three on Google. Because you’re not a public person, you’ve done very little, then this attack rises very high.
Now, let’s say this person’s completely making it up, but they post it on a website: That website is not liable.
Social media is not liable for false information because social media is considered legally—one of the absurdities of the law—they’re considered platforms, not newspapers. Therefore, they’re ‘content carriers’, but they’re not responsible for their content.
You can’t sue the social media.
The social media, therefore, doesn’t discern what it puts up.
Let’s say you’re basically a private person and—this has happened thousands of times—someone says something about you on social media. Now it comes up number two in Google.
That means that every single person you meet who then goes and Googles you, is going to see this false claim and they will have no way to adjudicate is that true or not true.
When I said this like 20 years ago, I was talking to people in technology, and I said, this is what’s going to happen, they said, well, it’s a public marketplace, just respond.
But that’s insane! That was never true. That was never true. If you lived in a village, you lived in a city, someone you didn’t know couldn’t make a claim about you and then have every future person that you ever meet hear that claim before they ever met you. This has never been true in human history ever. It’s never been true before.
There’s a new structure that exists today. Now, how we apply that structure, what we do with it—let’s bracket for a second what we do with it.
The Human Capacity to Forgive
Let’s just hold for a second the structure. The structure has never existed before. It’s a random person that you barely know or don’t know has never had that capacity—that’s our case.
Now, in this case, let’s say you’re a private person—it’s called a trolley car problem—we’re making up the case:
You’re a private person.
Someone has said things wrong about you on social media.
You don’t even know them.
They’ve done this.
It’s been up for 10 years.
It’s caused you an enormous amount of damage.
Now they call you and they recognize that they’ve done something profoundly wrong, and they ask you for forgiveness. Let’s say they’ve asked you once, they’ve asked you twice, they’ve asked you three times and it looks like they have a sincere desire to be forgiven.
Do you have a right to forgive them? The answer is yes, you do. But you can only forgive them for the damage they’ve done to you.
Let’s say you have a mother, let’s say you have an aunt.
Let’s say, you’re a psychologist and you live in, Wyoming. You’re a particular kind of psychologist living in Wyoming who has really good information for people living in Wyoming because your specialty is about some issue that’s really important.
Because this social media post has existed against you, there are 40 people that should have come to you for healing that now will not. Now, there’s no one else in Wyoming who does the kind of psychology that you do. Because you’ve been attacked by this social media post—and although you’ve run a good practice—there are 40 people that would have naturally come to you that you could have helped heal, and change their family dynamics, and help their next generation.
All that didn’t happen.
When that person who wrote that social media post against you comes and asks for forgiveness, what you can do is you can forgive them for the pain that they caused you.
Whatever anguish and pain you personally went through, you can forgive.
But you can’t forgive the pain that was caused to your mother that read the social media post.
You can’t forgive the pain caused to all the people that were affected, indirectly, by this false attack on you—our psychologist in Wyoming.
You can only forgive the pain that was done to you. That’s very, very, very important.
The human capacity to forgive is limited to the pain that was done to me.
Very, very, very important. That’s very important.
God Has the Capacity to Forgive Everything
What about God?
I was sharing this with a dear friend of mine, and they said to me, well, that’s true, but God can forgive pain. If God can forgive everything, why can’t you forgive everything because you’re like God?
Well, the answer is, and it’s very deep, the answer is every person in the world is included in God. God includes everyone. That’s what it means to be God. It means God includes everything.
Let’s say you’re talking about God, or you’re talking about Atman is Brahman, or you’re talking about Adonai Elohim, or you’re talking about the Christ.
The Christ includes everyone.
The Christ feels everyone’s pain. The pain of everyone is the Christ’s pain.
God, or the Christ, let’s say, in the Christian image, Adonai Elohim or Atman Brahman or Hanuman—however you’re telling the story—feels all of the pain, includes everyone within them.
God is therefore is the person, or is the Beingness, that was directly damaged.
All damage is caused directly to God.
All damage is caused directly to God.
It’s deep. It’s deep.
God has the capacity to forgive everything because everything that’s done to everyone has been done to God.
Now, do I have that ability? —No, that would be pure arrogance to think that I did; the notion that I have the right to forgive all pain that was done directly to me.
Now you’ll say to me, what do you mean? But I participate in Christ. That’s the claim that’s going to be made. Oh, I participate in Christ. I participate in God. Therefore, since I participate in God, just like God can forgive all sin, I can forgive all sin.
I understand that’s a powerful argument.
How do you know that’s true? You have to be very careful here, otherwise it becomes New Age nonsense—you have to be very careful here because the realization that I am in God, that I am part of God, is absolutely true.
It’s also true that I participate in the Divine, just like I am in God, God’s in me. That’s true. But those are not reversible!
I want you to understand, they’re not reversible, meaning God fully experiences Marc and Marjorie and Dorothea and Krista’s pain. God is not just the Infinity of Power.
This is deep. This is deeper. We’re like deep.
We’re deep in very profound philosophy and it’s very clear though. We have to make clear distinctions. We have to think clearly with a clear heart, otherwise it all becomes nonsense and it gets confused. Let’s think with a clear and a beautiful heart.
If I experience pain, God experiences all of my pain. Is that true? —That’s true because God includes all of me. I would say,
God’s capacity for pain is even more than mine. God’s not just the Infinity of Power, God is the Infinity of Pain.
That’s huge. God’s not just the Infinity of Power. God is the Infinity of Pain.
So, if I, or Marjorie, or Ayelet Chen, or KK, or Claire, or my friend, Sally Kempton who’s passed, or Barbara Marx Hubbard—if any of us experience pain—God experiences all of that pain. Therefore, God has that right to forgive fully.
Now, is the reverse true?
Is it true that because I participate in God, I feel the infinite pain of the world the way God does? I want you to get the sentence again.
Is it true that because I participate in God, I feel the infinite pain of the world the same way that God does? —That is not true! It’s just not true. That’s a lie. That’s an arrogant, hubris lie. It’s not true. That’s a narcissistic lie. It’s not true. It’s simply not true. It’s just not true.
It’s not true because I can’t experience the infinity of pain.
If I would experience the infinity of pain for but one second, I would disappear. I would disintegrate.
But one second of Divine pain—I would disintegrate.
So, since I don’t experience the infinity of pain, I don’t have the right to forgive everyone for everything.
When we claim that right in religion,
we simply destroy human dignity.
We destroy distinction.
We destroy human gravitas.
We restore human adequacy.
We make the whole thing a New Age sop of nonsense or a premodern religious sop of nonsense.
No, the right to forgiveness means, I’ve experienced the damage. I’ve been damaged. A debt is incurred. I feel all of the hurt. Therefore, I have the right to forgive all of the pain. That’s huge.
That’s why we don’t have the right to forgive everything. But what can we forgive?
That’s so powerful. It’s so big. It’s so huge. I can forgive anything that was done to me.
I have the right to forgive anything that was done to me.
Now, do I have an obligation to forgive that? —Different conversation.
But I have a right to forgive any pain that was done to me.
I want to just say this now. This is a big deal.
Anyone that’s ever hurt me personally, let’s say in the example I gave by saying false things about me, I forgive them that debt. I forgive them the pain that they have caused me. In this moment, right now, forgiven, completely forgiven.
I can’t forgive the pain they caused my mother. I can’t do that. I can’t forgive the damage they may have caused the Dharma. I can’t do that either. I simply don’t have the right to do that. That’s a big deal. That’s a big deal.
Could they accomplish that? —Well, they’d have to do a real process.
Sin, Forgiveness, Teshuva and Return Are Fundamental Dimensions of Reality
In order to be forgiven the damage, let’s say, let’s take the case of our doctor in Wyoming.
The doctor forgives the pain that was done to him by that social media post made against him; but the doctor can’t forgive the damages done to all the potential clients and all the healing that didn’t take place. The doctor cannot do that. That’d be an act of utter human arrogance and hubris. Doctor can’t do that.
Now, the person who made the social media post against the doctor, they can ask forgiveness from the doctor.
They also can work to remove the stain of character by reenacting that original act of making the social media post, which is to do teshuva, to return and to reauthor that story. That’s absolutely true.
But in order to be forgiven for the entire action they would have to publicly take back the social media post.
They would have to take it back.
They would have to publicize it.
They would have to do everything they could to remove the damage.
Then, at that point, they would turn to God after they’d done everything they could in this world, then they would turn to God and they would say, God, I’ve done everything I could to make it right. Will you forgive me? Then,
God has that capacity to forgive because God is all people and God, therefore, feels all damage.
Therefore, God has the right to forgive. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful.
So, sin, forgiveness, teshuva and return are fundamental dimensions of Reality. It’s crazy beautiful. We can’t live without this.
We can’t live without a deep understanding of the beauty of sin.
1 Sin means Cosmos cares about what I do.
Sin means I impact.
Sin means I have power.
2 We need to reclaim a new story of sin.
We need to distinguish between the medieval corrupt and degraded notion of sin.
We go with Billy Joel and his rejection of that notion of sin and then
We need to reclaim the dignity of sin.
We need to reclaim a post-postmodern view of sin.
3 We reject the notion that I’m a sinner.
I’m not a sinner—I committed sins.
I’m not an alcoholic—I may have a perpetual forever alcohol problem till the day I die, and
I can never pretend that that problem is going to go away. I’ve always got to deal with it effectively, every day. I can’t look at it as if it was in the past, but I’m not an alcoholic —
4 I’m a beautiful child of God. I’m a good child of God.
I’m a child of God that’s welcome and beloved and embraced and I’m filled with goodness and truth and beauty and dignity and wonder.
I’m amazing.
5 Sin stains and sin obligates.
Sin creates damages that create debt.
6 The debt, the damage can be forgiven by the one who experiences the damage.
But I can’t forgive for anyone else. For anyone else, only God has that capacity to forgive.
7 Sin stains. That can only be healed through teshuva.
The expression of it, for example, I can’t be a valid witness because my character, my very character is impugned. That can only be healed through me going through a process of, return, recognition, remorse, regret, and then a future resolution. So, it’s kind of a new possibility. I have to do that. And then I can go back and reauthor the past. I can literally remove the stain. I can literally go into the past and remove the stain. That requires also me asking forgiveness, but I’m asking forgiveness because I’m removing the debt.
8 I have to ask forgiveness to remove the debt as a prerequisite for the process of teshuva, for the process of removing the stain. Forgiveness doesn’t remove the stain, but it’s a prerequisite for the process of removing the stain. It’s beautiful.
That means there are no sinners.
That means that no one is lost in shame.
That means there’s nothing that can’t be healed and transformed and rectified.
That means that I can actually begin my life anew every day.
That means I’m not trapped in the past.
Transforming the Stain from Devastation to Destiny
That means I have the ultimate creative possibility.
The ultimate creative possibility is to—and here’s the last step—to not just remove the stain, but transform the stain, make the stain part of the new design; to make the stain, which is the devastation and the damage, part of my destiny by both, recognizing it, recognizing its deep inner cause. Recognizing the root that drove it and then transforming that root into part of the beauty and future of who I am.
Let’s say that I did something because let’s say I was jealous. I acted out of jealousy. I then find the root of my jealousy and I realize, oh, that jealousy is because I haven’t lived that part of my Unique Self. And I realize, oh, that’s what drove me.
When I go back to that root of jealousy, and I fix it, I rectify it, I find the part of my unlived Unique Self and I begin to live it.
I use the distance and the alienation that I feel through the sin to reignite my passion for union, my passion for intimacy, my passion to come close.
It’s like a rubber band drawn back and I’ve been so alienated. I’ve been so distanced from intimacy, so distanced from union by the sin, the rubber band is drawn back. And then I catapult forward in a way that I never could have without sin. Sin is not a blemish of damnation.
Sin is not a mistake. Sin is not a bug in the system. It’s a feature of the system.
It’s a beautiful text, ein tzadik ba’aretz asher ya’aseh tov velo yechta. There is no righteous person, there is no beautiful person, who does not sin.
It’s how I engage the sin that makes me into the wonder and beauty of being a divine human.
This is a big new chapter, my friends, big new chapter.
Future Reading for the Center for World Philosophy and Religion
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