We live in a time between stories, poised between utopia and dystopia, facing unprecedented existential risks that threaten humanity. Only a new Story of shared global value will allow us to respond effectively to our shared global challenges and turn our potentially dire fate into a new collective date with destiny.

However, many of us no longer even believe in the possibility of Story, or Value—or a Story of Value. The natural impulse in face of the unbearably tragic is often to turn away, to revert to the “pre-tragic.” We’ve been doing this—individually and collectively—for far too long. We must now, with trembling joy and responsibility, turn towards the tragic, feeling all that comes up, in order to haltingly and courageously find our way toward a “post-tragic” consciousness. Only from here can we recover a “memory of the future,” a non-naïve hope, as we realize the new human, Homo amor, who recognizes value “anthro-ontologically”—from within.

From this place we can see the gorgeous potential of living lives of Outrageous Love, gathered into “Unique Self Symphonies” that serve all beings and the whole of Reality itself. We become partners with the Divine—with God—whom we call the “Infinite Intimate.” We are each unique incarnations of the Infinite Intimate. Awakening to this precise realization is the crossing over from Homo sapiens to Homo amor.

These oral essays are edited talks delivered by Marc Gafni at the Eros Mystery School, August 2021.