Beyond Shame: Identifying Your Unique Wound of Desire
A new Parallax course with Dr. Marc Gafni Starting this Sunday November 16th
This course moves beyond conventional psychology to explore the nature of desire itself—not as an impulse to be controlled, but as the fundamental, animating force of reality that lives uniquely through you.
The Ontology of Touch and Wound (Nega)
In his pre-course podcast with Andrew Sweeny, Dr. Gafni begins by pointing to a core realization in the interior sciences: the original Hebrew word for touch is also the word for wound: Nega.
This is not a coincidence; it is an ontological truth. The wound is where your connection to the real has been broken.
“My wound is, I haven’t been able to touch… I haven’t been touched… The wound is the wound of desire. When my desire has been wounded, when I can’t access and trust my desire, I literally begin to deaden.”
The deepest desire of every particle of existence is to prehend (to touch) all prior experience. Your fundamental desire is to touch that which is real—significance, value, and aliveness. When this unique capacity to touch is rejected or thwarted, a unique wound is created. To heal, you must engage this wound directly.
The Divine Nature of Desire (Nachash/Messiah)
We live in a world where desire is often demonized, shamed, or hijacked by advertising. This course offers a radical re-reading of our most foundational myths.
Dr. Gafni explains that a deeper reading of the Garden of Eden story reveals it as a tantric text—a trickster story where non-rejection is key. The snake (Nachash) is not the voice of evil, but a disguise for the new human (Messiah).
Desire is the Name of God: The realization is that desire itself is the animating force of reality. The clarification of your unique desire is, therefore, a divine process.
Cosmic Eros: Reality is not a mechanical system but an erotic process unfolding every second. From the precise “rates” of chemistry that lead to life (abiogenesis) to the movement between two beloveds, it is all an unfolding of unique eros. Your life is literally a product of reality’s unique erotic intention.
The course is about engaging this truth. You must clarify your unique desire, which means engaging the fundamental ways in which your desire has been wounded.
Clarification: The Path to Wholeness
Dr. Gafni emphasizes that we must stop mistaking impulsivity for desire. Like the monk who “brackets” mechanical desire to access his deepest heart’s desire, we need the tools to clarify our own unique configuration of longing.
You cannot achieve mental health, fulfillment, or joy without desire. The transformation of your unique wound is what literally births you into reality, turning devastation into a deeper capacity for wonder.
We live in a world that is “always already home” and yet is ripped apart by war and suffering. This course holds that tension—the unbearable joy of Eros and the unbearable intensity of suffering—as the only way to become whole.
📩 Course Invitation
Identifying Your Unique Wound of Desire: From Wounds of Desire to Wounds of Love with Dr. Marc Gafni.
This three-week course is a radical consideration of what it means to be human and the necessary path to becoming whole. There are also optional discussion groups (digital campfires) on the weeks following the course, totaling six sessions.
First Session: Sunday, November 16th
Time: 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 2:00 PM CET
You are invited to join Dr. Marc Gafni to clarify your unique desire and transform your most personal wound into the source of your deepest wisdom.