This book is based on four live talks given by Dr. Marc Gafni on the weekly One Mountain, Many Path podcast in the first weeks of the Russian-Ukrainian war. They are complemented with an essay by Dr. Elena Maslova-Levin to provide a deeper insight into Russia's motivations and the history of relationships between Ukraine and Russia, which made this war impossible and unavoidable at the same time.Dr. Marc Gafni's analysis of this fateful moment is profound, multidimensional, and meaningful. Rather than being lost in the overwhelming emotions of the moment, or caught up in the seemingly rational confabulations of purely political analysis, it is rooted in a deep, unshakeable connection to intrinsic values of reality. What's more, he sees not only the tragedy, but also the incredible evolutionary potential of this moment - in his words, the moment of "this great arousal, this stunning coming together, of the postmodern West." The path forward he is showing is not just about the immediate needs of the moment - but about our collective future, and what we need to do (and, no less importantly, understand) for this future even to be possible.The guiding question of this book is: how do we respond? Although a lot has changed since the first weeks of the war, and a lot has changed, this book is no less relevant now (and in the foreseeable future) than Marc's talks were back then, in March 2022.

We are desperately in need of a new Story-specifically a new Story of Value, an Outrageous Love Story-as a way to meet the outrageous pain of the world. This is the only true response to the current meta-crisis, the amalgamation of interlocking political, educational, spiritual, ecological, and cultural crises that threatens not merely the total disruption of all social systems, but either the death of humanity or the death of our humanity. This series of oral essays outlines the contours of a new Story of Value. Most importantly, they clearly show how we-both individually and collectively-can transform our lives and become an "imaginal cell," an ontological activist, for the sake of the whole. Through profound "writual" practices like writing a Sacred Autobiography and composing Outrageous Love Letters, we start to move from a pathologized life to a mythic life. We begin to play our instruments as part of Unique Self Symphony. We become Homo amor, the New Human and the New Humanity, irreducibly unique incarnations of Eros, of the Intimate Cosmos that lives in, as us, and through us-for the sake of Reality itself. These oral essays are based on talks delivered by Marc at the Eros Mystery School at Kasteel de Berckt in Baarlo, Netherlands, August 2019.