Integral Spiritual Practice can help you Gradually, yet Profoundly Deepen your Life while Serving the Evolution of our World

INTRODUCTION

You're passionate about evolving yourself, and evolving our world. And you know that since ancient times, spiritual practice has been the royal road to a life of peace, purpose, wisdom, compassion, and evolutionary growth. You've experienced the clear awareness, physical vitality, mental focus, emotional balance, and transcendent love that are the most delicious fruits of practice. 

Yet anyone who's walked the path also knows that practice is not always easy. Moreover, it can be challenging just to keep your head above water, let alone do a rich spiritual practice-in our fast-paced, complex and chaotic world.

A do-able spiritual practice is key, not just to cope with our crazy, modern lives, but also because it might be the only way to get us to a more healthy and balanced world. In fact, we can achieve more than all the great spiritual heroes ever imagined if we create a vibrant culture of heart-felt practice, starting with each of us individually.

Real change requires us to break through our habitual patterns. That's why it's never been more vitally important to have a spiritual practice that's powerful, sustainable, and helps us gradually, yet profoundly, embody our highest aspirations.

"Actually doing" a practice is the key point, because if you're like many people, you know how easy it is to "have" a practice that you don't do! At least, not as consistently as you would like. In fact, you may even have developed a "problematic" relationship to practice. After all, "practice" implies work. It sounds hard. It feels demanding. At any rate, that's what many of us have come to (wrongly) believe.

But what if this whole notion of "I have to practice harder" or "practice is hard work" is at the very core of the problem? These challenges can lead us to abandon our most hopeful efforts, our deepest motivations, and our most essential practices. The good news is it absolutely doesn't have to be that way. In fact, it should not and must not be that way.

A daily, do-able integral practice, grounded in a spiritually awakened heart, is the solution. We also need a practice that harnesses the heart, tapping into the radical source of courage, hope, and creativity to help us face the challenges of our lives and world. Finally, we need a practice that does not divide us from ourselves or others, or cause spiritual burnout.  

Integral teacher, philosopher, and author Terry Patten will share from his 3 decades of experience working with thousands of students across the globe, bringing an Integral Spiritual Practice into their lives.

Through direct teaching, stories, and easy-to-follow practical exercises, you will learn the 3 most essential practices for accessing the power of the Integral Heart, the deepest source of motivation to sustain a practice that can authentically change your life, while helping you contribute to the evolution of our world.

Essential Practice #1: Awareness: The Power of the Heart of Intelligence

• Learn how to instantly relax into the deep ocean of feeling-consciousness in any moment and rest there increasingly throughout the day.
• Confidently navigate life's ups and downs by releasing yourself into a clarity that can compassionately hold the extremes.
• Plug into the source of boundless creativity that our most celebrated artists recognize as the wellspring of their inspiration and best ideas.

Essential Practice #2: Trust: The Power of the Heart of Feeling

• Allow yourself to trust love enough to truly let it guide your life into a confidence and authenticity you may have previously resisted.
• Feel into and through resistance and contraction, into a zone of vulnerability that is the ground of true strength.
• Nourish the two essential sides of genuine compassion-beginning with a gentle, yet clear and intelligent, care for yourself and expanding in widening circles of care for others and the world itself.

Essential Practice #3: The Power of the Heart of Choice

• Stand with courage in a free, creative relationship to your discomfort that allows you to revise unhealthy habits and patterns.
• Befriend yourself and your vulnerability in a way that liberates your capacity to be a stand for yourself, your values, and those you love.
• Discover how small acts of choice, repeated many times, can build up almost effortlessly into huge changes

If there is time, Terry will touch briefly on some of the core techniques from Integral Life Practice, including Integral Meditation, the 3-Body Workout, the 3-2-1 Shadow Work Process, the Integral Operating System, and the AQAL Integral Framework. He may also touch on some of the many tools given in his 8-week course on Integral Spiritual Practice.

Integral Spiritual Practice is a fresh way to live the timeless truths of the great wisdom traditions-one that fully engages the challenges of our fast-paced, evolving world. The "spiritual marketplace" that has emerged over the last 50 years has produced a cornucopia of new ways to be "spiritual but not religious" (and many revitalized ways of being spiritual and religious). A great, multicultural experiment has unfolded and developed... yet it's far from complete.

Our contemporary spiritual culture holds many inspiring breakthroughs, but it is also chaotic and fragmented; it can sometimes tend toward narcissism; and it often neglects many of the more "worldly" domains (e.g., science, technology, business, politics, economics) that are crucial to our evolving humanity.

We need a more inclusive, or integral, spiritual culture-one that accounts for the radical simplicity of awakening AND meets the mindblowing complexity, and the heartbreaking realities, of our lives and world.

Many dedicated practitioners-from both traditional and non-traditional backgrounds-are awakening into a new maturity, intelligence, depth, wholeness, and purpose in their spiritual lives. An "integral" wave of spiritual practice is now uniting the eternal truths of the ancient traditions with the realization that evolution is happening right now-in and through us-and thus spirituality itself is evolving too.  

It, and we, are headed somewhere. We can see the contours of an overarching Big Story and Purpose to it all. And yet, this story is not another metaphysical "grand narrative" handed down uncritically. Rather, Integral Spiritual Practice espouses an empirical set of ideas, based on both "hard" science and the hard-won insights of spiritual practitioners around the world. It is thus perfectly rational, and yet not limited to linear, materialistic rationality.

Integral Spiritual Practice seeks to foster a culture of open inquiry, dialogue, and accountability. It's a new "skillful means" for devout (or irreverent) people of any faith (or no faith at all). It can be the basis for communities of practice of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, and agnostics-or for communities of practice that include "all of the above."

By providing an "orienting framework" (incorporating the work of Ken Wilber, along with the insights many other Integral thinkers, visionaries, and activists), it can be a bridge between sincere, intelligent people across sectarian divisions. It's a clarifying context for anyone serious about growing... about cultivating more goodness, truth, and beauty... and for anyone serious about contributing to their world.

TESTIMONIALS

"Terry Patten combines brilliance with heart and passion to give an important transformational gift to the world. Working with Terry lifts my heart, while strengthening and clarifying the evolutionary impulse within me. If you study with him you will be empowered, uplifted and inspired into your own next level of conscious evolution." Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious Evolution

"Terry Patten's work is beautifully comprehensive and integral in its intent and form. I highly recommend it for anybody looking to get engaged in truly transformative work." Ken Wilber, The Integral Vision

"Terry Patten is a magnet for new evolutionary solutions. He has powerfully engaged the practices of the world's great spiritual traditions, and now serves as an impassioned pathfinder and bridge-builder, a champion for the betterment of all beings. As an evolutionary leader, Terry puts the flame under the crucible of becoming, thus catalyzing the sacred inward alchemy of transformation." Jean Houston, A Mythic Life

"Terry Patten is an authentic Evolutionary, and one of today's most dynamic, original, and important teachers. He embodies a powerful force of Integral intelligence and love, deeply aligned to the higher imperatives of our time. Those who connect with his influence are uplifted, empowered, and transformed." Craig Hamilton, Integral Enlightenment

"Terry Patten is a leading-edge teacher through whose work dharma is finding fresh and passionate expression. I heartily recommend him to any serious seeker of spiritual awakening and conscious evolution." Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within  

ABOUT TERRY PATTEN

Terry Patten is a leading voice in the emerging fields of integral evolutionary leadership and spirituality. In his cutting-edge writings, talks, and teachings, he not only inspires transcendental awakening, love, and freedom, but also calls us to accept and incarnate our full humanity. This expresses itself in a profound sense of purpose, spiritual inspiration, and evolutionary activism.

Terry is a faculty member in the Integral Executive Leadership programs at Notre Dame University, a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, and serves on the board of the Wellsprings Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan and John F. Kennedy University.

He worked with Ken Wilber a core team at Integral Institute to develop Integral Life Practice, which distills ancient and modern practices into an intelligent contemporary transformational lifestyle. Earlier, for 15 years, he undertook a life of intensive spiritual discipline in the monastic setting of Vision Mound Seminary. Upon leaving he founded the catalog company Tools For Exploration, which defined the field of consciousness technologies. Terry is also a social entrepreneur involved in supporting restorative redwood forestry. As an entrepreneur and consultant he has worked for twenty years to help leaders bring higher consciousness into practical actions that transform complex human systems. He is also a teacher, coach and consultant who travels widely, challenging and connecting leading-edge individuals and organizations worldwide.

Integral Spiritual Practice integrates the insights earned during Terry's decades of intensive spiritual practice with those from his years as an entrepreneur and grassroots activist. In his current work, he is helping to articulate an authentic spirituality that illuminates the vital relationship between sincere care, discriminative intelligence, personal responsibility, and spiritual awakening.

A coach, consultant, teacher, and author of four books, Terry lives in Marin County near San Francisco, CA. He is the author, with Ken Wilber, of Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening.  

Terry also facilitates the groundbreaking Beyond Awakening series, teleseminar conversations with today's most dynamic spiritual teachers.    

http://evolvingwisdom.com/integralspiritualpractice/course.php