Speaker 1: In a way. We have to let go of clinging
Speaker 1: to positivity in order to actually become the people who
Speaker 1: are really able to meet the challenges of our time.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Terry Patton,
Speaker 1: who speaks and consults internationally as a community organizer, philosopher,
Speaker 1: and teacher. Terry also founded the online series Beyond Awakening
Speaker 1: along with a local nonprofit Bay Area Integral and Tools
Speaker 1: for Exploration, a catalog company that defined the field of
Speaker 1: consciousness technologies. He's a social entrepreneur involved in projects that
Speaker 1: include restorative redwood forestry and the innovation of fossil fuel alternatives.
Speaker 1: His new book is a New Republic of the Heart
Speaker 1: and Ethos for Revolutionaries, a guide to inner work for
Speaker 1: Holistic Change. And before we get started, I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about a hobby of organized Well, it's not really hobby,
Speaker 1: it's more of a lifestyle. But Eric and I are
Speaker 1: both avid juglers, but we don't juggle kittens or flaming
Speaker 1: bowling pins. What we tend to juggle is jobs, in
Speaker 1: my case multiple jobs. It's extremely difficult to make this
Speaker 1: show and to do it properly. Eric has recently quit
Speaker 1: his day job to concentrate on doing The One You
Speaker 1: Feed full time. We really do need your support to
Speaker 1: keep the programming going, and while it's difficult to ask
Speaker 1: for help, it's likely even more difficult to not receive
Speaker 1: any help. Being a patreon of The One You Feed
Speaker 1: and making monthly donations is what really makes this possible.
Speaker 1: It takes an enormous amount of work and multiple people
Speaker 1: other than Eric and I to create a podcast like
Speaker 1: this that takes so much time and comes out every
Speaker 1: week and maintains the quality that it does, which we're
Speaker 1: very proud of. And it's not just Eric and I
Speaker 1: that need your help, it's other listeners that love the
Speaker 1: show that are maybe not capable of making a monthly donation.
Speaker 1: So for those of you who are, we really need
Speaker 1: your help. We really appreciate your help, and you can
Speaker 1: go to one new feed dot net slash support to
Speaker 1: make donations. Thanks so much. And if things do work
Speaker 1: out and our time opens up and we're still making
Speaker 1: the podcast, maybe someday Eric and I can post a
Speaker 1: video of us juggling kittens or flaming bowling pins. All right,
Speaker 1: that's enough of me asking for help. Here's the interview
Speaker 1: with Terry Patton. Hi, Terry, welcome to the show. Hi Eric,
Speaker 1: happy to be here. I'm excited to have you on.
Speaker 1: Your book is called a New Republic of the Heart
Speaker 1: and Ethos for Revolutionaries, a guide to inner work for
Speaker 1: holistic change. And I'm particularly interested in talking about this
Speaker 1: because it takes kind of head on a question that
Speaker 1: listeners will know comes up on the show from time
Speaker 1: to time, which is really what's the right balance or
Speaker 1: how do we trade off this doing inner work? That
Speaker 1: is important, but also not getting mired in ourselves and
Speaker 1: contributing to the world that's out there also, and that's
Speaker 1: really the theme of the book. So I'm excited to
Speaker 1: talk about all of that. But let's start like we
Speaker 1: normally do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking
Speaker 1: with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second
Speaker 1: and looks up at his grandfather and says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins, And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well, I've always loved that parable. Eric.
Speaker 1: I was just kind of delighted and charmed by the
Speaker 1: name of the podcast because it refers to it, and
Speaker 1: in a way I suppose it means for me probably
Speaker 1: pretty much what it means to you and everybody else.
Speaker 1: But as I reflected, knowing that you would ask me
Speaker 1: this question. I realized that in our time, it's important
Speaker 1: to recognize something about the bad wolf. That the bad
Speaker 1: wolf is a shape shifter, and it tries to disguise
Speaker 1: itself as the good wolf, and it isn't always so
Speaker 1: obvious to you what you're feeding, And therefore you have
Speaker 1: to go a little deeper. You have to interrogate the
Speaker 1: apparent good wolf and see if the good wolf is
Speaker 1: encouraging you to be charming on the dance floor of
Speaker 1: the Titanic, or if the good wolf is encouraging you
Speaker 1: to shut your ears and heart too larger dynamics that
Speaker 1: morally require your engagement, and even to kind of tune
Speaker 1: you into whether what looks like the good wolf is
Speaker 1: causing you to sit and meditate at a time when
Speaker 1: you really need to get up and go out and
Speaker 1: engage your neighbors. So I hope that's a useful reflection
Speaker 1: that might deepen your sense of it, even though of
Speaker 1: course I see it in just the same term as
Speaker 1: everybody else does as well. That's a great take. It
Speaker 1: gave me an image of a wolf sitting under a
Speaker 1: lamp in like a traditional police interrogation room, which made
Speaker 1: me smile. But it's an absolutely valid point, um. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'll start the conversation by saying the book,
Speaker 1: I found it challenging to me a little bit because
Speaker 1: I am wrestling with these questions, and so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: just start off by reading something that you wrote that'll
Speaker 1: that'll kind of get us kicked off. Here. You say,
Speaker 1: we are called to a robust and dynamic new form
Speaker 1: of spiritual activism or activist spirituality that fuses the inner
Speaker 1: work of personal transformation and awakening with the outer work
Speaker 1: of service, social entrepreneurship, and activism. So talk to me
Speaker 1: about how you end up at that point where that's
Speaker 1: what you're feeling called to write about. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's paradoxical our world right now to some degree. You know,
Speaker 1: I think there were two streams that came out of
Speaker 1: the sixties, and I am a child of the sixties.
Speaker 1: One of them was mostly activist, and one of them
Speaker 1: was mostly focused on the inner work. And I always
Speaker 1: felt that those of us who chose to do the
Speaker 1: inner work were in a sense taking the high road.
Speaker 1: We were noticing that when we pointed a problem outside
Speaker 1: us in the world, three of our fingers are pointing
Speaker 1: back at us, and we took to heart the idea
Speaker 1: that we had to change our own act first. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who end up being
Speaker 1: stuck in that self focus in a way that's ultimately
Speaker 1: not allowing them to bring the depth of their character
Speaker 1: to a world that's right now in a real crisis.
Speaker 1: And I think what time it is on the planet
Speaker 1: is is such that it's no longer morally justifiable to
Speaker 1: be so focused only on the inner work, and that
Speaker 1: you know, in a way you can't fulfill the inner work. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the last ox sorting picture is coming back
Speaker 1: to the marketplace with helping hands. The ultimate fruits are
Speaker 1: are the bodhisata vow uh. So our inner work really
Speaker 1: does have to bring us under the circumstances of what's
Speaker 1: happening in our world right now. Brother, two, sister, armed arm,
Speaker 1: you know, in contact with with everybody else because we're
Speaker 1: all in this life book together and it's looking like
Speaker 1: it may run aground. So let's find each other. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not a moment to just find your calm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's a paragraph you have that hit me kind
Speaker 1: of right on, because I was like, Yep, guilty is
Speaker 1: charged in certain cases, you say, we'd rather be resigned
Speaker 1: to it as one of the things we cannot change
Speaker 1: and choose serenity. We like to focus on the things
Speaker 1: we can change. Our personal goals, dramas, trials, and satisfactions,
Speaker 1: and our personal lives always demand constant and immediate attention.
Speaker 1: So many people confidently assert that our emergency is an
Speaker 1: unhealthy preoccupation, a distraction, And you know, that definitely hit me,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting. I was having a conversation with my son,
Speaker 1: who's uh just finished his first year of college, and
Speaker 1: he is certainly more on the four front of what
Speaker 1: I would say social justice and what we would think
Speaker 1: of as activism in the more traditional sense, you know,
Speaker 1: out really fighting for social change, And him and I
Speaker 1: had an interesting conversation where we talked about how we're
Speaker 1: both very interested in the relieving of suffering for other people.
Speaker 1: He's gonna be a sociology major. He's very focused on
Speaker 1: it from a sociological perspective, and I realized that I'm
Speaker 1: much more focused on it from a personal transformation perspective,
Speaker 1: not just mine, but working with people on changing their
Speaker 1: own relation to suffering, relieving suffering in the individual, but
Speaker 1: It's certainly got me thinking about this idea and what
Speaker 1: different forms can activism take and and you talk about
Speaker 1: that a little bit in the book. So I was
Speaker 1: wondering if you could talk about what are the different
Speaker 1: ways that you see people who are engaging in the
Speaker 1: good fight will say, who are also doing the inner work,
Speaker 1: But what are some of the ways that you see
Speaker 1: that activism taking shape out in the world beyond just
Speaker 1: show up at a protest as an example and carrying
Speaker 1: a sign. Well, you know, I have a little taxonomy
Speaker 1: of activism. I talked about in the system activism, which
Speaker 1: is donating money, helping register people to vote, voting yourself,
Speaker 1: volunteering your time, supporting a candidate, actually trying to affect
Speaker 1: political change in a direct way. Against the system activism,
Speaker 1: which is more that protest that we usually associate with
Speaker 1: the word, and around the system activism, which is more
Speaker 1: social entrepreneurship or changing your diet, or educating girls in
Speaker 1: the Third world, or things that really profoundly can change
Speaker 1: the world, you know, developing a new technology that would
Speaker 1: make fossil fuels less competitive. All those things would change
Speaker 1: the world, but they don't directly address politics. I think
Speaker 1: that there are two fundamental higher motivations that people of,
Speaker 1: one of them being I want to self actualized, I
Speaker 1: want to awaken, I want to be fully conscious, I
Speaker 1: want to realize my potential be all that I can be.
Speaker 1: And the other is I want to help. I want
Speaker 1: to be of benefit, I want to make a difference
Speaker 1: for others. And I don't think that you can, in
Speaker 1: the end fulfill either one of those impulses without addressing both.
Speaker 1: So very often people who are resonant with my message
Speaker 1: are already interested in activism, and I need to turn
Speaker 1: them more to the inner work, whereas people who have
Speaker 1: been focused on the inner work, I'll point to the
Speaker 1: importance of of an incarnate and embodied UH being a
Speaker 1: force for change. We we are alive in a very
Speaker 1: unique moment in our planet's trajectory, in our in our
Speaker 1: in our species trajectory. We certainly are. And you know
Speaker 1: what comes up for me with some of this is
Speaker 1: and it's a tendency that I have gotten way better
Speaker 1: at as I've gotten older, and I tend to think
Speaker 1: of it being one of the wisest teachings that comes
Speaker 1: out of Buddhism, which is the middle Way, because My
Speaker 1: inclination is to always think I should be doing more
Speaker 1: on either of those fronts. I should be doing more
Speaker 1: to awaken, I should be doing more to help others,
Speaker 1: to serving the world. How do these things come together
Speaker 1: for you in a way that doesn't feel like you
Speaker 1: are perpetually falling short really in both those endeavors, you know,
Speaker 1: in a way, Um, we all have to allow ourselves
Speaker 1: to wake up from a trance state, you know. Charlie
Speaker 1: Tart back in the sixties coined this term the consensus trance,
Speaker 1: to help us recognize that our social agreements about reality
Speaker 1: are not as objective as we tend to think, and
Speaker 1: that in some sense we're all in a shared dream.
Speaker 1: And I think right now many people use that metaphor
Speaker 1: of being on the deck of the Titanic. Our collective
Speaker 1: circumstances is not working. Human civilization is in you know,
Speaker 1: some people use the word unraveling. We're scared by that.
Speaker 1: We tend to get frightened, we feel grief stricken. And
Speaker 1: if we cognize what we're facing in terms of gosh,
Speaker 1: should I despair or should I be hopeful? Should I
Speaker 1: be positive and optimistic or pessimistic? Well, of course, we
Speaker 1: can recognize it's way healthier to be optimistic and positive.
Speaker 1: But it may be that on the other side of
Speaker 1: a confrontation with this darkness, there's a different kind of positivity,
Speaker 1: a different kind of optimism that's actually deeper and more
Speaker 1: more adequate, and that in a way, we have to
Speaker 1: let go of clinging to positivity in order to actually
Speaker 1: become the people who are really able to meet the
Speaker 1: challenges of our time. You talk about this idea that,
Speaker 1: on one hand, from an awakening perspective or a deep
Speaker 1: spiritual perspective, you say, I can trust reality itself never
Speaker 1: to really be a problem, however much death and loss
Speaker 1: it may contain, So that's sort of the absolute perspective, right,
Speaker 1: And then you go on to say, but we must
Speaker 1: not confuse the ultimate hope we may have in the
Speaker 1: goodness or rightness of things with the false hope that
Speaker 1: they will automatically turn out well for us in our world.
Speaker 1: And you say, a radical, robust hope lies on the
Speaker 1: other side of despair. And I always find that such
Speaker 1: an interesting thing to try and hold in consciousness, and
Speaker 1: one that depending on where I'm feeling a certain day,
Speaker 1: I might land on one side or the other of that,
Speaker 1: I very often, you know, when I hear us talk
Speaker 1: about everything is ultimately okay and right, there's a part
Speaker 1: of me that's like, well, no, it's clearly not like
Speaker 1: you know, as you and I are having this conversation,
Speaker 1: there are horrible things happening to human beings as we talk,
Speaker 1: And yet there is that deeper place that says, well,
Speaker 1: from some of the awakenings I've had, that reality is
Speaker 1: fundamentally okay. And so you're really asking us to kind
Speaker 1: of hold both of those things. Yes, we're actually, I think,
Speaker 1: at a point in our cultural evolution, particularly the culture
Speaker 1: of people who have been serious spiritual practitioners, who have
Speaker 1: awakened in real ways at least had glimpses of a
Speaker 1: of a higher level of consciousness, where we're ready for
Speaker 1: a stage transition, a maturation from what I like to
Speaker 1: think of is the adolescence of the whole human species
Speaker 1: to a new kind of human adulthood. And we're passing
Speaker 1: through a harrowing right of passage right now, which is
Speaker 1: like any right of passage. It scares the Bejesus out
Speaker 1: of all those adolescent boys. They think they might die,
Speaker 1: and it's because they find a way to show up
Speaker 1: with what's best in their character that they become a man.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is something that's alive in some ways.
Speaker 1: I think women are ahead of men. You know, become
Speaker 1: a true woman. But the metaphors around manhood have have
Speaker 1: a special residence because there is a kind of toughness
Speaker 1: and resolve and maturity and shouldering of responsibility that are
Speaker 1: a big part of our human maturation at this point. Yet,
Speaker 1: you talk about two competing you call meta narratives, which
Speaker 1: are basically one is everything's going to work out. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to come through all this um the world
Speaker 1: is becoming a better place, and then the other, which
Speaker 1: is this, oh boy, we're doomed, right, We're driving the
Speaker 1: planet off a cliff. It's all going to end badly.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because I'm certainly, to a large extent,
Speaker 1: I'm in the former category. At least, I feel like
Speaker 1: as a species we are becoming better, we are evolving.
Speaker 1: There is more kindness, there's more love, there's more justice
Speaker 1: than there's ever been in the world before. Now, if
Speaker 1: you look at a particular moment in time in a
Speaker 1: particular place, it may not appear that way but overall,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a big advocate and could spend forty minutes
Speaker 1: talking about why that's the case. And at the same moment,
Speaker 1: we are perched very perilously in a way that we've
Speaker 1: not been before, and so it kind of feels like
Speaker 1: both are true to me. That's right, they are both true.
Speaker 1: There are real important truths that we need to take
Speaker 1: in from both the doomsayers and those who you know,
Speaker 1: I call it boom and doom or or or the
Speaker 1: Cornucopian or Malthusian meta narratives. And you know, it is
Speaker 1: true that in the terms that of our current physics
Speaker 1: and the terms of our current economy, we have overshot
Speaker 1: our planets carrying capacity, and it looks like we're cruising
Speaker 1: for a collapse. It's also true that we are improving
Speaker 1: and awakening and becoming better people and experiencing exponential advances
Speaker 1: in our technology. And the whole history of evolution has
Speaker 1: been miracle after miracles, so looking forward, it's only sane
Speaker 1: to imagine there will be more miracles. And so there's
Speaker 1: a basis for being heartened and optimistic, and both those
Speaker 1: things are simultaneously reale. You touched on it briefly, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to hit it a little bit more, this
Speaker 1: idea of the consensus trance, because one way that we
Speaker 1: think about a consensus trance, so to speak, would be
Speaker 1: that it drives behavior. You know, there's a consensus, and
Speaker 1: it drives behavior. But you're talking about something and and
Speaker 1: the gentleman you reference is talking about something much deeper,
Speaker 1: not just behavioral, but in terms of consciousness itself, the
Speaker 1: way that we see and perceive reality. That's right. You know,
Speaker 1: your attention is a little like a flashlight beam, and
Speaker 1: awareness itself is a little like sunlight flooding every corner
Speaker 1: of the room. So what we're talking about, though, is,
Speaker 1: you know, very it's a special moment when somebody awakens
Speaker 1: to awareness to the point where they can see the
Speaker 1: flashing around of their attention as a flashlight beam, and
Speaker 1: they're really free of that point of view. In our
Speaker 1: social relations, in our media, in our conversations were mostly
Speaker 1: exchanging perspectives, points of view, and the points of view
Speaker 1: that we know how to take in exchange and reinforce
Speaker 1: among one another have been defined by agreements over time.
Speaker 1: And when we raise our kids, we speak to our
Speaker 1: kids and we orient our kids in a way that
Speaker 1: tunes them into our way of seeing things. And what
Speaker 1: Tart did was to study the way we socialize our
Speaker 1: kids and recognize finally that wow, this is exactly what
Speaker 1: we do to create a hypnotic trance. Our consensus reality
Speaker 1: as important as it is. You know, somebody who can't
Speaker 1: join us in our consensus reality. We define those people
Speaker 1: as mentally ill. That that's insanity when you don't join
Speaker 1: the consensus reality. So we need consensus realities, and yet
Speaker 1: they also limit us. And right now we're in a
Speaker 1: situation in which our greater consensus reality is not orienting
Speaker 1: us in a way that's allowing us to rise to
Speaker 1: meet a new set of civilizational challenges. When you say
Speaker 1: that our our consensus reality is primarily the one of separation,
Speaker 1: and that you know the world is is made up
Speaker 1: of separate things, separate people were separate from everything else
Speaker 1: versus a deeper reality that points to interdependence and wholeness.
Speaker 1: I think that's certainly true, and yet again it's paradoxical.
Speaker 1: We're at a moment in the complexification of human culture
Speaker 1: where we can't hold paradox and learn more by understanding
Speaker 1: those paradoxes reveal something about the very structure of our
Speaker 1: own perspectives and the structure of reality. So we're kind
Speaker 1: of used to thinking in these either or terms. We
Speaker 1: have to learn to think in both and terms in
Speaker 1: a wild way where we can appreciate and join in
Speaker 1: a consensus reality and also outgrow it simultaneously. And that
Speaker 1: actually requires the development of not just meta cognitive awareness,
Speaker 1: but meta perspectivele Uh, it's it's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a paradigm shift. It's another stage of the evolution
Speaker 1: of our meaning making. This isn't just like a high
Speaker 1: state of consciousness where we sense our oneness with all things.
Speaker 1: It's an ability to account for way more nuance and
Speaker 1: ambiguity and a process view. You know, we are processes
Speaker 1: in bigger processes. All of that complexity is apparent to us,
Speaker 1: but our language is always dumbing us down into a
Speaker 1: subject object uh dualistic framing of things that right now
Speaker 1: just isn't good enough to deal with the complexity of
Speaker 1: the world we're living in. Yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: where you talk about their needing to be evolution in
Speaker 1: the species as a whole or in more people. I
Speaker 1: think that's exactly the area that I'm most see us
Speaker 1: lacking as a species is in that ability to hold
Speaker 1: multiple nuanced points of view. Our cultural dialogue certainly is
Speaker 1: not has not been heading in that direction as of late,
Speaker 1: and it and it's certainly an area that a lot
Speaker 1: of people are challenged with. I think it is. I
Speaker 1: think you're right, it is a It is a big
Speaker 1: step forward as a species, I guess, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better way to put it, Yes, And yet those
Speaker 1: of us who are on the path, who have been awakening,
Speaker 1: who have been doing spiritual practice, or who have been
Speaker 1: taking perspectives on the way we see things, you know,
Speaker 1: looking at our own consciousness and and and and outgrowing
Speaker 1: our limited patterns. You know, there are way more people
Speaker 1: doing that than there ever were before, and our numbers
Speaker 1: are growing rapidly. And as I point out in the book,
Speaker 1: if we can get to the point where ten percent
Speaker 1: of the population is operating at a different level, and
Speaker 1: I think some of the Nordic countries in Europe and
Speaker 1: you know, who are kind of at the growing tip
Speaker 1: of of evolution, are getting kind of close. We're going
Speaker 1: to begin to see rapid and dramatic cultural changes in
Speaker 1: political changes of a whole new order. And I'm I'm
Speaker 1: excited about that. I think we are the tip of
Speaker 1: the spear of something that can even change the game. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought that was an interesting part of the book,
Speaker 1: that the studies and the science that show that once
Speaker 1: ten percent of the population really firmly believes something, that
Speaker 1: it tends to to bring the other folks along. Let's
Speaker 1: change a little bit, because I want to move We've
Speaker 1: been talking sort of broadly, and I want to take
Speaker 1: it down to the person a little bit more for
Speaker 1: a second. Because one of the main things that you
Speaker 1: talk about, a fundamental change that people can make and
Speaker 1: that that do make and is really important, is going
Speaker 1: from a seeker to a practitioner. And I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you could elaborate on what that means and why
Speaker 1: it's so profound. Yes. Sure, Well, you know, when we
Speaker 1: first have a moment of awakening, whether it's through an
Speaker 1: anthogenic drug or a meditation retreat or just a spontaneous opening,
Speaker 1: we suddenly realized, Wow, there's another mode of consciousness that's
Speaker 1: way way happy or more connected. I want more of that,
Speaker 1: and we seek it. And yet that mode of seeking
Speaker 1: the orientation of a seeker is an orientation that is
Speaker 1: well grounded in lack. It's grounded and what's missing. You
Speaker 1: say it very well. You say, the problem is that
Speaker 1: seeking actively prevents the happiness in amagine, and therefore you
Speaker 1: really do have to wake up out of that mode
Speaker 1: of seeking, because what does the seeker do. The seeker seeks,
Speaker 1: and what is the presumption of seeking. Something's missing, So
Speaker 1: we're looking for what's missing. We're always residing in what's missing,
Speaker 1: and as long as we're seeking, we're being someone who's
Speaker 1: missing something. On the other hand, if we really allow
Speaker 1: the incredible joy and freedom and peace and happiness that
Speaker 1: come with that awakening to become our orientation, and then
Speaker 1: we notice that we are tending to contract from that,
Speaker 1: we're tending two lose that clarity, then we can return
Speaker 1: to it. We can reassert it, we can relax that contraction,
Speaker 1: we can observe it, recognize and reorient to trusting the
Speaker 1: wholeness and okayness that is deeper. And if we orient
Speaker 1: in that way, then instead of being a presence of anxiety,
Speaker 1: a presence of lack, a presence of problem and dilemma,
Speaker 1: we can be a presence of the wholeness that is
Speaker 1: really our condition. And that is profound for us because
Speaker 1: we're relaxing into our awakening rather than always trying to
Speaker 1: create it. But it's really profound for others because we're
Speaker 1: kind of an irritant to others as long as we're
Speaker 1: reasserting the problem, and we're a source of strength once
Speaker 1: we're practicing the wholeness that we've intuited to be our
Speaker 1: actual condition. So is it a mindset change into one
Speaker 1: of practice, Because that's very easy to sort of say, well,
Speaker 1: if you've had a little bit of an awakening, you
Speaker 1: should just live from that awakening, which is again relatively
Speaker 1: easy to say. But if ninety five percent of the
Speaker 1: time you don't feel that right, then to your point,
Speaker 1: it's natural to seek it. What is the process of
Speaker 1: since we can't control the experience were necessarily having, right,
Speaker 1: I can't just flip a switch and say, Okay, now
Speaker 1: I'm going to feel whole. No, that's right, But I
Speaker 1: can I can feel a problem and be inclined to
Speaker 1: seek and reflect. Huh. Interesting here, I'm feeling so separated,
Speaker 1: and yet I know I'm not really separated. Huh, what's
Speaker 1: going on here? And I can become a curious participant
Speaker 1: in this automatic process of seeking and not just be
Speaker 1: in motion pursuing and reinforcing that sense of lack. And
Speaker 1: the more I do that, the more recognition takes place.
Speaker 1: Recognition is really what relieves me of that momentum. And
Speaker 1: when that recognition arrives deeply in the body in a
Speaker 1: felt way such that the wholeness and okay, nous, that
Speaker 1: really is my situation. Even if I'm going to die,
Speaker 1: even which you know, which I am, but you know,
Speaker 1: even if I'm going to die soon, or even if
Speaker 1: someone I really really love is dying, or even if
Speaker 1: there are horrible things going on in my world, which
Speaker 1: there are, there's a kind of surrender and trust of
Speaker 1: being that is the very soul of sanity. And yes,
Speaker 1: we lapse in it, but if we're really clear that
Speaker 1: that's what's true, we can reflect and recognize this process
Speaker 1: of contracting from it, and that is what crosses that
Speaker 1: kind of infinitely. It's an infinite gulf until our recognition
Speaker 1: causes us to magically arrive on the other side of it,
Speaker 1: and that is what's possible. There's a few things you wrote.
Speaker 1: I'll just read them because I think they say it
Speaker 1: better than I will say it. But you say, am
Speaker 1: I practicing separation and division or wholeness and interdependence? Where
Speaker 1: am I coming from? In a moment, you know, if
Speaker 1: I can stop and look at what my orientation is.
Speaker 1: And I do think that that idea of practice is
Speaker 1: such a big one. You've got a line you're quoting
Speaker 1: some people that were early in the human potential movement
Speaker 1: who say a whole life of regular, ongoing practice is necessary.
Speaker 1: There's no quick fix. It takes an ongoing, transformational lifestyle
Speaker 1: to sustain the fruits of practice. And that made me
Speaker 1: think of a line that listeners if they don't skip
Speaker 1: it every time the show starts, which I mean, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't blame if they did. Um, But we have a
Speaker 1: little intro we read at the beginning, and one of
Speaker 1: those lines that in there is it takes conscious, constant
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. And
Speaker 1: those things really resonate strongly with my personal sort of
Speaker 1: sense of the world, which is there's no quick fix.
Speaker 1: And that I say often on the show. I don't
Speaker 1: know where I first heard. I did not make this up,
Speaker 1: but that often we can't think our way into right action.
Speaker 1: We have to act our way into right thinking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's lovely. Well, I totally resonate with that. In fact,
Speaker 1: you know, for years. But I've primarily done is to
Speaker 1: teach UH integral life practice, which is UH understanding of
Speaker 1: practice that recognizes it's not just about our internal consciousness.
Speaker 1: It's body, mind, spirit, psychology, shadow, relationships, work, our citizenship
Speaker 1: in the world. Everything is practiced. And I'd like to
Speaker 1: mention something that's in the book. UM there's a slogan
Speaker 1: that UH, an early neuroscientist named Donald Hebb came up
Speaker 1: with that neurons that fire together, wire together. And that
Speaker 1: means essentially that whatever we're doing right now, my attempting
Speaker 1: to communicate this in a way that's genuinely caring really
Speaker 1: hopes for the best for every listener, for you and everyone.
Speaker 1: Then I'm practicing something healthy, and I'm going to be
Speaker 1: more likely to be in that state. But if in
Speaker 1: some part of myself I'm distracted or not full really present,
Speaker 1: if in some part of myself I'm anxious or resentful,
Speaker 1: I'm cementing those neural circuits. So we're always practicing something,
Speaker 1: and we're often practicing anxiety or resentment. We're often practicing
Speaker 1: distractability and kind of wandering craving. So recognizing that we're
Speaker 1: always practicing something helps us to wake up and then
Speaker 1: bring intention to how we're living and begin to repattern
Speaker 1: our neurology intentionally because we can, and why not. Otherwise
Speaker 1: we tend to drift toward a kind of unconscious pattern
Speaker 1: that's ultimately an unhealthy and unhappy one. I agree the
Speaker 1: way you wrote in the book, and you just said
Speaker 1: it right there, we're always practicing something. There's another thing
Speaker 1: that you write that I think is really helpful, because
Speaker 1: sometimes when I hear I'm always practicing something, and I'm
Speaker 1: practicing resentment or disc action or whatever, I start to
Speaker 1: feel bad or frightened or it reinforces itself. And so
Speaker 1: there's a little short part you have here that I
Speaker 1: found very comforting. It says, our lapses become shorter in duration.
Speaker 1: If we forget, we will remember again. And however we
Speaker 1: feel at a given moment, even if we feel terrible,
Speaker 1: even if we feel nothing at all, our commitment to
Speaker 1: practice remains unabated. So whether we have lapsed for a minute,
Speaker 1: an hour, a week, a month, or several years, We
Speaker 1: can always begin again now, And I just love that
Speaker 1: because it takes us out of the regret for I
Speaker 1: have not been as conscious as active all the different
Speaker 1: things that I wish I was. Oh boy a, my
Speaker 1: programming these neurons wrong and into Okay, I can just
Speaker 1: start again now. It's just like meditation. Just in this moment.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I'll return my attention to the breath. Or
Speaker 1: thank god, we are able to be practitioners, you know.
Speaker 1: It is such a a grace in our lives that
Speaker 1: practice is possible and that recognition is possible. And there's
Speaker 1: a kind of joy that comes in that brief moment
Speaker 1: of sudden recognition. Oh yeah, I can reorient, and I
Speaker 1: can rest as the open intelligence that I always already am,
Speaker 1: and as that I'm a free presence, and there's a
Speaker 1: certain sanity and happiness. And then I'm strong enough to
Speaker 1: turn to face some things that are really profoundly disturbing
Speaker 1: to my ordinary, separated consciousness, but I show up for
Speaker 1: them with an entirely different quality of feeling and attention
Speaker 1: and capacity. There is a lot in the book, and
Speaker 1: one of the big things that is in the book,
Speaker 1: and you were a very early part of the integral movement,
Speaker 1: and there's so much that that we're is not even
Speaker 1: going to have a chance to tap. I'm basically saying
Speaker 1: that for listeners that you know, there's a lot here
Speaker 1: that integral idea of that you you mentioned it from
Speaker 1: the context of practice that we need to be looking at,
Speaker 1: you know, body work, mind work, spiritual work, shadow work,
Speaker 1: or psychological work. You then go on and say those
Speaker 1: are all individual practices very important, but we also have
Speaker 1: to be looking at relational practices. And you say there
Speaker 1: are three main spheres of these relational practices or you
Speaker 1: call them social practice, intimate relationships, work in creative service,
Speaker 1: and civic participation. Yeah. Well, you know, in the book
Speaker 1: Integral Life Practice that I co authored with uh Ken
Speaker 1: well Burg, Adam Leonard, and Marco Morelli, we identified for
Speaker 1: what we called modules core modules of aategal life practice
Speaker 1: UH practices relating to the body, the mind, to spirit it,
Speaker 1: and to shadow And as I taught it, I ended
Speaker 1: up expanding that definition to include relational practices and also
Speaker 1: a wider definition of psychological UH soul work in the
Speaker 1: relational domain. A lot of us do our deepest work
Speaker 1: in our most intimate relationships with our partner. But you know,
Speaker 1: our intimate relationships with our kids and with our parents
Speaker 1: and with our best friends are equally rich domains for
Speaker 1: us to learn about ourselves and our feelings. So it's
Speaker 1: important to recognize that the hardest thing to do is
Speaker 1: to be related to other people. It is it is
Speaker 1: where we experience limits most, where we're lonely. We want
Speaker 1: more connection where we have the most connection. There we
Speaker 1: suffer the limits of our intimacy and our mutual love
Speaker 1: the most. It's when your dearest friend seems not to
Speaker 1: hear the thing felt most deeply, so when your spouse
Speaker 1: seems to just interrupt and run rough shot over something
Speaker 1: that was really important for you to share, that's where
Speaker 1: we suffer it. So that's a hugely rich domain. But
Speaker 1: you know, we spend most of our time working. We
Speaker 1: spend most of our time engaged in trying to make
Speaker 1: some kind of a constructive contribution to our world, and
Speaker 1: our ability to do that has to be an area
Speaker 1: of constant growth and practice. It's time management. It's got
Speaker 1: to do with being our best, you know, in in
Speaker 1: so many different ways, managing our attention, thinking outside the box.
Speaker 1: But it's very important that we not forget that we
Speaker 1: have this huge responsibility to the commons. We're in a
Speaker 1: time right now where our world is largely falling apart.
Speaker 1: Because it's in the United States at least, it's become
Speaker 1: a kind of in built presumption that smart people gain
Speaker 1: the system. Smart people find ways to cheat on their
Speaker 1: taxes without being caught. Smart people find ways to gain
Speaker 1: an advantage economically that ends up costing everybody a tenth
Speaker 1: of assent, but the lawyer who figured it out is
Speaker 1: a multi millionaire. That these kinds of relationships to the
Speaker 1: to the collective are are are sapping our collective health,
Speaker 1: and individuals who are really conscious, who begin to notice
Speaker 1: and see this, have to begin to become a presence
Speaker 1: of the health of that collective. We need to restore
Speaker 1: the broken commons. We want to be a presence of
Speaker 1: something different, and so our engagement with our communities, even
Speaker 1: our families, our towns, our states, are nations, are our
Speaker 1: our world. You know, wherever we live, it's actually an
Speaker 1: area where we depend on each other the most. You know,
Speaker 1: we really need others to be good citizens of all
Speaker 1: these different levels of community, and our recognizing that as
Speaker 1: a dimension of our practice is super important, especially right now.
Speaker 1: I've said this on the show before. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I started the show largely to avoid going on to
Speaker 1: autopilot and living unconsciousness. We talked about and I really
Speaker 1: figured that most of it would be about inner work,
Speaker 1: and certainly a lot of it is. But what has
Speaker 1: been surprising to me and shows up over and over
Speaker 1: and over again is the importance of the world outside
Speaker 1: of ourselves, whether it be to your point, our intimate relationships,
Speaker 1: our work relationships are civic participating. I cannot say that word,
Speaker 1: and we're just gonna let it go that that isn't
Speaker 1: equally important part of our growth and our development and
Speaker 1: of living a good life. Yeah, you know, I mean ultimately,
Speaker 1: the greatest, freest, most awake spiritual beings that we admire
Speaker 1: the most are people like Goudaba and Socrates and Jesus
Speaker 1: who really had an impact on their whole society. There
Speaker 1: are people like Dr King or Gandhi or or or
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela that changed the world. The ideal of the
Speaker 1: sad who of the of the completely still moveless realize er,
Speaker 1: that's not a role model for realization in our time,
Speaker 1: Real true awakeness in this time has to find its
Speaker 1: way to express itself in a way that affects our
Speaker 1: shared life. If everything that we love is threatened, and
Speaker 1: sense it really is that calls to the heart, It
Speaker 1: asks for us to be a presence of wholeness in
Speaker 1: the midst of this crisis of fragmentation, and the fact
Speaker 1: that that requires something new. You know, there's no perfect
Speaker 1: models for what I'm pointing to. I'm noticing that there's
Speaker 1: been an evolution of dharma, an evolution of awakening, and
Speaker 1: it continues to evolve, and those of us who are
Speaker 1: most awakened shoulder at a different level of responsibility for
Speaker 1: our shared future. So we're all being drawn into a wild, new,
Speaker 1: uncharted territory where absolutely our inner work is primary and
Speaker 1: it's essential that it be expressed in a way that's
Speaker 1: more than merely subjective. Well, I think that is a
Speaker 1: wonderful place for us to wrap up. You and I
Speaker 1: are going to have a post show conversation, Bree. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about your five categories of practice mornings, moments, mission, milestones,
Speaker 1: and momentum and listeners if you are interested in hearing
Speaker 1: the post show conversations for this and lots of other guests.
Speaker 1: You can go to when you Feed dot Net Slash
Speaker 1: Support and you can learn about how to support the
Speaker 1: show and how to get those extra conversations. And we
Speaker 1: will have links in the show notes Terry to your
Speaker 1: book and your website and all that stuff. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much. I've really enjoyed talking with you. I've
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this too, Thanks so much. Eric. Okay, bye bye.
Speaker 1: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
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