Terry Patten – Awakening Your Revolutionary Heart

Module 1: Connecting With Our Heart’s Intelligence, Strength & Commitment

It’s easy to trick the mind, but the heart knows better. In the first session of this 7-module journey, we’ll set a sacred container and choose to come together in a sacred community of practice, dedicated to living from our heart’s deepest wisdom. Through a series of experiential processes and epiphanies, we’ll support each other in reawakening our authentic gratitude, which naturally quiets the anxious mind and brings us back to empathy and confidence. We’ll become more fully present and open up new psychic space, inviting forward the wisdom and joy of our integral heart, which unites the highest intelligence of our whole being. We’ll invite the heart to raise its voice and to empower our whole way of being in the world.

In this module, you’ll:

• Access the wisdom of your heart through practices of the heart
• Discover what your heart most cares about and appreciates
• Drop into your gratitude — for life, the world, your freedoms, the people and animals you love, and those you will love
• Connect with the regenerative power of care and appreciation — and learn to empower yourself at the heart
• Discover and explore the amazing practice of trans-rational prayer
• Begin to live based on recognizing that love is the only engine of survival

Module 2: Facing Our Denial, Allowing Our Pain & Grief & Finding Our Truth

In this session we’ll face what we have avoided, and discover new strength. In the process we’ll allow, acknowledge, own and honor the pain we carry for all that is hurting and angry and unhealthy in our world. By daring to experience our grief, we can encounter a new source of moral intelligence and compassion. We’ll begin to discover the immensity of our heart-mind. What had isolated us in private anguish now opens outward and delivers us into the wider reaches of what Thich Nhat Hanh has called “inter-being.”

In this module, you’ll:

• Examine what we and our country lost in 2016
• Bravely face the dark potentials of our ecological predicament
• Notice the pervasive strategies of denial and avoidance that surround us and rob our authentic power
• Recognize how you’re affected by our collective attack of anxiety and anger
• Explore how the five stages of grief are being enacted all around you, and find your way to the amazing dynamic energy of true acceptance
• Discover the powerful humble work you can do, expressing the higher wisdom of the bodhisattva
• Awaken your natural ability to be strengthened and empowered rather than drained by empathy and grief

Module 3: The Alchemy Where Grief Becomes Inspiration

Healthy grieving weeps for a time, intensely, both alone and in community. And then there comes an end to the grieving period, and life goes on. The life force rises, and qualities like faith, hope and charity are called into play. In this session we’ll engage the alchemy through which our shock, grief and loss can be metabolized and transmuted into deep trust and love of the wild processes of life and death, darkness and light, loss and renewal. We’ll begin to trust what is, and magnify the irrepressible love and life that are our deepest nature.

In this module, you’ll:

• Experience the grieving process among a community of sisters and brothers — and then emerge, purified and wise
• Awaken to the life energy that is powering you — the raw impulse that always wants to keep living and evolving, no matter what
• Conduct that energy so it can manifest as resilience, humor, determination, sass, spunk and playfulness
• Know your own True North to be love, not reactivity; health, not disease; wholeness, not fragmentation, integrity, not corruption
• Discover that the deeper your losses, the more defiantly unreasonable your happiness can be
• Become the health of the body politic — both its immune system and its healthy vibrant life force

Module 4: The Anatomy of an Intervention

We are each participants in the patterns of our world, including its dysfunctions. For it to change, each of us must change. If we recognize our current crises deeply, perhaps we can “hit bottom” and begin something truly new. The process of addiction recovery is a useful metaphor. It often begins with an intervention. Family and friends sit the patient down and help him or her recognize that things must change — now. With real recognition, plus support, a former addict can start a new life, calling on a higher power to partner with their personal choice. Instead of letting bad news torment and upset us, turning us into agents of that reactive energy, we can make a radically different choice. In this session we’ll embrace this recognition and find our “Yes” to the profound wholeness that can reshape our lives and our world.

In this module, you’ll:

• Allow your shock to function as a spiritual initiation
• Grasp the meaning of current events as a “calling” — a conscription by the higher power of the heart
• Discover that the practice of wholeness is the practice of recognizing the ongoing tendency toward reaction and contraction
• Find a genuine “Yes” to being alive in this moment, recognizing that in a time of fragmentation, reaction and corruption, it is truly revolutionary to choose wholeness, health and integrity
• Open to the possibility of standing in wholeness as a magnetic call to others, recognizing citizenship as a sacred calling
• See the opportunity to renounce your identity as a soft and entitled consumer in favor of being an aspiring citizen of a new republic of the heart

Module 5: Joining the Integral Revolution

The last thing we need is more antagonism, violence, or the disruption of civil order, and yet this is an unmistakably revolutionary time, one that calls for our participation. The pace of evolution has never been steady. The fossil record shows long periods of stability punctuated by times when the whole ecology suddenly transforms. Those periods must have been wild, revolutionary transitions. The old structures became unstable, and creatures were transfigured as they tried out new ways of being. In our time, pressures for such truly revolutionary changes are building in consciousness, culture and society. In this session we’ll discover how we can participate consciously in an entirely benign integral revolution of the being — following the examples of Gautama, Socrates and Jesus.

In this module, you’ll:

• Recognize the revolutionary struggle in your own heart between the tendencies toward contraction, fragmentation and corruption on one hand, and the impulse toward expansion, wholeness and integrity on the other
• Understand how that same dynamic is visible in every relationship, family, group, organization, community, faction, ethnic group, religion, party, state and nation
• Awaken to the kinds of transformation that you can participate in spiritually
• Awaken to the nature of an integral, or spiritual revolution, and discover the practical steps you can take to practice it every day
• Clarify the critical shifts in your attitude and way of being that will enable you to renew and purify your intention many times each day
• Learn about the original teaching of Jesus on kenosis, or becoming empty
• Be inspired by the recognition that our truest spiritual intention is ultimately revolutionary, open-ended and lifelong

Module 6: Striding Deeper Into the World

Sustainable activism deepens, connects and sustains the soul of the activist. As we transcend our exclusive focus on ourselves, we need not abandon ourselves. In fact, we have to “put our own oxygen mask on first.” Thus, as we stride deeper into the world, we must drop deeper into our connection with our source of peace and inspiration, and with each other. This requires relating very skillfully to political news and turning our activism into an inspiring spiritual practice. In this session, we’ll unpack the lived experience of making that a reality in our lives.

In this module, you’ll:

• Discover how to build the inner muscles that enable you to be nourished by the outer work
• Find the peace to accept that our world has changed, and that the rest of our lives will be a marathon,which requires a very different orientation than a sprint
• Be inspired by a practical understanding of the implications of the Bodhisattva Vow so that it guides wise choices that balance self-care, relationships and care for the world
• Find out how to penetrate the common false ways of seeing current events that hemorrhage your energy
• Understand how to relate to bodacious “impossible” goals so that they’re a source of ongoing inspiration rather than discouragement while you live in the gap
• Explore how to engage the three essential domains of sacred activism
• Understand how to see through the surfaces of events with a “spiritual X-ray vision” that allows you to take strong positions without putting people out of your heart

Module 7: Becoming True Friends — to Ourselves, Each Other & Our World

An integral revolution is a revolution of love, under the guidance of our deepest heart intelligence. And that radiates from a sweet spot in our being. It is the place where two dimensions of our being intersect: (1) the uplift of our humble reverent devotion to all that is sacred, and (2) our grounded practical care, compassion and courage on behalf of all our relations. Then we can show up with our friends in ways that are truly vulnerable and also spiritually fragrant. We can reduce their loneliness and bolster everything that’s best in them. In this module, we’ll locate and exercise the practice of such true friendship.

In this module, you’ll:

• Understand how to take strength from the fact that you need others, and they need you
• Explore how to forgive and embrace the flawed humanity of your friends, family and self while still challenging yourself and those you love to be your best selves
• Consider how integral practice ultimately goes beyond mere “self-help” into “each-other-help”
• Discover how to grow into a capacity for deeper friendship
• Find your way into shared activism with heart friends
• Examine the five key principles of evolutionary dialogue
• Find your way to the gate of a new republic of the heart

Taking a Social Stand as Bodhisattva Activity
Audio Dialogue With Terry Patten and Diane Musho Hamilton

Silence, contemplation and deepening equanimity are at the heart of most spiritual traditions. But spiritual realization sometimes asks the seeker to take a firm and effective stand. When the world calls us to participate in politics or other forms of activism, people often experience a split between the inner work and the outer work. But in a truly actualized integral spiritual practice, enactment and realization are inseparable. There is no division between spirituality and action in the world. We see this vividly in great examples like Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Diane and Terry explore what’s underneath — the refreshing immediacy, freedom and empowerment these apparent contradictions and paradoxes can help us discover.

Diane Musho Hamilton is an exceptionally gifted mediator, group facilitator and one of the authentic contemporary spiritual teachers of our time. Combining decades of innovation in conflict resolution with an enthusiasm for life, she knows how to address the challenges of our modern experience with an uncommon spiritual perspective. With extraordinary warmth, depth and insight, she encourages us to consciously evolve beyond old and limited ideas of who we are so that we might discover our own unique expression of wisdom and of compassion in this time.

Renewal & Resistance: The Practice of Sacred Activism
Audio Dialogue With Terry Patten and Andrew Harvey

The fierce and brutal crisis of our time threatens the entire world. It is at once a severe warning and a glorious opportunity. It’s a warning that if we do not change and put love and wisdom into action, horrific global disaster is likely to upend human civilization. However, it’s also an opportunity to embrace these challenge and turn deep into spiritual practice to fuel radiant sacred action that could birth a new adulthood for humanity and a new world. With his deep knowledge of all the major mystical traditions, Andrew will lay out his vision of this crisis, explore the five kinds of sacred practices necessary for staying aligned with the Divine, and introduce his map of sacred activism. He and Terry will also orient listeners to the archetypal and personal shadow work that can restore our hearts to the light.

Andrew Harvey is an author, speaker and founder/director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective and practical agents of institutional and systemic change in order to create peace and sustainability. He has written and edited over 30 books and received many awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Award and the Mind Body Spirit Award.

The Esoteric Anatomy of the Heart
Audio Dialogue With Terry Patten and Thomas Huebl

In this special session, Thomas talks with Terry about the function of the heart in our subtle anatomy and the nature of the intelligence of the heart in the awakening of higher consciousness. What is the healthy and unhealthy relationship of the head and the heart? How do they relate to the base and to the intuitive centers in and above the head? How does the intelligence of the heart help you navigate the many challenges of our unique time in history?

Thomas Huebl is an internationally recognized contemporary spiritual teacher of uncompromising clarity, compassion and illumination. His work integrates the essence of the great wisdom traditions, modern scientific understanding, and his own personal path. Through immediate transmission and ongoing training, he guides people to a deeper level of self-awareness and personal responsibility. Thomas founded the Academy of Inner Science in 2008 to create a space for the exploration of contemporary mysticism and contribute to a culture of awakening.