Living in a New Republic of the Heart:

A Radical Experiment in Being the Change

with Terry Patten

 

Registration is now closed for Full Participation, however, we welcome you to engage with us in other ways. If you are interested in this yearlong program, please email us with your interest and/or questions: replies@terrypatten.com

 

• Join an international community of activist-practitioners in a mutual recognition of our prior unity, declaring and living in a New Republic of the Heart.
• Help one another integrate the inner work, the outer work, and the interpersonal work of bringing about a new stage of humanity’s evolving pattern.
• Participate in a pioneering pilot project aimed at helping advance the knowledge, power, and wisdom needed for healthy whole-system change.

A Yearlong Virtual Community of Practice.
A Radical Social Experiment.
January – December 2019

 

The teaching event I presented, “A Call for Yin Leadership” provides a description of this Yearlong Virtual Community of Practice Social Experiment, and tells you how you can get involved. Listen below:

Have you long felt a heroic impulse, with character and qualities unique to you, working through you to find its highest expression?

Have you felt called to heal our world in crisis, motivated by the core understanding that awareness confers responsibility?

If so, then you are likely a serious practitioner, active change-agent, or both, committed to evolving and serving wholeness, humanity and life, even as you actualize your deepest potentials.

And that’s a good thing! The world needs your heroism and your caring now more than ever. Our culture is suffering from a crisis of fragmentation, our economic and governmental institutions are breaking down, and the very living earth we depend on is disrupted and imperiled.

In other words — it’s game time on planet earth. It will take everything we’ve got, individually and collectively, to enact the radical, whole-system change that is called for. Three critical “front lines” include consciousness (the Inner Work), relationship (the Inter Work), and impact (the Outer Work).

This isn’t news to you. You’ve probably already responded by ratcheting up your efforts in one or more of these areas, deepening your spiritual practices or leaning further into activism. You may have even joined with like-minded individuals in an effort to amplify your work.

However like many of us, you are likely confronted by the enormity of humanity’s current problems, and their unprecedented nature. You may even harbor a terrible suspicion that whatever you do, it will never be enough, a destructive belief that undermines any Inner, Inter, or Outer Work you may engage.

 

Perhaps your spiritual practice (the Inner Work) is vibrant, but you haven’t yet found an effective way to “enter the marketplace” (and the fray) to engage our collective problems head-on, through activism or other forms changemaking. You may enjoy a life of privilege, and the gnawing sense that you could (and should) be making a much bigger difference.

Or perhaps you’re hard at work as a social entrepreneur or change-agent (doing the Outer Work), but want to get more transformational traction in your spiritual and psychological life. As you throw everything you’ve got into positive change, enduring setbacks, and without replenishing your inner reserves and uplifting your awareness, you’re sometimes left feeling scattered or depleted. And then your activism becomes “re-activism.”

Even if you somehow manage to engage both the Inner and the Outer Work, the Inter(personal) Work is likely just beginning. You find friendships with other good people, but haven’t yet found a real tribe, a healthy, engaged community of like-minded individuals who are catalyzing the solutions our unprecedented situation calls for.

All too often, our communities are burdened by habit-bound leadership, or unhealthy group dynamics. This applies not just to businesses, but to well-intentioned nonprofit organizations — and even to the spiritual communities that we look to as models of utopian transformation.

After a time, these “failures” tend to leave us feeling frustrated, suffering from what researchers have dubbed “learned helplessness.” Like rats who are repetitively shocked, no matter what they do — we may feel overwhelmed, defeated or cynical, unable to imagine that anything more is really possible. And research unequivocally shows the cure for such helplessness is a sense of efficacy, which comes from knowing we can take effective action.

And that’s what I describe in A New Republic of the Heart. Yet, the book’s most important insights can only come alive if tested and applied in a “laboratory” of committed participants.

 

 

Can we actually do it? Can we catalyze and engage emerging new patterns of practice and relationship? This proposition needs to be field-tested, as does the idea that we can create the radical change our world needs.

A Yearlong Virtual Community of Practice

A Radical Social Experiment.

January – December 2019

What if a group of us really “went for it,” showing up as the most awakened version of ourselves as much as possible, supported by collective agreements, deciding to create a kind of transformative crucible as free as possible of the assumptions and conventions that reinforce the consensus trance of our larger culture?

What if we were able to harness the “all-in” commitment and intention of an immersive, long-term, spiritual community — for now, but framed as a time-delimited 12 month commitment?

Hi, I’m Terry Patten. I invite you to join me and a virtual community of serious practitioners in an existential inquiry that integrates the three vital areas needed to enact the radical, whole-system change need to bring our world back into balance — consciousness (the Inner Work), relationship (the Inter Work), and impact (the Outer Work).

Radical transformation is possible in each of these domains. I call them “the 3 Awakenings” that we’ll be cultivating over the next 12 months. Even before enlightenment, we can make choices based on enlightened wisdom. The same is possible in cultivating awakened relationships and transformational impact!

This journey is also an experiment, a finite expression of the radical, open-ended commitment described in the integrative vision of my acclaimed book, A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries.

What can we learn when we commit fully to breaking through our consensus trance, defying our crisis of fragmentation, and blessing the world by serving and living as revolutionary Wholeness?

We can perhaps free ourselves to dare such a radical commitment by limiting this journey to 12 months. At the end, we will step back and assess our experience, both individually and collectively. What succeeded, and in what ways? What failed? What did we learn? What would we do differently if we were to do this again?

I invite you to answer this call to create a new kind of community. What if there really is a way we can make a difference? What if we can actually help Wholeness reassert itself amidst our crisis of fragmentation?

This experiment is the next phase of A New Republic of the Heart. Are you game?

 

What You’ll Discover in these Sessions

The Four Pillars of our commitment:

1. 1. Inner work. We will all take on daily practices of conscious movement and sitting meditation. We will relate to every moment and aspect of our lives as an opportunity for practice, growth, and transformation.
   2. Interpersonal work. We will create conditions conducive to our quickly becoming an authentic community of practice, deepening our we-space naturally in our dyads, pods, breakout sessions, and service work.
   3. Outer work. We will all engage and deepen our functional capacities through practical service to projects dedicated to restoring wholeness to our natural, social, political, and/or cultural worlds.
   4. Co-creating a new pattern. We will ‘break the mold” by engaging all these practices as expressions of an emerging new republic of the heart, in a loving and fierce spirit. Together we will endeavor to establish a new collective field of consciousness, expressing awakening, service and friendship, rooted in radical acceptance and defiantly joyful hope.

This curriculum begins with the Four Pillars that lay out the foundation for our shared practice and collective experiment. We will then explore key teachings that relate to our individual interior lives and practice. We will be engaging them, however, not just subjectively, but intersubjectively — and in relation to our concrete action in the world.

They do not represent a predigested formula. They create a robust context in which we each can show up powerfully and vulnerably as we convene a new transparent brother-sisterhood. My long-time student Siobhan McClory and I have created a curriculum, an offering of preliminary best-practices. They are designed to help us embody higher levels of practice, engage deeper friendships, recognize our strengths and limitations, and grow beyond our edges.

Apply Now

Prerequisite

Having read, or listened to the audiobook of A New Republic of the Heart— or agreeing to read or listen to it by February 10, 2019.

Module 1 – Orientation: The Key Principles of Our Experiment

What if we “just do it” and radically commit to wholeness? Why does this experiment make sense in this crazy world? What can we realistically hope to accomplish? We will begin with a deep practical and philosophical overview. We will enter into the spirit of practice in all the key dimensions of our lives, inner, interpersonal, and outer, right at the very beginning of this social experiment. And we will begin to take practical steps to structure and engage with each other  in a way that efficiently supports various aspects of our lives. We’ll also look ahead at the arc of the year’s curriculum of learning and engagement. We will introduce and unpack the Four Pillars of our shared commitment:

1. Relating to life as practice (the inner work).
2. Intensifying and deepening as a we-tribe (the interpersonal work).
3. Making a practical difference in our world (the outer work).
4. Making the radical commitment necessary to awaken together from the consensus trance and to co-create a new pattern.

Module 2 – Pillar #1: Inner Work: Relating to Life as Practice

A subtle yet powerful shift can occur when we begin to orient to life as the practice of Wholeness. This is not a single discrete shift; it may even wax and wane at times. But with repetition, practice itself can become foundational to our very way of living life. In a sense, we could say that Wholeness can come to recognize its own intrinsic Wholeness while also valuing the diverse values and points of view that contribute to our fullest and deepest expression, cooperation, and service. And that can manifest as a conscious and constructive relationship to every moment of living.

In this session, we will:

• Explore what it means to shift from Life as Practice from the perspective of the isolated, separate self-sense to Life as Practice as seen through the lens of Wholeness.
• Come to a deepening appreciation of the ways that the various aspects of practice intersect, supporting and enhancing each other.
• Establish a foundation of daily practice commitments.
• Anchor our practice commitments through the 5 M’s – Mornings, Moments, Mission, Milestones, and Momentum.

Module 3 – Pillar #2: Interpersonal Work: Co-creating Higher We-Space

From the beginning of this journey, we will be deepening our we-space. The relational dance between us is a cauldron for our learning and transformation in our dyads, pods, projects, and larger circles. In this session, we will engage practices for exploring, deepening, and evolving the “we” itself. We will consider it in terms of both “state” and “structure,” understanding how it is affected by meditative depth, sensitivity, trust, and intimacy as well as shared perspectives, values, agreements, and intentions. We will cultivate our capacities to become friends, and to trust and love, amidst the tender wounds that all of us have experienced in relationship.

In this session, we will:

• Cultivate and strengthen capacities to be with others, to see and be seen.
• Deepen somatic and energetic awareness of the we-space and our ways of being there.
• Cultivate the capacity to shift from a subjective to an intersubjective locus of awareness.
• Discover how to participate in a “we” that is itself learning, evolving, and awakening.

Module 4 – Pillar #3: Outer Work: Making a Practical Difference in Our World

 

In a suffering and fragmented world, there are thousands of ways of being of service, spanning multiple spheres of life. You have probably already been contributing in real and important ways. And yet, this is a new moment and we are living in a rapidly changing world. In this module, we will explore action and what it takes to make a meaningful difference. That requires exploring cooperation and how we can be a stand for a new possibility; sustain that with integrity; and make and keep agreements even in the midst of life’s unexpected twists and turns.

In this session, we will:

• Consider your commitment to something greater than yourself, and how new insights might transform your understanding of all this stand implies.
• Consider what it would mean to take 100% responsibility for your experience and your commitment to create consequential results.
• Make an intelligent choice and begin (if you haven’t already) to express your commitment in practical terms.
• Face reality authentically, including your own desire to be seen in a certain way.
• Learn what it takes to fulfill your commitment with integrity.

Module 5 – Pillar #4: Co-Creating a New Pattern: Exploring Radical Commitment

 

Our experiment is radical in the sense that we are coming together to live on the basis of an entirely new emergent pattern, to constructively reassert wholeness amidst our larger predicament and crisis of fragmentation. We recognize what time it is on the planet.  We choose to both (1) relate creatively and positively to an emergent future as practitioners through whom emergence might become possible, and (2) to engage change not just in political terms, but holistically — in psychospiritual, relational, cultural, and ecological terms as well. We will declare ourselves aspiring citizens of a new republic of the heart and inhabit it together, and in the process learn what that takes.

In this session we will:

• Explore the radical and fierce choice necessary for a group of practitioners to break free of the gravity of our consensus trance.
• Consider the dangers of cultism. In a sense, the public world is a cult of dissociation. To break with it, we must dare to inhabit a new reality together. Our time-delimited commitment is one of the ways we will guard against becoming cultic.
• Experiment with making wise changes to our news, media, and cultural diet.
• Explore additional ways we can support one another, growing our collective ability to actually “go sane” in a world gone mad.

Module 6 – Our Paradoxical Ground

Meditation can take many forms, the most powerful of which orient around attention, awareness, inquiry, and/or the heart. In this session, we will discuss their fundamental differences and the differing ways they can be of support. As we deepen in discovery of various ways to relax our fundamental tendency to contract, we will come to see the natural ebb and flow of experience as a natural and necessary aspect of our embodied human condition. We’ll naturally open to the greater fullness of our being. This creates a clear channel as we learn to hear the voice of our soul’s promptings toward our life’s deepest purpose.

We will also further explore our understanding of wholeness, from more radical to embodied spheres of wholeness, discovering the abundant ways this fundamental aspect of reality manifests and reasserts itself.

In this session, we will:

• Learn meditation practices that build concentration and focus and open into samadhi.
• Learn meditation approaches that enable us to release our focus and rest as open awareness.
• Clarify the ways that inquiry can support us in a deeper seeing.
• Learn how to allow the feeling-intelligent heart to meditate the whole body and mind.
• Clarify your daily meditation practice.
• Discover the ways that meditation supports the revelation of your inherent wholeness and sacredness, and enable the growth of your capacities to be in service to a greater Whole.

Module 7 – Opening to Wonder and Gratitude: Our Senses and the Natural World

 

Radical wholeness is prior to the divisions that appear to subject-object consciousness.  Awe, wonder, joy, and love often arise as we expand into Wholeness, both when opening to the Prior Unity that is the nature of every moment of experience, and when beholding the spectacular beauty of the living Earth.

E.O. Wilson coined the term “Biophilia” to speak to our “love of living things” and “innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.” We will explore different ways of being in nature: from expanding one’s embodied sensory-based awareness to more knowledge-oriented approaches. We will discover how they relate to, inform, and impact our connection to the world around us.

In this session, we will:

• Contemplate wonder, why it is so fundamental, and why it matters so much, especially in tumultuous times.
• Engage practices to connect with our primal aliveness.
• Expand our sensory awareness to deepen connection and awareness of our fundamental interdependence with the more-than-human world.
• Learn to see with “evolutionary eyes” as we view our lives, and this point in history, within the framework of Deep Time and the great story of evolution.

Module 8 – A New Relationship to Change: Loss and Possibility

 

While we may intuitively know that change is the only certainty, we tend not to live from this recognition. In this session we will consider our lives and changes and this point in history, from the perspective of the great story of evolution. With the intensification of external changes all around us, we are being continually reshaped, sometimes in ways that are disorienting (e.g., “future shock”). In this module, we will come into a deeper knowing of, surrender to, and embracing of change, within and without, as the very nature of living the great story of evolution. We’ll also  learn to honor the inevitable loss, grief, transformation, and rebirth that are aspects of change. Thus, we can become more conscious, creative, and courageous participants in life during our very interesting times.

In this session, we will:

• Explore the embedded beliefs that condition our cultural and personal relationship to change.
• Investigate how best to engage the special challenges of our ecological, social, cultural, and political crises.
• Encounter our grief, allowing it to wash us clean, rendering us truly useful to the world.
• Learn new ways of being with life’s gorgeous and heartbreaking play of changes.
• Draw upon the “wisdom of uncertainty,” letting it unleash our aliveness and inform our practice, service, and leadership.

Module 9 – Making Our Grand Intentions Real and Human

 

In this session, we will look at how our embrace of our highest ideals can paradoxically thwart authenticity and relationship. Can we embrace a radical commitment to living in a new republic of the heart without becoming proud of our daring and practice, and thus subtly feeding our egos and distancing ourselves from others? What does it take to keep releasing our identities and showing up with innocence? In the process, we will explore the practice of not-knowing even while embracing discernment to act wisely in an ever-changing, “post-truth” world.

In this session, we will:

• Explore the hypermasculine character of both secular and spiritual cultural ideals, and how they appear in each of us.
• Rediscover the innocence that is the ground of all real human intimacy and friendship.
• Learn to trust the fact that we are not really “knowers” in the end, and in that context come to rightly respect our limited relative knowledge and its crucial role in culture.
• Discover how this is a radically new basis for sanity in a world gone mad.

Module 10 – The Ear of the Heart Hears the Still, Small Voice of the Soul

What does it mean to fully give ourselves over to, and be in service of, that which calls to us? It expresses a different kind of mysticism, one that not only awakens us into the boundlessness of our universal Nature but also opens us to the deep, personal presence and guidance of our unique Soul. This means accessing the archetypal dimensions of your consciousness as explored by pioneers of psychology like Carl Jung and James Hillman. It is a study of the inner structures of our collective human consciousness — the powerful subterranean forces that sculpt our lives. This process connects you with a psychological understanding that transcends the personality and connects you with the “daemon” — the guiding presence of your soul.

In this session, we will:

• Review the many ways and levels of listening to the “still, small voice” within each of us.
• Come to know a depth of our being whose knowing is so radical as to be truly sacred.
• Explore the “sweet spot on the surfboard” that honors both conservative grounding and courageous daring as you explore your deepest reasons for being alive.
• Practice with the inherent tension of the pull of the past and the call of the future.

Modules 11 & 12: The Energetic Patterns that Animate Us – Seeing into the Unseen

As human beings, we are infinitely complex. As we mature, we discover how deeply our lives are shaped by unseen patterns of energy and habits of consciousness. It is useful to learn to see ourselves and others through different lenses that illuminate some of these hidden dynamics. But each, however true, is partial. These lenses are frameworks for deeper understanding of ourselves and others, even though the beauty and mystery of a human being cannot be fully encapsulated within any framework. By exploring the patterning that animates and informs our life, we cultivate our capacity for “making subject object” and seeing ourselves more clearly. This can open a possibility for breaking through to new levels of expression and engagement in the world.

In these sessions, we will:

• Learn and apply different frameworks, including the Hindu Trinity, the Integral Quadrants, and the Enneagram.
• See the beauty and wisdom of the patterns that shape our life, learning to draw upon their strengths and open beyond their limitations.
• Gain a deeper awareness and appreciation of our unique way of seeing things, even while growing in freedom from its inherent myopia.
• Emerge with a new appreciation of the unique perspectives and gifts of others.

Module 13 – The Power & Possibilities of Archetypes and Metaphors

Metaphors are woven into our language, culture, history, and even our neurobiology! They’re also a powerful modality for self-understanding and conscious transformation. By exploring mythic stories, archetypes, and metaphors, we’ll learn new ways of seeing and engaging with both ourselves and our hero’s journey, and that of our world in peril.

In this session, we will:

• Identify some of the default metaphors and stories we’ve inherited from public culture.
• Explore the nature of collective trauma, the concept of neurobiological activation, and how our history is woven into our biology.
• Identify the habits you are letting go of as you outgrow your current way of being.

• Identify the capacities you will begin to develop as you grow into a new way of being.
• Discover metaphors and archetypes that are appropriate and meaningful to you, empowering you to allow and incarnate the noblest aspects of your character.

Module 14 – The Intelligence, Power and Authority of the Integral Heart

I teach that the heart is not just a center of intelligence in the human system, but the center that can integrate the intelligence of the brain “in the head” with the brain “in the gut.” Paradoxically, it is also the center of our highest human capacity —  love.

“The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” These prophetic words from the French Philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin will guide this journey. Love is the most essential way wholeness can express itself in human terms. This is not squishy or idealistic because we live in a time when love must make an eminently practical, world-changing difference, in just the way Teilhard invoked.

In this session, we will:

• Explore three primary dimensions of our integral heart intelligence, and learn to access them in the midst of life.
• Examine the nature of love: To what degree is it a feeling, a way of being, a way of seeing, and/or a way of moving in the world?
• Honestly explore our degrees of freedom and bondage to the cultural limits on love inherent in capitalist, industrial civilization.
• Identify how clear seeing of the limits on our trust and commitment to one another can open space for deeper, more powerful and consequential friendships.

Module 15 – Harvesting Our Learnings

After almost 11 months of taking this journey, we will spend the final month identifying the lessons we have learned from undertaking this experiment. We will systematically reflect on our collective and individual learnings , and derive intentions we can bring forward into our lives and all our future undertakings. This can be a radical and revelatory process. After investing ourselves completely in this experiment, let’s conduct a full-spectrum evaluation, asking questions like:

• In what ways did I give myself to this experiment? How did I hold back? What can I learn from that?
• What about our collective experiment succeeded? What simply failed?
• How can what we learned  be of use to others?
• What would we do differently if we were to do this again?  What is most important going forward?

The Primary Elements of the Course

This is a course that’s much more than a course. It’s a social experiment and a collaborative community of practice. I hope it will be a transformative event in all our lives, rippling out into the fabric of the larger human collective.

21 Course Sessions:

90 minute large-group meetings will occur every 2-3 weeks. Each will begin with a dharma talk, and then we will go into smaller breakout groups. I will lead these assisted by my longtime student Siobhan McClory. These will focus on empowering you through philosophical and practice distinctions and direct transmission. Six of the large group sessions are reserved for emergent topics  — I will offer comments and teachings that will address, in a timely way, what is happening in our sangha and our world. Fifteen of the large group sessions will be formal modules with a predetermined focus that will move through the practice curriculum described below, covering the Four Pillars of our experiment and seven key practice topics.

Q & A Sessions with Terry:

Occasional ad-hoc Q&A Sessions with Terry. I will respond to questions and offer coaching during our primary course sessions. Additional ad-hoc Q&A sessions will be announced and scheduled as needed.

One dyad session each week:

One 30-60 minute dyad session each week in which you and a partner go deep into a series of personal and we-space practices. Your dyad partners will change every 6 to 8 weeks.

Smaller Circle meetings every 2-3 weeks:

A 75-90 minute meeting with your “Pod” every 2-3 weeks when the large group is not meeting for a Course Session. In this smaller circle of 4-6 people you will explore the course themes and discuss your practice, service and projects. These pod configurations will change twice (for a total of 3 configurations across our year-long journey).

The Practice of Making Change Real:

You will choose an arena in which to do your “outer work.” You can originate your own project or you can volunteer with an existing organization (there are a lot of ways we can help!) It should be on a scale appropriate to you — from family to community to city to nation to world, as long as it truly matters to you, averaging at least 2 hours a week. We will engage this not as a mere duty but as an ennobling practice, through which we will not only contribute but also learn and grow. And in our pods, we will give and receive mentoring and support. In this way, we will integrate our “outer-work” with both our inner- and inter-personal work. Some of us may join together in our projects. We have surveyed many dynamic expressions of the new movement that is coming into being, so we can help. And everyone is warmly welcomed to volunteer to further the initiatives of the New Republic of the Heart nonprofit organization.

Online Community:

Our private online community, exclusively for participants in this course, will provide a supportive environment for you to connect and have conversations about these key topics outside of our class sessions and your pods and dyads. Here you can continue the conversation and deepen your understanding with the broader community.

Video and Audio Recordings of the 21 Course Sessions:

After each large group meeting for our Course Sessions, both the video and audio will be available for you to download or stream in high-quality format. We encourage you to join every session live, but if you have a scheduling conflict, you can watch or listen to the recording at your convenience. This is also a great tool for reviewing and integrating the material.

Hi, I’m  Siobhan McClory. I am very excited to be joining Terry and all of you who have felt called to be on this 12 month journey. It feels like such a poignant and paradoxical time to be alive on our planet.

Having been a student of Terry’s for over seven years, it has been an honor to join with him in creating a curriculum that can support us all. As a certified Integral coach™ and long time meditation practitioner, the recognition that we are always in a “process of becoming” is close to my heart. In my coaching work, my focus is in guiding that process in ways that enable conscious, sustainable change.

In our work together over the following year, I look forward to being of support through group mentoring sessions, supporting dyads and pods and also as a fellow practitioner in our bewildering and yet beautiful world.

From my heart to yours, thank you for joining with us as we explore what it means to be citizens of a new republic of the heart.

 

Sessions will be Wednesdays from 12 noon to 1:30 PM PST on the following 2019 dates:

Jan 16, Jan 30, Feb 13, Feb 27, Mar 13, Mar 27, Apr 10, Apr 24, May 8, May 22, Jun 5, Jun 26, Jul 17, Jul 31, Aug 21, Sep 11, Sep 25, Oct 16, Oct 30, Nov 13, Dec 4

Although we don’t plan to reschedule any of these sessions, we know that unexpected circumstances can make changes necessary. If so, we will alert you of any changes as far in advance as we are able to.

Total time commitment: 2 – 4.5 hours per week.

Those able and wanting to engage more deeper and extensively may engage for 10 hours a week or more.

Also:  A number of Auditing Spaces will be made available to sincerely interested supportive individuals whose lives don’t allow them to commit to this whole experiment, but who want to learn and observe and participate in a more limited capacity (~90 minutes a week or less). If you’re interested in auditing, please go through the normal sign-up process; we will give all participants an opportunity to define their desired level of engagement later.)

Registration for Full Participation is now Closed. If you are interested and would like to participate in some way, please email us: replies@terrypatten.com

From students and readers of Terry’s work…

“Terry’s teachings unfold a transformative journey and give you ample “soul, heart and mind food.”  They are a heartfelt, intelligent call to action far beyond any esoteric or flatland approaches.”

—Claudia, NRH Course Member

“Terry Patten is an exemplar of what it means to bring wholehearted dedication, passion, and insight to explore the real and critical global challenges now upon us. With care and courage he invites us into a collective conversation, helping us build a community of support to face the times responsibly and creatively.”

—Eilen deVerteuil, NRH Course Member

“After 30 years of searching and experimentation, it was Terry Patten’s course that finally helped me evolve from being a spiritual seeker to being a spiritual practitioner.”

—Grant Hunter, Silicon Valley, CA

“Terry’s integral practice teaching inspired an attitude in me that has fundamentally shifted my point of view—to regard human potential and the future of our troubled planet with discerning hope.”

—Doris Tennant, Newton, MA

I’ve been a student and practitioner of Integral Theory and philosophy for 15 years, and Terry´s teachings are… what my soul was deeply asking and yearning for—for 51 years.

—Jochen Becker, Dusseldorf, Germany

His work is effective because it is integral. It originates from the Heart, and leaves no dimension of you untouched…Terry’s work is truly at the forefront of today’s spiritual unfolding.

—Hans Plasqui, Belgium

“Terry Patten gives us specific ways in which we can help to make something seemingly impossible to overcome, more of an adventure in radical hope.”

—Marjorie Shalita, NRH Course Member

“If you are wondering, overwhelmed, even fed up or despairing about the seeming lack of integrity, awareness, wisdom, unity or compassion these days, Terry Patten will deliver you profound and challenging questions, valuable and timely answers, a great amount of hope, and a clear path to a deeply revitalized sense of purpose that will renew your courage for the unfolding journey ahead of us all.”

—Anneke Edson, NRH Course Member

“After studying with Terry I had a completely different view of the events of my life. I no longer saw my life as a victim story, but rather as the soul journey of a heroine.”

—Maria Baes, Ontario, Canada

From colleagues…

“In a stunning marriage of wild heart and cool mind, Terry Patten turns the black diamond of our global darkness to illuminate our hearts, hone our wills for selfless service, and resplendently deepen our commitment to enact our divine identity and its joy, whatever happens. This is a major work of pioneering originality accomplished with great intellectual grace and profound sacred passion.”

—Andrew Harvey, Author of The Hope – A Guide to Sacred Activism (from the Foreword)

“We all know that humanity is at a critical turning point—and this is THE manual for all who want to meet this moment as the historical call to action that it is. Combining brilliant social commentary along with a step-by-step blueprint for catalyzing whole-system change from the inside out, Terry shows us the way to rise into our personal and collective destiny.”

—Claire Zammit, Ph.D. Founder, FemininePower.com

“A superb, terrific, exciting, sane, and enlightening look at more truly integral approaches to activism. It represents a social activism that is certainly social, but also personal, emotional, spiritual, ecological, relational, and that stems from, and points toward, the very leading-edge of evolution itself. Highly recommended!”

—Ken Wilber, author of The Integral Vision and Grace and Grit

“The world is changing now, rapidly and radically. Terry Patten imparts a challenging insight to us all—helping us feel and understand how the world is calling us to transform our interior lives as well as our behaviors relating to our immediate urgent evolutionary challenges.”

—Thomas Hübl, international teacher of practical mystical competence and founder of the Academy of Inner Science

“Like all true spiritual guides, Terry Patten shows us how to open our hearts and respond to this suffering world. His book is thoughtful, careful, and joyful.”

—Diane Musho Hamilton Sensei, author of The Zen of You and Me and Everything is Workable

“With deep caring and illuminating insights, Patten unfolds an integrative analysis of our impending crisis of civilization, offering a valuable handbook for those trying to make sense of what’s happening and—most importantly—what they can do about it.”

—Jeremy Lent, author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning

About Terry Patten

TERRY PATTEN is a philosopher, activist, consultant, coach, teacher, and social entrepreneur. He is the author of the bestselling book, A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries, as well as Integral Life Practice, which he co-wrote with Ken Wilber and a core team at the Integral Institute. As a teacher, he created the acclaimed online courses Integral Spiritual Practice, Living the Integral Heart, The Integral Soul Work Journey, and Awakening your Revolutionary Heart. For the past seven years he’s guided Circles of Mutuality which focus on deep “we-space” and relational work.

Terry is the founder of the “Beyond Awakening” teleseminar series and Bay Area Integral. As a social entrepreneur, he founded the pioneering consciousness technology company Tools For Exploration and led the team at the HeartMath Institute that developed their first heart-rate variability monitor. He co-leads initiatives in restorative redwood forestry, fossil-fuel alternatives, and transforming collective trauma.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is a virtual course?

A: Virtual learning is a way for you to participate in a course from anywhere in the world — home, office, wherever you have a reliable internet connection. You can join the weekly sessions via computer, mobile device, or telephone and access course materials via computer or mobile device. We’ll be using Zoom video conferencing for our live events. If there is more than one person in your household taking the course, you will each need your own connection.

There is no additional charge for connecting to Zoom with your computer or mobile device. Please note that dialing Zoom from your telephone is a toll call; your telephone service provider will charge you according to your existing long-distance calling plan. International access numbers are available.

Q: What if I can’t make all of the classes?

A: Each session will be recorded, both in video and audio format, and posted to the course homepage, so if you have a scheduling conflict, you can watch or listen to the recording at your convenience.

Q: How does the Course Online Forum work?

A: Our online community is open only to participants in this course. The intention is to provide a lively, supportive environment outside of class. Here you will be able to continue the conversations and deepen your understanding with fellow participants.

Q: How do the pods and dyads work?

Early in the course, after completing a survey to determine timezone compatibility, you’ll be introduced to your first dyad partner (2 people) and pod (4 to 6 people). Dyad meetings can range from 30-60 minutes. Pod meetings will range from 75-90 minutes. You will then work together to establish a day and time for your meetings and determine the platform you’ll be using for your meetings, either by video (Ex. Zoom, Skype, Adobeconnect) or audio (ex. Freeconferencecall.com, Maestroconference.com). Dyad partners will change every 6-8 weeks; We will have 3 different pod configurations over the course of our year together.

Q: What if I can’t commit the time required but I want to be part of it?

A number of “Auditing” spaces will be made available to sincerely interested, supportive individuals whose lives don’t allow them to commit to this whole experiment, but who want to learn and observe and participate in a more limited capacity. If you’re interested in auditing, go through the normal sign-up process; we will give all participants an opportunity to define their desired level of engagement later.

Q: What is your refund policy?

This course is for the most part billed monthly, so you only “pay as you go”. Thus, in some sense it is an honor system. However, we make a huge investment in generating the community, and as we cohere a group field, it hurts everyone when anyone drops out. So we invite you to register, participate, confirm your commitment, and if you don’t cancel by Jan. 30, 2019, to fulfill the full 12 months of participation and payment. If unexpected circumstances force you to withdraw, we ask you to have a conversation first. Be aware that our expenses will not be reduced by your early withdrawal. So if a completion conversation becomes necessary, we ask you to make a mutual and respectful agreement about the remaining payments.

Q: How can I reach Customer Support?

A: Please contact us here and we’ll get right back to you.

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“What we have here is possibly the finest example of the making of the possible human and with this, the development of a possible world.”

—Jean Houston, Ph.D., Chancellor, Meridian University, author of A Passion for the Possible