Saving the world has to be fun: Interview with Terry Patten

posted by Eivind on August 1, 2014, at 4:12 pm

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Terry Patten a few days ago. Terry is a highly respected teacher of Integral Spirituality and the author of four books, including Integral Life Practice (co-authored with Ken Wilber among others). After spending time with him over the past year, I also have the pleasure of calling him a friend. I wanted to interview Terry since he will visit Oslo, Norway soon with his workshop “The Revelation of the Soul”.

In the interview below, we touch on a lot of topics dear to my heart. Terry is highly passionate about helping activists remain joyfully alive even as they try to tackle serious problems in a world in crisis. He is clear that we cannot hope to affect real change if we’re coming from a place of frustration, fatigue and despair.

No, the people who will help us move forward are the ones who are passionately alive and who know how to dance and “love brilliantly”. This strikes home with me strongly; I sometimes carry my vision in a way that wears me down.

Archetypally, what I hear Terry say is that we must nourish our inner Lover in order to carry out the Warrior work in this world. I cannot agree more.

At the 07:25 mark, Terry speaks directly to my heart. He is pinpointing the most central theme in my life right now: Letting go of ideas about ourselves and our identities in order to step into who we really are.

Here are some of the highlight moments in this fantastic interview:

02:53 – Activists need to feel alive
04:55 – Being seriously playful
07:27 – Love brilliantly and let identities fall away
12:35 – Strategizing the moment is not going to work
16:40 – Soul and self-transcendence
17:50 – The paradoxical relationship between Surrender and Action
19:25 – The need for Self-compassion
21:50 – Healthy idealism and the heart of the heart
22:40 – What to expect from the workshop
24:15 – 15 years with Adi Da
28:00 – Adi Da: Reconfiguring the image of enlightenment

I look forward to bringing more of Terry to you soon, as he is almost certainly going to be featured as one of the experts in my upcoming archetypal home study course “Reclaim your Inner Throne”.

Enjoy this interview and let me know what you think.

Warmly,
Eivind