Open your heart to show up and not only to do those things but then to bring all that to bare on behalf of other people. You know, with an open heart, in a spirit of love, in the interest of offering something better for the world around you.
Rob: Sounds really good. So, this is a thick book. There's a lot in here. It seems to me as a very practical pragmatic book with detailed instructions on how to do things and how to think through things.
Terry: Absolutely. It was intended to...
Rob: As compared to Ken Wilber's writings, which tend to be very theoretical, philosophical, integrating philosophy and science brilliantly I think he is one of the smartest people around, but it seems like what you have done, as one of your reviewers said, is you created a kind of a GPS for consciousness, for traveling the journey, almost for exploring the idea of waking up, opening your heart, and showing up to the full extend that you have the potential.
Terry: Yeah. This is really, you know, when people ask Ken 'what can I do in my life,' he tells them doing Integral Life Practice. That is the single answer. His theoretical works are marvelous orienting generalizations that I think have really redrawn the best maps we have as to the territory of the inner and outer world so that we can have conversations of the leading edge of consciousness and culture at a level of specificity and rigor and insight and intensity that I thing have been possible before. But when it comes to my life, whatever my abstract understanding of things is, what do I do? This is the first book that Ken has been involved in writing that really addresses that question.
...you do not have to be interested in Ken Wilber or even never have heard of Ken Wilber to be interested in living the fullest life you can and in being all that you can be. You know, not that army slogan. But what is this life and how can I really fulfill the potentials for joy, and for awareness, and for aliveness, and for service to others?
How do I really fulfill the potential of this birth? Everybody is interested in that. People realize that you do not just do that by meditating and you do not just do that by physical fitness, you don't just do that by studying books. You know, some of it is kind of to be an integration of all these aspects of yourself.
Something comes on line when you do it all. It does not happen if you only pursue one of those lines. And that's what Integral Life Practice is about.
Rob: We are going to talk about it a little bit more after our station ID and sponsor information. So this is the Rob Kall Futurehealth Radio Show, WNJC 13:60 a.m. interviewing Terry Patten, coauthor of Integral Life Practice and the show was sponsored by Futurehealth.org. Futurehealth.org is a news and opinion site for consciousness, for biofeedback, for neurofeedback, meditation, different approaches to healing with the mind. It's also a website that offers products for professionals and for laymen having to do with stress and relaxation and check it out. Futurehealth.org or do a search for Futurehealth products on Amazon where we also offer a good number of products.
OK. Terry, back to Integral Life Practice. So Integral Life Practice sounds like something that everybody should want, yet I know a whole lot of a people never get there. You know why, part of what I do on another one of my websites OpEdNews.com is I have a quotation database on there.
I was uploading some quotations from Henry David Thoreau yesterday. He talks about how so many people go through their lives without ever getting it. Without ever doing anything but just working at ordinary jobs, figuring out that there was something more than that. Integral life is all about first understanding that there is more of it and then how to get there. Right?
Terry: Yeah. What I would say is I think everybody, we all come with the raw equipment. We have this amazing human body/mind. You know, if you look at our nervous system and these medical book diagrams, I mean, it is like an amazing tree. This is amazing that the raw equipment of the human being is capable of the tremendous ecstasy of writing poetry, building cathedrals, and of standing on the earth with kind of dignity, simplicity, intelligence, and clarity that is really moving. So everybody has got that. Everybody is doing it to some degree. Yeah, people tend to get dragged down. Life can be discouraging.
People end up in these low moments, feeling close to suicidal sometimes, certainly the postmodern act is something that everyone has had to deal with. I think that everybody yearns for something more, at least, in many moments. Many people find a way to make steps towards that, even if they are not very systematic, even if they are not very consistent in the ways they do it. Just by trying to be a good person, just by loving, just by reading good books, just by maybe opening their hearts, in a simple way, or praying or meditating, even a little bit here and there, maybe just doing Yoga, whatever.
They find ways, maybe running. For many people, their sport becomes kind of a spiritual practice for them. Everybody has got a little drib or drab of this going on.
I say to people, don't take up an integral life practice. Integral Life Practice is a way to understand what you're already doing and can fill in a lot of the missing pieces and help you come into a kind of wholeness and have more success, really get traction, really get results or the things that you aspire to most in a more powerful way.
But ultimately, not just so that you'll feel better, ultimately so that you'll become freer and freer of the things that are dragging you down so that you can be of service to the world around you, to other people, to be a contributor.
