Excellence Reporter: Terry, what is the meaning of life?

Terry Patten: In a very real sense, life itself is its own meaning. The very vibrance of every next new “now-moment” expresses life’s meaning, if we awaken enough to participate consciously in it.

The deepest part of our being holds the secrets to why we have been drawn into this body and this moment—right here, right now. Yet these unknowns are only revealed to us in “soul time” and only to the patient, watchful heart.

Conventional culture has evolved to lull us into a “consensus trance,” a state that tends to dull us and leave us feeling defeated and numb, able to express only in the most predictable of ways, and deaf to our inner wisdom and orientation.

Yet there are times in our lives when a shift occurs — a different octave of energy begins to be transduced through the whole being and integrated through the heart. When this “heart intelligence” comes online, we are synced up with our gut intelligence, our mental intelligence, our whole being intelligence.

We wake up from the consensus trance into a living romance with Reality itself.

We remember that we are already inseparable from All That Is, and we become a vessel for Life to flow through us in imaginative, sometimes unprecedented expressions.

And yet the unique contour of your life requires something more than the non dual awareness that you are already, always inseparable from All That Is.

To discern the narrative thrust and arc of your life, you must drop down into whatever it is that glows in the very marrow of your being, and let the ear of the heart hear the voice of the soul.

Then the dance of the universal and the particular reveals itself to you like a lover’s endless striptease, indescribably beautiful. Wonder and gratitude become more real than any search for meaning.

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~Terry Patten is co-creator and co-author, with Ken Wilber, of Integral Life Practice. He hosts the influential teleseminar series Beyond Awakening, conducting leading-edge conversations with many of the world’s renowned thinkers and teachers. Terry also authored influential teachings on Integral Spiritual Practice, the Integral Heart, Integral Soul Work, spiritual activism and awakened mutuality. His new book, The Awakening Activist, will be released by North Atlantic Books in Spring 2017.
www.TerryPatten.com

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