The Future of Spiritual Practice (Think About This)
by Joel Pitney
Terry Patten is one of the world’s leading proponents of integral spirituality. In the following excerpt from an EnlightenNext interview about his 2009 book Integral Life Practice, he describes the unique ability of the integral perspective to synthesize practices from the world’s many religious traditions and express the universal essence of the spiritual path:
Integral is the first full religio-spiritual path that cannot be called a “faith.” It’s beyond believing in anything. It’s about living and practicing consciously in ways that produce results. This is a form of spirituality that can stand up to the critiques of rational agnostics, atheists, and the deconstructive critiques of postmodernists. I think integral spirituality offers a skeleton key that can cut through the barriers that tend to divide the balkanized communities of practice. That’s why we emphasize integral approaches to all paths, as well as a stand-alone integral path. The fact that it can cross all those boundaries is just as important as the fact that it represents a brand new tradition all by itself.
You can hear Terry Patten in dialogue with EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen and other spiritual teachers by registering for his free upcoming teleseminar series, Beyond Awakening: The Future of Spiritual Practice, which begins on Sunday, September 12th, 2010.
There we were at the sacred 
In Evolutionary Enlightenment, the perennial revelation that there is only One is interpreted as the recognition that we are all part of One Process—a singular cosmic unfolding that began fourteen billion years ago and is still evolving, in this very moment, as you and as me. Every aspect of your experience in every moment, from the gross to the subtle, has been produced and is being produced by a cosmic process. Your physical form has been produced by a process that is the evolution of the exterior of the cosmos. Your psychological and emotional experience has been produced by a process that is the evolution of the interior of the cosmos. When you awaken to this perspective, you literally can no longer see yourself as separate. 
