State of Emergence

Prophetic teacher, psychologist, author and poet, Bayo Akomolafe joins Terry to explore the “cracks in the world” that are opening to swallow everything we’ve been taught to believe and sense into the voices, adventures, and new worlds that are poised to emerge. With vivid original imagination and a ruthless deep kindness, Bayo names the limits of modern Western “solutionism” and invites us to make “fugitive breaks” away from familiar ways of knowing — to become consciously...

Philosopher and author Tim Freke joins Terry to explore the personal, cultural, and global implications of an integration of our best rational and spiritual understandings of reality. Tim Freke is an English philosopher and author of 35 books, including a Sunday Times bestseller and Daily Telegraph 'Book of the Year'. He is the founder of ‘Unividualism’, which combines evolutionary science and deep spirituality to offer a visionary new understanding of the nature of reality and the...

Terry Patten explores the delusion, anxiety, loneliness, and fear experienced across our culture as well as the potential for sacred, next-stage friendship to be a key leverage point for healing the madness. Terry also invites members of the New Republic of the Heart practice community to share their experiences participating in a daring social experiment in transformational relating and co-creativity. Ultimately, Terry and others extend a special invitation to listeners. Here...

Purpose guide and psychotherapist Jonathan Gustin joins Terry to explore the vital processes of discovering and actualizing our soul’s purpose, in clear and practical terms, to benefit our world in crisis. Jonathan builds upon our recent episode with Bill Plotkin by offering important distinctions between purpose, vocation, and pleasure. He also describes what he calls integral awakening, using his “three worlds” model of consciousness, in which the “lower world” represents our...

In light of the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, host Terry Patten shares spontaneous reflections on endings, new beginnings, hope, despair, the spiritual tasks of this time, and how we can refuse to put anyone out of our hearts. We hope that you appreciate this episode, and, most importantly, that you are finding your own way to a renewed and inspired civic engagement during the current transition. Also: We invite you to join become a Friend of State of...

Ecopsychologist, wilderness guide and author Bill Plotkin joins Terry to consider the human crisis as essentially a crisis of immaturity — that true human adults and human elders are both extraordinarily rare today. Bill speaks to what is truly required for us — as individuals, and collectively — to grow from our extended adolescence into mature human adulthood. He describes the challenging, and sometimes hazardous, spiritual process of “soul initiation,” which demands the...

Evolutionary leader, thinker, and founder of The Shift Network Stephen Dinan joins Terry to explore how conspiracy thinking and new paradigm ideas are sometimes merging in a phenomenon some call “Conspirituality” — which he articulated, with clarity and courage, in a Medium essay some months ago titled, “Anatomy of Delusion: How Otherwise Conscious People Descended into the Darkness.” Although this episode was recorded a couple weeks before the recent rioting and insurrection at the...

Remarkable mystic and teacher Thomas Hübl joins Terry to discuss his new book Healing Collective Trauma, and they take the exploration into some new deep places. Every human being is born into and affected by, either directly or indirectly, the collective wounds of human history — epigenetically, energetically, and systemically. This is why Thomas says that we are all “shareholders of our collective unconscious.” Intergenerational and cultural traumas become “frozen hostages stuck in...

Author of Wake Up Grateful and the Executive Director of A Network for Grateful Living, Kristi Nelson joins Terry to explore the elusively obvious gift of this very breath and moment and the transformational practice of living with grateful generosity at this moment in our human journey. Kristi illuminates the differences between gratitude and gratefulness, and how the uncaused and unconditional nature of gratefulness enables us to stay open-hearted, in all of the ordeal and the...

Leadership development expert Barrett Brown joins Terry to explore the most advanced levels of leadership, especially as they apply in the US as a new Biden administration begins to navigate simultaneous, interpenetrating fast-moving crises. Barrett shares which leadership capacities are most essential for “leading in the unknown” amidst hypercomplex adaptive systems, heightened polarization, and a damaged information ecosystem. Many insights emerge, principally starting where we...

Environmental philosopher and activist Rupert Read joins Terry to explore the current state of our ecological emergency, its philosophical implications, and our human responses. They probe into what kinds of understanding, spiritual growth, truth-telling, and nonviolent direct action are appropriate now. They also consider the kinds of communication and action that can coincide with rapid transformation, particularly the primal, and still-untapped power of parents’ love for our...

Systems change strategist and facilitator Tuesday Ryan-Hart explores the trauma, care, tenderness, and sacredness that are underneath our discussions of equity and systemic injustice. She and Terry consider which mindsets, skills, and relational practices can enable us to stay in the complexity of difficult conversations and collective healing without losing sight of our common humanity and dignity. They imagine how an ethos of grace can guide this deep, challenging, and beautiful...

Cosmologist, futurist, and mystic Jude Currivan describes her understanding of the quantum nature of reality, which has profound implications for our planetary crises, and the potentials for creative emergence. In the process, she points to several recent scientific discoveries that reveal a holographic, nonlocal, and conscious universe, and describes the implications for our social and natural world. Ultimately, she and Terry relax into a radical trust of this already unified reality and...

Diane Musho Hamilton (award-winning mediator and Zen Roshi) and Jeff Salzman (integral political commentator and host of The Daily Evolver) join Terry to react, reflect, and take to heart this week’s historic, record-breaking, and, in many ways disturbing U.S. election. In true 2020 fashion, the election insisted on being an ordeal, and it will of course continue to challenge our collective patience, sensemaking, compassion, and resilience for weeks (perhaps even months) to come. On Tuesday...

Filmmaker, social observer, and humorist Neal Rogin joins Terry to explore the kinds of communications that can break through the cultural narratives that are tending to bind the human imagination. A cross between Yoda and Forrest Gump, Neal Rogin’s playful humor startles and liberates us into self-compassionate capital-H Humor. His unique brand of brilliance is tender and vividly in service of the heart. Ultimately, he and Terry make their way to a new level of levity, clarity, and joy in...

Psychotherapist, professor, and author Carolyn Baker joins Terry for a sober, deep, and instructive conversation to consider our planetary predicament as a sacred rite of passage that necessitates a “collective descent into the darkness,” the possibility of our collective “sacred demise”, and the possibility of a collective rebirth or “radical regeneration.” They explore which types of leadership and leaders we will need to midwife our human journey through a great transition, perhaps the...

Science writer, evolutionary educator, and more-than-human ‘grassroots’ climate activist, Connie Barlow joins Terry to reflect on the heartbreaking journey of accepting our ecological predicament, what it means to be a good ancestor, and how "life stages" open possibilities for a more sacred relationship to climate grief, to death, and to transformation. Ultimately, they fortify each other in their commitments to give more, require less, and be a generous sacrifice to the younger generations...

Prominent eco-theologian and “post-gloom collapsologist” Michael Dowd shines the light of evolutionary and ecological wisdom on this time of plagues, fires, floods, corruption, and collapse. He and Terry explore the psychological and relational journey into accepting our sobering predicament, living with accountability to the future, and even discovering lightheartedness amidst their heartbreak. They also consider how to balance certainty with epistemic humility (knowing we don’t know) in a...

Author of The Quantum Revelation, Paul Levy joins Terry to explore the radical, mind-bending implications of quantum physics and how they can transform our relationship to good and evil. For starters, Paul asks us to face the fact that there’s no “independently existing world out there” — we are co-dreaming it all into being. We consider how the way we observe our lives, culture and society tangibly influences them — like in a dream — and how unconscious feedback loops within consciousness...

Modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, and scholar Cynthia Bourgeault joins Terry to explore what it is to live and imagine from the “eye of the heart” in a seemingly apocalyptic world. They reflect on how each of them is relating to death and also discovering new strength and guidance by keeping the company of saints, sages, and our courageous ancestors — one of the most important spiritual fruits of awakening into the “imaginal realm.” Cynthia suggests we aspire to “live the laws of the next...