Beginning as a family counselor with two degrees from the UC--Berkeley, Patricia Sun has been a pioneer in ushering forth a creative, new style of thinking, feeling and being in the world for over 30 years. She has led thousands of workshops and lectures focusing on expanding our consciousness, re-perceiving reality, and moving ourselves forward in a collective evolutionary leap.

Although I have been a fan of Patricia Sun and her insightful philosophy for quite some time, I had not heard much of her for the past ten years. I began our interview with this observation, wondering if she had purposely kept out of the limelight.

PATRICIA: It's true; I decided to stay out of the limelight and wait until the time was closer. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, I "opened" and began teaching. Some people, including some well-known speakers, would take a piece of that teaching and run off with it. That helped because it spread the information, but they often didn't quite get the whole picture. It was missing the essence, which is about being truthful and earnest. The discoveries of how we can grow and the insights we need to have really come from the inside out. To have genuine empathy, not as a make-nice tool but as an understanding, is essential to the next step. So, to get back to your point, I realized that some people were somewhat slick or capable of saying all the right words without living it.

DAWN: I sometimes call that the "marketing of the New Age."

PATRICIA: Yes, you got it! And it hurt my heart so much that I felt I had to withdraw and pull in because this was obviously not the right time. But now is the right time! Now, I'm filled with hope and insight for people who will be able to see and not be so attached to having to be right all the time so that they can't grow and find their innocence and kindness - for themselves and others.

DAWN: Let's talk about that for a moment. What makes this the right time? We've been through the emotional wringer this past year and many changes are going on. People have been talking about these changes for years, but you're right that there is something qualitatively different now - it's almost palpable. What is that? How do you see that?

PATRICIA: About 25 years ago, I had a premonition that in some 20 years we would go through a very big change, one that would allow us to really mature and heal ourselves individually and collectively -- not so much by trying to force a collective change as by coming to a certain ripeness inside so that we would realize we have the power to heal ourselves psychologically and physically. I don't mean that in a woo-woo way, but in a very healthy, sane and sound manner. That premonition began my journey around the world, to visit some 38 different countries. I realized that I was planting seeds, and that it was important to stay low-key, because once you say, "I've got it" or "This is it," then resistance starts to build. But, if you start giving away seeds, people will claim their seeds. Some nurture them and grow them, and that makes a foundational change.

Another part of the premonition came in deep meditation. I asked what I was supposed to do, and the words came, "To end wars." I thought - give me a break! (laughs) Then, I heard my inner voice telling me to calm down and find out more. I saw a vision of the earth as if from the moon. I saw cylinders of light coming down and the words, "The Age of Avatars." An avatar is someone like Jesus or Buddha, someone who really experiences God. It's not about trying to be good, but about sensing the connection to goodness so that you are living it. Within these cylinders of light on earth, I saw a countenance, a very loving and radiant face, and I realized that person had learned to love completely within a body. When that person turned to others on the planet and looked at them with such love and acceptance, those people felt it and then became filled with radiance too. And they turned to others, and so on, until a critical mass was reached and the whole world was lit.

I think the ripeness for that time is here. There is a readiness inside the average person on the planet - every person, every race - to be real, to say "Oh, what the heck…what's the goodness here? What will make the planet healthy? How can we have good food, fresh water, good relationships with our spouses and children, and enjoy living with other people?" There is a readiness, and there is also simultaneously an inability to have the vision of what it takes to get out of the trap.

We don't realize that polarized thinking creates what we resist. An ancient Chinese proverb states that we become what we resist. I think we are changing how our brains work and we're maturing collectively. We have magnificent brains, but we use a great deal of our brilliance to keep ourselves stuck and ignorant, to keep ourselves from not shining. We are so afraid of our beauty and radiance and brilliance because it scared the adults around us when we were children. There really is a psychological defense that short-circuits our own flowering.

DAWN: Let's address that fear, because what we need is to not deny our fear, but walk through our fear. Still, how do we do that? We naturally want to cling to our old ways because that is our comfort zone. So, how do we let go of fear, when it is so real in the moment?

PATRICIA: The key to radiance is real love. One of the first things that helps us to let go of old-style thinking is to realize we are in a process and that everybody is somewhat caught up in that. Everybody is changing and everybody longs to change. The thing that makes us most stuck is either/or thinking - either I'm afraid or I'm not afraid; you're my friend or you're not my friend. When you think either/or, you throw out all the major capacities of intelligence - and I mean intelligence in two senses of the word, both in terms of information, all the information between one pole and the other pole that would help us use the second meaning of our intelligence, which is our ability to be creative and invent new solutions that are the source of our power and healing and change. We mostly feel fearful because we feel powerless. We feel powerless, I contend, because of a style of thinking that splits information in two poles that makes us lose all the operative information we need to solve the problem.

There is only one sentence that George Bush and Osama bin Laden have said identically: "You are either for us or against us." Nothing will ensure war more certainly or entrench rivalries more seriously than for or against thinking! We have to find the place where we are really for everyone but willing to say what doesn't seem okay about the situation. We need to find where I have empathy for what you are saying and really listen so I understand what is hurting you instead of saying that it shouldn't bother you. And you, likewise, would listen to what was really bothering me. If we do that, I absolutely guarantee that we would both have little eureka light bulbs go off over our heads and we'd both come up with creative solutions that would be different than either one of us could have conceived alone. That is the very essence of growth and creativity.

To get back to your question of what can help us not be so afraid, it would be to extend ourselves to feel and perceive others and not be so hasty to just be right. I always say that it's much more powerful to be good than to be right. Why? Because good guides us in moving towards that which is good. Being right makes a deadlock, an enemy, and it sucks us down from expanding our perception. It also frightens the other person and makes the position more stubborn. That is why we get destructive and do horrible things to one another, whether in personal relationships or in the big picture. And the big picture is just an extension of the same psychological dynamic that is going on inside our personal lives.

So, the solution to move forward in our change is to realize: 1) it's happening to everyone; 2) it's a process; and 3) it's a shift in the style of the way we think - not just what we think, but how we think. The process of discovery has to shift from skewing our logical mind to sift every bit of information to make us look right to using that logical mind to sift information towards what would make a good outcome for everyone. That is a whole different use for our intelligence! It allows us to use our intuition, which is our inspiration that allows us to be wholly creative and think of possibilities that were never thought of before. That is our brilliance, our true humanity that we use such a small percentage of.

DAWN: I'm reminded of a story you've told about sitting in an airport when a woman came and sat down not far from you and began crying. She cried for 15 minutes or more, and you just sat with her while she cried, sending her mental notes of encouragement - get it out, that's good. And when she was done…

PATRICIA: Yes, she got up to walk away, but stood before me for a moment first. And she said, "I knew you were someone I could cry with." And that's our humanity! If we let just a fraction of that power into actualization, we would create heaven on earth. I used to say this often - there is only one thing keeping us from having heaven on earth: we can't believe it! Why? Because we don't want to be wrong - so we'll be right and make it hell! (laughs)

DAWN: So, where did that belief come from? Why do we still have it and why do we keep holding on?

PATRICIA: I think it is simply that we are terrified of being wrong. It is as simple an issue as an evolutionary stage where our biology is such that we are imprintable. We have a hugely complex form of social and psychological imprinting. In the first six years of life, children are very psychically open. They pick up not so much what we say but what we really feel and think. They pick up our fears. They feel that collective horrible sense that we almost don't deserve to be alive if we are not right. This is poison!

The problem is that we haven't gotten the difference between being good and being right. Jesus and Buddha spent their lives trying to explain the importance of moving towards the good, which is love and compassion. Jesus endlessly spoke about the Pharisees not getting it. The Pharisees are representative of modern day, organized religion and institutional thinking, in that they represent the rules, the focus of being right and "us versus them" mentality, not the love and healing and compassion which leads to solutions. The kingdom of heaven is actually all around us; we just don't see it. Just like the Pharisees.

Freedom and liberty are not something someone gives us. Rather, it's about the freedom and liberty of our soul to be present and alive. It has to do with goodwill and connecting inside, asking not what makes me look right or gives me power over someone, but what is the wholesome thing to do - not just for me, but for the other person. When we start thinking in this less polarized way, there is an evolutionary miracle that happens: our brain starts functioning in a different way. The two hemispheres of our brain, instead of battling each other in fear and polarization make that leap of creativity and start to genuinely link up. And that is us being whole. That is what we are hungry for.

Patriotism is a beautiful thing - to love your country, your land, and your people and have a deep emotional affinity. But it can be so easily corrupted to polarized thinking, to harming others and ourselves if we don't realize what it is that is beautiful. It is beautiful because it is love.

DAWN: I think many people were easily swept into a corrupted view of patriotism with September 11. All the American flags, for example, were on the one hand a positive coming together of support, but all too often I sensed a deep-rooted "us versus them" mentality. I wanted us to create a new flag, with a picture of the earth on it, something for us to remember that we are all one people. You have a great saying on your web site …

PATRICIA: "You can't take sides when you know the earth is round." Yes, patriotism is a fine thing when we love our country, but we can't use it to harm others. What does love our country mean? It means love our people, our constitution, our way of life and to self-correct with good will. But how about the way of life that is corporate greed, the ways that poison the politics, people and land? It is not either/or. We need to move to a both/and view of the world. We are good and we need self-reflection to grow, heal and be genuinely creative.

Simplistic thinking and polarized thinking are what we go to when we are afraid. When we don't have information, we go to the simplest outlook, to black and white. But then we have to lie to ourselves. Black is never as black as you're painting it and white is never as white. We need to respect the tendency when fearful to be polarized, and then attempt to depolarize those situations rather than accelerate them.

All of this is about loving our world. It's not an accident that Nazi Germany happened. That's a historical example of organized black and white thinking and the hell it creates. We can now genetically engineer, put chips in people, cause death on a scale of millions that the Nazi's couldn't even imagine. And we are very close; we have that capability. But, instead of fear and capability, we need to mature ourselves to a place of knowing "that which is greater," to guide our hearts and minds to be creative, to find solutions that are not simplistic and destructive but creative and healthy. That is our challenge: to be truly creative and healthy and not make enemies of anyone.

From my point of view, the extreme right and the extreme left have always been the same - it's the extremeness that is the polarization, for it's coming from fear, from only seeing it's own point of view and, therefore, causing harm. We need an overview so that we can look at different poles and see all of the information and possibilities in-between, and find what is best at both ends. It's amazing how this frustrates people - what side are you on? I'm on both sides! I care about both sides, about the health and well being of all the children on this planet. We are not safe and happy and healthy if we do not have compassion for all children of the world. Who is America but us? We are all the people of all the world.

When we think in a simplistic way, we miss so much reality that we become what we resist. We have a difficulty facing ourselves - seeing that which we resist. We need to make judgments, of course - to observe what works and what doesn't, but not to be judgmental. Being judgmental is a form of madness that screams powerlessness and ruthlessness. When we can make good judgments and update them and not stay rigid, we come from goodwill and promote goodwill back to us. That's why Jesus said love your enemy. If you love your enemy, you don't have an enemy anymore!

Polarization isn't intrinsically wrong. It is a tool for progressing. You look at one pole, then the other, and all the journeys and differences in-between, and then you create something else. And then wherever you are, you make some more polarizations. And you look at one pole and then the other, and all the degrees and experiences in-between, and then, coming from goodwill, you make a creative progression. That is the evolutionary leap. That is what we are here to do.

We don't quite know it yet, though, and we're caught in a reactionary fear. The real fear is that we'll be wrong and we don't deserve to live if we're wrong. The foolishness about that is that everyone is wrong about something, sometime. Or else you're dead! Being wrong is the way we learn and discover - we try something, we discover it was a mistake. I believe Thomas Edison said that the man who makes 100 mistakes is 100 times ahead of the man who makes none. Why? Because he knows 100 things that don't work. And I'd say it's even richer than that because you not only know 100 things that don't work, but with each try you encounter information, discover things that later on down the road provide the crucial answer to a problem that can only be solved by that adventure, which was a mistake!

To think in a simplistic linear style is to be an immature linear thinker. To think in an intuitional style that is fear driven (with demons and goblins) is immature intuitive thinking. But when they mature, intuition becomes inspiration, creative insight, and new thoughts guided by what is good. And logic becomes a fabulous, exquisite tool for supporting intuition through facts. And then we become brilliant! Then we become what we are really built to be. I think that is the crisis of our times: to discover that, not just with a few individuals, but globally and collectively.

The minute we start operating from goodwill, it's an alchemy, for something irrepressible begins - it is love. It is what Jesus and Buddha and all the great leaders taught - it is the link to that which is greater. That is what the word religion means - not the dogma and the rules, but the link to that which is greater. We transform the world by transforming ourselves.

DAWN: It's always back to the self, isn't it?

PATRICIA: Yes, because we're the point of power. We have the choice at any given moment.

DAWN: And the Pharisees, the marketing of the new age, limiting religious dogma -it's as if that is the distraction, the creation we made and still make so that we don't have to see our inner self.

PATRICIA: Exactly! You know what Carl Jung said? He said that people invented religion to avoid religious experiences.

DAWN: That's a good one! No kidding!

PATRICIA: Yes. And sometimes people create patriotism to avoid being patriotic. Because to really be patriotic is to love all the citizens of our country. To mature to that level would cause the realization that the United States is made of all the people of the world and if we truly wished them well, we would be the leaders, perhaps, that we were meant to be.

To learn more, visit Patricia Sun’s web site at http://www.patriciasun.com/
Patricia Sun will be in Anchorage December 14 -- 15.