Explore every episode of the podcast Portals of Perception

Yes, it is indeed possible to attune to one’s soul—and there are many paths to do so, as this empowering workshop demonstrates. Aviv Shahar’s loom practice invites participants to build their own “discovery looms” of inquiries, thoughts, and feelings, fostering soul integration during times of change. The workshop then introduces two modes of learning:

• Horizontal learning—the process of expansion by adding new information.
• Vertical learning—an elevation of perspective that transforms what we already know and, through depth activation, releases latent codings to awaken fresh awareness and appreciation.

By workshopping the looms created by participants, the group enters a vibrant exchange, revealing each person as a symphonic arrangement of inner voices — some anchored in the mind, others resonating from the soul. When we ask, “What must we overcome to attune to our soul?” we discover shared hurdles: self‑doubt, conditioned dependence on external validation, perception shutdown, and various forms of trauma.

Throughout this experiential journey, open‑ended questions — inquiries beyond our current understanding illuminate the larger context: attuning to the soul as an essential response to the epochal change unfolding in our world.

Key exploration questions

• How do we learn to recognize the voice of our soul amid the many inner parts of our human orchestra?
• How can we encourage and honor each of those voices as integral to our humanity?
• In what ways can we integrate the soul into daily living, allowing it to emerge and navigate our processes?
• What distances us from our soul, and how might we overcome those barriers?
• How does understanding the soul’s energetic dimensions — and its relationship to human consciousness — situate this work within the broader story of epochal transformation?

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“Humanity is going to face tremendous challenges, and is going to be able to come through. But to come through, a growing cross-section of humanity is waking up now to the realization that we need to lean into and reintegrate the conversation with the soul, to bring into the conversation the spiritual dimension of life, and to learn to attune to our soul such that we are able to access the intelligence we need to meet those difficult challenges.” (Aviv)

“What is the function of consciousness? What is the function of cognition in the evolutionary process, and why is it that human life is the arising of a life that is conscious of its consciousness. And that, by the way, can become conscious of the nature of consciousness itself. Three steps: a life that becomes conscious, a life that becomes conscious that it is conscious, and a life that becomes conscious of the very nature of consciousness, which is where there is a breakthrough evolutionary pathway that opens.” (Aviv)

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Attuning to Your Soul – Event Part 1

How do we make sense of life in the vortex of so much change?

Where do the interior and exterior developments mirror one another — and where do they diverge?

The sixteen vortices described here offer a profound revelation emerging from the current tracking of this epochal intensification. These vortices include novel developments in both machine intelligence and human intelligence. AI clearly holds the potential either to help us or to hinder us. The critical question is: will we become subject to the machine and lose the significance of our humanity, or will we liberate our greater universal capacity — using the advancement of machines to help awaken and amplify our own universal potential?

The Cambrian explosion was the sudden appearance of new life-forms and greater complexity in an earlier age of Earth’s history. Today we are living through a crisis of complexity of another kind — a Cambrian Release — offering us a unique opportunity to connect with new dimensions of human intelligence that are revealing themselves now.

In this mind-expanding conversation, Aviv Shahar and Jeff Vander Clute pivot around the age-old question: What is intelligence? They explore the unseen dimension of universal intelligence that quietly nudges us forward, revealing the path ahead. We experience this intelligence when we engage in self-directed, long-term practices — individually and collectively — as a way of liberating greater perception and insight.

From Jeff’s two-year journey of writing a book — with its inherent agonies and ecstasies — the conversation zooms out to trace the five-year arc of the Epochal Journey and the Portals project. Aviv shares what it means to “fly in formation” with other self-directed elders engaged in the same developmental path. He reveals six habitual “shrinkage moves” that can immobilize us — or, if consciously leaned into, can become catalysts for breakthrough and new vistas of perception.

Significant opportunities explored include:

Embodying long-term practice and process: discovering that the work you are doing is simultaneously doing its work on you.

• Moving beyond the teacher archetype: exemplified by the five-year Epoch Journey and the imagery of flying in formation with self-led, self-directed elders.
• Recognizing the six shrinkage moves that can hold humanity back — and using them as portals to breakthrough.
• Understanding the seven-fold Epochal Process: upgrading our cognitive and operating systems to navigate greater complexity.
• Exploring the Universalis human and collective liberation: unlocking advanced capacities and learning to abide with unseen dimensions of reality.
• Considering the parallels between the Cambrian explosion and today’s epochal intensification: seeing this era as the release of new forms of intelligence and life through complexification.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“To follow that as a pathway is just appreciating, in an even broader sense, that we are all and each one of us, we are stepping into the human function. That is to say, whatever we process, metabolize, struggle with, overcome, resolve, transmogrify, and release in our capacities, we do so on behalf of the larger human family, and that's a service, too. And we do so from a place of love and devotion. Whenever you struggle, whenever you find a contraction point or resistance, which of these would come handy for you to lean into?” (Aviv)

“This is a collective path of awakening consciousness, as we focus on the shrinkage moves that we may be playing out individually, and really do the work, including releasing from our whole body, mind, system. The benefits of doing so, particularly if we do so as larger and larger collectives, perhaps cannot be exaggerated in terms of the world impact and what we impart to the healing of the global collective. I suppose you're proposing that when we are effective in regulating our own nervous system as we cohere with others, we cannot underestimate the potential impact of this in the way it ripples to others, and it's part of the work we're here to do.” (Jeff)

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The Next Great Flourishing: 16 Vortices of What is Emerging

How do we know what we know? How do we validate that our sources of our knowing are reliable?

One practical test asks: Do the practices drawn from this knowledge foster sustained well‑being, or do they diminish it? Can the study of natural laws liberate us into a more potent agency for life? For example, how might the Trinitarian principle help us see the core patterns of existence and the way the universe works?

These questions gain new urgency as the human search for truth becomes a universal impulse — a spiritual drive to join the co-creative act of the universe in its search to discover itself, to authenticate itself through the witnessing of our lived experience.

In Universalis #19,  Aviv Shahar, Karen Heney, and Kyriaki Nikandrou deepen the inquiry begun in “Universalis #18: How Do We Know What is True and Real?,” where they explored seven modes of knowing and the nuances of third‑, fourth‑, and fifth‑person perspectives.

Their new conversation reframes the verification challenge as a larger quest: uniting science, spirituality, and philosophy while honoring their distinctions, and cultivating life’s natural validation. Five key elements surface in this search for an integrated system — among them the study of natural laws (Creational Logic). Aviv offers an original view of the Threefold Trinitarian principle, illustrating the “law of three” through multiple examples that reveal its esoteric mechanics and phenomenology. He also outlines 16 dimensions in which a whole‑person living inquiry can yield tangible benefits — greater well‑being, vitality, creativity, resilience, self‑agency, and more.

Studying natural laws and the universe’s workings is meant to liberate us, tethering us to the natural unfolding process of life, so that life itself verifies its truth through us.

Additional insights include:

• You may be holding a permanent line inquiry for years, to the point where it works in you even when you’re not thinking about it. Because it is potently coded in your unconscious, it continues to work for you and offers its yield on its time.
• When we converse with another person or a group of friends, a whole new world comes alive that we wouldn’t be able to access alone. We form a collective intelligence web, each holding a node on which higher knowledge can land.
• Working solely for results differs profoundly from working in the service of a larger cause and allowing results to flow from that orientation.
• “The esoteric life isn’t about perfection; it’s about stepping into the arena of experimentation and learning. The times I fell on my face and learned to rise again offered vital moments of verification.”

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“The human thirst for knowledge and for truth and to understand how this universe is working, contained in that is the compound consideration and contemplation that this indeed is the propulsion of the human spirit, and as such, in the first place, it is the human desire to understand and get to know itself: what does it mean to be a human? And that, at the same time with it, we can contemplate that what that spiritual drive is, is a representation of the universal urge of the universe itself to get to know itself.” (Aviv)

“We each are a phenomenon that verifies life. What we are attempting to do here is to show that there is a way where we can bring science, spirituality, and philosophy together by sustaining distinctions, and by generating a greater whole, and that in doing so, we are engaging the natural verification system of life. And I'm about to bring the focus to five dimensions, five processes, five domains inside each of which there is a verification element.” (Aviv)

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The Verification System of Life – The Universalis Project #19

What does it truly mean to lead yourself?

In this illuminating conversation, Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis explore the nature of self-leadership through three guiding questions:

What is self-leadership?
Why is it essential?
What stifles or prevents it?

The dialogue unfolds into five key elements of self-leadership — learning to be a generative self-starter, to self-regulate, self-align, and self-author, and ultimately to regeneratively express from elevated internal content.

Together they examine how our modern conditioning often works against the emergence of true self-leadership. Many of us struggle with insecurity, the feeling of not being “enough,” fragmentation, or distance from our authentic capacities as human beings.

Our conditioning in life and the world we live in today works against our taking up true self-leadership; and we fall prey to obstacles like insecurity, feeling we are not “enough” or too small, minimizing our self-views, feeling overwhelmed or fragmented, and being at distance from who we really are and what we are capable of as a human being on this planet.

The conversation culminates with a powerful invitation: to awaken the innate powers we all hold — to reason, to take charge, and to consciously guide the direction of our own lives.

Insights into self-leadership:

• The importance of the powers of "yes" and "no" in self-leadership
• Discover the "glory of being lost" as a potential precursor to moving into a new octave
• Accessing authenticity and the integration of our outer and inner lives
• The need for practical, daily practices; tending to one's inner landscape

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“In the human case, if you are not leading yourself, then who or what is? If you are not leading yourself, then who is leading you, or what is leading you? And then, the recognition that if we fail to embrace the full responsibility of living, which is I propose, refusing to take charge of your own life, well, then you risk surrendering this precious opportunity. Just the fact that we are each alive now is a precious opportunity, and if you abdicate that responsibility and opportunity, I propose you are playing a game of Russian roulette.” (Aviv)

“I would highlight the glory of being lost. Why would I say that? Because, say a person has been living within a framework that has been given to them by parents, by teachers, they've lived within a certain framework in their life, and then they start to feel that that does not satisfy, it doesn't fulfill. There's something missing. There's something not quite there. And they start to feel a little bit lost, maybe even a little bit, where's my life going? What's it all for? What's it all about? And, curiously enough, and this partly is if there's anyone in the audience listening to this, that feeling lost can be very much the prelude to moving into a new octave, as we've spoken about before.” (David)

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5 Elements of Self-Leadership – Current Openings #25

In part one of this Portals Current Openings event, Threefold Leadership in this Epochal Moment, Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis explored the call for each of us to become self-authoring and self-determining. In these tumultuous times of challenge and change, the truest solidity we can rely on is the one we build from within.

In part two, Aviv and David turn to the awareness that our energetic hygiene — the inner ecology of our being — plays a vital role in sustaining balance and agility in any situation, while supporting our greater intentions.

The understanding that each of us is an ecology opens an important inquiry: are we conscious of what we allow to live and thrive within our inner environment? Violent video games, horror movies, and harsh music, even if we enjoy them, can seed and sustain dissonant energies within us.

If we dwell on painful memories or replay interactions that made us angry, we muddy our inner waters. It’s like a dark cloud crossing a clear sky; we feel the shift immediately, and it can take hours or even days to clear the state we’ve created.

The point is not to suppress or deny such influences, but to cultivate awareness and discernment — to set standards, to regulate and manage our exposure, and to create a safe and luminous inner environment that supports what we seek to accomplish.

Energetic hygiene means developing personal tools and processes for realigning and rebalancing ourselves whenever something knocks us off course.

Five key dimensions of energetic hygiene:

• Standards – what you do not go below
• Process – how you cleanse and renew
• Alignment – what you attune to and nurture
• Ecology – what resides within you
• Service – what finds life through you

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“It's a conundrum, isn't it? It's a paradox. When you say, I'm going to take full responsibility for who I am, knowing that I don't know who I am. So, therefore, I'm taking responsibility to be the place, the ecology inside of which I am emerging anew. That's a very different kind of sense, and orientation, and inner cosmology than, oh, I can take responsibility because I know. It has a much more participative sense with the process of the emergence of life. I join the process of life.” (Aviv)

“So what would be a level of energetic hygiene that's very practical? Trust the universe, but lock the door. How many of you have got locks on your doors? Probably all of you. Would you believe that's to do with energetic hygiene? Yes, it is because you want to monitor, not who is coming into your space, but what is coming into your space with the who that's carrying the what. So we don't think, who is that person, but what is that person processing? It's a different way of viewing.” (David)

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Energetic Hygiene – The 5 Dimensions, Part 2

Are you feeling the calling, the summons of this time?

As one epoch closes and another begins, we find ourselves in a liminal space of emergence—where heightened connectivity and increasing energetic conductivity offer new human permissions and possibilities.  What inner call might we be sensing as a new civilization seeks to be born? What might this time be summoning within us as active co-creators of change? 

In this Portalsepisode, Aviv Shahar, David Price Francis, and friends explore the idea that we may be witnessing a profound shift—from the age of ‘great leaders’ to the rise of self-leadership. The energetics of this new epoch appear to be awakening latent potentials within us, expanding our capacity, agency, and permission to act with purpose and vision.

Aviv, David, and the team surface key ingredients of self-leadership to cultivate at this time such as self-authoring, the intentional practice of choosing who we wish to be and become; self-determination of purpose; looking within to access inner guidance; discerning what is true; self-regulation, focus and discipline; cultivating the capacity to self-evaluate and update in real time; navigating the unknown with joy, gratitude and trust.

Together, they explore the three dimensions of self-leadership (1) leading in the world, (2) leading within, (3) leading through a greater purpose.  Self-leadership, expressed through this three-fold framework, may play a pivotal role in the conscious emergence of a new epoch - especially when we transcend personal ambition in service of a greater vision or mission. In doing so, we become purposeful conduits for the new civilization that seeks to be born, facilitating it to take shape through a collective agency of sovereign, responsive, self-leaders.

Threefold self-leadership:

• Leading in the world
• Leading within
• Leading through a greater purpose

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“In the old epoch, in the gold epoch, we looked at great leaders, Alexander the Great, the Napoleons; typically, they were men, not only men, there were a few larger than life women as well. But largely, the case was that they were men, and they made their mark on history in the gold epoch. But we are guided by the intuition that the pivot calls us to recognize that self-leadership is the summons, the call of this time.” (Aviv)

“Mostly in the world it's a subliminal process. It's happening, but people are not aware of it, except they're saying, oh, something's changed. This changed here, this changed here, this changed there, and they see it to be, we'll get back to normal soon. This myth of normal. But this is trying to go from subliminal and actually being aware that something much bigger is taking place, that there's an actual change of epoch on the move, to go from it being subliminal to conscious liminal, actually being conscious in the space in between.” (David)

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Threefold Leadership in this Epochal Moment, Part 1

If you search the internet, you're instantly confronted with a vast reservoir of knowledge — academic, scientific, artificial (AI-generated), and even channeled sources. Amid this teeming sea of information, how do you verify what is real and what is true?

Aviv, Karen and Kyriaki delve into this verification problem by tracing the evolution of knowledge and how it has shaped our modern landscape. They examine seven forms of knowing as a prelude to an integrated search for truth enabled by the natural verification systems of life. This leads to an intriguing proposition, that despite the shadow of the scientific method being the denial of the subjective or inner realms, it represents the search for an objective third-person perspective. This shift could herald a transformative leap into fourth- and fifth-person perspectives; the holding of multiple perspectives while integrating polarities, conflicting feelings and experiences. Such a multi-perspectival capacity may well be the catalyst for the Universalis Human to come online in an entirely new way.

Key insights:

• The search for truth and the verification problem inside of the excess of knowledge today
• The rigor of the scientific method and the shadow element of the great separation it brought
• The seven kinds of knowing; empirical, rational, theoretical, experiential, intuitive, procedural, and relational
• The integrated search for truth and knowledge enabled by the natural verification system of life
• The significance of the third person perspective and objective knowledge in scientific inquiry
• The seeding of the third person perspective as a herald to fourth- and fifth-person perspectival capacities as the new Universalis human comes online

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“There is a part of me that is totally impatient, like I want everything to happen this second. And there is a part of me that is patient beyond this lifetime, because I deeply understand that there are certain processes that will take a very, very long time; they will take centuries. So, I am able to integrate those conflicting feelings, sentiments, and experiences. And when I do so, I give rise, I am birthing the Universalis capacity.” (Aviv)

“That leads me to suggest that as we give rise to the symphonic orchestration of multiple lives and dimensions in our interiority, not just interiority in the singular sense, but interiority in between us, when we do so, we are literally providing the universe the space in which the universe is awakened to its cosmic symphony and to its interior dimensions, through us, with us. So it's both poetically beautiful and compelling and, at the same time, far-reaching in what it tells us about the verification system of the greater universe.” (Aviv)

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How Do We Verify What is True and Real? – The Universalis Project #18

As we regather for the second part of this event, Aviv Shahar offers this reflection: “One of the ways I answer the question, ‘What is it like to be in this liminal transition from an epoch that's fading to a new epoch that's emerging?’ Well, it’s like being in a playground — after I allow myself to relax to the situation. A lot of the time I don't feel relaxed. I feel I need to be something, to do something, to meet a certain need.” Sound familiar?

We have been exploring together the shift from one epoch to another, and what that means for us as individuals and as a global community: letting go of what is no longer needed (making space), finding balance and stability while relaxing into the unknown, being open to what is newly possible and upholding in ourselves what we want to nurture into the future.

It is easy to grasp these concepts intellectually without them ever hitting “home” for us personally. Far more powerful is to engage these contemplations with our Soul, our faithful guide and companion, designed to see us through these changes. What unfolds here are experimental and experiential ways of exploring these concepts so that we can feel them — literally, in the rigidity of a coiled fist compared to an open hand — and encouraged toward our individual discovery because that is the kind of playground where we learn and discover best.

The invitation here is to dive deeper, beyond the brain, into the interiority, into the emotions/heart, into the sensory responses that are activated, or inspired, by contemplation into the questions at hand. The whole of us is the playground, under the management of our Soul, for this exploration, while connecting us to ways of engaging our full system that will serve us well in the times ahead.

Discover what it is like for the Soul to facilitate the shift, From > To:

• From Rigidly Fixed > to Dynamically Evolving
• From Separated > to Connected
• From Valuing Things > to Prioritizing Relationships
• From Anchored in the Known > to Immersed in the Unknown
• From Reliance on Plans > to Trusting the Process

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“One of the ways I answer the question, what is it like to be in this liminal transition from an epoch that's fading to a new epoch that's emerging? Well, it is like being in a playground, after I allow myself to relax to the situation. A lot of the time I don't feel relaxed. I feel I need to be something, to do something to meet a certain need. And what if actually, this which is now seeking to access that which is latent in us, what if it needs us to relax into not knowing? What if it needs us to relax into playfully discovering?” (Aviv)

“One of the contemplations that emerged for me about the idea of separated and connected is that it teaches me to honor that we are separate individuals. And there is a design reason as to why life would want us each to be configured as a unique individual, and there is a design and purposeful reason behind why, along the evolutionary story, we released ourselves from tribal entity where we were homogenous, one unified self, to the discovery of the individuated self over recent centuries. And that there is a reason why this continual evolution is now nudging us to discover a new way of coming together.” (Aviv)

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Beyond the Collapse – Event Part 2: Separate Yet Connected

We all experience parts of ourselves moving in different directions at the same time. The cells in our bodies continually die as new ones are born. Throughout our lives, we release what no longer serves us and shift our attention toward new opportunities. So, we are no strangers to seeing that something is ending, fading, dying — while at the same time, something else is emerging, arriving, birthing through us.

This conversation brings to life the transition from an epoch that's fading to one that's emerging, and explores the soul's journey in placing both within a larger frame, one that recognizes three simultaneous processes: something ending, something emerging, and the liminal space in between. It is within this threshold that we can immerse ourselves in the unknown and embrace our struggles as whole human beings.

This journey invites us to expand beyond the familiar impulse to solve problems, and instead to explore options, widen our sense of what’s possible, and rewire our ways of seeing and being. The inquiry opens up vast questions, like “Where does the future come from?” — and illuminates latent potentials in humanity and higher states of consciousness. The soul, with its latent memory of the future, transcends the linearity of time in an entangled universe. It can serve as a powerful guide as the transition between epochs intensifies. To navigate these times with resilience and adaptability, we are called to both “hospice” the old epoch and “midwife” the new within ourselves and the world around us.

Strategies that help us approach this include:

• Releasing the conditioning of the old epoch, even as it resists being released
• Embracing the liminal in-between state and the opportunities it provides
• Facilitating, ripening and liberating the new epoch as it appears in us

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“The answer to the question, ‘Where does the future come from?,"’ is, well, it comes through all of us, each and every one of us, potentially. When you found a way to forgive deeply inside you, a person, or a certain situation, you have released that situation into a new future, rather than being stuck in a historic point of pain. When you come up with a new way of seeing the challenges you are facing, you are literally opening for yourself, and likely for the people around you, a future that was not available before. So, we are each, simply by the definition of being a human at this time on Earth, we are each an active agency for the future.” (Aviv)

“Can we find a way to embrace the totality of who we are as humans, and recognize that perhaps there is a way to imagine and envision this crisis point as a birthing crucible. If there is a test in it, the test in it is to live fully in the here and now, in the every moment of what it is that we encounter, whether it's a struggling moment at work, whether it's a struggling moment at home in our relationships, whether it is when we are in the meditation and the deepest prayer we choose to formulate, and refuse almost defiantly, to bypass this moment, to bypass this life.” (Aviv)

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Beyond the Collapse – Event Part 1: The Soul’s Role in Birthing a New World

What does it mean for a human to elevate? Esoteric pursuits are often associated with ancient mystery schools that promise to teach an initiate their secret knowledge. But, of course, you can’t walk in the door and be told the meanings of life. There is a rite of passage, an apprenticeship, a service required to earn the right to access sacred knowledge. Importantly, true sacred knowledge offers energetic potency, so the rite of passage is also a process of naturalizing a person to higher energies and frequencies, so that they will be able to handle more potency without getting out of balance.

This is the esoteric journey, but we recognize the process from everyday life. If you want to be a race car driver, you don’t start in a car that goes 200 miles per hour — you learn in less powerful cars and learn to handle them, moving up as you gain skills and stability. You don’t start as a head chef; you chop 10,000 onions first.

So, how do we apply this understanding to our life? In this episode of Current Openings (#24), Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis make a foray into codifying the mechanics of elevation, through 10 Elements, as it arises in any endeavor where we seek to grow and improve — to better ourselves and to access new knowledge. Because it is a natural process, once we understand it for one path, it can be seen in almost any undertaking.

They begin with the premise that we are first and foremost energetic beings, we are processing energies through our system non-stop. And, the ways of energies are graduated — there is a spectrum from low to high, coarse to refined, in all things. The journey is to move from the lower, entry level energy, to the higher, more complex and more intelligent energy.

And there will be challenges along the way — always! There is resistance that will test our resolve, there are setbacks. We’ll find we need to change things about ourselves to manage the next step. We’ll have to brave uncertainty, and we’ll have to find a way to trust our instincts and find ways to persist. Understanding the process offers a huge advantage toward succeeding.

Why might the universe want a mechanism such as this? Perhaps it provides the greatest safety for us — we aren’t given more than we can handle, and for the universe, where quality control ensures a reliable product. Ultimately, we want to meet the energetic requirements of the elevation we seek.

Insights into elevation:

• Resistance is a necessary part of the journey to elevation
• Persistence is needed to overcome our default patterns
• When we surrender we allow higher intelligence to work through us
• We need to rewire ourselves to meet new requirements
• Quantum leaps help us in making transformational changes
• Acclimatization: how do we stabilize connections to higher sources of energy?

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“This idea that every domain, everything you're going to do, has its requirement, and the reason this is so important is because, as we said, there is an energetic dimension to this. So once we begin to enter a new domain of practice, a new domain of knowledge, a new domain of artistry and mastery, what we are really describing is that the immersion inside this elevated energy space rewires and activates new internal pathways and connections. It's like the whole vessel that you are is rewired on the inside.” (Aviv)

“The reason we often need to find the point of surrender through crisis is because we are creatures of habit, and also because we tend to love, not only our successes, but also our struggles and pain. We're not easy to let go. And so this entire focusing theme of the journey to elevation is a journey of learning to release, learning to let go, reaching the point of surrender, and reaching the point, as you said, where instead of you doing it, it begins to do it through you. Now what is this it? Well, it is the latent intelligence. It is the latent potential.” (Aviv)

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10 Elements of the Elevation Process Mystery – Current Openings #24

The mystery of the soul has captivated humanity throughout time. In this new conversation, Aviv Shahar and Portalsfriends continue exploring The Soul’s Journey, now delving into the enigma of spontaneous healing. This live event weaves contemplations, soul dialogue, music, and visual expression. The invitation is to slow down and release the pressure to instantly agree or disagree. Instead, allow space to gently listen to the soul's subtle, quiet voice.

The soul’s knowledge is immense, largely untapped. By uplifting the meaning of “knowledge” beyond conventional learning, we begin to perceive the self and the soul as distinct yet deeply interwoven: the self as the "choice-making you," and the soul as the intelligent companion forever tethered to infinite creativity and all knowledge. Eight core soul premises serve as perceptual gateways, inviting deeper recognition of the soul’s role and subtle influence as it nudges us forward with the capacity to mediate the uncertainty of a new epoch and an unknown future.

Spontaneous healing is one such soul capacity — rare, mysterious, and historically documented. The soul already works as healer, and has the potential to access the knowledge to bridge to higher energies and intelligence that are faster than the planetary speeds of conventional healing. Can we release the pains of our yesterdays to create space for such renewal?

If we don’t trust the intelligence of the soul and the natural systems we’re part of, how can they deliver capabilities beyond the known? What mindset, energy, and connections are needed to open the gate to this higher possibility?

Significant opportunities:

• Create space to release the pressure of having to agree or disagree and open to the soul’s natural rhythm.
• Discover a wider intelligence that transcends conditioned ideas of learning.
• Recognize the agency of the self and how the soul supports our alignment with higher intelligence to help us mediate change, especially in times of great uncertainty.
• Ask: What is spontaneous healing? What blocks it? What inner gateways open it?

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“The Soul reads the subtle, energetic properties of everything. So every sound, every color, every object, every shape, every internal feeling, every registration of the environment, all of those, each and every one of those dimensions and elements, they carry knowledge. Every word carries knowledge, but it's not just a word; it's the intonation, it's the sound. So when we say the Soul is intimately connected with all the knowledge that exists on the planet, we are inferring the full range is available by potential for the Soul.” (Aviv)

“What does it feel like when you embrace this idea that there is a part of you, an intelligence loom within you, an intelligence loom that accompanies you all the days of your life, including when you are asleep, never leaves you without, affords you all that you know to do, supports you every moment of your life, and that it has all that you may need to encounter the challenges in front of you?” (Aviv)

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Spontaneous Healing – Event Part 2: The Soul’s Journey In Between Epochs

How can we bring the whole human intelligence to strengthen and steady us as we navigate an epochal shift?

In this engaging workshop, through inquiry and ground-breaking insights, Aviv Shahar and a group of international friends explore the story of the soul alongside the unfolding story of the evolving epoch. Movement, music, painting and drawing are shared as live, experimental methodologies to liberate our unique inner capacities.

Beginning with a summary of Chapters 1–6 of Portals into the Soul, the workshop opens the challenging invitation to attune to the greater versatility of one’s soul. At its core, the premise is a calling to the human family to re-engage the soul as a vital force in our time.

Rather than offering answers, the invitation is to live into the inquiry. Within each of us, one part may be dying while another is being born anew. Participants' contributions illuminate this inner panorama, revealing that what we see happening in the world is also stirring within us.

As we come to see that the energy crisis is not only planetary but also a concern of the soul — expressed in inner fragmentation, fatigue, and the depletion of human faculties — the search for greater intactness and soul range becomes a path to renewed vitality. This awakening can unlock inner resources to meet the demands of our time.

In the face of a global leadership breakdown, the soul’s journey calls us to step into a deeper initiation, toward becoming fully self-arising, self-responsible, and self-directing beings. True self-leadership emerges as essential for personal growth and for navigating transformative times.

• How do we engage in three essential tasks at once: release the conditioning of the old epoch and its operating system, embrace the liminal transition into the unknown, and facilitate liberation in the emerging epoch?
• The meta-crisis is not merely a problem to solve, but an expression and symptom of an epochal transition.
• What triggers chronic conflict in humans and what could enable deep settlement, peace, and well-being?
• How do we discover and cultivate the inner technologies that support process leadership? What we need now are process catalysts and facilitators of emergence.
• We are tenderly hospice-ing a dying epoch and caringly midwifing the birth of a new one — not only in the world around us, but within ourselves. This sensibility is arising in many people who feel called to this threshold.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“Any crisis point you can describe, and look at, on the world stage, has an interior dimension that mirrors it, that we can frame by way of an inquiry that is a Soul concern. So we'll abide with that for a bit, and there again, the inquiry will be, okay, what is it that we are observing that we can do, individually and collectively, to help facilitate the Soul to be more fully resilient, and all of us as people, wherever we find ourselves?” (Aviv)

“Part of the awareness in this is that we cannot make the transition from one epoch to the next just with our heads, just with concepts. We actually need the whole human person, the full inner orchestra, the inner lives, all the faculties, all the capabilities, all the talents, all the intelligence lines to participate in the discovery.” (Aviv)

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Navigating the Shift – Event Part 1: The Soul’s Journey In Between Epochs

“How do you know what you know?” This provocative question sets the stage for an illuminating live conversation. Opening pathways to expanded ways of knowing is a profound liberation — especially in a time marked by increasing polarization. The exploration of ten distinct types of knowledge runs throughout this latest dialogue in the Universalis series.

In this episode, Aviv Shahar, Karen Heney, and Kyriaki Nikandrou explore the transformative shifts that catalyze the emergence of a "Universalis human." These shifts guide us beyond rigid fixations and controlling tendencies rooted in what we think we know, steering us instead toward authentic curiosity and inquiry into the unknown. Through a whole-person contemplative exploration, attuned to the natural flow of life, we discover how each of us can uniquely serve the universe.

Insights developed and explored include:

• To dance with the universe and be an agency for life is the invitation at the heart of this enlightening conversation.
• The 10 Dimensions of Knowledge introduce pathways where integrated approaches expand and elevate our capacity to know. By weaving together the experienced, the sensed, and the intuited, we liberate our multiple inner lives — and in doing so unlock and uplift what we can connect with and understand.
• Through a potent inquiry integrating thinking and feeling, this brief explores new ways of knowing — not by replacing our senses, feelings or emotions, but by introducing frameworks of reference about how the universe works, ready to guide and accompany us on our journey inward.
• With domain residency, access to knowledge becomes almost instant as the domain knows itself through you. You can then move with ease through different life domains (such as family or profession) and unlock broader networks of human possibility.
• The emerging inquiry is: How fully can we be present in ourselves in order to access these pathways and liberate whole‑person, integrated knowing?

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“And then the inquiry arose from an even more foundational place, which is, how do you integrate what you think you know, by way of reference that you have learned, and the feeling experience? How do you bring these two interior universes into a convergent coherence where thinking and feeling work together rather than fight each other?” (Aviv)

“And what I suggested here is that there is a point where the attunement to a domain, and being centered in the first-principle nature of the domain, you become the embodiment of the essence of that domain. It's another way of describing it, a whole other level of mastery, process knowledge, sentiment knowledge, and domain knowledge, now you became the embodiment of that arena or that space, or that artistry or that discipline that you demonstrate.” (Aviv)

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The Universalis Project #17 – 10 Dimensions of Knowing

One of our greatest sources of power is our imagination — the creative energy we bring online as we visualize the way forward and a new blueprint for humanity’s renewal. It’s the knowledge we are never alone: intelligence and perception in multiple dimensions are available for the asking. Can we make the space? Are we prepared to update our understanding and belief about what is possible?

Great ponders once again for our international group of Portals friends, who gathered recently with Aviv Shahar to explore what it means to create a new future-inclined operating system for the human species in this epochal moment. These creative contemplations began in their first gathering. A core understanding is that as the universe accelerates its expansion, we also can choose to accelerate, and be more defined by who we are becoming than by who we were yesterday. In doing so, we then begin to sense our Universalis nature.

Additional insights from our friends’ collective contemplation:

• What is uniquely different about this time is that our destructive capacity is exponential; so much is at stake, especially for future generations and the toddlers arriving now.
• We are each self-authoring, each responsible; no need to wait for a teacher or guru to tell us what to do. In this epochal moment, we awaken into our own fuller potential.
• The best advice in any crisis point is find somebody to help; when you help somebody else, you help yourself.
• We are loved and supported by creation: believe in that. We are not alone; something higher enhances us, and we can lean into that strength.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“Where do I begin a place of renewal and upgrade? Well, the first two places I go to, nature and my purpose friends, and my community of purpose, one of which is right here right now, with all of you. And thirdly, I work daily to be in communion with the sacred blessing realms, the invisible, unseen blessing realms that I feel and experience when I'm out in nature. I feel an experience when we come together, and I feel an experience in literally everything I do, every moment of my life. And when I forget to remember that, I don't feel as well. I don't feel as vibrantly energized as I know I can.” (Aviv)

“So now I ask myself, well, how will I choose to upgrade my self-authoring government in how I guide, how I enact, how I regulate my everything? It begins with how I regulate my energies because everything begins with energy, it's the foundational property of life. How do I regulate my physical energy, emotional, mental, spiritual, and relational energy? And then, how do I guide, and enact, and regulate my thoughts, my feelings, my inner lives?” (Aviv)

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This Epochal Moment, Event Part 2: Renewal

Is it really a contradiction to think of the global chaos unfolding us around as both an overdue day of reckoning, and possibly the most hopeful, optimistic time we’ve seen in this century? Can humanity still retain the capacity for renewal and rebirth in such a time of intense doubt and fear about the future?

It seems like the perfect contemplation for a group of international Portals friends who recently gathered with Aviv Shahar to share their intuitions about this moment in the onsetting new epoch. Their intention and direction are to begin imagining a path forward, a new blueprint, through the upheaval to a new possibility for resurrection and rejuvenation. 

The collective intelligence reveals clarity and confidence, and the humility of realizing we swim in a great unknown among emerging patterns of new universal possibility.

Among their insights and sentiments:

• We call this an epochal moment because humanity is fast approaching a pivot point that can define future possibility, but requires an active individual and collective response.
• If humanity does not choose wisely, we can cause irreversible harm. Never has so much depended on the few of us alive today to guarantee future generations have a future.
• Just when we need it the most, the global collaboration required to solve global issues is becoming harder to find in this time of a quickening epochal transition.
• The coming decade is a critical reckoning time, as upgrade and renewal begin with each of us, and how we express the values and sentiments of the emerging universal human.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“For some of us, this is what we're here, what we bargained, what we contracted. If you believe that you come here to life with a sacred contract, then that is what you showed up here for; that is to say, with all the know-how and the spiritual and personal capacities to play at this time and be a constructive, creative contributor to the journey of humanity through these times of change.” (Aviv)

“What it practically means is that all systems, at all levels, are experiencing and will experience phase shift. We shouldn't be surprised by anything in the coming years and decades. Because the system is going through such a tectonic shift, the entire biological system, and the energetic system that accompanies and works with and through the biological system and this planet, the entire connected system, is going through a massive shift, which is why we are experiencing these changes that we are seeing.” (Aviv)

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This Epochal Moment, Event Part 1: Breakdown

Do we think of our conscience only as a feeling of guilt when our behavior or attitudes seem somehow out of line with our inner sense of moral right and wrong? What if we imagine the conscience as something much deeper and more powerful? An active process that allows access to our natural finer values — sometimes called the ‘better angels of our nature’?

An international gathering of Portals friends join Aviv Shahar in this conversation to explore the nature and function of conscience. As we discover, unraveling the mystery and meaning of the conscience also takes us deeper into the nature of the soul and its mission to guide and uplift our earthly journey.

(This conversation is part two of a special event that also focused on the “Portals Into the Soul” series; part one is included below.)

In Portals Into The Soul – Chapter 2, conscience is described as a self-arising moral presence — part of the soul’s awakened power and purpose. We’re invited to hear, sense and feel the multiple dimensions of the conscience, rather than only consider definitions and notions in our head.

Among their insights and sentiments:

• Conscience is a form of guidance that we experience as a self-aligning angelic presence within — an actuality we feel as an impulse that evaluates, regulates, nudges and directs.
• When we attune to the ‘permanent-line’ values of the universe, we sense the universe is a learning system, and learns best through our conscious witnessing experience.
• We can transcend personal development work to consider soul work for humanity, where we metabolize, disarm and recast the collective memory, a form of ‘world work’.
• We can engage with the conscience esoterically as a function — a cosmic, planetary process — that brings us to know the elemental building blocks of life.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“The soul carries a throughout remembrance of the purpose you came to this life with, including the unique and particular qualities and capacities, configuration, the gifts, the genius that you are wired to manifest, regardless as to whether you're fully aware of that or not. That calling, that memory, that you came into this life with, that you are here to serve in a particular way, is the conscience of that second impulse.” (Aviv)

“There is something about this universe, it is a learning system. It wants to continue to learn. Now we may be wired also in the first and the second impulse into learning for different reasons. But when we are attuned to the permanent line values of the universe, one of the dimensions we will exhibit will be that sense of the universe is a learning system. It wants to learn, and it can learn, and it learns best through our conscious witnessing experience.” (Aviv)

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Conscience – A Threefold Soul Guidance

We have been taught to exteriorize knowledge and truth to such an extent we have come to a breaking point, evident in the large-scale destruction we are facing today. Yet what is the alternative? How do we begin to access a new kind of knowledge based on our innate inner human technology?

Building on earlier explorations, this episode of the Current Openings series with Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis delves into the trinitarian principle as a fundament that offers permanent value, connection and integrity. It opens up how the third principle is a core creational logic that underpins all life and why it offers a crucial inroad into the natural pursuit of truth and knowledge.

On a human level, this principle calls for moving beyond duality to a third perspective that integrates, transcends, and reconciles polarities—examining not just process and results, but connecting to a deeper, life-affirming purpose behind our actions.

Key insights include:

• The trinitarian universe and Creational Logic
• Five dimensions of the natural pursuit of truth and knowledge
• How intuition and consciousness link to the trinitarian principle
• Cause, process, and results through the trinitarian lens
• Examples of people embodying this principle
• Cause as a foundational premise The human is an electrical being and processor of energy signals that runs on five levels of energy; food, liquid, gas, light, and impressions.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“We are leading into an exploration where instead of looking at the universe as a predictable, mechanical thing, a predictable machine, it is rather a universe that is self-organizing, self-arising, self-evolving, inside of which we humans are co-arising participants. And that is the central propulsion of the search for creational logic in the esoteric quest to connect with core processes and relationships.” (Aviv)

“We are making our entry through the side door into the inquiry of the true form of this creative, divine force which we are proposing is trinitarian by nature. Because the fact that we can observe all these different expressions, and different phenomenologies, through which we see that the triangle principle is a revelation about the very nature of the universe, and creation, and God.” (Aviv)

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The Trinitarian Principle - Current Openings #23

How do we acquire, assimilate and verify knowledge?

Exploring an inquiry as old as the human capacity to search for truth, which is re-enlivened in our times with the many challenges facing the human family globally, Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis invite us into a journey of discovery, tracing fascinating new pathways toward integrated understanding.

They begin with the awareness that scientific inquiry has opened a world of astonishing can-do possibilities, while also training us to exteriorize knowledge, giving rise to a widening separation between the interior and exterior dimensions of life.

In response, the conversation seeks to invite a new kind of integration. It opens with the idea of conscience, then moves from exoteric to mesoteric and esoteric perspectives, exploring questions such as: What is the purpose of human life? Could the universe be purposeful? And what would it mean to shift from the knowledge of things and concepts to the knowledge of processes and relationships?

They ask: How can esoteric knowledge or Creational Logic be sourced? What can the natural world, from daffodils to bears, from orchids to our own digestive systems, teach us about the innate authentication and verification built into life itself?

Proposing that the pursuit of truth and knowledge involves natural validation and verification inherent in the structure of life, the conversation weaves an exciting range of inquiries, offering a space where science, spirituality, and philosophy can come together to co-create a greater whole that liberates and nurtures the flourishing of life.

Additional insights explored include:

• In the ancient world, science, spirituality, and philosophy formed an integrated whole in the search for truth and knowledge.
• While the scientific project enabled extraordinary achievements in the modern world, it also contributed to the fragmentation of these three streams and the widening divide between interior and exterior knowledge.
• The significance of this moment in human evolution, as we step into the unknown—and how to validate the cathedral of inquiry now opening before us.
• What does it mean to live a purposeful life inside a purposeful universe, and how does such a stance offer an esoteric invitation into a pathway of discovery?
• How close observation of the natural worlds and life – from the relationship of the mama bear to her cubs, to the intricate workings of our own digestive systems -- demonstrates that authentication is accomplished through integrated, multi-pathway validation.
• How the global challenges facing humanity demand a broader, more inclusive way of validating truth and knowledge.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“So we are proposing here that the pursuit of truth and knowledge involve the natural validation and verification inherent in life. That's basically the surge here to reintegrate life, in its fuller sense, to the inquiry of knowledge and truth. And, in the bigger scheme of things, it recognizes that it is about bringing together science, spirituality and philosophy to sustain their distinctions while creating a greater whole that liberates and nurtures the flourishing of life.” (Aviv)

“If it's a completely random universe, why does it need to do anything? Why doesn't it just stay in bed? Why does it need to develop life forms? What's the urge by which life wants to develop, and evolve, and move forward? Where does that urge come from? Because it clearly exists, because the evidence of it is right there. So there's an urge underlying all of organic life to, in some way, be functional and be moving forward and developing. So what is that urge? Where does it come from? And how come it's there?” (David)

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The Revelation of Knowledge – Current Openings #22

Imagine a process that can bypass our dominant, loves-to-be-in-control brain and open a subtle energetic pathway to help us sense and feel the many dimensions of the Universalis human. A deeper contemplative process of feelings and intuition, not fixed mental boundaries.

In the newest Universalis Project conversation, Aviv Shahar, Karen Heney and Kyriaki Nikandrou explore the potential of a guided meditative process in expanding access to our universal nature. They demonstrate several pathways in an abiding circle meditation, a process that focuses the creative energy generated in the shared ecology of a group contemplation.

The circle meditation is a healing journey of inner discovery that invites us to metabolize and release pain and trauma. It builds inner conductivity and activates latent capacities and sense organs that enable deeper registrations of our universalis possibility. Other insights from Aviv, Karen and Kyriaki include:

• By abiding with inquiries in collective circle meditations, we unlock different processes, shifting from mental references to a whole person melting, merging, and harmonizing of different feelings and inner states.
• We are not one thing; we are multiple lives within; a soul, spirit and many other capacities. A struggle emerges as this orchestra faces the demands of an exterior world while forever harmonizing the interior life.
• Meditative abiding engenders greater awareness of the subtle bodies of somatic and mental processes. Each organ has its energetic body; together they constitute a configuration of presences.
• We shrink and separate ourselves by all sorts of modern conventions, but spiritual traditions and texts invite us to realize we are the crown jewel of the universal process here on this planet.
• The nature of universal love is that we are never alone, even when we feel lonely. The spiritual source of this love is forever around us with healing and possibility.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“The Universalis human will also not arise through some techno-utopian version of ourselves. We are not likely to find the Universalis human arising in silicon, or in sophisticated computer chips. My conviction, my belief, is that the birthing of a new human possibility, the suggestion is that the Universalis permission, the Universalis possibility, the Universalis activation, occurs inside us and in between us.” (Aviv)

“Wherever you will find a group of people who are interested in how we humans are evolving, both to solve the existential problems that the meta-crisis brought to us, and even more so to do so by unlocking our latent potential, the way we go about cultivating our interior inquiries and contemplations, individually and collectively, we are leaning into these possibilities, which is, how can we be part - a co-creative, co-participative part - of the rise of a universal human?” (Aviv)

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The Universalis Project #15: Pathways to Universal Life

If an incoming wave of universal change is influencing human behavior and global culture, as many have said, how do we see it? Where is it appearing? Can we really decode the flow and patterns of evolution as they emerge almost real-time in many of the core domains of human life and endeavor?

In the newest chapter of the The Universalis Project, Aviv Shahar and Portals friends Karen Heney and Kyriaki Nikandrou explore possible evidence of an unfolding new epoch in the breakthroughs and revelations that are transforming many areas of the modern world.

As they discover, creating space for something new, even the flow of emerging new universal possibility, happens when a person or circumstance come to the edge of their experience and knowledge, and resist the pull of history and prevailing available wisdom. They push through.

The breakthroughs that can transform humanity occur in many fields of life and expression, often driven by a compelling need for change. These transformations happen in science, technology, health and healing, leadership, and organizational dynamics. Resisting, transcending and going beyond the past are at the heart of attuning ourselves to the living flow of evolution and the future.

Among the many insights and points of inspiration in the Universalis conversation:

• Pushing the envelope: Great scientists and inventors don’t evolve in a void; they push the envelope of discovery on behalf of a universe that seeks to become more intelligent and conscious through its human partners.
• Natural leadership: Indigo and Violet impulses support a transition from rigid, mechanical systems to organic, emergent ways that attune to natural rhythms of life, such as in distributed and feminine leadership.
• Beyond royalty: There is a bigger idea in how human beings can manage themselves, other than the genealogy of a royal line — processes and protocols in the Blue system that facilitate democracies.
• Making mistakes: Pioneers see a need and are not satisfied with the prevailing paradigm; they don't stop themselves in the search for something new, and don't mind making mistakes.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“We're proposing that Acropolis work is prodding and poking and exploring into and beyond the edge for new connections, for new permissions, for new communion possibilities. And that when we do so, we seek to activate the human temple, the template of human life. Because every time we expand the horizon to new permissions, we are opening the broader template of human possibility, it's like we discover that the human mansion had another room that we never stepped into.” (Aviv)

“This begins again in asserting the more than human realms I'm choosing to describe here, the idea that human life is not flying solo in the universe. We are forever accompanied by the luminescent realms of possibility, and the luminescent realms of possibility, and the ascending and transcending spirals of development between other things, contain all the human endeavor throughout history and more.” (Aviv)

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The Universalis Project #14: Decoding the Current of the Epoch

In the Western world we usually identify ourselves as singular entities. Yet, we find ourselves in conflict with ourselves and with other people. We often get triggered, without even knowing why. How can we navigate the complex human interiority as well as our interactions with others? How can we reduce suffering and make our choices form a place of wholeness?

In this illuminating conversation, Aviv Shahar and Portals friend Alexander Love explore the transformative practice of "parts work" as a pathway to inner healing and greater personal and communal harmony. Guided by Alexander, an insightful healer, acupuncturist and life coach, we navigate the intricate landscape of the inner self, learning to recognize and integrate the diverse parts that comprise our being. Alexander articulates a holistic approach inspired by Eastern wisdom, particularly Chinese medicine, viewing each individual as an inner ecology, where every "part" holds unique perspectives, intentions, and functions.

Parts work invites us to move beyond seeing ourselves as singular beings and acknowledge the rich inner multiplicity. By gently engaging these diverse inner voices, we begin a profound healing and developmental journey toward inner harmony, emotional resilience, and deeper connection.

Ultimately, this practice not only helps resolve internal conflicts but cultivates an embodied wholeness that transforms our interactions and relationships with the external world, fostering enlightened intention and compassionate living.

Other insights and ponders:

• The inner ecology perspective: recognizing the self as composed of interdependent, dynamic parts rather than isolated components.
• We are always becoming with our world. Modernity has created a sense of separation to observe the world objectively. In fact, I am part of the world and what’s going on outside is also going on inside.
• No matter how much a part of the self feels separated and disconnected, it’s still a part of the whole.
• The first million-dollar question is: How do I feel towards this part? If it is wholeness, the answer will be automatically, I’m curious, I’m loving, I’m interested, I’m compassionate.
• We don’t start with fragmentation and then by the end of the session we are hoping for wholeness. We flip that around, when possible, we are starting with wholeness. Wholeness begets wholeness.
• Transforming protective parts by uncovering their deeper, authentic qualities, shifting from harmful behaviors to supportive functions.
• In the Portals Into the Soul writing, we develop the Inner Conclave work, visualizing an inner ecology where parts or different voices come into conversation with each other. We can apply this practice to do therapy work, developmental work, and connective communion, where the parts of the self-surrender to become the conduit for the creative act of the universe.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“There are all of these different traditions that are pointing to the same thing, that wholeness is intrinsic within all of the parts, even if they're feeling closed off from it. And so part of what we can do is to support that wholeness to come out, and then this creates deeper trust in the system, because the parts, they often don't feel successful when they're trying these strategies that are kind of warped or causing harm. And yet, they're committed to helping, but they don't know another way. By doing this and finding the deeper, enlightened intention underneath, and helping the parts experience that, they start to experience a much deeper sense of trust, that there's a deeper wholeness in the system which they are a part of.” (Alexander)

“Our human potentials seem to be so beautiful, and our ability to interact with chaos and uncertainty and darkness, our potential to be able to do that well is huge. It's vast. For me, the deeper invitation here is that we are deeply unbroken. We are deeply equipped to be able to face anything and lean into it, and find the beauty in it, and find the creativity in how dark times are invoking the evolution of things that are beyond what we can imagine, and that this is something we can do.” (Alexander)

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What is Healing? #4 – The Wholeness of Parts

If we’re seeking a feeling of illumination or deeper connection to the universal and divine, what clues and meaning can we find in perhaps the best-known story of transformation in western history — the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ? Does it reveal an esoteric path to active engagement with evolution and expanding consciousness? Or is it a powerful metaphor for an innate human species capacity to grow and develop?

In this conversation, Aviv Shahar and metamodern thought leader Brendan Graham Dempsey continue their lively dialogue on the many faces of Jesus Christ, the central pillar of Christianity. Building on their previous conversation, they focus on mystical and metamodern appreciations of the mystery of the Transfiguration.

• The exploration goes beyond historical accounts to seek the significance of such a transformation to our own pursuit of meaning, connection, purpose and expanded awareness. How do each of us experience our own moments of sacred empowerment and profound, life-changing insight and inspiration?
• The conversation expands our understanding of this unique time, into the evolutionary possibility to experience and express our true universal nature. Aviv and Brendan’s many insights include:
• The story of Christ’s transfiguration is a key moment of storytelling in the broader narrative that we see unfolding in human cultural evolution towards a shift in higher consciousness.
• We have entered a unique time where the species is reaching for something beyond Homo Solaris — the Universalis human, where we can again embrace plurality.
• We are not human beings seeking a spiritual experience, but spirit beings becoming human to develop, mature and become vessels for continual evolution to occur through us as co-creators.
• The first consideration in an esoteric contemplation is that a prophecy, or any learning, is actualized not when it occurs, but when it has been witnessed and validated.
• If the spiritual discourse is not amenable to the same kinds of justification dynamics as science or other discourse, it is insulated from critique, and breaks down into ‘you feel it or you don’t’.
• Focusing only on exterior sources of knowledge, and giving credence to the microscope and telescope, can disenfranchise the ‘interior scope’ and natural inner sense organs.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“We are not actually flying here on our own. This is not just a biological experience. That we are, in fact, not human beings seeking a spiritual experience, we are, in fact, spirit beings coming into the human experience to gain development and maturation such that we become vessels for continual evolution to occur through us as we are co-participants and co-creators of this evolution.” (Aviv)

“How do we make this journey? And we went back and forth in finding, carving, a way to enable a space that perhaps is not defined by the gravitational logic that we process every day, and at the same time that is not going to abandon certain frameworks and certain ways of thinking and being that will afford us freedom and safety and collaboration and, ultimately, possibilities to solve big problems on the global stage.” (Aviv)

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The Transfiguration Archetype

A new epoch is dawning as the old one ebbs, much like the tide, placing us in ever more conductive times. Have you noticed that old systems and ways no longer hold, offering little energetic nourishment? As energetic beings, we find ourselves desperately searching for the “new”, from leadership models to inner fulfillment, each are under intense scrutiny. On the surface, we observe rapid change, confusion, dysfunction, conflict, and instability — but these are byproducts of rising conductivity. There is a restlessness, evidenced by so many people on the move, seeking purpose and questioning from whence authority comes. Clearly, both human and planetary systems and patterns are in flux.

Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis go on a magical mystery exploration of these increasingly conductive times. By differentiating three levels of knowledge and perception; from the exoteric to the mesoteric, then shifting gears into the esoteric level, they move from peripheral views to core reasons, understandings and causes for these events.

Central to this is the electrical, spiritual human as a conductor of energy, both from within and without. We are our own energy worlds, designed to receive signals from the greater energy worlds; an organic, flowering radar dish for universal signals for planetary upgrade and evolution. As humans we can choose to bring finer energies into ourselves, but more importantly are our reasons why. Are we here for the planet, or is the planet here for us… or is this unique human race and planet an integrated, co-creative enterprise on behalf of something higher?

Significant points:

• The human is an electrical being and processor of energy signals that runs on five levels of energy; food, liquid, gas, light, and impressions. The moment we stop, we call that death.
• There is a natural relationship between the human as a conductor of energies; the subtle energy worlds within and around the body (aura), and the invisible energy worlds, including planetary, lunar, solar and universal sources.
• The mystery of increasing conductivity; what are conductivities? Why are they increasing? What is the evidence? Where are they increasing from? How are we humans called to respond?
• Understanding the three level of knowledge; exoteric, mesoteric, esoteric, that give elevating perspectives; for example, from information, to knowledge, to transformation, all ‘formations’ at different levels.
• Appreciating the reversal that occurs from a mesoteric perspective to an esoteric perspective, it’s a reversal octave or polarity shift, that takes you to the core or cause of anything; e.g. from "Mastery" to "Mystery".
• The epochal, octave shift calls for higher frequencies to be received and processed by humans and the planet, for planetary and universal upgrade, which we call evolution.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“It's almost as though you would ask so, what's the purpose of life in the universe? The purpose of life in the universe is to birth even more capable life, all the way to conscious life. What we recognize with human life, which is the capacity of a life to become initially conscious, and then a life that is conscious of its consciousness, and then a life that is conscious of the very nature of consciousness - so, in some way, it begins to offer back the learning feedback loop to the universe about its own very nature.” (Aviv)

“We assume that the planet's here for us, rather than we're actually part of a universal process that involves the planet we live on, and the sun, and the universe - and we're part of it. We're not somehow separated out from it. And that to me is a big part of the conductivity, because when a person feels they're isolated, they feel disconnected. Disconnected is a word that says blocking the current, because if you're disconnected you've no longer got the current flowing through you. So if we think of ourselves as an independent human species that's managed to conquer the planet, well, we're really disconnecting ourselves from the universe.” (David)

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The Conductivity Mystery - Current Openings #21

One of the most powerful tools of personal transformation is also one of the most accessible: it’s the story we tell ourselves about who we are and the future we imagine. It’s a story we can update and recalibrate every day — no permission beyond ourselves required to create and recreate the person we want to be and the way forward.

In this conversation, we continue the Epoch Journey series as Aviv Shahar and longtime Portals friend Jeff Vander Clute explore the process of self-authoring appraisal. How do we identify the blockages, possible pain and trauma, and limiting beliefs that hold us back from the vast field of larger potential that is our natural birthright?

As we update and realign our values and mental maps of meaning, we liberate greater versatility and range, and foster new pathways into our deeper universal nature. Appraising who we are today and the influences shaping our lives does not deny or bypass real challenges we may face. It allows us to melt and heal many types of inner scar tissue and discover our natural resilience.

Among Aviv and Jeff’s other insights and discoveries:

• What external persuasions do we allow inside ourselves? A modern vulnerability is openness to impressions that foster self-doubt.
• If we deny the point of pain, or suppress unresolved trauma or unmet essential needs, then already we are in a distorted view, bypassing what the case actually is.
• We explore in the self-authoring appraisal process a way in which we let life itself lead us within the various domains of our growth, development and engagement.
• With enhanced resiliency available to humanity, the big question for the species is, are we going to make it? Do we have enough resiliency to shift from Homo sapiens sapiens to becoming Universalis?
• The self-authoring appraisal is a technology we can apply to almost any aspect of our lives, much like carefully attending to a garden, instead of running on autopilot and habit.
• We can receive guidance by connecting with our inner resources, or inner conclave. If we ask a question, and then clearly see our situation, we’re already beyond it.
• In a post-guru, epochal transition, we all lead; we need each other. Through shared discovery and co-creating, we provoke ourselves and create a greater ecology for the divine.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“Life is open, life is an open system — the universe is actually an open system. So how do we live? How do we dance with life in an open system? It seems that you are pioneering certain understandings and modalities for how to dance with life, in openness. And in the openness each of us can show up fully, and very resiliently, and creatively. Openness is liberation, and inquiry grounds us in our own nature, which then allows us to continue to express and flower.” (Jeff)

“Just capturing two words from what you said that are so central to this appraisal process, and to being generatively creative in telling the story of your life anew every day. Waking up in the morning and saying, 'No, I was who I was yesterday, and today I'm telling the story again in a new way.' You are your own creator. You wake up in the morning and you have permission to rewrite your story today. That is, in what you said, that stopped me.” (Aviv)

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Resilience and the Crisis of Belief

A powerful way to envision our entry into this new phase of evolution and epochal shift is as a fusion process — a merging of the physical realm with a new universal potency that unlocks immense possibilities and profound renewal. Imagine it as an energetic Cambrian release for humanity and the planet. We dive deeper into the mysteries of the epochal shift underway in the latest chapter of the “Current Openings” series with Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis.

To better understand what we mean by an epoch, Aviv and David begin with a closer look at the energetic nature of the human and the cosmos. Modern thinking often confines reality to the limits of our biophysical form. However, we recognize an energetic dimension residing within and between all layers of organic, physical existence. Humans can sense and attune to these spiritual or energetic frequencies through finer faculties naturally embedded in our design. The energetic or unseen natures of the human and the planet evolve over time, which can be traced in the evolution of culture throughout history. This perspective reveals epochs as intelligent, purposeful programs of growth and refinement — forward-looking pathways guiding us toward a universal future.    

Other insights and ponders:

• The new epoch calls for capacities beyond intellect — faculties essential for deeper integration of human life within the universe.
• Epochal changes do not arrive all at once. The energetic permission of the past holds initially but breaks down swiftly, giving rise dramatically to the new.
• By metabolizing new impressions, we activate new capacities and perceptions — a profound act of renewal; an evolutionary process creating something new on the inside.
• Rather than rejecting the past, we harvest its best elements and respectfully leave behind the rest. We carry forward a tested, validated value system.
• There is confusion, chaos, and suffering when we’re not able to connect with new energetic and spiritual fuel available for healing and development elevation.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“An epoch is an evolutionary program, a program afforded by the universe and the planet, where humanity can go through specific and necessary development. The idea that the evolutionary process is just a random trial and error makes no sense; it's too brilliantly constructed. And there is clearly an ascending refinement and complexifying vector of life wanting to support higher levels, higher capacities, higher sophistication, higher consciousness.” (Aviv)

“This realization that in learning there is renewal. Because what it actually means is that we metabolize new impressions, and those new impressions activate in us new capacities and perceptions. And that, in that itself, is a profound act of renewal. And that therefore, as the epoch shifts and a new energy permission is afforded to human experience and to humanity at large, we are to truly expect that everything around us will continue to change in an intensified manner.” (Aviv)

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Current Openings #20 – The Epoch Mystery

Let us imagine that one of the most powerful ways to create space and be open to an incoming wave of evolutionary progress — the future — is to consciously heal and absolve the past, with all of its trauma and scar tissue. Not just our personal past, but imagining in ourselves the flow of history through the current epoch. It’s not just possible, but some would say a vital process in a time of great change and new possibility.  

In this conversation, Aviv Shahar and Portals friend Jeff Vander Clute take a deep look into the epoch’s seven stages and the corresponding potencies of the energy spectrum, Red through Violet. It’s a way of attuning to the flow and energetic nature of history, and to what Aviv and Jeff believe is a step-function leap underway to a new wave of evolution.

Jeff is a consultant and author of three recent books, including Beyond Every Teaching, a collection of transformative spiritual transmissions.

In today’s exploration, we focus on the main stories or perspectives of the epoch, especially the very real human capacity to revisit, rewrite and clean in ourselves painful and traumatic aspects of history. It’s a process of energetic dialysis powered by the spectrum frequency of Yellow, which we can also trace in the epoch to the emergence of the axial religions.

Other amazing insights from Aviv and Jeff’s conversation include:

• Universal culture: For the first time, there is a truly global civilization, with shared communication and commerce platforms — a core premise in the story of the shift from planetary to universal culture and civilization.
• Power of Yellow: Yellow dialysis enables self-forgiveness and transformation — a life reboot. The Yellow frequency promotes inner rewiring and deeper integration.
• Great alchemy: As we transcend and reach the source, the point where it all comes together, great alchemy is possible: polarities and multiplicities are seen in their root nature as unified; a new human species can emerge.
• Liberating essence: The axial religions that emerged around an energetic source became in some paths an institutional bureaucracy. Yellow dialysis liberates the essence into new currency and updating.
• Universal economy: The universe loves economy; if knowledge was codified earlier in the epoch, why waste it? Distill its essence, release what is no longer needed, and further the evolutionary story.
• New sense organs: Activating Yellow brings online new human sense organs and communication apparatus; it encourages shared values and meaning, and connects with higher sources of inspiration.
• Beyond the head: The Enlightenment and scientific revolution are based on the head or intellect-driven knowledge. We can experience knowledge differently through the vibrant, invisible blessing realms.
• Living history: The feelings and traditions of ancient cultures are alive in energetic form. We can attune to those sentiments and passions to sense and wonder about the grandeur of their appearance.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“And so we build into this the recognition that the epoch is not a concept, it's not a mental structure, rather it is a living process. It's arising inside us. It's arising in between us. It arises all around us, and it is something we can live into, inside and in between us, in our conversations and discoveries, which is the premise to come together in small pods or in a larger network, to metabolize, to ease, to decode these ideas as they unfold.” (Aviv)

“I've had an interesting esoteric experience in which I actually changed the past and suddenly the map of where I was going in life changed, instantaneously. It's as if the past is actually quite malleable. So when we're rewriting the past here, I would say that it's powerful beyond the words that we use to tell these stories, there's something going on energetically, and archetypally, within the collective.” (Jeff)

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The Five Stories of the Epoch

For many, last year made it impossible to ignore the scale of global change — what we see as global instability is only one dimension of a larger meta-crisis. Portals has been following the signs of this broader evolutionary cycle, which is reshaping our planet and humanity. With the epoch insight and perspective, we can trace the emergence and patterns of this epochal movement across every area of life, from grand global systems to everyday human endeavors.

In the latest conversation from the The Universalis Project, Aviv Shahar is joined by Karen Heney and Kyriaki Nikandrou to explore the flow of history and evolution through a “7-fold epoch.” This special lens examines the nature of each epochal impulse and its influence on culture, as well as on human growth and development. The epoch framework is not a new meta-theory about life or evolution; instead, it reflects an observable quality within all natural processes. We can see 7-fold patterns in the natural world — including flora, fauna, and human behavior.

For instance, the world’s major religions arose during the Yellow phase of planetary evolution, while the drive to resolve conflict, balance pressures, and collaborate in scalable systems reflects a Blue impulse.

Other insights from this exploration include:

• The nature of Red: This planet, in its cosmology in the galaxy, and its function as the cradle for evolving conscious life, discovers the unique emergence of a new epoch and conscious life in the frequency and nature of Red.
• Indigo theater: Social media and the internet represent a fantastic Indigo theater of merging and transference.
• Violet phase-shift: In the larger purpose of the epoch, a great endeavor or civilization ends in Violet as part of a phase-change to the next evolutionary leap, sometimes with a violent dimension.
• Living History: The living experience of history — the energy — has not been destroyed; those memories, feelings, and sentiments are encapsulated in time; as we become attuned, we feel the living nature of their experience.
• Capacity for destruction: The unfolding story of the evolution of life includes the capacity to destroy it. We help metabolize lower influences by expanding consciousness and unlocking higher human capabilities.
• • Indigo-Violet Acceleration: A core premise of the epoch study is that it’s a continuing revelation inside the context of a rolling event — the Indigo-Violet acceleration, as witnessed through the meta-crisis and other profound planetary change.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“So the story of the evolution of life is accompanied by the story of the development of the capacity to destroy life. And the reason we feel so compelled to bring the consciousness of this story into being is that there is an awareness that when we bring consciousness to this story, we may intensify and unlock capacities for humanity to do both the healing and liberation work, at all the levels, the level of the individual, the level of the group, and the level of the tribe and the nation.” (Aviv)

“Every human that's born on the planet, it's designed in such a way that every life can have a spiritual journey, can have a connective, purposeful life. And we're all born into this unfolding epoch. First of all, we need to be aware of it, which is the wonder of these recordings and this journey. Because if we become aware of it, and we opt in to being consciously mindful of these different progressions, then we're saying that we can co-join evolution and a human update.” (Karen)

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The Universalis Project #13: The 7-fold Epoch Progression

Our adventure exploring the deeper nature of human life forever seeks to find new bridges — the special connecting insights and nuggets of wisdom that remind us why this journey of discovery is so critical to our personal and collective futures. What is the premise that inspires us to unlock the promise of the human capacity to engage with and shape this emerging new wave of evolution?  

To help build these bridges of connection, this conversation brings together Aviv Shahar and longtime Portals friend David Price Francis for the 19th episode of their remarkable series “Current Openings.”

Even though these are the early days (comparatively) of the emergence of what we call the universal human, Homo Universalis, Aviv and David remind us we can be intentionally present in multiple spaces in the universe today, here and now. We have the capacity and permission of the human design to renew and reconfigure our finer energetic inner lives any time.

One bridge into the unknown then might be the awareness of our energetic nature and possibility to actively engage with the flow of an evolving cosmos.

Other connecting ideas and scaffolding include:

• We spiritualize the universe and the world through our refinement — the connection, the embodiment and ensoulment, that enable the universe to birth its higher possibilities through us.
• Within our carnal form, we're an electromagnetic spirit-soul being; the dimension of energies we process is vast. We can refine, a permission that no other organic life has.
• We create a space for each other to walk into possibilities that we wouldn't be able to access on our own. That's the other dimension: the universe of energetic potential we create for our collective future.
• Within the amazing promise and premise of being human is perhaps the greatest gift of all: freedom to decide how to use our life. We can choose to spiritualize our future.
• Only humans have been given permission to get it wrong; to mess things up. The rest of organic life follows its program; flora and fauna do what they do, naturally, at 100%.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“When a person has that spiritualized process they walk into the forest, and the trees and the animals, and the flowers they welcome the human. But if the human is full of anger and resentment and the mortgage and what's wrong, and checking their digital media and seeing what's on Twitter whilst they're walking through the forest, well, everything retreats from them because they're on a lower vibration frequency. So we have that amazing promise, but we're not told this is how you have to use it.” (David)

“Everything that exists in organic life is processing universal energies, in some fashion, whether lunar energy, solar energy, energy from different planets, it's being processed and received by planet Earth. So I think of the planet in that sense as this amazing crucible of receiving different energies, and she needs form to receive an energy. So whether it be a squirrel, whether it be a cat, whether it be a tree, a bird, everything is processing energetics and delivering that energy into the energy field of the planet.” (David)

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Current Openings #19: Spiritualize the Universe – 20 Core Premises

Can we imagine that the simple act of coming together — the “togetherings” of ourselves with our inner lives, our friends, our communities — unlocks the intelligence that enables the “we” to become an integral part of our future and of the evolution of life? What if life itself is intentionally nudging humans together toward a greater discovery of its own nature and possibility?

Longtime Portals friends Nigel Geeves and Well join Aviv Shahar for the latest exploration in Evolving Together, a series of conversations uncovering the creative potential unlocked when human beings come together in shared purpose or mission.

If two people can face their differences and build the trust required to unlock greater mutual possibilities, can we “scale” that insight to the larger community and culture? Can it help bridge and neutralize the often toxic polarities that divide so many segments of humanity?

Aviv, Nigel and Well explore different kinds of gatherings where the fundamental impulse for people to be together creates an ecology in which something bigger, often profound, can join and transform the dynamic (even a Led Zeppelin concert). As they discover, when people come together to consciously give life itself a better future, it fosters a deeper engagement with evolution than was previously possible.

Other togethering insights include:

• Being together, we sense the three core impulses of life: to continue; to be made new and regenerate; to evolve and upgrade to a new, better, improved version of the human species.
• The real struggle for any life is to elevate in ourselves, which means bringing closer together our own positive and negative, to both squeeze ourselves higher, and invite higher qualities.
• Evolution begins from the idea of giving back for what life gives us. We are creative beings with something to offer from ourselves that is new and different to what previously existed.
• We may come together around a shared intention outside of ourselves, such as to reach a common goal, or internally, with a mutual intention to create new possibility for each person.
• We grow through difficulties we face if we can actually get through them, where the support we offer each other is a powerful opportunity, especially if we're able to be honest and direct.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“If you think about it, life itself started somewhere, and the whole journey of the evolution of life has added value to the creation that it emerged at. Life has become more intricate, more interesting, more capable, more responsive in all sorts of different ways as the journey of evolution has gone on. For me, the whole journey of that is a journey of things coming together to offer a better response in all sorts of ways, and we're a shining example of that in the human form.” (Well)

“So I'm experiencing three core natures in the language you're offering to the shared intention of life. Intention one is to continue. This universe doesn't want to ever stop. But there is an intention two and three, because it doesn't want to continue in an inert way. It wants, intention two, to be vital, be fresh, make a new start. And then there is a third intention, which is it wants to continue to get better, to improve, to evolve its nature - these three core impulses of life.” (Aviv)

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Evolving Together #6: The Shared Intentions of Life

What does it mean to live religiously? How do the premises and ways of living religiously evolve to embrace and embody new evolutionary possibility?

How do people register and express perhaps the most intimate feelings a human can experience — the sensing of real connection with universal and divine sources of life?

Portals brought together an international group of friends to hear firsthand how their experience and embodiment of the impulse to live religiously may be evolving. Many moving and profound insights emerge in their conversation with Aviv Shahar, including:

• The religious impulse is a deep longing inside that seeks the highest point of communion we can find; it emanates not from religion, but from a spiritual presence that lives inside the temple of ourselves.
• We no longer need to build cathedrals of stone but seek the cathedral within.
• Every person is different; instead of structured religion, we come together in a shared sentiment as individuals with their own power and self-responsibility that allows freedom to do whatever we need to do.
• We are both human, both man and woman are created in the image of God, which says God has a female side. Whatever comes into the future of religion, it must start from that reality.
• We have these visions of how to lead a religious life: convent, ashram, mountain top. We're now talking about coming back inside us, the journey to where we are in our life.
• We bring with us our religious traditions, the ceremonies and rituals, because they are touchstones to connect us with what we're doing and why, and what gives us meaning.
• Religion can appear through a human being who has value for the planet; there's more intelligence and wisdom that the Great Mother, the great church, offers in abundance.
• A vital role in religious practices is to learn, educate, facilitate and allow the human to be moved and fashioned by dormant systems that will provide needed new intelligence.
• We’re looking for the religion of what works; being prodded to search for something else, something better, is maybe how we make ourselves fit for the different needs of the times we live in.
• I want to be part of a religion that can go anywhere from your heart; when the world can’t offer stability or love, the universe can; the stars have never failed to make me feel part of something reliable.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“It's not the religion that is important, it is the religious impulse that gives rise to something very fundamental in human life. And the story that we are seeking is the story of the drama of the relationship between the Source and human beings. And it seems to me that the religious impulse, which is a deep place in humans of longing, and belonging, and being part of, is based upon the fact that we are not complete, and therefore we seek completion with something which is outside of ourselves - which keeps us searching and looking for communion.”(Avshalom)

“A human lifespan is pretty short, so I've always had this feeling that I was born into something that's ongoing before me, and it's ongoing beyond me. So, what have I been born into? And can I become a part of what that is? And perhaps, as a next step, can I contribute to whatever that ongoing process is? So, to me, that's the beginning of a religious journey. I think so much of what we're talking about is that it's coming back inside us, where we are in our life, bringing us in closer contact with this whole universe that we're a part of.” (Peter)

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Expressions of Religious Living

Is it possible to appreciate the life of Jesus Christ in a real way that embraces the universal message and mystery, but also finds harmony with a fundamental approach to logic and reason? Can an esoteric perception of the divine find a home inside metamodern spirituality?

We continue exploring an evolving perception of God and the many faces of Jesus Christ, the central pillar of Christianity, in the newest conversation with Aviv Shahar and Brendan Graham Dempsey. Brendan is a metamodern leader who combines a personal experience with Christianity and a pioneering exploration of metamodern thinking and philosophy.

In a lively exchange, Brendan and Aviv explore different appreciations of the transformative power that spiritual seekers feel in the many facets of Jesus Christ. Could the religious influence that changed the course of human history have naturally emerged as part of a complex, evolving human species? Or can the esoteric pursuit of a deeper truth reveal the divine nature of Christ’s appearance?

Many enlivening insights emerge, including:

• The best defense of spirituality is rigorous, critical thinking; integrating nuanced, sophisticated perspectives with an openness to deep esoteric experiences.
• Some religious traditions can be seen as privileging the irrational: just have faith, and quote a lot of scripture when people ask uncomfortable questions.
• When you come back from a peak experience, it’s essential to engage in what we describe as a rational or debrief process to help separate the real from the unreal.
• Experience is a valid source of evidence; we can look to it without necessarily bringing down the skeptical, critical, prefrontal-cortex analysis and do science on it.
• We talk about the soul not as another dogma or form of teaching, but as a guidance to discover a path in ourselves where we can travel to the edge of what we know.
• There is a moment where you feel you can emerge to a unique combination that is not just the thrill of your mind quivering with new ideas, but is more than the biochemistry of your brain.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“I think we can reclaim languages of 'soul' and 'spirit' to refer very much to what they kind of used to refer to, but now be more clear about kind of what those things really are, in a sense, and it isn't to say that we fully understand them, either. Because there is this realm of the unknown and the mystery that we should lean into, and again, a lot of that is about the sacred for me. The more we learn, and the more that gets disclosed from that mystery and continues to fill in that causal account of reality is precisely the learning process that connects us deeper to the world, and, I would say, the divine.” (Brendan)

“Believe me, I would love nothing more than to really deeply feel in my heart that I am an eternal being that reincarnated here out of a long journey of continuous cycles of birth and rebirth as I develop, and that I am engaged in a kind of multi-lifelong process of learning, spiritual development and growth, so that I can ultimately be more united with the divine on the other side of this existence. And that this whole cosmic situation that we're a part of is part of a divine design and plan that's basically leading in that direction.” (Brendan)

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Religion and the Esoteric

What is the message we would bring back to our families and friends if we survived a near-death experience? It’s the kind of event that could change our lives in a big way. What would we most want the people closest to us to realize from our close encounter with the veil?

Such close encounters reveal profound insights and perceptions that can change a life’s direction, or bring new understanding about the human’s larger universal purpose and potential.

Being brought back “online” from an unexpected near-departure also highlights a view of human life as the integration of many different systems in a unified, harmonious whole — physical, mental, and spiritual. An illness or other struggle can be seen as a form of dis-integration, while weaving to reintegrate the parts back together, physical and energetic, enables a larger healing. It brings a clearer vision of the river of life flowing seamlessly within a stream of universal possibility.

Longtime Portals friend David Price Francis recently survived a very close call: a scheduled heart surgery did not go as planned. In the latest chapter of the Current Openings series, he talks with Aviv Shahar about the perceptions and meaning the experience unlocked, and the message he’d like us to contemplate. Among their insights:

• That's how I think of human beings: we're not finished, we're not completed. We're here to learn, to grow, to develop. We're in an embryonic state, which is why planet Earth is so messy.
• Make the most of life while we're here; pay attention, try to understand how the universe works. Partly why we're here is to read God's signature in the world around us.
• We can’t have the evolutionary stream without being in the river of life; we need to love both. Not trying to be in the realm of consciousness and leaving behind regular life.
• Instructing and talking to our soul is part of wellbeing and healing. We talk with our intention, our consciousness; we speak to our brain, our body, our soul about what’s happening in our life.
• We might see life in the universe and on Earth as random. Yet the distance from the sun to Earth is exact. In life there is often an exactness to a fraction of a degree. What does this mean for how we live?

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“We don't want to go to Nirvana, we want Nirvana to come to us - whilst we're doing the washing up - like that idea of chop wood, carry water, that one is actually engaged in the river of life, but one has, at the same time, a higher consciousness and a higher awareness that's active. So both things are happening at once. It's very easy though to get carried along in the river of life and lose consciousness within it; we become automated, we become auto responsive.” (David)

“Pay attention to the river of life, the codings, the understandings, you could say the signature of creation, it's all there. And so we don't take our consciousness and seek to separate it and go into some other domain and become blank. It's actually more like, everything is interesting, everything is worth looking at and exploring and trying to understand it. What are the actual laws by which this place works? And what are the connections through which it works? And we've been given this chance to research God through the river of life, because that tells us something about the design of creation.” (David)

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The Open-Heart Conversation: Current Openings #18

What would the divine feminine or Goddess nature want to ask or expect of a man today? If you were a man representing the divine masculine, and had the chance, what would you want to ask or say to a woman at this moment? Can we even imagine ourselves and each other as different expressions of a divine source, more than merely a personality?

These were among the inquiries that helped inspire a profound exploration of the divine feminine and the Goddess archetype at this Fall’s Metamodern Spirituality Lab. To learn more, Portals brought together Aviv Shahar and Lab organizers and metamodern leaders Layman Pascal and Brendan Graham Dempsey, along with participants Mariah Rose McKay and Antonia Louise.

This is the newest conversation in the Portals series exploring metamodern spirituality.

A central theme for this special collaboration of women and men was exploring the role of the Goddess, the feminine, in metamodern spirituality: an embrace, rather than historical denial, of the feminine presence at the heart of the human’s universal nature. The Lab itself was a space where gatherings and rituals supported a freer expression of the divine feminine and masculine influences in both women and men.

The openness allowed for the emergence of many facets of the Goddess nature: maternal, warrior, healing, wisdom. For many participants it produced a trust and chance for intimacy that in turn generated a deep sense of healing and release of ancient tensions between the genders.

Other Lab insights include:

• It’s the importance of community; we cannot do this alone. It’s the practical elements, but also the deep and intimate bonds we form, and the healing power of deep relationships.
• There is the long-wave dimension and nature of this work: we need to include the generational transmission; a project of the next 100 years.
• When the god and goddess are prepared to embrace each other, inside each of us, a birthing process occurs; those two configurations merge into a third nature that liberates a new future.
• We don't know the ripple effects of how our hearts and consciousness can affect the world when we change our relationship to the goddess.
• This quality of intimacy and way of being with each other, where people are held in a place where they can begin a sentence without knowing how they will end it, takes time to build.
• We honor the broad spectrum of ways women show up from a “masculine” stance, and men from a “feminine” stance; these are potent and helpful ways of looking at the world and ourselves.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“From the point of view of people who are interested in growth and development and depth and a transformation of civilization, a goddess who's also capable of growth and change and depth, and who could enter into more nuanced or richer relations with human beings, and in the masculine/feminine exchange, is something we would like to be able to facilitate through our thinking, and speaking, and hearts, and relationships.” (Layman)

“This is a favorite topic of mine, polarity in masculine and feminine dynamics, and there is something really valuable about having these distinctions and having a spectrum between those poles, but being able to create a magnetism, being able to create something that pulls together and also something that repels, not necessarily in a bad way, just in a separation, individuation way. We are separate, and we can be as one. I feel like there is a lot of healing that we are doing collectively; how do we embody those in the most healthy and conscious way?” (Antonia)

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The Goddess Arising

As we find our way each day through the often intense and personal struggles facing us and humanity, imagine that we can build our strength and resilience by exercising the right muscles; not just physical, but our emotional, mental and spiritual “muscles.”

In the newest chapter of the Homo Universalis series, Aviv Shahar, with Karen Heney and Kyriaki Nikandrou, explores how the “muscles” metaphor is not such a stretch as we face and learn to embrace the two big struggles in any developing life: the known and the unknown.

The known struggles are those we see and feel all around us, from personal, to family or community, to the global cultural, economic and ecological upheavals that affect the planet and each of us individually. Our struggle with the unknown includes trying to imagine and create a new future when so much of the present is uncertain and changing. Can we picture in our mind the person we want to become?

As Aviv, Karen and Kyriaki discuss, the activation of our Universalis nature, or universal human, brings online new capacities, perceptions and creativity to help us flex the right muscles that can balance and harmonize the many struggles we may face. Among their insights:

• The Universalis inquiry can help humanity at large to pivot from a barbarous operating system of “kill before you get killed” to a way of collaborating based in valiance, chivalry and virtue.

• As we enter new domains of possibility, what used to activate and energize us don’t carry the same impact; we feel different sources of energy, new capacities and parts of ourselves.

• If the human has a universal nature, and universal expansion is accelerating, are we also accelerating into the future, into the unknown, and who we are becoming today?

• To be available in new patterns and new ways, we need to relax the groove, the old patterns held at tension habitually. We make space for new processes, new energy sources, and new configurations.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“As we gradually see the corruption and dysfunctionality of various systems, the parallel is within our inner lives: any psychologies and patternings that don't have the sustaining energies of the now and the currencies that are ongoing into the future, equally are being weakened. And sometimes they will melt, sometimes they will fight, but there is this inner knowing that what may have worked before, well, maybe it's not going to be the enabling system for tomorrow.” (Karen)

“When we enter new domains of possibility there is a point whereby we look back and we say, hmm, I realize that what used to activate me very much, and energize me, no longer carries the same impact. I am now energized by different sources of energy, and I am activated in whole new different parts of myself. Sometimes you will even describe new sensitivity, new capacity, new expression, new art.” (Aviv)

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The Two Struggles - The Universalis Project #11

Where is our global culture today? How did we get here? What steps might we need to take now to shape a future that could become a saving grace for humanity? It feels special to find a clear, cohesive and compelling picture, one that encompasses the insights that help us make sense and meaning out of the tumultuous times we live in and answer these questions.

We dive deep into a new, emerging worldview in this conversation with Steve McIntosh, a leading developmental philosopher focusing on the evolution of consciousness and culture. Steve is the author of Developmental Politics, The Presence of the Infinite, Evolution’s Purpose and Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution. He is co-founder of the Institute for Cultural Evolution.

With Steve’s help we trace the major forces that shaped human history and culture, from the Renaissance and Enlightenment, through the fuller development of the Modern era, to Postmodern culture, and into today’s search for a new truth. We view the past with a new understanding that these are not fixed periods of history, but a form of living consciousness that evolves inside us.

As the first Enlightenment opened up our understanding of the external universe, the new worldview that has been emerging promises to illuminate the interior universe of consciousness and connection. We actively contribute to the evolutionary process when we bring to life the universal values of truth, beauty and goodness.  

Many more enlivening insights and profound understandings emerge in the conversation.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“The sense that we know deep in our bones that a better way is possible, that has an influence on our consciousness, and it's what drives cultural evolution. It's not just this quest for the good life, it's also the quest to know what's true, and the quest to make our circumstances more beautiful. More beautiful architecture, more beautiful homes, more beautiful bodies. Those are all ways that we're lured to make things better. And so understanding that as an attractive force, or a kind of gravity, on consciousness, that the evolutionary impulse that our sense is responding to - that begins to illuminate what it is that we're trying to define and understand better.” (Steve)

“The greatest human purpose, at least while we're in this world, is to contribute to the evolution of the noosphere because, by doing so, we're contributing to the purpose of the larger universe as a whole. And so just being able to land that truth can really help people appreciate how science and spirituality are pointing to the same thing, properly interpreted, that I think can go a long way toward helping to plant the seeds for this next emergent worldview.” (Steve)

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Evolution, Consciousness, and the New Truth with Steve McIntosh

How can a forward-looking, evolution-inclined spirituality, not tied to dogma or history, offer us a sense of meaning and purpose in a time of cultural upheaval powered by AI? Can a metamodern spiritual path also include a new perspective and appreciation of Christianity and the many faces, or dimensions, of Jesus Christ?

In the newest conversation in the Portals series exploring metamodern spirituality, Aviv Shahar welcomes back metamodern leader Brendan Graham Dempsey. Brendan is a unique voice who combines a deep personal experience with Christianity and a pioneering study and exploration of metamodern thinking and philosophy.

Together, he and Aviv trace the amazing evolution of the human notion and idea of God, from ancient cultures through the Enlightenment and into today. There are new insights into the appearance of Jesus and the rising importance of the individual, which explodes in the modern era with its elevation of self-actualization. (You can also see the discussion about Jesus excerpted below.)

The conversation does not just look back, but also forward; in a learning, growing universe, what’s next? What’s on the horizon with our concept of God? Is there a metamodern integration of perceptions that can activate a more powerful inner conductivity and capacity for universal connection?

Other ponders and insights include:

• The cutting edge of spiritual and Christian thought might be to include mystery school ideas without abandoning modern and postmodern reality, while pushing beyond scientific dogma.
• We are co-participating with the divine to unfold in new directions; to build on what we've already done and continue the dreams we’ve set up; to live the arc of this emergence; to move forward, not back.
• How do we know? Which faculty of knowing are we talking about when we talk about knowing? New sense organs? Can we integrate conceptual and head ways of knowing with other sources of knowledge?
• The Christ archetype is how we find the Christ in us; to show up in a Christ-like fashion; a profound universal engagement. These are the depths a metamodern Christianity should explore.
• We can’t put the genie back in the bottle, or try to reengage an older operating system. The challenge is harvesting the best of the ancient system, and hospicing what needs to be left behind.
• We’re talking about a metamodern move to address what can be described as a Tower of Babel of perspectives: confusion and chaos that give rise to polarization politics, and everything breaking down.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“This gave a new way of looking at all this, in terms of development, that as we go through learning our conceptions of God change. And that really kind of hit home, because as I studied very deeply a lot of the developmental literature, the psychological literature, people who had looked at what they call like stages of faith or religious judgment, and there was a clear way in which the learning process that we go through as people impacts the conceptions that we have of the divine, and the meaning of life, and value, and all these things.” (Brendan)

“My entryway into this was through a breakdown of meaning, to go all the way back to my own existential crisis, was the occasion by which I felt the need to find a new way of being in the world. Talking about these things might sound like concepts following concepts, but this is ultimately a lived experience. This is the story of humanity, but it's the story of humans. And so human beings are moving through the world, and we're experiencing the social and collective consequences of all living together with each other through time, figuring out things together, and changing the world around us as a consequence.” (Aviv)

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God: An Evolving Revelation with Brendan Graham Dempsey

Imagine being able to connect with a level of potency, passion and energy that could help reveal even deeper intelligence and meaning to our most compelling “burning questions” — the inquiries and mysteries that drive and inspire us to search for answers.

In several ways the potency of an inquiry is generated in how we think about and ask the question. For example, asking “why” attunes our mind to the energetic dimension or core of a question; it can link us to the powerful fuel of our emotions: e-motion, or energy in motion and flow.

Does the question form up when we reach the leading edge of our experience — just beyond the limits of our knowledge or comfort zone? The leading edge is the place where we prod and sense our way into the unknown and can find the revelation of the “new” answer trying to find us.

Why does any of this matter? As we have discovered in Portals, a potent inquiry or contemplation can activate and energize the far-reaching faculties that enable connection with our universal nature and possibility.

We delve deeper into the meaning and mystery of profound “burning questions” and the art of the inquiry in this special conversation with Aviv Shahar and Portals collaborator David Price Francis. Aviv and David invited several Portals friends to bring their own burning questions and together look for new insights, including:

• There’s a different way of living a life — not protecting who or what we have discovered, the titles and identity. But unlocking the mystery of who we are becoming, and its powerful energy and inspiration.
• As we move on, we leave behind what brought us to this point, with respect, honor and gratitude, but we don't copy them. The universe moves on, too. It’s the twin dynamics of mastery of the past and the mystery of the future.
• Maybe we should imagine not just our carbon footprint, but our cosmic footprint — the ripple from our life into our communities, the planet and universe, and embrace responsibility for that.
• Evolution is not over; it isn’t based on a signal from the past. We can see evidence in established world religions: there isn’t a reduce, reuse, recycle system.
• The progress of artificial intelligence and technology is the external evolution of form; the key to humanity’s future is the ongoing evolution of the organic forms of the planet and the human.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“Building on this, where you talk about 'what do you want?', which to me is one of the entry points into the inquiry of purpose, I would say that leading oneself in a chaotic world one wants to be grounded and anchored in some guiding principle and guiding purpose that is central and centering for a person's life. You first need to actually ask, well, how do you find that sense of purpose, that sense of mission?” (Aviv)

“There is a core impulse in human life, or in life at large. It's the impulse of life expressing itself in human life, which is the impulse of freedom and liberation. Life wants to express itself and come to its fuller possibility and expression, and be free. And you see that that is arising in each and every one of us, we want to discover what is our natural talent? What can we do? How do we live into the fullest freedom of our potential?” (Aviv)

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Current Openings #17 – Burning Questions

In the third installment we described two ways to apply Einstein’s admonition when he observed that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. The first practice involved placing the problem you are working to solve inside an even bigger problem. The second practice involved the cultivation of a symphonic loom of expanded considerations.

The realization latent in this admonishment from Uncle Albert is that we cannot expect to stumble on new perceptions with the same toolset we used to fashion the map of meaning that generated the problems we now confront.

Moreover, the faculties and “organs” of seeing, intuiting, and believing used when we generated our worldview are likely insufficient in our search for new ways of perceiving with which to be able to solve the problems we face.

In this and in the following installments we are embarking on the search for ways to unlock new perceptions, connections, and intuitions. We seek the activation of sense organs that naturally court and grow the spaces available for the soul to liberate. We will develop this pathway one step at a time and invite you to engage and play with the practices we demonstrate.

This work is part of the continuing Portalsdiscovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“We don’t seek to empty the mind by releasing identification with passing thoughts as a way of calming the survival wiring in the brain. Instead, this work into the Soul invites you to free the mind to its connective communion capacity, where it brings to the Soul potent energies to nourish its two higher natures.” (Aviv)

“As we develop these conversation pathways into the soul, naturally we confront several challenges. A key challenge is finding the courage to drop the lies we have been told about what a human is. There is a catch. How do you let go of misleading lies you have been programmed to believe in, without having new or elevated or clearer perspectives that can replace those convictions and beliefs?” (Aviv) 

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Portals Into the Soul, Chapter 4: A Growing Space for the Soul

Even if we’re familiar with the themes of evolutionary change and upgrade that run through Portals, what’s happening in the world today seems startling: the operating system that enables modern life as we know it appears to be crashing.

The key questions now: Is this an irreversible slide into self-elimination? Does evolution ever offer a chance for reboot and renewal? If so, how would we spot new universal intelligence nudging its way into humanity?

Our understanding of the “operating system” comes out of the Portalsexploration of the progression of human and planetary history as part of the current epoch, or larger universal cycle of change and upgrade. What we call the “Blue” phase of the epoch (which corresponds to the seven colors of the spectrum) brought to humanity the energy and intelligence for collaboration and working together.

It was the power of cooperation that allowed the building of cities, political and economic systems, and the civility that enables the orderly and peaceful flow of everyday life in all its many nuances. The multiple crises of ecology and culture that are transforming the planet today suggest the modern Blue system is no longer sufficient in the face of an Indigo and Violet intensification. We see the evidence in the eruption of wars, environmental destruction and political chaos.  

How did we get here? What happens next? As we discover in the latest Homo Universalis conversation, even with a failing operating system, the evolutionary process offers the opportunity for renewal and regeneration. Aviv Shahar, Karen Heney and Kyriaki Nikandrou share their ideas and insights.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portalsdiscovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“Could this be one of the ways we are already being naturalized and acclimatized to the actuality of universal life? Where you can be together with others and there is a chain reaction, running revelatory process; some will then put it to music, some will put it to art, some will put it to writing, some will put it to the causes they serve. Okay, is this a way to think about universal life: you are engaged in an ongoing revelation, a running revelation, rather than one singular revelation for a life?” (Aviv)

“That is the inquiry we are now facing, what is the operating system that needs to emerge? I don't know that we have the solution or the answer here. But you're beginning to articulate some of the principles that are likely to be critical in the new operating system. The principle you just described is, it has to have the capacity to integrate and bridge all interests.” (Aviv)

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The Universalis Project #10 - Why the World is Breaking Down

A laboratory is where we’d expect to find a safe space of discovery and purpose; an environment that supports experimenting with diverse ideas and mysteries in the search for truth. Add in an atmosphere of mutual trust and acceptance, and now we’ve created an ecology that invites something even deeper — a God lab.

Imagine a God lab as an intensified spiritual retreat, a gathering of like-minded and like-souled individuals seeking new understanding and experience with the divine. In this conversation, we are invited to appreciate a metamodern God lab as a community, created through the shared exploration of the sacred by people who each represent a unique expression of universal possibility.

In a metamodern God lab, every person is recognized and accepted as they experiment with creating and evolving their own vision, practices and art; an ecology where people find the inner balance that allows them to embody more fully at the spiritual leading edge of themselves.

We get to explore in this conversation the nature and possibilities of emergent metamodern spirituality with two metamodern leaders, Layman Pascal and Brendan Graham Dempsey. (This is the latest in a series of conversations sensing deeper into metamodern spirituality.) Layman and Brendan discuss with Aviv Shahar the recently completed Metamodern God Lab at the Sky Meadow retreat in Vermont.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“I think what I'm seeing, what I'm taking away from this weekend, is the sheer importance of setting up these kinds of hive-like fields for the bees to go to and from. And if you get a few new ones each time it starts to spread. And ideally, we would have dozens or hundreds of things like this around the world to be a generator of the leading edge of the culture. As much as we need all these different subsets, what we fundamentally need is the right kind of a scene that's just a constant generator of all the different tentacles of the leading edge.” (Layman)

“I think there’s something deeply important about having a place where we come together and gather, and connect, and feel this vibe and these energies with each other, and sort of remember our connections with each other and to what we’re doing, and the sorts of aims and goals that we have, and the shared vision and the friendship, the relational connections. And being able to continue to deepen; increasing deepening into the relational field of it all is something that I find deeply renewing, and it’s kind of like returning to that well of relationship with this incredible community.” (Brendan)

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Normalizing the Extraordinary: In the Metamodern God Lab with Layman Pascal and Brendan Graham Dempsey

How many of us remember having what some people call a “chrysalis” moment? An octave leap, with mind-opening perceptions, in real time. A powerful flow of energy, a quickening, triggered by a connection or breakthrough that can happen anywhere, at any time, and transform us and the circumstance we’re in.

The chrysalis we probably know as the middle stage of the three-step transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly. It’s a beautiful example of growth and change that happens in stages, or gradations, and is often generally described as a change in octaves, or levels. An octave change can be a long journey of refinement, or it can feel like a quantum leap, in an instant.

Why an octave in the first place? What is the benefit of an ordered transition or progression from one state to another? For example, from the physical and dense to the energetic and spiritual? The universe likes octaves; it’s the engineering that facilitates change and innovation; a natural technology that enables the safe entry and movement through successively higher energetic states.

How does it work? Can we really “leap” from a lower octave to a higher one? We turn for insights to Aviv Shahar and collaborator David Price Francis. Their conversation is the latest in the “Current Openings” series. 

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“There can't be an octave leap without new energy coming in from somewhere. So even when we see water boiling, there has to be the application of heat from somewhere to cause the molecules to get excited, and then it changes state. So when I think of now a quantum leap, or a change of octave, there's going to be a new energy incoming, a quickening as you say, a new energy incoming from somewhere to cause that to happen.” (David) 

“Teaching number one in there, which is we have to do whatever it is we're doing in the fullest possible way because, in actuality, the release of the portal from one octave to the next, that threshold, is reached for by the full realization of the octave we are in. And teaching number two you offered, there has to be resistance built in. If you actually try to bypass or skip the steps without growing by resistance, you may visit a higher octave, but you will not have the infrastructure to hold it in a sustainable way.” (Aviv)

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Current Openings #16: The Octave Leap Mystery

If we’re already diving deep into the core mysteries of the human experience — such as how to partner with a new wave of evolution and engage with the universe — how do we push even further on the edge of discovery? Can we go even deeper into the mysteries? What’s the real benefit?

A curious feature of engaging with the natural human impulse to grow and refine is that as we develop, we begin to activate amazing innate capacities for connecting to intelligence and influence that are universal in origin and source. This, in turn, enables even deeper diving and connection to the mysteries of life and our evolving future. We explore the activation of the universal human in the Portalsseries the Homo Universalis Project.

By deepening in our intention and pursuit of meaning in a chaotic time, we build stability and a stronger foundation, expand inner space, and birth new sensitivities and capacities. In doing so, we become an antidote for a superficial world consumed by multiple global crises. We discover more about the nature of the inner space in The Ghost and the Inner Conclave and The Guru Trap and the Golden Shadow conversations with Jeff Vander Clute.

We also deepen to become available for an even bigger mission, bigger task, in our service to the new pulse of evolutionary possibility washing over humanity and the planet. Not a bad reason to dive in and deepen in the cosmic mysteries unfolding all around us. But how do we deepen?  

We explore more deeply the why’s and how’s of deepening in the newest chapter of the Homo Universalis conversations (recorded in September 2023) with Aviv Shahar, Karen Heney, and Kyriaki Nikandrou.

Among their perceptions:

• We deepen through the art of abiding, of staying and being with; deciding to not be captured by the impatience and velocity of this postmodern time; to be immersed with what we are exploring.
• Homo Universalis is the liberation of latent capacities and sensitivities in the human, a process of release rather than acquiring something from the outside; the universe is liberated in us.
• We’re not merely trading words and concepts. There is a potent, energetic dimension we describe as a form of psycho-spiritual activation, almost like psycho-spiritual open heart surgery.
• To be self-authoring opens up a whole world of stories, narration and characters; humans have a wonderful ability to bring things together, join things, separate things; to create poems and art with a quality of refinement.
• A self-arising life is an intentional conscious application to further something you've chosen; to bring the self into it with creative generation — bringing something to life that might never have exist.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“That's a good reason to do deepening work, because unless you offer more of the depth of who you are and what you can bring to the table, unless you do that, unless you offer that facility, you will only be able to realize your purpose and what you love to the degree of the depth that you make available.” (Aviv)

“A deepening process is moving away from the linear shortcut that we are so much wired to in this post-modern age. Somebody asks a question and you try to answer it in the shortest possible way. Well, that's a skill one needs to have as well, for example, in the business world, but our endeavor is more to access the latent capacities such that we indeed give rise to the multiplicity that we can be.” (Aviv)

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The Universalis Project #9 - Deepening in Evolutionary Mysteries

It may be time to finally change channels, or — if we really want better reception and perception — to trade in that old analogue transmitter and receiver for the best, state-of-the-art technology in the universe.

We are referring, by analogy, to the most advanced radio set ever created: the human mind and network of finer, higher faculties — capable of tuning into any frequency, from humanmade, to planetary, to the deepest reaches of the cosmos. Its potential is vast and vital to our ongoing evolution and future.

Much of our precious daily life is likely spent inside a narrow band of energy, often worrying about relationships, career or cultural and ecological crises. With awareness and training, it’s possible to tune sensitive inner technology to transmit and receive on universal frequencies natural to the human design. It’s activating a higher human operating system.

It’s also a development journey enhanced and quickened by our companions and communities. Mutual respect and trust can help heal pain and trauma, as we become the signal that enables the emergence of new possibility in one another, evolving together.

We explore the realms of mutual transformation and the amazing human radio set in the latest of our Portalsseries Evolving Together, with Aviv Shahar and longtime Portalsfriends Nigel Geeves and Well.

“One of the things I do in my development work with myself is I talk to myself. Why would you talk to yourself? We live in a time where people often seek to find a new feeling and a new experience as the first move they make. In my journey, I've discovered that actually you want to introduce a new frame of mind, a new way of thinking, and that then enables you to heal, transmogrify, metabolize, sublimate, and actually access new feelings and new experience.” (Aviv)

“I think what you're talking about here is beginning to open up the profound realization that yes, we are universal beings. And, therefore, it's possible for us to develop a higher operating system, which literally operates at universal level as we live upon the planet. And via that higher operating system we can do something about the conditioning that's happened to the soul.” (Well)

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Evolving Together #4 - The Human Radio Set

In chapter 2 we described the nature of separation events and the compensatory act of the soul — the ghost. Before developing ways to recover the sense of connection and explore pathways to reengage and liberate the greater potential of the soul, this chapter begins to reflect on a whole loom of considerations, including the experience of showing up in a human model, which is governed by a seven-fold process.

This is the first in a series of installments that will be seeking to place this soul odyssey inside the context of this moment in the unfolding epoch transition. It will open the way to prod the soul’s interface with the full orchestra of inner lives of a human, including in a later installment the brain and the mind.

“Do you ever wonder, is it possible humanity has lost contact with the natural terrain of what being human is and the meaning of life? Is it possible humanity has lost touch with reality and is now at a place where we cannot begin to recognize who we are? Is it possible our search for knowledge and for solutions to our problems has, for a couple of centuries, started from a displaced place?” (Aviv)

“There are moments and situations where we act with increasing integrity, vitality, and alignment to our values and what matters to us, and moments when we act with lesser intactness and lose wholesome sense of clarity. These are the natural ebbs and flows of soul orchestration. When we respond and act with integrity, we produce an inner glow, accompanying soul settlement and well-being” (Aviv)

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Portals Into the Soul, Chapter 3: Symphonic Seven-fold Soul Work

How can we access greater intelligence, wisdom, and power to face the often-scary challenges of these times?

In the Inner Conclave Consciousness, Aviv Shahar and Jeff Vander Clute develop further the three process octaves they began to explore in part one of this conversation.

Why is this exploration so relevant now?.

Portals is chronicling what we describe as the unfolding crash of the operating system underlying much of the modern era. It doesn’t make our journey any easier; whenever we step into a new space of development and learning we cross the frontiers of resistance — all levels: physical, mental, emotional.

The Inner Conclave is a process to disarm resistance. It offers ways to help liberate the perception and awareness that add meaning and understanding in times of change. We can each work into this modality on our own and also in small pods, where we help each other activate the multiplicity of voices inside.

In this conversation Aviv and Jeff explore the vast, inexhaustible and versatile resource of the Inner Conclave and its second and third octaves of process, and dive deeper into the exploration of the Epoch Journey.

Among their insights:

• As disruptions from the crashing modern-era operating system continue, we will need a new galaxy of institutions, businesses and ways of going on in a large, global connected world.
• We're literally attuning ourselves to processes and realms that are universal, that existed before us and will exist after us. They express themselves through us and begin to impart new knowledge.
• It’s a conductive ecology where thought, vision, intuition, and listening to the voices within, the Inner Conclave, will birth in energetic form what life itself wants to express inside us.
• Our exploration of the Inner Conclave and connection with the causing realms recognizes that we are not the first; this has been a passionate quest of people from the beginning of time.
• Making conscious the development, transformation, healing and self-actualization is working inwardly; we can bring a similar roadmap to community where we champion the highest good.
• The Inner Conclave is seeking our inquiry through different voices: patience, care and strength; psychologist, midwife or her-storian. A technology that gives birth to the multiplicity of who we are on the inside.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“There's a question around to what extent do the diseases that manifest in the body, mind, world come about because we weren't listening? So if we can identify the true focusing need, and stay focused, and listen to the signals of the body, the signals of the world, well, that's a capacity - and probably a pretty useful one.” (Jeff)

“The invitation was, well, if you really want to explore these spaces go on a pilgrimage to your inner cave, because the universe is in you. The blessing and the causing realms are in you to the degree that you enable yourself and allow yourself to access these realms. Will you skate to your own deeply-held beliefs and gently put them down? So you don't look at the world, and you don't even look at yourself, through your deeply-held beliefs, but you look at the beliefs and discover what they allow and support and where have they held you back, perhaps?” (Aviv)

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Inner Conclave Consciousness

A glance at the headlines today often brings a deep sense of sadness about the escalating violence in many parts of the world, along with an urgent inner inquiry: what can one person do to promote peace, both within themselves and the global community?

Several Portals conversations and, most recently, the first chapters of Portals Into the Soul, offered the insight that every human is born with natural qualities and higher connections that form a powerful inner source of intelligence and capabilities. This Inner Conclave of our many inner lives is a ready resource to assist in any dimension of our planetary experience. Even, and maybe especially, in the quest for peace.

The Inner Conclave is not just an exercise in visualization. It is the energetic content and consciousness that can illuminate and transform our lives. The Conclave’s three levels, or octaves, of process include releasing and healing, learning and developing, and higher communion.

Engaging with the Inner Conclave can update and rewire our internal operating system and expand its capacity to welcome new qualities and natures, including deep well-being and peace. Imagine that we are integrated with every other human through our higher universal nature. Imagine then that creating our own inner peace can heal and transform the energetic networks and communities that connect us all.

Let’s take a deeper look at the amazing capabilities of the Inner Conclave in this newest conversation between Aviv Shahar and Jeff Vander Clute. Jeff is a consultant and author of three recent books, including Beyond Every Teaching, a collection of transformative spiritual transmissions.

Among their insights:

• There is an intelligence guiding the Inner Conclave — in each of us, and in humanity, which is in some sense an Inner Conclave for the super organism that is Homo Universalis, the universal human.
• Any point where we think we finally figured out who we are, and become fixated, we've just arrested the next discovery about who we are becoming, which also has space and opportunity in the Inner Conclave.
• We all have experienced embarrassment. Those spaces could contain the content that can unlock our creativity. Could years-old embarrassment be a misunderstanding we never had the circumstance to dissolve?
• The gift we offer each other is that we are the space makers and the midwives of each other’s growth and possibility. Being with others will amplify and augment for us our own space.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“The first point was, hey, can we relax in the way we approach this? Can we relax into the discovery of the Inner Conclave? You don't need to change yourself, you don't need to think you ought to be somebody else. Actually, it's an invitation to integrate a part of you that you often leave out. So it is not about trying to get it right. It is really about discovering who you, who we, are becoming.” (Aviv)

“And as we seek to inhabit and liberate and unlock the domain of healing, the domain of art, the domain of leadership, the different teacher-guides that we may choose to cultivate, can we do so in an embodied way? Can I feel how they live in different parts of my system? Physically, energetically, and in my space?” (Aviv)

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Activating the Inner Conclave

It may be easy to see the wisdom of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, who noted back in the 6th century BC, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." When the journey of a lifetime is measured not in distance, but in sensing and connecting with a universal source of purpose and potency, what is that single first step?

We’ve explored throughout Current Openings the many facets and dimensions of the human development quest and challenge. From personal — transforming me — to the collective of together evolving ourselves through our relationships and communities, which in turn uplifts and transforms our world and humanity. All guided by the search for truth in a time of evolutionary change and new possibilities.

So, the first step? We know from our Portalsjourney that the human is the only species on the planet with freedom of choice — the power to focus the full energy and creativity inherent in the human design in pursuit of an intention. Make a decision, and it starts to build the potency of one person being able to say, “I choose to do this.”

We learn a lot more about the zones of human development in the new episode, #15, of Current Openings: What the World Doesn’t Quite Get Yet, with Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis. Among their insights:

Many amazing ponders and mysteries to explore. Which we do in this latest Homo Universalis conversation with Aviv Shahar and Portals friends Karen Heney and Kyriaki Nikandrou.

Among their ideas and insights:

• Each one of us impacts the world by our actions, thoughts, and feelings, and the impacts can be greater or lesser depending upon how wholesome, or integrated, we are as individuals.
• The higher impulse is where we get to not just develop ourselves, but also get something else to help us develop us, an extra kind of larger power to tether, orchestrate, and sculpt who we are.
• Why do we keep recreating over and over the same painful inner stories or narratives, when an opportunity is available to redeem and absolve that pattern?
• Much of therapy is directed toward functioning within the bar of “normal” — being able to be a functioning member of society, and have a satisfactory life. However, normal is a pretty low bar.
• We can be partners in passion, which is exchanging energy, or become partners in purpose, and even higher to partners in evolution, where we look to help each other’s spiritual journey.
• Collective development depends upon the level of personal development which is actually present. They're interconnected; you can't look at one without the other.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“Human life is purposeful. And then, within the greater purpose of life, we each get a chance to first of all work on alleviating pain and suffering. And, secondly, work on optimizing wellbeing and creating positive results in anything we do. And then we may choose to work on the higher impulse, in Zone One, which I'm proposing as a starter place is to liberate my essence, to liberate my higher creational nature.” (Aviv)

“One of the really interesting features of personal development, people tend to think of themselves as singular, like, ‘What do I want to do?’ Well, if their ‘I’ is based in their emotion on Tuesday, then they may want to go into a retreat, and they may want to try and make contact, as you said, with the divine. But then on Thursday a different part of their system, their mental system, may be in charge, and it's going, ‘Oh, my Lord, we're a bit short on cash.’ And then an hour later, a different part of their system is in charge, and it's saying, ‘What's for dinner?’ We're not singular - unless we do a great deal of deliberate work to become whole.” (David)

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Current Openings #15: The Four Development Zones

Our long and revealing journey of discovery with homo universalis, the universal human, has taken us to what feels like a new beginning, but now as partners; a partnership that will transform both of us in the ongoing adventure of an unfolding new epoch and new future.

This partnership with the cosmos actually begins inside of us, with ourselves. We are becoming more intentional partners with the many inner lives of connections, capacities and expansive intelligence natural to every human. We know from previous Universalis conversations that new sense organs and deeper awareness of our universal nature also are firing and coming online.

Imagining a connected exchange with the universe as a partnership makes it easier to also think about our inner partners as an integrated, enhanced platform of new possibility. Which brings us to the conundrum we always face in wanting to integrate, consolidate and make our own these emerging new capacities.

How do we internally welcome newly arising intelligence and awareness in a way that promotes their ongoing liberation instead of fixing or arresting our emerging universal nature? It’s really up to us. Are we ready to embrace the responsibility (and opportunity) to be self-authoring, self-electing, and self-configuring as we integrate with our universal partners?

Many amazing ponders and mysteries to explore. Which we do in this latest Homo Universalis conversation with Aviv Shahar and Portals friends Karen Heney and Kyriaki Nikandrou. 

Among their ideas and insights:

• The universalis human is a way we are imagining and contemplating human life to be the place, the theater, through which the universe liberates itself to its greater potential.
• The telescope, microscope, and the computing power of the modern world enhance our lives. What about re-integrating a human interior technology? Universalis activation needs the inner wirings and latent formations.
• It's not theoretical: how do we integrate new intelligence to close the distance from perception to embodied living and expression manifestation; to become the vessel of the core essence of the new knowledge?
• The universalis human answers an imperative of the universe for a process of renewal and regeneration. If you take it away, the universe as a living being will quickly come to an end.
• We’re liberating a new kind of multi-faceted partnering with the universe — a breakthrough collaboration enabled by shared trust, shared imperative, and shared purpose.
• Some people think the process of reasoning is going back into the head, the intellectual. But originating reasoning seeks to connect with why something is arising in the first place.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“All of us humans are now invited into an evolving ecology of a new epoch, in which we get to reconfigure ourselves. And the self-electing, self-configuring, self-authoring responsibility is actually to step up to that dialogue, that conversation, because no one else can do it for ourselves. We are all children seeking to grow and mature into that kind of relationship with the universe to become adults in that sense of self-responsibility.” (Aviv)

“The Universalis human project is to do with coming into some kind of partnering with yourself and with the universe you are emerging in. It's a new way of being, it's a new way of partnering on the inside with the universe at large, inside of which we are looking to liberate a whole new set of latent technologies within the human system, and codify those, and translate them, and build the topographical landscape such that we can liberate even more so all that becomes available for us - and that the next 1000 years is about unlocking that greater potential.” (Aviv) 

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Universalis #8 - Partnering with the Universe

The journey of a spiritual teacher can help illuminate the joy, pain, revelations and profound awakenings that often accompany someone on the path to discover the larger meaning of life and the universe.

This conversation brings us an intimate look into one such life of spiritual learning and leading, as Aviv Shahar is joined by author, educator, innovator and business owner Sarah McCrum. It also inaugurates a new Portals series that will explore the unique developmental journey of spiritual teachers and leaders from a variety of disciplines. 

Sarah’s path of searching and teaching stretches from the high — experiencing the “source code” or creational origins of the well of being, or wellbeing — to the awareness of the energy of money as being an integral part of our wellbeing and spiritual purpose.

Sarah reflects on the many lessons and insights from her years of studying directly with spiritual teachers from several disciplines and communities — the deep healing, revelations, and challenges inherent in the student-teacher relationship. Her experience reflects aspects of the Portals exploration into the Teacher’s Journey. 

The story continues as Sarah describes the feeling of freedom, of being both an individual, and connected to the divine nature that emanates from the core of the universe. Other insights from their conversation include:

• The deepest terror had been to question things held to be true in the spiritual community. The curiosity and willingness to question and find answers for yourself is the journey of becoming a teacher.
• What’s important in the archetype of this story is the contracting from total surrender and openness to the teacher. It’s almost necessary in individuation — finding your own voice, your own path.
• A teacher can become dependent on being validated or needing the magnification of people around the work; it becomes the instrument of transmission. Without it, the teacher can’t access their own connection.
• There is an enormous craving in people to bypass and get to the instant solution, the instant illumination. Yet there is something about the human divinity that is very high and should not be compromised.
• To teach safely means to develop the systems and inner formation that can handle the antithetical nature that accompanies this work. Otherwise, you're not useful to yourself or others in a sustainable way.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“And what actually happened was that I heard or felt or sensed the words the well of being, and that well of being appeared to me to be in creation. Those were the words that came to me, and that was something I was very interested in exploring already - what is creation? And the well of being then becomes an experience which is a very deep, very fundamental inner experience of well being, which actually started, for me, a way of changing perhaps my own origin story about life.” (Sarah)

“And I then experienced what I now know to be the light. And it was an experience, first of all, of total protection, absolute protection, absolute stillness that was not contrasted with any movement, but sits inside all movement. So it was an experience of the absolute within all non-absolute. And I saw that it was in everything. It doesn't matter how dark a situation is, the light is in there. And that became very important.” (Sarah)

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The Teacher's Journey with Sarah McCrum

It was a Portals cliffhanger: We were in midflight, in midair, final destination unseen, at the end of the last Current Openings as we journeyed into the deeper space of development and what it means for us and the universe. The conversation then paused, to pick up later.

No need to worry. Our flight now resumes, as we aim even deeper into the core dimensions of what it means to be a true caregiver for ourselves, the planet, the cosmos, and future generations yet to come. The dimensions of care and love that determine our future with the choices and decisions we make every day.

A good place to start might be to notice the word “care” can be found in caregiver and character. What sort of character builds the inner platform that offers a good home to the new evolutionary energy now finding its way into humanity and the planet? How do our values, principles and morals enable us to connect with the source of what powers us on the inside, in whatever we are aiming to do?

As our “Current Openings: What the World Doesn’t Quite Get Yet” flight continues, Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis explore further into the five core dimensions of what it means to develop. 

Among their perceptions:

• Peak experiences are wonderful both individually and communally. But the trueness of one's development and character are more clearly defined by the point below which we never go.
• When we develop character, we again move a little more into the interior. We don’t disappear on the inside; the best way to develop character is in service of the larger ecology we are joined to.
• Hiding in an esoteric development might render yourself ineffective — you are essentially escaping engagement with your fellow humans. We live in the exoteric world and are able to create moments and spaces of esoteric depth.
• Where are today’s equivalent of the knights and ladies of King Arthur’s court? They are showing up all over the planet, endeavoring to make the higher choices of living in the face of confusion and chaos.
• Self-determination is key to becoming the person you want to be and to take a hand in your own development, to stand out with the virtues and values you decided.
• To live a virtuous life that is congruent with chosen values is to work softly, not just hard, to not go below the standards we set for ourselves, to embrace the idea of character development.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

“I'm proposing, developing skills was developing what you can do. Developing inside a role in a domain was about developing what you serve. When you develop your character, you are again moving a little bit more inside, in the interior, and it's not that you disappear in the interior because often the best way to develop character is actually to be in service of the larger ecology you are serving. And so I'm proposing that character in this is developing what you are, or developing what you're becoming, or both.” (Aviv)

“So often people think about the development journey, and they will go to describe their peak experience. Oh, I've experienced a non-dual illumination. I've experienced an ecstatic state. Okay, that's wonderful. The peak experiences are wonderful, both at an individual level and at a communal level. The trueness of one's development, and one's character, is more clearly defined by the point below which we never go.” (Aviv)

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Current Openings #14: What Does it Mean to Develop?