Episodes
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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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“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
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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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“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?
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It remains one of the most powerful and personal callings for someone on a quest for transformation and inspiration: the pilgrimage — a journey to what are believed to be sources of connection to the sacred or divine, the holy places.
Many of the best-known religious pilgrimages involve a million or more believers or devotees, such as the Hajj, or sacred Hindu celebrations in India. A pilgrimage can be required by religious law, or begin with a singular calling, an inner urge, felt by the pilgrim for closer communion with the divine, however the spiritual or universal source is named or described.
Why do people all over the planet from nearly every tradition take up these sometimes arduous adventures of spiritual devotion? What do they hope for?
In this conversation we hear from two longtime Portals friends who recently completed what some people might call the pilgrimage of a lifetime, to the source high in the Himalayas of the sacred Ganges River, in Hindu belief the home of the Goddess Ganga. Jeff Vander Clute, consultant and author, and Grace Boda, teacher, consultant and executive coach, share with Aviv Shahar the feelings and power of their pilgrimage to this divine source.
Among their insights:
Pilgrimage is an opportunity to be individually transformed, and to plug into a universal power and give back into the collective — a seemingly nonlinear impact on the field, this planet and the people who inhabit her.It was a total life reboot; a reorientation from rigorously mining truth in every circumstance, to expressing love grounded in truth.It’s reaching an edge physically, out of one's comfort zone, and needing to access other energy, other capacity, with the mental experience of dropping the structures and formations that block higher communion.When we Source, we open to the inspiration, and it brings a kind of knowing of right action — what the moment calls for. We can respond accordingly, and roles emerge; if a Sherpa is needed, we’re suddenly a Sherpa.If there is shadow anywhere, there is shadow in me; if there is woundedness, there's woundedness in me. We co-participate in the field of healing. None of us is above the work required.If there is a Second Coming, it is all of us. This time, the upwelling impulse of enlightenment is collective — a collective presence and awakeness — which fills us from a source beyond any personal identity.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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“And I realized that I was having a total life reboot. And, with the benefit of a little bit of hindsight, I can say that the nature of the reboot was a reorientation from mining truth, like rigorously mining truth, in every circumstance: what is true, what is true, what is true, what is true? What is real, and what is not? That had been my inquiry for many years. Subsequent to going all the way to the source, and having this embodied experience, the inquiry changed to expressing love.” (Jeff)
“Perhaps because this group was ultra coherent, we were somehow able to become a conscious microcosm of the whole, of let's say the species, and even the whole Gaian system, and offer ourselves in service to the transformation of the entirety and the healing of the human family. So we're going to the source, and we're going to the roots, and we're able to be correspondingly empowered in our service and devotion to the transformation of humanity at this time.” (Jeff)
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Journeying to Source
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How do we reckon with a reckoning? We can look around at the many crises engulfing the planet and think that, yes, humanity is facing its day of reckoning, a time of consequences for many forms of unsustainable behavior throughout the modern era. The “twilight of the gods,” or unraveling of our inherited values and reality described in mythology and literature.
Can we find a path forward from reckoning to renewal? In a post-guru era, the search for new intelligence and insight doesn’t rely on any single external authority. We are inspired by gifted teachers, shamans, and enlightened companions, but this also is a time of distributed leadership.
Each one of us has the natural capacity to connect with a universal source of knowledge and creativity — homo universalis. Each one of us carries a piece of the puzzle that together form a clear image of a collective new future. Doesn’t it make sense to then together reckon new ways of creating community that liberate the best each has to offer?
We are fortunate to again have a gifted guide as we navigate our way through this shape-shifting new reality. This is the third conversation between Aviv Shahar and Layman Pascal, a leader in Integral thinking and teaching, and a prominent voice on the Integral Stage YouTube channel and podcast.
Among their insights:
We’re entrenched on this planet in patterns that are not accessing the spirit. We're not collectively mobilizing to solve the metacrisis. We need a new source of meaning and energy to mobilize outside our embedded patterns.Merging and harmonizing different realms of experience produces an “extra,” greater than the sum of the parts. The extra is a pragmatic way to think about what spirituality and religion point toward.We have to reckon with the fact the very instruments through which we are trying to solve our problems are generating another set of problems that are gaining on us very quickly.We can't trust anything socially; we’re peripherally aware that we're not experiencing the same reality; the structure has been removed — a deeply uncanny and unsettling place to be; the time between worlds.Our sense of a shared consensus reality has been undermined. Any voice, image, or reference material can be generated by machine tools; what could give us the sense of proof has been taken away from us.We need to practice the emotional quality of trust individually, collectively and as a culture. There are many objective reasons to not trust our embedded systems, but we have a personal responsibility to be capable of trust.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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“So I think the emotional quality of trust is something that we need to practice more individually, collectively, and as a culture. When we look at the broader sociopolitical situation in the world there are many objective reasons to not trust the systems that we are embedded in. But we also have a personal responsibility to become capable of trust, because it's not just a response to what's out there, it's also kind of a faithful act that we make in ourselves.” (Layman)
“We're just shifting to a new system, so that we have to develop new responses collectively for figuring out how to be together, how to be in reality. And, in order to do that, we have to be able to sample lots of different kinds of perspectives and different kinds of reality tunnels. But not only sample them and acknowledge the plurality, not only go into the post-modern kind of consciousness, we have to be able to bring them back together in a way that is coherent and empowering. So that's the shift beyond the post-modern into the meta-modern sensibility.” (Layman)
“There is a body of work that’s been emerging over the last few years inside the Portals project, which we call the epoch transition, or the epoch journey, where we tell the story of the epoch through sevenfold natures, or through the rainbow. But these colors mean something other than what they mean in the traditional integrative framework, or spiral dynamics, or any other they’re talking about. They are describing recurring potencies in nature that are emergent throughout the epoch.” (Aviv)
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The Time Between Worlds with Layman Pascal
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How would we even consider paying back the universe — returning the favor — for the most amazing gift of being alive? In a simple appreciation, every breath, every heartbeat, demonstrates a greater permission, an ongoing love and care for the human species. Isn’t it reasonable to wonder how we might reciprocate?
Fortunately, there are many clues and directions in Current Openings that explore the true nature and innate possibility of being human. Much of the discovery has broadened our understanding of a larger purpose in the cosmos and what it means to actually develop.
We’ve learned, for example, that by design we generate and process energy at many levels, frequencies and qualities. We can choose to create and transmit into our lives and the world generosity, care, kindness and peace — qualities that enrich and uplift life itself — instead of being pulled into ever-more-toxic political and cultural polarities.
The activation of Homo Universalis, a greater universal possibility, means each of us can choose to become a conduit, a safe harbor, for new evolutionary potential nudging its way into humanity and the planet. We help ourselves (and each other) by helping the future help us. Not a bad first cosmic “thank you.”
As we continue the series “Current Openings: What the World Doesn’t Quite Get Yet,”Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis further explore the human impulse to reciprocate the cosmic love that keeps our hearts ticking.
Among their appreciations:
When we talk about dimensions of care and love, the invitation is to become caretakers to ourselves, the planet, and humanity at large in the way we simply make our choices every day.A perspective about the future is to have a degree of humility that goes with humanity. We didn't make the universe; we're co-respondents to new energy appearing, becoming people of the future.We can develop ourselves to become a conduit for a bright future, the portal for all that life can be as the universe continues to release its potential through planetary and human affairs.Humans are contagious: what we think and feel, and the energies we bring into ourselves and transmit, are contagious. If we're inspired in ourselves, other people can also become inspired.Generosity is the inner core of the human. It comes from being stable and strong in yourself; knowing who you are and why you’re here; that the universe wants you to be here, and to realize we are of kind; we're kin.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 theEventspage. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“This is looking at the inner core design of the human and having a human perspective on how we can help humanity. And, at the core of that, to me, sits this idea of generosity, which comes from being stable in oneself and strong in oneself, from the personal perspective, having a good sense of who one is and why one is here, that the universe wants us to be here, and to realize that we are of kind, or even a stronger expression, we are kin. We're of kin to the rest of the human race.” (David)
“So when we bring the cosmic perspective and we ask, how can you help the universe? The position we take, the invitation we make is, well, you develop yourself. By actually developing yourself you are helping the universe, you're helping humanity, you're helping the planet, you're helping yourself - by developing yourself, period. However, I'm offering the specificity of develop yourself as an agent of evolution, and develop yourself as an agent of the evolution of the universe in human and planetary affairs.” (Aviv)
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Current Openings #13 – How Can We Help the Future
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In chapter one we introduced the story of the soul showing up as part of a new life on the natural as was meant to be line. It is programmed with a threefold brief to orchestrate and guide the human to a) stay alive, b) learn, adapt, and improve opportunities, and c) discover and realize your higher purpose. The soul nudges you to bring to life and express the cosmology of your natural higher qualities.
In chapter two we ask why and how we get separated from the natural as was meant to be line, and what happens to the soul when we do. How does the soul fixate on and try to compensate for the separation? We will also address the postmodern self-construction criticism of what we describe by the natural as was meant to be response of the soul. We put individuals to work in things that do not serve life, and they hate their work. The people who were meant to move life forward are being hijacked by the systems, and we create the crisis we have today.
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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“You are a unique configuration: completely unique fingerprint like no other human; a unique, colorful intricate iris pattern of ridges and folds, and a unique cosmology of competencies, qualities, and essences. All of which means you represent a unique discovery lab for life. Life gets to discover and experience a once-in-the-universe algorithmic configuration through you. This is an extraordinary fact, a sacred fact.” (Aviv)
“Every person has a spiritual journey, whether they believe in the actuality of the spirit or not. You cannot be a human and not have a spiritual journey. A human is a spirit being entering a planetary experience in the human model. It is accompanied by a soul whose job is to be a companioning liaison that helps navigate and orchestrate the human to realize the spirit’s purpose through development and evolution.” (Aviv)
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Portals Into the Soul, Chapter 2 - The Ghost
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What if the underlying natural intelligence and energy that help influence and shape nearly every aspect of our lives were actually identifiable patterns hiding in plain sight — visible in every domain of life to anyone with the eyes (perception) to see?
Underlying patterns that together point to a unified universal operating system or source code that is guiding the growth and evolution of our own life, humanity and the planet…and all the ways we connect and interact. Identifying the patterns can open greater possibility of living and working in harmony with, not contrary to, the rhythms of nature and life.
Making space and time for the dynamic flow of life itself can transform a society and culture — all that we do, in the workplace, legal system, relationships and communities. How so?
We explore the guiding influence of usually unseen patterns and cycles in this conversation between Aviv Shahar and Jose Leal, a founding member of Society 2045, a gathering of visionaries imagining a future that supports and liberates the best of humanity. They first looked into their evolutionary crystal ball in the Portals conversation Imagine 2045.
Among their current insights:
We put individuals to work in things that do not serve life, and they hate their work. The people who were meant to move life forward are being hijacked by the systems, and we create the crisis we have today.We are in many ways thriving, and in many ways killing ourselves. The lack of recognition of the patterns of life is removing our energy from being in the flow of what life needs.The new cycle and new patterns arising are an opportunity to build new organizations that will displace part of the current system and operate more closely to the living patterns.Helping people become aware of the arising patterns is a psycho-activating catalyst that unlocks the energy, and facilitates the shift from the static and arresting to the fluid and integrated.We can see each persons’ unique configuration in their fingerprint, in their eyes. It's a sacred fact that we show up here as a unique representation of life; it's not just a random thing.A career is not just a projection or destination. I have certain capacities for certain things; if I lean into that, I'm dancing with purpose, to engage in the way that best serves life.We are inter-dependent, as individuals, as life itself. It changes our understanding of what we're doing to and for each other. It fractures the idea of independence; any one individual cannot exist independent of the rest of nature.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 theEventspage. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“There is implicit in these realizations some reframing of belief systems, such as what is it we believe the case to be about decay about dying? Do we believe it’s the end of everything? Or do we believe it is simply how the system reboots or regenerates or rejuvenates itself? And that leads us to the third pattern which you decoded as from transactions to relationships, or from impersonality of transactions to depth of relationships. There is an importance here of the word depth, say something about the significance of that depth and relationships in this pattern.” (Aviv)
“Nature and its complexity is still happening, we are nature. And those patterns, be it in our organizations or in our agreements, or in the way we do finance or the way we do collaboration, all of those things actually operate at some level, at the nature level, in those rhythms. That is life and nature’s complexity. And we’re butting against those two every day. And so recognizing that, when we look at, say for example, something that we would call a strategy for a period of time and saying, let’s look at where we want to go, but adapt to the flow, the nonlinear flow of where, of how we’re going to get there. And recognizing that that’s a fluid thing that we do, not a linear story that we can tell and be beholden to the story, no matter what the reality is, in the moment.” (Jose)
“Recognizing that we are interdependent as individuals, as life itself, changes our understanding of what it is that we're doing to and for each other. And the pattern that emerged that life seeks to serve life, not as an option, not as a choice, but as the very process of life is to serve life.” (Jose)
“The very existence of AI is a pattern of life. AI as a tool, that humans have been building tools for millennia, will alter our landscape like every other tool has altered the landscape. And I think that looking at these patterns lets us understand that we're not here to dictate what happens and doesn't happen. We're here to figure out how to go with the flow of life, rather than contradict the flow of life.” (Jose)
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8 Patterns of Transformation with Jose Leal
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How do we sidestep a familiar and unhelpful pattern of thought or behavior in that moment when trauma or pain begins to assert itself and trigger a response? Can we in the triggering moment find a uniquely creative and new response that helps illuminate and loosen the trauma’s grip?
Learning to pause before reacting to a triggering feeling or memory might be one of the most important moments in the healing process. Deciding how we will respond, if at all, engages a larger awareness or consciousness that lifts our perspective above the immediate, often polarized, circumstance. In this view of healing, consciousness is the medicine.
In this moment we can remember there is no separation: we are naturally integrated with larger universal patterns of regenerative energy and intelligence. Which means as we heal, the universe heals, and we co-create a new future.
We explore further into the realms of light and shadow and healing with a group of Portals friends who bring an amazing depth and breadth of experience as practitioners, authors, and teachers. In this new addition to the What is Healing? series, Aviv Shahar is joined by Lonny Jarrett, AlexanderLove, Randine Anderson Lewis, and Lorie EveDechar.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“I think when we talk about healing, it's really a concept very much applied to the bottom, which is that I cut myself shaving. And it takes two weeks for the wound to heal, or I broke my leg and it takes six months for it to heal. And the notion of healing in that regard in the physical realm and in the gross dimension of being is that something's going to get back to like it was, and it's going to be out of the way, and it won't be an inconvenience, and it will be resolved. And just over the course of my life, healing has really changed to evolution and the soul’s view of just a very deep time process.” (Lonny)
“I love that distinction around healing, often being whether we're thinking about it consciously or unconsciously, as a returning back to something sort of like, oh, well, I had a big trauma in my life. And so, if I heal, then I'll be the person I was before the trauma. And it brings up for me how often, in the West, we think of ourselves as nouns, we think of ourselves as like these fixed things that kind of get broken, and then we have to patch back together. Whereas, in the East, there's a lot of invitation to explore ourselves more like a verb. And when we do that, it invites this notion that every moment is receiving the previous moments, and then creating something new.” (Alexander)
“Where does healing come from? I'm really struck with this sense of our vastness, that we are multidimensional beings - it's not just the manifestation of the materiality here. I know from my own experience that what opens me up to that is my own brokenness, my own flaws, the ways that I can't seem to access the healing that I want. So all I can do is surrender and say, I need help.” (Randine)
“The second a person says, okay, I'm going to do it, or I'm not going to do it, and I'm putting my stake in the ground and the karmic line ends now, then instantly all the forces that support the evolution of their soul toward the true, the good, the beautiful, toward this wholesome step, line up. And every force inside that wants to maintain the status quo and has no sincerity at all in engaging with healing also becomes perfectly clear - and then we really have something we can work with. And that shifts the whole orientation from healing to evolution.” (Alexander)
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What is Healing #3 - Opening to Healing
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The teacher-student dynamic has been central for the unfolding story of humanity. Although universities began to emerge in Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries, the modern education system only developed during the Industrial Revolution, in part for adults to be able to go to work in factories. Modern education focused on exterior knowledge of the physical world and was shaped by scientific orientation. It also included learning and development of skills. These were mostly physical and mental skills that would facilitate participation in the workforce and employability.
What was largely left out of modern education was the interior and the character development journey. Modern education had no capacity to address this need. It was left for the priest, rabbi, lama, and the guru-teacher. The therapist was added later.
Anyone aspiring to deeper self-insight and understanding and the pursuit of perennial wisdom, both in the East and the West, needed to find the teacher and often the community where the quest for truth and self-knowledge could be supported.
Recent decades brought new realizations about the dynamic between a searching student and their spiritual teacher. In this conversation between Aviv Shahar and longtime Portals friend Jeff Vander Clute, author of Beyond Every Teaching, they trace the teacher’s journey, the identification trap for both teacher and student, and the golden shadow phenomenon. They also are reflecting on the kinds of ethical evolutionary communities that are arising now to address these challenges.
These ponders come at a critical time. We’ve explored on Portals the post-guru quest and the search for truth as new creative capacities come online with the activation of Homo Universalis, the universal human. We can integrate with the new incoming evolutionary impulse as self-authored and self-responsible — our own pathfinders with the help of others around us.
Among their insights:
If the teacher identifies with the students’ love and admiration, or with their criticism, they begin to be more attuned to their students rather than the original purpose or the ineffable source.A pathology of communities that decide to do away with teachers is to bounce to the other side of the polarity and not adopt any form of internal structure.We are in the post-guru phase and the resolution of the story is that the collective — the mutualized ecology and distributed body of people that we are — can become the teaching agency.This is about us as human beings learning to handle power safely before we can become universalized, where the power levels intensify; we go through many tests in our life and experience.For as long as we are in the flesh, we will have unfinished business that needs tending to, whatever the degree of enlightenment, even of a teacher. Nobody is exonerated.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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“And I would say a great way to realize the confirmation, not just the knowing, which could be abstract, to imbibe life and the experiences that life brings through interactions with students through interactions with anyone on the street. And to bring oneself into contact with the world is perhaps the most powerful way, not only to be confirmed in what one knows, you can think of the world as the playground for one’s spirituality, and more than that, the testing ground, but also to go deeper. And not only be in the cave from time to time, but to become the cave. So there’s no longer a need to go off to the cave. That happens when the inner and the outer are reconciled, unified, and ultimately seamlessly integrated.” (Jeff)
“It’s well said and I’m seeing the value of the dysfunction in bringing attention and awareness to the higher potential for the teaching and for the teacher. And, as you said, if we start with the goal of empowering, enabling everyone to have their own source connection, source realization, it does flow more smoothly. And if there’s dissonance, that’s a great indication that maybe we could be, maybe it’s time, maybe doing more of that, maybe it wasn’t time before. So the dissonance is valuable.” (Jeff)
“The trap is there already, it's always ever present, and unless we continually work with it we are captured by the ghostly behaviors, the ghostly patterns, of this trap. For as long as we are in the flesh, even when we feel that we have worked through all our disowned content, there will always be more patterns that with greater power, and with greater intensity, and with greater illumination will come to the surface.” (Aviv)
“Now what I'm describing here, in some way, is a central feature of the human experience, even in the child-parent relationship. We each, as children, we had the first moment when we said, well, my father, my mother - hopefully a little later than earlier - and there was, okay, they are human beings, too. They're flawed in their way, they have their weaknesses. And many of us experienced it very early in childhood, for some of us it came later. So there is a disillusionment crisis the student now experiences in relation to the teacher.” (Aviv)
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The Guru Trap and the Golden Shadow
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It’s good to remember that whatever the emotional, mental, or life pain or trauma we face — whatever the shadow or ghost — we can at any time assemble the most powerful team of advisors, healers, teachers, and friends available to help us. It can be anyone, close by or at distance; a quality, such as courage or kindness. Whatever we think we need.
They all come together in what we call The Inner Conclave, a multi-dimensional interior gathering of the many lives and resources accessible within us. If we face the trauma caused by abuse or loss, for example, we can imagine in our Conclave a person or quality that represents love, or trust, or wisdom.
It’s not merely a mental picture, but the energetic value and consciousness that work together to illuminate and in time transform the shadow or ghost, the pain and anguish. Where do our ghosts come from? Imagine an inner intelligence we call a soul that seeks always to keep us safe, and reconnect us to the natural love and wonder in us at birth.
We discover much more about the ghost and shadow, and the healing possibility of The Inner Conclave practice, in this conversation with Aviv Shahar and longtime Portalsfriend 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:
It’s a step-by-step process, potentially a navigable journey, to engage one's soul and come into the right relationship, a wholeness, with oneself. Miraculously, the world then begins to reflect our wholeness.The Inner Conclave contemplation enables a larger space and capacity, not to bypass or suppress the pain, but to illuminate and metabolize the ache and anguish.Suddenly, what used to be very big is no longer so large, as all the capacities and qualities we imagine and summon come online and take part in the inner conflict.We can bring mental healing to a whole lineage — a tribe, a nation — as part of humanity tapping into a universally-inclined shared experience accessed together in The Inner Conclave.Releasing ourself from the arresting limitation of polarities is to allow the natural multiplicity of voices, qualities, and essences that we are to impart their intelligence and revelation.Whatever the inner script, we each have a shadow or ghost pattern enacted with us because of our formative painful experience. Can it reveal a high truth or voice? How can we disarm it safely?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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“These are two novel objectives. What I simply meant by the transparency offered was that, in this case, we are journeying with a global community of some 150 people where the emphasis is that it’s not a teaching or learning situation as a first principle, although the profound revelatory dimension, learning dimension, developmental dimension, and healing dimension all accompany nature and features, the primary impulse is this evolutionary frame of mind.” (Aviv)
“I’m appreciating the genius of life in always bringing situations that challenge our core programming so that we can become conscious of our essential qualities and nature.On the one hand, well, this is just what I’m kind of thinking in this moment; we can contest it perhaps later. But I’m seeing that as long as collective human consciousness and there is a collective mind, if you will, that we participate in and are fixated on and have a deep belief in separation from the Divine, let’s say, then separation will continue to show up in every domain - in some ways to get our attention. I’m seeing that as we shift collectively into homo universalis, that operating system or way of learning and evolving need not continue.” (Jeff)“One way the ghost compensatory act will express itself in this situation is the person will develop a whole set of behaviors to try to protect from any dimension that will take away from harmony. So, in fact, they're not living in harmony, they're actually defending against anything that will take away from them the sense of harmony, but they are more in the ghostly experience of having been distanced and separated from harmony.” (Aviv)
“The stories that we tell ourselves, which so often are unconscious, or maybe at best semi-conscious, the scripts that are cycling round and round, which have their purpose to protect us from pain or to continue to remind us, perhaps, of a state that we feel has been lost. So you're providing a step by step path to go down a layer, down another layer, down another layer, access the agency, access the power of our own soul, frankly, to maybe burn away what is no longer serving, burn away the shadow.” (Jeff)
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The Ghost and the Inner Conclave
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How often do we feel the people closest to us emotionally or energetically — though not related by blood or marriage — are actually our real family? We all know the saying “You can’t choose your family,” usually meant humorously when a relative does something we find embarrassing. What if we can choose our family, in all the ways that have consequence, meaning and value for our lives?
We’re not referring to bloodline or DNA. It’s the special relationships — family formed from the bonds, exchange, and shared space of new possibility created when people come together in mutual purpose and vision. How does it happen? It begins with the very real connections among all humans.
We are singular and individual, but also born with minds, systems, and highly sensitive faculties that can naturally tune into and connect with the frequencies of our fellow humans. Not only link with one another, but exchange and transfer. Which means my learning and inspiration can become your learning and inspiration; a real shared consciousness.
It gets bigger. The same inner technology that connects us with each other also integrates with much larger universal systems and intelligence, allowing the flow of evolutionary energy to feel its way into humanity. Evolving together, us and the universe. Quite a family.
This conversation continues our discovery of family and growing together begun in earlier dialogues among Aviv Shahar and Portals friends Nigel Geeves and Well. Among their ponderings and insights:
In the economics of the universe, rather than competing with and destroying each other, we can actually benefit each other; we access in each other the power of the work we’ve done in our unique configurations.People think we get into the universe by going out there. But the codes of the universe are in us, or we wouldn't be able to see it. It’s like a tuning fork — we access the universe by going deep within ourselves.Could it be that we are each products of a universal transcendence? In getting together, we're like new chemicals combining into new reactions to create a new, surrogate universe beyond the one that formed us.The gift of human life and consciousness is that we’re the portal through which the universe is able to birth a new possibility; we humans become the midwifery agency of universal evolution.My inner systems are way more intelligent than me. They are designed to tune into others; in that connection, I find a different part of my own life. It's like new lives get born in each meeting with another person.While we're here, we have permission to create relationships. The way our body works can give guidance on how to proceed; atoms, molecules, and cells integrate and work together to support our lives.Two people can meet and something else becomes possible that wasn't pre-planned. Life itself takes a huge leap forward because different lives meet, integrate, and build things together; at higher levels, it's even more extraordinary.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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“You could say that each of us has three levels, three fundamental levels. And the first one is, you could describe it as your physical life, your planetary life that you're born into, that grows upon you. And in that, in the beginning, you're very helpless. And in the hands of others clearly, because you need support.” (Nigel)
“And one of the problems with a materialistic perspective is that we can only consider the paradigm that begins with dust from atoms and goes up, rather than contemplate what has been the contemplation of people who quest and inquire into the universe, before science, and had their way of knowing and appreciating the universe before we stumbled upon the beautiful, logical roadmap of science.” (Aviv)
“Whenever I meet another person, it allows me to be conscious of a different part of myself. I'm discovering that my systems are way more intelligent than me because they're trying to tune themselves all the time to whatever I'm facing. If I meet somebody from a foreign country, I notice my voice box is struggling to match their tone, their accent and, in that, find a different part in my own life. So it's a bit like new lives get born in each by the meeting with others. In meeting others, there's a development opportunity.” (Well)
“The uniqueness, the specialness, of each of us as a life, as an individual is something to do with what we came into this world with - however you define that. But when we meet each other, we're actually coming into contact with something else that is different to us. And in the best case of two things that are different meeting, something else becomes possible that wasn't preconceived, wasn't pre-planned, wasn't pre-given, and life itself therefore takes a huge leap forward by the fact that lives can meet, and integrate, and build things together.” (Nigel)
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Evolving Together #3 - Choosing Our Families
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We might want to stop and consider if a slightly different approach could help us unlock the core question this conversation is posing: Why develop yourself? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to wonder that since we will develop, one way or another, why not choose with intention and awareness what will fill our lives and help shape our future?
The human is designed to develop. We know from earlier Current Openings, such as The Addiction Trap, that the open-ended potential of the brain and mind can be programmed by high-intensity, repetitive impressions and activity. Toxic or healthy; healing or harming: the choice is ours. There is no inner void.
We can consciously direct our natural creative potential to the process of converting physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual energy into real impacts and results in our inner and outer worlds. Actually shaping our personal and planetary ecology, and the new universal possibility now emerging.
The more finely we develop, the greater our inner conductivity and effectiveness in the life we choose. Maybe a beginning answer to our core question.
Of course, there are many paths and possibilities to discover. In the latest edition of the Portals series “Current Openings: What the World Doesn’t Quite Get Yet”, Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis explore why human development shouldn’t be left to chance.
Among their observations:
It comes down to what we process: how we think, use our emotion, use our life, and apply ourselves. Why develop? At one level we help humanity, at the same time helping the planet and the cosmos.Could we partner with the planet to facilitate the mutual development and evolution of this sacred ecology we call Earth? What about an even broader perspective, where we think about the human as a universal being?Development is the incantation of tomorrow, and how that future reveals itself, through our living process. To develop is to emancipate the universal possibility that can transform our lives.What’s coming into focus is that development expands our perspective from the personal to the human, to the planetary, to the cosmic, to the future. We are evolving who we see ourselves to be.A curious part of development is surrender. We can't just say to the universe “take me as I am.” What's our surrender value? What have we assembled in ourselves that has helped the universe move on to a viable future?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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“I think, to help support something that you said, which is about the love of the universe, and how to look at that in a way that to me is infallible, and that is that we can see the love of the universe in what the universe supports. And if we bring that to planetary level - it’s easier to see in our own planet because this is the where we are, this is our home planet - that the planet supports actively the forms of organic life that exist on the planet right now. And a really interesting feature, the science tells us that about 93 to 97% of what has been on the planet, the different species of organic life, are already extinct.” (David)
“I would, again, make another approach in respect of what is the planetary perspective? What does the planet want from the human? What planetary purpose does a human fulfill? It’s easy to see with a daffodil, with a cat, with a squirrel, with a dog - they’re processing a particular energy. The planet draws that energy from that part of organic life. And the way I view it is, that’s how the planet feeds from universal energy, even by the direct process of sunlight, being beamed through the organic life processing the sunlight, and then producing material which goes into the planet. And she even materially grows her soil. This will be the planetary program functioning at, you could say, an unconscious level.” (David)“We are designed to develop, so why not take a hand and develop what you would choose to develop, from a personal perspective, rather than what everything else would turn you out to be if you don't take a hand in the matter? In other words, everybody is developing, but are they choosing the way of that development, or are they going to turn out to be the way that life turns them out to be?” (David)
“Someone says, well, what's your purpose? The answer might be, well, I'm here to help raise the level of vibration of the human race by connecting to higher cosmic energy as much as I can. And I'm developing myself as far as I can to be able to do that. Oh, by the way, I'm doing this, this, and this job to cover the economics because I'm not paid for being a Cosmic Agency right now.” (David)
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Current Openings #12 - Why Develop Yourself?
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Building on the context offered in thePreamble, this is the first in a series of Portals Into the Soul chapters we are publishing in a draft form. This work was seeded by the conversation The Ghost and The Inner Conclaveand, as the preamble narrates, by four decades of intense inquiry.
Portals into the Soul will reflect on the core story of life from the perspective of the soul. It will:
Describe the threefold configuration of the soulCodify the psychology the soul develops as a byproduct of one’s experience expressed in the compensatory act we call the ghostExplore soul pathways into the brain and the mindSketch The Inner Conclave process and its three levels of application in healing, development and connecting communionReflect on the ensoulment process and the birthing of a higher soulDescribe this epochal transition moment as a context for our voyage to rediscover the soulLet us begin this trace by appreciating what the soul is, what it does, and its threefold nature.
The Threefold Configuration of the Soul
We each appear in a standard human model, if we are all healthy: two arms, two legs, two eyes, two lungs, one liver, one heart, and a soul. That is the standard human model, the same for all. Within that shared design we each have a unique threefold soul configuration.
We describe the soul with a specific understanding, quite different to the general and often confusing use of the word. Okay, so what does the soul do?
The soul functions as an intelligence loom that mediates, negotiates, regulates, and navigates the planetary experience in the human model. Imagine the human is given a soul as a liaison, a companion for life, because humans are spirit beings, showing up here inside a carnal form in the Earthly ecology.
If a spirit showed up in a body without a companioning soul, the spirit and body wouldn’t know how to communicate with each other. The soul reads the cues of the spirit and is wired and programmed to offer translation to the body and back to the spirit; to orchestrate the human Earthly model and guide it through the planetary obstacle course.
The soul as an intelligence loom runs a three-layered orchestration system. The foundational orchestration layer keeps you alive. The second orchestration process guides your continual learning. The third orchestrating impulse intelligently prods you to discover and actualize your universal purpose.
Let’s reflect on these a little more.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“The soul functions as an intelligence loom that mediates, negotiates, regulates, and navigates the planetary experience in the human model. Imagine the human is given a soul as a liaison, a companion for life, because humans are spirit beings, showing up here inside a carnal form in the Earthly ecology.” (Aviv)
“Learning is inherent and automatic in the cellular feedback loop, where every cell communicates and updates all the other cells around it about changes it experiences. The immune system itself is an adaptive learning and memory program, a novel evolutionary product that is soul powered.” (Aviv)“The other major benefit on this path is that it squeezed me time and again into the unknown, where no maps were available. I have had to work by discovering the map on the move. Stepping into a functional role and facilitating, leading, and coaching others into an unknown terrain helped to syphon and catalyze connective flow, revelation, and fortitude, inspired by inquiries I have been pursuing my entire adult life.” (Aviv)
“When we draw closer to our soul’s nature, discover how we are meant to serve the situations we encounter, and connect to our calling, the spirit glistens and glows through the unique soul cosmology of qualities and natures. It may appear with a whimsical sense of humor; with others the soul glows with immense courage and the capacity to respond at the point of need and do what must be done. With another it is an inventive and innovative genius, or the intelligence of deep listening, care and healing support.” (Aviv)
“The first soul directive is a standard issuance working to keep you alive. The seconddirective compels you to learn, adapt, and improve by using your unique capabilities and can-do talent. The third directive seeks to unlock your unique configuration as it guides and even haunts you to discover your greater potential in life.” (Aviv)
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Portals Into the Soul, Chapter 1: The Soul - A Threefold Orchestration
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Greetings, friend,
Aviv is writing with exciting updates about Portals Into the Soul.
On Christmas Eve, Sunday, December 24, I finally found space to sit down with notes Kyriaki Nikandrou of the Portals team created out of The Ghost and the Inner Conclave conversation with Jeff Vander Clute. We recorded that conversation after a four-day Epoch Journey event in September and it was published in December 2023.
Once a space was created, what transpired on Christmas Eve took my breath away. I will get to what began to open below and describe the Portals Into the Soul work that started to emerge.
I said above “finally” because the last four months of 2023 brought immense intensity and struggle. With committed work and then with the war erupting on October 7, and new commitments that emerged, I experienced the ferocity of a roller-coaster moving at warp speed, which felt like a couple of years squeezed into just a few weeks.
These developments were tracking what we describe in the Epoch Journey as the violet upsurge. I believe the violet increase will accompany us for the coming decade or more. It will continue to be characterized by seemingly out-of-this-world events that will leave little of the late 20th century world order standing. It will also bring profound breakthroughs and opportunities. Both processes are integral to the violet phase-shift.
In the seven-fold Epoch progression, each of the color fractals, including violet, are not “good” nor “bad”. They each represent certain natures of potential and are therefore accompanied by historic and cultural phenomena. Violet represents a catalyst function for transformations that arise at the end of an epoch.
The shift can be experienced both “below” and “above” the line. “Below the line” violet is expressed through, for example, breakdowns that seem to trace regressive patterns to earlier evolutionary stages, such as with the rise of despotic leaders and the escalation of barbarous wars we thought were left in the past.
“Above the line” violet appears with, for example, scientific and social innovation and development breakthroughs. As we wrote more than three years ago, emergence and emergency, breakthroughs and breakdowns, may show up at the same time, in the same place. In the coming year, we will offer more about the Epoch transition story as it unfolds.
What took my breath away on Christmas Eve was a new open vista that started to emerge. For many years I have trained myself to pay attention when something new is coming through in my contemplative process. When the nudge of a new connective and creative current arrives, my practice is to make space to allow me to become fully immersed in the significance and flow of what is arising.
Letting inspired discovery be my guide has made all the difference. My journey has not been academically fashioned. Instead, it arose in the trenches of life, in the merging integration of helping senior executives and leadership teams in one part; in another part, journeying through an esoteric initiation by immersing in the big questions of life, meaning, purpose, spirituality, and our latent and prospective evolution. All in the face of civilizational crises and imminent disintegration of the world as we have known it.
Helping senior leaders in some of the most admired companies in the world kept me grounded and sharply alert to what is happening in culture, technology, geopolitics, and more. There also has been a humbling aspect in this. I would often be in the room with extremely bright people who are the best in the world in what they do; who know about their domain more than I will ever grasp. I’ve had to find novel ways of creating differentiating, even game-changing, value to them. Where could I find and source this kind of knowhow?
It was found in the other part of my journey, which centered on an inquiry endeavor to align with perennial truths — the natural laws that shape the universe.
It is a journey that forever connects me to the deepest sense of the sacred and fills me with awe about the mysteries of life, and the incredible valiance and vulnerability in being human. This path brought me to experience immeasurable kindness and the generosity found in friendship and the mutuality of purpose.
The other promise of this adventure was that by orienting and aligning with first principles as an embodied endeavor, rather than a concept, over time it will enable me to parachute into almost any situation, connect with its core dynamics and the people involved, make meaning, and generate pathfinding possibilities. If there is a secret in this, it is that all the domains of life share a set of universal principles at core. The price of admission was to go through the experience, to be vulnerably exposed without having guarantees as to what it was going to catalyze in my formation.
The core impulse of this path has therefore not been theoretical. Instead, it focused on helping teams in the business world, and groups and communities in the spiritual pilgrimage and personal growth and development space, to produce results. For many, these are conflicting spaces. For me, I have lived for decades inside the crucible of this convergence.
The merging integration of these different worlds unlocked gifts I did not even anticipate. They tested me time and again to find and formulate modalities and journey choreographies to help people get from point A to point B. The context and the scenery of what A and B represented changed from one situation to another, but the common thread was that I just could not produce these results with fancy theories or models. Instead, I have had to test on myself first everything I was leading others into. I have had to become the living embodiment and the energetic plasma required to ease others into the journey.
I have found myself in testing situations that brought me to the edge, exposed blind spots and capacity outages, and caused development I would never be able to cause in myself on my own. I figured this was one way to do the development of a dozen lifetimes in one tour of duty. I do not recommend this approach; it is not for the faint of heart. In the Air Force I learned that a landing you can walk away from is a good landing; near misses, humbling moments, and at times extreme stress, exhaustion, and loneliness were simply accompanying elements of this journey.
The other major benefit on this path is that it squeezed me time and again into the unknown, where no maps were available. I have had to work by discovering the map on the move. Stepping into a functional role and facilitating, leading, and coaching others into an unknown terrain helped to syphon and catalyze connective flow, revelation, and fortitude, inspired by inquiries I have been pursuing my entire adult life.
On that evening of Christmas Eve, I suddenly relaxed after weeks of intensity and stress. In that space, I experienced a blessed grace. Then, glimpses of Portals Into the Soul started to come together. Chapter 1: The Soul – A Threefold Orchestration, which will be published here on February 23, came through with intensity and flow. A high-level outline for the next chapter followed quickly. Still, there was a tinge of hesitancy. Was I crazy enough to embark on formulating and writing a whole new appreciation of the soul: what it does, how it works, and why this was now an essential revelation to integrate as the Epoch transition is culminating?
Two issues arise when you attempt to approach the subject of the soul and the spirit. The first is the confusion problem. The second is the credibility challenge. The confusion arises in that there are many different usages and applications of the word soul. This is exacerbated even more by the hyper-subjective postmodern mood and discourse, where everyone seems to be entitled to their own definition of what a soul is.
Postmodern thinking may be a gift opening the way for emergent novelty, but it is also a curse, since it breeds confusion and places everything in the equating soup of personal opinion and theory. Google, ChatGPT, and Wikipedia all offer something as bland as the soul is the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal. Well, okay; how is that helpful?
Perhaps they will be updating their definitions as we publish the Portals Into the Soul installments, but even then, the confusion problem is not likely to be solved. The confusing muddle is coupled with the credibility challenge, which is driven by reductionist materialist science that says show me the soul, please, in a way that can be reproduced in a repeatable test. If you can’t, the soul doesn’t exist. Before proceeding, therefore, I needed to answer one more question: Where will I find the temerity, where will I gather the chutzpah, to tackle these problems?
If I were going to write Portals Into the Soul to recast what the soul is, what it does, and why you should bother to pay attention, and publish the draft as monthly installments through 2024, I needed to address the chutzpah challenge and the confusion and credibility issues head-on.
The Portalsproject has proven time and again it is wiser than me. The agreement with the team at the outset was that we will let the project develop us and guide us with its own teleology. As luck or divine intervention would have it, a week before Christmas Eve, we published an end-of-the-year message with the writing An End of an Era & a Post-Guru World. In it we described the three traditional jobs of a guru and reflected on the individuation project, which we suggested is now leading us from planetary Sapiens human to the rise of universal human. This is where we are changing and updating our relationship with power and authority, with each other, and with life itself.
The message then reflected on the significance of communal endeavors, where we support each other as we discover our own agentic self-authoring and self-regulating freedom and responsibility.
I have always been suspicious and partly afraid of the guru archetype and model. For a start, there is much that has gone wrong in the guru-student relationships. Second, my intuition for decades has been that our next evolution cannot and will not emerge through solo all-knowing figures. That in fact the breakthroughs we need will emerge by Evolving Together.
I now needed to confront a potential shadow element in this. I asked directly, am I holding back from more fully and freely stepping into the authenticity of the revelatory discovery I feel called to share, so to not be perceived in the historic slot of guru-teacher?
Even though there was a tinge of this worry, having just declared we’ve entered the end of the guru era, I felt absolved and liberated. The Post-Guru World message was not suggesting the time of journey guides and teachers is over. In fact, we need more facilitators, mediators, spiritual sherpas, and midwives of revelatory discovery, truth, healing, beauty, and wisdom. These now often emerge in pods, teams, and communal gatherings, where a mutuality of purpose facilitates healing, development, and evolution; where we liberate each other to our greater and higher capacities, and where multifaceted and distributed leadership increasingly is on the rise.
This has been my experience of the Portals project. There is a growing team here and it is the shared inquiry, mutual respect, and love of the project that fuel the creativity. Much of the new discovery work is siphoned through this mutualized agentic process and the greater learning organism we are becoming. On Christmas Eve, I realized I did not decide to write about the soul. The Portals project decided it for me, and I acquiesced and surrendered.
What Portals Into the Soul will bring to life is not an invention of a new “theory” or “model.” The traces formulated here will offer actual pathways you can travel and test for yourself. Please do not take anything I write as a given before you validate these actualities in your own experience.
My own discovery laboratory has been inspired by and is sourced in the deep universal truth of what the case for human life is, in the best ways I have been able to contact these great mysteries through more than four decades of intense development inquiry.
The language formulation used in these Portals Into the Soul can be appreciated through a process like painting, where the painter comes back again and again to the same regions of the picture, to add new layers upon the earlier layers, so the picture gains depth, distinction, and significance.
We approach this work as an on the move discovery process, and are serializing these chapters digitally in draft form as they emerge. The intention is to clarify, refine, and update the writings as the perception itself becomes clearer.
For years, my advisory brief for groups I am working with has offered the following awareness about language. Because our objective is not theorizing but rather facilitating actual experiential discovery, connected development experiences, and elevation states and perceptions, language is an essential tool. At the same time, it is always an after-the-fact best approximation we can get to in the moment.
Whatever we say and write is a) not claiming to be the actual case, but is the nearest description of the case we are able to get to at this time, and b) best viewed as an approximation draft until such time as we are ready to produce a better, more finely tuned, updated draft. In that sense, the project is forever a collective mutualized refinement endeavor.
To help me stay inside the connective current emerging with this endeavor, it is prudent to also declare what Portals Into the Soul will not attempt to do. I am not writing these installments to try to impress or woo you into anything. I am not seeking followers or students; I am financially secure and free.
In the face of increasing global turmoil, I feel compelled to offer discoveries that provide nourishment and fortitude, and to be in conversation with you and with a growing network of friends about the soulful future we yearn to co-create.
As indicated above, I am not seeking to create a new meta-theory of the soul in a way that integrates all that has been said or written about the soul in the East and the West, and/or by wonderful authors of the last 150 years.
This will not be a comparative study about different notions of the soul. That inquiry has its place and importance and is best led by others who are better qualified for such a study. Attempting here a comparative approach would be counterproductive for our endeavor. It would become an exercise of reconciling frames of reference and maps of meaning and predominantly engage the referencing brain. Which is an incredibly useful machinery we have learned to emphasize with the rise of the intellect over the last 400 years and the innovation wonders it brought to us.
The great fascination and love of the brain to reference, name, categorize, and compare, and thereby acquire a sense of control, also created part of the problem humanity now face. It largely abandoned and disenfranchised other forms of knowing and appreciating.
I will address this more concretely in chapter two, where we will reflect on the astrophysicist view of the world and wonder if it has a place for the soul. My aim is to invite you to relax the dominance of the referencing brain and the reductionist materialist logic most of us raised in the 20th and now the 21st century have been indoctrinated into.
Come along for a discovery odyssey, in which you explore for yourself these portals into the soul and the experiential discovery pathways offered to contact directly the sacred actuality of being human.
I hope there is interest in creating and joining a rare opportunity of embarking on this year-long journey with other like-minded friends who are interested to decode and metabolize this new revelatory work as it emerges. Imagine making this part of your 2024 voyage by participating in a Portals Into the Soul exploration pod.
We are happy to facilitate these soul-inquiry pods coming together. Just let us know hereyou are interested to join a pod and we will connect you with others.
I am always indebted to incredible mentors and journey friends who offered me guidance and inspiration. I am utterly blessed by many friends, especially the Portals team and the Epoch Journey network who fortify me with courage, kindness, and inspiration as we search and inquire into the evolutionary process underway.
What became the Portalsproject started in my mind a few weeks after Talia, my granddaughter, was born. I imagined her asking me on her 21st birthday, saba (grandpa in Hebrew), what have you done since I was born to make this world a little better and brighter for me.
As I write this on December 28, 2023, she has had her fourth birthday a couple of months ago, and she now has a younger brother Ari who is nine months young. The entire Portals project is for me a long love letter to them, their contemporaries, and future generations to follow them.
We will put the chapters out for free as they emerge with this dedication and love for their future. I am personally funding the Portalsproject, which is made possible also through the generous volunteering and labor of love of the Portals team.
Your support makes a difference and we would love to have you as a Portals memberso you can get access to members-only content and events, including the groundbreaking work of the Universalis Project. If you appreciate Portals, one great way to express your support and help me is to share Portalswith your friends. You are welcome to forward this news about Portals Into the Soul to your network.
I look forward to seeing you at one of our upcoming events.
With care,
Aviv
TWEETABLE QUOTES“In the seven-fold Epoch progression, each of the color fractals, including violet, are not ‘good’ nor ‘bad’. They each represent certain natures of potential and are therefore accompanied by historic and cultural phenomena. Violet represents a catalyst function for transformations that arise at the end of an epoch. The shift can be experienced both ‘below’ and ‘above’ the line. ‘Below the line’ violet is expressed through, for example, breakdowns that seem to trace regressive patterns to earlier evolutionary stages, such as with the rise of despotic leaders and the escalation of barbarous wars we thought were left in the past.” (Aviv)
“My journey has not been academically fashioned. Instead, it arose in the trenches of life, in the merging integration of helping senior executives and leadership teams in one part; in another part, journeying through an esoteric initiation by immersing in the big questions of life, meaning, purpose, spirituality, and our latent and prospective evolution. (Aviv)“The other major benefit on this path is that it squeezed me time and again into the unknown, where no maps were available. I have had to work by discovering the map on the move. Stepping into a functional role and facilitating, leading, and coaching others into an unknown terrain helped to syphon and catalyze connective flow, revelation, and fortitude, inspired by inquiries I have been pursuing my entire adult life.” (Aviv)
“What Portals Into the Soul will bring to life is not an invention of a new ‘theory’ or ‘model’. The traces formulated here will offer actual pathways you can travel and test for yourself. Please do not take anything I write as a given before you validate these actualities in your own experience.” (Aviv)
“In the face of increasing global turmoil, I feel compelled to offer discoveries that provide nourishment and fortitude, and to be in conversation with you about the soulful future we yearn to co-create.“Come along for a discovery odyssey, in which you explore for yourself these portals into the soul and the experiential discovery pathways offered to contact directly the sacred actuality of being human.” (Aviv)
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Portals Into the Soul - Preamble
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Sometimes it takes courage to heal. It’s usually easy to see, feel, and know the pain and trauma from our own lives, our communities, and the cultural upheavals upending many parts of our world. Being able to perceive and register hurt or isolation and loneliness doesn’t necessarily make the path to healing and wholeness any more visible, or smooth.
How do we find and feel the inner strength to take the first step? One of the paths to healing and transformation begins in the special ecology or space that is created between people who share respect and value for what each life represents. It can be a simple conversation that brings a feeling of safety and trust — a special warmth that begins to melt whatever may be blocking us from connecting with who we really are and can be.
A real mutuality not only dissolves the barriers between us, but also enables a shared support and elevation that can reveal the path to deeper emotional and mental healing. In the process, reconnecting us to a natural inner courage and resiliency that carries us forward.
In this conversation, we explore further into the healing possibility enabled by a real human mutuality. Aviv Shahar is joined again by Alexander Love, acupuncturist, life coach, and cranial-sacral therapist, who took part in this conversation on approaches to healing. They are joined this time by Veronica Olalla Love, ontological coaching professional and CEO of the Newfield Network.
Among their insights:
We are not alone, even though we sense despair and loneliness at times. We can reactivate our connection with all dimensions of life, which modern technology can cause to recede and seem far away.We come together and learn both as an individual and a collective. In these curated spaces we invite a depth, safety, and love that don’t just reveal personal pain, but show what is possible to do together.The unshakable commitment we’re describing is not a mental or emotional muscle; it's a cellular reorientation of the living being that we are. It's a radical anchoring of the heart.The new human discovery emerging is the profound value in what is described as listening priests, the people that create the ecology and enable others to unfold the revelation they couldn’t access in themselves before.What's required for a collective to be strong enough to hold shadows and darkness in a way that won’t wobble or shake the space, so the darkness can arise and be safely explored?Seeing the different worlds we create in a group journey can help us deeply anchor, in our body, in our cells, what is actually possible; the level of trust people can have with each other is exquisite and profound.When you no longer shun, suppress, or pull outside of yourself the parts you dislike in favor of the parts you like, it becomes a fuller integration of the inner family; you are more relaxed and more yourself.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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“One of the things that I see is so beautiful is that unfolding of somebody’s greatness, the big fullness of who someone can be, and also being able to articulate the areas in which we challenge our repeated cycles that we fall into, or to be able to give voice and articulation of that wholeness of life and to be able to speak to it in the space that can be present, with compassion and with care.” (Veronica)
“It takes a lot of courage and something else to be able to allow these things to rush in and inform us in the waking, in the light of the waking day. And that something else is some kind of presence, some kind of unbroken radiance or dimension of being that allows us to know, beyond conceptual knowing, that it’s okay to feel, that it’s okay to explore little by little is probably what I might suggest little by little, opening our hearts to allow in just a little bit more of the whole and that includes the access to ecstasy, and it also includes the horrors. And all that it requires is a nervous system that’s able to have some degree of regulation as these things stream in, because if we’re honest, they are quite intense in all their faces.” (Alexander)“The essential element I’m experiencing in both of you and what you’re describing, is a particular kind of courage. Because there is an invitation you’re making to become more spacious, to unravel or bring to life what has been frozen and potentially grow the filaments of possibility beyond that. (Aviv)
“The new, or the novel, or breaking patterns can seem dangerous. So there's a sense of, is this actually dangerous? And if so, how? Or is it simply a signal that this is actually new and I'm in the unknown? My sense is that these times require us to be quite a bit in the unknown. And so as we cultivate our capacity to be in the liminal space or in the uncertainty, the ambiguity, the nebulous zones, that is a huge learning. (Veronica)
RESOURCES MENTIONED
“As we do this process together there can be a recognition that not only am I doing an individual learning, but we're doing a collective learning, and that there's something that we are together that's growing up as a result of these curated spaces - that invites depth, that invites safety, that invites love. And so it doesn't only reveal my personal pain, my personal yearning - that's important - but it also creates an environment where who we are as people, what is possible for us to do together, just that is a beacon of light, a beacon of hope.” (Alexander)Portals of Perception Website
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What is Healing? #2 - A New Togethering
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Be honest: When we see a friend or colleague achieve a personal breakthrough — barrier overcome; milestone reached; the best of themselves coming forward — do we fully feel the value and joy of their success? Not even a tinge of jealousy, or wish that it had been us instead?
What if we embrace a very different view of each other’s accomplishments and potential? When we acknowledge and appreciate the struggles and progress in someone else, we actually create space in ourselves for the same success. We grow in ourselves by watching others grow; we liberate a greater possibility that is only accessible when we come together as “we,” beyond the ego of “me.”
What’s holding us back? Many of the outcomes of modern life: separation, fear, and trauma, which create an emotional and mental scar tissue that prevents us from trusting and accepting each other. Our natural human sensitivity is numbed, inhibiting the fountain of warmth, kindness, and generosity that is our birthright.
Fortunately, we also have higher faculties and systems, still connected to our natural intelligence and creativity, that enable growth, development, and integration with an emerging new evolutionary potential.
We explore the barriers preventing a greater human mutuality, and the seeds of our healing and integration, in part two of the conversation Evolving Together, with Aviv Shahar and two Portals' friends and life-long spiritual seekers, Nigel Geeves and Well. In part one, the three opened the question, Why evolve together?
Among their insights:
To evolve together we want to be fearless, which doesn’t mean having no fear. It means we're able to move forward and discover that the feeling of bravery on the inside is more powerful.In our human development journey, what seemed intractable and frozen by time and trauma can melt away in the presence of a mutuality that is prepared to support life rather than arrest it.The grip of what is holding us back is made stronger by fear. When we develop above fear in ourselves it no longer has credence or power and control over us.Everything humans do is powered by energy, which creates a form of collective memory. It’s like a loose operating system influencing human behavior, unless we develop above our history and co-create our future.The key is in our acceptance of another life and giving a space for the sharing of both of us. It’s acceptance of life to life, rather than the historic pattern of how I can win.When you no longer shun, suppress, or pull outside of yourself the parts you dislike in favor of the parts you like, it becomes a fuller integration of the inner family; you are more relaxed and more yourself.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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“But the larger evolutionary strategy is that there is a better chance for survival, in most species in the flora life, in the fauna life, and for us humans, this was going to be more secure and guaranteed if we worked together.” (Aviv)
“There's an imagery that comes to mind, and it's one of my fascinations. If you take a mirror, you can look in that mirror and get a reflection of yourself, but it's a singular reflection. We can look at another mirror and do the same, but if you put those mirrors next to each other and put your head in between them, you get a million reflections, and a human is a much better reflector of another human than any physical mirror.” (Nigel)“What it actually means is that we've been very successful in doubling down on sensitivity so that we don't feel or pick up on the vast majority of what is going on because it's too difficult to handle. So this is the beginning of a diagnostic process that really begins to open up those sensitivities again deliberately. So we begin to grow our awareness rather than retreating into a non-feeling state.” (Well)
“Emotionally, as one grows and grows with others, and learns that it's possible to be safe with others, it is possible for the scar tissue in a life to begin to heal and melt. And the great benefit of that is that people become able to connect again, because trauma stops you connecting and causes isolation. And when people discover the great joy of being able to connect again, it's such a liberation that they tend to want to take that up and hold it as a valued thing.” (Well)
RESOURCES MENTIONED
“It just reminds me that shadows are always bigger than the thing itself. And, like you say, fear seems to be a shadow that when you actually face it, it's nowhere near as big as you thought it was. And the curious thing in that is that, how we think about something conditions how we feel about it. So it's vital that we review our views and psychologies, otherwise our feeling life just won't have a chance.” (Nigel)Portals of Perception Website
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Evolving Together #2 - What Holds Us Back?
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Where can the human Big Bang be found? It is: You become what you apply yourself to. It’s not just a different angle on the familiar phrase of becoming what we think about; it goes much deeper.
Application happens when we bring intention and purpose to focus our energy, knowledge and passion to achieve what we most value in life; to turn learning into action; to transform our physical, earthly reality and shape our universal future as it shapes us.
Great. But how? Applying ourselves with intention to transform our lives means unifying the action of our head, heart and hands in a self-chosen direction. In other words, we need to know what we want. It’s the first step in creating an ecology where higher intelligence and connections can find us and help our development.
In deciding how and where to begin, help is already available. This conversation marks the start of a new series in the Portals feature “Current Openings: What the World Doesn’t Quite Get Yet.” Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis are leading into “The Human Development Challenge,” which builds upon the many insights, knowledge and practices in the first ten Current Openings.
The Challenge will take us deeper into the esoteric knowledge at the heart of our universal nature and possibility, such as with the conundrum of applying our learning in a way that supports our evolutionary journey.
Among the insights:
The harvesting principle says anything the universe learns or new capacity it develops can be downloaded to everyone: the universe runs an open-source operating system.The development challenge is inviting us to opt-in, to self-elect, to recognize that for us learning is exquisitely awesome. We define ourselves by what we learn.Einstein focused 95% of his attention on a problem to discover the solution. Here we’re not aiming for a single solution, but to create an ecology where multiple answers can find us.If we focus on learning alone without applying the knowledge, we never quite live the full potential and truth, which is what brings higher intelligence and connection.We can actually choose to learn, which is an amazing human specialty. Nothing else on Earth can decide to study something beyond its basic programming.The cycle of life is from potential to actualization; from intention to realization; from learning to application. What is learning? Without application, it's an incomplete journey.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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES
“So the harvesting principle is this idea that anything that the universe learns, anything the universe develops as a know-how, becomes downloadable anywhere in the universe - because the universe runs an open-source operating system. In fact, it demonstrates that any capacity that got switched on is shared throughout the universe. It's a generous and compassionate universe. It means that for the universe, what's economic and effective is one and the same with what's generous and compassionate.” (Aviv)
RESOURCES MENTIONED
“The cycle of life is from potential to actualization, from intent to realization, from learning to application. What is learning without application? It's an incomplete journey. Learning is how life inseminates possibilities. It's the invitation for us humans to engage with this idea that we are alive here; we've been given the gift of life to enter the application theater.” (Aviv)
“Well, I think that all human structures are based in their origination on the laws of the universe. So, as you said about the universe, it has definite laws, definite preset codes, and ways of being that we didn't make ourselves.” (David)Portals of Perception Website
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Current Openings #11 - The Application Conundrum
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We’re living in a time where increasingly we see what’s happening in the world around us and have to wonder how, or even if, we can find deep truth in the age of the “deep fake”. Artificial intelligence can distort or manipulate many forms of data and information we take in through our physical senses. Sights, sounds and “facts” on a page can all be faked. How then do we with confidence make sense and meaning in a life when even what we see with our own eyes may not be true?
There are clues in the name itself: “artificial” intelligence. What about natural intelligence? We know from Portals conversations that the human is designed with the capability to connect with larger, universal sources of intelligence, creativity and inspiration, beyond the reach of even the most powerful AI.
It’s a deep truth explored throughout history by spiritual teachers, shamans and wise men and women attuned to the finer, energetic, subtle realms as a living reality. Sources of profound revelation and learning that can transform lives and communities, and reconnect the human to its natural birthright.
In this conversation we are once again fortunate to have as our guide Layman Pascal, a leader in integral thinking and teaching, and a prominent voice on the Integral Stage YouTube channel and podcast. He joins Aviv Shahar for part two of their conversation, begun with Protecting the Sacred.
Among their ponders:
AI is going to touch everyone and every type of reality, with inevitable distressing effects, including a reduction of cognitive capacities, and an increasing distrust in all information sources.How do we bring the spiritual and sociological closer together? Integrate a life of deep spiritual practice, freed from dogmatic interpretations, with an emerging cultural and community experience?How do we balance the notion of God with our current notion of reality? Or of creating healthier existing religious structures versus cultivating new emergent religion-like experiences?A big-picture model of deep history shouldn’t accept mainstream neo-liberal media or academic consensus as reality, but be open to surprises and anomalies that could reverse consensus going forward.We don't want to be naive utopians, but also not nihilistic, pessimistic, or to give up. Let's invest our imagination, heart, and actions in trying to figure out what a better world actually looks like.Just because someone can enter or produce a state — an unusual chemical, energetic, or psychological condition — doesn't mean they have an established stage of 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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“I think up to that point, what I'm mostly thinking about is something vaguely like enlightenment. Right? So that I'm undertaking experiences very deliberately, because I want to transform my consciousness.” (Layman)
“One of the most prominent ways that people have sort of subtle experiences in the modern world is with entities that they feel are extraterrestrial, right? And the work of Jacques Vallee in the 1970s did a lot of under laboring to support the idea that in a previous time period, you might have interpreted these as elves or angels or something like that.” (Layman)
“A lot of these communities are centered around meta models, by which we mean attempts to do transdisciplinary philosophical integrations that take many different models and many different disciplines and many different types of perspective taking into account coherently.” (Layman)
“There's a phrase I used in that series which was 'to naturalize the sacred and to sacralize the natural'. And I think this goes along with trying to bring the rational and the intuitive together. So you want to say, we embrace a natural science universe, not a reductive natural science universe, but an expanded natural science universe, and at the same time, it's only relevant to us if it can produce the cultural meaning and the individual transformation that's necessary for a human life.” (Layman)
“Is it better for you to treat something like a person or not? You can't objectively have perfect knowledge of whether you're dealing with something that's sentient or not. But is it actually better for you to respect everything you're dealing with as if it was another sentient being? And that makes a lot of spiritual and emotional sense. Or is that the gateway to a path of delusion where we lose important distinctions, and we end up over attributing capacity and depth to things that don't have them and lead our society further down a pathway of simulation and meaninglessness?” (Layman)
RESOURCES MENTIONEDPortals of Perception Website
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A Conversation with Layman Pascal Part 2 - Pursuing Integral Wisdom
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At a time when cultural and existential crises threaten the wellbeing of our global community, shouldn’t the search for wisdom and a more enlightened path forward embrace all sources of insight and new intelligence? Twenty-first century technology, side by side with ancient and sacred traditions? The intuitive, and the scientific?
There is growing awareness that real transformation, personal and collective, needs a fuller integration of many approaches, including the ancient shamanic, and more mystical or contemplative spiritual practices and personal development. Right alongside the speed and computational power of artificial intelligence.
So how do we get even deeper tethered in the natural human capacities that help create the space and receive the impulses of new evolutionary energy feeling its way into humanity, and integrate newly emerging technologies and sources of knowledge? How do we facilitate this integration in a meta-modern global landscape that is constantly evolving? In this special Portals conversation, Aviv Shahar is joined by Layman Pascal, a leader in integral thinking and teaching, and a prominent voice on the Integral Stage YouTube channel and podcast.
Among their considerations:
There is an enormous appetite among people to create rituals, to create beauty, to come together in the kinds of events that tell our subconscious we're part of a community that's worth fighting for, worth working together for.There's no way to change the world without including people we don't like. There needs to be an anti-fragile attitude of how to make use of the people we feel are problematic, not just the people we think are pure.The risks of a YouTube channel and podcast are that we begin to believe that talking heads and words are a sufficient pathway to an enlightened future. What about embodiment work, community, purpose and friendship?If you can fall in love with the unique spirit of special people — thinkers, writers, saints — that you feel have depth and brilliance, then you can see the same in versions of yourself.Other sources of intelligence, such as the subconscious, collective consciousness and AI, are where we're likely to see breakthroughs that our conscious minds are not going to figure out.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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“I think more fundamentally, it's the exploration of and refinement of our capacity to consecrate things. And different groups of people in different styles might do that consecration in different ways. For some people, it's the evolutionary process. For some people, it's a magical hill, or an image or historical events. And we need to be thinking very broadly about how different people perform this in different cultural contexts and through different languages.” (Layman)
“Culturally, I'm looking at an overlapping series of communities or networks where they aren't all exemplary cases, but where you get a higher concentration of people who exhibit these competencies. And I would throw into that competencies list humor, and also the willingness to go into what seemed like negative aspects, right, the ability to explore our shadow.” (Layman)
“I'm a little bit biased by my own temperaments. But it seems to me there are a lot of people asking how do we break out of the personal and collective discussion circles and play in a wider skill set? Right, the people who are in high level metacognitive construct aware integrally informed mindsets have a tendency to feel like they've included different forms of intelligence, but not practice those different forms of intelligence.” (Layman)
“I think we constantly are at risk of having the most dynamic aspects of cultural and individual transformation subtly replaced and sabotaged by things that sound good and look good, that the superficial mechanisms of our culture, our media, our economy, the gossipy part of our own minds, our allegiances, our symbolism, all this sort of social architecture has the tendency to enter and replace the sacred.” (Layman)
“I think there's a problem in getting different aspects of these networks linked up to each other. The people who are interested in ecology don't necessarily know what the crypto people are doing, who don't necessarily know what the psycho spiritual people are doing. They all in general recognize the same problem and want to work on it, but they don't understand each other's areas well enough to take action on them and generate projects on that basis. And so leaders need to be able to see and cause people to challenge the limiting boundaries that have traditionally surrounded change communities.” (Layman)
RESOURCES MENTIONEDPortals of Perception Website
Aviv’s LinkedIn
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A Conversation with Layman Pascal Part 1 - Protecting the Sacred
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Many news platforms today still at times refer to the struggles of life in 2023 as residual pandemic trauma — directly influenced by the painful events beginning in 2020. Is it really fair and accurate to connect today’s behavior and attitudes to a three-year-old ‘trauma’?
There’s no doubt the pandemic caused pain and suffering, and trauma, for millions of people directly affected. But as everyday life finds a post-pandemic new normal, is it helpful to our personal and collective healing and rebalance to see ourselves as traumatized? Or has trauma become a convenient rationale and strategy to avoid fully facing unsettling aspects of our changing reality?
The pandemic is one example of how trauma can become what some people describe as a culture and identity — a myth we hold onto to explain and excuse our behavior, where every struggle is attributed to trauma. We explore the nature and outcomes of this all-encompassing focus on trauma in this Portals conversation between Aviv Shahar and Alexander Beiner, author, podcaster, and co-founder of Rebel Wisdom, a highly regarded platform for new ideas in this time of change.
Alexander traces his journey to Rebel Wisdom and reflects on the extraordinary phenomenon of its rapid growth as a global community. The conversation then takes a deeper look at the trauma myth.
Among their insights:
The distinction between a healthy, constructive self-introspection, and one that is narcissistic and destructive, is important because they sound similar but have very different outcomes.There's something healthy about starting with a baseline that life involves suffering, rather than a modern Western consumerist notion of life as the pursuit of happiness.Cognitive flexibility builds on the understanding of brain plasticity; you can create new synaptic connections and circuitries through learning — exposing yourself to new experiences.We reframe resilience from bouncing back to bouncing forward; not reestablishing the old balance.If the story we tell ourselves is that we're inherently fragile, the culture we create prevents the innovation and risk taking needed to come through the mental crisis we're facing.It's a time of great overlapping crises; in Greek crisis means decision point — we must make huge decisions about who we are and the kind of society we want to create.The universe now needs more of the human coming online, not in buildings and churches made of stone, but on the inside, which means turning on the interior lights.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.
TWEETABLE QUOTES“As well as for me personally, a lot of the countercultural, psychedelic, countercultural visionary kind of thinking that I was used to, which really gave a message that we can change systems, it is possible. And it's a question of overcoming what was known as the prosaic fallacy, which is this idea that we simply can't imagine a different way of doing things, that doesn't mean that a different way of doing things isn't possible. So that was a big influence as well.” (Alexander)
“So it was actually quite a long process I went on and the instigating factor of me wanting to write something about it, or actually originally make a film about it, was a piece I read by Parul Sehgal, who's a literary critic, it was in the New Yorker. And her piece is called ‘The Case Against the Trauma Plot’. And I thought, uh, huh, interesting. What she's arguing is effectively that a lot of writers of modern stories are using trauma to explain their characters.” (Alexander)
“So I gathered a circle of friends, psychologists, practitioners, and we spent two years working on the project of resilience and the five key ideas we qualified. And then it became a tool that I've been using for the last 15 years now, with all the teams I've worked with.” (Alexander)
RESOURCES MENTIONEDPortals of Perception Website
Aviv’s LinkedIn
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Aviv’s Website
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