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

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

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

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

Other connecting ideas and scaffolding include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other togethering insights include:

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

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

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

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

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Evolving Together #6: The Shared Intentions of Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Expressions of Religious Living

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

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

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

Many enlivening insights emerge, including:

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

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

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

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

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Religion and the Esoteric

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Open-Heart Conversation: Current Openings #18

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

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

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

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

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

Other Lab insights include:

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

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

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

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

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The Goddess Arising

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Two Struggles - The Universalis Project #11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Evolution, Consciousness, and the New Truth with Steve McIntosh