Aviv Shahar: We are literally living the three processes that are underway. One process is a process we experience as an epoch that’s dying. Another is the epoch that’s birthing and emerging. And then we are most of the time in the liminal in between not knowing, uh, what’s going on.
Tami Simon: Welcome friends. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Aviv Shahar. Let me share with you a little bit of background here. I’d never heard of Aviv, but I was just playing around, really Googling, and looking up references for conscious evolution, trying to understand what’s happening at this time in terms of our collective evolution and what appears like so much.
Strife and turmoil, and how could we understand it in an evolutionary context? And I found my way to a website called Portals of Perception. And at portals of Perception, a lot of the questions I was asking in my own interiority were being asked to a group of people who were talking about it together.
And I was like, who’s behind portals of perception? Who are these people? And very interesting international team of people. And I was like, yeah, but there’s gotta be some kind of leadership. What’s going on here? And what I found was a Aviv Shahar is the quote unquote Sherpa of this website, portals of perception, our Himalayan guide.
And when I discovered that, I thought I need to have Aviv on Insights at the edge. Let me tell you a little bit more about him. He curates transformational journeys and is a storyteller of the epical evolution culminating at this time. Aviv is the founder of Aviv Consulting, helping leaders unleash strategic innovation, and he’s the author of the book, create New Futures, how Leaders Produce Breakthroughs and Transform the World Through Conversation.
Aviv, welcome.
Aviv Shahar: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here.
Tami Simon: In your work, I discovered this term—Epochal Moment. We are living in an Epochal Moment and I thought to myself, that is really interesting to refer to this time in that way. So to start, what does that mean to you? What is your view of this Epochal Moment?
Aviv Shahar: Well, uh, it may be my accent, but the way I pronounce it is Epochal Moment. And the epochal is, um, is word derived from och. It is also epical. So the the both are and. A central element of the portal’s exploration been an attempt to trace the story of the epoch. What is the story of the epoch? And actually, when we trace the story of the epoch, we, we are tracing five stories, five main trace lines, many more trace line, but five main trace lines, which is the axial So the, the 5,000 year story that, that includes the axial transition and, and the promise of that significant time in the unfolding of the epoch. The second trace line that we bring into it is, um, the four to 600 year journey from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and what that represents and how it impacts us today. I suppose the third storyline is the Industrial Revolution. What was that about? How did that emerge in context of the scientific method and what that led and how it is impacting us today? And, and line four and five. Well, trash line four is the one you and I have lived through, which is from the middle of the 20th century, and all that was promised from the middle of the 20th century. The, the counterculture, uh, movements, the, the various liberation movements and the rise of the new age, then the, the really, the last 20, 30 years, which is the story we tell about the technological transition, the computing revolution, the, the internet, and now ai. Social media in between the crisis that we are in at this time. So these are, these are trace lines that are now culminating. And the, the way we tell the story is we’re actually looking at five dimensions of the story, and I can say more about it, uh, but briefly to name them there is the historic trace.
That’s the his story. And then there is another story we tell, which is, which, which we fondly call her story. Her story is not a feminist perspective of history in that sense, but the living, vibrant, energetic dimension that is still alive. The, in the sense that the ancient Egyptian culture is still alive.
The ancient Greek philosophers are still alive in terms of sentiments and, and the what it was that they plugged into. And so, uh, we could choose to tune into the constitutional convention of the founding fathers, uh, here in North America, and that event is still alive and we can tune into that. So story two is one where we refuse to just be subject to the limitation of the, the historic narrative, which is mostly a story of the, the, the victims. And we don’t hear a lot about those who vanquished and, and the sentiments that they left behind. And then there is a story line of the evolution of knowledge and how through these five stories, we humans have changed our, our perspective of experience of knowledge individually and collectively. And then there is a story four and story five that we sometime get to, I’ll just name them.
And if you wanna go deeper into these, we can. Story four is what I call the dial story. It’s, it’s, it’s the idea that we’re not just telling the story of any period in time in history, but rather that we have the capacity to live into any space and time in history and, and become the analytic to help what is unfinished, what is incomplete, to complete, to become, in essence, redeemers and, um, agents of that story more fully expressing itself Today, as, as some people often choose to do in the area where, where you live about the, the Native Americans that lived in that part of the land, they, they take a sentiment that is acknowledging of that.
That is a lytic story. Story five, when we begin to tell story. Uh, four is we begin to tell the story of the future. when you put all of it together, the significance of this al moment. Is, so we also tell inside it a sevenfold story the seven natures, the the red, orange, yellow, green, and so on to indigo and violet.
And when I use these colors, I do not refer to other developmental meta theories. I tell the story differently with these where each of these living dimensions, each of these colors, they represent set of intelligences and they represent a function in the unfolding of the development and the evolutionary story, unconscious, unconscious, evolutionary story. So now why is this an al moment? Is because we are now in the intensification. Of the, the indigo and violet, one epoch is ending and a new epoch is emerging. And we are literally living the three processes that are underway. One process is process, we experience as, as an epoch that’s dying. Another is the epoch that’s birthing and emerging. And then we are most of the time in the liminal in between not knowing, uh, what’s going on. This, by the way, is an in say that, that found me when we, we from Israel to America, and my wife was having a very different experience than mine. Uh, I was in a dream state and she struggled. And I said to her, but you have to realize, which is a bad way to start a, a conversation. You ha you don’t have to realize anything. But when you can, you can realize When you move from one country to another, there are actually at least two processes. I said to her, you are, you are missing your roots in Israel. You are missing your roots. You are longing what used to nourish you and also you are seeking to learn the grammar of the new land, the new country you arrived at. we are like a bit like that in relation to the epochs. We are, a change of epoch is a change of power structure and that’s why it’s epochal because we are needing to completely rewrite our interior operating system because we used to be nourished by certain power structures. those are receding, have been receding for several centuries. But now we have reached culmination, which is why I’m calling it an an al moment. So a bit of a long-winded answer, but, uh, background to, to put it in context.
Tami Simon: There’s so much there, Avi, what you’ve shared, and I have to carefully pick the thread I wanna pull, and the thread that I think is most relevant, at least where I’m sitting, where now is in this liminal space between the epic of the future and the epic that we’re leaving. What is your sense of how humans who love, care, and want to be part of creating something new and beautiful for humanity, how can we focus ourselves, orient ourselves to do so?
What’s your sense of that?
Aviv Shahar: Well first it’s a, it’s a huge task and um, many people are. For many good reasons, filled with concerns, anxieties, disappointment, and, uh, all of those. And, and there is, there is a lot to do just in maintaining and regulating oneself. So think Job one, is we are to be agents that facilitate change and, and capacity builders and, and, uh, yeah, leaders into tomorrow, we first of all need to take care of ourselves and, and plenty of conversations that you have here at, um, insight at the Edge about that, where people can find tools and, and ways to, to do the self-regulation work.
I, I think that’s number one. I think number two is. Can we begin to truly perceive what is going on? What is the, where are we on the map? I am sharing in, uh, portals into the Soul, which is a serialized book I’m writing in the written form and also in, in audio form and, and video form on portals of perception.
I’m sharing on the third chapter an experience where I navigated solo night in my, the fire, uh, pilot calls. And, but this was before they let us fly. This was on the ground, and I’m describing there how I, I love navigating and I was good at it, but one night I got lost and I never forgot the, the lesson that, uh, was etched into me. Because of the humiliation, because the banter, once I arrived of all my friends was we, wait, we went to sleep four hours ago. What, hell were you? So the lesson etched into me then was when you lose contact with a terrain, you truly need to seek the last point you were in contact with the terrain and, and try to to figure where you are.
And you should never mistake the map for the territory. So we are experiencing now a bewildering experience, bewildering time, where so much makes no sense, especially people that anticipated that we were just, uh, one or two, uh, uh, miles away from complete enlightenment in, in the late 20th century. Everything, uh, we were hoping for in the late 20th century was, was around the corner, the last, uh, 25, 30 years unfolded differently. And we can talk more about why that is the case, but what I’m saying in this number two, after self regulation, can we, we gain true perception about where we are?
What is going on? is where, again, from my navigation experience, you can’t know where you are without appreciating what brought you here. How did we actually arrive in this place? So that’s why I’m tracing and telling the, the story of the epoch. So I’d say that is number two, and we can go deeper on that.
I’d, I’d offer number three to your question. We can’t do, we can’t, can’t really do what we are called to do at this time on our own. I don’t believe so. I, I think we need each other, I think. Whatever capacity those individuals we are cultivating. And, and there is this tremendous significance about becoming sovereign, agentic, self arising leaders.
And we can talk about that, uh, more why that is significant at this time and why we can only arise and find each other truly from the, the place of, um, agentic self-leadership. But once we do that, we’ve got to come together in many ways you are doing with, with your community, with your network. Uh, because we have to fortify each other.
The, the challenge is, is too large for any one person. And, uh, any day of the week, I may be down and you may be feeling stronger. So I would need you to fortify me and maybe the 24 hours, 48 hours later, um, we will do roles reversal. So leadership, leadership is changing. We, we need distributed leadership, which is why one of the themes we are exploring on portals is this idea of, um, we have entered in this time what I described as the post guru phase, never meant we don’t need teachers, we don’t need leaders, we don’t need facilitators.
We do, need to come together inside new, new and different archetypal relationship will allow us to unlock the, the greater capacities that are well latent from the beginning of time for this time.
Tami Simon: Aviv, what I wanna dive into is number two, being bewildered, lost, flying in the skies. You were using an example from when you were, uh, a, a pilot in the army. Yes. Uh, and, you know, definitely this feeling. I’m glad you used the word of bewilderment because I think that’s where a lot of us find ourselves today.
And of the three points you made, I think the, the one. Where I, I feel the, the least. Like I know where to turn, which is what I was Googling online, trying to get a clear picture. And one of the things you write about that I thought was very useful that I want to hear more about, there’s, there’s many things, but you write, could a regressive evolutionary cycle unlock a remedial development potential?
And I thought, I wanna understand more what are we remedying at this time in our human evolution? And are we remedying it? How do we remedy.
Aviv Shahar: Yeah. Wonderful. Uh, question series of, of questions. So, the, the understanding and the appreciation of the regressive cycle, which I will couple also with, um, um, mechanics and the understanding of octave transition. Octa lip are two critical insights for this indigo violet culmination and. So, so again, to, to just trace to uh, uh, how we got to in, in the conversation in, in this, so you said, what, what is it about this ecal time?
And I said, and how do we manage it? Number one, you’ve got to do your self-regulation work. Number two, you need to try to seek new perception so you can operate from a different, uh, realization of where you are on the map. And when you do so, you can begin to be a leader into your own life people around you.
So now we are putting the magnifying glass on the, the experience of bewilderment. And, um, first of all, uh, we need to befriend bewilderment because the, the source of the bewilderment is in the way I perceive it is, is the, this experience of these, we are all crucible. Living laboratories with three processes manifest all at the same time. Something is dying and is dying. That means something inside us is dying. And some days we will experience tremendous grief and will be in tears and will will feel like we are under enormous weight. And we don’t even understand why there isn’t a direct easy trace. Sometime we, we know that we’ve lost a loved one, so that is the reason why we feel grief.
But there are times where we will experience deep feelings that we can’t even exactly trace as to why Well, something is dying in this world. And then right next to it, there is something that is going through its birth pangs and, and, and is experiencing the struggle of emergence. And the two are different.
And yet they, they’re experienced all at the same time inside us. So we need to, to, to befriend these processes, to become literal in the ways to learn their, their symptoms and the grammar, and to become light on our feet inside it. And inside this and the regressive cycle is, is one of those insights. So consider we’re making some leaps and, and obviously these are, these are spaces and domains that when, when I get to do deep dives, we will take three days, not an hour.
But consider, let’s imagine that this is a wise, intelligent universe. And let’s imagine that this al journey we’ve been on has a teleology and we’ve been taken on an initiatory experience. This, this last 5,000 years has been a, a, an initiatory journey through this ebook. Let’s say that those phases that we’ve gone through, the, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and, and what yellow had to do with us to do with the rise of axial religions and what green had to do with us to do with, between other things, the Renaissance and what the blue had to do with us, which in the modern context was building the modern systems, the the liberal free economic marketplaces and, and the, the, the state, the liberal state in the way it has emerged as the modern operating system.
We’ve got to realize as these, as we were making these accelerations in the evolutionary story, a bit like when they develop a software. Program and operating system. There are, there were bugs that we developed in, in the system. There are a bunch of bugs that we can go deep more deeply into around how we utilized the enlightenment and what truly happened through the industrial revolution and what occurred through the 20th century. But what regressive cycles are, they are corrective periods where we need to retrace to learn the lessons that we haven’t fully assimilated, haven’t fully And you know, the example Tammy is if, if you look at, um, the hippie movement and the rise of the new age, that was a, that was an attempt at a shortcut to enlightenment.
And I can take a lot more time to, to describe why and how, partly we are correct. The, the various phases of the, the new age and our hope for a new hopeful world. And, and, um, we need to, to do the corrective work the 19th century and the 20th century right now in, in these last several decades. That’s one way of understanding the, for example, the rise of, um, authoritarian with leaders all over the world with what appears to be several socioeconomic regressive movements. They serve to awaken the social, the, the social spiritual crucible such that we can journey through the, the remedies that we need to cultivate. And unless we perceive that, unless we perceive that we will. Not find the resilience, the spiritual resilience, the, the social resilience, the, the fortitude actually journey in the way we are called to, to become the leaders through this struggle.
Tami Simon: So just to be specific about the bugs in the system that we need to fix now, how do you see that?
Aviv Shahar: okay, so, so the, there are three main buckets. You’ll discover that I’m a bit like that. Everything you ask me, I, I, I will look,
Tami Simon: It’s okay. Aviv, you know, I studied Tibetan Buddhism for a long time and they always had the five of this, the seven of that. So I’m used to it and it, it’s a good way to organize and structure. You have so much to say and I think our listeners appreciate it as well. So please just keep going with it.
Aviv Shahar: Yeah, let me actually do a, a brief segue and come back to,
Tami Simon: Sure.
Aviv Shahar: that, that question, of what I’m trying to demonstrate, even the way I’m living into and with your, your inquiries is, so in my, in my early to mid twenties, a very important message I internalized was the admonishment from our friend Albert Einstein, who said, we cannot solve the problems we created with the same kind of thinking we’ve used when we created this problem. And I thought, okay, that’s a very nice idea, but what does it actually practically mean? How do I, what do I do about it? And I’ve puzzled that now for four decades and it. Unlocked for me, practices and ways and, uh, capacities that brought me to places I never imagined I would get to, including running a very lucrative career. you told me 30 or 40 years ago that I would be able to walk into the halls of power and decision making in, in the, uh, largest, more successful companies in the world just with a, with a, um, architecture of inquiries, I’ll tell you it cannot be done. It’s a line. I’ve, I’ve been able to, to do that. And, uh, just earlier this year, I’m in the room with, uh, with a CEO of a, uh, large technology company and two, uh, McKinsey top guns. The session is going on. And a couple of hours into the session, one of them says to the CEO, why, why are you working with Aviv? Why are you, uh, why did you bring Aviv here? And he smiled and he said, um, well, it’s a little difficult to explain, but he is a bit like, uh, a, um, strategy and organizational shaman. And he asks us questions we never ask ourselves. And when he is in the room, we listen to each other differently. And so the the three main practices that I, that, that I had, this is why I brought this story now because you said the three of this and the five of that. Um, the three core practices that I’m demonstrating is that I live into permanent line inquiries and I create looms of inquiries. And these are, these are, this is the first and the second. And these are contemplative ways for me to be with inquiries. And the third is that I, I seek to create pathways rather than to answer questions. remind me the question and what was it that I said that I will address through the three buckets?
Tami Simon: Well, I, I very much like looms of inquiry. That is a, a beautiful, uh, image for me to hold. I was asking about. The regression that we see at this time that I think many people are like, what happened in terms of our climate action activities in the world that were moving backwards? What happened in terms of human rights?
You mentioned authoritarianism. We could go on and on. What happened? And yet Aveva is saying that somehow what we see as regression from an evolutionary standpoint might be a correction of some kind things, discoveries that we didn’t make as a human society fully enough. You called it bugs, like in software development.
And I thought, okay, I wanna hear from Aviv specifically. What are the bugs that, what looks like our current collective disaster is somehow addressing so that we can evolve? And this is really where I want our conversation to go as well into the new. Och and what that might look like. But this, trying to understand where we are right now, which is the glasses I ha have on.
I need to understand what’s all this seemingly regressive activity. Help me understand it.
Aviv Shahar: Yes, and I said that there are three main buckets inside of each one of which there are many sub categories. To name them first, and then we can go into, uh, whatever you’d like to go deeper into first, the first loom. Let’s, let’s move from buckets into looms because that’s how I actually work. Uh, and those people there, anybody visiting are portals of perception will see that I’m often sharing slides with, with looms because it’s a, it’s a thinking tool. And I call this actually loom work. The first loom of inquiries we are called to, to correct and, and, and remedy is everything that comes inside the territory of how we treat ourselves, how we deal with ourselves, each one, each person individually. And there’s plenty of work in that space that, that, uh, you have shared over the years, uh, with, with your network.
But it’s, it’s to do with how do we, um. Manage our relationship with our body. How do we manage our relationship with our thoughts? How do we manage our relationship with our feelings? How do we manage all those of the self? The second large space that we can explore is how do we treat each other? And all that is to do with the communal, the network. the, at the largest level it would be the national and, and the global space. So these are the first two spaces inside of which we can build a loom of categories, which often would be addressed as, one way is to talk about it is, is the shadow work of the individual and the shadow work of the collective.
But shadow work for me, uh, narrows it too much. The third one is maybe the most challenging, the most difficult and the most potent is everything that’s to do with power. there is, there is work to be done in the relationship between these three, but relationship with self, with other and relationship with power is tell how I will codify the spaces where we have bugs that we need to address and, um, learn to correct if we are to become safe, but just for ourselves, but say for ourselves, say for each other, and safe for the univers at large.
Tami Simon: Tell me what you mean. More in the loom work related to power and our relationship with power and what you see that we need to address.
Aviv Shahar: Wonderful. So the, the entry into this is to, and I lead these kind of inquiries in, in workshops and, and so one entry into this is where and what has power of you. And now you begin to build, uh, subplots and sub inquiries. Inside this, there is a whole loom of inquiries about your fears. We give tremendous amount of power to all those things that we are afraid of.
All the, all the things that are frightening for us, um, rationally and irrationally. Some born by our formative experience and, and some through just the, the experience through life. So how do we, how do we metabolize, how do we work individually, collectively, and as societies with, with fears? That would be one category. And, and right there, there is tremendous amount includes stuck energy, so much that has been arrested in time individually in each of our lives also historically for humanity. So, so it depends at what level we wanna do this work individually or collectively. If we do it individually, the, the pathway we will carve will lead with inquiry to discover what are the fields that are governing your, your way, the way you shape your career graph, uh, your life. So that’s a whole space of inquiry, including when we choose to look at it in, in the historical sense and, and look at, um, you know, some specific areas on the planet that are very tormented now, such as the place I come from. Ha. Um. Now right next to it are just placed to others. So we, we get the sense how versatile and vast the, the loom of inquiries into the, this third space of power is the, so the next one will be beliefs and, um, yeah, beliefs and, and those things we choose to give credence to. put tremendous power those stories. we tell ourselves which we decode reality. And so our worldviews, our beliefs and what we put our faith in. Is where we either have tremendous amount of power that’s leaking or, or lo we are losing that power, or we are in, sometimes in, in some other ways will be arrested in power structures that stand in our way to become more, um, updated in our own journey with where we can be today. And then there is the relationship between our beliefs and our fields and how they sometime build into each other. Then the third space of inquiry, right next to beliefs is to do with the, the major archetypal relationships that we have in our lives and, and what are the archetype, like where are we in the teacher student, in the leader, follower? Where are we with these domains? Because that, that is also where there are a lot of. Stuff that has been arrested the story of humanity that now needs to be updated if we are to become the, the true universal that I believe we are becoming. So I, I’d offer these three as a starter the, the third space of investigating, interrogating, if you like, the power structures and how those need to be updated through this time of regressive change.
Tami Simon: You mentioned the universal human that. We’re becoming, we have the opportunity to become, and that’s where I want to take our conversation. But before we get there, uh, in, uh, conversational cleanup, I’m gonna take a little, uh, regressive, uh, movement here. Because you mentioned this color framework that you use and this moving into the violet, uh, epoch and that your, the colors that you’re using don’t map on to other systems that people have heard about.
So they shouldn’t assume this means that or that. Can you share with me a little bit like, how did you come up with these colors? Why, why do we need color dimensions? And help me just understand the background here and get me on your map, if you will.
Aviv Shahar: Well, so it’s a good question because, um, I didn’t invent this. When we look at, uh, the beautiful experience that we get enchanted with as children when, uh, sun ray or coming from the sun with. With sufficient, uh, water in the air from the planetary ecology, when these two celestial bodies converge, they produce a rainbow. And, and what that for me means that it’s more than, uh, a biblical story that represents a covenant, but is truly the, the, um, if you like, the, the universal operating system that plays out through all aspects of life. So this is an inquiry that, that, uh, I’ve been with for, uh, four decades and I’ve seen and decoded how you get to see the seven stages of, um, a business, the seven stages. Of, uh, a person’s life. There were more famous people that came up with this idea before I did, but I, what, what I looked to, to investigate was how they appear through the red, the orange, and so on. So maybe I can just give you the, the very brief, uh, coded version each of those and, and what they mean.
So, so we put a starter tool in, in, uh, the hands of the audience who were journeying patiently with us here, begin with red. Red is the, the, the emergent arising of a new impulse. And we could track this at a person’s life at a, the, the rise of a new business. We could track it down to, in a civilizational context, when, when the Roman Empire is emerging, it is emerging initially in red, but then it plays out, much more into orange and it becomes an embodiment or an expression of orange.
Because if red is the emergent beginning of a new impulse or the emergent beginning of a new epoch, orange is the expansion of that impulse into new territory. And then when it expands, gets a little deranged all over the place and it needs to be brought into yellow. So it reorganizes around a unifying, purpose, which is one way we use yellow to describe the axial transition, the axial religions, and it’s. Still to this day, uh, not fully understood what the axial means, but the axial meant something was turning. And that name only emerged in, I believe, the middle of the, uh, 20th century with, with Jasper, the historian that, that wrote about what he coined as the axial age, he picked up a name that described that something was changing.
So that to me, represents the yellow orchestration of humanity around new belief systems, around new narratives. But then shows up when we use up, when we get exhausted with the energy that, that brought us to this journey. And, um, one expression of green, uh, is, is the rise. the Renaissance, although to demonstrate that this is non-linear, you could trace green also back to ancient Greece. So those colors, they, they appear, they have a developed mental unfolding story, but they also have a function in the unfolding society and, and evolution. Where blue is, how do we organize as a species in large groups of people. Blue is the, the capacity to work through conflicts, to build systems of justice, ultimately resolve, uh, differences such that we can operate together.
You could say that’s a differentiating capacity of homo sapiens and why we came into the position we came to. We were able to manage ourselves in, in large groups of people, although we don’t seem to be doing so, uh, at this time in, in an effective way. And indigo and violet. Indigo is the merging of all that has happened the epoch up until this time.
And violet is the phase transition to a new epoch. So when, when I say that we are phase transitioning, what I’m saying is that this, this natural process that you could find a seven of in every domain of life, in every facet of life in terms of the epochal unfolding, has now reached its transition, which is why I’m saying one epoch is dying and a new epoch is emerging.
And I believe the Ts emerging is the one where we are called to be initiated into the universal humans that we are becoming.
Tami Simon: Let’s talk about that and what it means. You mention in your writing new capacities, new you even say sense organs that this new universal human will have access to. And I thought, okay, I need to hear more about this. What are we talking about?
Aviv Shahar: Okay. Of all places. Um, insight at the Edge is a, is a comfortable place to talk about new sense organs, uh, because I will not be the one, the, the first person to, to approach, uh, these domain here. I don’t know if in the same language, but it, it is, it is to do with the activation of both latent capacities and new capacities. Some novel capacities, some of which were always searched for in even ancient mystery schools and in mystery schools throughout the ages and. One way to think about a mystery school is, so we’ve got the main, we’ve got the mainstream of all the large religions, and they always have the, the less esoteric, more esoteric dimensions of the work. within the esoteric dimension, there is sometime they even close smaller, uh, groupings that inquire into the, the various technologies, interior technologies, interior capacities that truly, um, afford a person access and, and, uh, contact a subtle and invisible. Realms and, and essences and presences that were in the first place, the inspiration of the, the religion, not, not all people that come into religion seek this dimension out, but there has always been, there were always people who were not satisfied to just be engaging with their religion through mediators, through the priests, through the various teachers.
They wanted to make direct contact with the, the, the truly the, the core essences that inspired the religion. And, and to do so, they needed to, to access subtle capacities, which I’m describing a sense, organs, perception organs. And could talk. For a whole hour about this and about the, the three main portals of knowing and how in each of those three portals, which is the sensory and somatic portal, the mental and the spiritual portal, and how the spiritual portal can potent the somatic and the sense portal and the mental, and, and activate new, new ways of knowing.
So, so that’s the brief entry into this. If you want, we, we can talk about it, um, further, but let me pause here and see what, uh, what this
Tami Simon: Sure, sure. Well, the notion of a new human and that new human is spiritually in touch and spirit led, and that changes our capacities. Okay. I’m, I’m tracking. I’m tracking with you there. I think where my curiosity really got peaked is in reading your work and hearing about Homo Universal as maybe a type of new super organism.
And I was like, okay, what? What’s happening here? Are we gonna have a different way of feeling and sensing our wholeness, our connection to all of humanity? What might that be like sprinkle in multi-cams using the existing format in this project 5 times throughout at moments where it switches between speakers quickly ?
Aviv Shahar: Yeah. Well that’s the trillion dollar or not dollar or something else. Uh, question because by the time I don’t know that we will have dollars. Ha. um, yeah. So, so Tammy, we are on the ground floor. What I believe is several centuries, uh, or perhaps, uh, 1000 or 3000 year evolutionary story. I can just for a bit truck back and say that. So we call ourself the s Sapient species. Uh, we really call ourselves the sapien sa sapien sapiens, by which we, we mean we are aware of our awareness, but I propose that what the axial promise was the axial promise was a to what I will name as Homo Solaris. Essentially, all the world religions that emerged in that phase, in that classical age carried a certain promise, a certain. Possibility to, uh, center our attention and transition from the tribal planetary humans that we wear to the more humans that are engaged a solar orientation. And it’s very curious that that occurs at a subtle, esoteric level through the axial age, but is being recapitulated the enlightenment where we are changing our belief system from a geocentric heliocentric view of the world.
And this is something, this is one of the reasons why we need to trace the unfolding epo, both in esoteric and esoteric level. Because what we see is that that change of perspective through, um. holding Galileo’s hand Galileo to look through the telescope and to then with those following him, essentially persuade us that now we are not the center of the universe.
We’re actually revolving around the sun. Now, that occurs as a, as a mental mapping of the universe after, after it initially arose as a spiritual permission culminating the arrival of Christ. But Christ, not in a, just a Christian sense, Christ is a promise that was latent in the full axial transition. So now what, what I’m mapping and what I’m describing, that what we have been on, uh, the journey of right from that. Renaissance enlightenment phase is were the early days of the change that is now beginning to culminate where we are called to graduate, even from being a galactic humans, Solaris humans into universally humans. And if you said, okay, but how can I believe it? What, what do you mean? What, what does that mean practically? Um, it’s easy to find, uh, traces for it many ways. For example, to just highlight two, uh, to suggest that the early root system, the early root system of a universal human has been with us now for a couple of centuries. other people may call it in different names, but, uh, and that’s all right. I’m, I’m not claiming proprietary on it, but what I’m saying is that. When you begin to see through the early and mid 20th century, the rise of meta theories and the rise of the capacity to have second, third, fourth, fifth person perspective and, and the various integrative ways of mapping reality. To me, that’s one trace line of a universal human coming online. The, the popularized practice emerging in many places to learn how to integrate polarities and how to live into polarities and, and the, the eye somewhere on pulses of perception and mapping 12 different moves to integrate and transcend polarities.
Those are some of the pathways what we are describing the perception organs of a universal human. It means I can be in one situation, Tammy and. I can look to discover, is it possible for me to feel tremendous pain and tremendous hope all at the same time? Is, is it at all possible for a human being to integrate these feelings? Is it possible for a human being to, in one part of myself, be totally passionate about not just one thing, but several things preserve and cultivate in my interiority a space that is dispassionate, by which I mean neutral, accommodating, spacious, one that allows all perspectives, all views to come online, all while I’m passionate, focus on certain aspects. Within the stories. the story we are looking at. These are capacities and organs that we are literally birthing in ourselves as, as interior configurations, interior homologies that enable us to metabolize, integrate contradictions, work as healers, work as facilitators, work as counselors, work as leaders of processes and scenarios and situations. And, and the work I do as a, as a process shepa, both in the corporate world and in the spiritual and the developmental arena. We need to bring these capacities online. And by the way, every time we do this work, we discover where we have outage and we fall on our face we, we get upset or we get triggered and we pick ourselves up and we say, okay, I’ve just discovered opportunity for more personal development work. that’s, uh, perhaps a, an entry. What, what is this bringing up for you? Uh, from your surveillance of what’s arising with humanity at this time.
Tami Simon: What I’m reflecting on Aviva, as you’re talking, is what a deep, uh, loom of inquiry you bring and that you bring to our audience and that you’re bringing to me right now and. Any one of the topics we’ve touched on, there’s so much more to be said and I think this is a moment for us to invite our listeners if they’re interested to join the inquiry, the conversation, the collective exploration at portals of perception.
And I wonder if you can say a little bit about that and, uh, a kind of welcoming invite for people who wanna go further.
Aviv Shahar: Thank you. Thank you for that. Uh, Tammy. So portals of perception, the, the seed for it is emerging in October, 2019, a few weeks after my granddaughter was born. I’m not gonna be original at all when I say that. Um, I looked in her eyes and feelings. I didn’t know I will experience them. Many people who said that before me. there, there was a moment I looked in her eyes and I committed that I will dedicate the rest of this planetary tour of duty to do whatever I could humanly do to make the future a little brighter for her because I, I was already, two things occurred. I was already quite successful, very successful in the work I was doing, but I felt that I was not fully integrated.
I didn’t bring the different sides of my life. I felt, uh, her presence and her look back at me was, okay, can you get your rock together? And so together with a group of friends, six or nine months later, right as the pandemic, uh, found us, uh, we started developing the portals journey. And portals. The portals, pro project configured itself around a simple question, was, where does the future come from? And the reason we have chosen question was it’s, it was a way to follow a brief that I’ve received in my twenties, in, in my twenties. One of my worries was that I’ve seen very bright and smart people in different spaces in life that have reached a certain point of combination and got stopped. I got scared in my twenties.
I didn’t wanna do that. I didn’t want to to be a, a dead ah, man. Walking into my fifties and sixties, I, I realized we needed to, I needed to stay committed to a continual journey. So I asked a wife, teacher, how do you make sure you don’t get stopped? And he said, that’s easy. You take a project that you can never fully complete. You work into a project that you will never be able to complete in this lifetime, and you’ll have to continue to work even as you move through the veil. And implicit in it is that you will have series of inquiries that are forever open-ended. You can never fully answer them, and I can never get a full answer for where does the future come from?
Every day I get new glimpses of the answer, but tomorrow I am discovering a whole new entry. So that inquiry invited into itself the ebook inquiry, the universal inquiry, we call current openings, which is a search for the esoteric truth, an inquiry about healing and what is healing. An inquiry we call iha, which is internal human orchestra work, where we move from words and concepts to somatic work to embody these ideas with movement, with sensitivity. ultimately surprised me and also led me doing the work into portals, into the soul, which I never anticipated. I’ll be writing. and we continue to, um, discover new people who find that, yeah, these are the questions I’m asking. Where were you hiding? Ha, please, uh, please join us. So, uh, and there are. Community events and, um, opportunities. And I feel that, uh, in many ways, uh, Tammy, you have been pioneering this space for decades before I decided to, uh, not just fly under the radar, but come on the radar and do this work in the public domain. I’ve, I’ve been for many decades doing that in, under the radar as, as a private person. But, uh, time felt like, uh, I was called to do this. So I was a reluctant teacher in the public space, especially that I speak about. This is the time beyond large, larger than life teachers. And, uh, but I was led into this and I, I welcome, anyone and, and everyone to, to join and discover more about the work we are developing portals of percept.
Tami Simon: I appreciate you being on the radar, Aviv, so I could find you and have this conversation with you. When I was a young person, just to speak personally for a moment, there were so many conversations I wanted to have and my family and my mother would always say, we don’t talk about that at the dinner table, Tammy, we don’t talk about.
And I was like, when are we gonna talk about it? When? And you know, now here, four decades of talking to people about the things I care the most about. It’s been, uh, a through line of my life and a never ending one, as you said, a project you can’t complete. I’m gonna end our conversation Aviv by staying personal and asking you about something that I’m really working through right now.
And, uh, the language I’m using for it is, uh, language from a, a spiritual tradition. Uh, basic trust. You write, we are loved and supported by creation. Believe in that we are not alone. Something higher enhances us, and we can lean into that strength. And what I notice for myself is that most of the time I’m with that, but then you talked about this third loom set of inquiries about power and where do our fears lie and how do they have power over us?
Sometimes I don’t feel that my fears take over and I don’t, I don’t feel necessarily that humans as a whole, and even in my own life, that that support by creation, that it’s a hundred percent all the time. So I, I’m curious what you would have to say to that and how your own conviction is so strong.
We’re not alone. Something higher enhances us. We can lean into that strength. How did your conviction become so strong?
Aviv Shahar: Well, first, Tammy, my experience is exactly like yours. I’m, I’m not there a hundred percent. I, I fall on my face and I need to myself up. And so I do this by the, through the work I do every day, EV every morning I. I get to, uh, rediscover what we are about. Um, one of the curious teachings that, uh, gorg, and I’m not a gorg student, but that, that nevertheless he brought to his students was the perspective of the discontinuous self, which is that you wake up in the morning and you, every morning you discover you are a different person and therefore you, he introduced this side, this practice of stop, stop in the middle of the day to discover who is now active. Is it the trusting you or is it the frightened you? Is it the disgruntled you or is it the compassionate and, and believing you? So a useful practice, but what I found was that we, we now have an even bigger permission, which is we get to write the story of who we are and what we are becoming every day.
And that that idea of a self-authoring human into this time of change. So central to, to the universalis emergence. And so to me it begins with what you just said. I don’t pretend that I’m always there. I begin with acknowledging when I feel that, um, I’ve been exhausted by something, that something has been trying. And I do the summary of evidence and I do the, the loom work of my interior, uh, evaluation. And, and I call upon inner conclave, which is the ecology within and all the, the interior friends that I’ve cultivated for many years. And they fortify me. And I also have many friends, uh, not in just in the interior, but in the exterior.
What has worked for me very much. Which I think may resonate for you because for me, you are a demonstration and an example sheet of that is you, you get on with a project and I, I’m going to guess that what I’m going to say now is likely true for you, as it is true for me, which is that while you work on the project, your project works on you, you needing to prepare for the next you’ll have you needing to find again the, your own conviction when you are about to meet your team, you needing to demonstrate to your team that you are choosing to coexist and, and partner with a critic, with a self critic, with the uncertain, with the, with the distrusting one. And that through the the interior dialogue, you are actually reestablishing. Trust. There is a simple model of trust that I, I’ve been bringing to, uh, leadership teams for, uh, really three decades now. And the beauty of that is that it, it’s relevant in the corporate sense, but it also is true for our partnering with the universe our partnering with whatever it is we will describe in our belief system. And, uh, do we trust, can we trust the, the character of what it is we are engaged with Because it time and again brings us results. Can we trust the, the competence of what it provides us with? And can it, can we trust that we are inside something that’s caring and it has our interest in mind? found that, uh. The blessings that have enveloped my life exceeded so much what I could have imagined, but it, it was never without tremendous struggle and, um, choosing time and again to run into the pain and to embrace the, the areas where, first of all, I found outage in myself. And second, I am, I was most frightened and I had to train myself to love run into frightens me.
Now that may sound strange. You could say you flew jets in the Air force. What could be more scary than that? You’ll be surprised. A lot of things in, in other parts of life that one needed to overcome. So I think we, the, the phase we are in. Is, is a phase where we grow into our wholeness through, uh, remedying, through the continually being remedial and finding the remedy to, to the parts that are broken and that we do so generatively and that we are industrious all those looms that, that, that I’ve shared.
So, I don’t know if that resonates, but I hope it, it offers something because I, I intuit that more than anything. I did not say anything you didn’t know, but in describing probably part of your nature in the way you have journeyed, you’ll tell me whether that’s true or not, but that’s what I attempted to do.
Tami Simon: I think you have done that Aviv and this meeting with you, I have a sense is just the beginning of a deepening friendship and collaboration and friends. I encourage you to check out portals of perception. Aviv, thank you for being, uh, on the radar and being such a brave and visionary soul and Sherpa for our times for this.
Acal Epical. It’s a hard word to say. I have to say that. I even looked up its pronunciation and it was said many different ways. Let’s hear how you say it.
Aviv Shahar: Al, we are involved in an AL transition al intensification. All the struggles we see all over the world are symptoms of that. We didn’t have time to describe the meta crisis and how that is an, an expression of that. And you have been on the leading edge of that for many years. So I am so, uh, filled with gratitude for your work and for the opportunity to be in conversation today.
Tammy, thank you.
Tami Simon: Thank you, friends. This epochal moment. Thanks for being with us here on Insights At the Edge.
