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Portals of Perception

Portals of Perception

Written by: Aviv Shahar Peter Barry
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Portals of Perception endeavors to create conversations at the frontier of discovery, and to bring to life the natural processes of human development. Each of us, by design, can become a living agency for the evolutionary process, as it arises, through our living expression, and can become an intentional participant in the emergence of a wiser future. Join our hosts Aviv Shahar and Peter Barry every week for conversations on a wide variety of topics including human purpose, personal development, evolution and the future, community of conversation and discovery, and more.2021 Portals of Perception Philosophy Self-Help Social Sciences Spirituality Success
Episodes
  • 137 - Self-Worth, Happiness, and Your Soul
    Oct 9 2026

    In Part 1 of this event it was revealed that it is indeed possible to connect and attune to one's Soul, and emphasized that there are multiple paths to find this attunement. Part 2 deepens our exploration with a set of profound steps aimed at discovering and liberating your Soul. The paradox of the Soul journey is that these steps cannot simply unfold in a linear progression; rather, we must engage with all five concurrently.

    In this forum, a circle of Portals friends joins Aviv Shahar to deepen the understanding of the Soul’s purpose and its remarkable ability to adapt to change. This adaptive nature of the Soul opens greater possibilities for each of us to realize our unique potential within the broader context of humanity.

    Attuning to our Soul requires us to first release it from the constraints imposed by past experiences and conditioning. Then we seek to find balance amid the push-pull forces of life, navigating the diverse frequencies, impulses, and functions of the many inner lives within us. With this found balance, we create space and freedom to reconnect with our natural inclinations and discover our unique resonance.

    Questions such as: Where do we naturally find flow? What enhances us?, and Where do we find joy in our lives? guide this discovery. We then expand our inquiry into the larger context of contributing to and serving a greater picture.

    Leaning into these mysteries puts us on a transformative journey that unlocks a deeper appreciation of what it means to be human:

    • Soul Purity and Innocence: Rediscover the purity of your Soul by releasing imposed identities and reconnecting with childlike spontaneity and mature honor.
    • Self-Worth Beyond Validation: Explore how true self-worth emerges not from external achievements or validation but from recognizing your innate human dignity and spiritual essence.
    • Happiness Anchored in Meaning: Realize why fleeting pleasures cannot sustain true happiness, which instead flourishes through deep meaning and spiritual connection.
    • Vertical Learning and Depth Activation: Engage in vertical learning—accessing latent inner capacities through mindful awareness to integrate and restore wholeness, and renew your sense of joy.
    • Service as a Soul Calling: Discover how dedicating yourself to serving others creates a powerful conduit for higher spiritual presences, naturally enhancing your Soul’s attunement.

    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 thing you could do is discover how you can be of service. There is something unique about your presence. There is something unique about your configuration. There is something unique about your experience in life, and the qualities and properties, the spiritual properties, the soul properties that you cultivated in yourself, and the capacities that you have you brought to life. So, we need your presence here. We need your contribution. We need your leadership. We need your service in whatever way you can offer that service.” (Aviv)

    “One way to attune in a deeper way to your soul is to discover how you can be of service, not the only way, but it's one profound and profoundly accelerating way. And as you do so, you continue to inquire what is nourishing and uplifting to your soul, and how are you naturally wired to be of service? You continue this discovery.” (Aviv)

    RESOURCES MENTIONED

    Portals of Perception Website

    Aviv’s LinkedIn

    Aviv’s Twitter

    Aviv’s Website

    Attuning to Your Soul, Part 2: Self-Worth, Happiness, and Your Soul

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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • 136 - Attuning to Your Soul
    Sep 25 2026

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

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

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

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

    Key exploration questions

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

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

    TWEETABLE QUOTES

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

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

    RESOURCES MENTIONED

    Portals of Perception Website

    Aviv’s LinkedIn

    Aviv’s Twitter

    Aviv’s Website

    Attuning to Your Soul – Event Part 1

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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • 135 - 16 Vortices of What is Emerging
    Sep 11 2026
    How do we make sense of life in the vortex of so much change?Where do the interior and exterior developments mirror one another — and where do they diverge?The sixteen vortices described here offer a profound revelation emerging from the current tracking of this epochal intensification. These vortices include novel developments in both machine intelligence and human intelligence. AI clearly holds the potential either to help us or to hinder us. The critical question is: will we become subject to the machine and lose the significance of our humanity, or will we liberate our greater universal capacity — using the advancement of machines to help awaken and amplify our own universal potential?The Cambrian explosion was the sudden appearance of new life-forms and greater complexity in an earlier age of Earth’s history. Today we are living through a crisis of complexity of another kind — a Cambrian Release — offering us a unique opportunity to connect with new dimensions of human intelligence that are revealing themselves now.In this mind-expanding conversation, Aviv Shahar and Jeff Vander Clute pivot around the age-old question: What is intelligence? They explore the unseen dimension of universal intelligence that quietly nudges us forward, revealing the path ahead. We experience this intelligence when we engage in self-directed, long-term practices — individually and collectively — as a way of liberating greater perception and insight.From Jeff’s two-year journey of writing a book — with its inherent agonies and ecstasies — the conversation zooms out to trace the five-year arc of the Epochal Journey and the Portals project. Aviv shares what it means to “fly in formation” with other self-directed elders engaged in the same developmental path. He reveals six habitual “shrinkage moves” that can immobilize us — or, if consciously leaned into, can become catalysts for breakthrough and new vistas of perception.Significant opportunities explored include:Embodying long-term practice and process: discovering that the work you are doing is simultaneously doing its work on you.Moving beyond the teacher archetype: exemplified by the five-year Epoch Journey and the imagery of flying in formation with self-led, self-directed elders.Recognizing the six shrinkage moves that can hold humanity back — and using them as portals to breakthrough.Understanding the seven-fold Epochal Process: upgrading our cognitive and operating systems to navigate greater complexity.Exploring the Universalis human and collective liberation: unlocking advanced capacities and learning to abide with unseen dimensions of reality.Considering the parallels between the Cambrian explosion and today’s epochal intensification: seeing this era as the release of new forms of intelligence and life through complexification.This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel. TWEETABLE QUOTES “To follow that as a pathway is just appreciating, in an even broader sense, that we are all and each one of us, we are stepping into the human function. That is to say, whatever we process, metabolize, struggle with, overcome, resolve, transmogrify, and release in our capacities, we do so on behalf of the larger human family, and that's a service, too. And we do so from a place of love and devotion. Whenever you struggle, whenever you find a contraction point or resistance, which of these would come handy for you to lean into?” (Aviv)“This is a collective path of awakening consciousness, as we focus on the shrinkage moves that we may be playing out individually, and really do the work, including releasing from our whole body, mind, system. The benefits of doing so, particularly if we do so as larger and larger collectives, perhaps cannot be exaggerated in terms of the world impact and what we impart to the healing of the global collective. I suppose you're proposing that when we are effective in regulating our own nervous system as we cohere with others, we cannot underestimate the potential impact of this in the way it ripples to others, and it's part of the work we're here to do.” (Jeff) RESOURCES MENTIONED Portals of Perception WebsiteAviv’s LinkedIn Aviv’s TwitterAviv’s WebsiteThe Next Great Flourishing: 16 Vortices of What is Emerging
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    1 hr and 7 mins
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