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

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

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

Among Aviv and Jeff’s other insights and discoveries:

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

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

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

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

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Resilience and the Crisis of Belief

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

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

Other insights and ponders:

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

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

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

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

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Current Openings #20 – The Epoch Mystery