11 Sept 2026
135 - 16 Vortices of What is Emerging
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 (https://portalsofperception.org/events/list/) page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXwKDHjE5zz1vLT87F2aqkQ) 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 Website (https://portalsofperception.org/)
Aviv’s LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/avivconsulting/)
Aviv’s Twitter (https://twitter.com/Avivshahar)
Aviv’s Website (https://www.avivconsulting.com/)
The Next Great Flourishing: 16 Vortices of What is Emerging (https://portalsofperception.org/portals/the-next-great-flourishing-16-vortices-of-what-is-emerging/)
