A glance at the headlines and the environmental and cultural upheavals making news around the planet might produce an understandable urge to withdraw, seek refuge, from a world that appears dangerously out of balance. Or at least to seek a developmental experience that generates a sense of sanctuary and safety amid the turmoil and change.
What if true transformation and the expression of new universal intelligence now appearing stimulate a very different, deeper instinct? An impulse to engage and dive into, not retreat from, life and humanity in all of the messiness, confusion and struggle. It’s part of a perception that new evolutionary potential won’t find its fulfillment secluded in a mountaintop monastery — physical or metaphorical — separated from the humanity it seeks to uplift.
In this conversation, Aviv Shahar and Jeff Vander Clute further explore the ensoulment journey, here referring to ‘soul’ as a guiding intelligence that seeks to assist the expression of a higher universal cause or purpose in our life on this planet. Ensoulment will inspire the kind of engagement with the world that can transform and heal and lead to a better future for humanity and the planet.
Aviv and Jeff touch upon themes first discussed in an earlier conversation, “Homo Universalis Activates: Becoming a Whole Person”. Among their insights:
- Could it be that people attuned to higher capacities coming online and switching-on actually need to step up rather than to retreat?
- There is a whole range of human inner technologies that we left behind in the massive race to scale in Silicon Valley.
- We are humans on a journey where we fall on our faces, and we've got to pick ourselves up.
- People born today enter a world that's noisy, chaotic, and largely gone mad…not oriented to the creative higher potential of human life, but to being consumers.
- One of the problematic byproducts of the digital age is that most people came of age with this formative mindset that technology can solve all our problems and challenges.
- What seemed to be impossible or hard work and a struggle now feels to be not only possible but happening on an accelerated basis.
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 ensoulment journey is not to escape the contradictions of life anymore but to learn to embrace the greater, larger contradiction in living, which is that we are spiritual beings inside the human experience, which is by itself a contradiction.
Jeff Vander Clute
Jeff Vander Clute coaches and consults, teaches, writes, and leads travel journeys.
He is a co-founder of Sourcing The Way, Enlightening Journeys and Expeditions, and The Consciousness of Money.
Jeff is also a member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle and he serves on the board of directors for Alliance for the Earth and Source of Synergy Foundation (previous chair).
Aviv Shahar
Aviv is the Founder of Aviv Consulting, helping leaders unleash strategic innovation, and is the author of Create New Futures: How Leaders Produce Breakthroughs and Transform the World Through Conversation.
