In the newest chapter of the Homo Universalis series, Aviv Shahar, with Karen Heney and Kyriaki Nikandrou, explores how the “muscles” metaphor is not such a stretch as we face and learn to embrace the two big struggles in any developing life: the known and the unknown.

The known struggles are those we see and feel all around us, from personal, to family or community, to the global cultural, economic and ecological upheavals that affect the planet and each of us individually. Our struggle with the unknown includes trying to imagine and create a new future when so much of the present is uncertain and changing. Can we picture in our mind the person we want to become?

As Aviv, Karen and Kyriaki discuss, the activation of our Universalis nature, or universal human, brings online new capacities, perceptions and creativity to help us flex the right muscles that can balance and harmonize the many struggles we may face. Among their insights:

• The Universalis inquiry can help humanity at large to pivot from a barbarous operating system of “kill before you get killed” to a way of collaborating based in valiance, chivalry and virtue.
• As we enter new domains of possibility, what used to activate and energize us don’t carry the same impact; we feel different sources of energy, new capacities and parts of ourselves.
• If the human has a universal nature, and universal expansion is accelerating, are we also accelerating into the future, into the unknown, and who we are becoming today?
• To be available in new patterns and new ways, we need to relax the groove, the old patterns held at tension habitually. We make space for new processes, new energy sources, and new configurations.

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.