What is the self? We live in a time when personal identity seems to drive all the big segments of global life — culture, politics, entertainment. We can self-identify as almost anything, any role we choose, with little worry about education, skill, or sense of higher human purpose and universal connection.

Is there a role for the “self” in a life that strives to express the highest potential of its human design? To understand its possible function in co-creating a new wave of universal evolution now appearing? Yes, there is, but it’s probably deeper and more powerful than most of us realize.

Here we explore the path giving rise to the birth of the new dimensions of self. It is a trace from ancient tribal societies, through the Renaissance and into this post-modern world and beyond. This exploration builds on Homo Universalis Activates and The 1000 Faces of Homo Universalis. 

In this contemplative conversation, Aviv Shahar is joined by author, consultant, and longtime Portals friend Jeff Vander Clute. Jeff is also co-founder of Sourcing the Way. Aviv andJeff reflect on the tribal self, through to first-self individuation in the planetary you, and then the second, third and fourth self-individuations to discovering the essence generator you, towards the activation of the Homo Solaris and Universalis capacities that are naturally arising in the human transformation journey. Among their insights:

• The human carries consciousness that is superior to the planetary realm, and potentially includes the whole cosmos and universe; the soul orchestration is different from ancient prophets, who did not need to navigate smartphones and the internet.
• “If you spot it, you got it” leads me to take radical responsibility. If I perceive or misperceive it, then it's in me, and there's work to be done if the buck truly stops here.
• The higher aspects of the self are not “Let me be me,” but rather the reverse: “Let me discover and be configured by the circumstance’s arising need and intelligence.”
• As our consciousness sees the whole pattern, the wicked problems we see in the world are infinitely small in comparison to our capacities as fully individuated humans and leaders.
• “Let me be me” means I can construct my world according to my desires and beliefs, including madness and insanity, divorced from other organizing principles or natural laws of how the universe works.
• In ancient hunter-gatherer tribes, you live in the consciousness of the tribe and do not experience yourself in the individuated sense, in the way we do today.

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.