Can we find a path forward from reckoning to renewal? In a post-guru era, the search for new intelligence and insight doesn’t rely on any single external authority. We are inspired by gifted teachers, shamans, and enlightened companions, but this also is a time of distributed leadership.

Each one of us has the natural capacity to connect with a universal source of knowledge and creativity — homo universalis. Each one of us carries a piece of the puzzle that together form a clear image of a collective new future. Doesn’t it make sense to then together reckon new ways of creating community that liberate the best each has to offer?

We are fortunate to again have a gifted guide as we navigate our way through this shape-shifting new reality. This is the third conversation between Aviv Shahar and Layman Pascal, a leader in Integral thinking and teaching, and a prominent voice on the Integral Stage YouTube channel and podcast.

Among their insights:

• We’re entrenched on this planet in patterns that are not accessing the spirit. We're not collectively mobilizing to solve the metacrisis. We need a new source of meaning and energy to mobilize outside our embedded patterns.
• Merging and harmonizing different realms of experience produces an “extra,” greater than the sum of the parts. The extra is a pragmatic way to think about what spirituality and religion point toward.
• We have to reckon with the fact the very instruments through which we are trying to solve our problems are generating another set of problems that are gaining on us very quickly.
• We can't trust anything socially; we’re peripherally aware that we're not experiencing the same reality; the structure has been removed — a deeply uncanny and unsettling place to be; the time between worlds.
• Our sense of a shared consensus reality has been undermined. Any voice, image, or reference material can be generated by machine tools; what could give us the sense of proof has been taken away from us.
• We need to practice the emotional quality of trust individually, collectively and as a culture. There are many objective reasons to not trust our embedded systems, but we have a personal responsibility to be capable of trust.

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.