073 - Evolving Together #2 - What Holds Us Back?

Portals of Perception

Be honest: When we see a friend or colleague achieve a personal breakthrough — barrier overcome; milestone reached; the best of themselves coming forward — do we fully feel the value and joy of their success? Not even a tinge of jealousy, or wish that it had been us instead?

What if we embrace a very different view of each other’s accomplishments and potential? When we acknowledge and appreciate the struggles and progress in someone else, we actually create space in ourselves for the same success. We grow in ourselves by watching others grow; we liberate a greater possibility that is only accessible when we come together as “we,” beyond the ego of “me.”

What’s holding us back? Many of the outcomes of modern life: separation, fear, and trauma, which create an emotional and mental scar tissue that prevents us from trusting and accepting each other. Our natural human sensitivity is numbed, inhibiting the fountain of warmth, kindness, and generosity that is our birthright.

Fortunately, we also have higher faculties and systems, still connected to our natural intelligence and creativity, that enable growth, development, and integration with an emerging new evolutionary potential.

We explore the barriers preventing a greater human mutuality, and the seeds of our healing and integration, in part two of the conversation Evolving Together, with Aviv Shahar and two Portals' friends and life-long spiritual seekers, Nigel Geeves and Well. In part one, the three opened the question, Why evolve together?

Among their insights:

• To evolve together we want to be fearless, which doesn’t mean having no fear. It means we're able to move forward and discover that the feeling of bravery on the inside is more powerful.
• In our human development journey, what seemed intractable and frozen by time and trauma can melt away in the presence of a mutuality that is prepared to support life rather than arrest it.
• The grip of what is holding us back is made stronger by fear. When we develop above fear in ourselves it no longer has credence or power and control over us.
• Everything humans do is powered by energy, which creates a form of collective memory. It’s like a loose operating system influencing human behavior, unless we develop above our history and co-create our future.
• The key is in our acceptance of another life and giving a space for the sharing of both of us. It’s acceptance of life to life, rather than the historic pattern of how I can win.
• When you no longer shun, suppress, or pull outside of yourself the parts you dislike in favor of the parts you like, it becomes a fuller integration of the inner family; you are more relaxed and more yourself.

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.

TWEETABLE QUOTES

“But the larger evolutionary strategy is that there is a better chance for survival, in most species in the flora life, in the fauna life, and for us humans, this was going to be more secure and guaranteed if we worked together.” (Aviv)
“There's an imagery that comes to mind, and it's one of my fascinations. If you take a mirror, you can look in that mirror and get a reflection of yourself, but it's a singular reflection. We can look at another mirror and do the same, but if you put those mirrors next to each other and put your head in between them, you get a million reflections, and a human is a much better reflector of another human than any physical mirror.” (Nigel)

“What it actually means is that we've been very successful in doubling down on sensitivity so that we don't feel or pick up on the vast majority of what is going on because it's too difficult to handle. So this is the beginning of a diagnostic process that really begins to open up those sensitivities again deliberately. So we begin to grow our awareness rather than retreating into a non-feeling state.” (Well)

“Emotionally, as one grows and grows with others, and learns that it's possible to be safe with others, it is possible for the scar tissue in a life to begin to heal and melt. And the great benefit of that is that people become able to connect again, because trauma stops you connecting and causes isolation. And when people discover the great joy of being able to connect again, it's such a liberation that they tend to want to take that up and hold it as a valued thing.” (Well)
“It just reminds me that shadows are always bigger than the thing itself. And, like you say, fear seems to be a shadow that when you actually face it, it's nowhere near as big as you thought it was. And the curious thing in that is that, how we think about something conditions how we feel about it. So it's vital that we review our views and psychologies, otherwise our feeling life just won't have a chance.” (Nigel)

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Portals of Perception Website

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Aviv’s Website

Evolving Together #2 - What Holds Us Back?