For almost as long as Homo Sapiens have been on the planet, humans have sensed and tried to commune with a mysterious presence registered as ‘something higher’ – a power, energy, or intelligence bigger than ourselves. For early humans, it might simply have been fear of the power of nature; over time it evolved into a profound spiritual or religious quest to connect with a universal, divine source of life and change. Part of the heightened spirituality and new consciousness emerging in the past few years is the awareness that ‘something higher’ is not ‘out there’; it’s in here. The human mind, heart and spirit can transcend what previously might have been thought of as an inescapable duality of higher vs lower, of carnal vs spiritual. Join longtime Portals contributor, Jerry Pike, and Aviv Shahar as they explore the inspiration, insights and practices that propel them along the journey to the ‘something higher’ in Entering the Higher.
For almost as long as Homo Sapiens have been on the planet, humans have sensed and tried to commune with a mysterious presence registered as ‘something higher’ – a power, energy, or intelligence bigger than ourselves. For early humans, it might simply have been fear of the power of nature; over time it evolved into a profound spiritual or religious quest to connect with a universal, divine source of life and change.
Part of the heightened spirituality and new consciousness emerging in the past few years is the awareness that ‘something higher’ is not ‘out there’; it’s in here. The human mind, heart and spirit can transcend what previously might have been thought of as an inescapable duality of higher vs lower, of carnal vs spiritual. Join longtime Portals contributor, Jerry Pike, and Aviv Shahar as they explore the inspiration, insights and practices that propel them along the journey to the ‘something higher’ in Entering the Higher.
02:41 – Aviv Shahar speaks to the deep crisis of the spirit that Humanity is experiencing
04:10 – Aviv welcomes longtime Portal contributor Jerry Pike, who joins the show to share his decades of experience and his endeavors in the space of ‘Entering the Higher’
16:18 – Framing ‘The Higher’
21:07 – Why it is critical to attend to the higher potential of life
28:32 – Jerry defines his belief of the Spiritual Arising
31:21 – The search for truth and the connection between Science and Spirituality
42:55 – Jerry expounds on the focusing practice of sentiments and feelings of higher states
48:18 – Closing thoughts and insights from Aviv and Jerry
“Humanity is concurrently experiencing a deep crisis of the spirit. And, the many crisis points that are underway, together they form what we describe as the ‘complexity wall’ that creates the metacrisis. And these directly emanate out from and/or are byproducts of this sense of a deeper crisis of the spirit - that is to mean humans being separated from the natural sources that were meant to be part of everything we do in our relational and communal spaces.” (03:06) (Aviv)
“Religion is a bit of a classic for saying, ‘There’s a them and us. And we are lonely and something above us is high and we need to smarten up if we are to be acceptable to it.’ But, I think just a quick run on the notion of ‘higher’ compared to ‘low’ and what it tends to mean. You see it all over the place in businesses where you get the person who deals with sales inquiries and then you get the person who is ‘higher up,’ who is the Managing Director. Higher is all around us, and in us, and we have higher things in ourselves as well as lower things.” (09:51) (Jerry)
“This idea of ‘The Higher,’ in history, has always been external to people. I think we’re entering a phase, this spiritual changeover, where instead of looking outside of ourselves for the enhancement that we seek, the change is that the enhancement is primarily available within.” (14:54) (Jerry)
“Although this is not particularly talked about in the spiritual community, I feel obviously that it’s there. We should be pursuing the truth and we should be pursuing reality, because I don’t think that spirituality is just a ‘nice to have.’ I think spirituality is the greater truth of what’s going on with the human race.” (28:49) (Jerry)
“Beliefs are just a stepping stone and we should be constantly assessing them to see if they’re driving us towards a reality. So with the spiritual affair, I feel we're starting to realize there's levels beyond the physical that are more fascinating. And these are things like feelings, emotions, the instinct, the intuition, the ability to perceive consciousness itself...These are the things that move us and get us up in the morning and make us want to understand more.” (30:34) (Jerry)
“I would say, for example, that one of the greatest faculties we have to explore the ‘higher’ department is actually our feelings. It almost works better than our thoughts. Both are needed, but feelings are almost like unspoken intelligence.” (45:43) (Jerry)