The Subconscious Way - Andrew Kippen

25/10/2024

I've helped 2 clients recently quit or pause successful careers to find a deeper calling.

It's been wonderful to see 4 stages emerge in their processes...

1 - DETOX - Our nervous system and mind have been primed for years to be productive, carry stress, achieve habits, and to worry about so many things. Once someone leaves a job, I notice it takes 3-4 weeks to actually detox from those old patterns and to let themselves finally relax. The nervous system moves out of fight or flight, and they finally have a chance to slow down.

2 - EGO DEATH - As soon as the stress is gone, a new stress comes in to replace it. "Yeah, but what's next? Who am I without my career? my paycheck? my title? my co-workers? my productivity?" A part of the ego begins to die and it starts FREAKING OUT. People begin feeling highly anxious, crying frequently, and feeling as though they should return to solid footing.

3 - EXPLORATION - As that part of the ego dies, now the fun begins. We get to explore what could your purpose be? What do you feel called to? What do you feel compelled by? What's the secret thing your friends know you do really well? This phase includes travel, museums, coffee dates, courses, retreats, and learning to trust intuition again.

4 - FOCUS - Once we find the thing, then we start making plans around it. How can you dive deeper? How do you create a life around it? What does that life look like as the ideal? Let's chart a path towards it!

Then the bobbing and weaving happens as clients listen to themselves, to others, to signs from the Universe, et al to navigate what's next. We find others on that path to help us.

And the truth is if I'd told them from the beginning, they wouldn't have believed me. The journey is an alchemical process that changes them and prepares them for what's ahead.

"We manifest at the speed of safety." Nyla Rodgers tells me.

This process allows the ego time to grow into safety as you reach for your bigger dreams and deeper purpose. It's so beautiful to watch clients go through it over and over again.

23/10/2024

2 More Spots for Men's Adventure Retreat in early November. Come join us!

03/09/2024

I'm running a 10hr program to help people find their PURPOSE. DM me for info.

30/08/2024

I'm hosting a MEN'S ADVENTURE RETREAT in Costa Rica this November with the talented Kelly Ehret.

This is for men who are tired of doing work on themselves... by themselves.

If you've read the books,
watched the videos,
taken the courses,
got your morning routine dialed in,
and STILL you're missing something.

This incredible week will WAKE UP ALL THAT SELF WORK
and turn it into something more.

We'll be KAYAKING in mangroves, and doing SHADOW WORK.

We'll be ZIP-LINING through the jungle canopy, while practicing our EMOTIONAL AGILITY in small groups with each other.

We'll be HIKING to Jungle Waterfalls and Whale Tail beaches, and getting to CONNECT DEEPLY with each other.

This is a men's retreat where you don't have to sacrifice your vacation time to be locked up in a room (although there's a time and place for a good vipassana).

We'll use the natural elements of Costa Rica to help embody all the self-work that you've been doing so that you can really see what it means to be livin'.

We're offering early bird pricing around $3k.

We have limited spots that will go fast so reach out when you see this!

DM me for more info / questions.

30/08/2024

Hosting a MEN'S ADVENTURE RETREAT - Nov 4-10 in Costa Rica. Join Us!

20/08/2024

As I sit with them, my posts this past week all tie into the idea of PURPOSE.

I have all these ideas.
I have these things that are missing from my life that i so want (anybody want to build aircrete domes with me?).
I want the world to change for the better.
I want my life and my family's life to be different.
I want to offer my friends and their families the opportunity for something different.
I want to live nearby, to grow food, to build things, and to be in communion with nature.

I watched the video that the brilliant and compassionate Navlyn shared and a bunch of things jumped out at me from it... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmusbHBKW84)

"PRIVATIZE REVENUE, SOCIALIZE LOSSES"
Big companies capture all the revenue from their work and then pass negative health effects on to society.
IE
- Factory Farming polluting lakes and rivers,
- Industrial Fracking polluting ground water,
- Social Media creating mental health issues,
- Walmart encouraging underpaid workers to live on food stamps, etc.

"TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT != BETTERMENT"
Advancement has no need for the inclusion of "what's good for us". So tech advancement or growing GDP is not a good measure of PROGRESS. Stakeholders including impoverished individuals, species going extinct, natural resources being polluted/destroyed, that there's very little inclusion of those things in our progress narrative.

It's a really juicy discussion between Daniel Schmactenberger (a great thinker on sense-making and the poly-crisis we find ourselves in) and Nate Hagens (unknown to me prior to this).

I recommend watching it when you have a chance. Treat it like a movie and have a drink and some popcorn.

I really savor this kind of philosophical discourse.

---

The talk also highlights the idea of cancer as a cell that doesn't know its purpose with respect to the whole.

It's a cell that keeps multiplying and trying to survive.

If it succeeds with SURVIVAL AS ITS ONLY PURPOSE, it ultimately dies because it kills its host.

A MEDICAL APPROACH says how can we kill those cells or cut them out of the body so they stop wreaking havoc.

A METAPHYSICAL approach would say how can we restore the cell's understanding of its role as part of the whole.

That it's actually meant to just be a liver cell or a breast cell or a pancreas cell, and its function is XYZ.

Once it understands how it can be helpful and useful to the whole, then it will cease simply trying to survive (killing its host) and resume its PURPOSE.

Sound familiar?

And so if we've been programmed to eat factory-farmed fast food, and to quell our emotional pains with purchases, to be online all the time, to take the job that pays us the most money to get someone to click on an ad
or to drop-ship
or to sell something processed
or to buy something processed
or to process something bought or sold
(couldn't help the Cusack reference here; kickboxing, it's the sport of the FUTURE!)

When all of those things are contributing to the problems we're facing... then we are like the cancer cell - just struggling to survive and carve out a life for ourselves that we think will make us happy.

---
And the happiness we're seeking is actually an impoverished and fleeting version of the life we're meant to have.

We are impoverished and we don't even know it!

We don't know that we're missing out on...
- functional community
- rites of passage and beautiful deep meaningful collective and individual rituals,
- being connected with animals
- being connected to the earth,
- on deep spiritual experiences that reveal the majesty of the Universe
- the richness of other cultures without judging them
- an incredible connection with our bodies and all wisdom they hold
- and so much more...

And I know that my friends here have had tastes of many of these things, but it's usually the exception, not the rule.

It's usually the travel or the ceremony once a year.
The visit to the zoo or for a horse ride.
It's the retreat you can't afford to do every month.
It's the therapy session once a week, and then back to disconnection and dissociation.

And so what I've begun to focus on in my work is PURPOSE.

How do we know what we're here to do?
How we fit into the larger narrative?
How do we shift from consumers to CREATORS/CURATORS?

My wife has an amazing metaphor that I love so much (she's brilliant by the way - nylarodgers.com)

The CATERPILLAR and the BUTTERFLY.

The caterpillar is a consumer.

It goes around eating leaves and destroying the plants it needs to survive.

Then one day it decides to take a sabbatical and go off and find itself.
It builds a chrysalis.
It takes days off from work to just be with itself.
It takes its 40 days in the desert and goes on a pilgrimage, so to speak.
Its own beautiful form of Vipassana - getting acquainted with each part of itself, each cell, and turning what was caterpillar into something else.

I have to imagine this is a painful process.

One I'd anthropomorphize with fear and doubt, and bravery, and worry.

Until ultimately it emerges as a BUTTERFLY.
An organism with wholly new features - wings, antennae, new muscles and structures that allow it TO FLY!

Allowing it to understand so much more of the world.
To have a different perspective on its ecosystem entirely.

An organism that now functions as a POLLINATOR... no longer a parasite, but a symbiot that spreads life instead of pruning or destroying it.

It becomes something that the ecosystem needs in order to survive and thrive.

When we find our PURPOSE, we can shift from being caterpillars to butterflies.

We can shift from being disconnected from the Earth to being regenerative, to creating health and life in our wake.

Even now, I'm discovering more and more about my purpose as I write these posts.

I did a powerful meditation yesterday that revealed even more of it along with a symbol for it.

That's a story for later this week though :)

16/08/2024

What if your culture was wrong?

Not wrong in the moral sense of the word like "going to hell" wrong that many Christian dogmatics teach, but wrong as in scientifically wrong - like we ran an experiment and it didn't turn out the way we expected.

It was just that our hypothesis was wrong.

In 2007, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone from a stage in San Francisco. I watched the announcement live with my colleagues.

Just like that, the game had changed.
Everyone wanted one.
Our Star Trek tri-corder moment was enabled.
All of human knowledge was in your pocket.
Apps became a real thing.
Social media took over.
Little red notification bubbles were everywhere and we were hungry for digital connection.

-- 2020 --
Fast forward to 2020 and the strange polarizing effect the pandemic had on us.

For some people it became the **accelerator** - people decided to get married, have kids, move away from the city, buy a house (for a minute), and take a risk.

For others it became the **decelerator** - their body broke down, their social engagements dwindled, their mental health took a toll, and everything went online and delivery.

-- UPS AND DOWNS --
For Nyla and I it was a bit of both.

My men's group went online.
I started teaching classes.
All my sessions went online.

And at the same time...
We were lucky enough to bounce around in the Hudson Valley until we landed in a wonderful shared home arrangement with our friends Meghan and Jurrien.

We had a room in their home in Woodstock.
They had a room in our Brooklyn apartment.
We both came and went as we pleased.

And... it ... was ... awesome.

I loved having an extended family in the house - 2 kids, grandma, friends and co-workers. We shoved two nuclear families together and found a 'molecular family' set up that felt great to us.

We spent Thanksgivings and Christmases together, we hiked, we went to Fairs, walked around Cooper lake and enjoyed Saturday evenings getting pizza in Woodstock and having cocktails at a great bar called The Early Terrible.

We got offline.

It felt like we were building our tribe, outside of work and religious communities. It had ups and downs, but we settled into a nice rhythm of cooking dinners, doing dishes, grocery shopping, and cocktail hours by the pool in Summer.

Everyone else thought we were crazy.
Or swingers.

Living with another couple? Like full-time? It was so funny to see the look on people's faces.

As I'm typing this I'm wondering if it was really just me who thought that? Could this work for a sensitive empath like me?

-- OUR CULTURE SHIFT --
Anyway the experience taught me that the American cultural bias I had about living as a couple or on my own, but never as a couple with other couples taught me we were actually missing out on something really rich and healing.

Nyla stopped needing to be my entertainment each night. Or maybe I stopped needing to be hers.

I had great discussions with Jurrien about business and culture and history. He taught me about Taiwan, where he'd spent his post-college years learning Mandarin / Taiwanese and traveling around.

I marveled as Meghan crafted beautiful interiors and revamped an entire house next door with finds from Craigslist and FB Marketplace. She was a master deal finder.

I watched Nyla parent Jurrien's kids as if they were own - taking a keen interest in Pokemon, and whatever app they were into playing on their iPads.

-- SHIFTING CULTURE in 2024 --
And so this Summer as I'm watching and reading research from NYU professor Scott Galloway about how screwed Gen Z is from student debt to jobs to housing.

I'm seeing the statistics about rising teen su***de and body image issues due to social media and how they're on their phones as if it was their job.

I hear from millennial friends who are dating Gen Z that hang-outs with Gen Z friends are time for everyone to be "alone together" on their phones.

And it makes me realize that I thought our culture was the natural outcome of the passage of time... that Americans were heading towards a perfection of government, business, technology, spirituality, ourselves... I realize how silly that sounds as I write it, but it was the water I was swimming in for so long that I didn't know to question it.

This is just the way things are.

But in my lifetime, things weren't always the way they are now.
We chose them this way.
We green-lit them at so many different levels.

And now it feels like the genie is out of the bottle.
It can't go back, and so we build on top of broken foundations.

We build apps that addict, and then tell people to turn their screens black and white.

We build watches that constantly distract us, and then tell people to turn on airplane mode.

We figure out ways to create the toggle outside of ourselves.

The toggle feels like a privilege.
To know it exists.
To have the willpower to resist it.
To enable it and then not turn it off when our worn down dopamine receptors need a hit.

Our broken machine of culture keeps adding more onto a broken foundation.

They were selling "Occupy Wall Street" shirts within days of the movement's start.

It is constantly eating anything that seeks to inhibit or prevent its progress.

Because... progress.
That's what we're here for right?

More tech.
More businesses.
More choices.
More resources.
More people.
More... more... more...
More progress
that ultimately empowers or enslaves us.

14/08/2024

Big Tech makes more money when you don’t move your body, spend time outdoors, when you don’t interact with humans in real life, and when you are addicted to scrolling.

—

Healthcare/Big Pharma makes more money when you’re living an unhealthy lifestyle, don’t know about natural health remedies, and believe you are powerless over what’s happening in your mind and body.

—

Big Agriculture makes more money when you don’t question where your food is coming from, how it’s been grown, and you believe growing your own food is hard.

—

Amazon makes more money when you require instant gratification and you don’t realize that you can’t buy emotional healing, status, belonging, or community from them.

—

Your employer makes more money when you work more hours for the same salary or when you take on the work of 2-5 people because the gaps need to be filled and you’re “the only one” that can do it.

We live in a society that is not aligned with our highest good.

There are layers of abstraction between us and everything we touch so that we have no idea where anything comes from.

- Do you know where cinnamon comes from? What does it look like?

- Where was your lunch grown? Who grew it? Who cooked it?

- Where did the last thing you bought online come from? Was it made by someone you could email and talk to.

As a Dad outside the US, I’m thinking about these things all the time.

Why do I need to buy almond milk with 10 extra ingredients to make it shelf-stable when I can just make it myself.

Most of the time the answer comes back to because I’m separated from a community that might make it together en masse and then share it between each other.

I’m separated from the woodworker who might make me new furniture. I’m separated from the space that would allow me to do that on my own.

And the answer is always… more money, which means more work, which means more time on the computer, which means more separation.

More separation = more money.

Anyone else feeling the overwhelming lack of functional community in their lives?

02/08/2024

Where in your life are you pretending that you don't already have the answer?

13/07/2024

We have an elder Stateswoman on our hands!

29/05/2024

If I asked, "Are you a spiritual adventurer?" What would you say?

12/03/2024

Last year I joined a workshop that changed my view on “CARE” forever.

Simone Seol, one of my mentors, invited one of her teachers, Fabeku Fatunmise to share wisdom about community.

There were so many light bulb moments from this talk, but ultimately two stuck with me.

And this is a long post where I'm chewing on things in public as was my goal for 2024. Hopefully you enjoy, and please comment below on what resonated for you or the questions at the end.

// MORE SELF-CARE IS A DISTRACTION FROM WHAT’S ACTUALLY MISSING // �

1 - Society is giving you an 8oz cup and asking you to carry 128oz of water.

As we center the Individual in Western Society, few of us are set up for success compared with the richness of culture, rites, and communities that our ancestors had (and many other cultures still have).

Here's a few examples of what this looks like.
- many new families (including Nyla and I) live separate from their existing families (mine's in TX/CO, Nyla's in CA/HI). We're expected to care for our child using PAID support like nannies, day cares, schools, house cleaners, meal preppers, etc. rather than having a family around us that does those things in loving support for FREE. That means we need to WORK MORE to PAY MORE for support.

- For those who are ALWAYS ON at work - available via phone / laptop, catching up on emails until 2am, working 10-14 hour days... self-care is at best a band-aid, and at worst another to-do on a list that's continually overflowing. Most people I know are in A CYCLE OF DEPLETE and RECOVER where ACTUAL DEEP REST is unavailable to them or reserved for once every 5 years. Resting actually feels like a privilege many of us don’t have… until we retire.

- Let's say you get the salary, the job, the partner, the kids, the house, the car, etc. You work for DECADES to find out that having all of it feels like a monumental WEIGHT on your shoulders - more a web of responsibilities than a life that you actually want to be living because you were so busy chasing someone else's dream that you'd forgotten the ability to listen to your own.

// THE INHUMANITY OF CENTERING SELF-CARE WITHOUT COMMUNAL CARE//
If you think about people's most common experience with Yoga and Meditation in the West, they’re a product that’s sold as tools for exercise and stress reduction.

And yet both of these are actually powerful tools for self-discovery and enlightenment given away for donation, when experienced in their traditional systems.

There's a whole science of yoga that includes breathwork, diet, movement, psychology, and community... but for the most part yoga is something for us that happens in a gym or in exchange for cardio/a workout.

Western Yoga & Meditation are good metaphors for Fabeku's point because you're given 20% of the solution and made to believe you have to figure out the rest. It’s your fault why your life is falling apart and meaningless even though you… look…fabulous darling.

If you do yoga, and journaling, and cold plunges, and meditation, and affirmations, and get good rest and eat organic then problem solved, right?

The truth is, none of that can sustainably fill the GAPING HOLE in our society that lack of community, shared rites & rituals, meaning/purpose, belonging, and elders with lived wisdom have left behind.

Which brings me to Fabeku's second point...

2 - COMMUNAL CARE ALWAYS CONTAINS SELF-CARE. ��The opposite is rarely true.

When we're a part of a good community, everything gets easier and I'd say better. Of course, new challenges arrive as well because where we meet others, we are confronted with a reflection of ourselves (both supportive and frustrating).

As a teenager, I belonged to an amazing Methodist church. I found a place where "being good" was cool. I made great friends in Robert, Evan, Wade, Kelly, Shelby, and Laura. We had ski trips together, we led worship, gave sermons, sang in choir, and traveled each year to do missionary work. We volunteered together every month at a support center for families affected by AIDS.

Church gave me a purpose, belonging, a role, and a community that I could talk with whenever I needed support. It was ideal. I became happier, got better grades, and started figuring out how to be in relationship. I did zero self-care other than prayer (maybe youth takes 100% of this, but there’s a point to potentially be made).

Eventually I graduated and moved away, finding similar communities in Switzerland and San Francisco.

As I started to question Church dogma and step away from Christianity to explore other paths, I found community in Buddhist Sanghas, spiritual classes and programs, in my profession, in EVRYMAN, men’s group, and in the tech startups I worked for.

And through all of it, I’ve seen how that COMMUNAL CARE led to a better version of me - happier, more supported, positively challenged, growing and giving back to my larger community. While my physical need for movement, sleep and good food still remained, my need for meditation, yoga, self-care, journaling, epsom salt baths, grounding, trips in nature, etc. wasn’t necessary.

—

And so with all that said, I’ve found a new community. Or maybe tribe is a better word at this point.

On the Sweet Spot retreat, László and Anna and I dropped into the most powerful healing container I’ve ever created.

We felt powerfully aligned in a way that was both ancient, and at the same time, new.
Laszlo talked about tribe and purpose.
Anna talked about energy and spirit.
I talked about emotions and relationship.

We’ve decided that we’d like to speak to this missing piece that so many in our “communities” are missing.

A safe space to be who we are fully.
A healing space.
A place to fully emote and be supported.
A place to grieve and grow.
A place to give and receive.
And a place to come to ourselves… our most powerful and free.

The journey is just beginning, but I wanted to share here to benefit from your wisdom and ask what have been some of your favorite communities? What made them special? �What do you know you’re lacking that a good community could provide?

I’m curious to hear more so that we can create something that is valuable for everyone we know, including you.

07/03/2024

Yesterday, the third Sweet Spot retreat completed. It was the most powerful personal transformation container I’ve been a part of. I had the honor of hosting with my brother Balázs László Karafiáth and my cosmic soul sister Anna Gannon.

I’ll tell you why it was the most powerful...

We LISTENed.

We listened to our INTUITION, and rarely did as we had previously planned.

We listened to the ENERGY of the room, and gave the participants what they needed, moment to moment.

One participant said as the retreat unfolded it felt like it was custom made for him and his journey. Whenever he needed something, it rose up to greet him.

We listened to each other, and as hosts we heard each other fully and let our individual MAGIC come to the event in beautiful ways.

We listened to the world, and provided a space for people to hear what it might need from us.

—

In this retreat, we found the Sweet Spot of working with mind, body, emotion and energy.

We used yoga to nourish, stretch, energize and release things in the BODY.

We used hypnotic journeys to forge a deep connection to the subconscious MIND that helped unlock purpose and insights.

We felt our EMOTIONS fully so that we could hear their messages and move through them to clarity. We used the energy of emotions as fuel to break through into deeper selfhood.

We used MUSIC to open up channels of energy and emotion while using body and voice to move things.

We TRUSTed energy and used it to tell us where to go -- what was working or not -- and to help people feel their own energy and power.

—-

We centered the COMMUNAL - giving people a safe space to be seen, to felt, and heard.

We kept coming back to the idea that COMMUNAL CARE ALWAYS includes self-care.

We helped people realize that often the reason things weren’t working at work, in their relationships, and in their purpose is because they are perpetuating

OLD STRUCTURES AND PATTERNS
- hyper-productivity, overwhelm and traumatization at work
- nuclear family structure with no community support and required income for childcare, schooling, activities, on top of other bills
- traditional education that forces people into a norm rather than awakening their true nature and indoctrinates them into climbing a ladder that either doesn't work for them or that leads to unpurposed comfort with zero fulfillment.
- neo-liberal capitalism that's leading to species extinction, destructive extraction, systems collapse, unhappiness and more.

—

“This feels like what church should be.” Said one participant.

A safe place where people find themselves and support each other in becoming their fullest selves.

This rings so true in my heart.
Caring. Challenging. Accepting. Loving. Supporting. Uplifting. Communal. Exploring. Adventuring. Laughing. Playing. Emoting. Crying. Death. Rebirth. Strength. Vulnerability. Anger. Safety.

It felt like I was in my deepest calling for days on end.

Chaos became a friend and a tool of transformation.

I loved every minute of it.

—

There’s a powerful force moving through me now.
I’m excited to invite you into it soon.

24/02/2024

🌟 Free Shamanism Webinar Alert!

Join Mauricio Bruce to explore powerful Shamanism tools for everyday life.

📅 Date: Monday, March 4th 🕗 Time: 8:00 PM EST / 7:00 PM Costa Rica Time

RSVP now to secure your spot and share the link below with anyone you think would enjoy this.

Gain a powerful tool for your everyday life and get exclusive access to the longer 8-month journey, limited to just 20 people, starting in April 2024.

This is for English speakers.

More info here ….

"Mau is a teacher who doesn't just guide but empowers. He truly hands you back your power. His guidance is potent, and this journey couldn't have come at a more perfect time in my life." -  Meghan 

19/02/2024

Those who say "YES" are rewarded by the ADVENTURE.

Those who say "NO" are rewarded by the perception of SAFETY they get.

01/01/2024

May 2024 greet you with new doors
To unknown places
On the earth and
In yourself.

#2024

08/11/2023

Going a Beautiful Mind on my upcoming Business Accelerator course for grads.

It’s been wonderful to figure out to blend and offer wisdom from my own experience as well as teachers and mentors like .grace.seol , , , , , and so many more.

Working to balance the clarity of ’s business wisdom with new paradigms of allyship and sustainability from .grace.seol

18/10/2023

What if more of you doing it all yourself is not the answer?