Conscious Growth Club is our primo online self-development club. It’s been running for 7 years now, so we’ve had plenty of time to evolve and improve it.
The new Year 8 version of CGC is especially rich, abundant, and divergent – so different and unique compared to anything I’ve seen elsewhere in the self-development world.
Instead of focusing primarily on content or coaching, in CGC we prioritize crafting and guiding you through unique growth experiences. You’ll learn more through direct experience than you will by just reading and watching videos. CGC includes a strong content library too, including all of my courses as part of the membership, but I really want to downplay that aspect as the key benefit this year because the experiential side of CGC is likely to be way more beneficial to you, especially with the many upgrades we’ve made for Year 8.
Consider the difference between researching traveling (reading about it, watching YouTube videos, talking to people about it) versus actually embarking on a real trip. Instead of studying self-development in CGC, you’ll be doing the equivalent of taking a self-development trip – in truth multiple kinds of trips spread all throughout the year.
Year 8 in CGC will be our most non-linear one – way more divergent and experiential than ever before. Gone are the regular Focus & Flourish check-in and masterminding calls from Year 7 – that was a solid format, but the intentionality behind it stemmed from a fairly linear model of self development, and the flow of each call became too predictable after a while.
Here are some of the ways CGC can help to fuel your growth with its emphasis on self-discovery through guided experiences.
1. You’ll Surf a Massive Variety of Growth Waves
CGC functions as an experiential wave generator, and you’re free to decide which waves to catch and ride. Week after week in CGC, members are invited into unique personal growth experiences, most of them fairly compact (like a one-hour Zoom call), some of them longer, like a multi-day walkthrough event. There’s a tremendous amount of newness and freshness in each of these experiences and not much predictable repetition.
Whereas a typical coaching program will usually run you through the same type of Zoom call over and over, CGC hits you with many injections of varied growth experiences. We still use Zoom for our group calls, so tech-wise that ought to be very familiar by now. But instead of just one or two formats, in CGC we have a whopping 14 unique call formats. Here’s the list of what you’ll get to experience in Year 8:
- Explorers’ Exchange
- Intention Infusion
- Truth Spark
- Good Vibrations
- Bear Care
- Spirit Spire
- Contribution Café
- Stature Sculptor
- Story Lab
- Courage Forge
- Pure Imagination
- Mystery Mixer
- Reflections & Revelations
- Alien Popcorn
If you want to see the descriptions for each call format, you’ll find them on the CGC invite page. Alien Popcorn is perhaps the most divergent, whereby we invite psychedelic energies to participate in the calls with us. If you attended the Spirit of Money or the Power of Spirit calls I hosted last Fall, then you’ve already had a glimpse of those types of energies. Was that too much for you, or would you like more of that in your life?
These calls don’t just have different names and formats – they all have different intentions, purposes, and vibes. For each call we create a different kind of energy, and we’ll guide you through different types of growth experiences. This allows you to work on self-development from many different angles, such as boosting your daily motivation, getting more attuned to your spirit self, aligning with your purpose, consciously directing the flow of your life story, upgrading your character, and more. You’ll go way behind basic yin-yang balance here.
We very much appreciate creativity and originality in CGC, so you’ll see that reflected even in the names of our calls and experiences. Would you rather attend a call named “Boundary Management,” or does “Bear Care” sound more fun to you? Would you rather take a boring and derivative course on manifesting, or would you prefer to engage in monthly group intentionality experiments with like-minded people, including picking fun intentional tracers each time and then sharing updates, results, and synchronous experiences with each other all throughout the month? Imagine doing that 12 times each year – real intentional practice with combined group energy. That’s only one small slice of what you’ll be doing in CGC each year.
CGC focuses on the doing and experiencing side of self-development, and we hit it from many different angles with a lot more range than you’re likely to see anywhere else. This is not one of those linear, step-by-step “proven” programs with a fine print disclaimer at the bottom. CGC Year 8 is very non-linear, matching how people actually grow and change. We know it’s foolish to try to promise specific results because that aspect is way too unpredictable, but we can promise to provide you with experiences, and these experiences can stimulate a lot of growth and change if you engage with them.
CGC is designed and intended for people who are mature enough to know that direct, experiential exploration is a powerful way to stimulate growth. But we must also acknowledge and accept that this growth cannot easily be predicted. The gains people make in CGC often come from surprising directions.
There’s something remarkably powerful about engaging with self-development through nonlinear exploration combined with massive variety, instead of trying to over-linearize it, control it, or force it. This approach has many benefits too, particularly in terms of flexibility. It works whether you have clear goals or not, a sense of purpose or not, a plan and schedule or not. It simply meets you where you are and works on you from within, much like a psychedelic does.
How well has trying to push yourself to advance down a straight, compartmentalized path actually worked for you? Is that actually helping you create the kind of life you truly want to experience?
What if you approached self-development with an open-minded explorer’s attitude instead? What if you invited some deeper levels of wisdom and energy – especially some fiery wisdom – to act upon you this year? What if you loosened your grip on the old linear mindset and opened yourself to creating a very different kind of relationship with life? And what if you did that with dozens of other people together – people who are also opening themselves to a new relationship with life? As you’ll soon see if you join us in CGC this year, these changes make a world of difference.
2. You’ll Get Regular Infusions of Heart & Spirit Energy
How easy is it for you to consistently make decisions that feel powerfully heart- and spirit-aligned? Are you fully engaged with your work, your living situation, your relationship partners and friends, and a powerful purpose? Does the flow of money through your life feel nicely aligned, and is it as abundant as you want it to be?
Did your prior investments in self-development help you reach the point of living as a fully self-actualized person? You know there’s so much more to keep exploring and discovering beyond this point, right?
If you’re currently falling short of this standard, worry not, my friend! There’s a community where you can infuse your life with abundant heart and spirit energy. By engaging with such energies regularly, you can keep these priorities top-of-mind and start making better decisions – i.e. decisions that prioritize long-term alignment and harmony over surface gains that eventually drag down your energy and enthusiasm.
This year our CGC theme is Fire Infusion. This represents the vibes of courage, intensity, full engagement, initiative, and boldness. Fire energy directs you to stop tolerating the misaligned and burn it to ashes. It’s a summons to make wiser and more intelligent decisions that serve your whole being harmoniously instead of forcing you to make unbalanced sacrifices. We’re inviting this energy into CGC to play a meaningful role in our unfolding story arcs this year. Do you see this kind of fire energy as playing a role in your life during the next 12 months too? You can still engage with other energies, such as peacefulness and relaxation, so the fire energy isn’t the only energy you can work with. It’s just a question of whether you want to engage with this kind of energy more directly this year. It’s an especially good energy for navigating tricky transitions, making bolder decisions, aligning with a strong purpose, creating positive ripples, and doing character-level and lifestyle upgrades.
Fire energy is inherently fearless. It can help you see what’s on the other side of fear. I can tell we’re going to collectively burn off a lot of fear energy in CGC this year. Do you sense that some fear energy is getting ready to depart this year? Haven’t we all had enough of it? Why don’t we do this together?
You can engage with CGC’s overall thematic vibe of fire infusion, or you can shift into a different mode. You’ll likely experience more oomph into your life when you allow yourself to participate in the group vibe. Then your story and the group’s story can harmonize with each other as we forge ahead together.
We also have quarterly vibes that we focus on as well, so this creates a very rich vibrational arc throughout the year. These are listed on the invite page as well.
3. You’ll Face and Upgrade Your Weak Areas
For the first 6 years of CGC, I often described it as a coaching club. Hundreds of coaching calls later, we graduated from that model to explore other possibilities. This has evolved into a training-based model for Year 8.
The calls and experiences for this CGC year are much more hands-on, so you’ll be directly doing a lot of guided inner work this year in the club.
Growth work like reading, courses, workshops, and coaching will only get you so far. Those are all reasonable ways to get started, but if you really want to advance your character and your life, sooner or later you’ll need to step into the zone of direct, experiential training.
It’s the difference between watching YouTube videos about dancing versus signing up for dance lessons and regularly going dancing. You’ll make some gains from both approaches, but there are some gains that can only be made through direct experience. The second approach is more challenging but also more powerful and effective.
One of the primary self-development benefits we can provide you with in CGC is access to potent and engaging growth experiences with other growth-oriented people. You can start having those experiences this very week if you want. Take advantage of the 7 years of effort we’ve put into building and refining that for you, not to mention 20 years of working in this field in other ways. Even my prior 10 years of experience designing and coding computer games has played a part in crafting CGC’s experiences. I love designing and guiding people through creative and varied growth explorations.
On many, if not most, of our CGC Zoom calls, you’ll be actively training through direct experience. This will surely raise your awareness of some weak areas that are holding you back. CGC is gentle and supportive, but we also focus heavily and character growth and advancement. It’s not for people who’d rather cling to their old excuses.
This Tuesday, April 30th at 11:11 AM, we’ll be having a new Courage Forge call. I’m calling this one “Center of Attention.” Do you have any fears about or resistance to being the center of attention? Great! Let’s burn off that fear and get you past it. Or do you still want to cling to it? Is that you who want to be?
Every call and experience in CGC is by your consent. You always have the option to opt in or opt out of anything you desire. See how much you’re able to take on and experience in one year. Then if you continue in the club for future years, you can keep stretching yourself to advance beyond what you’ve done in the past.
4. You’ll Replace Your Somedays & Maybes with Real Memories
Do you have some items on your “bucket list” that you still haven’t gotten around to experiencing yet? This year in CGC, we’re hosting three different bucket list walkthrough experiences, where we’ll all work on selecting, advancing, and experiencing items from our bucket lists.
It’s entirely possible – I’d say probable – that some CGCers will want to team up and have some of these experiences together. I’ve already been hearing some suggestions from people, such as going on a trip together. I can’t predict which way this will go because it’s an all-new feature we’ve added for Year 8. And since we’re running it three times during the CGC year (September, November, and then again in February 2025), we can use what we learn during each run-through to make it even better in the next year. And of course CGCers can also use the CGC forums and our 24/7 Zoom lounge to help coordinate plans, if they want to sync up their bucket list explorations. I imagine this aspect of Year 8 will be a lot of fun to experience. Rachelle and I will be actively participating as well.
I’m a self-development explorer first; a guide, trainer, and experience designer second. That prioritization is crucial for me since my active and ongoing explorations give me the experiential base for serving others. Continuing to advance my own self-development explorations keeps me feeling super jazzed and enthusiastic about my life and work, and this energy flows into the guidance, training, and experiential side of CGC. I love delving into fresh growth experiences with our members each year. I don’t sit on the sidelines and merely instruct – that approach would just kill my spirit. I need to be in the arena with you.
If you engage with and follow through on this “bucket list adventure” aspect of CGC, you’ll create some beautiful memories this year that you may otherwise never have experienced during your lifetime. Let us help you cross the threshold into the land of real experiential wonders.
5. You’ll Gain a Growth-Oriented Friendship Circle
CGC is a friendly and supportive place inside, and the extended CGC network consists of hundreds of members and still growing. Even if you join for only one year and then leave, you can still consider yourself part of this extended network. As we keep seeing, the friendships people make in CGC can really endure. We often see CGCers and former CGCers traveling together, even getting into relationships together. Recently I just heard from two former members who traveled to seven different cities in India together. How marvelous!
How would you like to explore hands-on growth and training experiences with other growth-oriented people – people that eventually become good friends of yours? Just imagine what it would be like if this was part of your normal day. This has been my reality for many years. And I will tell you that it’s a super motivating way to live.
Do you feel any bolder when you’re in the company of good friends versus when you’re alone? Most people do. When you’re immersed in a field of solid support that you can rely on, it’s normal to start reaching for bigger, bolder, more expansive goals.
Once you fill your friendship network with conscious, growth-oriented people – as opposed to NPC types (non-player characters), you’ll probably never want to go back. Just having this kind of social energy in your life can create such beautiful positive ripples.
Remember that people are energy sources too. What you experience socially isn’t neutral, and you can’t simply override the effects of your current social sphere just by trying to apply more individual intentionality. Your own intentionality field is infused with your social circle’s energy and intentionality too. Joining CGC can really help you upgrade your social field, which harmoniously strengthens and extends your individual energy field. Is the current social energy swirling through your life amplifying and extending your own energy in the directions you want it to flow?
If you aren’t vibing with the people in your life or the social media services you routinely engage with, please don’t ignore their impact. It really does matter. This is more than just social drag – you’re likely experiencing significant levels of intentionality drag as well. That can really slow you down and keep you stuck if you don’t consciously address it. If not by joining CGC, then please get yourself involved with a strong social circle that aligns with your values and desired vibes and experiences, whatever it takes. I assure you that it’s worth the effort, even if it takes decades.
6. You’ll Have a Sanctuary From Social Media Insanity
In CGC you don’t have to deal with the – let’s call it bullshit – that you’ll endure on typical social media platforms. I don’t do Facebook, X, Instagram, etc. because those platforms feel too dreadfully misaligned to me. For the most part, the people I connected with on those platforms were great, but the energy and intentionality behind those platforms was all wrong and corrupted the experience of connecting.
I felt torn leaving such platforms – at first – but I don’t think I’d have invested so much in developing CGC if I’d stuck with the old social media models. I had built up sizable audiences on some platforms, but I decided to trust my inner signals and let them go. I deleted my Twitter account in 2014, labeling it a cesspool back then. What’s it like there now? Given what I’ve heard, it makes me feel so glad I trusted my intuition 10 years ago. I really feel like life tested me by asking: Do you want to cling to the numbers while tolerating the creepy misalignments of those platforms, or do you want to trust your intuition and follow a path with more heart and spirit, not knowing where it will lead yet? I took the second option, which has worked out beautifully.
I don’t miss those old platforms and don’t need them because I’m active in CGC every day instead. My #1 everyday social network consists only of very growth-oriented people. But additionally, we get to socialize on a super clean platform of our own.
Do you feel genuinely motivated and empowered to live your best life when socializing and connecting with people in the spaces controlled by Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg?
Musk + Zuck = Muck
Notice the part of you that feels creeped out by those services. There’s a good reason for that. The intentionality behind those platforms isn’t aligned with your highest good. In CGC we don’t have to make that kind of compromise. We’re able to do what’s right.
Think of me as the bear guarding the entrance to CGC that keeps out the bullshit, so you don’t have to deal with it or tolerate it inside the club spaces. Most people will see a friendly teddy bear as they stroll right in. But this bear is very good at sniffing out misaligned intentions, and those with ill intent will encounter a ferocious bear guardian instead.
Trump supporters don’t get to join CGC. We have a strict “no assholes” policy too (and it’s not lost on me that this largely covers the first item as well). CGC’s annual dues are lower this year at $1111, which still ought to be enough to deflect most people who aren’t a match, and which shines as a beacon to very aligned people. This works well, but I keep ferocious bear mode on standby just in case. Honestly I haven’t needed to use it for a few years now.
Within this space, members have tons of freedom to explore whatever interests them. Having meaningful discussions with other smart people is really nice when you don’t have to tolerate any ads, affiliate promos, trolling, manipulative algorithms, hollow AI content, conspiracy theories, general outrage, clickbait, and other nonsense you have to deal with elsewhere.
Inside CGC you have tons of freedom to explore whatever aspects of self-development appeal to you, but this is also a protected space, guarded by some very conscious and alert bear energy. Those who’ve tried to attack or degrade the community inside have all been vanquished by that bear energy. Really they never stood a chance.
I’ve also seen plenty of validation that CGC is the beneficiary of a significant amount of spirit-level protection and assistance, which seems to keep growing stronger each year. I’m not entirely sure how this is all unfolding, but there’s definitely a spirit-level calling aspect to CGC’s creation and existence, especially with respect to protecting it and nurturing it.
If you pause for a moment, close your eyes, and attempt to tune in to CGC’s vibe as if it’s a conscious entity of its own, what do you sense? Are you able to feel a presence or energy form reaching out to you? And if so, does it have anything to communicate to you – verbally, emotionally, energetically, or otherwise? If you’re the kind of person who’s willing to at least try this, I encourage you to do so. I often engage with CGC’s energy through meditation or journaling, such as by asking where it wants to go next. It usually has a lot to say.
I’d even recommend asking CGC’s energy if it thinks you ought to join us this year if you’re open to receiving an answer from it.
7. You’ll Release What You Need to Stop Tolerating
My prediction is that this year in CGC, there’s going to be a lot of purging and releasing, as members who are finally ready to let go of significant misalignments take some big steps forward to do so.
What misaligned energies do you still engage with semi-regularly? What do you sense is getting ready to leave? Is it fear, worry, anxiety, stress, overwhelm, depression, shame, guilt, grief, loss, imbalance, etc?
Some misalignments can be tricky to identify. One of the trickiest patterns for many people is loyalty. Loyalty sounds good, but it creates stuckness more often than not, and it deserves a place on the list with the other misaligned energy patterns, like this … shame, guilt, loyalty…
This kind of tolerance (of the misaligned) isn’t loving or compassionate. Some decisions may have felt reasonably intelligent when you first made them, but if you’re a growth-oriented person, you’ll eventually outgrow the desire to keep experiencing the effects of those old decisions. For growth-oriented people, there are always some old decisions begging to be revisited and upgraded.
Let CGC help you go through this process, holding a space of caring invitation while you identify, thank, and release those old energies that are ready to leave you. CGC can also help you consciously choose and explore the new energies and experiences that call to you, when you’re ready to invite them in and engage with them.
8. You’ll Build a Base of Consistency and Balance
Maintaining a harmonious and balanced life can be very challenging today. How are you doing in this area so far? Are you pleased with the way you balance work, play, exploration, and rest? Is your life abundant in experiences that you savor and appreciate? Does your to-do list feel motivating, inspiring, and harmonious? Do you enjoy a steady and energizing flow of stimulating action and satisfying results? Are you engaging with the types of energies, people, and situations that uplift and fulfill you? Do you feel you’re on the right path with your life?
If you gave yourself a 1-10 score for your overall life balance, what would it be?
Is your answer pleasing to you? Do you want to maintain a similar level of balance for the next 10, 20, 30 years? Remember that you only have power to change in the present – right now.
A healthy minimum standard to reach and maintain here is an 8 out of 10. It’s definitely not the dreaded 7, which is what many people choose when the truth is really much lower. Most people fall well short of this standard though.
How would you like to create long-term balance across all important areas of your life? Training on such fundamentals is a big part of what we do in CGC, and it’s an even more significant part of Year 8 because this new CGC year, we have a special event in July specifically designed to walk you through developing, mapping out, and implementing a fresh new way to manage your time and energy while keeping everything in balance.
One counterintuitive challenge with life balance is that if you focus on balance itself, you’ll likely fail at it. It’s like riding a bicycle – you achieve balance through forward motion. If you sit on the bike without moving forward and try to balance yourself, that’s way harder and unlikely to work.
As you’ll soon discover during the July training event in CGC, there’s a better place to focus your attention if you want to create more harmony and balance. Once you learn and understand it – it’s actually quite simple – you can use it to good effect for the rest of your life.
What balancing on a bike and balancing your life have in common is that in order to balance yourself efficiently and effectively, it’s important to understand the forces at play and how to work with them instead of having them work against you. When people try to balance on a bike from a static position, the force of gravity is working against them, making it very difficult. Same goes for life balance – most people can’t properly balance their lives because they approach this in a way that leaves stronger forces working against them, so it won’t be sustainable.
As with riding a bike, the solution to life balance is technically simple, but it takes some practice to get the hang of it. So we’ll walk you through the approach and help you get started applying it too. I’m really looking forward to this because I expect it will be a lot of fun to go through this together. Living a life that feels nicely balanced is such a daily delight, especially if you’ve endured many years of imbalanced living previously.
When you ride a bike properly, how much do you think about balance? Very little most likely. You’re probably too focused on where you’re going. It’s the same with life balance. Once you have it dialed in, it becomes mostly automatic, and then you can focus more attention on where you’re going.
9. You’ll Strengthen Your Intuition and Self-Trust
A common problem that many growth-oriented people succumb to is premature convergence. You make erroneous, half-hearted decisions. You settle for misaligned paths. In the long run, even seemingly small misalignments can come back to bite you. You may even remember noticing – and probably dismissing – a subtle background sensation that tried to warn you and that didn’t want to settle for the option you chose. That part of you was already sensing that there was a better option wanting to come through, even if you weren’t aware of that option yet… or not patient enough to wait for it.
Lots of people suffer from low intuitive sensitivity these days. They make misaligned decisions, such as taking a job that’s a mismatch for them when a better option was possible, because their inner intuitive guidance is muted, suppressed, and/or under-developed.
Such people often find it difficult to fully trust themselves. They can’t properly sense and lock onto the signals of the correct path for them. Consequently, they may hesitate to make certain decisions, especially big ones. This keeps them stuck for lengthy stretches, at least until they’re ready to begin seriously developing their intuitive sensitivity.
Many people turn to psychedelics to help them advance here. Psychedelic substances can help turn down mental chatter and amplify signals of intuitive knowing. That’s the fast route, often creating breakthroughs in a matter of hours.
A much slower route is to adopt a consistent meditation practice, which can quiet the mind and make it easier to hear those subtler inner signals. This path normally takes a few decades, but it does work.
Another option that I’d put somewhere in the middle is to lighten up your diet, making it plant-based and high in raw foods. If you want to go faster, then all raw, at least for a while (like 6 months minimum). This can be noticeably effective within months, with compounding gains over the course of years. I like to think of raw foods as slow psychedelics. It has always amazed me that when eating all raw, I experience a much greater frequency of synchronicities.
Different foods have such different energy patterns. A good way to understand how different foods will affect your intuitive sensitivity is to consider the intentionality that brought those foods to your plate.
If you want to mute or downgrade the sensitivity of your intuitive senses, that’s readily achieved by eating foods with desensitizing energy patterns like animal products and processed foods. Consider the intentionality behind slaughtering animals for sustenance or making nutritionally compromised “foods.” Notice the swirl of energies infecting those foods: dominance, entitlement, profit, greed, deception, shame, sadness, fear, loss, and even murder. Notice what’s missing there too: caring, health, kindness, honesty, compassion, sustainability, etc. Also notice the difference between narrow-spectrum foods that have had many natural qualities removed versus full-spectrum whole foods. What’s the intentionality behind the shift away from whole foods in their natural states?
Consider what you’re adding to these experiences with your own intentionality too. When you prepare a meal or reach for a snack, pay attention to your intentions in the moment. That matters tremendously.
I especially love eating meals with the intention to feel energized, clean, and alert. I eat a lot of fruit, especially in the morning, because I can do it with the cleanest intentionality. It’s like eating pure sunlight. It’s the least violent because the plant can keep on living after the fruit is harvested. And yet there are still misalignments present, like the treatment of the workers in the process. It’s not 100% pure, but it’s much better than most other foods. It’s a great match for creative work too.
Moreover, these options aren’t mutually exclusive – you can combine them. Meditation and psychedelics and diet upgrades all work very synergistically together. It’s just a matter of how quickly you want to advance and how much it matters to you to develop really strong self-trust and clear intuition. This enables faster, bolder decisions, which in turn speeds up the flow of life – no need to wallow in indecision. You can just keep advancing, almost like a character running and jumping through one of the Matrix movies.
CGC, however, can provide you with yet another option, which is to directly engage with your intuitive senses and train them up. Those senses are particularly attuned to intentionality as well, so if you engage with them with the intention to increase your sensitivity and to connect with your best inner wisdom and knowingness, that can also help you advance. It won’t be as fast as with psychedelics, but it can be much faster than going the decades-long meditation route. This works even better when you combine intentional practice with meditation – and ideally with a very clean diet too.
I’ve invested a lot in increasing my intuitive sensitivity, especially in the past year, and it has served me incredibly well, allowing me to choose options I wouldn’t have otherwise spotted. Keeping these senses strong and crisp is important enough to me that I personally use all of these methods: food choices, meditation, intentional practice, and psychedelics (mainly micro- and mini-dosing). It’s all additive and synergistic.
Are you ever confused about what to do with your life? I encounter a lot of people who seem perpetually stuck in the land of “I don’t know.” I don’t have that problem. I dwell in the land of “I do know,” which is a lot more fun, engaging, and stimulating. There are still plenty of mysteries to engage with, especially regarding timing signals and coordination with others, but it’s really nice having perpetually strong clarity about one’s own path. I’m right where I want to be, going where I want to be going, and experiencing what I want to be experiencing. It’s a very joyful, heart-aligned path. I invite you to explore your own pathway into the land of “I do know” as well, so you can really get into the flow of living your best life.
It’s beautiful what even a modest amount of intuitive sensitivity can do for your life. I haven’t had a job or a boss in 32 years… not since I was 21 years old. I haven’t needed anything like that. I’ve learned how to go with the flow of my best inner knowingness over the years, which brought plenty of great opportunities to my attention and helped me get aligned with them. One example was shutting down my computer games business and getting into self-development blogging back in 2004, a decision other people in my life thought was risky or even foolish. Yet my intuition was plenty loud and clear that it was the right path for me. It clearly was – it’s been such a magical journey and still going strong. Instead of burning out on it, I feel even more excited and aligned with this path today.
CGC is my forever project – a project that will keep evolving and will never be complete. There’s no way I’d have been willing to take on a forever project if I didn’t have really good clarity and trust. As you develop and strengthen your inner senses, you’ll probably find yourself becoming less commitment-phobic. You’ll sense when a long-term commitment is truly right for you.
10. You’ll Learn the Value of Divergent Exploration
Lots and lots of divergent exploration is a big part of CGC’s flow this year.
Have you ever been through other programs that felt over-converged to you? You’re presented with a mostly linear path to follow. That can be comforting and accessible, and it’s a good place for beginners to start, but sooner or later you’ll find yourself feeling disengaged from such an experience because it will fall out of sync with where you want to go.
CGC is extremely flexible. There is no singular linear path through it. As noted previously, it’s very wave-like, experiential, and diverse. You get to decide which experiences to engage with, which helps you build more self-trust and get attuned to your inner guidance instead of leaning on someone else to dictate your flow of discovery. We’ll keep providing the experiences and inviting you into them all throughout the CGC year. You just show up when it feels aligned.
Divergent exploration has some powerful benefits. It can help you connect the dots and discover openings for advancement that you hadn’t noticed before.
Convergent experiences are easier for the mind to trust. Those are the experiences that look good on paper. It’s like watching a preview for a movie that basically shows you the story arc in advance. Then when you watch the movie, it’s rather predictable and formulaic. It’s akin to making small incremental gains in self-development. No major surprises. No big breakthroughs.
Which do you really prefer? Do you like convergent movies that follow predictable patterns, such as the typically well-done but unremarkable Netflix movies? Or do you prefer divergent movies that surprise you and take you on a wild ride?
Take the recent Dune movies, for instance. I know they were well-rated: 83% and 92% from critics via Rotten Tomatoes. I watched Parts 1 and 2. I thought they were well-made and checked all the boxes for what was expected. But I also thought they both pretty much sucked. My physical senses were semi-engaged, but my spirit was saying, “This is shit,” while throwing popcorn at the screen. Did you see those movies? How did you feel about them? Did they inspire you?
By contrast, I loved David Lynch’s version of Dune from 1984. It had many flaws, and he didn’t get final cut, which really pained him in the end. That movie has 37% on Rotten Tomatoes. But I saw sparks of real creative genius in it. I thought it was groundbreaking at the time. I didn’t fully understand it, but it made me want to read the book, which was awesome. Then I watched and rewatched the movie more times over the years, including buying it, and I found it even more incredible. There are some modern movies that I really like too, so this isn’t a question of preferring older version for the sake of them being older. I love movies that seem to keep engaging me long after I’ve seen them. David Lynch’s Dune had that effect on me. The newest remakes felt mostly forgettable.
Do you tend to prefer movies and other experiences that satisfy your expectations or that violate them? For me, and perhaps the answer for you as well, is that it depends on what kind of violation of expectations is occurring and how it impacts me. I can say that it’s disappointing on some level when an experience fully satisfies my expectations with no meaningful violations. If there are no surprises, there’s no growth, and so I’m left with a semi-hollow feeling afterwards. Usually I’d rather take the risk of being surprised because then there’s the potential for a different kind of stimulation that leads to growth.
Rachelle and I are currently rewatching Twin Peaks (a David Lynch series from the early 1990s). We’re a few episodes into season 2 now. It’s one of the most incredible, fun, and engaging shows I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s very, very divergent. I’ve never seen anything that comes close to Twin Peaks. It’s a true original. While my mind is thinking, “This is really weird,” my spirit is saying, “This is so fucking brilliant. How was he even allowed to make this?”
This type of divergent energy is a big part of my future aspirations for CGC. I want to invite way more creativity into the club this year and beyond. It’s not linear. It’s not predictable. It will make your mind do double-takes sometimes. But your spirit will know that you’re connecting with something truly special that you’re meant to be a part of.
Some of CGC’s divergent surprises won’t do much for you. That’s to be expected. But some are going to land in ways that haunt you, inviting you to process aspects of yourself that are ready to surface.
The over-converged path is Deadsville for me. The coaching-based model we began with back in 2017 is over and done with. Year 7 was a really important transition year, but it still had some anchors to the old convergent energies. This year we’re releasing those anchors and setting sail into a year of abundant divergent exploration together.
If you prefer highly converged, linear modes of learning, then CGC is definitely not for you. If you’re feeling a bit done with that tired, old approach, I invite you to join us for a very divergent kind of year.
11. You’ll Experience the Equivalent of a Yearlong Psychedelic Trip
You don’t have to take any substances because I’ll be doing that for you, and I imagine that some other members will want to partake and help to invite those energies into the club too.
In terms of actual psychedelics, I anticipate personally weaving in at least 4 different ones this year, so that’s going to open up a lot of variety. You might even feel some of this energy already reaching out to you now. Do you feel any unusual sensations as you read this? Hehehe.
The substances serve as doorways and amplifiers, but they aren’t essential. I’ve connected enough with some of these energies that I can connect with their energies without taking any, just by thinking about them. That isn’t uncommon at all in this space.
These energies are hyper-sensitive to intentionality. There’s a BIG difference between using them for recreation and using them for Re-Creation. This year in CGC we’re inviting the latter, although there’s nothing wrong with weaving some fun and playfulness into our intentionality too.
Do you want this to be a powerful year of Re-Creation for you? Think carefully about that because it’s truly a big deal. If you join CGC this year, it won’t be like the experience of previous years because this Re-Creation energy is acting on CGC itself. I can share that it’s already affecting the club as we go through this transition week from Year 7 to Year 8. I can tell you that this is an especially wonky and disorienting time for some Year 7 members who are in the process of deciding if they want to re-up for Year 8. A bunch have already done so, and some have voiced their intention to do so, while others have opted to jump ship at this time – all perfect. And we have new members flowing in and introducing themselves in the club now too, receiving warm welcomes on the inside.
I can feel these swirling energy patterns going through this transition since it affects me too. Part of me is still linked up with the flow of Year 7 while I also feel the strong pull into the different energies of Year 8. Every weeklong transition into a new CGC year feels like a storm of shifting energies to me, which is sometimes difficult to experience. But I know this phase is temporary, and there’s always such an amazing sensation of freshness and wonder when we’re a day or two into that new CGC year. It’s like a feeling of peacefulness, relief, and excitement. I’m so looking forward to reaching that point, this time more than ever, but for now I’m still in the maelstrom of this transition.
I can also share that psychedelic energies were used extensively in designing the “trip” that is CGC Year 8, which is a key reason for so many experiential upgrades. If you join the club this year, you’ll be engaging with these kinds of energies all throughout the year, and let me tell you they can really send your life down some very different paths. These energies are also immensely loving and supportive, but they best support your truest, deepest, highest self – not the layers of self-deception that may have been layered on top of it.
I know this was a lot to read, but hopefully it gave you a lot more clarity, not just about joining or not joining CGC this year but also about your own intentions and path ahead. Whether you decide to join us or to take a different route, please receive my intention for you to have a truly beautiful and wondrous path of growth and happiness this year.
If you want to be a part of CGC Year 8, you know where to find the full invite, and here’s the direct link to the sign-up form. Be sure to decide by the end of May 1st. You’ll get into the club as soon as you join though, so if you do join now, you can get started right away, and we’ll get you into the CGC forums today. Trust yourself.
