Anya Kaats, Author at Anya Kaats

Let me tell you a story…

spirituality spiritual bypassing power eros teacher student

I originally released this piece of writing as a podcast episode in December of 2021, before I’d started my Substack page. Many of you have requested the written version, so I decided to release it here. If you’d like to hear the audio version instead, you can find it here, or search for episode #108 wherever you listen to A Millennial’s Guide to Saving the World.

If you asked her to identify the moment she knew she was lying to herself, she could tell you.

Her intuition had always been accessible if she wanted it to be. The problem was, she rarely wanted it to be. Avoiding her subconscious mind was a strategic game of rationalization. She had mastered the ability to silence the inner voices she didn’t want to hear, and prioritize the ones she did.

She was stubborn, determined, and painfully intellectual in the way she moved through the world, coming up with endless rationalizations to avoid inner work, stay in toxic relationships, and play out codependent patterns over and over again.

You could even go so far as to say she enjoyed this game. She was good at it.

The truth is, she had played a lot of mental and psychological games throughout her life. She played them with herself, and with other people. A disturbing amount of energy went into these games, all in an effort to avoid her unprocessed trauma, racking up casualties in the form of other people, and her health, along the way.

It’s worth mentioning that she didn’t really understand what she was doing, or why. The reason she kept playing these games was unknown to her, and she didn’t even have the awareness to identify them as games. Looking back, it’s clear that’s what they were, but at the time, it just felt familiar, or like some kind of unavoidable survival mechanism.

To continue reading, and to get access to all future writing via email, please subscribe to my Substack page.

#133 Build Me a Castle of Dreams: Musings on Saturn in Pisces with Jenny Kellogg

Jenny is a certified astrologer, holds a PhD in Modern Languages and Literatures, a B.A. in Classical Philology, and has studied ancient civilizations and languages for over 25 years. She’s also a trauma-informed coach, spiritual guide, and one of my dearest friends. Jenny returns to the podcast (for the fifth time!) to discuss the upcoming ingress of Saturn into Pisces. From learning how to manifest our wildest dreams, to practicing responsible spirituality, to finding safe, structured containers to manage chaotic emotional and spiritual realms, to integrating death, grief and loss into our everyday lives, we discuss why this transit is so significant and meaningful for each of us.

Find Jenny at Amalthea.guide, on Instagram and download her Akashic Records self-study course at akashictraining.com

Songs featured: “Inside” by East Forest and “Human” by Alex Serra

How to support the show:

Rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!
Join me on Substack and get access to newsletters, exclusive writing, a community book club, and more: anyakaats.substack.com

Listen to this episode on Substack or wherever you listen to podcasts.

#132 Pursuing Gender Reconciliation Through Love and Compassion with William Keepin and Cynthia Brix

gender equity reconciliation Cynthia brix William Keepin

William Keepin and Cynthia Brix are co-founders of Gender Equity and Reconciliation International. William, a climate scientist and physicist who also trained in clinical psychology with Stanislav Grof began GERI thirty years ago under the name “Gender and Ecology” in an effort to expose and heal the hypocrisies of working to end the exploitation of Mother Earth without simultaneously addressing the exploitation of women and the feminine. Over the years, GERI has evolved into an international program that brings people together from all walks of life to resolve the gender divide through honest and compassionate discourse, somatic work, and mindfulness practices. GERI prioritizes cross-cultural perspectives, and is inclusive of all gender identities, sexual identities and welcomes people of all ages and spiritual beliefs. Their book, Gender Equity & Reconciliation: Thirty Years of Healing the Most Ancient Wound in the Human Family is available now.

Find William and Cynthia at grworld.org, and on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

William & Cynthia’s Book Recommendations: Think On These Things by Jiddu Krishnamurti, Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, and Cave in the Snow by Vicki MacKenzie

Songs featured: “Above All Else, Be Kind” by AJIMAL and “Meet Me There” by Nick Mulvey

Apply to present or teach at the Crestone Energy Fair in September or get more information about attending by clicking here.

How to support the show:

Rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!
Join me on Substack and get access to newsletters, exclusive writing, a community book club, and more: anyakaats.substack.com

Listen to this episode on Substack or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Where Have All the Liberals Gone?

“The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.”
– Aldous Huxley

A year and a half ago I sent an email to a woman I admired who works as an herbalist, inviting her to be a guest on my podcast. I received the following response:

Based on our review of the podcast, past guests, and the way some messages have been platformed/discussed, we are concerned that this collaboration does not align with our core values and so must decline.

It was August 2021, and I had just released several episodes that I knew were controversial, but that I was confident I had presented in a respectful, intentional, and balanced manner. I interviewed Steve QJ, an African American man, about his concern that some aspects of anti-racism rhetoric might be contributing to racism, as opposed to helping to eliminate it. I interviewed Rachel Foster, a woman who had transitioned to become a man, only to realize years later that she was not in fact a man, but simply a different kind of woman than what she was told a woman was allowed to be as a part of her (sexually) abusive, Christian fundamentalist upbringing. I had also interviewed Vaishnavi Sundar, an Indian woman who made a brilliant film called Dysphoric (featuring Rachel Foster), exploring the possible connection between global misogyny and the increase of female-to-male gender transitions worldwide, especially in extremely misogynistic places like India. Lastly, I had interviewed Clementine Morrigan and her partner Jay, two of the most left-leaning humans I know, who spoke about the authoritarian nature of cancel culture, and the damaging effects it’s had on both of their lives, and the lives of many others.

So, okay. I get it. These sorts of conversations rarely appear in “liberal,” left-leaning spaces these days. But to be clear, this is not because they contain any implicit critique of liberal values. I have always been a staunchly supportive of liberalism which, for the sake of brevity, I will summarize as a belief in equality and opportunity for all, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation and economic background. Instead, the reason these conversations are hard to find in liberal, leftist spaces is because under the spell of “wokeness,” liberals stopped believing that it was important for liberalism to extend not only to their (supposed) values, but also to the strategies used to uphold, promote, and defend those values.

In this article on ethics.org.au titled “Calling Out for Justice,” Oscar Schwarz writes that, “While there may be instances of collateral damage [as a result of cancel culture], even people innocently accused, a more pressing problem to address is how and why institutions we are supposed to trust are deaf to many of the problems facing … minority groups.”

In other words, many liberals have come to believe that the end justifies the means – a phrase coined by Niccolò Machiavelli, the infamous 16th century father of political science whose philosophy for acquiring and maintaining power depended upon removing ethics from politics.

To continue reading, and to get access to all future writing via email, please subscribe to my Substack page.

#131 Can getting better at one thing help us get better at everything else? (A solo episode / life update)

For the past few months I’ve found myself in a deep internal dialogue exploring the nature of my desires, my relationship to will, and my capacity for action. In the face of difficult choices, divergent interests, or upon reaching a fork in the road, how do we decide which path to take? How do we tell the difference between “trusting the timing” and rest/reflection vs. laziness and avoidance? How do we confront the grief of not being able to “do it all?” In this episode, I explore all of these questions, and share an epiphany I had that’s been helping me to move through the complexity of honing in on my desires in order to take authentic action. I also share some big news relative to Chris Ryan and my community project in Crestone, CO, and also speak about how I see A Millennial’s Guide to Saving the World evolving in the coming months and years.

Song featured: “In Praise of Home” by Rura

Join our book club by clicking here.

Follow Chris and my community project, The Crestone Conglomerate on Youtube and on Instagram

How to support the show:

Rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!
Join me on Substack and get access to newsletters, exclusive writing, a community book club, and more: anyakaats.substack.com

Listen to this episode on Substack or wherever you listen to podcasts.

#130 Living Nomadically on Horseback with Michael Ridge

Michael Ridge has spent the last decade living and traveling nomadically on horseback, mostly in the Pacific Northwest. He is an expert in primitive skills and wild foods, and possesses a level of bravery and commitment to core values that I find extraordinarily impressive. In our conversation, Michael shares about the events that led him to his current life on horseback, and outlines what his day-to-day has looked like, season by season, for the past ten years. We discuss civilization, technology, authenticity, grief, ecology, and community, and Michael outlines the the logistical, psychological, spiritual and emotional tools necessary to live the kind of life he’s chosen. This conversation is by far one of my favorite episodes of the podcast, and deserves more than one listen.

Find Michael on Instagram, TikTok and Youtube.

Here is a short video about Finisia Medrano, Michael’s teacher –

Songs featured: “And You Don’t Even Know You Hurt Me” by Nick Murphy, “Fertile Ground” by Evan Fraser, Vir McCoy, Rising Appalachia, and Chloe Smith, and “Wandering Nomad” by Cody Francis

How to support the show:

Rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!
Join me on Substack and get access to newsletters, exclusive writing, a community book club, and more: anyakaats.substack.com

Listen to this episode on Substack or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Community is a Practice

On August 21st, 2017, I woke up in a tent in the middle of a field in Rigby, Idaho. I had paid some farm owners fifty bucks to camp on their empty land so that I could watch the total solar eclipse at 11:33 that morning.

It was the fourth day of a solo road trip that began on my twenty-ninth birthday. I had kicked off the celebration by driving twelve hours from Los Angeles to Zion National Park and crying myself to sleep. From there, I headed north to Salt Lake City, then made my way to Rigby, just north of Idaho Falls.

At this point, in the summer of 2017, I was halfway through what I still consider to be the most challenging year of my life. I had left my marriage, stopped speaking to my mother, and was physically ill to the point of forced social isolation. I was a mess, trudging through the darkness of the tunnel, still far from seeing ay light appear at the end.

To continue reading, and to get access to all future writing via email, please subscribe to my Substack page.

#129 Envisioning, Designing and Creating Spaces for the Future with Johanna Hoffman

Johanna Hoffman is a designer, urbanist and strategist exploring the ties between design, planning, fiction and futures. She’s the founder of Design for Adaptation, a studio using strategic planning, interactive storytelling and speculative design to survey the impacts of potential futures and spur proactive adaptation. Her new book is called Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Navigate Change, Foster Resilience, and Co-Create the Cities we Need. Johanna and I talk about strategies to make the intangibility and overwhelm of the future more personal and inspiring, and how we can integrate grief into shifting narratives. We discuss how national mythologies translate into the creation of different landscapes, the pros and cons of modern cities, and how important it is to give ourselves permission to lean into our creativity, imagination, and confidence in order to manifest big ideas.

Johanna’s book recommendations: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Viral Justice by Ruha Benjamin, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and the work of Eric Klineberg, Ursula Le Guin, Stuart Candy, and Octavia Butler.

Find Johanna at johannahoffman.com and on Instagram

Songs featured: “The Fear” by Ben Howard and “Let Me Down Easy” by Gang of Youths

How to support the show:

Rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!
Join me on Substack and get access to newsletters, exclusive writing, a community book club, and more: anyakaats.substack.com

Listen to this episode on Substack or wherever you listen to podcasts.

#128 Mending Our Myths and Planting Seeds of Future Stories with Téo Montoya

Téo Montoya is a Human Design Analyst, Metamodern Myth Mender, Indigenous Futurist writer and multimedia artist. His work focuses on synthesizing cosmological and spiritual systems, myths, archetypes, and modalities to find ways of supporting an emerging world in crisis through human development, ecological literacy, and reciprocity with our communities and more-than-human kin. In other words, Téo and I have a lot in common. We speak about our complex relationships to both Human Design and Astrology, and the importance of questioning the nature of “belief” when it comes to working with archetypal systems of meaning. We also discuss mythology, individualism, our collective crisis of meaning, grief, identity, ecology, masculinity, Metamodernism and so much more.

Find Téo at archaicremnant.com and on Instagram @teomontoya_

Songs featured: “A Prayer of My Own” by Nick Mulvey and “You Get What You Give” by New Radicals

How to support the show:

Rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!
Join me on Substack and get access to newsletters, exclusive writing, a community book club, and more: anyakaats.substack.com

Listen to this episode on Substack or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Whatever you do, just give me a body.

In hindsight, maybe it was a mistake to put the music on.

I wanted to feel present enough to tune into whatever the float tank god was asking me to tune into, but after twenty minutes, I was still asking myself if I was doing it right.

I figured switching on the meditation playlist would help me switch off my distracted overanalyzing.

I made my way toward any wall I could find and traced it with my hand until I found the light switch. After awkwardly pulling my body out of the heavy, salty water, I plugged in my phone, hit play, and returned to the tank.

I switched off the light, and limb my limb, lowered my body back down into the salty tub.

Now I could relax, I thought…

To continue reading, and to get access to all future writing via email, please subscribe to my Substack page.