What Is AUREA? Hear It From Those Who Know First-Hand.

"The unity here, the love, the support. It's a portal in itself."

Marla Lindner said that sitting in front of a camera on the last day of an AUREA gathering, trying to find words for what had happened to her.

Forty-six people gave that interview over one weekend. Each was asked the same two questions. What has your experience here been like, and do you feel any difference between the person who arrived and the person sitting here now. Nobody was handed a script.

Sixty-nine people have now said it on camera, across gatherings, retreats and coaching. Almost none of them describe an event. They describe what it did to them.

What is AUREA?

AUREA gathers the leaders of humanity's next great awakening. It is a community and a coaching system, founded by Jackson Strong in July 2022, for people who feel the shift coming and carry something they have not yet put into the world.

It is not one thing in one city. AUREA runs multi-day live gatherings, which have drawn more than a hundred speakers. It runs retreats, in Colombia and at Agape Valley. It runs coaching containers and masterminds, small circles that meet long after an event ends. It holds free community calls twice a week, open to anyone. It built Serafina, a companion that helps a leader turn a calling into a message, an offer and a movement. And it is regenerating land at Reimagine Ranch in Elgin, Texas.

Austin is where the work is based right now. It is not what the work is.

Who has spoken from the AUREA stage?

More than a hundred people, and the range is the point. Vishen Lakhiani on why money is not unspiritual. Charles Eisenstein on the habit of asking permission. Preston Smiles on the way a nervous system quietly caps an income. Josh del Sol on what Rome cut out of us. Shay Rowbottom on the thing you are most afraid to publish.

Alongside them: Adam Apollo, Dr. Samuel B. Lee on base-12 geometry, Paul Hutchinson, Kaya Leigh, Adam Roa, Sean Stone, Kevin Walton, Jeff Scult, Scarlett Max, and Yawanawá tribal leaders carrying a lineage out of the Amazon.

Every one of those talks is written up on this site. None of them was booked to fill a slot.

Where did AUREA come from?

From a collapse. Jackson Strong spent his first decade in private equity and enterprise software, inside companies valued north of $300 million, and describes that period as living two lives at once. "A buttoned-up executive in the boardroom, and a closet mystic everywhere else."

In 2016 the two stopped being able to hold each other. His marriage ended. His body gave out. He is careful not to dress it up as a decision. "I would like to tell you I chose to burn it down. I didn't. It collapsed, and the only choice left was what to build in the rubble of a purpose-less life."

What he built first was a coaching practice, taking his business training to tantra teachers, trauma-informed coaches, plant-medicine guides and visionary leaders, mostly by helping them get out from under the fear and the old pain they had been carrying alone. AUREA followed, and the reason he gives for founding it is the reason the testimonials below sound the way they do.

"I founded AUREA so that nobody gifted with a Calling would have to go through what I did on the journey."

That is the whole thesis. Everything else is delivery.

What is AUREA actually building?

A parallel society. A new culture, a new community, and in time a breakaway civilization, built on regeneration at every level: culture, capitalism, and creativity. The gatherings are the doorway. The civilization is the work.

AUREA does not set out to fight the old system. It sets out to make it irrelevant. The premise is that the world is awakening while systems of control seek to divide us, through censorship, corruption, AI disruption and a crisis of meaning, and that the answer to a collapsing culture is a better one, built in the open by people who are already awake.

Regenerating culture means unity through honored difference rather than unity through enforced sameness. Regenerating capitalism means value you carry and govern yourself, prosperity in place of the scarcity the old system runs on. Regenerating creativity means the voices the world is hungry to hear stop asking permission to speak.

It has to be physical, which is why the land matters. A parallel society that exists only online is a newsletter.

There is a warning built into the mission, and it is what gives all of this urgency. A true Golden Age is dawning, and a counterfeit is being built to keep people from it. The counterfeit arrives wearing the language of awakening: technocratic order, digital identity, programmable money that switches off the moment you step out of line. The test is simple and it never fails. A real golden age returns power to the individual. The counterfeit gathers it to the center.

This is what people walk into. It explains why the interviews sound the way they do, because nobody sits down after a conference and talks about their bloodline. What follows is what a great renaissance of humanity sounds like from the inside, one person at a time.

What does AUREA change in the people who come?

They arrive carrying something they cannot put down and leave able to name it. Across the interviews the same three turns come up, in the same order the mission names them: the fragmentation, the fear, and the scarcity.

Why do people say they were called there?

Most of them could not give a reason. They came because something pulled, and they trusted it before they understood it.

Carmen Badan came from Naples, Florida, by way of Romania, after years of shadow work done alone. "I was asked before I came, what's the purpose of me being here? What's my intention? And I said, I have no idea why I'm coming. I just know that I am called to come. There were enough synchronicities that left me with no other option than to be here."

Mayrah Delbello, who creates transformational retreats in Austin, said it more simply. "It really called to me. It was something that I knew that I had to be here, and I didn't know exactly why."

Kelly, a life coach and Reiki practitioner from Houston, arrived without a target and knew it. "When I came here, I did not know what to expect. I wanted to transform. I didn't know what I needed to transform."

One acupuncturist came to work on her business and found out on the first morning that she had come for something else entirely. "I know I came here for business stuff, but I think I'm actually here to call in love. A love that's based out of reciprocity, and that's based out of trust, versus what I've experienced in the past, out of fear."

What happens to the fragmentation?

It threads the pieces of a life back into one thing. The clearest account came from Natalie, a teacher from Miami, who had done the work in fragments for years and felt them sewn together.

"All the work that I've done on myself. This feels like all my pieces are together, and it feels like that golden thread is just sewing me up and putting all those beautiful pieces together. All the pleasure, all the passions, all the healing, all the pain, all the depths, all the rebirths, all the shadows, all the love. Just sewing it all up together with that golden string. And it's given me a lot of peace. It's given me a lot, a lot of peace."

For one woman, a Reiki practitioner, the thread ran backward through her bloodline. She described her ancestors surfacing over the weekend, and then something turning. "I'm also the generational curse breaker."

She also named the moment the searching stopped, which is a different event from the searching succeeding. "It's like, I am that. I don't need to try to keep searching and becoming that. I already am that."

What happens to the fear?

It makes it safe to be seen without armor, and then it shows people the armor was never needed. Carmen Badan, who had spent those years in what she called hibernation, walked out with one word repeated.

"It's safe to play. It's safe to trust. It's safe to open. It's safe to pull your shame out in front of the world knowing that they will embrace you, and then to realize that you didn't really need to do that, because you are perfect the way you are. So you don't need anyone's approval."

Kelly said the honest version of what that costs. She came close to walking out. "Honestly, I would have already left. I would have already ran. I would have already ducked and run and not allowed myself to feel uncomfortable. The only thing I've learned in life, though, is if I'm doing things that make me uncomfortable, then I'm probably doing something right."

Blake carried years of shadow work and what he called new age skepticism into the room, and he did not come as a participant at all. His business partner had a vendor table. He left with something he had not budgeted for. "I feel like a new fountain of hope for my future."

What happens to the scarcity?

It changes what people believe they are allowed to receive. Xander Sage, a community builder and hotelier from San Diego, described the shift as a change of stature rather than strategy.

"I feel a deeper embodiment of my king. Greater receptivity to abundance."

Petra, a sacred adorner from Los Angeles, named the thing she had mistaken for ambition. "I was too busy feeling pressure. I was too busy competing in the matrix. And over here, I can really drop in." What she could see from there was a different way of running a life. "It really helps me see what's possible. Oh, I can live in this much grace and ease. And in fact, that was the way that we were designed to live. I just forgot about it."

For Anip Pandey, founder of the Healing Vortex, the scarcity that broke was a ceiling on his own mission. "By seeing other people have been able to scale, that gives me more confidence. I feel very supported and confident that I can take my mission further."

Why can this work not be finished alone?

Because the last part of it requires witnesses. This came up again and again, from people with no reason to agree with each other, and most of them had already given the solitary version years of their life.

Blake put it as a conclusion he had been forced to. "I've been on this journey of trying to do the shadow work for the last decade. What I'm coming to realize is that you can't complete the work, in my opinion, without the right community presence. Just feeling the love and support, and being witnessed at a depth that I haven't really experienced anywhere else."

One woman described what she had been asking for long before she heard of AUREA. "I have been praying to God for so long. Give me my people that are on the same frequency as me, so I don't feel so alone."

Kim and Maria, who traveled from Charleston, named the particular loneliness of waking up faster than the people around you. "Sometimes it feels lonely, and you're going through an awakening, not having close proximity to people that get it." Then, at AUREA: "Hundreds of people that are just like, welcome home. Where have you been all my life?"

King Kato, a speaker and hypnotist from Las Vegas, said the relief was in being able to stop performing. "This is a place where I feel at home. It's a place where I feel like I don't have to wear a mask. I don't need to try. I don't need to focus on the external validations of the world." What he carried out was certainty. "I've been on a long journey feeling like I'm going the right way, and yet now I know I'm going the right way."

Michelle Hori, an executive coach, put the same finding in one sentence. "THIS is the community I've been searching for over the last decade."

Who actually comes?

No. Among them were a firefighter, a professional pianist, a cosmic radiation reliability engineer at NXP Semiconductors, a private equity fund raiser, a blockchain founder, a licensed acupuncturist, and a widow from Austin working out what the next chapter of her life is.

Kim, an Austin firefighter, arrived certain she did not belong. "On day one, I didn't realize how normal I am. I was like, I think I'm pretty out of place here." By the third day she was describing the room as a working model. "It feels like a group of humans that are doing life right, who have figured out how to attract to themselves the things that they want, and also how to let their soul really create what is meaningful in this lifetime."

Alana Abiel, a spiritual teacher and brand developer from Austin, named who the room actually selects for. "I really love gathering with the brave. The crew of the brave. Those people and thinkers that are creating projects that are on the leading edge."

What do people go home to build?

Something larger than themselves, and sooner than they planned. The word that recurs at the end of these interviews is not peace. It is work, aimed outward, at a scale people had not previously granted themselves.

James Layfield has the most concrete version of it. "Within three days of being at this event it unlocked not only incredible connections, but actually our first orphanage."

Xander Sage described leaving as the end of a chapter rather than the beginning of one. "I almost feel like a graduation of sorts. I've been to a lot of events over the last couple of years, and being here, I kind of just feel like the chapter is coming to a close. The graduation has happened, and it's time to build. It's time to share."

Anip Pandey arrived already carrying a thesis about what the work is for. "I realized about three or four years ago that the way to save the world is to raise the vibration of the collective."

Scarlett Max, who keynoted, drew the line between being moved and being mobilized. "We also get to leave having been activated, and then having things that we can actually go do that allow us to blossom exponentially in our own world."

Jubilee Jackson, a somatic therapist from Detroit, refused to let the weekend stand on its own. "We are the shift. Integration is a part of the shift. The shift doesn't really happen unless you integrate it into the now."

And the clearest description of what the room is actually made of came from Kim and Maria, talking about the people they had just spent the weekend among. "People that have been through, like, to hell and back, and came out stronger and brighter and more beautiful than ever. And they're here to just serve the world."

That sentence is the parallel society in one line. Not a retreat from the world. A return to it, by people who have been to the bottom and came back with something to give.

Does it hold up outside the room?

That is the fair question about any few days that feel like this, and it is why AUREA is built as a community rather than an event calendar. The proof sits in the parts of the work that have nothing to do with a stage.

John Beals came off a retreat at Agape Valley with a comparison worth having. "I've been to a lot of retreats, and by far this has left me so expanded, and feeling whole and renewed and refreshed." Zoe, from the same land, named what came back. "I was reconnected in such a deep way to my inner child, to play."

Maggie, from an AUREA retreat in Colombia, described Jackson's part without embellishment. "He shows you what you were capable of."

Ben Clark, who worked with him one to one, measured it where it is hardest to fake. "He's completely shifted the way that I show up for myself, for my business, for my clients, and for all the relationships in my life."

Fernando Subirats, founder of The Manifestival, gave the least mystical sentence in the entire archive, and it may be the truest. "If you do the work, you will get the results."

What did people take home?

Courage, mostly, and the end of a private suspicion that they were alone in what they carry.

One attendee, who had missed most of the sessions because he had a business to run, still got the thing that mattered. "I feel more courage, because I know there are more people like me, and there will be a new network."

Melissa Minnich, founder of the Sacred Soul Alchemy Mystery School, was asked whether she felt different than when she arrived. "I feel high on life."

Janice Dempsey, who lives in Austin and came alone because she recognized two names on the schedule, left with a sentence that had nothing to do with either of them. "I gave a wonderful gift to myself."

And Marla Lindner, asked the same question everyone was asked, gave the line this whole page has been circling. "It's hard to articulate the words, because it's so profound. Life changing. I'll never be the same."

Frequently asked questions

What is AUREA?

AUREA gathers the leaders of humanity's next great awakening. Founded by Jackson Strong in July 2022, it is a community and a coaching system rather than a single event: multi-day live gatherings, retreats in Colombia and at Agape Valley, coaching containers and masterminds, free twice-weekly community calls, a companion called Serafina, and regenerative land at Reimagine Ranch in Elgin, Texas. Its purpose is to alchemize fragmentation into unity, scarcity into prosperity, and fear into freedom.

What is AUREA building?

A parallel society: a new culture, a new community, and in time a breakaway civilization founded on regeneration of culture, capitalism and creativity. AUREA does not set out to fight the old system, but to make it irrelevant by building a better one in the open. The land at Reimagine Ranch matters for that reason, because a parallel society has to take root somewhere physical.

Who founded AUREA and why?

Jackson Strong, in July 2022. He spent his first decade in private equity and enterprise software before a 2016 collapse ended his marriage and his health. "I would like to tell you I chose to burn it down. I didn't. It collapsed." He rebuilt as a coach to purpose-driven entrepreneurs and founded AUREA, in his words, "so that nobody gifted with a Calling would have to go through what I did on the journey."

Is AUREA only for people who work in spiritual fields?

No. The people interviewed at one gathering included a firefighter, a semiconductor engineer, a private equity fund raiser, a computer programmer, a blockchain founder and a professional pianist, alongside healers, coaches and practitioners. Kim, an Austin firefighter, arrived convinced she was too ordinary for the room and left calling it a beautiful place to discover.

Are these AUREA testimonials real?

Yes. Sixty-nine people have given filmed testimonials across gatherings, retreats and coaching, and every review AUREA has received on Google is five stars. Several of those interviews are embedded on this page, so you can watch the person say the line rather than take our word for it. Quotes are trimmed for length and filler, never for meaning.

How do I experience AUREA if no gathering is scheduled?

The community meets live twice a week, free, over Zoom: Mondays at 9:00am CT and Thursdays at 2:00pm CT. Jackson leads the call. It is part teaching, part open mic, and it is where most people meet this community long before they ever stand in a room with it.