Note: Our upcoming May retreat is almost full! Only ~3 spaces left. Will you be one of the final voyagers to hop aboard this majestic journey to the oasis of Kumankaya, Mexico? Apply now to reserve your space on this profound adventure with Ayahuasca, Bufo, and your soul family from May 26th - June 1st.
There are a lot of things no one tells you about spirituality.
Today I want to share with you 4 highly pragmatic, down-to-Earth secrets that I think every spiritual person should understand.
Let’s dive in:
1. The world of spirituality is a mine-field. Discernment is essential to avoid getting stuck in many types of quicksand-pits.
Spirituality looks pretty harmless ‘from the outside.’
Looks like it’s all tie-dye hippies and grinning buddhas and sun-lit memes of smiling meditators channeling celestial wisdom.
This is how the spiritual marketers (unconsciously) draw you in.
Many people stay on the surface of spirituality. “Spirituality” is kind of like a costume or ‘fashion trend’ to them—an ornament for their identity. For these people, the risks (and rewards) of spirituality are greatly minimized.
But for those who sincerely engage spirituality, you need to understand that in 2024, it is the Wild Wild West out there.
Nowadays, anyone can present themselves as some kind of ‘spiritual teacher’ or ‘guru’ or ‘mystical life coach’ online.
Many ‘new age’ folks present themselves as ‘shamans’ after experiencing just a few ayahuasca ceremonies.
Many ‘guides’ have huge shadows that they’re not aware of, or they have little idea of the powerful forces and energies they’re actually working with.
Many ‘communities’ completely abandon rationality and get sucked into all sorts of weird, ‘conspiritual,’ ominous reality-tunnels.
There are many, many ways to be led astray.
2. If you get serious about the pursuit of truth, it’s almost inevitable that you will experience ‘Dark Nights of the Soul.’
And when you really crack through the surface of spirituality, you quickly realize that it is no joke to play around with the ‘deep unconscious’ and other seismic psychic forces.
Psychedelics are the most powerful mystical catalysts known to man and can open psychic doors that can never be closed again. Even meditation and other ‘softer’ spiritual modalities can open deep psychic portals and bring up repressed content that one never anticipated.
True spirituality is a path of destroying comfortable fictions and discovering the truth at all costs.
If you sincerely engage in this, trust me: At some point it *will* get frightening and seriously uncomfortable.
This is something that is not discussed often enough.
The sincere pursuit of truth or Divinity almost invariably leads one into ‘lonely deserts of suffering.’
‘Waking up’ sounds great, but in practice it can be profoundly disorienting and isolating. One can feel as if one’s entire life, world, and identity are falling apart. One can feel as if no one understands or can relate.
On the other side of these ‘dark nights,’ there *IS* a Light at the end of the tunnel.
I promise you: There *is*.
For those who are ready to ‘really go there,’ the spiritual path leads to unbelievably gorgeous spaces. It leads to the direct recognition that one is always Home, cradled by God, and can unconditionally Love and Trust all of life.
Yet in order to get to ‘Heaven,’ you almost certainly gotta pass through Hell.
(Likely multiple times—or perhaps ongoingly.)
I have seen this time and time again with clients and friends who I’ve supported on their spiritual path.
Shit almost invariably gets quite dark at some point.
It has to. We have to confront everything we never wanted to look at within ourselves and life.
This is why it’s really not a good idea to dive deep into spirituality or psychedelics unless there is truly a sincere heart-calling—unless you truly feel called and ready.
This is also why it’s a good idea to do foundational psychological ‘clean up’ work prior to diving deep into awakening practices: Go to therapy and work on those primordial traumas before diving deep into awakening. You’ll thank me later.
One more thing: Eventually you’ll see that the ‘Dark Nights in Hell’ are initiations that God uses to humble you, strengthen you, crack your Heart open, make you more resilient, compassionate, grateful, and profound.
The Dark Nights are an important part of the process. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t intense and scary as f*ck, and we should do a better job of educating people about this.
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
— Rumi
Well said, Rumi.
On to point #3…
3. ‘Spirituality’ leads many people to avoid ‘getting their shit together’ and to ignore the pragmatic realities of their life.
A lot of people won’t want to hear this.
They would rather remain ‘ecstatically ignorant’ as #conscious flowbois and flow-girls cruising whimsically through life, ‘following bliss,’ ‘going where the wind takes them,’ and ignoring ‘the matrix’ / ‘the muggles’ / ‘the NPCs’ at all costs.
I’m not here to judge anyone. I lived the flowboi life for many years. Things are as they are. Life is as it is. All is fundamentally okay.
At the same time though…
I feel compelled to tell you that at some point Life is likely going to (violently) jar you out of ‘Peter Pan’ mode and ask you to Grow Up.
At some point you’ll realize that you’ve spent years indulging endless ‘medicine ceremonies,’ ‘polyamorous temple nights,’ ‘5-d astral projection,’ and ‘sex magick’ under the pretense of being ‘one of the awakened special ones who is creating the New Earth’…
There will be a few glaring problems though… These might take the form of:
Your bank account is near-empty and you’ve got credit card debt up to your eyeballs.
You haven’t developed any hard life-skills that can actually land you a stable, well-paying job or allow you to build a real business.
Your relationships are in shambles because you ‘transcended your family and old friends’; your ‘nomadic lifestyle’ did not allow you to build real community in a single place; and your self-gratifying ‘polyamory’ created irreversible damage in all your romantic relationships.
You have no long-term vision or plan for the future. You are not building a real legacy to leave to the world.
You have not actually created or contributed anything tangible to society.
You can barely take care of yourself and cannot be reliably trusted to care for children or other people.
You’re addicted to ‘shamanic’ tobacco-snuff, Instagram, ‘plant medicines,’ lethargy, ‘festival culture,’ never-ending ‘healing’ loops, and ‘spiritual hedonism.’ These habits sabotage your real potential.
Your life is out of order. You habitually avoid facing the pragmatic tasks and foundational demands of your life.
You give ‘spirituality’ a ‘bad name’ because you are basically a floaty flake who is not equipped to shoulder any real weight in the world.
I know, I know:
This list is pretty harsh.
I deliberately wrote it in a harsh way so that it would hit home.
Look, we are all on our own journeys and we all need to learn our own lessons.
You’re beautiful as you are, and it’s all okay.
At the same time, I implore you to understand this:
4. The point of spirituality is not to escape from ‘normal life.’
True spirituality leads to arriving fully *in* the human experience, *ready* and *available* to truly and reliably serve others and serve this planet—as a dependable, honorable, high-integrity Adult who others can count on.
Don’t ignore your life-foundations.
Get your shit together.
Bring order to your life.
Train.
Master personal finance and generational wealth-building.
Nurture your oldest relationships.
Be a good son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, cousin, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, grandson, granddaughter, grandmother, grandfather, and/or friend.
Ground yourself on this Earth.
Master your vices.
Learn real life skills.
Find ways to be of genuine service.
Realize life is not about you.
I’m certainly still learning all of this, too.
Lastly, I wanna be sure to be clear that I’m not some high-and-mighty guru who has all of this completely figured out.
Much of what I shared here are deep lessons that I will be learning, re-learning, integrating, and embodying for the rest of my life.
I lived the bliss-following, digitally-nomadic ‘Peter Pan’ lifestyle for nearly a decade. In many ways it was wonderful. I lived a dream, created a lot of stuff I’m proud of, and I don’t regret it. Yet eventually Life asked me to step up…
Becoming a father and husband was the gorgeously rude awakening that finally highlighted many of my blindspots and presented an ultimatum: Grow up, or let your family down.
In the last 2.5 years since my daughter was born, I’ve been initiated massively and grown more than I would’ve thought possible. Yet I still have plenty far to go.
I feel excited to embrace and enjoy this never-ending journey of growth.
“A flower’s duty is to blossom,” as R.A.P. Ferreira once said.
And to paraphrase Remi Delaune of Kumankaya: It is natural for an acorn to grow into a mighty oak tree. True freedom is to be in symbiosis with your current stage of life.
May your journey be blessed, my friend.
May you be in symbiosis with your current stage of life.
May you develop into a grounded, grown Man or Woman who can be relied upon.
May you awaken in due time, with proper pacing, in accordance with a true heart-calling.
May you discover the Light which permeates and redeems all.
May you rise from the ashes of your Darkest Nights as a strong, incandescent Phoenix.
May you be one who shows the world what spiritual people are truly made of.
With Love,
Jordan Bates
Apotheosis Co-Founder & Retreat Facilitator
If you feel a sincere heart-calling to discover the truth of who you are…
If you feel a calling to experience Bufo and Ayahuasca in a safe, wisely-held context including a robust preparation & integration program…
If you feel called to experience Apotheosis’ unique integration of mystical truth-realization, community connection, *and* grounded wisdom for navigating human life…
Consider joining us in Mexico from May 26th – June 1st, 2024, for our next Apotheosis Retreat.
Only ~3 spaces left.
If you know in your heart and soul that Summer of 2024 is your moment to dive deeper into the Divine Mysteries of Life…
Now is the time to apply, hop on a call with us, and reserve your space:
If you’ve applied previously you’re welcome to simply go ahead and book a call with us:
If you want to get a vivid taste of Kumankaya Healing Center…
Be sure to watch this video.
Kumankaya is the best place I know of in the world to experience Bufo and Ayahuasca.
Thank you for reading.
May you be blessed.
With Love,
Jordan Bates & the Apotheosis Team
About Apotheosis
Our mission at Apotheosis is to assist in creating a more beautiful world by guiding people through deeply transformational experiences. Having first emerged within HighExistence, our retreats have now served 140+ people from dozens of countries.
Our signature approach—which incorporates true community, unique psychedelic ceremonies, grounded life mastery, Divinity-reconnecting modalities, a myriad of workshops, and a robust preparation & integration program included in the cost of a retreat—distinguishes us as a high-integrity provider of once-in-a-lifetime transformational experiences.
Consider joining our next retreat with Ayahuasca and Bufo—May 26th to June 1st in Mexico.
Author Bio:
Jordan Bates is a dad, husband, space holder, men’s coach, entrepreneur, investor, rapper, course creator, blogger, truth lover, co-creator of Apotheosis & HighExistence, and author of four books. You can learn more about his work here.
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— Frank, 38, Lawyer, Ireland
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