18 Days in the Jungle: An Entheogenic Healing Journey
18 Days in the Jungle: An Entheogenic Healing Journey
Ayahuasca, Bufo, Love, and more — A recap of our jungle journey in late 2022
“Like 1,000 therapy sessions in one.”
— Brian, Retreat Participant, in reference to his Bufo experience
A few weeks ago I said I’d soon share a longer post about the Presence of God and Women Rising retreats that Tanja and I hosted at our dear friends’ beloved Kumankaya Healing Center in Mexico in late 2022.
This is that post.
It’s always impossible to encapsulate in words what happens during these entheogenic adventures in the jungle.
Time dilates in an uncanny way, and you really end up feeling like you spent months training in the hyperbolic time chamber (who got the Dragonball Z reference?).
Where to begin?
Ayahuasca: A Mysterious Medicine
Let’s start with the Amazonian vine medicine often known as “the mother.”
As usual, with ayahuasca, there were marvelous immersive visions / ‘astral travels.’
I personally was seemingly transported to astounding dragon realms complete with huge dragons flying over a vast mountain sea, as well as rainbow-light-worlds in which elves were using light-technology to build etheric, otherworldly energy-architectures.
Another brother reported that he was guided by light beings through an elaborate labyrinth that led to the center of the Earth, where he was then guided to stare at a pendulum-like object that transmitted to him a kind of golden light-language, activating him as a heart-warrior and inviting him to commit to protect the sacred feminine.
This gives a taste of some of the wilder stuff that can happen with ayahuasca.
Interestingly, though, to paraphrase and affirm the words of our shaman, Remi:
The visions are not really the important thing. Don’t fixate on them.
Some people don’t have any visions with ayahuasca. It varies a lot from person to person.
Much more important than the visions, are the purges, releases, tears, cleanings, and internal healing processes that occur with this medicine. This is the stuff that really does the ‘heavy lifting’ in terms of deep healing that changes lives, often dramatically, for the better. These processes are catalyzed not only by the ayahuasca itself, but also by the true ayahuasca shaman’s masterful use of the icaro song technology to aid in the healing process.
A few years ago a different shaman once told a group of us, “When we hear you vomiting, that is like music to our ears. That is how we know the medicine is working.”
Ayahuasca can feel like puking up lifetimes of shame, guilt, anger, frustration, grudges, and other sticky, gloppy, afflictive emotions in a span of a few hours. I am consistently amazed by its capacity to catalyze quantum leaps in people’s healing processes, seemingly allowing people to accomplish a level of therapeutic healing work in a few days that might have otherwise taken years or decades.
We certainly experienced this on retreat, with everyone experiencing large purges and releases of one form or another. I was especially grateful for a couple ceremonies in which Remi utilized the icaro song technology to ‘clean out’ a few dark-magickal attachments I had picked up in relation to a pair of New Age guru figures, in the 1.5 years since our last visit to Kumankaya. I had some massive purges. Tanja and I have both noticed that something big shifted for me after these cleanings, and that I have come into a new level of grounded, humble heart-alignment and service-oriented leadership in our family since the retreat.
Bufo Alvarius: A Profound Teacher
Bufo alvarius (5-MeO-DMT) was utterly profound on this retreat as well.
After his final Bufo session on my retreat, in which I personally administered the Bufo to him, one of my participants, Brian, said:
“That was like 1,000 therapy sessions in one. [Released] a lot of hidden shame… Condensed super-therapy.”
Another participant on my retreat, Sam, came out of his first Bufo session smiling, saying:
“I wanna weep in the face of truth… Two things: There’s nothing to be afraid of, and Love is unlimited. I wanna hug you guys.”
In a later Bufo session, Sam said, “Create beauty. Make beautiful things. Life could be a giant ceremony.”
I had ~three Bufo sessions during my 18 days in the jungle, and they were some of the most clarifying, life-affirming, heart-purifying, Divinity-connecting experiences of my life.
The final one was perhaps the most incredible, as CoryaYo and I decided to receive the medicine at the same time, while listening to some unreleased medicine music he created, including a track called ‘Yahweh,’ which was an utterly and unspeakably holy experience.
Cory and I helped hold space for all the individual Bufo journeys on my retreat, infusing medicinal prerecorded songs and live sound healing into the mixture, and this proved to be remarkably beautiful. The participants loved the sounds, and it seemed to clearly take the experience to the ‘next level’ of sublimity and sacredness.
I was pleasantly surprised to find on this retreat that Bufo is an even more dynamic medicine than I had previously understood. To some extent, I had previously conceived of it as somewhat of a Divine ‘one trick pony’ that (at a sufficiently high dose) primarily gave people full-on dissolution experiences, allowing for a ‘melting into’ pure union with the Loving Light of God. This had been my primary experience with the medicine, through dozens of firsthand experiences with it.
This dissolution effect was present this time around too, yet not nearly as pronounced overall. On these retreats, I was blessed to see more clearly that Bufo, like other entheogenic teachers, has a remarkable capacity to calibrate its medicinal effect based on the needs of the one who is receiving the medicine. On these retreats, the Bufo felt overall much more grounded and embodied than in my prior experience—not just for me, but for most everyone. It was like it knew that what was needed was not full-on dissolution, but rather an embodied anchoring of God’s Love-Light-Grace-Heart-Purification. This seemed to be a recurring theme through most everyone’s experiences, and proved to be unbelievably nourishing, healing, heart-opening, mystical, and joyful for us.
After witnessing the dynamism of Bufo on these retreats, I feel a deepening calling to continue serving this medicine (as well as pure 5-MeO-DMT) to people. The Bufo told me in an extremely direct way during one of my ceremonies that I am meant to serve it to others. Having now understood more deeply the myriad of possibilities with this medicine, I am happily refining a Bufo / 5-MeO protocol that will involve starting people at low doses, to ensure they respond well to the medicine—then increasing from there.
My general feeling about the Bufo / 5-MeO community—based partially on a past misstep of mine—is that facilitators are too gung-ho about trying to “blast people off the cliff” with their first dose. There is a strange insistence by many facilitators in this community that very high doses of 5-MeO constitute “the true experience” and that people ought to be given high doses from the get-go. Unsurprisingly, this often has significant unpredictable negative consequences. As such, I am now firmly of a different mind on this point. 5-MeO can be incredibly therapeutic at low doses, and as such I do not see a reason to start people with dangerously high doses. Unless something drastically changes, my approach moving forward will be to start low and gradually increase. I have witnessed this approach provide mesmerizingly beautiful healing experiences for people, in a way that feels far more predictable and containable than giving people large doses on their first go.
Psychedelics are Not a Panacea and Have Shadows
One of my shadows/biases is to speak with overflowing enthusiasm about psychedelic/entheogenic medicine, so I try to counterbalance that by regularly mentioning that psychedelics are not a panacea and definitely have their shadows. I’m likely going to write at greater length on this point sometime soon, but I can quickly make a couple points here:
In both myself and others, I have witnessed that working with psychedelics presents a substantial risk of massive ego-inflation. It’s fairly common to get swept up in quasi-manic grandiosity in the wake of powerful psychedelic experiences. It’s fairly common to develop some degree of spiritual egotism, a ‘specialness’ complex, a guru complex, or even a messiah/savior complex, due to the profundity of psychedelic mystical experiences. This is far more present in the psychedelic community than most would admit. This is something one must really be unflinchingly honest about. One must have people around who can give one straight no-bullshit feedback in the wake of psychedelic experiences. This time round, my psychedelic work in the jungle felt like some of the most grounded and humble medicine work of my life, though I did still notice some (subtle) symptoms of inflation in the wake of those experiences. So this is something our community really needs to be extra attentive to.
A second and final point I’ll make for now is that miraculous psychedelic mystical-healing experiences are invaluably precious, yet ultimately not worth much in terms of long-term healing, without truly dedicated ongoing integration. A lot of people pay lip service to integration, but I believe tons of people are still not ‘walking the talk’ on this one. Many people are fixated on simply booking their next ticket to Costa Rica for their next ceremony, hoping for a miraculous healing to occur in a few hours. But the fact of the matter is that true personal healing and integration almost always require years of dedicated daily focus, care, devotion, and discipline—and the path of self-understanding and self-blossoming is ultimately unending.
There are no real shortcuts in life. Any apparent shortcut always comes with a cost. This is why Jung said, in relation to psychedelics, “Beware of unearned wisdom.” A lot of people get destabilized or ungrounded by the veritable firehose of ‘unearned wisdom’ provided by psychedelics (see my previous point), and a lot of people end up erroneously believing the answer to everything is to simply “do more psychedelics.” This is not the case. Psychedelics can do a lot of heavy lifting in a short span of time and can show you what is possible, but without ongoing sincere self-work and spiritual practice, most people will simply slide back to their old baseline and back into their old patterns a few weeks after a retreat. They may receive some lasting deep healing, and this might even be quite life-altering in terms of feeling lighter, more grateful, and more able to see the beauty of life, but if they are not truly committed to living the truth of Love that has been revealed to them, they will continue to create new karmic knots that will gradually weigh them back down in most cases.
There’s more I could (and likely will) say on this topic but this feels like a good word of caution for now.
Understanding these points, I still find myself to be a proponent of the wise, responsible use of entheogens by those who feel a sincere heart-calling. It is not an understatement to say that these (plant and animal) teachers have brought immeasurable beauty to my life, have helped me heal on levels I didn’t know were possible, have reconnected me to the Earth and my own Heart in ways I didn’t know I needed, have revealed to me a Miraculous Infinite-Dimensional Cosmos beyond all reckoning, and have quite literally brought me ‘face to face’ with God, the One Supreme Creator Spirit. I continue to feel that mankind’s long-term survival, consciousness-evolution, and flourishing may depend upon the incredibly-fast-acting, wisdom-bestowing capacities of entheogenic teachers.
As such, it is difficult to imagine myself ever discouraging the use of entheogens by those who feel a sincere heart-calling. Entheogens have been a vital and indispensable aspect of my path and practice for ~12 years now, and all signs indicate that they will continue to be. Though I now find myself in what feels like a far more humble, reverent, cautious, and balanced place with respect to these medicines, than I used to be. I still find them to be among the most powerful consciousness tools available to mankind at this juncture, though they are the farthest thing from a joke, and their usage is not to be taken lightly, but rather with the utmost respect, humility, and sense of sacramental sanctity.
Nature, Family, and Tribe Love
On a final note, I want to mention the nature, family, tribe, and brotherly love-vibes that permeated both our jungle retreats.
This is something that I think is often underestimated in terms of what really leads to deep healing on retreats.
Being deep in primordial jungle nature, and bonding with a group of (mostly) strangers on a similar path through a week of entheogenic release, is incredibly powerful. And the nature-plus-tribe context is really an indispensable aspect.
The tribe love became palpable on both retreats. My retreat ended up being a men’s retreat, and the brotherly love was viscerally potent and nourishing.
Yes, people can have powerful healing experiences with psychedelics alone, in the comfort of their own home, but what I have seen on retreats leads me to believe that several-day nature immersion + tribe/family vibes really take everything to another level.
(Furthermore, it is also far safer and more likely to be beneficial and energetically protected to work with psychedelics with experienced facilitators in a wisely-held retreat setting, VS simply ‘popping a few tabs’ alone at home or in a [misaligned] social setting, especially if you are inexperienced with these medicines.)
There’s just something about flying down to Mexico and taking a winding dirt road deep into the jungle that takes a person completely out of their default reality, sets the stage for something remarkable to happen, and opens them up to the possibility of miraculous, out-of-the-ordinary occurrences. When you combine that with immediate bear hugs upon arrival plus an environment of consistent familial unconditional love in a paradisal jungle oasis for an entire week, you get a recipe for a deep rewiring of a person’s relationship to life, love, humanity, nature, and themselves.
On top of that, add in the bunches of sharing circles and hugging meditations and laughing meditations and ecstatic dances and breathwork and prayers and sound healings and hammock lounging and massage that take place alongside the masterfully-held entheogenic ceremonies, and you get a truly next-level recipe for profound healing and rejuvenation.
Add to that the fact that Tanja and I provide substantial preparation and integration support before and after our retreats, and you start to get a sense of what a world-class entheogenic retreat service looks like.
A Mini-Documentary Spread Out Over a Few Videos
If you want a vivid taste of what went down in the jungle, here are a few videos for you:
Retreat Participant Sam Shares His Experience:
Retreat Participant Brian Shares His Experience:
I Reflect on My Experience:
Retreat Participant JP Shares His Experience:
Retreat Participant Nimrod Shares His Experience:
A Guided Meditation I Led on My Retreat:
Retreat Co-Facilitator Cory “CoryaYo” Altenhofen Shares His Experience:
Kumankaya Co-Founder & Retreat Co-Facilitator / Shaman, Ashley Delaune, Shares Her Experience:
Retreat Co-Facilitator Sonny Shares His Experience:
Retreat Co-Facilitator Tanja Shares Her Experience:
In Sum: A Labor of Love
I am truly proud of the work we do on our retreats.
Tanja and I bring about ~17 years of combined experience to the table when it comes to working with these medicines, and at Kumankaya, with Remi, Ashley, Cory, & a couple others supporting as well, we’re talking about the better part of a century of combined experience with psychedelic medicine—not to mention decades of intensive non-psychedelic spiritual practice in monasteries, ashrams, churches, healing centers, sacred sites, and everyday places around the world.
It’s a family affair on our retreats. It’s a Love-fest, in a most upright, wholesome, and honorable way. Even our beloved little Lila was there this time around and was present in the maloca for a few of the ayahuasca ceremonies (dozing soundlessly ~98% of the time!).
I am excited and honored to continue doing this work for the foreseeable future.
So far I have announced two retreats for 2023—a psilocybin retreat in Netherlands in ~July and an ayahuasca/Bufo retreat at Kumankaya in ~December—and Tanja has announced five retreats, both entheogenic and non-entheogenic, in Europe and Mexico, that I will be co-facilitating.
If you know you feel an inspiration to potentially attend one of our retreats this year—or if you are interested in 1:1 psychedelic integration coaching with me—fill out this interest form and let me know.
As I mentioned the other day, I am offering a 15+% super-early-bird discount on all bookings prior to February 15th.
To give a sense of pricing, my psilocybin retreat in Netherlands will likely be ~$1,500 and my ayahuasca/Bufo retreat in Mexico will likely be ~$2,500. The price difference is a result of the latter retreat entailing significantly greater expenses for me, as I happily pay Remi and Ashley ~$1,300 per participant for their world-class services, in addition to other miscellaneous expenses.
Thank you for reading this, my friend, and if you feel a sincere heart-calling, I do hope to see you in person on one of our retreats, and to give you a sizable hug.
Warm & Cozy Heart-Love,
Jordan