On Marriage, God, & Total Commitment

Celebrating Tanja and I's recent wedding.

Dear Family,

I’m happy to share some good news with you:

A couple months ago, Tanja and I got married!

We love our family.

We celebrated our wedding in the Mexican jungle at Kumankaya Healing Center—right at the conclusion of my ~5.5 weeks there.

We were married by the great Christian curandero Remi Delaune in an ayahuasca ceremony at Kumankaya—with our closest family members present there.

Tanja and I with our dear friends, Remi and Ashley Delaune.

This event truly felt like the apotheosis or eschaton of my time at Kumankaya. In a sense, it was the ‘end of a world’—the end of the life-world of Jordan Bates as I have known him; Jordan Bates as an unmarried man.

The weeks prior to the wedding had felt like passing through the eye of yet another needle—a wee, tiny, minuscule needle. So many layers and snakeskins were being peeled, dissolved, cleaned, melted, purged out of me. I was being prepared for the greatest and most beautiful adventure of my life—the adventure of true and total commitment to my wife, our daughter, our family.

I’m so happy to call her “wife.”

The wedding ceremony was abyss-deep for me. Strong ayahuasca induced a lot of purging. It may have been the most purging I’ve done in a single ceremony—top two or three, I’d imagine. This felt kind of strange to be doing in the presence of my mother, father, and other family members. Yet it was clear that it was destined to be this way.

Having my closest family members present in the maloca allowed for the surfacing of deep karmic knots within our ancestral lines. Something about the familial proximity enabled the cleaning of certain attachments and debris that I had not previously had occasion to clean.

Our beloved family. Deeply grateful they all made the trip.

To be honest I felt like I was purging for everyone there. In my visions there were a variety of dark energies and entities revealing themselves—shadow-beings who had hidden, perhaps for ages, within our family lines—and I was systematically cleaning them, clearing them, dissolving or transfiguring them in the Light of Christ, or commanding them to be gone once and for all—sending them to the Pure White Light of God and then firmly closing etheric doors behind them. “The Father will know what to do with you,” I remember saying repeatedly within my mind. Quite a wedding night, hah!

Tanja also experienced a deep, intense, alchemical ceremony. We ended up sleeping with Lila in the maloca, cuddling close in the chilly Mexican jungle ‘winter,’ and awaking the next morning in an aura of sweetness and gratitude.

Love.

The Joyful Clarity of Total Commitment

I’m grateful to report that weeks later, I am most definitely feeling happily married.

To paraphrase C.S. Lewis: “Heaven on Earth exists, and it’s called marriage.”

I’m sure I’ll write more about marriage in the times to come. And I’m sure there will be plenty of challenges. Already there are challenges. And yet…

I feel a deep sense of rightness.

What I love most about marriage so far is the sense of Total Commitment.

It’s profoundly clarifying.

You know what your mission is:

To do whatever it takes to show up beautifully and continue creating a beautiful life for/with your wife and family. To give your life to your wife and family, in humble service to God’s Love.

Modern people expend tremendous amounts of energy wondering what to do with their lives—feeling endless amounts of doubt, uncertainty, disorientation, and analysis paralysis. I’ve certainly been there.

Marriage—when truly committed to as a lifelong devotional vow—resolves a great deal of that angst.

The path is clear.

And now all that is left is to walk it.

With grace, dignity, and honor.

That’s not to say that all the details are clear. There’s still plenty of uncertainty as to precisely what our life is going to look like, where we’re going to live long-term, how we’re going to make our way, and so forth. And I’m glad for that; it adds plenty of mystery and excitement to the equation.

Yet a great deal has been clarified:

We are together. We are a team. We have made the deepest of commitments. We have forged the most solid of foundations. We are here for each other. We are here to celebrate Life and practice daily Gratitude together. We are here to take care of each other and walk each other Home. We will do whatever it takes—God-willing—to live a beautiful life together in accordance with our Heart’s deepest values.

This feels wonderful to me.

Sacred Readiness & Inspired Motivation

I feel a ridiculously concentrated sense of Sacred Readiness to do whatever it takes.

“Lay it on me, I’m ready for it, let’s go, just try and stop me, I will never fold,” is the perhaps-overly-exuberant feeling.

There is an extra-normal furnace of inspired motivation that ignites when your life is no longer primarily about you.

In my Heart I know that I am no longer on Earth primarily for me.

I have given my life to Tanja and Lila, and I am committed to give it every day, on ever-deeper levels.

In the weeks leading up to our marriage, on multiple occasions—often deep in ayahuasca ceremonies—I made sacred, hand-on-Heart vows to myself and God—to give my life to Tanja and Lila, to put them first, to be there for them no matter what, to be the Knight in Shining Armor that they deserve.

Giving My Life to God on Ever Deeper Levels

And through this covenant of marriage and family, I can feel myself becoming ever more able to give my life over to God—my Heart’s one and true Master.

To give my life over to God—for the Greatest Good of All—is the most fundamental endeavor and never-ending practice of my life.

To transfigure my entire life into a Prayer.

In entering this covenant of marriage, I can feel the great wisdom of my Catholic and Christian ancestors—who understood marriage as a sacred sacrament that would ultimately serve to bring us closer to God.

The sacred duty to responsibly care for others and make sacrifices for others is not a curse. It is the Greatest Blessing. It is central to what Life is truly about.

Only by losing ourselves in Selflessly-Lovingly-Joyfully Giving to others and to the Whole, can we truly find ourselves in our natural state: Free, generous, unencumbered, humble, open-hearted, grace-filled, honorable, dignified, close to God.

Marriage teaches me this. Family teaches me this. Every day.

(And sometimes I totally ‘stumble’ and resist and do not embody this lesson, and that’s okay too.)

Marriage and family rightfully seen, constitute a sacred daily practice of generously giving one’s life over to God’s Love.

To That Love Which Flows Freely, Endlessly, And Generously To All, Never Concerned For Itself.

And yet as the great Prayer of St Francis so poetically reminds us:

“For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

Or as Jesus put it:

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all things shall be added unto you.”

I am astounded by the immense wisdom encoded in the Great Catholic and Christian tradition of my ancestors—wisdom which has been sitting right in front of me since my earliest childhood, yet which it has taken me nearly 33 years to begin to understand.

Thank you, God.

Thank you, Life.

“Shepherd me, oh God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into Life.”

“Make me an instrument of your Peace.”

“Let there be Peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.”

May I practice every day to learn and embody—little by little, forevermore—the truly limitless depth of meaning within these immortal words.

May I be the best husband and father that I can be.

I love you, Tanja.

I love you, Lila.

Amen.

Faithfully Yours,
Jordan