A Summoning into Devotional Discipline 📿
A behind-the-curtain look at our 7-day DIY at-home retreat.
📍 Coordinates: Sparrow Café, Argentina.
📖 Reading Time: ~13 minutes.
🧉 Housekeeping: I’m putting together an intense devotional 100-day initiation for myself and others this year. More information can be found at the bottom of this if that sounds like your jam.
A blood-curdling, primal shriek echoed off the walls and ricocheted down the hallways...
"There it is! Keep going."
2 more gut-wrenching, goosebump-giving bellows boomed out like cannon fire.
But there was no war here. This was a battle of the heart.
After 3 hours of intense breathwork, stretched out over two days, my partner found the release valve on her vocal expression. Decades of pain, purpose, confusion, passion, and raw soul force stampeded through our school space.
We sipped some water, lit a stick of palo santo, and went on to the next exercise.
Not bad for 2 in the afternoon on a Wednesday.
This was one of the dozens of experiences on our DIY self-guided retreat we conducted in the week leading up to the holidays.
This isn't going to be a complete play-by-play of the full 7 days, but let's take a look at some of the notable experiences, surprises, mistakes, learnings, and next steps from this weird, winding, and wonderful experience.
☀️ Overall Impressions
I have several months cumulatively of retreats under my belt. None of them at home. This was a new flavour, and I was deeply anticipatory (nervous & excited) going into it.
I think it was an astounding success.
It did what it was intended to do, and then some.
It provided sacred space for detoxing, disconnection, and doing some serious work to move forward into the new year.
My partner and I both had several intense moments, accompanied by a medley of embodiment, contemplation, nourishment, and self-discovery.
Doing it at-home was incredible and challenging. Doing it at home forfeits the excitement of travelling to a remote location, nestled in the jungle or beautiful retreat center, surrounded by the smiling faces of soon-to-be friends. With that absent, it became solely about the work. No fancy externalities, no social distractions, no running away. Just you, with yourself, day in and day out. With no external enforcement, sticking to the schedule, giving it your all, and honouring the commitments were more challenging for me. It's easier to get into breathwork releases surrounded by 20+ friends all doing the same, less so when it’s just you and your partner in a room together. But those awkward challenges became the material, and I'm grateful for that.
The need for unstructured down time. While we never felt rushed, our daily schedules were busy. Flowing from one activity to the next. If we ever needed buffer room, the "unstructured solo time" was the first thing cut. This was a mistake. Unstructured isolated time should have been protected as firmly as anything else. The act of truly being with yourself, with no phone, no commitments, no distractions, and no outcome, is deeply transformative. It's where latent unprocessed material surfaces, and where sparks of insight and inspiration arise from.
The discipline/surrender divide. This was a prominent theme throughout the week for me, and become the subject of my previous article. You're 5 days in, several ceremonies deep, tired, hungry, on edge, and staring down the barrel of a deeply challenging IFS session – what do you do? I found that the surrendered "okay, this is where I'm at, I trust the structure and the process, onward" versus the disciplined "get it together, you're not done yet, push with all you've got" was far more effective, allowed for more grace, and enabled a smoother flow throughout the week, particularly as the days began to take their toll.
Retreats have innate wisdom. Retreats seem to have their own intelligence. A combination of the medicines, your unconscious, and what the world needs. Each day built upon the work of the previous naturally, and it followed a smooth peak from beginning to climax to integration effortlessly. Everyone gets what they need, but not always what they want. I would love to take credit for some sort of immaculate design that enabled this, but I know it was far beyond me and my doing. A beautiful, graceful reminder.
⛩️ Core Session Commentary
We had a 'core pillar' experience planned for each day of the retreat. Here's how they went down:
🐸 Kambo Day 1: 2 major dots, left forearm. I think kambo is underrated in the plant medicine space. It is potent, of course for its physical detox/purging elements, but also because it is a powerful mirror for how you react to extreme discomfort. It's hardcore meditation: sit on a mat, as composed as possible, while your body responds to the acute shock of poisoning. It shows how you shut down, get angry, misalign expectations, push through, and overcome. I love kambo and it was a great way to begin, providing a comprehensive nervous system reset to settle us down into the rest of the week.
🐸 Kambo Day 2: 3 major dots, left forearm. A strongly physical experience, with deep bile purges. It felt like the abuse of smoking, caffeine, and unclean food was being ripped out of my cells. I feel a strong resonance with kambo and have integrated its lessons and teachings fairly well over the past years of working with and learning to facilitate it. The only mistake I think we made is not planning a third session (3 sessions within 28 days, or 1 lunar cycle, is known as inoculation and I should have heeded this wisdom). I think we both felt like our engagement with the spirit of kambo was incomplete after only two sessions.
🪑 Structures: 30 minutes a person, exploring the conversation that unfolded with my family the night after a serious car accident I had when I was 18. Structure work, otherwise known as ‘PBSP psychomotor therapy’ lets you not only revisit, but play an active participant in reframing and rewriting core memories and experiences from your past. It can do general relationship-level work as well. Accessible with only a facilitator and some household objects. I want to do considerably more exploration around this and how you can best work with it. It really showed me how much resentment I have towards other people for not being perfect – for not acting the way I want, for not knowing the things I know, and essentially, for not being how I want them to be. This was an uncomfortable but important emotional wave to sit with and work through.
🍄 Mushrooms: ~3.5g dose. Ah, mushrooms. Beautiful as always! Mushrooms are highly advanced biotechnological organisms, and you can feel them moving through your energy body. This session helped me redefine my own definition of success, my own version of what's possible for me, and the path it takes to get there. Of living and breathing my values, my purpose, and my passions. It got me so inspired I bought a saxophone to enter the discipline of Jazz music last week, largely inspired by listening to this song. This ceremony helped me root down two core identities: a spiritual warrior, and a man of culture. I want to make art, play music, speak languages, see the world, read great literature, and have deep conversations.
👨👩👧👦 Internal Family Systems: 30 minutes per person, exploring the 'angry part' that has been present with me. My partner and I have a tag-team IFS routine. Taking time to explore and facilitate interactions with a part or two that are present. Anger and its associated emotions have been fairly present with me lately. Honstly, I was too triggered to make a lot of progress in this session. The angry part literally blocked us from moving far beyond the introduction. This was unfortunate, but also important as I realize how much potent work there is to be done here.
🌀 LSD: 350ug dose, 2 tabs. LSD is the psychedelic I am most experienced with and have a deep affinity for. I've spent thousands of hours in the LSD headspace at this point. This session was powerful. Several of my experiences here will be written about in the future. This was nothing less than a complete and total bio-psycho-spiritual upgrade, preparing and focusing me to devote all of myself to my training and teaching. Here's a sample of my journal entry: "... it activated a clear channel to receive what could only be called a calling, or gnosis. It rippled through my being: I am to surrender to the discipline of becoming. Of awakening. To become a warrior-sage and honour the integrity of the ancient wisdom traditions. A clear and loud summoning to submit my life in the true service of humanity's future and in homage to the miracle of existence itself. [...] My life is now in full service of the All."
💛 Integration: A day of journalling, discussion and planning. Time dilates under emotional intensity and the retreat felt like many weeks long. What became clear to me is that I must continue my own inner work with renewed power and ferocity, but also begin to work more with community and host experiences to allow others to do this: retreats, ceremonies, summits, the works. There is a group of warriors out there who want to do the work of the heart. I will steward these spaces, put out the bat signal, and submit completely to this work.
⚡️ Personal Take-Aways
I have a long and challenging road ahead, and I'm excited-nervous about it. The material I was presented with was intimidating, to say the least. It will require deep surrender, deep humility, and massive ongoing action. I submit myself as tribute to the power of medicine and of this kind of work.
Putting ‘devotional discipline’ (serious spiritual practice) first. This retreat solidified the fact that nothing in my life is more important than my path and my practice, and I need/want to embody it. It feels like beforehand there was still a level of subdued internal debate ("oh what about work? where do my relationships fit in? what will people think? isn't this just a part of life, not the point of it?"). No more. This is primary, and I'm willing to make the difficult decisions, trade-offs, and boundaries that are required to honour that.
The spiritual warrior calling is getting louder. An off-shoot of Point 1. To make myself a living dynamic embodied example of why this work is important. Beyond that, to cultivate a true devotion to my values and purpose, to be willing to plant my stake in the ground and say you shall not pass. The call is deepening. A spiritual warrior isn't how many ceremonies you’ve done, it's whether you’re willing to stand up, and die for, the more beautiful world and future that is possible.
Identity Fluidity. I’m in a new liminal space between identities. First, having designed and executed and facilitated much of this retreat, by myself and for myself, was incredible. In previous retreats I've run there was always a team. This really solidified in me a core confidence that I can do this, and seeing the results of my study/practice (yoga, plant medicine, facilitation, psycho-somatic work, etc.) weaved together in a single experience was beautiful. I also had an interesting experience about my relationship to athleticism, which was unexpected. I was super athletic growing up (board sports, golf, hockey, climbing, running, etc.) and realized that at some point in my life I 'put that identity down'. I feel ready to flow into that more as well. And finally, really trying to come to terms with spiritual warriorship, earnest devotion, and what this looks like in my life.
⁉️ Rapid-Fire Q&A.
What was the hidden gem? Structure Work, by far. We picked up the practice in The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, and it is powerful! You pick a 'scene' from your past that you want to work through, and begin to re-create it in front of you by selecting a variety of objects or people. We were alone, so I chose two yoga chairs to represent my parents. You then unpack the scene, saying anything you wish you had said, viewing it differently. It feels ridiculous to have emotional conversations with plants, couches, and chairs, but I was amazed at how easy it was to "get into it" and the emotional outcome of working through that. It is a very real example of 'serious play' and easily had the greatest gap between expectation and outcome.
Most powerful experience? I had an absolutely insane trauma-release/body-reawakening/kundalini activation in the first 2 hours of the 350ug LSD experience. I will be releasing a dedicated piece about that here soon.
Hardest part? Fully disconnecting from technology. I literally failed at this. Still checking my phone throughout the day and not honouring my boundaries strongly enough by getting on a few work calls during our free time blocks Monday/Tuesday. It’s embarrassing to admit this. Beyond anything else (kambo sessions, reduced caloric intake, hard breathwork exercises, psychedelic ceremonies), disconnecting from tech was the hardest (so difficult I failed at it). Caffeine withdrawals were a close second.
Easiest part? The psychedelic ceremonies. I say 'easy' because I think they are challenging to most people, but they are largely fun, powerful, beautiful experiences for me. I have trust in the medicines and experience, lots of familiarity in those waters, and I got a lot out of them.
Scariest part? My partner passed out during her first kambo session. This is not uncommon if you have strong medicine. I'm a trained facilitator, but I haven't sat with (let alone facilitated) in a while. Dealing with that was scary, but also natural. Noticing how well I effortlessly responded to that was deeply motivating and helped with an important identity shift later in the week.
Would you do it again? In a heartbeat. That end-of-year timing will undoubtedly become an annual ritual, and I'm thinking about how this can be modified for a quarterly 3-day or a 6-month disconnect.
What would you do more of? Medicine x Psychology Sessions. Something like low-dose LSD IFS work. MDMA structure work. Museum-dose mushrooms extended yoga flows.
What would you do less of? Food prep. It's one of those things that retreat centers do for you! We had to prep/cook all meals every day. While there was good dharma work in basic tasks like this, there were times it was frustrating after a long day to then have to make a meal.
⏭️ What Comes Next? Exploring Integration.
There were a few core experiences and next steps that emerged for me. I believe over the years my sensitivity to deciphering messages from my intuition/Self has increased, and the messages themselves have gotten louder.
☀️ My day must begin with the sun. This came blaring through like a code-red emergency alarm in my LSD ceremony. A very clear, unwavering command that in order to continue walking my path, my day must start when the sun rises. I rise as the sun rises. Despite never having done this in my life and that I've never been a ‘morning person’, my days now begin with yoga during the sunrise. It's been fantastic.
💪 Greater spiritual insight requires stronger physical capability. Frank Yang summarizes this well in his video ‘Athletics of Consciousness’. I experienced—very clearly—the fundamental and inseparable connection between the physical and the immaterial. A clear message was received that physical capability (strength, stamina, flexibility) limits & affords the level of spiritual insight you can access. Particularly in the realms of kundalini and psychosomatic upgrades, you need to be able to physically endure the process. It became clear that the next levels for me require increased physical capability. Yoga, endurance running, and strength training are now non-negotiable parts of my life.
🧎🏻♂️ Surrendered devotion is discipline. The link between devotion, surrender, and discipline is extremely present. Discipline (and the warrior generally) has been my weakest archetype. But a new frame was offered: devotion, not discipline. Submit yourself, fully and completely, to the path, to the practice, to the purpose. Discipline is not needed when there is no resistance.
There was one final insight that arose for me during the ceremonies – a way to practice surrender, devotion, discipline, and transformation: The Hundred Day Challenge.
I'm going to ground this experience in a 100-day devotional discipline challenge. If you've read this far, first of all you're a G, and second of all you're clearly the kind of person I'd like to do this with.
If you're interested in joining a hundred-day devotional discipline group experience, comment on this article or shoot me an email. I'll share more details in February.
With love,
EB. 💛
❤️🔥❤️🔥 Beautiful. Love feeling the new levels of devotional surrender to God coming through 🙏🏼
This article is highly inspirational, thanks for the brain food Eric.
And count me in on the 100-day challenge!