VISION
INTENSIVES
Retreats
Our retreats are motivated by the understanding that mystical psychedelic education starts with, and must be intersected by, the thorough and conscientious work of the individual and the self, transforming ourselves into practitioners that can support others from a deep space of authenticity and integrity. We believe in a participatory quest guided by these lived experiences and made possible through group processes that will challenge and confront students to grow beyond their edges of comfort and familiarity. “How will you guide another through a door you have never entered yourself?” For this reason, our transpersonal retreats are focused on understanding and experiencing the ways in which the psyche works within. In a caring and conscious space, students will be invited to explore the amplification of their psyche through psychedelic medicines to understand how perception changes, how transference and countertransference is expressed, how doors in our conscience open, and how alternatives to living and shaping our realities in this world emerge.
In these retreats, students will undergo a series of journeys that will lead them into the depths of their unconscious. They will have the opportunity to work on their personal process, descend into the dark shadows of their own emotions and challenges, and move towards healing, whilst simultaneously learning important tools and methods from transpersonal therapies. By working on themselves and learning the basics of experiential therapies, students will slowly gain the experience and knowledge needed to competently guide and accompany another’s psycho-spiritual process.
During these retreats, students will also have the opportunity to practice the tools and methods learned with their peers while being supervised by experienced facilitators, teachers, and guides, understanding that apart from profound personal transformation, supervised hands-on practice is the best way to genuinely acquire knowledge in the therapeutic field.
Pilgrimages
Pilgrimage is the mobilization of people toward places where they come in touch with the sacred.
There are some examples of pilgrimages in Islam - the Hajj to Mecca; in Hinduism - the pilgrimage to the Kumbha Mela and the Ganges; in Christianity - perhaps the most known is the way to Santiago de Compostela; in Tibetan Buddhism to the caves of teachers such as the cave of Padmasambhava or Milarepa. In indigenous America, pilgrims travel to the pyramids, to the sea, to volcanos, to the peyote desert...
At Ecstatic Mysticism we recognize not only the importance of pilgrimage to sacred sites, known by their sacred energy and their instructor spirit, but also to living mystical cultures and authentic spiritual traditions. We see that as our societies transition into globalization, authentic mystical cultures that have managed to stay alive present great opportunities for insight and wisdom.
Our pilgrimages with the different indigenous communities will provide the valuable opportunity to expand awareness, permitting students to be deconstructed by the cosmogonic frameworks of these communities and by their ways of seeing and inhabiting their lives. We recognize that the western world has been experimenting and embracing psychedelic thought for a very short time and that these non-western logics of thought are masters in the field. We are working with communities that hold millenary entheogenic traditions that have evolved throughout many generations.
We intend to break through comfort zones, both physical and mental, in order to experience the spirituality of the Universe’s vastness touched by the spirit of the desert with the Wixaritari-Huichol, of the Amazon with the Ai-Cofan, within the sacred regions of the Yawanawa and Huni Kuin, and of the Congo basin in Africa with the Babongo and Massango.
It is important to note that our time spent in all of the pilgrimages will not be as comfortable as the transpersonal intensives in our retreat centers. Many times we will have to sleep in tents or hammocks, in simple indigenous houses, or directly on the floor of the sacred site as instructed by the elders. We will also have to spend some time in internal transportation, sometimes in the back of a pick-up, in a motorboat through the river, or walking in the desert. We believe that these are all very important elements of pilgrimage and are designed to offer students the full-terrain shamanic reality, instead of a light, disengaged interpretation.
