Rebirthing the Temple of the Way of Light

It is with much joy that I share this update. After one and a half years of having to suspect all retreats – the COVID cocoon – the Temple of the Way of Light reopened at the end of August 2021.

As we had sensed from the beginning of the pandemic, our temporary closure presented an extraordinary opportunity to restructure, reimagine, and rebirth the Temple. After 13 years of non-stop work in the Amazon, the pandemic enabled us to stop completely, take a big step back, and listen deeply.

Through the guidance of the plant spirits over the years, we have learned that any challenge we face is a gift in disguise. We quickly realized our hibernation was an invitation to reimagine and reinvent the Temple.

In the dark and difficult days at the beginning of the pandemic, we reconsidered everything; we examined every aspect of our operations, blindspots, struggles, resources, systems, programs, and infrastructure, starting with and returning to our “why.” Why do we do what we do? What is the source of our mission? When fulfilled, what would that look like in the world?

Reflecting on how it all began

The Temple was created in January 2007 following a vision I was blessed to receive in an ayahuasca ceremony. My entire being was lit up like a Christmas tree at the moments of awakening I experienced in that ceremony and the vision I saw. I would build a center for healing in the Amazon to support people struggling in life with the same issues that I had faced for decades – chronic anxiety and depression.

I knew, deep down, that with time, learning, hard work, and patience, the Temple would eventually set the highest standards, inspire many others, and support the emergence of a new paradigm of healthcare, soul-care, and planet-care. I had found my North Star in life and have never looked back since.

From March 2007, I passionately committed everything to developing the Temple. The original vision clearly guided me to build upon three cornerstones: respecting tradition, caring deeply about every guest and member of staff, and giving back to the people of the Amazon. The seed of the Temple was sown in 2007, and we broke ground in 2008 when I met and fell instantly in love with Klara, my beloved wife.

Klara had the insight to work with female healers, and her love, deep intuition, and profound kindness really shifted the trajectory of everything in my life. The Temple’s growth since then could also not have happened without the hard work and passion of so many people who have joined our mission—some short-term and some long-term, and some still with us to this day.

For 13 years, we rode an epic rollercoaster with many challenges that we eventually overcame and learned from. This journey, guided by the spirits of the plants, has provided us evidence that no matter what, crisis indeed does precede transformation. As an organization, we’ve moved through many breakdowns, individually and collectively, which were always followed in time by breakthroughs.

Over and over again, we’ve practised choosing and supporting each other to embody what we’ve learned from the plants: to trust, surrender, and be patient. We’ve embraced the ups and downs, the ebb and flow of the ‘ceremony of life’.

The difficult moments were always where we learned the most. It became abundantly clear that the pruebas (tests) that we go through are essentially the way that the plants teach us, guiding us slowly through ongoing spiritual awakening and bringing more and more awareness to that which is not aligned, not conscious, nor of light or love.

Over time, they teach us humility, why judgement and distrust are always projections of our inner pain, and how all fear ultimately arises from traumas that have not yet been resolved—our own and inherited from our ancestors.

The COVID cocoon

Skip forward 13 years to Friday, March 13th, 2020, when we closed the Temple due to the pandemic. I certainly didn’t see that coming, despite an increasing feeling that our global systems were about to crash. As I wrote in the blog post-COVID and a Call for Awakening in April 2020, it was clear that our suspension would mark the beginning of a process of metamorphosis of the Temple.

It had been 13 years of growing and learning as a caterpillar before entering the “darkness” of the cocoon, where we faced our fears, let go of the old, and reimagined something entirely new. Then, we stepped into a new paradigm of our work and mission in the Amazon and beyond.

I am thrilled to share that this has now become our experience.

At the beginning of the pandemic, quickly realizing that we needed support, we sought investors to help us navigate the financial impacts of closing our doors. We have been extremely fortunate to have been supported by Christian af Jochnick, Dr. Bronners, Riverstyx Foundation, Evolve Foundation, and two individual donors, who have ensured we have had the financial means to reinitiate our work.

From March this year until August, we carried out significant reformations to our center and infrastructure. A primary intention was to upgrade the temple’s rustic facilities to reach a level of quality and comfort that has become increasingly in demand.

We have also maintained our commitment to keeping our accommodations electricity, AC, and WIFI-free, ensuring that our guests are best supported in unplugging from the modern world and experiencing immersion into the rhythms and energies of the Amazon Rainforest—connecting to the birthplace of ayahuasca.

We built a new house for our Shipibo team, a new dining room, and an indoor lounge space, repaired and rebuilt all guest tambos, now equipped with running water, bowl sinks, flushing toilets and upgraded bed linens, mattresses, towels, and soft furnishings, built a beautiful small chill-out maloka on our lagoon for guests to relax in, installed a new waste system with three biodigesters to more efficiently manage our grey and black waste, and installed two new high-quality water filters for drinking water.

We also set our focus on and committed our energy to our beautiful land and grounds. We planted nearly 3,500 medical and ornamental plants and trees throughout our main center (about 7 hectares in the middle of our 222 hectares of rainforest land) and are redesigning existing and implementing new sustainable food production systems.

In addition, we’ve repurposed our second center (where we previously held our Deep Immersion Programs) into a permaculture center to be managed by our sister non-profit organization, the Chaikuni Institute. We’ve been incredibly blessed to have had some new amazing Permaculturists join the Chaikuni team, who are busy working with an expanded local permaculture staff and long-term volunteers.

We hold permaculture courses for foreigners, locals, and Indigenous people from the Amazon. This December, the Chaikuni team will have a special Dialogo de Saberes (Dialogue with Wise Ones), where about 30 Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon will come to the Temple to share their vision on regenerative agriculture and agroforestry.

Guided forwards, with a renewed commitment

With wisdom and foresight, our team of Shipibo healers carried out extensive master plant dietas during the pandemic, knowing that the crisis would catalyze a call to the Amazon for many people struggling through the challenges and longer-term impacts of the global situation. They tell us that the plant spirits have called for an elevation of the work and are teaching and engaging us in ways we’ve not previously experienced.

Since the healers returned to the Temple, we’ve all been blown away by the depth they are reaching through their work, their level of commitment to our guests’ healing processes, and the strength and clarity of the love and healing energy emanating from them.

The first retreat we held upon reopening was a Changemakers Ayahuasca Retreat for a group of 23 high-impact individuals, including medical professionals, visionaries, entrepreneurs, business leaders, psychedelic therapists, and environmental and Indigenous rights activists.

Our shared experience on the retreat was quite literally out of this world. The healers worked at a whole new level, the team felt deep alignment, and we had a clearer connection than ever before with the wisdom, intelligence, and power of the plant spirits directing everything.

We are beyond excited to be open again, with two twelve-day retreats held each month, and are experiencing a tidal wave of interest in our work. More than ever before, we are called to serve and honored to support people in bringing consciousness to the unconscious, liberating the pain of the past, and awakening to their highest potential.

Over the years, our personal experience of clearing the past has shown us what is possible – the reclamation of our birthright and the remembrance of our true nature – to inspire us, guide our actions, and shine light, especially during these transformational times that we are all passing through.

A new paradigm of health, soul, and planet care 

In order for full-spectrum healing to occur, we need to move beyond the current anthropocentric, materialistic medical paradigm, which focuses on the physical realm and solely on the individual. Faced with the challenges we are all experiencing in an entirely unsustainable global society, we recognize the critical importance of identifying the energetic origins of our issues.

We see the potential evolution of the Western medical model, which is now looking to incorporate psychedelics by embracing an ecocentric approach to healing, shifting from the Newtonian assumptions that underlie these systems into an energetic paradigm that transcends the limitations of materialism and moving into a quantum understanding of health. Causal healing, viewed within a Newtonian context, is incomprehensible and unbelievable and will only ever be understood through the experience itself.

There is significant potential for a synthesis of ancient healing practices and modern therapies to resolve the global health crisis (mental illness and beyond) by working together respectfully, equitably, and reciprocally for therapists and medical practitioners to learn experientially from indigenous healers, the true experts in psychedelic healing, who carry generations of wisdom and experience in navigating the subconscious, energetic, and non-local realms of being.

In our view, only then will a new paradigm in healthcare emerge that can truly resolve the deep-rooted personal and trans-generational traumas that impact us all on every level of our lives and unconsciously drive every system in global society.

Indigenous healing traditions can guide us through this time of transition. We see many decades ahead when our current dysfunctional society is collapsing and a new paradigm emerges that understands that we are inextricably connected to nature and to the planet itself, our Mother Earth, as indigenous wisdom keepers and our ancestors have always known!

Inspired to be in service, we take this stand: 

Traditional Amazonian plant-spirit healing offers a solution to the modern epidemic of depression, anxiety, and stress, encouraging a revolution in our healthcare systems and in the way that society addresses mental health and the source of disease.

We recognize unresolved personal and transgenerational trauma, in all its different manifestations, to be the taproot of all disorder and turmoil, individually and collectively, across the planet.

The resolution of trauma leads to completion, wholeness, and connection, and is the single most significant mechanism for individual, social, and global transformation.

We stand for a new paradigm in health care, soul care, and planet care.