I spent 10 days in the Amazon jungle of Peru on a plant medicine retreat featuring 5 ayahuasca ceremonies. 

It was the most profound, challenging, mystical, spirit-testing, and magical experience of my life. For the first three days, I questioned why I was there. On day four, I almost left. Things began to shift around day five when I received a whisper from God through a dream. I started talking to plants on day 6. I understood past lives on day 8. And I connected with my guardian angel and spirit animal on day 9.

Similar to the retreat, this letter will move from practical to esoteric, 3D to 4D, and worldly to other-worldly. In 10 days, I learned more about myself, life, nature, the universe, and the future of humanity than I’d learned in my previous 23 years of life. I want to share as much as possible with you in these letters.

We will begin by diving a bit into my background, why I came to plant medicines, and how ayahuasca found me before diving into the retreat. This first letter will be all about my history with plant medicines.

My personal growth and healing journey began in the depths of hell.

It was Febraury 2022. I was a 20-year-old sophomore in college. On the surface, I had everything going for me. I was on a Big Ten football team, studying economics at a top 10 university in America, a prestigious finance internship that was going to set me up for a 6-figure salary out of school, a cool group of friends, and a girlfriend.

But below the surface, I was suffering. I had a torn ACL, a weed addiction, a binge eating problem, a deep feeling of misalignment in my work and career path, I was losing hair at 20, and I was sexually impotent with my girlfriend. It was the final point that sent me in desperation to therapy to figure myself out.

This intrinsic decision to seek help via psychotherapy was the seed of my spiritual awakening, though I didn’t know to call it this at the time. 

As I began to heal through various mechanisms like cognitive behavioral therapy, reading personal development books, meditating, journaling, grounding, and getting morning sunlight, I came across another healing modality that seemed a bit too far “out there” and esoteric for my conservative, midwestern programming:

Plant medicines.

Despite my hesitancy, I was curious to learn more.

I first heard of psychedelic mushrooms (psilocybin) not from a hippie, a biologist, or a psychonaut but from two NFL players: Pat Mcafee and Aaron Rodgers.

Mcaffee mentioned in this episode of his show that a mushroom trip during his sophomore year of college was the reason he made it to the NFL. Rodgers mentioned on various podcasts how plant medicines like psilocybin and ayahuasca helped him tremendously on his healing journey.

"Is it not ironic that the things that expand your mind are illegal, and the things that keep you in the lower chakras and dumb you down have been legal for centuries?" ~ Aaron Rodgers

When I began to hear these ideas, I still very much saw myself as a football player. These ideas coming from men I looked up to in the arena I still identified with began to open my mind, and led me to question everything I thought to be true.

At this time, I wanted to transfer away from my Division 1 team to a Division 3 school to play quarterback. I saw it as the path to become the starting quarterback, win a national championship, and sneak my way into the NFL. I thought maybe, just like Pat Mcaffee, mushrooms might be my secret to doing so.

So, during spring break in March of 2022, with the house to myself for the weekend, as I was at this crossroads in life, unsure of which path to take, I decided to take mushrooms alone with my dog as a company and a neighborhood friend on speed dial in case something happened.

My First Mushroom Journey - March 2022

What the mushrooms did to me seemed to be the opposite of what happened to Mcaffee. Instead of finding the secret answers to get into the NFL, I found peace in not being a football player. I realized my potential could be so much broader and higher outside of the box of “football player” or “athlete” I’d been in my whole life!

I could be a writer like Jordan Peterson. I could be a philosopher like Marcus Aurelius. I could be an entrepreneur like Aubrey Marcus. The ideas and possibilities went on and on and on.

The most valuable piece was the increase in self-understanding I experienced. I saw myself on a deeper level than ever. Similar to how Marcus Aurelius started his Meditations, I listed every family member, close friend, and person of importance in my life and understood how their character traits rubbed off on me. I realized I could choose to embody the traits I admired in those around me and let go of the traits I despised. I didn’t see it this way then, but of course, everything I admired and despised “outside of me” was just a projection of my self-image. Nervless, this was incredibly valuable at the time for beginning to construct the man I wanted to become.

Above all, I realized I was 20 years old. I had my whole life ahead of me! It felt I was reborn into a newfound optimism for the future and gratitude for where I was. I realized I didn’t have to associate my self-worth and happiness with the label football player because I was destined to be so much more.

A few weeks later, I walked into my head coach's office at Northwestern and told him I was retiring from football. It was the first time I ever spoke to him without nervousness or anxiety. I spoke from my stomach and solar plexus. I felt it was the first time I ever spoke to someone I looked at as a grown man as a man myself. This new state of embodiment and self-assurance signaled to me I was on the right path.

Looking back, this mushroom journey at 20 was the seed of a massive spiritual awakening and personal development journey that ultimately led me down to the jungle of Peru to sit with the Grandmother of all psychedelics, Mother Ayahuasca herself.

How I Came To Ayahuasca (And How She Came To Me)

Since that initial mushroom journey in March 2022, I had a few other psychedelic experiences.

I’d taken mushrooms twice more with friends. I took LSD with a friend in Argentina and again at home by myself. And I smoked a ton of weed during this 18-month period, which I see now as frequent mini-psychedelic journeys.

Before any of this, I was probably a 6/7 out of 10 on the openness personality trait spectrum in psychology. In September 2023, I was around a 9. Now, I don’t even think I fit on the spectrum. My cannabis use, plus psychedelic journeys, opened my mind and expanded my consciousness in profound ways.

Each time I merged with a psychedelic, I experienced a profound, expansive, and liberating shift in my consciousness. I began to taste what “spiritually” really meant, especially one time while listening to a Ram Dass lecture on LSD. I began to realize I was a spiritual being in a human body, rather than just a body and a mind. My curiosity led me further down the rabbit holes of psychedelics, spirituality, consciousness, the nature of reality, and God, despite being an entrepreneur, performance coach, and creator consultant on the surface.

This curiosity eventually led me to ayahuasca. Scratch that. It led ayahuasca to me. It is said, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” and in the same way, when my consciousness was ready, the teacher appeared, and this teacher was Mother Ayahuasca. It is a common thought that ayahuasca will come to you through someone when you are ready for Her. This is what I experienced in September 2023.

At the time, I was living in Costa Rica with my friend Matt. One August day, a few days after my 22nd birthday, Taylin Simmonds, a friend from Twitter, gave me a call. He asked if Matt and I wanted to do a one-night private ceremony with ayahuasca in the mountains of Monteverde in Costa Rica.

My instant reaction was no. I had just barely turned 22. My brain wasn’t even fully developed. I didn’t think ayahuasca would be something I would consider until I was at least 30 with a wife and kids. The stories I’d heard from Joe Rogan scared me. I wasn’t ready.

But, in divine timing, I happened to be reading the book “The Surrender Experiment” by Michael Singer. The book is his life story about how when he removed personal preferences, said yes to life, and trusted that there was a higher intelligence behind the scenes his intellects couldn’t grasp, life took him on a magical journey he could never have planned.

I was accelerating on the spiritual path at the time, and I felt there must be a reason I couldn’t understand why I just so happened to be reading this book at the same time that Taylin called me with this offer. So, after sitting with the decision for a few days, I decided to surrender to life and say yes.

My First Ayahasuca Journey - September 2023

A month later, Matt and I took a jumper plane across Costa Rica to Monteverde for our one-night ceremony.

The night before the ceremony, I was scared. I was journaling and reading “Being Ram Dass” to try and quell my fears, but in a way, this only enhanced them. I was resonating with Ram Dass on such a deep level. He was speaking to the depths of my soul. I feared ayahuasca was going to convince me to renounce the world and travel to India to meet my guru and become a spiritual teacher. I wrote in my journal, “I am prepared to die.”

But as I was about to go to sleep, the final line I read hit me like a ton of bricks. Maharajji (the guru) said to Ram Dass, “You don’t have to go to India.” This line felt like it was speaking directly to me and was the seed of where my ayahuasca journey took me.

In the ceremony, I did not come to the conclusion I should renounce the world and travel to India. Instead, I went deep into myself, and from a new depth of self-understanding, I realized my immediate purpose.

By tracing my entire life from 3 years old until 22, I understood why I was naturally a leader, could read people, could see the future, and was an out-of-the-box thinker. I saw past relationships, sports teams, and life experiences in a way I’d never seen before. I experienced a level of understanding, confidence, and assurance about myself that cannot be put into words. 

I realized I was supposed to lead young men. I realized I was just like the guys I looked up to on YouTube, like Hamza and Dan Koe. I was meant to be like them. But I didn’t have to rush anything. Even if it took 6 years, I would still be young. If I had to stay at home for 4 years to build the foundation of this mission of empowering young men to realize their potential, so be it.

The rest of the journey was full of similar insights on what I was supposed to create in the world and the person I was capable of becoming. However, I stayed on the surface and only drank one cup because I felt I got exactly what I needed. Afterward, I felt I’d be done with ayahuasca for a while. I knew what I needed to do going forward. So for the next 8 months, I put what I learned into action.

I went home to my parent’s house and entered monk mode. I launched four cohorts in six months. I was giving lectures to groups of 20-30 people at a time, often with many students being twice my age. I wrote a 4000+ word newsletter each week. I began making YouTube videos. I started working with Dan Koe (one of the people I previously pedestalized) at Kortex. I made over 6 figures. I was deeply immersed in my current layer of purpose for these 8 months and made massive progress. But something was still off. 

Months after ayahuasca, I was still escaping into weed, food, and porn. I constantly felt simmering anxiety in my chest. I had a feeling of existential tiredness. And just like how my first dark night of the soul in college prompted the seeds of my first spiritual awakening, these lingering vices and habits prompted a strong recalibration back onto the spiritual path after I’d lost sight of it in favor of money, status, and material gain.

In February 2024, things began to shift again. I began working 1v1 with Danny Miranda and Leigh St. John. I had an incredibly expansive MDMA therapy session. And life led me to a group medicine session in Austin, Texas, in May 2024, where I unintentionally encountered ayahuasca again, this time unknowingly.

My Second Time With Ayahasuca (Unknowingly) - May 2024

On May 10th, 2024, I went to a group medicine journey with 15 other adults all twice my age.

I had an extremely chaotic week leading up to this event. I co-facilitated an MDMA journey for a friend, I got into a new romantic relationship, and I finished up the final week of the cohort I was running. I was underestimating the journey I was about to go on and didn’t create the space to prepare myself.

I went into this journey with the mindset of “I’m so experienced with plant medicines,” and I didn’t really have any intentions. Time would show I massively underestimated this experience.

This was a medicine ceremony unlike anything I’d experienced. The facilitators intuitively gave you the medicine they felt you needed based on your aura, your intentions, how you interacted with the group, and how you spoke about yourself and your life. 

I found out afterward I was given Canna and Sassafras, two heart-opening medicines. This helped me see all the adults I was around, ranging from 42-75, as people just like me, without the age barrier and pedestal I tended to create in my mind. I was having a beautifully expansive and connective experience, dropping in deep with people, and learning a lot. Then, the facilitator said to me, “I think you’re ready for a chocolate.”  I said, “Sounds good,” and ate it. 

I later found out the chocolate was a special blend of psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and ayahuasca, brewed in a way that doesn’t make people purge. However, the effects were no weaker than my first time with ayahuasca and were actually more profound. I had my first “ego-death,” or true spiritual awakening.

I was hanging out in the kitchen with one of the facilitators, and we were talking about past lives. I told him I could never get behind the concept of it, and that past lives just didn’t make sense to me. He replied, “Oh, maybe it’s just your first time here.”

In that moment, everything shifted. I had a “satori” moment, or sudden awakening.

Time vanished. I was looking into this facilitator’s eyes, and the idea of our separate selves disappeared. I was him, and he was me. There was no separation. I saw clearly through the illusion of Jack Moses for the first time.

This was what the spiritual teachers talked about as “non-duality.” I’d read about these concepts for months, but feeling it was an entirely new experience. For the first time, I glimpsed it, thanks to the medicine shifting my perception and my heart and soul being in a wide-open state of receiving. The realization was so intense and profound it sent me into deep contemplation on the kitchen floor for the next 3 hours.

This was the first time I saw my ego so clearly. Previous psychedelic trips had been mostly ego-inflating, full of joy, peace, potential, and bliss. This time, I saw all of it. The light and the dark. The good and the evil within myself.

I felt lust and a desire for power. I saw how my whole life, I constantly looked outside myself for validation, and I was addicted to it. I also saw how I was addicted to thinking, to planning, to strategizing, and to doing. I went in the mirror and stared at myself as if I was staring at a stranger for an hour, seeing clearly through the illusion of Jack Moses and all of his flaws.

This journey was incredibly humbling. For the first time, I saw how much work still needed to be done. I was also curious to go deeper into ayahuasca.

Despite feeling fear, nausea, disgust, and self-pity the entire time, I maintained an unwavering curiosity that I wanted to understand it all. For the first time, I understood what it meant to feel “called” to ayahuasca or any type of plant medicine.

I felt She had given me a glimpse of the depths of realizations I could have if I chose to return. I put the intention out to the universe that I was ready to return to ayahuasca and go deeper.  As I was backpacking Thailand a few weeks later, life answered my wish.

I received a text from the same Shahman I sat with in Costa Rica in September 2023. She was hosting a 10-day dieta retreat in the Amazon Jungle of Peru featuring 5 ayahuasca ceremonies. I texted my other friends who were thinking going, and signed up.

I spent the next few months traveling Thailand with nothing planned beyond September other than this trip down to Peru in October. It floated in the back of my awareness, but I didn’t think of it much until I boarded the plane on October 16 to go.

After months of waiting, 12 hours of flights, and a deepening desire to understand my nature as a spiritual being, the five-ceremony journey began…

Thank you for reading!

I originally had the entire story, from how I came to plant medicine and my first two times with ayahuasca with everything that happened during this journey in Peru, but the letter was 10,000 words and 20 pages.

After getting some feedback from friends on Twitter (thank you, Pierre, Marley, Reese, and Will), I decided to split it into 3 separate essays.

In the second Ayahasuca Expedition (likely coming out Wednesday), I will go deep into the five ceremonies and the magic I experienced hanging out in the jungle outside of the ceremonies.

In the third, I’ll go into broader themes and lessons I learned about humanity, nature, the universe, God, and myself. This one will come out on Saturday.

If you have any questions about this letter or any of my experiences, feel free to shoot me an email!

Final Note

Last thing here…

I have a few offerings I want to make you aware of.

1) Cameron Hogan and I are hosting a Men’s Retreat in Austin November 21-24.

Right now, 8 brothers will be joining us. You can fill out the application form on the site, or send me an email explaining why you want to join. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email (:

2) I’m helping creators launch cohorts and communities

I am working on two new projects. The first is helping Nick Sweeney and Danny Miranda launch their first combined cohort, and the second is helping Joe Phair launch his first cohort as well. This is also in addition to my own brand and building my next cohort ~ Transcendence.

Because of this, I do not have the capacity for any more full-time clients. However, I am offering 120-minute brand audit and launch strategy calls through the end of the year.

With my Notion doc and experience making $92,000 launching cohorts and products in 2024, we will be able to outline and strategize your entire brand and launch strategy for the next year plus.

If you want to sign up for this call, book a time here:

Strategy call

3) Quick Drop-In Call

If you simply wish to connect, book a time to chat here!

Peace, and talk soon!

Jack

jackmoses.co