
In the age of algorithms and avatars, I walk an ancient path—digitally. I am a digital shaman, not by trend but by necessity. Through storytelling, I translate timeless wisdom into modern language, bridging the sacred and the screen.
My spiritual journey hasn’t followed a straight line. It’s a constellation of practices—yoga, Buddhism, Kabbalah, shamanism—each one a star illuminating the vast terrain of connection. Together, they form a map of survival, healing, and awakening.
But this isn’t just a story of spiritual exploration. It’s a testimony from the edge. I write this from the lived experience of homelessness—not as metaphor, but as my daily reality. And in this crucible, I’ve discovered something radical: that spiritual practice isn’t a luxury. It’s a lifeline.
Yoga and Buddhism were my first teachers. They cracked open the illusion of separation and whispered a deeper truth: that we are not isolated beings, but threads in a vast, living tapestry. Through breath and stillness, I began to feel the pulse of something eternal—within me, around me, between us.
But transformation demands more than insight. It asks for surrender.
In 2013, I entered Conquering Lion Yoga Teacher Training under Kelly Morris. Her teachings didn’t just inform—they dismantled. She held up a mirror to my soul and asked me to look, really look. What I saw wasn’t just potential. It was responsibility. To carry wisdom forward. To live it. To teach it. Even when the world felt like it was falling apart.
Raised in Christian tradition, I once imagined myself a missionary. But the Spirit had other plans. Kabbalah found me like a secret chord—vibrating with truth I hadn’t known I was missing. It was punk rock mysticism: raw, encoded, unapologetic. It didn’t ask me to be perfect. It asked me to be real.
Kabbalah taught me that the divine wears masks. That our physicality, our emotions, our identities—they’re garments, not essence. And beneath them all is the Point in the Heart, the spark that longs to return to Source.
This wasn’t just theology. It was survival. Because when you’re living in the margins, you need a spirituality that doesn’t flinch. One that meets you in the alleyways and shelters and says, “You are still sacred.”
Meditation became my medicine. Not the kind that numbs—but the kind that reveals. Every morning, I sit. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes in chaos. But always in devotion. The Yoga Sutras guide me: ahimsa, satya, tapas. Non-harming. Truthfulness. Discipline. These aren’t just concepts. They’re lifelines.
Shamanic journeying emerged like a memory I’d forgotten. A way of walking between worlds. Of listening to the ancestors. Of healing through vision. It’s not performance—it’s presence. And in the digital age, it’s translation. I carry these practices into the realm of smartphones and social media, because that’s where the people are. That’s where the pain is. That’s where the healing must go.
Let me speak plainly: I am experiencing homelessness.
Not as metaphor. Not as a spiritual allegory. As my daily, embodied reality.
This isn’t just about lacking a roof. It’s about being stripped of the illusions we wrap around ourselves—comfort, control, identity. Homelessness is a crucible. It burns away everything that isn’t essential. And what remains… is soul.
I’ve slept in shelters and on sidewalks. I’ve prayed in parking lots and meditated in borrowed corners. I’ve held my phone like a sacred object, not for distraction, but for connection—to teachings, to community, to the divine. This is digital shamanism in its rawest form: translating ancient wisdom through modern struggle.
And here’s the paradox: the deeper the crisis, the clearer the truth.
Yoga taught me to breathe through discomfort. Buddhism taught me to observe suffering without clinging. Kabbalah taught me that even exile is holy. Shamanism taught me that healing begins in the wound. These aren’t just practices—they’re survival strategies. They’re the scaffolding that holds me up when everything else falls away.
Homelessness has become my ultimate spiritual teacher. It asks me daily: Do you still believe in interconnectedness when no one sees you? Do you still trust divine support when your body is cold and your stomach is empty? Do you still carry the vision when the world insists you are invisible?
Yes. I do. Because if these teachings don’t hold here, in the margins, then they don’t hold anywhere.
I write because silence is a luxury I can’t afford.
I write because the spiritual path isn’t just about transcendence—it’s about embodiment. It’s about asking whether these teachings still matter when you’re hungry, cold, and invisible. It’s about testing every mantra, every meditation, every mystical insight against the raw edge of lived experience.
I write because I believe spirituality must do more than soothe. It must disrupt. It must illuminate. It must hold space for contradiction—for the sacred and the shattered, the mystical and the mundane.
This isn’t a call to escape suffering. It’s a call to meet it with open eyes and open heart. To walk through it with tools that were forged in fire: yoga’s breath, Buddhism’s stillness, Kabbalah’s encoded light, shamanism’s ancestral memory.
I write to remind myself—and maybe you—that spiritual maturity isn’t found in perfection. It’s found in persistence. In showing up. In holding the vision even when the world says, “Let go.”
I write because I believe in the power of story. Not as performance, but as communion. When I share my journey, I’m not asking for pity. I’m offering a mirror. Maybe you’ve been here too. Maybe you’re here now. Maybe your path looks different, but the questions are the same:
Does this matter? Does this help? Does this heal?
Yes. It does. It has to.
At the heart of this journey lives a vision—not just personal, but collective.
We are living in a time of fragmentation. Disconnection. Crisis. But also, awakening. And we need translators between worlds—people who can speak the language of ancient wisdom and modern struggle. People who can hold both the smartphone and the sacred text, both the trauma and the teaching, both the despair and the divine.
That’s the role of the digital shaman.
Not to escape the world, but to reweave it. To take the threads of yoga, Buddhism, Kabbalah, and shamanism and stitch them into something that speaks to now. To offer spiritual tools not just in temples and retreats, but in shelters, in inboxes, in the quiet corners where people are barely holding on.
This vision isn’t about perfection. It’s about presence. It’s about showing up with what you have, where you are, and saying: “Even here, the sacred lives.”
We need spiritual practitioners who admit when they’re struggling. Who name the gap between philosophy and reality. Who refuse to pretend that awakening is always blissful. Because the real work happens in the dark. In the questions. In the waiting.
And still—we carry the vision.
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu—may all beings, everywhere, experience happiness and freedom.
Even me. Even you. Even those of us living in the spaces between worlds, practicing our shamanism from smartphones in shelters, holding the vision of interconnectedness when the world insists we are alone.
We’re not alone. We never were. That’s the message I’m here to carry.
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Adontai M.
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