Our Team

Ian's spiritual and professional lives have crisscrossed the planet and traditions. A seasoned and successful entrepreneur he has founded and exited 5 companies in biotech, renewable energy and electric vehicles in the private and public markets. While earning an MBA from The University of California Los Angeles, Ian was introduced to yoga and meditation and developed a devoted practice in both areas, immersing himself in structured hot yoga practices, and exploring the meditative paths of Transcendental Meditation, The Self Realization Fellowship, Eckankar and Mudrashram, The Bridge Path.

In 2001 Ian journeyed to Allahabad, India to participate in the Maha Kumbh Mela with the intention of becoming a Sadhu. The festival is attended by over 60 million Hindu devotees and occurs only once every 144 years. While at the month-long festival he spent time questioning the Sadhus, bathing in the Ganges, meditating and talking with mendicants from the remote reaches of India, but ultimately did not find the teacher he was seeking. Upon his return he entered a year in seclusion, living simply, meditating up to 8 hours a day, and writing about his inner experiences.

In 2003 his first book, “Voices of Ancient Bethlehem: A Dialogue with Jesus and the Twelve Disciples,” was published by The Jodere Group to positive acclaim within the esoteric Christian community. He has written five additional books related to the esoteric teachings that are available on a limited basis.

Ian also spent two years working for The Esalen Institute in Big Sur, spending time with luminaries in the human potential field and observing and contemplating the vast variety of teachings and paths. In 2023 he founded the Church of the Acraya to support the creation of dark meditation retreat centers worldwide.

He currently resides in Scottsdale, AZ with his wife, daughter and young son. He meditates up to two hours daily and has several spirituality and sustainability focused projects in development.

Micah is a meditation teacher and dark retreat facilitator. His work rests on a single conviction: that peace, joy, and fulfillment aren't earned or acquired — they're what remains when we stop running from our own experience. He helps growth-oriented people set down the conditioned patterns and coping strategies they've used to manage life, meet their deepest needs with compassion, and rest in the simplicity of being.

His path into this work began in the dark. In the summer of 2021, after a month of silent meditation in the mountains above Lake Atitlán, Micah spent seven days and nights in total darkness. He walked out at dawn and wept — not from grief, but from the sheer, uncomplicated joy of existing, with nothing added and nothing required. It was the most sober, and the most himself, he had ever been. He has been returning to the dark ever since.

As an advisor to Acraya, Micah helps build its global facilitator network and the standards that hold it — work he shares with Dr. Allen Bittaker and Severin Geser. He is a dark retreat facilitator himself, with over a decade of contemplative practice behind his work: months in silent retreat, weeks in darkness, and training rooted in the non-dual traditions, the attachment system, and trauma-informed care.

He lives in Austin, Texas, where he works with private clients, draws on decades of experience as an entrepreneur to build contemplative programs and businesses, and continues to deepen his own relationship with the dark.

Allen is a transformational coach with a background in chiropractic, nervous system healing, meditation, and human development. For years, he has worked with entrepreneurs, leaders, and growth-oriented individuals to help them better understand themselves, move through emotional patterns, and create lives that feel more aligned, meaningful, and authentic.

Allen has been immersed in contemplative and transformational practice for over a decade, including extensive meditation experience and multiple multi-day dark retreats. His work is grounded, relational, and focused on helping people embody more of who they truly are.

As part of the team at Acraya, Allen supports the development of the global facilitation network and the evolution of modern dark retreat experiences.

He currently resides in Costa Rica, where he works with private clients, develops transformational projects, and continues exploring the intersection of spirituality, human development, and conscious leadership.

Hi, I'm Severin. My deepest passion is to be a merciful witness to the full spectrum of being human. The light, the darkness, the pain, the beauty, the confusion, the grief, and the quiet strength that often lives underneath it all.

I believe real transformation begins when we feel safe enough to be seen as we are. Not fixed. Not judged. Not pushed into becoming someone else. Simply met with presence, honesty, and care.

My own path has been shaped by this. I grew up with a lot of emotional instability and pain, and much of my life has been a journey of learning how to come back into my body, trust myself, and become a grounded human being again. Today, one of my deepest practices is being a present father to my children and living what I have spent many years guiding others into.

I was born in Switzerland and have spent much of my life in meditation, yoga, monasteries, silent retreats, and dark retreat work. At one point in my life, I was ordained as a monk in Thailand, though I did not reach enlightenment. I later co-created The Hermitage at Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, where I guided hundreds of people through dark retreats, silent retreats, and deep inner processes.

I see myself as a pattern recognizer and a space holder. Through astrology, somatic awareness, nervous system regulation, and many years of direct experience in darkness, I support people in understanding the cycles they are living through and meeting them with more compassion, clarity, and inner safety. Facing our deepest fears is essential. And going into a Dark Retreat is like going back into the womb of our mothers. It's an ancient and very direct medicine.

I am part of Acraya, creating a community that prepares you, welcomes you into the unknown, and receives you back with care when you return. Darkness is a life-affirming way to meet yourself and remember that the answers have always been within you.

Harlin's path has always moved between the unseen and the engineered. Raised in a mountain valley in the high desert of Nevada, he grew up in a family culture that honored dreams. His grandmother's simple question, “Did you dream last night?” became an early doorway into the symbolic language of the unconscious and the subtle communication beneath ordinary awareness.

By his late teens, Harlin was already immersed in formal intuitive and meditative training, studying dreamwork, energetic perception, telepathic alchemy, and spiritual development through teachers connected to the Berkeley Psychic Institute, Edgar Cayce's A.R.E., and the Mudrashram tradition. His work within Mudrashram became a sustained four year study of meditation, Kundalini process, and inner transformation, eventually leading to certification to teach both introductory and advanced meditation courses.

Harlin's professional life has followed an equally rigorous arc. He studied Biomedical Engineering at The University of Texas, where his work in medical device design was shaped by mentorship from former NASA astronaut Captain William M. Shepherd and connected to Department of Defense research. He later worked as a product design and systems consultant for organizations including Thermo Fisher Scientific, Campbell's, Jabil, Ferrara, and Bristol Myers Squibb. He went on to earn a joint MBA/MSSE, bringing together systems thinking, human physiology, product development, and organizational strategy.

His inner work is also grounded in depth psychology, including more than 1,000 hours as an analysand. This convergence of dream practice, meditation training, intuitive development, engineering, and psychological inquiry led to the creation of the Bardo Technology Suite, a dark room meditation platform designed to support deep inquiry into consciousness, perception, and psychological transformation.

As part of Acraya, Harlin supports participants in the Dark Room by bringing together intuitive sensitivity, technical rigor, and a steady respect for the vulnerability of transformative states. His work lives at the intersection of ancient contemplative practice, modern technology, and the direct study of consciousness.

Andrey has spent his life moving between two ways of knowing — the precision of systems and the slower truths of contemplative practice.

He is a mechanical engineer by training, graduating top of his class with a minor in applied mathematics. For the last fifteen-plus years he has worked as a technology entrepreneur — building ecommerce brands, mobile applications, and most recently AI ventures — alongside earlier years spent as a scuba diving instructor in different countries.

In 2012, a spontaneous kundalini awakening dissolved the identity he had constructed and opened a doorway he hadn't been looking for. The integration took most of a decade, and the practice has not stopped since. He spent time in India, in ashrams, in Buddhist monasteries — studying pranayama, tantra, somatic trauma work, and self-inquiry, alongside many lesser-known lineages and teachers. He approached the work the way an engineer approaches a system: testing each tool against his own experience, keeping what held, discarding what didn't.

His focus has settled on the structural maps of inner development. He trains directly with George Boyd, whose Continuum of Consciousness is one of the most detailed cartographies of inner transformation he has encountered, and cross-references this with David Hawkins' Map of Consciousness, the Theravada model of fetters and stages of awakening, Human Design, and the Enneagram.

As part of Acraya, Andrey contributes to marketing and supports the expansion of the work.

He lives in Bali with his wife and young daughter.