About James
Teacher of Love, awakening, healing, and direct spiritual practice.
James Zatopa is a spiritual teacher, yoga instructor, meditation guide, prophet, healer, and founder of Church of Infinite Love and the Luv-U app. His work is rooted in a direct encounter with God in 2017 and years of daily practice, study, teaching, and service.
Primary work
Spiritual teaching, meditation guidance, yoga instruction, awakening support, energy healing, and direct practice rooted in love, truth, God, and integration.
Training
Advanced Yoga Principles 200-hour yoga teacher training, Reiki Master, Theta Healing, Medical Qi Gong, Kriya Yoga, Tumo breathwork, Ophanim Yoga, Temple Arts, Kabbalah, and Hermetic practice.
Location and platforms
Based in Brookfield, Illinois, with teaching and community work shared through JamesZatopa.com, Church of Infinite Love, and the Luv-U app for iOS and Android. For direct inquiries, email Jzatopa@gmail.com.
The story
From crisis, practice, and awakening into a life of teaching.
James began an intensive daily meditation practice in 2016 during a profound life crisis. What started as inner work, self-inquiry, and contemplative practice became the foundation for mystical experience, healing, and spiritual breakthrough.
James Zatopa is a teacher of Love as the path to enlightenment. Love is not a side teaching in his work, but the path itself.
In 2015, after the birth of his daughter, he experienced a profound white-light awakening and direct encounter with God in 2017. He describes this as meeting God in totality and following the Holy Spirit across the world to learn everything divine providence had to offer.
That experience did not end the search. It began a deeper life of practice. James continued studying the world’s religions, aligning them into a single living form of teaching and healing, and devoting himself to helping others meet God directly through sincere practice, healing, openness, and personal transformation.
His path has taken him through Israel, South Africa, Central America, Thailand, and sacred spaces of study, practice, and service. In Israel, he journeyed to Tzfat, Jerusalem, Tel Megiddo, and Midburn, deepening his relationship with Jewish mysticism, prophetic tradition, embodied practice, and global spiritual community. In South Africa, he sojourned to the Magaliesberg Mountains while receiving visions of a wall of water covering the world. After he dove deep into advanced Tantric practices, the sky opened and the lands flooded, mirroring the meaning of his last name in Russian, despite being half Czech and half Dutch, only two weeks before COVID flooded the world. While training in Central America in the arts of invocation and evocation of holy spirits and angels with a master, he developed a vision for where to go next, what the future held, and how powerfully these gifts could be trained, not just received. Thailand brought the structure that ashram-level dedication can create, along with full certification from AYP Yoga. His most recent dive into the limits of human healing potential has taken the form of training at the nearby Tranquil Cloud Taoist Temple, further deepening his already impressive healing abilities. Along the way, there have been many other initiations, trials, and developments.
Path and service
The work has become classes, healing, community, events, and digital tools.
Church of Infinite Love
James founded the first all-inclusive online micro church, Church of Infinite Love, as a simple place where everyone is invited and all who show up are loved and included.
The Lion’s Den
At Burning Man in 2019, he founded and hosted The Lion’s Den, a three-day spiritual event focused on meeting God and supporting each other through life’s challenges, with talks including Meeting God, The Divine Masculine, and How to Human.
Luv-U
He created and developed Luv-U, a mobile app for spiritual guidance, guided meditations, education, self-love, divine connection, personal transformation, and accessible modern practice.
How James works
Teaching, healing, guided practice, and grounded awakening support.
- Weekly online class, local teaching, retreats, and spiritual discussion groups
- 1:1 awakening support, healing support, and integration guidance
- Yoga instruction, meditation instruction, breathwork, and spiritual practice
- Medical Qi Gong, Reiki, Theta Healing, Kabbalah, Hermetic practice, and energetic healing
- Digital resources through JamesZatopa.com, Church of Infinite Love, and Luv-U
Training and certifications
A wide training background held inside one practical aim.
- Medical Qi Gong training, Cloud Temple of New Lenox with Tony D’Angelo, 2025
- Tumo Breathwork training, Hansavedas Academy, 2025
- Advanced Yoga Principles 200-hour Yoga Teacher Certification, 2023
- Kriya Yoga Initiation, 2022
- Reiki Master Certification, 2022
- Ophanim Yoga, Judeo-Christian Yoga, 2021
- Franz Bardon’s Principles of Magical Evocation with Mark Rasmus, 2021
- International School of Temple Arts Level Two, South Africa, 2020
- Theta Healing Certification, 2019
- International School of Temple Arts Level One, Chicago, 2018
Practice disciplines
Daily practice, study, and healing work are the center.
Meditation and prayer
Daily meditation since 2016, including multiple-hour practice, contemplative prayer, Kriya Yoga methods, self-developed meditation techniques, and practices for healing crisis, breakthrough, and divine encounter.
Healing and energy work
Reiki, Theta Healing, Medical Qi Gong, energetic healing, breathwork, Tumo, pranayama, shamanic practice, Hermetic practice, and body-based spiritual disciplines.
Study and revelation
Sacred text study across traditions, recording of personal revelations and mystical experiences, and ongoing work to integrate direct experience with disciplined spiritual learning.
Core teaching philosophy
Meet God directly. Live from love. Practice until it becomes real.
James teaches that living in alignment with God comes through consistent daily practice, authentic community support, and the recognition that human life is a blessed opportunity to experience heavenly angelic consciousness while embodied.
His teaching emphasizes integration of diverse spiritual traditions and healing modalities to support holistic transformation. He advocates direct mystical experience over dogmatic belief, while honoring wisdom from Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikh tradition, Taoism, Western esotericism, and other sacred paths.
Central to the work is infinite love as God’s essential nature and the invitation for all beings to recognize their divine nature and live from love-consciousness in everyday life.
Teaching experience
Classes, retreats, teaching spaces, and community containers.
- Yoga Instructor, Southwest Ice Arena Office Yoga Program, 2025
- Yoga Instructor, B3 Yoga, Crest Hill, Illinois, 2024
- Tantra Teacher, Oneness Fest, 2024 and 2025
- Creator and Founder, Church of Infinite Love, 2020 to present
- Founder and Host, The Lion’s Den at Burning Man, 2019
- Online spiritual teacher and discussion leader, 2017 to present
- Creator and developer, Luv-U app, 2024 to present
- Host of specialized retreats and advanced practice gatherings, including Franz Bardon Mini-Retreat work
Community impact and service
- Guided hundreds of individuals through spiritual awakening experiences and healing crises
- Created safe sacred spaces for discussing divine experiences and spiritual emergence
- Developed websites and mobile tools making spiritual growth resources available globally
- Facilitated cross-traditional spiritual learning and genuine interfaith understanding
- Hosted transformational events at Burning Man and online retreats
- Provided free teachings and resources through Church of Infinite Love
- Mentored students in advanced practices including Franz Bardon’s Hermetic system
- Supported people integrating mystical experiences and navigating spiritual emergence safely
“James’s distance healing was able to help me free myself of stuck pain that allowed me to grow and heal.”
Skills and competencies
- Advanced meditation instruction across multiple traditions
- Yoga teaching: AYP, Hatha, Kriya, Ophanim, and Vinyasa
- Energy healing: Reiki Master, Theta Healing, and Medical Qi Gong
- Kabbalah, Judeo-Christian and modern interpretation
- Spiritual counseling and guidance
- Event design and facilitation
- Public speaking and teaching
- Interfaith dialogue and integration
- Sacred text interpretation
- Breathwork instruction
- Temple Arts and sacred sexuality education
Studies and lineages
A cross-traditional library of practice and study.
Judeo-Christian
Sefer Yetzirah, Tanach, New Testament, Bahir, Book of Thomas, Book of Andrew, Book of Judas, Zohar volumes 1-8 of 23, and The Lesser Key of Solomon.
Eastern traditions
Tao Te Ching, Grasping the Wind, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Jnana Sankalini Tantra, Akashara Tattwa, The Dhammapadda, The Diamond Sutras, and Asa Di Var.
Esoteric and mystical study
Franz Bardon’s Initiation Into Hermetics, Principles of Evocation, Key to the True Quabbalah, The Book of Gates, and Valentine Tomberg’s Inner Development.
When learning about life, we have paths to take.
One is the way we travel, and another is the way we do not. Where these paths converge we find The Light. Through my teachings, prophecy, and exercises, Life and The Light become one.