The Church of Psychedelics Origin Story: The Prayer Beneath the Roots

The Church of Psychedelics did not begin with a substance. It began with a responsibility: if plant medicine can open the human mind to the deepest truths of consciousness, there must be a spiritual path that teaches us how to return as better human beings.

It began because I understood that the experience itself was not enough. Psychedelics can reveal something extraordinary and profound about ourselves, but a revelation is not the same as transformation. A person can touch something profound and still return to the same habits, wounds, and ways of treating people. I was given the vision of a way to integrate experience into genuine behavior.

The answer came through my professional history, my family heritage and lineage, Indigenous spiritual practices, my work to legalize hemp and then psychedelics in Colorado, and relationships that shaped my life. The narrative thread through all of that is my personal spiritual development journey with psychedelics. I share what I’ve experienced and currently think I know. But, we are here because of a calling that began with a short conversation.

“Grandson, I See You Working With Plant Medicine”

At a 2018 Sundance, Chief Leonard Crow Dog telepathically stated to me, "Let us speak." I found him under the north gate of the Sundance arbor where he was seated in his wheelchair, so I took a knee both out of respect to be on his same seated level and to understand him better because when he spoke he sometimes drifted between Lakota and English and my Lakota is beginner level. He verbally asked if I was still working with hemp. As I was answering he raised his hand to pause me, then he took a couple beats before saying, "Grandson, I see you working with plant medicine. I want you to pray about it." And then he made the Lakota gesture for ’wašté’ which generally translates to ’all good’ – in other words that’s all he had to say about that.

It was not an instruction to start a church. It was an instruction to pray.

In 2020 I took that prayer on the hill – meaning, I took it into one of the most sacred prayer ceremonies called hanbléčheyapi or vision quest.

The Bear and the Medicine Bird

At twilight on the second day of my vision quest, the sky was turning silver, reminding me that the stars would visit soon. My ceremony took place in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where large stands of scrub brush were dotted with pine trees, exposed sandstone patches, and with boulders and sandstone outcroppings.

I was praying when I heard a squeaky grunt quickly moving through the shrubbery headed directly towards me. And it was as if someone had turned on a faucet of ice water that slowly ran through my veins as my mind became centered on one overwhelming thought: I know what a baby bear sounds like, and I know where there’s a baby bear there’s mama bear.

I was inside a very small prayer space defined by a few rows of hemp string dotted with tobacco ties. Other than my prayers, there was nothing between me and that bear.

But, “When things get really difficult, pray. When things seem impossible, pray harder.” That is what I learned in sweat lodge and that’s what I did.

The cub veered away at the last moment without coming through the brush.

The mother was a different story. Mama bear did not veer away.

She came bursting crashing through the shrubbery, and we met face-to-face. She was so close that the dust and pebbles from her sliding to a stop peppered my face. If I reached out, I could have touched her nose. I felt a burst of energy blast from her.

The fat beneath her skin rolled forward from her back. Her shoulders bulged and ringed her head like a lion’s mane, making her head appear three times its normal size. I saw the fight enter her eyes, and I knew I was in for a big lesson.

Then we both heard a squawk coming from the south. Whatever it was came in so fast that it struck an exposed patch of sandstone and skidded right between us. What looked like a ball of feathers rolled a short distance past us before coming to a stop.

It was an American kestrel, known in many places as a sparrow hawk.

The kestrel snapped its wings into the shape of a “W,” hopped-skipped within a few feet of the bear’s face, and began squawking sternly.

I understood what was happening in a way that is very difficult to describe. It was not words, but I clearly understood what was being communicated by how it felt. This feeling is like that moment when you learn the core origin of a word and it utterly captures the essence of what that word is meant to mean. It was like understanding a word from a language I had never learned because the feeling it carried was the feeling of the original experience that gave birth to it.

I’ve had experiences of telepathy and this was very similar.

“This human is in ceremony in a good way. Continue from here.”

The message, in essenceThe medicine bird to the bear

And she did.

Mama bear swung her head, and the rolls of fur around her neck became smooth again. She released a great huff — she was so close that I breathed in her breath — before moving back into the bushes in the direction of her cub.

The kestrel then hopped in front of me and began squawking again, but this time I had no idea what it was saying. It was not the same as the understanding when it was squawking at the bear. However, a knowing came over me that this kestrel was the “medicine bird” for this area — like the medicine person in a village.

It stared at me for a moment, cocked its head in a couple of different directions as it studied me, and then took flight.

I prayed and meditated until I calmed down, but my head remained on a swivel for hours for any squeaky grunts because I didn’t know if the medicine bird would return if mama bear came back. I had been on the hill for two days and nights without food or water. Eventually, I decided to sleep, trusting in the prayer and my vision to keep me protected..

But the prayer was not done with me.

Beneath the Roots

I was looking up at the stars, my wool blanket rolled beneath my head as a pillow, while I contemplated the overwhelming experience I had just lived through. I closed my eyes and immediately dropped into that twilight state on the threshold between wakefulness and sleep. I was in a spiritual state of being.

Through my eyelids I could see the stars pulling away from me. Then I realized they were not pulling away — I was sinking into the earth.

I could see the roots of the tree in such clear detail that they resembled the neural network of a human brain, and beyond the roots the stars were still visible. I paused there, and then my vision seemed to shift. I could see the mycelial network spreading just beneath the surface of the land like an intricate web.

The mycelium was woven around the tree roots. Connecting the two were tiny, hairlike filaments that formed a bridge between the mycelial network and the roots of the tree.

My body was facing upwards like floating on my back as I continued sinking into the earth. Then I turned over until I was facing looking into the ground, like staring into the core of the earth.

I saw an opening, like a void within the earth. I remember being frightened to go farther because I thought I might not return. The experience was more real than reality, and in that state, the possibility of not returning did not feel irrational.

The best way I can explain what I saw is that there was an opening within a knotted tangle of roots. Slowly swirling around that opening were the spirits of two wolves.

Somehow, I knew that one of the wolves was named Morning Eye. That knowing is as clear to me now, as I write this, as it was when I experienced it. The other wolf carried a female energy and did not communicate with me. I sensed that both wolves were there to protect me so I could journey farther.

The only way I can describe what happened next is that my consciousness directed my awareness into the opening.

It was dark inside. I could barely make out a shape by the faint sheen of light across it.

It was a giant toad.

Keep in mind that this Lakota ceremony does not involve psychoactive substances in any way. I was sober as a stone going into all of this.

I was alarmed and afraid because I sensed that this thing could eat me or consume me in some way. I do not mean literally, in the way an animal eats something. It felt as though, if I went too far, it could metabolize me into another dimension.

It is difficult to put into words because it was more than a feeling. It was as though I had entered another realm of the natural divine.

The toad communicated through a modulating frequency – a type of croak that tuned me into the knowing – it showed me how mycelium works, that it’s related to lightning, and how it moves information and nutrients through sympathy, empathy, and generosity. I saw how holy the mycelium was, how it was the medicine for the heart and mind, and how various sentient beings had communed with it since the beginning of time.

I saw the vast wisdom of Mother Earth concentrated into a single prayer — one that expressed itself through the fruit of the mycelium we call a mushroom.

There are many kinds of mushrooms. Among them, I understood that psychedelic mushrooms were special allies to human beings, specifically to help us gain higher intelligence, and to heal and spiritually evolve. I saw that psilocybin is one of the most powerful master healers on earth.

The Medicine Already Knows Where to Go

I received an understanding that the mushrooms were not calling on me, and did not need me, that it is life itself and it will always find a way. Joining the spiritual destiny of this mushroom and other entheogens was a matter of free will on my part. But, the world needs them and it’s time, almost like it did not require a choice, that this is how it’s done.

The understanding was that the mushroom had broken itself out of prohibition and it knows where it needs to go and who needs its help. The nature of psychedelic mushrooms is in direct relationship with source consciousness and here to help us expand our self-awareness and develop a deeper relationship with supreme consciousness.

My background and experience was to make it a safe and intentional use of psychedelics to help people in their personal and spiritual development.

I saw there are many spiritual paths, but this one that’s offered to me is what is now The Golden Path. The Knowing showed me that there’s something that will be the center point of the belief system of the mushroom. And that’s all it had to share about that.

My body turned back over facing upwards toward the sky and I slowly ascended up through all the dirt, rocks, mycelium and roots and up through the ground again with my head laying on my wool blanket gazing up at the stars.

I had my answer to the prayer.

I sat up and just looked over the land surrounding me and felt completely connected and knew I had activated this prayer. I saw the single tobacco tie in gray cloth that was at the end of my prayer ties and I laughed at that little detail – the gray tobacco tie was my prayer for Chief Crowdog and the reason I was on the hill. He often said that he was a common man, and a student at the University of the Universe. I understood what that meant now more than ever before.

Some may call this a vision, dream, spiritual communication, the language of the unconscious, or an encounter with the natural divine. I do not need anyone to give it the same name I do. I ask only that they consider what it asked of me.

It did not tell me I was special. It gave me a responsibility.

The Sentence That Became the Center

A few weeks later, I was flyfishing on a river in Lyons, CO when a voice in my mind suddenly said something. It was startling because I heard this voice in my mind and through my ears at the same time. This phrase has been said many different ways throughout the centuries and by various poets and philosophers, but the way I organize it is, "We are a spiritual being having a human experience."

From there The Golden Path just poured out of me as a result of many ceremonies, lessons, discussions and contemplations and I understood the mission very quickly. I was at the right place at the right time with the right experience and at the right stage of life.

That sentence became the center point I had been shown. We may experience unity consciousness, ego dissolution, revelation, or profound states of love — but we still return to our bodies, relationships, responsibilities, and decisions.

That return and integration is where the spiritual experience proves itself.

The Origin Story Is Still Being Lived

The most important part of this origin story is not that I saw something extraordinary beneath the roots.

It is that I came back.

I came back with a responsibility to create a safe, intentional path grounded in humility, service, and personal responsibility: a church for people who believe that nature is alive, consciousness is worthy of exploration, plant medicine can be sacrament, and spiritual awakening should make a visible difference in the way we live.

There are many spiritual paths. This is ours.

And if it helps us become more present, more loving, more honest, more courageous, and more responsible for the life we are living, then we are walking it in a good way.

May love guide the hearts of all beings.