Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #461 Eric Osborn Mushroom Church

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

This conversation goes DEEP into the potentials of psychedelics. We discuss Eric's hard won long run with the law, high dose psilocybin ceremonies, disclosure, and the history of humanity.  If you are called to have an experience or want to know more check out https://www.psanctuary.org/ Get the best microdosing poducts on the planet from www.BrainSupreme.co/kkp and remember to use code "KKP" for 15% off everything in the store! Up your brains hardware and software now! Join my new community The Kingdom Within on Skool right here for a free 1 week trial!  https://www.skool.com/the-kingdom-within-5541/about

Eric Osborne, welcome to the podcast, brother. Thanks for having me, Kyle. I'm stoked. Our mutual homie, Dr. Nathan Riley, as we call him Uncle Doctor, the holistic OB-GYN. He's been on this podcast many, many times, stayed at our house many times. He was telling me all about you, you know.

And I think even if you just qualified you with, you know, a psilocybin church starter, you know, in the U.S. I'd have just been like, oh, bingo, let's go. Oh, yeah. A lot of people are really put off by that. man. Oh, dude, I'm like, not in Austin. Not wearing, not wearing shirts like this, you know, but, um, church work, right? It's the church. The church. I honestly, I think more people, it's tough because y'all are in Kentucky, you know, and so I, I, I've only been in Kentucky a handful of

times, a couple times, not a handful. And, um, you know, the first time I got there, we were out in Paducah, which is kind of, if you know, for people that don't know, it's kind of like out in the cuts. And we were with the military guys We were going to be doing like Hand-to-hand combat. I was going to teach the hand-to-hand combatos. They were going to teach me tactical gun stuff. And we were planning on putting this on as an event down the road.

But this was just for us to like shoot 10,000 rounds, teach each other some cool shit, have fun, knock back some moonshine and just see how this would actually work, you know, teaching people. And right when we got to a gas station, because I was born and raised in the Silicon Valley in California. They're like, hey, man, this ain't like the West Coast. And I was like, oh, what do you mean?

It's like, well, there's, you know, there was a lot of racism here. I'm not saying everyone was racist, but like it's just a different vibe. You know, like sometimes people don't talk to each other or it's just different. And I was like, oh, okay. And we get out of the car, we go into the gas station, and I love fanny packs. And there's Confederate flagged fanny packs everywhere. I'm like, man, this is the only place I'd be like I could find that. You'd never see that shit in California.

They probably burn a building for having that in there. And then he, though, you know, we came out. There's three, like, big brothers, big black dudes sitting outside, and they're talking to each other. And, you know, they don't say a word as we walk in. We're just minding their own business. But they see us fucking with each other. And then, you know, one of them's like, hey, man, y'all ain't from around here.

They're like, no, I'm from California. And they're like, oh, shit, Cally, huh? And then they just warmed up and started talking to us. It was like, like, there was like a difference. You know, like, if you're not, they recognize, like, oh, and Cali shit's different. And they were totally cool. But the Bible Belt's always been a hard thing to kind of wrap my head around. You know, like I went to non-denominational church where a lesbian taught, you know,

like that shit would never fly in the South, you know. And, you know, since that, I feel like in large part, and I promise I'll shut the hell up here. But in large part, you know, like my trajectory of everything that felt wrong about church, you know, started feeling right through Native American wisdom, Eastern mysticism, non-dual thinking, things like that. And then, you know, plant medicines help facilitate, like, the remembering of that knowledge as truth, for me at least, in that, you know, whatever, whatever is animating me is animating all things.

It's in all of us. And as Paul Selig says, all is over nothing is, you know. How I remember conversion for you? I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, no. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, that was back. Let's see. I mean, I had had a couple mushroom journeys that are fun, but not really transformative. I had partied on mushrooms, you know, which is absolutely incorrect and got my ass whipped for it, as it should be, when I was 19. And then I was partying again at Arizona. I went to Arizona State.

I think it was like 22 or 23, and we decided to go to Sedona. Now, mind you, I haven't started my fight career yet. I haven't met my guy, you know, and, you know, who would be my, you know, who was a mestizo, Aztec and Native American, indigenous guy. you bring us up to the Native American Reservation in Northern California for Sweat Lodge and psilocybin and ayahuasca and all the things that was years later so I've got like you know cases of beer a little cocaine a little molly a little everything and I just happen to have some mushrooms and you know we're drinking until 4 am taking key bumps playing poker just being knuckleheads and the next day I made

a big ass omelet with the mushrooms for everybody and so we cooked the mushrooms right who knows how much made it through, but it definitely works. We had that first thing in the morning, and I told everybody, hey, this is a mushroom omelette. So everybody that had it said yes to it. And dude, that was, that was like, I think it was the container of Sedona, but it was like my first deep, like spiritual experience of like a nosis of God, a nosis of, kind of as above so below.

Like I could witness ants and just see like the interconnectivity of all things. And it was just a holy shit moment like, wow. And then like now, you know, with the experience that I have, just laughing that that even I was even capable of having such a positive experience considering, you know, no set, no setting, no, no reverence, no intention, no, you know, just other than getting high, you know, like, and all the other shit the day before that I'd never do before ceremony now. But fast forward, I had a boxing coach who'd take me through a lot of these things and teach me, you know, quite a bit of just the old ways of thinking. And, and after a couple of years

of doing sweat lodges with him, we started working with psilocybin. And then after a couple years we started working with ayahuasca and then i bounced around you know trying to get my sacchi a look passport filled out let's go to peru let's go to costa rica let's go try all these different places and um and now i've kind of come full circle in that i love the medicines but i also you know i meditate every day i might do like one decent journey a year uh and that's like usually just with someone like paulchek or somebody you know if i feel like you know i got a soul brother that i want to dive deep with um but there's not necessarily like a giant calling there as there was but man that that's that facilitated more growth in my life than anything else.

So the church thing, all that to say, I feel like it's a mixed bag of opinions. But like depending where you're at, you know, Bible Belt, church means one thing to that group of people. Church on the West Coast means something different than church in Austin, which is a lot like the West Coast. And I think there's a lot of psychedelic churches trying to pop up. So if you know it's a psilocybin church or an ayahuasca church, like most people in my neck of the woods are like, yeah, fucking go for it. You know, of course you got to label it church. it's the legal way through, you know, that kind of thing. And it is a sacrament.

So anywho, I blabbed for way too long. Tell me what your life was like growing up and what, like, steered you into this path. You have some great stories. Pretend that Nathan and I do not have any crossover from an audience. And that anything you said on that podcast is totally valid here. Yeah, well, I mean, even if you're talking about growing up and what you, you know, first spoke to, the racism in Kentucky was a major influencing. around my life growing up.

And somehow, well, I know how it was, man. And, you know, I tell the story because it was so powerful and transformative for me. But, you know, I grew up and there were out in the country, you know, I grew up in the country, but out in the country country, there were literally signs that said ends will be shot, you know, like it was that kind of place. And, man, and I was like seven or eight years old. We were at a 4-H camp, and we're all just hanging out talking about, you know, fucking with the cabin next to us. They had a, they were egging us, and we were egging them and all that.

And they had a black guy that was the head of their cabin. And I was like, like I said, like seven or eight, man, that's probably like 10 or 11, fourth or fifth grade. And I was like, yeah, fuck that in. And as soon as I said that, I realized that my black buddy was behind me. And I turned around and he was fucking crying, dude. His eyes were just welling up. And that hit me so hard that it was like my first ontological shock that really had me think, oh, shit, everything, everything I've been taught, like, is not necessarily true.

Like, there's a reality that I'm not aware of. And my lack of awareness has real implications on others. And so I haven't really recognized that until, you know, later years as being one of the most transformative moments in my life. I think I actually recalled that years ago during a mushroom experience. And so, like, from there, I just started looking at different ways of thinking. And a group Catholic and, you know, it was ultra-Catholic, ultra-boy. and, man, sorry, I haven't thought about that story for a long time until you just mentioned that racist, the racist history here,

and it just, like, it just hit me hard. But I grew up there, and, like, there was one time as a kid, I remember in the library seeing a book about peyote, and I was like, that makes sense. Something about it made sense, you know what I'm saying? And then it wasn't until many years later. I was a good altar boy. in high school that I finally started smoking weed and then that was another kind of, you know,

chink in the armor of puritanism. I was like, ah, my family, we had a huge role to play in the cornbread mafia. Have you heard of that by chance? It was the largest outdoor cannabis bust in American history still is. Johnny Boone, the guy that was the central figure of it was, you know, his on America's most wanted. He was a fugitive until a few years ago when he got caught up in Canada, they had like 15 farms and states all around Kentucky, and they were just growing hella weed back before aerial surveillance and stuff. And so they got popped and that just like broke my family apart because I had like several cousins, a couple uncles who were, you know, top tier in that organization. So I was incredibly anti-drug for a pretty long time

until like, I mean, for me a long time, junior year in high school or so. And I was started smoking some weed. And I was like, yeah, they have been a lot of it all kinds of shit. This is the greatest thing ever. And it wasn't until I was 19, moved it to Louisville here where I'm at now. And someone gave me some LSD. And by then I was like, all the priest rapes had come out. And I was just like, fuck the church. Fuck everything about the church. And so I just started diving into all kinds of drugs, Coke and acid and whatever. And somebody was like, man, if you like acid, you're going to love mushrooms. And so they were right.

I ate some mushrooms and was just like, oh, this is home. I found, I was like sitting on my toilet. Like, oh, my God, this is the, this is where I belong. I saw, I'm like sitting there and I see the toilet paper shadow like snake up the wall. And I just started laughing and I hear my buddies in the room like, oh, yeah, he's getting it now. And I was like, fuck. So I eat mushrooms for three days straight. And I found out quickly that they deserve more respect than most people were giving them at the time, you know.

And it just like, I mean, it opened a whole new world for me. I grew up very much into the natural world. I was like always out in the creek hunting snakes and that kind of stuff. And so when I ate these mushrooms, it was like, what the fuck are mushrooms? This is what mushrooms can do? Like, what are mushrooms? And so I started getting into all the wild edibles and like 9-11 happened. I'm like, we're getting up to go to the woods, y'all.

The society is going to collapse. And so I started getting into wild foods and found wild mushrooms. And that just like opened up an entire world of adventure and exploration. So just, man, it just became a mild obsession by the time I was 19. Paul Stamett's work, I'm sure you're familiar with him. I started reading all of his books and just got deep, deep, deep into it. And man, it's just been a, it has been a beautiful ongoing journey since then that has, it's just, it's impossible to say how it has expanded my horizons.

When I look at myself from that guy grown up in nowhere, Kentucky, who I look back at the people who I grew up with and see the lives that most of them are still living, I thank God, one, for that racist comment of mine that woke me up, and then for the plants that continued to wake me up. And since then, like you said, man, there's all kinds of techniques and entry ways into the mystical. And so that's really what my life is about exploring is mysticism in every way that I can reliably or semi-reliably access it.

What's up, guys? I want to give you a quick break here to tell you about Brain Supreme. Brain Supreme is by far and away the best microdosing company that has ever been created. True genius behind it, not just because I'm friends with the owner, but also because of the fact that their products work incredibly well. Everything is mailed discreetly. You know, there's a proprietary blend with about a. 100 milligrams of active mushrooms in there. But they're blended with other really high quality ingredients. So there's the genius, which has fantastic neutropics in it and lions main mushrooms

and other things that really help your brain fire. There's the athlete, which has rodeola and several other fantastic supplements that help you train your best and have the most endurance and just get the most out of your workouts, no matter what you're doing, whether that's kickboxing, running, hiking, being in nature, the athlete is phenomenal. There's feel good, which I took for a sound healing, and it's exactly what it does. It makes you feel good. I don't know.

It's just blown away by how awesome that product is. And these products can be stacked together. You know, typical dosing is two capsules on an empty stomach, and you don't have to run two of the same. So a lot of times when I'm doing my training, I'll take one athlete and one genius, and that's the perfect combination for me. So play around, start low, work your way up, see what works best for you. if you guys want to have like a detailed synopsis on the best ways to microdose and what are, you know, the reasons behind that, whether that's healing the brain from TBI, you know, maybe you're in a car accident or something, you know, fell off a horse when you were young. There's different protocols for that.

There's different protocols for creativity and there's different protocols for learning something new. And I talk about all these on the podcast that I've done with Adam Schell from Brain Supreme. Just punch in those and you'll see them. But I absolutely love these products. They are the very best. get 15% off everything in the store using code word KKP. Also check out the MacStack. MaxTack is a potentiator. You can put it in your coffee or your morning drink. It makes your day better, period, period, period.

There's nothing magic in it, but it definitely works. And it's fantastic with all the other things. It's meant to be a complimentary addition. They also have some Sheila G. Pearl Balls, which are out of this world. They are super good, potent. You can feel them. And there's no sticky goo to get around. All you got to do is just, you know, dump these five, five little pearls in your hand, swallow them for breakfast.

And it is a phenomenal way to get the highest quality shilogy possible. Check it all out at BrainSupreme.co. And don't forget to use Word KKP at checkout. We'll also have them linked in the show notes. And now back to the show. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more with, you know, the comparison. I had a, it's, I don't know how old you are. I'm 44 when you were born in the early 80s.

I'm 48, 78. Late 70s, okay. So you would have been like a senior. when I was a freshman or right around there. There's so many memes now about millennials, and it's funny because millennials bitch about being lumped into one lung group

with kids that are born in the 90s and shit. Like, we need their own category, but it's hilarious with how health conscious I am now. And, you know, after fighting in the UFC, like that's really where I got all my education and this stuff. And because I was sparring three days a week, which was really fighting three days a week

against world champions, I always had a test that would tell me, is this working or is it not? Is it helping me recover quicker? Is it helping me with better cardio? So I could just see real world experience. Does this work? Breath work, visualization, all the things.

And these memes are hilarious because there's one that's like millennials back in the day, you know, and it shows like the, you know, like the Joker leaning out the window, you know, just taking in all the rain in the face while the songs, Technos blasting and shit like that. And it says like, you'll take drugs from a total stranger, but now you're worried about the plastics on your receipt.

You don't want to touch your seat. That is so fucking true. That is so true, dude. Just the other day, I was, you know, we were going out. And I was like, oh, I wouldn't touch that. You know, I'm kind of holding it from the corners. I'm telling my son not to touch the receipt. And I was like, dude, I would take all kinds of drugs from perfect strangers.

And they're like, oh, is that acid? Let's go. All right. All right. Let's see what it's made with. You know, like, jokes. chewing them up. Oh, man.

What a fucking... Yeah, well, if people die from fentanylase cocaine and stuff like that, it'll change things real quick, you know? And then obviously,

the accessibility of information, what we're learning now about the reality of the world, like a fucking receipt. Who would believe that a receipt? Or what was it I was looking at there? They were like, oh, you know, those, you see those commercials,

like we barely watch TV, but every now I watch a movie with the kids and have commercials in. They got this, uh, a scent thing for the top of your trash can. It's like, oh, your trash can smell good. Like a sticker.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Plug-in guy. The most deadly thing in our homes are the false scents that we bring. Who in the world would have ever thought that would be one of those toxic, deadly things that we could do to ourselves is artificially scent the environment. Yeah, just hose. I remember when Fabriz came out, I was like, fuck yeah. You know, I've got like stinky M&A gear that's never been washed, you know, just because I don't want to ruin it. I'm just spraying shit down.

It was like, oh, dude, not a million years. now. Yeah, it's just so fun. I mean, like, we, I stayed up late the other night to be intimate with my, with my amazing wife. And I'm looking at the clock and it's 1045 and I'm like, it was worth it. And it's going to kick my ass tonight, you know, going to bed at 1045. And I just said, right when I laid down, I started laughing because I was like, there was a point in college and right after where the night didn't start until 1030. Like, there's no way in hell I'd go to a club before 1030. You didn't want to be that guy there. That's like 9.5. with three other people just kind of looking around, like having drinks, you know, like, no,

1030 is like maybe I'll be in line at 1030, most likely 1045. And I was like, that's when the night started. And now I'm bitching about it. But, yeah, it's funny. It just, it just cracks me up thinking back on the differences there, you know, like, on the open book with my kids. You're like, good. And I was just to say, like, the, it's ironic to me.

Like, I was sitting in the park the other day with, we call them Dr. Byrne, our family we call Nathan Dr. Byrne. because we first met him was like, oh, we just got back from Burning Man. But I was in the park cleaning a bunch of psilocybin that I had found there in the park, right? And I'm just like, drugs can be wholesome. You know, like we have had this, you know,

all the BS from the drug war and all the, you know, lies that we've been told. And here I am picking mushrooms in the park with kids, my kids, in the park. And these mushrooms are going to help me be a more healthy, conscientious parent in person. And so the paradox is where I, it's like my favorite place to play in the paradox. Yeah, that's beautifully stated.

And it's, it is hilarious. For anybody, like my son, our children won't grow up with the DARE program. You know, our kids are homeschooled. You guys are in Waldorf. We were in Waldorf for a year. Love the Waldorf style. I want to talk to you about that. But like, you're never going to have a police officer show up at Waldorf and say, you know,

let me tell you about the story where deputy Diana had to chase. down a guy and shot him six times in the chest and he still didn't stop and he bent a stop sign in half because he was on PCP and then tell you that all drugs equal that story. Right. Right. I had a, I had a thought on psilocybin that the difference between a good drug and a bad drug is, you know, how you feel the next day. Will this leave me more whole than when I started? If you can answer that question honestly and say yes, then that's a good drug. If it will not leave you more hold than when you started, then you're paying for fun on credit. Love that. You know, you've got to pay that back later.

You know, you might be free drugs. It doesn't matter. You're still going to pay that back. You're going to pay it back through sleep, through your neurochemistry, through how you feel, all of it. Well, what are your thoughts on MDMA? I love MDMA. That's the more hole when I started because even though I might need to sleep a little

if I'm doing all things correctly, I need a lot of rest. I need a hydrate. An IV bag, vitamin IB bag would be nice. Not necessary, but would be nice. I should take some, you know, ramping up with the, right supplements and sleep ahead of time, not burning the kennel at both ends before our MDMA. But MDMA to me is, it's funny, I've never been too, it's interesting to me how the spiritual community likes to think that like all synthetics are out. You know what I'm like, I've had some of the

most spiritual experiences in my life on acid. And nothing has opened my heart better than MDMA. You know, including like there was a, there was a show on VH1 back in the day where they did like, I think it was 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. And they tried to cap, you know, like each decade as an era. And they showed you the iconic music, the iconic movies, that kind of thing. And when they got to the 90s, they showed like the rave scene with people popping pills and everyone dancing together, like this mass formation of like opening. And I'm like, it caught it visually, but it didn't capture what happened in here.

You know, like it didn't capture like what that meant, what people would learn on, it could be Burning Man now, right? But like, that to me, it's funny when you hear like Rick Doblin or somebody talk about, you know, well, if it's therapeutic, it's done, you know, lying on a couch and you have two sitters and you write out all these questions and here's the playlist you listen to and it's blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, dude, some of the most transformative experience in my life have been dancing until 4 a.m. on MDMA, you know, with the right people and then talking for another two hours and then crashing hard for 24. Yeah. You know, like unbelievable peak experiences. Yeah. It's pure love.

It's an amazing thing. And I also love hippie flipping. I did a ceremony with my dad years ago. We had sat in ayahuasca a couple of times, but he always got really nervous before having a second cup. So he was always kind of riding the edge without ever really fully going. And you can't force it. So I'm just like, hey, bud, you know, you're good where you're at.

I remember the guy coming around, you know, for round two. And I'm like, oh, please, you know, and I take my cup. And he's like doing this with this. arms and I look and I laugh and I'm like what what's going on he's making the X sign with his hands he goes I'm good I'm good they go well tell me about your experience like are you seeing stuff with your eyes open or closed and he's like I kind of see a little bit of stuff moving with my eyes closed not much with my eyes open and I was like you can go a little bit further but only when you're ready like I'm never going to tell you to do it you know and so ultimately didn't and then

I was telling him about, you know, the high dose, you know, the Terrence McKenna, the high dose psilocybin experience and how it's, you know, you just take one dose, you buckle up, you let go and surrender, but you have the experience. And how beautiful that can be too with, you know, just 100 milligrams of MDMA can like just open the heart and help curate that experience in the light. And so we get to do that. We did a, I think I did three and a half or four grams of penis envy. He had three grams of penis envy.

and we each had 100 milligrams of MDMA with it. And that was like the, you know, he still talks about that experience. Like it was an incredible experience for both of us. That's just a beautiful experience. So yeah, MDMA, in my opinion, is an incredible, can be an incredible medicine. And obviously, you know, the difference between medicine and poison is dose and frequency, right? So that's also worth stating. But I think it's an incredible, incredible molecule.

Yeah. I mean, I'd completely agree with what you're saying there, too, about the synthetics in terms. of the spiritual component, you know, it's like, but for one, like the whole history of LSD, like literally calling to Albert Hoffman from the drawer, you know? Have you heard that? You've heard that story. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Like, consciousness doesn't care what container. I mean, I guess it cares, right, because there are specific molecules or are specific pathways. And I think that there's something to the whole AI evolution as well. I'm not in favor of data centers on every corner or whatever, you know, but I'm also like, I'm not one of these people that wants to just piss on the future as it comes, you know. That's what has the standing generation for all generations, the majority of people have bemoaned

the inevitable future only to end up adopting it because there's no other choice. It's like, how do you work with the tools that were given versus, you know, just kind of blanketly dismissing them. Did you ever watch the movie A Million Ways to Die in the West? I have not. It's a Seth MacFarlane movie, the guy who did Family Guy. Anyways, it's a comedy that makes fun of all the ways you could possibly die and how hard it was living in the West. But one of the things they do is they show kids, you know, like with like a stick and a wooden hoop.

And they're running through the streets with this wooden hoop, you know, making the stick move the wooden hoop. And they're running and laughing. And they're like, that's going to fry your brain. knock it off. There's this underlying current of every toys the kids play with is going to fry their brain, knock it off. And it fucking cracks me up.

It's like, we've all said that shit. You know, we've all thought it. We've all been told that. And yet we don't end up with fried brains for the most part. Yeah. You know? But yeah, I think of the fried brains, you know, like this is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.

Any question? That ad, you know, where they'd literally crack an egg in a frying pan and so it's Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's just a wild thing. Because now we're seeing studies on psilocybin in particular, a lot of science on psilocybin where you've got, obviously there's a mystical experience that can happen and take

place, especially if that's something you're searching for and believe it can happen. But so much on the hardware, you know, and I've often thought that like, oh, if I'm fixing software, right, if I'm fixing my emotional intelligence and I'm fixing my psychological outlook on life and I'm working with spirit, and it has a benefit to all those things, why wouldn't to have a benefit on the physical structure on the hardware of the body. And, you know, that, that quack, Brian Johnson, the,

the guy looks like Nosphiratu. He's from this down. A boy, the sun like the plague, thinks he's going to live to 150. It's just, it's great. He's just a fun guy to poke fun at. But, you know, he did a high-dose psilocybin journey. And he was getting, he was all hooked up to the fucking machines

and mapping everything as it happens. And he's like, it actually helped his blood sugar. And so they're now doing studies this for diabetes and healing the pancreas and all sorts of shit because of the potential psilocybin for that. And it's like all this from one thing, from one thing. This is just such an incredible thing. And the dose range is such a cool thing too, right? Say it again. Just the fact that you could have a micro dose with 150 mix to 100 mix.

And you go all the way up to the Klandi, you know, 30 gram. And there's no ceiling. Like there's so much wiggle room to play with. within this that completely changes the experience, right? I think that's one of my favorite things about psilocybin. And LSD is comparable, right? There's no, there's no ceiling on LSD either. And we've seen some anecdotal reports from folks who had irreparable issues

that were repaired through massive LSD doses. There's this one thing that's just now coming out, the lady who has her in her 80s and took a five-gram dose of mushrooms and got her speech back the next day. I worked with the guy years ago down in Jamaica who was a fighter jet pilot, and he started having an aphasia where he would drop off the last word of every sentence,

and it was getting pretty bad. He covered it up for quite a while, and then his family started notice, and people started getting worried, and he started going to a neurologist, and he said that on the way out of his appointment with a neurologist, he was in the elevator, and there was a retiring neurologist,

psychologist that said, hey, what you're here for? And he told him, and he's like, go find psilocybin. And so he came to Jamaica and did, I don't know, six doses with us completely repaired his aphasia. And years later, you know, I've seen miracles, man. Honestly, it's been, it has been such a privilege to work so closely with this medicine sacrament for so long. And I'm like you, I take maybe once or twice a year. My last dose was nine grams back in last September. I've had some micro doses since then. But, you know, Maria Sabina kind of famously said that once you learn the mushroom's language, you don't have to keep eating them.

You can just talk to them. You know, and I think there's so much that we have yet to discover. And I personally feel like the physiological, psychological, psychological benefits are kind of like the low-hanging fruit of what this thing is doing. You know, I had an experience years ago where, you know, I feel like it was revealed to, me that the mushroom psilocybin is what when Ponce de Leon was looking for the fountain of youth when he heard these stories of the fountain of youth from the indigenous that they were actually speaking of the mushroom and that he didn't understand because they've also been called metaphorically

they've been called the little flowers and the little fountains through Mesoamerica and Mazatec communities and now what we're seeing in their abilities to extend life and heal the body in ways that we never would have imagined. And again, like the thing is, it's like these are things that were demonized for decades. And we knew or it was known all along throughout the decades that these medicines were powerful and that they were effective. To the extent we didn't know. But, you know, there's all kinds of studies that were destroyed.

Do you ever read the book Acid Dreams by any chance? No, my buddy Eric Gadsie is a huge fan of it, though. He's probably better. One of the ones. It talks about that. It talks about that. The research that was born showing autistic children who are self-mutilating and non-verbal, who were given megadoses of psilocybin and LSD, who, you know, got their speech back,

stopped, you know, harming themselves. Miraculous stories. And, you know, people like myself who have been administering these compounds to the public underground and now above ground for the, you know, the years that we have, I just, I wake up every day. Like I sit out and meditate with the birds. I get up, you know, five o'clock in the morning, go outside and sit with the birds.

And lately, man, it has just been thanking whatever it is, God, creator, source, whatever it is that has gifted us and gifted me with this opportunity to share this medicine out to the world. And, you know, so much of what our work is. And this was really what it was about when we started the retreats in Jamaica, was to try and try and really shift the country. consciousness specifically around psilocybin. Because even back then, when I started those retreats in 2013,

ayahuasca was kind of the only thing that was talked about in terms of this, you know, big therapeutic, life-changing experience. You had your Terrances and Dennis McKinnan, those who had been talking about this for years, but as far as like the mainstream popular was, it was all ayahuasca. You got to go to Peru. And I was just like, Jesus Christ, if people would just take 10 grams of mushrooms, you're going to get there, right? And so we started these retreats with that in mind.

And that was an incredible privilege. When we started those retreats, we didn't lead out with the spiritual because most people were coming for therapeutic benefit. But then nearly everyone would have a spiritual experience, especially because we were working with doses. You know, that's kind of been my specialty is holding space for, group experiences of 10, 15 grams. And people in groups of that size dose, there will be spiritual experiences profound.

There will be mutual telepathy. There will be paranormal and psychic phenomena that we don't have any understanding for. And so to help people unpack that, like the doctors and the lawyers and the business people that I got to work with was an incredible privilege. So, you know, now with the church, it's like there is a bit of a social resistance, you know. I'm sure it's different in Austin, but, you know, we're a nationwide organization. And people very often have, like, some real skepticism about what we're doing. It doesn't matter if they're coming from California or even, like, the places where these compounds have been used historically more regularly.

there is this, I don't want to say hubris, but there's this kind of sense like, oh, I don't need anybody else to be on this journey with. But I tend to feel pretty strongly that this, just like the drug war, miseducated us around drugs, we have been miseducated around our need for community. You know, this American individualism is a,

it's a fucking sickness, quite honestly. And that's where so much, I believe, of our psychological ailments arise from is because we, that we don't have community. Yeah, I wanted to actually really, I wanted to bring this up as it's such an important piece, and I also, you kind of touched on it,

but I wanted to get, you know, we jumped right in on our favorite experiences and things like that. Talk about your trajectory to get to this place where now you've got a legal church, you know, because that wasn't always the case. You talked about, you know, being in Jamaica, even before that,

I think you would spend some time in jail, like lead us for that and bring us in. And then community is such a huge piece. Just to touch on that role, quick because I want to give it its own time space. When they pass the Ibogaine thing for veterans with PTSD, a lot of people, you know, plant medicine gurus are like, oh, that's bullshit. They're going to medicalize it.

And anybody who's got friends in the military is like, fuck yeah, dude, give them an option, right? And that still doesn't give people community. I just had a Jerich Fry on the podcast who was a Marine who healed a lot of his shit through psilocybin, but also through Brazilian jitzyb and being a barber because being a barber, he'd have first responders come in and he would talk to the first responders about his experience in Fallujah in different places and they had their own similar experiences

and so it got him talking with people regularly. Then Jiu-Jitsu gave him physicality back and a team and people to work with on a different level. So it's a piece of it. It's not the whole piece of it, but community is one of the massive pieces that's missing. So I just wanted to say hell yes to that and let's give that

another look here. But tell me about your trajectory here. All right, yeah, yeah, going back, going back through the history. Oh, I'm seeing them. So anyway, man, 19 years old, yeah, I ate my first mushrooms, fell in love with that experience, started getting into the gourmetes and the edibles and all that, started selling wild mushrooms to restaurants. And then I was teaching at a little middle school,

and one of the board of directors was like, hey, man, we got a, we got a farm that's just sitting empty, if any teacher would like to come up here and stay. And I had been studying how to grow mushrooms in mass for, a long time. I mean, I was growing psilocybin in my closet pretty much all along. The way that those spores first came to me was a, like a bit of a miracle on its own, a little serendipitous moment, but I won't go into that long story. I am in the middle of writing a book. So if any of this is of interest to people, then they can check that out when it comes out, hopefully in fall this year, where I go into some of these things, a little more detail. But I moved out to that farm

and it had, like, I went out there to tour it and it had big warehouses. It had, it had, 87 acres of woods. It was like everything that I had been dreaming of. So I was like, all right, this is it. Let's do it. And I moved there, started farming mushrooms and selling the local restaurants. I quit my job teaching because I just felt like this was the mission and started growing psilocybin.

Of course, like if you can grow a pound, you know, if you can grow an ounce of psilocybin, you can grow 10 pounds of psilocybin if you're growing with the right equipment, right? And so I never wanted to sell them. I never, ever wanted to do black market. I just wanted to put bowls of mushrooms out in front of people at my parties and say, have fun. And I did that. And then, like, times got hard. The farm wasn't really making money.

And I needed to find a way to bring in some extra cash. And so I started slinging shrooms. And reluctantly, it was very reluctantly. I actually, you know, went to the mushroom and asked, like, is this the right thing to do? And it was just absolutely no. And this is not the thing to do. But I couldn't take off the pressure in any other way. And so I did it.

I did it. And, you know, it's not ultimately what led to our arrest. I think that energetically, it was a contributing factor. What led to our arrest was a pretty innocent ceremony on our property with friends that we had known for a couple of years. One of them was a young girl who started feeling nervous. I mean, I think you might appreciate this hearing some of your podcasts and talking about some of the weird paranormal, interesting stuff. Like, I have a very, just say, paranormal relationship with the experience. I've witnessed and gone through some just stuff that is impossible to believe for the average person, I think.

But this specific instance, you know, we'd spent the whole day prepping. Everything was like just on point. And as we went to start the ceremony, I went to light the fire. And like me and fire are homies. I can just like snap my finger and I got a fire, you know? And this fire would not start for shit. I just kept trying to start the fire and it wouldn't fire. It wouldn't light.

I was like, what is going on? It's just smoking. It's not wet. It's just like, and in me, I'm like, don't do this ceremony. This is the fire telling you do not have this ceremony. And I'm just like, ah, my ego is just like, ah, we're here, everybody's here. We've already, we've been prepping for this. So finally, I fought it long enough to get the fire going.

And like, as we're standing there and with the fire, and the woman who ends up being kind of the catalyst for our arrest, she comes up to me and she's like, Eric, I just want to tell you, like, on the way here, I was popped over a heel driving here, and there was a dead cardinal in the middle of the road. And, like, cardinals are like my spirit bird. I just love cardinals. I see him everywhere, and I don't know,

I don't think I've ever seen a dead cardinal. And I saw this dead cardinal. Do you think that means anything? And I was like, like, everything in me was like, hell yeah, that means something. But my ego was like, oh, no, we're good. We're good. Yeah.

And she only took two grams. She took two grams of mushrooms. They were fresh, so she took 20. And another fatal flaw here is that everybody on site dosed, you know. But everybody dozed, and we were in it. And about an hour in, she's just getting chatty, chatty, chatty, and she's just nervous energy. Like, the whole ceremony was actually around her.

She wanted to recover from some trauma and whatnot. And she wouldn't stop talking. So my now wife then girlfriend was like, maybe if you just like quiet down, you'll get more out of this experience. And so girl, oh girl tried. She tried. But like she closed her mouth and she just started just getting fidgety. And she was like, Eric, can I go laying my tent?

It's like, yeah, yeah, sure. And so she goes laying in her tent, it's like 30 feet away. And we're all there just having her time's coming on. It's like hitting pretty hard. And out of nowhere, her tail lights are just booking down our driveway. Gravels flinging. It's like a quarter mile. driveway I can see.

We had her keys in our kitchen. She got paranoid, wanted to see her boyfriend, Army crawled in the darkness to her car, and had a key magnetized under the bumper. Yeah. Like, we did everything.

We spent the entire day of prepping. We had keys. We did everything except listen to the signs that were you know. That was a very humbling experience. So she drove off into a ditch. She didn't get hurt.

She got out of the car and she was yelling. And she was already like a couple miles from our house by then. Neighbors were, came out. And we were out in the middle of nowhere. I was just freaking out. I was just like, this is the end. Manslaughter charges I'm done for, you know. And we calling, texting, blowing her up everything we could, couldn't get nothing.

And then was it? like about 3 o'clock, 2 o'clock in the morning. This was like 11 when she drove off. So about like 2 or 3, I was like, all right, I can drive. We're going to find this girl. And so I got in my car, me and my girlfriend got in the car and drove off to go find her. And we went like an hour and a half to where her boyfriend would be

and nothing, nothing, nothing. Finally, I mean, we went all over town to people that knew her and could not find her, couldn't find anything. We called hospitals. We checked jail or police reports, everything we could. And finally, at like 5 p.m., she texts us and says, I'm fine. I just need some space.

I was like, all right, cool. So we took a huge sigh of relief and swore to not sell mushrooms, right? Because we were like, this has to be here, what this is from. We did everything right. This has to be what it is. And so we come home, and as we pulled in the driveway, I got one neighbor who was bush hog in the yard next to us, the field where his horses were. And he flags me down.

He's like, yo, sheriff was just here. He said, mushroom party got out of hand. He's looking for you. I was like, fuck. So I took my tractor and blocked off the driveway at the gate so nobody can get through. And I had the biggest fucking bonfire I've ever had. I had just the week before got rid of 10 dry pounds of mushrooms. So like I had one pound on site and a massive grow.

I had a huge operation where I was doing about two dry pounds a week. You know, so it's about 20 fresh pounds. So, you know, a sizable amount for one person to be growing. And especially in Kentucky where people ain't eating the shrimps like they're, you know, in bars in 20, what was that, 2015? Yeah. And so we had this massive bonfire. We cleaned everything, spick and span. We're like, it's all good no matter what.

I took my pound of mushrooms. I'm like, well, they ain't getting my sacrament. I remember telling Courtney then they're not going to take my sacrament. I'm going to take it out in the woods. I'm not hiding in a tree. And it'll be fine if anybody comes. And so a couple days later, Tuesday, July 2nd, I'm sitting there in my office. on lunch break with one of the guy, one of my workers.

And, man, my dog didn't embark. Next thing I know, there's a lot full of cop cars. They all come in warrants and shit. And they asked for a tour. They wanted to know what was going on. So I gave them the tour, man. I was like, look, check it out. And they were like, actually really cool.

You know, they were like, oh, this is really interesting. And I'm dreadlocks. So I got dreads to my waist at this time. And they're like, this is really cool. We, you know, we've heard about your operation. We think this is really great what you're doing for the community. we wouldn't be out here if somebody didn't tell us

we had to be out here and I was like, all right, well, who the fuck told you you had to be out here because we still hadn't talked to

a girl. And so they get us up the top of the hill where the house is, Mavis sitting there and I forget when they started saying this. Eventually they told us

some absolute lie that this girl was wearing a GoPro and that she had videotaped the whole thing. Yeah, and I was like, Bullshit, bullshit.

They were describing the entire scene. Anyway, they go to the house, they go everything, they can't find nothing. At the very end, there's one cop there that was like a smart ass the whole time. He was a young state trooper. And he's like, well, I know if you ain't got mushrooms, you got weed out in these woods. And I'm going to go find it.

I was like, help yourself, bro. There ain't no weed out there. And so he walked back. I had like manicured trails. I was doing like high school tours. And it was an educational forest. You know, I was growing like 15 different types of gourmet mushrooms. I'd just been to China and bought all this mass.

of equipment to upscale. And I still don't know how he found these mushrooms. If it was like the light shining in the tree or what, but I had a bong in my mushrooms. And he came out there just grinning like a fucking shit-eating dog, man. He was just like, thought you got away, didn't you? And so they locked us up. And I was in for a week.

I mean, that whole story, like the way that went down was insane. We were, I, my wife got out the next day. because her parents were both attorneys, and she wasn't, well, she was living with me at the time, but they said my bond at $60,000, said I was a cult leader. They had all this crazy trumped-up shit on me and we're trying to put me away for a while. Well, my, my wife and I couldn't have contact with each other because we were not married. We were co-conspirators, they called us, right? And so she went back to live with her parents in town in Louisville and I'm up in the middle of Indiana. on this farm wearing an ankle bracelet.

And we can't have, we can't talk to each other. We can have a contact. All my friends bail on me. Everybody, like, I had one buddy who I had known for 15 years. I gave mushrooms all the time. I called that dude from jail 10 times and he hung up on me 10 times. And he had money. This guy was like inherited a bunch of money, you know.

And so I was just like, well, my life is over. You know, I just thought it was done. I still haven't had a traffic ticket since like five years before that. And, you know, and so, man, ultimately her parents, so her attorney, her parents being attorneys, hired, you know, one of the best attorneys in the area. And her attorney tried to get her to turn on me, say, you know, this was all him. He talked me into it. My wife's 12 years younger than me, you know, back then she was 25, you know.

And so she wouldn't do it. She refused to. Because, hey, she sat there and cleaned all those mushrooms. We sold mushrooms her friends, you know. But she stood up. stood up and would not let me take it all. And so eventually what happened was the judge said, well, I'm going to be both of them in the same sentence. And her attorney being a very, you know, well-known, well-respected attorney was able to get the charges down from three B felonies to

one-D felony that would be expunged on our probation. So that all happened in 2017. It was expunged, but I started the retreats in 2013. So another reason I didn't want to sell mushrooms is because I was trying to advertise these international psychedelic retreats and I didn't want to bring that heat down on me, you know? And so like in 2011, I was in my lab working one night

and it just like clicked. I've been going to Jamaica for 10 years as my spiritual mecca. Like I said, dreadlocks. I was all up in the Rasta community. And my minor in university was Pan-African studies. So I went from being a racist from central Kentucky. to be an anti-colonialist, you know, an abolitionist, basically.

And then so I had some buddies that were down there in Jamaica with property and I would go see every year. And I'm sitting there one night working in my lab. And there's just like little boys that's like, hey, you know, mushrooms are legal in Jamaica. I was like, holy shit, how have I been down to mushroom? How have I been down in Jamaica every year for 10 years? I see this. There's this one shack called Ted's in the grill. I was like, I've seen this for years.

How did I not make the connection? And so I started eating mushrooms when I would eat mushrooms after that realization, one night in 2011, I ate mushrooms. And this communication came in that said, Jamaica is going to be a lighthouse of psychedelic healing for the world and you are going to light the torch. Those were the specific words that were said. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. That is way too big for this little country boy.

I was like, well, that's what's happening. I'm like, nah, it's not what it's at. No. And so I went through a full year of getting my ass kicked at least once a month. Every time I would eat mushrooms in ceremony, it would sit me down and it would just until you do this, it's going to suck. And I went through a year of really tough experiences. And even after I accepted the mission, so to speak, I kept going through this like,

why the fuck me? Why me? Why do I got to be? And so it just like went in this whole years worth of. of deliberating, debating with my head. And then when I finally accepted it, about 2012, I said, all right, well, if I'm going to do this, then I am going to prepare myself as best as possible.

And so I started eating high doses, five to ten grams, every new moon and full moon for the entire year of 2012. And by the time that was over, I was like, all right, I think I can work with the public here. You know, I'd been doing underground stuff for friends and whatnot. And then so in 2013, we did the first retreat. And then, like I said, in 2015, we were arrested. After we were arrested, my wife was like, yeah, like, yeah, no mushrooms, no fuck mushrooms.

I'm done with this. I was like, well, if that's the case, then we're not going to be together either because I was more lit up for it. You know, I'm sitting in jail with a bunch of meth heads, people who are robbing, like, stealing copper out of, you know, air conditioner units and shit. And I'm like, these people could be healed with the thing that I'm in jail for. And so when I got out, you know, I was in jail for a week. And then after that, I was just more enlivened for it. We ended up coming back to the city, to Louisville. And I was like, I don't know how I'm going to do these retreats.

I couldn't grow mushrooms, you know. I was still advertising the retreats, but I couldn't obviously grow them. My wife wasn't going to have that. I would have done it if it wasn't been for her. And in 2016, in April, on April 1st of 2016, after in 99 is when I found, met psilocybin. I started looking for wild psilocybin in like the year 2000, right? Because it was just like, I'm going to find that. I know they're out here. I never found any psilocybin from 1999 until 2016. I never found any psilocybin. I had always been growing into my closet. I had

strains that I named after myself. I had mystery, the strain that was like my favorite one that I grew and sold and shared out. And in 2016, I led a foray for a for a. the nonprofit that I'd started. I started a nonprofit to try to generate scholarship funds to get people to Jamaica for Sillusat. Equitable access is like huge for me. I think the mushrooms, they're fucking free most of the time, you know. Like they shouldn't cost.

It's ridiculous. And on one hand, it's ridiculous that mushrooms are like $35 a half hour or a half quarter because they'll change your life, you know, forever. And then weed is like you're paying $300 an ounce for something that you just burn up and smoke. every day. So anyway, that's a whole paradox in of itself. But in 2016, on April 1st, I led this little foray as a fundraiser

for this nonprofit. And there had been whisperings of this species of Widiostidiaata or ovoids, as they're called. Nobody ever found in our area, though. And so we went out specifically looking for them. Didn't find any, at the very end of the foray, somebody comes to me as we're like literally at the parking, like, literally at the parking, not getting ready to leave. And so I walks up, I'm like, Eric, what's this mushroom here?

And I look at it and it's bruising blue. It's got a little wavy cap. I was like, where did you find this? I'm like over here under this bush. And so I go over and look under the bush. And there's like a couple, two or three little mushrooms popping up. I'm like, holy shit. And I pull the weeds back and there's like 50 mushrooms underneath.

I was like, well, all right, guys, we found the mushrooms. And I like, show them. Have a good day. So everybody left, eating me. But I circled back and picked the rest of those mushrooms and took them home and ate them, much to my wife's dismay. And from then, this specific species of mushroom supplied those retreats for two or three years. To this day, like this year, it happens almost every year that something, I don't know if it's the mushroom, spirit, whatever we'll call it, will tell me where to go to find them.

In 2016, when 2016, I picked a bunch and gave a bunch away to some friends here locally. and took some to the retreats. But in 2017, the retreats were starting to pick up. And the Jamaicans were having a hard time growing mushrooms. I was only there like two weeks out of a month, back and forth. You know, I'm like, how am I going to do this? And one morning I'm sitting in my house right after our kid was born. And I hear this voice.

Eric, we're out here. Come get us. Come get us. It's like, oh, what is this? I got work to do. I'm trying to work on his website and build this business. And it's just like, this was the first time I had heard this voice. And it's like, come get us.

come get us. And so I'm like, I left a note. All right, baby, I'm going on, looking for mushrooms. And so I leave. I go to my spots. There's nothing there. I'm like, all right, this is ridiculous. I got to go home. I go to two different spots. There's nothing there. I got to go home. As I'm driving down the road through the park, I just get this. Eric, you got to pull over. You got to pull over. You got to pull over. So I pull over. And out in the middle of this field, there's just this field of tall grass that is just telling me walk out in this field. And I was like, this is not where they grow. They don't grow. They don't grow. out here, you know, this is a wood lover that grow in mulch is where we were found

them mainly. So I'm like, but it's like, I could not. So I walk across the field in this tall grass and get there and there's a little seedling that had been planted by the parks that was surrounded my mulloch and had like a couple two or three ovoids. I was like, well, that's kind of cool. So I get down on my knees and pick them up. And as I kneeling, I look up in front of me in about 20 feet out in the distance, there's

a pile of debris that had washed down the heel. and it is absolutely resplendent with, I literally picked an entire, just reusable grocery bag full of psilocybin right there. Oh, man. I'm on probation, bro. I'm on probation.

Sillicine, no church, no nothing. I'm like, I can't not do this. So I come home and I'm cleaning. I got an entire room devoted to cleaning and drying these mushrooms and powdered them and encapsulated them. And that's what ended up supplying the retreats in Jamaica for two years was the mushrooms that I found in 2017 and 2018 until we got cultivation down there.

This year, I was at Waldorf dropping the kids off. You know, me and Nathan passing each other, good morning, good morning. And I just like, there's no mushrooms. The weather's dry. There's like, it's too hot. And there's not been any, any ovoids popping. And I just like get pooled. pulled and underneath the grass there's some mulch and it's just the right conditions.

I picked probably a pound, two pounds of fresh psilocybin out of the school property this year. So anyway, but those retreats ran from 2013 and 2020. I sold them. It was like right as COVID hit. I had this, dude, I, to tell the incredible supernatural stories. But like this last one, I won't go into the whole story in detail, with this last one where it was like, I've had multiple experiences where this divine mother,

the only way I know how to interpret it, has spoken to me and directed me. And in this last ceremony, a woman there for about two hours just completely channeled this divine mother. Told me my history, told me all these things about myself, told me my future,

told me that I had to do this thing. And so I thought she was talking about the work in Jamaica, because we were pretty full to get ahead with that. I was doing two retreats a month with 15 people per retreat, you know, seeing miracle after miracle, working my ass off, getting burnt to the core. And COVID hit. And I was like, y'all, COVID's my fault. Because I told God something's got to give because I can't keep this up.

So COVID hit. She delivered this message. COVID hit. We chilled for six months. And then after that, we were like, we were ready to move back to Kentucky. I had a dog in Jamaica that I named Kentucky. I was just like, I miss my old Kentucky home. I would listen to John Prine song and cry down there on the beach.

And so we sold the business, came back to Kentucky. The idea was to bolster the nonprofit, the scholarship program. And when we came back, the attorney who was setting us up, who was a very experienced psychedelic attorney, he was helping us sell the company, you know, negotiate that out. And he had been following my work for many years. And he's like, Eric, I got to tell you, man,

I've put together a number of psychedelic churches, ayahuasca churches. And if there's anybody that can put together a psilocybin church that can stand before the Supreme Court, it's you. And I want to help you do this. And I was like, well, man, I ain't doing that. I know about church.

He's like, well, I'll do it for almost nothing. And so I sat with it and sat with it. And, you know, like down in Jamaica, people would come out of their experiences, like these, you know, buttoned up business people, they come out of these high-dose experiences, brushing it off, like, and would say to me, on multiple occasions, people would say, Eric, I don't know what kind of church it is you're starting here,

but you could sign me up. And I was like, no, we ain't no church, but I'm glad you're getting the goods, you know? And so I sat with that kind of stuff. I meditated for a couple tours or weeks, and I told my wife, I was like, yeah, I think this is it. She's like, well, you can count me out because I am not doing a church. It's like, well, I guess we'll have to find somebody else. And it didn't take her long to see.

Because she lived in Jamaica. She ran the admin side of it. And she saw the miracles. She saw all the things happen. And so she was like, all right, eventually she's like, all right, let's do this. Let's do this. And so, man, since 2021, basically, we are five years running now. It was May of 2021 that we were officially organized.

We started doing work in like. January of 21, but we were finalized as an organization in May. And since then, it's been, it's way, it's way harder than running an international retreat. Nobody could have ever convinced me of that. And I thought that those, those retreats would have been more difficult. But this thing about community being outbred of us, you know, where we have, we have been taught to run from our shadow. And that is what community will confront you with.

And that is the medicine of community. You know, you can't see the same people, especially when you're doing plant medicine work, you can't be in circle with the same people for years on end and not encounter your shadow. And like not a lot of people right now have the Constitution to really, really withstand that. So we have a we've had over a thousand members over the last five years. We've got out 350, 400 right now. And those that are with us right now, there's like a mix of new people. and a mix of people who are really like,

they're really in this. And we got people from Maine. We got some amazing folks of in Maine. There's this dude of in Maine who, there's a vice documentary on him. You can watch on YouTube. He, a polar bear grabbed him by his fucking head and pulled him out of his tent and tried to eat him.

And somehow like some people shot at it or whatever, and he got out of this polar bear's mouth. And he is, he's been a member of our community for probably four years. And this dude, he has taught me so much about appreciating life. The veterans that I've worked with, that was another thing. Like, I grew up in a very anti-military family. And in Jamaica, I worked with some very high-ranking military CIA and FBI and people who would, you know, high-rank.

And I found out that they are some of the kindest, most caring, compassionate, baddest motherfuckers on the planet that I want on my side. and I am resolved to be on their side because what I see is that our government has not stuck it through with them. So I am hopeful for these things like the eyeball gain. Now that actually originated in Kentucky here. Brian Shipp, like on his last name,

Brian Hubbard, Brian Hubbard, the guy who has initiated that, he tried to get it in Kentucky. He was working for the state of Kentucky and he brought that initiative and we went to several meetings trying to, you know, advocating for it. And it looked like it was going to pass.

And then our governor, who is a pharmaciel, at the last minute, declined it. And so they went to Ohio and then Texas. And so it was a little bit of a heartbreak to see that it happened here in Kentucky or not happened here in Kentucky. But as long as it's happening, that's really what ultimately matters to me. Because I'm telling you, bro, like police officers as well. I've dosed, I don't know, probably a couple dozen police officers.

and I was the biggest fuck the police guy you ever saw. I now go up to policemen on the street and thank them for their service because I understand that every single day they're out there making shit money and risking their lives to truly try to make society safer. You know, so I have been transformed through the transformation of others and through my own work with these mushrooms. And it's just been a blessed journey, man, that I'm so grateful to be a part of.

That's a beautiful story. Keep going. Sorry, keep going. I just want to add that like, you know, what ultimately, you know, I say we and I say I interchangeably, you know, I am a reluctant leader. I don't, the reason I didn't want to do at church is I didn't want to be nobody's guru, you know. And in Jamaica, I found out that no matter what, people are going to put you on pedestal. If you're the one that is at the tip of the spear, people are going to think that you're the guy, you know, no matter how much you say you're not, no matter that you say, God is the one behind me, they're going to think it's you.

And I'm starting to come to terms with that. But ultimately, what we are trying to do at sanctuary is change the culture around religion and psychedelics because there is this mass movement to medicalize something that is painted on cave walls, man. You know as well as I do. This has been a part of our spiritual, metaphysical tradition. as long as we've been documenting anything. The oldest cave paintings literally depict psychedelic mushrooms.

You know, so for as much as I have worked and hired and I love therapist, I've got a therapist that I see right now. I'm not dogging the profession or the medical world. I broke my leg and they had to put a plate in my, you know, so thank you, allopathic medicine. And with psychedelics in particular, there needs to be, there needs to be a more holistic approach, you know. So I could go on a tangent and talk about that forever,

but I think I'll stop there for a minute. All right, guys, quick break to tell you about my brand new community, The Kingdom Within 15 months in the making. I've really been dialing this in. We're on school. If you want to learn about the body, the mind, connection, family, psychedelics, all the things. This is your place to do that.

This is about bringing people together who want to grow, who want to learn and are willing to make changes, but don't know how, or maybe don't think they have enough time, we're going to reframe that. We're going to reframe that through the wealth of knowledge that I've had in 30 years as an athlete and training under the best coaches in the world,

the best mentors in the world, and putting that all together. The last seven years I've been coaching people in fit for service, and now I get to be directly the coach with you guys. And I'm inviting in people that really want to work and people that are willing to make changes, and we're going to get that done. There's no two ways about it.

You will make changes. It will change your life for the better. I can assure you that. all you got to do is show up. We meet twice a month once for a lecture where I have a deep dive on a particular topic with some Q&A. And then again, two weeks later, just for a pure Q&A to make sure everyone's integrating and practicing and getting this stuff down. And then it asks me anything. You know, that's all going to be in there too. But we're also posting in between you guys are privy to special emails and things that I'm not sending out to my regular group. So detox pathways,

all the different things that you'd want to know. The questions I get on Instagram, I'm writing detailed reports for the people in this community to be able to get a hold of, and it's only $150 a month. It is the cheapest way to work with me possible. I hope to see you there. Click the link in the show notes for the kingdom within. And now back to the podcast. Yeah.

Now, I love that. Many great points, but that's such a beautiful story. I love how it comes, you know, the, we, Rogan said this before, not that that matters, but, you know, just how you don't want the guy in office who's itching to be president or itching to rule everyone. You know, like, it is a good thing to have the reluctance. And you think of Joseph Campbell's, you know, arc of the hero's journey, one of those stages is refusal.

It's saying, fuck this, I'm not doing it, you know? And then ultimately, if you keep listening, you have to acquiesce at a certain point. But that's such a beautiful story. And yeah, I get it on first responders. My son just turned 11, you know, and he's talked about wanting to be a police officer. And we have a lot of friends that are military.

And, you know, I told him, like, look, there's nothing wrong with being military. The problem is that, you know, our government doesn't give a fuck about those guys. And they create wars out of thin air just for money. And then, you know, good people go and die because of that. That's nothing to be a part of. So then he thought police officer and I'm like, well, let's talk about that. You know, it's an incredibly challenging job, you know?

Like, no one likes you. You put your ass in the line every day. They spend your fucking pension away before you even get to retire, you know. Firefighters have good, great friends. and firefighting. That was something when I was, when I was fighting the U.S.C. I thought of that is like, this is what I'm going to do when I finished. So, you know, did a couple years of school at the junior college, you know, became a nationally registered EMT, was going through interviews and all the things and hanging out at the firehouse, you know, doing mock interviews

and learning as much as I could. And one of my best buddies kept telling me, you know, he's like, the first thing, you know, dead serious. He's like, the first time you come across, this is in Phoenix. He's like the first time you come across a child floating in a pool and you have to interact with the parents. The kids fucking purple and bloated. There's no way to, it's been long dead, right? But they,

it won't register in their minds. It can't because they're parents, you know? And then they're telling you to save little Johnny. What are you doing? Save little Johnny, right? And he's like, that never leaves you.

And I was like, man, oh, it just ripped me in half thinking of that. And that's the first time, right? It could be fucking six in one summer. year after year. You know, so I don't know, I see how that hardens people.

I also see the benefit, you know, I had a buddy who I believe was a Marine. He runs a church out just west of Austin, I believe. He was on the podcast, and then he was in Austin firefighter for a long time. So he had the Marine background as well as the firefighting background. He said the parallels were unbelievable, you know, in all the things that they go through. So, you know, I have much total love and respect for those guys. And I think like these are the avenues that can hold people, you know, and help to bring them together. But the community piece, and you talked about that with Nathan about Waldorf, which is such an incredible education system.

It's a shame that they're all franchised, you know, like we had, Austin Waldorf was an awesome Waldorf. It still may be, honestly. But during COVID, the powers that be, you know, it wasn't a unanimous thing. a lot of people left a lot of teachers left a lot of the board members left i was buddies one of the guys on the board he runs vital farms eggs and they were a sponsor of the show you know and they were pissed because this guy who came you know from california he was a money guy didn't know who the fuck rudolph signer was was like hey we're going to follow cdc guidelines to the book wow you know we're going to do the mass we're going to do the at home education it's like we had to sign a

fucking one page document that said no screens whatsoever no cell phones right like you're like if you're used to watching Daniel Tiger, limit that instead of, you know, once a week, do once a month. If you're watching a Disney film, you know, once a week, change that to like twice a month and once a month, then not at all. Like that's the shit they were talking about. Like, now you expect my kindergartner for 1,400 bucks a month to sit in front of a fucking screen and do yarn work. Like, get out of here. So we, there was a homeschool co-op that started after that, that a lot of the Steiner teacher started. We liked that for a year. And then it would have been, because Kinderino in Waldorf is 4, 5, and 6.

And there's great reasoning behind that. But it would have been Bears' third year of Kinder. And my wife had been homeschooled all the way up until high school, and she's like, let's try it. And so, you know, it's been ups and downs, peaks and valleys, a lot of learning and education for us just as well. But it's been great. So that's what we've been doing. I still appreciate the hell out of, anytime I get a Steiner guy on the podcast, you know, whether it's Edvin Knighton or Chervine from Symbiotica, Joferial, like guys like that. I'm just like, tell me more.

Tell me more. Tell me about these seven-year processes. Tell me about, there's just so much, you know, from biodynamic farming to fucking any of his wealth and knowledge. It's hilarious to see, like, diehard Christians say he was an occultist and he believed this shit was like, dude, if he just fucking read what the guy talked about, like he was dialed, absolutely dialed. Yeah.

He could, he, his teachings, his information can contribute to psychedelic science more than any other discipline that I have studied. I have studied a breadth of esoteria. Cheong, like deep, deep, Chi-Gong teachings and the teachings of Rudolph Steiner describe and explain more of the phenomena than I have experienced as an observer and as an experiencer within the psychedelic space

than any other teachings across the board. I believe pretty strongly as well that quantum biology and the study of light, as a quantum material, as us as buildings of light, can contribute to psychedelic science beyond compare what psychiatry and clinical, even the neural imaging and studying the nervous system. That I believe, from my experience, my own personal studies, is downstream of what's happening.

I, I, there are traditions that speak to this. There are phenomena that speak directly to this that it seems to me, as I've observed this, that what is ultimately and primarily being impacted is the oric field or the etheric body, as Steiner talked about, right? This is why people start tripping before they eat mushrooms. This is why people start, sometimes you're tripping five minutes in. You didn't, your body did not digest that it's not, it's not a familiarity with the taste. This is why the shaman and, you know, even modern practitioners, which I could speak to some

of this, can can suck off illness from other people and transmute it through their own system, right? Because we are not primarily physical beings. And I feel very strongly that psychedelics, if studied properly, can help to illustrate that. Yeah. Yeah, you said something that hits the nail. It's kind of funny. You know, like, when I, I first started getting in ayahuasca and all of this that I'll say about ayahuasca, 100% goes alongside with psilocybin. But there was just less of that kind of, you know, the less conversation around the kind of things that ayahuasca had a little bit more lower to it, I guess, you know,

in terms of people talking about it. But when I got in ayahuasca, they're like, oh, you know, how do you find it? It's in all these different places. How do you know? And it's like, well, it'll find you when you're called to it, you know? And like, sure enough, like, that's exactly how it happened for me and other people. It just found its way to me. And, but like the moment, this has been many times I've sat with IA 30 sits, you know, so I'm not like, I'm more experienced than a lot of people, but no, nowhere near McKenna's or anybody else, like a Dr. Dan Engel in the thousands, different ballgame.

But in that, you know, like when I, when I choose to sit, you know, the moment I say yes and book my flight or take an intake questionnaire or whatever the thing is, you know, where it's like, now this is real. Downloads start happening in meditation when I'm on the shitter. If I slow down and take a bath, I have a lot. like one bath in the last two years but if i do take a bath you know like i can just a lot can come through and um it's incredibly odd to me you know it makes sense now but it's just weird how that happens like right when you say yes fucking weeks before medicine i'm not even in diety yet and i'm getting like visuals and like having dreams that are as real as as real life you know that have a point to them that are very clear like clear in the point of what it's trying to communicate to me there's no like deciphering and let me get this, you know, dream analysis book from a Jungian now, you know,

a Jungian guy. And it's like just right there like, oh, holy shit. Okay, this means this, heard, listening, you know. And that happens with psilocybin too, especially when you create the container for it in the same way and you hold it with respect and reverence and have intention. Absolutely. I've loved psilocybin for the fact that, you know, like, I'm sure you've read DNA in the Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby. I love that book. It was the first one where I actually saw someone talking about, you know, that they wanted to name Hermine, one of the alkaloids in the vine, telepathine, because people who took it at the same time could have telepathic transmissions. They could have the same vision or they'd have, be able to

communicate with one another. That happened to my wife and our fourth and fifth journeys together. We both saw, you know, we had the same vision of, of me holding a baby and her holding the two of us. And then it was a baby boy. And then fucking a month later, we got our little son on the way. And it was just, you know, those experiences will never leave me. I might lose memory. and things like that, but like, that's going to be with me until the day that I die. And, uh, Kalindi Ai was a great guy. You familiar with Kalindi?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was a, from Detroit, um, black guy, shaman, lifelong martial artist. Fucking incredible. He has some great videos on YouTube for people. I've talked about them in the past, but it's been a few years.

And, um, you know, I had a friend send me, you know, we were doing a lot of work with, with a community in a group called fit or service. So we'd, we'd have events with 100. 150 to 220 people and I'd be coached him for four months leading up to the event. We'd have the event. We'd do ecstatic dance, holotropic breathwork, everything but medicine, you know, and bringing guys like Peter Crone or Dr. Kelly Brogan and different experts and musicians to kind of work with us.

And those are awesome times. But one of my, you know, one of my close friends that I met in fit for service, she sent me a thing from Kalindi. And it was like, this guy says, you know, her, you know, shits on Terence McKenna's heroic dose of five grams and said he's been using 20 to 30 grand dose. there's no ceiling and he's been doing this for last 20 years and I just I text her back without even open him like this fucking clickbait dog shit nobody does that and for sure there's got to be a ceiling right you can't just get deeper and deeper one way and I just I set it back down and just like

an hour passed by and I can't fall asleep and I'm like fuck I got to watch this thing so I pull it up and immediately like Kalindi the way he spoke and articulated things was like this guy's more grounded than half the people I sit with an ayahuasca he has a deep appreciation for the background of each plant medicine, but he really loves psilocybin uniquely, you know, and he speaks to that in a really beautiful way. And all the ways indigenous cultures, even in Africa would use these things. And, you know, from lion hunts to, to, uh, writes of passage and everything in between. But, you know, hearing him, I just felt like I was getting permission, you know, and I had, um, quite a bit of psilocybin on deck. I had purchased an ounce

of penis envy. And, you know, I love strong mushrooms, but I remember looking at these and I was like, these don't, these don't look like large phallic. It just didn't look that way. And I didn't ask my buddy. I thought my buddy might have just given me the wrong bag or screwed me, you know, sold me some golden teacher for the same price as penis envy. For people that don't, penis embe is probably, it can be, you know, two to three X, the silesin content in there. And so I had done some microdosing with it and for some reason I didn't think that it was penis envy and I had 30 grams of that thinking like all right this is this is what I can use my 30 gram dose with oh to him and buddy that was I fasted the whole day it was a solo journey I had my wife checking on me from down so I was up in a

guest room upstairs and had her checking on me dropped in at 830 at night went till midnight did a whole podcast I went to like five levels of hell but before that it was pure light pure beauty and I just finished the DMT dialogues where they talk about you know Graham Hancock says like if you come across darkness, lean into it. It's there to teach you something. Don't just shy away. Every time they're like, oh, fuck, I see the devil. No, no, no.

And they snap out of it. They're like, damn it, I should have said yes. I should have seen what the hell that was about. So I have, I finished reading this like a day before this journey. And it's already like in the program. Like, all right, if something shitty happens, I got to lean into it. And this black wormhole comes off the wall. And I've got freaking alien beings that Kalindi talks about with softball eyes,

like the insectoid standing there. and making clicking sounds and shit. I was just like, this is fucking wow. And eyes wide open, look at it, I'm like, wow. And this mandala spins and this black hole comes out. And I'm looking at it. And it's blacker than black on the inside. I'm like, what is that?

I was like, oh, that's the darkness. And I remember asking myself, can I go in there? And the answer was yes. Right when I go in, everything that happened before was gone. It was like brand new journey. First level is me watching my wife explode. We had a miscarriage right before then. man, I didn't

I didn't realize how hard that was you know, like it was really fucking hard on both of us but um you know fairly calmly but still it hit like a Mack truck you know and so like I kept reliving that experience over and over and over again and I knew in my mind I was like oh there's a pattern here oh it's the same thing oh all right now she's going to explode

so like layer by layer of revisiting it until I truly didn't care but I mean it was like the by far and away the the heart experienced my life. I wouldn't wish it upon fucking Bill Gates or anybody for that matter. And, you know, I think the point behind that was that these were fears that I had, you know,

just running like a background app, taking up my bandwidth and taking up my energy. And some of them were conscious fears. Some of those were unconscious fears. They didn't realize I had until I visited. And I was like, yeah, that fucking scares me. You know, and it just took me through those over and over and over again until it was done. And midnight, I snap out of it and was like,

Scrooge. You know, I got wake up. I'm like, fuck, I'm alive. This is incredible. And I didn't even sleep that night. Just journaled and laid in bed and meditated. I don't think I'll be doing that again. But it was everything, you know, Kalendi could say and more.

And so I have such a respect. You know, I actually did a 15 gram journey with that same specimen later. And I was like, oh, this is penis. I mean, so I've had 15 grams of Golden Teacher multiple times. There's nothing like this, you know. And so it's just just an incredible, incredible experience. And I say that not to, you know, grant people permission, like build up to that, work up to that. You can't.

I have watched people lose their fucking minds on acid, lose their minds on cannabis even. Like, high-dose cannabis now with all the dabs and the oils and stuff like that, you know, and trying to talk sense to a person that's fractured and splintered their psyche, it's beyond my pay grade, you know. It's such a sad thing. it's one of the challenges of folks like us with the level of experience that we have talking about these things. It sounds as if we just arrived here. But this has been many years of building up and progressing towards it. And I think it's a very important part of the conversation to enter into,

especially, like you said, with cannabis is all being hyped up. Even mushrooms now, it's like, how strong can we get the mushrooms? Well, still to this day, I had a six gram trip that I was like, just fucking around. Like, I'll just eat some mushrooms. I swear to God, I literally sweated blood. It is a condition that can happen. Like I went before a firing squad multiple times. I got into this one spot where I'm just laying on the ground, just writhing and twitching.

And these beings, these the mantids, you know, are like, all right, we're going to operate now. And they start operating. And I like, I'm convinced that I'm bleeding internally. That's what happened. First of all, I'm like laying there thinking, I am fucking bleeding internally. I've got to get to a hospital.

And I'm just like by myself, out in the middle of nowhere on my farm. Like, I have got to get to a hospital. And something just like, I just had this resolve. You know, I have this, what I call the stay put muscle that I've trained into myself over years, fucking stay put, dig in, dig in. And so I just sat there with it. And they're like, these mantids came. And they're like, yes, you are bleeding internally, but it's because we're fixing your DNA.

And so I saw them like unravel my DNA, shred off all this junk, went through this cosmic, you know, family. history of intergalactic spy war and all this stuff that has later been confirmed, at least I've heard stories from others within the UFO community to talk about these traditions from indigenous tribes that share the story that I experienced that night. And so I had thrown my, the last thing I did before I collapsed on the ground was through my glasses at the moon. I was like, I'm done with these things.

So I threw my glasses at the moon, collapsed on the ground, went through all this stuff, just laid there finally went like at like four o'clock in the morning five o'clock in the morning I fell asleep for an hour or two woke up with the sun coming up and I went inside to go get my other pair of glasses and I looked in the mirror and I thought I had like look like mud mud on my forehead and I just thought I had been digging my face in the mud you know and so I took some water to splash it off and it turned red I was like what the fuck And so I got up close to the mirror and I could see like in the pores of my forehead was blood was blood.

And I was like, what the fuck just happened? And I go and read about it. And it is hydrohematosis is a medical condition that can arise. And it typically happens when people are in the right before they're executed. Like it's this stress response from the body. Whoa. Prior to that, like a couple of hours prior to the whole collapse, I. believed myself to be Jesus in the Garden of Gassimony.

Like I was experiencing Christ and I was walking through my own literal pepper garden, you know, and I was like experiencing myself as Christ because I had had this whole like, death was coming to get me. My ex-wife, who was a self-proclaimed witch, had sent death to get me. Like, that's how the trip started, you know, and I was like, but it just went. It was crazy. And it's still like sick gram.

So I like, the dose, there is. importance in the dose and what I've seen over the years is that the dose is not quite as important as we always, you know, think that it is. So like set and setting, my one thing that I have seen predictably that will bite you in the ass is just play around with it. Think you're just eating some mushrooms because that's what happened. Me and my buddy were going to eat three grams each. He bailed on me. It's like, ah, six grams ain't nothing. I'm good. Bump. Little did I know. And I've had 15, 20 gram trips that didn't come anywhere near that, you know. So, yeah, there's so much.

And then, you know, we haven't talked about. And I'm sure we don't have time now. But I think that there is some really valuable and important conversation to be had around the disclosure that's slowly happening. Let's open this up if you got a minute here. Let's talk about this because I think this is important. I was just laughing because Spielberg. has the new movie Disclosure Day coming out, right? It's going to be like a hundred million, you know, plus dollar that they've invested into.

It's a big-ass production as it should be, right? Spielberg movies are a classic and, you know, they're doing it right. Emily Blunt and I forget the Black British guy who's a co-star. They're getting interviewed by another British comedian who I follow on Instagram. And they're all, you know, asking each other just these lame-o questions, you know, like, oh, do you feel like the public is ready if we had a real, like, full disclosure kind of thing? and like, oh, we were going to ask you that. He's like, I don't.

You know, and I'm like, really? You don't fucking think that? I feel like we've had the carrot in front of the horse's mouth. Like we've been playing just the tip since 1950. Oh, no. Okay. I lost video. All right.

Any of you, as you're still on, I can still hear audio, then you're good. Like I said, no one will be watching this. You're good. So, you know, I was just like, this is the same crap that I would hear from the fucking media. It's worthless, you know? So I don't, I don't, uh, it's very annoying to me that people aren't like, yeah, tell us the fucking truth and let us deal with it. Um, but part of the thing that I'm, that I'm coming to see too is, you know, there, there may be more, you know, when it gets into like David Ike stuff with, with reptilians and, you know, P, Draco, whatever, lizard people,

that kind of shit. And then you hear like fallen angels type stuff, kind of the biblical, um, sense that there may be some crossover there or the uh you know the nature of uh humans you know having the the two the double bonded chromosomes that doesn't happen in nature because there's a telomeres in between right which clearly illustrates us being tampered with which also goes back to the emerald tablets and follows in line with the onanaki story creating us then or having a part in creating us you know like there's a lot of things that start to add up that perhaps the reason we're not getting disclosure is because the fact that it would paint a picture of who we are that would fry people in a way that they're not prepared for. Not just, oh, aliens exist, but like, yes, they do. And,

you know, they are our creators in a sense, not the creator, not the all, but that, you know, we have these bodies because of the tampering that took place from these beings. I was just laughing with you on text about the timing as soon as we get in the conversation of reptilians and you know the Anunnaki tampering with human DNA for the very

first time in 460 episodes the online version has shit out on us so we'll be just holds up yeah yeah it's interesting all right it's interesting and this is where my whole experience has really

started taking a turn I mean it was years ago that things got a little bit weirder, but in the last year and a half, man, I have had undeniably I don't know how to say it. So I guess the first thing is like you talk about you're talking about this

kind of manipulation of human DNA and how this would be too too much for the population to take. The thing is is that it's already in our stories, right? It's embedded into the biblical stories. It's embedded into the Sumerian, which not as many people know about that.

But it's part of our traditions already, just not explicit. And so in a way, I feel like there is some of the groundwork is laid for this to be accepted, although if it's been as much of an ontological shakeup for me as it has been, who have been exposed to this kind of literature and the spiritual experiences for years, and I can see it being a lot for John Q. Public to take. I don't think that necessarily means that we shouldn't have the conversations, and that's something that I have debated, particularly over the last year, as things have gotten more prescient for me.

One, I don't want to alienate my audience. You know, I'm trying to bring people to psilocybin in a grounded way that helps people improve the quality of their spiritual lives on a everyday basis, right? And then there are these undeniable realities and communications and interactions and interactions that are happening at a greater pace that it feels in ways that, you know, or the question that has come for me is, am I being presented with this in order to be an ambassador for it? the most profound

I don't know how far we want to get here a lot of this stuff I have not talked about publicly I wasn't going to put it to my book until like the next book I was thinking to bring it out but it's

fuck like I started having in 2020 I was told right before the retreat's closed, I was told while I was sitting up under a coconut tree that your next solo trip is going to be a level up. And, you know, after at that point,

it was 20 years in this work. I'm like, what is the next level? And, yeah, I don't know. How far do you want to go with this? How much time you want to do? We got all the time in the world, dude. Go, go, go, go, go. I've got another hour.

If we don't need to take a whole hour, but I've got another hour to have anything going on. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to share the story. And it may completely discredit me, but it's, no, it won't. This is awesome. Let's see. Let's see where it goes. All right.

So in 2020 or, yes, 20, no, shit, whatever, it's COVID. Never code hits. The last retreat before COVID, which would have been 2020, I guess. I'm sitting under this tree and get this message. You're going to upgrade. And so I come back home and sell the company. you kind of forget about that experience, you know? And I did not have an opportunity to do a solo trip because of time constraints and kids and all that stuff.

And so out of nowhere, storm comes through, wind storm comes through, knocks all the power out in, like, early March here in Kentucky, is still pretty cold. So my wife takes the kids to her parents, and I stay home to keep a fire going so that I can keep my snakes warm. So since I was a kid, I have been, like, I thought my profession was going to be as a herpetologist. I've been mildly, I've been kind of obsessed with snakes in my whole life. And then as I got into esoteric studies and I started to understand more about that, I became more curious, but never really had any kind of like solid answers as to why this was always with me. From like literally, instead of a teddy bear, I had a bikini strap that was my mom, that was my pet snake when I was like three years old.

right. And so I, they leave and I'm like, all right, cool. Time for me to eat my solo dose. I can do this now. And so I lay out five grams, think it's just going to be a moderate five gram trip, you know, the mushroom jump in my mouth. I've never had mushrooms just gone. I was like, what the fuck just happened? Usually I got to choke these things down. They just like, that was just, that almost did it itself. And so it comes on and immediately as it comes on, there is this like, hand on the back of my head puts me down on the ground. I'm just like prostrate on all fours right in front of the fire. My snakes are into big pillowcases by the fire that's going to keep it warm there.

And this voice says to me, we're going to show you why these snakes, why the snakes have always been with you. I'm looking at your shirt now. And I'm taken back through, first of all, it starts in Egypt. And I have, I've always kind of pissed on, like the whole, like, the whole, like, the whole, like, you know, I am not a woo-woo kind of guy. I have not been. I'm like, I don't want your crystals. I don't want your, I don't want your dream catchers.

I don't want none of that shit, right? You know, we're in a Latin pants? No, no, right? Now I got saw it, but I didn't then. I was like, it takes me into Egypt of all places, and I'm seeing these, like, high priests and they're sacred cobras, right? And then I'm like, all then I'm like, into the Mayan. And I see the Mayan and they're,

the Mayan cosmology, the snake, a serpent is central to it. And then, you know, in the Celtics, and there's the Celtic serpent. And like, I go through this, like, historical world tour of serpent priesthood, right? And it's not saying anything, but it's like, that's what I'm getting. And then, like, all of a sudden there is this, there is this presence that is more powerful. I have managed some fucked up situations with like possession type stuff, entities and beings that people just like I've dealt with some stuff. And I've never felt anything like this. And so like whenever something comes on that I don't know, I, Eric, don't know how to handle in my conscious mind.

I call in my guides. I call in Christ. I call in the highest of high teachers. And every single time, every single time immediately, it's like, all right, we're cool. This time, when I did that, the immediate response was, yeah, they worked for me. And I was like, whoa, okay, then what do I do with this? And there was like not a malevolence to it, but there certainly wasn't a benevolence. It was just power.

Like, this is the God of the earth type. Like, it was massive. And so I'm just like, all right, what? And then I go through this whole purging, and there's like a lot of stuff that I can't really remember, but it still has this kind of Egyptian-type feel to it. And so I come out of the experience just like covered and snogged, sweat it out like crazy.

My son, my 20-something-year-old son, comes home from work. He had been working at his restaurant job. He comes home and, And we're having a conversation. He's like, oh, what's you doing? I was like, yeah, I just took some mushrooms and ho. It's like, oh, cool, yeah, all right, whatever. So we talked for a while.

I have been having a nice conversation. And I'm still just kind of rattled by it. He goes to bed. I fall asleep. The next day I wake up, I'm like, all right, I got to understand this. Like, who was that? That was my question. Like, what was this entity?

Because that is nothing in 20-something years. I've not encountered anything like that. and so I go to my phone and I just type in Egyptian serpent cult is the first thing that I started going through and I start scrolling through and I'm not really finding anything

too impactful but I come across this character of Thoth and I have no knowledge of the Egyptian pantheon but I come across this character of Thoth and there's something about it that's just like I don't know something feels interesting there

And so I put my phone down. Well, my son, he, you're speaking about high-dose cannabis, he was predisposition from his mother's lineage for schizophrenia, and through excessive cannabis use, he became schizophrenic and expressed because we're in states. And he woke up that morning going into a break. And so he starts going into his break, and he's like, you know, starts cussing at me, getting real agitated, and he's outside just chain smoking cigarettes and joints. I can see him getting agitated, and I'm just like, put the phone down there.

He can have to deal with this. And so he comes in, and he's like, just like yelling at me. And he starts going, that's why you're thoth. You're thawth. And I was like, what the fuck? And so he goes into his bed, he comes in that, down to his bedroom, which is where I'm at now. and he just kind of is there doing his thing.

And so a little bit backtrack, six months prior to this, I was doing some work one day, like in the yard or something, I don't know. And I get this voice that says, you're going to be gifted a crystal skull. And like I said, I have had, I've owned zero crystals in my life, never at a crystal. And so I heard this or I got this. I was like, eh, that's just me. It's just me like listening to Bashar or watching Indiana Jones. That's just some noise, you know.

And so I dismissed it. Well, the morning after my son comes down into his bedroom and I'm sitting up there, I get a text from this guy out in Colorado who's like the hippiest of hippies. He was not like MDMA hook up. He's just a good old guy, but he's straight up hippie. And he messaged me and he's like, yo man, you're not going to believe this. He sends me a voice note on signal. He's like, yo, man, you're not going to believe this.

But I was in a meditation last night. And Thoth told me I have to send you this crystal skull. I was like, what the fuck? What? And so the month or so goes by and he sends me this massive crystal skull. And I'm like, what do I do with this? I don't even, I don't even know what to do with this, you know. So I just got to sit it on the shelf and don't know what to think of it.

About a month after that, so we're like in mid-July right now. And it must have been like, what was this, 26, I was 23, mid-July of 23. And a buddy of mine, a member of our church from out Midwest, calls me. And he, you know, the first time we talked, he was like, man, I've eaten, like, I've just, like, taken a little bits of mushrooms, and I get real weird. And I don't know, I think there's something going on. And so I'd always felt like he was like a channel or some of it, you know, I worked with a

lot of people who were very spiritually prying. And so the stories he was relating to me, I felt like there was something there. And I was like, well, let's eat some mushrooms together and find out, you know. And so he messages me. He's like, let's see, I'm ready, dude, let's do this. Come on, damn, huh? So it comes over, we'll go out in the middle of nowhere. And we're both at 7 p.m. take 7 grams.

And I, you know, I started a little fire. I got just a little fire there. And starts coming on. And he's getting like, like, chatty, chatty, chatty, but he's like talking gibberish. And he's like pacing and getting into these weird. like, oohla, woola, l'u. And I was like, oh, fuck, man, I was really not when the babysits might a night. I thought I was going to, you know. And so, like, before it got too intense, I, like,

turned my back and was just trying to have another, like a half an hour or so to myself. And so I'm sitting there with my back to hit to the fire, which is between him and I. And I'm just in my zone there trying to meditate, feeling it come on. And all of a sudden, I feel like he's yelling at me. I'm like, all right, I got time to go to work. All right, what's up? And so I turn around and he's sitting in a camping chair on the opposite side of the fire of me facing me and his face is flashing red and gold and he's going sooth so so soth i was like okay i think i know what's up here and this is fucking wild and so i like go over like all right like walk over to him and like okay i'm here to learn i'm here to learn and i'm just there

I got, like I said, I got the little fire going. And he's like, he's going, bye, bye, bye, bye, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, guy, a guy, a ka, ba, ba, ba. And I was like, as I was he doing this, I'm like remembering my time as a middle school teacher teaching Egyptian history. And I recognize that this is some Egyptian alphabet, right? The ba, the kha and the ha are components of spiritual, the spirit body. And he's doing this and he's pointing in his mouth and he's pointing at the fire. He's pointing in his mouth, he's pointed at the fire. I'm looking back and forth at the fire and his mouth.

And I start to see that the fire is responding to his intonations. And so when he would go, the fire would go down and he go and he it was like he did this for like five or ten minutes and I'm just watching this just in awe and when it gets down real low

at this one point and he looks at me he like sees that I'm getting it right and he goes and when he does the fire sparks are flying out of it I mean I was like what the fuck and so I like The next thing I know, I don't know, I'm like on my hands and knees in front of the fire.

And he like stands up. Pisses the fire out. Pisses the fire. I'm there. There's a stream of piss coming down from my head onto the fire and puts it out. And I'm just like, what the actual fuck is going on right now? The train has left the tracks, right? And so when the fire is out, he's like laughing.

He jumps on the fire. and it comes right back into being. But this time, it's three smaller. There's like a larger fire, a medium, and a smaller fire all kind of separate. And so he gets down on the ground and starts doing this like the sounds again. And now it's like going from the little fire to the medium fire. You can see it and feel it. And then he starts pointing at my mouth and the fire.

And he points at my mouth, his mouth, in the fire. My mouth, his mouth and the fire. And so I start doing the thing with him. and I feel this can I feel that I'm seeing the fire responding I'm feeling it connected and I understood it in that moment as it relates to the kumbolini fire you know and the breath and the spirit and uh later on that evening thank God if I didn't have my dog there I don't know my dog is the one that proved to me it was all good because like even after that even after all that madness like he starts being. and this like, he's like, I didn't, I didn't, at the time, I couldn't have found words for it, but after he was talking to me and he was like, man, this was like, I felt like I was like a mantis. And like, that is exactly what I experienced. And there is this, in UFO lore, there is this mythology or information that's passed down that says that the mantids are like

pure emotional. and that they are really, like, powerful beings, but they're also very vulnerable. And there was this component of raw power, but just like inherent vulnerability. And so this whole thing just went on for hours. It did not let up until 7 a.m. when the sun came up. I've never had a mushroom trip to do that, 7 to 7. And so all that shit goes down, and I'm like, all right, what is going on here? I'll start reading into the stories of Thoth, and Thoth is connected to Inki, the Sumerian Onanahi God.

Inki and Unlil, the two brothers, yeah. And Inky is the one who gave humans fire, who taught humans language. Thoth is the god of language and magic and all this. And so I'm like, you know, what do I do with this? And I get kind of like other clues of how to work with the skull and whatnot. Well, the most recent thing that happened that is just as baffling as any of this is on, and again, like, I've never been into astrology, never was into any of that stuff. Well, this year, there was an alignment between, at the first degree of areas, between Neptune and Saturn, at the first degree of Ares, that was the first time this had happened in 9,000 years. okay this happened two days after a solar eclipse the solar eclipse um and saturn are both um the auriboris is a symbol for both right because the orboris is this

huge passage of time saturn is the keeper of time et cetera as i've come to study well like i said i got snakes I got a bunch of snakes here in my room with me. And I came downstairs the day after the solar eclipse, the day before the Neptune, the Neptune Saturn alignment, I came downstairs and my snakes had shed. And one of them had shed into, when I say an auroboros, I don't mean like the tail of the skin was touching the mouth. I mean, I have it in a frame right now.

the tail is like six, eight inches down inside. And this was a baby snake. So it's like a 12 or 24 inch, remember about a 24 inch 18 inch shed. And like a full like three eight inches, three to five inches of it is down inside the mouth. I miss more that. It's like it's fucking ridiculous, man. It's like I cannot figure out how it happened. I can't figure out how it happened.

And the first place that the auriboris was ever found. symbolically was in King Tut's tomb on the Egyptian Book of the Dead. So, you know, like for me, what is important or what's meaningful here is to consider that these intelligences are actively interacting with us and that that is something that we can be in touch with and that there is real world value and meaning in that. I don't take these things that have happened and start a cult or even tell people about it. I just like I sit in meditation with these objects and I ask for answers on what I'm supposed to do in my daily life that can help advance consciousness for humanity.

So the UFO phenomena and the, it's, you know, McKenna talked quite a bit about this, how UFOs inherently expand our content. consciousness, these encounters and experiences inherently expand our consciousness, and the psychedelics can expand our consciousness and give us the capacity to communicate and perceive and understand that we are embedded in innumerable, infinite layers of reality that we can actually communicate with, interact with, and be assisted by and assist ourselves. Steiner's work has taught me the same thing. Right now I'm reading an outline of occult sciences,

and I just read a book on angels by one of his students. And, you know, the misportrayal of aliens, you know, Jay Vance has come out and said that, you know, they're all demons. Like, that is as much a sciop as they're all angels, right? Right. So there's something very valuable and very important for us as a species or whatever humans are, the phenomena that humans are,

there's something very valuable and important for us to explore here in advancing the evolution of our planet and our species, I believe. And psychedelics are an intrinsic and part of that. Fuck yeah, brother. That was so awesome. I'm so happy you shared that. That was incredible. Incredible.

Yeah, buddy. Well, we'll do this again. I definitely have some stories for you, too, on that, you know, with the mantis beings. At first I wasn't certain when I saw them. I was like, I'm doing a solo journey. I'm on the highest dose of ever had.

And I just asked them like, are you here for me? I just finished DMT dialogues. Are you here on my behalf? Or did I fuck up and I'm in trouble? You know, and they just, you know,

they speak in the clicking. And I'm like, I don't understand the language, you know? And just one of them takes two long fingers and touched my balls. And I just feel like this wave of loving energy move through.

what would be the lower dantien, you know, like just all the way through and expanding up into the thoracic. And then right here on the side of my head where I had my worst ass beating in the UFC was against Glover to Cher. I got hit with two perfect hooks in the same spot in the temple. And I was the one time where I didn't even know how to get back to the locker room. I just didn't tell anybody because I didn't want to get under suspension. But I was fucked. And didn't even party that night. You know, I've always partied after the fights, win, loser, draw.

And I was like, I probably got to be good at my brain on this one. But they touched that. And that loving, loving, swelling energy just moved through my head. And that's what made me feel comfortable enough to saying yes to entering the darkness. So there's, you know, I just, I love hearing shit like this. I love staying open. I remain open to the fact that we know very little about, you know, our own lives, the nature of reality. And but, you know, asking it is given, you know, like the more we open ourselves to the potential

disease realities and say, yes. to what is available than, you know, if we're in the right space, I think Greer had it right, you know, that if your, if your heart is in the right capacity, that's an invitation to the benevolent beings, you know, they can read that more than the shit coming out of your mouth, more than what your mind's thinking, more than how bad you want it, is where is your heart at? And that is the invite for these guys to come in and help. Yeah, the last thing I'll say is that you shared that on that podcast with Eric, I can't remember his last thing, but they got out of, yeah, y'all got deepened the conspiracy, which I

love that. But there is a consistent phenomena of people experiencing whatever, objects, craft, whatever we want to call it, on that tail end of the mushroom experience. I've had several myself, and I think that it is related directly to what you're saying, is that you come in that state, your heart is open, your mind is open, and they're like, all right, he's ready, she's ready to listen, she's ready to hear and see now. So, yeah, they're calling, They're calling. That's not something I would have, you know, been able to say years ago, even though I'd have many experiences that I'd deny out,

but there's something shifting on this planet. And I'm so grateful to be a part of it. I'm really grateful to be connected with folks like yourself who are part of this awakening. I appreciate everything that you're doing, sharing these conversations. And I'm really, really grateful to be, you know, part of your playlist now, my friend. Thank you so much, brother. If people are listening to this and they have an inkling to sit with you, where would they go about that?

How would they go? Which channels they need to get to? which websites and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Show notes. Sanctuary.org, Sanctuary with a P, is the avenue that we have for equitable access. Those ceremonies are donation-based. It's always super important to me that that is an option.

I also do private work. That is at Eric S. Osborne, OSB-R-N-E dot com. Someone can sign up for that there, work with me there. That's a mandatory 12-week program. I want to spend real time with people and help them really dig in and they get the most out of these experiences and whatever. and share and help with them there. I got my own podcast on Eric Esauz.

Eric Oswald, more on YouTube. It's also out there on Spotify and all that stuff. And I think it's about it. TikTok. I'll be doing some TikToks and stuff, having some fun with that. That's a little more informal.

But yeah, I'd love to see some of your audience out there and, you know, build and grow our, connect our communities. Absolutely, brother. Thanks again. We'll do it again, brother.

Sounds great.