This post was originally given as a sermon on 5/17/2026 at Bell Street Chapel, Providence RI
You have heard me say before that two of the best decisions I’ve ever made, certainly that I’ve made in the past ten years were made under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms. This is a fun, flashy statement but it also happens to be true. The clarity that I felt in those moments was revelatory, the acceptance of the answers I received virtually complete, as if I were being advised on the matter by a trusted teacher or a guardian angel.
It’s a rather shocking thing to consider. How is it possible that such clarity could be accessed simply by ingesting a few grams of a mushroom? And how is it that this clarity can be vindicated over such a long period of time, long after the effects of the drug had worn off? Did I already know what I wanted down deep and somehow the mushrooms plumbed the depths? This seems likely. But what about questions I never thought to ask, desires I didn’t know I had, paths in life I never really considered? How do psychedelic states access these landscapes in our minds and, more importantly to our conversation today, what do they say about our normal decision-making processes?
The late Dr. Roland Griffiths, neuroscientist and psychopharmacology researcher from John Hopkins University, is considered one of the leading academics that launched a new wave of research into the personal, spiritual, and medical effects/benefits of psychedelics. In an interview Dr. Griffiths spoke of the shock he encountered when he first began administering psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, in controlled studies. These studies were conducted so that patients were blindfolded, what some call a therapeutic dose or therapeutic trip. The participants who were given the active compound reported deep spiritual/mystic experiences and reported long-term benefits weeks, months, and years after the trials were conducted. Shocked by the results Dr. Griffiths followed up with many of these participants, asking them to compare the psychedelic experience to other experiences in their lives. They reported that the therapeutic trip they had in his lab was as profound to them as their wedding day or the birth of their children.
Since then (and actually many, many years previously) many researchers have validated Dr. Griffith’s work. The benefits that people have reaped through psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD include relief from major depression, substance abuse disorders, end-of-life crises and so on. Today therapeutic trips administered by professional therapists are becoming more and more common.
As interesting as all of that is (and certainly worthy of a Sunday service) I would like to explore with you the more mystical side of what Roland Griffith’s work helps validate and vindicate. There is a spiritual aspect, or at least a spiritual lens that we can look through to analyze and invite psychedelia into our lives. “Psychedelia” is a word I will be using to refer to not only mystical experiences resulting from ingesting psilocybin or LSD but also meditation and/or breathing exercises.
I believe that our deeper desires, wants, and potential are occult things or forces, hidden things or forces, that can be revealed to us through psychedelia. This to anyone who’s experienced these phenomena will be obvious. But what has shocked me is that I’ve come to see these processes as beyond psychology, beyond the boundaries of neuroscience and pharmacology. I believe these occult desires are vestiges of a greater spiritual reality and are always good, are always benevolent. I believe that these occult desires spring from a well of benevolence and love inside us as well as between us and so are not confined to our own bodies and brain. I believe that these desires for ourselves reflect our desires for one another and at their core are always good. In fact, I believe that these desires are not just our desires but, rather our destinies and explicitly related to our responsibilities to each other. I believe within this framework of exploration we can uncover our purposes in life and our collective salvation.
With your permission this is what I’d like to discuss with you today.
So, to begin:
To prescribe purpose to a thing is to treat it teleologically.
Before the Enlightenment of the 16th and 17th centuries the Western intellectual world was dominated by a school of thought known as Aristotelean scholasticism. This perspective viewed the universe through a teleological lens. That is to say, according to this worldview, everything in the universe has a corresponding purpose, an intention, a goal. This included everything from rocks and birds, to triangles and people.
Christian church fathers and intellectuals adopted this fatalistic, purpose-driven worldview from the pagan philosophers and adapted it to Christianity. A famous lived-example of teleological thinking centers the renowned church father Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas walked in a marketplace with a wealthy friend who offered to buy him anything he wanted. Aquinas suggested that his friend purchase all the caged birds in the market. When his friend gladly does so Aquinas opens the cages and sets all the birds free… because what is a bird but to fly? That’s teleology. The bird’s purpose is to fly.
Modern society since the 16th century has attempted to do away with teleology and for good reason. Assigning purposes and roles to things generally is arbitrary and often highly problematic. The obvious, oppressive examples of this are easy to think of: The ideal woman, for instance: the home-keeper, the mother, the faithful wife, while the ideal man is the warrior, the protector, the provider, and so on.
This kind of thinking of course is still persistent but overall the intellectual world and liberal society has rejected it in favor of a more open, individualistic and reason-based worldview.
When I was in school studying botany my professors would chaff if students referred to plants as “wanting” things, such as sunlight or good soil. They did not approve of us referring to plants, which are things without central nervous systems, as being “happy” or “content”. They said this was teleological thinking. This was antiquated and poetic thinking and was rejected in favor of a more mechanical worldview. Plants didn’t “want” things. They didn’t “want” to grow towards the light, they were compelled by hormonal imbalances induced by stimulation from the sun. This is the “proper” way to think of a plant, as essentially a living machine.
This proper way of thinking never felt proper to me.
So teleological thinking says we all have inherent purposes and predetermined roles to play and are moving towards an ideal future while modern, mechanistic thinking says No, there is no ideal man, no ideal woman, no ideal chicken, no ideal rock, no ideal future. We do not live in a fatalistic universe, we have no ideal destiny and reason is our exclusive tool for navigating our lives. This dominant type of Western thinking rejects fatalism.
For me both points of view seem right and also wrong.
In eastern philosophy we encounter fatalistic thinking as well. The concept of dharma is one that can sound a lot, quite a lot, like teleological (purpose-driven) thinking. However, dharma comes to westerners with a bit less baggage and with some compelling spiritual/mystical facets that both teleology and mechanistic thinking lack. I’ve come to think of dharma as something of a bridge between these two exclusive worldviews.
For the dharma there are essentially two important goals in life. One is to enjoy yourself through your own personal creative pursuits. This includes everything from how you organize yourself around friends, family, and your creative enjoyment. According to the dharma there is an ideal arraignment of these things that apply specifically to you (so we’re not talking about the ideal man but the ideal John) and, if in balance, can be perfectly in harmony.
The other goal is how you apply yourself to the common good. How you employ yourself in your civic pursuits, your work and your efforts on behalf of your community. This is the puzzle of what will be most harmonious to the world around you in terms of the work you do and the efforts you exert to better you community.
Basically it’s a collection of all the most important and most difficult questions we can ask. Boiled down the dharma seeks to answer the fundamental questions: who are we, and why are we here?
Now, within this philosophy is the concept of the dharma path. There are many paths in life one can take but according to the dharma there are only certain paths of which you will most harmonize with. This is where the dharma moves away from rational thinking to spiritual insight because you cannot think or rationalize your way onto the path. You have to feel you’re way and, this point can’t be underestimated: you have to be led to the path. The world around us and inside us guides us to our dharma path.
To the second point of the dharma, regarding our working lives, in the US we often think of this process quantitatively, rationally. For example if you were to go to a guidance councilor they may look at your report cards and say “you’re very good at math, you should be an engineer, an astrophysicist, an accountant.” To take one quantitative aspect of yourself and extrapolate it out would provide you with many, many options and soon, as many young people are, you are paralyzed by choices. By adding more facets to the equation (I’m good at math, I like basketball, I enjoy smutty romance novels, I can memorize the Gettysburg address) often only muddies the waters further until it is very hard to know what to do and how to build a fulfilling and enjoyable life.
Many people are waiting for their futures to be revealed to them. They are waiting for revelations. Sometimes they come. I’m sure you have experienced moments of clarity and epiphanies in your life. If you’re lucky you’ve had moments of profound clarity when your life after the epiphany is irrevocably different and better from what it was before. You’re in the car and suddenly you realize you no longer love your boyfriend, or you hate your job and quit that afternoon, or you suddenly feel compelled to write a novel. This is one way we are led; one way the dharma path is revealed, through these sober, lucid epiphanies, these revelations of our subconscious.
However many people spend a lot of time waiting for moments like this. I had a young man working for me some years ago. When I asked him what he was interested in doing he said, “I dunno, I’m just sort of waiting to have a really good idea.” He very well may still be waiting.
I believe that the dharma path is a real thing and by a real thing I mean that I believe there is something like a rolling template for each of us, all things, even abstract things like oceans, farms, and church buildings. I believe that these templates have insight into our past present and future. I believe that we have well suited orientations in life toward all the things the dharma mentions: work, love, play, adventure.
I have come to believe that rational thinking and ethical thinking can get us on an okay path if we’re lucky, something more or less suitable to our nature, but that spiritual insight is required for us to truly harmonize with our surroundings and each other. What’s more is I believe that these orientations, these dharma paths, are all fundamentally good, beneficial to us as individuals and to each other. I do not believe the universe is inherently good but I do believe there is intention within it somehow to be so.
I agree with Roland Griffiths, the neuroscientist I mentioned early, that psychedelics are the best tools we have for reaching these revelatory spaces, these spaces that reveal to us the dharma.
When we engage in psychedelia, whether through psychedelic substances or meditation etc., it is thought that we shut down a part of our brains known as the default mode network. The default mode network can be summed up as our ego. The ego is the functional part of our personalities that we often misinterpret as ourselves. The ego is that dominant voice in our heads, that prodding, insistent chattering force that got us out of bed and got us to church this morning. It’s the voice that reminds me when I’m writing essays in the morning that I have a lot of planting to do this time of year and makes sure I’m being a good dad or a good husband. It is the loudest voice in our heads. But it is not the only voice. One of the most fascinating things about experiencing therapeutic psychedlia is when you reach a degree of manifestation that you realize you are observing the voice of the ego from outside of it. It is a truly riveting moment. Michael Pollen in his book How to Change Your Mind described a psychedelic experience where his ego covered him like a blanket and then blew apart like so many post-it notes revealing a calm and observant self beneath. I’ve experienced similar states myself through psychedelics and meditation.
The ego is a very useful thing. However, for whatever reason it is particularly skillful at stamping down our subconscious and by doing so keeps us off of our dharma path.
By shutting down the default mode network, by shutting down the ego, we are able to manifest our subconscious (the word psychedelic means literally mind manifesting). The revelations and clarity we can have in these manifested states are called noetic experiences. They are the type of experiences that once you’ve had them you can’t un-have them. They are the kind of revelations that often feel irrevocably true to the person experiencing them, like pure clarity. Let me give you a few brief personal examples:
I proposed to Mindy during a noetic revelation as we both were coming down from a psilocybin trip. I had been uncertain about what marriage meant to me until that moment. I realized in a flash that what I wanted was to validate my feelings for Mindy by being more than just her long-term boyfriend. It was a clarity that I had not had until then. And I knew the moment was perfect to propose, so I did. A year later, the day before our wedding at the farm we returned to that same spot by Step Stone Falls to receive a blessing from Margaret Weiss the former minister here (at Bell Street Chapel). Somehow that spot feels more than special to me. It feels holy, where truth was revealed to me.
Years later, curious about more direct, explorative, therapeutic psychedelia I approached a trip blind folded and asked for guidance on my spiritual self, which always felt unclear to me. During that afternoon blindfolded at my kitchen table I had a profound spiritual experience, which I will not bore you with now. I also had three noetic experiences (which I will bore you with now):
I realized that I wanted to be a member of Bell Street Chapel. A congregation I had always hovered around seemed to be calling me into the circle. At that time I had been coming here as a renter for thirteen years. The very next weekend after this trip Mindy and I were attending services.
The second noetic experience I had that afternoon was that I wanted to grow a beard. I’m still working on that.
These two things may not seem so revelatory. Maybe I would have come to them eventually on my own or after some years of therapy. They are I suppose somewhat predictable. The third revelation however completely shocked me. As these noetic revelations were coming I suddenly realized that I wanted to be a preacher. I wanted to do what I am doing right now. This was a shocking realization. It is very hard for me to believe that I would ever have come to the decision to preach without the manifesting of my subconscious through psychedelics on that Friday afternoon in July of 2021. This, among other things is my dharma.
The reason behind the reason I believe the dharma path is real is because other things seem to corroborate with it. In 2021 and 2022 I was confronting and grappling with some of the stranger things that have happened to me in my life: psychic phenomena, my odd life path and so on. In 2022 a friend of mine suggested I explore Tarot. I have been exploring it ever since. I consider myself a student of Tarot, not an expert, but have been practicing and investigating it for several years. Tarot completely broadsided me, especially surprising since in my earlier years I would have dismissed it as utter nonsense.
Tarot cards are divination instruments. You’ve seen these images referenced in pop culture if you haven’t used them yourselves.
They are similar to the many other culturally specific divination techniques. The tradition of Ifa divination, for example, is culturally specific to parts of Africa and instead of images on cards involves tablets and sand to perform divination. Tarot is effectively western (western-pilled as my younger friends would say) although some of its traditions may come from North Africa. It is a collection of symbols, archetypes, and occult concepts arraigned into a deck of 78 cards, similar in many ways to playing cards.
I have been practicing and learning about Tarot now for about four years. What I have discovered, or believe to have discovered, is evidence for the dharma path within the divination techniques of the Tarot. I will speak of it in the affirmative, even though you and I will have questions about how true this may be. I have witnessed that the Tarot, like psychedelia, reveals the subconscious of the Querent (the person asking the question of the cards). It has the ability to do so in the past, present, and future context, and, most shocking of all to me, it consistently does so in a benevolent and helpful way. I have witnessed this countless times with several decks across all kinds of people, including skeptics and true believers.
I once relayed a predication to a family member who is a powerful person in the academic world. She said, “The cards were right!”
I said, “The cards don’t lie.”
That has become something of a mantra for me with Tarot. The Cards Do Not Lie. They do not manipulate or tip toe. Like Father Greg Boyle says of his role at Homeboy Industry, they “shine a light” on the light switch. You have to flip the switch yourself.
This may sound fantastic however I have come to believe that the cards seem to have the Querent’s best interests in mind. For every question there seems to be a proper path forward. For every reading, the Querent’s best interest is in the mind of the deck. If the Querent is not on that proper path the cards will reveal it, often to the dismay of the Querent.
Tarot can often be a bummer.
“Bad tidings” are never welcome of course. However, in my experience giving many readings for others and myself, though the answers may sometimes be unwelcome they are always with the Querent’s best interests in mind. And what are the Querent’s best interests? I believe they are those things that best harmonize with their dharma. They are the things best aligned with their purpose in this life.
I will leave a deeper exploration of Tarot and divination for another Sunday, if you’ll tolerate it. Instead to conclude I’d like to focus on the root of this topic: which is that there are powerful, mystical methods allowing us to explore what will satisfy us in this life and benefit our community. Some of us have a powerful intuition allowing us to move through life fluidly and happily, allowing us to avoid many detours and conflicts. Others of us struggle to walk our own path. Psychedlics, meditation, and divination are more than just tools, in fact it feels distasteful to speak of them as such. They are ways of connecting with divine purpose within us and outside of us. Not in the ideal sense, like teleologically conforming to someone else’s idea of how we should be, and not in the mechanistic sense, as if to say there is no purpose to life except to relieve each other of discomfort and maximize our joy… but in a richer place where our subconscious is intimately entwined with those around us and so invested in the outcome of the greater whole.
In such a place we can have extraordinary insights and hopefully do some good for ourselves and for everything that walks the path.
May it be so.