In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with Bob Otis, the founding pastor of Sacred Garden Community Church and a leading advocate for the decriminalization of sacred plant medicines. Bob is deeply involved in psychedelic spirituality and serves on councils dedicated to the protection of sacred plants.
We touch upon topics such as:
Bob’s journey with psychedelics and founding Sacred Garden (01:16)
Mystical experiences and spiritual connection through plant medicines (04:14)
The relationship between psychedelics and Western religion (06:32)
Bob’s perspective on starting a church for plant medicine (15:19)
Ethical considerations and challenges of leading a psychedelic church (47:20)
The Decriminalize Nature movement (59:34)
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats, go to http://www.lawayra.com
Find more about Bob Otis at sacredgarden.life.
Transcript
Sam Believ (00:02)
Hi guys and welcome to Ayahuasca Podcast. ⁓ As always, we do the whole assembly of today I’m interviewing Bob Otis. Bob is ⁓ the founding pastor of Sacred Garden Community Church and a leading advocate for the decriminalization of sacred plant medicines. He’s deeply involved in psychedelic spirituality and serves on Chakruna Council for the protection of sacred plants, working towards ethical and sustainable practices in plant medicines. Bob, welcome to the show.
Bob (00:33)
Thank you, it’s lovely to be here.
Sam Believ (00:35)
Bob, before we begin diving deep, ⁓ can you tell us a little bit about your story, your life story and how it brought you to work with plant medicines?
Bob (00:46)
Yeah. And actually, you you had talked about that bio and I will give a little just because of, ⁓ I want to be an integrity. I ⁓ had been really grateful to be a part of that Chacruna council and then moved to ⁓ founding the, co -founding with others, the sacred plan Alliance. I’m no longer on that Chacruna council and Sam, thank you for letting me clarify that. I could have cut that earlier. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s really have appreciated Chacruna, but want to be an integrity about, about that relationship. Yeah.
Bob (01:16)
You were asking kind of about background ⁓ and it’s interesting and actually having just been talking about chakruna, ⁓ it makes an interesting lead in because there are different ways I think into what I’ll call the entheogenic awakening, the psychedelic awakening, this sort of time that we’re in. ⁓ And a lot of people will move into this space through having heard about ayahuasca. This is called ayahuasca podcast and people have learned that you can go down to
Bob (01:46)
locations, maybe in Colombia or Peru or Brazil or Bolivia and access these, what you call medicines or sacred medicines, what I call sacraments from my culture and tradition. ⁓ And so there’s a really kind of a path that has become very wide and well -trod over the past, I’ll say five years or 10 years into the South and receiving ayahuasca or maybe Wachuma and others.
Bob (02:16)
Whereas my background and heritage is really much more global. And I would call it even modern or postmodern, in fact, probably even trans modern or meta modern. And so my first really deep and meaningful experience that has guided my life to this day was over 40 years ago, sitting on the side of the Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee, where my family had been for nine generations. So.
Bob (02:44)
In some sense, you know, I really feel a deep connection to that space. We have lived in the land with property even inside the Smoky Mountains Park ⁓ for a long time. So I just felt really connected to that place. And ⁓ even with all of its history, ⁓ Cherokee Tennessee was very near where that was. So just thinking about the indigenous peoples that have been there and are still in that area, it’s just a rich conversation. But anyway, sitting up there in the Smokies,
Bob (03:14)
with LSD, ⁓ a ⁓ European sacrament, really, you know, that came from Albert Hoffman ⁓ and was with a group of really trusted friends. And we were sort of truth and infinity ⁓ oriented, trying to understand. This was in my teens. We were, ⁓ I’m so thankful to have been with a group that was seeking to deepen rather than ⁓ only to ⁓ recreate. We were also happy to be together and enjoying ourselves, but really kind of seeking
Bob (03:44)
truth or knowledge or wisdom, whatever that may be. And just had a moment with a relatively high dose of LSD where I was sitting apart from the group. And it was as if ⁓ one of those mystical experiences that you’ll hear about that these sacraments can open. ⁓ it was, and ⁓ I could start crying telling the story, I probably won’t today, but you know, it was as if time stopped and the entire universe became solid light.
Bob (04:14)
and my body dissolves in my sense of self extended outward into, it ⁓ felt like maybe all things and in all time. ⁓ And ⁓ it was just a really profound experience also as if consciousness were in all things and as if all things were known and loved and held in love. ⁓
Bob (04:39)
In a sense, forgiven, but deeper than that word, you know, so it was just a really profound experience that was really healing. And I couldn’t even put any words, even those words I just put on have taken me 20, 30, 40 years just to start putting words into that experience. But it also was guiding me to learn more. I went to my own father who was a medical doctor and I was thankfully able to trust. I’d seen some books by folks like Charles Tard and John Lilly.
Bob (05:09)
in his library, these sort of Western early psychedelic aficionados. So I felt safe talking to him and he said, let’s go to the library and check out all the books. And so I found psychedelics encyclopedia and ⁓ some of these down at the Oak Ridge public library. And that just started a lifetime of study, leading me to receive psychology degrees and religious study degrees and an ⁓ MDiv and studying with Wendy Doniger at University of Chicago, who was a sacred
Bob (05:38)
global sacred plant expert. So those like profound, deeply meaningful experiences that these entheogens can bring can really impact our lives. ⁓ And I think sent me in a ⁓ direction that helped me grow closer to my family, helped me grow closer to meaning, I think in this life and have led me to here. There’s one little story, hope that was useful.
Sam Believ (06:02)
Very useful, thank you so much for sharing. ⁓ Religion is something that I’m planning to talk about ⁓ on this episode. And you mentioned LSD, right? And there’s some good ⁓ way to explain the relationship between, you know, Aragoth and Kukion and, ⁓ you know, ⁓ Greek religions and maybe even early Christianity. I ⁓ think you probably would know a lot about that. ⁓
Sam Believ (06:32)
What have you found in that direction as in connection between psychedelics and religion? ⁓
Bob (06:39)
It’s so interesting and also I’m hearing a little bit of around. Sort of a Western religions, you know that you mentioned Greece and Christianity and and some of these and. This is such a rich. I won’t say story because I think there are stories you know there are are such rich stories associated with this and the first one, which I’ll share with a little bit of grief is my sense is that you know the indigenous plant practices of.
Bob (07:08)
the European continent, which still exists in some areas, like in Finland with the Sami peoples and the Laplanders in the far north and Tungus all the way out in Siberia. ⁓ There are these still living indigenous traditions of what someone might call the global north. ⁓ But Europe really, I think in many ways, was the first of
Bob (07:33)
of the ⁓ humans around the globe where something that we might call modernity ⁓ pushed all that down, you know, where we were somehow. It’s like the indigenous, I’ll say religions or the indigenous sacred practices of meaning, ⁓ which were present. And we could talk about some of those. You mentioned, you know, the Kikeon and, ⁓ and Eleusis and they’re really interesting quotes from Shakespeare.
Bob (08:02)
where he mentions different, even even mentions toad in a really interesting way. There’s the bufo bufo in Europe and that bufotnene can have an effect. So there are a lot of indications ⁓ authors like Karl Rook and Brian Murorescu and Jonathan Ott and many others ⁓ have written about that we lost. And this wasn’t only European, also even in the Middle East and even in the Far East, there seemed to be something that was
Bob (08:31)
that was happening, ⁓ starting as far back as maybe 1 ,500 years ago and then accelerating all the way up until recent times, where we were learning to see objects. We were creating science. We were getting this subject -object distinction really clear and becoming empirical. All of this was happening. And I think that’s very strong magic that that science is bringing. And so I feel that there was probably a lot that was really compelling.
Bob (09:01)
I’m just trying to understand the story. then as a part of that, the indigenous plant practices were considered to be like superstitious or witchcraft or harmful. They weren’t in alignment with the sort of sky god religions of Christianity or Judaism or Islam or some of those. And so something happened starting probably 1500 years ago, but then we can talk about different times, know, there are inquisitions and
Bob (09:31)
And even in the last 50, 75 years in the United States where we had the drug laws, ⁓ right? So my personal feeling is the Irish islands where I came from, ⁓ the areas of Greek, the European mainland, they were all holding indigenous sacred plant practices. For me, they, that I will call that religious or religion. And
Bob (10:00)
We’re speaking from the languages of our culture, Sam. You may be thinking more from a, I don’t want to be projecting to you, but for example, just to use examples, you may be coming from more of a Colombian culture where you think about plant medicine and ⁓ some things like Pachamama. And ⁓ it’s more of a almost like a cultural healing, self -healing medicinal type of practice. Again, don’t let me, I’m just, I’m projecting. It may not be accurate, but.
Bob (10:28)
For example, there are these different ways people will look. Whereas for me, I am coming out of a Western background. That’s my family heritage. ⁓ On my dad’s side of the family, there were two medical doctors and two pastors and a nurse who married a pastor. Right? So this is my culture and my language that I’m coming out of. So for me, the experience that the sacraments brought were of what I might call divine presence, right? Or divinity.
Bob (10:55)
I’m not so comfortable with the word God because there’s a lot of other cultural baggage that I may not agree with, but it might have been as if God were present, you know, with that sacramental experience. Certainly what I would call the divine. But what it means to you may be different. For me, that may be that spirit of universal love. For someone else, it may be the spirit of Christ. For someone else, may be ⁓ Mother Iah coming and guiding them. Like, it seems like this experience may be different based on our culture.
Bob (11:24)
For me personally, it’s a profoundly religious experience. ⁓ Coming from, for example, this Western philosopher, William James, who talks about religion as those experiences, I’m not going to get the quote exactly right, that the attitudes, experiences, sentiments that each of us in our own heart ⁓ hold in our sincere relationship to that, whatever that is that we might consider divine, right? This is William James’ definition of religion.
Bob (11:55)
that the sentiments, the experiences, the practices that each of us carry in our heart in relationship to whatever we might consider divine. And to me, the sacraments participate in that, ⁓ the plant sacraments, the sacraments of our church, ⁓ whether that may be the combination of DMT and MAOI that opens up that, that opens the way to the divine, or whether or not that may be coming from ⁓
Bob (12:25)
MDMA, is helping remove those things that are blocking us from the divine, or whether or not that may be ⁓ the psilocybin mushrooms, which can bring us into a state of presence with that which I’m calling divine. And for me, that’s really the definition of a sacrament, that the thing that is connected to and connecting us to that experience of the divine or to the divine. That’s the way I would define a sacrament. And the sacramental practice is religious.
Bob (12:55)
And so that’s a little background there. Hope that’s helpful.
Sam Believ (12:59)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, so ⁓ I actually come from Latvia originally which is in Eastern Europe and ⁓ even though I’ve been in Colombia for eight years and most of my spirituality got ⁓ Developed here. I ⁓ did have a like to participate in the very ⁓ Paganistic sort of ritual in Latvia with us. It was a sauna ritual something similar to the musk all the way before I even know what the musk all was and in that part they
Sam Believ (13:27)
they work with plants a lot like they would use masculine trees for masculine, feminine trees for feminine. There’s like series of saunas and cold dipping ⁓ to such an extent that I think it resulted in one of my very first psychedelic experiences. So to say, I remember my consciousness sort of shrinking and kind of becoming ⁓ dissolved. But in those forests in Latvia, all over the place, and Latvia was the last pagan ⁓
Bob (13:52)
Thank you.
Sam Believ (13:58)
place in Europe ⁓ historically they were only ⁓ Christianized very late ⁓ but you see those rat cap mushrooms everywhere and also have access to Russian culture because I am a Russian speaker as well and all the fairy tales they have to do with mushrooms and all kinds of you know suspiciously very psychedelic looking and sounding creatures and stories so I kind of understand what you mean by that but
Bob (14:15)
So, thank
Sam Believ (14:26)
the story seems to be that ⁓ religion was started from psychedelics or from those sacraments then including the cult of Dionysus that then kind of grew into ⁓ Christianity and then somewhere along the line we lost that connection to such an extent that religions became against the psychedelics and now with the work like you’re doing where obviously you have a church with psychedelics it’s kind of bringing that connection back together
Sam Believ (14:56)
⁓ So let’s talk a little bit about that, you know, your very unique path to work with plant medicines or sacred medicines or sacraments as you like to call them ⁓ on which I do agree. I do agree that plant medicines are sacraments. How and why did you start a church? you know, because it’s a very different route to take. Tell us more about that.
Bob (15:19)
Right, right. And I was really enjoying that discussion about your experience in Latvia. Thanks for sharing that. That’s interesting. Yeah. And it also opens up the question about what may be a sacrament, right? And for me, sometimes within this community, and I answer your question, ⁓ but just to go back to your last comment, for me, ⁓ the entheogens, the psychedelics, it’s also to remind people that psyche, even that word psyche,
Bob (15:46)
can mean soul or something that’s indefinable, that’s like that life force, the thing that is inhabiting us, ⁓ Expanding that and bringing that forward. ⁓ For me, the ⁓ plant ⁓ sacraments, the fungal sacraments, they help this deaf man here. ⁓ It may be that taking ⁓ saunas or meditating in India, all of these things may also help us find that experience of the divine.
Bob (16:15)
For me, having sat many 10 -day meditation retreats and taken all kinds of various forms of Timaskal, I’m so thankful that the psychedelic plant sacraments exist because I don’t think I would be able to hear without them. So to me, ⁓ they’re required for my practice to be able to receive the benefits of divine presence. ⁓ After more than 50 years of seeking, ⁓ these have been the sacraments that
Bob (16:46)
open the way, right? So that to me is required for my sincere religious practice, which is part of what helps define our church, right? What do we require for our practice? So just to answer your question directly, it’s interesting because I had had this initial really profound, overwhelming mystical experience when I was 17, and then I had had a few other experiences over my life kind of leading in that direction.
Bob (17:15)
And though they were guiding me, feel at ⁓ really deep levels like subconscious or even unconscious guidance being received as well as conscious guidance. I didn’t know why I felt so compelled to study psychology and religious studies and sociology and receive a master’s of divinity. ⁓ I just felt that. ⁓
Bob (17:40)
⁓ those experiences were guiding me to ask these questions and I had to go in those places to answer them, right? Or to at least learn more. I wouldn’t say answer, but to grow more depth and language in the space. So I had spent 35 or more years after, you know, having some initial deep experiences, ⁓ preparing myself to found a church, really. But I didn’t realize it. You know, I was like, why am I doing this? My parents bless them were so loving. They’re like, Bob, we want to
Bob (18:07)
support you. It was a lot of privilege for me that my parents would ⁓ morally and ethically support me doing all these strange studies that weren’t really career oriented. You know what I mean? That’s just like psychology and religious studies and studying plant, going down to Palenque with my dad and learning from Terrence McKenna and Sasha Shogan. you know, it’s like, that wasn’t really a career move exactly, right? But I just felt a deep, compelling
Bob (18:37)
need, know, like a calling, I guess you might say that was coming out of those experiences. I started growing my own mushrooms when I was 18. Right. Because I also felt a strong calling that the sacraments were so important to me and my community. This was when this concept of community started coming into my head as a teenager. I was like, these sacraments are important to me and my tribe, my community. need them.
Bob (19:04)
I need to be able to go to earth and sun ⁓ and receive the sacrament. don’t want to depend on all this market economy and dealers. It needs to be between me and earth and soil and sun and water and sacrament. I just felt that calling, which may have been a re -indigenizing energy. ⁓ I’m not sure, but it was like, Bob, the sacraments are asking you to connect to the soil and the seed. And so now we have a garden.
Bob (19:33)
I have a sacred garden. ⁓ so having been living in this location in Oakland with a big parking lot and a big warehouse, and we took the concrete out of a lot of the parking lot. like to say we unpaved the parking lot and we invited Paradise to come back in. There’s a song about paving the parking lot and, ⁓ paved Paradise and put up a parking lot. And we kind of, we’re doing the opposite here. You know, we’re like taking out the parking lot and bringing Paradise back into the heart of Oakland.
Bob (20:03)
know, downtown Oakland, where I live. So there’s a beautiful sacred plant garden here. I had had a long practice with sort of ranging between three and 10 people like my close friends, you know, but like at the time in the nineties and zeros, you had to be sort of a really careful underground psychedelic aficionado. If you’re going to be practicing, it wasn’t popular. You couldn’t at the time there weren’t these paths down to South America, weren’t well trodden, right? They weren’t easy to find.
Bob (20:33)
And so I had my group of, we called ourselves the Yogi team, Bay Area Practical Satsang. We had all kinds of funny names for our groups, right? Satsang Unity Project. We’d get together and enjoy sacraments and move into divine presence. But then suddenly around 2017, everything started to change. think maybe Michael Pollan’s book, but there was like a sea change in culture. There’s something was happening around 2015, 2016, 17.
Bob (21:02)
And that little group that I had been sort of the informal leader of was really expanding. People were kind of bringing my partner, ⁓ my cousin, my friend, know, Bob, these gatherings out here at Tranquility Base are really wonderful. You can we have more ceremonies, larger ceremonies? So we were starting to have three, four ceremonies a month, 15, 20, 25 people’s ceremonies. This back 2015, 16, 17, right? And that was…
Bob (21:33)
Just mostly I were leading those ceremonies. I would have sober sitters come in, folks from ⁓ mycological groups and things. ⁓ everything was changing, Sam. They weren’t experienced aficionados ⁓ who had been studying meditation all their lives. They were people seeking healing, people who were alienated, seeking connection, seeking to grow community, all kinds of folks coming in. So that’s where I realized, this is more than I.
Bob (22:02)
should be holding, ⁓ right? ⁓ We need to grow facilitation. ⁓ And so I started my first facilitation workshop in 2017 with a few folks from this place called Tranquility Base and Karen and a couple of others. And the workshops were going well and we were graduating and growing facilitation slowly. ⁓
Sam Believ (22:20)
fuck.
Bob (22:26)
But then the whole structure of the community was becoming unwieldy. know, the email list was having three, 400 people on it, right? And so we got together, sort of the leadership group, and we said, what is going on? And we all realized that we had already a church, that it was an etheric body of a church. We were a community coming together, bringing resources and methods and practices together that were enabling us to experience the divine, right?
Bob (22:56)
⁓ And so ⁓ that was ⁓ sort of an etheric recognition. Then we got ⁓ our friend from Chikruni together, and we started asking, what would it mean to found a church in the space? ⁓ And so we were able to start doing that. And COVID hit, which was actually in a way useful for us. We started meeting online frequently.
Bob (23:20)
And then we were working through our bylaws and all these things, and we founded the church formally in 2020. I hope that was, yeah, that’s a good story there.
Sam Believ (23:29)
⁓ You mentioned COVID and interestingly enough for me COVID was the moment I moved out to the countryside which ⁓ indirectly led to eventually starting the Loira retreat. ⁓ So as you say you kind of were doing stuff your life preparing you for something. Something similar happened to me I never planned to start an ayahuasca retreat I just started doing ceremonies with the shaman that I knew and slowly just grew and now outgrew.
Sam Believ (23:59)
anything I could have imagined. So COVID, think was this big wake up call for a lot of people. And also I think the trust in mainstream authority ⁓ really plummeted around the COVID time and more people started looking for alternative healing methods and plant medicines amongst them. ⁓ But can you talk to us a little bit more about, you know,
Sam Believ (24:25)
Let’s say, let’s imagine somebody’s listening to this podcast and they thinking about starting their own church. ⁓ What is that process like? ⁓ How easy or difficult that is? Because I think in US, one of the only ways ⁓ to work with the medicine is to have a church.
Bob (24:42)
Yeah, yeah. And this is ⁓ a rich conversation for me that involves a lot of self -reflection. ⁓ So I’ll share my perspective and there may be other perspectives, but I guess the first thing that I would propose, and this is why I’m coming, trying to come into this with a humble framing, ⁓ is I would not recommend founding a church ⁓ if the goals of founding the church are to sell mushrooms or something like that, right?
Bob (25:12)
I’m not that selling mushrooms in itself, you know that that may be a lovely wonderful. I fully support you know people offering mushrooms to communities. ⁓ But ⁓ I’ve there has been experienced people come in meeting me. They’re like Bob. I want to deal mushrooms. Why don’t I found a church right and to me that that is a challenging. Because I would propose to you that if you’re considering founding a church that you really want to be.
Bob (25:41)
sincere in understanding what you mean by that or exploring what you mean by what is founding a church, right? ⁓ Spiritual but not religious in the United States is not religious, right? So you probably want to be able to think about, you can be spiritual and religious, you know, that can help, right? But if you want to found a church, you probably need to look through that
Bob (26:05)
critique of ⁓ the domination associated with religion. You mentioned distrust in ⁓ authorities and institutions that has emerged a little bit since the early ⁓ 20s. And a lot of people have a lot of distrust of religious institutions, right? Big churches and Methodist Church and Catholic Church and things like that, experiencing them as dominating, right? And really culturally dominating, not opening the way to an experience of God, but rather dominating me culturally and telling me I have to live certain ways and,
Bob (26:35)
So I want to propose if someone’s opening a church, you want to think about all of those things. What do I mean by religion? What do I mean by church? ⁓ Am I able to sincerely ⁓ get behind that concept? Right. What do I mean when I say that? Right. If you’re like, I just want a way to sell mushrooms without getting in trouble, that’s making it more difficult for other churches that are sincere. You see what I mean? Because you’re really ⁓ taking advantage rather than
Bob (27:05)
moving from authenticity. So that’s my first comment. And that’s kind of a tough, that’s kind of a rough one. And I realize there may be feedback, critical feedback on that statement that I’m making, it’s, and so I want to be humble and reflective there, but that’s my first comment. So if you, if you feel that you have a sincere calling to engage in a religious ⁓ practice, then in the United States, you just need a few things to be really clear. You need to have a well -formed doctrine or dogma.
Bob (27:34)
has to be clear. ⁓ that already causes trouble for me. Those were dogma. my gosh, no. Right. ⁓ Because dogma is often associated with metaphysical domination. You better believe this or you’re going to go to hell. Right. Now I have a lot of trouble with that personally. So you want to think clearly about what your dogma is in order to have a shared faith within a community, which helps define a church, right? A community with a shared faith, shared values, shared practice.
Bob (28:04)
Can you have those things? Within Sacred Garden community, we have something we call least dogma. So you hear us working on this stuff. It’s like, well, Sam, if we’re using words, we’re probably using dogma. Like just when I say hello, there are all kinds of cultural assumptions coming along with what that means. So ⁓ I don’t think we can claim no dogma within Sacred Garden Church. ⁓ There’s a church that’s
Bob (28:32)
says they’re a church of no dogma. I think that’s really cool. If they can do that, wonderful, right? But we at least have least dogma within sacred garden community. We’re simply open to the possibility that the sacraments of our church, if we engage them carefully and respectfully, they can connect us to a direct experience of the divine within this lifetime. That’s our shared faith. But what we mean by divine, we don’t say, right? ⁓ Your experience may be different.
Bob (29:01)
We have shared values, care, ⁓ respect, and trust. We have a common practice that moves around a wheel of practice from navigation, preparation, initiation, practice, integration, community integration. ⁓ So this guides our practice. So these are some of the things that bring us together as a community and allow us to, I think, with real sincerity and authenticity, call ourselves a church. Yeah. Is that all making sense?
Sam Believ (29:30)
Definitely, I think what you say about dogma is is a really try thing the only way to start church without dogma ⁓ Would be to start a silent church no communication if you just engage with the plants and and there’s probably zero dogma and still you got to be careful, you know if you have a certain ⁓ Art and your walls and stuff like that they can kind of influence people’s directions. So no dogma is really really difficult something as ⁓
Sam Believ (30:00)
Facilitating myself is something I consciously think about a lot as in What how do you behave in such a way that you don’t make people’s experience about yourself? ⁓ but about you know the the sacrament and ⁓ the larger connection ⁓ So and yeah, you mentioned you know starting a church just to sell mushrooms so that’s not why I’m asking that for I ⁓ was case legal here in Colombia. I’m asking because ⁓ you know for
Sam Believ (30:30)
just out of curiosity because it seems, ⁓ you know, when you think about church, in my opinion, it’s like, wow, you you started a Christianity or something like that. It’s like a big thing to do. it’s like ⁓ to realize that, you know, you can start a church is a very interesting concept. ⁓ But definitely I don’t recommend anyone to just sell mushrooms or buy mushrooms. I think in my opinion, it has to be done in a safe legal setting with good facilitation, which I’m sure ⁓ you’re doing.
Sam Believ (30:59)
⁓ So any notes about what I just said any ideas thoughts
Bob (31:06)
Yeah, I, ⁓ I don’t know. I just appreciated your reflection. Yeah. ⁓ And I love that idea of, ⁓ silent and, and, ⁓ you know, I do identify strongly with my family’s Quaker heritage. So my, my up to my great grandfather were, were Quakers and they had that technique where they would just sort of sit silently and then someone would just speak. And so it’s lovely that you’re, you’re kind of reflecting that back. feel an alignment. And I think that there’s a little bit about the sacred plant work.
Bob (31:35)
that may help us in that direction. The ⁓ sacred plants, now this is my perspective, this is just me shouting, but to me they don’t require a whole lot of made up stuff. If you can just sit ⁓ with a calm and careful and respectful way with the presence of those sacraments, they will open the way for you. They don’t require me to bring a lot of a special prayer that uses only the certain words, right?
Bob (32:04)
And my experience, which I’m not claiming a lineage, but having been really privileged to have been able just to sort of experience different ways of sitting in different areas, a brujas ceremony in the Philippines, or, ⁓ you know, ⁓ an old small sort of daime -like group in Brazil, or a yawanawa ceremony in Bolivia. And they’re actually, they can be very different. The metaphysics and the dogma, the language, they can be really different.
Bob (32:34)
⁓ from place to place, right? But ⁓ the experience of learning, of healing, of divine presence, that will move independently of those different things. This is only my experience, right? ⁓ And so for me, there’s something special about the sacraments of our church because they can open the way to the divine ⁓ independently of the language that I use, right? And so I think that’s really rich and interesting. And may it…
Bob (33:02)
May they guide us in that direction where we may not be so, again, this is not, I’m not representing our church, this is just me thinking, but where we’re not so hung up on ⁓ our particular faith position, then we have to fight each other, right? It’s like, no, you say Allah and I say Jesus, and so now we have to fight, right? Or you say, ⁓ you know, Wachuma and I use a crucifix, right?
Bob (33:31)
And so our sacraments are different and we have to like drive each other off of the planet that we’re so upset about the difference, right? If these sacraments can help us realize maybe the words we use, the names we give, they’re not so important. Maybe, right? It may be an experience that’s really beyond words that ⁓ is the thing ⁓ that we’re seeking, right? And so I personally hope we’re moving in that direction.
Bob (33:59)
Also, I really appreciated your comment about being careful about not sort of making it you. you know, we’re having a ceremony, so let me put my culture into the ceremony so that everyone will be more like me. That’s a really subtle thing because I’m doing that right now, even as we’re talking, right? I’m saying, here’s a way of thinking that may be useful, right? And sharing that. So to become really sensitive to that, I think is important, particularly with these anthogens or psychedelics because they
Bob (34:28)
One thing that I believe they will often do across people and across cultures and categories is they’ll open us to the idea that things can be different. So we’ll have an experience and then during the experience we’ll receive so much information or so much guidance or so much ⁓ whatever that may be that comes through the journey. Then during the journey, it’s like you come back out and you’re like, everything can be really different. If someone is in there feeding you a whole bunch of cultural
Bob (34:58)
perspective, when you come out of that journey, they call it suggestibility, right? You may be a lot more ⁓ open to hearing new ways, different ways, which is lovely. That’s wonderful. But if somebody’s coming in and they’re saying, okay, now that you’ve had the mushrooms, let me tell you, the universe is all like this, you know, there’s a Trinity or there’s ⁓ there’s, you know, ⁓ Brahma or whatever it is that I want to tell you, you know,
Bob (35:26)
You want to be humble about that because ⁓ your voice is probably being heard a lot more loudly. The person’s opened. And so to be sensitive to avoiding manipulation, ⁓ cultism, I’ll call it neo -fundamentalism, right? To me, those things are really important in our space. And I think other people may have different perspectives. They may think it’s really important that my metaphysics is really heard. And I’m not going to tell them that they’re wrong, but
Bob (35:54)
For me, I think it’s important not to be trying to ⁓ manipulate people out of ⁓ anthia journeys into my metaphysics. ⁓
Sam Believ (36:06)
Thank you. ⁓ That’s all very, very, very good information. I’m sure the listeners are enjoying it. ⁓ As once I had an experience in ⁓ Columbia and Amazon where medicine showed me a potential for me to become a healer, not as in a shaman, but like heal people with my hands, like in a one -on -one kind of situation, they kind of gave me the entire manual and I came out the poll after that, didn’t know what to do with it. So I asked many shamans, you know, ⁓
Sam Believ (36:35)
Do you know somebody who can teach me? Do you know what should I do about it? And almost all of them said just this one thing, know, keep drinking the medicine and we’ll tell you ⁓ what you need to do. So in a way there is this unique ability that there’s this one clear source that cannot be polluted and that’s ⁓ the medicines themselves or as you call them, ⁓ sacraments. ⁓ And interestingly enough, you mentioned cultism.
Sam Believ (37:04)
and cults. So my question to you is have you ever been accused because you know religion plus psychedelics I can see a lot of people wanting to use that word have you ever have anyone ever said like you know it’s just you just have a cult and like what would you say to somebody like that?
Bob (37:22)
Right. We know kind of interestingly, here’s another issue that I’ll bring up speaking, being accused of. So I’m really thankful for Sacred Garden Community. have a very, we’re sort of exploring this holacracy model for our leadership. We’re very clear that ⁓ the experience and the healing and the
Bob (37:47)
The relationship is between the practitioner and the sacrament and the practitioner is every member of our community. It’s not that there’s a ⁓ only a priest who is the practitioner. You see what I mean? And everyone else is like a patient. ⁓ Every person in our community is, is a practitioner. So we really want to recognize the leadership, the agency of every member of our community. So all this is really baked in to the community. Also this least dogma as a part of our community.
Bob (38:17)
⁓ All of these things make it less likely for people to see us as a cult. You see what I mean? There’s not an infinitely wise ⁓ priest who’s a member ⁓ of an eternal lineage or something like that in our community. We recognize that we’ve come together as a community ⁓ with these sacraments because we’ve experienced their healing. It’s not that I am the only one who’s experienced that healing.
Bob (38:44)
many members of our community have experienced divine presence with the sacraments. You see what I mean? So there’s not a special priest who knows more than anyone else here. I ⁓ happen to be a little bit older than a lot of folks. I’ve been working with sacred plants for many years so I can give plant talks that people love and talk all about the different plants. ⁓ And I’ve had a good bit of experience in the space, in the presence of the sacraments, so I can help people understand their experiences.
Bob (39:14)
But I’m no different than anyone else. ⁓ I’m just another person who just happened to be a little older and has maybe had a little bit more experience. I’ll share that experience. You can share yours with me, please. And I can learn. We consider ourselves to be a continually learning community because we have least dogma. We don’t already know everything. And so we learn from each other. All of these help protect us from cultism. And then there are real specific things. Like I don’t have perfect power. We have a board and we have checks and balances and we have ethics councils. You see what I mean?
Bob (39:43)
⁓ We have other stewardship. ⁓ I don’t get to just a point. All of the team we have to let the community give thumbs up or down on new team members in all of these things we do to avoid being a cult, right? So I think having transparency, avoiding ⁓ the priestly, you know, sort of. ⁓
Bob (40:04)
like making the Taita or the Onanya or the Curandero or the Shaman, know, as some special being who’s really separate and different from the others. We don’t do that here, right? And so this is also part of the reason why I’ll say we’re a trans modern or a positive postmodern church. We don’t even come from a master lineage, right? A lot of churches will say, we come from a certain special shipibo lineage from Peru. That’s wonderful.
Bob (40:33)
know, that’s if you have that, that’s wonderful for you. That may, that there may be some obscure esoteric knowledge that is associated with the priestly wisdom of that tradition, and that may be useful for that group. That can also be tending a little bit more towards what someone might call cultish if there’s a lineage that really venerates ⁓ its historical masters. You see what I mean? They’re special somehow.
Bob (41:03)
We don’t have that here. We’re just a regular group of people who grew up mostly ⁓ from the West. we realized through LSD and MDMA and others, Changa and the psilocybin mushrooms, particularly Cubensis and Natalensis, that these can be sacraments. And together we’re founding this community, right? To me, that’s very different from a cult. Can you see that?
Sam Believ (41:29)
Yeah, no, I definitely see that and I would never accuse you for being a cult. It’s just since you mentioned that word it’s something that I think about a lot and Yeah, because obviously, you know on the internet you get ⁓ accused of everything, you know if ⁓ if you Promote ayahuasca. They say, know, you’re just a glorified drug ⁓ smuggler or lord whatever or your
Bob (41:40)
It’s fair.
Sam Believ (41:56)
Common that I commonly get is like stop dragging people or like only Jesus can save you and those kinds of things ⁓ but ⁓ So I’m assuming you must have a similar kind of experience ⁓ And yeah, think the the beauty of medicines once again is ⁓ By removing the intermediary between a sacrament and a person You lower the risks of all of those ⁓ negative consequences
Bob (42:23)
Mm -hmm. Yep.
Sam Believ (42:25)
cultism included because if you have a ⁓ In the past what church wanted us to believe is like there was this person Thousands of years ago. He had a sacrament. He wrote a book about it Now you have to believe it and I was like you don’t need a book as long as you have the sacrament That’s pretty clear and I believe this is kind of what you’re doing. Hopefully I’m not putting words in your mouth
Bob (42:49)
You know, I ⁓ love that conversation, and I’m going to ⁓ share this for the Christians that might be seeing this or people who have some Christian heritage. ⁓ I did kind of appreciate this cat, this old Christian character named Martin Luther. He was this guy who basically said, hey, we don’t have to have a priest. ⁓ If you have a Bible, you can read the Bible yourself, right? And you can find your own wisdom from the Bible.
Bob (43:13)
without the priest and that he founded the Methodist Church and some of these churches, maybe Lutheran, I don’t know exactly, but they split off from the Catholic Church, Martin Luther did. And that whole movement was to say, we don’t have to go through the priest for our sacrament. And I thought that was really profound. And I think this is a movement even further in that direction. We don’t even need the Bible that was written by someone who had that experience ⁓ to find our wisdom. We can have that experience directly ⁓ of God.
Bob (43:43)
or of the divine, or of the healing ⁓ wisdom of the universe, whatever language we want to use. And so this to me is really a movement even in the tradition of Luther, right? Because we’re growing closer to God as people rather than as priests. And I think that’s really powerful and positive and hopeful. And ⁓ there are also some interesting challenges because if you don’t do the control strategy that says you have to go to the priest,
Bob (44:11)
Well, then that makes it harder to maintain your institution, right? So there’s a real sort of power -driven temptation ⁓ to say, you know, you got to come to the church and you got to sit in the ceremony with us, with our facilitator, or you’re not going to see God, right? But that’s probably maybe just trying to sort of create power and maintain a position rather than ⁓ growing divine presence.
Bob (44:37)
So within Sacred Garden Community, we offer facilitated ceremonies. We love them. We believe they’re safer. They’re really good for newcomers. But we’re not telling people that they can’t ⁓ have the journey at home with a sitter nearby or something like that, right? So we’re moving in that direction. Also really quickly, that experience, and I’ll say this for folks who are considering founding a church, particularly if it becomes very known, ⁓ but even within your own congregation, there is a lot of opportunity for these experiences of things like
Bob (45:06)
Projection and transference and all that. You were mentioning your experience on the internet with people sort of giving you lot of different, I’ll say, sort of challenges that they’re bringing up. So, there’ll be people who will see me as this really wise savior type and they’ll be disappointed after a little while, ⁓ because I’m not, I’m just a regular person. I have moods, I have temper, you know what I mean? And so people will become really disillusioned. They think that you’re this wise.
Bob (45:36)
But then also there was, you know, someone will say, ⁓ he’s a global capitalist who’s partnering with big pharma to corner the mushroom market. You know, just projection will happen when you get it, when you get, that’s not true by the way. I’ll just, I’ll state, I have no global pharma ⁓ and certainly no interest in patenting psilocybin, but those kinds of things will come to you if you, if you’re in a leadership role in a religious institution, because I think people have a lot of confusion and fear and
Bob (46:05)
and anger and if you kind of are perceived as a leader or even particularly as a religious or spiritual leader, that you can receive a lot of interpretations about who you are that, you know, the person doesn’t even know you, they’ve never met you, but they just see you and then they imagine all these things. So you need to be kind of aware of that ⁓ and be effective at setting self boundaries and emotional boundaries and things if you’re planning on founding a church. Yeah.
Sam Believ (46:31)
Yeah, those are all very valuable ⁓ insights. Projection is something I have experienced firsthand many times, not only in interacting with people on the internet, but sometimes in the work with the medicine, a lot of starts coming up and sometimes it’s projected on you, especially if you’re a certain kind of character, whether you want it or not, ⁓ it’s a part of it. So it’s great to have quite a few podcast episodes talking about the
Sam Believ (47:00)
transference, counter transference and all the niceties of that ⁓ work. In answering my previous questions, ⁓ you mentioned ethics and I think I believe you focus a lot on ethics and ⁓ cultural respect. ⁓ Can you talk to us a little bit about that? What is your approach?
Bob (47:20)
Yeah, boy, I’ll tell you, ⁓ there’s intuition and then you’ll talk and then you’ll learn. it’s like, I, when we’ve, creating our wheel of practice, we include community integration as a part of the wheel of practice. And so sometimes during Sunday service, I’ll mention that community integration in many ways is where you might say the, the, the rubber hits the road or, know, where you really got to walk the walk and, ⁓ you know, sitting in ceremony can be challenging.
Bob (47:49)
Challenging experiences can emerge shame, anger, know, fear. Those things can happen in ceremony. You can move through them. The same things will happen in community, right? ⁓ And, ⁓ and particularly when you have a community like ours, which shares least dogma where we want to be radically inclusive, right? Because we share least dogma. We’re not telling you, you have to believe one thing or another. Everyone is welcome. Right. ⁓ but then we get diverse cultures coming in the door.
Bob (48:19)
We get diverse skin colors, diverse gender orientations or sex and gender kind of orientations. We’ll get ⁓ different metaphysical backgrounds. Like there would be someone who would come in from a very conservative background who may be very offended when they learned that three or four men were naked in a hot tub together after a ceremony. No women present, but these men were naked, right?
Bob (48:46)
And from that person, from their culture, that may be very offensive. this is, I thought it was a safe church, but now I realized that you all are supporting nudity. Well, so the other culture is like, what are you talking about? Anyone can get together and have a hot tub. There’s nothing unsafe about people. Right. So we have different cultures coming into the church and then they’ll be, they can become upset with each other. Right. Because you’re doing things wrong. Well, from that culture, it’s perfectly fine.
Bob (49:16)
from the other culture, it’s really, really dangerous or wrong. So we have to grow that kind of ⁓ insight that we live in this diverse world. And so the actual practice of community integration has really been tempering for me, you know, to experience all of the diversity and the fear and the anger and the experience of not being safe, right? ⁓ When you have diversity, particularly in a
Bob (49:42)
⁓ a nation like the United States where there’s some really hard ⁓ breaks between, for example, people who are primarily white identified or identified as black, right? ⁓ The level of fear and distrust between those groups ⁓ can be very difficult and can emerge in community, right? ⁓
Bob (50:06)
And so if someone wants to say, Hey, you know, I just don’t feel this is safe for me. can’t say I know it is really safe because it’s you who are, who are present. And if you, if you’re in a place where everyone is like a demon around you, it may not be safe for you or the other person. Right. So, so these conditions of potential, ⁓ at least perceived or real harm, they can just emerge out of the presence of difference in community. Right.
Bob (50:35)
And so as a result of this, you know, when we really started growing quickly, that was hard. That was been hard. You know, we’ve had people come into community and not feel safe. Everyone sitting feels like they’re being fine, right? But we can have these kind of, maybe someone is really harmed. So all these things can happen, right? As a result, I’m so thankful. Some of the community of Sacred Garden have helped us put together really robust ethics programs. In the beginning, everyone was just coming to me.
Bob (51:03)
You know, Bob, I don’t feel safe. This person said something and, you know, and I found myself triangulating frequently, trying to help solve between two people who I didn’t really know the detail, but trying, and that doesn’t work. I would recommend to avoid being the one who solves everybody’s ruptures, right? Triangulating. ⁓ So that was all of the six months with people coming to me just to solve their challenges.
Bob (51:29)
And then we have a community member who’s had a lot of experience in a different community. And so he helped Sacred Garden put together a real process. So we have a listening function first, someone who’s just there to listen in a non -judgmental way. ⁓ Karen does a wonderful job with that. Then we have a harmony circle that people can go to. call it a peacemaking circle. ⁓ That’s grounded in at least what are called a lot of Native American practices, right?
Bob (51:56)
that ⁓ are intending to be allow people to be heard if they’re not feeling safe or need to be heard in a safe way, right? And then finally, if ⁓ we can’t move through those things, then we have an ethics council. That is where things get a little rough. People need to make a formal ethics complaint. It becomes more like a adjudicatory, you know, we have to review it and everything goes into confidentiality and all these things happen. That’s really rough. And we’ve had a few ethics.
Bob (52:23)
⁓ Submissions and had to move through ethics processes right over the years. Last thing I’m going say on this is I’m also very thankful to the sacred plane alliance. I mentioned which was incubated, but incubated by that group. Shakuna, but it’s its own group now. ⁓ That it provides external ethical oversight and expectations to sacred garden into a number of other churches. I think it’s more than 20 now. ⁓
Bob (52:47)
So if we have an ethics issue that rises to that ethics complaint level, then we are compelled to share that with the sacred plan Alliance, right? To make sure that we’re not being corrupt, like maybe, ⁓ you know, protecting the facilitator who was accused of, some, ⁓ boundary by violation or something, you know, it’s maybe tempting for groups to kind of protect their leadership because they want the group, they want the group to persist and they’ve got some leader that they’ve invested in. Right. And so.
Sam Believ (52:59)
Thank you.
Bob (53:16)
having external ethics body that keeps us accountable, ⁓ not only to our internal community, but also to external, that’s very useful for us just to keep us honest. Yeah. So there’s a little information about ethics.
Sam Believ (53:31)
That’s not little, think that’s a lot of information and it’s great how much attention you pay to that because let’s compare it to conventional church, you know, there’s especially Catholic Church doesn’t have a good reputation and there’s a lot of things they just sweep under the rug so it would be great if they also had some kind of external oversight. It’s interesting you mentioned naked people in the jacuzzi for those who are very ⁓
Sam Believ (53:59)
afraid of that definitely don’t go to some parts of europe because everyone goes to sauna naked together ⁓ i once had a i built a sauna in one of the previous houses i lived in and i had the german friend visit me and he came in the sauna naked and he came out of sauna naked my wife saw him and she was really really upset ⁓ so very so i understand that managing this ⁓ different culture is is different is difficult ⁓ especially so in u .s. i think u .s. ⁓
Sam Believ (54:28)
now feels very very tense and there’s a lot of cultural trends that maybe are aimed in the opposite direction of resolution like this whole trigger culture ⁓ which reminds me of this ⁓ i interviewed a lady a few episodes before and she said ⁓ i’m not a ⁓ i don’t have a trigger i think that’s ⁓ something more people need to know about
Sam Believ (54:57)
⁓ But yeah, people come to Lawara to drink ayahuasca and most of them aim at healing. Some people kind of ⁓ aim at maybe ⁓ some personal growth. ⁓ What do people seek ⁓ when they join your church?
Bob (55:15)
Right, right. ⁓ Yes. So we have our we have our explicit mission and vision, and then we have the reality too. So explicitly by our mission and vision and our dogma, we’re ⁓ not intending to offer sacred garden community like our dogma doesn’t say we will heal you of your injuries. That’s not in our core dogma. You see what I mean?
Bob (55:43)
Our core dogma is you can experience divine presence. ⁓ We’re open to that possibility. And the experience of divine presence, I will propose to you, is deeply healing, deeply healing the experience of the divine. That mystical experience that can occur within the sacrament is deeply healing of all kinds of fear, anger, shame, ⁓ alienation, ⁓ anxiety. Many of these things will be healed by divine presence.
Bob (56:14)
in my opinion, ⁓ or can be helped deeply. ⁓ But Sacred Garden Community is really, we’re not saying, please come to us with your physical or emotional or mental illness and we will solve that. The sacraments or our practices will heal you of those things. We’re not saying that. In fact, we have a health and suitability screening process, right? So people spend time with us, get to know us. ⁓
Bob (56:42)
new members to spend at least three months and attend at least eight events before that you become confirmed, right? Before you say, yes, I understand the faith and I agree and I want to be a practitioner. After you become confirmed, you become a practitioner. ⁓ When we, to become a practitioner, we have to move you through a health and suitability. So we have a clinical, clinically trained psychologist who does interview of a questionnaire you fill in and we have a medical review, right? And some folks may have a lot of recent
Bob (57:11)
hard trauma, or they may be experiencing what you could call emergence or psychosis, right? Delusional experience. You know, they’re having a lot of mental ⁓ challenges that may be making it difficult for them to sort of participate in day -to -day reality. ⁓ Angry, upset, having been deeply hurt, you know, these things. ⁓ If we meet someone who’s in that space, ⁓ we love them, we welcome them into community, but we may encourage some of those folks to do one -on -one work.
Bob (57:41)
You see what I mean? So if you’re seeking like mental healing of mental health within Sacred Garden community, we would say that’s wonderful. It’s possible that these sacraments may help you, but you may actually want a more medical framework. In other words, you may want to go see a therapist that offers antigens or whatever that may be. You see what I mean? So within Sacred Garden, we’re not claiming to be the group that is healing your physical or mental illnesses.
Bob (58:10)
We may, the practice, I believe, will help remove things that are blocking you from divine presence. And many of the things that may block us from divine presence may, might be called, ⁓ like mental health issues from another perspective, addiction ⁓ or just anger or shame or resentment or, ⁓ you know, having been triggered all the time and never being able to sit in a community and be friendly.
Bob (58:39)
You know, those things may be blocking us from divine presence and the practice may help remove those. So that may be healing in itself, but that’s not what we’re trying to do. That’s not our goal isn’t to heal you of your sickness, rather is to help you move into divine presence where all things are healed, where all diseases are known and all diseases are healed. And honestly, then the disease doesn’t even, it becomes not even important. It’s just, ⁓ it’s almost as if everything becomes a gift of being. Right. So that’s a little framing there.
Sam Believ (59:09)
That makes a lot of sense. Give me some clarity on what you’re doing. Yeah, we’re also very careful with who we receive and not receive because there are some things with, medicine cannot be compatible with. ⁓ Last question I have for you before we wrap up is decriminalize nature. Can you tell us a little bit about that movement?
Bob (59:34)
Yeah, and boy, it’s became much bigger than me. And so if you want to talk about inflation and non inflation, you know, this is one that helps me be humble. ⁓ Sometimes if I want to be if I want to be a little puffy, Albert Hoffman wrote a book called LSD, my problem child. And, you know, I’m not in the category of Albert Hoffman, but sometimes I might almost say decrim nature my problem child a little bit. ⁓ So I was the founding chairperson.
Bob (60:00)
of decrim nature here in Oakland, California, of actually of decrim nature Oakland. So I was the, and that was the first decrim nature, ⁓ all plants and fungi ⁓ and the compounds that may be found within them removed to lowest ⁓ priority for law enforcement, right? ⁓ That was actually three of the five board were sacred garden community members and I was the chair. So it was really a sacred garden community movement.
Bob (60:28)
It was a little different than I feel decrim nature became from Oakland. This was like a quiet prayer for integrity with the city. Like, ⁓ for some reason I’d been having a number of practices where I would be sitting in meditation. And this is unusual for me, Sam, it doesn’t normally happen where towards the end of the meditation, these really clear words would come into my head as if they were coming from somewhere else. Right. And they were saying, you can sit with the elders of your village.
Bob (60:56)
And here I am in Oakland, downtown Oakland. I’m like, this isn’t really a village and I don’t know who the elders are. What in the world does that mean? Right. And I was just like, what is, who am I supposed to sit with the elders of my village? But then I was giving a lot of plant talks. This was back in 2019, 18, 19, I think. And, this cat, Carlos Plazola came to one of my plant talks and he had been the chief of staff for a city council member and he’d been a big, ⁓
Bob (61:24)
He still is a ⁓ real estate developer. So he put big developments in all kinds of districts around the city and he knew all the city council. Right. He came to one of my plant talks after the plant talk. I’ll make the story short, ⁓ but there’s a lot more, but to spare. He basically was like, Hey, you know, I can get you a sit down with city council members if you’d like, pretty much any of them. Then a little bell went on in my head, which was like, ⁓ this is sitting with the elders of your village. Right.
Bob (61:53)
And so I was considering the city council as elders in a sincere way, like as elders of this village. And then there was some other motivations, which we have like 80 year old members in this community. ⁓ One who has since passed would occasionally get dizzy and sort of get kind of pass out with cannabis, even when we’re just having community events. You know, this guy who has kind of been in his mid eighties was fragile.
Bob (62:21)
And so I really felt like I needed to be able to call 911 without being afraid and putting all the altar away and, you know, all that. So there was this desire to be, to grow safety, to grow integrity with the elders of our village. ⁓ Just to be honest with our practice, that was really guiding me and the Sacred Garden leadership into the Decrim movement. And the city council of Oakland really, I believe, heard that.
Bob (62:50)
You know, in fact, they even said, you all came to us with such a respectful approach. We thought maybe you were going to be trying to burn everything down or, you know, like be a bunch of really upset activists, but you just came in this really loving and respectful way. And we really appreciate that. And it was unanimous, you know, so it was just like an answered prayer that the whole decrim in Oakland was just such a beautiful flowing movement. And I want to give Carlos and then Larry Norris, the two non SGC members, a lot of credit. They came in hard.
Bob (63:20)
with social media and organizing, you know, and clipboards and all this, right? Sacred Garden was more prayer and sincerity. These other guys were like activist energy, you know, so three, five board members, two non -SGC, and then Carlos and Larry were the two non -SGC. Very active. ⁓ After we made the resolution in Oakland, Carlos and Larry felt a very strong and expansive
Bob (63:49)
let’s go national, you know, and all that. For the Sacred Garden community, that was a total surprise because we’re like, we’re just asking the elders of our village for integrity and safety. ⁓ We’re not a political action group trying to save the world or something, right? We just want to have safe, quiet practice here in Oakland without being burdened. ⁓ so ⁓ Carlos in particular, but also Larry have a much more sort of politicized, kind of far left wing.
Bob (64:18)
⁓ A lot of challenges with the pharmaceutical anti -pharm, ⁓ a different energy, like a real hard activist energy. You see what I mean? So we started kind of, after the Oakland happened, they really wanted to go in this aggressive activist kind of direction. And the Sacred Garden community just basically resigned from the board. And ⁓ decrimination is still going on. think Carlos has actually now left decrim nature as well.
Sam Believ (64:31)
Mm
Bob (64:47)
And I’m really thankful for its good work, but it’s taken a much more, it ⁓ varies from city to city, decriminate your kind of city, county led, right? ⁓ But it’s gotten a lot more political, a lot more sort of divided politically. And ⁓ that’s okay. ⁓ But it’s just been interesting how that evolved. ⁓ Carlos really wanted to come in and take leadership and I thought that was fine. And ⁓ so I let go of… ⁓
Bob (65:14)
the decrim leadership in I think 2020 maybe it was.
Sam Believ (65:19)
⁓ Interesting it’s good. I guess it’s a good wise decision because there’s there’s a phrase I’ve heard somewhere that Revolution always eats its children and someone that’s just like when you’re in this big change then inevitably you kind of get Sucked by this wave. don’t know if it makes any sense Bob. Thank you so much for this episode. It was ⁓ Really informative very educational very entertaining ⁓
Sam Believ (65:46)
Where can people find more about yourself if they want to find you on social media or maybe join your church if they’re in the Auckland area?
Bob (65:55)
Yeah, thanks for asking, Sam. And thank you for ⁓ this time. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit, too. Yeah, thank you for this time. And if folks want to get to know us better, it’s easy. You can go to sacred garden. That’s just one word, sacred garden dot L I F E. So sacred garden dot life ⁓ online, and then you’ll find everything you need to find. ⁓ If you put your email in the list, we keep it confidential. We are a sincere church.
Bob (66:24)
Our practice is legally defended. ⁓ you know, we’re practicing within, we assert in our attorneys that we’re practicing within the laws. We’re very high standard and careful. ⁓ We keep you confidential, but if you want to put your email in the ⁓ website, you’ll start getting a newsletter twice a month and invitations to different events like a book club and Sunday service and things like that. So check out sacred garden .life and put your email in and we’ll be cooking.
Sam Believ (66:55)
⁓ Yeah, before we wrap up, I wanted to say thank Madhu. Madhu is a volunteer here at Loira. He came a bit more than a year ago as a patient, really loved it. Now he came back. He’s here doing good work and he’s also member of your church and he put us together for this conversation. So Madhu, if you’re listening, you are appreciated.
Bob (67:16)
Thank you, Madhu. Love you, brother.
Sam Believ (67:20)
Thank you, Bob. Great episode, guys. You’ve been listening to Alaska Podcast, as always with you, Josem Believ. ⁓ It was a pleasure and I will see you in the next episode.
Bob (67:30)
Thank you, Sam. Big love.
Sam Believ (67:33)
Okay, so I finished the recording. One thing that is concerning to me, for some reason it’s showing