Grief, God, & Golden Teachers. A Coach Mentioned by Forbes, 45 Participants, and One Hell of a Week
The Premise
It’s hot. Humid. A tingle of nervousness, excitement, and irritability hangs in the air, amplified by 40 hours of travel. Smiles, waves, and greetings are exchanged. I’m standing in the lobby of Reunion in Costa Rica, about to embark on an intensive week of ecstasy, catharsis, psychedelics, and transformation with 45 strangers I’ve only briefly met online.
What am I doing here?
Well, I have an idea. But if I’ve learned anything from these experiences, it’s that expectations are merely forecasts written in sand—subject to be swept away by the wave of a mystery.
THIS IS A PLANT MEDICINE INTENSIVE
I signed up for this experience when I decided to transition from film work into the world of transformational coaching, a journey that started around 7 years ago. I’ve long believed that altering our states can alter our traits—and if that’s true, then the world is in desperate need of a transformation. Fast. My bet? Psychedelics are going to play a pivotal role in the kind of healing and evolution our world desperately craves. But let’s not tune, in and drop out. It needs to be rooted in a modern world where harm reduction and safety, let alone cosmology, are all considered for who gets to drink the scared Sacramento.
That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m standing next to Third Wave founder Paul F. Austin, as part of my training with the Psychedelic Coaching Institute. This isn’t just a passing curiosity—it’s a calling that has been humming in the background of work, whistling to me me at 3am, and whispering to my heart for years.
What I Came For
I came to be part of the Third Wave.
For those unfamiliar, the “Third Wave” is the resurgence of psychedelics, not for escapism but for optimization, healing, and transformation. It’s a movement dedicated to using these substances responsibly—to enhance creativity, emotional intelligence, leadership, and ultimately, to create a more sane, connected, and regenerative world. But how do we achieve this and still hold the very fabric of the whole plant medicine path… It is a sacred, ancient birth rite and practice. It as a path to a mystery.
And now, I’m here to master microdosing coaching, to learn how to walk the talk, to hold transformational coaching containers with integrity. I’m here to learn how to impact leaders, organizations, and movements that are striving to inject a little more truth, beauty, and healing into the world. The people trying to make the world less shitty.
But let’s be honest. I’m also here to network, to follow that little tugging in my heart, to see where it leads.
We arrive. Physically. Spiritually still at the halfway house. My feet hit the ocean floor of Costa Rica. We share a group swim. I feel a cocktail of optimism, skepticism, and a dash of fear. My ego is already scanning the room, deciding who I’ll bond with and who I’ll politely sidestep. Classic human nature. Classic protective mechanisms.
The Mini-Dose Experience
Day two begins with a mini-dose of mushrooms. Little does the group know, that this day also marks the anniversary of my mother’s passing.
I am one of those people who struggles to recall their exact age, let alone dates of significance. So, often, I forget to ritualize—no candles lit, no flowers brought, no quiet walks to where my mom’s ashes rest. And as that realization sinks in, so does the guilt. My nervous system shifts into a sympathetic state, and the urge to withdraw from the group rises. How hard it is to sit with discomfort and tough feelings. I want to leave. To recluse, be alone. Don’t we all when things are tough? We don’t want others to see our vulnerability. After all surely a coach has it all together, 24/7?
Our mini-ceremony starts, and the facilitators lead us in a nervous system regulation exercise. Alright, I can last a little longer, I tell myself. Maybe I’ll stay.
We take a 0.3g dose of mushrooms, a mini-dose—somewhere above a micro, a few notches below a macro. Then, we are guided into noble silence: no talking, no eye contact, no external stimulation—just being with yourself. Ahh, now this is my cup of tea.
I step onto the beach. It is absolutely breathtaking—imagine The Beach from The Beach, minus DiCaprio losing his mind and the Lord of the Flies undertones.
The mushrooms begin to take effect. It’s subtle, but the doorways of perception crack open. The familiar oscillation of the world sets in… Things are.., Wavy to say the least. The hermit crabs, the shifting sand, the glistening waves—it all seems alive in a way that’s always there but only sometimes seen.
I find a spot and allow myself to connect with my mom’s energy.
I believe we are tethered by a golden thread of love—a connection that exists beyond time, memory, or physical form. It’s not just nostalgia; it’s an essence, a presence. As I lean into that connection, a gust of wind rushes over me. A visceral knowing settles in. She is here. A lump forms in my throat. Usually, it takes a few more grams to get me to this place. It’s not overwhelmingly visual. But the sense of “spirit” and “spirits” are all around me. Felt.
I see Grandfathers all around me. A man named Tim, has climbed this cliff. He is sitting with his ancestors. I glimpse his soul.
We are asked to collect an item from the beach for an altar, placed on a beautifully woven Shipibo cloth—its intricate patterns representing realms visited in Ayahuasca journeys.
I choose:
A shell, representing my mother.
A seed, resembling the all-seeing third eye, symbolizing spirit.
A stone, representing myself.
When I place them on the altar, I do so in a sequence that ritualizes the truth: my mother has moved on, but she is never truly gone.
A crack in my heart begins to… well, crack open.
The Tarot. The Lifeline. The Debris That Keeps Us Afloat.
The next lesson comes through Tarot.
A deck of glow-in-the-dark cards is laid around the altar. I allow my intuition to guide me. My hand reaches for a card—just as someone else picks it up. My body pivots, drawn toward another.
The Nine of Wands.
A man drifts down a river, suffocating in the current. He clings to nine branches of debris, believing they are keeping him afloat. But are they?
Or are they just an illusion of support—attachments that create the illusion of safety while keeping him from true surrender?
I sit with the imagery. I let it sink in.
The debris represents crutches—vices, distractions, addictions. The things we cling to when we fear the unknown: bad food, alcohol, weed, social media, porn, mindless TV. Pick your poison.
If he just let go, he wouldn’t drown—he would be free.
“I surrender to the flow of the great unknown, surrender to the open place where I feel at one.” — A song I once heard but never found again.
A Heroic Dose of Golden Teachers
Fast forward through breathwork, yoga, high-vibe food, and cathartic conversations. Now, it’s ceremony night. Bare in mind this is not my first mushroom rodeo, and I find I have been on the bull ride more than a few time. I know how to hold onto the horns, release, witness and enjoy the ride. I may just have my 10 000 hours in this realm. And still each time, a wave of fear arises. This work, what is revealed, what is encountered.. Ain’t always for the faint of heart.
The facilitators prepare the space with precision—practitioners, ceremonial guides, paramedics, volunteers. A well-orchestrated symphony of safety.
My mind resists. Just take 2 grams, enjoy the music, and be done with it. But my body, my intuition, says otherwise.
I listen.
I consume 4 grams of potent Golden Teachers. We are told that the potency of these bad boys is basically 3gs is = to 5 gs. The previous ceremony thoroughly confirms this. This shit is strong. I sit with the medicine long before I drink it. My intention is put into the cup of mushrooms before I drink it. I hold it to my heart. I let the two energies intertwine.
And the journey begins.
A song begins—sung by three practitioners. Two women, one man. Their voices vibrate through the room. I consistently, for the first part of my mushroom journey enter a realm I cannot explain. I enter a realm I cannot explain. Walls. Entities. Geometric corridors lined with hieroglyphic symbols. Cascading waves of iridescent color. Am I in Asgard? A cosmic kingdom of some kind. I’ve been here many times before.
Faceless beings work on me. I feel seen, in a way I didn’t know I needed to be seen. I apologize to them for my tired, grumpy state. They work on me anyway. I laugh at the insanity that hey have to see me like this. The journey continues, and this inhabited rooms or geometry, machinery, and beings starts to fade. I am stoically a witness passing through these cosmic hallways of some Asgard lie kingdom beyond my understanding. I’ve long given up on trying to figure out his place. Is it star brothers and sisters? Perhaps. Perhaps vibrating in a dimension we gain access to via these plant allies. A kingdom dormant yet alive within the plants, yet out in the cosmos.
Then, I remember my intention:
Oh yes, it is to open the heart. Forgive. Forgive myself.
Open the heart.
And so it begins…
Open the heart.
The songs are sung by 3 people I can only refer to as light workers. A divine masculine presences and two beautiful feminine energies and voices. They sing “icaros” and medicine songs. Unbroken, healing songs that have been sung in spaces like this for a very long time. They sing, play guitars, singing bowls, rattles. It is possibly the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. A song starts being sung about forgiveness being the path to the divine. A song that says to forgive us, back when we were blind. I feel a strange energetic thing happening during this medicine experience. I am lying in the inner circle of the “maloka”. Bare in mind, I am tripping some serious roundeties to say the least. I open my eyes and one of the practitioners is over me, saying the medicine told her to give me rose oil to open my heart. The mystery is alive in the room, a healing spirit if working its way through everyone. I allow the rose oil to do its work.
I try to think where to go for my intention, but wait thats not how you do it. I pull back, and go into my heart space. It takes me to my mom, and it starts to crack. Each song connects me to something deeper. An energy withheld. And emotion too painful to sit with. I cry for missing my dad. For past relationships. For dogs.
My body starts shaking.
The walls crumble.
My heart—once guarded—begins to break open.
I cry.
Each song connects me to something deeper. An energy withheld. And emotion too painful to sit with. I cry for missing my dad.
I cry for my father. I cry for my mother. I cry for every love I’ve lost. I cry for dogs, for friends, for the roads I never walked. I cry because I have arrived. I cry because it’s okay to bear pain. I cry because I am alive.
I laugh.
Because each time the music shifts, another layer of my heart opens.
I cry because my heart is open. I laugh because each time I feel another song play. It triggers another heart opening. I cry for and laugh, this heart opening stuff ain’t easy. But its where the magic is. Im grateful as a for this gift. I did not come for healing. But those mushrooms had other plans
A song about forgiveness. A song about being someone’s sunshine. A song about imagination. A song about not worrying .. about a thing.
This heart-opening thing? It ain’t easy.
But it’s where the magic is.
I didn’t come here for healing.
But the mushrooms had other plans. Every little thing is gonna be alright. Surrender. Witness. Let go. All my life, turns out is a ceremony. Thank you Sonia for that insight.
The Lessons
The universe is singing a song of tension and harmony, there is always tension before some kind of release, an omega point and crescendo into the unknown. This kind of deep self work has been around for a while. We must somehow take on the burden, carry the cross of our own “fuck, fight flight” primate impulses, and ascend. Ascend and integrate the worst parts of yourself. We must tune our bodies, minds, hearts and souls like a guitar, and tune that shit into the universe. Tune ourselves like an antenna, and twist the knob until channel normal gets distorted. A crackle, and glitched hum of another song starts to come into our awareness and then we hear the radio station we’ve been looking for. The universe is always singing. Vibration. Breath. Oscillation and Expansion.
The planet, it’s soul, has a plan. It’s always playing a song. That song, like any good album, is not all in C-Major. It’s not just the Feel Good Hits of the Summer, the “Now That’s What I Call (Universal)Music Vol. 100.” fun hits. It sometime plays the deep, sad, heart wrenching ballads that tear a rip into your soul, like an old pair of jeans—that shakes something loose, tosses it in the air, and fondles a part of you that you didn’t even know was untouched. And the raw skin of what’s really going on slips through the cracks..
Most people never get the chance to hear it. It is unbroken—sung before any vocal cords could shape it into sound. It’s like that old line: some people feel the rain; others just get wet.
The song needs to be sung. We need to get out of our own way and channel it.
The song of the great unknown.The song of mystery.
We are out of tune. Our bodies. Our minds. Our souls. We are instruments in need of tuning.
Psychedelics won’t save us. But the connection they allow us to gain access to just might. A connection to I, we, all. ALL. They might remind us how to save ourselves.
We’ve lost ritual. We’ve lost ceremony. We have mistaken productivity for meaning, efficiency for wisdom, accumulation for fulfillment.
And we are starving for something real. Something sacred.
The Third Wave isn’t about dropping out—it’s about tuning in. Dropping in… Ahh the drop ins are so powerful!
It’s about remembering.
Community: A Gathering of Listeners
A friend I made during this experience, said to me - Integration can leave us feeling cracked open. Wide-eyed to truths we cannot unsee. And then there’s the pull. The temptation to go back to the comforts and bliss of ignorance.
Ahh, the bliss of not knowing.
But it’s too late. The monkey is out of the bottle. The curtain has been pulled back. We must face the truth. And as my friend put it: we must weave it into our story.
A story that is shared within a group. A circle. That is the medicine. This is shared with me by a firned named Neora. A storyteller.
In the West, we have lost our ritual. We have lost the act of bringing the sacred to the earthly plane—the bridge between the mystery and the known. (What is really known?)
We have lost Gnosis—the direct experience of knowing. We’ve severed the link to the matriarchy, the mother, Eve. The protector of the fruit. The path. The forbidden knowledge of who we really are. If we actually remembered?
We would have no choice but to live differently. To stop playing small. To stop outsourcing our power. To stop selling our souls for comfort, for survival, for…. pick your escape of the week for the right ticket price? But the ticket is often on sale, half priced, and elusively tempting.
Reclaiming Ritual in a World That Has Forgotten
So how do we reclaim ritual? How do we bridge the gap between what we have become and what we have always been meant to be?
Why do we do this work? To get free of the debris—the suffocating weight of old patterns, vices, and distractions that keep us clinging to the illusion of safety.
To remember that: An open-hearted me = the best me. Plain and simple. Painful and gainful. Open and close. Breathing. Open again.
Integration: The Hardest Part of the Journey
Living in a Lie, and Seeing Through It. How do we live in a world that we know is built on illusion?
We have bought into the meme, the idea, the prostitute selling themselves to pay the bills.
Or worse. Selling time, expresiion, sacredness just to own a little more, accumulate more, have more. A bigger bite of the proverbial pie. And the taste is often cheap, full of sugar and washed down with whatever is next. Gulp. Gulp.
Yet we all want a sip.. And for what? Our attention hijacked, hacked, jacked and cracked. Our attention pulled away from within, pulledaway from above. From looking at the stars. Gazing up is just but a mirror into what is gazing right back. Or it could be dimesnional beings too.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Or pleasures? Wants?
At the top of the pyramid, we’re told, is self-actualization:
"The highest level of human need is self-actualization—realizing your potential, fulfilling your deepest desires, experiencing peak moments." And that’s the best we can hope for? Me, me, me? How utterly pathetic.
The ultimate goal cannot just be my self-fulfillment, my peak experiences, my personal development.
It has to be bigger than that.
It has to be self-integral—a move beyond Maslow into Ken Wilber’s integral model. The ultimate must include my development, yes, but also the evolution of the whole.
Yes as Brett Weinstein says, “We are perfectly deigned for a world we no longer live in.”
A nervous system with pleasure zones, cortisol, adrenaline and endorphins. Fight or flight. Us vs. them. Tribalism hardwired into our biology. Put people in danger, and they group up for safety—keeping the illusion of separation alive and well.
And yet, here we are. At this moment in time.. Awakening to? A new porential.. Fingers crossed. Double on black. I’m not perect… But I’m all in.
Can we even fathom ten generations ahead? Or do we just keep buying, fucking, and fighting until we die?
The Myth We Are Tied Into
Vote with your dollar, Paul Chek always says. Sustainable, organic—it comes at a cost.
Make love. Love yourself. Love the world. And fight—from peace within your heart. But in the real world?
The myth we are tied into is both launching us into the cosmos and eroding the very fabric of life on this planet. So how do we redefine leadership? How do we reshape performance? How do we make space for balance—for stillness, contemplation, and then, right action? And how do we do so without sounding and acting like generic messiah-complex broken records?
More yin. Less yang.
A conundrum, indeed… The Paradox: Screaming into the Void
But is there time? Or are we all just clinging, screaming our hearts out into that dark night?
As Jung said—how do we kindle our light in the mere presence of darkness? How do we even hold the fractured mirror of the collective soul? How do we exist in a world where everything is speeding toward exponential collapse and exponential awakening at the same time?
The paradox is real. I must witness. And I must act.
With all my heart.
The False Utopia and the Real Work
Give me the orange robe. I’ll drink the Kool-Aid. I’ll sign the dotted line for the commune.
I get it now—the full allure of Osho ashrams, the Bali exodus, the endless search for a utopia. Sign here for paradise.
Only for it to inevitably turn into a tyranny—run by the charming, god-complexed sociopath who knows exactly which strings of compassion to pull.
If you’re always on the good side of the good fight… It might be time to look within. Because the real work is not escape.
The real work is unraveling the myth of endless productivity, of endless work, of endless accumulation.
The real work is reclaiming our humanity.
