Navigating your Pathway into Sacred Facilitation with SGC

For experienced Facilitators navigating the evolving landscape of psychedelic practice, the Sacred Garden Community (SGC) Pathways Program offers a rare bridge between secular facilitation and legally secured rights to sincere religious practice. Where most Facilitators find themselves confined to the regulated secular frameworks of Oregon, Colorado, and New Mexico, SGC provides a pathway to work within constitutionally protected religious rights across the United States.

The Pathways Program emerges from a recognition that many skilled Facilitators—whether trained in indigenous traditions, Western therapeutic models, or other established practices—seek not just community, but the depth of personal and community engagement (and legal protections) that come with sincere religious practice. This eight-week intensive training, followed by a practicum and ordination process, welcomes those who have committed to this sacred work in their lives, and who wish to deepen their roots within a legally recognized interfaith church.

An Uncommon “Sacred Community of Practice”

What distinguishes SGC from other training programs and religious / spiritual communities lies in its approach to religious practice. The community operates under what it calls "Least Dogma"—a framework that honors multiple traditions, Sacramental practices, and globally identified lineages while moving beyond narrow religious constraints. This interfaith approach allows Facilitators and community members from diverse backgrounds to maintain their authentic religious / spiritual frameworks while participating in a broader container of Shared Values: Care, Respect, integrity and commitment to growing Trust.

Least Dogma represents more than theological clarity and openness; it embodies a practical wisdom that recognizes the Divine may be encountered through many paths and expressed in many languages. For a Pathways candidate, this means engaging our Shared Faith and one's own beliefs with genuine self-reflection and humble conviction, while remaining open and respectful - offering the ‘benefit of the doubt’ - regarding how others walk their religious / spiritual journey. This balance of shared faith, personal authenticity and communal humility creates space for sacred Facilitators who might otherwise find themselves between traditions or outside conventional religious structures.

The community's commitment to clear, humble, reflective interfaith practice extends beyond philosophy. SGC is a founding member of the Sacred Plant Alliance, an external body dedicated to community self-regulation within the broader psychedelic movement. This involvement demonstrates SGC's commitment to responsibility beyond its own walls and its recognition that responsible practice may benefit by engagement with larger networks of Facilitators and advocates.

Deep Roots within the Psychedelic Awakening

SGC's is grounded deeply within the soil of the current psychedelic movement. The founding chairperson and three of the five founding board members of “Decrim Nature Oakland” - the first successful all-psychedelic-plants-and-fungi decriminalization movement in the US - were SGC Elders. This early outreach and engagement emerged from what the community describes, with language received with wry discernment during a deep assisted meditation in the late 2010s, as from "a deep prayer and shared motivation to grow safety and to be in integrity and right relation with 'The Elders of our Village.'"

This history reveals something essential about SGC's approach: Community Integration and religious / spiritual practice are understood as interconnected aspects of sacred work. The community sees itself as a part of what some call a "great psychedelic re-awakening," recognizing that this cultural moment requires both inner transformation and loving community engagement.

Specific Benefits of Pathways

For experienced Facilitators, the Pathways Program offers several concrete advantages. Most significantly, it provides nationally secured rights to sincere religious practice within a well-formed and thoroughly reviewed religious organization. This legal protection represents more than bureaucratic shelter; it reflects the community's understanding that, for many of us - and for our communities - sustainable practice may benefit by community grounding.

The program is designed for those who already bring substantial experience, whether through formal guide training, indigenous or other forms of training and apprenticeship, or years of ceremonial practice supported by, for examples, risk reduction training, therapeutic or pastoral counseling experience, or similar (Zendo, etc). Ideal candidates have engaged with the Sacraments for at least a year, participated in multiple group and / or 1-on-1 ceremonies, and who maintain ongoing personal development work through personal meditation, therapy, coaching, somatic healing, or other contemplative disciplines.

Upon ordination, Facilitators gain access to established community safety protocols, health screening systems, Sacred Garden Community Member “Practitioners” and a network of Facilitators for peer supervision. The program also opens possibilities for regional expansion, inviting graduates to establish SGC chapters or “Gardens” in their own communities. This emphasis on local community building reflects SGC's understanding that sustainable practice requires both personal depth and communal support.

A Living Tradition

The Pathways Program ultimately offers experienced Facilitators something that individual practice or secular training programs cannot: membership in a living tradition devoted to awakening Divine Presence within a careful and well-formed Practice, while maintaining Least Dogmatic claims to metaphysical or cultural control, with the flexibility to honor diverse religious / spiritual approaches. Through its combination of rigorous training, ongoing mentorship, and legal protection, SGC provides a framework for Facilitators seeking to serve others within a context that honors both personal calling and community responsibility and engagement.

As one ordained Facilitator reflects, the program "offers a truly holistic experience—one that honors my unique perspectives within a broader and more inclusive framework of shared least dogma." This balance of individual authenticity and collective container represents SGC's core offering: a way to practice with both religious / spiritual depth and legal security, personal freedom and communal support.

For Facilitators ready to move beyond the constraints of secular practice while maintaining and even growing clear reflection and insight into their own authentic religious / spiritual orientation, the Pathways Program offers a mature approach to sacred work - one grounded in legal reality, community accountability, and genuine interfaith respect. You may learn more about the Pathways Program and send in your application for consideration here.