Great post and I agree with many of your points. After only my first psychedelic experience with Psilocybin, I was immediately struck with most of the feelings described here: a new sense of empathy and understanding towards the existence of all that is around me and within me, and a strong desire for other people to take a moment to see the world this way as well. It was definitely profound.

My one contention is your paragraph, "Are The Plants Still Teaching Us?" While I don't think your theory is ridiculous or anything, and I've heard it echoed by many intelligent people I respect, I would question its usefulness in factual discussions/education on the use of psychedelics, or as an initiation. I think there's a risk of sounding crazy when we say "the plants are talking to us" that we should at least be aware of. Someone who has taken mushrooms may understand what you're saying (although, perhaps not) but someone who hasn't and has been misinformed about them their entire life is almost certainly going to think it sounds nuts. What do you think? Should the two topics be mixed like this? At the end of the day, it is certainly possible that it is just a chemical reaction (and Occam's razor would suggest it is) so even in stating it as our own personal intuition, I think a critic would jump on that and make it their focus of an argument against because it is the most easily attacked point.

And I say this as someone who is interested in both topics and think they both deserve to be discussed and studied. But I think "Are The Plants Still Teaching Us?" should be its own blog post.