My Story

At the beginning of 2018 I discovered the possibility of spiritual enlightenment or what some teachers refer to as directly experiencing absolute truth. Such a discovery shook the very foundations of my worldview. In the aftermath of this new and radical possibility of enlightenment, I made the commitment to meditate for 1 hour every day for 6 months. However, at the end of this 6 month period, my health began to rapidly decline, ending in an emergency room visit where I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. What had started as a first step in pursuit of truth ended in an intimate encounter with the nature of suffering. In the hours, days, and weeks following such a destabilizing diagnosis, the only tool I had to face this new reality was my meditation practice.

As a next step in increasing the intensity of practice and understanding spirituality, I began aggressively using high dose psychedelic substances once every 2 weeks for just under a year and a half. These “journeys” were solitary and entirely contemplative, using the methodology outlined by John Hopkins University aside from having a trip sitter. However, eventually these expanded states of consciousness lead into what I can only describe as the collective mind of humanity and the collective suffering of the planet. I was not sufficiently prepared for the intensity of these encounters. The experiences were harrowing, each encounter leaving deeper seeds of understanding - all beings seek happiness and all beings suffer.

Repeatedly experiencing this depth of consciousness lead to an even deeper obsession with meditation. The next three years were spent focused on non-stop spiritual training. During this time, I lay-ordained with a visiting Buddhist Nun May 2022 on Vesak, in the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, receiving the Dharma name Losang Namgyal. Day by day I, along with the community, focused on learning Buddhism, deepening our meditation practice, and working on how all of this fit into the larger relational web of humanity’s global circumstance with existential risks like artificial intelligence, environmental breakdown, and even nuclear war.

As the days, months, and years passed by, the structural integrity of the community slowly changed. What had once been a vibrant community slowly dwindled. This decrease in size was do to an increasing misuse and consolidation of power from the organization’s leadership. While much of my training had been enormously beneficial, the core of the organization was out of integrity and so I made the decision to leave. This leaving was one of the most painful decisions of my life, but was a critical choice point along my personal spiritual path. If you’d like to learn more about this exiting, you can watch my video about it below.

One of the biggest lessons from my time at the monastery was that when we sincerely seek to practice, and when we sincerely try to live from honesty, this is precisely the hard work of global systems change. I hope to offer these teachings and guidance I’ve been given to help move the needle, however slowly. Step by step, breath by breath, this path makes a difference.