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. I had no teacher, no spiritual path, and no community for guidance; there was only this aspiration of the possibility of realizing what this enlightenment thing was all about. The practice was difficult but proceeded. 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 life altering, painful, and emotionally destabilizing diagnosis, the only tool I had to face this new reality was my meditation practice and the only powerful response was an unshakable faith in the practice.

With this new chronic condition, the fire for realizing the truth only deepened. In reaction to the enormous amounts of confusion, uncertainty, and pain, 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. The sole intent of such aggressive use was discovering the nature of consciousness, mind, and reality at deeper and deeper levels. 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, and heartbreaking, each encounter leaving deeper seeds of compassion at the state of all being’s existential circumstance - all beings seek happiness and all beings suffer. The collective form of mind and the interconnected relationality of collective suffering the psychedelics expressed on the journeys are beyond words or conceptual comprehension.

Repeatedly experiencing this depth of consciousness lead to an even deeper obsession with meditation. One evening, I received very clear instructions from a tree I frequently sat under attend a meditation retreat. The next day I signed up for a 9-day online zoom vipassana meditation retreat with Unified Mindfulness teacher and founder Shinzen Young. The retreat resulted in a profound unfolding into present moment by moment experience where it was seen with precise clarity that a deep practice of meditation was not only necessary for awakening into the fundamental nature of reality, but was the antidote to this great mass of suffering I’d experienced from the psychedelics. I saw how the suffering at the base of my own mind were the same conditions for suffering for all beings. Moreover, I further saw that this suffering then expresses itself through distorted and harmful behavior and that when this kind of behavior scales, it leads towards the existential risks we’re facing as a species. The supporting conditions giving rise to suffering of the mind were seen to the basis of existential risk.

I immediately signed up for another retreat, and then a third. By the end of this third meditation retreat it became clear deepening my meditation practice was the only thing that mattered. Through careful planning, I set my worldly affairs aside and left to join a “modern monastery” based on Rinzai Zen dedicated to not only Buddhist Awakening practice, but addressing existential risk through contemplative practice. Unexpectedly and rather shockingly, I’d found a community dedicated to the insight I’d independently realized on my first meditation retreat.

The next three years were spent focused on rigorous spiritual training. During this time, I sat thirty-five meditation retreats, twenty-three of which were seven days or longer. Each non-retreat day at the monastery could have been considered retreat level intensity by some. Additionally, 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 sat, breathed, and intently focused on learning Buddhism, deepening my 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.

To separate the small moments of the day, or even the apparent smallness of our lives from the large collective movements of global civilization or even larger context of the totality of existence is to misunderstand the nature of interconnectedness. To miss this is to not see clearly the sacred quality of this present moment, right here right now. Our lives are a sacred expression of this Great Mystery; when we live in accord with that mystery, guiding principles of truth, compassion, and joy begin naturally unfolding as a functioning of the integrity of our lives.