About Ethan Schaltegger
My hope with this sharing this story is that it motivates you into deeper practice and builds trust between us, even if asynchronously.
Encountering Suffering
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 diagnosis, the only real tool I had to face this new reality was my meditation practice and the only sincere response was an unshakable faith in the practice.
Psychedelics
With this new chronic condition, the fire for realizing the truth only deepened. At this time, 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 was beyond words or comprehension, even to this day.
The Path
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 immediately signed up for another retreat, and then a third. By the end of this third retreat it became clear deepening my meditation practice was the only thing that mattered; the suffering of the mind, whether my mind or other beings, was at the root of this great mass of suffering. 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. I’d found a community dedicated to the insight I’d independently realized on my first meditation retreat.
The Monastery
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 day 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 ex-risk.
Leaving a Cult
As magnificent as this period of life was, the time in this community slowly soured. Little by little,