The Journey
I've been experimenting with consciousness since I was too young to have the vocabulary for it.
Middle school: I discovered I could watch my thoughts without being pulled into them. I didn’t know it was a form of meditation. I thought I was just daydreaming differently. I’d induce hypnagogic states, cultivate lucid dreams through trial and error, and compare notes with the few other kids and adults curious about how minds actually work.
High school: a summer tai chi course gave me my first real structure. That teacher introduced actual meditation techniques, not the intuitive experimentation I’d been doing on my own. The standing and movement practices resonated with my teenage energy in ways seated practice never could.
Then I joined the US Army. I trained at Fort McLellan, Alabama, then served in South Korea and Kansas. During OSUT, I’d use standing meditation in formation under that brutal Alabama sun, sweat running down my shaved head, body locked in place for hours. The techniques worked. They kept me present, kept me spacious. But I didn’t yet understand why.
After service, I spent six years traveling through East Asia, Southeast Asia, India, and Türkiye, learning from monks and teachers across multiple traditions. This is where vocabulary finally met experience. This is where I could articulate what I’d been exploring since childhood. And this is where technique became recognition, where my practice shifted from accumulating methods to understanding what makes any method actually work.
