John Driggs
Student of Life, Love, & Being
About Me
Hey. My name is John Driggs. I live on a quiet mountain property with my remarkable family – my partner River and our four kids.
We’re currently building and expanding it into a sanctuary and a place of growth – a place where people can come to feel safe and loved, a place where teachers and artists can come together to share their wisdom and beauty, where they can host retreats, workshops, and other experiences that soften our hearts and expand our minds.
I’m looking forward to sharing my unbounded love and tender heart with each of you.
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In an earlier life, I was a corporate attorney, advising large corporations mostly on financial and real estate matters. But it didn’t take long to realize that life as an attorney wasn’t for me. It was eating away at my soul.
So, I ended up taking two years off to devote myself fully to my real passions – studying, reading, and writing about philosophy as well as practicing meditation (primarily Buddhist practices like vipassana and metta).
My love and passion for philosophy started early. I was raised in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, the heart of Mormon culture, by devout Mormon parents, whom I love beyond words. As a young teen, though, I ran into a lot of problems with their Mormon faith – moral disagreements, logical contradictions, and philosophical problems – that led me to reject the faith and set out on a search for truth.
Turns out, though, every time I’d catch a glimmer of truth, I just ended up with more problems. Essentially, my initial problems grew deeper and deeper — I learned more about what I don’t know. But as I got to know my ignorance in this way, I was able to ask better questions and, in turn, create better answers.
These problems and their evolution have consumed me now for decades. They have pushed me to learn about the world’s religions, past and present. They have given me a relentless appetite for science and philosophy. They have sent me around the globe to explore people and customs , to break bread with Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims.
They have led me to explore the nature of my own mind — to sit for week- and month-long meditations, to participate in traditional ayahuasca ceremonies with the Shipibo tribe in Peru, to inhale Sapo toad venom, which contains 5-MeO-DMT, otherwise known as the ‘God Molecule’, and to explore many other entheogens, psychedelics, and ‘religious’ or ‘supernatural’ states of mind.
And after all this—books, travel, meditation—I am now confident about only one thing: that I know nothing, that whatever knowledge I have will always be engulfed by my ignorance, that I’m just a kid playin’ in this cosmic sandbox without a clue about much of anything.
I do have a few ideas, though, ideas that have helped orient me in this endless mystery of existence, ideas or frameworks that have helped me discover, shape, and understand myself, the world, and my place in it.
I’ve also come across some incredible practices – practices that have helped me become more open to, aware of, and interested in life, practices that have made me more composed and resilient, practices that have made me less reactive and given me more freedom.
I’ve discovered meditations that have helped move me past concepts and connected me directly to the unformed space of awareness, meditations that have pointed me to a boundless love and to an unshakeable peace.
If you’re interested, I’m happy to share them with you. But remember, your life and your understanding are up to you. No one can walk your path for you. All I can do is point you back to yourself. I can be a polished mirror for you to see your reflection clearly, a hard rock to sharpen up against, an honest friend and counselor.
But in the end, the real work is up to you. The truth can only ever be found in you.
May you embody lasting peace,