I love when people come to visit me here in Krabi to talk about meditation. Recently I enjoyed a visit over a couple of days from a man from Europe. We had some great conversations that were enlightening on both sides. I always get something out of these visits by people from across the world who have experienced different paths and results.
I made the following line graph just to show how the Ego/Self/Me/I has fluctuated over time. I was explaining to him what it looked like and I think it was hard to picture. So I made a picture. :).
In 1995 I wasn’t meditating. I was reading Eastern religion and philosophy books. (A. marks that time on the chart)
In 1996 I did a little meditation with my wife’s father and on my own. There was a teacher, Hamid, at my practicum during grad school at the Florida Mental Health Institute, so I attended some of his meditation sessions.
In 1997 I began to really look at meditation as a way of life. I began practicing once per day in the evening usually for 20-30 minutes. I was flying blind for a while and had no real forward movement for months. At least not what I could recognize so easily. There were some good changes in those months but nothing huge.
Sometime in 1997 (B.) I reached Perfect Concentration on the feeling of the breath in the nose. This led quickly to the Deep Jhanas and mind states that were all new to me. The ego fell off hard and fast.
By 1998 after about 6-7 months of entering Deep Jhanas I found myself on a serious path to losing the self. It was scary, to be honest. I hadn’t the slightest idea what I had stumbled into. Monks in the Tampa area couldn’t tell me what my states of mind were all about. I visited two Theravada Buddhist temples at that time – one in Palm River and one in Carrollwood. Besides some difficulty with English, it was apparent that the monks at these temples were not meditating much. They hadn’t studied higher level meditation.
In C., I stopped meditation out of fear I was going to lose ME forever. I certainly seemed to be on that track.
After that decision to stop all meditation I ran back toward my ego. I went back to doing things I had done pre-meditation. Pre-Jhana entry. I started drinking with my friend Dave again once a week or couple times a month at a bar on Friday. I went back to exercising maniacally. I piled on achievements as I got many certifications like Real Estate Agent, Home Inspector, Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, and dozens of computer hardware certifications.
I ran from meditation because I wasn’t sure I was on a good path.
When meditation becomes serious… as in Life Changing, one needs to make a fast decision.
I wasn’t really sure I was sane anymore. My mind, my life, my ego, my desires, my attachment to things had all changed SO MUCH that I wasn’t sure what was going on.
At D., in 2004 I found Santikaro’s phone number and called him. He was a monk from Suan Mokkhabalaram in Chaiya, a subdistrict of Suratthani in Southern Thailand. He was living in the states. He had disrobed I think to marry. Or at least have a partner.
He gave me his opinion on my meditation experiences. He said I was on a good path. He said I might go to Thailand if possible to learn more about Jhana and possibly stay at a temple for a while to keep practicing.
In 2004 later that year, I moved to Thailand. I thought I’d say a year. I’ve been here 20 years now. In a month, 21 years.
So, in 2004 I began meditating again. I was curious what would happen. I knew I would like to continue the path in some way, but maybe not 100% fast-forward ahead like I was before.
I meditated on and off from 2004-2007.
In 2007 I decided to just try some intensive days of meditation and see what happened.
It felt like there was more to do. I felt drawn to it like pulled to it, like a gravity or force pulling me to meditate more.
I started a daily practice.
Around August/September 2007 I was in the same state as I was in 1997-1998. Ego was gone after some Deep Jhana meditation sessions. I was sitting in my villa in perfect peace and with little to no ego at all for hours and sometimes days after my sessions.
After a couple of more sessions the urge to meditate just stopped. (E.)
The questions about ‘what is enlightenment (nibbana)? and is it attainable just went away. I couldn’t have cared less about it now.
There was no concern with that at all any longer. Questions about going forward on the path, doing any more meditation sessions, Deep Jhana, everything, just vanished. For years I had been plagued by those questions. What did these experiences MEAN? Was I near Nibbana? Was I going to become like a Buddha? Was I losing my Ego entirely? There were so many questions about meditation and what it meant and whether I should do it more to go further.
That all stopped after August 2007.
The next couple of weeks were odd.
I could almost function normally but I would find myself in an odd state where I wasn’t able to think or do things. It took me a while to really notice what was going on.
I became aware of two conscious tracks my mind had become.
One was the ego-filled Vern State. I say ego-filled, but it was definitely a fraction of what it was in 1995, or 1999 to early 2004.
The other was the Non-Dual State I called the Flatline State for years, not knowing the phrase Non-Dual.
I kept the chart going past 2025, assuming the states available to me would stay the same as they have since 2007. Not sure, but it seems likely.