I believe that non-self and depersonalisation are the same phenomenon, just one is intentional and expected while the other is unintentional and unexpected. One of my dhamma-buddies said that there’s a fair deal of selfing going on in my current writing, and I agree.
But that is the nature of the brain. It creates predictive models. You tear them down through insight and they rebuild. Over time you nudge this more toward ‘no-permanent-self’, but that does not mean you go about your days without a self-container. Even the Buddha had his container called the tathāgata, which he reinforced at night by speaking with the devas in his other world.
The extreme version of no-self is very pleasant indeed, so long as it is intentionally cultivated. But it cannot be maintained if you have 2 young kids to raise and are trying to figure out just what is going on with this enlightenment malarkey.
I could wander around going 無心無心 all day; pretty sure I’ve destabilised enough times now for that to be possible… but I don’t want to. Stuff to do, y’know.
I’ve spoken with a couple of people recently who had unpleasant depersonalisation experiences. One changed job to be self-employed and was then misdiagnosed bipolar as his calzone-of-self exploded and he set about picking up the pieces. He managed to tear himself away from the drugs too and is now happy; when he was taking them he nudged suicidality.
The other was a teacher who spent a couple of years raising kids then moved house and went back to teaching, only to be shocked by the amount of abused and traumatised kids in the classroom.
Both of these were just rapid changes in life situation. The old self became maladaptive. The software was out of date and the old perceptual framework crumbled to make way for the new. I think more people need to be educated in Buddhist insight practices just so they know what to expect when something like this happens. Knowing a little about the dukkha-nanas might go a long way in terms of helping people feel better when their old self spontaneously combusts.
The thing is though - it’s all about the new data you input when the old ways implode.
If you are afraid then fear will become the foundation of the new tree and it will grow; you will spiral. If you are joyous, then that will grow and compound. If you view it as a way to decondition yourself and lose old trauma, as in the insight practices, then you will achieve your deconditioning and come back a lighter and more carefree soul.
The tower has crumbled and you get to rebuild. The important thing is the narrative you give yourself for top-down reinforcement. This is why I needed to get away from those ‘stabilisers’ and the ‘manic’ narrative - it was making me rapidly suicidal. And even after I did, I needed to destabilise the self several more times to remove the damage they had done. Fucking DSM.
I was thrown into this by prescription of aripiprazole without a diagnosis. A non-dual mode of being occurring overnight; I was exploded out of my self and felt frightened and enlightened, but probably only because of my prior interest in and practice of Buddhist philosophy. I imagine that if I hadn’t already had a basic grasp of non-self I would have been utterly terrified and may have ended up psychotic.
I had spent 2 years deconstructing the self using art, retired early, found sobriety and high-level ironman competition to be dissatisfactory, and was already on the cusp of this kind of destabilisation anyway. I had climbed every mountain and found the view to be lacking. I was fed up of the chase but knew no other way of living.
Aripirazole exploded me to complete anatta for 2 months, with a solid state of full-body pīti / dopaminergic tingles for the duration, day and night. I deconditioned myself to the max through the 88 hells but then instead of being able to recover in a safe environment I was given valproate and put in an empty house on my own. This neuroplasticity-suppressant prevented my mind from rebuilding properly and the narrative made me suicidal within a span of days. Thankfully I spotted the causality and broke free.
However… I needed to destabilise the new model multiple more times to get to where I am now. And where I am now is where I was when aripiprazole made me non-dual; I know that the world is hosted in my mind and I know that my mind is hosted in the world.
Yet I still come back to a self, and you always will if you act in the world. The idea of non-self is often understood to mean ‘permanently non-dual’… but I am sure that is wrong. You can achieve the non-dual thing relatively quickly after a while - just by stopping and breathing or staring out the window - but in terms of daily functioning you will always operate as an agent within the world.
The thing that you learn is that all these modalities are not ‘you’. You come back to an ego-container in order to function but you recognise that it is temporary and changing. It is in constant flux and no two moments will ever be the same.
The magical meditative states are conditioned things, as the Buddha stressed. They are not something you can hold onto. The jhāna are there while you’re there and they’re gone when you’re gone. This is one of the explicit teachings of the Buddha - that letting go of these mythicall meditative states is one of the last things to do on his path. Even the understanding of the state-change is conditioned and will end when you die.
So there is no self. I know that :)
Yet… there is a self? I know that too :)
Language :p
So I don’t think there’s anything contradictory about trying to figure out the mechanisms at play. That’s what Siddhartha did, after all. I’ll go sit in a few minutes and fade into the ether, but the diffuse will always condense around this mortal form, creating something new and suited to its present situation, kind of like how a snowflake will grow from water vapour and take form based on the conditions it develops in.
In terms of getting the scary depersonalisation under control, I recommend movement-based regulation. Walking, running, cycling, swimming, dancing. Making knives out of samurai swords. This is what held me together until I hit stream entry and was able to sit and meditate properly. This is why monks mix sitting and walking.
Because even with understanding of Buddhism, that aripiprazole experience was terrifying. Words do not suffice for the intensity. They… I can never even hope to describe how that drug destroyed everything I knew of my self and my world overnight.
But you can take that and you can wrangle it and make something new from it. The stale spring snow has evaporated, but that doesn’t mean it can’t form anew once it gets to a high enough altitude.
How many clouds are in the sky?
How many selves will you have over a lifetime? The fact that clouds become snow become clouds again does not mean you are missing the point of anatta.
I think this non-self thing is about seeing the cycle. How the water moves. Not about trying to hold it as vapour and prevent the snow from falling.
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