From Kevin Ji-Keitoshi...

A friend of mine asked me after an intense meditation experience, "What if I lose myself in there? I went so deep that I felt like I had to fight to remember who I was!" My friend was feeling unsure whether it was safe to continue exploring.

It is such an important question for brave spiritual explorers. Is it possible to lose myself in the process? What is really at risk, and how do I stay safe? I'd like to share with you my experience of struggling with these questions.

The good news is, the most important parts of our personality arose in us for important reasons. Our deepest love for friends and family, our connection to spiritual truth, and our deepest passions all came to be in our personality because of forces in our life, and so even if we forget all those things for a moment, they are recreated in us by those same forces. Like film in a movie projector, the images seem to disappear when the light of awareness is removed, but the imprints are still there and will arise again at the instant the light is returned. So my experience is that even in very deep meditations or transformational experiences, the most important depth parts of my personality snap right back into focus as soon as I come back.

But, transformational experiences wouldn't be transformational if major stuff didn't change in me. So what is it that changes? And why is the stuff that changes okay to change?

On top of my deepest self is a whole collection of ideas about how I should manifest my personality. These ideas are usually unconscious, a whole collection of strategies, habits, and inclinations that have developed over time as circumstances unfolded. I may have a certain laugh I developed in middle school, copied from another teenager. I may have a certain way of eating I copied from my mother. I may have a certain way of driving I got from my uncle. These things seem like "me", like my distinct personality, but really, they're incidental. They were developed at random, and many of them were developed in conditions that I would reject now if made conscious of them. (Anything I developed in middle school is in that category).

The random forces that caused me to develop that laugh, for example, are no longer in my life. That middle school kid is long gone, and I don't need his laugh anymore. So when I go really deep in meditation, it's possible that I might just forget that, and when I come back, there's nothing to cause it to be created again.

I might just forget that I don't like sour cream, and start liking it. I might just forget that I thought that clothing fashion was stupid, and start wearing it. I might just forget that I thought I'd never affiliate with a certain political view, and suddenly it makes sense to me. I might even forget how I learned to walk and talk and eat, and just recreate those things spontaneously now, based on who I am today.

And all of that would be a good thing (and all of those examples are real in my life). But it can be scary, because when I was learning to let go of those things, they really felt like me. If I let go of how I laugh, what I eat, what I wear, and how I move, where am I? Who is left?

The answer was really quite beautiful, if hard to express. Underneath all those affectations I found my deeper self. The old affectations are replaced with new affectations, of course, because I still have to walk, talk, eat, laugh, make fashion decisions and form political opinions... but now I know that all those things are temporary truths built on the needs of the moment. They can (and will) change. My real self is under all that and can't be lost in meditation, sleep, coma, and even death.

Given that, I am much more free to explore meditation and spiritual transformation deeply.

Does this mean we are utterly safe, and cannot possibly have a problem from exploring spiritual truth? No, not at all, and here's why:

Although it is true that we cannot ever permanently lose that deeper self, we can certainly bury it so deep in temporary affectations that it's invisible and unfindable. And we can make really poor decisions in the name of surface personality traits because we are so out of touch with the deeper self.

The beauty of spiritual exploration is that it cuts through our surface personalities and allows us to let them go... but then we'd better be sure to be conscious of what we replace them with. The first time we formed out personalities, we hopefully had parents and teachers to guide us, to call us out when we got way off track, and to maintain a safe environment. As adults, all the safeties are off. Less people are looking out for us, we have more privacy and power, and we may not allow the ones who care about us enough influence to help.  If we get obsessed with an unhealthy personality trait, it's harder for us to get out, so we'd better make the personality-formation process conscious, intelligent and careful. Speaking from experience, freedom is also danger.

We could also fall into a trap sometimes called spiritual materialism, where we think the spiritual experience is a replacement for a surface personality, or that the surface personality is bad or pointless. Not at all. I can tell you that trying to float around in a spiritual cloud with no personality is not effective or enjoyable, for you or others.

So these are the real dangers - not that I will lose my deepest self, but that I will panic as my surface personality changes, or that I will use the freedom from my past to make an unhealthy personality in the present, or that I will simply fall in love with spiritual truth so deeply that I refuse to engage the personality-formation process (essentially leaving it to random chance).

Despite these risks, I find it is worth doing for an intelligent and motivated person. The rewards are limitless, and through it all, you can never destroy your most basic pure self. My recommendation is to find and verify a great teacher, trust them with your whole self, and then practice bravely and with an eye toward the highest goals.

Kevin Ji-Keitoshi Casey