Meditation Practice and the Chameleon

"Becoming" is a word used to describe, among other things, striving to attain states of transcendence in meditation practice. We intellectually figure out a goal, and then imagine that we have somehow attained that goal. This is the trick of a clever ego; a chameleon in the ways in which it can conceal itself. Once we fool ourselves by thinking that we have attained a goal, such as emptiness for example, it is common to become disinterested in practice and go on to more alluring activities, perhaps building a meditation center or becoming a teacher of meditation.

This is because our ego must always be in control, or it's not happy. During concentration meditation, the ego is not in control, as we calm the thoughts that create the ego itself. The ego doesn't like this; the ego likes action, and will therefore create all kinds of illusions in order to tempt the mind to discontinue meditation practice which weakens the ego. The ego is very clever and not to be underestimated in its power to distract.

Inaccurate assumptions of one's progress is a common mistake for intermediate practitioners, particularly if they have no teacher or good spiritual friend as a sounding board. If meditation is disregarded before the subconscious shifts deeply, the intellect, which is then in control again, cannot provide the true realization of emptiness. As a consequence, emptiness remains only a theory, and although the mind will conjure up its own idea of emptiness creating a belief in the practitioner's mind that he or she is making great progress, no progress is fundamentally made at all, only intellectual and psychological imaginings.

In this context, I speak of the conscious mind as the psychological and intellectual mind, and the subconscious mind as the well of the life-continuum consciousness and the retainer of karma. Our thoughts bubble up from these subconscious strata, as do our inclination to focus our awareness in certain patterns. This is habit karma derived from long adhered habits in this lifetime, as well as past ones. The subconscious is the only place that great shifts in consciousness can occur, never in the conscious or intellectual, psychological mind.

To overcome this flaw of imagining that we are advanced far greater than we actually are, the ego must be tricked into becoming a warrior to fight itself. If we do this with shrewdness, then before the ego can catch on to what's happening, it defeats itself! This is called "skillful means."

We must become warriors because that's what it takes to fend off intellectual hypothesis. The surest way to become a warrior is to adhere to concentration practice, simply because correct Samadhi practice, particularly jhanas, leaves no escape routes for the ego to get loose and create confusion. Vippasana practice, on the other hand because of its openness, can be more easily fooled by the ego.

The proof that your emptiness is only a theory is when you see yourself making some kind of progress, or thinking that you have attained some kind of a realization. Reality is that no one is there to attain anything, and no one is there to make progress on the spiritual path. If it seems that an entity exists that will go to another realm to become something else, then this is still "becoming" and not conducive to Nibbana, or blowing out the flame. As long as even an ember is glowing regarding the idea of self, the flame has not died completely, and dying to existence completely is required before reality of "no self" can manifest.

The ego must be in place and working for realization to take place. It is the effort. Trying to abandon this idea of ego or effort prematurely is an illusion, because the ego is the exact thing that is doing the abandoning. This is premature intellectual theorizing in the form of convenient spirituality, and convenient spirituality will only delay matters if the practice is diluted.

If you are a Vipassana practitioner, I would recommend using half of your formal sitting dedicated to concentration practice or jhana, and half to awareness practice.