Personality and Awakening

I've spoken to a few people who've objected to meditation based on the idea that it would erase their attachments/aversions, which according to them is what composes Who They Are.

I've also heard and believe that through enlightenment the personality is not lost.

I'm caught in the middle, being someone who wants to get SE, but also has to Build-A-Life in the meantime since I am basically been driftwood for the last so-many years.

So I'm wondering what can be said to such a case.

People who meditate wind up becoming even more themselves, because they are less of a self so they no longer resist their self. Yeah it's a paradox, but it's true. Don't worry about it.

But there's also the You Wake Up To the person you are thing, so I'm wondering what kind of distribution I should have with how I invest my time.

Ideally sit two thirty-minute sits a day, but at least one thirty-minute sit a day... and the rest of the time for your life. You'll find yourself wanting more sitting at times and you can add more. Consistency is most important, so commit to blocking out the time for at least that one sit.

Quality is much more important than quantity.

Doubt is the tricky thing to deal with... "Am I sitting enough?, Am I missing out?, Am I never going to make progress?, Would I be having better sits if I had more time for practice? Buddha didn't work or go to school and it took him seven years of total practice, so I'm never going to make progress", etc. Those doubts usually happen during a sit, which if you look closely at it... it's a way of not really doing meditation. It's thinking about meditation. But if you notice that and ideally note that as a "doubting thought", then you are doing meditation again.

Quality meditation isn't a state of distraction-free, thought-free sitting. It's a willingness to simply do the practice for the sit: note what is happening. The rest is beyond control and will happen on it's own. There is no way to game it, not by knowing the maps, knowing fancy techniques... Working with a teacher helps, because they are good at noticing how we avoid doing the practice (whereas we buy into our clever plans for making progress in meditation).

Every judgment about progress needs to be noted as a "judging thought".

It's so simple, but humans complicate things. Quality is just trusting that simple works and practicing consistently.

We DO "wake up as who we are;" we do NOT wake up as who we think we are, trying desperately to convince ourselves and others we are. Who we waste all that time in argument over-- internally and with others-- that is what we wake FROM: a fragile fantasy that we spin and then try to keep in place as if our lives depend on it. "Screw-up me", or "hero me"-- from the pov of awakening, it's the difference between good dream and bad dream-- not significant.

Until we wake up we have no clue who we are, and there's no second-guessing, no tricky moves to calculate if "who we really are" meets with our confusion's approval, and so is worth pursuing. Probably it will not: that's why we call it confusion. Clarity is not more of the same.

What is to be done in our lives remains to be done in either case; but clarity sure helps!

But there are still things such as depression that persist potentially into the awakened state, and seem inherited from beforehand. When you wake up you still have your processes, ext. So shouldn't you be mindful of cultivating them beforehand? Not to dramatically alter yourself but just so you have a self

I still am capable of experiencing depression, but it doesn't take hold for as long. I had real depression last week, but it was the result of unacknowledged sadness that had gone underground. Having a good cry did the trick. In the past I had low-level, chronic depression. I don't miss that at all.

No one who has known me experiences my personality as having undergone significant change. Some might say I'm easier to live with, but that's it.

Femtosecond wrote: When you wake up you still have your processes, ext. So shouldn't you be mindful of cultivating them beforehand?

That's what sila is all about. See Ron's take on it.

There is an interdependence and a synergy between the three trainings (sila, vipassana, and samatha).