Hm. Trying to figure out a way to talk about something meditation & conditioning-related.
It's so unabashedly positive that I don't know how to address it without sounding like an asshole.
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Usually I talk about meditation in a fairly balanced, risks and rewards sort of way (I hope!), but some things just lack an up- or downside.
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But okay, I put on my robe and asshole hat...
Something weird happens when you start really hitting deep levels of emotional freedom.
(See this other thread bout that:)
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So, one thing you'll come across a lot with long-term meditation is personality shifts, where your interface with the world changes.
Mostly these are tiny shifts, the kind you see in mindfulness brochures. A bit of gentleness, a dash of courage.
Some are monumental.
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The thing that happens is that the body just stops believing all the bullshit stories you tell about yourself, to yourself.
"I am"-statements start sounding hypothetical at best. This opens doors you may not even have realized were closed.
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Personal example:
I used to have a crippling fear of social embarassment. Doing stuff in public would terrify me, especially things I was no good at.
There were all kinds of autobiographical reasons for that, but fuck it, who cares? Point is, I was very scared of embarassment.
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Resultantly, there were all sorts of things I'd wanted to do, that I couldn't. Too scary, too embarassing.
I learned to sing, but wouldn't sing for people, especially not larger groups. Etc.
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I learned all sorts of ways to overcome this fear in small ways, with great effort.
None of them were reliable, and I might fold to anxiety, but at least the attempt was there.
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So I had all these small stories to explain that to myself and others.
"I am shy."
"I get stressed in crowds."
"I'm introverted."
"I'm from the planet Shrktakh and the ways of humans confound me."
You build a cage around your fear, then little by little you add in the bars.
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Over time you tell the stories enough, and they start seeming like facts.
Your personal origin myth, stenographed in the Before, recited ever since.
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But when enough meditative deconditioning has occurred, everything can come apart.
You remember that "I am shy," is just a story you tell. Maybe it was true when you first told it. Now, who knows?
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This is when you start exploring, maybe. Certainly was for me.
Turns out, there are a lot of versions of Sindre that are *not* shy. The question is almost academic.
Personality is mostly "which hat are you wearing?", not "who are you?"
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