16 comments on “Depersonalization vs Enlightenment”
How odd. I came across this the other day and then couldn’t find it again (amongst the countless Shinzen Young videos on Youtube). And now here it is again here. Thanks.
This is wrong. I have experienced dp/dr since the age of 7. I have also expereinced many wonderful spiritual events during my life. And I also have experienced a kundalini awakening. Dp/dr is not scary once surrendered to and understood that it is a quick thrust into non-ego states which force one to surrender and experience a higher state of being. Not all surrender to this and try to latch on to ego-mind. Obvisouly psychology considers it a disorder because they do not see beyond the veils of illusion. I expereinced dp/dr at the age of 7 when i was looking in the mirror and asked myself ‘ who am i?’ this has happened to many others. It is a trigger to these dp/dr states.
Oh and did you know that the mind SHUTTS DOWN during these states? Why?.. because it is an ego-less state. There is no ‘evil twin’ to enlightenment. The only evil twin are those are are addicted to logic.
How do you cope with DP/DR now – I mean, since you “learned” to surrender to it, did the void of it transform, or merely become latent? I am experiencing DP/DR and have done so for a year. I too have had nice experienciences with meditation, before, but not since. It is difficult to find hollistic information about, because most of it is confounded by mistakes of rebirth experiences. Reading “Feeling unreal” gives a nice overview, but from a fairly western psychology point of view. Any directions would be much appreciated..
since I have been meditating more frequently.. and since i had a strong spiritual experince during meditation.. the dp is actualy not there… or i should say, not the same way it was. It use to be scary to feel dp… or scary when i contemplated ‘the self’ too much.. now, it doesn’t scare me at all.. I just feel peace when i think of .. ‘ who am i.’ So, i think meditation has helped a lot. I also do a lot of physical activity .. to make a balance with meditation and also living.
Dp is just a stage I feel, some people cannot move passed it.. but it is necessary to experince I feel. I know how terrible it can be to experince it.. but DP is a teacher… a difficult course.. but YOU WILL one day be free of it and it will no longer have any control over you.
I wish I could give you specific meditations but i don’t have any. For years i have meditated at least four times a week for 30-1 hour. I usually pray a few minutes first and then i remain as silent and still for the rest of the time. I just surrender my thoughts as much as I can..
just be sure to do physical activity also often.. eat well.. and meditate !
Mr. Young I have been experiencing DP/DR for 4 years. This happened after I had a spiritual awakening of some sort and felt a tremendous amount of inner peace for 3 weeks. 3 weeks later DP hit. I don’t understand how I went from a state of such oneness with myself and the world to a state of complete detachment. Would you mind if I contacted you to run a couple questions by you?
PS Michelle, what’s up :P Funny to see you on here!
This same thing happened to me over 8 yrs ago now! its been a long 8yrs of trying to distract myself from it instead of confronting it!!! i think the key is befriending it
I actually know a lil’ about spiritual freedom and actually suffer from DP/DR. And this guy is right on point. Listen to him because he knows what he’s talking about.
DP as the “evil twin” of freedom, fearlessness, spiritual freedom is the best description I’ve heard so far.
@Michelle
your story of awakening is very similar to mine, I too developed this on my own… seeing myself in a mirror and questioning the soul at the age of 10.. It gave me unusual sensation for few seconds then I used to shake my head and came out of it.. Whenever I was empty headed I used to do this to me.. 3-4 times a year and DP lasted for seconds.. until 3 months ago. I did this to me again and could not just come out of it this time.. in my case DP is causing anxiety..then anxiety increases DP..I feel I am stuck in a loop.. Sometimes this feeling goes away but not for more than an hour. I talked to a neuro physician and even got an MRI done ( all well ). I am seeing a psychiatrist as well, he says he knows what is DP and says it will go away on its own & says this is not a disorder rather an order.
I am trying to sense spirituality behind it. I feel I will be comfortable with it someday…I would call this Repersonalization and not depersonalization..
“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.”
Yesss love thinking about it as a repersonlization process…a second honeymoon :) …the first few times it started happening to me also i was able to shake my head out of it till one day it felt like a tidal wave from a black hole hit me and 15 seconds later i no longer knew which way was up… -if there was a compass in the mind it was sent spinning and spinning-.. i am becoming more grateful for it now tho, lots can be learned from this angle!
My take: (maybe help some ppl who are fearing in DP, idk)
DP is an experience, and just like all experience, it’s up to one’s interpretation of it that invokes feelings – such as fear of DP, or bliss in DP.
It doesn’t help that in non-spiritual circles (‘normal society’) the DP experience is seen as a ‘disorder’ – and the experiencer of DP is constantly given negative feedback, promoting resistance of the perception.
In spiritual terms: The people in the dream, those who see behind a veil of illusion, want the DP experiencer to start believing the dream again. And the experiencer, if not spiritually knowledgable, is accustomed to perception from the veil, and wants to go back to living in the dream.
i think this is the difference, simply in the interpretation, which leads to fear, “enlightenments evil twin”, or the bliss of emptiness – which follows if the DP is simply accepted.
As Young says, there a bit of self in those who are fearful in DP. Not all is empty, and it’s holding on for dear life. If such a sufferer can be shown to let go, to accept the DP, it’s my experience that beautiful things are to come.
“my story”:
I had a high anxiety series of events – in academics haha! – that led to a spontaneous onset of DP. Without any spiritual wisdom at the time, the DP was seen as a disorder – I got an MRI, saw neurologist, psychologist etc.
I met the psychologist for 3 sessions only, she had no clue, and I just learned to deal with it. Also, perhaps reading about some spiritual seekers and reading the term ‘depersonalize’ in a few texts, i thought, “perhaps this isn’t all that bad”.
Funny thing, with the world constantly promoting the separate-self, i eventually went back to that perception from a self – the perception before DP – i suppose because I started to believe in a self and started living in the dream again. (This may be a technique if you want to go back) From there DP vacillated in intensity, more so in stressful situations.
Fast forward 3.5 years from the onset, i was in conversation with a young lady about awakening, and expressed ‘Right now, i don’t feel sober, like the sober i knew when i was a teen in HS, i feel like i’m in a dream’.
She responds, ‘exactly, that’s how it’s supposed to feel!’
I fell to the ground laughing that i had spent much effort trying to rid myself of from this “DP disorder” perception. What followed shortly, after accepting the state instead of fighting it, were beautiful experiences: feeling an intimacy with all objects, plants, humans, one-ness, joyful bliss of living. Tremendous detail in the world became available.
Also the term “awakening”, involving seeing the world as an illusion, waking up to reality.
Doesn’t this directly relate to DP? In DP, one feels they are in a dream, the world is illusory, it’s like, a type of lucid dreaming, but ‘lucid living’.
The difference btwn DP and awakening may be that a small small sense of self is hanging on by a thread, fearing.
From a spiritual perspective, I might assert that those without DP, who call DP a disorder, and who believe in a self are actually the ones with disorder. DP being closer to the true perception of reality.
This may be only my experience, but at age 3 i remember knowing something of the world that adults seemed to have forgotten, and i wanted to make sure i didn’t forget it.
What ever it was, it was fundamental to life – but, during some point in growing up, i forgot it.
After that acceptance of DP, i’m pretty sure the ensuing perspective of the world was what was known at age 3 – a perception more primary than that forced upon us during conditioning.
That experience lasted 4 days, now vacillates, right now perceiving from a self, but would prefer the DP perception. Funny how this works!
I agree with Michelle, this information in this video is wrong. I’m very skeptical about claims to “spiritual enlightenment” that haven’t involved some kind of hardship, turbulance and pain. Unfortunately, there isn’t much information on the more turbulant and messy side of the process.
In 2007, I had a random thought about the end of the world while at work and had a panic attack. This led to months of depersonalization, existential depression and confusion. I couldn’t find meaning in anything. I wondered around in an anxious mental fog, over-reacted to everything – although I still managed to go to work and do what I needed to do. Eventually, I became so fed up with my condition, despairing, trying to find the answers and fighting it that I completely broke down and surrendered to it. I decided that I would “take each moment as it comes” and not care about anything else, at least I was still alive and breathing. As I did, within days the emptyness went from numb, to calm, to peaceful, to joyful and eventually turned into ecstacy and illumination – I had revelations about my life, the world and my personality was transformed to a significant degree. I became much more more authentic and individuated.
Eckhart Tolle as an example talks about how he had a “glimpse” and spent the next three years in a state of “constant anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression” and “the world seemed so hostile, alien and meaningless”, until he decided that “enough was enough”, that he couldn’t live with it anymore and surrendered to the void.
The state of depersonalization is the true state of “the dark night of the spirit” as described by St John the Baptist, where neither the inner or outter world appear to have any meaning.
In my understanding, in terms of yoga, panic attacks and depersonalization IS the initial awakening of kundalini. Panic is a REACTION to the alteration in consciousness and the unconscious fears that have unleashed. While kundalini is portrayed as a serpent rising up the spine, many mistake this metaphor and map as a literal statement. Kundalini is the core “I consciousness”, and when it awakens it comes into conscious awareness and overwhelms the personality, almost like a light being switched on. This is why people with depersonalization feel as if they have to “will” everything, their movements, their speech, even their breathing. People in depersonalization are occupying a higher state of being but ardently cling to the personality, which causes the unpleasant sensations. The void appears as something frightening and catastrophic, but this is a grand illusion. If the sense of personality had a large unconscious investement in fear and constantly sought to protect it’s self-image, it will lead to what is described as depersonalization as those fears are made conscious and slowely burned away. The unpleasant sensations (visual distortions, rushes of energy in the body etc etc) are all a product of adrenaline. It is a very uncomfortable, often terrifying state – but it isn’t harmful or a state of psychosis. A state of “neurosis” would be more apt.
There are two options at this stage, stay put and fight or move through it. The individual can cling to the scraps of the former personality until the process wanes and goes back to being dormant, if it does (although it will probably cyclically rise again at some point in the future) or they can let go and surrender to the state and accept it, and allow the metamorphosis of the personality to take place. They can remain as the chrysalis or transform. If the individual clings to scraps of the eroded personality, it is probable that a partial transformation will be noticeable when it becomes dormant. If it has already eroded a significant portion of the personality, it may not go to sleep until the process is complete. In my experience, the state of surrender and acceptance is very difficult until you have truly decided that “enough is enough” – which may happen suddenly, or in stages over time – although I don’t doubt that some, as they claim, simply decided to let go.
In my experience and opinion, and from speaking with others and piecing together as much information as I can and connecting the dots, the state of depersonization is an early stage of spontaneous spiritual opening – and even for those who have moved through it and transformed to a significant degree, it will cyclically come around again and again to sweep the system clean, re-organize the personality and put us on track.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Frank Herbert, Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, “Dune”
A little wisdom from pop culture. There are some great points of view here.
Although I disagree with much of it. In the classical texts its said that it is misleading to say that things are either real or unreal, personally I think much of the discussion of nothingness is splitting hairs or the only way to express something that can’t be adequatelly described in words. They are so fond of saying that the self is a fiction, maybe they really mean that the self isn’t extant alone, that it exists in a state of relationship to the other than self. I also think that in some strange way that what is called self by a psychologist steeped in the westren tradition and what is called self by a trained meditator are both fundamentally different things. My reason for this is that those with clinical depersonalization can have their brainwaves measured and it can be shown that they have grey zones of activity in the brain, whereas trained meditators with 1000 hours of meditation or more have had their brain waves measured and it can be shown that they have greater coherence and higher activity in the right brain. Perhaps it is just that the acceptance of no-self is something like a formality necessary to pass from one stage of development to the next. Maybe it is something like a hyperbolic way of realizing that we live in dynamic relationship with everything around ourselves, and that the conditions of self are not static but subject to constant change. In a practical sense is a tree not real because it has roots or because it may lose its leaves or grow fruit. These are just opinions of one of many, and I respect all of the opinions expressed here and they are valuable and well articulated. I think that most of us live in the spectrum between dream and “real” life and knowing that is a kind of a paralell to the idea of taking the middle path for me.
I have been living with this for 6 months now and I have had glimpses of reality return and I believe in my heart that it will return fully. I accept it now and I am at peace but I believe I will have ” my feet on the ground” again and look forward to that time when I can feel connected with the world again. When I can come home to my body. I hope someone can take some value out of my thoughts and that they do not just sound like denial to you all. I am not trying to say there is no value in what is experienced by those such as ourselves who have been to the pit of the void or experienced”the great death” but I prefer to think of it as a rebirth of self rather than an annihilation of ego although admittedly it can be brutal for those of us who must go through at any pace we choose to take. Thanks you guys.
This is my opinion/view on DP/DR vs Enlightenment (it’s not a fact, only my experience):
DP/DR is experienced as NEGATIVE, Enlightenment as POSITIVE. Why?
DP/DR has a lack of positivity, people start realizing that the ego and environment are subjective without getting the benefit from it. They keep resisting to it, they wanna get back to thereself (the ego) but they can’t. The ego is gone. They get depressed maybe afraid of life. It feels like a total emptyness because you only knew the ego. But when you accept it and start looking for the positive side you will find enlightenment because there is a lack of negativity. This process takes a lot of time and study, selfreflection. Everything is made from the same energy (GOD?) We are that energy, we are ONE, there is nothing else. It’s all about consiousness/ awareness.
Life is so beautiful/peaceful if you stay away from negativity!
8 weeks ago whilst traveling in India, I went to a 10 day Vipassana Mediation retreat which had a profound, life changing impact on my life. Previous to this I had never meditated or considered myself a spiritual person.
Since being home I have kept up the mediation and occasionally I would experience mild derealization similar to what I used to experience as a child but soon enough it would fade. As of late though the feeling of derealization has intensified and taken me over which has now left me lost with no direction.
At the times I am in awe of this beautiful world then it can switch to feelings of isolation and loneliness where everything around me becomes ‘meaningless’. I find myself asking questions ‘Who am I?’, ‘Is this life actually happening or am I in a dream?’.
I read that Vipassana Mediation can trigger the first stages of a ‘ spiritual awakening’. I feel disconnected and detached from my partner and those around me. When I think of the past my memory is foggy even looking at pictures of myself is odd. I have feelings of ‘nothingness’. It is as if I am detaching from myself.
I read that your conditioned mind starts breaking apart and what has collapsed is the whole conceptual framework for your life, the meaning that your mind had given it. So that results in a dark place.
Its scary but I’m learning to let go and surrender. Reading these responses have really helped me, I thought for a second I was losing my mind ( I guess I am).
How odd. I came across this the other day and then couldn’t find it again (amongst the countless Shinzen Young videos on Youtube). And now here it is again here. Thanks.
This is wrong. I have experienced dp/dr since the age of 7. I have also expereinced many wonderful spiritual events during my life. And I also have experienced a kundalini awakening. Dp/dr is not scary once surrendered to and understood that it is a quick thrust into non-ego states which force one to surrender and experience a higher state of being. Not all surrender to this and try to latch on to ego-mind. Obvisouly psychology considers it a disorder because they do not see beyond the veils of illusion. I expereinced dp/dr at the age of 7 when i was looking in the mirror and asked myself ‘ who am i?’ this has happened to many others. It is a trigger to these dp/dr states.
Oh and did you know that the mind SHUTTS DOWN during these states? Why?.. because it is an ego-less state. There is no ‘evil twin’ to enlightenment. The only evil twin are those are are addicted to logic.
How do you cope with DP/DR now – I mean, since you “learned” to surrender to it, did the void of it transform, or merely become latent? I am experiencing DP/DR and have done so for a year. I too have had nice experienciences with meditation, before, but not since. It is difficult to find hollistic information about, because most of it is confounded by mistakes of rebirth experiences. Reading “Feeling unreal” gives a nice overview, but from a fairly western psychology point of view. Any directions would be much appreciated..
since I have been meditating more frequently.. and since i had a strong spiritual experince during meditation.. the dp is actualy not there… or i should say, not the same way it was. It use to be scary to feel dp… or scary when i contemplated ‘the self’ too much.. now, it doesn’t scare me at all.. I just feel peace when i think of .. ‘ who am i.’ So, i think meditation has helped a lot. I also do a lot of physical activity .. to make a balance with meditation and also living.
Dp is just a stage I feel, some people cannot move passed it.. but it is necessary to experince I feel. I know how terrible it can be to experince it.. but DP is a teacher… a difficult course.. but YOU WILL one day be free of it and it will no longer have any control over you.
I wish I could give you specific meditations but i don’t have any. For years i have meditated at least four times a week for 30-1 hour. I usually pray a few minutes first and then i remain as silent and still for the rest of the time. I just surrender my thoughts as much as I can..
just be sure to do physical activity also often.. eat well.. and meditate !
Mr. Young I have been experiencing DP/DR for 4 years. This happened after I had a spiritual awakening of some sort and felt a tremendous amount of inner peace for 3 weeks. 3 weeks later DP hit. I don’t understand how I went from a state of such oneness with myself and the world to a state of complete detachment. Would you mind if I contacted you to run a couple questions by you?
PS Michelle, what’s up :P Funny to see you on here!
This same thing happened to me over 8 yrs ago now! its been a long 8yrs of trying to distract myself from it instead of confronting it!!! i think the key is befriending it
I actually know a lil’ about spiritual freedom and actually suffer from DP/DR. And this guy is right on point. Listen to him because he knows what he’s talking about.
DP as the “evil twin” of freedom, fearlessness, spiritual freedom is the best description I’ve heard so far.
@Michelle
your story of awakening is very similar to mine, I too developed this on my own… seeing myself in a mirror and questioning the soul at the age of 10.. It gave me unusual sensation for few seconds then I used to shake my head and came out of it.. Whenever I was empty headed I used to do this to me.. 3-4 times a year and DP lasted for seconds.. until 3 months ago. I did this to me again and could not just come out of it this time.. in my case DP is causing anxiety..then anxiety increases DP..I feel I am stuck in a loop.. Sometimes this feeling goes away but not for more than an hour. I talked to a neuro physician and even got an MRI done ( all well ). I am seeing a psychiatrist as well, he says he knows what is DP and says it will go away on its own & says this is not a disorder rather an order.
I am trying to sense spirituality behind it. I feel I will be comfortable with it someday…I would call this Repersonalization and not depersonalization..
“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.”
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery ~
Hey Rohit… i think i saw your post on the DP site.. i just wrote to you :)
I look forward to chatting..
Yesss love thinking about it as a repersonlization process…a second honeymoon :) …the first few times it started happening to me also i was able to shake my head out of it till one day it felt like a tidal wave from a black hole hit me and 15 seconds later i no longer knew which way was up… -if there was a compass in the mind it was sent spinning and spinning-.. i am becoming more grateful for it now tho, lots can be learned from this angle!
[Apologies - this is a long comment]
My take: (maybe help some ppl who are fearing in DP, idk)
DP is an experience, and just like all experience, it’s up to one’s interpretation of it that invokes feelings – such as fear of DP, or bliss in DP.
It doesn’t help that in non-spiritual circles (‘normal society’) the DP experience is seen as a ‘disorder’ – and the experiencer of DP is constantly given negative feedback, promoting resistance of the perception.
In spiritual terms: The people in the dream, those who see behind a veil of illusion, want the DP experiencer to start believing the dream again. And the experiencer, if not spiritually knowledgable, is accustomed to perception from the veil, and wants to go back to living in the dream.
i think this is the difference, simply in the interpretation, which leads to fear, “enlightenments evil twin”, or the bliss of emptiness – which follows if the DP is simply accepted.
As Young says, there a bit of self in those who are fearful in DP. Not all is empty, and it’s holding on for dear life. If such a sufferer can be shown to let go, to accept the DP, it’s my experience that beautiful things are to come.
“my story”:
I had a high anxiety series of events – in academics haha! – that led to a spontaneous onset of DP. Without any spiritual wisdom at the time, the DP was seen as a disorder – I got an MRI, saw neurologist, psychologist etc.
I met the psychologist for 3 sessions only, she had no clue, and I just learned to deal with it. Also, perhaps reading about some spiritual seekers and reading the term ‘depersonalize’ in a few texts, i thought, “perhaps this isn’t all that bad”.
Funny thing, with the world constantly promoting the separate-self, i eventually went back to that perception from a self – the perception before DP – i suppose because I started to believe in a self and started living in the dream again. (This may be a technique if you want to go back) From there DP vacillated in intensity, more so in stressful situations.
Fast forward 3.5 years from the onset, i was in conversation with a young lady about awakening, and expressed ‘Right now, i don’t feel sober, like the sober i knew when i was a teen in HS, i feel like i’m in a dream’.
She responds, ‘exactly, that’s how it’s supposed to feel!’
I fell to the ground laughing that i had spent much effort trying to rid myself of from this “DP disorder” perception. What followed shortly, after accepting the state instead of fighting it, were beautiful experiences: feeling an intimacy with all objects, plants, humans, one-ness, joyful bliss of living. Tremendous detail in the world became available.
Also the term “awakening”, involving seeing the world as an illusion, waking up to reality.
Doesn’t this directly relate to DP? In DP, one feels they are in a dream, the world is illusory, it’s like, a type of lucid dreaming, but ‘lucid living’.
The difference btwn DP and awakening may be that a small small sense of self is hanging on by a thread, fearing.
From a spiritual perspective, I might assert that those without DP, who call DP a disorder, and who believe in a self are actually the ones with disorder. DP being closer to the true perception of reality.
This may be only my experience, but at age 3 i remember knowing something of the world that adults seemed to have forgotten, and i wanted to make sure i didn’t forget it.
What ever it was, it was fundamental to life – but, during some point in growing up, i forgot it.
After that acceptance of DP, i’m pretty sure the ensuing perspective of the world was what was known at age 3 – a perception more primary than that forced upon us during conditioning.
That experience lasted 4 days, now vacillates, right now perceiving from a self, but would prefer the DP perception. Funny how this works!
Contact me on fb if you’d like!
Pingback: Depersonalization/Derealization | Dark, but Life
I agree with Michelle, this information in this video is wrong. I’m very skeptical about claims to “spiritual enlightenment” that haven’t involved some kind of hardship, turbulance and pain. Unfortunately, there isn’t much information on the more turbulant and messy side of the process.
In 2007, I had a random thought about the end of the world while at work and had a panic attack. This led to months of depersonalization, existential depression and confusion. I couldn’t find meaning in anything. I wondered around in an anxious mental fog, over-reacted to everything – although I still managed to go to work and do what I needed to do. Eventually, I became so fed up with my condition, despairing, trying to find the answers and fighting it that I completely broke down and surrendered to it. I decided that I would “take each moment as it comes” and not care about anything else, at least I was still alive and breathing. As I did, within days the emptyness went from numb, to calm, to peaceful, to joyful and eventually turned into ecstacy and illumination – I had revelations about my life, the world and my personality was transformed to a significant degree. I became much more more authentic and individuated.
Eckhart Tolle as an example talks about how he had a “glimpse” and spent the next three years in a state of “constant anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression” and “the world seemed so hostile, alien and meaningless”, until he decided that “enough was enough”, that he couldn’t live with it anymore and surrendered to the void.
The state of depersonalization is the true state of “the dark night of the spirit” as described by St John the Baptist, where neither the inner or outter world appear to have any meaning.
In my understanding, in terms of yoga, panic attacks and depersonalization IS the initial awakening of kundalini. Panic is a REACTION to the alteration in consciousness and the unconscious fears that have unleashed. While kundalini is portrayed as a serpent rising up the spine, many mistake this metaphor and map as a literal statement. Kundalini is the core “I consciousness”, and when it awakens it comes into conscious awareness and overwhelms the personality, almost like a light being switched on. This is why people with depersonalization feel as if they have to “will” everything, their movements, their speech, even their breathing. People in depersonalization are occupying a higher state of being but ardently cling to the personality, which causes the unpleasant sensations. The void appears as something frightening and catastrophic, but this is a grand illusion. If the sense of personality had a large unconscious investement in fear and constantly sought to protect it’s self-image, it will lead to what is described as depersonalization as those fears are made conscious and slowely burned away. The unpleasant sensations (visual distortions, rushes of energy in the body etc etc) are all a product of adrenaline. It is a very uncomfortable, often terrifying state – but it isn’t harmful or a state of psychosis. A state of “neurosis” would be more apt.
There are two options at this stage, stay put and fight or move through it. The individual can cling to the scraps of the former personality until the process wanes and goes back to being dormant, if it does (although it will probably cyclically rise again at some point in the future) or they can let go and surrender to the state and accept it, and allow the metamorphosis of the personality to take place. They can remain as the chrysalis or transform. If the individual clings to scraps of the eroded personality, it is probable that a partial transformation will be noticeable when it becomes dormant. If it has already eroded a significant portion of the personality, it may not go to sleep until the process is complete. In my experience, the state of surrender and acceptance is very difficult until you have truly decided that “enough is enough” – which may happen suddenly, or in stages over time – although I don’t doubt that some, as they claim, simply decided to let go.
In my experience and opinion, and from speaking with others and piecing together as much information as I can and connecting the dots, the state of depersonization is an early stage of spontaneous spiritual opening – and even for those who have moved through it and transformed to a significant degree, it will cyclically come around again and again to sweep the system clean, re-organize the personality and put us on track.
That’s my view.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Frank Herbert, Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, “Dune”
A little wisdom from pop culture. There are some great points of view here.
Although I disagree with much of it. In the classical texts its said that it is misleading to say that things are either real or unreal, personally I think much of the discussion of nothingness is splitting hairs or the only way to express something that can’t be adequatelly described in words. They are so fond of saying that the self is a fiction, maybe they really mean that the self isn’t extant alone, that it exists in a state of relationship to the other than self. I also think that in some strange way that what is called self by a psychologist steeped in the westren tradition and what is called self by a trained meditator are both fundamentally different things. My reason for this is that those with clinical depersonalization can have their brainwaves measured and it can be shown that they have grey zones of activity in the brain, whereas trained meditators with 1000 hours of meditation or more have had their brain waves measured and it can be shown that they have greater coherence and higher activity in the right brain. Perhaps it is just that the acceptance of no-self is something like a formality necessary to pass from one stage of development to the next. Maybe it is something like a hyperbolic way of realizing that we live in dynamic relationship with everything around ourselves, and that the conditions of self are not static but subject to constant change. In a practical sense is a tree not real because it has roots or because it may lose its leaves or grow fruit. These are just opinions of one of many, and I respect all of the opinions expressed here and they are valuable and well articulated. I think that most of us live in the spectrum between dream and “real” life and knowing that is a kind of a paralell to the idea of taking the middle path for me.
I have been living with this for 6 months now and I have had glimpses of reality return and I believe in my heart that it will return fully. I accept it now and I am at peace but I believe I will have ” my feet on the ground” again and look forward to that time when I can feel connected with the world again. When I can come home to my body. I hope someone can take some value out of my thoughts and that they do not just sound like denial to you all. I am not trying to say there is no value in what is experienced by those such as ourselves who have been to the pit of the void or experienced”the great death” but I prefer to think of it as a rebirth of self rather than an annihilation of ego although admittedly it can be brutal for those of us who must go through at any pace we choose to take. Thanks you guys.
This is my opinion/view on DP/DR vs Enlightenment (it’s not a fact, only my experience):
DP/DR is experienced as NEGATIVE, Enlightenment as POSITIVE. Why?
DP/DR has a lack of positivity, people start realizing that the ego and environment are subjective without getting the benefit from it. They keep resisting to it, they wanna get back to thereself (the ego) but they can’t. The ego is gone. They get depressed maybe afraid of life. It feels like a total emptyness because you only knew the ego. But when you accept it and start looking for the positive side you will find enlightenment because there is a lack of negativity. This process takes a lot of time and study, selfreflection. Everything is made from the same energy (GOD?) We are that energy, we are ONE, there is nothing else. It’s all about consiousness/ awareness.
Life is so beautiful/peaceful if you stay away from negativity!
8 weeks ago whilst traveling in India, I went to a 10 day Vipassana Mediation retreat which had a profound, life changing impact on my life. Previous to this I had never meditated or considered myself a spiritual person.
Since being home I have kept up the mediation and occasionally I would experience mild derealization similar to what I used to experience as a child but soon enough it would fade. As of late though the feeling of derealization has intensified and taken me over which has now left me lost with no direction.
At the times I am in awe of this beautiful world then it can switch to feelings of isolation and loneliness where everything around me becomes ‘meaningless’. I find myself asking questions ‘Who am I?’, ‘Is this life actually happening or am I in a dream?’.
I read that Vipassana Mediation can trigger the first stages of a ‘ spiritual awakening’. I feel disconnected and detached from my partner and those around me. When I think of the past my memory is foggy even looking at pictures of myself is odd. I have feelings of ‘nothingness’. It is as if I am detaching from myself.
I read that your conditioned mind starts breaking apart and what has collapsed is the whole conceptual framework for your life, the meaning that your mind had given it. So that results in a dark place.
Its scary but I’m learning to let go and surrender. Reading these responses have really helped me, I thought for a second I was losing my mind ( I guess I am).