The Deep End

A few weeks ago, Dan’s guest on the Ten Percent podcast was Joseph Goldstein, a guiding teacher at Ten Percent Happier, one of the most important figures in Western Buddhism and the mindfulness revolution, and, as it happens, a longtime teacher of mine as well. On the episode (the most-listened-to in the podcast’s history) Joseph mentioned “the deep end” – what comes after learning to meditate, and what happens as a meditation practice deepens over time.

The response was phenomenal. We’ve received hundreds of messages asking for “deep end” content in the app, as well as at IRL retreats and events, and we’re hard at work developing that.

What’s funny about my own story is that I got into the deep end first -- and a very unusual, idiosyncratic deep end at that.

As described in my new book Enlightenment by Trial and Error – which is being officially published tomorrow, November 18 – I got interested in meditation for unusual reasons. Most people take up meditation and mindfulness to better manage stress, anxiety, relationships, and so on. Some get into it to build their mental fitness, inspired by the data that meditation can improve focus, emotional intelligence, resilience, and happiness.

I got into it for mysticism.

During my twenties, I studied mystical traditions in the academic world – eventually I’d get a PhD in Jewish Thought, focusing on Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical and esoteric tradition. I also read a lot of books about Buddhism, Vedanta Hinduism, Sufism, Christian Mysticism, psychedelic mysticism, and so on. I focused on mystical experience: not the bells and whistles of theology or magic, but the remarkable experiences of ultimate (or at least heightened) reported by contemplatives around the world. And I dabbled in some of these myself.

Eventually, I wanted to do more than dabble. I wanted to experience for myself the sublime altered states that I’d read about in books. (That’s not the only “deep end” of course — more on that in a minute. But it was mine.) And in most of the traditions I’d studied, meditation was the way to do that.

Did it work?

Actually, yes.

As I describe in Enlightenment by Trial and Error (subtitle: “Ten Years on the Slippery Slopes of Jewish Spirituality, Postmodern Buddhism, and Other Mystical Heresies”), I did end up having the mystical experiences – dissolving into the Void, unimaginably profound love that mystics ascribe to God, all of that and more – that I’d sought.

All along, though, I remained a skeptic. Despite having numerous, repeated, and ever-deepening experiences of the sacred, I’m still not sure what any of it means, whether God is a delusion, and what’s really happening in the mind/heart/brain when these things are happening.

I do know, however, the transformative effects that these powerful experiences have had on me over the last seventeen years. I’ll share three of them here.

First, having the most mind-blowing experiences I could ever have imagined – yes, far better than sex, drugs, and rock & roll (or in my case, fourteen trips to Burning Man) – did finally cure of me of the thirst for bigger and better experiences.

Of course, I’m still an enthusiast for all things sensual, spiritual, and otherwise experiential. I still love a great bourbon, the perfect DJ set, or healing physical and emotional intimacy, but to be honest, once you’ve been fully absorbed in the Sphere of Infinite Space – the fifth “jhana” cultivated by some deep-end Buddhist practitioners – there’s just a little less thirst for these things.

Enjoyment, yes. But the bucket list feels a little lighter. Optional instead of mandatory. Joyful play, rather than a desperate need to fill it.

Second, and relatedly, it’s clear that these kinds of deep-end experiences are not, themselves, The Point.

To return to a metaphor I’ve used many times, I’ve turned up the volume on life’s radio – cranked it, maybe. And I’ve loved the music. But the real point is to turn down the static and tune into the quiet miracles and releases that happen every day. My daughter laughing. Fresh baked bread. The letting-go of a passing sadness.

After all, as Jack Kornfield wrote, after the ecstasy comes the laundry. No matter how high the high, there’s going to be a low – in fact, in my experience, the higher the high is, the lower the low is likely to be if you’re not prepared for it to come around. Meanwhile, every day has its delights, and one consequence of diving deep into the deep end has been appreciating the “shallow” end of everyday life that much more.

Of course, it isn’t really shallow at all. (As Lady Gaga may have mentioned.)

Third and finally, as pretty much every “deep end” practitioner has noticed, said, or at least been told by their teachers, the journey is the real destination. Sublime states are powerful, transformative, and part of the gift of being human. But the most valuable part of the deep end is the journey you take to get to them.

In Buddhist terms, this process is sometimes called “purification of mind.” In ordinary terms, it’s called seeing all of your psychological baggage and gradually learning, on an intuitive level, not to be ruled by it. It’s the stuff we focus on at Ten Percent Happier, in fact. Because once again, the shallow part isn’t actually shallow at all.

The thing is, other than with psychedelics, there’s no way to dive into the deep end. You have to wade in, slowly, doing the work, one breath at a time, one neurosis at a time, one insight at a time.

That’s what I didn’t know when I went on my first meditation retreat seventeen years ago. I went for one version of the deep end: for the transformative spiritual experiences I’d read about in books. But, to my dismay, instead of seeing God and all the angels, I saw my stuff: my desperate yearning for love, my internalized homophobia, my arrogance, and a lot more that, you guessed it, is described in the book, which is mostly made up of essays I wrote early along the path as I tried to figure stuff out, lost my religion, and gradually found my way to a kind of deep and abiding happiness.

Because the secret is this: the actual deep end is where you’re standing right now, only a little bit quieter, happier, and, well, deeper. You don’t have to swim to the ends of the earth to find these deep wells of peace within yourself. You just have to dive down into this one, precious moment.