Finally I was able to write down in a logical, easy, and meaningful way a step-by-step path to attaining the deep Jhanas. I’ll put a sample of this book below where you can read a bit about it.
Though our main offering here is online Deep Jhana training in our membership site, if you are in Hawaii for vacation or reside there, you can meet with Vern for private coaching.
Author’s Forward
I don’t know where to start with this book.
I certainly don’t want it to be anything like any other book talking about Jhana and the changes that can follow.
Meditation isn’t always a joke.
Let’s start with that.
There is ‘Feel Good Meditation’ and there is ‘Serious’ meditation.
Feel Good Meditation is what most people are doing.
It feels good. It gives you some positive state of mind. You may notice some changes in your behavior after a few weeks and months. You’re less stressed. You have a way to deal with stress and anxiety in your life.
You talk about your meditation practice with friends, strangers, and to yourself in countless thoughts about it. You tell yourself it’s a magical thing. You tell yourself it’s worth it to keep doing this. You tell yourself it’s one of the most positive and beneficial hobbies you’ve ever had in your life.
Then you quit in two weeks.
Why?
Why do you quit?
You probably realize that what you like about meditation is all the social aspects, the identification with a new hobby that so many other people have also. You realize that the feeling good part is what you’re getting from meeting new friends, talking about it, planning it, watching videos, and endlessly ruminating about it.
And you realize the harsh truth. The meditating part is blah.
It’s boring.
It seems stupid.
You’re not even sure what you’re doing.
Are you doing it right?
This is the biggest question of meditators all over the world – ‘Am I doing it right?’
Most of them just continue on, a little lost, not really understanding fully what it is they should be doing.
They don’t have a good plan. It isn’t even written down.
They don’t enjoy not knowing if this is all going somewhere good.
Deep down, they know it’s going nowhere. They didn’t take it seriously. They weren’t in it for the life-changing experiences.
Social Meditation is all that extra fluff that comes with your meditation practice. This is what most people like about meditation.
They like the new friends they make. They like buying cool cushions and loose clothes to wear to their meditation classes. They like learning about it and telling friends what they’re doing. They make a mish-mash of their meditation program, adding and subtracting elements to such a degree that the meditation they’re doing a month after learning a good system – has gone way off track.
Most meditators will settle into some sort of feel good meditation that becomes a habit. It’s not hard. They sit there on the floor and listen to mantras and try to say them. Pretty soon they can also mimic the sounds.
They use guided meditation. It’s mindless. You just sit there and listen and do what you’re told.
They use breath play. Breathing in deep and hard and fast and slow and holding breath and forcing breath out. It’s something to do. Feels like you’re really doing something, I guess.
People attend group meditations. Not because the meditation is better. It’s as bad as it can get with a hundred times the distractions you’d have just sitting by yourself in your room.
People follow gurus. Why? Because they say the coolest stuff. They can repeat it on social media and sound cool also. They know nothing about the personal life of the guru – because they keep all that very under wraps. They spout endless praise for people who seem to really have their shit together.
Without ever knowing if they really do. How do they treat their kids? Spouse? Friends? Enemies? Poor strangers? Needy strangers? The rich? The privileged?
This idol worship nonsense is common.
Which is fine if that’s what you want.
But you’re interested in Jhana. This is a serious path. This is a life-changing path you’re on. This is a path that destroys all superstition. Eliminates guru seeking. Cuts to the absolute truth of the matter. Of existence. Of the self.
When you begin entering the Jhanas, you’ll start to really understand what you are made up of.
That alone is an enlightening process.
The awareness you have after reaching Jhana for a bit is enough to transform your life.
Change you as a person.
If you continue, and go further, and reach the fourth Jhana and further, your ego will be gone within a very short time.
It may come back to some degree.
It may just go permanently and not return.
This Jhana thing is no joke. It’s actually affecting the core programming of your mind. The core connections. It broadens your awareness. It makes you see the truth of things.
It can be a mind-blowing experience to lose all ambition, emotion, needs, wants, and fear.
If you have reached a stage in your life where you are tired of the world and its demands. Its chaos. Its pointlessness. You might follow a path leading to Jhana and non-dual experience. You may welcome it.
The real point I’m trying to reach in this prologue is that the Deep Jhanas are no game. They are something you may not come back from. You will certainly be changed. You will certainly lose your ego to some degree, and possibly all of it for a time. Or for an eternity.
Please look really closely at your life as it is now.
Are you really in a place where you would welcome the changes that may take place?
Are you able to live on your own and support yourself? Or, do you have a compassionate familiy who will do so for you?
Or, are you ready to enter a temple in India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, or in your home area – and live as a monk without any possessions?
Are you able to stop caring for your spouse? Your children? Your elderly parents or family or friends?
It’s a selfish step you’re taking, isn’t it? You’re perfectly within your right to do as you wish with your body and mind, but are there legal obligations you must resolve first?
Think of all of these things because in a couple of months you may lose your self. Your ego may be a smoldering pile of ashes.
You may not have the chance to slow the process down once it starts. It’s all encompassing and at some point, it doesn’t even matter if you meditate anymore. The process continues on in the background, shaping your reality and pulling you toward a permanent conclusion.
I don’t mean death.
Well. I do mean death. Death of the ego. Death of the self. Death of everything you have been to yourself and everyone who has known you over the course of your life.
Deep Jhana states can transform you. The middle and late Jhanas initiate a process that exists in all of us. A process that shows us the truth about what we are as human beings. With a mind. That we don’t control. That is a collection of past experiences and memories of them. A mind that is affected by experiences that have preceded what we experience today in this moment.
Deep Jhana helps us to see reality in an entirely new way.
* * *
Meditation isn’t always done by you.
Meditation also does to you.
Meditation, done in a precise way with perseverance is a very powerful tool that begins a life-changing process.
It isn’t easy to see how such a simple practice, done once a day for less than an hour could annihilate the ego inside you.
Set it on fire.
But it can.
The title of the book isn’t just for shock value, it’s a very real possibility.
I watched as a bystander as my ego was slowly burned down to ashes.
A tiny portion of ego remained as I became lucidly aware of my self and who I used to be.
I had lost my spouse. My dogs. My house. My job. My ambition.
I was in a sort of panic.
What was going to happen if Iost me for the rest of my life? I didn’t want to go sit in a temple and answer questions for people. I didn’t want to lose the fun things I used to enjoy in life.
I realized I was at a moment of NOW OR NEVER.
What did I do? I’ll tell you about it toward the end of the book. (smile)
You can skip forward to the chapter called MY STORY if you have to know right now.