How much of your personality do you tend to shed away once you reach enlightenment?

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I’ve never actually witnessed anyone become enlightened. I believe I have been enlightened since birth. It took me many years of spiritual exploration and reading and meditating before I realized there really was nowhere for me to go. I can trick myself into having “enlightenment experiences” but all they really are is entertainment for me.

Having never actually witnessed it, I can only go by what I have read.

Some people have described events that caused them to have a sudden awakening and clearing of mind. I have had these sudden events in the past, they are generally temporary and the ‘intensity’ of the moment fades away, leaving an indelible mark on one’s consciousness. I believe this to be a neuro-chemical event changing the structure of the brain. It can have sharp effects on personality. As stated earlier they didn’t really have much effect on me. The intensity was blunted by a sense of “been here done that.” Eventually my thinking returned to normal and once I could reason about what I just went through I concluded that it wasn’t anything particularly special.

I think true ego-death is rare. It can feel like you are free of ego, but what really happens is your attachment to ego fades and you’re left in greater control of your mind. Ego still wants what ego wants, but you are free to disregard as you see fit.

Having been enlightened since birth I am in a unique position to control how my personality develops. I see personality as a set of ‘ruts’ that your mind operates in. I can change the ruts by repeatedly running my mind over different patterns. If I get angry in a particular instance, I’ll generally spend the next fifteen minutes to an hour drilling down into the reasons why I got angry, looking for new pathways to run my thinking down so it doesn’t amble through the muddy waters of anger.

Having a malleable personality necessarily changes the meaning of the concept for me. People generally think of their personalities as something they identify very strongly with. I do not. I’ve learned over the years the necessity of projecting a ‘face’ to the rest of the world, I do my best to keep that face as clean as possible.

I think of enlightenment as a cultural construct. The underlying experience does not have to be as dramatic as is portrayed in literature. If it’s not been fetishized, then people can become enlightened without any fuss. Just like a minor epiphany, and they go on living life with less stress and more self-assurance.