A former coworker of mine went to a silent meditation retreat. He's been recovering ever since.
Without more details you're just announcing your biases to HN.
My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
131–140 of 600 posts
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#132"Why my swimming practice, which involved me swimming the english channel every day, eventually led me to drown."
An unkind sentiment. Every individual is unique, and some can stomach challenges that would make others fall to their knees. It's our different strengths and weaknesses that make us.
While terse, the sentiment was to highlight that maybe it isn't swimming that is the issue at hand here. It's swimming the english channel every day.
A normal activity that when pushed to the limits of endurance, can overwhelm an individual. But that doesn't necessarily make swimming or meditation something to be feared or avoided.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
He was an instructor in "Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction" -- sorry, this is not a real thing. He's been teaching things he clearly does not understand, and his mind was blown by this. When I say "a teacher would tell you to come back to the moment" it's not quite as simple as I make it sound, the key thing is who the advice is coming from (read: an actual zen teacher who has received transmission, not a charlatan…
> an actual zen teacher who has received transmission, not a charlatan I'm really hoping you were going for darkly ironic humour, if not, please reread your sentence I quoted and, I don't know, contemplate on it. Received transmission? From the Trisolarians perhaps?
Transmission simply means their teacher considers them ready to also become teachers, it’s not some whoo science fiction mind meld or something… There are some cases of teachers giving this out inappropriately however these are rather obvious if you were to speak to one who has achieved the real deal vs not..
Buddhism is largely an oral tradition, in that the teachers who exist today can trace their education back up a tree, this is all I mean by transmission.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#134Ha! I thought it might have been vipassana. My own experience of this (a 10 day silent retreat, not having done meditation before) was a full blown manic-psychotic experience (never having had any such thing before, nor in family history). If you're interested, I made some audio files [0] talking about what happened. I honestly think it's _insane_ that they (vipassana) will take regular people who haven't done medita…
Bi-polar is specifically screened for as a contra-indication for retreats, at least Goenka ones (along with Reiki practice, interestingly). They may still allow a diagnosed individual on, but are supposed to give extra attention.
What retreat did you go on, and did they ask about bi-polar experience pre-retreat?
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
My psychologist taught me that fear, anxiety, etc. destructive emotions are surface events, bubbling up from somewhere deeper. Mindfulness can be used as a resource for us to be with that fear; in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh "those painful emotions are like a child crying out. A child needs love and attention. Hold them with love, be with them." Once we can be with it, then we can start to follow it down to its root…
I’m sure the author would love to hear more about your diagnosis of his condition based solely on the content of an essay.
If someone puts a posting on the net, they likely have to accept that there will be reactions to it. That said, I am not looking forward to a fist-fight with a wanna-be-monk, so distance is probably the key. Dont you feel a fist-fighting drinker is a rather comical mindfulness practicioner? A bit like the gay nazi, or whatever stereotypical contradiction you wanna imagine.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#136my $.02 on this- just because you're not diagnosed and having "just anxiety and agression", doesn't mean youre ok and might be quite opposite- it's probably for a reasons, that your conscious mind protects you from, something you dont know and have forgotten, and no simple evaluation will find this out but when you yourself "stirr up" your unconcious mind, all this started to "leak" into conscious mind and it took you by surprise as you thought of yourself as "highly experienced".
to me the cabin episode sounds like a LSD trip gone bad and no proper, experienced sitter resulting in a traumatic experience.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
If one does not, they end up with [often undiagnosed] mental health problems anyway. Everything is dangerous, you just should try your best to do it the right way under supervision of a qualified person and stop if it goes wrong.
> Everything is dangerous This is not what is being promoted by the mindfulness/buddhism-lite industry that the article is talking about. > you just should try your best to do it the right way under supervision of a qualified person and stop if it goes wrong. This appears to contradict "One should meditate always"
> This is not what is being promoted by the mindfulness/buddhism-lite industry
Every industry is corrupt. But if you are lucky and smart enough you can actually get away with something good for you.
Out of curiosity, I have even attended a course in extrasensory abilities once. Paradoxically, besides some useful self-regulation and some trance-based techniques they also taught observing your thoughts and feelings detachedly and taking them critically which has boosted my rationality and helped me so many times. And good for them, they were pretty serious about making sure people with mental issues are not allowed to participate. Sadly most of the industry don't care.
> This appears to contradict "One should meditate always"
Almost nobody can meditate intensely for long periods of time in the beginning. You just do your best to awaken from unconscious daydreaming and stay conscious as often and for as long as you comfortably can. If you try and immediately find out you actually can (although not necessarily comfortably) maintain undisturbed conscious concentration for long periods of time you should go to a doctor or a Buddhist teacher experienced in meditation techniques and things which happen to people on this way. Choosing the latter absolutely doesn't imply you have to take the religion and believe in their saints - you only really need the psychotechnical (and the philosophical maybe) guidance.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alan Watts used to say "When you've received the message, hang up the phone."
I think the biggest problem is that people who had an ego death experience are trying to experience it again by dosing up when it is largely a set and setting issue. Firstly, you can't have a life-changing, ecstatic experience of being connected to the universe every couple of weeks. Secondly, if you don't have some philosophical or religious framework to frame the experience, I imagine it can be really devastating.
Consumerism paired with sensationalism. Some people take psychedelics like others consume television... To amuse themselves. Remember what Tim Leary wrote in the psychedelic experience? If you have hallucinations, you're doing something wrong. But that is getting a bit off-topic regarding the original post.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#139Lapsed Buddhist here. > The Arahat Daniel M. Ingram According to the instruction I received, there have been no arahants since a few decades after the death of the Buddha. Choose your teacher carefully. Many meditation teachers are charlatans; watch out especially for those who claim to be enlightened. > The type of meditation I had been practicing was jhana ...or "dhyana", if you go with the Sanskrit version. The OP…
> According to the instruction I received, there have been no arahants since a few decades after the death of the Buddha.
I don't believe that is the standard view. I haven't heard it before at least. And it seems odd to me that anyone would claim this, seeing as no one knows every person who's lived in the last 3500 years.
>The industry generally claims to be secular, or at least, to not depend on a religious interpretation. If you folllow an openly-religious meditation teacher, you shouldn't hear that reassuring touchy-feely nonsense
I think you are labouring under some dogma, all due respect.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#140From my experience, what the writer is talking about is a transcendental experience that sounds awfully similar to what happens under psychedelics. Experiences like this are highly influenced by set, setting and expectations, and can go wrong. Meditation is an incredibly deep practice, and if you engage in it you must be aware that it is much more than a stress-relief tool. Many people meditate with the explicit purp…
If we're to believe the author, they meditated for 10 years and attended numerous classes, seminars and retreats. Clearly they were engaging it as more than a "stress-relief tool".
The article I will take as a single data point, about one person's experiences. But comments like yours, and others in this thread, worry me far more. Collectively, they exhibit the dismissiveness, defensiveness, condescension and victim-blaming that is absolutely typical of members of religions/cults both spiritual and secular. Anyone who can describe the experiences related in this article as "desired and welcome" has lost any sense of perspective.