My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

My teacher would, and has, yes. But I wouldn’t advise anyone to do that, or even get into that situation in a hippy dippy setting with a bunch of dreadlocked “teachers” who have studied just one aspect of the Buddhist tradition from deepak chopra, no.

The stuff that comes up, including the hallucinations, are brought to the surface through your practice, but they are not caused by it. The only way to deal with them is with an experienced teacher, therapist or with self discipline (the latter i only include as seemingly this is what shakyamuni apparently did).

Everyone is different, I agree, but sitting with inexperienced people and expecting some enlightenment experience is definitely going to go wrong for you.

I believe I get your point now, hopefully you will understand mine.

Looking from the outside, from the practical (economical) point of view the value/meaning of a unit does not depend on whether it is conscious or not - it just does the same job. Somebody probably can replace me with a future version of GPT3 once and not even my mom will notice (as she lives in a different country and my job also is writing e-mails).

Looking from the outside, from the moral, empathetic and spiritual points of view (although devotees of some cults will argue), and from my own actual view all lives are absolutely equally valuable and meaningful. I really feel and see this way, not because this is a moral or religious law.

I don't judge anybody based on anything, let alone on how mindful their are. I even go further and believe no criminal is actually a wicked person - they just feel and act the ways they do because they are not mindful about how bad (and conditioned) their actions are and how they could avoid them. In many cases this even is a scientific fact.

Looking from the inside, however, I indeed believe I enjoy more value out of my life if I am more awake, conscious for longer and more frequent periods of time. Simply saying it's not worth to pay for ticket and go to a cinema if you are deadly tired and will most probably fall asleep there anyway. One night on a vacation I got terribly drunk. The next morning we went to a museum and that was a waste because I could barely stand on my feet fighting drowsiness - there could be no paintings on the walls and I would not notice. The day passed as if there were no such day, I've got nothing but the next number on the calendar.

Do you understand what I mean? It absolutely isn't my goal to argue the hell out of us or convince you people with ADHD (like myself) are worthless, I only keep writing to make sure what I wrote is understood correctly (not necessarily agreed with).

From the article:

> "I spent my last day in Los Angeles riding on a Segway, buying legal marijuana and staring at some turtles in an on-campus pond at UCLA. I was unsettled yet intrigued by Britton’s message. Some of the adverse experiences she had described were similar to challenges I had faced. But, at this point I was a decade into my intensive mindfulness meditation practice. I was too deep to get out. "

There's just so many things that is bad with this new-new age wave.

First of all, doing spiritual practices generally do not go hand-in-hand with taking drugs. Just taking marijuana or hash may bring panic attacks, and even psychotic episodes. If you rely on drugs to keep your emotions in check, you're already dealing with them wrong. Meditation together with drugs won't help that, but may worsen things if done intensively.

Second, there's no such thing as "intensive mindfulness meditation practice". Mindfulness is gentle and short, and more about stillness than meditation.

Third, "intensive meditation" is something everybody should be wary about. Max 20 minutes is recommended per day, and there is no need to do more in order to "get anywhere faster". Most important of all, do it with an experienced teacher you trust. The most important ingredient in meditation is to let go and relax, and is not yet another "work".

In the end, something can always go wrong. Not everyone can deal with meditation, and not sure if there's a way to ensure to filter out people. Often people come to classes because they have some issues, not when everything's alright. So there are already things to deal with. Recommended is that people doing medication like antipsychotics, should be prescreened from joining class.

In the end, meditation is a powerful tool. But not sure the stress of Western life is the right way to channel the clarity and calmess one may get from it. You may come back from long retreats, but need tools to deal with the stresses in modern day life. So just meditation may be too confusing or not enough, to deal with one's life once more.

No one is obligated to list every facet to anything just to tickle your "I'm included in what some random person is saying". The commenter is speaking out of their own experience. It's not about you. Actually add something regarding those other practices instead of virtue signaling.

I am nowhere near the experienced meditator or Buddhist student that the author is but this part stuck out: " I described how on numerous occasions all my thoughts disintegrated and I bathed for extended periods of time in states of deep, non-conceptual bliss. I thought awakening was right around the corner "

Isn't this particularly warned against in meditation? To me this is more akin to trance and in Buddhism, more akin to escapism and self-delusion. From a magical perspective, it seems obvious this guy was playing with fire.

Just like the quote about how one can travel extensively and still leave all their preconceptions intact, people can meditate a lot and still leave their attachments intact. My impression was not that meditation leads to bliss; that's some New Age pap. It leads to awareness, and that includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.

It sounds like the author may have delved into meditation enough to access the control panel, but that is a dangerous place to be. It's why there are so many safeguards built around it in the first place. I am just surprised that this was unexpected.