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Meditation and the Unconscious

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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Re: Meditation and the Unconscious

#51

Post by welshwelsh »

i_like_apis wrote: post #19
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Makes me think of how Marvin Minsky thought Meditation was a bad thing.

I've always found it interesting that many meditation techniques involve "emptying the mind" or "clearing the mind" of thought. While practicing concentration on a single point of focus definitely seems useful for strengthening the mind, I'm not sure that practicing a state of being completely devoid of thought is necessarily healthy. I would rather meditate on being full of thought, and thinking of many things simul…

I would not say that meditation is about eliminating thoughts from the mind. That might not even be possible. It is more about setting intentions and sticking to them.

For example, I might have some thoughts that are rooted in a specific desire. Perhaps I feel an urge to see what's new on Hacker News. I already did that 15 minutes ago, but so what. I'm thinking about what a great feeling it was last time I found something cool on this site. So I stop what I'm doing, navigate to Hacker News and proceed to waste 45 minutes reading through comment threads.

Of course, there's another option. I could simply ignore the desire and do something else- like whatever it is I had otherwise planned to do with that time. But this is not so easy. Chances are, I will succumb to the desire and then rationalize to myself that this is, in fact, how I planned to spend my evening the whole time.

With meditation, we practice by setting an unusual and specific intention, such as monitoring the breath. That way, if you notice yourself doing anything other than that, such as walking around, planning your weekend or replaying some event in your mind, you know that you are not doing what you intended to be doing. By returning to what you originally intended to do, you strengthen your ability to behave in an intentional manner, rather than being powerlessly yanked around by whatever idea happens to pop into your head at any given moment.

I'm not sure whether meditating for very long periods of time is healthy. But most of us struggle greatly to do it for even 10 minutes. That's because 10 minutes is longer than our attention span: even if we firmly resolve to pay attention to something for that long, we inevitably get distracted by something else within a minute or two, and completely forget what we were supposed to be doing in the first place. Don't you think that's troubling?

Re: Meditation and the Unconscious

#52

Post by Trasmatta »

uptownfunk wrote: post #25

I heard one of these "Guru's" once say in response to allegations of meditation as brainwashing: "If the brain is dirty, it needs to be washed."

That sentiment sure has a lot of potential for being a powerful thought terminating cliche for actual cults

Re: Meditation and the Unconscious

#53

Post by lanstin »

dbtc wrote: post #46
i_like_apis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found it interesting that many meditation techniques involve "emptying the mind" or "clearing the mind" of thought. While practicing concentration on a single point of focus definitely seems useful for strengthening the mind, I'm not sure that practicing a state of being completely devoid of thought is necessarily healthy. I would rather meditate on being full of thought, and thinking of many things simul…

Yeah in the vipassana tradition check out 'Mahasi style noting'. In Zen, look up 'do nothing' or 'just sitting' - I don't know the traditional language. Shinzen Young has really good content on youtube IMO. Focusing on a single point is called 'anapana' in the vipassana tradition and is used as a way to calm the mind - like sharpening a knife - before moving on the the juicier stuff. It's sort of paradoxical but by g…

Shikantaza is the traditional Japanese for just sitting in Zen. The approaches of increasing ones ability to focus awareness or openning awareness of all salient reality flow back and forth as one practises.

Re: Meditation and the Unconscious

#55

Post by i_like_apis »

damontal wrote: post #36
i_like_apis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found it interesting that many meditation techniques involve "emptying the mind" or "clearing the mind" of thought. While practicing concentration on a single point of focus definitely seems useful for strengthening the mind, I'm not sure that practicing a state of being completely devoid of thought is necessarily healthy. I would rather meditate on being full of thought, and thinking of many things simul…

Sam Harris kinda does this in his guided meditations. At times he asks you to sit in a noisy public place. His aim seems to be to to try to get you to quickly turn your attention on the thing that is currently doing the noticing. The point being a realization that there’s nothing there when you try to turn your attention to it. And that’s supposed to produce some kind of realization. Never worked for me in practice.

I believe there is an exercise benefit to meditation in noisy environments, as one form of practice. Swamy Vivekananda preferred meditating in a room with loud street noise in his youth.

I used to have a coworker who would work while listening to stuff like Aphex Twin specifically to exercise his ability to focus. Personally my programming output would suffer but I think there's something to the exercise.

Re: Meditation and the Unconscious

#56

Post by andrei_says_ »

leoh wrote: post #23
cypherpunks01 wrote: post #20

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” -C.G. Jung

I am in agreement with Jung; yet not to only make darkness conscious, but by beholding it with love and presence...

Making space to love the hate, rage, shame, etc... is not easy and takes conscious effort. What about all the times when your attention is busy with something else?

Re: Meditation and the Unconscious

#57

Post by andrei_says_ »

monktastic1 wrote: post #40

I am surprised that Matthieu did not address this question head-on: > This brings me to a critical issue: the side effects of meditation. One could argue that a strategy consisting of closing one’s eyes when facing conflicts, in escaping from problems rather than solving them, is perhaps a suboptimal strategy. In Dzogchen meditation (which is his main practice), one does not close one's eyes or always sit in a specia…

What is a good resource for descriptions of some Dzogchen meditation practices?

Re: Meditation and the Unconscious

#58

Post by undershirt »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #28
cypherpunks01 wrote: post #20

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” -C.G. Jung

Context? I have no idea what this quote is trying to say.

> making the darkness conscious

I don’t think “to make something conscious” means to make it clear, but rather to personify it:

    * “Hate the sin, love the sinner”
    * “Don’t hate the player, hate the game”
    * “People don’t have ideas, ideas have people”
    * “Memes should be considered as living structures, not just metaphorically”
So, morally, it is profound (“enlightening”) to admit a reality of evil as conscious.

Re: Meditation and the Unconscious

#59

Post by fellendrone »

i_like_apis wrote: post #19
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Makes me think of how Marvin Minsky thought Meditation was a bad thing.

I've always found it interesting that many meditation techniques involve "emptying the mind" or "clearing the mind" of thought. While practicing concentration on a single point of focus definitely seems useful for strengthening the mind, I'm not sure that practicing a state of being completely devoid of thought is necessarily healthy. I would rather meditate on being full of thought, and thinking of many things simul…

> I would rather meditate on being full of thought, and thinking of many things simultaneously

This is basically ADHD, and whilst it has its advantages, wouldn't recommend it in general.

The extreme of this might be psychedelics. A useful experience, but not necessarily something you want day to day.

Thoughts are a tool. They're like mind software.

The point of meditation isn't to stop thinking, it's to decouple yourself from them and see them from an outside perspective. In the process, perceiving that "you" are not your thoughts or your mind, and therefore direct the mind more effectively.

It's a bit like closing background processes and gaining back resources. Those thoughts take resources to 'run', and many of them are constantly spawning new ones.

When you turn your awareness on these processes, rather than them running ad hoc in the background, you can understand your self more and direct yourself better. The competing processes reintegrate.

Or perhaps it's like an unruly dog that's constantly pulling you this way or that, but you're so used to it you don't even know it's unruly. Then you start to train it, and sooner or later you become a unit, working in coordination.

Neurologically, it's likely modulating the default network, which some theorise is the neural correlate of the ego/self: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network

> Meditation – Structural changes in areas of the DMN such as the temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus have been found in meditation practitioners. There is reduced activation and reduced functional connectivity of the DMN in long-term practitioners. Various forms of nondirective meditation, including Transcendental Meditation and Acem Meditation, have been found to activate the DMN.

Re: Meditation and the Unconscious

#60

Post by mtalantikite »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #57
monktastic1 wrote: post #40

I am surprised that Matthieu did not address this question head-on: > This brings me to a critical issue: the side effects of meditation. One could argue that a strategy consisting of closing one’s eyes when facing conflicts, in escaping from problems rather than solving them, is perhaps a suboptimal strategy. In Dzogchen meditation (which is his main practice), one does not close one's eyes or always sit in a specia…

What is a good resource for descriptions of some Dzogchen meditation practices?

A 12 week course I took recently on dzogchen/atiyoga used “Weapon of Light” [1] as a main text and “The Flight of the Garuda” [2] as a supplemental one.

[1] https://www.skypressbooks.com/weapon-of-light

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2508146.The_Flight_of_th...

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