Meditation may—in rare instances—potentially trigger psychosis in vulnerable persons:
Not everyone should meditate
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Re: Not everyone should meditate
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe guidance from a good teacher, patience with yourself, and persistence (continuing to practice even when you're frustrated with your lack of progress). Meditation isn't for everyone but nothing you have said suggests that it isn't for you.
Instead of me spilling tons of personal info, do you mind sharing what would suggest meditation isn't for someone? Your input will be appreciated
There's an anecdote in the Tipitaka where the Buddha analogizes would-be followers who never advance in the practice to farm animals that never grow, and explains what the herder does with those animals: he kills them.
This is generally understood as a recommendation to kick hopeless monks out of the monastery, not literally kill them.
You'd have to ask a competent meditation teacher, which I am very much not, how to know. I am pretty sure that the answer involves spending some time trying, with good guidance.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#73It's easy to spend your entire life running from one thing to the next. Meditation can just be a 10 minute break where you give yourself permission to take a mental break. Like almost everything, there is an unhealthy extreme. As an analogue, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that fitness is generally good for you, but trying to do ultra ironmans is probably not going to be good for many people, and if you attempt it you have to prepare in a way that's suited to your own body.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's more a question of dose. If you're meditating 20 minutes a day for three years you probably won't see a big effect. If you're meditating 12 hours for a day for 10 years, you're going to encounter a lot of stuff that could get labeled "psychosis" by people who don't know about it. And, it may be permanent. What kind of meditation you're doing will affect what you encounter and how you deal with it, but no…
If you eat one cube of sugar in a coffee per day and no sweets you are good. If you eat one kilo of sugar each day you'll probably get diabetes in a few months.
I think the picture is a little more complicated than that. There have been entire monasteries full of people who spend many hours a day meditating for thousands of years. They don't seem to be mentally unhealthy on the whole, though there are some exceptions. So it's evidently not the kind of thing where a continuous overdose will leave your mind or your body disabled; on the contrary, the meditators tend to live longer than average and be happier.
However, the kind of experiences described (seeing visions, losing interest in mundane matters, becoming certain of beliefs that turn out to be false) are a well-known feature of the process. And it's at least widely believed that guidance from experienced meditators is very helpful, if not crucial, to navigating these experiences.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#75https://hollyelmore.substack.com/p/i-believed-the-hype-and-d... talks about some results of meditating seriously that are causing its author considerable distress. She also talks about some positive results.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#76This is a great perspective. I know what the author means with it, too. I spent 5 years in daily meditation practice (twice a day for 20 minutes) and it completely altered my state of mind. I was a naturally introverted person when I started, though I believe that meditation really stepped it up a notch for me. The strange thing about meditation and the idea of living in the present is that it completely transcends y…
> I was so caught up with spirituality and meditation that I overlooked anything else in my life. Respectfully this is not an outcome that you can lay at the feet of meditation. It’s like blaming the catechism for the years you spent cut off from the world in a Benedictine monastery. Meditation is an input, it is not the program.
It’s a common enough effect that it should be noted. Many spiritual people end up being detached from the world, for better or worse.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#77I’ve meditated on and off for a few decades and have only ever experienced a sense of calm and clarity. Is the author’s experience common for other people?
It might not be common - I'm just urging people to do some self-reflection before jumping into a practice.
I think it might be more useful to recommend that they consult a good meditation teacher, because you really need to know both about meditation and about yourself to make the decision—though, as you point out, identifying a good meditation teacher when you aren't one is a difficult problem.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#78This is a great perspective. I know what the author means with it, too. I spent 5 years in daily meditation practice (twice a day for 20 minutes) and it completely altered my state of mind. I was a naturally introverted person when I started, though I believe that meditation really stepped it up a notch for me. The strange thing about meditation and the idea of living in the present is that it completely transcends y…
> The strange thing about meditation and the idea of living in the present is that it completely transcends your life experience. It is not in human nature to fight with the inner workings of your own psychology, and for me - meditation really amplified all that I had been trough or was going through at the time. I really don't understand why the world just accepts that meditation as a whole is not just another versi…
It’s not bad, but if you feel strongly against it, you’re not missing out on much. Overcoming the psychological resistance to meditate is probably not worth it.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I was so caught up with spirituality and meditation that I overlooked anything else in my life. Respectfully this is not an outcome that you can lay at the feet of meditation. It’s like blaming the catechism for the years you spent cut off from the world in a Benedictine monastery. Meditation is an input, it is not the program.
It’s a common enough effect that it should be noted. Many spiritual people end up being detached from the world, for better or worse.
Detachment is a tenet of Buddhism, not an effect of meditation.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The strange thing about meditation and the idea of living in the present is that it completely transcends your life experience. It is not in human nature to fight with the inner workings of your own psychology, and for me - meditation really amplified all that I had been trough or was going through at the time. I really don't understand why the world just accepts that meditation as a whole is not just another versi…
I'm in the same boat as you. I think there's a lot we don't know about human psychology, the brain and self-help practices, but I haven't seen convincing evidence that meditation works. This 2017 publication sums it up nicely: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691617709589
> but I haven't seen convincing evidence that meditation works.
"works" to what end?