Grew up in a continent of many legendary arahant monks (in Thailand), I would say legit lessons have been lost a lot in the past century, to the point that, as of today I don't think I can trust any living monk as a teacher, it's also very hard to find direct descendants of passed away arahant monk. We call this trustworthy monk "Forest monk" who you barely saw/see them, they were/are mostly in deep jungle.
Not everyone should meditate
181–190 of 335 posts
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 lo…
> 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, Not to be snarky (ok maybe a little), but they do believe in unprovable beings on some "higher" plane of existence...
Not only that, but they also believe spending many hours a day meditating is normal. In some ways it might be seen as.. unhealthy.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#183Author compares meditation to doing LSD, then states that doing LSD can be helpful but super hurtful to possibly schizophrenic people. Some part of me can't stop thinking that it's nuts to tell people to not sit quietly and try and clear your mind because it might trigger schizophrenia.
It's not nuts, it's Christian. The author states he is a Christian. Some Christian sects think that Yoga and meditation are rituals that open up the dark side. I hear all the time how meditation lets the demons in. 6 Reasons to Reject Eastern Meditation and Yoga https://rosilindjukic.com/eastern-meditation-differs-biblica... I'm bipolar and I meditate - I sit queitly, focus on my breath and try to let my thoughts qui…
I don't know. They're Christian but their argument is more nuanced than just thinking meditation is opening up to the dark side. I think it's worth talking about, especially given the experiences shared by other posters in the comments.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s interesting that everyone who has had a bad experience seems to have really tuned their practice up to 11. Silent retreats etc. seem to show up in these stories a lot
That is my impression as well. An ultra marathon is not a walk around the block even if they both commonly involve moving your legs.
Moving your legs might not be for everyone!
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#185https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27890790
Discussion on meditation induced psychosis and some a bit more metadiscussion on how it is perceived by pro-meditation groups - victim blaming (eg. you're doing it wrong, this didn't happen to me, this isn't meditation). Seeing some similar comments in here. Some areas of meditation actually acknowledge some sort of "dark night" that practitioners have to push through which caused a mental breakdown in the author.
Just because I've done LSD multiple times without psychosis, doesn't mean that LSD can't cause psychosis in some people. I believe it is the same with meditation. As much as some think meditation is beneficial, the effective sample size is 1.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#186> As a Christian, I use it to hone my focus for prayer and to increase my mindfulness so that I can better sense what God wants for me. Thanks for letting me know because there is a long campaign against Yoga and meditation by some sects of American Christians, who feel they are demonic and meditation is how you let demons in so they take over. These Christians have bizarre ideas of what Yoga and meditation are, trea…
I’m glad you found a combo that works for you. I don’t know many Christians that demonize meditation, but I’m sure they’re out there.
At my Christian high school in the 90s, one of my teachers told the class that the purpose of meditation was to empty the mind to let the devil in. I think this is more typical of fundamentalist types.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Note: I'm not sure if you're suggesting there is a "you" or not.) While I'm of course a mass of stuff that feels and thinks, I really do feel like I'm watching a pleasant movie filmed through my eyeballs. I feel like that about half the time. The other half, I forget, and live "normally". I also don't feel like I'm part of some interconnected world organism or anything like that. To the ~5 people I've described that…
> I really do feel like I'm watching a pleasant movie filmed through my eyeballs. I was curious about this. You mean it feels as if you are a little person sitting inside your skull, watching the "you" movie? Or you meant something different?
Yep, that's what I mean. And movie maybe implies too much action/drama/plot... Maybe it's more like a surveillance camera! I'd say it's just a general dampening of predictions, emotions, and explanations.
Instead of saying "I want my next job to be X", it's "I wonder what my next job will be". Instead of saying "I'm taking a walk to place Y", it's "I wonder where I'm walking to". Of course I can tell myself a destination, but statistically, I know it's far from certain. Looking backwards, instead of saying "You should have said hi to your neighbor", it's more like "I wonder why I acted that way". And it's not always in the direction of being helpless. Sometimes it's "I wonder why I'm exercising so much today".
At one point today, walking, I thought "I'm moving my left foot, I'm moving my right foot, my foot is touching the ground, it's weird that I don't usually think about this". That's meditation-ish, like watching the breath as a swinging gate, appreciating a normally automatic process for a bit. In my opinion, this goes beyond just breathing and walking, and extends into processes like writing and talking - words just kind of come. You can revise them and slow them down, but if you can step back, you might feel words just coming out of nowhere. Sam Harris, mentioned by others in this thread, has also described speech as being surreal in this way.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#188For me, meditation started a fundamental shift in how I think about free will, and oddly nobody I've mentioned it to in real life has felt this. I used to feel very in-control of my own mind, but after intentionally sitting and monitoring for thoughts, labeling those thoughts, etc, I became sensitive to how thoughts can really come out of nowhere. You can't predict what you will think next. That strikes a little deep…
From my own practice and what I've read / been taught, it's wrong to be labeling the thoughts, your either simply paying attention to raw experience or you're not. Once you start telling yourself it's good (or bad), you're not longer just an observer you're a participant.
By wrong I don't mean to say you're doing anything wrong, but it's not in the spirit of objective mindful meditation.
From my own practice, it's help me to accept the good and bad times, or what I'd usually think of good and bad, as more of a movie and put the bad times in a little more perspective.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#189Can confirm from personal experience. Even a lot of vipassana meditation by itself can send you into psychotic states when you're not ready for all the insight yet. I came very close to psychosis once, experienced ego death, broke down mentally and had to spend 2 months in a depression ward. Cannot recommend. I don't regret the 2-3 months of active ego dissolution phase, life has never been more beautiful and strange…
I had a brief experience with what you're talking about induced by drugs. It's made me decide I have no appetite for either meditation (except for short, surface level sessions to help with anxiety) or mind altering drugs anymore. I had briefly waded into the depths of something I wasn't prepared for, and I don't want to go back. > I have gained insights I was not supposed to have and I've preferred to mostly live in…
Hmm, I wonder if these experiences you and GP are describing are at all like my nightmarish Salvia trip--experiencing the collapse of the universe of experience and the certainty that everything I've ever known, been, and desired is an illusion that will all be pulled out from underneath me at any moment. Insanity.
Yet, somehow, I am glad I experienced that insanity--it showed me what direction I was headed in, "woke me up" to the inner world I was creating for myself, and changed my direction.
Still, wouldn't recommend the experience. It would be easier to just have a really open discussion with someone who cares about you and has some life experience, and have them tell you "you need to focus on what really matters--taking care of yourself, and appreciate life while you have it". I had to wrestle that lesson out of that incredibly frightening experience, which psychologically damaged me for almost 2 years.
Re: Not everyone should meditate
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
>No one should just go sit with zero context and no support. C'mon now. It's not hang-gliding or dropping acid, it's sitting quietly in a room. Not everything in life should be treated as if it's horrendously risky or can't possibly be understood by people exercising common sense. Nor, in my opinion, do the agglomeration of various meditative practices and teachings, no matter how old and "sacred" they may theoretica…
Strongly disagree. There's more to meditation than just sitting quietly. I'd say it's more analogous to breaking out of a sandboxed VM and gaining read/write access to the underlying OS and kernel. My personal anecdote - I developed a difficult-to-control, anxiety-inducing thought* while dabbling in meditation a couple of years ago. I experienced a week or two worth of extreme anxiety, and had a panic attack. To this…
> an involuntary, difficult-to-control channeling of my focus/perception
I'm really curious about this. Say more?