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Not everyone should meditate

joshcsimmons.com

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Re: Not everyone should meditate

#281

Post by mi3law »

Mo3 wrote: post #277
mi3law wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry you've had such difficult experiences. Does the following excerpt resonate with you? If so, I'd be happy to share more. "This comment is extremely important and should be borne in mind by all who feel tempted to dabble with the psychedelic experience without knowing what they are doing or why. He who enters the fifth state of consciousness without preparation may be spiritually paralyzed by his experience.…

That resonates on a very deep level, yes. I've worked through most of it already. I'm not sure exactly right now what this refers to as fifth state of consciousness, is it the eight circuit model of consciousness? If so, as of the last dark night of the soul I seem to have reached permanent and stable access to sixth circuit now with glimpses of the seventh circuit, but I don't want to go there right now and proceedi…

>> I'm not sure exactly right now what this refers to as fifth state of consciousness, is it the eight circuit model of consciousness?

No, the fifth state here is an interpretation of the Gurdjieff system and the associated Fourth Way. Loosely the fifth state equivalent to enlightenment (satori). The specific quote is from a book by Robert de Ropp called "The Master Game."

I haven't looked into Leary's eight circuit model in years. Thank you for reminding me of it. By your description of your current state, sounds like you have found utility in that particular framework?

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#282

Post by zozbot234 »

tasha0663 wrote: post #198
zozbot234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not in human nature to fight with the inner workings of your own psychology This is not something that meditation should ever be about. Meditation is about exploring the inner workings of your experience, in a way that ultimately aims towards equanimity. It requires some deep (and continuing!) experience in practical ethics (turns out if you really learn to care about other sentient beings around you, it's a…

> The "Dark Night of the Soul" I've always wondered if there'd be less incidents of that if it didn't have such a sexy name.

As mentioned in a sibling thread, the real "dark night" is something that happens only after one is deep enough in the development of contemplation - both the Christian and Buddhist tradition are very clear about this. In fact, that's the reason it's so insidious: many inexperienced meditators get as far enough as reaching a stage of insight that subjectively feels a lot like the common folk trope of "sudden enlightenment". But the "dark night" comes right after that stage, and then they don't know that they're supposed to meditate more and look for the way out (through the insight of equanimity). It's a very understandable mistake, which is why it makes sense to warn about it.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#283

Post by BoxOfRain »

argentinian wrote: post #172
cromd wrote: post #170

Earlier 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?

Sounds a vaguely like depersonalisation, although I'm against this trend of pathologising every little thing that might be unusual about the human experience.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#284

Post by zozbot234 »

skilled wrote: post #222
hackernewds wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To inject another perspective from an outsider, to me it read like meditation actually was a positive experience for you. One of the implicit intentions and outcomes of meditation, at least in Buddhist and Hindu belief systems, is that it's meant to be a technique to _overcome_ wordly illusions and temptations (Maya) and attain enlightened state (Moksha) thus escaping the cycle of birth and rebirth into this world. S…

It was! Honestly, my comment is pretty raw and it doesn't give the full picture. But you are absolutely right. Meditation changed me and gave me insights about myself and life that I perhaps would have never encountered otherwise. And you're correct about turning back to a "stale" way of being. This is literally what happened, so kudos to you for noticing. As someone once told me, "You're still young. You have time."…

I would actually point you towards deepening your equanimity, as opposed to trying to renounce the world in this lifetime when you're basically nowhere near ready for that. If it feels like your way of being in the world is "stale", that's the pattern you should be working on. It should be fully possible to engage with the world, even and perhaps especially as an enlightened being.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#285

Post by zozbot234 »

astrange wrote: post #212
saulpw wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the tenet of Buddhism is non-attachment, not detachment. They are different.

Traditional sutric Buddhism was definitely about detachment (or “renunciation”); you’re supposed to never have sex and if you’re eating food you should imagine it’s a rotting corpse so you won’t end up enjoying it. The presentation of Buddhism as chill and peaceful and all about meditation is a modernization to keep it alive after the white people found it.

> you’re supposed to never have sex and if you’re eating food you should imagine it’s a rotting corpse so you won’t end up enjoying it.

Possibly as an instrumental practice on the way to full buddhahood (and that would come after even the very advanced stage of arahantship, which basically means guaranteed complete enlightenment after your lifetime!). Surely not as mere penance or mortification of the flesh shorn of any contemplative practice, because that was very clearly criticized by the Buddha as misleading and useless when the Hinduists were doing it.

(Then again, IIRC, the Stoics talk about doing something very similar. The idea itself would not have been unfamiliar in the West.)

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#286

Post by strken »

argentinian wrote: post #274
strken wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't meditate, but thoughts do just seem to appear to me without a lot of control or conscious effort. My answer is twofold. Firstly, your executive function is still moderating those thoughts, even if they're appearing from some dingy recess of your brain that decided to think about hunger or inkjet printers. Secondly, there's not really a "self" other than your executive function and the stuff going into it. Any…

Does the executive function operate in a deterministic way? In a random way? In a mixture of determinism and randomness?

This is a bit like asking whether a fire is deterministic or random. Sure, at some level there are processes happening that are either deterministic or random. At the level we observe, though, it's just a really complicated semi-predictable process.

I'd say that agency is your executive function's ability to take control of the actions resulting from that process. Someone who binges after starving lacks agency, because their executive function has lost control, while someone who holds themselves under a cold shower is exercising agency by staying there in violation of thermoregulation, pain, cold shock, or whatever else.

I don't think agency can be defined outside the context of the process that is you. Determinism and randomness are inherent in that process, and someone operating predictably still has agency so long as they're exercising control.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#287

Post by avgcorrection »

verve_rat wrote: post #134
kragen wrote: post #74

Earlier 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...

You just called billions of people mentally unhealthy. Not so much snarky as unnecessarily mean.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#288

Post by sooheon »

kybernetikos wrote: post #278
sooheon wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to consciousness they suddenly appear, but it was still my brain that formed them, so me. Interesting philosophical position! I've rarely seen that position be held in earnest, because the obvious consequence is that you should be held fully responsible for anything possibly criminal you do while sleepwalking, as it was still on your brain's orders, regardless of your state of consciousness.

Our brains often cause us to do things we consider accidents, e.g. fumbling an egg. It's still me that has done it, and I am still responsible to clean up the mess. The fact that I didn't do it 'deliberately' doesn't negate my culpability and responsibility, although it may change its character.

What is certain about accidents is that they are outside of our control. They are not what anyone would call, of our own free will.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#289

Post by krageon »

1_player wrote: post #238
krageon wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their argument is more nuanced than just thinking meditation is opening up to the dark side Is it? Viewed through that lens, it doesn't seem like there is a lot of nuance.

The point I'm making is I'm not sure they're viewing it through that lens, but rather GP is dismissing the article because the author is Christian and _some_ of them are known to be against meditation. It does not segue that all Christians are against it. GP seems to be the biased one here with a preconceived opinion.

I'm not unsympathetic with that stance, as every Christian I've ever met is fast to claim "there are also tolerant ones" - the majority are simply not. That's what a reputation does: It informs someone about what to expect. In this case it colours what is also said, both parties need to acknowledge this.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#290

Post by mbg721 »

sooheon wrote: post #254
mbg721 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo, recognizing that there are some uncontrollable thoughts is part of the general trend of acknowledging the close connection of mental health to physical health. The existence of "lizard" characteristics to the brain doesn't invalidate free will, but they're so rarely pointed out that it's useful to notice them.

There is no distinction between "lizard" and non-lizard thoughts. Every that that arises in your brain originates with processes far below the level of consciousness, you don't have control over the upstream causes that are in motion long before you are aware of any conscious thought.

Even accepting that deterministic framework, I think there's still a distinction in that the lizard-thoughts are missing some metadata that comes with the thoughts we recognize as conscious.
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