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My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

danlawton.substack.com

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Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#81

Post by thih9 »

samastur wrote: post #67
HeckFeck wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious. It sounds like meditation has been misappropriated in the same way as therapy. Therapy _should_ bring up difficult emotions and experiences from the past because they are often the root of dysfunction and frustration in the present.

And then what? I'm genuinely curious as a loved one rejects therapy exactly because she already knows what causes of her depression are and does not see any use in debating them further as they only bring her down. I don't have experience or knowledge to explain how it would help her.

Please remember that having a loved one that deals with depression is itself a big challenge and good reason for therapy too. The fact that she might need it "more" is not a reason to avoid seeking help yourself (if you feel that you need it).

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#82

Post by brabarossa »

samastur wrote: post #67
HeckFeck wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious. It sounds like meditation has been misappropriated in the same way as therapy. Therapy _should_ bring up difficult emotions and experiences from the past because they are often the root of dysfunction and frustration in the present.

And then what? I'm genuinely curious as a loved one rejects therapy exactly because she already knows what causes of her depression are and does not see any use in debating them further as they only bring her down. I don't have experience or knowledge to explain how it would help her.

And then you can see unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, and work on yourself.

Here's an example of techniques for CBT: https://positivepsychology.com/cbt-cognitive-behavioral-ther...

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#83

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

lr4444lr wrote: post #60
me551ah wrote: post #27

What he experienced is actually expected, deeper states of meditation bring out even harder experiences. Meditation is marketed in the west as some sort of a relaxation pill, designed to cure anxiety and other mental ailments. It's actually not. Meditation is a hardcore exercise for the mind and if your mind is not strong enough then deeper states will break you.

Sounds as conveniently unfalsifibale as any more patent pseudoscience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade

Your own eyes jump around all day, but you never notice. You do not notice, because your visual sense, fills the gaps, and even refills these gaps, with storys that make sense. "You frozze with fear" when the bike approached, instead of "My eyes filled the buffer to slow for my car".

Meditation is trying to break these cobbled together parts of the self-computer appart, trying to understand. Its a not very wise and not very calming endavour. After all the machine that should reassemble it, is the one that took it apart.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#84

Post by denton-scratch »

pigsty wrote: post #55
rg111 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buddhist buddhism involves demons, hell, and more praying or even chanting than meditating for the general population. You are mentioning Mahayana or later Vajrayana Buddhism. Buddha never asks you to pray, and he did not teach any concepts of hells or demons. Please stop appropriating Buddhism. You have no authority. Just like Christianity practised in the US is not true Christianity, Buddhism practised in East As…

Western Buddhism is based off an aesthetic interpretation of Zen Buddhism. If Buddhism in East Asia is appropriation and people in East Asia have no authority to talk about it, defending western Buddhism, which is based off the customs of a Japanese interpretation (based off a Chinese branch), is a strange turn to take. (hell is mentioned within the context of Theravada as well)

> hell is mentioned within the context of Theravada as well

As far as I'm aware, Theravada is a body of teaching that developed late - around the same time as Mahayana. It's not some kind of "what the Buddha actually taught".

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#85

Post by nidnogg »

Great write-up. Where I'm based, there are not a lot of meditation retreats at all. It's often something that's not really talked about but even then I wasn't aware at all that these side effects were out there. The most I went through as a short mindfulness class in college, and I absolutely thought it would be beneficial to go deeper into it eventually. I could never find the time or (mostly) patience to follow up with it afterwards.

Having had almost life ruining psychosis for pandemic related reasons in between then and now, reading this makes me glad I didn't and keen to learn more on this side of the issue.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#86

Post by zozbot234 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #77

I have been told that Trungpa said "they always run". The context was people on retreats jumping up from their meditation cushion and running away as fast as they can, not to reach some destination, but just to escape. I've never witnessed this, but I never did many retreats. The practice wasn't the jhanas, it was meditation on emptiness. The idea is that when you achieve a certain level of realisation into emptiness…

I think you're conflating the concentration and insight jhanas/meditative practices. What you said about losing the sense of self is true of the insight jhanas, but "mindfulness" as a meditative practice is more reminiscent of concentration. Also, it's not like "losing the sense of self" is always bad for you; it depends how deep your attachment to the self was in the first place. Sīla (moral and ethical practice) and intellectual insights like Stoicism can help you gradually loosen the notion that a personal self must be integral to existence, without abandoning it completely.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#87

Post by Karunamon »

fluoridation wrote: post #80
Karunamon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything as subjective as one's own mindset interpreted by oneself is incompatible with the scientific method in the first place. It's not the right tool for the job because it is impossible to objectively measure the results. That does not make those results any less real.

"Real" in what way? I would say that something is definitely real if I can agree with other people that it's there, while other things can at best be put in the "maybe" pile. Whatever you experience while meditating, other people won't be able to experience it, so it can't go in the "definitely real" pile. So the fact that it can't be studied scientifically definitely does make it less real, in the sense that your ca…

As real as the rest of your feelings in that they color, if not drive, your subjective experience of the world. Which applies to pretty much every person on the planet.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#88

Post by subrat_rout »

ghoastl wrote: post #9

My most intense mindfulness experience was on a two-week silent retreat, in the woods, isolated from all of humanity. At the beginning, I met only the creatures of the forest and heard only the whispers of the trees. By the sixth day I was hallucinating gold and purple snakes slithering out of my belly onto the ground around me. By the eighth day I had visions of a cloud island vista with animals the world had never…

Mind disclosing the name of retreat and place where one can attend?

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#89

Post by denton-scratch »

rg111 wrote: post #37
coldtea wrote: post #11

There's no Buddhism in the West, but in name. Buddhism is a religion associated with a way of life and a culture. It's not something a businessman does on a "weekend retreat" as "mindfulness practice" to get back in the rat race refreshed.

Where did Buddha define Buddhism? Even in time of Buddha, there were thousands of Buddhists who were practising Buddhist while remaining in a family. Buddha, once addressing Ananda, told him that there were hundreds of disciples who attained Nirvana while remaining in a family and with a profession. I find this kind of opposition to Western Buddhist practices absolitely repulsive and baseless. Yes, I studied Buddhist…

> you don't need to burn insence sticks and bow k times before a statue to be a Buddhist.

That's what would be called "devotional practices". I didn't care for all that - pujas, foundation practices, 100,000 prostrations and so on. I wanted to do the insight practices, and gain insight.

What I later learned is that you have to do devotional practices as well as insight practices. A bird can't fly with just one wing. Devotional practices supposedly give you the confidence to deal with awakening insight.

/me no longer a practitioner or a Buddhist.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#90

Post by Frummy »

fluoridation wrote: post #80
Karunamon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything as subjective as one's own mindset interpreted by oneself is incompatible with the scientific method in the first place. It's not the right tool for the job because it is impossible to objectively measure the results. That does not make those results any less real.

"Real" in what way? I would say that something is definitely real if I can agree with other people that it's there, while other things can at best be put in the "maybe" pile. Whatever you experience while meditating, other people won't be able to experience it, so it can't go in the "definitely real" pile. So the fact that it can't be studied scientifically definitely does make it less real, in the sense that your ca…

So not having the tool to measure something makes it not part of reality? Makes me think of how our worldview every now and then expands, from geocentrism to heliocentrism and so on. Surely the earth revolved around the sun before it was understood to be that way. And surely our experiences are real even though our minds are isolated from eachother. In Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, the devil told Adrian roughly this: Your brain is sick, yes you are hallucinating me, but that doesn't make me less real.
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