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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)

#251

Post by seltzered_ »

HeckFeck wrote: post #59
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.

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.

There's been works like 'McMindfulness' written about this, along with framings warning of practices of 'escapism meditation'

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

#252

Post by denton-scratch »

wirrbel wrote: post #240
denton-scratch wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a lot of mindfulness sitting practice. We were specifically directed not to attempt concentration. There's more than one kind of mindfulness, and more than one kind of vipassana. I was mainly taught vipassana as something that arises naturally from shamatha; but I've been on courses where it was taught as a systematic exploration of the skhandas, to convince yourself that there is no self in the five skhandas.…

> There's more than one kind of mindfulness, and more than one kind of vipassana Definitely true, by itself sati/smrti is a hard-to-translate term. > Shamatha is "calm abiding", which I think is what the McMindfulness crowd are trying to teach. It should really be treated as a sort of universal preliminary for most other types of meditation. But it's perfectly reasonable to treat shamatha as your main practice (as I…

No idea what Bhante Vimalaramsi is. I used the term as a synonym for sravakayana; I think I probably used it incorrectly, it should probably include a lot of mahayana practice (because mahayana sutras). Maybe it just means "practices that don't depend on revealed teachings". At any rate, "not tantrayana".

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

#253

Post by naasking »

weregiraffe wrote: post #247
naasking wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and people lie on surveys used in studies too. Only some percentage lie like this though.

Yes, and you can never know which percentage, so surveys in general only teach you about how people answer surveys.

Of course we can. fMRI will be able to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate brain states.

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

#254

Post by kodah »

jossclimb wrote: post #127
cutler wrote: post #114

I can't help thinking that most of these examples of negative side effects are related to intensives rather than meditation/mindfulness itself. There's a world of difference between 20 minutes a day and 10 days in a retreat looking inward. Maybe it's just better for you in short bursts, not long marathons. I once experienced negative effects after joining a Buddhist meditation group while at university. Every time I…

I expect there will be higher cases of psychosis happening on intense retreats, but as anecdotal as this, I had it happen to me (albeit not as extreme as OP) after meditating for much shorter periods (approx 10 minutes up to an hour). I really did not see it coming. For some context, I don't know of any deep seated trauma that I have and I liked to think of myself as someone robust mentally. I experienced a deep real…

> I experienced a deep realisation that our thoughts manifest from nowhere and not from ourselves (words fail me here) and that the construct of 'me' was completely false and was just a reverberation of my environment. I understood there was no me.

If you were tripping this is called ego death. In some circles, including mine, what you described after:

> I started to think that I should be looking to help other people and become a guru, perhaps write a book to help humanity, but then my ego (I expect) came back with a vengeance, kicked my ass and brought me back down to earth with a crash (maybe its a safety system).

Can be common. When I experienced ego death I was aware that it would return so I was able to deal with it. I think of it kind of like the trip itself; the more you fight it the harder it fights you.

Not sure this helps as it's entirely my own experience and was drug induced, but I do think occasional ego death is worth it. Just be cognizant of what you're doing. The mind is a powerful place.

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

#255

Post by feoren »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #83
lr4444lr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A good response to "that's not falsifiable" is offering a test that could prove the assertion false. This is only more unfalsifiable metaphor.

Also: saccades are very easy to notice if you just pay a little attention to them, just like noticing your tongue in your mouth or your nose in your vision. They're not a deep psychological enigma.

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

#256

Post by colechristensen »

leashless wrote: post #124

All of the real meditation traditions around the world - including the ones inside of Christianity - spend decades training highly skilled teachers to help people 1) avoid problems like this, and 2) clean up problems like this when they do happen. And even so those traditions never, ever (in my experience) describe themselves as anything other than perilous. "The way is long and narrow." "Like a snake entering a bamb…

All long term buddhist retreats will essentially sit you down and try make sure you're mentally healthy enough and prepared to partake. People losing it during long bouts is a regular occurrence.

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

#257

Post by detourdog »

arbitrage wrote: post #244
detourdog wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I'm winging it based on experience:) That just happens to be my observation and why I spoke up.

so what you mean to say is that you're just making things up as you go? neat.

True, but I don't see that as distinguishing me from anyone else.

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

#258

Post by op00to »

weregiraffe wrote: post #247
naasking wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and people lie on surveys used in studies too. Only some percentage lie like this though.

Yes, and you can never know which percentage, so surveys in general only teach you about how people answer surveys.

Used to work in a neuroscience labs. fMRI can not be used as a lie detector.

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

#259

Post by javier123454321 »

In the west, many conflate meditation for stress release and meditation for transcendence of the self.

If your goal is to develop yourself to go beyond every limitation that you ever believed about yourself, to transcend every piece of identity that you ever identified with in order to reach enlightenment, then it is best to look for a teacher that:

1. has achieved the goal you are after. (A teacher that practices what they preach) 2. is willing to take you as a student 3. You are willing to commit to their path and working through the difficulties like the ones outlined in the post

Note that this is explicitly about no longer identifying with your ego, and will be a very difficult, and sometimes dangerous road. Otherwise, then take the advice of the article and just do a little here and there.

Just don't conflate the two things, and - especially if you are doing the latter - definitely don't go around shopping for a bunch of different methods and try to practice them all as the author did. Grab a method and stick with it, if it's not for you then chose another one and stick with that, but don't fall into the trap of trying to create your own medicine from the vastness of teachings and methods.

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

#260

Post by zozbot234 »

kodah wrote: post #254
jossclimb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect there will be higher cases of psychosis happening on intense retreats, but as anecdotal as this, I had it happen to me (albeit not as extreme as OP) after meditating for much shorter periods (approx 10 minutes up to an hour). I really did not see it coming. For some context, I don't know of any deep seated trauma that I have and I liked to think of myself as someone robust mentally. I experienced a deep real…

> I experienced a deep realisation that our thoughts manifest from nowhere and not from ourselves (words fail me here) and that the construct of 'me' was completely false and was just a reverberation of my environment. I understood there was no me. If you were tripping this is called ego death. In some circles, including mine, what you described after: > I started to think that I should be looking to help other peopl…

And this is exactly why "tripping" is heavily frowned upon by serious meditators and spiritual practitioners. Experiencing "ego death" (i.e. the three marks of existence) without having the previous spiritual grounding for it to help free you from attachment to the ego, is only a recipe for being even more deeply mired in craving and dukkha.
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