131–140 of 396 posts
Ppl with mental disorders shouldn't meditate more than 20 min/day
If it's done unsupervised or without a support system such as a guide or teacher, the experience can be traumatic.
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Could you give an example of beliefs/ideas you've let go of, or discovered can't be known to be true? I've been trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy vs meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of false beliefs. But while there are a lot of examples of this in psychotherapy and the mechanisms are well-documented, it's hard to find first-person accounts regarding meditation that aren't just…
Psychotherapy works on the "self": your problems, your history. One of the aims of mediation is to gradually understand that this self is really an illusion, hence there are in fact no problems and no history. Past does not really define who you are, and problems are only problems if you think reality should be different that what it currently is the moment you experience it (which is of course totally impossible. Wh…
"...you were taught in [Jesus]... to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." -- Ephesians 4:20-24
"[O]ur mind is trained to function this way in response to some stimuli" vs "our old self is corrupted through deceitful desires". The former sounds non-judgemental, but by saying that this realization should "lead you to develop new, more wholesome habits, in adequation with reality, which make you and others suffer less", it's implying that the previous habits were unwholesome (cf "corrupt"), not in adequation with reality (cf "deceitful") and made you and others suffer more.
I think insofar as psychotherapy is reluctant to discard bits of the "[old] self", the two perspectives would agree that it's a dead end.
I do have to say, personally I like the sound of having a "new self, created after the likeness of God" better than "realizing I'm just a bundle of habits, then replacing some habits with better ones." :-)
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Could you give an example of beliefs/ideas you've let go of, or discovered can't be known to be true? I've been trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy vs meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of false beliefs. But while there are a lot of examples of this in psychotherapy and the mechanisms are well-documented, it's hard to find first-person accounts regarding meditation that aren't just…
Psychotherapy works on the "self": your problems, your history. One of the aims of mediation is to gradually understand that this self is really an illusion, hence there are in fact no problems and no history. Past does not really define who you are, and problems are only problems if you think reality should be different that what it currently is the moment you experience it (which is of course totally impossible. Wh…
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I think this is a misconception. I do think there’s a greater likelihood that someone with religious tendencies will pursue a path like this, but the religiosity is not the key. Sam Harris is the polar opposite of religious, but is arguably one of the leading meditators/teachers in western culture right now. I’m as allergic to religion as someone can probably be, but I’ve gotten serious about meditation and have made…
It seems you have a fairly narrow view of what constitutes a religion. Christian fundamentalism is particularly dogmatic and is one negative manifestation of religion which happens to be present in the West. From the book "God is Not One" by Stephen Prothero: "Philosopher of religion Ninian Smart has referred to these [shared religious] tendencies as the seven “dimensions” of religion: the ritual, narrative, experien…
The Christian dogmatic variety and its offshoots also happens to be quite popular. I understand the broader religious context after investing significant time and effort into trying to understand the phenomena of religion more generally. “The Evolution of God” is another interesting text in this category.
The narrow view I’m representing here is the view that I spent most of my life holding, and the view that most people I know still hold. It’s also the view that kept me from exploring Buddhism and meditation for many years. Religion had been a very destructive force in my life, and I’m not alone in this experience.
My point in this thread is that associating meditation with religion is unnecessary, and can be a problem for people who hold this narrow view. My attempts to expand my own understanding seems pretty rare in my social circles, and when I added a meditation practice as something very central to my life, it was clear that people around me hold all sorts of assumptions and misconceptions about it (as I did), and those associations don’t need to exist.
“Real Christianity” - following the things that Jesus actually taught - is actually a pretty decent way to go about life. But this isn’t what most people experience, and it colors their views of the whole endeavor accordingly.
A few years ago I tried the very first Headspace meditation courses, back when Headspace was pretty new. It was great! I loved it. I really felt like the narrator was knowledgeable and had something to teach me. His explanations for the process actually made sense, and weren't woo-woo mumbo jumbo. Perhaps it is all placebo effect, but even if so, the effect worked for me perfectly. The problem is, as the industry exp…
You learn to meditate by trying and failing over and over, and in the process you learn your own mind. You learn all its tricks. And that’s the point. It can suck for a long time. It can be a grind. But eventually, you stabilize.
"Along a less-traveled route, meditation remains what it long was: a deeply transformative pursuit, a devoted metamorphosis of the mind toward increasingly enlightened states." This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for me. However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself. As my practice has gotten deeper, I've started to reframe meditation for myself as the process of unrelenting inquiry…
Could you give an example of beliefs/ideas you've let go of, or discovered can't be known to be true? I've been trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy vs meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of false beliefs. But while there are a lot of examples of this in psychotherapy and the mechanisms are well-documented, it's hard to find first-person accounts regarding meditation that aren't just…
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For me, it was about confronting deliberate self deception. In my mind I always told myself that "I dont have time to exercise", when the truth was, I was too lazy to exercise. While I was meditating, this profound clarity came to me, it wasn't a case of a tyranny-like self-harming disclipinary action about my deliberate self deception, it was more like a great washing of positive emotion that framed exercise as "thi…
An hour day seems like a high threshold (I'm not saying it is, just my perception). Are there diminishing returns pas 15 minutes or 30 minutes etc?
I guess everyone is different, for me the practice was looking for guidance and then finding what works for me - one of the first things I had to let go was rigid time schedules, "THIS IS MY 15 MINUTE WINDOW FOR MEDIATETION LET ME SET AN ALARM SO I CAN GET BACK TO WORK" is not a very constructive attitute to regeneration and healing.
I suspect me saying above "Get results after more than a month" instead of hearing "I need to stick to this for a while" people hear "I will definitly get results in 1 month, here let me mark it on my calander [GET RESULTS HERE]" where it doesn't work like that. Maybe you need more healing than I did, maybe you need less. Maybe breathing is important because of how it intertwines with your exercise schedule (or lack thereof), or maybe you need silence or darkness. Maybe you need music. Maybe you need white noise.
The only common thread is that meditation is a personal journey, so listen to your body, try to avoid any preconcieved notions and expectations of results, timeframes and experiement with a few different things until you find what works for you...
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> I can't help but feel the recent societal interest in meditation and psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's treating a symptom rather than a cause. I agree, but the question emerges "what is treatable?" Many of the thousands of causes of stress in modern life can't be changed by an individual: I can't unelect politicians I disagree with, clean up the air where I live, or make the roads I travel significantly less…
> Many of the thousands of causes of stress in modern life can't be changed by an individual The counterpoint is essentially that if people engaged in social outward-looking collective action , as opposed to solitary inward-looking meditation, then you can change the world -- as has been demonstrated countless times. You certainly can unelect politicians in the next election. Environmental movements have made giganti…
I’ve been meditating casually for almost 10 years, I couldn’t sit still for a minute when I started and can sit regularly for an hour now. I still have a lot of skepticism about the sensations that other meditators describe feeling, like jhanas and profound states of tranquility and whatnot. I have experienced deeper calmness and have made some insights about my brain (eg thoughts are like a sensor organ not unlike a…
Supernatural claims made by meditators that are obviously not true are what keep me from experimenting with meditation. I don't want to mess up my brain. I value it. All the senior meditators I know have some element of irrationality. The openness that meditation seems to promote seems to also promote a certain level of gullibility that I did not expect from them. Obviously, an out of body experience is not really tr…
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There are multiple scientific studies show the positive affects of meditation and a myriad of health benefits.... I'm not sure what "gurus" you're seeing but it's not really relevant to objective studies that show it works and makes changes in the brain. I'm sure they are making some claims that are pseudoscience, but that doesn't mean meditation in its entirety is just a "feel nice" routine. Here's just one of sever…
There's also a lot of studies showing that meditation can cause harm. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01503-2