A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming
1–10 of 43 posts
Re: A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming
#2In my opinion, this is a failing of schools. Keep trying while figuring out how to do it better is a culture of learning. Shuffling everybody through without meaningful challenges and eliminating all indicators of relative (or even absolute) performance, means kids aren't developed with a sense of self-development, even if they do pick up some academic knowledge along the way. This can easily cause people to become reliant on an unearned default acceptance, confirmation, and praise from others.
Home life certainly has a lot to do with it, encouraging kids to get through their homework (and homework itself is of arguable benefit), but the standards and expectations of schools really set the underlying tone. We need to be trained in overcoming challenges ourselves, with assistance and guidance where appropriate, and with real consequences if we don't.
The fact that so many people hit adulthood without this basic self-determining ability is apocalyptic.
Re: A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming
#3The research paper linked in the article essentially recommends only a few apps that scored high enough to properly engage you into learning meditation, and none of them appear to be games, but use gamification techniques:
* Headspace
* Smiling Mind
* iMindfulness
* Mindfulness Daily
Re: A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming
#4In my opinion, this is a failing of schools. Keep trying while figuring out how to do it better is a culture of learning. Shuffling everybody through without meaningful challenges and eliminating all indicators of relative (or even absolute) performance, means kids aren't developed with a sense of self-development, even if they do pick up some academic knowledge along the way. This can easily cause people to become r…
Yeah the fixed mindset has really crippled me in my life. I was one of those "gifted" kids (to be fair, I do have a pretty high IQ, but fixed mindset is bad for high-IQ individuals too) and I couldn't even stick with video games after awhile, always playing on the easiest difficulties. It's really taking a long time to re-build my attention span and work ethic (ie. from just fiddling around with a million little linux distros and languages, to really investing in learning Android/Java like I am right now - one thing at a time)
For anyone who hasn't read it yet, or isn't familiar with these ideas of praising effort and relative improvement over ability and talent, checkout Mindset - it's a great book which I'm about half-way through right now: https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0...
Re: A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming
#5In my opinion, this is a failing of schools. Keep trying while figuring out how to do it better is a culture of learning. Shuffling everybody through without meaningful challenges and eliminating all indicators of relative (or even absolute) performance, means kids aren't developed with a sense of self-development, even if they do pick up some academic knowledge along the way. This can easily cause people to become r…
This can easily cause people to become reliant on an unearned default acceptance, confirmation, and praise from others.
This makes so much sense of so many of the interactions I've had with younger people! Look at games nowadays. 80's arcade games used to pretty much throw you into the pool, and leave it up to you to swim. (Granted, they threw you into the shallow end.) Now, it seems like games hold your hand and praise you for every action you take.
Re: A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming
#6The research paper linked in the article essentially recommends only a few apps that scored high enough to properly engage you into learning meditation, and none of them appear to be games, but use gamification techniques: * Headspace * Smiling Mind * iMindfulness * Mindfulness Daily
Yeah I noticed this also. Its a reoccurring theme in conversations I have with nongamers that "respect" gaming, they really do respect it, but find it difficult to get past the subject matter of the game and focus on the gameplay. I'm hoping to tackle that with my new game. Basicly it looks spiritual (it actually is to me) but offers fairly standard gaming mechanics. Just hoping it might help people get beyond the subject matter and into what's important about gaming...and be helpful in general for them.
Re: A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming
#7In the meditation world, those are called "supports". They support your practice. I'd consider things like, going to a quiet place, having a meditation cushion or bench so you don't wreck your knees, bells, asceticism, even mantra, are all supports. These games, when done well, are supports.
Eventually, you kick away the support when the support no longer becomes supportive. By that I mean, you realize you are attached and relying on the support, which forms an attachment -- a story. "This too shall pass."
In the meantime, enjoy the support, just don't confuse it for the practice.
Re: A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming
#8The research paper linked in the article essentially recommends only a few apps that scored high enough to properly engage you into learning meditation, and none of them appear to be games, but use gamification techniques: * Headspace * Smiling Mind * iMindfulness * Mindfulness Daily
Yeah I noticed this also. Its a reoccurring theme in conversations I have with nongamers that "respect" gaming, they really do respect it, but find it difficult to get past the subject matter of the game and focus on the gameplay. I'm hoping to tackle that with my new game. Basicly it looks spiritual (it actually is to me) but offers fairly standard gaming mechanics. Just hoping it might help people get beyond the su…
I like to keep my eye on projects like this. Do you have a mailing list or a twitter or something I can follow? Or would you mind elaborating on this more?
Re: A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming
#9In my opinion, this is a failing of schools. Keep trying while figuring out how to do it better is a culture of learning. Shuffling everybody through without meaningful challenges and eliminating all indicators of relative (or even absolute) performance, means kids aren't developed with a sense of self-development, even if they do pick up some academic knowledge along the way. This can easily cause people to become r…
Yeah the fixed mindset has really crippled me in my life. I was one of those "gifted" kids (to be fair, I do have a pretty high IQ, but fixed mindset is bad for high-IQ individuals too) and I couldn't even stick with video games after awhile, always playing on the easiest difficulties. It's really taking a long time to re-build my attention span and work ethic (ie. from just fiddling around with a million little linu…
I had something similar. Martial arts and video games didn't quite switch it on for me. There were wishful thinking on my part when I practiced those. At some point, I learned to eat the suffering that comes with doing something difficult. It came down to that. There is no avoiding the suffering. What makes hard work "hard" is literally the suffering. Being able to be present -- being mindful -- to it is what makes it look like endurance, perseverance, grit, "ren", "nin" on the outside. It looks stoic, like being indifferent to pain, but it isn't. Being indifferent is a subtle way of avoiding the suffering, while I'm speaking of being present to pain and suffering.
I learned that through a shamanic thing and cultivated it with meditation. My ability to practice the things I wanted and take on challenges really accelerated. (I got a taste for climbing up mountains, heh).
I also went to the other extreme where work became just an endless death march of anxiety and stress. (If you can eat suffering, then you can just keep on going, right?) That took reading a book on classical, non-dual Shaiva Tantra and it's philosophy (it's View) before things clicked for me there. Up until then, I had difficulty reconciling some things. I didn't want to lose being able to work hard, but sustaining that was deteriorating things for my health and my family.
Re: A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming
#10In my opinion, this is a failing of schools. Keep trying while figuring out how to do it better is a culture of learning. Shuffling everybody through without meaningful challenges and eliminating all indicators of relative (or even absolute) performance, means kids aren't developed with a sense of self-development, even if they do pick up some academic knowledge along the way. This can easily cause people to become r…
> The fact that so many people hit adulthood without this basic self-determining ability is apocalyptic.
We lost a lot of our traditional rites of passages. Some of the traditional ones goes against contemporary notions of childhood and would be considered child abuse.
In some cultures, for example, failing the rite of passage is fatal. Those cultures may consider that the spirit inhabiting the child was not serious or ready about being an adult. Try against next time.
I'm not suggesting we lost our way and we should go back to traditional practices. Rather, there are wisdom we learned with our modernity and there is wisdom we lost when we left behind traditional wisdom. There is some sort of way where we can have those teachings of self-reliance that's expressed natively, and emergently from our modern sensibilities.
I don't know what that is, though it's something in the back of my mind for a while.