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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)

#411

Post by [deleted] »

zozbot234 wrote: post #336
mtalantikite wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best book I've read on this topic is Chögyam Trungpa's "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism" [1]. He's very clear in pointing out how ego tries to get involved in everything. It sounds like you may have had an experience, to some extent, of dwelling in the union of wisdom and emptiness or what some call dharmadhatu [2]. It's not a teaching I encountered until I started practicing Vajrayana, as Theravada teacher…

> ... the union of wisdom and emptiness ... Ah, the extent that some people will go through to avoid acknowledging God. It's like some people take stubborn pleasure in being purposely nihilistic and strenuously denying all that's good about the world. How this can be part of a supposedly spiritual practice, I just can't understand.

[deleted]

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

#412

Post by leashless »

roflyear wrote: post #409
leashless wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://myhopeforthe.world is just packed with high impact decision-making issues in future as that work rolls out into the climate (and other) crises.

Sorry for being unclear, I mean what is your motivation?

I want people that I can delegate my responsibilities to if we wind up using the hexayurt and similar parts of my critical infrastructure work in a global humanitarian crisis.

I will be much more confident delegating to people that have done a lot of meditation and are able to hold their heads together under immense pressure.

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

#413

Post by roflyear »

leashless wrote: post #412
roflyear wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for being unclear, I mean what is your motivation?

I want people that I can delegate my responsibilities to if we wind up using the hexayurt and similar parts of my critical infrastructure work in a global humanitarian crisis. I will be much more confident delegating to people that have done a lot of meditation and are able to hold their heads together under immense pressure.

Makes sense, but doesn't that mean in a way you are afraid of what happens after you die? Or would you call this motivation something different than something similar to fear/worry/anxiety/etc?

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

#414

Post by ok_dad »

hnfong wrote: post #398
ok_dad wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that anyone even had to specify that excessive meditation could cause harm. Isn't the whole point of Buddhism to follow the "middle way"?

The problem with "excessive X causes harm" is that it is tautologically true. The real question is the quantitative level where it starts doing more harm than good. Nobody knows, but it's easy to say after the fact that something is "excessive".

Yea, but I think 10 days in a row of 12 hours a day meditation might fall on the "excessive" side, right? I mean, I live in a place where Buddhists are pretty common, and none that I know do anything like that. They might go to a retreat in the mountains, but they aren't just sitting there for hours trying to feel their body parts mentally, they do other things, like copy religious texts by hand or take nature walks to appreciate life.

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

#415

Post by hnfong »

ok_dad wrote: post #414
hnfong wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "excessive X causes harm" is that it is tautologically true. The real question is the quantitative level where it starts doing more harm than good. Nobody knows, but it's easy to say after the fact that something is "excessive".

Yea, but I think 10 days in a row of 12 hours a day meditation might fall on the "excessive" side, right? I mean, I live in a place where Buddhists are pretty common, and none that I know do anything like that. They might go to a retreat in the mountains, but they aren't just sitting there for hours trying to feel their body parts mentally, they do other things, like copy religious texts by hand or take nature walks…

Yes, but even a traditional retreat in the mountains like you described could be "excessive" to some.

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

#416

Post by sixo »

2devnull wrote: post #236
sixo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That meditation reliably causes these crisis events (so much that it's an acknowledged "stage" of the process; the "dark night of the soul" term comes from the Roman Catholic contemplative tradition which maybe doesn't refer to the same thing but has a similar role in the process) is pretty much THE criteria to establish causation; that it only happens to a portion of meditators additionally rules out "the kind of pe…

My intent was to single out a-spiritual meditation. Meditation that occurs as part of an established program of spiritual practice, that goes along with other aspects of religion within a centuries old framework is obviously the opposite of weird. It is normal. Whether what you call crisis events that are part of the process is == psychotic episodes seems dubious to me. The psychosis I hear reported from more extreme…

Oh yes ok. I also don't buy that crisis events are == psychosis. Or maybe, my first approx would be that psychosis is a spiritual crisis event sans any organizing moral framework, and the lack of framework is what makes it disabling. But I'm in no way informed.

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

#417

Post by mettamage »

zozbot234 wrote: post #405
lend000 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't quite achieved an ego death yet through meditation, but reading through a fair amount of psychedelic journeys suggests that eliminating the ego, while perhaps useful and enlightening in moderation, sort of defeats the point of living a life in this world. If the world really does exist simply to provide experiential distraction from the existential dread of being an absolute consciousness in the void (which…

No-self is not really about eliminating the ego, it's about eliminating the craving for an ego. These two are not the same; in fact, the latter seems to be harder. It's why so many meditators anecdotally get stuck in their "Dark Night". I don't know what psychedelic "ego death" does exactly, but I'm skeptical that it addresses craving.

There might be some overlap as psilocybin can be used to treat addiction. There’s a recent John Oliver episode on it

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

#418

Post by anonymousnotme »

mtalantikite wrote: post #328
jossclimb wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was more humouring the situation there and adding some color, but for sure, the ego is incredibly powerful and deep seated. I firmly believe what I had initially was profound, and was hijacked by the ego (and this is a very common happening to anyone on a spiritual journey of some sort).

The best book I've read on this topic is Chögyam Trungpa's "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism" [1]. He's very clear in pointing out how ego tries to get involved in everything. It sounds like you may have had an experience, to some extent, of dwelling in the union of wisdom and emptiness or what some call dharmadhatu [2]. It's not a teaching I encountered until I started practicing Vajrayana, as Theravada teacher…

Had this tab open, should have responded several days ago, not sure that this will help anybody now. Michael Singer's Books have been very helpful to me so far. The whole problem seems to be one's ego and how to deal with it.

https://untetheredsoul.com/untethered-soul

https://untetheredsoul.com/living-untethered

I also found eckhart Toll's book "A New Earth" are also helpful:

https://eckharttolle.com/books/

I found "A New Earth" better/more details than "Power of Now" probably because it was written later and I read it later.

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

#419

Post by jeremyt »

whitepaint wrote: post #192
jeremyt wrote: post #131

I have quite a lot of experience with meditation. I've done thousands of hours, including more than ten retreats that involved sitting for as many as 18 hours per day. I've also done many healing modalities, including somatic experiencing. From my perspective, we have taken "Buddhism" and "meditation" and we have done what us Westerners almost always do: we boil it down into "stuff that does stuff" and "everything el…

Very beautifully put. I completely relate with the last 2 sentences. Do you have recommendations for books?

Or just watch this. It’s all there.

https://youtu.be/dWLd9y1MG4c

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