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Ten years of trying to meditate

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Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#91

Post by feanaro »

bowsamic wrote: post #88
feanaro wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you describing something which can happen without proper technique/guidance or something which inevitably happens? And I guess I'm wondering the same for the rest of your list of changes.

It happens for almost all practitioners, one problem is that the secular practise doesn’t offer the “save all suffering beings in the cosmos” narrative that Buddhism does, and so it cannot offer a way forward beyond the insight and into compassion. It usually doesn’t even try to.

I found it interesting because while I can see how the other things in your list would naturally happen as attachments lose power, I don't see why an increase in neurosis would be a necessary or even a common result. (For context, I've been meditating daily for a year and a half, for 30-60 minutes and this simply hasn't happened to me yet. In fact, if anything, the opposite happened, where I engage less in self-aggrandizing behaviour.)

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#92

Post by bowsamic »

feanaro wrote: post #91
bowsamic wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens for almost all practitioners, one problem is that the secular practise doesn’t offer the “save all suffering beings in the cosmos” narrative that Buddhism does, and so it cannot offer a way forward beyond the insight and into compassion. It usually doesn’t even try to.

I found it interesting because while I can see how the other things in your list would naturally happen as attachments lose power, I don't see why an increase in neurosis would be a necessary or even a common result. (For context, I've been meditating daily for a year and a half, for 30-60 minutes and this simply hasn't happened to me yet. In fact, if anything, the opposite happened, where I engage less in self-aggra…

Have you not heard of the spiritual ego? Most practitioners eventually grow a big ego around their practise. Chogyam Trungpas book “Cutting through spiritual materialism” is all about this

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#93

Post by titanomachy »

rebelos wrote: post #57
titanomachy wrote: post #35

I was in a similar rut for a while. I had a sense that meditation could help me deal with various mental health issues, but I couldn't do it: I just spent my sessions being bored and annoyed with myself. I tried picking it up many times but never got momentum. After a few years of this I finally bit the bullet and went on a 10-day meditation retreat. ~12 hours a day of meditating, no books or talking or exercise. The…

What was your level of practice before going into the retreat? Did you go in 'cold'? What would you recommend for people who are considering it?

Pretty much cold, yeah. I'd meditated 10-20 minutes occasionally over a few years but never kept up a habit for more than a week. I didn't read very much on the subject either, although I did read Sam Harris's "waking up", which is what convinced me that a retreat was the best way to learn meditation.

I'd recommend trying to find a place with qualified teachers. I went to a Goenka retreat (i.e. dhamma.org) and there were some weird things about it: all the teaching was done through 30-year recordings of a guy who's been dead for 10 years. The facilitators actually present at the retreat were his "assistant teachers", and in my case they didn't seem to have a lot of expertise. They seemed to be following Goenka's script and were reluctant to deviate. I think everyone there really meant well and had no ulterior motives, but there were cult-y vibes nonetheless. If you can put up with that and are willing to work through difficulties largely on your own then maybe I'd recommend it. I had a great experience, in the end. The food and facilities were also quite nice.

Also, I had some intense experiences that I would have thought were only possible with psychedelic drugs. It really scared me at one point: I was sure I was losing my mind. I almost asked to be taken to a hospital and put on antipsychotics. I think there is a chance that if I had done that, things would have gone very badly for me.

The other people on the retreat with me apparently did not have experiences like this. But it's not unique to me. [1]

Just go into it with an appreciation that you're attempting something significant and powerful and probably (at least for now) a bit outside of rational understanding.

It was worthwhile for me. I had a hard time justifying taking 10 days away from everything, but ultimately I convinced myself that it would be exciting to spend 10 days doing something wildly different from what I've done basically every other day for the last couple of years. Variety of experience is a good thing, right? :)

[1] https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/britton/research/varieti...

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#94

Post by taeric »

vorpalhex wrote: post #90
taeric wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I push back against the "of course there are going to be negative outcomes." The evidence at hand is strictly that there are depressed people and that panic attacks and suicidal tendencies exist. Unless the studies show a significant uptick in how many people feel these after starting meditation, this feels akin to the logic people use to show that vaccines cause autism.

All of these adverse effects happened during or immediately following meditation. That metastudy gives a base rate of 8% - that is waaay above background noise. Ibuprofen is a great drug and I recommend it. It also kills people, is toxic, and can have severe side effects especially when misused. If something is powerful and has an effect.. it will have side effects and negative outcomes. Even as a secularist, I think…

8% is indeed quite high. My gut would be more that this is the selection bias, though. Folks that are looking for things such as meditation to help with mental health, are more likely to have trouble with mental health. Such that I am still suspicious of this data.

I should say that I'm fine with the idea of pushing for caution. I just have major suspicions when a practice is pushed with a mentality that you need expert guidance to get layman benefits.

I should also state that my personal stance is that the majority of meditation, if it is working, is not working for the reasons that the practitioners think it is working.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#95

Post by vorpalhex »

Hasu wrote: post #80
bowsamic wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have access to that data. Do you? I would guess that about 5 to 10% of people who seriously try the practise for an extended period experience very scary and potentially trauma inducing effects

I can use Google, and found this [1] article claiming over 4 million DAUs for Calm in June of 2020, with trendlines going up and to the right. So the lower bound of your estimate gives us ~200,000 people who would be adversely affected. Looking through negative reviews, it's all complaints about pricing and paywalls. The same is true for Headspace, the second biggest app in this space (I don't have DAUs for them, but…

You're assuming the people having issues realize Calm is the source. Also a DAU is not always someone meditating.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#96

Post by vorpalhex »

roody15 wrote: post #28
bowsamic wrote: post #9

My biggest advice for anyone is to not ignore the traditional advice. Secular meditation practises based on Buddhist meditation take the practise out of its context in a quick and forceful way. Buddhism has had 2500 years to slowly develop and work out what works and what does not. It is quite dangerous to take it and call the parts that do not immediately appeal to the secular western mind, like devotion, worship, c…

Disclaimer: This is probably going to make me sound crazy but perhaps it’s fitting. In a deeply meditative state you can open up yourself to a spiritual state of perception. In this transcendental state you can attract other spiritual and ethereal entities. Not all of which are benevolent. Lots of the meditative mantras, prayers and rituals perhaps are meant to ward off negative entities and even perhaps attract comp…

Do you view this description as being literal or metaphorical?

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#97

Post by titanomachy »

bowsamic wrote: post #81
titanomachy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem pretty experienced in this stuff. I agree with a lot of what you're saying in this thread: meditation can be dangerous and should be taken more seriously. Treating it as on par with a psychedelic therapy sounds about right. Here's where I think we differ: a lot of people in secular western culture are intensely put off by all the religious stuff that comes with Buddhism. The metaphysics and reincarnation stu…

The Buddha never taught that those aspects are optional and every tradition has preserved them from India to China to Japan, until now! Why are we special that we can forgo all of the religious trappings? We aren’t Of course the teachings must be made to appeal to westerners. This does not mean totally gutting them People who won’t accept anything spiritual or religious don’t need this practise. In Buddhism we don’t…

I think there is a difference between accepting spiritual and religious practices.

The illusion of self can be observed directly. Perhaps it's even an inevitable conclusion of sufficiently intense introspection. I'd consider observing this to be a spiritual practice.

The metaphysics of realms of reincarnation, hungry ghosts, etc. is religious thought (and it was the dominant worldview when Siddhartha was born). These are not ideas that I can discover independently through introspection; if I believe them it's because someone told me to.

We might be talking past each other, though: if you're saying that the benefits of meditation are inherently inextricable from a Vedic worldview, I don't agree. But if you are just saying we haven't yet figured out which parts of the religion are actually necessary, then I agree. I personally learned meditation in a fairly Buddhist context, and naturally there are parts that resonate with me and parts that don't.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#98

Post by vorpalhex »

taeric wrote: post #94
vorpalhex wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these adverse effects happened during or immediately following meditation. That metastudy gives a base rate of 8% - that is waaay above background noise. Ibuprofen is a great drug and I recommend it. It also kills people, is toxic, and can have severe side effects especially when misused. If something is powerful and has an effect.. it will have side effects and negative outcomes. Even as a secularist, I think…

8% is indeed quite high. My gut would be more that this is the selection bias, though. Folks that are looking for things such as meditation to help with mental health, are more likely to have trouble with mental health. Such that I am still suspicious of this data. I should say that I'm fine with the idea of pushing for caution. I just have major suspicions when a practice is pushed with a mentality that you need exp…

I don't think the harm data means you need to go pay a yogi $400 for lessons.

I think we need to stop telling people meditation is a perfect little peaceful practice and instead treat it like ibuprofen.

If you are meditating and you start feeling anxious or in a bad way.. stop. Stop meditating and go do something else. Maybe talk with a therapist.

If you start feeling depersonalization.. stop meditating.

You should inform your medical practicioners that you meditate, the same way you tell them if you take ibuprofen on the regular. They probably don't care, but it's good to know.

You probably should ask yourself "is the benefit from meditation exceeding the side effects?" If no.. then stop doing it.

Taking more ibuprofen is not always the right course. The goal of meditating should not be to meditate more.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#99

Post by taeric »

vorpalhex wrote: post #98
taeric wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8% is indeed quite high. My gut would be more that this is the selection bias, though. Folks that are looking for things such as meditation to help with mental health, are more likely to have trouble with mental health. Such that I am still suspicious of this data. I should say that I'm fine with the idea of pushing for caution. I just have major suspicions when a practice is pushed with a mentality that you need exp…

I don't think the harm data means you need to go pay a yogi $400 for lessons. I think we need to stop telling people meditation is a perfect little peaceful practice and instead treat it like ibuprofen. If you are meditating and you start feeling anxious or in a bad way.. stop. Stop meditating and go do something else. Maybe talk with a therapist. If you start feeling depersonalization.. stop meditating. You should i…

Amusingly, I am probably harsher on meditation than you seem to be. My stance is more that if you are otherwise healthy and making good choices, go for it. If you are wanting to use it as a treatment for problems/discontents in your life, expect that it won't help, and focusing on your problems is likely to lead to other problems.

Comparing it to ibuprofen strikes me as begging the question that it has a mechanism. Something I am not quite ready to cede.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#100

Post by feanaro »

bowsamic wrote: post #92
feanaro wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it interesting because while I can see how the other things in your list would naturally happen as attachments lose power, I don't see why an increase in neurosis would be a necessary or even a common result. (For context, I've been meditating daily for a year and a half, for 30-60 minutes and this simply hasn't happened to me yet. In fact, if anything, the opposite happened, where I engage less in self-aggra…

Have you not heard of the spiritual ego? Most practitioners eventually grow a big ego around their practise. Chogyam Trungpas book “Cutting through spiritual materialism” is all about this

Now that you've mentioned it, I remember hearing about the term but I always took it as a possibility, especially when misapplying practice, and not a necessary part of the path. My own path so far seems to be confirming this notion of mine so the things you were saying piqued my curiosity to learn more.

Will I become more self-absorbed and grow feelings of superiority as I continue to meditate? I don't know. But I will still try and see for myself.

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