[HN Gopher] Not everyone should meditate
___________________________________________________________________
Not everyone should meditate
Author : joshcsimmons
Score : 58 points
Date : 2022-03-02 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.joshcsimmons.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.joshcsimmons.com)
| cma wrote:
| Hang on to your ego.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I would like to at least try to meditate but I am not calm
| person. Not at all. Even coffee and green tea kick my nervous
| system into overdrive, so 8 don't consume them.
|
| What could possibly make meditation accessible to a person like
| me?
| heleninboodler wrote:
| There's a lot of authoritative claims about what meditation is
| in this thread, so there's also a good chance that what I do is
| considered "not real meditation" but it's what I learned at a
| meditation center, so I'm going to go ahead and tell you what
| got me over it when I had a hard time starting:
|
| Just allow yourself to be bad at it and repeatedly apply the
| rule that when observe that your attention has wandered, you
| just consciously bring it back to what you're supposed to be
| focusing on. You haven't "failed at meditation", you're
| learning it. Don't beat yourself up for your mind wandering,
| just acknowledge that the repeated application of the
| redirection is what it takes and it's all part of the practice.
| At first it's non-stop, and eventually you get better at it.
| Sometimes it's excruciatingly boring and tedious and sometimes
| it's immensely relaxing, and occasionally you get weird
| hallucinatory stuff out of nowhere (although that to me feels
| like just going into a dream state, which I've always
| interpreted as "I'm so relaxed I fell asleep and dreamt").
|
| That's really all it is for me. A way to relax and slow down.
| cpeterso wrote:
| Try starting with very short meditation sessions, even just 1-2
| minutes. Even a small first step is still beneficial. Long
| meditation sessions are not the end goal. Self-awareness is.
|
| I just finished watching two informative series that I
| recommend: "The Science of Mindfulness: A Research-Based Path
| to Well-being" and "Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to
| Meditation". They're long (24 30-minutes episodes in each
| series). You can watch them for free on Kanopy.com with a
| library card from a participating library.
| calculated wrote:
| I personally use an app called Smiling Mind. It has different
| paths you can go according to what problem you're trying to
| solve through meditation. It's an amazing app IMO.
| kragen wrote:
| Maybe guidance from a good teacher, patience with yourself, and
| persistence (continuing to practice even when you're frustrated
| with your lack of progress). Meditation isn't for everyone but
| nothing you have said suggests that it isn't for you.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Instead of me spilling tons of personal info, do you mind
| sharing what would suggest meditation isn't for someone? Your
| input will be appreciated
| kragen wrote:
| There's an anecdote in the Tipitaka where the Buddha
| analogizes would-be followers who never advance in the
| practice to farm animals that never grow, and explains what
| the herder does with those animals: he kills them.
|
| This is generally understood as a recommendation to kick
| hopeless monks out of the monastery, not literally kill
| them.
|
| You'd have to ask a competent meditation teacher, which I
| am very much not, how to know. I am pretty sure that the
| answer involves spending some time trying, with good
| guidance.
| rl3 wrote:
| Meditation may--in rare instances-- _potentially_ trigger
| psychosis in vulnerable persons:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31668156/
| janeerie wrote:
| I started a casual meditation practice a couple of years ago and
| was getting benefits from it, when I came across an article (on
| Hacker News) written by a man who had developed severe
| disassociation and other disorders from meditation.
|
| The irony is that I started meditating because I struggle with
| panic disorder. Now I was hearing that my most common panic
| trigger (the thought that I could think myself crazy) was
| actually real! This sent me down quite a spiral that I have had
| to resolve by accepting the tiny odds that I might go
| spontaneously nuts. That's not an easy one, and I wish there was
| more reliable research on this issue.
| [deleted]
| omnicognate wrote:
| There are different ways of meditating. If you're hallucinating
| blue, humming God balls you're certainly not doing what I do. I
| think what I do would probably be beneficial for most people. I'd
| hesitate to say all.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I agree. Most "meditation" (mindfulness) as I've seen it
| portrayed is really a very quiet, self-driven cognitive
| behavioral therapy: Learn to recognize thoughts, interrogate
| them to see where they may be false, and retrain to be detached
| from those cycles.
|
| That's a gentle practice that, in addition to taking 10-20m for
| yourself in quiet place, is pretty much OK as a general
| recommendation.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think too many people are accidentally going to
| stumble upon the sort of meditation-induced psychosis talked
| about in the post using Headspace or Waking Up to try and
| reclaim some presence in their thoughts.
|
| They just get you to sit there, consciously realize that
| thoughts come from nowhere, and notice that you can merely
| discard them. After a year of the Waking Up app, it's just a
| practical way to reground myself. For example, maybe I realize
| a bit of anxiety in a large place like a music festival, and I
| take a moment to try to discard the feeling. I'd be surprised
| if this wasn't the sort of meditation most people associate
| with the word.
|
| So the thought of that being psychedelic or dangerous to
| people, suggested in the post, is just a reminder of how many
| things fall under the umbrella of "meditation".
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| I have been doing Waking up and meditating 10 minutes a day
| and really liking it for exactly this reason. It almost feels
| like I am "training" my mind like I train my body with
| exercise whereas previously my thoughts and feelings would
| just run away on me and I would be along for the ride.
| Whereas now I am getting a bit better at realising I don't
| just need to be dragged along by whatever pops into my head
| moment to moment.
| kragen wrote:
| I think it's more a question of dose. If you're meditating 20
| minutes a day for three years you probably won't see a big
| effect. If you're meditating 12 hours for a day for 10 years,
| you're going to encounter a _lot_ of stuff that could get
| labeled "psychosis" by people who don't know about it. And,
| it may be permanent. What kind of meditation you're doing
| will affect _what_ you encounter and how you deal with it,
| but _none_ of the paths will remain just "a practical way to
| reground [your]self."
| ssijak wrote:
| If you eat one cube of sugar in a coffee per day and no
| sweets you are good. If you eat one kilo of sugar each day
| you'll probably get diabetes in a few months.
| kragen wrote:
| I think the picture is a little more complicated than
| that. There have been entire monasteries full of people
| who spend many hours a day meditating for thousands of
| years. They don't seem to be mentally unhealthy on the
| whole, though there are some exceptions. So it's
| evidently not the kind of thing where a continuous
| overdose will leave your mind or your body disabled; on
| the contrary, the meditators tend to live longer than
| average and be happier.
|
| However, the kind of experiences described (seeing
| visions, losing interest in mundane matters, becoming
| certain of beliefs that turn out to be false) are a well-
| known feature of the process. And it's at least widely
| believed that guidance from experienced meditators is
| very helpful, if not crucial, to navigating these
| experiences.
| kragen wrote:
| https://hollyelmore.substack.com/p/i-believed-the-hype-and-d...
| talks about some results of meditating seriously that are causing
| its author considerable distress. She also talks about some
| positive results.
| skilled wrote:
| This is a great perspective. I know what the author means with
| it, too. I spent 5 years in daily meditation practice (twice a
| day for 20 minutes) and it completely altered my state of mind. I
| was a naturally introverted person when I started, though I
| believe that meditation really stepped it up a notch for me.
|
| The strange thing about meditation and the idea of living in the
| present is that it completely transcends your life experience. It
| is not in human nature to fight with the inner workings of your
| own psychology, and for me - meditation really amplified all that
| I had been trough or was going through at the time.
|
| I spoke to Buddhist monks in Himalayas, and I lived with Hinduist
| practitioners in Bali. I went quite far with my exploration of
| meditation, and perhaps that warrants a blog post of its own. But
| in terms of keeping up with it, in my case - the chickens came
| home to roost.
|
| I was so caught up with spirituality and meditation that I
| overlooked anything else in my life.
|
| I started working less, started losing interest in certain
| things. I lost friendships that I later regretted. And I
| attribute it specifically to meditation because in that "peaceful
| state of mind" you can't help but laugh at the stupidity of this
| world. Why should you care if everything around you is designed
| to work against you. We live in a systematic world yet the system
| does not provide the means to be genuinely happy human.
|
| Insights like this really dominated my life at the time, and it
| was very difficult to process it at all. So, at some point, I
| experienced a "collapse" of sorts and stopped.
|
| At some point, when I catch up with the things I neglected - I
| would definitely like to return to the habit of daily practice.
| Meditation is an incredible tool (even if my own report says
| otherwise) to connect with this world on an entirely different
| wavelength.
| subpixel wrote:
| > I was so caught up with spirituality and meditation that I
| overlooked anything else in my life.
|
| Respectfully this is not an outcome that you can lay at the
| feet of meditation. It's like blaming the catechism for the
| years you spent cut off from the world in a Benedictine
| monastery.
|
| Meditation is an input, it is not the program.
| avindroth wrote:
| It's a common enough effect that it should be noted. Many
| spiritual people end up being detached from the world, for
| better or worse.
| joshcsimmons wrote:
| Thanks for reading. You have an interesting perspective - and
| one filled with more diverse experience than mine, I'd be very
| interested in reading about it.
| ggpsv wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I'm curious, did you consider at any point
| untangling those feelings with a psychotherapist?
|
| Your experience resonates with me, but I came to a different
| conclusion. Meditation did open the doors to a more conscious
| awareness. That sounds grandiose but it isn't. It means having
| a practice of observing thoughts and emotions as they arise. As
| you describe, this can lead to more clarity into the order or
| nature of things. But meditation ends there, it is a tool to
| bring about conscious awareness. It does not "create" those
| thoughts or emotions.
|
| I ask whether you've worked with a psychotherapist because I
| found myself in a similar predicament. I realized that my
| discontent had little or nothing to do with my "spiritual"
| practice. Simply put, the hustle and bustle of daily life is a
| sure way to keep many thoughts and emotions at bay. A
| meditative practice lets the stream pour through. For me
| meditation became a tool to bring those thoughts to the
| foreground and getting to know them. Through that process I get
| to know myself better. If necessary, I'll work with a
| psychotherapist to go through it.
| mahathu wrote:
| What sort of meditation practice did you do?
| skilled wrote:
| I was never initiated or dedicated myself to a specific
| practice. I can say today it was a mix of mindfulness and
| practical Vipassana.
|
| I think one of the things people complain about when it comes
| to meditation is concentration. I was not one of those
| people. It came extremely natural to me.
| ssijak wrote:
| Complaining about concentration is like starting to train
| soccer and complaining that you are not on a Messi level
| and dropping it.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > The strange thing about meditation and the idea of living in
| the present is that it completely transcends your life
| experience. It is not in human nature to fight with the inner
| workings of your own psychology, and for me - meditation really
| amplified all that I had been trough or was going through at
| the time.
|
| I really don't understand why the world just accepts that
| meditation as a whole is not just another version of snake oil.
|
| All this reads as absolute bullshit to me, as has done
| everything else I've ever read about meditation.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| I'm in the same boat as you.
|
| I think there's a lot we don't know about human psychology,
| the brain and self-help practices, but I haven't seen
| convincing evidence that meditation works.
|
| This 2017 publication sums it up nicely:
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691617709589
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I would read up some more on psychology.
|
| The problem, at it's core, is that the human mind is not a
| rational thing. Rational frameworks (at least the ones we
| have currently) do not play well with real-but-irrational
| things.
|
| This is why early psychoanalysis and Gestalt works focused on
| symbolism as an abstraction of the human mind. Of course
| those areas are generally fraught with missteps and bad
| theory, but progress was still made.
|
| If you want a real no-fluff experimentalist view of the
| psyche, look into psychonetics, a Soviet toolkit. To quote
| (from memory) from it's material:
|
| "You may hear the sound of God talking to you. Do not be
| alarmed, even if you are an atheist. Remain calm and do not
| respond to the voice."
| skilled wrote:
| Snake oil implies you're being sold something, doesn't it?
|
| All I am saying is that meditation brought up a lot of things
| that I had buried in my past. Anger (being betrayed by
| people), hatred (being whipped with a leather belt by my
| step-father when I was a kid) - these are all real emotions
| that you have to process because in small little ways they do
| have an influence on your psychological behavior. And, thus,
| on the behavior of who you "think" you are as a person.
| ggpsv wrote:
| I've observed that sometimes "meditation" is used as a catch
| phrase for several different practices, especially those
| which the west adopted from eastern traditions.
|
| I would not rush to dismiss all of it as disingenous just
| because some interpretation of it does not resonate with you.
| And it is ok if it doesn't resonate with you, we don't all
| have to agree on it.
| avindroth wrote:
| It's not bad, but if you feel strongly against it, you're not
| missing out on much. Overcoming the psychological resistance
| to meditate is probably not worth it.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| There's a lot of scientific evidence for the benefits of
| mediation. You can ignore all of the noise about higher
| states of consciousness and suchlike and still receive
| documented benefits:
|
| https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/meditation-in-depth
| ssijak wrote:
| My take away from your experience is that anything can be
| abused (in a sense that it becomes more bad than good for you),
| even meditation.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > It is not in human nature to fight with the inner workings of
| your own psychology
|
| This is not something that meditation should ever be about.
| Meditation is about _exploring_ the inner workings of your
| experience, in a way that ultimately aims towards equanimity.
| It requires some deep (and continuing!) experience in practical
| ethics (turns out if you _really_ learn to care about other
| sentient beings around you, it 's a lot easier to care about
| yourself too!), as well as a kind of intellectual knowledge or
| wisdom that's perhaps best associated today with the Stoic
| tradition, albeit surely not exclusive to it (even a cursory
| understanding of the Buddhist literature on vipassana should
| familiarize you with the same concepts, albeit of course
| phrased differently).
|
| The idea of meditation as "fighting" with oneself should
| definitely raise many alarm bells, the practice is surely
| challenging enough on its own! (The "Dark Night of the Soul" is
| legitimately scary, especially if you're not told in advance
| that it might occur _and_ that there 's ways past it.)
| einmaliger wrote:
| I'm sorry, but this is such an extreme example. You should not
| overdo anything, be it meditation, gaming, playing, reading,
| any sport, even drugs. Drugs also give you a state of mind
| that, when taken to the extreme, can harm your social life and
| well-being. That is not a problem specifically of meditation.
|
| You can safely do anything up to the point that it benefits
| you. The moment your well-being suffers, or you neglect
| important parts of life, like friendship, you should stop.
| carterschonwald wrote:
| Theres actually some evidence (or a least a lot of pubmed papers)
| that touch on how for certain at risk populations, meditation can
| increase the probability of an episode of psychosis! (so anyone
| who has any family history of schizophrenia or other things in
| the same space, really need to be careful of meditation and
| friends)
|
| see these google scholar results for more info:
|
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=meditation+and+psychosi...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| The first link is a single male patient who claims meditation
| provoked his psychosis. Other people suffering from psychosis
| have blamed, lets see, off the top of my head - wifi signals,
| chemtrails, their gang stalkers, fluoride, the CIA, aliens,
| lizard-men, etc. Is there any reason to believe a random
| psychotic person when they make a claim about meditation,
| versus when they make the claim about wifi signals?
|
| The case analysis a few results later find a total of 28 people
| in the literature who have made the claim, with 14 of them
| having precipitating factors such as "like insomnia, lack of
| food intake, history of mental illness, stress, and
| psychoactive substance use", which almost certainly have a much
| larger effect on psychosis than...sitting still and thinking a
| certain way. If I had a heart attack while meditating, I don't
| think I would jump to the conclusion that meditation is
| dangerous for people with heart conditions.
| james-redwood wrote:
| Agreed. It's a weak result.
| joshcsimmons wrote:
| Wow - thanks for posting. Had seem some brief research about it
| before but not this much. This really should be a larger part
| of the cultural conversation around meditation.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I believe that ' family history of schizophrenia ' is not fully
| understood.. there is an interrelated system of health,
| genetics, aging, stress, nutrition and extreme experiences,
| which can go many ways.. I believe that 'schizophrenia' is real
| and serious, but that the factors involved in leading to it,
| and its treatments, are not fully understood..
|
| with that said, I believe there is science evidence that
| marijuana and meditation, both can be triggering to an ill
| mental state.. along with other, stronger things of course..
| common street methamphetamine can bring on illness rather
| quickly and is addictive.. serious personal injury like trauma
| can bring on illness rather quickly.. things like that..
| twofornone wrote:
| >The first odd thing I experienced was the inexplicable feeling
| that there was someone else in the room during my meditation.
| Luckily this didn't disturb me too much, one of the books I had
| read at that time mentioned that this was something that could
| happen during zazen. I now know that it is called the sensed
| presence effect. Other sits were more pleasant - I often had a
| sensation of uncaused joy arise. Sometimes I would see intense
| and clear images inside my head. During one session I saw a
| bright blue humming sphere that I knew was God (or some kind of
| representation of) - I swear I could hear the harmonious hum of
| it. I had previously abandoned my Christian faith but that
| experience alone made me reconsider my stance.
|
| I've been trying to meditate on and off for years, including
| daily 30 minute sessions for months at a time, and never
| experienced anything remotely as intense as this author. In fact
| despite all the time I've spent trying, I can't say I feel like
| I've gotten any better at it. At best I've developed a sensation
| I would describe as being extremely tall, as though my head were
| posted thousands of feet above my legs, but psychologically I
| don't feel like I'm doing any better today than when I started
| with respect to observing my thoughts or focusing on, say,
| breath.
|
| I suspect some people are far more predisposed, be it nature or
| nurture, toward successful and deep meditation than others.
| njacobs5074 wrote:
| I've meditated on and off for a few decades and have only ever
| experienced a sense of calm and clarity.
|
| Is the author's experience common for other people?
| yldedly wrote:
| From personal experience and what I've read, there's a clear
| dose response relationship. If you meditate enough, especially
| if do a lot of insight (vipassana) meditation without doing
| much concentration (samatha) or Metta meditation, you will
| begin to deconstruct yourself. That's what it does. Often you
| will find a new, and better way to relate to your conscious
| experience, but sometimes you break things and they don't get
| fixed.
| [deleted]
| virtualwhys wrote:
| Same.
|
| Are you able to clearly manifest an image of anything in your
| mind's eye? If not then you might have aphantasia (i.e. "third
| eye blind").
|
| When I was younger I sat several Vipisana and Zen retreats
| across multiple traditions. While it changed me in the sense
| that I became far less impulsive and more grounded, there was
| never anything mystical about the experiences, just periods of
| calm and quiet, like the internal world had slowed way down.
|
| But that's unusual, I suspect most who seriously take up
| meditation do indeed have full blown psychedelic experiences
| (thus the author's reference to LSD), not long after taking up
| practice, and certainly within the first week long retreat or
| two.
| kragen wrote:
| It's common among people who meditate seriously. A significant
| fraction of the Tipitaka consists of documentation and
| interpretation of such experiences.
| joshcsimmons wrote:
| It might not be common - I'm just urging people to do some
| self-reflection before jumping into a practice.
| kragen wrote:
| I think it might be more useful to recommend that they
| consult a good meditation teacher, because you really need to
| know both about meditation and about yourself to make the
| decision--though, as you point out, _identifying_ a good
| meditation teacher when you aren 't one is a difficult
| problem.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| https://www.dharmaoverground.org/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCT...
| kragen wrote:
| I don't think the author of the article has yet reached the
| Dark Night of the Soul.
| cbfrench wrote:
| Or at the very least doesn't mean what St. John of the
| Cross means by it.
|
| When I took ascetical theology in seminary, my professor
| told us that if someone comes to you and says they're
| undergoing the Dark Night, they probably aren't. (Unless
| you for some reason happen to be the spiritual director of
| a contemplative order, but even then.) He wasn't being
| flippant; it was just a recognition of the degree of
| spiritual progress needed even to arrive at that point.
|
| It can be easy to confuse aridity or even unaddressed
| psychological issues for something like the Dark Night, but
| it does have a precise technical meaning in the mystical
| literature. It isn't just "prayer is difficult for me right
| now."
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Well, vipassana meditation is just as intense as any
| other tradition of contemplative prayer.[0] Canonically
| the Dark Night happens soon _after_ the first loose
| "hint" of stream entry or actual awakening/enlightenment,
| namely the second vipassana jhana, characterized by
| seeming effortlessness of insight (Daniel Ingram calls
| this the "Arising and passing away") and this should be
| enough to tell whether you're facing it.
|
| [0] And yes, in case you didn't know, prayer is
| definitely a legitimate part of meditation, even going by
| Buddhist teachings - the typical metta/loving-kindness
| meditation is indistinguishable from a kind of prayer.
|
| Arguably, a very legitimate role can even be
| recovered/reconstructed for outright theistic
| contemplative worship directed at the "Ultimate Self",
| essentially the _Brahman_ of Hinduism - although this
| would of course reflect a very imperfect understanding of
| the Brahman, one way too error-prone for those who would
| seriously aim at enlightenment and unity with the
| Ultimate Self in _this_ very lifetime. But nonetheless
| plenty enough to look forward to what 's effectively an
| afterlife in the Pure Abodes realm as an _anagami_ or
| "non-returner"! Hinduists in the "dualist" tradition, for
| all its imperfection, have of course always been aware of
| this as a possible path.
| cbfrench wrote:
| Oh, I didn't mean to imply that vipassana isn't a serious
| and intense contemplative discipline. If I did, that
| certainly wasn't my intent.
|
| At least in St. John's use of the term, it's a spiritual
| and even existential desolation that leads ultimately to
| a radical purifying of love through the apophatic way. As
| such, it represents a fairly advanced stage in the
| spiritual life. I'm not sure if this is the same way the
| term is used in the vipassana tradition (making the
| necessary accommodations for the translation needed to
| take a Christian mystical concept and import it into that
| tradition).
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > leads ultimately to a radical purifying of love
|
| Yes, this can be directly paralleled with the jhana of
| equanimity, which canonically follows the Dark Night.
| ("Equanimity" itself being the fourth vipassana jhana,
| whereas the "Dark Night" is essentially a feature of the
| transition from the second and/or third to the fourth
| vipassana jhana. The consistently "apophatic" character
| is hopefully clear enough from the very fact that it is
| understood as a transition stage between different
| degrees of insight.) Daniel Ingram's book on _Mastering
| the Core Teachings of the Buddha_ does a very nice job of
| "decoding" the Buddhist tradition in very modern and
| understandable terms, and I'm not aware of people
| involved in the actual tradition who have raised any
| deep, substantive objections to the understanding he
| conveys.
|
| (Note that "Dark Night" as applied to vipassana
| meditation is a modern term, but one that does reflect
| traditional understanding of the relevant jhanas-- the
| Buddhist traditional name is apparently "dukkha nana", or
| "Knowledge of Suffering", and in the Vimuttimagga it is
| known, rather descriptively, as the stage of "fear and
| disadvantage and disenchantment", followed by "delight in
| deliverance and equanimity". https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Vipassan%C4%81-%C3%B1%C4%81%E1... It was not the result
| of forcefully "importing" something that came from
| outside, but rather of carefully drawing empirically-
| sensible parallels between the two traditions.)
| [deleted]
| cardanome wrote:
| Not exactly but I find meditation really "painful".
|
| I am more of the anxious side of things and being super focused
| on myself is very stressful. Sure I feel calmer afterwards but
| the process feels like a cold shower in winter.
|
| The only times I found meditation enjoyable is in a group
| setting. Normally I am quite introverted and prefer to do most
| activities alone but here it is reversed.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "and being super focused on myself is very stressful."
|
| Can you explain, what exactly is stressful to you, by
| focusing on yourself? Or is it just that you feel you want to
| move but you also want to be still?
| cardanome wrote:
| It's just not not having anything to distract you of your
| mental pain. Like having a flesh wound and instead of using
| pain killers, you put you finger on the wound and actually
| focus on the pain. That would be quite stressful, right?
|
| Have you ever had something bad happen and you try to
| distract yourself by working or watching something?
| Meditation feels like the reverse of that.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| After a decade of practice I basically vividly hallucinate if I
| let myself when I meditate. Focus is more useful, but the
| hallucinations are very interesting/calming too.
|
| I'm lucky to have been born naturally resilient to mental damage,
| but I know from (friends') experience that when you're
| genetically predisposed to schizophrenia, you're SOL. I've
| definitely felt my sanity slip at times or delusions take hold,
| but eventually my brain would reset to the status quo.
|
| The silver lining is: unless you're willing to devote a large
| amount of your attention and life to this, you're unlikely to
| ever experience these kind of effects. I know people who practice
| for years and experience nothing.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| expecting "good for me" to be "always fun and easy" is, broadly
| speaking, going to lead to some weird and probably disappointing
| mismatches of expectation and outcome.
|
| Meditative practice, prayer, etc. are "good for you", but they
| are _challenging_, which again, doesn't mean "a thing that is
| hard to learn but is sunshine and rainbows once i learn it". It
| means that you will come up against some dark shit sometimes, and
| that's "good" but it is in no way "fun", and yeah, you need a
| community of like-minded practitioners to help you.
|
| Relatedly, therapy is "good" but usually not "fun"; and
| therapists need therapists of their own, too.
| gleenn wrote:
| Author compares meditation to doing LSD, then states that doing
| LSD can be helpful but super hurtful to possibly schizophrenic
| people. Some part of me can't stop thinking that it's nuts to
| tell people to not sit quietly and try and clear your mind
| because it might trigger schizophrenia.
| newbie789 wrote:
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| Has anyone here ever tried Waking Up app by Sam Harris? I am
| working through the intro course now and very much enjoying it
| and finding it helpful, but I don't have a good base reference to
| know if he knows his stuff. I am not interested in the spiritual
| side of meditation so much as the learning to be in my own head a
| bit more stably and acknowledge and understand my
| emotions/thought more productively.
|
| Any advice would be appreciated.
| FastMonkey wrote:
| It's easy to spend your entire life running from one thing to the
| next. Meditation can just be a 10 minute break where you give
| yourself permission to take a mental break. Like almost
| everything, there is an unhealthy extreme. As an analogue, I
| don't think it's unreasonable to say that fitness is generally
| good for you, but trying to do ultra ironmans is probably not
| going to be good for many people, and if you attempt it you have
| to prepare in a way that's suited to your own body.
| reddit_clone wrote:
| People who suffer from severe ADHD, meditation is nearly
| impossible.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| This is definitely not the case for everyone with severe ADHD.
| I think you have to define "severe" and you have to define
| "meditation." If your ADHD allows you to hold a steady
| professional-level job, I suspect you can do TM, for example.
| kragen wrote:
| Like programming, meditation is nearly impossible for everyone.
| At first.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| Also like programming, mainstream tools and procedures
| sometimes fail in bizarre, frustrating, and utterly
| undocumented ways when working with unusual hardware.
| cbfrench wrote:
| This is an underappreciated point. I'm an Anglican priest, and
| I always thought I was just really bad at prayer. (Ironic, I
| know.) But then I got diagnosed a couple of years ago, and I
| realized that my brain was working against me.
|
| Some day I have a mind to write a book on spiritual disciplines
| for those with ADHD and how we talk about prayer and the
| spiritual life is often not useful for those with the disorder.
| But, you know, I have ADHD, so I doubt that will ever get
| written. ;)
| Mo3 wrote:
| Can confirm from personal experience. Even a lot of vipassana
| meditation by itself can send you into psychotic states when
| you're not ready for all the insight yet. I came very close to
| psychosis once, experienced ego death, broke down mentally and
| had to spend 2 months in a depression ward. Cannot recommend.
|
| I don't regret the 2-3 months of active ego dissolution phase,
| life has never been more beautiful and strangely peaceful and
| jarring at the same time. However, I did lose my job, my
| apartment and almost permanently lost my sanity as well, but now
| in hindsight it looks like it was all for the better.
|
| Nevertheless I don't think you should force something like this
| (like I very much did), the consequences to internal and external
| reality can be absolutely dramatic, I have gained insights I was
| not supposed to have and I've preferred to live in peaceful
| ignorance since then... save for the short moments of..
| remembering. Everything and nothing at once. Becoming the
| observer. Observing the observer. Being everything...
|
| It's all still there if I really wanted to, and my state of mind
| has changed permanently in drastic yet mostly unconscious ways.
| It took years to come to terms with all of this and since I've
| achieved stream entry back then there is no way back out now.
| It's either managing to get out of the cycle or repeating it over
| and over again. Meditation has become mandatory like drinking
| water.
|
| Tread carefully, reality is not as stable as you think.
| razzio wrote:
| Meditation is just a word. As an analogy you can say that driving
| a car can hurt you. Well that depends what kind of car, your
| driving style, the speed, whether you use the correct side of the
| road and so on.
|
| My personal experience is with 30 years of Anapana and Vipassana
| that started under guidance in a Thai monastery. Even with
| Anapana, which is considered quite low risk in terms of 'side
| effects', the message was that it is always better to practice
| with a teacher and don't mix different practices. This cannot be
| overstated enough.
|
| My own dark night lasted around 10 years, even with the guidance.
| Sometimes my outlook so dark it was impossible to look in the
| mirror. Over time there was a slow transformation of perspective
| that is still ongoing today. Less clinging to ideas of good, bad,
| and especially self. Things just happen and most of the time I
| can now see that all emotions and ideas around that what happens
| are created by the mind and constantly changing. What starts to
| matter more and more is compassion for the situation of others
| and their suffering.
|
| Meditation is often a transformative process and without proper
| support and guidance this process can indeed be risky.
| palencharizard wrote:
| Anyone else getting a 404? Seems like the article was taken down,
| judging further from what's listed on the homepage
| joshcsimmons wrote:
| Should be back now - was doing some maintenance and brought it
| down for a few minutes.
| URfejk wrote:
| Oh, this page does not exist. You can head back to homepage.
| joshcsimmons wrote:
| Back up now!
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