For me, meditation started a fundamental shift in how I think about free will, and oddly nobody I've mentioned it to in real life has felt this.<p>I used to feel very in-control of my own mind, but after intentionally sitting and monitoring for thoughts, labeling those thoughts, etc, I became sensitive to how thoughts can really come out of nowhere. You can't predict what you will think next. That strikes a little deeper than a nature/nurture argument where you might say "oh, I just behave a certain way I guess, its in my genes". You start to wonder if you're just being forced to watch the movie that is your own life.<p>I personally feel like my life is a mostly-good movie, and there's reason to predict it will continue that way, but for many people, they're stuck in a bad movie. Some people may feel imprisoned by that. But not feeling in control can also be liberating, depending how you look at it. So I definitely agree that it's a double edged sword, or that YMMV.<p>(Overall, I've enjoyed meditation, and I try to do it about once a week, just to remind myself that there's another mode of thinking that's available to me.)
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I was so caught up with spirituality and meditation that I overlooked anything else in my life.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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 mostly live in peaceful ignorance since then... safe for the short moments of.. remembering. Everything and nothing at once. Becoming the observer. Observing the observer. Being everything...<p>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. I‘ll soon be confronted with all of this again.<p><a href="https://ibb.co/WtBR3FD" rel="nofollow">https://ibb.co/WtBR3FD</a><p>Tread carefully, reality is not as stable as you think.
No, they certainly shouldn't... for various reasons I did a vipassana 10 day silent retreat back in 2010, and, ended up triggering a bipolar episode[0]. No, there was no history of that in my family, it was a complete surprise.<p>This obviously doesn't happen to everyone doing it, but, while my blog is very much buried now, I still get yearly mails from people saying that the same thing happened to them..<p>[0]. <a href="http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com/2010/02/bipolar-chronicles.html" rel="nofollow">http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com/2010/02/bipolar-chronicl...</a>
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27890790" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27890790</a><p>Discussion on meditation induced psychosis and some a bit more metadiscussion on how it is perceived by pro-meditation groups - victim blaming (eg. you're doing it wrong, this didn't happen to me, this isn't meditation). Seeing some similar comments in here. Some areas of meditation actually acknowledge some sort of "dark night" that practitioners have to push through which caused a mental breakdown in the author.<p>Just because I've done LSD multiple times without psychosis, doesn't mean that LSD can't cause psychosis in some people. I believe it is the same with meditation. As much as some think meditation is beneficial, the effective sample size is 1.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Meditation is often a transformative process and without proper support and guidance this process can indeed be risky.
> As a Christian, I use it to hone my focus for prayer and to increase my mindfulness so that I can better sense what God wants for me.<p>Thanks for letting me know because there is a long campaign against Yoga and meditation by some sects of American Christians, who feel they are demonic and meditation is how you let demons in so they take over. These Christians have bizarre ideas of what Yoga and meditation are, treating them like some kind of ritual that gets you in touch with a hidden world.<p>That was my first thought when reading the title, so I'm happy the author owned up to his biases. Saying "Not everyone should meditate" is like saying not everyone should sit quietly, pay attention to their breath and see if they can quiet their thoughts.<p>I am bipolar and meditation along with CBT is how I stay balanced
The author might be more correct than he imagines. I suffer from bipolar disorder, which was “activated” during a heavy meditation period 5 years ago or so.<p>My therapist now advises me to stay away from it. She says that meditation is a form of “self hypnosis” and that I should stay away from daily practice, which is what I had previously.
I think meditation is a way of being nice to our right hemisphere. Our left hemisphere is responsible for speech, and our right hemisphere is mute. Be nice to your right hemisphere, it's you too, and it doesn't like listening to your jibber-jabber.<p>On a semi-related note, I think the movie 'Us' by Jordan Peele is about our split-minds. The protagonists are the left-hemispheres, and the clones are our right hemispheres (they cannot speak). I read a book called "Of Two Minds: The Revolutionary Science of Dual-Brain Psychology" recently and it just reinforces it. So if you break it down that way theoretically, our right-hemispheres live impoverished lives eating cold, raw rabbit and are experimented on, forced to be 'tethered' to us, listening through us to 'pop' music and the 'government' getting angrier and angrier, fantasizing about using scissors on our own corpus callosum...
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.
Meditation is a tool. I don't understand how anyone can claim that a tool is powerful enough to alter your mind or body can only have positive effects. Of course, any such tool can also alter your mind or body in a negative way, if used incorrectly or if it is not the right tool for you. Same with Yoga, Ayurveda, weed etc. If you think it has the power to change you, you have to accept that it can also change you in a way you did not anticipate or want. I think we should explore all of these, but also be careful in recommending them as "side-effect-free".
Coincidentally Mingyur Rinpoche just posted a talk about this as well [1]. I think the most important thing is to find a lineage to practice under, with texts that can support that practice. As much as people want to divorce it from it's historical context, meditation is part of a spiritual practice and communities of people have ways of teaching it in particular ways for a reason. No one should just go sit with zero context and no support.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VzeYD2VY5o" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VzeYD2VY5o</a>
A helpful concept from Thomas Keating is "the evacuation of the unconscious". The idea is that it is normal to have painful thoughts arise into our consciousness when we enter into meditation. It is common in ordinary life to get into the habit of filling one's life with noise and distraction, in order to keep sources of anxiety or other negative emotions at bay. Meditation lessens the noise and distraction, which has the natural effect of making room for the suppressed thoughts and emotions to pop up. In meditation practice one learns to gently refrain from engaging with emotionally charged material, noticing it with objectivity and detachment, letting it pass by, and returning to a state of calm wordless awareness. In the natural course of events, suppressed fears and anxieties are much less powerful when looked at consciously and rationally. One ends up taking them less seriously, and consequently they tend to lessen in terms of their ability to cause unhappiness. Circling back to the point of the OP, if an attempt at meditation practice starts causing psychotic episodes or anything of that nature, don't do it. That's just common sense.
The argument here seems to be that LSD can be dangerous, meditation is kind of like LSD, and therefore meditation can be dangerous.<p>It does seem like a possibility, but you'd think if someone were going to write about it they'd try to present evidence of some sort to support the point.
>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.<p>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.<p>I suspect some people are far more predisposed, be it nature or nurture, toward successful and deep meditation than others.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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)<p>see these google scholar results for more info:<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=meditation+and+psychosis&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart" rel="nofollow">https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=meditation+and+psychosi...</a>
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.
Agree.<p>I mediated an average of 10-15 hours/week for about 10 years, and... it didn't do much for me.<p>What instead did a lot for me was Zen Practice:<p>- going to the temple<p>- going to retreat<p>- Zen reading<p>- Dharma talks<p>- Interview with the Zen Masters<p>- Working at the Temple<p>And then, meeting the inflated ego of some - but not all - the Zen characters in low-level leadership.<p>I still practice Zen, but I do it as a Free-Agent LOL<p>Recently I realized something, not so much achieving Nirvana, more like a DUH-moment: mediation is practice for mindfulness, and at any point in time, no matter where I am, no matter what I do, I can practice mindfulness. Here, I am doing it right now...<p>And don't get me started in all the pseudo-meditation practices and "applications".
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.<p>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.<p>Relatedly, therapy is "good" but usually not "fun"; and therapists need therapists of their own, too.
I have been meditating for the last 28 years and I meditate 2-3 hours a day, every day, without fail. Still don’t consider myself an expert and I am not a teacher although when pushed, I will sit with someone sincere and meditate with them. If they ask.<p>The question is not whether everyone should meditate or not. The question is whether “I should meditate?” And if the answer to that is yes, try and find someone who knows what they are doing. If they charge you something, that’s fine, they need to make a living. If they charge you so much they make you weak—-run. If they in any way try to come between you and your friends or family—-run.<p>I cannot say if meditation is for everyone because I am not everyone. I am me, and meditation has had a mind-blowing effect on my life. And with it (because of it) I can work (I’m an engineer) and know I am not working, I can do, and know I am not doing, and perhaps best of all, be, without blaming anyone.
People with OCD [0] should consider doing less meditation, IMO.<p>I find that meditation can lead me into rumination traps where I make no progress.<p>I sometimes have to set myself deadlines or checkpoints to make sure that I do not ruminate my way out of available time.<p>What I tend to need instead is breathing techniques to stay and cope within the moment, which I accept is like task-focussed micro-meditation in a way. But deliberate, long quiet meditation rarely helps me and it can make things worse.<p>[0] by which I mean the debilitating condition, not the pop-culture joke about pointing out pictures aren't straight or kerning on some signage is wrong
Having a life-long love affair with Japanese Zen, and a ten year zazen practice, the most useful insight for me comes from Claire Gesshin Greenwood's book, Bow First, Ask Questions Later. <quote> Most teachers of Zen, in Japan at least, will tell you that Zen is "not about thinking," and that practice is something you do primarily with your body. </quote> Soto Zen's practice of Shinkantaza, 'Just Sitting' fits well this. It's the posture, stupid.<p>A few more snippets from Gesshin's book: In the Zen tradition especially, there is a lot of emphasis placed on "not thinking." In "Universal Instructions for Zazen", Dogen Zenji wrote, "Think of not-thinking. How do you think of not-thinking. Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen."<p>So generally (in Japanese Zen) the advice given is to just practice without trying to understand what is happening, because the only way to actually learn something is to engage with the thing itself without adding your own idea. If you add your own idea, then you are just engaging with your idea, not the thing you are trying to learn. I should add that this is all advice that I have personally received.
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.
I feel like this actually somewhat overinflates the impact that meditation can have, at least on an acute level. There's a marked difference between taking a psychoactive substance like LSD and meditating. Conflating the two is somewhat disingenuous in my opinion.<p>This isn't to say that meditation doesn't work, which I highly recommend for improving focus and de-stressing. You probably actually often end up meditating without even realizing it (e.g. anytime you exercise or listen to music).
Such a claim can't be disproven. But the author doesn't have any really good argument why somebody shouldn't try meditation.<p>In my opinion, if you can "think" yourself into something like a dangerous psychosis, then that is not a problem of sitting down too much, it is a problem that should be addressed through other channels like proper medical help.<p>Yes, there are sharlatans, sects, whatever, but that's not what I mean by "meditation".
When I had a daily body scan practice, I body scanned so much that I didn't emotionally recognize myself in the mirror. Only rationally did I know that it was me. But it felt like I was looking at a strange man.<p>I stopped my daily practice after that. Unfortunately, most benefits also went away. Fortunately, a few of them stayed and for that I'm grateful :)
This sort of thing comes up now and again, and all I can really say is: don't harm yourself by doing this incorrectly or without the proper support. If you're meditating intensively like a sesshin or a retreat, you really need some kind of experienced teacher or access to a proper community to help you deal with this kind of stuff.<p>I am a practicing buddhist of the Zen variety, and I certainly couldn't do a 10 day vipassana retreat, even after actual years of practicing staring at a wall. People who expect to be able to do this kind of stuff, with a 'teacher' that got his/her credentials by sending off 500 dollars to deepak chopra without such things happening are misguided at best and being taken advantage of (read: suckers).<p>There are no shortcuts, look after your health, don't overdo it. Don't pay charlatans.
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.<p>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.
Meditation is not just one thing, there are many traditions and many forms, some can lead to strange side effects, in fact, some document those side effects on their map towards their goal.<p>Every culture has forms of meditation, for example some prayers that christian monks do are mindfulness meditation. See David Fontana's "The Meditator's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Eastern and Western Meditation Techniques" for a overview of many forms of meditations across cultures.<p>One thing that is not emphasized enough about meditation is to explore why you want to meditate, what you expect out of it. Different answers to that questions will lead to different practices. My understanding though is that if done in an intensive manner, all forms of meditation converge and have side effects.<p>Finding a good teacher is important, the issue is to how... There is no easy answer, but there is a lot of information online, do your homework about particular practices and what to expect, their risks, etc... and trust your gut instincts. Don't take red flags lightly, talk to friend and family, see a professional if in doubt.
How much of this is caused by the dissociative nature of the world in which we live? A similar phenomenon can occur when writing fiction. When I think back on the time in life when my devoted interest in writing became unlimited, I look to the lack of coherent experience offered by the world outside of my work as the primary culprit for my fugue state.
"If you can find a worthy meditation teacher - that may be a valid route too, but the lack of professional qualifications makes it difficult to estimate the authority of such a person."<p>Vipassana teachers do at least have some guaranteed qualification, and there are schools right around the world. Despite being a 'silent' practice you can speak to the teacher at the middle and end of the day.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/vipassana/comments/agaqbo/what_is_the_process_for_becoming_an_assistant/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/vipassana/comments/agaqbo/what_is_t...</a>
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.<p>What could possibly make meditation accessible to a person like me?
Grew up in a continent of many legendary arahant monks (in Thailand), I would say legit lessons have been lost a lot in the past century, to the point that, as of today I don't think I can trust any living monk as a teacher, it's also very hard to find direct descendants of passed away arahant monk. We call this trustworthy monk "Forest monk" who you barely saw/see them, they were/are mostly in deep jungle.
<a href="https://hollyelmore.substack.com/p/i-believed-the-hype-and-did-mindfulness-meditation-for-dumb-reasons-now-im-trying-to-reverse-the-damage?s=r" rel="nofollow">https://hollyelmore.substack.com/p/i-believed-the-hype-and-d...</a> talks about some results of meditating seriously that are causing its author considerable distress. She also talks about some positive results.
I’ve meditated on and off for a few decades and have only ever experienced a sense of calm and clarity.<p>Is the author’s experience common for other people?
I cannot reach the page, copy on archive.org:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220302210608/https://www.joshcsimmons.com/posts/no-not-everyone-should-meditate" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20220302210608/https://www.joshc...</a>
This post reminds me of the book : Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, by David A. Treleaven. It explains how incompetent meditation can awaken and reinforce trauma, while a competently handled meditation can be part of the toolbox to heal it.
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.<p>Any advice would be appreciated.
For me it's just hard to find an objective, "meditation is objectively good for you and here is what 'meditation' means."<p>Every study I find is either terrible (p hacking) or not directly studying what I'd like.
TLDR;<p>Every major school or lineage originating from Sanathana Dharma insists on the importance of a guru's guidance and/or initiation. Yet people decide to ignore it and think Apps can/should replace a guru.<p>Going it alone comes with its risks, there are many who have done it having taken extreme plunges, some throwing away their last piece of clothing (or their kingdoms) to erase themselves of the memory & attachment to their past.<p>Bringing it into our narrow world view trivialises this seeking, yes it is not the same, few people have true seeking to understand/experience reality.