Re:Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation
by simonebrunozzi on Monday March 22, 2021 @08:42AM
(#26539997)
> Christian monastics have written tomes about the dangers of spiritual delusion arising in the course of practice (prelest);
I wasn't aware of this. Could you point us to some of these writings? Curious to read more about it.
Re:Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation
by cat199 on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @09:28AM
(#26554708)
Sure - Don't have a good example of a work specifically focused on this - some excellent texts with significant portions dealing with this topic interspersed:
(very dense theologically, and intended for actual practicing monks, fitting the topic, beware )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ladder_of_Divine_Ascent
"18–26: Avoidance of the traps of asceticism (laziness, pride, mental stagnation"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophthegmata_Patrum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philokalia
"On the Signs of Grace and Delusion, Written for the Confessor Longinos: Ten Texts"
less familiar with western christian works, though i'm sure there are some.
Christian monastics have written tomes about the dangers of spiritual delusion arising in the course of practice (prelest); Without getting into theological debate about core teachings between various religions, I'm quite sure the same is true for any serious spiritual/religious ascetic discipline; The tendency in our culture to divorce the practices from their philosophical underpinnings to make them more 'consumable' by the uninitiated as seems to have happened here is likely a big contributing factor in cases such as this one, and the article completely sidesteps the point by falling victim to the same thinking ..
In a similar vein I also find it quite ironic that the article attempts to reconcile 'meditation' as one monolithic topic that is either 'good' or 'bad' within scientific literature, while at the same time ignoring that 'scientific literature' itself has many studies of differing results from differing psychological treatment modalities, many of which could be viewed as 'meditative' in some casual sense (e.g. CBT, so called 'mindfulness meditation', schema therapy, etc)