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 we lost some of safety practices that were encoded in religious meditative practices.
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.
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.
Comparing it to ibuprofen strikes me as begging the question that it has a mechanism. Something I am not quite ready to cede.
I take it as similar to inversion tables. Could it help some folks with their back pain? Absolutely. Does it do so for the reasons they put forward? Highly unlikely. (Acupuncture is similar. Homeopathy? Maybe...)
The spiritual part is how to frame the results and shifts that come from long-term meditation in a helpful worldview.
Have you tried it by the way? It sounds like you aren't quite aware what it even is
I have tried meditation before. Never did a weekend retreat, but used to do guided classes. They left me a bit high and dry. And they felt exactly the same as old religious acquaintances on how that helps guide and inform. I /do not/ doubt that it works for the folks it works for. I clearly have doubts that it is a general thing that even can work for everyone.
Loosening it to most people, I mean, maybe? But then why does the nature of what you focus your thought onto matter? I suppose the mechanism is that you are effectively forcing a wiring of whatever in your mind is responsible for consciousness? Makes sense that you can effectively train your consciousness by rote in much the same way that you can train your arms/hands to juggle.
But, at this point, we have to establish that consciousness is the same between us. Certainly plausible. I'd go so far as to say likely. But not guaranteed.
> Makes sense that you can effectively train your consciousness by rote in much the same way that you can train your arms/hands to juggle.
It does, so why are you arguing against it? You claimed it only has an effect by some kind of vague suggestion.
Of course, strictly, it's also false that working out with weights will increase muscle mass. You are just being needlessly pedantic. Your claim has shifted from "I think all effects of meditation are just a kind of self-propaganda" to arguing some crap about the nature of consciousness.
Why do we even need to speak of consciousness? If it confuses you that focussing on a meditation object for 30 mins a day might do something, I dread to think of how the concept of learning or memorisation sends your head into a spin
And don't take my claim too strong, here. I obviously don't /know/. I have some strong doubts, sure; but doubts are not themselves evidence against. Your very point on weights not absolutely working is essentially my point.
I bring in consciousness, as that is what it sounds like when you say that one needs to think on something. Consciously and deliberately. Otherwise, I can think a lot on a program I'm wanting to write, but make zero progress on it.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
There is also the fact that this is a forum for discussing/debating ideas. Not just to affirm them with agreement, but to strengthen them through criticism.