This concern has discouraged me from trying meditation. That’s all bs IMHO. Also, my awareness and attention are much stronger (I can still hardly believe the difference a few weeks can make...). But this is part of the “negotiation” it takes for these subminds to unify; with enough meditation, the system will assimilate their insights and they will join the Borg like everyone else.This isn’t enlightenment. There are pieces that were either considered unplayable or so difficult that mistakes by top concert performers were tolerated, but are now part of the repertoire of an intermediate player. This book is the most complete, engaging, frank, helpful and, above all, usable text on the subject I've ever encountered.
All of these combined can be Shinzen says that meditation can definitely cause something terrible called “falling into the Pit of the Void”, but that it usually doesn’t happen, and that with daily guidance you will get better after a few months or years, and so But overall Culadasa’s optimism seems justified here. The talking is part of the processing.
This is basically the main problem in my life and makes meditation difficult for me, as it seems to exacerbate it.Meditation wasn’t supposed to work without the rest of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path which includes deconstruction of the ideas of “I”, “myself”, “mine”. Each moment of consciousness is completely static. Counting sheep and daydreaming are NOT meditation and yet most people taking your money don't know that. A good fun time without using alcohol or other drugs, and thus with fewer side-effects (this may sound trivial, but I would consider it a valuable property of meditation)There is pretty good research now that meditation can help anxiety and depression.It’s widely reported, if not researched in the same way, that it contributes to an overall sense of well-being.I think mileage varies on “good fun time” — I’ve never found it to be fun, always found it to require motivation in the way exercise does and then feel glad that I did it; this even despite experiencing some delightful states.
And as far as I can tell, no enlightened have ever escaped, be it deluded or not, this reality except presumably in death.I don’t know what “escaping this reality” means, but at least you no longer feel confined by your own fears and pains in this reality: you can still choose to avoid painful events if you wish, but it will be of your choice, rather than because you are letting your fear of pain control your life.
With TMI I was able to make more progress in a month than I had previously managed in a year.I'll join the chorus: this is the greatest book on meditation I've ever found. It’s good not to obsessively want things that you will literally never obtain, but I see it as pathological to convince yourself that you should holistically want nothing. It's so much more than just "quiet your mind" - it explains exactly what you'll experience and what to do.I found this book helpful with starting a practice but now I find looking at a spiritual practice with a “levels and stages” perspective to be limiting.
They’re places where you go to get blessings and funeral services. Then the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools started saying maybe you could reach enlightenment in one lifetime, if you did everything right and worked very hard. Do they have an autoimmune or gut problem that makes taking antibiotics particularly problematic for them?
If you were the monk, what would you do? That doesn’t make any sense at all.I don’t think you’re meant to only look inward, forever.It may well be that the I-Thou distinction dissolves also. I hope this makes my position more clear.I also question the value of any “insight” which is obtained by entering some other form of consciousness X which is completely different from usual waking consciousness—if I do that maybe I have learned what X feels like, but by definition X is something very far from the normal operating conditions of the brain, so attempting to extrapolate from X to normal experience seems potentially fallacious. After all, if consciousness can only contain one thing at a time, what room is there for peripheral awareness? Now I think that this goal is well worth critiquing Logically, it is possible that an experience of temporary cessation might be useful even from what I am tempted to call a “pro-life” perspective [not talking specifically about abortion here], because of some practical benefit gained from the experience.
The same thing can happen in psychotherapy and other growth modalities. This is often called “ego-death” and people can get it unbidden and without preparation, when it’s called “depersonalization.” It’s also possible on drugs.
Everything out there that shows some evidence of being helpful to large numbers of people (I’d include all the things on your list, plus others like exercise and eating well, having some good relationships, and so on) is going to be more or less helpful to any one person.All of the research that’s been done so far on psychotherapy and drugs, for instance, tells us that there’s no way to say when it comes down to the individual which one treatment or approach is going to be the most helpful for what that person is dealing with, even though the research shows that psychotherapy and medication generally can be quite helpful for most people.Some people will hate meditation no matter how helpful it might be for them. Even if you have an ear infection, it doesn’t. It could be good for beginners though because you can start at the beginning, do the beginning exercises and see how you get on. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
This is a very good modern day meditation manual. And it’s written for those of us who can only dedicate short periods of time to meditating each day (short is relative: Culadasa recommends about an hour per day if you want to progress along the path). I believe this book will become one of the "Top 10 Must Reads" for anyone on the spiritual path for years to come. But I’m too much of an egoist to follow the other path, and I’m under no illusions that enlightenment is anything close to what I seek. They seem For whatever reason, TMI’s mind-system model doesn’t bother me as much.