Meditation Comes With a Price

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2719544/

I remember a post about Shamanism and Mental Illness patients. I actually posted it at Force Academy. Last night, a long time member posted that he has been reading up on these sorts of things and posted the above link. In this article, it actually makes a case AGAINST meditation. I would be curious to see your thoughts.

Alethea Thompson wrote: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2719544/
... In this article, it actually makes a case AGAINST meditation. I would be curious to see your thoughts.

I don't fully agree with the Author's stated definitions of Awareness vs. Concentrative meditation, for me they are part of the same practice, but I otherwise tend to agree with what I think the author is saying.

However, from where do you get "Against Meditation" from the author's conclusion?

Conclusion
Understanding meditation as a complex act that consists in part of attending and abstaining helps us to understand how the many positive consequences of meditation occur. It demystifies the process.

Not only do we all spontaneously attend and abstain to some degree, but much of our psychotherapeutic work is geared toward helping patients to perform these actions. Meditation can thus be recast as an individual, formal practice of actions that are also practiced in psychotherapy. From this perspective, it becomes obvious that the two are “technically compatible and physically reinforcing.”33 There is a need for more psychiatrists to receive training in meditation so that they can augment their practices with this important technique.

My take-away from the article is that there needs to be more focus on the practice of meditation, and less on mystical adjuncts to meditative practice, with which I agree.

Meditation can be part of a religious practice, but it is entirely apt to a non-religious practice and that should be the entry point for most people...

I didn't take it from the conclusion. Just points in the article. The point of the subject was to get people to actually read the article and discuss it

Alethea Thompson wrote: The point of the subject was to get people to actually read the article and discuss it

Fibber.

Ally posted click-bait for Jedi. hahaha. :laugh:

And you expect honest discussion from a dishonest premise?

Puzzled I am...

Oh come now:

From the Article wrote: "In fact, meditation can actually be harmful; it can precipitate psychosis or release a debilitating flood of painful affect in some seriously disturbed"

It's not dishonesty.

Obi-Wan wrote: "So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view."

Manipulative, sure, but if what I was saying is that "the price is a probability roll that you will have a panic attack or precipitate psychosis" it's not dishonesty at all

You dig a whole and it will fill with water, unless your in the desert in which case it might be some good shade, until it fills in again with sand. Is your mind a forest, a desert, an ocean or just a galaxy far far away?

:blink: :silly:

At the heart of it I guess it's a shift of focus which done enough can allow people to access different parts or states of their mind/s. I don't think its meant to be done in isolation for any capacity beyond relaxation. With power comes responsibility....

ok I'm in a silly wordy mood today

Buddhism is obviously a tradition with a lot of meditation, and it has other concepts which support the practise to seemingly try and soften the broader perspective of self. In Jediism with the concept of the Force it might be good to use some similar type of things, perhaps included in the Jedi Code, but it seems to be quite an important part of the fiction. When I first ran into the meditation as a hobby I read warnings about doing it without proper instruction (it was Tibetan Buddhism), but I tend to do my own thing so took it as an advisory caution rather then a hard instruction... I actually stopped doing it after a few years, because I didn't need to anymore... its effects can be real and tangible. I started again a few years ago and am using Jediism as the framework for support in that regard, and am contrasting it to Buddhism and other meditative traditions. It's an interesting topic!!

Alethea Thompson wrote: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2719544/

. In this article, it actually makes a case AGAINST meditation. I would be curious to see your thoughts.

I think it's BS, my opinion only.

Alethea Thompson wrote: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2719544/

I remember a post about Shamanism and Mental Illness patients. I actually posted it at Force Academy. Last night, a long time member posted that he has been reading up on these sorts of things and posted the above link. In this article, it actually makes a case AGAINST meditation. I would be curious to see your thoughts.

The conclusion deems meditation to be helpful and practical and tries to encourage medical professionals to educate themselves so they can apply the techniques better. It also says that strategies used for meditation are already present in modern psychology, making meditation compatible with treatments that are already being used in the field.

As Arkayik already said: a de-mystification of meditation doesn't hurt. To me, meditation doesn't have a mystical side, never had.