Beautiful Description of Meditation Danger

[Mrkvn8]

The Dilation Syndrome

In sports, injuries can result from being too flexible, or more flexible than you are strong. In meditation, a crucial balance seems to be sensitivity and strength. Meditation does tend to make you more sensitive, and if you meditate just the right amount for your daily activity, living your life and pursuing your passions will make you stronger. But if you meditate too much, you may become too sensitive too fast. I am thinking of calling this The Dilation Syndrome, because it may be related to the chakras opening too rapidly. The analogy I am making is that opening the chakras is like learning to dilate your pupils – if they are too wide open, then they will not adapt to the light levels, and bright lights will hurt your eyes. You may then become afraid of the light or think "the light is hurting me."

I have just been noticing this syndrome in people who started meditating in their late teens or early twenties, when their personality is not fully formed and they are not fully engaged with the world yet. Here is how the syndrome seems to begin: the individual starts meditating during college years or just after, and has profound inner experiences of peace. They also absorb Eastern teachings encouraging passivity. They do not get the teaching that you need to balance meditation with expression. The more you meditate, the more you need to go out and live it up. They read spiritual material, cultivate a mood of equanimity and calmness, and become more sensitive than they are strong.

As a result of cultivating sensitivity, they start to hate everyone. Because they see themselves as spiritual, everyone else is unspiritual in some way and fallen, except for certain spiritual heroes, who would be the dead Asian males on their altars, and maybe one living Asian male. Then they cover this disgust with humanity with a veneer of compassion or tolerance, and there they go – a person with artificial layers, who even 20 years later is irritable. The irritability shows up in problems forming lasting human relationships and a complicated internal balancing act.

[Mrkvn8]

A whole list of pitfalls and dangers that many of us on the forum may run into and have run into, in this article: 

http://www.lorinroche.com/dangers/homeless.html

[molosku]

7 hours ago, Mrkvn8 said:

As a result of cultivating sensitivity, they start to hate everyone. Because they see themselves as spiritual, everyone else is unspiritual in some way and fallen, except for certain spiritual heroes, who would be the dead Asian males on their altars, and maybe one living Asian male. Then they cover this disgust with humanity with a veneer of compassion or tolerance, and there they go – a person with artificial layers, who even 20 years later is irritable.

Erm... No?

Yes, spiritual ego is certainly a thing for every age group, but it has next to nothing to do with young folk especially. You would have to be self decieved to extradimensional proportions to straight up start to hate humanity as a whole (excluding spiritual master), just from intense meditation. 

Anomalies exist, and i guess there must be SOME people that might fall into such a vortex of spiritual ego but... What you are describing is a ultimate case of that, and for 99.99% of people who consider themselves spiritual, the spiritual ego plays a much much more subtle role.

When one (almost inevitably) learns that such a thing exists, they learn how to gradually be more aware of that and they turn out as great human beings as a result. 

I would say that to call the thing described here as a real trap to watch out for, is like saying writing notes can lead into an uncontrollable habbit of writing stuff on to walls, buildings, cars and other people, SO BE CAREFULL!!

 

Ps. I dont know how old you are, but 20-somethings are indeed quite fully engaged with the world unless one lives in a cave. Not developed to their full potential but certainly engaged. 

Edited February 6, 2018 by molosku

[AlwaysBeNice]

In other words, just don't become a smug, that's not meditation danger, that's just uneducated unwise arrogance.

[Nahm]

@Mrkvn8 You’re implying sensitivity is like physical sensation. Sensitivity gained from meditation is awareness which helps us decipher our self deception. If you’re experiencing negative reactions from mediatation, it is not coming from the act of sitting there doing nothing, lol. It’s coming from not facin what you have become aware of. Push on through, let it go. Don’t sculpt the world around it to stay miserable.