Long-term Meditation is Crap: Why would anyone want to stop thinking?

[r0ckyreed]

If you don’t have time to read thoroughly, read the bottom part and my questions in bold.

I have been meditating since 2018. The main benefits I have gained from meditation are calmness, responsiveness, and a sense of control over my emotions. I have noticed that it has helped me to focus more on the positive and not be dragged by negative thoughts. 
 

However, after meditating for long periods of time, I have noticed that my memory has decreased since I have been meditating for long periods of time (more than 20 minutes a day). I have also noticed that it can be hard to visualize things and be creative because I’m so used to bringing my attention back to the present moment. But there was also times for meditation has helped me to be more creative as well but not nearly enough.

I think a big part of memory is thinking and thought rehearsal. When you meditate for long periods of time your mind shuts down which I found it good for being at peace with the present moment but meditation alone does not help you to be able to think deeper. 
 

Contemplation and deep thinking is some thing that has to be developed as another skill aside from meditation. 
 

I have come to the conclusion that long periods of meditation is actually worse for you and your personal development than if you were to spend that time contemplating present moment. 
 

Don’t get me wrong meditation is a very powerful skill that has been helpful as part of my emotional mastery quest, but I think that counting your breaths alone, labels, mantras, etc. for a long period of time can actually be detrimental to your cognitive, intellectual m, and creative functions of your mind. 
 

If all you do is silence your mind, then how can you ever explore it fully and know how to use it deliberately? 
 

When I meditate now, I only do it for short periods like 10 minute sits to still my mind to the present moment. After that, I start to use my mind to contemplate existential and personal topics that fascinate me, topics that I have been avoiding, and topics that I deeply fear. 
 

Meditation is a good reminder to be aware of the present moment. It has helped me to gain more self-awareness and observation skills in general of both the external and internal worlds. 
 

However, I love to think. My thoughts are rarely negative at all. I think a lot of people meditate to silence negative thinking, but what they don’t realize is that they are also silencing positive and potentially creative thinking as well. 

I love using my imagination. I love thinking deeply about life. I find much more creativity, inspiration, and insight from that than from 4 hours of sitting trying to bring thoughts back to my breath or repeating a mantra. I honestly feel like long-term meditation has made me dumb in some ways and also more aware of the now as well.
 

I have found it difficult to think and visualize because I am so used to bringing it back to my breath. I have realized that mindwandering and daydreaming are so important and crucial to creativity. If you suppress that through long-term meditation, you will see the consequences.

With all this in mind, what do you think?

Why would anyone really want to silence their mind or have No-Mind? 
 

Edit: The deepest insights I have ever attained came from deep contemplations and asking questions. I guess contemplation could be technically called analytical meditation if you want to be technical about that. When I refer to meditation, I am talking about non-analytical forms of it such as anapanasati, do-nothing, vipassana, etc. 

Edited April 24, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[r0ckyreed]

On another level, you can think of it this way, if you don’t think, you will be dead real soon. You are stuck in this game. You can either learn to think consciously or unconsciously.
 

Brief periods of silence can be helpful to think deeper and creatively, but I have found the long-term silence leads to memory and cognitive problems because our minds need stimulation and repetition like a muscle.

Taking a rest from running can help you run better marathons, but too much rest and you lose your ability to run marathons. Same with the mind and thinking. You get my point.

[kag101]

14 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

Brief periods of silence can be helpful to think deeper and creatively, but I have found the long-term silence leads to memory and cognitive problems because our minds need stimulation and repetition like a muscle.

Taking a rest from running can help you run better marathons, but too much rest and you lose your ability to run marathons. Same with the mind and thinking. You get my point.

you just answered your question.

what meditation techniques do you use?

[Raze]

You aren’t stopping all thoughts, you are stopping useless crap thoughts for the brains default mode network. Creative thoughts and planning thoughts are fine and come from a different part of the brain.
 

https://jeffwarren.org/articles/neuroscienceofsuffering/

[Carl-Richard]

It has made me able to think more clearly and meaningfully, but it's like it's not under my control anymore. It feels like the thoughts always have a significant purpose, and if I attend to that purpose (say completing some work), they quickly die down, but if I ignore them, it keeps the circuit open and the thoughts repeat. Thoughts feed off uncertainty and indecisiveness, and if you've figured out some of the big questions, then your mind will be a reflection of that.

[hyruga]

Yeah I agree with all that you mentioned, @r0ckyreed.

For me, it's about mind control in this case. Either you take control of your mind or your mind controls you. 

I don't do much of 'no-mind' meditation as firstly, I have trouble getting into 'no mind' plus all the reasons you listed make it not worthwhile to do much. I still do breathwork and analytical meditation.

[T_i_m]

40 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

Brief periods of silence can be helpful to think deeper and creatively, but I have found the long-term silence leads to memory and cognitive problems because our minds need stimulation and repetition like a muscle.

Taking a rest from running can help you run better marathons, but too much rest and you lose your ability to run marathons. Same with the mind and thinking. You get my point.

Meditation is a type of training as well. Could the negative consequences be from overtraining, not from meditation itself? Like running too often would fuck up your heart and joints. Maybe you've been meditating everyday but your mind needed more rest days without meditation. 
 

[r0ckyreed]

1 hour ago, kag101 said:

you just answered your question.

what meditation techniques do you use?

I do that a lot lol (answering my own questions) I mainly want to hear other perspectives to see what I may be missing.

I use mindfulness meditation (as outlined in The Mind Illuminated book, which if you don’t know is a form of following your breath and bringing mindwandering back to it) and I use do-nothing a lot along with Leo’s tips on Satisfaction Meditation. That’s all I use.

In contemplation, I focus on answering one question such as “what fascinates me most about life? What is time? What is reality? Am I on track with my life purpose, etc.?”

1 hour ago, Raze said:

You aren’t stopping all thoughts, you are stopping useless crap thoughts for the brains default mode network. Creative thoughts and planning thoughts are fine and come from a different part of the brain.

That makes it hard for me to meditate because I hardly have any negative thoughts but that doesn’t mean I am always cheery and happy. Meditation is helpful in those cases to see the beauty in nature, but when I get there, my ADHD, hyperactivity, creativity, and passions can interfere. I like being active and long meditation sits are not for me.

I don’t use enlightenment for the purposes of awakening or some other goal. Rather, I see it as a space and time to reflect, contemplate, and just be with myself and reality. 
 

36 minutes ago, T_i_m said:

Maybe you've been meditating everyday but your mind needed more rest days without meditation. 

Yeah. I agree. I want to learn how to experience more frequent quietude while also not compromising the intellect. 
I would rather have the music of my thoughts to play than for them to be out of practice or worse, silent forever.

I see some power in being able to sit and listen to reality through an empty mind, but I feel like at this point in my life, I am still trying to look for answers related to personal life. I also value imagination and contemplation to great lengths.

I meditate mainly to train my ability for happiness in accepting reality as it is.
 

One thing that stood out to me was from watching the show called the Good Place where a Monk meditated since he was young and has a low IQ because he stopped learning. That episode from the Good Place confirmed my doubts that meditation is not as holistic as we may think it is. You can reach great levels of stillness, emptiness, no-mind, and be able to sit your ass for 2 days straight, but the intellect, understanding, cognitive abilities, and wisdom can still be underdeveloped.

My life purpose is centered around understanding, being intelligent and wise. Contemplation along with personal research appears to be my main modes and techniques towards this domain of mastery. Meditation in the form of quieting the mind appears to be a small part in my life and life purpose.

What do you all think?

Edited April 24, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[r0ckyreed]

Just watched the movie Turning Red and it helped me understand this paradox more. I gotta learn to embrace both like yin yang. I tend to go all in on one thing. It is about learning to accept all the parts of myself. There is no unity in thinking without quietude. How I incorporate this practically is another journey to walk.

[Ulax]

Maybe you'd like do-nothing meditation more. Will likely aid creativity

[Leo Gura]

6 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

for a long period of time can actually be detrimental to your cognitive, intellectual m, and creative functions of your mind. 
 

If all you do is silence your mind, then how can you ever explore it fully and know how to use it deliberately?

1) Yes, there is def a trade-off between no-mind and using the intellect for creative work. For the mind to do creative work it needs to light up and make connections.

2) But meditation is not necessarily supposed to nuke your whole mind forever. Ideally it trains you to turn your mind on and off based on what the situation calls for. The problem for most mentally creative people is they cannot shut it off and it causes lots of suffering at some point.

3) Paradoxically meditation can make you more creative. Some of my greatest burst of creativity comes a few days into a meditation retreat. My mind floods with creative ideas. Of course to make use of this creativity requires that I stop meditating because it does interfere with proper meditation.

4) Consider the possibility that creative intellectual work might itself be a sort of attachment that needs to be transcended at some point to reach the most advanced stages of spirituality. Of course this is not for most people. Maybe this is not for you. But it could be for very serious people.

- - - -

The bottom line is that you have to decide what you want out of life and even out of spiritual work. Do you want to be more creative? More productive? More happy? Better at relationships? Deeper connection to God? Ultimate understanding? Freedom from all suffering?

These can be very different goals requiring different methods. And no one can tell you what you should want. That's up to you. Nowhere is it written that you must aim for the highest spiritual stage. In fact, maybe the highest spiritual stage is not appropriate for you because you want something else out of life. Get really fucking clear what you want and then work toward that.

[Epikur]

Yes I had the same experience. That is why I work with 1 minute meditations. There I do count till 10 and repeat it. It was annoying to get things done with an emty mind. Btw visualization is exhausting

[aurum]

7 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

With all this in mind, what do you think?

Why would anyone really want to silence their mind or have No-Mind? 

Yeah I can’t say I find any appeal to completely turning off all thought forever. My sense is that is not the best life, or at least not what I came here to do. And perhaps it’s not even possible. I’ve never met anyone who no longer has thought.

But at the same time, there definitely has been tremendous benefit for me in learning to silence the mind at times. Otherwise you just drive yourself crazy with anxiety. There’s no space. Form needs balance with formlessness.

In terms of creativity, I find they go hand in hand. Yes, you need thought for creativity. But no, excessive thinking also does not help. Excessive thinking usually blocks creativity cause you’re too anxious.

[BuddhistLover]

I want to be A Pro Musician!

Leo wants to be "THE MESSIAH"! you can tell, that is trying his absolute best to be the walking reincarnation of god. And he really is the messiah, everyone says he is a cult leader, and that's backwards, the people who say he is a cult leader are the actual cult leaders, and Leo Gura is the actual second coming of the messiah. Leo is one of the few influencers who isn't a cult leader, he actually cares about his people. 

 

Edited April 25, 2022 by BuddhistLover

[zireael]

@BuddhistLover

careful by saying this you make Leo a cult leader. Don't make this a self-fulfilling prophecy, if people see Leo as 'the Messiah' he will become an idol to people, thus this will become a cult, whether Leo wants it or not.

You can learn a lot from him, but don't make idols out of people

[_Archangel_]

 

11 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

With all this in mind, what do you think?

Why would anyone really want to silence their mind or have No-Mind? 
 

Edit: The deepest insights I have ever attained came from deep contemplations and asking questions. I guess contemplation could be technically called analytical meditation if you want to be technical about that. When I refer to meditation, I am talking about non-analytical forms of it such as anapanasati, do-nothing, vipassana, etc. 

@r0ckyreed Existential insights are intuitive and non- discoursive, doesn't metter if you get there through no-mind or full-mind.
They are 2 sides of the same coin. If you contemplate deeply enough you know that at a certain point the caothic mind center itself around the the object of inquires, making it similar to non-analytical meditation.

 

11 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

 but I think that counting your breaths alone, labels, mantras, etc. for a long period of time can actually be detrimental to your cognitive, intellectual m, and creative functions of your mind. 

Not true. If not, the opposite.
Look how many creatives are into meditation and say it enhance their mind-work and inspiration.
David Lynch, Paul McCartney, Hugh Jackman, Madonna, Steve Jobs, jack Keruac, Ophra Winfrey, Bruce Lee, Leonard Cohen, George Lucas, Jeff Bridges, Orlando Bloom, Bill Gates, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Ray Dalio, Marina Abramović, Howard Stern, Richard Gere, Herbie Henkock, Herman Hesse, jack dorsey(Twitter), Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn) all practiced it or still practicing, many of them for decades.

If done seriously it makes your reasonong clearer, sharper.
I don't know about you, but after a 45 min. session of breath following my mind is super fresh and ready for work

I think a correct concentration practice is vital for conteplation or visualization.  How can you succed in those if you mind is not fast and able to mantain focus?
 

12 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

However, after meditating for long periods of time, I have noticed that my memory has decreased since I have been meditating for long periods of time (more than 20 minutes a day).

I wouldn't say meditation is the culprit here, expecially if you pracice for short periods.
Look at what you eat and how much you sleep instead.

[Chrisd]

4 hours ago, aurum said:

Yeah I can’t say I find any appeal to completely turning off all thought forever. My sense is that is not the best life, or at least not what I came here to do. And perhaps it’s not even possible. I’ve never met anyone who no longer has thought.

But at the same time, there definitely has been tremendous benefit for me in learning to silence the mind at times. Otherwise you just drive yourself crazy with anxiety. There’s no space. Form needs balance with formlessness.

In terms of creativity, I find they go hand in hand. Yes, you need thought for creativity. But no, excessive thinking also does not help. Excessive thinking usually blocks creativity cause you’re too anxious.

Contemporaries who claim to function basically without thought: guruswamig, gary weber (happinessbeyondthought.com), christopher cornelius (coherencehealing.love).

You can also look at what Nisargadatta Maharaj said: about his mind "M: Of course not! I am fully conscious, but since no desire or fear enters my mind, there is perfect silence"

I'd say silence isn't the point though, it should be pleasurable silence. Gary Weber describes a sweetness to his silence, while guruswamig does not. I imagine ultimately a silent mind + ecstasy is ideal.

[Chrisd]

If you don't think you can function without thinking, I wouldn't attempt to silence the mind.

[r0ckyreed]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The problem for most mentally creative people is they cannot shut it off and it causes lots of suffering at some point.

I totally see that. One of my big fears is to lose my intellectual, cognitive, memory aspects of my mind. I know that this is of course a fear to work on and transcend whenever I am ready.

I already noticed slight memory decreases in part because I was trying to have no-mind throughout my day. This helped me realize how important thought is to survival, memory, imagination, intellect, etc. Of course, it is also good to learn to silence it as well but for me I am not striving for long-term silence.
 

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Paradoxically meditation can make you more creative. Some of my greatest burst of creativity comes a few days into a meditation retreat. My mind floods with creative ideas. Of course to make use of this creativity requires that I stop meditating because it does interfere with proper meditation.

Yeah. This happens to me all the time. After sitting for 5-10 minutes of counting breaths, mantra, or whatever I am doing in meditation, I always get fascinating and creative thoughts that I think come “purposely” to stop me from meditating. It almost makes me just want to switch to analytical meditation (A.K.A contemplation). Whenever I do try to bring my awareness back to my breath over and over again, I tend to forget those thoughts. It is like trying to recall a dream. If I don’t engage with it and write it down soon, it will be forgotten.

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Consider the possibility that creative intellectual work might itself be a sort of attachment that needs to be transcended at some point to reach the most advanced stages of spirituality. Of course this is not for most people. Maybe this is not for you. But it could be for very serious people.

Yeah. I totally get that. I am very attached to creative intellectual work. It is kind of like my love for life. Thinking, imagination, and contemplation are what I love most about life. However, I also aspire to become a sage and be highly spiritually developed, which to me is more about having the highest possible understanding, strong intellect, wisdom, and emotional mastery. 

At this point in my life, I think it is important to focus more on my strengths such as contemplation and developing my thinking mind, while also spending some time each day meditating. I think a new rule for me is that if I meditate for 20 minutes, I will contemplate for 20 minutes.

I meditated for one hour days for about 30 days back in 2021. My mistake was not also balancing contemplative practices with meditation.

 If I neglect time for deep, existential thinking, then this part of my psyche will lose its strength as I have noticed.

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The bottom line is that you have to decide what you want out of life and even out of spiritual work. Do you want to be more creative? More productive? More happy? Better at relationships? Deeper connection to God? Ultimate understanding? Freedom from all suffering?

All of those sound good lol. That is part of my issue. I have a lot of things I want to work towards that require contrasting approaches. I definitely appreciate this feedback on being more clear about what I want out of life and when it comes to spirituality. The greatest insights I have attained came from contemplation. The greatest peace for me came through meditation. I guess I am just looking at it too dualistically.

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Get really fucking clear what you want and then work toward that.

The 5 main things that I really want are:

1. Spirituality

A. Gain the highest wisdom and levels of understanding possible through natural means at this point (no psychedelics right now). In addition, I want a deep spiritual connection to reality such that I see infinite beauty even in a dog turd.

B. This means I need to carve more time to be in solitude to contemplate and meditate. My goal is at least one solid hour during the week days to go for nature walks, bring a journal, and contemplate.

2. Education

A. Gain highest knowledge I can about life. Become life-long learner, which means to read a lot of books, personal research/study, and writing, journaling and reflection.

B. This means I need to let go of or spend less time on video games, movies, media, and technology in general.

3. Health

A. Being able to attain the greatest fitness, health, and strength possible. 
 

B. This means to maintain a good diet and cut out the junk food I eat. This also means exercising more often. 

4. Career

A. Having a career that is alignment with my spirit and life calling. I want my career, life calling, etc. to be centered around my contribution to nature. I want to work and be active outdoors and not be inactive indoors in some office.

5. Financial freedom

A. Being able to have “enough” money to where I can have the freedom to not worry about money and be able to have the freedom to travel.

Thanks so much. I have a better idea of what I need to do now! I got a lot of work to do lol. I guess meditation will be my guide to not be so overwhelmed with what I want to accomplish.  

[gettoefl]

mind is a great servant but a poor master, use it when needed but most are letting it run things 100% ... you are not a finite machine

leo's latest video on ketamine touches on the default happiness that exists when mind is not operational ... this is the baseline state to reside in