An Anti-meditation Scientist

[The White Belt]

I've never come across a scientist that is particularly anti-mediation.

John Horgan.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/meta-meditation-a-skeptic-meditates-on-meditation/

 

Any truth in this?

[Prabhaker]

16 minutes ago, BeginnerActualizer said:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/meta-meditation-a-skeptic-meditates-on-meditation/

The Placebo Effect Problem

Meditation is the equivalent of telling yourself, over and over, “Be happy,” or, “Chill.” In other words, meditation, like psychotherapy, harnesses the placebo effect. In fact, you meditators out there can have this mantra, free of charge: “Chill.”

If you are living western way of life , it will be very difficult to see noticeable results. If you live a life of meditator, it results in flowering of the personality, which is visible to everyone.

[The White Belt]

@Prabhaker 70+% of us are living a western life in this forum. How do we reconcile this? I've noticed a difference in awareness though. Is that Placebo? Am I and many others wasting our time based on that?

[Prabhaker]

Just now, BeginnerActualizer said:

70+% of us are living a western life in this forum.

Almost all of us are living a western life in this forum. East is now poor imitation of west. 

4 minutes ago, BeginnerActualizer said:

I've noticed a difference in awareness though. Is that Placebo?

No, but these results are never permanent in initial stages, you can fall back easily, if you live unconsciously. 

7 minutes ago, BeginnerActualizer said:

Am I and many others wasting our time based on that?

Subjectivity needs long patience, a waiting. It grows, but not in a hurry. It is not a seasonal flower. Don't expect quick results. It takes time. If you are in a hurry, if you are in haste, then only you are wasting your time.

[The White Belt]

@Prabhaker How do I fall back? If I stop practicing mindfulness? 

Sorry my ego hates contradiction. I've got a nice meditation practice in place, for the first time i've done several months, not just a few weeks then backsliding, and now I see some article about meditation not being a good thing and i'm just hating it, because my resistance will use it against me the next time I go to sit. 

[Prabhaker]

1 minute ago, BeginnerActualizer said:

How do I fall back? If I stop practicing mindfulness? 

It could be anything, like watching too much porn, excessive alcohol use!

[TJM1959]

1 hour ago, BeginnerActualizer said:

Any truth in this?

Prob not, look at the source, the guy doesn't do any work(almost views mediation as a joke) to validate any of his claims, just quotes/links to outside sources to validate his article/opinion. Somewhat insulting and has no real substance or weight.
I gotta ask you though, why would you seek out this kind of information? If you have developed a good practice for yourself, why question ANYONE? Please don't do that, keep working on you, regardless.

[Shin]

You will backslide everytime you fall into your old patterns and addictions.

So, if you don't take care of those, you could basically get stuck forever.

Also, if you socialize too much, with the "wrong" kind of person, even though it is a great test to your ability to stay in the present moment, it will just make you inconscious if you didn't reach a certain stage of awareness, especially intimate relationship.

[Visionary]

5 hours ago, BeginnerActualizer said:

@Prabhaker How do I fall back? If I stop practicing mindfulness? 

Sorry my ego hates contradiction. I've got a nice meditation practice in place, for the first time i've done several months, not just a few weeks then backsliding, and now I see some article about meditation not being a good thing and i'm just hating it, because my resistance will use it against me the next time I go to sit. 

You might want to meditate without any intentions. Just put aside every believe you have and try to imagine that this is the first time your senses are aware of things. As if you're newly born and have no concepts whatsoever. There will be no room for ideas. Just awareness and experiencing. 

[The White Belt]

5 hours ago, TJM1959 said:

I gotta ask you though, why would you seek out this kind of information?

I didn't. I googled 'scientists who meditate', I guess for motivation, and that article came up.

[cetus]

7 hours ago, BeginnerActualizer said:

Any truth in this?

Yes it is from the viewpoint of the seeker. You see there is nothing that really needs to be done.  Allen Watts stated it best when he said "any effort to become enlightened is totally futile. Like trying to assist an air liner off the ground by pulling on your seat belt". 

And another great saying  of his  It's like painting a red rose-red

Edited March 30, 2017 by cetus56

[cetus]

Do you see how it all collapses in on itself? The searching that is. Than what remains?

[The White Belt]

@cetus56 Well I don't really meditate for enlightenment. I meditate for clarity of mind, more presence, more awareness of thoughts, etc.

How's that?! 

[electroBeam]

@BeginnerActualizer I don't 'meditate' in the sense of what people refer to in this forum. My meditation is an expression of a way of life I follow. I don't just meditate 20 minutes a day, and the fall back into my usual patters for the other 23 hours of the day, I continually watch my thoughts and contemplate my identities 24/7. 

And dude honestly, it might freak you out to think that you have been wasting your time because of some article on the internet, but you need to really start understanding what truth really is, and appreciating the value of empirical evidence and egoic traps. 

Meditation might be a trap/waste of time, but so might not meditating. You can't rely purely on articles on the internet, and even purely on scientific methods to guide your actions and work out truth, you have to start looking into the present moment and distinguishing between delusion and truth from that place. Otherwise society/science will fuck you in the ass.

There are ego traps everywhere, get use to/even accept the fact that you might be deluded and you may be wasting your time, because guess what(assuming here, but im pretty sure due to how most people are), you're already deeply deeply deeply deluded, just like me and everyone else on this forum.

I was like you once, scared about being deluded, but you have to let that go, that's the only way you'll actualize.

[Gopackgo]

It's funny that you bring up the placebo effect, a thing that science has never been able to explain because they refuse to accept that reality is subjective. Maybe the benefits I have experienced from meditation are "placebo", I really can't know, but the experience is real to me. If a person had cancer and they took an inert medication, and were cured, do you think that even if it was expectation alone that cured them, that their cancer would come back? Do you think the fear and the experience of cancer is any less real to them, or that the relief and happiness of being "cured" is any less real? Do you think that person really cares what cured them? Either way, their experience was that they were cured, so that is their reality.

This is the problem, people are living their life in a way that requires verification from "objective" and external sources that form their subjective internal beliefs. It's this big game called rationalizing, and I can tell you that objectively it causes illusion. Rationalization by nature is subjectively adapting an experience by twisting it into something that fits in your belief system (regardless of what you actually experienced). This is a process that builds on itself, making people draw connections that arent really there, and creates huge blindspots. This is also how the self is formed. It is the middle man that is causing everyone's pain because it tries to exert itself on what is.

It's true that your ego doesnt like contradiction. A big part of enlightenment is accepting contradictions. Why can you not do this? For example: There are republicans and there are democrats. If one is a democrat, does it make their reality of experience any more accurate when they have to tell themselves that people are republicans because they just arent as educated as democrats? Is that really true? What about the fact that there are really smart republicans? How does that fit into their working model of reality? All that rationalizing does is cause conflict with what is actually happening. The alternative is to accept that there are 2 conflicting ideologies. Neither one is right, and both political parties serve the same function.  They just are as they are. There's no need to reconcile it with what you want to believe. When you choose to rationalize instead of accept as is, your subjectivity will put you at odds with reality, It is unavoidable. Further, it will limit what you are able to learn and experience, because you will avoid everything that doesn't jive with your one sided view. It's selfish.

This is just one small example, but imagine that this happens in every single aspect of your life. On top of that, Imagine that you think that your way of thinking about how you think is the only way that could ever makes sense. Can you start to see how all of those incompatibilities would build on each other and force you to live a lie? Welcome to the mind fuck.The truth is that underneath all of these beliefs, everyone is the same exact awareness of existence, Awareness is the fundamental essence shared by all humans. It means that the only difference between you and other people is the belief system that makes up your working model of reality. That model is the self, and much like scientific models, at some point, it will be rocked beyond belief if you allow yourself to take up beliefs based on your other beliefs as opposed to direct experience. My goal is to crush all of my beliefs, because I have no desire to live in fake reality created by illusory rationalizations. Attachment to your beliefs is the cause of all suffering.

So in short, I disagree with that articles attempt to rationalize a method that has been changing lives for 2500 years. I would humbly suggest that you formulate whether you want to meditate and work toward direct experience based on your experience and not what an external source tells you is objectively true.

[ajasatya]

meditation is the practice of becoming conscious of thoughts and letting go of them. the more you practice it, the better you become at it. it's real.

being good at observing thoughts and letting go of them is key to acquire different habits and actually change the way we live. humans have difficult times when trying to implement a healthier life because most of us are stuck in unconscious patterns of thinking.

[Dodo]

19 hours ago, BeginnerActualizer said:

@Prabhaker How do I fall back? If I stop practicing mindfulness? 

Sorry my ego hates contradiction. I've got a nice meditation practice in place, for the first time i've done several months, not just a few weeks then backsliding, and now I see some article about meditation not being a good thing and i'm just hating it, because my resistance will use it against me the next time I go to sit. 

Who has a meditation practice and whos resistance will use /it/ against who the next time who sits?