For some, meditation has become more curse than cure
Eventually, life lost its meaning. Colors began to fade. Spiritually dry, David didn't care about anything anymore. Everything he had found pleasurable before the retreat—hanging out with friends, playing music, drinking—all of that "turned to dirt," he says, "a plate of beautiful food turned to dirt."
That's depression. Clinical depression. Fits my experience to a T. The first thing out of my mouth when I finally saw a "real" doctor was "I can't see colors or taste food anymore... I mean, I can tell you its red or blue or tasted like chicken but I can't see or taste it anymore. I know that sounds crazy but..."
This article is a little dangerous. Like saying "Running causes heart failure" but omitting "in people with congestive heart failure". Its the heart condition that's the problem, not the running.
If you have these symptoms, it wasn't the meditation. You're depressed. See a doctor. They can fix you.
About 1 in 4 adults experience some level of mental illness in a given year.
> "I started having thoughts like, 'Let me take over you,' combined with confusion and tons of terror," says David, a polite, articulate 27-year-old who arrived at Britton’s Cheetah House in 2013. "I had a vision of death with a scythe and a hood, and the thought 'Kill yourself' over and over again."
That's not an effect of meditation, that's a symptom of a mental illness. Meditation probably helped him discover it earlier than he otherwise would have.
I mean, the words "mental" and "illness" don't even appear in the article.
The entire article reeks of fear-mongering on the basis of rare and extreme anecdotes. It's good that people are investigating any potential side-effects that may exist, but until they find something that's conclusive and statistically significant, it's not worth worrying about.
Let's not forget that the psychological/physiological benefits of meditation have been well documented and demonstrated by numerous scientific studies. If you're someone considering trying out meditation, you have much more to gain than lose by giving it a shot.
I'm not going to say I'm the most experienced meditator in the world, but I've gone fairly deep. I'd argue that if you aren't getting into weird ego-dissolution experiences you are still meditating for comfort (which is totally okay! meditation is a great stress dissolver) and not moving towards the actual point of most meditative practices...but this also points to two things -- 1) meditation can't "cure" everything, sometimes you need a good therapist, or some chemicals, or some combination of the above 2) you absolutely must have a meditation teacher you trust if you want to do deep dives (yes, a 10 day vipassana retreat is certainly a deep dive, as is a zen sesshin). Preferably one you know has actually touched most of these spaces, is well grounded and compassionate, isn't woo-ey or ego-challenged in terms of feeling like your bad experience might threaten their "good teacher" status, etc.
In the yoga tradition, meditation is not something you can just sit down and do regularly from the beginning. You are supposed to do asanas to prepare for breath exercises, and breath exercises to allow the mind to concentrate, and then the "meditation skill is unlocked".
The general idea is that sleepiness and sluggishness is a certain outcome of an unhealthy body, as well as anxiety and irritability that are caused by various body aches.
In the worst case, meditation can become a formality, just a checkbox to fill out, a way to spend an indulgent, lethargic half-hour, or the opposite - a constantly distracted, obsessive anxiety (which is perfectly fine and even to be expected at the beginning of a meditation, but not at all times).
That's not to say that meditation is completely off limit: the idea is to do a bit of meditation and breath exercises at first and a lot of asanas, and then gradually increase breath exercises and then concentration; and finally meditation.
But this whole idea that meditation can be counter-productive in some circumstances is not really alien to the Eastern traditions. They are not stupid and they've been doing it for a long time with an empirical, practical approach.
These experiences during meditation are real. It is therefore very important to develop compassion for yourself. In the Dhammapada the Buddha teaches to "Love yourself and watch". If you cannot love yourself, it may be better to not meditate (yet). There is a related and equally well known quote by Dogen which cautions against "driving the self to enlightenment". If one doesn't love himself, that will be what he will attempt to do and then because things don't work that way desperation results.
It is strange for me to read in the comments all the advice to--as I understand it--be a relatively "whole" person before beginning meditation. In my limited experience and perspective, I was under the impression that meditation can assist one with releasing stress and anxiety... I thought meditation was one tool which could be applied for achieving more "wholeness" as a person, and I'm surprised at the suggestion that apparently other means must be pursued first?
It seems to me that it would be hard to go wrong with 15-30 minutes of "meditation" spent focusing on breathing and non-judgmentally observing your thoughts as they bubble up and dissipate. I've often felt that a lot of my stress and anxiety and even depression is the result of hanging onto things and the result of trying to control things which are actually outside my control.
Or perhaps these other comments are directed toward the serious, multiple-hour, practice of meditation? I have no desire to separate my consciousness from my physical being, for instance. I'm happy to stay firmly rooted on earth, while learning to accept the good in my inherent existence. If that makes sense.
MCTB - Mastering the Core Teaching of the Buddha - which is a fairly hardcore "path" towards enlightenment has these phases well charted out.
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki...
Once one has crossed the Arising and Passing Event, one will enter the Dark Night regardless of whether one wants to or not. It doesn’t matter if you practice from this point on; once you cross the A&P you are in the Dark Night to some degree (i.e. are a Dark Night Yogi) until you figure out how to get through it, and if you do get through it without getting to the first stage of enlightenment, you will have to go through it again and again until you do. I mean this in the most absolute terms
These are a well understood steps in the journey towards enlightenment and comes with necessary warnings. For most people, they will not step this far and this point is moot. For hardcore practitioners of meditation, it's a necessary step. What I think has happened is that meditation has become classified as "infinitely benevolent" : you can go down that path, as far as you can, and all will be good.
Meditation like weightlifting, needs guidance and care. You can hurt yourself if you don't respect the barbell.
A while back I had the thought that meditation for self-improvement is a non-starter. Meditation, supposedly done properly, is supposed to be non-judgemental observation. But if you're approaching the whole practice as a way to improve some aspect of yourself, the entire foundation is flawed. In that case, the whole reason you're doing it is based on a negative judgement.
I was wondering if someone more experienced with meditation can comment on this. Does this make any sense?
Meditation can induce a psychoactive experience much like you can get with a chemical agent. just as you can go on a bad trip or experience religious ecstasy on a drug, you can induce a similar state through meditation. This is neither good nor bad. You just need discipline and an understanding of the risks.
No mention of kundalini anywhere... Seems he went a bit deep too soon with no guidance. Electrical currents, spasms, sexual thoughts, digestive issues, etc. Classic kundalini symptoms.
Aypsite.org has some good info on it and how to avoid or deal with it.
I remember reading this when it came out, and noticing how it reflected some of my personal experiences.
I found that meditation unlocked some of my inner anxiety and I was experiencing frequent panic attacks when I wasn't meditating. I had to stop for months.
I have started again, mostly because I miss the benefits of meditation, but it is closer to what another poster labeled "comfort meditation." I still consider one of the longer retreats, but I don't know that I'm yet ready to face that again.
I certainly had heard about this aspect of deep meditation and that it is in many cases a stopping point for many serious practitioners. I like that the article touches on the search within esoteric religious practices of dark experiences.
I practice mindfulness meditation and the way it has always been taught to me is to simply sit and observe without judgement. That is, don't actively try to push away thoughts. Simply acknowledge them as they arise, and return your focus to breathing in and out. Forcing away thoughts is just another way of engaging ego -- you get caught up trying to get somewhere rather than simply being in the moment.
One of my favorite descriptions is by Alan Watts, called "listening meditation":
I meditate daily, and I'm part of a community that encourages it, but only after a thorough process of mental housecleaning. If you're full of un-dealt-with bitterness, anxiety, resentment, guilt, restlessness, shame, etc.—to say nothing of untreated mental illness or trauma—yeah, meditation is going to be a supremely unpleasant experience. Shutting out all distractions is only comfortable if you haven't been using those distractions to keep from having to deal with life.
> He panicked. Increasingly vivid pornographic fantasies and repressed memories from his childhood began to surface.
As someone with Aphantasia, I'm absolutely fascinated by this.
Adverse outcomes of meditation practices described in the article covered a range of disorders, e.g., depression, panic attacks, possibly frank psychosis. These conditions are familiar to psychiatrists and not rare, guessing something like <=5% of the whole population have a serious form of such conditions.
We know that assigning a singular cause of psychiatric disorders is spurious since all major conditions have been connected to multiple genetic, social and environmental factors.
It's certainly conceivable that meditation could precipitate an episode of a psychiatric disorder, and of course it is mostly impossible to say if or when the condition would have emerged otherwise.
IOW the apparent sequential onset of psychiatric symptoms could be just chance occurrence reflecting the general population prevalence, or there might be a genuine causal effect of the preceding meditation event. Logically, at this time there's as much basis to assert meditation "caused" the condition as asserting meditation did not cause it. Until a lot more information is available, the relation remains indeterminate, or undefined.
It's a good principle (and the safest course) to hold that any/all spiritual practices or psychiatric treatments have risk of bad outcomes. No "prescription" is going to be good for everyone.
The idea that meditation and psychotherapy have overlapping risk potential is compelling. Haven't looked into to it yet, but definitely worth finding out what if any studies have been done.
Along those lines there's a just-published meta-analysis re: outcome of treatment for depression with CBT or medication. With both treatments, ~5-7% of subjects had at least some "deterioration" of their condition, and those with the greatest pre-treatment symptoms had the worst outcomes. [0]
While the domains are only partially congruent, 5% is probably a good initial guess concerning the probability of mild or greater adverse effect of meditation, IIRC corresponding to ~2 SD from the mean. I didn't see any references in the article to publications by the researchers profiled, but I'd imagine they'd have some data that sheds light on the prevalence of the outcomes they're studying.
[0] Vittengl JR, Jarrett RB, Weitz E, et. al. "Divergent Outcomes in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Pharmacotherapy for Adult Depression." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=divergent+outcomes+...
I would also add that meditation is a bit tricky in the sense that it increases awareness of what's there - and what's there may be good or bad, but increased awareness is a better gift than merely good or bad things. Noticing more things means I'm not as locked in to my obliviousness. It's paradoxial but having a bad meditation is often beneficial.
Apart from mental illness, perhaps some practitioners of deep meditation have simply trained their brains to disconnect from physical reality and not align with the physical and emotional stimulus that keeps thoughts "normal"
The title is wrong on the linked page. It says The Dark Knight of the Soul and everywhere else in the article refers to it as the Dark Night. I do appreciate the Batman of the Soul though.
Not at all convincing. I have been meditating for more than 10 years and it has always been an exhilarating experience. The author is trying to make up a story, it seems.
There was stuff dropping away … [and] electric shocks through my body. [My] core sense of self, a persistent consciousness, the thoughts and stuff, were not me."
This sounds to me like the beginnings of psychosis. I don't doubt that these feelings could be induced by meditation, but I do doubt that they would not have emerged in some other way.
Sounds like he just got older.
2014