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> That has been my experience. I've done meditation retreats and the like. I do find it slows down my mind, but can also surface things that frankly I'm perfectly happy to leave under the surface. This is generally acknowledged by many meditation traditions especially ones which incorporate vipassana, but perhaps less so by the scientists who write papers about meditation. At some point in the practice all your "inner stuff" can come up: fear, confusion, uncertianty, memory of trauma, etc. Jung called it the "shadow", a popular spiritual teacher Eckart Tolle calls it the "pain-body", and in some Christian traditions they use them term "dark night of the soul". Psychologists may call it PTSD-like-symptoms. Buddhists believe that one has to purge the mind-body of the three poisons as part of the process of awaking, and during this process it's normal for unsettling mental fabrications to arise. Some practitioners in America feel like they did not sign up for a deep purge/cleanse of their dark inner content because the whole meditation affair was pitched to them as a form of gentle relaxation therapy. For many people however it can become almost a sort of all-encompassing, existential, ground shaking, transformative process which can sometimes feel like a burden when viewed from a lense where you only indicator of progress has to do with how socially well-adjusted you are in terms of finance, social signals, dating, etc. Plus statistically speaking some percentage of the people who have their untamed mental processes come up are likely to be ensnared by these creepers in some way and perhaps spiral out of control or go off the deep end. However the meditation dharma-sword is an approprate instrument to hack your way through the mental jungle, and come out the other end which opens up to reveal a mountain. Whether you climb to the summit of your mountain, or just make a cave dwelling within is up to you, but at least you have an elevated perspective relative to the jungle of untamed body consciousness below. |