[BiteCode_dev]

You can see the same misconceptions when people expect mindful meditation to always:

- relax them

- make them happy

- make them less emotional

But with practice I learned that some sessions are extremely emotional, full of stress or sorrow. It's not uncommon to feel pain, distress or to cry deeply during intense meditation retreats.

The process improves one existence by making us live those aspects of our life better. Not by taking them away.

Now of course, on the long run, it will make people more relaxed, happier, etc. Making you fitter to live with yourself.

But not by removing, ignoring or suppressing suffering.

It's still here. It will always be here. That's the point of meditating.

Mindfulness forces us to observe it as it is. You see your contradictions, your scars and your urges. You see your masks, conditioning and reflexes.

If anything, it removes dichotomy. Not add to it.

In fact, from what I witnessed, meditation tends to make people remove layers in general. I rarely hear meditators talking about adding ones.

And mindfulness is certainly not emotions vs reason.

It has nothing to do with either.

Emotions and reason are here. You observe them, and yourself using them. But the fact you use them is not part of the technique. It's just a part of you, and like all parts of you, you are invited to observe it.

Like everybody, when I started years ago, I confused "be detached" with "don't feel", "label it unimportant", "try to relax". That's not it.

What you feel or the label you use are just not part of the teaching. They don't matter at all (for the practice). What matters is that you observe it.

[a-nikolaev]

Thank you, this is the most compelling argument for meditation I've ever seen.

Don't want to sound too ignorant (although I might be), but more often than not I encounter much simpler interpretations of meditation and its goals that (to me) sound more like instructions to wall off rather than to find peace with yourself. They also sometimes come with a tacit shaming of strong emotions, but as the saying goes: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". I think that pushing for no strong emotions at all (at least on the surface) does promote walling off rather than actually understanding yourself better, which sometimes requires you to be out of balance. Like in math, always going up can lead you to a local maximum only, and to reach a global maximum you have to walk downhill once in a while.

[BiteCode_dev]

> more often than not I encounter much simpler interpretations of meditation and its goals that (to me) sound more like instructions to wall off rather than to find peace with yourself.

I've notice this at several occasions.

It is not specific to meditation though.

Agile software development, as practiced behind corporate walls, is very different what Beck and Schwaber talked about in the 90'.

Thanks to MMA, we know now that many modern martial art teachings are not practical from a self-defense perspective.

Many may claim they follow the ideal of the same famous religious figure, and confronted with each others, will end up with opposite opinions on how to live one life.

As soon as something become mainstream, it is bound to be adapted into different variations of what it was initially intended. Yet we keep the same name for it.

For what I know, what I'm practicing is also a variation of a variation of a variation of something.

[e12e]

> Thanks to MMA, we know now that many modern martial art teachings are not practical from a self-defense perspective.

I don't disagree with the general point that there are martial art schools that do not teach effective self defense - but I'm not sure how MMA figures in to it.

Self defense is about situational awareness, coping with multiple attackers, probably armed. Often you may have a way of de-escalating the situation (eg: give them your wallet).

I suppose in the instance of a single un-armed rapist (often the case when the victim knows the attacker) MMA has increased the focus on grappling (ie: judu/jujutsu/bjj and various wrestling techniques).

I'm not sure what else the popularity of MMA has thought us about self defense.

Now, if your talking about ring fighting with a particular ruleset, one on one, with a referee... That might be something else.

[Viliam1234]

I am not an expert, but some sources on meditation describe states of extreme emotion, as intermediate steps towards enlightenment. In Wikipedia, the first and second jhana are described as "rapture and non-sensual pleasure" (with or without internal speech respectively). So the proper path to balance seems to lead through mastery of the emotions, not suppressing them.

I think the idea is that you are not your emotions, and you don't have to be ruled by your emotions, but rather the emotions are something that happens to you, and something you can control. Doesn't mean you have to turn them off, it just means you have the option to do so if necessary. Or perhaps you feel the emotion, but are not compelled to act on it.

[closeparen]

Walls get such a bad rap. They are how we do resilience. They are how we prevent cascade failure. They are how we can keep sailing even when a compartment floods.

[foobiekr]

That is a great description of the reality and mirrors my experience doing a lot of meditation for mindfulness in college.

Three years ago, I picked it up again for about 18 months years and once again let it slip.

It took me a long time to realize why, which is this: I have not found meditation to have been very useful in actual day to day life despite the multiple attestations from people that it brought them ... something. I got something out of meditation also, but unlike weightlifting, for me it has never been a continuing something.

There's the eye-opening moment of really becoming aware of the ephemeralness of so many impulses that inflict us day-to-day. That is a great lesson and probably helped a lot with self control. It's like the first time you realize that you can change your mood - you don't have to ride the tiger, you can stop the process, it is subject to your conscious influence if you want it to be, but you don't need to practice this once you learn it.

In practical terms, I think those impulses are actually very valuable because they tap into faster, broader lower-tier reasoning, and mindfulness, at least as I understood it and practiced it, ended up disempowering them in a way that was mildly negative, especially in interpersonal situations where the side-effects of added latency and inevitably reduced amplitude have consequences.

YMMV, obviously. Possibly I am just lazy.

[BiteCode_dev]

Very lazy too, so I get it. I try to take so many shortcuts, and often it leads me taking more time that I would have if I did the hard thing first.

I've been meditating for 13 years, and sometimes I meet people with 3 years of practice that seem decades ahead of me.

One time, I think after my 2nd or 3rd retreat, I practiced in such a way that instead of helping myself, I got into depression. Took me a few months to change course.

I don't thing there is a "standard experience" for meditating. YMMV seems like a good summary for it.

Could be a t-shirt.

"Your Meditation May Vary"

[bsenftner]

Mindfullness is formally and best described here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2631787720929704

[BiteCode_dev]

I can relate.

Meditation at its core is a very mundane activity, no more special than taking a shower, going hiking or talking to your therapist.

However, humans love to create mythology or add deep meaning to anything. In doing that, we can turn a simple healthy practice into a load of BS.

That doesn't mean showering doesn't have benefits though.