[silveroriole]

Do you think there is an advantage in using meditation to achieve a state where you can manage your thoughts, vs other techniques like CBT? It seems to me that most people don’t need the abstract/spiritual concepts like there not being an I, whatever that means. Your comment implies that understanding the abstract concepts is the real point of meditation, and I still don’t see what the benefit of that is - unless it’s just a very mystical way to say that we don’t have fixed, unchangeable personalities and we should worry less about our ego.

[kire2345]

I would suggest that both meditation and CBT have a similar objective, which is to see reality more clearly for what it is. CBT goes far enough to transform distorted thoughts into more realistic ones. This goes far enough to help you live a happy life in the "normal" sense. Meditation can be used to go all the way to the realization of the Ego/body limited self as an illusory concept. This normally results in a rush of a very clear sense of reality. Which lets all worries, problems, hopes, insecurities etc. collapse into what they really are. A constant play and variation of matter/form/energy/consciousness/god whatever you want to call it. That are just other forms of our "true" self matter/form/energy/consciousness/god, experiencing this variation and play. This gives a lot of room for joy or bliss if you will. From my own experience it takes some practice to keep remembering this reality more and more often.