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There's so many things wrong in this article... They should just leave the 'take a nap' advice. If the focusing drains energy from the mind, it's the wrong kin

by aaimnr 9y ago

There's so many things wrong in this article... They should just leave the 'take a nap' advice. If the focusing drains energy from the mind, it's the wrong kind of focus. Real concentration (buddhists call it samadhi) doesn't come from forcing your other parts of mind to do what "you" (the small, narrative mind-process) want, but rather to unify the whole mind around single intention. This state is not only stable, it's more efficient, because there's just one thing to do rather than tens of conflicting intentions. It's more efficient and calm than Default Network Mode, which is basically a garbage can for the mind. You don't even have to get into buddhism, there's a lot that science already knows about eg. the flow state, which is a mini-samadhi. Also, Judson Brewer discovered that DNM is not fundamentally 'default', as it doesn't activate for long-term meditation practitioners. Such people (some of them really high functioning) report that great thoughts just come to them out of nowhere. Clinging to the thought forcefully only reinforces the illusion that 'we' are thinking it, which is not true and counterproductive, as it obstructs the dynamics of the mind. Just let the mind figure the problem out and let you know when it's done. DMN is an impostor that pretends that everything done by the various diverse mind processes is done by the narrative fiction centered around the feeling of 'I'. It's not, it's highly distributed, there's no driver and no center. The more we think otherwise, the more force we have to put to make the mind obedient.

wruza 9y ago
(Didn't read tfa) In my experience, flow state tends to be toxic and socially harmful with time. After weeks of practicing, once you're in, there is no easy way to exit it without sleeping (in the morning you're at risk falling in there again). I discussed this effect elsewhere and it confirmed. Sometimes I forcefully retain my mind in normal mode with "expensive" focus, because further plans require to be communicable and alive. It is not "for free" to me in neither way. Am I using it wrong? Is meditation and samadhi a better version of the flow in this regard?
- throw_away_elec 9y ago
  There is a concept called "laya" or "mano laya". If you are stuck in this, it might lead to stuff like this. Samadhi is completely different - referring to a deep meditation state without particularly concentrating on anything. Flow results from deeply being engaged in something or concentration.
- aaimnr 9y ago
  One possibility is that the awareness is to narrow, and you just don't notice the harm you're doing, being to stuck on the pleasure coming from concentration. Sampajanna is the 'clear comprehension' aspect of mindfulness (sati) responsible for alertness, receptivity. I like how Tucker Peck (https://meditatewithtucker.com/ https://meditatewithtucker.com/, recommended, he has an online group) phrased it: when there's samadhi with not enough sampajanna, you're happy asshole. When there's sampajanna without samadhi, you can clearly see what's going on, but you can remain sad (not enough flow-induced pleasure, leaving the mind not strong enough). In such case there's just enough mind unification to create the pleasure from the flow state, but not enough to expand the awareness and notice wtf is going on around (and for the mind to notice introspectively what it's doing). Maybe you could try to be continuously aware of the pleasure (or rapture, to be more precise - piti) in your mind, and how the mind is clinging to it. It leads to realising that the rapture is still quite a growse and still somewhat stressful state of mind (it feels a bit like happy anxiety) and with time causes the mind to let it go and leave just the mental pleasure (sukha) or at least to make the piti component more integrated and refined. That's the idea of the Jhanas progression, but not many people know that samadhi is equally possible in day-to-day life, not just with eyes closed. Good for you :) BTW please take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, I'm not hugely experienced. PS. A great piece about it: http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/Meditation%20and%20Joy%20Handout.pdf http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/Meditation%20an...
- gurkendoktor 9y ago
  Wow, I think I'm experiencing exactly the same issues. I've never successfully picked up meditating, but I do optimise for flow (home office, instrumental music at exactly my pace etc.) I've decided to roll with the punches and just work all-day, but take more days off. That way I can just go straight from flow to bed (with a few walks throughout the day). But I'll try to make sense of the sibling comments as well. Or maybe I just need to get better at napping again (right after work - a great reset button). If you have links to other discussions of this, please share :)
  - wruza 9y ago
    These were in .ru and pretty shallow, apart from that it was several years ago in the middle of other chat-like discussion. Idk how to search, if these threads still exist today. Guys reported that flow is inescapable for them too after some time; that it is quite depressing when you have to socialize; and that it is [arguably] not so productive overall if taken objectively.
- qwer 9y ago
  I find physical exercise gets me back out even easier than napping. It took me a while to figure that out, but it's been really helpful.
petra 9y ago
>> but rather to unify the whole mind around single intention. If that's the road to samadhi, inherently it's long and maybe painful - because our intentions depend on our memories - and a single intention means something like clearing or integrating all of the other intentions/memories. Or is there possibly a different way to achieve that? On the other hand, i believe the view from neuroscience is that meditators created a network that can silence the default-mode network on command, and than the task-mode network automatically becomes the only one activated, hence focused on a single intention. So maybe that's the shortcut, maybe it could be accesseible by science ? And BTW: Judson brewer recently published an interesting paper, showing how EEG could enable neurofeedback on deep brain structures related to meditation("effortless awareness") - which could have significant practical implications for meditators: http://web.stanford.edu/~msacchet/pdfs/16_vanLutterveld_NI_ip.pdf http://web.stanford.edu/~msacchet/pdfs/16_vanLutterveld_NI_i...
- majewsky 9y ago
  Uh, this looks very promising indeed. I'm currently trying to get into meditation, and that "silencing the default-mode network" part is really really hard.
- aaimnr 9y ago
  >> but rather to unify the whole mind around single intention. > If that's the road to samadhi, inherently it's long and maybe painful - because our intentions depend on our memories - and a single intention means something like clearing or integrating all of the other intentions/memories. Or is there possibly a different way to achieve that? Wow, did you get this idea now, just by thinking about consequences of centering around one intention? Because it's not obvious and to some extent definitely true. Yes, there is a stage of integration where 'difficult stuff' comes up in the mind. In Culadasa's stages of concentration development it corresponds to stage 4 mostly (laid out in details in his Mind Illuminated book). However: - When you're doing it right, it's happening almost automatically, there's often pleasure of concentration that eases things significantly, and the relief that comes up... it's worth it. With time you almost yearn for such difficult things to come up from the depths, knowing the relief and completely new perspective that the integration will bring about. - Saying that "I don't want to integrate the difficult parts" is a bit like "I don't want to be completely happy". Unifying the mind is like unifying the world - no conflict, completeness, content, everything you want and love is right there with you. - Integrating the difficult parts is not just getting over them. Sometimes it results with ability to transform difficult relationships, to forgive, to reach deeper levels of communication with eg. difficult parents etc. What's mind changing is world changing. With all that said there's so many examples of meditation gone wrong, of doing things that are counterproductive etc. - there definitely are less and more smart ways to do it. And hopefully the marriage of Buddhism and the Western thought will result in further advances. I'm almost sure that neurofeedback will be of some help - we learn so much quicker if we have tight feedback loops, with immediate feedback it's almost like a game. Even in the paper you cite, the best results were achieved during the 'free play' phase, were one could play around interactively with the graph. In the meantime I recommend Culadasa's method because it's very precise, driven by joy and the articulate, clear style expands to the whole community, which can be helpful when someone gets stuck.

by aaimnr 9y ago

wruza 9y ago

(Didn't read tfa) In my experience, flow state tends to be toxic and socially harmful with time. After weeks of practicing, once you're in, there is no easy way to exit it without sleeping (in the morning you're at risk falling in there again). I discussed this effect elsewhere and it confirmed. Sometimes I forcefully retain my mind in normal mode with "expensive" focus, because further plans require to be communicable and alive. It is not "for free" to me in neither way. Am I using it wrong? Is meditation and samadhi a better version of the flow in this regard?

throw_away_elec 9y ago
There is a concept called "laya" or "mano laya". If you are stuck in this, it might lead to stuff like this. Samadhi is completely different - referring to a deep meditation state without particularly concentrating on anything. Flow results from deeply being engaged in something or concentration.
aaimnr 9y ago
One possibility is that the awareness is to narrow, and you just don't notice the harm you're doing, being to stuck on the pleasure coming from concentration. Sampajanna is the 'clear comprehension' aspect of mindfulness (sati) responsible for alertness, receptivity. I like how Tucker Peck (https://meditatewithtucker.com/ https://meditatewithtucker.com/, recommended, he has an online group) phrased it: when there's samadhi with not enough sampajanna, you're happy asshole. When there's sampajanna without samadhi, you can clearly see what's going on, but you can remain sad (not enough flow-induced pleasure, leaving the mind not strong enough). In such case there's just enough mind unification to create the pleasure from the flow state, but not enough to expand the awareness and notice wtf is going on around (and for the mind to notice introspectively what it's doing). Maybe you could try to be continuously aware of the pleasure (or rapture, to be more precise - piti) in your mind, and how the mind is clinging to it. It leads to realising that the rapture is still quite a growse and still somewhat stressful state of mind (it feels a bit like happy anxiety) and with time causes the mind to let it go and leave just the mental pleasure (sukha) or at least to make the piti component more integrated and refined. That's the idea of the Jhanas progression, but not many people know that samadhi is equally possible in day-to-day life, not just with eyes closed. Good for you :) BTW please take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, I'm not hugely experienced. PS. A great piece about it: http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/Meditation%20and%20Joy%20Handout.pdf http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/Meditation%20an...
gurkendoktor 9y ago
Wow, I think I'm experiencing exactly the same issues. I've never successfully picked up meditating, but I do optimise for flow (home office, instrumental music at exactly my pace etc.) I've decided to roll with the punches and just work all-day, but take more days off. That way I can just go straight from flow to bed (with a few walks throughout the day). But I'll try to make sense of the sibling comments as well. Or maybe I just need to get better at napping again (right after work - a great reset button). If you have links to other discussions of this, please share :)
- wruza 9y ago
  These were in .ru and pretty shallow, apart from that it was several years ago in the middle of other chat-like discussion. Idk how to search, if these threads still exist today. Guys reported that flow is inescapable for them too after some time; that it is quite depressing when you have to socialize; and that it is [arguably] not so productive overall if taken objectively.
qwer 9y ago
I find physical exercise gets me back out even easier than napping. It took me a while to figure that out, but it's been really helpful.

petra 9y ago

>> but rather to unify the whole mind around single intention. If that's the road to samadhi, inherently it's long and maybe painful - because our intentions depend on our memories - and a single intention means something like clearing or integrating all of the other intentions/memories. Or is there possibly a different way to achieve that? On the other hand, i believe the view from neuroscience is that meditators created a network that can silence the default-mode network on command, and than the task-mode network automatically becomes the only one activated, hence focused on a single intention. So maybe that's the shortcut, maybe it could be accesseible by science ? And BTW: Judson brewer recently published an interesting paper, showing how EEG could enable neurofeedback on deep brain structures related to meditation("effortless awareness") - which could have significant practical implications for meditators: http://web.stanford.edu/~msacchet/pdfs/16_vanLutterveld_NI_ip.pdf http://web.stanford.edu/~msacchet/pdfs/16_vanLutterveld_NI_i...

majewsky 9y ago
Uh, this looks very promising indeed. I'm currently trying to get into meditation, and that "silencing the default-mode network" part is really really hard.
aaimnr 9y ago
>> but rather to unify the whole mind around single intention. > If that's the road to samadhi, inherently it's long and maybe painful - because our intentions depend on our memories - and a single intention means something like clearing or integrating all of the other intentions/memories. Or is there possibly a different way to achieve that? Wow, did you get this idea now, just by thinking about consequences of centering around one intention? Because it's not obvious and to some extent definitely true. Yes, there is a stage of integration where 'difficult stuff' comes up in the mind. In Culadasa's stages of concentration development it corresponds to stage 4 mostly (laid out in details in his Mind Illuminated book). However: - When you're doing it right, it's happening almost automatically, there's often pleasure of concentration that eases things significantly, and the relief that comes up... it's worth it. With time you almost yearn for such difficult things to come up from the depths, knowing the relief and completely new perspective that the integration will bring about. - Saying that "I don't want to integrate the difficult parts" is a bit like "I don't want to be completely happy". Unifying the mind is like unifying the world - no conflict, completeness, content, everything you want and love is right there with you. - Integrating the difficult parts is not just getting over them. Sometimes it results with ability to transform difficult relationships, to forgive, to reach deeper levels of communication with eg. difficult parents etc. What's mind changing is world changing. With all that said there's so many examples of meditation gone wrong, of doing things that are counterproductive etc. - there definitely are less and more smart ways to do it. And hopefully the marriage of Buddhism and the Western thought will result in further advances. I'm almost sure that neurofeedback will be of some help - we learn so much quicker if we have tight feedback loops, with immediate feedback it's almost like a game. Even in the paper you cite, the best results were achieved during the 'free play' phase, were one could play around interactively with the graph. In the meantime I recommend Culadasa's method because it's very precise, driven by joy and the articulate, clear style expands to the whole community, which can be helpful when someone gets stuck.