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> I've experienced all these interpersonal deficits after meditating seriously 2 hours every day for 2 years straight. Wow! I haven't meditated before. That so

> I've experienced all these interpersonal deficits after meditating seriously 2 hours every day for 2 years straight. Wow! I haven't meditated before. That sounds like a lot of time. Do you still meditate? What does it offer you? Has it offered you what you expected?

2-718-281-828 5y ago
I'm also curious about an answer. If I may take a guess from my own experience. People from Western countries tend to start meditation practice with a specific goal in mind as opposed to just doing it naturally as it is part of the culture. For me a goal is gaining mental strength and balance. After meditating for a while I reach that goal (at least to some extent) and get overwhelmed by the energetic surplus. That leads to either distraction or simply investing this positivity into another goal (work, a project, social activities, ...) leaving me less motivated to further meditate (because it is less "fun" to sit still and work on your mind instead of doing something). After a while the energetic surplus is consumed and I am sooner or later mentally back to square one - because stopping the meditation also stopped the healing and reflection and I'm faced anew with old wounds destabilizing my mind.
- fjabre 5y ago
  A meditator is a someone. That someone is a product of duality. The wounds are part of the body and personality. They are not you. To come out of the duality we can leave the meditation open. It doesnt have to take any particular form and it should have no goal in mind. Objectless. It is this sense of beingness or presence that is a true meditation. It is the sense of existence which is the background of every other thing itself not perceivable to the senses. It remains constant throughout while everything else fades.
  - jackdawed 5y ago
    https://deconstructingyourself.com/do-nothing-meditation.html https://deconstructingyourself.com/do-nothing-meditation.htm...
pmoriarty 5y ago
"Do you still meditate? What does it offer you? Has it offered you what you expected?" I'm not the OP, but after I practiced meditation intensely for a few months I found two huge benefits: First: before I meditated I used to get annoyed and bored when I had to do chores like washing the dishes or standing in line. But after meditating for a while, when I had to do such a chore I'd just focus on my breath and I'd no longer feel bored or annoyed. In fact, such chores and waiting in line became almost pleasurable because they gave me an opportunity to meditate. Second: when someone said something mean to me I would just focus on my breath and sort of catch myself about to get angry and saw that I had a choice whether to get angry or not. I didn't have to get drawn in to the hurricane of feelings as an unconscious reaction to the meanness directed at me. Instead I could just continue to focus on my breath and I wouldn't get angry at all. Unfortunately, for some reason that I no longer remember, I fell off the wagon of meditating regularly and went back to my old easily bored, quick to anger self. I still try to meditate occasionally by focusing on my breath, but it doesn't help nearly as much as when I meditated regularly for hours at a time.
- minimoose 5y ago
  I've had the same experience, but using the sauna regularly has helped spark resistance to the mundane.
  - ollifi 5y ago
    I don’t know where you are from but seeing sauna gain popularity outside Finland and Estonia lately has been refreshing. It is commonplace thing here and I don’t think we attach so much theory or consider ”using” it for any particular reason because it is so mundane. Maybe if you intentionally have to go to lengths to do it then you also think about the meaning of doing it more deeply. Not to be rude, but to expand how this sounds to me - It’s like going to shower to incorporate shower thoughts to be part of your daily routine. Which is profound but at the same time somehow narrow view of the whole routine and tradition of having showers.
- d3fault 5y ago
  I've had a bit of a similar experience in reference to the mundane. As a kid, I absolutely hated doing the dishes or laundry (as most kids do). However, around when I turned 19 I started listening to music (sometimes a podcast) while doing the dishes and everything changed. I realized I can basically mentally automate the process of doing dishes, and almost completely shut my brain off. I'm a habitual over-thinker and usually quite anxious, so this was absolutely amazing for me. Its gotten to the point now where I almost get excited to do the dishes. I personally don't consider what I was doing meditation, but I wouldn't be surprised if I accidentally mimic'd some meditation-like behaviors to aid in this.
jackdawed 5y ago
I still meditate daily, but more in a maintenance manner, the same way a power lifter goes to the gym out of habit, for health, without the goal of setting new PRs. Most of the time, my mind meditates itself automatically. I am very good at deep work, and concentrating on stuff. It is also easy to deal with stress and emotions in my day to day. My life feels like playing a third person video game with the FOV slider turned to 360 degrees. Every sensation comes discretely where I can see the beginning and end. 1 second is a really long time, enough room to fit 1000s of sensations, bounded only by your speed of perception. I am aware of how my mind constructs the concept of time, the idea of later. The cool part about hitting stages of enlightenment is that there is a quantum shift in how your brain processes, that I know I cannot regress to a previous stage. But I wonder if awakening is built from physical, neural correlates, then things like dementia or a traumatic brain injury might reverse some of the effects. Another interesting note is that I have a much higher pain tolerance, as well as sort of better control of my body movements. I know some people describe enlightenment as a full body transformation, not just the mind. One thing that is keeping me from progressing further is the inconvenience that comes with sleep alterations caused by meditation, and how it affects my work as a programmer. I still have obligations to participate in modern society, pay bills, keep relationships, etc. And I know if I didn't do this, I would be perfectly content doing nothing all day, just meditating. It's why retreats and the monastic life is so conductive to awakening. Maybe this is the ultimate FIRE goal, I'm just working on the FI :) For the record, the Buddha has never advocated leaving society, especially lay followers. Whether we are a monk, at a retreat, in a family, we all have a duty to be a wise citizen.
- adnmcq999 5y ago
  Big if true
  - dEnigma 5y ago
    Big "if"
    - danuker 4y ago
      true

2-718-281-828 5y ago

I'm also curious about an answer. If I may take a guess from my own experience. People from Western countries tend to start meditation practice with a specific goal in mind as opposed to just doing it naturally as it is part of the culture. For me a goal is gaining mental strength and balance. After meditating for a while I reach that goal (at least to some extent) and get overwhelmed by the energetic surplus. That leads to either distraction or simply investing this positivity into another goal (work, a project, social activities, ...) leaving me less motivated to further meditate (because it is less "fun" to sit still and work on your mind instead of doing something). After a while the energetic surplus is consumed and I am sooner or later mentally back to square one - because stopping the meditation also stopped the healing and reflection and I'm faced anew with old wounds destabilizing my mind.

fjabre 5y ago
A meditator is a someone. That someone is a product of duality. The wounds are part of the body and personality. They are not you. To come out of the duality we can leave the meditation open. It doesnt have to take any particular form and it should have no goal in mind. Objectless. It is this sense of beingness or presence that is a true meditation. It is the sense of existence which is the background of every other thing itself not perceivable to the senses. It remains constant throughout while everything else fades.
- jackdawed 5y ago
  https://deconstructingyourself.com/do-nothing-meditation.html https://deconstructingyourself.com/do-nothing-meditation.htm...

pmoriarty 5y ago

"Do you still meditate? What does it offer you? Has it offered you what you expected?" I'm not the OP, but after I practiced meditation intensely for a few months I found two huge benefits: First: before I meditated I used to get annoyed and bored when I had to do chores like washing the dishes or standing in line. But after meditating for a while, when I had to do such a chore I'd just focus on my breath and I'd no longer feel bored or annoyed. In fact, such chores and waiting in line became almost pleasurable because they gave me an opportunity to meditate. Second: when someone said something mean to me I would just focus on my breath and sort of catch myself about to get angry and saw that I had a choice whether to get angry or not. I didn't have to get drawn in to the hurricane of feelings as an unconscious reaction to the meanness directed at me. Instead I could just continue to focus on my breath and I wouldn't get angry at all. Unfortunately, for some reason that I no longer remember, I fell off the wagon of meditating regularly and went back to my old easily bored, quick to anger self. I still try to meditate occasionally by focusing on my breath, but it doesn't help nearly as much as when I meditated regularly for hours at a time.

minimoose 5y ago
I've had the same experience, but using the sauna regularly has helped spark resistance to the mundane.
- ollifi 5y ago
  I don’t know where you are from but seeing sauna gain popularity outside Finland and Estonia lately has been refreshing. It is commonplace thing here and I don’t think we attach so much theory or consider ”using” it for any particular reason because it is so mundane. Maybe if you intentionally have to go to lengths to do it then you also think about the meaning of doing it more deeply. Not to be rude, but to expand how this sounds to me - It’s like going to shower to incorporate shower thoughts to be part of your daily routine. Which is profound but at the same time somehow narrow view of the whole routine and tradition of having showers.
d3fault 5y ago
I've had a bit of a similar experience in reference to the mundane. As a kid, I absolutely hated doing the dishes or laundry (as most kids do). However, around when I turned 19 I started listening to music (sometimes a podcast) while doing the dishes and everything changed. I realized I can basically mentally automate the process of doing dishes, and almost completely shut my brain off. I'm a habitual over-thinker and usually quite anxious, so this was absolutely amazing for me. Its gotten to the point now where I almost get excited to do the dishes. I personally don't consider what I was doing meditation, but I wouldn't be surprised if I accidentally mimic'd some meditation-like behaviors to aid in this.

jackdawed 5y ago

I still meditate daily, but more in a maintenance manner, the same way a power lifter goes to the gym out of habit, for health, without the goal of setting new PRs. Most of the time, my mind meditates itself automatically. I am very good at deep work, and concentrating on stuff. It is also easy to deal with stress and emotions in my day to day. My life feels like playing a third person video game with the FOV slider turned to 360 degrees. Every sensation comes discretely where I can see the beginning and end. 1 second is a really long time, enough room to fit 1000s of sensations, bounded only by your speed of perception. I am aware of how my mind constructs the concept of time, the idea of later. The cool part about hitting stages of enlightenment is that there is a quantum shift in how your brain processes, that I know I cannot regress to a previous stage. But I wonder if awakening is built from physical, neural correlates, then things like dementia or a traumatic brain injury might reverse some of the effects. Another interesting note is that I have a much higher pain tolerance, as well as sort of better control of my body movements. I know some people describe enlightenment as a full body transformation, not just the mind. One thing that is keeping me from progressing further is the inconvenience that comes with sleep alterations caused by meditation, and how it affects my work as a programmer. I still have obligations to participate in modern society, pay bills, keep relationships, etc. And I know if I didn't do this, I would be perfectly content doing nothing all day, just meditating. It's why retreats and the monastic life is so conductive to awakening. Maybe this is the ultimate FIRE goal, I'm just working on the FI :) For the record, the Buddha has never advocated leaving society, especially lay followers. Whether we are a monk, at a retreat, in a family, we all have a duty to be a wise citizen.

adnmcq999 5y ago
Big if true
- dEnigma 5y ago
  Big "if"
  - danuker 4y ago
    true