A helpful concept from Thomas Keating is "the evacuation of the unconscious". The idea is that it is normal to have painful thoughts arise into our consciousness when we enter into meditation. It is common in ordinary life to get into the habit of filling one's life with noise and distraction, in order to keep sources of anxiety or other negative emotions at bay. Meditation lessens the noise and distraction, which has the natural effect of making room for the suppressed thoughts and emotions to pop up. In meditation practice one learns to gently refrain from engaging with emotionally charged material, noticing it with objectivity and detachment, letting it pass by, and returning to a state of calm wordless awareness. In the natural course of events, suppressed fears and anxieties are much less powerful when looked at consciously and rationally. One ends up taking them less seriously, and consequently they tend to lessen in terms of their ability to cause unhappiness. Circling back to the point of the OP, if an attempt at meditation practice starts causing psychotic episodes or anything of that nature, don't do it. That's just common sense.
Meditation takes practice and you've got to learn to forgive yourself for having your mind veer away. It's part of the process. Nobody expects to sit there without having them, not even those that have practiced meditation for decades.
It's not about shutting those thoughts up at all. It's about recognizing those thoughts as they begin to enter your mind and using the meditation as a tool to either embrace those thoughts (sometimes we need to) but recognizing they likely aren't our reality and are likely just thoughts from past experiences or future expectations. It's your reaction to those thoughts that is really important and a lot of us who don't meditate tend to ruminate on things that we know aren't beneficial to us. It helps you learn to control that better.
I'd recommend following guided meditations, I specifically enjoy metta (kindness) meditation. Your instructor will occasionally tell you to allow those thoughts in so that you can get better at recognizing them as what they are, just thoughts, not something you have to act upon or believe. Then they'll typically have to go back to focusing on your breath which will make those thoughts disappear, even if only for a short time.
It takes practice. Don't fault yourself for not being a meditation guru. Nobody is. Just be kind and accepting to yourself as it happens. There's no rush. Some of my meditation sessions are much worse than others, just like my workouts.
After a month of daily meditation (which I'm unfortunately not doing lately) I become such a calm person. I still get that twinge of anger when someone cuts me off or traffics bad but I notice it as soon as it starts to enter my mind and I can control my output FAR better. Usually I just go "oh, that happened, it's out of my control, what I can control is my reaction to it."
I think there's another way to attack the problem. I assume that the anger is arising for good reason, that it is (or at least was) helpful to human creatures. So it may be really difficult or impossible to prevent the anger from arising.
But when you meditate, one thing you slowly but deeply learn is that your thoughts are not you. Thoughts that bring you happiness arise even when you didn't ask them to, and you want them to stay forever, but they don't. Thoughts that make you feel bad arise even though you obviously didn't want them to, and you try to make them go away, but they stay as long as they want. But they eventually go.
So over time, as meditation practice develops, it can be as if you build a second mind behind the first mind, and you live in that more quiet mind, watching the first mind, seeing, e.g., wow, OK, there is anger in the mind. But there's a distance because you know it's not you. It's there but it doesn't move you so much.
As one begins meditation one becomes more aware of their thoughts and feelings. If one has been suppressing "negative" thoughts and feelings those will start to come to the forefront and may seem overwhelming. As a potential solution the article recommends working with a guided meditation either live with a teacher, or a recorded one. This is a great ideas as one develops the capacity to become comfortable with discomfort.
It's not really about nixing unhappy thoughts. A lot of people misunderstand that as the purpose of meditation. It's possible to get into bliss states through some form of concentration exercises, and among my friends, we call them bliss junkies.
Rather, it's the avoidance of unhappy emotions and thoughts that create distortions, leading to neurotic emotional and mental patterns. These emotions and thoughts will arise on their own regardless of how you try to suppress them (and often times, suppressing them will make them grow stronger).
The basic practice is very simple at it's core: what arises will arises, what passes will pass. So when it arises, you allow it to arise -- and remain aware. When it passes, you let it go -- and remain aware.
As things that have normally been suppressed start surfacing up, it's as if you are "sweating out" these toxic thoughts. It will get worse before it gets better.
It goes deeper than that, since detoxifying isn't the ultimate aim either. It's the direct experience that what you think of as "self" is really an illusion. It's only after that, that things start get really interesting.
I rave about meditation, not because it makes me feel nice but because it's an antidote to the psychologically toxic and maladaptive thoughts that pop, unbidden, into my consciousness.
On a light note: There is a difference between micro-wave meditation and slow-cook meditation! Personally, I'm a slow-cook kind of guy. This article seems to be describing various ways to short-cut or accelerate the process, and I'm not sure of the wisdom of that game plan.
One important aspect of meditation practice for me has been the gentle unpacking of suppressed trauma. Thomas Keating refers to this as the evacuation of the unconscious. In my experience this is an evaporative process. With gentleness and patience, this process happens naturally and organically over time.
Inner psychological defenses and coping mechanisms tend to fade away as they become less needed, because the inner demons they were containing have evaporated and are no longer lurking in one's subconscious. But trying to accelerate the process and crash the door down before one is ready via some artificial short-cut may not be advisable for some people.
The way I like to explain meditation aimed at samatha it is that your mind is like a busy room full of conversations, and as you meditate, the conversations go quiet one by one, until there are just a few left. The ones left, the stubborn, uncooperative ones, are often the least pleasant. They are the ugly thoughts, the scary thoughts. And because you've let all your other thoughts go quiet, the unpleasant voices are now filling up the whole room. Before, you might not have been able to really hear them over the noise, but now even whispers ring out loud and clear. You can't make them shut up, and you aren't supposed to initiate new thoughts to refute them. You are only supposed to observe. In this way, a meditation session can, on a bad day, turn into sitting and listening to all your worst thoughts echo inside your head, not through any mistake, but as a natural consequence of how meditation works, especially for a beginner.
I don't know of any traditional meditation practice that claims to provide immediate benefit for a novice. It is presented as a skill that yields results through sustained development and practice, and difficulties are expected along the way. People presenting it as a quick and easy way to improve mood are the same kind of people who promote fad diets.
I meditate daily, and I'm part of a community that encourages it, but only after a thorough process of mental housecleaning. If you're full of un-dealt-with bitterness, anxiety, resentment, guilt, restlessness, shame, etc.—to say nothing of untreated mental illness or trauma—yeah, meditation is going to be a supremely unpleasant experience. Shutting out all distractions is only comfortable if you haven't been using those distractions to keep from having to deal with life.
I am agreeing with the other comment(s) here asking if you could explain further how has meditation specifically helped you? And what/how do you meditate?
I too feel that there's another happy universe inside my head were I to distract myself to believe in another reality. But it's just biological facts that come to maul me and digesting uncomfortable thoughts by yourself is not very efficient way of solving the issue. I am not living up to my potential and the momentary voices, although painful, are a reminder to me that I have to change something to feel good about myself. I think in the heart of it is the need for a constant validation through something, other people's love and affection mostly, that you can feel that your life is worth living.
In the sense same thing (maybe) that you can do with meditation and keep those positive neural pathways from growing shut.
>Spending your meditation time pondering your "issues" is the biggest rookie mistake you can make
This is worth repeating. This is a silent practice, and while thoughts may arise (and very interesting ones, too!) learning to let them go, and remain (mentally) silent was perhaps the biggest obstacle to progress for me personally. Not sure if mental silence is a cause or effect of meditation, but it's the closest thing to real happiness I've experienced.
"As far as your own inner conflicts are concerned, if you use meditation simply as a quick fix to superficially appease your emotions, you temporarily enjoy a pleasant deferral of these inner conflicts. But as you rightly say, these cosmetic changes have not reached the root of the problem.
Merely putting problems to sleep for a while or trying to forcibly suppress strong emotions will not help either. You are just keeping a time bomb ticking somewhere in a corner of your mind.
True meditation, however, is not just taking a break. It is not simply closing one’s eyes to the problem for a while. Meditation goes to the root of the problem. You need to become aware of the destructive aspect of compulsive attachment and all of the conflictive mental states that you mentioned. They are destructive in the sense of undermining your happiness and that of others, and to counteract them you need more than just a calming pill. Meditation practice offers many kinds of antidotes.
"
People should also be aware that meditation, while generally beneficial, does not always have a benign effect on the mind. Look up "meditation induced psychosis".
When I got started with meditation a couple of years ago, I used to really find it hard to sit and concentrate. Random thoughts used to come to my mind and some of them were extremely uncomfortable.
So the first thing that came to mind was to try and stop thoughts willfully. Needless to say, that was a recipe for disaster. Fighting with thoughts led to me greater distress and irritation. Meditation was supposed to calm me, and exactly the opposite was happening. It was getting more and more restless, irritated, and angry ever day.
We are so used to taking up things like a task "that needs to be done perfectly". The worst part is that we also start judging ourselves for not being able to meditate properly. I was treating meditation as a hard task that needs to be done efficiently.
Now when I look back, I realize that I was falling into the same old trap due to the past conditioning. It's so fascinating what our minds are capable of.
So I decided to create a video about this, where I talk about the common mistakes beginners make when starting meditation.
I know a lot of you are much more experienced and knowledgable than me. Maybe, you guys can shed more light on this topic and help learn more.
Regarding negative feelings after meditation, I am grateful that you mentioned it because I had these too and this is the first time I've heard from anyone with a similar experience.
I took up regular meditation last Spring, sitting 30-40 minutes daily in my best approximation of zazen. I found the meditation quite relaxing and on some days I felt much better afterwards or had small insights about my life. Other days were not so pleasant. I believe I experienced a sharper awareness of the stress I felt at work (which in the past I would have denied feeling at all) and I was much more likely to notice when I became distracted at work, resulting in growing frustration and anxiety. I think it also made me more aware of the shallowness of my relationships with my coworkers and my own reluctance to engage with them.
Overall I suppose it's been a positive and educational experience.
Well, part of the problem meditation addresses is the desire to control one’s thoughts - which is usually counter productive. The more one tries to control and fight what is, the more pain that usually results.
It’s usually more productive to notice them, notice their nature, and let them go when and where they do not serve your interests. With a small pat on the head, and some not small amount of empathy and caring.
Which is hard of course, especially when there are real reasons for them. But if they do not help, it’s better for everyone.
Strongly disagree. There's more to meditation than just sitting quietly. I'd say it's more analogous to breaking out of a sandboxed VM and gaining read/write access to the underlying OS and kernel.
My personal anecdote - I developed a difficult-to-control, anxiety-inducing thought* while dabbling in meditation a couple of years ago. I experienced a week or two worth of extreme anxiety, and had a panic attack. To this day, the obsessive thought is still with me and causes occasional distress. I can't say with certainty that the meditation practice was the cause, but the timing coincides, and I've never experienced anything like this prior to the meditation practice.
* not exactly a thought, but I'm not quite sure what to call it. It's more of an involuntary, difficult-to-control channeling of my focus/perception toward sensations which I perceive as uncomfortable and disturbing.
I've tried to start meditating a couple of times in my life but every time after a couple of days instead of being introduced to gradual calm/bliss/joy/whatever I get met with an existential dread, sadness, anxiety, melancholy etc. I guess am naturally predisposed to those as well, much more than 'happy' feelings. I had to then take a week or even more to recover. I feel like you need to have your shit together so to speak before you try meditating or it might uncover some suppressed trauma or whatever it is. I must say though I am way more 'aware' of my body and emotions more than before, but the problem is they might not be pleasant. It is okay when the feeling is transitory but an existential dread which lasts for days or weeks feels impossible to shake off, it consumes your whole life. One day I hope to be able to swing the pendulum in the other way.
reply