Open thread, August 14 - August 20, 2017

Thomas

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

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1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

4. Unflag the two options "Notify me of new top level comments on this article" and "Make this post available under..." before submitting

People who become passionate about meditation tend to say that the hardest part is encountering "dark things in your mind".

What do meditators mean by this?

There are stages in meditation when painful thoughts and memories might come bubbling up. If you're just sitting still with your mind and have nothing to distract you, you may occasionally end up facing some past trauma, especially if you've previously avoided dealing with it and have e.g. tried to just distract yourself from it whenever it came up.

(This is not necessarily a negative anything in the long run, since facing those negative thoughts can help in getting over them.)

3moridinamael9y

Possibly they mean more than one thing, but the primary concept that jumps to mind is known as the "dark night". The aim of many meditation practices is to become aware of the contents of consciousness to the extent that those contents lose any emotional valence and become meaningless objects. In the long term this makes the meditator extremely equanimous and calm and detached, in a good way. In the medium term, before the changes have properly sunk in, it can result in a semi-detachment from reality where everything seems meaningless but in a very bad way. I think I may have touched the edges of such phenomena. It is indeed unpleasant, and probably contributed to my cutting down my meditation by a lot.

0Elo9y

What if you discovered that a part of your brain doesn't like when your friends are happier than you? What if you discovered a part of your brain just wants to wirehead itself? What if you discovered a part of your brain that likes to come up with ideas about how horrible you are and then meditation only causes you to pay attention to those thoughts?