Thank you for joining in, Helena.
I would like to offer a scenario to counter your feeling about collective meditation environments, as well as the possible impact of meditation on individuals who have not integrated their own emotional and psychological dimensions. In both cases, this scenario brings out a different dimension that is simply about trust, rather than emotions, psychological makeup, or feelings of community support.
I want to do this because the direct experiences that are expected to occur in traditional meditation fundamentally break our trust in our own understanding — about ourselves and the entire context of our lives. That is how these techniques accomplish their goal — to bring us to an understanding of our true nature.
These experiences are neither a feeling, nor an imbalance in our psychological balance — although the resulting loss of trust affects both. Instead, these are events that should not have occurred if our understanding is valid. So here goes:
One day, after decades of marriage, you discover your spouse has been having a long-term affair with someone else.
These direct meditative experiences are like that in their impact upon us. And it is in the void of lost trust that an explanation of what happened is necessary — in a broken marriage, and in traditional meditation. And as I pointed out in this essay, it is that explanation which is unavailable in secular contexts.
Having a unique perspective, when accompanied by an understanding outside the mainstream, is diagnosed as mental illness according to the DSM-V (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) That is the issue — if we let science rule the arguments relating to meditation and its “dangers,” we participate in allowing victims to be blamed for what befalls them in a secular meditation context. This isn’t a call to insist upon the wholesale adoption of religious doctrines, it’s a call to be honest about the cause of the potential dangers inherent in extracting traditional techniques that worked within a particular support structure.
If you read the linked articles about research into the dangers of meditation, you will see the story about the woman who sought out medical help for the issues she was experiencing because of her meditation. She was subjected to electro-shock treatments to bring “her back to reality.” That sent chills down my back the first time I read it.
