M # 06 Psychologist/Researcher ( being more aware of psychological changes) Documents His 3-Year Experience Of Meditation.

Extracted From The Book " Buddha Pill "

At the time I was actually weaning myself off meditation. For the past couple of years, it had been taking up quite a chunk of my time, often between two and three hours a day. More than relaxing or peaceful, it was deeply pleasurable, not unlike David Lynch’s description of experiencing meditation as ‘falling into bliss’. I’d get into a mental state where thoughts disappeared, like being in an empty room with all the blinds shut. Inexplicably, rather than being in a dull space where nothing happened, I would feel something I can only roughly describe as waves of blissful electricity moving through my body. There was a downside to it, though. Coming out of the meditation, I often felt I was hovering above reality and everyday concerns. Despite being able to control or even feel unattached from negative feelings – anger, sadness or frustration – I was shocked to find that, sometimes, this lack of attachment made me less sensitive and empathic to other people’s feelings. It was only when a friend joked I was becoming a ‘meditation junkie’ that the penny dropped. He was right; meditation was turning into a way of bypassing real life, or at least of avoiding the parts of it that were difficult or bitter. I had decided then to drastically reduce my practice.

From its early psychoanalytical beginnings, the goal of psychological therapy has also been about increasing awareness, bringing into the light what was previously hidden, unobserved or unacknowledged.  

Site comments : Detachment is the primary aim of eastern meditation. The most famous of meditator was Milarepa and this is what was written of him : 

Milarepa : Tibet’s Great Yogi
“ the mind passeth from consciousness (of objects) into a state of perfect tranquility, so that days, months and years may pass without the person the person himself perceiving it; thus the passing of time hath to be marked for him by others. This state is called shi-ney (tranquil rest )…. Thus by thought process and visualization, one treadeth the path.”
                   pg141, Oxfored Univ Press, 1971

Site comments : Detachment can be as extreme as Milarepa or as in the case of the above psychologist, being detached from negative feelings and being less sensitive to the feelings of others. Is this what you really want?  Biblical meditation not only avoids these problems but in the full assurance of God's infinite love enables us to confornt our weaknesses, faults and many presumptions that God may draw and heal us. This is cognitive therapy .... not of the mindfulness Buddhist genre.