I do not quite like it when people refer to meditation as "new age bullshit", or accuse people who say it works of magical thinking.
When you go to a doctor, he prescribes you pills, and you believe that those pills will work. Why do you believe it? Because one person - the doctor - said so? Because there was a research done that proves that those pills work? Who told you there was a research done? People on the Internet? And you believe them? Why? Is it about sufficient amount of people before you start believing? Why don't you then become a Muslim or Christian - is there not a sufficient amount of religious people around? Or is it maybe about what the most people around you believe in?
I say until you study medicine and do the research yourself, all you can do is magical thinking that goes like this: "for some reason it works even though I don't know why". Then why is a person who says "I don't know why meditation works but it works" is accused of magical thinking and being silly?
In the end there is nothing mystical or magical in how meditation works. The basic technique of focusing on your breath - is simply an exercise drill in the ability to focus. It's focus training, nothing else! And it is not exercising staying focus, it is exercising bringing the focus back, and not understanding it is why many people give up on meditation thinking that they cannot stay without thoughts running through their head. Almost no one can. When you do muscle training you do not progress by trying to keep them flexed for maximum amount of time, you usually train them by doing repetitions. This is what the moment of bringing the focus back is - a repetition. The more times you bring the focus back, the better you become at it. The easier and faster you bring the focus back to what you are doing in your life, the more of your life you will spend in a focused state. And it goes without saying that a living in a focused state makes your life better.
Why focus on the breath, not something else - breath is the only thing in our body that we can do both voluntarily and involuntarily - you can control you breath, but when you stop you will not stop breathing, the body will take over. Therefore focusing on breath is especially efficient as it makes you constantly balance between two polarities: you do not want to go into doing mode and focus on controlling your breath, at the same time you don't want to go into watching mode where you space out like in front of the TV and start thinking about something else. It's simply tricky enough, and as a bonus it forces you to make some contact with your body (more about it below). And your breath is always with you, you can use it any time.
And now about how Vipassana works, the technique that comes from Buddha. Religion aside, the 10 day courses of Vipassana are nothing more than putting you in a very extreme and difficult prolonged situation (similar to a prison), where yes it is fucking hard to fulfill the expectations you had towards yourself when you joined. It's a set up for a failure. And of course in that hard situations everyone will freak out, and everyone will freak out in their specific ways, and of course it is your personal stuff that you would rather not deal with that will come up. And since you are not allowed to interact with people there, you are not allowed to read or write, you are not allowed to use any distractions, you are forced to actually deal with your emotional shit. And since all happens in a controlled almost sterile environment, where they even feed you, it is much easier to do it than it would be in a real stressful life. That's how people go through "spiritual transformations" in those courses. This "spirituality" is nothing more than ability to look into yourself, know your shit and deal with it.
I think that the actual Vipassana technique works in different way and - just as they say in the course - it is unlikely that someone will get a real benefit from it just after 10 days. So what is Vipassana - it is a kind of body scan. As it is now known to science, there are two kinds of long term memory - the explicit memory in hippocampus - a kind of registry of past events, as well as implicit memory - that is the way your whole body has been affected by your life. People have car accidents after which their body posture changes - the trauma gets trapped in the body. So what does body scan do - it brings the awareness to what is in the body, so that again - you can deal with that shit. As a bonus, you gain more awareness of your body, which lets you know far in advance when you are about to freak out or say or do something that you would regret and gives you a possibility not to do it. Yes, our body is a part of us! Something many people forget. Emotions start in the body, not in the head. They should really teach this in school.
Now why all this religious stuff around meditation. Well, this is where it historically evolved. And I think what is the other benefit of it is that it is easier to be brave when faced with your emotional shit when you entertain the possibility that there is a higher meaning behind it, that there is an entity that wants you to do it, that will guide you. It is simply the trick to believe that you can do it before you start trying - which, as we know, is super important for the outcome.
When you go to a doctor, he prescribes you pills, and you believe that those pills will work. Why do you believe it? Because one person - the doctor - said so? Because there was a research done that proves that those pills work? Who told you there was a research done? People on the Internet? And you believe them? Why? Is it about sufficient amount of people before you start believing? Why don't you then become a Muslim or Christian - is there not a sufficient amount of religious people around? Or is it maybe about what the most people around you believe in?
I say until you study medicine and do the research yourself, all you can do is magical thinking that goes like this: "for some reason it works even though I don't know why". Then why is a person who says "I don't know why meditation works but it works" is accused of magical thinking and being silly?
In the end there is nothing mystical or magical in how meditation works. The basic technique of focusing on your breath - is simply an exercise drill in the ability to focus. It's focus training, nothing else! And it is not exercising staying focus, it is exercising bringing the focus back, and not understanding it is why many people give up on meditation thinking that they cannot stay without thoughts running through their head. Almost no one can. When you do muscle training you do not progress by trying to keep them flexed for maximum amount of time, you usually train them by doing repetitions. This is what the moment of bringing the focus back is - a repetition. The more times you bring the focus back, the better you become at it. The easier and faster you bring the focus back to what you are doing in your life, the more of your life you will spend in a focused state. And it goes without saying that a living in a focused state makes your life better.
Why focus on the breath, not something else - breath is the only thing in our body that we can do both voluntarily and involuntarily - you can control you breath, but when you stop you will not stop breathing, the body will take over. Therefore focusing on breath is especially efficient as it makes you constantly balance between two polarities: you do not want to go into doing mode and focus on controlling your breath, at the same time you don't want to go into watching mode where you space out like in front of the TV and start thinking about something else. It's simply tricky enough, and as a bonus it forces you to make some contact with your body (more about it below). And your breath is always with you, you can use it any time.
And now about how Vipassana works, the technique that comes from Buddha. Religion aside, the 10 day courses of Vipassana are nothing more than putting you in a very extreme and difficult prolonged situation (similar to a prison), where yes it is fucking hard to fulfill the expectations you had towards yourself when you joined. It's a set up for a failure. And of course in that hard situations everyone will freak out, and everyone will freak out in their specific ways, and of course it is your personal stuff that you would rather not deal with that will come up. And since you are not allowed to interact with people there, you are not allowed to read or write, you are not allowed to use any distractions, you are forced to actually deal with your emotional shit. And since all happens in a controlled almost sterile environment, where they even feed you, it is much easier to do it than it would be in a real stressful life. That's how people go through "spiritual transformations" in those courses. This "spirituality" is nothing more than ability to look into yourself, know your shit and deal with it.
I think that the actual Vipassana technique works in different way and - just as they say in the course - it is unlikely that someone will get a real benefit from it just after 10 days. So what is Vipassana - it is a kind of body scan. As it is now known to science, there are two kinds of long term memory - the explicit memory in hippocampus - a kind of registry of past events, as well as implicit memory - that is the way your whole body has been affected by your life. People have car accidents after which their body posture changes - the trauma gets trapped in the body. So what does body scan do - it brings the awareness to what is in the body, so that again - you can deal with that shit. As a bonus, you gain more awareness of your body, which lets you know far in advance when you are about to freak out or say or do something that you would regret and gives you a possibility not to do it. Yes, our body is a part of us! Something many people forget. Emotions start in the body, not in the head. They should really teach this in school.
Now why all this religious stuff around meditation. Well, this is where it historically evolved. And I think what is the other benefit of it is that it is easier to be brave when faced with your emotional shit when you entertain the possibility that there is a higher meaning behind it, that there is an entity that wants you to do it, that will guide you. It is simply the trick to believe that you can do it before you start trying - which, as we know, is super important for the outcome.
