What Meditation Really Is
I wanted to get your take on meditation. Is it something you do?
It’s a dear practice to me. I think it’s been hijacked. So it’s been marketed as a relaxation tool and it’s just not designed as that. It’s not a relaxation tool. The whole point of meditation and the reason that it came about, if we look into the horse’s mouth and Buddhist philosophy is that it’s to undo the illusion of self.
The Real Outcome of Deep Practice
I had a chat with a guy called Daniel Ingram who is a emergency medicine doctor who’s basically completed meditation, spent multiple months in retreat and he’s now achieved the outcome. He’s undone the illusion of self and he lives in a functionally different brain state to most people.
He says a lot of people will if they’re hyper responders to meditation and they just start without having that context, they can end up finding themselves in really deep water because they’re having experiences that they think are then becoming psychotic and they’re not able to place why this is happening. It’s because you’ve started someone on a path of undoing a lot of the basic fabric of their belief structures without giving them adequate warning that this is what you’re doing.
It’s been marketed as a relaxation tool and it’s just not designed as that. The whole point, if we look into the horse’s mouth and Buddhist philosophy, is to undo the illusion of self.
Starting a Safe Practice
Do some reading about it. Make sure that it is a thread that you want to start pulling on before starting a practice. Don’t think that because it’s sitting quietly on a cushion that it’s safe. I don’t think anything is 100% safe. I’d recommend looking at a book called “Mindfulness in Plain English” by Bhante Gunaratana. It’s a very accessible book on that.
And then if it’s something that you’re keen on, then just start with an app. I’m sure any Insight Timer, Calm, any of those things, just to dip your toe into it. And then once you’re comfortable with the practice and you know where it’s taking you, then you can take the stabilizers off and go full in.
Completing Meditation as a Goal
I’ve never heard someone talk about almost completing meditation like a video game. I’ve never heard of that as a possibility. I just always presumed wrongly that it was one of these journeys that you never saw the end of. There was always more to discover.
It’s something very few people in the world have done but we can see the functional correlates in the fMRIs of people that there are a few people who are who have submitted themselves to science and said look I’ve done 10,000 hours of meditation and now my subjective experience is fundamentally different like my phenomenology is flipped on its head and they and rightly you look at their brains and you can actually see that there is very little blood flow in the default mode network and there is a lot of activity in the tasking network. Most people it’s the other way around. So these people who have completed meditation brain looks like somebody who is on a psychedelic drug but just constantly.
What the Shift Actually Feels Like
Daniel Ingram talks about his experience as being decentralized. So he says if there’s a glass of water over there previously prior to this shift happening the glass of water was there the sensory input was coming to here and then it was being processed and then it was being projected back out onto there. So he’s okay I’m over here and the glass water’s over there. Now the water is just there and there’s no processor here. If it’s raining outside the rain is happening there. It’s not happening bouncing off here.
These people who have completed meditation – their brain looks like somebody who is on a psychedelic drug but just constantly.
Different Approaches for Different People
What most people are trying to get out of meditation, which is really the relaxation and a bit of distance from their thoughts, I would start with a gentle breath work practice or lying relaxation like progressive muscle relaxation. That’s more efficient and it carries less risk than deep introspective meditation.
If you are someone who per perhaps has some unresolved trauma or maybe you’re looking into that in other areas, maybe that’s not the type of thing that you necessarily want to. That’s more anxiety-inducing, isn’t it? Rather than the other way around. If there’s a chance that you’re going to be dealing with trauma, it’s always good to work through that with a professional in a safe space with someone who’s experienced and can guide you through that. So I’m a big advocate of therapy.
What to Expect at Each Stage of Practice
- 100 hours: Less stress, less anxiety, less fear, more focus, optimism
- 1,000 hours: Sense of being driven and aware and intuitive, reduced need for sleep, increased capacity to experience love, higher pain tolerance, sharper concentration, improved emotional sensitivity
- 5,000 hours: Much of the ego dissolves, very little attachment to any point of view, deep feelings of peace will pop up and stay for unpredictable amounts of time, boredom never occurs
Don’t think that because it’s sitting quietly on a cushion that it’s safe. Make sure that it is a thread that you want to start pulling on before starting a practice.