Why meditation doesn't solve your problems (unless)

[Carl-Richard]

I wrote a MSc on using mindfulness (with music) to treat rumination (persistent, repetitive, self-focused, negative thoughts).

I had this belief before I started writing, and it was only strengthened, that 90% of cases where rumination is a serious issue have to be solved through changes in choices or life situation. If you hate your job, quit your job. That's actually where your rumination comes from. That's the root of the problem. Of course your mind will tell you when there is something you're doing that is wrong. That's its job. Using mindfulness techniques to distract you from the symptoms of that root problem will only provide that; fleeting and moderate symptom relief. Which can be useful for dealing with the root and eventually getting to a different place where your mind has no longer a reason to throw up two middle fingers, but you have to indeed deal with the root for that to occur.

The only exception is when you use mindfulness to wildy transform your psychology, which means intense devotion and practice, meditating a minimum 1 hour a day with the goal of literally cracking your mind into small pieces. Such intense devotion and practice will itself be such an expression of being integrated with your own wants and desires that rumination does not happen; what happens instead is intense obsession and even manic states (which is just the opposite side of the coin: rumination with positive instead of negative thoughts just means obsessive-compulsive manic thinking). If you're doing something you don't want to do, rumination happens. If it's something you want to do, obsession happens.

I'll make sure to bring this understanding into where I'll be doing my work, that there is a difference between "clinical" meditation/mindfulness which you do for 5 minutes where you want to forget that your life sucks and you are too scared to do anything about it, vs "religious" meditation/mindfulness which is about essentially transcending your human mind and destroying the very thing that thinks those thoughts (the illusory ego identification).

That said, the study had positive results and we will be publishing it soon.

Edited Saturday at 10:34 PM by Carl-Richard

[aurum]

5 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

That said, the study had positive results and we will be publishing it soon.

Nice work, congrats.