I decided to start going to a therapist for some issues I've encountered over the years. He took my background information and immediately dove into an entire diatribe about meditation. Without addressing a single thing I actually said. The thing is, I've attempted meditation over the years. Not only had I already read all of his recommended source material AND watched the videos he recommended, but I knew other sources that I rattled off to him as well, including entire books on controlled breathing. I spent 2 years with it and never got anywhere.
It does not work for me and I'm not putting myself through it again. I've got three or four separate trains of thought going on at all times. It's impossible to put a cork in all of them, it isn't helpful, and it's about as useful as prayer is to an atheist.
Asking someone who has been abused as a child to instead stare into the abyss is a cop-out. Meditation as a solution to depression and anxiety doesn't bring me calm. It makes me angry.
It reminds me of: years ago I came across a book profiling the journey of a young western Jewish man seeking a path in Zen Buddhism, studying under gurus with other seekers in monasteries. As he progressed through his meditative practice he couldn't avoid feeling unsettled by the sense that none of it was "working" for him no matter how deeply he understood and how much he practiced. The gurus all just kept trying to help him improve his practice. Until he came to the most enlightened and compassionate guru who basically let him off the hook, saying, in essence, that this stuff will never stick to him and that he's just meant to practice Judaism.
It is not impossible for all to learn this type of 'skill'. It is more difficult for many, and impossible for some.
I believe we can learn languages by (1) concentrating on mimicking and (2) learning by speaking with others and being continuously corrected by others.
The problem is that is requires a tremendous amount of work for learner and teacher.
Think how a baby or child learns and do as much of that as possible.
Initially absolutely avoid all reading, and totally avoid learning any rules.
Improve your general ability of mimicking skills e.g. by copying singers and songs, by copying famous people in the foreign language, mimicking accents or people in your own mother tongue.
People with English as their mother tongue have some advantages - we actually recognise a huge variety of vowel sounds because various English accents contain them - we also have familiarity with a variety of grammatical constructs. We also know pronunciation and writing are completely disjoint: anyone coming from a language where you say what you read has a big disadvantage.
Much of my belief comes from talking with people that have English as their second language, and looking for their successes and failures. Some people learn English well and it's interesting to look for why them? Some mistakes are common to particular groups and it's interesting to look for the root cause.
I have applied some of the above to teach myself conversational Spanish. To test my beliefs I'm definitely keen to move onto something more difficult ( I'm middle aged): the block is that I will need to dedicate many months of effort living in another country.
I’ve meditated on and off, and find it sometimes helpful, but I can’t conceive of what it would mean for it to work, or not work.
It did not. I never felt any real benefit from it and I didn't enjoy the process. So to me, that's "not working."
What's your motivation for meditating? Is it something that you can tell afterwards whether you achieved it or not? And I'm not talking 'achieve' like some sigma grindset maximizing gains type BS, I mean the way if I play a video game, I'm doing it because I expect to have fun, and afterwards I can ask myself "was that fun?" and gauge the degree to which I had fun.
The only times I do clear my mind intentionally now are the times when I am waiting. Kinda like fast-traveling to the future in video games (or, indeed, meditation mechanic in Witcher games). Makes airport experience a lot better, actually.
Meditation is a tool, and no tool is useful for everyone. And some folk don't use the tool as intended.
But for others who maybe have struggled with it but haven't entirely sworn it off, I wanted to offer the following thoughts.
> It's impossible to put a cork in all of them
I know you know this given your background, but for others reading, the point of meditation isn't to silence your mind. It's one of the most confusing things about meditation at first, and it often sends people into an anxiety feedback loop. People notice their mind isn't being silenced and start to feel like a failure for not silencing it, which makes their mind less silent etc. I have an anxious kid, and this fear feedback loop is the hardest part.
But really, stripping away the traditional/religious background, IMO the main thing is activating the parasympathetic nervous system in a controlled way. Putting aside relatively abnormal cases, if one is angry or anxious then one hasn't successfully activated the parasympathetic nervous system, even if one is sitting in a meditation posture and trying to focus on the breath. So this it's pretty easy to tell whether you're deploying this skill successfully.
From trial and error, I've found that asking people to breathe out slowly is the least error prone method to get people to successfully activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Sometimes it helps to take a breath, hold it for a few seconds and then breathe out slowly. Other methods, like telling people to take a deep breath I've found to be less effective and more prone to errors. (For example, some people try to breathe hard or fast or even hyperventilate).
Once you can do that reliably and habitually, then you can start promoting other skills, like watching your mind without judgment. But I'm not sure it helps to, for example, non-judgmentally watch yourself have a panic attack. So IMO the ability to step back from the brink should come first for a lot of people, and then the harder skills should be built on a foundation where you know you have the ability to intervene if you need to.
