MEDITATION IN PSYCHOTHERAPY FORUM ARCHIVE
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Re:Does Meditation Have Detrimental Effects?
Noah Cutler · 11/14/00 at 11:58 ET
Finding a teacher skilled in meditation practice is quite helpful at first, but I've found the guidance of teachers to be of little use in the long run. Sure, a teacher can help motivate you to go beyond what you think you are, but eventually the motivation to deepening self-understanding has to come from within. The 'detrimental' experiences that can arise in meditation are only detrimental in one's relationship to them. Of course, psychotic breakdowns can occur in response to intensive meditation practice, but this is an issue one must consider before taking up a practice--am I strong enough to encounter the unknown in myself? For this reason having a teacher in the beginning is both helpful and necessary. ---No Escape Comments to sit1way@hotmail.com
As far as a teacher can help one in working through the various difficulties that inevitably arise in one's practice, I can't say that their interventions have been particularly helpful--neither have the suggestions of experienced psychotherapists. Why is this? Another can never know what is happening in oneself. In the final analysis one can only rely on one's own inner yearning toward healing and self-understanding. A teacher is as much in the dark as the student is regarding the student's predicament. At best it's an agreement to calmly and persistently go into the unpleasant areas of one's experience; in so doing, one is eventually renewed.
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