excerpts from Ken Wilbur..... Every old-timer in the contemplative game knows this is true-that growth is usually uneven. But some say the neurotic bits are actual regressions: a person made a real advance in meditation but then, seduced by samsara, abandoned it and got caught up in neurosis. Others say that meditation actually scoops up hidden, compacted neuroses in the advanced practitioner, making him or her suddenly and mysteriously become a jerk. Do you think there is any truth is such views? I think of each of those points you mentioned is sometimes true. People often do make real progress in meditation, only to abandon it because the demands are too great. And when they return to their old ways, their neurosis is even worse, because they have the same old problem but now their sensitivity is increased, so it simply hurts even more. Your second scenario is also common. Particularly at advanced stages of meditation, the really deeply buried complexes start to become exposed to awareness. Advanced practitioners can become very exaggerated people, because they have already worked through all the smooth and easy problems, and all that is left are the karmas from when you murdered twenty nuns in your last lifetime. Im sort of kidding, but you get the idea: some really deep-seated problems can rush to the surface in advanced practice, and this can confuse people, because this does not look like progress. But its sort of like frostbite: at first you dont feel anything, because youre frozen. You dont even think you have a problem. But then you start to warm up the frozen part, and it hurts like hell. The cure, the warming up, is horrible. Advanced meditation is especially a fast warming up, a waking up, and it usually hurts like hell. But you have some other scenarios as to why things can go bad in meditation. Yes, the idea is that, as we were saying, development consists of several different streams that develop through the basic stages or waves of consciousness unfolding. The great wisdom traditions tend to emphasize two or three of these streams, such as the cognitive (awareness), the spiritual (and moral), the higher affect (love and compassion). But they tend to neglect other streams, such as emotional, interpersonal, relationships, and conventional interactions. Thus, as you tend to make progress in some of these streams-perhaps the meditative/cognitive-you can become a little unbalanced in your overall development. Other developmental lines become neglected, withered, atrophied. Your psyche is saddled with one giant and a dozen pygmies. And the more your meditation practice advances, the worse the imbalance becomes. You start to get very weird, and you are told to increase your meditative effort, and pretty soon you come apart at the seams like a cheap suit. Yes?
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 05:04:32 +0000
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