Can meditation cause harm?

[redchartreuse]

I do agree with you that it's a bit odd that while there are constant suggestions to meditate with very little suggestion as to how to do so.

Yes, it kind of reminds me of the constant suggestions attributed to Jesus in the Bible to "forgive" without any clear instruction about how to go about doing that. I mean, I'd love to just snap my fingers and forgive everything and everyone, but in practice I tend to not find forgiveness unless or until I come to a point where I have witnessed something positive to have come from the whole ordeal.

Though for me, it also kind of dovetails with something I am discussing in another thread... I find it very difficult to forgive people when operating under the assumption that they have "chosen" to say or do whatever. Yet when I acknowledge that they were likely acting unconsciously at the behest of programming or other influences, it becomes much easier for me.

But perhaps the vagueness of their suggestion is also why there aren't any cautions. For instance, when they say meditate, they don't specify the "drawing in more light" technique that you had issues with. I think the suggestion to meditate is more about finding something that does work for you rather than attaching to any specific idea of exactly what meditation is. Though more guidance and caution would be very helpful.

For me, I've found it most helpful to integrate "meditation" with the performance of my "daily round of activities"... those mundane activities like cleaning my body or my home, cooking or doing chores, etc., while maintaining the awareness that these seemingly mundane activities on the physical plane are actually quite profound symbols for things that are occurring on the spiritual plane.

It's sort of like the more I attempt to get some "profound" result, the less effective I am.

An example of harm from meditation that comes to my mind is a friend of mine who suffered from intense anxiety. I suggested meditation, as it has always helped with my anxiety, though I didn't give much instruction. Apparently the meditation just amplified the anxiety and sent her into a panic attack. Her therapist said that meditation can sometimes trigger that sort of response in anxious people.

Yes, that appears to be a fairly commonly reported side effect. Some years ago, I was experiencing a lot of anxiety, and found that trying to meditate only made it worse. However, I also persisted in my own internal investigations of the phenomenon and found that what I was feeling as anxiety was some sort of physiological process that occurred as a result of the emergence of troubling "memories" when I tried to meditate. Specifically, these revolved around an "abduction" experience, as well as a one-off time I may have been molested as a child. I'm not exactly sure how I got through it, but eventually I came to the space where it wasn't really important to me anymore whether or not those things "really" happened, and that's when the anxious feelings finally dissipated.

Anyhow, the long and the short of it is that there seems to be a lot more nuance to the whole process than simply meditate, meditate, and meditate some more.