No wonder Meditation became an international hit overnight.. everyone love an ego boost
Hmmmmmm. Emphasis mine. I've meditated for a relatively long time. When I started out I researched a lot of traditions (in a practical way by adopting them for a month or two) while I was looking for something that felt suitable. I'm still interested in other types of meditation and met a lot of people, in particular teachers and students. In that time I've met perhaps one or two people I think you could truly describe as being close to "enlightened" in the spiritual sense that meditation originates from. Not having reached that level myself I have literally no clue what that state actually is, just my conception of it. Until I subscribed to r/meditation on reddit that is. Wow. So many people posting as if they are high level experts that understand and have conquered advanced mental states that can arise from meditation. I've also encountered plenty of people teaching about meditation that clearly don't understand what they are teaching. While it seems I'm agreeing with the article/study it looks very flawed and I don't feel confident it's uncovered anything substantial. A second study of 162 people who practiced meditation, recruited through Facebook groups devoted to meditation, found that the practice had similar impacts on self-enhancement as yoga. In this study, participants were asked to evaluate themselves based on statements like, “In comparison to the average participant of this study, I am free from bias.” The study found that participants had higher self-enhancement in the hour following meditation, than when they hadn’t meditated for 24 hours.
self enhancement is pretty defined http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/self/self-enhancement/ But the point is not about the irony that an old Eastern Killing-the-Self philosophy result in a modern Self-worth-boost in the West.. No! We needed a justification on why all those Meditation/Yoga practitioner always sound holier-than-thou. They are the Vegan of the mind, and now , it make sense why they cant wait 1 sec before talking about their Yoga/meditation practice
Lots of people suffer from low self esteem. If they felt better about themselves they might be happier better members of society. If meditation gives you enough self worth to not blow your head off or maybe even enough to clean up your house than that is a boon.
A big problem with AA is that they see ego as a bad thing. Like the epitome of everything wrong and sinful with humanity. If you come into the rooms of AA broken and demoralized and completely lacking any self-worth, due to your own actions or random clinical depression or some combination thereof, you're told that pride and ego are toxic and will kill you. But meditate. Meaning pray. To Jesus basically. Concentrate on your faults and ask a deity to remove them There's a deep connection between substance abuse and depression and our current treatment model is based on shame and guilt and reinforcing the kind of thinking that leads to depression. Shits fucked up
Why do I think some people have low self esteem? I know next to nothing about psychology and am really in no place to hazard any real explanation. What do you think? I think it's prevalent across most of society. Why does meditation and yoga make people's egos blossom? I think that people with a positive self image tend to make decisions that foster their well being and that decisions that foster well being tend to make ones self image more positive. A virtuous cycle? Of course people can be wrong about how great they are or can wear that greatness with insufferable pride that makes no one want to listen to or be with them. Ego can be a boon or a curse depending how it manifests itself.
I was asking along the lines of "Is there anything you see around you that makes you wonder whether it makes people feel worse about themselves?". People often ascribe such qualities to social media, for example - for good reason. Have you noticed something like this around yourself, in your life or others'?Why do I think some people have low self esteem?