19 June, 2023

u/ubercorey on western meditation culture

https://www.reddit.com/r/HubermanLab/comments/14cizcn/you_dont_suck_at_meditating/


It's so important I'm going repeat it. You cultivate what the mind is best at, instead of against it. WE DO NOT FORCE IT TO BE QUIET, we encourage it to roar, but very channeled. Like you were saying, into laser focus. The defuse power becomes a beam, focused on a specific goal. You use its natural tendency to be extremely active and constantly create. Instead of fighting it, you use that to create what you want. That is what the meditation masters discovered. That mind has a superpower and we can harness it. This is what NBA coaches know, that we can improve free throw shots just as much using visualization as on the court practice.

The way pop culture teaches meditation now, without the foundational practices first, would be like taking a wild horse who's kicking and smashing his stall and just the keeping the wild horse in his stall all day today to force him to calm down, he would start to go stir crazy in his muscles would waste. So messed up... This is how we treat children in schools who have a lot of energy. And what happens, it breaks their spirit.

In contrast, the foundational practices are like like taking the horse out and running on a certain path that horse gets better and better on that path