Hmm, not quite wireheading, but still worthy of a hat-tip to Larry Niven.
I expect that this will mostly be officially ignored until someone comes up with a cheap wearable, popular, and impossible to ignore version, at which point there will be excessive pearl-clutching and a declaration of a War on Some Ultrasound Devices.
well illegal drugs are there but harmful meditation is best and slow way to gain some nuero hacks in my opinion hacks are useless and imperfect. sensing brain waves and upagrading technology is best way with our opening a skull we can get mind operating system courses in future i think.
Inducing a meditative state has been possible for years with neurofeedback. Nowadays it is commonly used for healing trauma.
Have a look at: Eugene G Peniston and Paul J Kulkosky (1991). Alpha-theta brainwave neuro-feedback therapy for Vietnam veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Medical Psychotherapy: an International Journal, 4:47 --60.
I find it irrelevant to disparage such this just because it is a shortcut to meditation. We are not all equal. People with severe trauma require extraordinary efforts to reach meditative states, and they may never even succeed. Such tools are very useful give them a boost in their recovery.
Obviously the ration benefits/risks has to be assessed. Neurofeedback has no serious adverse effects if practised correctly, but it takes much time. This ultrasound approach looks interesting because they claim it gives immediate results. The whole point is to find out if whether there is some adverse effect in injecting ultrasounds in the brain.
I feel your trepidation about trepanation.
This would actually be helpful for those on the spectrum, especially with ADHD and also people with anxiety disorders. For some people meditation is impossible, their brain just won’t allow it (and the guilt and shame of not being able to do it, being told that the journey is the crucial part, that you have to work to get there, is all part of the same endless cycle).
If this helps people to relax then they can then try meditating the “real” way. But you can’t do the latter if your brain just won’t let you.
Unless you invoke some religious fundamental to the argument, I think we can only talk about ethics in relative terms. Electroconvulsive therapy started from the observation that patients feel they ‘felt bad’ before a grand mal seizure, and ‘felt better’ afterwards. You could electrically get through the ‘bad bit’ faster and more conveniently. It was not intended to fry the brain of people who were difficult to look after, though that is maybe how it got used. Drugs are possibly a little better - you cannot aim them like an electric current, but they can be more subtle. Drugs such as LSD are potentially a lot better as they are effective in such any amounts, so the chance of side-effects is reduced. But, anything effective can be effective at doing harm, and once you have taken too much LSD, there is not much you can do to get it out again. But you can midrodose LSD. And finally, there is this thing, which may be the best of the lot: you can turn it on by degrees, and you can turn it off if you don’t like it.
I understand the ginger lady in the video. I can’t meditate, not because I am angry or disturbed, but because I am ‘busy’ internally, and not doing anything is very hard for me. I do not know whether there is a Zen belief that if you can’t do meditation ‘properly’ then you shouldn’t do it at all. Or whether this is Protestant Work Ethic discussed as Buddhism. I probably will not experience the states they talk about without some Magic Hat like this. If it ‘serves me right’ then I do not really see how or why.
I think they took a sensible course. They said there are possible problems. They sketched out a few. And they left it at that.
This is a false statement. It’s like saying, “I can’t play piano because when I sit down and play, it sounds bad.” It just means that you haven’t had a lot of practice. Every Zen Buddhist teacher would tell you that zazen is worth doing, even when - especially when - you feel like you are not necessarily doing a good job at it.
I’ve noticed several people have said they can’t meditate. I’ve never been successful in “turning it off”, not that it won’t go off, but when it does it I literally go off. For the times I’ve tried to quiet my mind I simply fall asleep. Once my thoughts go away my brain just goes to a sleep state. Maybe that’s part of the journey, learning how to work past things like that. But I’ve always known that I sleep different than most people. For me it’s 15 seconds with my head on a pillow and then darkness.
I will say there have been times where I doze, where I’m conscious but my mind is free wheeling and my body is out. It’s like I’m floating through my thoughts, not exactly enlightening, but it’s a nice experience.
It is a true statement for me. It may be an overstatement: if I put enough effort into it, I might succeed in the end, for all I know. But to pursue the analogy with playing the piano, I can play, but I know I will never be as good as many other people for the same effort. This is possibly because I try to think what I am doing, rather than just doing it so my Debussy triplets do not come out smooth. I find languages hard for a similar reason.
I still play the piano, enjoy the sunset, and try to muddle through in foreign parts. If a Magic Hat toned down the voices I my head and let me do what others clearly can without a hat, I am all for it. If I can then learn to do it without the hat, that would be better still. Some people may be annoyed because they spent years doing it the old way, but that’s technology for you.
That’s some ableist nonsense right there.
Personally I would be wary of dependency on any chemical that always makes me “feel good” especially if it’s one that I choose to use and not under the watch of somebody for a specific issue.
I would feel the same way if you replace “chemical” with “technology”.
Same. I am self-diagnosed ADHD, and you can keep on capitalizing that H until you run out of shift key. I have three states: mind in motion, body in motion, and comatose. It is much more common that I look at it in terms of sleep hygiene, and in that context I consider myself absolutely blessed. But it does render me unable to meditate in the traditional sense.
The vast majority of my meditation-adjacent brain state time is early in the morning before I’ve fully awoken, but even that is not all that common. Everything is a tradeoff, I guess.
Just based on the headline: Mondo 2000 lives!!!
How so? What disability prevents anyone from practicing meditation?
It isn’t. Meditating, however badly you might think you are doing it, is meditating. Unlike with the piano, there isn’t ever any expectation that someone else will appreciate the effort that you put into it so there isn’t any reason to say “Oh someone else would be better at this.” The idea that someone else would get more out of it for the same effort is backwards, because the effort is entirely the thing. Having a wild monkey mind and having to expend a lot of effort does not mean that you are meditating any less than some lama that has been doing it for kalpas.
PTSD, anxiety disorders, autism spectrum, ADHD.
It just means that you haven’t had a lot of practice.
That’s ableist, like telling someone with depression to smile more or get some fresh air. Some brains cannot be calmed down enough to even start the process of meditation and it creates a cycle of frustration and guilt. The more you try the more you fail. And the false positivity of it being “worth doing, even when - especially when - you feel like you are not necessarily doing a good job at it” is assuming a great deal about the executive function of others.
Don’t you understand that you are telling another person how their own mind works? Unbelievable.
And what the hell is “a wild monkey mind”? Seriously, do you think before you write?
This part isn’t true. I don’t know what you’ve been told or what practices you’ve attempted but there isn’t anything about any of the disabilities that you list that prevent meditation. The problem that you seem to be having is that there is some sort of notion of “success” at meditation. Like, “Oh I got supreme perfect enlightenment and am now a Boddhisattva and I don’t have to meditate any more.” ? There isn’t any success at meditation. If you get down on a mat and try to sit still and can only sit for five seconds before you have to jump up and pace around, that is still meditation. It is still “successful” meditation. If you try to count your breaths and you get to three before you lose track and start thinking about Star Trek, that is still “successful” meditation. I have first hand experience with people with ADHD and anxiety and ASD doing meditation because it happens every morning in my house. The local zen teacher is a vet with TBI.
No, I’m telling you that you don’t understand what meditation is.
You really don’t like listening to people do you? You don’t know what goes on inside someone else’s head and you’ve responded to several people in such a manner. Completely tone deaf.
