Shadow Side Of Meditation

Well articulated and critical points about the shadow aspects of meditation. I would be interested to hear your views of the experience of 'desire' in Buddhism, meditation and psychotherapy. Desire as is meant in the Freudian and Lacanian sense, as part of the 'life drive' rather than the 'death drive' (being different to Demand, of compulsions, cravings etc).

Thanks,

Adam

Thank you for your comment Adam. In brief, my sense is that the "desire" that is at the root of unnecessary suffering addressed in the Buddha's teachings focuses on the pervasive sense of "lack" that most of us live with.

We tend to think we are a problem to be solved. Consciously or unconsciously we have this uneasy feeling that something is missing. Something is not quite right.

From a psychological point of view we think the problem is our conditioning — our story and history. If we could only identify and work effectively with our conditioning, then we hope to find relief from our shaky identity and establish a strong sense of self that is robust and healthy.

From a spiritual point of view, we have two broad options: We can either affirm a belief system we hope to be able to rely on forever or we dedicate ourselves to a set of practices that will eventually end our suffering and assuage this existential sense of lack. Most often, the result is that we either work endlessly towards psychological self-improvement or become a perpetual spiritual “seeker” searching for nirvana.

Both paths to salvation are flawed because they both miss the shadow aspect of this pervasive “sense of lack.” Our deepest fears are not that we will never be good enough or that we will eventually die. The shadow fear, the one we least want to face, is that the sense of self we rely on for our identity is, in truth, groundless and without substance. We are not who we think we are and we sense this at some deep level.

Nothing is missing. We are always perfectly ourselves. The thing we cling to the most — our "sense of self" — is not worthy of our faith and trust. We cling to our conditioning and forsake our True Nature.

Thank you so much for your intruiging comments!

It seems the need for mindfulness to go beyond “just sitting” brings us directly to the Wise Effort of the noble 8-fold path to enlightenment. The skillful discernment of unwholesome from wholesome, diligently removing the unwholesome and cultivating the wholesome, is organic to psychotherapy; wise mindfulness becomes a great support to wise discernment and wise action.

To clarify the above comment, I wanted to hear from some versed Buddhists concerning the experience of desire in Meditation practice. Desire is usually considered 'negative' in buddhist psychology but without it who would ever meditate, contemplate, or help anyone?

The same principles described above can be found in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus as well. Mindfulness is no foreign "Eastern" concept. It is a concept of wellness and health and appreciating what is and how God made it.