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% Mastery Mailing 1
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\shorttitle{Meditation and Your Second Self}
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\begin{document}
\centerline{\textbf{Mastery Mailing 1: Meditation and Your Second Self}}
Hi Nana!
I'm learning about meditation in psychology class, and I think you'd be
interested in the subjective effects of ``open monitoring'' meditation.
While some types of meditation focus on creating a ``trance'' state,
many meditators report an increased sense of awareness of their own
thoughts and surroundings \autocite[146]{textbook}.
This really surprised me because I thought the medical effects of
meditation---lowering heart rate, blood pressure, and stress
levels---meant the conscious state of meditation was close to sleep.
However, this may actually be true of some types of meditation.
According to some psychologists, the term ``mindfulness'' has become
conflated with so many different subjective experiences, news articles
and new studies can't reliably mean 20-minute open-monitoring sessions
or a global change in perception/awareness \autocite{doubt}.
My textbook says that meditation is a general category for hundreds of
different practices that focus attention or make you more aware of
internal and external sensations \autocite[145]{textbook}.
You're probably already familiar with some techniques of meditation,
either from a religious (probably Buddhist) perspective or a secular
perspective, but I'll examine a couple of techniques to see what
psychologists are studying.
There are two big categories: focused attention and open monitoring.
Focused attention empties the mind of intrusive thoughts by thinking
only about an object or your breathing or even movement (like in Tai
Chi).
Open monitoring is often transitioned to after focusing on breathing,
but experts eventually can reach this state through effortless
concentration \autocite{lutz}
Open monitoring is acting as a passive observer of your own thoughts and
external sensations.
\begin{figure}[ht]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[height=2.5in]{yang}
\par\emph{A Practioner of Tai Chi. Unknown author, Public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
This leads into the qualitative study that I found about meditation and
depersonalization.
Depersonalization is usually treated as a disease where the subject
reports feeling disconnected from their own actions, as if they were
watching someone else live their life.
If this is brought on unexpectedly, it can be very distressing, and in
certain cases, people have experienced it from meditation and
immediately sought medical help \autocite{castillo}.
This study also includes interviews with long-term meditation
practitioners (not monks, just typical Western workers and
businesspeople) who all experienced depersonalization.
They report feeling mildly content and entirely lack strong emotions,
and many are totally accustomed to work happening outside of their
``self.''
However, the interviewees included in this study didn't revere
dissociation as much as religious texts on the subject do.
Except for the initial distress, none reported sadness at the state, but
they weren't ecstatic either.
They describe what Yoga psychology calls enlightenment, especially the
less persistent experience of derealization.
Some meditators said they saw every object as being conscious, having
auras, and vibrating to some degree.
I thought of you when I learned about this because I know you are
interested in enlightenment and mystic symbols, so people achieving
these states after only a year or a few days of consistent meditation is
interesting.
I was really intrigued that these practitioners weren't just
recommending the experience to everyone.
Even though meditators who experience this accept their experience, I'm
afraid of the loss of strong emotions because I like emotional highs
even if it means I have to experience some disappointment and
depression.
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