For me, concern about “taking a workshop while staying in a house with people who aren’t actively promoting the right kind of curiosity” rings really loud alarm bells.
I would also find that a little alarming. How alarming would depend on details. Is this meditation retreat basically just an opportunity for quiet largely-isolated meditation? (In that case, saying “keep the rest of the world at arm’s length while you’re doing this” seems eminently reasonable.) Is it also going to be filled with, for want of a better word, indoctrination? (In that case, not so reasonable.) Is the given reason something like “to avoid distractions”? (That seems very reasonable.) Or is it something more like “you are better off not being in contact with people whose opinions might differ”? (That would be alarming.)
Your description of what CFAR said (which I appreciate I may be misunderstanding, or you may be reporting in good faith but with less than 100% accuracy) seems to me like it’s leaning in the more-alarming direction.
If I take it exactly at face value, it’s not so alarming. But what you describe seems like exactly the sort of thing I would expect them to say in a world where their purposes are a bit nefarious (“attempt to rewrite participants’ values to bring their goals nearer ours”, as opposed to “help participants reflect on their own goals and achieve them”). This is a concern it’s worth having because it seems like this sort of slight nefariousness is something of an attracting state for seminars of this kind.
I haven’t tried to find a clear explanation of why meditation retreats are more valuable than other approaches to meditation. I have some intuitions, but I expect that most meditation instructors would say something like “experience tells us this is what works”. That’s also most of how CFAR ended up with its current approach. I’m also relying a lot on personal experience—I’m more open to new ideas and new habits in a multi-day retreat than in the other contexts that I’ve tried.
Any workshop, meditation retreat, or university is going to involve some amount of indoctrination. CFAR does a fairly ordinary amount of it compared to those reference classes.
You’re correct that it’s hard to know in advance whether something like this will brainwash you. It seems healthy to plan in advance to get sanity checks from your pre-CFAR friends a week after the workshop, and then repeat that a year later. CFAR is pretty comfortable with participants seeking out contrary opinions before and after workshops.
The post Hold Off On Proposing Solutions provides evidence that temporarily suppressing certain types of opinions can enable people to be more creative about finding good ideas. CFAR participants appear to benefit from similar effects.
For me, concern about “taking a workshop while staying in a house with people who aren’t actively promoting the right kind of curiosity” rings really loud alarm bells.
How would you compare that to a meditation retreat that asks participants to minimize contact with the outside world for the duration of the retreat?
I would also find that a little alarming. How alarming would depend on details. Is this meditation retreat basically just an opportunity for quiet largely-isolated meditation? (In that case, saying “keep the rest of the world at arm’s length while you’re doing this” seems eminently reasonable.) Is it also going to be filled with, for want of a better word, indoctrination? (In that case, not so reasonable.) Is the given reason something like “to avoid distractions”? (That seems very reasonable.) Or is it something more like “you are better off not being in contact with people whose opinions might differ”? (That would be alarming.)
Your description of what CFAR said (which I appreciate I may be misunderstanding, or you may be reporting in good faith but with less than 100% accuracy) seems to me like it’s leaning in the more-alarming direction.
If I take it exactly at face value, it’s not so alarming. But what you describe seems like exactly the sort of thing I would expect them to say in a world where their purposes are a bit nefarious (“attempt to rewrite participants’ values to bring their goals nearer ours”, as opposed to “help participants reflect on their own goals and achieve them”). This is a concern it’s worth having because it seems like this sort of slight nefariousness is something of an attracting state for seminars of this kind.
I haven’t tried to find a clear explanation of why meditation retreats are more valuable than other approaches to meditation. I have some intuitions, but I expect that most meditation instructors would say something like “experience tells us this is what works”. That’s also most of how CFAR ended up with its current approach. I’m also relying a lot on personal experience—I’m more open to new ideas and new habits in a multi-day retreat than in the other contexts that I’ve tried.
Any workshop, meditation retreat, or university is going to involve some amount of indoctrination. CFAR does a fairly ordinary amount of it compared to those reference classes.
You’re correct that it’s hard to know in advance whether something like this will brainwash you. It seems healthy to plan in advance to get sanity checks from your pre-CFAR friends a week after the workshop, and then repeat that a year later. CFAR is pretty comfortable with participants seeking out contrary opinions before and after workshops.
The post Hold Off On Proposing Solutions provides evidence that temporarily suppressing certain types of opinions can enable people to be more creative about finding good ideas. CFAR participants appear to benefit from similar effects.
Is there any proven benefits of meditation retreats in comparison with regular meditation?