(and I don’t think it’d be easy to judge that from the outside).
There are people in this community who were participants of meditation retreats that you can ask for recommendations. That will likely give you much better information than reading advertisements.
Perhaps there is someone with the meditation skill who can quickly drop the woo from the way they describe it?
This assumes the main issue with way is people describing it. If you as an atheist have a vision of Christ raising from the cross, then the thing you want isn’t a person who leads the meditation who doesn’t answer questions and says “Trust the process”. You want someone to tell you: “Hey, part of meditation is that you can get visions. That doesn’t mean they are real. There no good reason to believe in them. I have had plenty of visions during meditation in which I don’t believe.”
That’s how Danis Bois handles the issue. I did a 5 day seminar with him this summer. Each of the days had less than 1 hour of pure meditation. and there was plenty of lecture time.
Some openness to be confronted with things you consider to be very improbable is simply part of the process.
Being treated like a child who’s not ready to hear certain things isn’t good. Scientology 101 contains no woo at all. Luke wrote about it as a very valuable experience. Later they teach about Xenu. That’s not the kind of environment you want as a rationalist.
You want to have questions that you ask honestly answered. I’m okay with not being told things I don’t ask, but it no easy area. I also marvel at the ability of Danis to say things where the answer is hidden in plain sight for half of the audience who isn’t ready to hear it.
There are people in this community who were participants of meditation retreats that you can ask for recommendations. That will likely give you much better information than reading advertisements.
This assumes the main issue with way is people describing it. If you as an atheist have a vision of Christ raising from the cross, then the thing you want isn’t a person who leads the meditation who doesn’t answer questions and says “Trust the process”. You want someone to tell you: “Hey, part of meditation is that you can get visions. That doesn’t mean they are real. There no good reason to believe in them. I have had plenty of visions during meditation in which I don’t believe.”
That’s how Danis Bois handles the issue. I did a 5 day seminar with him this summer. Each of the days had less than 1 hour of pure meditation. and there was plenty of lecture time.
Some openness to be confronted with things you consider to be very improbable is simply part of the process.
Being treated like a child who’s not ready to hear certain things isn’t good. Scientology 101 contains no woo at all. Luke wrote about it as a very valuable experience. Later they teach about Xenu. That’s not the kind of environment you want as a rationalist.
You want to have questions that you ask honestly answered. I’m okay with not being told things I don’t ask, but it no easy area. I also marvel at the ability of Danis to say things where the answer is hidden in plain sight for half of the audience who isn’t ready to hear it.