I completely agree that, when something is sufficiently cheap then it is often better to simply try it than spend a lot of effort on trying to analyze it. However, my impression was that Looking is far from cheap, that it is something that requires years of practicing meditation to achieve. I might be wrong? Moreover, it also seems potentially dangerous, at least for me. I know for a fact that my sanity is not impervious and I’m wary of trying anything that might harm it.
It definitely doesn’t take years of practicing meditation. Though I’m hesitant to speculate on how long it would take on average, because how prepared for the idea people are varies a lot. The hardest step is the first one: realizing that people are talking about things you don’t yet understand.
If the question was, “Should I commit to spending years investigating Looking and related ideas?” I’d agree that most people could rightly conclude, “No, I shouldn’t”.
So a better question becomes, “Is it useful to take a step in that direction?”. Again, to me the answer seems to be yes. But besides, “is it worth the time” there’s still the prospect of danger you mention.
I used to think that there was no way to be in danger, as long as you took things one step at a time, but slippery slopes and murder ghandis make a lot of sense.
Here’s 5 min of thought on why it doesn’t feel dangerous to me:
I feel I’ve gotten much better at noticing confusion, and it seems like Looking would have to systematically undermine my ability to notice confusion before it could hurt me (and that registers on a gut level as very unlikely)
I’ve previously been in a place of bad epistemics and bad functionality via going overboard with “naive rationality”. Having come out the other end, I guess I feel a bit inoculated to “getting hijacked by an idea”.
I think this talk by Dan Barker kicked a strong sense of, “Oh, you can have a crazy ‘supernatural’ experience, and it doesn’t have to mean anything.”
What do you notice when you think on your feeling of it being dangerous?
I feel that Looking might be dangerous for roughly the same reason psychedelic drugs are dangerous. I know that my sanity is not very robust, and I also know that my mind is quite well functioning in the moment (so that “if ain’t broke” applies). Experimenting with highly unusual states of consciousness seems like something that pushes your mind away from its normal operating conditions and can destabilize the system in difficult to predict ways.
Learning to Look can definitely be hazardous: some teachers advise people with any kind of mental health issues to be very cautious about trying meditation at all. In particular, learning the required kind of sensitivity for noticing subtle movements of mind means that you also become aware of any unpleasant stuff that you might so far have been suppressing in order to cope.
Ideally, that dark stuff bubbling up to surface will be rough but beneficial, as the person meditating will process it and get over it, but that’s under the assumption that they are relatively mentally healthy (on some relevant axis); for people who aren’t, it may be too much to handle at once.
And, as you say, deeper Looking inherently involves moving the mind outside its standard parameters. If the techniques aren’t used right, there is a very definite risk of breaking things.
I completely agree that, when something is sufficiently cheap then it is often better to simply try it than spend a lot of effort on trying to analyze it. However, my impression was that Looking is far from cheap, that it is something that requires years of practicing meditation to achieve. I might be wrong? Moreover, it also seems potentially dangerous, at least for me. I know for a fact that my sanity is not impervious and I’m wary of trying anything that might harm it.
It definitely doesn’t take years of practicing meditation. Though I’m hesitant to speculate on how long it would take on average, because how prepared for the idea people are varies a lot. The hardest step is the first one: realizing that people are talking about things you don’t yet understand.
If the question was, “Should I commit to spending years investigating Looking and related ideas?” I’d agree that most people could rightly conclude, “No, I shouldn’t”.
So a better question becomes, “Is it useful to take a step in that direction?”. Again, to me the answer seems to be yes. But besides, “is it worth the time” there’s still the prospect of danger you mention.
I used to think that there was no way to be in danger, as long as you took things one step at a time, but slippery slopes and murder ghandis make a lot of sense.
Here’s 5 min of thought on why it doesn’t feel dangerous to me:
I feel I’ve gotten much better at noticing confusion, and it seems like Looking would have to systematically undermine my ability to notice confusion before it could hurt me (and that registers on a gut level as very unlikely)
I’ve previously been in a place of bad epistemics and bad functionality via going overboard with “naive rationality”. Having come out the other end, I guess I feel a bit inoculated to “getting hijacked by an idea”.
I think this talk by Dan Barker kicked a strong sense of, “Oh, you can have a crazy ‘supernatural’ experience, and it doesn’t have to mean anything.”
What do you notice when you think on your feeling of it being dangerous?
I feel that Looking might be dangerous for roughly the same reason psychedelic drugs are dangerous. I know that my sanity is not very robust, and I also know that my mind is quite well functioning in the moment (so that “if ain’t broke” applies). Experimenting with highly unusual states of consciousness seems like something that pushes your mind away from its normal operating conditions and can destabilize the system in difficult to predict ways.
Learning to Look can definitely be hazardous: some teachers advise people with any kind of mental health issues to be very cautious about trying meditation at all. In particular, learning the required kind of sensitivity for noticing subtle movements of mind means that you also become aware of any unpleasant stuff that you might so far have been suppressing in order to cope.
Ideally, that dark stuff bubbling up to surface will be rough but beneficial, as the person meditating will process it and get over it, but that’s under the assumption that they are relatively mentally healthy (on some relevant axis); for people who aren’t, it may be too much to handle at once.
And, as you say, deeper Looking inherently involves moving the mind outside its standard parameters. If the techniques aren’t used right, there is a very definite risk of breaking things.
Basically agree with this.