Following your example, here are some insights from my meditation practice over the last 3 years:
There are ignorant mental processes going on that I am normally not aware of, and
that control salient aspects of my behavior. I can become aware of these
processes and develop control over them.
This is the kind of thing that is intellectually obvious but seems striking
when you come to experience it firsthand in certain cases. Let me provide some
an example.
A few days into my first vipassana course I started to become more aware of my
thoughts, and was unpleasantly surprised to find that a large majority of them
were ridiculously self-indulgent. I was running simulations of altered past
events and possible future events where everything just happened to fall
amazingly in my favor. I got the girl, pummeled the bad guy, etc. I would now
call these wireheading patterns, but I didn’t think of them that way at the
time. Nevertheless, it was clear that they were distorting my beliefs and
likely the actions I was taking based on them. By using meditation I was able
to decrease the frequency of such patterns.
Similarly, I found that I could also become aware of and control the processes
responsible for whether I liked certain foods.
(This provides some evidence that meditation can increase communication
between mental subsystems and reduce compartmentalization.)
Amazing and powerful states of mental focus, peace, and happiness can be
achieved without drugs. Such states can be maintained during everyday
consciousness.
While initially experiencing these states during meditation sessions it became
clear that they could be sustained outside of them. This probably became most
evident to me during my second vipassana course. From your second course on, you
are instructed to meditate constantly; you are doing sitting meditation during
the scheduled sessions but at other times you should strive to keep regulating your
awareness according to the meditation instructions. So, in a certain sense, you
are meditating while eating, walking, etc. This practice makes it clear that
everyday consciousness can be transformed.
My experience meditating daily over the past three years provides further
evidence for this; during this time I have experienced progressively less anxiety
and restlessness.
I compulsively judge mental phenomena as either good or bad (I called these
judgments “affective judgments” in Understanding vipassana meditation. These affective
judgments are not necessary, and can be controlled. Series of such affective
judgments can cascade to form strong mental pressures. (This insight is essentially a special case of the first one).
I was surprised by how strong this habit was, even in the face of persistent
opposition. This was particularly clear when observing my experience of
pain during meditation. The pain seems to start as a relatively neutral sensation.
One unwittingly begins to try to mentally “push” away the sensation (making a
negative affective judgment). The sensation starts gaining in strength, which
results in more forceful mental “pushing”. This process continues until the
pain is unbearable, and one shifts positions. I eventually was able to
identify when I was near the judgment threshold; once I got close enough any
minor errors or loss of attention would usually cascade into pain that caused
me to move. I had some damn frustrating sessions experiencing that. Eventually
I thought it was pretty funny.
Awesome. This is exactly what I was expecting from meditation and to hear it confirmed really psyches me up for working hard on it. Thank you for sharing.
A few days into my first vipassana course I started to become more aware of my thoughts, and was unpleasantly surprised to find that a large majority of them were ridiculously self-indulgent. I was running simulations of altered past events and possible future events where everything just happened to fall amazingly in my favor. I got the girl, pummeled the bad guy, etc. I would now call these wireheading patterns, but I didn’t think of them that way at the time.
I’ve become a lot better at this in the last few months, but this used to be my normal mode of thinking. It led me to believe I was incredibly narcissistic, which further led to me developing lots of safety mechanisms to keep that part of me from poisoning my thinking; in some cases, the safety mechanisms are I think too harsh and too self-critical, because there is too much affective negative self-judgment. The big thing I’ve realized from meditation thus far is that the affective judgments aren’t necessary; mindfulness without judgment is enough to avoid harmful attractors.
But I got sidetracked; really, I’m curious, is this a common disposition among Less Wrong rationalists? I didn’t think so as I’d heard of the typical mind fallacy and most people don’t tend to talk about this facet of their thinking very much (maybe because it’s embarrassing). But if it’s more common than I thought, then maybe I wasn’t as incredibly narcissistic as I thought, and maybe this type of wireheading pattern is a typical attractor in mindspace.
I do something similar—I’ll run through either remembered past or imagined future conversations in my head. For the past ones, I’ll have myself say what I now think I should have said, to try and figure out what would have happened. For the future ones, I sometimes do productive planning (“I want to mention x when this happens”), but I also catch myself simulating other people in a way which is clearly inaccurate but leads to a highly favorable situation (like me saying the “right thing” and someone else swooning).
I have gotten some use out of that last, though. If I’m feeling bad and imagine someone saying just the right thing to me, and then me feeling better, I now know exactly what I want to hear. Then I tell the other person what that thing is, being clear if necessary that it’s not that I don’t know it already, but that hearing it again right now would make me feel a lot better (useful for avoiding defensiveness when the thing is, say, that they love you). There’s a chapter in the Usual Error about this, which is what made me realize that I can just do that and it works. (You can insert a mental “yet” into the sentences about not being purely rational, if you like. Tsuyoku etc.)
Anyway. I think the phenomenon in general is called daydreaming, and it’s normal, even the exaggerated/narcissistic-seeming kind. I feel like I see it referenced/parodied in popular culture a fair bit, and I don’t see why that would be true if lots of people didn’t really do it.
I don’t have a habit of imagining things going better for myself than they really did. It never would have occurred to me that such a habit existed for anyone.
I’m very much more apt to think about things having defects, or to appreciate actual good points.
I should probably do more observation of what I actually spend my mental time on, but I could probably use a little more wireheading (at least of the replaying good memories variety) than I do.
I’m like this—my knee jerk thoughts are often quite arrogant (for example, reading a story about someone smart or attractive and immediately judging myself smarter or more attractive).
Sidenote: For most of my life I’ve managed to combine this over-arrogance with an outward under-confidence, which sucked.
But if it’s more common than I thought, then maybe I wasn’t as incredibly narcissistic as I thought, and maybe this type of wireheading pattern is a typical attractor in mindspace.
Amazing and powerful states of mental focus, peace, and happiness can be achieved without drugs. Such states can be maintained during everyday consciousness.
One of the most memorable events in your meditation career is the moment when you first realize that you are [in] meditation in the midst of some perfectly ordinary activity. You are driving down the freeway or carrying out the trash and it just turns on by itself. This unplanned outpouring of the skills you have been so carefully fostering is a genuine joy. It gives you a tiny window on the future. You catch a spontaneous glimpse of what the practice really means. The possibility strikes you that this transformation of consciousness could actually become a permanent feature of your experience. You realize that you could actually spend the rest of your days standing aside from the debilitating clamoring of your own obsessions, no longer frantically hounded by your own needs and greed. You get a tiny taste of what it is like to just stand aside and watch it all flow past. It’s a magic moment.
Some of the changes I’ve experienced seem to be accessible to those with natural reflective abilities. In this comment Oshaberi writes:
I have no memory of a time when I didn’t think self-reflexively, I’m pretty sure I was doing it as far back as kindergarden. Though I’m not sure I took it to the extremes of some of you, I only ever did modest personality modification :). I realized I could like any previously hated food just by trying. It’s somewhat useful having such great control over thoughts and emotions.
Do you think the more mundane physiological effects could be seen as indicators that meditation is working, or are they almost entirely distinct from more useful progress in meditation, or are there just more tangible effects that people could notice? I think aspiring rationalists especially will be looking for signs of growth and that perhaps without those signs they will become skeptical of the value of meditation. Listing signs that meditation is working in your post might be a good idea.
I think aspiring rationalists especially will be looking for signs of growth and that perhaps without those signs they will become skeptical of the value of meditation.
Good point. One benefit of taking a long retreat is that (at least in the case of the dhamma.org courses) you will probably either have a number of insights or experience a significantly different state of mind. Either of these would be evidence warranting further investigation into meditation.
I’ll try to think of signs of growth for those learning in the battleground of real life.
Following your example, here are some insights from my meditation practice over the last 3 years:
There are ignorant mental processes going on that I am normally not aware of, and that control salient aspects of my behavior. I can become aware of these processes and develop control over them.
This is the kind of thing that is intellectually obvious but seems striking when you come to experience it firsthand in certain cases. Let me provide some an example.
A few days into my first vipassana course I started to become more aware of my thoughts, and was unpleasantly surprised to find that a large majority of them were ridiculously self-indulgent. I was running simulations of altered past events and possible future events where everything just happened to fall amazingly in my favor. I got the girl, pummeled the bad guy, etc. I would now call these wireheading patterns, but I didn’t think of them that way at the time. Nevertheless, it was clear that they were distorting my beliefs and likely the actions I was taking based on them. By using meditation I was able to decrease the frequency of such patterns.
Similarly, I found that I could also become aware of and control the processes responsible for whether I liked certain foods.
(This provides some evidence that meditation can increase communication between mental subsystems and reduce compartmentalization.)
Amazing and powerful states of mental focus, peace, and happiness can be achieved without drugs. Such states can be maintained during everyday consciousness.
While initially experiencing these states during meditation sessions it became clear that they could be sustained outside of them. This probably became most evident to me during my second vipassana course. From your second course on, you are instructed to meditate constantly; you are doing sitting meditation during the scheduled sessions but at other times you should strive to keep regulating your awareness according to the meditation instructions. So, in a certain sense, you are meditating while eating, walking, etc. This practice makes it clear that everyday consciousness can be transformed.
My experience meditating daily over the past three years provides further evidence for this; during this time I have experienced progressively less anxiety and restlessness.
I compulsively judge mental phenomena as either good or bad (I called these judgments “affective judgments” in Understanding vipassana meditation. These affective judgments are not necessary, and can be controlled. Series of such affective judgments can cascade to form strong mental pressures. (This insight is essentially a special case of the first one).
I was surprised by how strong this habit was, even in the face of persistent opposition. This was particularly clear when observing my experience of pain during meditation. The pain seems to start as a relatively neutral sensation. One unwittingly begins to try to mentally “push” away the sensation (making a negative affective judgment). The sensation starts gaining in strength, which results in more forceful mental “pushing”. This process continues until the pain is unbearable, and one shifts positions. I eventually was able to identify when I was near the judgment threshold; once I got close enough any minor errors or loss of attention would usually cascade into pain that caused me to move. I had some damn frustrating sessions experiencing that. Eventually I thought it was pretty funny.
Awesome. This is exactly what I was expecting from meditation and to hear it confirmed really psyches me up for working hard on it. Thank you for sharing.
I’ve become a lot better at this in the last few months, but this used to be my normal mode of thinking. It led me to believe I was incredibly narcissistic, which further led to me developing lots of safety mechanisms to keep that part of me from poisoning my thinking; in some cases, the safety mechanisms are I think too harsh and too self-critical, because there is too much affective negative self-judgment. The big thing I’ve realized from meditation thus far is that the affective judgments aren’t necessary; mindfulness without judgment is enough to avoid harmful attractors.
But I got sidetracked; really, I’m curious, is this a common disposition among Less Wrong rationalists? I didn’t think so as I’d heard of the typical mind fallacy and most people don’t tend to talk about this facet of their thinking very much (maybe because it’s embarrassing). But if it’s more common than I thought, then maybe I wasn’t as incredibly narcissistic as I thought, and maybe this type of wireheading pattern is a typical attractor in mindspace.
I do something similar—I’ll run through either remembered past or imagined future conversations in my head. For the past ones, I’ll have myself say what I now think I should have said, to try and figure out what would have happened. For the future ones, I sometimes do productive planning (“I want to mention x when this happens”), but I also catch myself simulating other people in a way which is clearly inaccurate but leads to a highly favorable situation (like me saying the “right thing” and someone else swooning).
I have gotten some use out of that last, though. If I’m feeling bad and imagine someone saying just the right thing to me, and then me feeling better, I now know exactly what I want to hear. Then I tell the other person what that thing is, being clear if necessary that it’s not that I don’t know it already, but that hearing it again right now would make me feel a lot better (useful for avoiding defensiveness when the thing is, say, that they love you). There’s a chapter in the Usual Error about this, which is what made me realize that I can just do that and it works. (You can insert a mental “yet” into the sentences about not being purely rational, if you like. Tsuyoku etc.)
Anyway. I think the phenomenon in general is called daydreaming, and it’s normal, even the exaggerated/narcissistic-seeming kind. I feel like I see it referenced/parodied in popular culture a fair bit, and I don’t see why that would be true if lots of people didn’t really do it.
I don’t have a habit of imagining things going better for myself than they really did. It never would have occurred to me that such a habit existed for anyone.
I’m very much more apt to think about things having defects, or to appreciate actual good points.
I should probably do more observation of what I actually spend my mental time on, but I could probably use a little more wireheading (at least of the replaying good memories variety) than I do.
I’m like this—my knee jerk thoughts are often quite arrogant (for example, reading a story about someone smart or attractive and immediately judging myself smarter or more attractive).
Sidenote: For most of my life I’ve managed to combine this over-arrogance with an outward under-confidence, which sucked.
I’m also curious about this.
Here is some more evidence for this claim (from Mindfulness in Plain English):
Wow, I’m psyched I finally got that off my chest.
Some of the changes I’ve experienced seem to be accessible to those with natural reflective abilities. In this comment Oshaberi writes:
(Also see my comment here)
On the slightly more mundane side, I’ve also experienced a lot of the physiological effects Will_Newsome mentioned above.
Do you think the more mundane physiological effects could be seen as indicators that meditation is working, or are they almost entirely distinct from more useful progress in meditation, or are there just more tangible effects that people could notice? I think aspiring rationalists especially will be looking for signs of growth and that perhaps without those signs they will become skeptical of the value of meditation. Listing signs that meditation is working in your post might be a good idea.
Good point. One benefit of taking a long retreat is that (at least in the case of the dhamma.org courses) you will probably either have a number of insights or experience a significantly different state of mind. Either of these would be evidence warranting further investigation into meditation.
I’ll try to think of signs of growth for those learning in the battleground of real life.