Maddie

I was curious because I'm finding that the effects do not go away quickly for myself either. Most Theravada lay practitioners don't actually do much cultivation as its mostly a merit making religion for lay people so there is probably not much to undo for most.

True but just to be fair there are jealous men as well.

It's a decent theory, the only problem is that before I would do the meditation I might be feeling more or less neutral and then after the meditation was over feel pretty rotten.

Inner smile was one of my first practices. I liked it but also found it that it dug up a lot of emotional baggage but I also combined with the healing sounds so I'm not sure which one was doing the digging. So are you finding that it is taking time to undo the effects from Theravada practice?

One more thought. I would like to know what other's think about the theory that in this day and age chanting is the most beneficial practice? Such as the Kali Yuga/ third age of Buddhism theory.

I was pondering if people that get more out of chanting than other practices benefit from "help from above" so to speak more than others?

It occurred to me that meditation is a broad topic and word so I thought perhaps if I were to add a little more detail to how I specifically practice meditation it might illuminate things better. So typically I was doing basic Buddhist anapanasati breath meditation. I would just focus on my breath. After a while the thoughts would generally calm down quite a bit and I would be very relaxed and feel extremely peaceful. That part was great. What was not great is that maybe later that day or maybe the next day I would begin to feel either very anxious or depressed and have really random unpleasant thoughts bombard me for several days to a week until the effects of the meditation would wear off. Over the years this pattern has repeated itself enough to become noticeable as a pattern. I think some of the side effects and explanations for them were in the article the OP had posted.

This is huge. I think the most emotionally unstable patients I get consistently are the ones that do the most energy work.

Yes that is a good point and an oversight on my part. Hunting provided much of the protein, and gathering (a mostly female activity) provided most of the other nutrients and vitamins.

Actually the bonding aspect is a part of the evolution from our hunter gatherer ancestors. The oxytocin produced in the brain due to attraction and sex (commonly called falling in love, but saying my brain is making oxytocin thinking about you does not sell Hallmark cards) were an evolutionary adaptation. The woman had an evolutionary/survival reason to bond with the father of her children so that he would stick around to hunt and protect to ensure that the carriers of said DNA grew up to pass along more DNA.

Thought I'd bump this topic since it was being discussed on the meditation thread.

Without getting into meditation specifically I do realize that mindfulness can be quite uncomfortable and most people actually seek to do the exact opposite of mindfulness. *Granted it can be rough so sometimes concentration can be a nice break (eight fold path speaking) or chanting.

This is an interesting and important topic which probably deserves it's own thread. But now I would like to redirect this thread to the various problems of meditation.

The important thing I think when talking about lust is to make a careful effort to distinguish lust from aversion to lust. This can also be very subtle.

I'm not exactly sure how in the west we became so neurotic about lust and sex but we did.

I think I used to view lust more like what you are stating. I think what changed my interpretation of lust was over the years of meditation I began to see how subtle it could be. This was a big surprise to me.

Sometimes the complication in communication is finding out what each person means by the words they use.

Yes I was expecting the issue of judgment (right or wrong, good or bad) to come up relatively soon. These are counter productive terms in my opinion. I prefer skillful or unskillful. I think lust being viewed in the context of right or wrong though is a western guilt based paradigm, and as opposed to belonging to desire, relates more to the inverse of desire which is aversion (the other of the three poisons)

I see. In my understanding lust is a type of desire. I see desire as the root cause according to the second noble truth. Then desire manifests itself based upon the various conditioning of the individual mind. As far as healthy vs unhealthy go this depends on ones point of view. For the perpetuation of the species lust is very effective (of course that begs the question of why does the species need to be perpetuated but this gets more into the attachment to being which is another issue in the 12 links). But in regards to healthy in terms of Nirvana (ultimate peace of mind and contentment) then lust is a detrimental obstacle.

One thing I've noticed so far is what the terms seem to mean to various people. It seems that to some the word "lust" means when sexual passions are at their highest. I on the other hand though meditation have come to see that lust can be and often is very insidious and subtle. Both men and women seek to control. I think the yin/yang issue isn't control vs non-control, but merely the means used to control.

I think its when people try to make what the Buddha said was unknowable, knowable polarities of thought spring up.

This is correct, but that statement was more of an issue of defining terms than a judgment.

While two different topic, few things seem to bring up guilt and judgment like lust related topics do. I would say there is lust, and stuff like this is the aversion to lust. Having a feeling and then in the same mind having an aversion to the same feeling makes things rather complicated.

Desire is still desire regardless of degree.

Just one thing I want to point out so it does not get lost is that by saying that the Buddha did not specifically say there is no self is not the same thing as saying that the Buddha said there is a self. There were many questions the Buddha left unanswered. He would also not answer if he would exist or not exist after final Nibbana. Later when people did attempt to answer this question it gave rise to schools of thought that either said Nibbana is either annihilation or some other form of existence like a heaven. Again both questions that the Buddha simply did not answer.