I’m glad you found your way here! It’s great to hear that having been involved in research you know what I’m getting at. I don’t think that all forms of mindfulness lead to harmful dissociation (even though it is a form of dissociation), but lack of clarification on the aims of mindfulness can most easily go in that direction. Plus, as you’ve experienced, people who pick up the tool may be predisposed to dissociating in the first place.

You may find that with your new realization, your mindfulness skills can actually help you pinpoint instances when you begin to, or want to, dissociate. Thanks for sharing your story.

I am pretty speechless right now. I worked in Oxford on developing Mindfulness Based Cognitie Therapy for the NHS. I have studies mindfulness and practised it on and off for years. Over the past year I have had real trouble in experiencing and accepting my emotions. It felt like mindfulness had stopped working. Then I read your articles and I realised that indeed I had been using mindfulness as well as eckart tolles work to actually try to avoid experiencing negative emotions. It’s been a real problem but i wasn’t aware of what i was doing. It has affected my relationships, caused a lot of anxiety and also my work! Reading this was like a massive light bulb lighting up! My strategy for managing negative emotions has to change. I followed mindfulness like a sheep and ignored my own feelings about these things. I was so desperate to escape uncomfortable and negative feelings that its often all i would think about. Many thanks!

The way the authors talk about the “real” nature of reality definitely reflects an elitist mindset…

And what you are talking about with this “higher” power is something so, so subtle… but when you can recognize it, you see the world in much different shades.

The scientific community is notoriously distanced from emotional exploration, but there are some pockets that merge with less resistance. Really, anywhere you look, humans fight to uphold the traditionally dysfunctional emotion/thought division.

And why? Well, uncertainty as you bring up is a valid motivation. Fear of the unknown. Having to make sense of it for the time being. Trying to “re”-gain “control.”

Another alternative, or maybe just a consequence, is that tons of people are dissociating from… themselves (their Egos/Inner Children/Emotions, etc…) Dissociation is a really unstable state. It’s the ideal state for being brainwashed by culturally-transmitted dysfunctional beliefs.

That’s why I see this mindfulness meditation movement, which for now seems to mostly be pushing for more dissociating (it can change course though), or not “identifying with” emotions, as a potentially dangerous path.

You simply can’t expect to dissociate from yourself and expect to be healthy, happy, let alone a free-thinking individual.

There’s a quote by Carl Jung that I think you’ll like:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

I don’t know if I’ll ever conclusively comprehend it. The more I read it, the more questions I have.

Perhaps we could create our own version of the scientific method that was emotion-based.

Well, the scientific method is beautiful as she is. It’s just that science as it’s practiced is not entirely *scientific* because it’s guided by and embedded in a community of practice — or culture. (A book that covers this is on my to-read list: “Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact,” Ludwik Fleck.)

Science (at least when it comes to psychology) is like a magnifying glass. Scientists use it to take a closer look at things. But you have to remember to look at the bigger picture, and to look at things when they interact with other things. And, you have to know what to look out for.

An on-topic example: researchers can use EEG brain waves of meditating monks to then show that meditating is good for you. But the discrepancy I see is… lack of critical thinking and *mindfulness” about emotions themselves. Meditation can have a nice place in daily routine. But how to do you when the right time and place is for it? How do you make sure that it doesn’t interfere with other stuff we know about emotional health? That it doesn’t give people an excuse to avoid *identifying* with, or experiencing, their emotions?

Science gets (us) into trouble when it doesn’t ask these bigger-picture questions. Such as by largely ignoring important parts of the emotional/subjective experience.

There’s been a recent surge in science to recognize we are emotion-based, that doesn’t lose sight of the bigger picture… by trying to use things to “control” the emotions. (Grasping for “control” only reflects a lack of understanding that we are emotion-based.) On the site I refer to it as cognitive-affective science, and I think that over time it will be more “emotion-based” in the way I think you imply.

I built this place to be emotion-based, with an intuition that the science will eventually catch-up, and start asking and answering some really important questions on how to best be response able to this thing called life. ;)

Thanks WN for sparking such an interesting discussion!

But what is this really a metaphor of?

There IS an invisible force that is very powerful and CAN control us, and it’s made up of all the parts that you talk about here in this blog: Consciousness, unconsciousness, ego/inner child, imagination, creativity, reflection, humor, and more we haven’t discovered yet…

And these things are not intangible, or invisible, really. They ARE accessible but you’ve got to do the work. If you don’t do the work, then this force will remain that mysterious ether that eludes and controls you. And you WILL try to explain it away with abstractions, because what else can you do with it?

Maybe it’s the over-rational mindset of the scientific community that keeps them distanced from emotional exploration. Perhaps we could create our own version of the scientific method that was emotion-based.

The quote I included, “In the Buddhist literature…” was written by the authors, and they were referencing the book by Ole Nydahl called The Way Things Are.

I haven’t read that book so I’m not sure how directly it related to scripture and/or what Buddha actually said — since many different sects came from his teachings.

The bottom line is though, just what you said, a cop-out. And from my perspective, hijacking both science and spirituality to push an agenda, which I talked more about in Monday’s article.

You’d be surprised, WN, We Are One is not out of fashion. It’s really popular right now in the mainstream New Age Self-Help movement. Maybe it’s the second wave or something, but with mindfulness meditation on board, I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.

I hear your frustration. It took me days to finish this paper. First of all because it was dense, but secondly, because I had to really take time understanding the authors’ angle. And then, coming up against some Major Frustrations when getting into the (lack of logic in the) last third of the paper.

To be honest, this paper led me on with high hopes, and then really disappointed with the final slant. That’s not to say though that this isn’t one of my favorite papers. I consider it a good preview of what’s to come in research, practice, and mainstream self-help.

I just can’t help but think that some scientists have spent the last 40 years trying to justify 1969-think and all this talk about We Are One is totally unprovable and, as you say, abstract– and outdated!

Just because I see my pen on the desk, doesn’t mean I’m my pen!!!

It’s a cop-out to think that we are all One and the Same and Brothers and Sisters, because–it’s kind of like trying to spread Christianity or something. There’s a big powerful force that is invisible and impossible to fathom that you’ve gotta get on board with if you want the world to be at peace.

Nope.

“I’m soooo much more enlightened and scientific because I see the world as One, while you see it as fractured. Let me look down on you for a second before I continue saving the world. Hope you get it one day!”

Now I’m angry. I’m gonna have to reappraise this later.

GOD!!!!!!!