near_how_far

Is rhetorical not in the dictionary?

This is as if to say that meditation is anything other than thinking for thought's sake.

And so, to stretch further, this paraphrasing of what meditation actually IS, at the end of the day...

Is it possible for a person to simply "think" themselves into a certain states or flavors of insanity, or rather the more proper term, mental illness?

The article in question doesn't state that meditation was a cause of their problems, but pretty obviously details that people coming to meditation looking for ways to improve their lifestyle, instead began down a road to a much worse place.

While it might be unsurprising that meditation did not provide direct benefits to mind or body, it also failed to insulate or deflect these people away from new misery.

It's interesting to learn that the people described in the article had uncovered unsettling realities about themselves while meditating.

Knowing what I know about many people, uncompromising introspection is not something everyone would be comfortable with. Some people are jerks. Some people have their head in the clouds.

Grinding one's life to a halt, and taking a hard look in the mirror, is bound to derail an unrealistic world view now and again. But if, on the other side of an unceremonious introduction to cold reality, awaits absolutely no way to fix profound disappointment...

What then?

Except meditation is sold (yes, sold) even to the mentally ill as if it were a completely benign cure-all, suitable for use in preventing or attenuating exactly that kind of mental disturbance.

After all, leaving someone alone with their own thoughts... what harm could that do? And who could be blamed for such problems, except the individual?

It's almost like prescribing absolutely nothing.

So, when someone tells you this will surely ease your pain, but, rather than cure, or even do nothing at all (the general assumption a naive individual might make), it greatly amplifies one's problems, as if one were given a service animal only to be viciously attacked by it, such a result is probably going to surprise you.