[theqabalist]

Forgive me if anyone has said as much, but something that directly stands out to me about all of the comments heretofore mentioned is that they are treating a state of consciousness in a formalist way, as if the mind exists independent of the body. The brain's activities and the things the mind experiences are very much situated in the realm of bodily states. One state that is very common amongst people who follow certain paths is malnutrition.

I am not necessarily going to try to start a flame war over which diet or whatever could cause which set of nutrient deficiencies, but I think its a salient point that he has self professed clinical symptoms (like convulsing muscles) and never sought medical help, only seeking more help from the same overly formal realm of rules.

Additionally, the author mentions following all these buddhist frameworks, but in Theravada at least, part of the eight fold path is not drinking or doing drugs, yet he says he would drink and do drugs when he didn't get the jolt he wanted from the practice. Alcohol and drugs, while not necessarily inherently bad, are great at depleting the body of essential things like vitamins, minerals, and neurotransmitters needed for proper brain functioning.

The only real treatment he gives to this is saying, "no preexisting conditions." Of course, I hope I don't have to explain that just because you haven't been diagnosed with a deficiency of some kind, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I also find his later comment that another practitioner had "no preexisting conditions except anxiety," to be particularly problematic. Anxiety is a preexisting condition, which lends some probability that his evaluation of preexisting conditions could be overly lax, and his consistent search for confirmation bias that Buddhism would solve his medical/biological problems could cause him to downplay actual preexisting conditions.

Anyway, I agree with many of the other people that dark nights, etc are well known phenomena, so I don't want to downplay any of that. I just wanted to add to the conversation that nutrition is very important, and if you fuck that up, you can get really fucked up psychologically due to dysfunctional parts.

[scotty79]

I had pretty much the same symptoms as this guy with zero meditation, just caffeine overdose. When I stopped drinking coffee and tea all symptoms, including dread and feeling that something is very wrong, muscle twitching and other odd feelings went away.

And I didn't even drink that much by coffee drinkers standards.

[lolc]

I found it strange him mentioning drinking coffee in the retreat, especially in the morning after experiencing strong dissociation. In general I would have thought they'd skip the coffee.

[arvinsim]

Switched to decaf for the same reason.