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Interesting I was not aware that people with PTSD can be triggered by mindful meditation? Sadly there are always going to predators seeking out people who are searching.
Good for you! I feel for all people who work in jobs where they see traumatic events daily. I have a life long friend who is a fire captain and he would tell me the horrors that the first responder's went through emotionally from being exposed to this daily. They had special classes offered to them which were basically therapy sessions. A lot of people don't realize how seeing trauma on a daily basis breaks down the mind. I agree and seeing how it's evolved here in CA has truly demonstrated that regulating it and performing laboratory testing on the products is very important. Harborside Health Center/ Dispensary in Oakland and San Jose are trailblazers in this effort.
There is a few links on discussions between Mindfulness and PTSD and other issues. For example here. Basically is has not been studied closely enough for us to be definitive. But what anecdote and studies do exist - warrant extreme caution.
But it seems so far it should not preclude it's use in anyone. Just caution and care. The intensity of the practice and the quality of the instruction do appear to mediate for most of the risk factors. But charlatans who just have a product to sell and go in blind giving everyone the same intensity and guidance- are not treating their customers well and are likely just playing the odds on any risks under the assumption they will not get a customer who can be harmed.
I just tend to be more cautious. And with the cop and with the Anger Management people I approach if differently than I would an alcoholic or a stressed student.
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Originally Posted by Matadora
Is this a recent new fad?
Here? Yes and no I guess. It has been kind of cyclical in my experience over the last 20 years. Each wave being more heavily pushed than the last. In a place called Clontarf in Dublin for example I recently saw a 15 meter long 5 meter high canvas "billboard" advertising a class. That was unprecedented for me. At most before that I would only see ads in the local paper or on bulletin boards in supermarkets.
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Originally Posted by Matadora
I agree! Once I learned how to meditate I realized that many of the issues we see in the US in our schools could be resolved if kids were taught how to meditate vs. jail or medication. This is outstanding on your part! I would not even know where to begin with getting mindful meditation introduced into school curriculum.
That's too bad that it's being instructed as a sort of addendum to religion. I hear you on the profound meditation experiences...while I've also experienced them I never attributed them to any type religious beliefs because I am not religion prone. From a very young age I was able to see that there was something not right about religion.
I guess the way to get these things into the curriculum is just keep talking. To anyone who will listen. Until a critical mass of interest is set to light in the public and the politicians take notice. As a republic we have elective representatives here. So if a TD here hears the same subject come up from his constituents often enough - he or she will start mentioning it in places that matter.
So far it has been rolled out as a kind of trial in a few locations - not nationally - but it is a good start. What I find here in Ireland and I think in many other countries is we do not discuss mental health in any useful way - certainly not in the schools. And a lot of people do not have the language to do so when mental health becomes an issues in their lives.
So what I find is that when you start educating people on ideas - whether the ideas have good science behind them like CBT for example - or are more nebulous and lack evidence based science like "Transactional Analysis" for example - what you do is give people a linguistic structure they can then use to actually start talking about their issues.
So I would love to see a comprehensive ME curriculum here some day of which Mindfulness would only be one constituent of many. But an important one.
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Originally Posted by Matadora
I posted some studies recently where neuroscience has confirmed the mechanisms by which our brains experience what some call a religious experience. If people could learn how to induce lucid dreams they would understand what you just described.
Lucid Dreaming is great. My trigger is watches and light switches. For some reason in my dreams watches and light switches never work 100% normally. So I was able to get myself into the habit while awake - and by inference then while asleep - of checking them almost like OCD. And when I notice a glitch it triggers my Lucid Dreaming awareness that I am not awake and am dreaming. Then I get full Neo in the Matrix level control.
I love the split brain experiments where one split proved more religious than the other - and one split made up stories, even patently and obviously false ones - to justify the actions of the other. Very enlightening on how the mechanisms of religion work in our species. Very demoralizing though to the idea the religious compunction is ever one that our species can grow out of any time soon.
Also I had another thought. We always say, "Nobody ever comes back to verify whether there's life after death." I think "reincarnation" (whatever your concept of that is) requires a forgetting. Your past lives are not erased, but they are encoded inside your soul memory. There probably is a way to access that memory, but we are so loaded with distractions and so far away from spirituality that we can't do it. We use a VERY small percent of out brain. I believe those ancient civilizations like the Maya were able to tap into more of their brain, which is how they were able to build those things. Either, that or they really were beings from somewhere else. Because why can we not replicate that today?
I do believe some "strangers" we have met are souls we knew in another time and place. I think that when we reincarnated to repeat whatever we didn't master/learn, these people come along to help. You know when you and someone just click really well and it's like you've know them forever? Maybe it's because you have. But this time they're a Chinese male and you're an Iranian female; you're from two different races and socioeconomic groups, etc. I dunno. Just theories.
Eta: I think the danger in "reincarnating" is that you risk ALL your progress when you come back. I do think some people have already "graduated" but agree to come back to help others. But what if this time you get distracted so much that you break the cardinal rule, which is to go from belief to unbelief? Or you commit some other "sin" that causes you to have to work harder to redeem yourself?
I once asked a friend why his children eat no vegetables. He said there was no vegetables that they liked. So I asked which ones he had actually tried giving them. The answer was - none. He had simply assumed there was none they would like - so he never even tried.
You are working off the same lie. You like to pretend there is no evidence we like. But the reality is you have never actually presented any. The narrative we do not like it exists in your head alone - and is the justification you use to cop out of ever making the attempt.
In fact your general MO on the subject is not only to refuse to offer any evidence - but to try and pretend it is our job to tell you what the evidence is or should be. When you are the one making the claims.
So by all means speak for yourself - but when you speak vicariously on our behalf alas you tend to just end up fantasizing. Like you just did here.
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So when someone asks us whether God exisis or not, we should not tell them to do their own research and find their own answers.
Instead we should shove the Atheists narrative down their throats that there is no God because there is no evidenxe.
Classy!
There is no evidence that any living organism continues to 'exist' consciously after death; ergo, everything 'ceases to exist after death' is my answer. And although I ultimately claim agnosticism on the god front, I do not believe there is a god.
Help you to elevate your eternal self/true self? Now if you don't believe in that concept, I don't know what to tell ya.
I'm just trying to understand why you think what you stated.
What are the graduation standards you spoke of and who sets those standards? Who ensures you've met those standards and awards you with a "graduation"?
What exactly do these "graduated" folks do to help others elevate their "eternal self/true self"?
I'm just trying to understand why you think what you stated.
What are the graduation standards you spoke of and who sets those standards? Who ensures you've met those standards and awards you with a "graduation"?
What exactly do these "graduated" folks do to help others elevate their "eternal self/true self"?
The simplest verses to explain what is necessary, from my interpretations, are these from the Quran and from the "apocryphal" book of Tobit:
Surah 98:5 - "And they are enjoined naught but to serve Allah, being sincere to Him in obedience, upright, and to keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, and that is the right religion."
Tobit 14:8-9 - "Now, my children, I give you this command: serve God in truth and do what pleases him. Train your children to do what is right and give alms, to keep God in mind at all times and praise his name in sincerity with all their strength."
To me, these verses essentially say the same thing and are repeated over and over in the Quran and New Testament. I don't think it's a good thing to get into rules and what you "should" be doing, because that's how people got in trouble in the past. Focusing too much on the "law" and not understanding that the end game is for you to be a righteous person with a pure heart. IMO, anyone wanting to know "what to do" should start with praying, giving back to the less fortunate if you have means (sincerely and not because you get a tax break or it looks good to others ) and being a good person. Most of us who have a conscience of any sort have a general concept of what's "good" and what's "bad". If you conscience is tugging at you...you probably shouldn't be doing whatever it is you're thinking about doing. If you want to get a little more complex than that, familiarize yourself with the Old Testament/Torah and get an understanding of all the laws that the prophets say Israel is to follow "forever". There are A LOT of regulations for the descendants of Israel that they are to keep for all time. Passover, for example. But we associate Passover with the Jewish. There are A LOT of people who should be observing Passover who aren't, but God knows that many of those people don't know who they are. I think as long as you're trying to do right by God at this point is what matters. Like I mentioned in another thread, the book of Jubilees says the children of Israel will forget the feast days, holy days and Sabbaths. Book of Hebrews says we should be teachers right now but are still learning the basics. So there is an acknowledgment that most of us are not where we're supposed to be at this time. But that's how everything was planned.
Anywho...I think those verses that I shared keep things simple and keep pressure off those who think they must be perfect. Perfection is not required. That is what we're striving for.
Basically, we become worm food. The atoms that comprised our bodies will be dissaptated in various ways, and restructure into soil, over time rock, or food for plant and perhaps other animals. Those atoms will live on, but they are not life.
Part of our DNA came from our forefathers, and part of that DNA will live on in any offspring we have spawned.
Other than that, we are memories in people who loved us.
Find your own answers by doing your own research - it’s a fruitless endeavor to get into arguments with those who believe there is no God because there is no evidence of their liking.
Liking has nothing to do with it. It must be credible, whether we like it or not.
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Originally Posted by GoCardinals
and arguing with those who believe that believing in the existing of God is based on faith - and faith does not require evidence.
Then you can not say if your faith is good or not.
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Originally Posted by GoCardinals
And this faith is build on finding and identifying the signs of God.
Which would be evidence.
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Now if you don't believe in that concept, I don't know what to tell ya. 
