Transcendental meditation

On meditation courses generally, I caution you to use a lot of due diligence, mostly importantly by getting a recommendation from someone you know well who is pretty emotionally sane.

I went to a few different meditation courses in my 20s (it was a psychedelic time for me and I was looking for brain training to make my acid trips even better).

Even for courses which promoted themselves as all about meditation and discipline, the courses tended to be populated by self-help junkies. Self-help as in the Self-Help section of the bookstore ie books with large fonts and 7 wishful thinking secrets to success and the like.

These were broken people fleeing from experiences either harrowing or terrifyingly mundane, desperate to see a light at the end of any tunnel they could find. They would lurch from one motivational speaker session to the next meditation workshop, desperate to find a guru who would lead them to salvation.

What's worse, they were generally human wrecks. They lacked either the discipline or attention to stick with any path once the endorphin rush from the closing motivational speech had worn off.

They were refugees from lives that were just all too hard.

Even in courses where these "flee-ers" were outnumbered by legitimate "seekers", the flee-ers were too eager, too keen and too vocal, so would end up spoiling the whole experience. Rather than being able to focus on meditation and be filled with equanimity, I was instead focused on the wreckage of their pitiful lives and filled with equal parts sympathy and disgust.

Courses with some form of confessional element were the worst. The flee-ers often loved the positive attention they got under the spotlight as they vomited up their problems or lifted their dresses to expose their dirty secrets.

If there was no confessional component to the course, at least one of these people would grab the closest opportunity for a confessional session, seize it with both hands and would not let go.

Carthatic for them, I'm sure.

Once this really fucked up my experiences at a tantric sex workshop. A real wood-killer.