Hey sorry for the late reply, I hope everything is still going well. I’m happy to hear that there is some benefit you’ve seen with meditation already. Meditation is a lifelong journey (if you’ll forgive my corniness lol) and it can also come in phases. In my life so far, I’ve had periods where I stop meditation completely and then come back to it when I feel like I need it. It would be better to be consistent and as one’s discipline grows it can/should be. But I’ve heard that for many people they have these “waves” in their life. Breht actually discusses it in the revleft episode you mentioned! That was actually originally posted on the Red Menace podcast with Alyson. They actually have a part II of their discussion: On Mysticism II: Enlightenment, Non-Duality, & Perennialism and I wanted to let you know of it. It’s an interesting episode as it talks about mysticism from a Buddhist (Breht) and Abrahamic (Alyson) perspective.

In fact revleft has a lot of episodes about meditation and mystical traditions across various religions. I’ll spam you with a few:

Buddhist Philosophy: The Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path

Buddhist Enlightenment: Impermanence, No Self, and the Dark Night of the Soul

Awakening from the Dream of Separateness

Meditation, Materialism, and Marxism

On Meditation (Patreon Teaser)

[UNLOCKED] Buddhist Perspectives: Self-Immolation and Political Struggle

Is Marxism just Religion by Another Name?

Religion and Marxism: Thinking Through the Human Condition

Approaching Organizing and Spirituality w/ Rev Left Radio

Contemplative Practice and Political Struggle

St. Francis of Assisi: Patron Saint of Ecology & Brother to All Creation

Early Christianity: Psychedelics, Ancient Greece, and the Emerging Church

Sufism: Islamic Mysticism and the Annihilation of Self in God

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I know what you mean by being ‘anti everything spiritual’. I was definitely like that, but I was still in to philosophy as I have wanted to seek solutions to the emotional problems I feel I’ve had my whole life. I found Buddhsim, but my anti-spirituality forced me to adopt a secular Buddhism. Then later I was interested in Lacan, existentialism, etc.. I then came back to Buddhism on a more spiritual level through realizing that there’s a lot of overlap between Buddhism and the concepts in Lacan (and other psychoanalysts) of ‘lack’, ‘The Real’, etc. It wouldn’t do any good to explain it, but I found a way to ‘make sense’ of the mysticism in a way that wasn’t too antithetical to my materialist worldview. In fact, I’d also argue that there is a lot in common between the metaphysics of Buddhism (or other traditions like Daosim) and Dialectical Materialism.

What really set this off for me was reading about the similarities between Tiantai Buddhism and Zizek’s psychoanalytic philosophy despite the latter’s criticism of Buddhsim Is Žižek a Mahāyāna Buddhist? śūnyatā and li v Žižek's materialism. The text was my introduction to Tiantai Buddhism, which actually opened me up to mystical ideas in a context I was already comfortable with. Unfortunately, Zizek is very much a western chauvinist and has become more and more cringe over the years.

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Regarding my comment about meditation taking you to dark places if one’s not careful, Breht actually talks about that in the above episode I linked. Essentially, though, meditation is part of a mystic or, if you can stomach the word, sprititual practice. Certain spiritual truths may emerge when doing meditation. And if you don’t have the context or community to help you may find that mediation can worsen some existential crises or reintroduce trauma that you have suppressed. Imagine your mind as a pool of rough and murky water. Meditation helps still the waves so the murk can settle. When that happens you can see much further into the pool, but you may see things you aren’t ready for. That probably sounds cliche, but I think there is some truth to it. And Breh talks about how people who have been thrusted into intense meditation retreats can have trauma from it. If you are just meditating for 5 to 30 minutes a day, though, I don’t think you have to worry about psychotic breaks or anything. But, I wanted to mention this because meditation is part of a spiritual practice. Eventually, some truths will come out of it.

Another reason that it can be dangerous is that there are “gurus” and teachers who have done a lot of meditation. They probably have seen or felt certain truths on life, but they still end up acting unethically. They abuse their position and act ego-ically. Their meditation can give them greater control of some parts of their ‘selves’, but without an ethical practice they abuse what they’ve gained. Once again, meditation is just one part of a spiritual practice. Ethics must be part of it too. Some will say that by doing meditation ethical practice naturally follows, others disagree.

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I hope you continue to do well, and best of luck!!