Archon Shit: Meditation is supposed to be a harrowing ordeal
A reaction to and challenge of David Kortava's scare-mongering piece for Harper's Magazine
Iāve written reaction pieces before. Most of the time, Iām falling for the bait of some tabloid outrage piece designed to draw attention to a page plastered in advertisements. For the simple act of rendering to the page, the ads net the hosting website a few cents. So itās in the siteās interest to generate a ton of traffic to any page with ads on it. The entire point of publishing bad takes is that it has an effect on people that causes them to link others to it so they can share in their disbelief that someone has personal beliefs that fucking suck. Extremely online baby witches are struggling with this now on TikTok. Some purple haired jabroni will post a video of them dancing while moralizing about āclosed practicesā and it provokes everyone under the age of 25 to react on various social media outlets, thereby boosting the originalās engagement. Itās a deeply cynical way to draw eyes to yourself but it works.
I recently came upon an article that defied my expectations and seemed to be warning people in earnest of the dangers of meditation.
Lost In Thought, the psychological dangers of meditation by David Kortava
How did they go about this? They published an article in Harperās Magazine. It wasnāt some bad take in 500 words or less. It was one of those long-ass articles characteristic of the Harperās publication and had a lot of interview passages and research behind it. It was, for all purposes, a well-written article. It just happens to also be a gigantic load of bullshit.
Maybe Iām just waking up to it. Maybe people have always published this kind of thing and I just never noticed. But as we progress further and further into the Aeon of Horus, I canāt help but notice a few things that seem to be acting in concert if you squint your eyes and look at the big picture from a certain angle: There is a steady decline in the participation with organized Western religion and a steady rise in interests having to do with a more personal spirituality and a return to practices deemed occult or new age by the folks that get to lay labels on everything. The Archons seem to be losing their grip on controlling the spiritual narrative. Either that or the Demiurge just doesnāt give a shit anymore. But every now and then, Iāll see some article come along that seems to be a response to the rising tide of spiritual awakening going on and Kortavaās piece for Harperās seems to be the latest in a series.
The article is two things: A report on the sad fate of a woman named Megan Vogt and a series of quotes by people in the psychology sector remarking on how meditation is a fundamentally dangerous practice and that these dangers are deliberately downplayed by advocates of meditative practice. Vogtās story is legitimately sad. She attended a Vipassana meditation retreat that had some seriously hardcore rules. Participants were expected to attend the retreat in silence, spending ten hours of each of the retreatās ten days in deep silent meditation. This sounds like heaven to me. For Megan it was hell. Seven days in, Meganās mind snapped and she experienced the horrors of psychosis. If youāve ever used LSD and your mind wandered into that deep dark shadow of the bad trip, you know how awful this can be. Now consider that it didnāt wane over time and eventually end for Megan. Her time at the retreat was directly responsible for her condition that ultimately led to her suicide. Kortavaās thesis is proven by this criteria. But hereās the thing: No one but ascetic monks spend ten hours a day in deep meditation. And those guys donāt even start out doing ten hours. They lower themselves in to the pool slowly, becoming more and more at peace with the inner landscape that they eventually come to practically live in. Megan seemed to have some background with meditation but a ten hour marathon meditation sesh is meditating on the highest difficulty level by any standard and her personal readiness to do such a thing is highly in question.
The article makes sure not to lump all meditation into a single bucket. It makes some distinctions between Mindfulness, Vipassana, Transcendental, etc. It includes remarks made by people who, after a regular meditative practice of an hour or more per day started to feel disconnected from the world around them. But what Iām about to say next is going to blow your mind. It may even be a little insulting to the family of Megan Vogt but I assure you, Iām not trying to be hurtful. There is a simple truth to deep meditation for long periods of time, performed consistently across a long period of time by ascetic monks dedicated to their practice:
Itās supposed to feel that way.
Your consciousness is supposed to eventually become unmoored from your mind. Youāre supposed to gain incredible insight from this practice and that insight may look like madness. The physical world is supposed to lose its appeal. And as Iāve written before, enlightenment is painful. The pain is a barrier to entry meant to be faced only by souls ready to make the journey but not everyone is ready. It may take several trips around the wheel to arrive at that point. My own confrontation with the first pains of awakening were deeply traumatic. Enlightenment isnāt free. Thereās a price.
Let me step back for a second. Kortavaās article makes it clear that there is a distinction between the fifteen to twenty minute daily meditation and the serious mystical shit ranging from an hour to hours beyond and that itās those long-ass sessions that end up tragic for some people. Practices that end up in those long spans of meditation come with a philosophy that is supposed to prepare you for what youāre going to end up facing in the darkness. If youāre meditating for those sorts of stretches, you often have a good reason to do so and have been studying that practice with a purpose in mind. When the eventual snap comes, itāll be no less nightmarish, but youāll be ready for it because you likely know that on the other side of it lies your destination.
Thereās a repeated indictment in the article that meditation is universally advertised as a means to reduced stress and greater relaxation and it is when performed in the recommended dosages of fifteen to twenty minute mindfulness stretches. Whatās more, if youāre one of these people in the article reporting that meditation caused you to stop feeling love for your children, what prevented you from ceasing this practice? Why did you continue? A very large part of meditative practice is learning to listen to your body. Techniques to focus the mind and quiet the internal chatter very often include focusing your consciousness on your breath or other parts of your body. Why are none of these people listening to their bodies when itās clearly telling them that maybe meditation isnāt their scene? Megan Vogt very likely didnāt just snap without warning. There were likely warning signs in the days ahead of the break that should have informed her judgement to bail on the retreat. I can understand to some degree that people do often fall prey to sunk-cost and will endure something shitty just because they paid for it and the article does point out that the retreatās literature really leaned on people to hang in there if they werenāt feeling it. I looked up the Pubbananda Dhamma website and will admit that it comes off a bit culty and that Transcendental Meditation, as an organized body, also has a culty reputation that likely pushes people into situations theyād otherwise be uncomfortable with and come out the other side with less than they started with. But these outfits arenāt Scientology or Jim Jones. You can walk away from this shit with nothing more than gap in your wallet and a bad taste in your mouth.
The numbers in this article are also hazy and vague. Literally billions of people around the world meditate in the way that comes to mind when you think of the word meditation. This doesnāt include silent, non-mindful techniques such as prayer, either. And yet, Kortava would have you believe that thereās an epidemic of madness which stems from this practice, touted as the key to the secret of reduced stress and greater relaxation in the capitalist hellscape we occupy. When these concerns were brought to the attention fo the Dalai Lama, he merely cracked a joke! Can you believe this sinister foe? Not that Iām casting aspersions, but the article has a deeply troubling rhythm to it which smacks of The Fiendish Yellow Peril and its nefarious plot to enslave the minds of western people!
The article is not some slapdash hit piece, either. It comes with research and interviews and Iām certain that the risks reported here are rooted in truth. Some people are going to face something very dark when they spend a lot of time probing the dusty corners of their consciousness. Not everyone is looking to face the Minotaur. Some people just want to chill out and silence the din of every day life. Kept to a regimen of fifteen to twenty minutes of mindfulness a day, the likelyhood that youāll one day become obsessed with psychotic notions is exceedingly unlikely. But Kortavaās article has a vein of hysteria running through it. It's just this side of Kevin McCarthy at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, lurching through traffic, desperately pleading down the barrel of the cameraās lens, āYou fools! Theyāre after all of us! Weāre all in danger!ā
I had to look David Kortava up to see what sort of person he is and information is limited. This article is the first heās written for Harperās after a few dozen pieces in the New Yorker about Manhattan bars, so a long article decrying the dangers of meditation, known and suppressed by its greatest advocates, struck me as an odd shift. Harperās seems to have a habit of publishing the literary equivalent of spicy online takes since a piece critical of the #MeToo movement and a piece published some time ago making the claim that HIV is not the cause of AIDS were published to great criticism. The editorial staff seems to have a revolving door as well. So, who knows what itās like working there and what the publisher expects of them? The only truly remarkable thing I could find on Harperās is that theyāre headquartered at 666 Broadway in New York City.
I knew it. Illuminati confirmed.
Bottom line: Fuck this article, man. It operates on the same logical wavelength of anti-vaxxers. An edge-case of meditation practitioners could become dislodged from reality and go nuts. The Mindfulness Mafia, Big Meditation, knows about this risk but donāt want you to know! Youāre all idiots for falling for this trap and this truth will set you free.
Go ahead and meditate but you know what? Actually be fucking mindful. Listen to your body. Observe the changes taking place in your mind. Meditation, even in small doses, will lead you to a greater awareness of everything and it should be hard as nails to get caught slipping and go crazy. Youāll know it, youāll see it coming, youāll feel it in everything you do. If that feeling is a dark one and your practice is taking you down a path to something that isnāt serving you or your loved ones, stop. And if some dickweed cult zombie is busting your balls for trying to leave a hardcore retreat early, your middle finger should send them a clear message without breaking your vow of silence.