Scientific studies have shown that intercessory prayers do not work. However, until recently it has been assumed that meditation is an important tool for making a person assume a world of bliss and peace. Through meditation, it has been said, you’ll find an inner peace. Meditation majorly makes people hide from reality, people assume a world filled with fantasy. I have always met several meditation techies in a bush or garden looking to the sky with their hands up in the air. This could change if the report by a brain expert that “meditation makes you miserable” is adopted. The new findings show that meditation can cause great despair.
Meditation is a practice in which an individual trains the mind or induces a mode of consciousness, either to realize some benefit or for the mind to simply acknowledge its content without becoming identified with that content or as an end in it. The term meditation refers to a broad variety of practices that includes techniques designed to promote relaxation, build internal energy or life force and develop compassion, love, patience, generosity and forgiveness. A particularly ambitious form of meditation aims at effortlessly sustained single-pointed concentration meant to enable its practitioner to enjoy an indestructible sense of well-being while engaging in any life activity
Miguel Farias who leads the brain belief and behavior research group at Coventry University in England, has just released a thoughtful work called: “The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Actually Change You?” Farias has spent 20 years looking studying meditation and other methods of mindfulness and found them holy, but also full of holes.
Miguel and his co-author Catherine Wikholm examined available research on meditation and their effects on human beings and afterwards came up with their own theories about meditation impacts on human. They found one study that showed 63 percent of people who used meditation on daily basis have suffered from at least one downward side effect. Confusion and depression are examples. Mania and psychosis have been observed too.
Farias’ argues that a technique that allows you to look within and change your perception or reality of yourself must have potential adverse effects. This technique is one that was brought to greater Western prominence by the Beatles. In Farias and Wikholm’s work, the authors are trying to remind those who might be blinded by transcendence that some earthy realities could come along with it.
