Sunday, August 4, 2024

Mindfulness

"Mindfulness means focusing your attention on what your body is doing: your beating heart, your breathing, the positions of your arms and legs and the like.

Meditation can be harmful – and can even make mental health problems worse (The Conversation, 19 July 2024). Miguel Farias is
an associate professor of clinical psychology at Coventry University near London, UK. There has been a surge of interest by scientists in mindfulness over the past eight years, Farias says. 
Q: Why? 
Since mindfulness it’s something you can practice at home for free, it often sounds like the perfect tonic for stress and mental health issues.” Books, YouTube videos and even phone apps make it look beneficial and safe.

Q: But where did this practice come from?
"Mindfulness is a type of Buddhist-based meditation in which you focus on being aware of what you’re sensing, thinking and feeling in
the present moment.
The first recorded evidence for this, found in India, is over 1,500 years old. The Dharmatrāta Meditation Scripture, written by a community of Buddhists, describes various practices and includes reports of symptoms of depression and anxiety that can occur after meditation. It also details cognitive anomalies associated with episodes of psychosis, dissociation and depersonalisation (when people feel the world is “unreal”)."

Red flags should go up immediately upon reading this. Ancient Buddhists in India were not using the scientific method to test what types of mental activity improve well-being. They were following religious texts based on their theological views of the world.

Farias mentioned five types of harm that were reported in the Buddhist Scripture” by those who meditated in this way, up to and including psychosis. Similar types of harm are being reported by the practitioners of mindfulness today. Some of them are downright scary.
"These studies show that adverse effects are not rare. A 2022 study,
using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10% of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month.
According to a review of over 40 years of research that was published in 2020, the most common adverse effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalisation, and fear or terror."

Such adverse effects, Farias adds, are not limited to habitual practitioners, but include first-time users or dabblers into 
mindfulness. There are many, he admits, that seem to benefit from mindfulness meditation, but the promoters on social media rarely mention the potential harms.

Mindfulness is an occult practice, not a science! The Bible warns about the occult. Avoid all forms of divination, including the seemingly innocent ones like water witching and palm reading. They are doorways for demons to gain access to human minds that can lead to further deception and oppression later on.

Psychologists who refuse to consider the existence of evil spirits cannot begin to understand what is going on when they merely speak of “unpleasant experiences” by people who have opened themselves up to demonic powers, and are suffering the consequences. Imagine a secular scientist watching the man with the “Legion” of demons in Mark 5, then trying to write it up in a scientific paper in psychological terms! It would be completely baffling to him. He would see only a man acting crazy, but not the evil spirits controlling him. "
CEH