Frank Lee

I disagree with the way meditation is taught, which I see as a form of severely conditional self-love. The way meditation is generally taught is to start by placing one's focus on the meditation-object, usually the breath. If one's focus then wanders and ends up on something else, one is taught to redirect one's focus back to the breath and restart. An analogy for what you're doing to yourself when you meditate like this is the following: Imagine you have a child that you want to become a professional basketball player (child - focus, basketball - breath). You tell your child to play basketball, and as long as it does what you want it to do you love it, but when your child stops playing basketball and goes to do something else, you no longer love it and tell it to go back to playing basketball. To confine your attention solely to a single object, such as the breath, is in my opinion extremely unkind to your attention, and thereby arguably yourself. It's like telling...

Mental illness vs mental health vs emotional well-being What is a mental illness? Google defines it as: “a health condition causing significant changes in thinking, feeling, mood or behavior, leading to distress and impaired daily functioning in social, work, or family life, ranging from mild issues to severe disorders like depression or anxiety, and can be managed like other medical conditions.” I can poke holes in that and question why significant changes in thinking, feeling, mood or behavior are a bad thing. These can be great things. I assume that even psychiatrists, who diagnose mental illnesses, agree that if their treatment changes a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, and/or behavior in the way that they envision for their patient, that that is a positive thing. Hence, a change in thinking, feeling, mood, and/or behavior alone means nothing. I can also ask what exactly falls under distress. Some people are comfortable and even enjoy falling out of an airplane (with a para...