Tom's Views

In this piece, I continue the arguments (started here) that it’s unlikely that   mindfulness meditation therapy   can relieve a strong love desire as surely as   actually finding true love. So I resume efforts in this segment to pick apart an article [Mentat] provided, that attempts to show that mindfulness meditation can cure a myriad of ills indeed.  But my simple point is that medication probably cannot vanquish a person’s   true love desire   in any practical ways.

Dear [Mentat],

Again, let’s assume for this discussion that the   mood set point   discussed   here   indeed exists.  Further assume that the   mood set point   is not changed over the long term by the usual   life-altering events   that typically occur in a person’s life. Given these, the article you sent me then discusses how the mood set point can be influenced positively by mindfulness meditation. Well, perhaps it can. But several questions arise:

1. Would for example, the Dali Lama’s seemingly perpetual good moods survive a transplant from his culture to a more western one? That is, if he came to live in the United States, I wonder how long he’d continue to benefit from his advanced meditative skills, or if the benefit would remain as clearly pronounced as it is while he lives in his native lands. Indeed, many easterners who permanently relocate here soon adopt most of the stress-related health problems that have come to characterize our culture [here in America]. The Dali Lama’s native culture may be more determinative of his heightened sense of well-being than his meditative skills.  So meditation itself may be only partially responsible for his tranquil disposition.
2. How applicable are these techniques to counteracting the loneliness resulting from thwarted   love needs   gratification? Specifically, how well would they work against love lust? The [article] does not address this. While the techniques appear to work well to reduce stress in the chronically stressed-out western worker, the article attributes no direct applicability of this technique specifically to the particular emotional and physical stresses of doing without   romantic   relationships. While it does say that the resulting mood elevation might help make relationships in general better,   it does not say which kinds of relationships. I’m skeptical of meditation’s long-term positive effects at eliminating a basic need (deficiency need) – particularly one at level three or lower in Maslow’s needs hierarchy.
3. How widely applicable is this, particularly in so-called right-brained people? This article relies much on the subjective interpretations of MRI brain scan data. Deciphering these is even more of an art than reading X-Ray pictures (I found out just how “guessy” reading X-rays can be when I injured my wrist six year ago. But more about that another time). As we discussed in other posts, as I understand current technology, it lacks quantitative much less normalized ways of measuring precisely what’s being accomplished in the brain, how much is being accomplished, and precisely where that accomplishment is happening. Peoples’ brain physiology differs depending on genetics, the experiences they’ve had while growing up, and numerous other factors. Each brain is wired differently therefore. So a locus of activity in region A of person 1’s brain likely means something totally different than the same activity in the same region for person 2. Yet this article doesn’t account for these differences. It seems to treat brains rather generically, when it claims that people in chronically bad moods have more right-brain activity than left. After all, many people   normally   rely more on the right side of their brains for higher cognitive functions (particularly those involving analysis and decision-making). So who’s to say whether elevated activity in that area is due to a bad mood or healthy brain operations? To get around this problem, they might have included the less disputable blood pressure, heart rate, and galvanic skin response readings of the test subjects, to bolster their arguments for the stress-reducing effects of mindfulness meditation. But perhaps someone already did that in another article.
4. How practical would it be for westerners to make the seemingly-drastic life style changes required to benefit significantly from meditation therapy? Again, to the article’s credit, it does say that the those who seem to benefit most, have to achieve a meditative skill comparable to concert violinists or Olympic divers. Very few people at large would ever be willing to work so hard and so long.  In short, medication therapy probably will not work well unless you make a career out of it.

Well, as you can tell, I’m not overly impressed with this article. While I see the possibility of using mindfulness meditation to get short-term relief from thwarted love desires, I’m not convinced that it could totally eliminate such a basic need in the Maslownian sense. Meditation therapy may treat the symptoms perhaps, but not the root cause of the distress, which is a need for true love.  The cause of the loneliness then is simply that the suffering person lacks this true love.  The cure is (simply or not), that he obtains true love.  That’s all.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Accepting Limitations
• Can Mindfulness Meditation Therapy Cure Love Lust?
• Celibacy Turns Priests Into Dangerous Lustful Predators
• Find True Love For Lasting Happiness
• Finding True Love Gives Lasting Pleasure
• Love Needs Tid Bits
• Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs

References

• Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs   definition on Wikipedia