Trigger warning...

My introduction to meditation was through Adi Da. Besides some reading of Chogyam Trungpa and Will Johnson, Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha provided my first real exposure to Buddhist meditation. 

Even before MCTB, through every teacher I had and every book I read, it was made pretty clear to me that meditation can cause weird shit to happen. I was already experiencing weird shit before MCTB. It was my teacher, who was well versed in weird shit, who said "hey, if you're going to take this path seriously you might want to familiarize yourself with the maps" and for the record he was not a maps guy or an MCTB guy, arguably the opposite. 

To make it clear, there was never any point where I was under the impression that weird shit wasn't going to happen. 

Ok, so, how does someone end up on a retreat with an organization who isn't able to deal with or capable of recognizing a bit of an A&P to DN shitshow?

Because, I wish this to be understood as frankly as it can possibly be interpreted ... I have never sat with someone who hasn't experienced that. Never. 

How are these professionals not specialized in and capable of addressing these experiences? 

Like... 

Where the fuck did these teachers come from? Surely you can't run regular retreats and not know weird shit happens? 

If I went on retreat with some people in the Amazon and the Shaman wasn't able to deal with a little bit of a freak out I would strongly suspect that I was in the company of grifters.

I don't mean to downplay the severity of a potential psychotic break and I respect there are other professionals out there whose job it is to deal with that. It's just...

My experience of the meditative journey has been weird shit all the way down. I've talked to forest spirits, fairies, aliens, dead people, I've had fucking ghouls on my ceiling and terrors in my basement. Not to mention, I've had to explore at length, every shade and shadow of my own corrupted human soul. I've had A&Ps higher than any drug, Dukkha Nana's harsher and more excruciating than any pain I've ever experienced and I've spent some time in a full body cast. 

Every step of the way I've had wiser, older people able to guide me and say "hey, that can happen, its ok, modify your practice like so" 

So, yeah... Who the fuck are these people? Why are they running retreats? How did we end up here? 

If they aren't capable of doing the job why are they being allowed to?

Am I wrong to ask this?

​​​​​​​I know there are some awesome teachers out there. I just don't know how someone like our friend who came through here recently can go on a retreat and be left with nothing. It's in these dark moments that the wisdom of those wiser than us is most needed. That some comfort and wisdom was not offered him is... Fucking bullshit. 
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I don't do retreats and I have always been blessed to have sage council and an exceptionally good nose for the dharma. Why would someone go on retreat, even learn meditation, if they can't be in the company of wiser people, people with experience in these practices?

How does a retreat get put together without any wise, experienced people in participation? 

Out of curiousity, what inspired this post Baiya?

In general, the types of retreats with no teachers/guidance are typically the Goenka retreats where they just play a pre-recorded video. To be a "teacher" I guess you need to know how to press play. I guess the guides have some personal experience, but they are not qualified for freakouts/psychosis and will typically blame the meditator for doing something wrong... "it's not supposed to happen like this... just do what the tape says..."

Other retreat centers, such as IMS, have very skilled teachers but --- I believe, but do not know --- they don't advertise either the possibility of freakouts/psychosis nor their ability to deal with it. I don't blame them, imagine the liability! But they can handle most problems that arise and get people to more serious medical help if needed. IMS has very good teacher vetting for the most part and I've seen them manage some interesting situations.

I've done some retreats with monastics and it's a mixed bag. On one hand, they can be great. Like really really great. On the other hand, they can sometimes be just a mass-produced monk that think "these lay people can't achieve anything" and so they sort of blow off teaching/guiding and just give "sunday school" childish dharma talks that are mostly unrelated to the actual retreat. These latter folks can also sometimes blame the meditator if anything goes worng...

And the big problems really happen when students don't have frequent access to teacher and don't self-report problems early on. I think frequent (daily) interaction with a teacher would help most of the problems from occuring, but in the therevadian tradition it's more normal to talk with a teacher every 2-3 days which is pretty edgy. If a student hasn't been eating/sleeping regularly for three days, has spent most of the time talking to spirits and doing yogic breathing... that student is basically screwed. Even with very good guidance, they still have another 2-3 days to mess things up until the next meeting!  And if the student doesn't self report problems, a teacher can't be a mind reader.

(And of course our medical system isn't any help, no one wants to be labeled as psychotic etc. etc. so there are good reasons why people don't report when weird shit is happening...)

Holding a retreat is a calculated risk: is it worth leading a group of 100 if 3 will have to leave and 1 will need an intervention? Probably yes, it's worth it to the 97 other people and society overall. It's a minor miracle that we can have access to retreats in sane settings with access to sane teachers.  

Adi da well, he wasn't so sane...

I know many people who meditate with different  Intensities and in different traditions. Honestly.  I have never seen anybody have a psychotic break. And most people who continue  to meditate usually have some psychological  issues to begin with and that can keep them motivated( especially  me).  The 3c and dark night can be rough,however in Mctb,  Daniel brings up the worst case scenarios just to advise is . He mentions that. .. Shit happens . I feel bad about the Individual  that recently had a break at a retreat. He got the help he needed and is doing better. . I hope he is able to slowly build his practice up again. If his doctors clear him. It doesn't seem to me they handled the un3xpected to badly.  
. I also Have a schizoid personality  disorder.  NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA  OR SCHIZOTYPAL.  I am  ery high functioning.  Just very introverted.   I have been meditating  for  years off and on and for at least 2 hours a day for 2 months.  I have never seen a ghost, goblin, sprit or seen had anything really that strange happen.  I have had brief audible hallucinations  , a few lights and some slight visuals. But I could always realize thats par for the coarse. Usually happens when I am half asleep when meditating.    The shadow stuff is certainly real because of the Introspection. That being said. I wouldn't call this strange fucked up shit. 95 percent of my meditations are uneventful.  Most people that seems common. But that's those I talked to

 What inspired this...

Somebody came through here recently who was clearly good enough at meditating to get themselves into trouble. They had to leave a retreat (which was I think the right call) but didn't recieve any guidance, council, direction from the people who organized the retreat.  

From my point of view, this person was having a high powered A&P which led to them sleeping poorly and doing some spooky shit as the world started crumbling around them. Is this ideal? No. Do we need to make some adjustments to practice? You betcha. Is any of it unusual? God no. I feel weird saying this but... it honestly indicates to me that they probably have real potential. (If they can learn to chill out) They got the damn spaceship off the ground, they just drove it into something too nasty, too quickly, because they didn't really know any better. 

This is an esoteric process. Shit can get weird and there can be some real danger to that if the right support structures are not in place. Every meditation teacher I have had, every spiritual friend, they've all shared some such situation with me. I find it upsetting, the idea that this person was on a retreat and there wasn't a single person around to say "Hey, this stuff can happen, why don't you try...". It seems wrong to me. How can a meditative culture exist that isn't prepared for this?

If we were going to go diving with Sharks, no cage, right, there are obviously dangers but there are also protocols that can be followed, there's knowledge that's shared between participants for everyones safety, there are best practices, there are methods for working within a context that has large amounts of volitility, large amounts of unknowns. It seems to me like meditation isn't being taken seriously enough in any scenario where potential volitility isn't being openly addressed and planned for, frankly. 

I do think free diving with sharks is an adequate analogy. Perhaps I am just an unusually hardcore meditator. Sharks have a strange beauty to them. Certainly they have a few lessons to teach about impermanence.  

Is it worth leading a group of 100 if 3 will have to leave and 1 will need an intervention? Yes it is, totally, my point is about the quality of the intervention more so than whether the need for one should be avoided. 

Adi da well, he wasn't so sane... No, but he was honest about many of the realities of meditative practice. An honesty that has held up in my esteem through years of practice. If I'm going to discuss meditation with people I'm probably not going to discuss Adi Da, for a lot of reasons, but I bring him up here because the context of my introduction to meditation was not very "mainstream", like... it was kind of culty  (and that was never a problem for me personally, it was just the particular patch of mud in which my lotus decided to blossom - Also, I am not extolling the virtues of Adidam over any specific Buddhist communities or approaches to meditation, please nobody get that idea - ). I have not participated much with the wider world of meditation, retreats and so on. 

I don't understand why people could be in a position to lead a retreat and not be thoroughly honest about the reality of suffering and the dangers of intensive practice. (I'm obviously not accusing anyone here of this and 99% of the time for me these days "the world of meditation" is about as vast and as deep as the Dharmaoverground, I don't normally have bandwidth for much more than this forum lol) 

-Pride: I feel like if I was leading a retreat I probably could have been a lot more helpful, that's not something I'm interested in doing but I do think as a statement it's true enough, I have walked some dark forest trails y'know-
 
I mean obviously there's nothing I can DO about any of this so I'll just let it go. I think it just made me sad. 

I also accept that teachers can't be expected to be mind readers... even if they are. 

I agree that the guy who got sick has potential. Its a gut feeling I have that he is high up in the path. His ego could have fought back  and caused problems as a last ditch attempt to salvage itself. I also think he had an abnormally  Intense  AP.  .   To be honest . I would love e to be In his shoes  because I would k ow something is happening.   But is this common?   I dunno. Most AP events are pleasurable aren't they?  

Yeah, most A&P events are pleasurable. But it can also lead to an intensity of focus, which can lead to neurosis, difficulty sleeping and that energy can carry you further until all of a sudden your in the middle of the dukkha nanas.

​​​​​​​Its a process I have some familiarity with lol

some classic stuff from MCTB on maps/retreats/teachers/mushrooms...

35. How the Maps Help – MCTB.org

I don't have all the answers but I am sympathetic to the Bahiya's post.

I think it's useful to distinguish between suppressed emotions and unpleasant realizations about one's self coming up during meditation that are in a sense natural and more or less expected (and which may require psychological counseling to deal with), and more serious issues that I think come from meditating too much and "straining" the brain or rewiring it in ways it was not designed to be wired and might require psychiatric care.

I don't really think it is a good idea for a beginner to go on a multi day retreats and I think people who run such retreats that let beginners participate are irresponsible. 

There is also social pressure to finish a retreat - if you leave, it is considered "weak" - and someone who is having problems might be reluctant to stop when they otherwise would.

And there are different styles of meditating, and some seem to have a higher incidence of more serious issues and I think the people who run those retreats need to find a different style of meditation to teach.

I also think the general community of meditation teachers and also meditators should recognize this problem and not accept it as part of doing business but as something to be embarassed about that needs to be fixed - like with sexual misconduct scandals. There are generally accepted rules of conduct for interactions between a teacher and student, there should also be guidelines for preventing these kinds of serious issues from developing. The guidelines could take into account the style of meditation being taught. I'm not a psychologist, but I think someone like Willoughby Britton would be a good person to involve in developing such guidelines. 

May I ask what kind of retreat  it was ? Vaguely  what tradition?  Howi ntense?  6 hours a day ? 10 hours sitting?