Tangentially, this is a nice perspective on the varieties of parental experience. I love my son extremely dearly and am very glad to be a parent and to be his parent specifically -- but at no point in his life would thinking about him have been a cheat code for sparking the kind of uncomplicated joy you seem to say leads to jhana entry.
In fact on reflection I am not sure what thought *would* spark that purity of joy, despite having a very satisfying, meaningful, loving and loved, and comfortable life. This kind of dispositional variation may be an underrated barrier for those who don't have as successful an experience as yours.
Yeah, it's interesting! I've heard this from a number of people now re: different ways of relating to joy, which I think is a useful insight in itself. I had kind of assumed joy is an "objective" emotion that's experienced universally, even if the actual source varies, which is how it's often depicted (e.g. dopamine or seratonin being released in the brain). But it turns out we all have wildly different baselines for "happy" or "sad," and one person's 10/10 happy moment is phenomenologically different from someone else's. My guess is it's possible for people to increase their baselines, if they want it - just not sure how yet.
The lack of correlation is certainly a surprising initial result.
My kneejerk reactions would be: pooling the various measurements of meditation into a single latent variable might reveal a more meaningful correlation as these do sound very noisy; doesn't Jhourney have EEG equipment or other measurements which could be a more objective measurement of meditation experience?; n = 81 might just not be a big enough sample for such noisy measurements combined with such a short intervention (1 retreat), and a power analysis might show that the nulls here are no surprise at all; and maybe there could be some sort of selection bias where people interested in the Jhourney concept of 'let's build a machine to optimize jhanas' are those who regular meditation doesn't work for and so a different approach puts them on equal footing with newbies.
Tangentially, this is a nice perspective on the varieties of parental experience. I love my son extremely dearly and am very glad to be a parent and to be his parent specifically -- but at no point in his life would thinking about him have been a cheat code for sparking the kind of uncomplicated joy you seem to say leads to jhana entry.
In fact on reflection I am not sure what thought *would* spark that purity of joy, despite having a very satisfying, meaningful, loving and loved, and comfortable life. This kind of dispositional variation may be an underrated barrier for those who don't have as successful an experience as yours.
Yeah, it's interesting! I've heard this from a number of people now re: different ways of relating to joy, which I think is a useful insight in itself. I had kind of assumed joy is an "objective" emotion that's experienced universally, even if the actual source varies, which is how it's often depicted (e.g. dopamine or seratonin being released in the brain). But it turns out we all have wildly different baselines for "happy" or "sad," and one person's 10/10 happy moment is phenomenologically different from someone else's. My guess is it's possible for people to increase their baselines, if they want it - just not sure how yet.
The lack of correlation is certainly a surprising initial result.
My kneejerk reactions would be: pooling the various measurements of meditation into a single latent variable might reveal a more meaningful correlation as these do sound very noisy; doesn't Jhourney have EEG equipment or other measurements which could be a more objective measurement of meditation experience?; n = 81 might just not be a big enough sample for such noisy measurements combined with such a short intervention (1 retreat), and a power analysis might show that the nulls here are no surprise at all; and maybe there could be some sort of selection bias where people interested in the Jhourney concept of 'let's build a machine to optimize jhanas' are those who regular meditation doesn't work for and so a different approach puts them on equal footing with newbies.
So what is meditation for?
> culminating in cessation, or loss of consciousness
For the loss of consciousness itis enough to open any social network in doomscrolling, or turn on TV.