QC

Meditation doesn't have to do this to people, this asymptotic blindness to suboptimal behavior. There is more truth in the fetter/perfection models than is currently sexy. Though, if you combine current pop. meditation methods w/ such models you do get disasters, in practice. 2/

The mind can't look at terrible things in self & world without preparation. This is partly where the term "equanimity" is pointing, creating an ever-safer space for for bad stuff to come up, so then it does bubble up, fizz up, enter into experience, to be metabolized, roughly. 3/

Popular insight & concentration and combined methods are unprincipled, ad hoc in this sense of equanimity. They do not systematically restructure the ground so that *anything* in the mind can come up. So one raises a contingent subset, extraordinary change, but demons remain. 4/

And it's actually worse than that. Popular insight & concentration & combined methods do produce limited *compensation* for those remaining demons (abuse, trauma, etc.), which sometimes allows for functional behavior and sometimes causes sex scandals. That's... somewhat good. 5/

But that compensatory function comes at a cost. It causes a layering, a papering over of the *inroads* to getting at remaining demons, abuse, trauma, childhood confusion and misinterpretations, and so forth. The more compensation, the longer it takes to recover those inroads. 6/

The hiding of those inroads does look like blindspots, rigidity, anger, belligerence, neurosis, etc. So, most meditators DO get saner and crazier at the same time, on short and long cycles. There is nonmonotonicity to even "ideal" practice. 7/

In maybe not the worst case, but still pretty bad, you get a meditator who's processed so much stuff, is so damn sane in a lot of ways, but then they got this BRILLIANTLY-DECADES-BURIED bad stuff, too, patchily compensated for. 8/