First, apologies if this should go in a different community, it just seemed like this probably made the most sense-mods please move it if it should be someone else.
So I’ve been seeing my new therapist for a couple of months now, and overall I do like him/seems like a good fit. He recently asked if I had ever done meditation/mindfulness etc, as he wanted to do more than just being 99% similar to a friend you would just air your greivances/problems/thoughts out loud which sometimes therapy feels like, which I also like as I do appreciate actually tactics/methods of improvement and such.
Anyways, he sent me a free trial of Waking Up, which unbeknown to me is created by Sam Harris. Like most here, I am not a fan of him at all, but I figured I’d at least check out the app. There’s a 28 day “intro” course which is basically teaching you the principles of meditation/mindfulness, and I’m about halfway through and so far I would say I’ve benefited from it. I mentioned my concerns to my therapist, who understood my concerns (I know my therapist is pro palestine based on my ramblings/rants about the situation, so he’s not a full blown Sam Harris fan/neoliberal etc) and he suggested that as long as it seems to be working for me I should stick with it, and did point out that if there is any legitimate background/knowledge that Sam Harris does know it would be meditation more so than his fraudulent neuroscience/political activities/“expertise”.
I’ve personally kind of for now been like “as long as one of his lessons doesn’t obviously show his flawed thinking/views outside of meditation I’ll stick with it for now” since I have no idea if there’s better resources/alternatives out there, but does anyone have thoughts/suggestions of better resources/apps and what not?
Thanks!
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Sam Harris is, if nothing else, a tribute to the fact that following the path to enlightenment will not cure you of having dumb fucking opinions about the world. Within Buddhism & adjacent communities it’s a popular idea that all we have to do to achieve some kind of world utopia is put people on the path, and so it’s a worthy thing to dedicate your life toward. Sam Harris with his general conduct takes a giant shit on that idea. Western Atheistic Buddhism is perfectly compatible with imperialist bloodthirst. In general it’s a well-trodden critique that mindfulness serves to make you into an excellent capitalist subject (for example presentations of meditation as a sort of natural adderall, improving focus decreasing stress etc.). This doesn’t make meditating a bad thing, I think it’s great, it isn’t a panacea but I don’t need it to be. Sam Harris is a good meditation instructor. I use Waking Up and would recommend it to others.