{"id":207,"date":"2016-09-14T14:19:53","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T14:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/wp\/?p=115"},"modified":"2016-10-24T22:22:13","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T22:22:13","slug":"mindfulness-and-magic-misused-to-manipulate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/14\/mindfulness-and-magic-misused-to-manipulate\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindfulness and Magic: Misused to Manipulate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the wrong hands mindfulness meditation can be used to manipulate and control others. This is painfully illustrated in the CNN documentary &#8220;Holy Hell&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Mindfulness meditation should be a personal introspective experience and not a tool to promote group think. Too often the experience of meditation is explained as having magical powers. In fact it is nothing more than a natural ability that anyone can learn to be used independently. When a cult like the one in this documentary makes meditation an important group activity it becomes easy for a manipulative leader to use it to brainwash followers into believing anything.<\/p>\n<p>This not a defect in the practice of meditation that should concern anyone. Just because some people use knives to kill doesn&#8217;t mean we should empty them from our kitchens. The same is true with meditation and cults. This is good reason why you shouldn&#8217;t seek out group meditation sessions. Meditation is needed in your daily life. You shouldn&#8217;t rely on others for the benefits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the wrong hands mindfulness meditation can be used to manipulate and control others. This is painfully illustrated in the CNN documentary &#8220;Holy Hell&#8221;. Mindfulness meditation should be a personal introspective experience and not a tool to promote group think. Too often the experience of meditation is explained as having magical powers. In fact it is nothing more than a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mind-power","category-mindfulness","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emergentmeditation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}