Notice when a stage name is being used to skip past difficulty
Catch the moment a stage name becomes a reason to push through, skip, or dismiss something hard that deserves attention.
Pourquoi ça marche
A map can offer a ready reason to set discomfort aside: it is only a stage, it will pass, the book says it is normal. Some of that may be accurate, but the difficulty continues unexamined when it is used that way. Britton’s 2019 paper asks, in its title, whether mindfulness can be too much of a good thing and proposes the value of a middle way. The same question applies to stage maps: a stage name can close a conversation that the experience still needs. The pattern is sometimes called spiritual materialism.
Comment faire
- When you notice a stage name ending a conversation with yourself (“it’s just a stage”), stop and name the discomfort in one sentence.
- Ask whether the difficulty is one you are willing to look at with a teacher or clinician, and if not, what is making it hard to look.
- If the difficulty involves fear, feeling unreal, or thoughts of harm, do not continue intensive practice. Use the grounding practice on this page first.
- Write down what you were steering around before you return to practice, if you return at all that day.
Données probantes
Lindahl et al. (2017) documented meditation-related challenges whose impact ranged from minimal and transient to severe and enduring, and identified interpretive frameworks as a factor that may shape how those experiences are handled. Britton (2019) asks whether mindfulness can be too much of a good thing. (observational)
These sources do not measure bypassing as a construct. This practice applies their observations to the stage-map context and offers a noticing exercise to test in your own practice. It is not an established effect.
Sources
- Lindahl, J. R., Fisher, N. E., Cooper, D. J., Rosen, R. K., & Britton, W. B. (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. PLOS ONE, 12(5), e0176239.
- Britton, W. B. (2019). Can mindfulness be too much of a good thing? The value of a middle way. Current Opinion in Psychology, 28, 159–165.
Erreur fréquente
Treating every hard experience as a stage to be endured, which keeps a real difficulty out of view until it has grown larger.
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Plus de pratiques pour Buddhist Meditation Stage Maps: How the Major Traditions Compare
- Let a stage map orient you, not score your sitting
Let a map tell you which experiences others have reported, not where your sitting ranks.
- Log sittings in neutral, descriptive language
Write what happened in a sitting as observations, so the record does not depend on any map.
- Check a stage map against a qualified teacher
Bring a stage description to a teacher who knows your method, and ask what it does and does not fit in your own practice.
- Choose one map that belongs to the method you practise
Pick the stage map written for the method you actually practise, and treat the others as comparisons, not instructions.
- Compare stage maps side by side without merging them
Set the maps next to each other, note where they overlap and where they disagree, and resist averaging them into one scale.
- Ground first when a stage feels like dissolving or fear
When a stage feels like falling apart, stop the formal practice and come back to your body and surroundings before anything else.
Concepts associés
- The Progress of Insight: The Stages of Insight in Vipassana
The Burmese insight map of what meditators say they pass through — read as a map, not a ladder
- Lamrim: The Stages of the Path and the Three Scopes
Atiśa’s three scopes and Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise: a contemplative map from a precious human life to awakening
- Mahāmudrā: Looking Directly at the Nature of the Mind
The Kagyu path of calm, then looking at the mind itself — practised the way the manuals lay it out
- States vs Stages of Consciousness: Wilber, Combs and O’Fallon
Why a powerful experience and a lasting change are different things, and how each one grows