Jamie Wheal warns that meditation and consciousness-expanding practices can create three types of addiction, including ontological addiction: a compulsive need to access higher insights that traps people in endless seeking. Without community, grounding, and ethical purpose, the pursuit of altered states becomes disconnected sensation-seeking rather than genuine healing.
Bulletproof radio, A state of high performance. So even traditional meditation practices, a certain percentage of people who start meditating do not do well. They probably shouldn't meditate or they shouldn't meditate the way most people do.
Yes.
So what are the risks of, you know, getting a good spanking on nitrous and all? The entire list, you know, what if it goes wrong? What do you do? What does it look like when it goes wrong?
Yeah, Well, I mean, you know, I think. I think Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, who recently tragically died, is an example of that. You have folks that get, you know, actually, I make a point of describing this after this, the reporting on the study with the couples. Because if you get really good at pushing all the buttons that evolution has encoded into us, Rob, the respiration, sexuality, embodiment, substances, music. You're. At first you're like, gee whiz, does this work? You know, and you're like, oh, shit, it totally works. Just like Danny Deckchair, you know, like that. That Australian who built. Put all the helium balloons on his. On his lawn chair. And there's like, Holy fuck, I'm 20,000ft off the ground. Right? There's definitely. That happens. And so physical addiction is one thing, psychological addiction is another. But the third, which I think is really important in relationship to, like, getting access to that information layer, is ontological addiction, which is, holy shit, I've got the Galactic Magic 8 Ball, right? I have access. Or the palantir seeing stone in the Lord of the Rings, right? Like, I am seeing things that are critically important. And one of the key wobblies that always gets people is. And I'm critically important, and I need to keep coming back here to get the rest of the message. And that undoes a lot of intrepid travelers. So it feels essential to be done in community, in relationship, and in connection to the rest of our lives and to what matters most. If it's just seeking, for instance, like, I never feel comfortable sharing this with untethered males. I don't. I. There's so many dudes who aren't grounded by a good woman or a good partner who are just seeking knowledge for knowledge sake. And I would say that's squarely in your category of the ones that come unglued. And the other is, you know, an ethic and a care and a concern which is in service of what? Because it's so easy, like, the pretty lights are so stunning and so endlessly diverting that it's incredibly tempting to forget what we came for. It's sort of like, you know, it's like the party at the end of time is almost like, you know, and Burning Man's a good example, right? You could, you could make case, right, that it's got all the things and it is the baddest ass throwdown possible. But actually that raucous, ecstatic, celebratory side of it is a symptom. It's not the point. The point is opening up portals in non ordinary consciousness and awareness that allow us to remember what we forgot and allow us to heal and integrate and allow us to connect. And if you get sidetracked by the carnival, then you just spin off into the hell realms of, of sensation seeking and then we just become lizard brain, monkey.
