Why We Can't Meditate: A Psychology of Meditation

Why We Can't Meditate: A Psychology of Meditation is a discourse on the practical, spiritual, and psychological factors that play into our ego-resistance to meditation. Drawing on the author's experience as an instructor of meditation, the text teaches us to look at meditation and life in new ways. Philosophy and psychology are combined to reveal the problems, value, and limits of meditation through an East - West lens.


Topics include: The Use of Pleasure, Immortality Projects, Catastrophic Thinking, Talk Therapy, Apostasy, Egoism, Knowing Your Body, Alienation, Fanaticism, Practicing Death, The Stages of Death and Dying, Boredom, Problems in Guided Meditation, Guilt, Meditation and Conflict, The Body is a Hindrance, Prayer and Meditation, How Not to Think About God, Being-Doing-Having, Messiah Complex, and Meditation & Methamphetamines.
Joseph van de Mortel has taught philosophy, meditation, psychology, and religion for more than 25 years. Utilizing Adlerian psychology, he argues life is too economically and politically unpredictable to rely on one occupation, so transform your interests into a confluence of livelihoods to guarantee flourishing. By example, in his youth, he channeled his love of woodworking toward a contractor's license for general carpentry. Later, sailing over 18,000 nautical miles, primarily in a Ranger 26, his adventures qualified for a USCG captain's license. Along the way, he created a meditation form for ocean currents on windless days, drifting meditation.


He has also written a faculty recommended university text for the study of philosophy and religion, Mind Skills: A Philosopher's Notebook. He is a recipient of a Templeton Award in Science and Religion.