Meditn

 an experienced meditator and someone who has studied the relevant science, but it’s hard for me to parse the question. First of all, is meditation good for what? There are many different kinds of meditation, and many different reasons people meditate. Second, science doesn’t tells whether or not things are good.

We know that long-term meditation changes brain structure, increasing gay matter in the insula and hippocampus. These areas are linked to memory and emotional regulation. We have evidence that meditation can reduce stress and build up concentration.

I will say that, in my case, it was important to gradually increase the duration of my sessions. For several years, I meditated for just ten minutes a day. I didn’t notice any changes in emotional regulation, concentration, or memory until I upped that to an hour a day, but there was no way I could have meditated for that long at first. It took me years to be able to do that. Some folks get there faster.

However fast it you get there—if you do—there’s no scenario in which you’ll meditate for a couple of months and notice massive changes. This is a long-term project.

One other thing: meditation (done diligently for years) seems to weaken activity in a the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN), which is implicated in the sense of self. People who meditate—for years and for long sessions—tend to find their sense of self getting whittled away, and it may entirely vanish. Permanently. This shift, which is sometimes called “awakening,” is either greatly sought after or terrifying. Or a bit of both.

The science doesn’t say “Meditate and you’ll lose your sense of self.” It says that meditation—when done for over a very long period and for lengthy sessions—can weaken DMN activity. And we have some evidence that this is linked to the sense of self. We also have thousands of years of anecdotal evidence, from Buddhism and other traditions, that long-term meditation can have this effect. But that’s not scientific data.

And, just to be clear, you’re not likely to “wake up” if you just do ten minutes of meditation a day. In fact, you may not wake up if you meditate for five hours a day for 20 years. There are some other things that tends to be needed for that project, too, such as a special kind of inquiry.

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This is a nuanced and mostly careful framing. A few parts could be tightened scientifically, but the overall shape is reasonable.

A few distinctions matter:

• Meditation is not one thing. Focused attention, open monitoring, nondual practice, loving-kindness, mantra, somatic awareness, and inquiry practices can produce very different effects.
• “Good” depends on the aim: stress reduction, attentional stability, emotional regulation, insight, trauma processing, spiritual awakening, etc.

The neuroscience points you mention are broadly consistent with current evidence:

• long-term practice is associated with structural and functional brain changes,
• especially in networks related to attention, interoception, memory, and self-referential processing,
• though effect sizes are often modest and the literature has methodological limitations.

One correction:

“increasing gay matter”

presumably means gray matter.

The point about the Default Mode Network is important and often oversimplified. Meditation does not simply “turn off the self.” Rather, experienced practitioners often show:

• reduced habitual self-referential rumination,
• altered identification with thoughts,
• and more flexible switching between attentional networks.

That is different from literal ego erasure or loss of functional identity.

Your caution is also warranted:

• dramatic claims about awakening are often exaggerated,
• most people practicing moderate daily meditation will experience incremental changes rather than radical transformation,
• and intensive practice can occasionally destabilize people psychologically, especially without guidance or grounding.

The phrase:

“the sense of self may entirely vanish permanently”

is where I’d be most careful. In contemplative traditions, reports of “no-self” or nondual awareness usually refer to a shift in how self is experienced — less solid, less central, less owned — not inability to function as a person. Scientifically, we do not have evidence that meditation reliably produces a permanent elimination of selfhood in a literal sense.

The other subtle point you make is insightful:

meditation alone may not produce awakening.

Many traditions distinguish between:

• attentional training,
• emotional purification,
• ethical development,
• and insight/inquiry.

For example, in Theravāda Buddhism or Advaita traditions, sustained inquiry into the nature of awareness/self is often considered distinct from concentration practice alone.

The most grounded conclusion is probably:

• meditation can meaningfully reshape attention, emotional reactivity, and self-experience over time;
• the deeper transformations described in contemplative traditions are real phenomenological reports, but difficult to operationalize scientifically;
• and expectations matter, because people sometimes approach meditation as self-optimization when some traditions actually frame it as a loosening of the self-project itself.