Like the protein-folding computer can get trapped (see above), I think personal-growth experiences can get trapped in local minima too.
One example is meditation, i..e. sitting at home on a cushion for ten minutes and thinking about how your breath feels going in and out.
I learned meditation in 1992, got to sort of a plateau, and then stopped. Picked it up again in 1996, got better, and then stopped. Did it seriously in 2004 for two years and got to a point where I felt no further progress and stopped. Now in 2010, I am doing it again and it feels like I figured some things out about it. It's better now.
Going away and then reinventing it from
square one seems to have helped me escape the local minima. This
doesn't work in everything but in meditation it is for me true.
Highly worth checking out (and completely free of new age mumbo jumbo ) are the simple meditation instructions from the FWBO. In their words, meditation is "the only real antidote to the anxiety, hatred, discontentedness, sleepiness, and confusion that beset the human condition".
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