Addressing the American Problem by Modeling Cognitive Development
By Zachary Stein
We, moderns but especially Americans, have a fundamental misunderstanding of cognitive development: we assume that higher-level functioning is always desired and so disparage and neglect fundamental cognitive skills.
Meditation can be seen as the ultimate in â[restructuring the] lower-level componentsâ of the mind. We abandon all the higher-level cognition built upon words and concepts and return, as much as possible, to the preverbal experience in order to âre-engage and reshapeâ our way of being in the world.