A Preliminary Study of Long-term Meditators: Goals, Effects, Religious Orientation, Cognitions

Depending upon the psychotherapist's orientation and the client's goals, meditation has beenused as a clinical intervention for selfregulation, self-exploration, and/or self-liberation. Most of meditation research to date, examining its self-regulation and self-exploration effects, has been based on an examination of short-term meditators (six to eight weeks, twenty to forty minutes a day). However, recently, there has been a call to examine longer term meditators as one way to assess more carefully whether some of the primary and original goals of meditation-self-liberation and compassionate service-were being attained (Shapiro & Walsh, 1984; Goleman, 1988; West, 1987; Murphy & Donovan, 1988; Kwee, 1990).