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 “[restructuring the] lower-level components” 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 “re-engage and reshape” our way of being in the world.