Meditation is ridiculously oversold as a magical solution to all of life's problems. The whole question of the relationship between meditation and the ego just strikes me as irrelevant if not made up entirely in the way that religions make up stories about the spiritual benefits that their practitioners can enjoy.
The most use I've gotten out of meditation is as a simple cure for habitual thoughts and behaviors. And I think the logic is incredibly straight forward: if you find yourself suspecting that what you're doing is not helpful and/or not deliberate, what better thing to do than to sit down and take an honest look at your thoughts and impulses? It's not rocket science and I don't think it's fundamentally a religious practice either (as some here have suggested).
Coming to the practice with an overinflated sense of what's possible will certainly lead to disappointment and maybe even depression.
The most use I've gotten out of meditation is as a simple cure for habitual thoughts and behaviors. And I think the logic is incredibly straight forward: if you find yourself suspecting that what you're doing is not helpful and/or not deliberate, what better thing to do than to sit down and take an honest look at your thoughts and impulses? It's not rocket science and I don't think it's fundamentally a religious practice either (as some here have suggested).
Coming to the practice with an overinflated sense of what's possible will certainly lead to disappointment and maybe even depression.