Sunday, 23 February 2014

Cannabis and Spirituality (Is Pot a Beneficial Spiritual Drug?)



By: Gaurav Singhal

Cannabis (also known as marijuana or pot) has been used for thousands of years as a powerful plant medicine to enhance spirituality. It has also been used as a harmful recreational drug. So, is Cannabis beneficial to spiritual practice, or is it detrimental to spiritual practice?
 

Pot, otherwise known as cannabis or marijuana, is considered a spiritual medicine and has been used as such since 2000 BC because it is a psychoactive drug. Pot is considered psychoactive because it can alter one’s state of consciousness. Altering one’s consciousness helps them to break free of illusion and the restriction of limited perception.
All plants possess unique energetic frequencies and those frequencies can teach a new way of thinking and being. Cannabis teaches about a great many things including: The path of least resistance, oneness, surrender, release, letting go, present moment, “Livity”, communion, allowing, the impermanence and illusion of the physical dimension, the frailness of boundaries, inhibition, the unhealthiness of control, the fear that lies behind the bold, confident mask of the ego and effortless being.
People react very differently to cannabis; this is because the vibratory rate of the plant is in fact what is altering people’s state of consciousness. An individual human holds a unique vibration. When a person interacts with cannabis, the vibratory rate of that individual has to change in order to match the frequency of the cannabis in order to stay a match to sharing a reality where both the plant and the person coexist. In shamanic tradition, these psychoactive plants (including cannabis) were seen as gatekeepers or tunnel guardians between realms. 
This matching of frequencies or resonating between person and plant is called “friending”. Friending the plant, allows you to pass between realms. This resonance effect drastically increases when the medicine is ingested. The vibrational resonance causes a cascade of physiological reactions occur, most especially the inhibition of neurotransmitters. It inhibits the brain from functioning at normal capacity. This provides a great deal of relief to many people, who are bombarded by their own resistant thoughts.
The brain is a transceiver of information that is designed to create the illusion of a static 3-D dimension for the purpose of learning. The physical dimension is a learning hologram. When the transceiver is affected or inhibited by certain drugs, the illusion of the physical dimension begins to dismantle and a person can feel or see beyond this dimension into other dimensions and realities. When the transceiver is incapacitated, a person is enables to allow more of his or her own pure being to be fully present and unrestricted. But people react differently to the plant. The question is…why?

A person reacts differently to cannabis for two main reasons. 1) Because people have different vibratory rates. Your enjoyment of cannabis, or lack there of, is directly related to whether the plant holds a higher vibration than you do, or whether you hold a higher vibration than it does. If the plant holds a higher vibration than you do, you are most likely going to experience a sense of calm euphoria and a dramatic reduction of pain in your body. 
If your vibratory rate is higher, you will most likely experience paranoia and other unwanted side effects from the medicine. 2) Because cannabis is extremely responsive to intention. It enhances the truth of this reality, which is that intention directs energy and intention creates your experience. If you set an intention for what you want cannabis to help you do, it will have that effect. If you do not, it will respond according to the intention of your subconscious. This means if your subconscious wants you to know about something that is plaguing it, or if your subconscious fears the loss of personal boundaries, taking cannabis will enable your subconscious to fulfill it’s intention and you will come face to face with your fears.
The number one benefit of cannabis is that it helps people to release resistance. By affecting the brain like it does, it inhibits the brain from focusing on and translating the resistant, stressful thoughts that cause a negative emotional response within the body. This is why it is so effective at reducing stress. And this is also why it is so effective for the use of pain management. 

Pain is a symptom of resistance. By causing a person to release resistance and “flow downstream with life” a person is free to be who they really are. More of their true essence is present in the absence of resistance and this is why people often undergo such intense spiritual experiences while under the influence of cannabis. But this is also why it is used recreationally.
As a spiritual teacher, I cannot fully support nor fully condemn a spiritual medicinal such as cannabis because the issue of using vs. not using these medicines is not black and white. It is a case-by-case scenario. And, all beings, including plants are teachers. If a person tries to escape their resistance by using a tool like cannabis, they have learned nothing but to be dependent on the tool. They may have increased their awareness of what is beyond this dimension, but they have not learned anything about how to access states of consciousness beyond the 3-D consciousness on their own, without the use of an external substance/tool. 
In essence, they have become powerlessly dependent. This is in fact the number one reason that I do not overtly support the use of spiritual drugs. While these medicines are often life changing because they can serve to crack through the illusion of the physical dimension so a person can peer beyond the illusion, they all too often become a person’s only way of transitioning their consciousness into a “more spiritual” state. They then become a crutch that disables a person from reaching those states organically.
The feeling state created by these medicines becomes an addiction and the more subtle transition of increasing one’s vibration and altering one’s focus so as to facilitate an organic shift in consciousness, no longed registers as a “special and noteworthy experience” when compared with the intensity of the radical break from reality, caused by the medicines. So often the drug itself becomes the person’s only access to spirituality. The drug itself becomes the religion. Pot is an addictive substance. A living being will become addicted to anything they feel dependent on to achieve a certain feeling state. When a person feels as if feeling good or greater awareness is dependent upon cannabis, they will become addicted to cannabis. And to become addicted to cannabis, is to shortcut your own expansion. 
Stress and resistance exists for a reason, to teach you about yourself and to fuel you in the direction of your own expansion. When you feel resistance creeping up in your consciousness, there is always an aspect of yourself that needs to be examined and shifted; and there is always something new that is being desired. If you escape from that feeling by using cannabis, you will forgo the opportunity to examine and shift the root of that resistance. What’s more than that, when the effects of the drug wear off, you are right back to where you were, having improved nothing in the long term. In this way, cannabis prevents learning. 
Also, with a decrease in resistance, you will simultaneously experience a decrease in desire. This decrease in desire causes a decrease in the dopamine levels in your brain. Dopamine is responsible for the motivation response within your body. This is why motivation dissipates and apathy increases when someone uses pot often. Desire is the basis of expansion. With decreased desire, there is decreased expansion, so it must be said that chronic pot use thwarts both personal and universal expansion. This is why I am not a person who advocates recreational drug use of any kind. It is a better idea that a person change their life for the better (so they no longer feel the desire or need to escape from their life) than to escape from their life by using cannabis or any other drug for that matter. However, there is an exception to this rule.
We create our own reality. And when it comes to chronic pain, or chronic worry, there is an interesting thing that occurs. Certain kinds of pain and worry inhibit focus and especially positive focus to such a degree that a person cannot learn and cannot get out of the downward spiral of negative reality creation. In such a case, resistance incapacitates a person. If a person is incapacitated by resistance, (which is the case when chronic illness has caused chronic pain to occur), cannabis may in fact be the very best tool that a person can use to enable themselves to distract themselves from the pain, thereby releasing enough resistance to come back into a state of alignment. 
When this is the case, a person’s vibration is so low that cannabis is able to help a person to release enough resistance to enable them to face and explore their own resistance and therefore shift. But cannabis should never be treated as a long-term solution to resistance. We need to find the root of our resistance and pull up that root if we want a long-term solution to resistance. At this point in history, a major debate rages over the legalization of pot. Some people think that pot is a gateway drug, which puts youth at risk for harder drug use. Others think it is wrong to condone any drug. They argue that by legalizing a drug, we are essentially condoning the drug.
I’ve been asked my opinion on the legalization of pot many times and so I have decided to put forth my answer. I support the legalization of pot. In my opinion, making something illegal fuels the use of a substance more so than making it legal does. The number one addiction for mankind is not a specific substance; it is the sensation of freedom. When we break the rules by doing illegal things, we get to rebel and therefore feel freer. Prohibition never did anything to restrict the use or sale of illegal substances.
It simply made the trade more life threatening for both sellers and users. In my opinion, governments have no place determining what is right vs. what is not right when they have demonstrated their overt inability to make such decisions, as is proof by the fact that the government thinks it is right to go to war. In my opinion, people can and should be trusted to do what is right for themselves and learn from the consequences of their own actions rather than be controlled by external forces, including the government.
 Not to mention the fact that he government should have much better things to do with their time than prosecute people for trying to find relief (which is what people are doing when they are using drugs). Legalizing marijuana would reduce our smuggling problem, thus reducing the flow of American money into international criminal markets. In my opinion, even though it is a moneymaking business to fine people for illegal drug use, the government is missing a major opportunity to make even more money for the country by not legalizing cannabis. 
If they legalized and taxed cannabis, they might not have to shut down so many beneficial government programs due to their embarrassing financial mistakes. And lastly, rules in general prohibit people from listening to their own emotional guidance system and so they prohibit people from discovering right and wrong within themselves and because of this, they disallow people from experiencing an organic sense of morality and camaraderie. It is a sad day when an external government replaces internal self-governing.
Cannabis should be seen as what it is, a tool. It is a tool that is not necessary to spiritual awareness or practice. It is a tool that can help enhance spiritual awareness. It is a tool that should never be a substitute for organic spiritual awareness and practice.

Studio33
http://www.amazon.com/shops/studio33

Virgin Atlantic Airways
http://tinyurl.com/pjbm6r6

Luxury French Lingerie
http://tinyurl.com/o7qcz7m

From chocolate eggs to chocolate coins, give your sweet tooth a treat with our delicious products.
http://tinyurl.com/nragc9j

Astore
http://astore.amazon.com/nevinghomebas-20

No comments: