Meditation and marijuana?!

I can barely free my mind when Im not high. When im high its going soooo fast it cant be helpful. except when it just makes me tired.
I say you should just try it and compare it for yourself.

 

I am strongly of the school of thought that believes that narcotics are a hinderance to these experiences.

During mystical practice you have got to be able to distinguish between what is real and what is not (in all aspects of life). All though narcotics may increase you sensitivity to extraphysical realms, you will not be able to distinguish between what is a genuine faery and what is a genuine hallucination.

I am also of the school of thought that mysticism begins with the mundane so you wouldn't need any particular sensitivity to the extraphysical anyway, not for a while.

Blessings

Sebbi

 

by the way, moss, the buddha taught to never get intoxicated at all... maybe another thing to think about. Not a teaching for me... I think you said to me something once like, "Ask some buddhists. They usually know what they're talking about." so, maybe consider your own advice? but you've never really made it clear to me how much of that stuff you like to follow.

 

while getting stoned the other day I noted the similarities with descriptions of meditation. Maybe the descriptions of meditation were an attempt of the ancient stoners to describe the experience of getting stoned? And the attempts of meditators are an attempt to recreate the experience of getting stoned when they can't find any smoke. So maybe down through all the years of history things have gotten turned around so that all these spiritual seekers are spending years of training and discipline to acheive a state that can be attained simply by smoking some herb. A state that was attained and described by the ancients by doing exactly that(smoking the herb) but somehow the description(of the meditative state) and how it was attained(smoking) have gotten divorced from each other and now the meditators no longer realize that it can be attained by smoking also.

 

Maybe along with enlightenment comes a sense of peace and euphoria which can also be experienced by smoking a herb.

Peace and euphoria are BY PRODUCTS of spiritual awakening if this is the case. They are the added bonus, not the aim.

Blessings

Sebbi

 

So what is the aim?

 

Spiritual awakening of course.

Or happiness, it depends.

Blessings

Sebbi

 

Pot is not a narcotic as far as I am aware.

How does meditation differ from an acid trip? Just curious what people's views are on this.

Do you think anything spiritual or intellectual can be gained from a trip that pure meditation cannot provide?

 

Some say that both cannabis and psychedelics can lead to a spiritual awakening.
That has been the experience of many people.

 

Pot isn't a narcotic, you're right.

I think the intensity of a trip would be hard to get via any other channel. But who can say?

 

I have come across across many people who say that but I have come across anyone who has actually had a spiritual awakening as a direct result of intoxicants (if narcotics aren't the word, I'm not exactly an expert enough to know the different terminology for "mind altering substance"). Generally the awakening I hear is "pot will solve all your problems". Most of the people who've had an "awakening" that I've met have slipped back into their old "unenlightened" ways. With this in mind anyone who's surprised I'm an utter cynic on this one shouldn't be.

I have worked very hard to get where I am spiritually and I believe that any spiritual progress that doesn't come from working for it is not going to stand up to the stage where everything you've learned is tested.

Blessings

Sebbi

 

Maybe you met the wrong people. I'm not suggesting for one moment that just smoking cannabis will get you into a meditative or spiritual state automatically. It is a well known fact that dope only intensifies what is in the mind of the user - so if you take it when feeling up-beat you'll get high, if you smoke it when you're depressed, it can intensify the depression.
Certainly it won't solve all your problems. That's a kind of immature 'kiddie' reaction to it. It can give insights. and open doorways in the mind. It can give a deeper appreciation of beauty and art. In the right person, that is. Give it to monkeys and you'll get a monkey reaction.
It is quite possible to use cannabis and to follow other methods at the same time. Thats done in India, and in Morocco. In Morocco, it plays a big part in much of the traditional culture which goes back to pre-Islamic times. It is an established thing. To see it as a kind of short-cut is mistaken. To get the real benefit it has to be approached in the right way. Some Moroccan sufis say it is the gift of God. As do many Hindu sadhus and Rastafarians among others.

 

psychedelics help people toward the realization that "life is a dream and the externality of relations is an illusion"

 

Can't say they made me realize that. It doesn't seem to me that life is a dream.
Our perception of it, our ideas about it may all be faulty, but I think there is an actual world out there. With actual people in it. With whom one can have various relations.

 

it is a metaphor that might be useful. when we dream, or are stoned, the unconscious is closer to the surface. syncroncity awareness. take 10 hits with your friends, archetypes appear. the illusory nature of time and space. its' psychological and full of meaning. loss of ego, or at least it doesn't seem so important at the moment.

 

I'd have to side with the 'MJ helps meditation' crowd. It's been used by various traditions as an aid to meditation for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and I personally find that it helps tremendously. I meditate both with and without on a regular basis and it's just a different way of appraoching the same thing.

I would learn how to meditate without it first though.

MelT

 

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it's a good thread that's relevant to me, so i don't mind if bringing it back to visible sight gets some more responses and opinions about it =]

 

Guys- what does meditation give you ? what exactly is that meditation makes u see deeper levels of ur mind... you just think of it, tryign to get into it doign for an hour , or imagining that you are somewhere ebyond ur mind.. what are teh benefits ?? Monks say that you MUSt give ur self a few minutes a day to think just one-on-one with urself, but meditation isisnt it waste of time ? or you essentialy need it to calm... relax ???

 

Hi Beaver. It's a question that's got a very broad answer. On one hand it allows you to relax, which you might not think is so important, but sometimes life can be so hectic that unless we set aside some time in the day to allow ourselves to step out of life, tension and stress become cumulative, We can get to a point where eventually we can't relax even when we want to.

Mentally it's the same idea, that you need to give your brain a complete rest as often as you can if you have a busy life. Before I started I had a pretty hectic job where I had to be creative on cue, and I eventually found it almost impossible to switch off the creativity and my internal voice. Meditation helped me get back enough mental control so tha I could switch off my body and my analytical mind whenever I needed to.

But on the deeper side, once your mind IS clear you begin to feel, see, taste, etc, everything much more acutely, and life becomes more enjoyable because of it. You also become much more aware of how your own mind works, and how much your own emotions can sometimes work against you. Again, having control over your mind allows you to get beyond this.

Deeper again and we're into the realms of 'real' meditation, where the clarity of mind you gain allows you to be aware of subtle states of mind and sensations. The clarity gets deeper and you begin to experience 'bliss states', or moments of intuition about the nature of reality, or even an experience of self as the whole of the Universe, seeing it as it truly is. These experiences are called 'glimpses' in Buddhism, small events of realisation that may one day lead to full enlightenment if they're worked with in the right way.

Meditation is whatever you want it to be: a Path, or just a way of coping with the world.

MelT