caffeine and your spiritual stuff?

How many of you are addicted to caffeine, daily use of it?

I always worry about this in spiritual terms. Then I think, but didn't the buddhists perpetuate green tea?

I'm finding myself highly dependent on tea and yerba these days. I always wonder if this can be inhibitory in any spiritual sense? I've read about how addiction to stimulating things can mean some kind of deficiency in the solar plexus. But I'm curious is this actually a spiritual hurdle or is it just a human thing. Or I guess just a shaman thing... you know the chemically aided spiritual process.

 

Ry, look at it in this light. Your life right now, is just one among many thousands, and possibly many more hundreds to come. When you make the choice to completley overide your attachment to material things and devote every waking and meditative moment to pure, unaided God consciousness, then you are done here. You will not come back, you are God inspired and you live according to God's will. Until then, you have to decide, who do you love more? God? Or yourself?
I live for God, I love God more than people because I see God in them. But when it comes down to it, I still smoke a pack a day, I drink coffee in the morning, I take percocets when Im offered, I drink beer once a month, I eat unhealthy food several times a week, I get frustrated when my son gets wild and uncontrolbable, I get angry when Im insulted, and many other limiting human attachments. Though any emotion that arises in mind, blows away like a breeze, normally in less than the time it takes to have a thought. But I am not liberated, I am still, in some ways, trapped in the prison of my mind.
When the time comes for you to go to God, it will come. There is no forcing it, there is only accceptance and being content with your situation. Just fall into place, when God calls you to come Home, only then will you be ready. For now, you can only sit with wide open eyes, staring into Love and absorbing as much as you are allowed. We are not ready, but we still perform our dharma by helping others and meditating on the Absolute. It's all an illusion, but dont kid yourselves, maya is not something so easily overcome.
Namaste *

 

i'm pathetic when it comes to caffeein...ESPECIALLY coffee...i was born in canada but my heritage is italian...i've been drinking coffee since EARLY childhood--they water it down with milk and think its cute--now i'm like a junky. caffein is a DANGEROUS & very powerful drug...very very very--when i studdied it a bit it terrified me--how much and for how long i toxicated/poisoned my body. still i didn't want to give it up. 3xi pestered me so bad i quit it for him mostly--whuch is terrible--i should quit it for me but i love it soooo much. it has been well over 6 mo. to a year since i've had a coffee and i still salivate at the thought of it. i miss it! MISS it!

BUT--it does affect your body...so i steer very clear from it--thanks to 3xi being so UNRELENTING!!!!!!!

 

I never drank much coffee as a kid but now I've been starting in my early/mid 20's. My reasoning (excuse) is that Jerry Garcia would drink it before practicing his scales in the morning, and he's a guy who I look up to. My motivation is that it makes me feel good. In fact, I think it makes me feel better than alcohol does these days.

But I've always gotten on my mothers case for drinking these huge cups of it every day. Too much of anything in excess is of course toxic but I feel that a few cups a week can't be TOO bad, right?

 

i love yerba mate... i drink mate and coffee and other tea with caffeine almost every day...

everything is karma, everything is spiritual, everything is god, and god is love. it all depends on your consciousness. the subtlest things are the most solid. if something is hindering your spiritual consciousness, changing it could help, and unblock you so you can move forward... but is it the caffeine itself that's causing a percieved block, or is it your thought about it? i don't know. it's different for everyone. i think that generally it's easier to change an action than it is to change a thought about an action, so people who are trying to keep their consciousness in touch with the absolute might just want to sidestep anything that could easily be spiritually controvercial... if you don't ever have reason to think about something, your thought about it doesn't affect your consciousness.

i am addicted to air, and if i give that addiction up, maybe i'll "go back to god". but i'm already there, so i don't have to give it up, i just have to realize i never had it any more than i ever had anything because i always have and am (we always have and are) everything.

everything that exists and everything that happens is god's will, but the illusion of seperateness can be easier to believe in, in certain situations. but sometimes that's the best way to really realize the power of faith and consciousness. the difference between hell and heaven is a split second of epiphany and realization... and the juxtaposition shows you just how amazing it really is.

 

You basically captured the entire point here Prism.
It brings to mind the whole "Well, Jesus drank wine and ate fish, so why cant I?" debate. But this is because Jesus was a self disciplined master, not subject to the same level of temptation the rest of us are!
Nothing is actually evil, it's the thought behind it. It's like sex, if you sleep with a woman while you are married to another, it's not your body that performed the evil, it's the mind that both blew off the wife, as well as lusted after the woman. With caffeine, it's only you who has the problem of addiction, not the caffeine. If you can live without caffeine, and if your mind doesnt cause you to salivate over it with obsession and desire and forget your Soul, then what's the problem with having a coffee?

 

share the warmth, your fox is very creepy

 

don't fool yourselves people - caffeine is a powerful drug. caffeine is something that we become dependent on very quickly. i used to drink one or two coffee a day and i stopped for a few reasons. i don't like it when something has control over me - like if i don't have that coffee i am going to be tiered all morning. after many days of drinking coffee or tea in the morning you will have a very difficult time going with out it. not only that but when you have caffeine in the morning you will burn out later in the day so if you want to keep that awake feeling through the entire day you would have to have many servings. not only is it very expensive to be drinking coffee all day it is also not very good for your heart to be working harder than it needs to. caffeine actually makes your body think that you are in danger as it releases adrenaline into your system. you are fooling your body into being more alert than you have to be.

when you go without caffeine for a few weeks you start to notice that although it may take you 30mins to an hour to awaken into your natural alert self the natural high lasts all day with no burn out. i find that my natural alertness is far clearer than caffeine induced. you get that high and a rush from the caffeine but what most people drink it for (alertness) is not exactly what they are getting. instead they get a slightly shaky and scattered awake.

all in all i don't think caffeine is that bad but i would say that it definitely causes more problems than it helps and is no real benefit to anyone spiritually.

 

i'm horribly addicted caffeine, but it's the only thing that will keep me awake through the day. in the mornings my dad makes a pot for the family, and i'm allowed one cup from that, then when my dad goes to work i make myself half a pot of coffee, and drink it througout the day.

i can't stand drinking coffee just in the morning, or i'll be tired all day.

 

Right now, I drink about 2 cups of coffee a day, one in the morning, then one at around dinner time. Last summer though, I drank anywhere from 5-8 cups a day. Ugh, I bet that did a number on my body...

 

caffeine makes me feel like a schizophrenic.
I prefer to feel like a bodhisattva.

 

Drinking coffee really isn't bad. It's amusing (but also a little frightening) that such a benign statement sounds like heresy to some people.

 

When I first started drinking coffee, I was worried about getting hooked on it, so I stopped quick! And instead, I now take GINSENG pills every morning, and it works for me! After 5 days of taking 2 pills a day, I saw a marked improvement! Get it at your local health food store, it's honestly worth it. An herbal alternative is best, I say! The stuff is one of the main ingredients in energy drinks (putrid stuff I know, but they are energy drinks); the only thing is that the 2 pills have like 750 mg of ginseng and most drinks have around 25 mg or so!

Caffeine is a stimulant you can overdose on, is addictive, and busies the liver while it's trying to purify other toxins. So I quit before I started. I've even been cutting out Mt. Dew from my diet (I drink it only at work now.)

It's ironic - I tried telling my sis this tonight and she justified her coffee addiction, haha. (She really did though, if you drink 2 cups or less a day it can be good for your heart studies show, it's only if you have over 4 cups a day it hurts you, do you metabolize it fast or slow, blah blah blah)

 

lol you sound like someone that really knows his stuff. umm..do you by chance happen to sell ginseng pills for a living? just wondering.

 

Stalk, I know what you mean when you say it makes you feel schizophrenic. But I actually find that feeling notable to coffee and synthetic caffeinated drinks primarily. Not so much green tea, and not very much at all with yerba. Yerba mate actually has 50% caffeine and 50% theobromine in it, theobromine is a euphoric stimulant and it changes the effect remarkably. I actually don't like coffee and tea much at all, I only drink yerba.

But as for justifying this, yerba has like nearly every vitamin and mineral in it you need. It has far more antioxidants than tea and overall it seems to be incredibly healthy for you. So I always thought "if nature provides all these health benefits in a leaf and that leaf comes with caffeine/theobromine, doesnt that mean nature wants me to drink that too?" Yerba also seems to have a pecuilar effect of where, you don't really feel like you crash like you do from coffee. I've just given like an advertisement for it Know...

Maybe I should get off it. I did quite for like a month, then I came back and just find so much enjoyment in it.

Although, I still smoke hookah and marijuana occasionally...

I really don't like feeling dependent on something, like I need it to progress.
But I mean, I do think I'll do mushrooms twice a year or so for the rest of my life and feel like I need to, I almost consider it like a symbiotic relationship.
Perhaps it's all about just lowering the frequency of substance intake, not cutting it off entirely.

BTW I do agree with you morning bell, ginseng is awesome. In fact I actually found ginseng to help ALOT after coming down on acid.
Maybe I should try just ginseng for a while.

 

Haha, I just like to reasearch my stuff in depth. Ginseng works for me so well, I just feel like the world needs to know!

Anyone have other caffeine/coffee alternatives? I ordered an ounce of Galangal root yesterday, and it sounds promising. It's like an herbal energy tea (among other things), so I can't wait to try it.

 

far as alternatives go, eat an apple. i once read that an apple supplies more energy than a cup of coffee. im not sure if its true, but it definitely wakes you up.

also, put two tablespoons of pure maple syrup in something that you drink. like lemonade or something, it gives you a kick, is healthy, and tastes awesome.

or more like a friendship?

 

Well I'd hate to take away from the original point of rygoody's posting of this thread, so I've posted a new thread in Other Drugs forum about Caffeine/coffee alternatives.

 

I'm addicted =) and i don't plan to stop cause i don't care....I guess a coke addict would feel the same way sorta lol. 1-2 energy drinks a day, for the past 6 months. One day with out is enough to make me pissed off at nothing and have a headach. =(

J.C

 

I've been drinking coffee for 12 years.