Marijuana & Existence

Smoking a fatty one day, I came to perceive the world differently. I didnt know what existentialism was before I had my "moment of clarity", but the feelings I get when I smoke the greenest of green created the questions, from which I searched for the answers (via: google) I found a religion, a philosophy and a way of life. Now I realize that, I only have all the power to choose and do whatever I feel, but I alone must take reponsibility for my actions. It's seems so simple but everyday that I smoke I realize that this "movement" has saved my despair, and absolved my fear of death, and has made me appreciate life.

Your thoughts?

 

Yeah man, marijuana was a big part of my movement away from strict materialist atheism. That and a book I read, and a discussion I had with a guy online. I had the discussion, two days later smoked my first weed, and it blew my mind. The conversation came back to my mind, and took on a much deeper meaning (it was already deep, about existance and time and such), it MEANT more to me, more than just facts and points. That broke me into a whole new line of thinking, I learned many things that night, and it truely changed my outlook on life and existance. Been using weed in such a way ever since.


The book was read a week or two later, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, for those interested. That helped me put the experience in place, sort of.

 

may your voyage be ever so

 

dude....i'd say you owe all that awareness to google...not the chubbies

 

Dude.
Before I'd ever smoked ganja, the world was scary.
Really, things were falling apart, and I wanted to do something but I didn't know what I was going to be able to fix.
In my sophomore year of high school, in november actually, a few of my friends turned me on to pot, and since then things have still looked bad, but I'm able to sit down and tell myself that they'll get better.
I can't smoke currently, UAs suck, like sobriety.
But it does help you to sort things out.
Not in any physical sense, mind.
Just physically in the mind.

 

marijuana is a key that unlocks a door. once you know how to open the door yourself you no longer need the key. in fact after a time the key becomes heavy and can keep you stuck in the doorway.


use it as long as it serves you, then leave it behind for someone else to use.

 

or you could somehow try to remove the door and replace it with a curtain

 

Yeah same experience. I didn't realize we were truly alive and miraculously living until I high. Might be sad but its the truth. And it cured my asthma

 

or door beads, taht would be cool

 

Hey dudes.

Pot is a drug that alters brain chemistry mildly..

And no more

Occam uses it for fun and enlightenment.
LSD/peyote goes one step further , it interprets the neuroelectric data we call reality in a new way.
Occam can handle that..but many can not.

None of these drugs reveals anything but a new perspective
on reality.
[And our interpretation of the data we get from our senses IS our reality.]
For they effect NOTHING but YOUR brain.
THAT is what occam uses them for.

Many say they 'get out of it to get into it'
But occam has met few that truely do.


Occam

 

no small thing in my book but yeah we need a pill that will take out the garbage also

Pot is a drug that alters brain chemistry mildly..

And no more

Occam uses it for fun and enlightenment


Occam[/QUOTE]

 

[/QUOTE] Mati.

Is big brother watching you?
Ask gretel

She is the pill that entertains your children.

Such media is a syndrome more degrading and damaging than ANY drug.

Yet parent allow it without qualm..
Why.
Ignorance.


Occam

 

why does Occam refer to himself in the third person?

 

Sorry ..you missed out...
Occam has explained himself 1000 times.

That was the deal he made with god when god asked how many times
the lazy of mind would ask him why he calls himself by the name he was given...And not the generic 'i' ever sob uses.

you are 1003
Sorry

Occam

 

This place seems an appropriate place for this. =)

About a year ago, I tried weed (henceforth referred to as Herb =P) for the first time, and, like all of you, it opened my mind to huge possibilities.

A little afterward, I tried another herb (without the capital H) called Salvia divinorum.

After a shaky experience, I was out in the woods as the effects started to wear off. Then, like an information overload, I had a pretty detailed realization, which I want to share with you:

Imagine a tree; evergreen, whatever, it doesn't matter. One with a peak and a trunk. You start out on the bottom. There's grass and mud, and it's pretty dirty if you try to climb it. So, up we go, climbing the tree now, and we get onto our first branch. You're a little higher up than you used to be standing on the ground, so you can see a little farther into the distance. If you look up, you might be able to see part of the top of the tree.

Now imagine the tree as a symbolic figure. The peak of the tree represents Truth, and every branch represents a paradigm viewpoint.

My realization is this: As human beings born into a human society, we are somewhere out on a branch. We can move around the branch, just as our viewpoints tend to change with time, but there are few people who ever manage to climb up to the next branch. But regardless, your view of the top (Truth) is always obscured by other branches, because you are only on a low branch. So you only see a small side of Truth.

For me, smoking Herb for the first time was a paradigm shift; it marked the first point where I grabbed hold of another branch, and swung to that. From there, I could see a different side of Truth; it wasn't the complete opposite side, so there were similarities with the Truth that each one of us sees from a normal perspective. But there were also things that you couldn't see from the other branch.

When I tried Salvia, this is what I realized; psychoactives are like the branches on such a tree. Every branch represents a different mindset with a different point of view. A person who has been exposed to more than one mindset, begins to gain the ability to switch between the two at their own will. At first, they have to induce swinging to the other branch by using the psychoactive, but with enough exposure, their mindset changes, and they begin to see Truth from both perspectives.

On this Earth, composed of carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and many other materials, we evolved as a species that thinks on an oxygen- and nitrogen-based brain. As we develop from a baby, we begin to "get used to" the "high" of the real world, as we learn about it. Eventually, we can look up and see truth with a functional mind. However, when we expose ourselves to other chemicals; THC, salvinorin-A, theobromine, 4-acetyl-morphine, whatever ... when we expose ourselves to these things, our brains radically shift into a new mindset, and gains a new perspective on the nature of such things as ... perspective, Truth, and many other concepts.

Dr. Shullgin, reknowned psychoactive scientist, has shown that carbon dioxide and oxygen, when inhaled in different quantities than we are used to, can produce psychoactive effects that have been described as "LSD-like" and "morphine-like," respectively. It seems true that we are just "used to" the content of chemicals in the air, and we have become tolerant of the psychoactive effects low doses of such chemicals, much like one gains a tolerance to heroin.

By swinging from branch to branch and exposing our minds to these new perspectives, we start to see many more sides of Truth that were once obscured by the branches we couldn't grab onto. However, some branches are not worth swinging to (like crack in my opinion), because they are too weak to support your weight, or because they will snap off the tree. So you must always be conscious as to what branches you move to.

Regardless, now imagine if our world was filled with, instead of nitrogen, THC, or perhaps instead of carbon, silicon? Our brains would have evolved differently, to have a different viewpoint towards Truth. And then, perhaps, we might have different psychoactives that can give us even more different perspectives.

I view the world of psychoactives as branches on the tree of life. You should be careful what branches you use to climb to the top (where you will finally be able to see Truth in a mostly unobscured way), but in order to see more Truth than you are normally able, you must expose your mind to chemically forced paradigm shifts, and learn from those shifts.

Comments, thoughts, or flames? =P

 

you dont think its purely coincidental that some herbs alter our state of consciousness, just like poison ivy gives us a rash, or aloe soothes a wound?

i believe that if there is a higher truth, ie something outside of our universe, earth is just an insignificant part of it. we're so small compared to our universe, let alone what could be outside of it; what would we matter in the grand scheme of things? I see our life, which randomly generated on Earth, as just a smaller part of a greater whole, but not in the sense that we are essential to the whole. Were just along for the ride, and we serve no real purpose.

 

I do think it is purely coincidental, but in coincidental in such a way that it makes sense that most substances would be psychoactive, but the ones that are normally in our bodies we would generate a tolerance towards.

I also see our life as randomly generated, but we get to give it purpose and meaning instead of some God doing that for us. That alone is a difficult and frightful task, but ... hey, it's what we got.

 

Once one can see their own existence they shall now that they exist. Looking at the world from gratreful prospective is the way to see beyond oneself. Pot provides a good medium between the self and reality, or necesity and vanity

 

Well said Hikaru Zero

 

A good reason to move from dirty polluted cities to a place with fresher air. I like to view the expansion of consciousness as the shedding of delusions. Our awareness during unstoned daily life has been clouded over with concerns about ego and mechanistic assumptions. When stoned, these disappear and we can see more clearly. It is not always the case though that, when stoned, one can glimpse the truth-other assumptions can also be blocking the way. It is only when we are free of all of these that we can see that (as nagarjuna put it), nothing exists, whether of ourselves or others, or nothing whatsoever. And if you can live with that, all the better. But most of us can only hope to do so a couple hours or so a week with the help of pschedelics. But living close by is not so bad either.