Elevate and Evolve | Cannabis & Psychedelic Culture Blog
Brian Rose & Nic Gabriel of London Real go Floating in an isolation tank for one hour @Floatworks, the largest floatation tank centre in the world. Watch as we enter into a weightless, soundproof, and completely dark chamber to induce theta brainwaves and a meditative state.
A very informative introduction to Floating for newbies. The video covers all the prep before going into the tank and the awesome benefits you get after your session is done.
George Carlin talks about a point in his comedy career where he was directing his message to the wrong people. The close minded and uptight war generation didn’t want to hear him, but the children of the 60s embraced his declarations of peace, love, and change.
Hallucinogens are value changers, so is marijuana. Like it or not, it changes your values.
It opens up your windows, doors of perceptions was what Aldous Huxley called them.
You see things differently and I suddenly was able to see my place and realize I was in the wrong place.
Chief Tecumseh (Crouching Tiger) of the Shawnee Nation bestows ancient wisdom which is lined with an understanding that the reality around us is shaped by the way we choose to be, the way you interpret yourself and your outlook on life.
So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.
When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
The part of existence that we cannot see is constantly at work and our understanding of these concepts at the moment is limited. John Lloyd presents all that is invisible in a lighthearted approach that is mentally stimulating.
So the question is, what is invisible? There is more of it than you think, actually. Everything, I would say, everything that matters except every thing, and except matter.
We can see matter. But we can’t see what’s the matter.
We can see the stars and the planets. But we can’t see what holds them apart, or what draws them together. With matter, as with people, we see only the skin of things. We can’t see into the engine room. We can’t see what makes people tick, at least not without difficulty. And the closer we look at anything, the more it disappears. In fact, if you look really closely at stuff, if you look at the basic substructure of matter, there isn’t anything there. Electrons disappear in a kind of fuzz, and there is only energy. And you can’t see energy.
So, one of the interesting things about invisibility is that things that we can’t see we also can’t understand. Gravity is one thing that we can’t see, and which we don’t understand. It’s the least understood of all the four fundamental forces, and the weakest. And nobody really knows what it is or why it’s there.
For what it’s worth, Sir Issac Newton, the greatest scientist who ever lived, he thought Jesus came to earth specifically to operate the levers of gravity. That’s what he thought he was there for. So, bright guy, could be wrong on that one, I don’t know.
Consciousness. I see all your faces. I have no idea what any of you are thinking. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that incredible that we can’t read each other’s minds. But we can touch each other, taste each other perhaps, if we get close enough. But we can’t read each other’s minds. I find that quite astonishing.
In the Sufi faith, this great Middle-Eastern religion, which some claim is the route of all religions, Sufi masters are all telepaths, so they say. But their main exercise of telepathy is to send out powerful signals to the rest of us that it doesn’t exist. So that’s why we don’t think it exists, the Sufi masters working on us.
In the question of consciousness and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has really, like the study of consciousness, gotten nowhere. We have no idea how consciousness works. With artificial intelligence, not only have they not created artificial intelligence, they haven’t yet created artificial stupidity.
The laws of physics: invisible, eternal, omnipresent, all powerful. Remind you of anyone? Interesting. I’m, as you can guess, not a materialist, I’m an immaterialist. And I’ve found a very useful new word, ignostic. Okay? I’m an ignostic. I refuse to be drawn on the question of whether God exists, until somebody properly defines the terms.
Another thing we can’t see is the human genome. And this is increasingly peculiar. Because about 20 years ago, when they started delving into the genome, they thought it would probably contain around 100 thousand genes. Every year since, it’s been revised downwards. We now think there are likely to be only just over 20 thousand genes in the human genome.
This is extraordinary. Because rice, get this, rice is known to have 38 thousand genes. Potatoes, potatoes have 48 chromosomes. Two more than people. And the same a gorilla. You can’t see these things. But they are very strange.
The stars by day. I always think that’s fascinating. The universe disappears. The more light there is, the less you can see.
Time, nobody can see time. I don’t know if you know this. Modern physics, there is a big movement in modern physics to decide that time doesn’t really exist. Because it’s too inconvenient for the figures. It’s much easier if it’s not really there. You can’t see the future, obviously. And you can’t see the past, except in your memory.
One of the interesting things about the past is what you particularly can’t see, my son asked me this the other day, he said, “Dad can you remember what I was like when I was two?” And I said “Yes.” And he said, “Why can’t I?”
Isn’t that extraordinary? You can not remember what happened to you earlier than the age of two or three. Which is great news for psychoanalysts. Because otherwise they’d be out of a job. Because that’s where all the stuff happens that makes you who you are.
Another thing you can’t see is the grid, on which we hang. This is fascinating. You probably know, some of you, that cells are continually renewed. Skin flakes off, hairs grow, nails, that kind of stuff. But every cell in your body is replaced at some point. Taste-buds, every 10 days or so. Livers and internal organs sort of take a bit longer. A spine takes several years. But at the end of seven years, not one cell in your body remains from what was there seven years ago. The question is, who, then, are we? What are we? What is this thing that we hang on, that is actually us?
Okay. Atoms, you can’t see them. Nobody every will. They’re smaller than the wavelength of light. Gas, you can’t see that. Interesting. Somebody mentioned 1600 recently. Gas was invented in 1600 by a Dutch chemist called Van Helmont. It’s said to be the most successful ever invention of a word by a known individual. Quite good. He also invented a word called blass, meaning astral radiation. Didn’t catch on, unfortunately. But well done, him.
Light. You can’t see light. When it’s dark, in a vacuum, if a person shines a beam of light straight across your eyes, you won’t see it. Slightly technical, some physicists will disagree with this. But it’s odd that you can’t see the beam of light, you can only see what it hits.
Electricity, you can’t see that. Don’t let anyone tell you they understand electricity. They don’t. Nobody knows what it is. You probably think the electrons in an electric wire move instantaneously down a wire at the speed of light when you turn the light on. They don’t. Electrons bumble down the wire, about the speed of spreading honey, they say.
Galaxies, 100 billion of them, estimated in the universe. 100 billion. How many can we see? Five. Five, out of the 100 billion galaxies, with the naked eye. And one of them is quite difficult to see unless you’ve got very good eyesight.
Radio waves. There’s another thing. Heinrich Hertz, when he discovered radio waves in 1887, he called them radio waves because they radiated. And somebody said to him, “Well what’s the point of these Heinrich? What’s the point of these radio waves that you’ve found?” And he said, “Well, I’ve no idea. But I guess somebody will find a use for them someday.”
The biggest thing that’s invisible to us is what we don’t know. It is incredible how little we know. Thomas Edison once said, “We don’t know one percent of one millionth about anything.”
And I’ve come to the conclusion because you’ve asked this other question, “What’s another thing you can’t see?” The point, most of us. What’s the point?
But, the point, I’ve got it down to is there are only two questions really worth asking. “Why are we here?” and “What should we do about it while we are? And to help you, I’ve got two things to leave you with, from two great philosophers, perhaps two of the greatest philosopher thinkers of the 20th Century. One a mathematician and an engineer, and the other a poet.
The first is Ludvig Vitgenötajn who said, “I don’t know why we are here. But I’m pretty sure it’s not in order to enjoy ourselves.” He was a cheerful bastard wasn’t he?
And secondly and lastly, W.H. Auden, one of my favorite poets, who said, “We are here on earth to help others. What the others are here for, I’ve no idea.”
Dr. Roland R. Griffiths, Professor of Behavioral Biology Professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins, discusses how psilocybin mushrooms can mirror and enhance the effects of meditation.
Meditation has similar affects physiologically in various humans who practice. But the actual practice of meditation is best left to each practitioner so they may construct a method that is best suited for the individual.
Cannabis and other psychedelics are wonderful tools to use in conjunction with meditation. The key is to know how you wish to incorporate these tools within your practice and methods. The possibilities are only limited by your own imagination. Marijuana and meditation both bring states of relaxation, clarity and euphoria, combining them seems natural in this world.
Lots of stoners wake and bake as a ritual to start their day. Pour a glass of water along with your morning toke then when you feel the relaxation of being high come over your body and mind find a comfortable place to rest outside on your porch, by a tree or in the morning sun and set your mind free for a couple of minutes.
The timing works well because you don’t have a full day of happenings to contemplate yet. Often times my days go smoother because I visualize how my day will go during this meditation and I set priorities without stress or tension clouding my judgment. Make sure you set aside a good chunk of time so you don’t feel rushed.
Marijuana’s ability to “distort” time makes it easier to sit for longer stretches of time, so light up on your path to enlightenment and enjoy the moment.
If marijuana makes you paranoid and brings up the doubting/judgmental voice in your head then this is the perfect time to sit and meditate. Many times when we meditate we have to go through the swirling thoughts that arise before we can reach that tranquil state full of knowing, love and acceptance.
If cannabis brings a certain paranoia or thought patterns, sit and listen. Your own consciousnesses is communicating with you giving you insights into who you are, who you believe you are and who you want to be. Embrace yourself, you are the sum of all your thoughts, feelings and actions.
Sometimes after a workout or a stretching routine I’ll sit comfortably for a meditation session. I enjoy meditation after physical activity because when you close your eyes or fix your gaze on a spot the blood flow within your body is apparent and it brings the feeling of being inside of yourself.
When I feel my consciousness return to this earthly experience and away from my meditative state I leisurely grind herb and pack my bong. I make sure to have all my utensils around me so I don’t have to go far from where I meditate. I inhale deeply and allow the weightlessness to come over my tired body, soothing my previously active muscles.
This bong rip to the dome brings, an at ease state of mind, into an euphoric existence. This helps extend and ground the meditative state I feel beyond the time of the session into my next activities and tasks.
In this lecture, Alan Watts expertly expresses eastern philosophies that look deeper into the question of what we all want.
We are in a game where we need to earn money for food and shelter, but what if that wasn’t the rule of the game? What if we lived in a society where money didn’t exist, what would get you up in the morning?
What do you desire?
What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like?
Let’s suppose – I do this often in vocational guidance of students. They come to me and say, “Well, uh, we’re getting out of college, and we haven’t the faintest idea of what we want to do.”
So I always ask the question, “What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?”
Well, it’s so amazing. As a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say, “Well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets, we’d like to be writers. But as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way.”
Or another person says, “I’d like to live an out-of-doors life and ride horses.”
I said, “Do you want to teach at a riding school? Let’s go through with it. What do you want to do?”
When we finally got down to something which the individual says he really wants to do. I will say to him, “you do that, and forget the money.
Because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You will be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing. Which is STUPID!
Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.
And after all, if you do really like what your’e doing, it doesn’t matter what it is, you can eventually become a master of it. It’s the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it. And then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is.
So don’t worry too much. Somebody’s interested in everything. And anything you can be interested in, you’ll find others who are.
But it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like in order to go on doing things you don’t like and to teach your children to follow in the same track. See, what we’re doing is we’re bringing up children, and educating them to live the same sort of lives we’re living in order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing. It’s all wretch and no vomit. It never gets there!
And so therefore it’s so important to consider this question. “What do I desire?”
Meditation will help you realize just how far, and how fast, your mind can wander from what you’re supposed to be doing at the moment. In an age of multitasking, hyper-scheduling, and instant internet distraction, that alone can be a huge help.
Beyond just anecdotes, it’s also been suggested that meditation can actually exercise your brain’s “muscles” to increase focus, and has been shown to lower stress and increase forgiveness among college students who take up the practice.
Following and steadying the breath is the most universal of meditation techniques.
In The Miracle of Mindfulness, a classic text that introduces the thinking and practice behind meditation, Thich Nhat Hanh lays out a thoughtful case for how the breath is connected to the mind, which controls the body. By actively watching one’s breath, and evening it out, one can bring their entire being to what some call the still point.
The instant you sit down to meditate, begin watching your breath. At first breathe normally, gradually letting your breathing slow down until it is quiet, even, and the lengths of the breaths are fairly long. From the moment you sit down to the moment your breathing has become deep and silent, be conscious of everything that is happening in yourself. – Thich Nhat Hanh
For some of us, that’s easier said than done. You start focusing on your breath, and after a brief victory, in comes the growing wave of random brain chatter—What should I eat for lunch today? Did Marissa say she would drop the bike off this weekend or the next?.
Hanh offers the simple, straight-ahead counter to distractions of the mind:
If following the breath seems hard at first, you can substitute the method of counting your breath.
As you breathe in, count 1 in your mind, and as you breathe out, count 1.
Breathe in, count 2. Breathe out, count 2.
Continue through 10, then return to 1 again.
This counting is like a string which attaches your mindfulness to your breath. This exercise is the beginning point in the process of becoming continuously conscious of your breath.
Without mindfulness, however, you will quickly lose count. When the count is lost, simply return to 1 and keep trying until you can keep the count correctly.
Hanh goes on to suggest that controlling the breath is useful in many situations beyond the quiet moments of meditation.
Seek inspiration: If you are inspired by Eastern spiritual traditions, you might reflect upon an image or icon of the Buddha. You can also use the flower of life, a crystal, or other object that has meaning for you. Lightly allow your attention to sit there, quietly and peacefully.
Recite a mantra: A mantra literally means “that which protects the mind.” So reciting a mantra protects you with spiritual power. It is also said that when you chant a mantra, you are charging your breath and energy with the energy of the mantra. Again, choose something with meaning for you within your spiritual tradition. Tibetan Buddhists use a mantra for peace, healing, transformation and healing.
Do a Guided Meditation: Guided meditation is akin to guided imagery, a powerful technique that focuses and directs the imagination toward a conscious goal. (Think of a diver imagining a “perfect dive” before he leaves the platform.)
> A Guide to Meditation for the Rest of Us | LifeHacker
The idea of someone going from birth to the grave without ever having a psychedelic experience is like someone going from the birth to the grave without ever having a sexual experience. It means you never really played in the game. You were a spectator, a silent witness. It means that you never figured out what it was all about. – Terence McKenna
Sex provides a shared state of mental and physical euphoria, a psychedelic experience provides spiritual euphoria by opening the third eye and destroying all previous judgments and conditioning. Both experiences are necessary for living the story of a stoned ape on planet earth.
Calvin: If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I’ll bet they’d live a lot differently.
Hobbes: How so?
Calvin: Well, when you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day.
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. – Aristotle
When we take the time to unlock our inner world, the outer experience makes more sense and becomes more enjoyable.
Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our personal perception of time affects our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we interact with the world.
So what we have discovered in 30 years of research is there are six main time zones that people live in: two focus on the past, two on the present, and two on the future.
Focusing on the Past
The people that focus on the past remember the good ole times, successes, happy birthdays, and nostalgia. These are the people who keep the family records, family books and have the family rituals.
There are other people who focus only on regret, only on failure, only on all the things that went wrong; so we call those focuses past positive or past negative.
Focusing on the Present
There are two ways to be present-oriented: the obvious one is to be hedonistic, that you live for pleasure and avoid pain; you seek knowledge, you seek sensation.
There are other people who are present-oriented because the say it doesn’t pay to plan: my life is fated, fated by my religion, fated by my poverty, fated by the conditions that I’m living under.
The closer you are to the equator the more present orientated you are; the more you’re in an environment that doesn’t change it gives you a sense of sameness rather than change.
Focusing on the Future
Most of us are here because we are future-oriented; we have learned to work rather than play, to resist temptation.
But there is another way to be future-oriented. Depending on your religion, life begins after the death of the mortal body. To be future-oriented you have to trust that when you make a decision about the future it’s going to carry up. If you have inflation you don’t put money in the bank because you can’t trust the future. If there is instability in your family, adults can’t keep their promises to you.
So he has a bunch of these measures and it turns out you can identify cultures as having different paces of life, and now cities. And he shows that in America you can rank 60 cities according to high pace of life and low pace of life. The ones with the highest pace of life, men have the most coronary problems. It becomes part of your whole way of life.
