Tag Archives: Meditation

6 Things You Should Know When Buying and Consuming Legal Marijuana

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Whether you haven’t toked since the 70’s, or you’re entirely new to the experience — here’s the starting place.

By Jeremy Daw

Source: Alternet

I distinctly remember the first time I bought weed. Nervous out of my mind, I dialed the beeper (this was 2003 in New York City – every step required discretion). Two minutes later, someone called me back. I gave them my address, then waited two hours (I didn’t yet have the experience necessary to appreciate how fast that was). Then I answered the knock on the door and opened up my home to a complete stranger who never gave his name. He opened up a briefcase full of five different strains, ranging, he explained, from $50 to $80 per eighth. “What’s an eighth?” I asked. He rolled his eyes. Noob.

Determined that the God-knows-how-many curious tourists flocking to Colorado to purchase legal cannabis today should never suffer the same indignities as I did over a decade ago, I present here the sum total of my experience as a pot smoker, distilled into 6 easy maxims. You can thank me later.

1. Stay on the grass.

New tokers, or anyone who hasn’t lit up since the 70’s, will likely find the dizzying array of pot products for sale at the package store a little confusing. BHO (butane hash oil), ice water, something called ‘shatter’ – the wide selection of products on offer stand testament to just how far the industry has come in 40 years. If you have no tolerance built up already, take my advice and steer well clear of all of these. Just the grass – dried flowers – by itself will be plenty potent enough to get you high, believe me. The main exceptions to this principle, however, are the edibles. Today’s edible products have evolved far beyond mere brownies; many chocolate infusers mold their products to break off easily into precisely measured ‘doses’, so the newbie who doesn’t want to irritate her throat can break off a small square and feel a moderate effect. Just be careful – sugar can trick your brain into thinking it needs more sugar, so you must stalwartly resist the urge to take that extra bite until you’ve given the first dose time to work – up to 1.5 hours for most people.

2. Vaping is healthier.

Another development which has taken the cannabis industry by storm lately is the proliferation of portable vaporizers. While the reliable Volcano still remains the equipment of choice for the home-bound aficionado, new portable models have opened up possibilities to take one’s vape on the go. These handy devices can drastically reduce any potentially harmful chemicals in marijuana smoke and can avoid irritating the throat (they still will make you cough, however, because of the expectorant properties of cannabinoids). But make sure you pair the right vape with the right product. Some are designed to handle ‘shake’ (dried flowers, ground up), some only work with hashish and some only work with the highest-grade extracts. Perhaps the best choice for the new marijuana user is the O.pen or similar model, because they come with pre-mixed extracts in glycerin, providing an experience familiar to anyone who has tried an e-cigarette. In any case, remember to take just 1-2 puffs at first, then wait at least five minutes to measure the effects before vaping again. It’s easy to get too high on this stuff.

3. Train your brain.

As strange as this may sound, everyone has to learn how to get high before they can experience it; this is why many marijuana newbies report feeling no effects the first time they smoke pot. Marijuana intoxication is unlike any other feeling in the world, and until your brain knows what to expect it can be difficult to get there. If, after taking a couple hits, you don’t feel any different, try this meditation to deepen the experience. First, relax; close your eyes. Listen to the sounds to your left. Listen to the sounds to your right. Pay attention to how your body feels – is there tightness anywhere? If so, don’t judge – just breathe into the parts of your body which hold the tension, and allow your breath to exhale out. Let go of all judgmental thoughts, all questions of “am I doing it right?” Just float downstream instead.

After a few minutes of mindful breathing, don’t be surprised to suddenly feel noticeably different. Your body may feel lighter; colors may appear more fascinating. Music will open up with more depth than you have ever felt before. And pretty soon, you may start to feel pretty hungry.

4. Come down with CBD.

There are many wonderful reasons why marijuana intoxication is more pleasant than, say, alcohol (no hangover, for one). Even so, the experience isn’t enjoyable for everyone. If you find yourself feeling paranoid, anxious or nauseous – first of all, relax. Remind yourself that no one in history has ever had a fatal overdose of marijuana, and that everything will pass. Breathe deeply.

Just in case that isn’t enough, make sure to keep some special marijuana handy, called “high-CBD.” Such bud is so called because it contains unusually high levels of cannabidiol, or CBD for short, a non-psychoactive cannabinoid which has been shown to mitigate the effects of THC. Many first-time users who found they accidentally took too much have found relief by smoking (or vaping) a few hits of high-CBD bud; within minutes, the CBD will “bring them back down.” If you’re new to cannabis, or you haven’t ever had anything truly high-grade, asking your vendor for a gram of high-CBD bud can be a good idea, just in case.

5. Savor the flavors.

For everyone who has never tried it, or anyone who has relied on the same bud from the same dealer for years, the myriad diversity of scents and flavors on selection in Denver will be a revelation. Some taste like pine; others, mango; still others, lavender. Take the time to sample the scents on offer before making your selection.

When you’re ready to consume, use practices which preserve the flavor. Vape, if possible; the low-temp sublimation process preserves the maximum amount of terpenes – the organic chemicals which provide the pot’s flavors. If you’re smoking instead, use a hemp wick. These beeswax-coated twines are wound with hemp fiber, so they neither add to nor take away from the bud’s exotic flavors. Lighters cover up too much with the taste of butane.

6. Get a grinder.

Regardless of whether you’re rolling joints, packing bowls or loading vapes, a good grinder makes everything easier. Even many experienced tokers often forget to grind up their cannabis before consuming; stuffing whole nugs in pipes can lead to a frustrating experience. But when the bud is ground up ahead of time, it allows smooth airflow which in turn leads to smoother, more flavorful hits.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it will get you started. Apply these principles, and the new year will bring more than just new laws – it will also deliver a healthier way to recreationally relax.

 

Jeremy Daw is the editor of TheLeafOnline.com and Cannabis Now Magazine, and the author of Weed the People: From Founding Fiber to Forbidden Fruit (2012).

Consciousness & The Art of Loving Our Experience

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By Phil Watt

Source: Waking Times

The usual tendency in our modern secular thinking is to view the outer world as separate from ourselves, but really it is just a partial reflection of what we fundamentally are. Objective reality is one of two pieces. Both pieces make up one whole. The other part is our subjective world, which are our feelings, thoughts and beliefs.

In this ancient and rebirthed understanding, we are realizing we are both the inner and outer worlds.

Now I could go into why quantum physics specifies that these two portions are inseparable, or why ancient wisdom and modern mystics say the same thing, but if we’re on this path we intuitively and possibly even logically know this already.

Instead, here I’m going to focus on what actually makes up our experience, as well as ways to find our peace by loving our experience, because it’s not always easy to accept and embrace all of what we perceive in life.

Some of it is simply hard for our hearts to take and challenging for our minds to fathom. But our experience is much like an intimate relationship: it has its ups and downs, there are things that need to change, there are things that we wouldn’t change for the world and there are hard lessons involved which hopefully inspire us to develop ourselves. And just like we love our partner regardless of their positives and negatives, we should also love our experience, irrespective of its strengths and weaknesses.

Another way to begin to look at it is by considering how we love ourselves. Just as we don’t condone everything about our partner, yet we still love them, we still love ourselves, even if sometimes we’re not proud of all our feelings, thoughts and actions. After all, we make mistakes, learn and navigate our entire lives growing into our new, more developed selves.

But our experience is much bigger than our ego, or our perception and the ingredients of our ‘illusory separate’ selves. It’s also the objects of our experience, because if we change the objects, we also change the experience. Therefore, it is the two realities combined; it’s an intimate interconnection between the inner and outer worlds.

Let’s put it in a simple model:

Subjective world = feelings, thoughts, beliefs, actions
Objective world = body, people, earth, universe.
Experience = the interconnected total of our subjective and objective worlds.

This means that there is something which is the bridge between or the basis of these two seemingly separate realities.

Both pioneer scientists and contemporary spirituality view consciousness (or something like consciousness) as the ground of all being and therefore the bridge of these realms. Though to be clear: it’s not our individual consciousness but the whole of consciousness which is the unifying factor.

One way to illustrate this is through the analogy of a fire. The whole of consciousness is the fire, the objective world including our brain is a flame in the fire and our subjective world is our flame’s heat. All are the fire. All are consciousness.

One common assumption about our individual consciousness is that it is generated by the big brain (containing 100 billion neurons), the second brain (100 million neurons embedded in the walls of our gut) and the heart (which contains 40,000 neurons); much like a generator creates electricity. Even though this is voiced by some materialists as being a proven scientific fact, it’s not – it’s speculation based primarily on the evidence that if we tamper with the brains (particularly the big brain) in certain ways, it tampers with our awareness in particular ways too.

But just as all scientists and laymen alike should know – correlation does not imply causation. Just because our individual consciousness changes when we alter our brain does not mean that the brain created the consciousness in the first place.

The alternative to this explanation, one that is receiving support from emerging scientific evidence, is that the brain receives or tunes into consciousness, much like a radio or television tunes into signals. If we tamper with our radio or TV set, then it will no doubt have an associated impact on the way the signal is received, without actually changing the signal itself. Therefore, just because modifying our brain can alter our experience, does not inherently mean that we have changed consciousness itself. We have simply changed our experience of consciousness.

This makes sense when we acknowledge how our experience is influenced by what’s happening both inside and outside of us. We’re tuning into particular frequencies of consciousness to have an experience which is co-created by both our inner and outer worlds.

When we begin to meditate this point becomes even clearer. Think of our conscious awareness as the light from a torch and the darkness as our subconscious mind. When we meditate, we can navigate through our subconscious mind by making it conscious with our light. Meditation is the act of navigating our awareness through our subconscious mind. The more skilled we become at expanding our mind with meditation, the deeper we go into the darkness of our subconscious. Then suddenly – as many experienced meditators agree – we potentially reach beyond our subconscious mind.

In other words – advanced meditation can craft our individual awareness into a cosmic consciousness or even consciousness itself. This is also a common experience when taking a psychedelic substance. Over and over again, through countless individuals and a wide array of tribal, traditional and current cultures, it is believed that during a psychedelic trip (or other trance-induced activity) the mind becomes one with the whole of reality.

The line between the internal and external worlds has become reverently blurred. This is a big concept to entertain, but once we do, we arrive at an inevitable conclusion. If our experience is a melting between two interconnected worlds, and we love our experience, then we love both worlds. We therefore have a solid foundation to establish and maintain our inner peace.

That isn’t to say that we like everything within it – such as war, murder, emotional dysfunction, suffering etc. – just that we embrace it for what it is. We’re at peace because we understand it as a manifestation of what we fundamentally are: consciousness (or the more traditional term of God). The way we then operate through our lives is based on love, because we view our experience as a reflection of ourselves and we love it as we would love ourselves, and all humanity.

This is when loving our experience becomes an art because we learn to consciously co-create our experience in a way that is beautiful, inspiring and above all loving. Ultimately, you should love your experience like you love yourself, because it is you. It’s a sure-fire way to be at peace.