Cannabis - a Serious Warning

Cannabis and self actualization / self realization do not mix

Cannabis is one of the relatively unsung blights upon Western civilization - and I say this as one who in the early 1970s smoked cannabis myself several times and appeared to actually gain greatly from it. It is my task here to clarify the situation so that - I hope - many people will wake up to the seriousness of the situation with regard to the long-term effects of this mind-affecting drug.

What can be positive about smoking cannabis?

Yes, we all know that most people feel sort-of comfortable and 'nice' when they have smoked a bit of marijuana, 'the weed', dope, 'grass', hashish, hash, 'shit', 'skunk', or however one chooses to name it. But feeling nice or indeed having fascinating visual effects is not in itself necessarily a positive effect. Let us remember that wants and likes, on the one hand, and what is for one's deepest and ultimate good on the other hand, can be very, very different. We did not incarnate to become comfortable or feel nice, but to experience life as enlightened and self actualized / self realized beings - which implies that at least one of our fundamental life tasks is comprehensive genuine self actualization. And that implies working on ourselves to clear old emotional issues, stresses and traumas - indeed all karmas - and all dark force connections and influences*. The question is, then, can the use of cannabis actually take us forward in our life purpose of self actualization, and any other life purpose of ours with regard to improving the lot of all people (as part of improving our own living environment)?

* For really effective means to do so, please see Healing and Self Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

To a point the answer is, apparently, that for a small number of people it can have a truly positive effect - if smoked only a small number of times in order to get some one-off experiences, and then not returned to ever again. The particular benefit is little to do with feeling 'nice' but is to do with having mental doorways temporarily opened so that one discovers all manner of new ways of experiencing things, and visionary ways of perceiving things.

This is of use at all only for people with very active and creative minds (primarily people who are direct incarnations of fundamental consciousness (who I call no-soul people, which is not at all a pejorative description), who can make some sort of subsequent use of what they have seen and experienced, and who do not become attached to the experiences and seek to keep returning to them. I was one such person. When I had cannabis experiences (probably up to about 15 of them, from 1971 to 1973), they opened a powerful window on my hidden creativity and ability to live in the present and enjoy to the full each experience as it arose. I knew intuitively that these experiences were showing me capabilities and potentialities in my mind, and my task was to leave cannabis behind and work through various means to open up those potentialities so that my mind was every bit as expansive and creative as in the cannabis experiences - indeed much more so - and fully under my own control, without need for any further drugs or 'props'.

However, if I had known at that time in the 1970s what I know now about long-term effects of cannabis, and the tremendous troubles that I was due to get from the dark force in 2003-2008, I would very likely have foregone any use of that substance at all.

And now the problems...

One thing I noticed at the time, when I was occasionally smoking cannabis and 'enjoying' its various effects, was that its 'visionary' effects were ones of self deception. Well, except that in my case it was not very much self deception because I saw through the façade, but other people around me who were smoking the stuff did appear to be deceived, and thought they were experiencing something important and in some respect fundamental or highly 'spiritual' in some really positive sense. I recognised clearly at the time that the cannabis experiences had a sort of two-dimensional, 'cardboard-cut-out' quality about them, figuratively speaking, which made it obvious to me that, although those experiences did give me some extremely useful pointers to some aspects of improved mental and emotional functioning that I needed to uncover, those experiences themselves were NOT of any genuine improved functioning at all, but were actually at best crude and superficial imitations of it. Indeed, after a quite small number of cannabis sessions I found the experiences and 'fascinating' visuals actually boring, and I was getting impatient for the 'high' to go, because I was clear that those experiences were really not taking me anywhere useful, and I wanted to be in full command of my faculties again.

On one of those cannabis sessions, soon after I started writing poetry, when I smoked a little bit of the 'weed' up on Pewley Down above Guildford I took with me a portable cassette recorder, because I had noticed that when I was 'high' I had all sorts of seemingly awesomely meaningful surrealistic phrases and expressions coming into my mind. I thought that I would thus be able to build up a whole inventory of wonderful striking ideas to use in my poetry. In the event, once I had got out of my 'high' I was disgusted, though not at all surprised, to find that all I had recorded was banal and almost completely meaningless drivel. I did write some 'poems' trying to make use of that stuff, but they were useful only as experiments. In my writing I was able to be genuinely and profoundly visionary and, one could say, 'hallucinatory', but only without drugs or any other interference with my mental functioning. Indeed, one limitation on quite a bit of my poetry of those times was that I was often still seeking to portray a sort of cannabis effect rather than trust myself completely for my own 'inspiration'.

I did succeed in capturing something of that cheap, ersatz, cardboard cut-out pretence of a visionary experience during a cannabis 'high' in my early poem Smoking Grass on Pewley Down. I wrote that actually NOT while I was 'high', and before I came to be seeking to use the (actually) drivel that came to me when I was 'high', so that my creativity was not being stunted or distorted too much by the 'dope' smoking.

What I also noticed was that most people did not move forward in the way that I did in terms of genuine life improvement and self healing. They got attached to the pleasant feelings and (in many cases) visual effects of a cannabis 'high' and kept returning to them. Some of these people eventually got bored with that and more or less finished with cannabis, while others continued it as a regular or even daily habit because it took their attention away from uncomfortable personal issues. I saw no sign that any of these people had benefited significantly in the sense of having received some nudge for positive life change and actually clearing the particular personal issues. Some of them seemed to think they had achieved positive life change by continuing to smoke cannabis, because they were apparently more relaxed than they used to be, less anxious, and more comfortable in their current situation. Indeed, some actually claimed that through doing do they had "found enlightenment" - something that they most certainly had not, and indeed by making such a claim they had demonstrated that they were in a state of self delusion.

Many people continued using cannabis because they tended to have depressive feelings, and cannabis comforted them so that they felt such feelings less. The drug was being used as a 'natural' (i.e. biologically sourced) antidepressant.

We need to remember, however, that 'natural' actually does NOT mean or even imply 'beneficial' or 'okay'. Naturally sourced strychnine will kill you just as effectively as synthetic strychnine! In other words, if it is not sensible or helpful to be taking a pharmaceutical antidepressant such as Prozac, neither is it sensible or helpful to be taking a biologically sourced anti-depressant such as cannabis!

It seems sort-of attractive, doesn't it, that, while people taking alcohol regularly are liable to have all sorts of overt problems arising from it, and it can precipitate all manner of irresponsible and violent behaviour, cannabis tends to be gentle in its effects and make a person gentle and accepting, and more happy with their lot.

But the underlying purpose of our lives is not about withdrawing into our 'comfort zone' and finding quick and easy contentment. It is about experiencing variety and contrast in abundance, about moving forward, opening up new horizons and taking on new challenges. There is an inner peacefulness and what you could call contentment that is eventually opened up through proper self actualization methods - the true self healing - but that is something very different from what is achieved by drugs, and it itself becomes an obstacle when people make it an actual goal, as they usually do. A true positive way forward necessarily involves sometimes facing discomfort and pressing through inner resistance in order to break old behaviour patterns that were based on old emotional stresses or traumas, and to respond to situations in new, better ways. You cannot do this if you have no motivation to move out of your comfort zone.

My current understanding is that regular, and especially daily, cannabis smoking, over a period of weeks, causes changes in brain chemistry in such a way as to keep the person unmotivated for positive change, and thus so reluctant to go beyond their comfort zone that they are in most cases unmotivated to give up cannabis or indeed any other addictions or significant patterns.

It is the norm for such people to live in denial of there being anything wrong for them. Those who are more deeply self aware are inclined to kid themselves and others that through having found a certain level of comfort and peacefulness, that they have found 'enlightenment' or at least something very close to it. In fact they have not only not found enlightenment at all that way, but they have greatly reduced the essential motivation that could get them there, and would find it almost impossible to progress much further in terms of self actualization, even if they gave cannabis up now and never smoked any more. They have also created for themselves insidious and extremely harmful illusory realities.

Thus, these people - and there are a LOT of them - can be seen as effectively brain damaged. Yes, that sounds harsh of me to say it directly, but that stunting of their motivation for positive change is associated with changes in the brain, and it is this brain damage that makes them seem commonly so placid and easy-going. They tend to withdraw from those of us who, like myself, have an active self actualization process and sense of our life purpose, for they find this too threatening to their comfort zone, preferring to resonate with others who have similar self-anaesthetization tendencies. Some of them have considerable self awareness to a certain level, yet seem to wrap it up in cotton wool so that becoming more peaceful and contented with their lot in life is equated with enlightenment. That is actually a very harmful illusory reality, which is bound to cause them unthinkably horrendous problems beyond this lifetime. Enlightenment is actually never found through getting more comfortable through going into denial of one's issues. A considerable amount of active clearance (which can be very uncomfortable at times, though can be both painless and actually joyful if appropriate methods are used) is a prerequisite before enlightenment can occur.

Well, at least that is the case for the healthiest and deepest experience of enlightenment. Lots of meditation gets some people to enlightenment, but it also puts the lid on a lot of the deeper-seated emotional issues so that fully comprehensive self actualization is really not happening.

I know some people who smoked a lot of cannabis a few decades ago and, as far as I know, do not normally do so now, and I find something of a 'drifter', laissez-faire sort of outlook in them, which again prevents them from really moving forward on any active self healing or process of self actualization, even though they mostly think of themselves as being very 'open' and aware. They, like so many others, completely mistake a state of chronic ungroundedness for being self actualized (which latter is our real need - not so-called spirituality).

The only situation in which the brain damage may be reversed is if a powerful healing method is applied. However, there is a catch - indeed a Catch 22 situation. Because of their non-motivation, such people mostly cannot be bothered, or even actively do not want, to change, and so they will not apply the healing to themselves, and few indeed would look to anyone else to assist them either. Indeed, they are mostly unmotivated to let go of their addictions (any of them), and thus retain their obstacles to true healing.

True healing possibilities for cannabis harmful effects

For the benefit of the rare case of the person who has smoked cannabis significantly and is still sufficiently motivated to do something effective about it, there are are very powerful methods by which you can address this. Because they operate in rather different ways and address different aspects of the issue, all the methods would generally be needed for full healing, even though there is a large overlap between their healing effects and any one of them on its own would still be very beneficial (but why settle for anything short of the whole job when you could so easily complete it and have massive additional improvements to your life?). I cannot guarantee full healing of all the cannabis related damage for every affected person - that would be an unrealistic claim to make for healing of any type of issue. However, it appears that any affected person who uses these particular methods would benefit greatly, and at least theoretically a good proportion would recover fully*.

* Actually, 'recover fully' is rather a funny thing to say relating to use of such healing methods, because such methods would heal and clear so much else as well that the whole notion of 'recovery' (i.e. rather than a genuine ongoing self actualization process) gets to look quite limited and 'Stone Age'!

• Use daily a particular set of yogic practices (very different from ordinary Yoga) called the Returning Life Sequence. A DVD is available from which you can learn the sequence.
• Do regular Self-Power Walking.
• Get yourself a Clarity-Sphere setup and put that into ongoing everyday active use.
• Alternatively, obtain and put into ongoing everyday use an Energy Egg (the most powerful version, currently made of white jade), connected to a Guardian Angel or preferably an Archangel.

Cannabis and 'mental illness'

I have learnt that people who have had any tendency to night hells (night terrors) or 'hearing voices' (and a very significant proportion of people have, or have had, such a tendency), in some cases can have the use of cannabis trigger the night hells process, which would often be a hellish maelstrom of frightening and often dark and demonic images. These visuals would typically be accompanied by exaggerated arisings of fear and related emotions (anxiety, apprehension, panic and full-blown terror). This is not just a one-time triggering, but rather, a long-term disruption of the brain chemistry so that the disturbing visuals and fear/anxiety/panic attacks keep recurring. Contrary to what most of the medical and psychiatric services believe, the changes in brain chemistry do not directly cause or produce the disturbances, but rather, they reflect particular weakenings of the person's non-physical aspects (associated with the person having become more poorly grounded), which allow greater access from the dark force, which then itself produces all the disturbing manifestations, as I describe in Night Hells (Night Terrors) and Hearing Voices.

My understanding now is that interferences and attacks from the dark force are the basis of at least the vast majority of cases of alleged cannabis-caused 'psychosis'. Affected people would do well to read the above-linked page so that they can start working out a true healing strategy, because currently the mental health services have no clue about this and would just try to suppress symptoms with drugs and maybe ECT, which simply adds to any extant brain damage to the point even of wrecking.

As explained in that page, my own observations strongly point to the dark force being the prime cause or aggravator of virtually ALL so-called 'mental illness', and on this basis I can fairly say that any attempt to address cannabis-associated mental health issues without recognising and addressing the involvement of the dark force is like going out to a slap-up meal at your favourite restaurant supposedly in order to put out the fire that is burning your house down!

The smoking of cannabis (also tobacco) also ungrounds the person and thus makes them more open and susceptible to the the dark force. Such people also are inclined to get soul fragments attached to them, also draining their energy, degrading their life experience and causing steadily increasing health problems.

It is also worth noting that on most days this website gets visits from at least one person who has made a search engine query for 'cannabis' [or equivalent word] and 'night terrors', usually in a phrase indicating that it is a connection between the two that is their interest. Although nothing is proved by that, it is highly suggestive that many people out there have experience of what they are identifying as 'night terrors' apparently being caused by cannabis - though of course I cannot know for sure to what extent they are meaning exactly the same phenomenon that I am calling night terrors (i.e. night hells).

"I stopped smoking cannabis and I started hearing voices, getting illusions and all the other withdrawal symptoms. Doctors got involved and they gave me tablets. I want to leave the medicine. How long will it take me to recover and what would happen if I leave the medicine?"

That was actually a search engine query that led somebody to this page, and it is a nice illustration of the sorts of pickle that cannabis users tend to get into. I salute the particular individual in his having the strength to cut out cannabis. However, he has unfortunately identified his adverse manifestations as merely 'withdrawal symptoms' - which assumption of course would follow the standard medical 'Party Line', and so the guy is given medication to try to hide the problem. Unfortunately he is now feeling stuck on that medication, and, although he wants to come off it, he is liable to find that if/when he does, the adverse manifestations are still there, for what he has been experiencing would most likely NOT be withdrawal symptoms in any meaningful sense but the result of the damage that he has been doing to himself by smoking the cannabis in the first place. His need therefore is not the antipsychotics or whatever other type of drug that he has been given, but safe and completely non-medical methods to strengthen his non-physical aspects and heal the damage caused to him by his use of the cannabis - see Healing and Self Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way. That particularly includes a consistent strategy of cultivating stronger grounding of his awareness.

"But shamans use drugs as part of their path..."

Yes, and that is one good reason why they are so attached to their paths and do not go beyond such paths and so do not become genuinely enlightened and self actualized. Actually the whole notion of a spiritual path is highly problematical, because of the way people become attached to the 'path' and do not get on with a real self actualization process. In addition, ALL religious / mystical / spiritual / healing traditions contain elements that maintain or increase your connections with the dark force, and shamanism is no exception there. So conventional notions of a spiritual path ALL need to be let go of if you are serious about enlightenment and genuine self actualization. I point to a true self healing / self actualization methodology, free from problematical connections and influences, in Healing and Self Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way and Letting Go of Addictions and Compulsive Behaviours.

Should cannabis be illegal then?

It is not for me to go telling people what they should or should not do. It is my task simply to point out the cause and effect relationships in this issue, as far as I can ascertain them. The human race generally has an extremely confused and contradictory attitude to mind-affecting substances, and our supposedly so rational Western civilizations are highly irrational in their attitudes to them. Why, for example, is cannabis illegal while alcohol and tobacco products - so tremendously harmful - are freely available (albeit with actually very minor restrictions)? Certainly not because of the problem that I have outlined above with regard to motivation for positive change, because that is not widely recognised - or rather, at least in our Western materialistic culture, the consequences of the personality change brought about by cannabis are not recognised as anything serious because self actualization and self healing are not seen as a vital part of the life purpose of each of us - and many of the apparently brain-damaged people actually seem rather nice and endearing in their easy-going ways.

Those who want to use cannabis for treating medical conditions do not understand the great price they would be paying for their physical comfort or reduction of unwanted physical symptoms. I am not saying that they should not use cannabis, but they do need to be made fully aware that once they have been regularly medicating themselves with cannabis or just THC for a while, they may well have lost much or all of their (potential) motivation for self actualization or actively taking charge of their lives in positive ways. Once they know the full costs as well as benefits, then it is really their choice and not for me or some holier-than-thou doctor to try and make such a decision for them.

Basically, what would-be medicinal cannabis users (and indeed any other cannabis users) really need instead of that cannabis is to embark on proper holistic self healing programmes or strategies. On this site I point to the sort of way to go in order to really heal yourself and dispose of any perceived need for such medication (at least for the vast majority of cases). Please see Healing and Self Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

As to the legal status of cannabis possession and use, I express no view, except pointing to the inconsistency of treatment of this drug and alcohol and tobacco. Whatever happens about cannabis, I am all in favour of much stronger measures against alcohol and tobacco, which are drugs just as much as cannabis, and cause tremendous misery, illness and mortality worldwide. But ultimately it is not for me to try and decide on such issues. If decision-makers insist on playing the silly fool and allowing hospitals to be filled with, and countries' health budgets be strained by, victims of use of these drugs, then that is part of their own learning process - the hard way.

What is necessary with cannabis is that people be widely and fully informed of its brain-damaging effect and the fact that it effectively puts a brake or even total stop upon a person's opening up to their true life purpose.