Cannabis - a Serious Warning

Cannabis and 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's 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've smoked a bit of 'the weed', dope, hashish, hash, 'shit', or however one chooses to name it. But feeling nice or indeed having fascinating visual effects is not in itself a positive effect. Let's 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 realized beings - which implies that at least one of our fundamental life tasks is full, comprehensive self realization. And that implies working on ourselves to clear old emotional issues, stresses and traumas - indeed all karmas - and all astral connections and influences*. The question is, then, can the use of cannabis actually take us forward in our life purpose of self realization, and any other life purpose of ours with regard to improving the lot of Humanity (as part of improving our own living environment)?

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

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 incarnations, which isn't at all a pejorative description), who can make some sort of subsequent use of what they've seen and experienced, and who don't become attached to the experiences and seek to keep returning to them. I was one such person. When I had cannabis experiences, 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, I would very likely have foregone any use of that substance at all.

And now the problems...

What I also noticed was that most people did not move forward in the way that I did. 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'd 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 which they most certainly hadn't, 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 antidepressant.

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 isn't about withdrawing into our 'comfort zone' and finding quick and easy contentment. It's about learning, 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 realization methods - the true self healing - but that is something 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 patterns.

It is the norm for such people to live in denial of there being anything wrong. 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've found 'enlightenment' or at least something very close to it. In fact they've not only not found enlightenment at all that way, but they've greatly reduced the essential motivation that could get them there, and would find it almost impossible to progress much further in terms of self realization, even if they gave cannabis up now and never smoked any more.

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 realization 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. Enlightenment is actually never found through getting more comfortable through going into denial of one's issues. Active clearance (which can be very uncomfortable at times, though doesn't need to be if appropriate methods are used) is a prerequisite before enlightenment can occur.

Well, at least that's the case for the healthiest and deepest 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 full self realization is really not happening.

I know some people who smoked a lot of cannabis a few decades ago and, as far as I know, don't 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 spiritual opening up, even though they mostly think of themselves as being very spiritual. They, like so many others, completely mistake a state of chronic ungroundedness for being self realized (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 or will inwardly block such healing sent from others. Indeed, they are mostly unmotivated to let go of their addictions, and thus retain their obstacles to true healing.

I tried sending healing to a friend of mine for this type of brain damage, but his own deep unwillingness for the requisite positive change ensured that the help he got from the healing was negligible and just not worth the time and effort of my continuing to do that.

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 two very powerful methods of addressing this. Because they operate in rather different ways and address different aspects of the issue, for full healing, both methods are needed, even though there is a large overlap between their healing effects and either 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?).

• Obtain and put into ongoing everyday use the environmental stress elimination devices called the Energy Egg and the Guardian Angel (or its more powerful 'big brother', the Archangel). I strongly recommend the use of both, with the Energy Egg connected to the Guardian Angel or Archangel in the manner described in the instructions for the latter two. Any other environmental stress eliminator would not properly address the cannabis issue, and indeed almost certainly would have unseen harmful effects which the makers and suppliers don't know about.
• 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.

For more about both of these, please see Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

Cannabis and 'mental illness'

I have learnt that people who have had any tendency to night terrors or hearing voices (and a very significant proportion of humans has, or has had, such a tendency), in some cases can have the use of cannabis trigger the night terrors 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 subtle energy system (associated with the person having become more poorly grounded) which allow greater access from interfering dark entities, which then themselves produce all the disturbing manifestations, as I describe in Night Terrors and Hearing Voices.

My understanding now is that this is the basis of at least the vast majority of cases of alleged cannabis-caused psychosis. Affected people would do well to read my page (link above) on night terrors and hearing voices 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 my Night Terrors and Hearing Voices page, my own observations strongly point to dark entities being the prime cause or aggravator of virtually ALL 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 dark entities 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 attractive and susceptible to the troublesome dark entities (aka) astral beings and also to spirit attachments - discarnate entities which are the consciousnesses of people who have died but are frightened of moving on to their proper place or 'dimension'.

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

Yes, and that's one good reason why they're so attached to their paths and don't go beyond such paths and so don't become truly enlightened and self realized. Actually the whole notion of a spiritual path is highly problematical, because of the way people become attached to the 'path' and don't get on with a real self realization process. In addition, ALL religious / mystical / spiritual / healing traditions contain elements that maintain or increase your connections with astral ('dark') forces, and shamanism is no exception there. So conventional notions of a spiritual path ALL need to be let go of if you're serious about full spiritual opening up, enlightenment and true self realization. I point to a true self healing / self realization methodology, free from problematical connections and influences, in Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

Should cannabis be illegal then?

It is not for me to go telling people what they should or shouldn't do. It's my task simply to point out the cause and effect relationships in this issue, as far as I can ascertain them. Humanity 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? Certainly not because of the problem that I've 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 spiritual progress 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'm not saying that they should not use cannabis, but they do need to be made fully aware that once they've been regularly medicating themselves with cannabis or just THC for a while, they may well have lost much or all of their motivation for spiritual opening up or actively taking charge of their lives in positive ways. Once they know the full costs as well as benefits, then it's 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 Realization - 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'm all in favour of much stronger measures against the alcohol and tobacco, which are drugs just as much as cannabis, and cause tremendous misery, illness and mortality worldwide. But ultimately it's 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's 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.