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Two-hour Christmas conversation with Kyle, on Jasun’s anti-marijuana rule, exploring the harmful effects of cannabis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, marijuana as anesthetic, the benefits of cannabis, social drug use, getting back to baseline, the quest to get high, drugs as bonding, being possessed by plants, salvia divinorum, three witches in Guatemala, a devil & an angel, an alternate timestream, accelerated consciousness, retraumatization via drugs, trapped in the mundane, being disembodied on saliva, Icarus’ wings, the life of a psychonaut, the psychedelic backlash, the splinter in the brain, a perpetual cage and an illusory key, an internal mechanism for cage-building, the ground of organic existence, submitting to the rules of matter, a defiance of the body, virtual reality & increased savagery, ‘60s LSD explosion, Dave McGowan, hijacking activism, the legacy of the counterculture, drugs & ego inflation, “Mad Men” & social engineering, how hippies became Masters of the Universe, Burning Man & end of the world parties, shamanic tourism, re-engineering Ayahuasca for maximum damage, a sense of disconnect, a desire to belong, turning a critical eye on family, a programmed resistance to criticizing parents, a sabotaged connection to the mother, identity formation, the tip of an ancestral land-mass, being formed from the mother’s body, the mother’s gaze, reciprocity of expression, an optimal mother-bonding experience, the primary organ of perception, an open heart, the need for infants to be met with a core connection, mother bondage, cannabis as surrogate connection, sensation immersion, substance aids for community bonding, marijuana and opening the heart chakra, the light side of the Moon, ancestral addictions, Hell & the inability to love, why Hell is other people, a socially enforced disconnect, starting a family as a cure-all, going down the conspiracy rabbit hole, living with disconnection, life in the pit, the dry well of the soul, a small fulfillment & a lasting deep vs. fleeting highs, looking for love, accepting the emptiness.
Songs: “The Kommema and his Religion” & “Of the Lakes,” by SunWalker; “All I Want From You is Love,” by Let’s Go Sailing; “Silver Wind,” by The UpsideDown.
Who did the version of “All I want from you is love” that you play in this episode? That droning synth is great – like something that should be included in the new Bladerunner soundtrack.
The song I’m referring to is not “All I want from you is love”. It’s the song at roughly 01:30:00. It’s been a long night.
hint: it’s right at the bottom of the show description 😉
Jasun thank you for your work. It is often helpful and always provocative.
However I have to almost completely disagree with your stance on marijuana. First in the sense that you give it soo much emphasis and importance. To me making a big deal out of marijuana one way or the other is superfluous, and usually the result of people projecting their own personal experience into everyone and everything else. Misery loves company I guess 😉
Do some people use it in a way that is unproductive (like getting high and playing xbox all day in a dark room) yes. I do not. Some do. Who cares?
To me there is a more fundamental point to emphisise here. You mention often “true self” or other synonyms of that idea. Which is what it is; only an idea. The fact is is that your true self is everything. That what one may call “thier body” or “their consciousness” or “their soul” or “their awakening” “their pain” “their joy” “their life” “their death” are only ideas and bodily reactions to insights, awakenings, whatever. These are part in parcel of an infinite web of connections, where no lines between things exist.
I also see that maybe your problem with marijuana and other psychoactive drugs stems from issues of control within “your” own experience.
I am 40 and have been using canabis for about 25 years now. I have been through many times of aversion, and also of loving the use of canabis. All the questions you are bringing up as well. Does it become a trap? Does it fool me and keep me away from reality? Etc.
What’s changed? Nothing. Atleast nothing specific to marijuana.
I won’t get too into it here because it Is a long story, I will summarize; I had two very bad cases of the flu two years in a row. I had profound experiences during and after both. The first was the most life changing.
I develop a persistent cough when I get sick. This cough mixed with the normal lovelies of the flu, keeped me awake for days on end. During this time, particularly at night, I would have mild repetitious, unpleasant, hallucinations.
After the main flu had peaked, and I was starting to feel better, something like a slow moving switch was flipped off. I then found myself in a complete and profound state of nothingness. What I mean is that from the most gigantic thing in the universe to the smallest quantum wave, from the highest heaven to the darkest hell. Everything was the same. Things and what they “were” became grey areas with loosely hung words that described them dissolve into nothingness.
This is where I should say that yes, I have had these ideas intellectually for years, but this was different. I was living it. My individuate sense of me was also desolving. I was not scared. I was not perturbed, it was not beutiful, it was not ugly. It was enlightenment. It was nothing.
I stayed in this state completely for 3 days.
Another interesting thing is that I smoked cannabis to try and bring myself back to a recognizable state of mind, but, strange as it sounds, I could not get high. Cannabis had no effect at all. Like I couldn’t get stoned. I have theories on that.
Anyways what the experiance did was gave me a rebirth in a sense. Going to the brink of nothingness and staying there, goes a long ways in making one a nihilist. Good news is true nihilism does only what’s in balance. Only what works best. Why? Because it is the easiest thing to do.
Point is this; if you like smoking cannabis then do it.
If you don’t like it, I guess that’s ok too ;). It dosnt matter. There is no true quest to self or truth. There is only being. All meaning is arbitrary.
By that reckoning (rationalization), there would be no harm in living on a diet of MacDonalds. It’s dissociated reasoning. It’s funny, coz it’s exactly what I dislike about pot & pot smokers, including myself when I was one. I have tapes I used to make every day from years ago. Every now & then there are ones I made when I was high on pot. I find them unlistenable. What an idiot I was believing in these profound insights that in the end amounted to so little. Weed fuels delusion and does untold harm to the body. It’s also wildly popular and mostly misrepresented as harmless. That’s why I considered this worth doing a podcast about.
Some people do need extreme forms of self-medication, however. I wouldn’t judge someone for it, I hope. But for dissembling about it, maybe.
Sure abuse is happening. And yes, if one chooses to eat mcdonalds everyday they can. That’s to matters only arbitrarily. And only to humans who see it as an issue, or that even cares.
My sharing of my experiance was toward the idea of the self as a thing. To the idea that there is a higher self to reach. As if it is waiting there twirling it’s thumbs in anticipation awaiting our arrival. Nice to be feelsoo important I get it.
My experiance showed me that all phenomena is ultimately equal in emptiness. Emptiness in the sense of all is all.
The search itself is actually an attempt at escaping the hardships of being.
For me, my experiance of nothingness left me withou want. I have been on my own journey of enlightenment for a long time. Never have I felt it more completely as when I (by the force of my experiance) let it go. I feel I was emptied. And now I am full of it 😉
Respectfully
Oy vey. You really haven’t been paying attention to what I’ve been trying to communicate, and/or I’ve done a poor job of doing so. The message of this podcast is consistent with my whole output; reject it & you reject the rest.
Seems like a tall order to insist on every position one puts forth as an absolute and to be adopted and excepted by anyone that would listen (whether or not their own experience reflects the position). All i can say to that is good luck.
My position is that the best position is to have no position. Then one is truly free to move and use all positions that are useful and move from ones that are not.
i promise that I am not trying to one up you, or even defend what i do in my life.
I think our difference in view is that you perhaps think there is somewhere to go or something to do. I no longer feel that way.
I have much respect for you. You are a brilliant man. Your opinion is yours to have. Mine is mine.
On that i will finish my input on this subject of marijuana, as a nonissue one way or the other. It does not hinder. It does not set free. If you are hindered it will intensify in one direction or the other. If you are free you can enjoy moving around the stage unattached and completely efficient.
And that’s how i truly feel and truly experience.
As for what your communicating; I’m with ya bro!
My absolute position on this is that the body is a system that functions according to laws and these laws are not subject to human will except insofar as trauma is the result; in other words that human will that does not fully surrender to the laws of existence, the divine & the material, is always in revolt against reality, which is a long lonely dead-end road built by ego.
To suggest that an enlightened perspective disregards what one does with or to the body is the thin end of the transhumanist/MKULTRA/organized abuse wedge, a wedge that I’ve been busy mapping, tracing it back to just these kinds of original delusions. When you say that what one eats is immaterial or marijuana is a non-issue, that’s delusional or dissociated because it has no correspondence with physical reality. To then skirt around that with moral or perceptual relativism is part & parcel with the same avoidance strategies that I consider to be so harmful and self-harming. The charge of absolutism seems to be most popular with the dissociated fence-sitters who want to perpetuate disembodied bliss-out states as a surrogate experience of enlightenment. Sure, the body isn’t the be-all and end-all of our experience as consciousness, but it’s where we are anchored now and any consciousness that isn’t altered by what we do to our bodies is a delusional/disembodied one. At least I have yet to encounter anyone or have any experience that has persuaded me otherwise. Anything is possible within the infinite, but I’m addressing your own testimony now and it is not convincing, not even a little bit. You may be happy in/with your idea of enlightenment, but insofar as it co-exists with the belief that physical bodily reality is a non-issue, irrelevant, entirely subjective relativistic question, then I predict a massive Icarian comedown as described in this podcast, which you consider so irrelevant since so far the wax in your wings is holding up. Yet to say you are complete and have nowhere to go is 100% invalidated by your need to use drugs to get to that state. Get real, Travis. You are living in a drug-induced dream world. I wouldn’t be the communicator you think I am if I didn’t tell you as much.
I’m sure the Buddha could smoke hash and eat McDick’s and still be as enlightened, but he might have something to say about people using them to fill their (spiritual) holes. That Travis can ignore all harm (personal, environmental etc) caused by people’s habits is, to me, a clear indicator that the simplicity of his mindset is due to a cloud covering the unsightly view, rather than a seat atop the mountain of insight.
Dave Oshana told me that, after his enlightenment, he tried various things to see if he could lose it, to test how sure it was. The closest he got to losing it was by eating crappy food and drinking beer. But even that didn’t work, he said.
You are right. I do abuse marijuana; in return she wraps herself tighter around me. She clears my mind and vision for moments. Glimpses of blue sky through a rolling fog.
Another thing to let go of….
It has value in the right application. Sometimes more for the people around than the individual using. I have a hard time imaging a Bob Marley without cannabis. However he ,as well as (probaly) most to all people who claim to use it for spiritual practice, obviously abused it. I say most. I’m sure there are people who actually do use cannabis ritually or medically.
I’m usually high. Although I have sort of a “mastery” with it; that only seems to make it harder to resist. Not through any force by it, but a sort of assurity somewheres within myself. An assurity which once looked into becomes nothing more than a wanting of feeling good b and a depth to vision by doing nothing more than packing a bowl. Deeper insights, however, easily becomes a self deceaving e trapp. I can get my head deeper and deeper in my ass and see complex and wonderful things.
Then once I get so accustomed and addicted to the depth of my perception, I soon forget that I’m in my ass.
Again I do feel there is a “proper” use of canabis. Canabis a s a tool or a medicine. However continual use does indeed set the flavours of perception.
To quote the great Marley “he who shall dig the pit, shall fall in”.
Btw. I have been on cannabis hiatus. Two reasons specifically. One is boredom with the stoned state.the second and most significant is to be in a more balanced state. Going through the natural rhythms of the day a night.
Just being human.
I have also almost completely stopped my caffeine intake. Which I see as a much more damaging drug environmentally, as well as the up and down imbalances in mind and body that caffein creates.
Peace and chicken grease!
Kudos.
You can’t stand the continuance of thought
You thinks
So you smoke pot
You perceive a need to continually
Create liminality
To be in liminality
So you smoke weed
But watch out chuck
You might get stuck
Find out you have to swing back around
You’ve ran dry Of dumb luck
Hard time going through the hard times of stimulant withdrawal
…
Alas the way is clear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM8PIcilZXY
^^^ Like it.
*big smile* 😀
I agree with Jasun on this. Beautifully articulated responses as well I must add. I didn’t listen to the podcast tho my iPad is a piece, just responding to the comments. I learned recently to try to never argue or “prove a point” but to give our insights and opinions because it keeps ones own mind sharper and more intuitive to ones own truth and maybe even “the truth”. Marijuana def effects different people different ways. I for one would lose my shit if I ate a strong edible, I don’t like it. Smoking it usually just makes my mind go blank and I feel kinda empty and uncomfortable for a bit. Sometimes vapping it left a “better high” but I honestly never really felt good off smoking despite smoking pretty much everyday for years God knows why.. Just trying to escape I guess. Only thing it helped sometimes was for a stomach ache or help gain a little appetite. Plus it’s expensive and a pain that it’s illegal for the most part still. And if you smoke it and it doesn’t do anything what’s the point I’ve had that as well. It smells good fresh and unsmoked that’s all I like about it anymore. As far as enlightenment goes ones body is a key factor in keeping staying mentally sharp. If someone is a big person with a lot of excessive weight they usually have to eat more and more often to stay feeling good until eventually your gona get sick cause disease is the way nature attempts to force or start the healing process. And if one is actually enlightened they are sure as shit not gona eat mcdonalds. In fact your 100 percent better off not eating at all if a burger is your only option, just deal with the uncomfortableness of the hunger pains which will pass at some point anyway, especially with sleep. Eating slows down and stops the elimination of old toxins that the body begins to do on an empty stomach so you feel better, but ur never gona feel complely good until you eat the right foods that aid the cleansing. I got off track here. I think if cannabis can be used as medicine then it’s good. But the right foods and strategic fasting is the ultimate medicine, got to know what your doing tho especially with the fasting. Smoking it and probably even vapping it probably have at least some negative effects on the body and therefore the mind and spirit. I never smoked or tried dmt don’t really want to anymore there was a time I woulda tried it. But smoked salvia a bunch of times and it got weirder, and scarier every time, last time I felt like I was out of my body and I was walking down the stairs( half running in a panic) while it felt like my mind was stuck in the wall and I was yelling out for help even tho I was at home alone and I wasn’t actually saying anyone but heard myself yelling in my mind. I don’t know how I was even walking down th stairs. I got there awful feeling that I was gona be stuck in the foundation of my house forever and have to watch life live on in the house while I guess my body would have died. I don’t know how I was even walking down the stairs. Got to the dining room and started to come too a bit. Was a terrifying experience that only really lasted like two minutes. So bizzare. I think it’s safe to say we are spiritual beings having a human experience as the saying says. So bottom line we have need experiences, we need to learn, to grow, to change to figure out what is right for us and then apply it and help people if we can and that’s what life is about and to just enjoy it , love and make the best of it. “Drugs are bad mmmkayyy” 🙂
LOL. Great description of the SD experience.
I did have a burger for NY’s eve dinner the other night, but it was gourmet cuisine. An enlightened burger.
If there were still room for doubt, now whitley is promoting cannabis use:
http://www.unknowncountry.com/dreamland/cannabis-and-spirituality
The discussion on how cannabis use relates to infancy (in terms of Sensation dominating one’s experience, or promoting the sense closeness to one’s Mother archetype) reminds me of the supposed fact that endocannabinoids are said to be present in the mother’s breast milk, and are thought to possibly play a role in stimulating the baby’s appetite (as well as regulating against over-eating), and possibly promoting relaxation & pleasure as a bonding mechanism. So it would make sense that cannabis use could have a direct connection in regressing one to an experience of their inner child, feeling cared for & connected, and awash in that sense of nurturing, maternal love.
I have mixed feelings on the issue. It’s been 14 months since I smoked cannabis, and although there have been some improvements in my life, there are some things that haven’t changed, although I’d hoped they would. Marijuana gets the reputation of “making” people lazy, lack motivation, isolate themselves, be too introverted, etc. But I’ve often suspected that it’s more a case (at least for me) of cannabis enhancing my natural introversion, rather than causing it.
I see where Jasun is coming from, in terms of cannabis’s deluding aspects, but at the same time, I don’t see why it couldn’t help *some* people, in the sense that we don’t all start with the same brain chemistry. One person’s sober, natural state might be healthy & functional. while another’s might be depressive, schizophrenic, agitated, etc. And although something like cannabis use can exacerbate negative symptoms in those with mental illnesses, I see no reason why it couldn’t, conversely, nudge some people’s brain chemistry into healthier, more functional & happy realms, if used in moderation.
Yes, it sucks to feel that we need something external to be happy & whole, but isn’t that just part of the human condition?—-we’re born with various Lacks, which motivate us to go out and fill those needs, whether they be the needs of Hunger, Love, Achievement, etc. It’s unfortunate & uncomfortable that some people would simply die (or just suffer) without various medications, but realistically, some people’s “natural state” is unsustainable, unenjoyable, and untenable, and external chemicals can improve their quality of life. The idea of a Natural state is a tricky matter, since everyone’s Natural state is somewhat idiosyncratic & individual, even to the point of being almost arbitrary & random, as opposed to one uniform, Default, factory setting.
I’m proud, in some sense, to have been away for cannabis for the longest stretch I’ve had since starting it, since it was often something to which I knew I was addicted—-but sometimes I wonder: has my life really improved, or am I depriving myself of a fuller enjoyment/enthusiasm for things like music, movies, art, just to claim the somewhat hollow victory of being able to say, “I’m drug free and in my natural state…”? Is my natural state really preferable, and what is it providing me that my my cannabis use couldn’t, or that my cannabis use prevented? Or am I not even yet at my deepest, most “natural” state? Maybe I’ve merely cleared one stumbling block out of my way, and have to do more work (clearing, building, digging, etc.) to keep improving. Honestly the temptation of going back to cannabis at some point looms as a real option & possibility, but first I want to try other avenues of improvement & progress.
A very tricky issue, and another great episode.
Listened to the podcast once or twice previously and am shortly to hear again but just wanted to briefly say how interesting this comment section was to read over. As of today I have decided to stop using mj and haven’t had any for three days. But the very last comment left articulated well some of my present thoughts and feelings. Given that it was written over 3 years ago, I’m curious as to how this journey in, around and towards the “natural state” has been. Regardless, ty and blessings