Non-sober Meditations

[The_Tired_Philosopher]

I've been running some things through my mind lately and one of the recurring thoughts is, 'does my smoking interfere with my spirituality'.

I do smoke cannabis.  I began using it for graveyard shifts to help me sleep during the day.  I've quit it once to find a new job then started again, and can easily quit it (the extra money is great motivation), and have been very recently been putting off meditating when high because I recall discussion that speaks of performing meditations while non-sober can make doing them when sober harder.

It's interesting to note how the body handles it differently becoming reacquainted, it is no longer as light and carefree an experience.  Sometimes I feel anxiety and fear that I notice to be greetings exploiting openings in my auric field.  I find accepting the paranoia and denial and fear rather than intellectually trying to fight it actually stops the feelings.  The biggest new thing to happen is hallucinations of physical phenomena that are unpleasant.  I've 'heard' my teeth crack before, and 'felt' my nails and jaw uncomfortably so.  It took me facing myself in the mirror and telling myself it's the experiences I don't normally notice consciously without being put into a disassociative state of 'high' to notice everything, and the unnoticed things caused anxiety, until I acknowledged I was noticing them and there was nothing weird about being some 'conscious something' looking out through holes in jelly ball bags inside a walking container of mostly water with hard parts on the inside and various layers of existing being.  Oh, and that right behind my field of vision is the entire center through which I operate consciously through, a jumble of fibers that send electrical explosions that create blast-offs of chemicals.  (Which honestly freaked me out because I was realizing how much meat and bone I am.)

But ultimately, it's leveled off to I have moments now where I'll feel something intuitive but it's these utterly complex and massive concepts that sometimes are just too much for me to handle.  (Then again I get those sober and drunk too at the moment now as well but they're much more noticeable high).

And so I've decided I should ask some of y'all, you might know, right?


My first question is, has anyone found this to be true?  Does cannabis or alcohol use alongside meditation make it harder to do sober?

My second question is, does anyone else circumnavigate this supposed issue by just meditating regardless of state of being or mind, is this possible or not recommended?

My greatest experiences came when I used to meditate while high.  The thing was I would perform clearing meditations of the mind since my memory made contemplation meditations almost pointless as any real breakthroughs would be swallowed up by the forgetting associated with the high state.  An issue that while it goes away when you come down past the high into the post-high buzz, is still an issue nonetheless.  I've also tried meditating while drunk but that just isn't happening for me, my head feels heavy and unusually thick when I tried to meditate drunk or buzzed on alcohol, it's more of a contemplation helper.  Since unlike weed I don't forget what I come to realize (also why I usually write down important intuits into a journal when high).

Does anyone else have any thoughts or comments on non-sober meditations?  I figured you shouldn't do just them as it'd train your mind to think it's easy, and creates that much more friction when trying to do it sober.  I imagine you can do such when impaired, but in a shallow type of way until you're able to easily meditate into deeper states sober before attempting any not sober.

Thoughts my sacred friends?

[upensmoke]

I Feel like i don't meditate in both states of mind enough to provide you an answer based off of experience, but based off of intuition which has never let me down, i think it comes down to moderation and balance. Also I don't think cannabis or alcohol use alongside meditation will make it harder to do sober. I feel people say that because they are unaware that cannabis and other drugs can be viewed as a spiritual stimulant or steroid if you will. so when you meditate under the influence of a substance that enhances your abilities it is only natural that when you meditate without the substance that your abilities will be lesser. As for your second question I feel that you shouldn't worry about performance and just do what you want to do. If you want to meditate high then do that, if you want to meditate sober than do that. just be in my opinion. who this helps.

[Jade]

Since I partake in the ganj I do notice that it makes meditation easier, or maybe a bit harder when sober, but not that hard. I find the pathways that I have laid down are still there when sober. I don't think I could meditate drunk. But, MANY people have found meditation through marijuana use, for instance, Carl Sagan.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25805478/Marij...Carl-Sagan

I'm not advocating marijuana use and meditation, however, if marijuana use is specifically making you NOT meditate, it may not be the best thing. But there is nothing wrong using it in conjunction with meditation, IMO. I also think it goes into the Law of Responsibility - if you are going to use a tool or crutch that has profound spiritual effects, like marijuana, you need to utilize them.

[The_Tired_Philosopher]

This is exactly what I keep telling myself, just do what you want to do, only then will I walk the path I need to walk to figure out which roads to take.

This Yellow-Indigo Ray thing where I need to be considerate of what others say but also listen to myself is tricky to me.  On one hand I want to consider what they say openly, on the other hand I need to be cautious of what to believe.  Yet trust in my own self.

Gets tricky for me, especially without the aid of that place of inner silence to quietly sit in while the fires are flaming around you to make sense of them...  Metaphorical fires I mean.

if you are going to use a tool or crutch that has profound spiritual effects, like marijuana, you need to utilize them.

Jade, I'm a bit confused by this last sentence, everything else makes sense. And Carl Sagan discovering meditation through weed is no surprise to me, the first time I meditated high was the first time I experienced a meditative state that left me feeling rejuvenated and not like I just woke up (which used to happen sometimes when meditating, I'd be groggy as if just waking up afterwards)

But your sentence, utilize something it you're going to use it? Do you mean in the sense of work smarter not harder if you've the tools to do it smarter rather than harder? (or perhaps easier should be substituted for smarter?)

[APeacefulWarrior]

Yeah, I'm pretty much all about the ganj here. Most of my major breakthroughs (and some seriously funky internal voyages) have resulted. In my case, I basically use marijuana to stretch my abilities, then slowly catch up while straight. Like, the first time I learned to manipulate my own energies, it was while high. And the first time I made an energy ball, I thought I was literally tripping. But then a couple weeks later, I did it sober. I sort of have parallel developmental tracks going, in terms of 'things I can do high' and 'things I can also do straight', and I'm always looking to transfer ideas\insights\skills from column A to column B, so to speak.

So I definitely use it as a tool.

Alcohol, on the other hand, I have very little use for and I don't think it adds much spiritually. Past one or two drinks (which can be effective as a relaxant) it really seems to just cut off "higher" contact.

[Jade]

This is exactly what I keep telling myself, just do what you want to do, only then will I walk the path I need to walk to figure out which roads to take.

This Yellow-Indigo Ray thing where I need to be considerate of what others say but also listen to myself is tricky to me.  On one hand I want to consider what they say openly, on the other hand I need to be cautious of what to believe.  Yet trust in my own self.

Gets tricky for me, especially without the aid of that place of inner silence to quietly sit in while the fires are flaming around you to make sense of them...  Metaphorical fires I mean.

if you are going to use a tool or crutch that has profound spiritual effects, like marijuana, you need to utilize them.

Jade, I'm a bit confused by this last sentence, everything else makes sense.  And Carl Sagan discovering meditation through weed is no surprise to me, the first time I meditated high was the first time I experienced a meditative state that left me feeling rejuvenated and not like I just woke up (which used to happen sometimes when meditating, I'd be groggy as if just waking up afterwards)

But your sentence, utilize something it you're going to use it?  Do you mean in the sense of work smarter not harder if you've the tools to do it smarter rather than harder?  (or perhaps easier should be substituted for smarter?)

The Law of Responsibility is a bit of a nebulous idea but has been discussed on the forums before. Basically, what I get from it, is that Ra says that certain things like crystals, learning to heal, etc, put one "closer to the light", which affects the Law of Responsibility - and that if one takes it upon themselves to use these spiritual aids, that it shouldn't be without thought. You can't just go around giving people crystals you've charged thoughtlessly. Marijuana is one of those spiritual tools, IMO - it can be used or abused, but the knowledge of its power lends it to a greater spectrum of use/abuse - the results are great, but the negative effects are great if you are cavalier about its power.

Ah good, I found the quote. "Training aid" is what Ra calls it:

At this space/time we may best serve you, we believe, by stating that the pyramid for meditation along with other rounded and arched or pointed circular shapes is of help to you. However, it is our observation that due to the complexity of influences upon the unmanifested being at this space/time nexus among your planetary peoples it is best that the progress of the mind/body/spirit complex take place without, as you call them, training aids because when using a training aid an entity then takes upon itself the Law of Responsibility for the quickened or increased rate of learn/teaching. If this greater understanding, if we may use this misnomer, is not put into practice in the moment by moment experience of the entity, then the usefulness of the training aid becomes negative.

Of course, Ra later calls the archetypes a "training aid" for them on Venus, but the "complexity of influences upon the unmanifested being(s)" there may have been less.

[APeacefulWarrior]

I tend to see the Law of Responsibility basically boiling down to Stan Lee's "with great power comes great responsibility." Once someone has a revelation about the way the universe works, they can't ignore it just because it turns out to be inconvenient to their everyday lives, at least not without karmic backlash. Things done in ignorance are neutral, in terms of polarity, but acting contrary to things one knows/believes to be true is ultimately on the negative path.

Like personally, not that I was ever a Lothario, but once I realized just HOW powerful\spiritual\important sexuality could be, my next realization was that I'd just created serious restrictions on who I could sleep with and still feel good about myself. That was the Law of Responsibility demonstrating itself. But it's probably just as well, since I never really liked casual hookups anyway.

(And thus that which is not needed falls away... )

In the case of marijuana, or other mind-expanding drugs, I suspect the risks would be more internal. Plenty of people have blown their minds in a too-literal sense on psychedelics, and tried to take in too much of the universe at once without enough preparation. I see types like that from time to time on Reddit's /r/psychonauts board. I would see the responsibility in this situation as largely being responsibility towards self; having enough self-knowledge and self-love to know when it's time to take time off to process the insights, rather than ceaselessly forging onwards and upwards at the risk of madness.

/disclaimer: I'm terrible at following that particular piece of advice.

[Minyatur]

Meditating on psychedelics opens myself to "download" my true identity across a window unto my real self.

[APeacefulWarrior]

Oh, you get the 'downloading' vibe too, Elros? Interesting. That's very similar to how I look at it.

Except rather than a window, I see it as a series of lenses, looking through each other. When I'm really tuned in, my higher-selves can beam Love\Light at me, which I attempt to refocus and beam at them, back and forth. I've gotten some really interesting sympathetic resonances going on this way, although I usually can't keep them going for terribly long. It requires a level of ego-dissociation that's very difficult to maintain.

In a few cases, I've gotten my energy levels high enough to really feel like I had the whole gestalt mind thing going on, sharing mental space with my 4D and (maybe?) 5D guardians\selves, all experiencing my physical body as a point of commonality and co-operating to move it. But that's REALLY hard to maintain.

[Minyatur]

Oh, you get the 'downloading' vibe too, Elros?  Interesting.  That's very similar to how I look at it.  

Except rather than a window, I see it as a series of lenses, looking through each other.   When I'm really tuned in, my higher-selves can beam Love\Light at me, which I attempt to refocus and beam at them, back and forth. I've gotten some really interesting sympathetic resonances going on this way, although I can't maintain them for terribly long.

I don't know if I get sent Love/Light unless I actually do seek to generate the emotion while thinking of something. It feels like harmonizing with my unveiled self. I don't seek to interact so much with my higher self (oversoul), I tried to see if I could more than anything.

Makes me pierce my veil and step outside it's restrictions to remember my true experience and wisdom. Also makes me contemplate my veil/programming, like yesterday I made the conscious choice of acknowledging that I do not want to be able to visualize images and that this programmation was of my making and that it is still desired for the time being.

Fun experiences. This Universe truly is just a big ball of distorted Love, for it to not be a simple monochrome light without any colors to itself...

...

Also allows me to connect with the awareness that is "playing" at being all of us and it's something I try to avoid. (It's just avoiding itself.. really) Like I don't like talking to my friend for example and that we both know we're just creating the illusion of talking to ourselves while having a greater awareness external to our individualized awarenesses that is actually just seeing itself talking to itself.

[AnthroHeart]

I'll tell you after I get a bit drunk, if I can hold it all in.

I've been known to throw up even thinking about drinking. But when I actually do I'm fine.

[The_Tired_Philosopher]

I got that download vibe too! Only I'm set on autoaccept and automatically let my disassociated self let whatever higher source is working with me 'in' to my thoughts where it then does, as you said, a beam of sorts that rewrites and reconfigures thought patterns and habits.

Its a temporary supplement to the current, and will go undone if not taken down the roots of the mind within a few days. I usually let it fall away due to not wanting to uptake such responsibility right now.

[AnthroHeart]

By downloads, are you referring to sometimes when you just "get it" and understand something?
Is it like a form of claircognizance (clear knowing)?

[Matt1]

I guess what ever works for you. I don't do anything like that any more. I simply just meditate and do rituals. I feel some degree of caution is needed when mixing already intensive spiritual practices with narcotics.

[The_Tired_Philosopher]

No that's different for me. A download is quiet and self aware of different levels/layers that are all one entity that is the one who uses that beam. I didn't see any of it, I just understood what was going on as if it were common sense. It wasn't malicious. There was nothing to 'get', if that helps.

But its similar. I call what you're describing as learn/teach though. In thinking about it to myself my intuition points me steadily in the direction I'm looking for typically through synchronicity though, especially in my self talk in my mind. Suddenly I understand things differently too.

And sometimes things just make other things click together to cause other thing suddenly make sense in different ways that helps me understand other things in different ways until suddenly all these crazy concepts make sense. Like illusion is still real because it's thought of, making reality and illusion the same thing, existent.

[AnthroHeart]

It's hard to meditate when my mom's always badgering me to do stuff.

I drank some while she was in her cave (room).

But I didn't really meditate. I did feel more of an excitement for life,
and less suicidal feelings.

Seeing my dog now gives me a greater hope.

[APeacefulWarrior]

By downloads, are you referring to sometimes when you just "get it" and understand something?
Is it like a form of claircognizance (clear knowing)?

In my case (I can't speak for anyone else) there are actual sensations involved. I feel like I am being filled, like my spirit is a water balloon getting put under a faucet. My soul expands. And as it happens, depending on the level of intensity, I can feel my own personality shift as my 3D ego becomes mixed together with the identities and perspectives of the higher-selves taking part in this little game.

The tricky part -and why this is hard to explain- is that the sense of "I" is uninterrupted. This isn't like a channeling, where the channel's personality "switches off" and they lose memory of what the body does. My everyday 3D ego has to voluntarily let go of what it believes to be itself, and simply accept\love the new, bigger, slightly-alien personality that's taking its place, without fully vanishing. It doesn't go away, exactly, but it sort of gets... pushed to the rear, I guess. That personality is still aware, but no longer demands direct control of the body. It becomes only part of the larger gestalt personality, rather than the focus, with my body responding to the larger group decisions/vibrations being made.

My body's ego has to be almost entirely focused on maintaining the transmission to\from my higher-selves, for the transference to be stable. And that's why I generally need to be high to pull this off, since it's much harder to achieve that level of dissociation while sober. Even then, it's usually only for a few minutes. But, of course, my ultimate goal is to be able to reliably achieve that state while sober as well, although I suspect it will be years of (joyful, loving) work to get to that point, at the very least.

[The_Tired_Philosopher]

You just described what hearing voices sounds like for me.

I'm not the only one... Though...I have that happen even when I'm sober.

[APeacefulWarrior]

Well, even before I got spiritually activated, so to speak, I was one of those people who always had interior voices and could have internal dialectics or such. Or when I (occasionally) write fiction, my characters "live" in my head, which is an experience that some other writers report. The difference is that I was constantly aware of those interior voices being a subset of me, imaginary puppets dancing on command so to speak, whereas there's a very pronounced not-me-ness to the connection with my higher-selves.

So that means accepting Me as now being a 'imaginary' subset of a higher not-Me that has become the new-Me while still being aware of old-Me in the background and... yeah, words basically run out at this point. There isn't a language for simultaneity, but it's what my higher-selves are attempting to teach me through these exercises, I think.

[The_Tired_Philosopher]

I understand what you're saying for I Experience it too. For me it makes it possible to live in my head. Which can have down sides.

[tamaryn]

You can keep up the Ego disassociation Guys!! It doesn't have to be scary, just move to your heart!

[tamaryn]

Also, I feel all of you reading this are consciously developing, or very close to developing 'Imperfect/Perfect' rainbow auras.

They become rainbow once you realize the Imperfection is Perfection of expressed energy.

[tamaryn]

The point of getting high to me is to Open my aura to these 'downloads' and then to be open the them just a equally when I am not high. So far this has worked wonders for me If I am able to tune the Ego out of its own fear of my True self taking over. Hes dyinn' all the time.

This makes running out of Cannabis a playful and fun experiment!! Lol. Thank you drug dealer man, i kno u have some fire, but not today

[The_Tired_Philosopher]

Also, I feel all of you reading this are consciously developing, or very close to developing 'Imperfect/Perfect' rainbow auras.

They become rainbow once you realize the Imperfection is Perfection of expressed energy.

By that surmise I've had rainbow for...about a year ago.

All is One, that's one thing my awakening taught me.  No pun intended lol

What if my ego wants to love though. Can it be expressed through the heart?

[APeacefulWarrior]

Yeah, I figured out that perfection would always be "imperfect" some time ago. But I've got no idea what color my aura is. I've never really had the knack for seeing them, or seeing energy colors at all, except rarely. I feel them rather than see them, more or less.

[tamaryn]

You can choose to align your Ego with the Heart. But it is a contant process of 'losing' the awarness and reclaiming the alignment as your own 'Self'.

Of course you could also choose to channel 'other selves' or 'evil' personalities.

There is an infinity of Ego. And all of it is bittersweet and primordially beautiful to me.

My light-golden/rainbow aura expanded to such power at the workplace today, I was not able to keep up the the Ego insanity that others expected of me. I revealed to everyone the Sacrificial insanity of their expectations of me. And it was like I had never spoken the truth before in my life. All that I have ever needed to say, just in a span of fifteen minutes.

From now until the day I die I vow to run my mouth. I vow to hold my breathe for the greater good of my own learning. I will not be afraid of letting people know they have a mirror. And I vow to unveil that which is still partially invisible.

If I intend to live my highest truth, I must speak the word in the absence of fear of any consequence.

While Crucifiction was a very real phenomena of the Past, we no longer live in a world where we are killed for who we are. I can personally let that go, and become more of who I am each day. Each day more glorious than the next.

[The_Tired_Philosopher]

I dunno about you but that world still exists here. Being killed over how you are...

Please be safe.

[Observer]

Mushrooms and meditation are particularly powerful for finding divine purpose, or divine reassurance. I've had around 8-9 various experiences with this particular revelation. Communication with spirits is most definitely heightened, and if you are already clairvoyant or clairaudient (I am both) they will definitely enhance your ability to hear what you are meant to hear, and feel what you are meant to feel. I have had extremely ground breaking spiritual experiences from spending an entire trip in a deep meditative state..