Tag Archive: marijuana


Is Marijuana Harmful to Your Astral Body?

Filed Under: Chakras/Auras, Energy/Vibration, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Is Marijuana Harmful to Your Astral Body?


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Dear Soul Arcanum:

I use marijuana quite often when meditating but I have heard that drugs can harm my astral body. “Drugs” is a very broad term and I am not sure if marijuana falls under this category in terms of its effects on the astral body. What is your opinion?

Jacob

Dear Jacob:

Cannabis can be found all over the world. According to some historians and archeologists, marijuana has been used for various purposes for some 10,000 years. In addition to the many practical uses for hemp, marijuana was also used to enhance spiritual pursuits and awareness and for many medicinal purposes. I mention this because even when we are conscious of our social conditioning, it’s difficult for most people raised in the United States to think about marijuana without being influenced by our culture’s extreme bias against it.

There are spiritual schools of thought that carry strong warnings about the use of intoxicants. Buddhism has five main precepts, and not taking intoxicants is one of them. However, I believe these warnings were based on alcohol and intoxicants that tend to cause people to be careless and break their spiritual vows. Marijuana has a very different effect than alcohol; since marijuana tends to make people very peaceful and meditative, it may be a great spiritual tool. While no one knows for sure what the Buddha really did, many historians claim that for years, he ate hemp seeds every day when he was searching for enlightenment, so I doubt any Buddhist warnings about marijuana in particular came from the big guy himself.

Some Hindus also believe that drugs can damage one’s astral body and this can lead to future lives in which the body is physically or mentally malformed. In this school of thought, the worst thing you can for your astral body is to indulge in negative feelings like fear, anger and envy, for these also damage the astral body and lead to miserable future lives. It seems to me that we can drive ourselves crazy worrying about the damage we may be doing to our astral bodies simply by living, and that worrying in itself may also damage our astral bodies. Further, if experiencing negative emotions is the worst thing for our astral bodies, and getting <q>high</q> encourages positive feelings, then even those people who smoke marijuana to avoid dealing with negative feelings should benefit. (The problem, of course, is if you need drugs to feel better, then when you aren’t getting high, your vibration will plummet again.)

There are also Hindu teachers and mystics of a different opinion altogether. There is a rich tradition of using marijuana as a sacrament in the worship of Shiva, the god of power and ecstasy. In fact, in ancient Vedic texts, marijuana is referred to as “the Sacred Grass” and was one of the five sacred plants of India. There are many interesting books written on the subject of sacred plants. If you’re interested, here’s a link to one to get you started: Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers.

Clearly, if we look to religious traditions for the answer, we get a huge range of ideas from smoking marijuana being one of the worst things we could do to it being one of the most powerful ways to achieve a spiritual breakthrough. Though we’ve been conditioned to view illegal drug use as harmful and irresponsible, there are some who believe that “the gods” gifted humankind with plants like marijuana to help us spiritually, and if we work with spirits of such plants in a conscious way, they can bless us with great wisdom regarding the nature of reality.

As for more modern views, many clairvoyants say that drug use leads to a mucky, yucky energy field. In my experience, this is because most people use mind-altering substances to avoid dealing with difficult feelings. This causes those nasty feelings to get stuck in the aura, which is what causes the muckiness. While it’s true that drugs affect our auras, this is true of Tylenol, cough remedies, and allergy medications as much as alcohol, marijuana and other drugs.

Our auras are in a constant state of change. Just as we are constantly experiencing new things, changing, and healing, so are our auras. When people leave this life, they also leave behind the physical problems that troubled them when they were alive. For example, the blind can see, the deaf can hear, and cripples have no problem with mobility. Given all of that, I find it hard to believe that smoking marijuana would permanently harm your astral body.

Of course, if you smoke marijuana and feel fearful or guilty about it, it will affect your aura. Further, these days, most marijuana is grown in a state of fear and distributed by individuals who are far from being full of love and light. You might ask yourself if you would eat food prepared by all of the people who have handled the marijuana you may be smoking; do you want to align with their energy? I imagine the energy of cultivated marijuana is very different from what grows in the wild.

Regarding why there is such a broad range of views, I believe it’s because the way marijuana affects one individual may be very different from how it affects another. If you are smoking marijuana to suppress your feelings or avoid dealing with something, it will create sludge in your aura, disconnect you from your personal power, and make you vulnerable to negative entities. The negative feelings you are avoiding will linger in your aura; then when you smoke, your psychic defenses will drop and any negative entities that are attracted to those negative feelings can move in. This sort of use is spiritually harmful and psychically damaging.

If you smoke marijuana in a conscious, respectful way in order to open your awareness to other realities or achieve some sort of spiritual breakthrough, its effects will probably prove positive. I say probably because it is also important that you are prepared for such shifts. The risk lies in going too high, too fast. If your lower bodies (physical, etheric and astral) are not ready for the sudden influx of light and energy that getting “high” (aligning with a higher body experience) entails, you can damage those lower bodies. This is why your reason for using a drug is so important. Also, while taking a mind-altering substance will open your aura to outside psychic influence, if you are in a high vibration and radiating peace and love, you will attract wise, loving entities who match your vibration.

In my view, there is no one correct answer. If you use fire carelessly, you may get burned; if you use it carefully and consciously, it can keep you warm and cook your food. The same is true of all that nature has given us. In such matters, we have to allow our own inner guidance to direct us. To determine if something is good for you, you must approach it in a conscious way and be very honest with yourself. Ask yourself why you are considering doing something, what you hope to gain from it, and how doing so tends to affect you. If something brings you peace and bliss and makes you feel closer to God, I would trust those feelings more than I would trust what other people have to say about the matter.

Soul Arcanum :)

Soul Arcanum

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Spiritual Effects of Marijuana

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Energy/Vibration, Psychic Ability, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Spiritual Effects of Marijuana

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

People say that marijuana can lead to enlightening experiences, but I don’t think that’s the case. From my experience, it just seems like it messes up the senses and causes a lot of confusion. When I smoked it, my mind was separated from the physical world and I felt oblivious to what was happening around me. Am I validated in feeling this way? What are the spiritual effects of smoking marijuana?
– Ned

Dear Ned:

Please note that this article in no way encourages illegal activity of any kind; it’s purely a philosophical discussion.

The spiritual effects of marijuana use depend entirely on who you are, where you are in your journey, and your intention in using it. Drugs aside, people should be psychologically stable and healthy before exploring altered states of consciousness.

Most of our beliefs about illicit drugs stem from social conditioning and our observations of people who abuse them in order to avoid reality. When people who aren’t stable and competent in everyday life take recreational drugs, it’s like watching someone who just learned to drive climb into the cockpit of an airplane. By contrast, people who are ready for it and have a clear sense of where they want to go can fly to new dimensions of spiritual experience by employing various sacred tools and practices.

Many sincere seekers who embrace marijuana as a sacrament find it spiritually beneficial. Further, many times when people use marijuana for the first time, it opens them up to a whole new realm of possibilities because getting high focuses their attention inward, toward the realm of spirit. Pot alters our state of consciousness and increases alpha brain waves much like meditation and other trance work. In terms of its effects on the aura, it can create a lovely green color and open the heart chakra. So you’re right in saying that it loosens your awareness of the physical world, but isn’t that one aim of spiritual practice?

Perhaps the most dramatic spiritual effect of marijuana use can be seen in people who are strongly rooted in physical, rational, left-brain thinking. From birth we are programmed with what and how to think, which can become a mental straight jacket that prevents us from moving beyond ordinary levels of wisdom, consciousness and spiritual experience.

Through altered states of consciousness, we can escape from that mental conditioning and expand the scope of our inner horizons. When we get high, we often experience higher levels of love, peace and awareness. Before we experience something, we don’t even know that it’s possible, but after we’ve done it at least once, it’s easier to find our way back to it without aid of outside influences.

So just trying marijuana can awaken people who are uptight with social conditioning to new spiritual possibilities. Further, when their existing beliefs are shattered, they hopefully learn to question everything else they’ve assumed to be true, possible, right, good, etc. This blesses them with an open mind, which fosters further personal and spiritual growth.

Marijuana can also turn on parts of the brain that have remained dormant and free our consciousness to wander into new psychic territory. According to at least one very involved study, using marijuana can profoundly increase a person’s chances of having an out of body experience. Marijuana users are also far more likely to report experiences of ESP, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance and other psychic phenomena. In lab experiments, regular marijuana users have also scored significantly higher on psychic tests than non-users.

Similar studies have found a negative correlation between ESP scoring and alcohol use, and scientists have noted that marijuana affects the brain differently from drugs like alcohol, nicotine and cocaine. For example, marijuana seems to generate the growth of new brain cells and stimulate brain cells in ways that combat depression and other mood disorders, where the other drugs have an opposite effect.

Marijuana users also frequently report spiritual experiences, such as feeling connected to All That Is; contact with Divine beings like spirits, angels and guides; a deep sense of peace and contentment; a shift in their values away from materialism toward more spiritual interests and concerns, etc. Just meeting spiritual beings or having an out of body experience can spiritually transform people by opening them up to all sorts of new possibilities, allowing them to shed limiting fears, and launching them on a quest for new wisdom and experience.

Further, the term “to get high” accurately reflects marijuana’s spiritual effects. When most people smoke marijuana, they get fully present in the moment, drop all emotional resistance and sink into a wonderful state of appreciation. As a result, their vibration skyrockets. When our vibration is soaring, we’re more open to life and other people, which facilitates greater psychic and spiritual awareness. (Those who feel paranoid on marijuana should definitely avoid it, and might view this as a sign that they have a lot of repressed fears to be healed and released.)

Since marijuana doesn’t lower our vibration and it isn’t addictive, we don’t have to worry about lower astral entities as we do with other substances like alcohol. In fact, smudging with marijuana can dispel dark energies and cleanse the psychic atmosphere like sage does, for its energetic tone resonates with purification, liberation, peace and love.

All of this aside, please understand that I am just explaining why marijuana may have spiritually beneficial effects on some people. I am not in any way trying to convince you to change your mind about what is best for you personally, nor am I advocating the use of mind altering drugs for spiritual growth. Scientists have learned that the body produces its own psychedelic chemicals, so when we ingest a mind altering drug, we’re not introducing anything truly foreign into our bodies. This means we don’t NEED things like marijuana in order to attain the states of consciousness they induce.

I also believe that there is a point early on in every conscious spiritual journey when the use of mind altering substances becomes more limiting than beneficial. We might equate this with becoming an astronaut: when you can soar into the cosmos in a rocket, climbing into the cockpit of that airplane I mentioned earlier will prevent you from going as far and as high as you could without it.

Marijuana has been used as a spiritual tool for ages, and like any other tool, it can be used for destructive or constructive purposes. If spiritual seekers take a wise, mature approach, using marijuana may expand their consciousness and help them tap new psychic ability.

– Soul Arcanum

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