The smoke of marijuana, seeing past the illusion

Marijuana has become extremely popular nowadays.  People from all walks of life and circles smoke it on a regular basis and has begun to become legal in many states. It seems that it’s only a matter of time until marijuana becomes legal in New York as well. However, with in the increase of marijuana use comes the increase of risks as well.

The normalization of marijuana use in our communities has become surprising to me. It crosses religious levels and spans the spectrum of schools and shuls. On a personal level, I am no longer surprised to find out that someone is regularly smoking marijuana or frequently uses on “occasion” (which is typically code word for fairly often).

The way I see it, is that one of the main problem is thinking that smoking marijuana is not a problem. Because smoking pot is not a “problem” a person can easily fool themselves into thinking nothing is wrong with them. I often here from my clients “I don’t get why my wife doesn’t understand it’s okay! What wrong with her?!” By normalizing marijuana use a friend, spouse or parent automatically loses their ability to comment and help the one they love. Any protest or concern expressed tends to be met with something along the lines of “everyone smokes, it’s totally okay.” Or “you don’t understand. Why don’t you don’t you also smoke? It will help you!”

When people are smoking and still functional they might have issues in other areas. One might not necessarily view it as a problem because he/she has gotten use to the “interference”. Such as; lack of emotional presence, self-absorption, lack of sexual drive, being moody and an overall lack of inner harmony and well-being.

In my line of work I often wonder; why is it that a people often feel the need to change their emotional status? If they feel insecure they want to feel secure, if they are anxious they want to feel calmer and more at ease.  I think one possible answer is that people don’t realize that they are innately healthy. That they have inner wellbeing and resilience hard wired into them. The failure to recognize the emotional well-being that lies within causes a person to seek to change his/her feelings. Therefore, whenever they have a feeling or thoughts that cause emotional discomfort they think they feel inclined to “fix it”.

For some, the experience of lite-heartedness may be less often, but those genuine feelings for life are still there. They never went away. Like the sun on a cloudy day. The sun might be hidden behind the clouds but it’s always there. When our thinking dissipates our deeper nature starts to shine. We need not take every thought we have so seriously.  We need to see passed the illusion or smoke of our thinking than our deeper more present selves emerge.

For some, the experience of lite-heartedness may be less often, but those genuine feelings for life are still there. They never went away. Like the sun on a cloudy day. The sun might be hidden behind the clouds but it’s always there. When our thinking dissipates our deeper nature starts to shine. We need not take every thought we have so seriously.  We need to see passed the illusion or smoke of our thinking than our deeper more present selves emerge.

Whether you are an occasional pot smoker or a heavy user. You need not to change your emotional status. You were built to whether the storm. No feeling, no matter how insecure or strong an experience is or feelings feels it won’t be forever. No feeling stays 100% of the time. Our thoughts and feelings can be compared to a storm on top of an ocean. When you go deep down into the ocean there is complete quiet, calm and tranquility below the storm. So too we all have a deep inner core of well-being that is synonymous with our true or deeper nature. By realizing your deeper nature, you stop relating to the content of your thinking and experience more peace of mind.

Understanding we have a deeper nature and we are feeling our thinking from moment to moment provides a person with greater insight and resilience to weather their perceived storm.  We are not our thoughts and our feelings! We are something much greater. Throughout the ages the wise talked about in different ways.  We are divine energy manifest in the world of form.  We are drop in the ocean of life and a spark from the flame. We are pure love and consciousness or as some say we are a soul.