Daily Ideas - A Story of Cyclic Change - Reflections on Cannabis Use, Resistance to Career and Disco

Coming back from the warmth of Australia was an interesting experience on a bodily level, as the days went by, I felt my body becoming more and more contracted, especially as I strongly felt it was important to keep the heating to a minimum for environmental/sustainable as well as energetic and bodily strength and integration into the dominant natural forces.

Simultaneously though I've been feeling a spring of creativity that was perhaps really strongly initiated in the Yang of Australia and it's now taken two weeks for a full integration into the Winter energy of southern England. A lot of this motivation and inspiration comes from a feeling as if "...a monkey was lifted off my back..." - a feeling Graham Hancock references when he abstained from his enjoyment of Cannabis as a recreational intoxicant/entheogen.

I have similarly now resolved to abstain from the use of the plant as a source of pleasure and escapism. I frequently went through phases of use abuse and abstinence of the plant and each cycle taught me a valuable lesson with the overarching themes being it's effect on my ability to function fully as a creative force of the universe for the benefit of all and everything; and my use of it to cope with the self imposed pressures of expectation of success and achievement.

My most recent revelation was just a week ago, whilst conversing with my usual group of fellow travellers about the pressures of career and my unwillingness to engage in the TV production world was that I had been avoiding facing my own resistance to the work. The tension wired into my nerves from a recent degree completed in documentary production whilst working part time at a TV documentary production company was redirecting my energy into escape rather than feeling that pain and integrating it into my being.

This revelation was a beautiful healing moment, and one that continues to be worked on its integration whenever the topic of career occurs. However, a marked change in the way I deal with these revelations is that instead of immediately going the total polar opposite way and forcing myself into whatever I had been resisting, a simple opening and relaxation occurred. This was not attached to any particular result, simply I opened up my willingness to engage with documentary work and replied to my previous boss' email asking for that reference she had offered to write a couple of days earlier.

Let's play with a little short term story as a reflective tool. Since I finished my degree in April of last year, 2016, I successfully became financially independent from my family who had been fully supporting me throughout my studies by working at a recycling factory and putting my living room up on Airbnb as a studio size room. Fortunately summer was on the horizon and Brighton was filling up with tourists hungry for the seaside air and sun. The Airbnb proved lucrative enough during those months to not only pay my rent but also my travel and food costs for a month in Ibiza on a Taoist Meditation, Qi Gong, Baguazhang and Sexual Meditation training with Bruce Frantzis. I camped in the forest 50 meters from the edge of the mediterranean sea and 100 meters from a hippie campsite with beautiful, free women and men would practice yoga nude at dawn and dance to psychedelic colours at night for a month.

Returning from Spain, reinvigorated, energised and inspired, my 2 and a half year relationship dissolved, I ran out of money and briefly went back to work at the recycling factory, followed by a gardening job for 3 weeks which did not end too well as the person I was assisting clearly had unresolved emotions and self delusions to the point of becoming a truly toxic environment I had hoped to nurture my own growth inspired by the gardens.

I simultaneously was introduced to Tony Parson's message and together with my prior training in Taoist arts and some exposure to the teachings of Dzogchen a true awakening began to occur as I was forced to face life's difficulties and my own feelings of insecurity at being thrown into a world the best international schooling and a strong university degree had done nothing to prepare me for.

I retreated into the comfort of that warmth that Cannabis can bring if your heart and breath can relax - a quality finally integrated at its most superficial level after 5 years of near daily, rather intense training in Taoist and Mindful practices and several month long and many shorter trainings with masters of those arts. Along with Tony Parsons message and the recognition that none of this really matters, being supported enough financially to live comfortably by the airbnb and a friend moving in to share my room, I was finally free to be what I had always wanted to be - free to consume as much cannabis as I wanted. I finally wasn't worried about what parents or teachers might shout at me, I didn't have to worry about money much (except when I would spend £15 on stoner corner shop visits), I had a good group of friends, several fantastic reggae, dub and drum and bass playlists, great neighbours, a couple of girls to hang out with, all the blankets, pillows, colourful lights one can want and a home cinema arrangement all of which allowed me to relax. Just relax, and chill and enjoy doing whatever I wanted on a daily basis.

Eventually after a couple months of just being stoned every day and having a wonderful wonderful time being an awakened stoner, I had a recognition that I was what I had wanted to be for all those years of seeking. I was myself, just as I wanted to be, and there was no-one who could tell me what I was doing was wrong because I was happier and more joyful than I had ever been in my life. Every day was bliss. And once I recognised that, it was all over.. it was resolved. No longer needing cannabis for fulfilment my interests began drifting to my other passions - health, healing, benefiting all and everything to my fullest potential.

And there was the presence of knowing that the cannabis was restricting that potential. My relationship with my family had grown distant and tense in those months of self indulgence, money was running low as tourists were not as attracted to the rainy windy Autumn beach as to the sunny weather. So I pushed myself to earn more by working harder on deliveroo - a part time job taken up due to it's absolute uncompromising flexibility and freedom, and as my body purged the toxins of inhaling all that tobacco and cannabis and I exposed myself to the elements by working longer and colder and wetter hours, I got sick. Then I recovered a bit, went back to work as money was becoming a big issue and got even more ill. I eventually became so ill I wasn't able to work for most of November and the dreaded moment came - I had failed at being independent financially and had to ask my parents for money.

Money was always a tense issue as my parents didn't trust me over the years what I would spend it on, with any spare change usually going for a bag of weed, and the habit wasn't over, it was simply starting to fall away with the realisations of truth thanks to my personal healing, the shifting earth energies and the manifest beings sharing that message such as purist Tony Parsons, loving Ananta, direct and multifaceted Dzogchen teachers and extremely pragmatic Taoists.

My infinitely loving and generous parents, despite all their own tensions and aggravations have always been there to help me, not always in the way I wanted, but this time my dad accepted my perhaps slightly stoned but with gems of lucidity proposal and lent me money to cover my rent for November and December.

Then in early December I truly met Ananta in truth, and simply through her presence and open love I discovered beyond a doubt that which had been pointed at by all the teachers I had encountered before. Well, more accurately, it was simply a confirmation of all the previous recognitions and the doubt was what left. I was there, and not there and the problem was seen through and whatever doubt had been obscuring "it" lifted.

I was lucky enough to share in her presence on a personal level on several occasions which through a particular life experience finally also lifted the veil of what role cannabis played in my life. Family healing began simultaneously with sessions with a trusted guide with my mother, and then we spent 3 weeks in Australia all together recognising each other and being truly with each other for what seemed really like the first time. It was wonderful to hear their thoughts on that time as a continuous daily improvement in our relationship and our wholeness as a family once again, a feeling we had probably not strongly felt since I was in my earliest teens.

An interest in nutrition and health and looking after the body was reignited and since coming back from Australia I am barely ever smoking a puff of a cigarette, if I feel that that's what I want to do I recognise its toxicity and mostly choose a tea and a breath of fresh air instead. Cannabis is out of the picture, perhaps forever, who knows but I have no desire towards it... in fact a significant change in that area is that before even when I would abstain I would still dream about it. Now, it's disappeared almost completely from my dreams and when it does appear I make the relaxed choice of throwing it out, or removing it from the dreamscape without anger, frustration or tension of any kind.

That's enough for today. The next calling isa resolution and integration of remaining feeling of needing to prove something to myself - a conditioning of thought and nerves that our world suffers from as a whole. Let's all heal deep within for the apparent externality to heal as well.

If you've read the whole story, thank you, and I hope somehow it may have benefitted you. Much love and best wishes on the journey :) We're all it together :)