Plant Medicine As An Ally In Meditation

Copyright, Parker Stafford

I was given weed recently as a result of my describing what took place this Summer where weed had made me more psychic, something I wrote about here at WTI.

Alone finally last night after the holiday goings-on, I decided to get ready for bed and go through a meditation after using the weed I had been given.

I used a very small amount, about a pinch, about 3/4 the size of a pea (if that). This amounted to two regular puffs and one fraction of a third. This was a very low dose, although the version I used was described as being a strong hybrid version. I put on my headphones, pulled up a Monroe Institute Hemisync program from the Gateway Experience, and listened with headphones. This particular audio helps to induce deep Theta states, and while there are directions for relaxation and breathing, most of it is designed for your own inner work. The audio lasts about 45 minutes, just enough to get you there.

Everything happened very quickly. Before the narrator/guide began his first comments, I already felt a presence of a male who was speaking to me in this bright excited voice who seemed to be positioned above me who extended his hand saying, “Take my hand and I’ll show you all the places you can go!” At this point I was already dissociated from my body and traveling through what looked to be outer space. I remember having an experience like this before many decades ago where I moved out of my body and began seeing a starry sky and feeling that the stars were actually consciousness. The sensation at the time was overwhelming and it put an end to the projection because of the state of overwhelm I invariably would fall into that kept me from further projecting. This time, I thought about this and as I saw all these stars, I didn’t feel overwhelm but instead felt a stirring warmth in my core where there was only love. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, I acknowledged this love as the next step in my evolution and the evolution of everyone on the planet.

I was interupted by the narrator of the audio a number of times as he made suggestions for how to breathe and relax. I was there in seconds, I was ready instantly and kept having my meditation interrupted by this voice. It didn’t trip me up completely though, it was more that I paused my meditation and waited for the voice to complete what it had to say since it pulled me out of the “broad mind” state as I felt pulled into a more linear language-based state (rational left brain). I’ll have to work more on that in the future. I found myself back at my body after expanding outward through both space and dimension, which all took place very quickly.

I noticed during this whole experience that my third eye had become very active. This time, though, I could feel the third eye pressure at the bridge of my nose. My third eye is now a vertical band that goes from my nose all the way up to my hairline. When it activates, it is usually felt as a large dot on my forehead with a sense of energy and even something that feels akin to tightness of a sort. This tightness isn’t inhibiting in any way, it signals that my third eye is activating in a strong way. It is more that this tightness is the result of these bands of energy that flow around it and out of it. When this happens, it is a sign that I can begin to see clearly beyond the physical if I focus my mind correctly with the third eye center. The two work together in bringing information through. I was aware of information streaming into different parts of my brain which would get routed to the third eye as the lens used to see into the realities that these intuitions represented. Likewise, I was aware that the third eye could see into the mind to pick these things up. It was a fluid dynamic system where informatiin flowed both ways.

As I thought about this, the third eye energy shifted up into its usual place which was mid-brow up to the edge of my hairline. The whole area constitutes the third eye for me, which is akin to a long extended flame of awareness and sensation. The Hindu seers who paint the tilak on their foreheads are using an image of how I experience the third eye. Two vertical lines with a cental line in the center all corresponding to the Ida, Pengali, and Shushumna nadi. The Ida and Pengali merge in union and balance in the Shushuma, the place of boundless bliss. Below is a photo of the tilak as it is worn by mendicate monks. There are variations of the tilak, so the one shown below is just one of a handful of versions used.

I was also met by a small presence that I can only describe as dwarfish that spoke and moved excitedly as it began showing me the energy lines in my legs. I had gone from standing on a beach to being up in the hills in a tropical location atop a flat-topped roof of someone’s house, which was where this being began pointing out the energy lines in my legs.

I was in this kind of environment because the hemisync audio uses ocean waves as part of its audio. I naturally found myself standing on a beach, and later moved from the beach uphill into the mountains above where I landed on a slightly sloping rooftop. The being was showing me where the energy lines crossed in my legs when the narrator broke in and it made it hard to continue. I will see about going back to this in another meditation. I knew or could feel how others had mapped the energy body in not too different a way in the past in meditations much like this one, and I thought how easy it was, not the arduous task as I had originally had thought it was.

I was keen to get into the leg chakras because I could feel how there was some blocked energy that resided at the junction of the torso and the legs. It was curious how this energy trailed off behind me, right around my behind and extending out like coat-tails behind me. This awareness has always been one of the great gifts conferred by awakening, and the awareness itself has been enough to dissolve countless blocks in my field. At one time many years ago this awareness would make me feel defeated by the sheer volume of material present to still clear. Now, though, it existed more as a remnant, a trailing bit of material near my lower back.

What is worth mentioning is the back trouble I have been having since November. The week of Thanksgiving was where it came to a head after driving to see family. It was so bad I couldn’t move from a sitting to a standing position without the use of a broom handle which I used for about a week to get up from my couch. Luckily, I somehow managed to keep working even though all I wanted to do was to lie flat on the floor. I have been slowly rehabilitating my back muscles so I can move more freely. What would have taken weeks if adjystments by a chiropractor I was able to do on my own and now the sore muscles are in a much better place with slow and gentle stretches. It was I think not a coincidence that I was having this tightness along with the enhanced awareness of the stuck energy near my bottom in this meditation.

I soon decided to drift off to sleep after this took place. I revisited the idea of telepathy before going to sleep but every person who I put my mind to seemed much too vivid and in a tangle for me to even try another experiment along these lines. I did however find a part of my mind aware of one person who I kept feeling like I was communicating with during the meditation, like a quick check-in contacted me and there was an important message waiting for me from tat person when I checked messages this morning.

I say this only as a reminder about the things we can explore, learn, and discover. We are all inheritors of a noble light that is supportive and loving. We go and experience things that are part of our present “set and setting” and experiences are part and parcel of where we are at any moment in time.

I will note that up until this summer, I have only ever used natural methods for reaching accelerated states of being and awareness. I have also been an advocate for this approach for many decades (using it myself exclusively) since my early twenties—in the late 1980’s. My experience this past summer made me rethink this approach. After being able to reach these ecstatic states naturally, I have considered what some substances might do to help further expand both awareness and experience. While I have no interest in being a heavy user, I am considering this as one wrinkle among many in this entire process.

If weed helps me to hone in on the remnants if blocked energy, then I will consider future meditations using very small amounts to assist in sharpening that awareness. I don’t sense that weed opened my third eye, that initiation took place in a meditation in late 2006. Rather, my intent to do this meditatiin was set on “finding out what I might see ir discover” with my third eye dutifully responding to that intent and also aided by the much more fluid state I found myself in as the weed began to take affect.

The goal for me is to learn how to emulate these states without outside substances. I will mention though that even the food that we eat can have a significant effect on our physiology not unlike weed has done. I have found states of bliss after eating cantaloupe and other melons because it served to modify how my body responded to the energy of the awakened state. Just being well hydrated can change how I feel. Taking vitamin D has had dramatic effects on how I experience bliss, for example. So weed? It may well be one of many plant helpers that I can use to help open up my cognition and awareness to valid physical and nonphysical states, not as a distorter of experience, but as a liberator from an inhibited state to one that is not as inhibited.

I hope you are getting a break and have enjoyed the holidays. If you don’t hear back from me, happy new year!

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Did Weed Make Me More Psychic?

Boy, this has taken a bit of courage to post especially given my stance on using substances for altering consciousness in the past. Gulp. I am writing, though, to share an observation and point something out that happened in the event that you are interested in taking a deeper look on your end. Or not.

July 1st 2021 was the day that the prohibition of marijuana ended in the state of Virginia. Not long after that, a friend stopped by the studio after having obtained weed. All legal, now, and what a strange place to be I suppose.

If you read my blog you will see that I advocate natural means for reaching alternate states of consciousness. While Terrance McKenna didn’t believe it was possible to enter into the numinous without DMT or psilocybin, I know different. While I very much respect what these early psychonauts were attempting to do, theirs was just one path or road to “Oz.” In a way I would have liked to have spent some time with Terrance explaining to him how I came across this naturally. I don’t think it would have changed his mind, though. For his generation he had found a viable way of gathering knowledge and experience that in many ways is perfectly valid because of how broad and far-reaching consciousness is. My way took longer so it was not a path meant for the impatient. People get bored quickly.

While under the influence of a drug we say that our consciousness has been altered. Has it really been “altered” unnaturally? We have receptors for all kinds of substances that are found in nature that allow us to experience what those agents do to us. We also have bodies that produce many of those compounds naturally also. You can see that I might appear like I am hemming and hawing. The truth is, I think that plant agents can be very helpful if used judiciously and not used so they become like a crutch. That said, what I hear from friends who have used marijuana for years illegally, is that it is far superior for cutting anxiety and helping with sleep than drugs that leave them feeling out of sorts and with other unintended symptoms (“may cause intestinal bleeding, rapid heart rate, shingles, fear of the unknown, sleeplessness, and dizziness”).

Recently a friend offered some of the devils lettuce to me and I decided that I would take a very small amount because I was curious to see what effect it would have on me now that I have awakened. I decided quite unexpectedly that I would give it a go after many decades of having sweared it off. I explained to my friend that one reason why I didn’t smoke the stuff was because it made me feel like I could feel this immensely large consciousness very close to me and I explained that I could not tell if that consciousness was me or if it was something else. It made me feel very….self conscious too! My friend looked at me and just smiled. I realized she had no idea what I was even talking about, and I kind of felt funny even mentioning it. That’s one reason why I don’t talk much about any of this stuff because I inevitably wind up sounding like I am crazy. Or baked.

“I’m not baked! It just sound like I am!”

After my friend left to go home, I was free to turn my attention inward, which I was eager to do to see if I could trace the contours of my awareness and see if I noticed anything different about it. Obviously I felt different, yes, that was the drug, but what about whether it might confer something interesting in regards to awareness? It all happened quite quickly.

At first I thought it was my imagination. It seemed real, but ever the scientist, I needed some form of proof one way or the other. What had happened was my mind turned to my two children who live on their own now, having grown up. When I thought of them I had the distinct impression that my mind was locking into their own vibration and that I was seeing through their own awareness, something that had not happened before in the way it was happening on that day recently (I keep my distance so as not to spy on my kids). It was novel and different from what I have experienced in years past when I had a connection to someone or when I was running some strong energy that would have an effect on my awareness. I don’t mean to sound contradictory; when awakening came there was a slew of phenomenon that I was peppered with and they all seemed to just happen without knowing how or why. Yes, so I was psychic from having awakened. The Hindu write at length about this, it is a sign of attainment. And everyone is a little different, none of this is a competition. In those earlier cases, my perceptions would become more sharp or would open up more. This would mean I would feel what others around me were feeling. The difference between then and now was that back then I felt like I was tossed bodily into the experience. I felt like I had little say-so about it. I felt it bodily, but what I was feeling or experiencing recently was a lot more controlled. I felt it more as though I was in control of myself, and I had the distinct impression that something in my awareness was able to just slip into these thought-streams and it certainly had the distinct feeling like that was exactly what was happening. Still, maybe it was just my imagination, maybe it was the weed. I took a few moments and surveyed the landscape of the mind of one child and when I decided to pull out of it, it was like breaking the surface of the water and I was out of it. In fact, it was like waking up from a dream where it got to be a little hard to even remember what it was I had just seen and experienced.

Reflexively, my mind turned to my second child, and the experience was completely different. I experienced what felt like a panic attack, but it was unlike any kind I have myself ever experienced before. It came on very fast and then was gone very quickly. While I was experiencing this, it felt completely real to me. What’s more, it showed me something about my child that I had not considered previously. I had seen these sudden outbursts before and I had not understood them, two had happened just recently when I was helping with a move from one apartment to another. It had thrown me for a loop. It was upsetting, and I was left at a loss as to what on earth had just happened. Was it possible that I had gotten inside someone’s head? Was it possible that I was now seeing or experiencing what this child sometimes experiences? In similar fashion as the first experience, when I was out of it, it felt like popping out of the ocean, moving from one phase or mode into another. I was now back in my own local focus. When had that happened before the way I had just experienced it? I couldn’t say that I had experienced reading someone like that in the way I had just done. The difference was that I felt like I was in control of the experience. I was able to pull out when I was ready. I felt like there was this observer in me that was able to watch and then feel what this emotional and mental material meant (or seemed to mean). Still…was it just the weed that had done this, had created the appearance of this phenomenon? Like I have said, it felt like the real thing.

The memory of the experience kept at me the rest of that afternoon. By that evening, I resolved to call my child to compare notes. My only concern was there might be no interest in talking about any of this, but when I did call there was no resistance to discussing it. I was so relieved. I remembered what a psychic friend of mine explained to me many years ago who said that often when we read someone and really see them, when we see them next, they will often tell you everything about what it was that you had seen perhaps a few days or a week before. She explained that it was like some part of them knew that they had been seen, and this is something that sparks a response even if it comes from a more subconscious state. We know, but we don’t know that we know. Perhaps we suddenly feel like we want to tell that person our life story, or one part of it. I had experienced this before with a number of people who I had read in similar ways before, so I had seen some evidence of this being a thing. “Read them and then they will then speak back to you everything that you saw, which is a very good way to confirm without needing to ask that what was seen was accurate.” What was remarkable was how much of a breakthrough it represented in my understanding of another person. It became clear to me that what was experienced was in line with what my child experiences.

The feeling that I had when this scan happened was a sense that I was going deeper into my mind than I normally go. I don’t know how else to describe it than that. I had the distinct impression that I was using or utilizing a part of my brain that doesn’t normally get used and it felt like it was a deep innermost core part of brain and self. Each time that I had this experience happen, I was aware that I was in this very deep place within that had been made possible with the use of the marijuana. Maybe it is a little bit like what we do when we channel? No, strike that; it didn’t feel quite like that. No one was taking me over. I was slipping into a mind-stream and my own inner perceptions were analyzing and sensing what was taking place or what exists within their mind-field of thought and feeling. That is what it seems like from my vantage point right now. One outcome was that I understood a little better how my child might get triggered by me or something I say or do. It was helpful because by being more aware of what I say or do or how I interact, I can in some instances head the triggers off at the pass.

It feels like I have gone full circle in my work and my experience with kundalini. In the beginning, I was swept up by the force of the energy and I had all kinds of unusual experiences taking place that I seemed to have no control over, they simply would happen. I would know things, I would walk past someone on the street and I would feel their painbody or their load that they were carrying around. I didn’t seem to have any control over it or when or how it would happen. Now, though, it felt much more controlled. It felt like I had found that place in the center of my brain where there is this transceiver. It felt just like that. It felt like I went into a place don’t normally go that was quite deep and it was there that I could see in this “new” way. Yes, I have had experiences similar to this before, but now it was also different. Now, it was controllable, more intentional. At first, I felt like I was spying to be honest. But then I also realized, if what I was experiencing was on the mark and not just imagined, then this kind of insight could help me to better understand the behavior and reactions of others who are near me.

Clearing the inner junk is critical for being able to fine tune your inner senses. This is why doing the “work” not only helps you to be free from the distortive effects of your own repressed emotion, but it also can make you clearer as a seer or psychic. It makes your life more peaceful as you integrate the truth of who you really are in a concrete way in your inner sensory landscape. I have seen in myself how stored emotional material can get in the way of inner sensing work. I have also seen in another person that I knew very well who was constantly projecting her own mental illness onto me or others whenever she “read” them. The problem was how readily apparent she was drawing from her own inner index of past material but was unable to see how it was clouding her own inner vision. Another friend who is an established psychic with years of experience counseling others is someone who has worked doggedly most of her adult life to clear and cleanse herself of stored emotional material, and the result is that she can do cold readings that have an incredible level of accuracy. The only difference is one person has done the work and the other person still has a lot of work left to do. So let this be a lesson to you; do your work! One sure sign of what you are seeing is inner material being projected onto the other person is that fear is often involved. When I felt my child I didn’t feel fear, I simply experienced something on a visceral level but I can’t say that “I” was the one feeling it. I was sensing it, yes, but I knew it didn’t originate with me….and that is, I think, the small but significant difference. Mind the gap.

So did weed make me more psychic? Did it open part of my mind in a way that it helped to catalyze this new shift into awareness? Possibly. I find myself having to admit that I will have to conduct a few more controlled experiments first to see if I can more completely confirm what it is exactly that has ben taking place. For all I know this might be something specific to me, but then again, it might not be. I think it is worth taking a look at, especially given how after decades of negative press about marijuana the results are showing that instead of being dangerous, that it has medicinal qualities and for this person, it is a great sleep aid. Much better than taking some complex pharmaceutical compound that might leave you with a host of undesirable side effects.

I’m not rushing out to buy and use. I am, however, quite keen now on seeing what else it might suggest to my consciousness as directions to go. Sometimes a compound in a substance will act like a trap door in our consciousness which we can then go back without the compound in us and recreate through our own native chemistry. How? We meditate on the state that the substance produced in us originally. Does that sound strange? Turns out, people describe how they can recall the states experienced with psychedelics in such a way that they don’t have to actually take the drug again in order to produces its effects in consciousness. THIS is how the plants can help us. We can recreate their effects in our bodies and consciousness if we simply focus on them and remember their effect so clearly that the body itself produces the effect that we are thinking about (which the body is expert at doing). It is amazing when you think about it: if you focus on feeling a certain way, your brain will see this and then your body will begin putting out the chemistry for the state you are imagining.

So? I guess my views on using substances has changed. There is nothing wrong with using them if you understand what you are going into. Psychedelics have been known to help people perform some of the same “exorcisms” of emotional material as kundalini does. There have been a lot of recent studies in this area that involve the use of magic mushrooms that have had some very amazing results for those involved in the studies who took the mushrooms, and were more positive in result than other drugs that are legal to use which can produce many undesirable side effects. That isn’t to say a psychedelic wont produce some intense experiences for the person, the difference is that often when faced with a negative experience, the issue is often being brought up to be healed. Just noticing and seeing that emotion fully for the first time can be enough to break the bonds it has in our subconscious. Ergo, it can be, however hard, a path to authentic healing. And no, it isn’t for everyone.

Absent the drug effects, it seems that all of the same requirements are the same: face the fear or the emotion, see it for what it is, let it play through you but remain dispassionate in relation to it (don’t grab back at the emotion in order to keep it) and it just goes “poof” and is gone forever. Ayahuasca does the same with a lot of vomiting and being led to facing old repressed emotions and fears in order to overcome them. DMT seems to offer some emotional release effects as well. But I think at what point do these things become crutches? No one will know except you. As for me, I am now a little more curious than before and is an old dog who is learning some new tricks.