Alcohol is especially harmful

"Alcohol only arose after the Atlantean epoch to help men to become individualized. It closes man off from his higher capacities and encloses him in himself.

But now all civilized people have reached that stage so that alcohol is an unnecessary evil today. Through its use one loses the ability to get along with others and to understand them. Alcohol is especially harmful for esoterics since its use changes all developed higher forces into forces of the personal ego, repeatedly locks it into itself.

By consuming alcohol one prepares a fertile soil for hosts of spiritual beings, just as a dirty room gets filled with flies."

- Rudolf Steiner

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 266 – From the Contents of Esoteric Classes: Esoteric Lesson – Stuttgart, August 13, 1908

@timeoftransition

Evidence shows ancient Mesopotamians may have used opium and cannabis as medicine and in their rituals

For as long as there has been civilization, there have been mind-altering drugs. Alcohol was fermented at least 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, about the same time that agriculture took hold there. Elsewhere, for example in Mesoamerica, other psychoactive drugs were an important part of culture. But the ancient Near East had seemed curiously drug-free-until recently.

Now, new techniques for analyzing residues in excavated jars and identifying tiny amounts of plant material suggest that ancient Near Easterners indulged in a range of psychoactive substances. Recent advances in identifying traces of organic fats, waxes, and resins invisible to the eye have allowed scientists to pinpoint the presence of various substances with a degree of accuracy unthinkable a decade or two ago.

For example, "hard scientific evidence" shows that ancient people extracted opium from poppies, says David Collard, senior archaeologist at Jacobs, an engineering firm in Melbourne, Australia, who found signs of ritual opium use on Cyprus dating back more than 3000 years. By then, drugs like cannabis had arrived in Mesopotamia, while people from Turkey to Egypt experimented with local substances such as blue water lily.

Evidence shows ancient Mesopotamians may have used opium and cannabis as medicine and in their rituals -- Secret History

care not

you think you've reached a level
that your comfortable with
you find that it's just another shortcut to the pain
there are certain situations
that shove you out of your comfort zone
that is where the pain is

even though you used to be so secure
in those kind of situations
now you are a fish out of water
because you have become more real
open now to men in a whole different way

one that is closer
to you
to the pain
new opportunities arise
for growth
they say

i cannot handle
cope

i choose alcohol
i choose to harm
poison this body
i choose oblivion
give me vodka

i cannot understand
how this good stuff makes me
so frustrated
something good happened
never felt so low

i want death
i want to never
leave the house again

people like you
you are very nice
to have
around

cannot handle
cope

feel only sadness
when they approach
or look
at me

i feel I am gasping for air
knowing  that I am
as the breath
that leaves the body

i cannot show myself?
the real
so painful?

it was never a problem
naked in the night
for sex
never much of a deal
confident

change is here
reiki
i do not understand
this frustration
just being out there

split personality
cannot heal
this is here
hate suddenly all things
that remind me
of those years

that remind me
that there are people
interested in me
that like me

understand it not
my purpose
that is
pain
not worth this

when step out
wanting
find only inner pain

vodka
weed
numbness
comfort
self medication

know not how to move
care not

nice and quiet

This post should be a reminder of what I know and of what I should remember forever now: smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol is detrimental to the inner calm.

Since stopping once again; I feel that slow detachment; it seems to have gotten nice and quiet in my body, so much less confusion and more flow, less constriction.

A healthy diet is also helping, avocado and tea, helping to feel the inner physical calm.

Now when confronted with ignorance or the unknown, when feeling automatic comparisons arising; I quickly detach or at least I am conscious of that conditioning now and therefore render the duality powerless.

I am more aware of who I am and so less threatened by that stupid norm of competition and insecurity.
That drama always needing my attention, always claiming that I need to resort to addictions to numb out the pain of being so called different, when being unique is exactly the whole point of it all and the hidden strength at this time, !

residing in this sanctuary that we rightly call the mother: earth

The right time to write is now.

I think of the inhuman implants leached onto organs that might sway my mood, turn it this way or that. Then feeling my eyes slowly close and my guides telling me: we will take care of that, we will take care of that, I sit back and relax.

Back to the channel of creative force I turn, creativity is a feminine thing but you must balance it out with the masculine. Save your procrastination for a hot summer’s day and create I say.

Residues of prescription medication and recreational drugs that tampered with my delicate chemistry are leaving. Reality is crisp after the cleansing, I see that the plants nearby are alive, at night they are breathing slowly, their metabolism is light.

Alcohol is absolutely not on the present list and for weed there is no need.

I think of the extraterrestrial ships that encircle the earth, they hover sometimes on the inner plane, I ask the beings to reveal themselves, depending on whether or not I see each thing as a manifestation of God that is. Water I drink is alive.

I am not insane but loose, ready to shake the foundations and send sparks bouncing off the walls, listening to the streets over and over again.

There shall be no more talk of war, or death, no more words of pain or loss, no suffering.

There shall be dancing on holy ground only. All ground is holy.

Through the meridians of the body energy flows free, there is a quickening of blood through this psychical vessel, this temple.

To be alive, to be aware of this gift, to know this pleasure, to realize this abundance, that is my intention.

They say: we will take care of that, we will take care of that.

Sit back and relax.

Stress and the Mind

The mind is a tool that’s suppose to do its job: seeing the similarities and differences so that you can make decisions concerning your survival. Now when the mind—which is a self-preserving mechanism—when the mind understands that it can’t do its job, or its not adequately able to make good decisions about your future, it’s got a built in, evolved in, safety over-ride system. And it goes in stages. The first stage of that safety over-ride is called stress. When your mind is not sure of what’s coming, it sends your body a signal. This is your walk-away response. You’re supposed to get up and walk away. Animals have this down really good. A dog will smell something weird and will just get up and leave. Us on the other hand, we have had parents and teachers and now employers who would not have us just get up and walk away, right. So, we have adapted to stress; as a matter of fact, stress is a character evaluation on you. How much stress can you handle?? That’s right, because if you could handle more stress, you’d go further up the corporate ladder. That’s really what the glass ceiling is on each person; how much stress can you handle? [I was just going to say that most disability companies no longer accept stress as a reason for being away from work. You cannot get that coverage anymore, as of 2 years ago.] Right. Meanwhile, doctors, the AMA, proclaims that 80% of everything that goes wrong with your body begins with stress. Stress is such an epidemic proportion that all the benefits that used to be afforded to workers for stress have been cut off. Everybody’s got stress; it’s a pandemic.

If you make a telephone call, you’re hooked up to computers that are making something like 4-5 billion decisions per second. Your mind is doing 24. Consciousness is moving at at least 5 billion decisions per second.

Do you understand that consciousness is as fast as you can realize, so now we’re talking about nano-seconds which is one hundredth thousandth of a second. Wow. Consciousness has just sped away from your mind. It used to be, when this territory was settled the people who settled it built everything in their house from the foundation, to the floor, to the windows, to the bunk beds, to the chairs, to the tables. Everything they built with their own hands didn’t they? Except maybe the pump and the skillet; everything else, they built it. They even had a certain amount of knowing about how to do it; they knew how to do it. Go ahead, go home and build a light bulb. That kind of thing is a source for stress. When your computer goes down, there’s a whole lot that the mind doesn’t know about, and it generates this stress. Like I said it’s a pandemic everywhere.

Fight or Flight

Okay so you’re supposed to handle the stress; you’re suppose to adapt to stress and the stress builds and as we’ve just seen that this acceleration continues to accelerate. So what’s next, if you don’t handle the stress, then you go into this. The mind goes into the fight or flight. Now here, all logic is suspended. There is no similarity or difference any more. It’s just a drop of adrenaline in your system and the body is supposed to either run away or fight its way out to preserve your way of survival. That’s the mechanism. This though, this fight or flight, this is desk-rage, this is road-rage, this is Columbine High School, this is terrorism and all wars. That’s what this is. And that is on a massive increase, isn’t it?

Going Unconscious

So what happens if you can’t fight your way out and you can’t run away? For instance, if you go in and punch the boss in the nose or your teacher, you’re going to end up in jail or at least out of a job. Right. So if you can’t fight your way out and you can’t run away, what’s left? There’s one last ditch effort on the part of the mind to survive this: unconsciousness. If you can’t run away or fight your way out, what are you supposed to do if a bear attacks you? You’re supposed to play dead. Maybe he’ll only eat your arm. You’ve seen other animals use that technique, haven’t you? They get caught and they just turn over on their back with their belly up and they play dead. It is a survival tactic. It also happens to be the mother of all addictions and the father of all suicides. Basically this is the denial of experience. All addictions are a person’s chosen method to remain unconscious. And it doesn’t matter if it’s alcohol or drugs or work or gambling or shopping or sitcoms. All addictions are a chosen method to stay unconscious. And how many people do you know, yourself excluded, who are stuck in that sort of thing? A whole bunch of people, huh? You’re starting to get the impact of what this acceleration means. 400 years ago, people had lots of time to sit and ponder things, before they changed. And 400 years ago, you had lots of 24ths of a second to work it out. Now it’s not that way and it’s going to get faster and faster on everybody you know, including yourself. This is a serious situation; this is why the world looks like it’s going to pieces, because it is. The mind was not built for speed. It was evolved when things were going a lot slower. Trying to keep your mind up to speed is sort of like taking your donkey for a run behind the family station wagon at 75 miles per hour. It’s just not pretty. But that’s what’s happening to everyone and it’s going to get even more dramatic in the future. If it's not the mind then what?

Source: Welcome to the Evolution: Mayan Calendar Comes North

Transcendental Meditation

20 Years Later

by aridelros

Being the eldest male of five siblings from a divorced parent background, I've had my share of problems. I was about 19-20 at the time I tried Transcendental Meditation, but before this, I was spiralling out of control - mainly from all the college day drugtaking ( downers, alcohol, beer, and the sheer joy of peer pressure ) - but also from failure to face day to day facets of real life problems on even keel. So I basically had two problems – the drugtaking and living in an impenetrable eggshell. The drugtaking was basically an MTV-influenced reward and punishment lifestyle – and the eggshell life prevented me from seeing problems – both good and bad – as they really were. Instead I had warped up all psychological defense and offense mechanisms for dealing with real life situations.

I decided to try Transcendental Meditation and began saying Ohhhhmmmm 15 minutes a day. Sometimes twice daily. Sometimes more. After about two weeks of this, there was a certain lucidity to my thoughts. Problems could be separated from emotion. And I started smiling more, becoming more calm – for a moment, there was some window of lucidity from all the turbulent and neurotic experiences a shy college boy faced.

Now I am 43. The TM experience was particularly significant on hindsight because medical findings have documented meditative experiences as bringing a healing dimension to overall well-being. I guess brain circuitry is rewired with meditation, and traffic of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters are manually controlled by the individual for the first time.

I have used meditation from time to time – but never with the diligence used during those days. I find that controls I’ve imposed on myself twenty years ago in a meditative state, still hold today. Two decades ago, I’ve ordered myself to be transported into the Alpha level when joining my thumb and two index fingers together (Silva Method of Mind Control ) – I find the same still holds true after 20 years. Amazing.

Exp Year: 1986

Source: Erowid.org