SENSE TESTIMONY: Persons lack Spiritual Community
5th Step Conclusions:
1) One Infinite Mind is ever present community connecting all persons.
2) The Infinite invisible Eternal I AM I is pure energy purpose of One Truth verity.
3) I a breathing the awareness that fellowship is ever present as One Life Unfolding.
Sagittarius New Moon, December 17, 2017 (27 degrees) 10:30 pm PST on the 18th
The Sagittarius New Moon is accompanied by four other personal planets (Saturn, Sun, Venus and Mercury), and has great power to assist us with our humanitarian visions, empowerment and expansion. Sagittarius is the last of the fire signs, helping us to expand our inner light, and ignite the spiritual fire that keeps faith and hope alive and nourishes us through the long dark winter.
Venus in Sagittarius, conjunct this New Moon, helps us to re-ignite the feminine into the collective consciousness. Venus in Sagittarius symbolizes the wild feminine, the primal goddess — expressions that have been suppressed under the long held patriarchy. Venus’s involvement with the New Moon asks us to make our bodies’ needs and desires a priority and to expand into greater sensuality and pleasure. And at the same time guarding our bodies as sacred and powerful, not to be used, belittled and exploited. Women will have come fully into power when they easily say no to unwanted touching, advances and coercion.
Since the chaotic Uranus square Pluto energy and economic breakdowns that have accompanied Pluto in Capricorn, we’ve been working to create new and sustainable visions for our future. It is time to clear out selfish and greedy belief systems that serve the few and not the many, and have kept us stuck in out-moded structures that will not serve us in the 21st century. Saturn, moving into Capricorn in a few days, will help bring our humanitarian visions into form. What are your futuristic ideas you can move forward? What means can you use to break up any blocks you may have to higher vision? Real change starts first within each of us.
Chiron in Pisces squares this Sagittarius New Moon prompting the question: How can we maintain our optimism and invest in a positive future vision in the face of so much suffering? For the past year, the square between Saturn and Chiron has confronted us with the necessity of healing what we can, while coming to terms with the seemingly unhealable parts of ourselves and the world. Intense feelings may be triggered during this New Moon. Use your emotion to empower you to action. Compassion is a willingness to be with suffering, even if we can’t “fix” it. Then we can gain access to the higher potential of the Saturn–Chiron square, which is to allow our hearts to open to greater acceptance and love.
Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius, is in the intense and emotional sign of Scorpio, supporting us to feel the full range of our emotions. The truth, faith, and higher vision that are available to come through us at this New Moon are found in our emotional depths. While Sagittarius tends to bypass harsh realities, Scorpio says the only authentic way to get to the light is to go all the way through the dark.
Written by Wendy Cicchetti
PLAN YOUR OWN NEW MOON CEREMONY. Give yourself some quiet time in meditation to see where you need to seed new ways of becoming. List these areas within your life you want to change. What areas do you want to break free from the norm and become more productive and discerning? The NEW MOON is the time to manifest the personal attributes you want to cultivate as well as the tangible things you want to bring to you. Possible phrasing: I now manifest ____ into my life. I am now _______ . Remember, think, envision and feel with as much emotion as possible, as though you already have what you want. Thoughts are things and the brain manifests exactly what you show it in the form of thoughts, visuals and emotions. The Buddha said, and I am paraphrasing, “We are the sum total of our thoughts up to today. ” If we want to be different then we must change our thoughts. “If you always do what you’ve always done then you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” CONSCIOUS CHANGE is the key.
What is Consciousness
What is Consciousness? From the Material Brain to the Infinite Mind and Beyond
A New Concept of Consciousness
What is consciousness? What about the mind? If the world is vibration, is also mind and consciousness a form of vibration? Or on the contrary, are all vibrations, the observed world, a manifestation of mind and human consciousness?
Although it is true that when all is said and done all we know is our consciousness, it is also true that we do not know our own consciousness, not to mention the consciousness of anyone else.
We do not know what consciousness really is or how it is related to the brain. Since our consciousness is the basis of our identity, we do not know who we really are. Are we a body that generates the stream of sensations we call consciousness, or are we a consciousness associated with a brain and body that displays it?
Do we have consciousness, or are we consciousness? Human consciousness could be a kind of illusion, a set of sensations produced by the workings of our brain. But it could also be that our body is a vehicle, a transmitter of a consciousness that is the basic reality of the world. The world could be material, and mind could be an illusion. Or the world could be consciousness, and the materiality of the world could be the illusion.
Both of these possibilities have been explored in the history of philosophy, and today we are a step closer than before to understanding which of these theories of consciousness is true. There are important insights emerging at the expanding frontiers where physical science and consciousness research join.
On the basis of a growing series of observations and experiments to answer the question of “What is consciousness?”, a new consensus is emerging. It is that “my” consciousness is not just my consciousness, meaning the consciousness produced by my brain, any more than a program transmitted over the air would be a program produced by my TV set. Just like a program broadcast over the air continues to exist when my TV set is turned off, my human consciousness and conscious awareness continue to exist when my brain is turned off.
Consciousness is a real element in the real world. The body and brain do not produce consciousness; they display it. And it does not cease when life in the body does. Mind and consciousness is a reflection, a projection, a manifestation of the intelligence that “in-forms” the world.
From the Material to the Infinite
Mystics and shamans have known that this is true for millennia, and artists and spiritual people know it to this day. Its rediscovery at the leading edge of the science of consciousness augurs a profound shift in our view of the world. It overcomes the answer the now outdated materialist science gives to the question regarding the nature of mind and consciousness: the answer according to which consciousness is an epiphenomenon, a product or by-product of the workings of the brain.
In that case, the brain would be like an electricity-generating turbine. The turbine is material, while the current it generates is not (or not strictly) material. In the same way, the brain could be material, even if the consciousness it generates proves to be something that is not quite material.
On first sight, this makes good sense. On a second look, however, the materialist concept of what is consciousness encounters major problems. First, a conceptual problem. How could a material brain give rise to a truly immaterial stream of sensations? How could anything that is material produce anything immaterial? In modern consciousness research and science, this is known as the “hard problem.”
It has no reasonable answer. As researchers point out, we do not have the slightest idea how “matter” could produce “mind.” One is a measurable entity with properties such as hardness, extension, force, and the like, and the other is an ineffable series of sensations with no definite location in space and an ephemeral presence in time.
Fortunately, the hard problem does not need to be solved: it is not a real problem. There is another possibility: mind is a real element in the real world and is not produced by the brain; it is manifested and displayed by the brain.
Mind beyond Brain: Evidence for a New Concept of Mind and Consciousness
If mind is a real element in the real world only manifested rather than produced by the brain, it can also exist without the brain. There is evidence that mind does exist on occasion beyond the brain: surprisingly, states of consciousness and conscious awareness seem possible in the absence of a functioning brain. There are cases—the near-death experience (NDE) is the paradigm case—where mind and consciousness persist when brain function is impaired or even halted.
Thousands of observations and experiments show that people whose brain stopped working but then regained normal functioning can experience human consciousness during the time they are without a functioning brain. This cannot be accounted for on the premises of the production theory of consciousness: if there is no working brain, there cannot be consciousness. Yet there are cases of consciousness appearing beyond the living and working brain, and some of these cases are not easy to dismiss as mere imagination.
What Near-Death Experiences Can Teach Us
A striking NDE was recounted by a young woman named Pamela. Hers has been just one among scores of NDEs that help to answer the question of what is consciousness; it is cited here to illustrate that such experiences exist, and can be documented.
Pamela died on May 29, 2010, at the age of fifty-three. But for hours she was effectively dead on the operating table nineteen years earlier. Her near demise was induced by a surgical team attempting to remove an aneurism in her brain stem.
After the operation, when her brain and body returned to normal functioning, Pamela described in detail what had taken place in the operating theater. She recalled among other things the music that was playing (“Hotel California” by the Eagles). She described a whole series of conversations among the medical team. She reported having watched the opening of her skull by the surgeon from a position above him and described in detail the “Midas Rex” bone-cutting device and the distinct sound it made.
About ninety minutes into the operation, at which point she should have had no brain function or conscious awareness, she saw her body from the outside and felt herself being pulled out of it and into a tunnel of light. And she heard the bone saw activate, even though there were specially designed speakers in each of her ears that shut out all external sounds. The speakers themselves were broadcasting audible clicks in order to confirm that there was no activity in her brain stem. Moreover, she had been given a general anesthetic that should have assured that she was fully unconscious. Pamela should not have been able either to see or to hear anything.
It appears that human consciousness is not, or not entirely, tied to the living brain. In addition to NDEs, there are cases in which mind and consciousness are detached from the brain in regard to its location. In these cases, consciousness originates above the eyes and the head, or near the ceiling, or above the roof. These are the out-of-body experiences: OBEs.
There are OBEs where congenitally blind people have visual awareness. They describe their surroundings in considerable detail and with remarkable accuracy. What the blind experience is not restored eyesight because they are aware of things that are shielded from their eyes or are beyond the range of normal eyesight. Consciousness researcher Kenneth Ring called these states of consciousness “transcendental awareness.”
Visual awareness in the blind joins a growing repertory of experiences collected and researched by Stanislav Grof: “transcendental experiences.” As Grof, a pioneer in the science of consciousness and the mind found, these beyond-the-brain and beyond-here-and-now experiences are widespread—more widespread than anyone would have suspected even a few years ago—and give us a clue into what consciousness is.
The Evidence of After Death Experiences
There are also reports of ADEs, after-death experiences that help expand on the question “What is Consciousness?” Thousands of psychic mediums claim to have channeled the conscious awareness and experience of deceased people, and some of these reports are not easy to dismiss as mere imagination. One of the most robust of these reports has come from Bertrand Russell, the renowned English philosopher. Lord Russell was a skeptic, an outspoken debunker of esoteric phenomena, including the survival of the mind or soul beyond the body. He once wrote, “I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.” Yet after he died he conveyed the following message to the medium Rosemary Brown.
You may not believe that it is I, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, who am saying these things, and perhaps there is no conclusive proof that I can offer through this somewhat restrictive medium. Those with an ear to hear may catch the echo of my voice in my phrases, the tenor of my tongue in my tautology; those who do not wish to hear will no doubt conjure up a whole table of tricks to disprove my retrospective rhetoric.
. . . After breathing my last breath in my mortal body, I found myself in some sort of extension of existence that held no parallel as far as I could estimate, in the material dimension I had recently experienced. I observed that I was occupying a body predominantly bearing similarities to the physical one I had vacated forever; but this new body in which I now resided seemed virtually weightless and very volatile, and able to move in any direction with the minimum of effort. I began to think I was dreaming and would awaken all too soon in that old world, of which I had become somewhat weary to find myself imprisoned once more in that ageing form which encased a brain that had waxed weary also and did not always want to think when I wanted to think. . .
Dean’s Holiday Greeting December 2017
Nice quote from “Manhattan Night” movie
Asherah, consort of Yahweh
Asherah (/ˈæʃərə/; Ugaritic: ???? : ‘ṯrt; Hebrew: אֲשֵׁרָה), in ancient Semitic religion, is a mother goddess who appears in a number of ancient sources. She appears in Akkadian writings by the name of Ašratu(m), and in Hittite as Aserdu(s) or Asertu(s). Asherah is generally considered identical with the Ugaritic goddess ʼAṯirat.
Asherah is identified as the queen consort of the Sumerian god Anu, and Ugaritic El,[1] the oldest deities of their respective pantheons,[2][3] as well as Yahweh, the god of Israel and Judah.[4] This role gave her a similarly high rank in the Ugaritic pantheon.[5] Despite her association with Yahweh in extra-biblical sources, Yahweh in the Bible commands the destruction of her shrines so as to maintain purity of worship to Yahweh Himself.[6] The name Dione, which like ‘Elatmeans “Goddess”, is clearly associated with Asherah in the Phoenician History of Sanchuniathon, because the same common epithet (‘Elat) of “the Goddess par excellence” was used to describe her at Ugarit.[7] The Book of Jeremiah, written circa 628 BC, possibly refers to Asherah when it uses the title “Queen of Heaven” (Hebrew: מְלֶכֶת הַשָּׁמַיִם) in Jeremiah 7:16-18[8] and Jeremiah 44:17-19, 25.[9]
In Israel and Judah
Image on pithos sherd found at Kuntillet Ajrud below the inscription “Yahweh and his Asherah”
Between the 10th century BC and the beginning of their exile in 586 BC, polytheism was normal throughout Israel;[12] it was only after the exile that worship of Yahweh alone became established, and possibly only as late as the time of the Maccabees (2nd century BC) that monotheism became universal among the Jews.[13][14] Some biblical scholars believe that Asherah at one time was worshipped as the consort of Yahweh, the national God of Israel.[13][15][16] There are references to the worship of numerous gods throughout Kings: Solomon builds temples to many gods and Josiah is reported as cutting down the statues of Asherah in the temple Solomon built for Yahweh (2 Kings 23:14). Josiah’s grandfather Manasseh had erected one such statue (2 Kings 21:7[17]).
Further evidence includes, for example, an 8th-century combination of iconography and inscriptions discovered at Kuntillet Ajrud in the northern Sinai desert[18] where a storage jar shows three anthropomorphic figures and several inscriptions.[19][20] The inscriptions found refer not only to Yahweh but to El and Baal, and two include the phrases “Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah” and “Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah.”[21] The references to Samaria (capital of the kingdom of Israel) and Teman (in Edom) suggest that Yahweh had a temple in Samaria, while raising questions about the relationship between Yahweh and Kaus, the national god of Edom.[22] The “Asherah” is most likely a cultic object, although the relationship of this object (a stylised tree perhaps) to Yahweh and to the goddess Asherah, consort of El, is unclear.[23] It has been suggested that the Israelites might have considered Asherah as a consort of Baal due to the anti-Asherah ideology which was influenced by the Deuteronomistic History at the later period of Monarchy.[24] In another inscription called “Yahweh and his Asherah”, there appears a cow feeding its calf.[25]:163 If Asherah is to be associated with Hathor/Qudshu, it can then be assumed that the cow is what’s being referred to as Asherah.
William Dever’s book Did God Have a Wife? adduces further archaeological evidence—for instance, the many female figurines unearthed in ancient Israel, (known as Pillar-Base Figurines)—as supporting the view that in Israelite folk religion of the monarchal period, Asherah functioned as a goddess and consort of Yahweh and was worshiped as the Queen of Heaven, for whose festival the Hebrews baked small cakes.
The word Asherah is translated in Greek as alsos, grove, or alse, groves, or occasionally by dendra, trees; Vulgate in Latin provided lucus or nemus, a grove or a wood (thus KJV Bible uses grove or groves with the consequent loss of Asherah’s name and knowledge of her existence to English language readers of the Bible over some 400 years).[26] The association of Asherah with trees in the Hebrew Bible is very strong. For example, she is found under trees (1K 14:23; 2K 17:10) and is made of wood by human beings (1K 14:15, 2K 16:3-4). Trees described as being an asherah or part of an asherah include grapevines, pomegranates, walnuts, myrtles, and willows (Danby:1933:90,176).
Some scholars have found an early link between Asherah and Eve, based upon the coincidence of their common title as “the mother of all living” in Genesis 3:20[27][28] through the identification with the Hurrian mother goddess Hebat.[29][30] Asherah was also given the title Chawat from which the name Hawwah in Aramaic and the biblical name Eve are derived.[31]
Asherah poles, which were sacred trees or poles, are mentioned many times in the Hebrew Bible.
Book: “The Great Oom” by Robert Love
The Great Oom: The Mysterious Origins of America’s First YogiRobert Love
Penguin Books, 2011 – Health & Fitness “Rollicking and well-researched…A story of scandal, financial shenanigans, bodily discipline, oversize egos and bizarre love triangles.” –Wall Street Journal More than fifteen million Americans currently practice yoga (according to Yoga Journal), but how many of them know the true story of how Downward Dog first captivated America? Resurrecting a fascinating and forgotten tale, journalist Robert Love returns to the Gilded Age, when Dr. Pierre Bernard (né Perry Baker in Iowa) revived a discipline banned in Victorian India, packaged it for Americans, and taught legions of followers, who bankrolled his luxurious Hudson River ashram- the first in the nation. Filled with Jazz Age celebrities, heiresses, spies, and outraged clergy, The Great Oom is the enthralling life story of the unlikeliest of gurus, and a stunning saga of mysticism, intrigue, and the American dream. |
Katie Lee – The Will to Fail
Jazz saxophonist Bud Freeman came up with the idea for Songs of Couch & Consultation, a cult classic comedy album that pokes fun at psychoanalysis and psychiatric jargon. Freeman wrote a dozen songs’ worth of lyrics, which Leon Pober set to music and Bob Thompson arranged. Katie Lee, an extraordinarily pretty folk singer who previously recorded an album for Specialty called Spicy Songs for Cool Knights, was brought in to sing and pose for the cheesecake album cover. The songs describe an assortment of neuroses and psychiatric conditions in a variety of musical styles, delivered with a heavy dose of hand-wringing self-scrutiny. There’s ragtime, big-band blues, and even cowboy music as Lee coos her way through topics such as schizophrenia, repressed hostility, and maladjustment. “Hush Little Sibling” lampoons parenting manuals and the venerated Dr. Spock, and “The Will to Fail” identifies a drive Nietzsche missed. The irony is that the sophisticated humor targets an educated audience that is also the group most likely to embrace psychiatric jargon and theories. Reprise reissued the album with a less striking cover, so the original Commentary Records pressing is the one to find.
Addiction: A Disease of the Soul?
How a wounded spirit can trigger compulsive behavior
We naturally want to feel good. But what happens when our favorite method of stress relief turns destructive?
Serious addictions take an undeniable toll both physically and mentally. But according to Lisa Boucher, author of the 2017 winner of the Best Book Award for women’s health, “Raising the Bottom: Making Mindful Choices in a Drinking Culture,” people often overlook the true root of addictive behavior: a wounded spirit.
“Addiction is a spiritual malady,” said Boucher, a registered nurse who has helped women overcome alcoholism for the past 28 years. “People are just trying to fill the hole of the soul.”
Most addiction counselors acknowledge the spiritual aspect of their clients’ compulsion. “The Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), for example, emphasizes a spiritual awakening as a necessary step in breaking free from alcohol’s grip.
But it’s a notoriously hard lesson to learn. A common theme among the hundreds of addicts Boucher has worked with is that they can take years or decades to even admit they have a problem.
“Pride and ego are what keeps people locked into addiction,” she said. “They don’t want to accept that they can’t control something.”
The New Alcoholic
We’re all prone to occasional indulgence, but we can be lax at judging when we’ve gone too far. Substance abuse can be even harder to accept when society supports it. Unlike heroin or cocaine, alcohol is a legal and socially encouraged drug. But Boucher says these features can make it even more insidious. She points to an increasingly common character: the wine mom.
“We have normalized alcoholism,” Boucher said. “The new alcoholic carries a diaper bag and wears designer pumps.”
While recreational drug use, in general, is at an all-time high, alcohol remains the most abused drug in the world after tobacco, and it’s hitting women especially hard. Alcohol-related deaths for white women ages 35 to 54 have more than doubled since 1999, according to an analysis of federal data by The Washington Post. Researchers studying the spike call it a public health crisis.
According to a 2013 study, the alcohol industry has increased ad spending almost 400 percent since 1971. Ads make a brief nod toward “drinking responsibly,” but the predominant message is that booze is a fun, sophisticated, and socially sanctioned excuse for letting go.
It’s an appealing proposal, especially for those trying to juggle a career and family. But Boucher believes women have become so conditioned to reach for a drink under stress, that they lose touch with their innate coping skills.
“People drink because they can’t handle the way they feel,” Boucher said. “If you’re trying to change the way you feel, you’re not coping with some deeper emotion.”
It’s not just alcohol; all of our most destructive drugs tend to be those that provide a temporary escape from misery. Such substances can be a short-term blessing for serious injuries and illness. But we lose an important part of ourselves when they become our primary coping method.
Chronic reliance on a substance for our sense of well-being can stunt our emotional and spiritual growth, says Boucher, because we never develop the strength of character that comes from facing life’s challenges with a clear mind. A prime example is Boucher’s sister, a successful career woman in her 50s who’s four years sober of a serious meth habit.
“This is a woman who never learned to cope with life,” Boucher said. “She has had to go back and relearn how to deal with conflict in an appropriate manner.”
Researchers point to genetic markers that may increase the risk for addiction, but role modeling may seal the deal. Boucher and her siblings grew up resentful of their alcoholic mother who was either in a Valium stupor or drunk for most of their childhood, yet they all followed a similar path.
“Our mother never taught us coping skills,” Boucher said.
Spiritual Disease
Why would anyone choose to waste money, destroy relationships, and ruin their health? Addiction doesn’t make any logical sense, but we can’t seem to stop the tide. Despite the government spending more than $1 trillion on the war on drugs over the past four decades, the rates of addiction and overdose deaths in the United States are now higher than ever before. Opioids get the most attention, but in some states, meth may soon claim the highest number of addicts and overdose deaths.
Addiction used to apply primarily to substances. Today, it is found with vices like pornography, gambling, shopping, excessive smartphone use, and countless other compulsive pleasures.
Researchers believe they may soon uncover a physical fix to our addiction epidemic. Studies are underway to develop treatments that target the chemical imbalances and faulty wiring found in the brains of addicts.
But what if our addiction problem is more complex than any solution science can conjure? According to the Rev. Sheri Heller, a New York-based psychotherapist and interfaith minister, addiction may be biochemically based, but the psychological and spiritual aspects of the disease still demand attention.
“You can’t heal emotional wounds intellectually,” she said.
Spirit is a concept that is often at odds with contemporary medicine, but it wasn’t always this way. People once looked for meaning in their suffering.
Dr. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist famous for his descriptions of ancient archetypes residing in our collective unconscious, helped Westerners regain a sense of meaning in their suffering. Jung gave the modern world a vocabulary for the psyche once reserved for myths and legends. He was also instrumentalin inspiring the 12-step paradigm found in addiction recovery programs.
“Jung said addiction is really a misguided search for God. It’s an attempt to feel the euphoria one gets from having a sense of belonging or a sense of being loved,” Heller said.
Of course, each addict has a unique backstory of trauma and pain, but Heller believes a change in society lies at the heart of our growing wave of addiction. Our sense of community, intimacy, and humanity have been replaced by a culture of technology, celebrity, and divisiveness. Isolated and overwhelmed, we reach for anything to fill the void.
Medicating Addiction
Since people usually do drugs to feel better, there’s a prevailing notion that substance abuse is merely a symptom of depression. But Boucher believes that’s a backward idea.
“You can’t diagnose depression when they’re smoking pot every day, drinking alcohol, using meth, smoking crack, taking opioids, or whatever that person’s drug of choice is,” she said. “How do you know what that person’s baseline is?”
Alcohol, for example, is a depressant. So if a heavy drinker complains of depression, they may be guzzling the root cause.
Boucher is sympathetic to legitimate cases of depression, but she believes that in order to properly diagnose it, sobriety should come first. In her experience, those who go clean for three to six months often eliminate their need for drug treatment.
“In 90 percent of the cases that I’ve worked with, these women were able to get off their antidepressants,” she said.
Beyond Willpower
Few people can drop their bad habits cold turkey. But for many addicts, connecting to something larger than themselves helps them work toward recovery. However, adopting this mindset can be a difficult leap, especially since those who turn to drugs often do so because their faith in God or man has been shattered.
Jung himself was reluctant to use spiritual terminology with his patients because he feared they would misinterpret his message. For those resistant to talk of a higher power, Heller suggests more deity-neutral language.
“One could say that the person needs to be able to expand their consciousness to incorporate new ideas,” she said, “but in order for anyone to engage in a process of healing and self-exploration, they have to be able to surrender to something greater than their own will.”
Some insist willpower is the key to recovery—if we’re determined to deny our cravings for long enough, we can be whole again. But according to Kimberly Hershenson, a New York-based therapist specializing in substance abuse, willpower will always fall short.
“If you’re looking at this from a disease model, you are as powerless over addiction as you are with cancer,” Hershenson said. “No matter what you try to do, your brain is going to crave more. And it’s really about accepting that.”
Our addictive impulses are connected to the survival and pleasure centers of our brain, so they react faster and with greater force than the part of our brain responsible for reasoning. This means that cravings surge long before thoughts of consequence kick in. Beating back urges can be a losing battle even for the strongest of wills.
“An addict cannot force themselves into a place of health by soldiering through life,” Heller said. “This is about being willing, not being willful.”
If addiction is a spiritual disease, then the cure has to come from within. There are tools to address the physical aspects of addiction, but experts say we must also cultivate positive behaviors, such as humility, accountability, a sense of purpose, and healthy coping mechanisms.
Life can be cruel, the world can seem crazy, but how we handle it makes all the difference. Boucher urges us to step back, be thankful for what we have, and reconnect with what is essential to our souls.
“We are human beings. We need quiet. We need to reflect. We need to nurture the whole person,” she said.
“Getting a Little Anal” by Joe Kukura
Cannabis suppositories
Some smartass has figured out a way for cannabis users to enjoy the pleasures of marijuana by sticking it in your anus. When SF Evergreen discovered that cannabis anal suppositories were available, we busted our ass to get some and give them a try.
You may have heard of people taking psilocybin, LSD, or MDMA via rectal injection, using the rationale that this gets you higher, faster. Supposedly, this effect also extends to cannabis.
And researchers say there are no ifs, ands, or butts about it.
“Rectally is actually a lot more preferred, because of the volume of absorption,” George Washington University medical director Dr. Mikhail Kogan told the CBC. “You can put a lot more and it gets absorbed a lot better.”
For medicinal patients, methods other than smoking cannabis have the obvious upside of being easier on your throat and lungs. Even edibles are somewhat inefficient, because there so many variables within your digestive system that interfere with the cannabis’ psychoactive elements.
Putting drugs in your butt is the most “bio-availabe” method of delivery, meaning your body absorbs drugs in your rectum faster than it does through other methods.
But finding marijuana suppositories is a pain the ass. SF Evergreen called all 11 dispensaries that the website of sensual cannabis product company Foria listed as carrying the suppository Explore. None had it.
But the BASA Collective on Divisadero Street did carry a different cannabis suppository from Alive Botanicals. (Delivery site GetGreen- Wings.com also carries a suppository from Sacred Medicinals.)
“We don’t take returns on those,” our budtender wisecracked.
Alive Botanicals has two different types of suppositories, one that is all-CBD and another with a 1:1 ratio of THC to CBD. Being fans of a head high, we took the 1:1 version to see if marijuana up the butt really does get you high.
Suppositories in hand, SF Evergreen was ready to put their efficacy to the test — and assfuck ourselves with a Colt “pumper” butt plug that plumps to a width of 3.5 inches.
The suppositories themselves are about an inch long and packaged like tiny little rockets. Removing the packaging, each suppository had a waxy surface that didn’t require any lube for its insertion.
The suppositories’ instructions say to lie on your left side and slide it right in. Hilariously, Alive Botanicals’ instructions also say, “The parent/ caregiver may have to gently hold a child’s buttocks closed.”
Once you poke the suppository into your anus, your bunghole automatically sucks it right in, and the suppository dissolves inside you. We aren’t sure how quickly that happens, and we didn’t really want to go feeling around to see how long it was taking.
The heady effect of the THC kicked in less than five minutes after we stuck the suppository in our butt. Alive Botanicals puts 21 grams of THC in each one, which hit very quickly and felt more like 50 grams. The feeling takes a little longer to set in on your rear end. And it’s not a sense of numbness, but instead a pleasurable, warm tingle that introduces another sensual element of fun to butt play.
The pumpable butt plug with which we sodomized ourselves didn’t hurt any less, but the suppository delivered a fun new angle to the experience. Obviously, it helps if you enjoy getting fucked in the ass. The cannabis suppository doesn’t do much to directly counteract the initial pain of sphincter penetration, but adds a kick-ass dash of extra spice to anal play.
If you’re looking for a topical to make it hurt less when you’re getting pounded in the butt, marijuana suppositories won’t be up your alley. Surprisingly, the head buzz was more prominent than the rectal sensation when using the THC-CBD combo suppository.
But — and there’s always a but — cannabis suppositories absolutely kick in faster than edibles, and even a little more quickly than high-end kind bud. When it comes to putting a marijuana suppository in your rectum, SF Evergreen gives it a “Thumbs Up.”