How to use cannabis to practice acceptance and overcome physical and emotional suffering

How to use cannabis to practice acceptance and overcome your suffering?

We can never avoid pain, but we do have a say in how much we suffer from it. Of course, not all pain is the same, and not all suffering is the same.

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you’re like, “Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘injured’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether you can still stand or not depends on the runner themselves.”

This is a quote from Haruki Murakami in reference to his book What I’m Talking About When I Talk About Running. While this is directly related to running, it’s also a great metaphor for life.

As we go through life, it is inevitable that we will experience pain or trauma. People will let you down, situations will spiral out of control, and you will end up on the bad end of an experience a few times in your life.

But as Murakami says, “Suffering is optional,” the Buddha also escaped the same truth: “Attachment is the root of suffering.”

In other words, the level of identification you have with a particular situation or experience indicates the level of suffering you will experience as a result. For example, let’s say you’ve just bought the car of your dreams and someone walks by and smashes the windows, punctures the tires, and brings a sledgehammer to the door.

Chances are, you’d “feel” the damage a lot more than if it were a random stranger’s vehicle. In the second scenario, you might be “sad” for the person depending on your level of empathy, but you wouldn’t “feel” the “pain” as much if it were your vehicle.

Maybe cars aren’t your thing. You can exchange the object for anything that is important to you, and you will find that your attachment or identification with the object immediately increases the perceived value of your own identity. In turn, when “something” bad happens to that object/person/experience, we suffer because we cannot match the meaning we give to the object/person/experience with what is actually happening to us at that moment.

Our attachment to the idea of ​​the object/person/experience increases the level of suffering we experience when it is altered in any way that contradicts our inner expectations.

PTSD is also a form of suffering due to attachment and this is where cannabis can help you detach and move away from what is making you ill and in turn reduce the level of suffering in the user experience. Today we’re going to talk about different ways we can achieve this and why cannabis can be a great tool to help you overcome your affliction.

Why do we identify so strongly with persons/objects/experiences (POE)?

In order for us to act in this reality, we must have a sense of “self.” This is not to be confused with the SELF, which is conscious awareness. The self – lowercase s – is also known in mysticism as “ego”.

The ego is essentially your identity or the collection of stories and experiences you have that informs the SELF about the Self. It’s who you think you are right now.

And if we were to think of that person – you – how would you describe yourself? You might start with some physical characteristics, but then quickly focus on “what you do, the music you like, job, school, relationship, politics, etc…”.

All of these concepts are not the person, but the “interests of the person” that inform “who the person is.”

However, this is still superficial because we also know that we are our pain and our victories, our victories and our losses. We are the culmination of all of our life’s experiences, blended together in this thing we call a body to create the “illusion of self” that bears your name.

It is the avatar that consciousness uses to participate in the world we know.

All of this is natural. However, what happens when trauma triggers self-fixation on a specific POE? They get PTSD, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, panic attacks, etc. When the self is no longer able to construct new experiences without the influence of a past POE, we have an “overbinding” problem.

How cannabis interrupts and catches breath

In order for us to break free from the trance that keeps us trapped and fixated on a specific POE, we have to do something “extraordinary”. You could escape a trance state by practicing mindfulness.

However, most people do not practice mindfulness and/or are too caught up in the “gravity” of the emotional field associated with POE. You are constantly being drawn back into the black hole of despair, only accumulating more darkness until you reach a breaking point.

Cannabis helps by injecting a bit of euphoria into the mix along with a cocktail of cannabinoids, terpenoids, and flavonoids.

When all of this hits the brain, it sets in motion a series of events that alter the normal functioning of the brain. The current is somehow redirected in the brain, which then does not activate the nerve tracts with the same intensity.

This small shift in consciousness is often all you need to break the pain trance. However, it’s important to emphasize that it’s a combination of mindfulness and cannabis that makes this detachment possible.

If you smoke simply to numb the pain, you will not be able to escape the negative emotional feedback loop that is causing the suffering. Cannabis only offers you the opportunity to disidentify with the POE, but you still have to do the work. You can’t wait to just smoke a joint and suddenly all your problems are gone.

This is delusional thinking.

You must participate in the healing process. There is no silver bullet. Healing from the traumatic experiences of the past requires courage and coming to terms with the reality of our situation. It can take time to emotionally detach from POE, but cannabis can make it a little bit easier.

Acceptance is not conformity

I think it’s important to talk a little more about the concept of acceptance and why accepting something “as is” doesn’t mean that you feel “compliant” with it. It simply means that you acknowledge that a particular POE is what it is.

Whether it’s health, finances, relationships, etc., accepting the situation is simply saying, “This is how it is now.”

It’s not like, “Because it’s like this now, I have to do X, Y, or Z as a result…” Instead, it’s easy to become aware of the expression of the moment, how it’s affecting you, how you’d prefer to feel, and behave, and only when you have a neutral emotional connection to the discomfort will you be free to transcend your suffering.

This means that you no longer have an “expectation”. That doesn’t mean you are powerless to do anything about it. If you are honest, there are endless things you could do in the face of any need.

You could end your relationship, your job, your engagement, you could end your agreements, you could just ignore everything. But you’re not willing to do any of that because you’re so attached to the situation.

Once you can let go of your attachment to the situation, you can begin to move freely, look outside the pull of the emotional field, and find better ways of doing things in the future. In a way, when you’re fixated on a problem with no solution, attachment adapts to the situation… you’re stuck in a prison.

How to use cannabis to get rid of your ailment

Cannabis isn’t meant to be the main vehicle in the replacement. However, it can be a great way for you to lessen the intensity of your suffering so you can address the root cause. For example, if you had a bad breakup with your partner, you would be heartbroken, have a knot in your throat, and tears in your eyes.

This is because you have a broken picture in your head where what you thought you had and wanted is no longer a way it was supposed to happen. The “how it was supposed to happen” scenario was the scenario where you placed all your chips – and the universe called – and it turned out you were wrong.

Emotionally you would be broke, fixated on the pain as you see that the pain is the only remaining connection to the core desire of what has been lost. In this case, smoking some weed and taking your mind off the pain is a good thing.

Giving yourself a breather from the pain is a good way to put it into perspective. If the pain doesn’t go away and the cannabis makes you more mindful – just close your eyes, breathe and observe the feelings without judgement.

You will quickly notice that your relationship to pain changes and with it the extent of suffering

So the next time you feel the whole world on your shoulders, take a mindful puff and allow your brain to let go of the suffering. Either take a vacation or use it to take a deep dive into what’s going on. The more mindfulness you practice, the quicker and easier it is to detach from the emotional field of the POE you are facing.

Once you escape gravity, you must actively work to remake the event. This is the second part of the equation. You – as a detached consciousness being – are no longer “consumed” by the past event, but have shifted into the perspective of the viewer. From here, you can reinterpret the event in a more imaginative way.

You accept that the POE happened, but ask the part of you that’s fixated on the pain to find more imaginative ways to express it. In addition, you can give new meaning to the trauma from your current perspective.

“Because XI can do Y, and while I didn’t like X, I can understand how it pushed me to Y…”

Of course, this only scratches the surface of what we can do to break away from our pain.

If you are interested in revisiting these past events, you can always contact me and I may be able to help.

last words

Facing our pain and trauma is not always easy. We tend to run away and hide from it because it changes our perception of who we are, affects our behavior, and gives us a reason why we “can’t”. There is a sense of comfort in the misery that the Self knows and possesses.

However, the SELF knows that this is not the way to exist, and it is up to us to engage in modes that will help us overcome our pain. Whether it’s through mindfulness, meditation, cannabis, breathwork, psychedelics, or therapy, these are all ways for us to face the self and heal from those attachments to painful POEs.

How has cannabis helped you break away from your suffering and reconcile your pain? Let us know in the comments section and let’s find solutions for all of us to process our traumatic events and overcome what’s holding us back.

EMOTIONAL SUFFERING, READ MORE…

CAN MDMA HELP WITH GRIEF, NOW WHAT DO WE KNOW?