I’ve gone through all the notes you have sent me concerning Yesod. Most of it I had read, some I had worked with, and the last, large document of the 22 notes, I had only skimmed prior to this evening. I’d like to review everything thats happened in this sphere, so we can move on; the idleness has set in.
In many ways, I can see this sphere’s influence over so many aspects of my life. My son was born in this sphere, on the day of the Full Moon, to a clan whose patron is Artemis herself. Things have been waxing and waning, I have struggled with and redefined my defining addiction, and my lifes work has become clearer with the launch of my first information product, the culmination of four years of study.
Now I understand why I have been inexplicably drawn to Purple as the branding color for the ALF. Indigo, violet, these shades are all colors of this sphere, and I have been designing websites and PDFs with this color palette for weeks.
I had a revelation about the human experience, thanks to catching my son and considering his experience as an entity. Within the womb, he is in Earth, ensconced in the world around him. He then moves into the element of Water, where his existence is surrounded around his new digestive system, and providing and managing the liquids that come in and go out is a large part of my parenthood. For years he will be working out the consumption and elimination of resources, until he attains a state of flow.
As a child he will be hungry for learning, filling the width of his mind with Air. I remember my long decades as a scholar, relishing every opportunity to learn new things. For the time, I thought there would be no better purpose to life than to study and learn all day long.
As I grew into a man I understood the importance of Fire. The Will is what allows you, as an individual, to control your world, create your world, and define your place in it, by declaring it through Will. This is now my stage, the stage of manifetation; and this is the path of the elements that we walk to maturity.
Being mature, however, comes with a set of vices, and as co-creators endowed with Will, we can choose our vices. While there are subconscious and repressed influences behind all vices and addictions, with a proper application of will any addiction can be temporarily, and sometimes permanently, nullified.
I have made frequent periods of abstinence part of my practice in my lifelong addiction to marijuana. Spending the occasional month without smoking gives my body a chance to cleanse, my tolerance a chance to raise, and my mind a chance to clear. I typically have gone through a brief period of abstinence a couple of times every year.
Yesod has given me greater opportunity to examine my addiction, because I find myself coming up on a year without stopping daily pot smoking.
I’ve had occasion to examine this state, ask myself if it is appropriate to my life, if it needs to be changed, what the causes of it are, and how to handle these causes in the future.
[pausing, actually, to light a joint]
The only reason I struggle is because there is a part of me deep down that still believes that drug use is inherently limiting to the human system. (I won the contest in 4th grade to design the DARE program’s new poster for our classroom.) I started smoking post for predictable reasons (I was a long haired smartass in a poor suburb who hung out with smokers) and I continued smoking pot because…I like it.
A lot.
My mind is so active, especially due to my chronic caffeine addiction, that I can’t readily ease myself into the state of mind necessary for relaxation or meditation. I use it as a segue, to step into a different mindset, like I’m changing my mental clothes.
I also react in an odd way to pot: I don’t get hungry. I actually use it to put off hunger pains, because there was a large part of my late teenage years where I sometimes didnt have enough money for food, but I always had pot. Smoking would keep my food intake down to once a day.
While under the influence of pot, I often feel the urge to do vigorous exercise, or enter deep meditation, and I slide into doing these things so easily, in a way that is totally different from my non-stoned state. When sober, I have to plan exercise, and set aside time for it, and prep for it, and argue with myself about whether I’m going to do it or not;
or I can smoke a joint, and fifteen minutes later I’m fitting yoga poses into everything I’m doing. I start juggling, and focusing my reflexes really intently.
I fall into dance.
I am called to move into ritual, and engage with the spiritual currents I can feel coursing through heightened awareness.
My accomplishments while I’m stoned are, in large part, responsible for the quality of person that I am today. I wouldn’t be nearly as healthy, as fit, as calm, or as productive without pot.
And, most importantly, I would be a shitty father without marijuana.
While I’m stoned, I can give my kids my full and complete attention. I can shut my mind up and just play. It’s become so essential to our family life now that whenever I am transitioning out of focused time (work, or running errands, etc) into a time when I am going to be hanging out with the kids, I just get stoned. I hang out with my kids…everyday.
Kids are a constant and unending demand on your time and attention. They require patience in order to handle the level of interruption that is constantly present, and patience comes easier with pot.
Most importantly, as a Capricorn, I can turn into a grumpy bitch sometimes. Pot is an easy, surefire way to turn that around, 95% of the time.
So as an emotional management tool, pot is really incredible for me, in a lot of different areas of my life. I asked myself last week, why do I keep thinking I need to stop?
Part of it is the illegality of it. Heavy drug laws here. Transitioning from having a medical card and being able to walk through downtown Portland smoking a joint – into a country where all drug users are equated with drug smuggler – it’s given me an opportunity to reassess.
Looking at everything, I’m recognizing my feelings that I should find a reason to stop smoking for a while come from the lower unconscious, which is one of the aspects of Yesod.
I thought it would be the other way around – that my addiction would have a deep seated lower unconscious root. But I really don’t struggle with my pot addiction like I do with caffeine, or like I did with tobacco. (Those are the only three drugs I’ve ever done, so this is the breadth of my addiction repertoire.) My struggle, especially since we moved into Yesod, has been over how to manage the withdrawal period, and find other ways to keep my emotional state on an even keel, because I obviously have to be quitting smoking for a period of time coming up soon. This is the longest consecutive period of smoking I have had without a break since I was probably nineteen. My habits feel off balance, since I’m accustomed to taking a break after smoking consecutively for so long.
For the first time I’m beginning to consider the idea that I could, if I chose, be a daily pot smoker for the rest of my life.
My lower-unconscious reaction to that idea is that I can’t expect to keep my wits about me or my body healthy.
This is despite the fact that while under the influence of pot, I have been able to create and sustain a business, I’m happier, and I’m physically healthier, due to my penchant for wanting to dance, exercise, and do yoga when I’m high.
And I wouldn’t be a third of the magician I am without pot.
So I’m grateful for this time in Yesod, to see that I don’t have a problem with trying to keep an addiction away; I have a problem with allowing a beneficial addiction to be a permanent part of my life.
This is a very different struggle than the one I thought I was having.
