Many people claim that marijuana is harmless, and they make reasonable arguments in favor of its recreational use. But when we investigate marijuana as spiritual practitioners, the View is a little different.
1. Arguments supporting the legalization of marijuana for recreational use are often made in the context of a comparison to alcohol and the failures of prohibition. But if we are in the process of trying to wake up, marijuana is not very similar to alcohol.
As with every medicinal, ritual or psychotropic herb, cannabis has a unique personality, or way of acting in the world. Some people would call this the plant spirit. The signal action of cannabis is to induce a lack of clarity in general, but also a special kind of lack of clarity about the herb itself.
This process is easiest to understand in the context of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air and space.
In the beginning of someone’s relationship with marijuana, the natural bristling clarity of space element manifests as a vague kind of spaciness lacking in brilliance and precision. Still, there is an echo here of the sense of wonder experienced by realized yogis.
Clarity can feel too intense or even painful when our elements are unbalanced. Marijuana shuts down space-element clarity. This feels relaxing. But prana is becoming more unseated and disorganized. Healthy relaxation happens when prana is seated. Despite temporary relaxation, long-term, the nervous system is jangled.
Over the long term, quite a bit of exhaustion and stagnation develops. A heavy, tired, cloudy miasma sets in, and sometimes a dull, chronic anger and paranoia. Wind element is exhausted. It’s hard to find the get-up-and-go needed to get on with one’s life. Clarity is further impaired. But you still might think that everything is fine.
3. Even though most legalization schemes only allow folks to grow a limited number of plants for their own use, the fact that a single plant can fetch 5-20k is driving more people into the business of selling cannabis illegally. This creates stress for those people, participation in a potentially violent chain of illegal activities (including environmental degradation due to bad growing practices) and more karmic entanglements. If you are a practitioner who sells marijuana, the situation is even worse. The simple fact is, you cannot build a life of waking up on the backs of people you are helping to put to sleep.
However, If you are a spiritual practitioner, or want to be, my advice to you is to not use cannabis in any form. The compassionate way is to understand the specificity of the karma (activity) of cannabis and to educate our children and others so that they can have more clarity and move forward toward greater awakening.