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Medical Marijuana – Coaching Lesson

Hi, I’m AJ. Welcome to this month’s coaching lesson. Not long ago I was meditating, sitting down meditating, just clearing my mind. And I felt a little bit of tension, tightness, in my back so I actually decided to lay down. So I laid down on the bed just very, very, very peacefully and I just let go, let go of everything. Let go of all thoughts and just let my mind settle down and clear.

I’ve done this many times but this was a special experience. A very deep and peaceful feeling of relaxation came over my body and mind and for some reason, I don’t know why, my mind just completely cleared. And then suddenly in that moment I had this…this, this profound realization feeling of unity.

Unity, unity, unity comes from the word. We have words like unified, unity.

Unity means everything together as one, everything together as one. And I had this, this realization, this feeling that all things in the universe, myself, the room I was in, everyone I know, all people, all animals, all plants, the planet, the universe, everything connected as one. Which sounds very, y’know…but it was more than just the thought.

Of course, y’know, I’ve read plenty of books about physics and science and spirituality and all these things about this idea, but this was an experience where I really felt it, profoundly, deeply. It was a very powerful experience. Hard to explain in words, really impossible to explain in words.

After that experience, I returned to my normal way of feeling and thinking, my brain functioning as usual again. However, I have noticed that since that time, since that…whatever we want to call it…that awakening, that realization, I’ve felt more peaceful in my life, in my day-to-day life, I’ve just felt more peaceful. I’ve also noticed that I feel more creative. I seem to be getting better ideas. They just come to me more easily. And in general, I just feel happier.

So what happened? What happened? And how does this connect to the topic of medical marijuana?

Well, regarding marijuana, not just medical, just marijuana in general, why do people use it? Now, in medical marijuana they’ll tell you it has all these…these great benefits. Yeah, like a lot of medicines, it’s true.

But most people who use marijuana, who smoke marijuana or eat it or whatever, do it for a different reason, not just for medical purposes but for psychological reasons. And not just marijuana but many other types of drugs and not just nowadays, but throughout history for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Humans have been taking these kinds of drugs. Why?

Now some people just say, oh, they’re bad and because, y’know, they’re evil, and have this kind of closed reaction to this idea of these kinds of drugs. And certainly we can see in the modern world a whole lot of abuse of drugs where people are using these substances in a way to try to escape from pain, escape from boredom, or just a party, in America, woo-hoo party, and just act crazy and stupid. Again, trying to escape or just act childish. That’s certainly true.

And we can also see that many of these drugs, not all, but many of these drugs are physically addictive so they have a very bad effect on the body. Or some are psychologically addictive where people begin to depend on them, depend on them and need those drugs. So all of that is true. But still we have to ask they question, why, why, why, why throughout history have people used these substances? And I believe it’s because they change our consciousness.

That’s what happened to me during that session of meditation. My consciousness changed. See, we know in psychology that we don’t just have one kind of consciousness. Consciousness is awareness. It’s the function of your brain. And indeed, scientists and psychologists have a hard time even defining exactly what is consciousness and they have no clue where it really comes from, scientifically, they can’t prove or disprove how it’s created, where it comes from. This feeling of awareness, this feeling of just being alive and aware of the world.

But we do know, it’s clear to all of us, that there are actually different levels or different types of consciousness, of awareness. Now when we go about our daily lives, we’re in kind of, we could call it everyday consciousness, right? Everyday ways of thinking, everyday ways of being aware. We could even measure this.

Scientifically, there are different kinds of brainwaves that can be measured. They put little, these little electrodes, they’re these little electric kind of wires and they just tape them onto your head and then they can measure the overall, the big waves that are…waves of energy, waves of electricity, that are in your brain at this moment. And when we do that, the scientists, psychologists actually have a way of describing the different kinds of waves and the different waves are indicative, it means they show, different kinds of consciousness.

For example, our everyday way of thinking and perceiving things, noticing things, that’s…those are beta waves. They call them beta waves, just from Greek letter, B, beta. So when you are in a beta mindset, beta consciousness, y’know, you’re generally alert. You probably have a lot of mental chatter, meaning that you’ve got words going through your head.

You’re thinking in words and your thinking in images. So there’s a whole lot of stuff happening inside your brain. You’re thinking about things. You’re noticing things in the world and then you’re thinking about them. You’re basically alert, right? That means you’re awake. That’s called beta consciousness or beta waves.

And some people, they’re in that kind of consciousness all day every single day and they…some people think that that’s the only kind of consciousness there is. They don’t even realize that there are other kinds. But if you think about it for a minute, you’ll know there’s at least another kind of consciousness, sleep.

Because when you’re asleep, some people think well, when you’re asleep, you’re unconscious, right?

You’re not aware of anything but that’s not true. We know when we dream, for example, that we’re conscious because we can remember those dreams sometimes. It’s not normal everyday consciousness, walking around, but there’s still activity happening in your brain.

So, in fact, there are different kinds and different levels of consciousness, many, many, many, but let’s talk about a few that have actually been measured scientifically. There’s something called alpha waves, so it’s just describing the overall wave pattern when they put those electrodes on your brain. Beta waves, normal sort of kind of thinking.

Alpha waves are the kind…it’s the kind of consciousness that’s typical of normal meditation. So if you were to just sit down and just to relax. You can close your eyes, open your eyes, it doesn’t matter. And let’s say just focus on your breathing. And you just focus your attention on your breathing and just do your best to relax.

Now thoughts are going to pop into your head, it’s natural. But just do that basic kind of meditation where you’re awake, you’re still awake, you’re still alert, you still know what’s happening, but physically and mentally, indeed, you’re much more relaxed than normal. Those are called alpha waves or alpha state.

It’s a meditative state. It’s a different kind of consciousness.

Why is that important? Well, it’s because when different…when you’re in a different kind of consciousness, let’s say when you’re in an alpha state, people call it an alpha state, you actually will notice different things. See, one thing about consciousness is that you can think of it as a filter, right?

Think of it as a filter or an opening to the world, right?

Your brain is taking in information from the world, right? There’s all this energy and light and things…from your nose, from your eyes, from your ears, from your body, sensations and feelings, taste, all of your senses. All of this information is coming. And physicists will tell us, scientists will tell us it’s almost infinite, the amount of information coming into your senses, coming at you, in any moment.

So your…normally, your brain can’t handle infinite, right? So you have to filter out some things. You have to not pay attention to some things. Your brain has to actually not notice some things because it’s too much. And so it filters out and your brain focuses on things that are perhaps most important to your everyday life, to your everyday survival.

So when you’re in a beta consciousness state, that beta state, the everyday state, you can think of like the opining is kind of smaller, like this. You’re ignoring a whole lot of stuff, your brain is, unconsciously, automatically, that’s happening. But what happens is when you, let’s say you just go into a basic meditation, you go into the alpha state, that more relaxed state.

What happens is it’s like the opening gets a little bigger so a little bit more information comes into your brain, into your mind. You’ll notice a little bit more. You may have had this experience. If you’ve ever had this experience, for example, just walking outside in nature where, for some reason, you’re just very, very relaxed and your brain gets a little more quiet.

And then you’re looking around and you just notice more than usual, right? More of the details, more of the colors, more of the sounds, you just notice much more. It’s because you’re probably, or you were probably, in more of an alpha state of consciousness where, again, it’s like your brain, your mind, your senses all open up a little more and you get more information. You notice more things.

Now there are even deeper, or we might say wider states of consciousness. There’s something called theta…theta waves. Now theta, if you measure the brain and, again, we look at the brain, a theta state in your brain is a state of very, very, very deep relaxation. And we notice theta waves, we measure them when people are, for example, dreaming, when they’re in a dream state we might notice theta waves.

They’re slower, deeper waves in the brain.

Also, people who meditate very, very deeply where the mind gets very, very quiet, may enter into that theta state. And sometimes in certain kinds of hypnosis and other states, mental states like that, mental conditions like that, are more of a theta state, theta waves they call them. You don’t really need to understand exactly what that is but what is interesting is that it’s, again, it’s a more of an opening, right?

So when you’re in theta, even more information is coming into your brain, right? You’re so relaxed, it’s like the filter opens even more so even more information from the outside world comes in.

What does all this have to do with this month’s topic? Well, I believe that my experience meditating, and I believe the experience that many people have when they’re trying these different drugs, are just changes of the level of consciousness. And these different levels, states of consciousness, are important. And they’re useful to us. They’re useful to us in many ways.

They’re useful to us in practical ways, to help us solve problems, be more creative, more innovative in our lives. And they’re also useful to us in order to give us a deeper sense of wisdom and peace and happiness, and we need that. And the problem I see in modern life is that so many people are only in one state of consciousness, right?

They’re so focused on that beta state, that normal everyday life. I’m working and I’m only focused on what I’m doing right now in my job. And they’re kind of not noticing much, right? And their minds are very busy. They’re thinking, thinking, thinking all the time, all these thoughts, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking about their job, thinking about the future, thinking about the past, worrying about things, constantly, this mental chatter, right?

This mental talking going on non-stop. If you could listen to their minds it would be very, very noisy and that’s that kind of normal everyday beta state. It is useful. It is useful for certain kinds of things. We do need it. Certainly we need it. To get things done in the world we need to be in that kind of more narrow focused, busy mindset.

But…but, if we stay in that kind of mindset, that kind of consciousness too much, we get stressed. And we also lose our connection to the whole world because that beta state is a state where we feel separate from everything else, right? We feel like we’re a separate being, a separate almost like machine in the world and everything else is separate. And that is useful sometimes but it also creates a feeling of loneliness and separation and stress.

So we need to access those other levels of consciousness to be fully human. Now the good news is you don’t need drugs to do it. There are many, many ways that human beings have used for thousands of years to reach these other levels of consciousness. The alpha and the theta states, for example, are very, very useful for creativity and for problem solving, right?

So many times in our life we get stuck with a problem and we just cannot figure it out, we just kind of go in circles, right? Our thinking goes in circles. We just continue to think of the same possible solutions again and again and again. They don’t work but we just keep…we get stuck in this pattern in our mind, in that beta state where we’re just…and we can’t, we can’t think of something new and different, right? We can’t find that great solution, that great innovation.

To find that solution, we have to open up. We have to create those other deeper, more open kinds of consciousness, the alpha and the theta levels. So they can help our lives a lot. And maybe it’s just a financial problem. Maybe it’s a problem you’re having in your family with your son or daughter or whatever. It can be anything. But getting that creativity coming into your life, you can’t do it in that normal mentality. It’s just not good for creativity.

You have to get into these other states of consciousness to really access the creativity because you have to open up so that more information comes in, then you can find better solutions. And then at a deeper, more spiritual level, to have that feeling of peace and wisdom. To not just know in your mind but to really feel deep in your heart that everything is connected, that there’s nothing to fear.

Well, to experience that, again, you have to get to those much deeper levels of consciousness. How can you do it? This is what I want you to try this month. There are many different ways. Let’s talk about the many different ways that don’t involve drugs at all.

Number one, meditation is a time-honored way, a way that people in all different cultures all over the world for thousands and thousands and thousands of years have been using different techniques of meditation to access those alpha and theta levels. What are some of the techniques of meditation you could try?

One very basic one, is the breath meditation I mentioned earlier. You just sit down. You don’t have to even sit, you can just lay down. You just get a relaxed position, you relax, and then you just…you can close your eyes or open, up to you. And you just focus your attention on your breath. When I do it, I usually focus on the end of my nose, just feeling the air going in and out of my nose.

And I’ll do that for…well, sometimes I’ll do it for one minutes just to get a very quick relaxation and calm, just to get that alpha state just a little bit during the day. And other times if I have more time maybe I’ll do it 20, 30 minutes or even an hour. So just focusing on your breath. That’s one way to do it.

Another way to do it, which is what happened when I had that very powerful experience, is just to sit and let…and just don’t think at all. Don’t focus on anything at all, just to let everything in your mind just kind of become quiet. Now some people who teach meditation, they describe this like dirty water. So imagine you have water and it has dirt in it, right? You shake it up and it’s really dirty.

But if you just sit, set the water down and don’t move it. Just let it sit. Maybe the next day the dirt will kind of fall out of the water and eventually the water becomes clear, just by being…letting it be still, all that dirt will kind of fall to the bottom and the water becomes clear. This is a metaphor. So with your mind it’s sort of the same thing.

If you just sit and completely relax, thoughts will come into your head and then they leave, come in and leave. But with time, the thoughts will slow down and they kind of settle down until you just have a very clear and open mind and you become aware of much more. That’s another way of meditating.

Now some people prefer a more physical way of meditating. One way you can do that is with sound.

You can just say a sound. It can be any sound, to be honest. It can be anything. Y’know, in India sometimes they say “Ommmm, ommmm.” And, again, instead of focusing on your breath, you’re focusing on a sound. The reason for doing this is by focusing on one thing it helps your mind become more quiet and it gets you into the alpha state. Your brain gets into the more relaxed, more open state.

So you can focus on an image, y’know. If you’re religious, it could be a religious image. It could just be a picture. It could be anything. It doesn’t matter. But just focusing your mind like that. The same with the sound. You can say anything.

Yoga is another way people throughout the centuries have used by focusing on a physical kind of activity and focusing their mind completely on that physical activity and noticing how their body feels as they do it.

Again, it allows the mind to get quiet and to get more into the alpha and even maybe theta levels. So what all of these things have in common are quieting your mind and getting into the deeper brainwaves.

Hypnosis, now that’s another way you can do it. You can do self-hypnosis. Now with this word hypnosis, y’know, some people have the idea, y’know, the watch and you’re doing mind control. That’s sort of the fake hypnosis I would say that we have from this image from movies and books. And there were people doing that but modern hypnosis, modern, more scientific or psychological hypnosis is really more about, again, getting your brain to relax so you get into the alpha or the theta brain level.

And then again, you’re more open to suggestion. You’re more open to new ideas. You’re more open to new information. And you can do this yourself. You can even find books about self-hypnosis and you can record yourself and listen to the audio. Sometimes you can even just read something and it helps to put yourself into an alpha or theta level and to open up again. That’s all it is. That’s all hypnosis really is.

Nothing to be…it’s not magic or anything like that.

And, y’know, there are many other ways to do this. But the point is, by doing this you start using more of your brain, right? The problem in modern life is that when we’re just watching TV and going to work and dealing with everyday problems, is that we stay in a very narrow kind of consciousness, that beta level.

And we’re just always stuck there all the time and we’re not using the rest of our brain, the rest of our consciousness which is so huge. There’s so much more information coming in and we have so much more intelligence that we can access if we will use all of these brainwaves, all of these brain states, all of these kinds of consciousness.

So this month what I want you to do is to choose one of these methods, meditation, it can be quiet focusing on your breath, it might be chanting. It might be a kind of physical exercise like yoga, selfhypnosis. It doesn’t matter. You decide. And just practice this month, every day, every day to put yourself into that relaxed more quiet state of mind.

And that’s all. Without a goal. Don’t have a goal like “I must solve this problem. I must get a new idea. I must be more creative. I must be more happy. I must, y’know, become enlightened like the Buddha.” No. No goal. Just do it and see what happens. Do it every day, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, as much as you can. You could do it several times during the day for little short times.

Just allow your brain to quiet down. Get into those deeper levels of alpha and theta and see what happens. You’re going to be happily surprised. I think you’re going to start finding you’re getting new ideas. You’re going to become more creative. But even at a deeper level, especially those theta levels, you’re going to learn faster and learn better and you’re going to start to feel more peaceful, more happy, more alive. And for me, those are the best benefits of all.

So this month practice a little meditation, yoga, whatever you want, but get yourself into those other brain states, those other brain mindsets. Use more of your brain this month. See you next time. Bye for now.