Cannabis and The Sacred Choice
As the group gathered for a sunrise ritual on the Sumer Solstice, there was a palpable sense that everything in the circle of life is indeed Sacred. This Northern California earth-based ceremony on Tuesday was a blessing for life and an often-misunderstood plant.
The land came alive as the rays of the golden sunrise sparkled from the east, infused by the prayers of a circle of people remembering how it feels to be in union, connected to nature and to the hearts of one another. An intention to honor the land, honor the elements, honor the spirits and the ancestors, and to sanctify a newly planted cannabis crop, became an awakening to the ancient ways that always held the key to the perfection in the unity of all of life.
How consumers will be touched will ultimately be up them, but at the very least they will receive something from a harvest that was imprinted at its onset with loving presence in recognition of the ecosystem and the circle of life.
Cannabis was demonized by our culture for generations. Now that it is being seen for its vast array of medicinal properties and the promise of big money for business, we are faced with choices of how we will interface with this recently legalized plant. It can be used to heal, and it can be used to escape. Even the California lawmakers are preparing a fund to support addiction that may be fueled by the recreational legality of this plant as a “gateway drug.”
I prefer the terminology of “medicine” in this case, versus “drug.” A drug is used to mask and check people out of the feeling and sensations of being alive. Medicine is used to heal, to make whole. So how cannabis is approached is always a choice.
In addition, how marijuana supports a growing list of health concerns, when used for the right reasons, this plant has the capacity to usher us deeper inside of ourselves through its transformational properties, to awaken insight, creativity, and connection to one’s self, to nature and to the divine presence that lives in all things.
Whether you like it or not, the use of cannabis is becoming widespread and will continue to grow in our society. How will you choose to interface with its presence in your life, and those of your friends and family members, even your children? To step into all things with reverence, holding a space for expansion and self-inquiry, is always the choice that leads to the red road, the right road, the path of the illuminated heart.
Our prayers in the cannabis field yesterday were about that, creating unity and bringing consciousness to the beginning stages of the life of these plants, to launch them down the red road. With this, there is cohesion and a sense of the Sacred among the growers, whose energies will stay with the plants through harvest, through distribution and hopefully in how they touch the people who choose to ingest them as drugs, or as medicine.
When we sacralize in a ceremonial setting, we bring connection to all parts of whoever and whatever is present, including the unseen elements and spirits who ultimately make life possible on this planet. The ways of ritual are ancient, and when we touch into one another is this form, we come to remember a special something we may not even have known had been missing. After more than 20 years sharing in earth based rituals, I have seen for each person how these ways naturally fill a longing inside for closeness, for reverence and for connection to the entire circle of life and mystery of being an embodied Soul.
I am blessed to be a carrier of these Sacred ways, that in this case, served to deepen presence to an agricultural project and to the hearts and minds of the people joined in business, as they look to bring prosperity to their families and the greater community.
