Three of us were having a conversation about weed experience. All three, weed smokers at some point of our lives. One (me) already quit, another a sporadic user and another a regular one.
The sporadic user said weed didn’t do him much good. I said the same.
‘It’s because you haven’t smoked much. Once you get used to it, it won’t harm you,’ the regular user said.
‘No, I have tried it a lot! In fact, I have done everything to conquer it. I have tried to enjoy the mental games by strengthening myself. I have tried to use it, exploit it and conquer it. I have tried to enjoy the game it plays with my mind and smirk at it. But it just doesn’t work for me,’ I said.
After that, I got excited and shared one of my experiences with weed:
I was alone in an office one night. Everyone had left. I had some weed given to me by a friend. I went to the roof and smoked a stick, trying to tell myself I was now strong enough for weed to bother me. Strong enough to fight the paranoia!
For half-an-hour, I was strong. I was excited at the idea of having conquered the beast that had been responsible for many fits of anxiety, paranoia and depression. I was excited at the thought of having been a strong person now.
45 minutes in, I started to get dizzy and my mouth went dry. The thoughts were normal — largely because I was doing everything in my strength to stop a few from coming. I thought it was time for me to leave. Feeling dizzier and drier in the mouth by the moment, I shut down the computer, turned off the lights, locked the doors and left in my car. Aphrodisia had kicked in and I was in a hurry to go to my bed, open my laptop and do what lonely young men do!
The distance between the office and my home was 10 minutes. I must have been driving for about 5 minutes — still feeling dizzy — when I reached to a major junction. Cars and bikes with headlights stormed from all directions. I got blinded for a while. But I tried to maintain the traffic discipline and drove. But things had changed:
I got nauseous. Seriously dehydrated and experienced vertigo.
I struggled to keep my hands on the steering. My legs were shivering. I thought I could drive no more. But it was still rush hour so stopping the car wasn’t a good idea. I kept driving. It kept getting worse. My heartbeat went faster and louder. I don’t know what I did and how, but I reached home.
At home, as I parked the car and shut the gates. A strange question hit me:
‘I hit-and-run someone, didn’t I?’
I got more nauseous. Severely dehydrated and experienced serious vertigo.
‘I have hit-and-run!’ kept popping in my head.
‘The police will be here anytime now.’
Of course, the police didn’t come and after the attack was over I could recall clearly that I hadn’t done anything as such. But the impact was devastating. I don’t remember having smoked it since.
‘Yeah, it happens to some. Such people shouldn’t smoke,’ the regular user said after I narrated the incident.
‘How’s it with you?’ I asked.
‘Oh! I get hi~~~gh. I feel rela~~~xed. And the sexual side of it is just unbe~lie~vable. When I fuck while high, I go on and on and on…’ he said.
I wish I could use weed like that, now that I am married, I said to myself.
But why does it work on some and not on others, I wondered.
‘It must have something to do with blood-pressure and all,’ I had been explaining myself.
But yesterday I had a different perspective.
Maybe it isn’t about blood-pressure, maybe it is about character!
The regular user I talked about earlier is one of those fun-loving guys. He likes to go to parties, on trips to Goa and Thailand, watch and talk football. Take one day at a time.
Once I had tried talking classical music and philosophy with him but he kind of scolded me by telling me those things were for the boring or for the old.
‘Don’t waste your time on those things. Life is for enjoyment. Enjoy!’ he had said.
Of course, my version of enjoyment does include classical music and philosophy. And introspection and self-awareness and self-enquiry and mental exploration and all that!
But he isn’t someone who will sit and wonder why he or the universe exists. I will bet every dime on the fact that he doesn’t sit idle in front of a lake thinking of how deep he has reached in his wisdom about life. Nor will he sit in front of a sea questioning whether he should be powerful in society or not. He lives by the day and does what’s supposed to be done by a modern youth.
There’s where I see a difference in character:
I have done all those things (Sitting idle in front of a lake, sea, etc.)
I see myself as too self-aware (emotionally too) for weed. Yes, it does make all people self-aware but maybe not to the extent as it impacts me. Because I get emotionally traumatized by it. Because maybe I suffer from emotions too much. I have always been troubled by them. That’s why I say, it’s in the character.
Maybe I am being judgmental or maybe I am missing a trick or two. That’s why I would love to know your experience with this thing called weed.
The Process of a answering this How To live question Begins With another question:
How am I feeling right now?
It should always start with this question. It should always be about this question.
But how do we track things as elusive and vague as our feelings?
Why do I keep coming back to these questions whenever I feel prominently about something? More important than that, Why are these questions even relevant when I can tune into any form of entertainment available in abundance and forget about my feelings (wash them) and shut my thoughts?
I don’t think I can get into the first, second and third questions without answering the fourth.
Yes, I have used sports, games, music, movies, TV shows, novels, friends, cigarettes, coffees, teas, alcohols — I have used them all in plenty throughout my life. I have used them all to get out of all sorts of feelings dwelling inside me. Good, Bad. Get out of feelings intolerable. Even getting out of feeling enjoyable to me as a celebration.
I have used them all to shut-down the thoughts that those feelings have generated in me. And those things of entertainment have helped me. They’ve helped me get out of the dreaded zone. But always temporarily. Unwanted feelings haven’t stopped. In fact, feelings haven’t stopped. These days, whenever I think of going into entertainment or distractions to get rid or celebrate my feelings, I am reminded of their transience. Of their ineffectiveness.
A person who goes to entertainment all the time never has to understand and feel the feelings. But the question remains: Why should anyone have to understand and feel diverse feelings when one can feel ‘entertained’ all the time?
In my case, it maybe because I have also done time of introspection in my life. And once you go inside yourself, you never completely come out, do you?
I got into introspection all those years back because I wanted to know what life was really about. I wanted to know what I was. I wanted to know why I was existing. I wanted to dig and reveal all sorts of feelings and emotions possible. I wanted to live completely. I wanted to live colorfully.
I haven’t seen those people who live for entertainment feel much about things. I have seen myself not feeling too much about things when I have surrendered myself completely to entertainment.
So, understanding your feelings is important if you want to live an introspective, profound and colorful life. You can use entertainment as a bonus. As one color in all the colors of your life. But you cannot make entertainment the only color of your life. (If you want to have a profound and colorful life, that is.) Yes, I can wash my feelings and shut my thoughts whenever I want by merely pressing y in my browser address bar, but I want so much more from life, don’t I?
With that out of the way, I want to share how I try to trace my feelings.
First thing is to be feeling-conscious:
‘How and What am I feeling right now?’
It’s difficult to do this all the time. In fact, I feel lucky whenever this question does grace me at all. But it’s sporadic. I have been trying my best to increase the frequency.
The thing to do is to try to stop yourself from getting lost in your feelings, which means from getting lost and carried by your thoughts. I see thoughts as slaves of feelings.
This is contradictory. How do I make my life colorful and enjoy the feelings when I stop myself from feeling the feelings?
My experience is that being feeling-conscious gives you some amount of control over what you are feeling. This control is important because then you can decide what to do with the feeling. This act of being conscious itself is control. You can then decide how much suppression or allowance you are going after. For me this control is important because I have found even good feelings to be intolerable for me.
Let me share something with you
A few days back, I went to a party, Got drunk and shared things with people with whom I usually don’t share things much. The next morning was devastating. I wanted to kill myself. I couldn’t stand to go back to recalling the previous night, yet my mind wouldn’t allow me to go anywhere else than there. That day passed in intense suffering. Only time shall heal this misery, I said to myself. Until…
Immediately, the intolerable hangover vanished as I started searching for words to describe whatever I was feeling.
Humiliation
The word appeared as if by magic. And the feeling and thoughts that had made me suicidal, vanished, as if my magic.
But it wasn’t magic.
It was a pretty simple thing: Introspection. Feeling-consciousness.
I don’t want to and have to lie to you. After that, I was in control of my feelings. I pushed as if I was pushing something physical and heavy and successfully stopped humiliation from appearing in me again.
Trivia: I had spent the day watching a stupid movie for an escape.
The mere act of being conscious of my feeling and naming it worked for me. Of course, the humiliation hasn’t completely vanished, but it is something I know-of and am in relative control of as of now.
Let me answer the questions I asked in the beginning.
How am I feeling right now?
It should always start with this question. It should always be about this question.
But how do we track something that is as elusive and vague as our feelings?
We try to increase the frequency of the question above and name the prevalent feeling. Use Words. Use terms. Name it! Human beings have managed to create words for almost all the feelings, and even if they haven’t, it’s your chance to coin something epic.
Get in control of your feelings. This will help you control your thoughts. If you manage to do it, you will live a profound and colorful life. You won’t need to be dependent on the entertainers. You can use them in your own accord to provide you entertainment whenever you feel like having one!
Whatever you go through in your childhood will have a profound impact on the rest of your life. This is because in our lives – like in the world – a thing will cause the following event and that event will in turn be the cause of another and so on.
While this holds true for all phases of our life, childhood is especially significant because it is then that we change the most. That’s the phase when we are the most passive and relatively unconscious of ourselves and the surrounding. This passivity and lack of proper consciousness means we are not at all in control of ourselves and whatever happens to us happens without our consent and will. We are at the mercy of other entities. Which means, our actions of that phase are reactive. We are malleable.
I reach back to the days my childhood whenever I try to understand the thoughts and feelings I currently behold. Almost everything takes me back there. Everything seems to have its roots there and then.
For example, today during my evening walk, I tried to understand my passion towards the unacceptable things in society. My digging took me to the stage of my life when I was mentally ill-treated and bullied by someone who was acceptable in society. I can’t recall being fascinated towards the unacceptable before my close encounter with that person and the ill-treatment/bullying I got from him and his supporters. This must have developed a sense of rebellion in me which prolongs to this day and which has largely shaped a lot of my crucial decisions.
Of course, that person must have been valid from his point of view for his ill-treatment and he might not even consider it to be an ill-treatment, but what that did to me shaped not only my behaviour but my character and entire personality. He was conscious, I was not!
Of course, I don’t have an issue with how I ended up, but I could have ended up worse if I hadn’t dared to work on my self and if I hadn’t dared to stand-up to rotten values.
What do I take away from this?
Be careful with things that are malleable and sensitive. Tougher things will resist you and will probably shape you instead. Don’t express that frustration of yours on weaker ones. Take care of softer things if you’ve got balls. If you’ve really got it, try to shape things bigger and stronger than you!
P.S. Maybe that person was more unconsious than the childhood me?!!!
Each time you are self-aware of what you are doing for a living, you realize that you are on the lookout for the next true revolutionary thought, idea, so that you can sell them on platforms such as these and earn your money or things that humans are built to earn.
This way, you may flatter yourself by seeing yourself as a ‘natural-being’ because you are like a tiger or an eagle, or a pigeon or a sparrow:
Constantly on the lookout for the next meal.
This also means, you are not like a domesticated animal in that you are not fed based on your service to others.
But there’s a major difference between you and them (nature’s foragers), in that, what you are after is not the meal itself. In fact, if you are not after viral-content but are rather after some true thought, idea, then what you have collected could be the most worthless thing for any creature. Worse, it could be worthless for you in terms of its value in the marketplace. Take the idea that I have built this particular story upon for instance: I cannot guarantee that this will be read or listened-to by people such that my views and reading time go up. In fact, my experiences have time and again shown me this outcome in the form of proverbial slaps!
On a personal level, this hardly matters for me, because I would have already gathered my share of true experience and knowledge from the exploration and the writing. But, such ‘true’ experience and knowledge aren’t foods, clothes, houses, etc. in that they can’t be eaten, worn and they won’t save me from the winter cold. Which means it matters a lot from a professional level.
What am I trying to take-away from all this? What am I trying to say?
This life of an online creator is amazing. It is amazing in that it allows one to go wherever one wants in search of whatever thoughts, ideas, ‘truths’, stories one wants to discover. But it comes at a bargain. There has to be a certain ‘smartness’ if one wants to take it out of personal use and earn ‘valuable’ things from it.
The ‘smartness’ required is of productive-story-selection.
You have to be able to winnow:
You have to be able to carefully select (productive) publish-worthy true thoughts, ideas, stories from the mass of all conceived thoughts, ideas and stories.
You are like a forager but a forager who can’t directly consume the thing discovered. A forager who has to winnow the thing discovered and distinguish between things suitable for personal use and professional one. A forager who has to then come into the marketplace and then try to sell the thing discovered.
As a creator, you are like a beast but a beast that hunts for thoughts, ideas, and stories. A beast that then filters the things hunted and comes to the marketplace trying to sell whatever seems fit for selling (from the perspective of the beast.)
Q: But what about all those who teach you to express everything without winnowing?
A: My life experiences have taught me that people in general do not care about you, let alone your thoughts, ideas and creations.
But there is nothing unethical with this, is there? In fact, everything is natural about it. Most hunting animals do know whom they want to prey upon. And the reason they prey is for their survival. You have all the right to winnow sellable thoughts, ideas.
Most fascinating thing is that there’s even something called surplus killing where certain animals at certain times kill just for fun. Which should give you further inspiration and reasons for winnowing. Seek all forms of true thoughts, ideas, stories; sell those that can feed you and use the remaining for your personal use.
Q: Which type of creator are you?
(We are not considering killing for self-defence and all that)
A Human-Creator: A human-creator is a creator who tries to feed-off almost every type of thought and idea. This type of creator is experimentative. Of course, some will be successful and some won’t, but like a true human, such a creator wants everything and keeps an eye on everything too. They will use the useful and keep the rest for potential future use. Force marketeers too fall into this category.
A Crow-Creator: A crow-creator is a creator who creates part-time: Like crows foraging. If there’s an easy meal to be had somewhere they will eat there. But if there isn’t any, they will be out there trying everything. Just as human-creators, they will try and taste everything. For them, it’s just about the earning.
Scavenger-Creator: A creator can also be a scavenger. I have seen a lot of those and I fear I will become one. A scavenger-creator lives-off dead or second-/third hand things: Thoughts, ideas, stories, knowledge that others have conceived. The scavenger-creator takes others’ works and re-interprets them for the consumption of the mass-public. You can find a lot of those in the form of informative YouTube channels with millions of subscribers.
Eagle-Creator: This type of creator knows what he/she is supposed to create and sell. They are precise and meticulous. Niche creators you can call them. You don’t see them experimenting much.
What about the winnowing creator?
A type of creator who has a niche. This is because I have used the word ‘true’ up there. Which means, this type of creator cannot settle with publishing everything. The search for the true makes them like eagle-creators. But the search for truth in everything makes them human-like.
So?
They look half eagle, half humans:
Half-Human, Half-beast.
(Maybe we should take our favorite animal and try to be like them)
A trick for Self-Improvement. Unfasten all the seat-belts that bound you to seats. Wear something comfortable. Stretch your body parts. Take some deep breaths and get ready to go for a long thought drive.
A thought drive is a drive where you free yourself from the cycle of static sitting or sleeping and hence, free yourself from many shitty and sleepy thoughts.
A thought drive is a drive where you move around in such a manner that it sets the platform for your thoughts to take you to amazing mental places to see spectacular things.
A thought drive is a drive where your movement acts as an accelerator and the thoughts that you will have inside as the views you would see from your physical vehicle window.
How do you go for a thought drive?
First, you have to be willing to see what your thoughts have got to show and tell you. After that, you have to move around. But, you have to let go of all those meditative, sedative mind-control, self-control, god-focus, self-focus lessons that shitty and sleepy gurus have preached to you. You have to be ready to listen to your thoughts. Listen to what they have always been meaning to tell you but you have always been shutting them off because you fell prey to the scam of some philosophical conman.
After all this, go for it. Move around in whichever pattern you feel comfortable. Long walks, short walks, to and fros, stand and stares. Find the sweet spot of movement, like you do with your car seat. And then welcome your thoughts. Accept them. Invoke them. Do not use dull philosophical theories to understand them or control them. Let them flow. Let them come. Accept them.
But how do you make sure you don’t get lost?
That’s a good question. Thoughts are stingy and lethal at times. that’s why you have to learn to be strong. You have to learn to be able to take every sting with a smile and you hve to be able to respond every slap with a deep breath.
Once you are ready with that and good to go for a drive, you have to begin with a single thought. It could be an image, a sound, an idea, concept, desire, goal, person, computer, star, whatever. Yes, right before you go for the drive, begin with a single thought. Then, finish the drive by coming back to the same thought. Finish it by bring the original thought back. And notice how that thought looked before the drive and after. If you manage to do that, you will not only have discovered a lot of things, but you will also have returned to your home safely!
Hey, I am Adesh.
Welcome to my world! I am a Life & Mind Explorer, Self-Explorer,
Creator, Writer.
Come take a journey of mind, life and the world with me through this website.
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