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The ‘You Should Do Drugs’ Argument for Not Doing Drugs

Most of our frustration with life comes from our desire to control things. If you think about the last time you were frustrated or stressed, you’ll soon discover that you were probably feeling that way because life wasn’t behaving as you wanted it to. Time was going too quickly, or people weren’t doing their jobs, or you weren’t exercising self-control. It’s always one thing or another that is out of our control, and this can cause us daily frustration.

For most of us, our Selves are the things we wish we could control the most. But no matter how hard we try, we’ll find ourselves thinking or doing things of which we don’t approve.

For those of us who value control, we can hardly imagine anything worse than becoming a pot smoker. But maybe we should think about it a little more . . .

Staring At Your Hand

‘Wow, dude. Check this out!’

Yep, that’s someone on pot, staring at their own hand like an idiot. Could there be anything more pathetic?

But wait! Let’s consider, for a moment, that instead of looking at our own hand, we’re looking at a beautiful meal that was just set before us.

We want to be amazed at the meal, don’t we? We want to be capable of smelling the aromas, seeing the colors and textures, tasting the incredible flavors. In fact, our idea of a great meal is one we can really sink ourselves into and truly enjoy.

When we look more carefully, we find that any of us who want to experience the Now are after that same experience. We want to be able to look out the window and marvel at the blue sky and the billowy clouds. We want to be able to look over at our loved ones and see how incredible they are. We want to take a sip of wine and really taste it. In short, we want to be amazed by the world again, but we know, deep down, that the world has become pretty grey and boring. Nothing really amazes us any more, unless it’s very out-of-the-ordinary.

In fact, we might even think it would be wonderful if we could look at our hand and see how very amazing it is.

Seeing the Now, we imagine, would be like seeing everything fresh in every moment – the world would once again become beautiful and enchanting.

Why Not Smoke Pot?

So why don’t you just light up? If you’re resistant to using drugs, it’s probably because you don’t want to lose control. If you smoked pot, you might be afraid that you’d be totally out of control – no longer ‘in your senses’. And if you kept smoking pot, then you’d get ‘dumb’, as tends to happen with those who use that particular herb. The fear is that pretty soon you’d always find the world to be really cool, but you’d be so dumb that it wouldn’t really matter.

If we look carefully, we’ll see something quite odd in this reasoning. We’ll see that we want to control our amazement. We want power over it. Otherwise what would be wrong with being a pot smoker?

No, we want to be smart, in control, and then be amazed by our meal or the clouds or our own hand.

Imagine a Zen master, in total control of her being, who then sits down and fully enjoys a meal. We contrast that with our idea of a pot smoker, who enjoys the meal just as much, but thinks that anything is amazing. You might as well have fed them hot dogs instead of lobster, since they’re too ‘out of it’ to tell the difference.

Do you see what it is we want? We want controlled amazement. In effect, we want to be amazed when we deem it is appropriate. We can be amazed at the lobster, but we certainly don’t want to be caught gaping in utter amazement at a hot dog.

Where Control Gets Us

Controlled amazement. Think about that for a moment. What kind of amazement is controlled amazement?

We do the same thing with passion, and with love, and with our emotions. We want to control these things, but as soon as we try to control them, we squeeze all the life out of them, and all we can do is experience a pale ghost of what passion, love, amazement, or emotions really are.

Then, because we want the world to be beautiful again, we have to try to experience more and more amazing things. Passion isn’t really alive in us any more, so we have to dress in black leather and buy the Z-38 turbocharged tri-tip vibrator in order to make passion ‘powerful’ enough that we can feel it again. Our Love turns old and weary, and we have to read magazines that tell us how we can once again get romance back into our lives. When we’ve squashed Amazement, we have to start making ever-more fabulous movies and listen to music and visit the Grand Canyon in order to get amazed. And after we’ve killed our Emotions by trying to control them, we start having to replace the emotions we once had with new and more noticeable ones, like drama and stress and frustration and anger.

It’s as if we think we want control, and direct all our life energies toward it, but in reality, we really want to be out of control! After all, who would want to play a video game where you never missed your target and every puzzle was easily solved and you always got the most points possible?

No! Life is only fun if it has challenges, and challenges involve being out of control. By striving for control, we’re playing an endless game where we’re defeating our own aspirations.

What is the Zen Master’s Secret, Then?

In a very real sense, the Zen master has relinquished control. She’s seen the true nature of her Self, and in that seeing, has found that our usual ideas of control just don’t work.

Control is self-defeating. It never really gets you anywhere in life, and it is actually the surest possible way you can guarantee that you’ll remain stuck in dualistic thought for the rest of your life. The amazing thing is that you are fully capable of perfect action without exerting any control at all. Just like a tree that grows in the forest without any direction from a ‘Will’, or the sun that shines absolutely perfectly, you are capable of perfect action at all times – without any control at all.

This is the secret – when we really cease all of our effort, we are able to see the world Just As Is, and our actions in the world emerge from us perfectly.

That Sounds Confusing. Maybe I’ll Just Smoke Pot.

The reason that drugs of any kind aren’t the same as non-dualism or Awakening is that if you look carefully, you’ll see that drugs are just another way to control amazement.

When I take the drugs, I get amazed, and when I don’t take them, I’ve returned to my ‘normal’ way of seeing. People take drugs for the same reason that people watch TV – their ‘regular’ life leaves something to be desired, so that they need television or drugs to ‘turn on the amazement’.

In this way, we can see that taking drugs, watching TV, trying to control our lives, and even making an effort to ‘achieve’ enlightenment – all these things are really the same. They spring from trying to control the organic beauty we call life. And our control crushes her. And then we try to dress her up and paint pretty cosmetics on her to make her appealing again.

As we so often do, we’re spending all our time trying to solve problems that we’re creating. All we really have to do is see Now, and the world will be beautiful once again.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Understanding Dualism. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.