tinyana: the mysteries of hysteries in histories.

So, looking over this whole piece of work, it becomes clear to me what's missing.

I actually answered very few of the questions I raised here, so i'm just going to take a minute to wrap a few up.

What happened to Marijuana in history?

I apologize for my ignorance of the Arab/Islamic history of Marijuana. No real description of the evolution and devolution of Cannabis culture in Israel and Jerusalem is going to be whole without that detail, of the last two thousand years of history. It's a problem with Israel, the two thousand middle years of her life are blurred over in the Jewish folk memory, and while that isn't something inherently shameful, it is a bit dishonest and regrettable, especially if I'm trying to uncover a hidden history.

I tried in my early days in Jerusalem to find out about the Morrocan and Yemenite religious jewish cannabis tradition, and was always a little heart broken at how unseriously pious oriental Jewish Mystics who DID smoke hashish would take the substance itself.

I think much of this is because of the internal dissonance that jewish mystics and mysticsm sometimes have about the world that gives them their revelations. There's so many trips in the Bible, Talmud and onwards about rejecting foriegn influence, even as much as there is about accepting and even embracing the gifts of the G-d in exile, as in Jeremiah, and the Babylonian Talmud.

But the repatriation of Israel might be responsible for fucking up our heads about this, the cultural confusion about What's Jewish in Morrocan Jewish Tradition and What's Morrocan, even as both are threatened, ridiculed, and consequently jealously defended as sacred norms.

But even in Morroco, the "serious" and straight people wouldn't smoke hash, and even in the Islamic world, it was very criminalized and repressed, the devils hash. Why?

My journeys in Israel have been limited by my language skills and affinity groups, but there's a few important groups that I feel like I need to deal with to look at the mystery of how/why Marijuna was demonized and criminalized, and what this has to do with the mystery of civilization, and the emerging fringe cultures of Israel and beyond?

When was marijuana first criminalized?

My history sense is mythic more than factual; such is the nature of growing up in a tradition that describes giants and half divine monsters as part of the historical narrative. I will not apologize for this, nor do I consider it inauthentic. History and the world are weird, I don't know how things worked and what happened, all I can relate too is my family's cosmic descriptions. I can reject or re-understand the myths however I want, and share my understandings with whoever else is dealing with a similar paradigm. I am happy to surrender the specificity of these myths under the revelation of more, lets say, objective truths and discoveries, yay for the clarifications about What Could Have Happened! This is something I want to call a kind of Mythic Evolutionsim, where a creationist and archaic narrative is allowed to be confronted by the emerging scientific paradigm, and though it does not reject what it used to know and think about what was and what is, it is able to grow and re-understand itself in the face of all the new discoveries.

Which is pretty much the way Jewish communal scholarship has worked in the periods where "enlightenment" (that is, surrender to a wider population's perceptions) was not imposed, but allowed to gently sink in as the world we were around would seem to advance beyond us.

This is what happened in the Sephardic/Arab world, where scientists and philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes were taken very seriously by Religious Jewish Scholars and Doctors (like the Rambam), their works, translated into Hebrew before anyone bothered to translate them into Latin.

Of course, mysticsm and science were less differentiated back then. Science was less concerned with liberation from religious paradigms than working around and with them. How do you know that you're really free from your parents? it's safe to come back to their house, even accpet their advice without being quieted or destroyed through it.

All that said, it's clear to me that the cradle of life is something called by the ancients of my tradition the Garden of Eden, and that's where the earliest strains of Cannabis, if not all vegetation and humanity, originate, by definition.

Ah, but where is the Garden of Eden? The placement descritption of it in the Bible is physically imposible, somewhere floating above and below these different rivers, meeting in the place where none of them intersect. Josh Lauffer brings down the midrash that all vegetation is still nourished from it, all the waters that feed anything still come from it, making it a mythically really place, not unlike Santa's workshop in the North Pole--- all those toys really do come from the same place, on some profound and true level-- Christmas really does happen, and the fountain of all the good in the world might as well have a name.


There's much historical question by those official and proffessional speculators of history, where did Cannabis come from?
My cultural chauvinist impulse is to say the Jordan river valley, and there isn't really any damning proof saying for sure otherwise, so I could totally rest on that mythic delusion for as long as I want, until some clearer truth proof comes along. THAT SAID, Chinese texts and pottery have the earliest recorded mentions of it. This is one of the two thoroughest histories i've found on the internet:

It is not yet clear where cannabis was first cultivated.

Perhaps the people of Central Asia did so themselves –
we must not be led to too readily assume that it must have been the more 'advanced' Chinese who would necessarily have preceded their more 'backward' Central Asian neighbours of the great steppes in using
and subsequently cultivating hemp
as either a fibre plant
or a drug.

Central Asia, a vast land of deserts, steppes and oases is, despite its name, usually seen as of marginal historical influence,
a kind of cultural vacuum
between the great civilisations of China to the east,
India to the south
and the Middle East to its west.
Yet, very early on, thriving trade routes passed through the region and these became known as the Silk Roads, on account of the importance of Chinese silk for both Muslim and Western merchants.

It is known to archaeologists that Central Asia was an important center
for the transmission of new discoveries and religious ideas from prehistoric times onwards.

The hemp plant,
being of major technological importance as a fibre
and being one of the most influential psychoactive plants in human culture,
was most likely a key trade item
from a very early date.

The anthropologist Weston La Barre was of the opinion that cannabis use goes as far back as the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) period
as part of a religio-shamanic complex.

Certainly
the use of the plant had already spread across an area stretching from Romania to China,
secondly south to India and on to south-east Asia,
and last, and certainly not least,
to western Asia, from where it diffused to Africa, Europe and eventually the Americas.

Somehow, Marijuana came to Egypt, Israel, etc. As mentioned before, the Hebrew word "bisamim Rosh" to describe the spices in the sacred annointing oil, implies a certain universal preciousness, spices known and sought in every country, in every culture.

The history of when Cannabis is tolerated is very interesting to me.

It was a big controversy in Islam, back and forth, is Cannabis harram or not?

Everybody (well, except for rabbeinu Hafiz and his chevre) knows: Wine is Harram in Islam, because it intoxicates. So it's a question: what's called intoxication, and what's called clarity?

(Yeah, I know, I said it was finished, and it is: there's just an old Chassidic tradition of tagging on the surplus manuscripts at the end of a book. It's called "Tinyana," an aramaic term literally meaning: "we learned it somewhere." I'm just supplementing, filling out the gaps... ok? ok.)

One more special, message to go, and then i'm done, and I can go home

We've been using the question of drugs in Torah to talk about the mystery of Torah as forms of drugs. In the context of this, one thing that has come up has been the response of non-drug users to junkies like us, the responses of our families to our indulgences, that is to say, all the nations of the world and their issues with jews.

Why not stop a junkie from being a junkie? because maybe dope is the purpose of creation






















But really, if you are a junkie C"vS, I bless you that when something better comes along, you should have the strength and will to drop all your habits and run after her with all your power, in an instant, without hesitation.

But why bother? It's only worth quitting, if the drug is holding back good from coming into your world, i.e., making you feel less free rather than more free. It's good to check in every so often with the self, just to check: Is this what I really want to be doing? For my sake, or for yours.

So. We've talked so much about why to smoke weed. But Why stop smoking weed?

The worst thing marijuana does is make it harder to feel outside.



It's a blessing when feeling is Too Much, but a curse when things are so good, and I can't even really experience it, because my nerves are too numbed.

Because dope may not be the purpose of the world. That is to say, no a midrash ha ikkar elah ha maisei. The midrash is how we give it over, the pill we give each other to swallow, and that's we don't doresh nothing on Tisha b'Av, because we are fasting from the drugs we're usually taking to make life feel good, that is, the Torah's that
let us handle it.

Mostly Torah's really good, right? Kurt Vonnegut z"l famously wrote"

"Live by the foma* that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy." — The Books of Bokonon 1:5"

*Harmless untruths

The only problem is when the foma stop being harmless, which, you know, has happened in every religion at least once or twice, even in the best of them. With Judaism, notably the theology of the Gentile, I'm really sorry about that. I don't hink we've got it worked out so well, but it comes, this delusion and many others, from confusing Truth with Tenets of Belief.
Where an idea about how to ignore certain people, their demands and the priorities, can be liberating, a problem inevitably comes when we decide to ignore them forever.
The Buddists in Tibet saw this, when the masses of farmers offended by the meditative oblivion of the Monks in the mountains were easily motivateable into becoming Communist armies, ready to force attention through atrocity. I do believe that maybe something similar happens with the Jews whenever we depend on our fufillment of our required responsibilities, be they to man or God, to save us from having to be pay attention to the vulgar, dirty world, and it's music and priorities. I totally vibe with the need to create sacred spaces, not easily violable, for the sake of endless focus on The Holy, AND the crying children will become angry police if they are ignored for too long, if their desires are called petty, and their appetites dismissed as disgusting.

I hope that Torah is still growing, and able to adapt back, to it's very source, all the new info and wisdom about how to live, all together, better, and that the holy arrogance of those called leaders won't hold the kids back from being able to save their own, all our own, lives. Amen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The brain can be negatively affected by too much psychedelics over time. So what's the fixing?

Ayurveda has answers! One, Calamus, has been mentioned before. The more powerful one we haven't brought up yet, that would be his majesty Chaparrel.

Bitter and deeply cleansing, it's a hardcore thing to fast on, but there you go: it takes the residue of excess psychedelicatessen out of the brain and liver in a quick, vicious punch. It's bitter as all get out and VERY ungrounding, but y'know why? the psychedelic motarot stuck in the recess of the brain are ungrounding, and the process of cleaning them out comes with living them again.

Because rarely do we metabolize the whole thing, when we trip, nebuch. often we end the trip with food or more drugs, something that pushes away the trip into the recesses of our spines or wherever these things get kept until the worms get to trip off our flesh.

Bitterness foods are the "healthiest", as long as it's not bitter from rancidity. Gurdieff says suffering is the most beneficial thing in the world, as long as it's voluntary. And therein lies the rub, the once mentioned difference between good medicine and bad poison: how much the heart is in it. That's the easy way to tell if something is genuinely good for you or not, on any level, nutritionaly and spiritually, sexually and morally. Listen really close to the reaction when you taste a little bit. Remember that it's perfectly ok, and maybe even ideal, to stop, leave and get away. And then, if you really want to continue, continue as slow as you can, the better it is, tasting and chewing. This is the ideal way to live, tasting and chewing so slow, as if there was really nothing else to do, and now where else to go.

Crying children, angry landlords, bosses or soldiers are standing at the boundary of this ideal, for sure, and I wonder how to deal with it honestly and righteously. I know people who just don't eat very much, for the sake of not having to hurry when they do. Lord! Give us confidence in the value of our time, give us confidence in how much you appreciate and long for our pleasure and true satisfaction, amen.

And that's why I'm not going to smoke herb... today. Life is so nice, lately, y'know? I've been around all kinds of beautiful people, and I really want to feel what it's like to touch them, really feel that contact as deeply as possible.

Yeah, Now that I'm done with Cannabis Chassidis, i'm gonna stop smoking grass for a little bit. Or maybe forever.

That's actually, secretly the real reason I started this blog: Otherwise, I have a moral responsibility to smoke weed with people, in order to give over the Torah's of how to do it "right." Now, having said all this, i'm free. Maybe now I can go get that job at the bank that I always wanted---

---staaam!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------


So once, I brought Dan Sieradski to Micha Odenheimer's house for a shabbos day meal. They lived near each other, both valued human rights and progressive Torah; I figured they'd get along, and was curious for what they'd talk about.

So, the question of Daniel Merkur's Mushroom/Manna theory comes up. Dan talks as if it's Pshat that the Manna MUST HAVE BEEN mushrooms, and Micha is like, I dunno man, it's kind of a mythic metaphor. Trying to prove out what it was is kind of like trying to prove out how the splitting of the sea could have happened naturally. Doesn't literalizing the Manna take away from what's symbolizing?

Manna has been understood as a labor metaphor for a long time.

Remember when
the food was free?
came down from heaven and we always had
just enough.

Everyone knows, why is there war in the world? Because people are afraid, that if they don't war, they won't eat, and that's part of why the hebrew word for bread (Lechem) is so like the hebrew word for fighting (Locheim).

There were tribes that never learned violence, because they had no fear of starving. A friend was telling me about a Polypensian tribe that actually would have these big, ritual land trades once a year, just for fun. They had no problem with internal fighting, no language for physical violence within their own species--

...and they were very into touching. Babies would not be put down for the entire first years of their lives, and everyone would hug each other hello.

Another tribe, on an island not far away, had the opposite tradition. Babies were put down unto blankets or something shortly after birth, and pretty generally left to crawl around on their own, or tied up and hung on trees. affection was uncommon for members of that tribe...

...and they were into cannibalism. They had less land, and food was scarcer, so they
grew up meaner. G-d help us all, save us from hunger and disassociation!

What we need the drugs for is to learn how to accept a new reality faster. We may not have time or luxury to feel like we don't have time or luxury to appreciate life, without fear...

One of the problems with excess psychedelics is the fear, the paranoia, that comes from weakened, debilitated Kidneys.
That's the danger of drugs, if they stop you from touching each other so deeply, with so much presence, chas V Shalom, and lock us into our little trips more than anyone wants. We need the drugs for better things; wilder imaginations, married to cosmic awareness and sensitivities, expanded, sensitve and adaptable moralities, grounded in the golden rule, married to our roots and souls, the Torah understood very deeply. We need to be righteous, and Tzidkes depends on harmony, sensitivity balanced with dominance--

This cannot be accomplished through dogmatism and legal proclamations, our hearts themselves have to be married to the sensitivity principles, and it has to be an open marriage, with room for all the new Law and principle coming in.

Marijuana, Mushrooms, LSD, and other friends in the family, are so good for opening the self to profound realization, and the value of that cannot be over-emphasised.
Yoga, Tai Chi, dancing, all these things is crucial, however, for deeper feeling and appreciation of the life, and must be incorporated in to anyone and everyone's life-- somekind of movement, that is not panicked and purely recreational.
This is what Shabbos steps have to be.

Also, food. Good food. Whole Grains! Legumes! Vegetables! Without these, all the drugs won't do much to help, because they can only work with what they have. Eat real food! Smoking weed can only feel as good as the body is capable of feeling. Maybe it can help transcend assumptions and situations, but really, take care of yourselves, and each other! It's really important! Hug! Massage, softly, slowly, with care! You are the healings and the Life that G-d depends on and dreams of, You are the sacred names that G-d has wirtten in his Tephillin, and really have to treat yourselves that way.

It's so basic that we've, as a community, become embarrassed to remind and remember about it, but really! The medicine has to be whole, and we have to be honest with ourselves about which medicines are really helping, and what's just me banging my head agianst the wall because I don't know what else to do, chas v' shalom.

When you get high, want it to be really good? Then let it move you, let it dance you and swing you! Obey the inspiration, and sing that song, draw that picture, write that idea down before you have a chance to forget it! Do something so fun, the munchies don't interest as much as the sacred activity you're engaged in.

Yaakov Leib Hakohen brought down a Zohar recently, saying: "Don't tell your dreams to anyone who doesn't love you, because it gives them power over you." I feel like this applies to psychedelics too-- you can't do them except around people who love you, who you love, and the upside is, sometimes just sharing a dream with someone is what compells them to loveyou.

There's been a problem with our reaction to the holy and the sublime sometimes, when it gets too heavy, we tend to break the space. So, sometimes we get high, and just shove that special experience into some lamer situation. Why? We're afraid of having our hearts broken, the the holy will push us away, chas v' shalom. That once we are overwhelmed with the love, to the point where we can no longer hold anything back from her, we will lose grace in her eyes, and we'll be left, vulnerable and wounded, the desire for us lost once we stop being mysterious. This is the secret of marriage, how do I know that you'll still hold the space for me once i've given you everything? Don't fear this, if you can help it, be inspired, and let the sublime voice of the amazing happening in between you and the divine be! And from that silence, the silence of trust and the end of fear, something new from somewhere completely other can sometimes be heard.

On Har Sinai, we are forgiven for the Golden Calf. What's the biggest sin in the golden Calf building? Besides tearing the earings off of the women's ears, is just that we wouldn't hold the space for a little bit longer, wouldn't listen just a little bit closer to what the voice wanted to say. We were so afraid of dying.

Of the four who ascend to Pardes, only Ben Azzai is praised. R Akiva ascended and descended in peace, bully for him, But Ben Azzai let himself die! He didn't run away.
And later on, R Akiva atones for not Dying in Pardes by Dying in a Pardes of torture somewhere else... I guess it wasn't his time yet. But Ben Azzai, of him it is written.

"Precious/valuable
in the eyes of the LORD
is the death of his Saints" (Ps 116:15)

Ben Azzai, despite bemoaning his not having learned more from R' Akiva, disagrees with him openly on a number of issues, on most which he has the last word.

Akiva declared Bar Kokhba to be the Messiah, God's annointed one, the redeemer of Israel, King of the Jews, descendant of David.

Ben Azzai, a colleague of Akiva said to him:

"Akiva,
grass will grow
in your cheeks
(i.e. you will long be dead and buried)

before the Messiah comes."

That is to say, Moshiach can't come while R' Akiva lives. Why? R Nachman brings down

Anyone who sets a date or a time for when Moshiach will come
It's for sure, without question, that Moshiach will not come then

Or maybe, it's for the same reason Moshiach can't come while Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev is in the world: As long as everything is fine, good enough, Moshiach doesn't have to come. This is what R' Akiva's Torah emphasised, and as long as Moshiach is for sure coming, then who needs him to come?

And this is the main "problem" with coping, accepting, surviving, if it's a problem at all.

One of the traditional issues in different uses of drugs. Some drugs make us OK with the problem, other drugs make us very aware of the problem. And the best drugs do both., L chayim.

But this is the problem also with accepting our community and our Torah as is, something Ben Azzai maybe has more trouble with that R' Akiva

Perhaps Ben Azzai's and Akiva's political differences are rooted in a more fundamental disagreement.

The Talmud notes:

"Rabbi Akiva says:
'Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
This is the great principle of the Torah.'

Ben Azzai says:
'These are the generations of mankind.
This is a greater principle of Torah.'"

The Hebrew for "Love your neighbor as yourself" can also be read as
"Love your neighbor who is like you"
- in other words a call for tribal solidarity.

Akiva believed in the primacy of Jewish solidarity
above all over values.
As such he blindly supported a nationalist zealot,
who led the Jews to one of the greatest disasters in their history.

"These are the generations of mankind"
refers to the sentance in the Bible
preceding the genealogy of the descendants of Adam.

The Rabbis note

God
created
only one Adam
so that no person can say:
"My father is greater than yours."

For Ben Azzai, our primary moral imperative is the universal one -
all humanity
is the descendant
of one father Adam,
who is created in God's image. All peoples, Jews and gentiles alike, are equal in God's eyes.

And maybe that's what Moshiach is so frustrated by, and this is the truth that we would rather not have to hear on Har Sinai. What could Hashem have been saying that made us die? What does Ben Azzai see that lets him die?

There is a revelation that comes only once we are secure in the health of our families and our nation, that there is a higher value, and a transcendant truth, of the world and it's unity, beyond the small community called Yisrael. One couldn't call R Akiva racist per se, it's not about blood to him. He marries a convert, and lets go of the ten tribes, saying they're gone forever, and their blood won't save them.

For him, it's about the ideas, the Torah. Those are what make a master race, what make our people immortal and which are so precious that what little water he's given in prison are spilled over his hands so he can make blessings, rather than wasted on drinking. And I think Ben Azzai is saying, even those will be transcended. This Torah, this law-- something better is out there, coming, and he is so desperate to see it.

Ben Azzai talks like the reason he won't get married is because he loves the torah too much. As if R' Akiva didn't love the Torah? I'm reading it like, "I love" IS my torah, so why should I ever get married?


From Moshe Idel

...for some Kabbalists at the beginning of
the Thirteenth Century the major figure was not
R. Aqiva but Ben Azzai, the Talmudic master who
died. For them, the Pardes was not a matter of
intellect, but of the experience of a supreme
light. This Light was not an intellectual or
conceptual light, but an experiential light...

... There is a manuscript text by an unknown
author -
one which I needed some 60 pages to
analyze, so we can only deal witha small part of
it here.

There are some ten lines in it about
Ben Azzai
(who did not return).

"Ben Azzai
peeked and died.
He gazed
at the radiance
of the Divine Presence
like a man with weak eyes
who gazes at the full light of the sun
and becomes blinded
by the intensity of the light that overwhelms him...

He did not wish to be separated,
he remained hidden in it, his soul
was covered and adorned

...he remained where he had cleaved,
in the Light
to which no one may cling
and yet live."
[Quotation approximate]

This text portrays people gazing
not at a Chariot
or a marble throne,
but at the radiance of God
(Tzvi ha Shekinah),

a light
so strong
that no one can bear it.

The idea
of having a great desire to cleave,
as described in the medieval text,
is new.

In ancient literature,
contemplation is of something far away,
across an unbridgeable gap.

There is no idea there of love,
only of awe. Here, however,
we see a trace of a radical change:
the
intensity
of the experience
is linked with a great desire
to cleave
to the radiance
of the Shekinah.

There is a strong experience of union
with the Divine, the result of a desire to enter
and become a part of the Divine realm.
There is an attempt
to enjoy the Divine
without
interruption.

...


So yeah, that's about all there is to say on the subject.

...

And if you believe me when I say that, you probably aren't interested in learning more. There is SO MUCH I didn't get to. just because I wanted to get this book out before the Telapathic Alien Overlords (yimach shimom!) ban it or something. Miriam was not fully explored in this whole narrative, was she?

Smile.

Her Name matters So Much, she is the fixing of the waters, right?

Her son dies from authencity, for refusing to build an idol. That says something about something.
p.s. "what" is a synonym for "something" The two words are completely interchangeable, more or less.

Miriam is the one responsible for the drinking water we had in the desert
and the soul that experiencing ALL THE SUFFERING IN THE WORLD
(acc. to R Nachman. I have no idea where he finds it)
That's the other end of creation.

Some want to say that Miriam is Moshe's mother as well as sister. It's a very deep thing to want to learn out, because she's so big. How popular is her name, in so many different cultures? It's up there with Joseph and Ephraim!

Mary jane
mary jane,
I need you to keep me sane, Maria Maria

All the suffering in the world, and when the power?

She has so much attributed to her, just when she was a kid.
That is, it was her, and all the nashim tzidkanios that she represented, that insisted that the baby boys be born. Why? Out of love for life.

I really feel that Shlomo was a Gilgul of Moshe Rabeinu. He's the one who first makes a handle for the cup that moshe poured, Acc. to Chazal. And the yom Hashimini is called Netzach Netzachim sometimes, isn't it? As I misremembering that?

It's funny how life happens, but, thank the good good lord, it's kept happening. may it long endure and sustain! Amein!

Mariam is what Magydalyne is called in the Greek Scriptures, the Mary being what remains of the long name, as the rest burns off on the road... The same thing happens to all the harsh, sharp names, Yeshu is hardend into Jesus, and then softened in the far east back into softened into Isa, Yoseph gets complicated into Guisseppe, and then quietly allowed to become Jose', or just Joe...

Though I was very shocked when I first heard of a Gentile Latino named Miriam from Puerto Rico. I was so sure she was a secret Marrano, and though she never discounted the possibility... the name spreads nice.

I had a vision once, of R' Nachman, or anybody else in that tradition, traveling to America, on one of their strange journeys to anywhere, hanging out with a Mexican farmhand. Talking, softly, in simple words, because neither really speaks the other's language. So all the Mexican can do is offer the Rebbe some smoke off his joint. And when the rebbe asks "Vos Ist?" Jose' can only smile beatifically and say "Mariajuana!" To which the rebbe can only close his eyes and reflect on all that a name means, and how familiar the taste feels.

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The Waters are Not Bitter, anymore, thanks G-d. By not, I mean the bitter must be consumed to balance out the sweet, and is so sweet even. Have you ever sat and just held wheat grass jews, oops, i mean juice on your tongue? So sweet.

Speaking of sweet, you know what part of davening I love the most, on any given shabbos?
Aniyim Zimiros. The whole thing is sublime, every line is a song, and the last stanza!

And my blessing
Nod to me your head (Lord)

And It,
take it to yourself
Like some Heady spices

May my speech, please be sweet to you

Because/then/if my soul longs for you.

And with that, this volume of Cannabis Chassidis closes. It's not like the topic is really exhausted, but it's like tachanun: you've got to stop somewhere.

Feel free to write your own sifre chassidis, by the way, to comment in any of the essays above, to criticize, attack or update anything expressed here. I appreciate so much the steady, heady, presence of everyone reading this stuff, and please be blessed to find your ways in Torah, that your paths in Torah should be clear, and the subtlest language should be there for you to be understood, all too well, by all who encounter you. Stay High and stay happy, and remember:

It's very important to be happy
And the only thing more important is to be free
R' Nachman

And i'd say further, the only thing more important than being free is just to be at all.

Updates on my next projects will be here, if not on www.sevenfatcow.wordpress.com. One will be a nutrition/torah blog, to be named, the other will be too controversial to do under my own name. Don't ask me about that one.

And, yeah, I guess I'll see you in Jerusalem, where I hope you'll school my ass on everything I don't know, bimhaira biyameinu Amen

(p.s. If it wasn't said clearly enough, let me say it now: Love is the most powerful psychedelic. What else compells us to change our minds, ever? Be blessed with an unending supply, of the purest, finest, freshest Schoirah, coming out of you, coming towards you, as needed, as wanted. amen, Selah)

silence if that's the best you can do

Just right before the very last post, i'm dropping this bit of news:

LSD as Therapy? Write about It, Get Barred from US

BC psychotherapist denied entry after border guard googled his work.

Scary stuff, to me. Being penalized for discussing psychedelic experience on the internet = THEY're trying to scare us into being quiet.

Which, I suppose we are allowed to do. Even advised to do.

'Alchemist's dictum'

When Feldmar looks back on what has happened, he concludes that he was operating out of a sense of safety that has become dated in the last six years, since 9-11. His real mistake was to write about his drug experiences and post this on the web, even in a respected journal like Janus Head. He acknowledges that he had not considered posting on the Internet the risk that it turned out to be. So many of his generation share his experience in experimenting with drugs, after all. He believed it was safe to communicate about the past from the depth of retrospection and that this would be a useful grain of personal wisdom to share with others. He now warns his friends to think twice before they post anything about their personal lives on the web.

"I didn't heed the ancient Alchemists' dictum, 'Do, dare, and be silent,'" Feldmar says. "And yet, the experience of being treated as undesirable was shocking. The helplessness, the utter uselessness of trying to be seen as I know myself and as I am known generally by those I care about and who care about me, the reduction of me to an undesirable offender, was truly frightening. I became aware of the fragility of my identity, the brittleness of a way of life.

"Memories of having been the object of the objectifying gaze crowd into my mind. I have been seen and labeled as a Jew, as a Communist, as a D. P. (Displaced Person), as a student, as a patient, a man, a Hungarian, a refugee, an émigré, an immigrant.... Now I am being seen as one of those drug users, perhaps an addict, perhaps a dealer, one can't be sure. In the matter of a second, I became powerless, whatever I said wasn't going to be taken seriously. I was labeled, sorted and disposed of. Dismissed."

This is the secret of "shtok! Kacha Aleh b' machshava;" The invocation that the Holy One Blessed be he uses to silence Moshe Rabeinu when the questions go to the core of Who He Is and What's Being Hidden from sight of the past.

It doesn't fly as a real answer, only as a caution: If you want to be part of the world, as it is now, you can't ask that.

But, if you want to change the world, you might have to.

Zeh Torah!
V zeh Sachrah?

"This is the Torah!
and this is it's reward?"

I don't believe Moshe Rabeinu is asking if this is really the Torah or not, although Elisha Ben Abuyah might be. Moshe seems annoyed at the reward, Acher, just seems skeptical that he's playing the game right.

This is Eli Wiesel's criticsm of Acher/Elisha Ben Abuyah: His heresy was not a humanist one.
Whereas seeing G-d's injustice to the righteous might provoke one to believe that G-d is not just (Moshe's issue, upon seeing the future of R'Akiva, tortured to death for giving Torah over.)
It might provoke someone else, someone more connected to their sense of surrender to The Way than to their sense of outrage and justice, to think, hm, maybe we're just playing the Game wrong. Maybe the Torah that R' Akiva is teaching isn't really the Torah, and that's why G-d is abandoning him.

This second opinion is more traditional in many ways, and more logical, cold, reptilian and adaptative. And so, Acher counsels children to go and become anything but Torah scholars. He betrays Jews keeping the Sabbath secretly to the Romans, so that their loophole to feel like they're keeping Shabbos is taken away.

Eli Wiesel reads this as Acher deciding that G-d's unfairness means that he can and should act unjustly, siding with the winners against the losers. He wants to like Acher, to find sympathy with his cause and his discovery in heaven, but decides that he cannot, when faced with Acher's hostility towards his people, and his Roman sypathising.

We have to have a higher standard for G-d and his world, yes we do. Maybe our standard of what better is can be adjusted from time to time, but the most sinister and malicious thing we can is accept the wrong justice of the world as if it were true justice. This is like accepting Pharoh or Nimrod as God.

I was in a very friendly restaurant in Berkeley, one time, this past fall. I was talking to one of the workers there, for a moment, about his "we will not be silent" T-shirt, in english and arabic.

He started telling me about a friend of his who got stopped at the airport for wearing one, and was not allowed on to the plane until he changed. I laughed, to cynically defuse the passion of the moment, and said, "boy, I know what not to wear when I go to the airport."

And he looked at me seriously, and said, "That's really all they want. That we should be silent in public, while they do whatever they will."

Which, lets us live. Lets us survive.

"I didn't heed the ancient Alchemists' dictum, 'Do, dare, and be silent,"

Did you think Mesiras Nefesh for Torah meant saying an extra daf of daf yomi? The only people I know of in Jewish world being genuinely Mesiras Nefeshdik for their Torah is Neturei Carta, and see how Am Yisrael treats them for it!

That's because the modern Jewish religion, G-d bless us all, from the Misnagdim to the Chasidim, is based on not rocking boats, and not saying but that which has been approved by the most conservative amongst us. This is a survival technique, used by luminaries like R' Yochanan Ben Zakkai and Rabbi Steven Wise, Yimach Shimo. It doesn't always work, and when it doesn't, it's especially embarrassing.

On the other hand, who wants to die for something as shallow as an ideal? Better to live and know quietly, maybe, right?

But that's exactly what the forces in the world obscuring truth want. That they shouldn't have to get their hands dirty killing us, and that we should learn to keep our traps shut.

There's a time for everything, but really: you may want to consider being willing to die, get arrested, deported, or beaten, for the sake of your Torah. And if your Torah doesn't feel worth it, then, well... you may want to go find some that is, no matter what.

"Memories of having been the object of the objectifying gaze crowd into my mind. I have been seen and labeled as a Jew, as a Communist, as a D. P. (Displaced Person), as a student, as a patient, a man, a Hungarian, a refugee, an émigré, an immigrant.... Now I am being seen as one of those drug users, perhaps an addict, perhaps a dealer, one can't be sure. In the matter of a second, I became powerless, whatever I said wasn't going to be taken seriously. I was labeled, sorted and disposed of. Dismissed."

Water? I don't even KNOW 'er!

BalSem/Doktor's warning: This piece is a long one, you may want to print it out and read it over yom tov or something.

Next-to-last: conclusion

Water is important. no spit sperlock!

But it's really important when you're tripping, both for drinking, sweating, soaking, and, of course, as a divine metaphor.

Because, everybody knows, how many waters are there? lots. Just One. And I feel as if unified conciousness is a crucial part of the psychedelic experience. The only alternative is paranoia, and eternal war.

Water is a What at War. Or a What at World.

Your DNA is carrying the inspiration, the oil floating on the water. Psychedelics can help you alter your DNA, and grow however you want to grow, because the water in you becomes shooken up, open to all kinds of new changes. All the information and brilliance in the world is reflected through life, the only thing that perceives. And all life grew out of water.

Julius Lester shlita did a very cute version of God's War with Tehom at the beginning of creation, it's surprisingly intense! It recounts the story of how G-d had to kill the first created thing in order to create a world, and her refusal to die, to no avail, alas, but she is still trying to come back together, even as the waters above to come down so individualistically, every raindrop and snowflake it's own unique miracle.

The last Torah I ever heard from Dovid Hertzberg Z"l was that the water from above and below do come together sometimes, everytime a tzaddik cries. Have I told you that one before? It's deeper to me now. Why should a tzaddik cry? But that's when and how the above and below get bridged. I suppose a rasha laughing does the opposite?

No, because laughter doesn't make water move. That is the definition of life, "what moves water." At least water thinks so, any everyone born from her, living through and desperate with her, for her.

Laughter doesn't make water move, unless there's sweat or tears involved. Blood is a whole other trip, not all living things use blood the same way, but it's basically water a little thicker; and milk/semen, thicker still.

Oil slows things down, and even burns, it's so thick! And all living things have essencial oils, making up their Life Essence, Ojas/Jing from which they nurse and store nourish. We're all born with some---

But it started with water, at least that's how the water remembers it, and everything else that a man is made of is just what happens when water was treated with different things, like fire and spirit. This is Sepher Yetzira stuff, right? Excitement, passion, they make one sweat, and thus inspire (perspire?) water's motion, justifying the original split--

Because water only resents the split when it's stagnant, and this is the secret of Tuma water vs. Tahor water: water doesn't mind the split of creation, as long as creation is interesting enough to justify being apart. It's true about exile of every kind: we don't get homesick, as long as the Life is too interesting for the past to compell backwards--

This is also the secret of preventing or encouraging G-d's destruction of the world. As long as the world is happy being the world, destruction will not follow. One preson being happy might annoy others who feel neglected through his satisfaction, but when everyone is having fun? Then the whole world is changed forever, until, chas v' Shalom, it gets lame--

But the whirlwinds and hurricanoes don't let that happen, they come and disperse whenever it comes too close to an end to creation. "Break it up folks, there's nothing else to see here! move it along!" This is why the tower of Babel is not tolerated, nor the generation of the flood. G-d has enjoyed history, and has not yet become so contempteous of it to want to end the world. Give him a minute, let the party get lame, and we'll see--

But yeah, water is crucial when/for tripping. rave culture taught us the important of drinking enough, because when life is Alive in the unstoppable dancing way, and all physical imitations, all assumptions about how far I can go vanish, how much do I really need food? Water? But yes, water is important-- on the other hand, obsessive water drinking doesn't help if it's more than the body can handle-- about 8 ounces every ten minutes. Maybe more if you're sweating alot, but you know what? It's fun to ignore thirst sometimes, and just keep dancing. Don't let the mind and it's paranoid assumptions and obsessions about what it thinks you need get in the way of a really sacred moment. Powerful messianic occasions depend on not stopping, not looking away, not fleeing, but being willing to die for the sake of what's being revealed through you, if it's really worth it.

(you'll know right away if it is. If you're not sure, it's not.)

Water, according to Kabbalah, is just congealed light. Psychedelics have so much to do with light, that's what they open the I up to: more light. Ostensibly the light that's already there, but which the mind is set to ignore in order to focus on the wonderful world of lies.

Too much light. What's that? If you're not sure, then it's not.

This was what happened by the Four who entered Pardes, right?

(here's four commentaries on That, for those not assuming that they Know.)

"Four entered the Orchard (Pardes).

They were Ben Azzai,
Ben Zoma,
"the Other" (ha, ha!)
and Rabbi Akiba.

Rabbi Akiba warned them,

'When you enter near the stones of pure marble,
do NOT say

'water water',

since it is written, 'He who speaks falsehood will not be established before My eyes'' (Psalms 101:7).
Babylonian Talmud Hagigah 14b

Pure Marble:

As transparent as clear water.

Do NOT say:

"'water water: is here!"

" and how can we procede?'

- Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki-Yarchi (Rashi: 1040 - 1105)

Which, as heard by consensus at the Thursday night Zohar shiur in Jerusalem, means:

Do NOT say:

It's TOO MUCH

TOO FAST!

This is the biggest danger with the psychedelic revelation of truth, only fear, only running.
The second biggest danger is the day after, once you know, relating ANY of it back without being dissmissed as crazy as Ben Zoma is:

Ben Zoma gazed
and went Batshit crazy.

Regarding him it is written,

"You have found honey,
Take what you need
and let the rest pass
lest you bloat yourself and vomit it' (Proverbs 25:16)

What proved that Ben Zoma was crazy? The kind of Torah he was talking about.

"Fear Hashem,
observe his Mitzvot,

because that is what mankind is all about,"

quoted Rebbi Elazar.

The entire world
was only created
in order for such a person to come along.

Rebbi Abba Bar Kahana said:

This person
is as important as all the rest of the world.


Shimon ben Azzai,
or
some say

Shimon ben Zoma, said:

The entire world
was only created
to keep this person company. (Berachot 6b)

Ben Zoma once stood on the Temple Mount
and observed from there
a crowd of some 600,000 Jews.

"Blessed be Hashem!"
he exclaimed,

"who created all of these people
just
to
serve
me!" (Berachot 58a)

Of course, he's kidding here, maybe, but maybe not. It's not clear which of the Torahs in his name are from before he's considered "outside." But htis is related to the secret of the water, before it splits, as it's coming back together: As far as the Water is concerned, there is only "I" and the parts of "I" not yet come back together, coming back together. This is the heart of Ben Zoma's conclusion later, the question he's meditating on to the end, why he's considered "crazy:"

R. Joshua asked Ben Zoma the defining question.

This is how the Talmud (Hagiga 15a) records the event.

R. Joshua b. Hanania was standing
on the way up to the Temple Mount
when he was see-able by ben Zoma
who did not stand up in his presence.

"From where
to where
ARE you, Ben Zoma?" asked R. Joshua.

"Envisioning, I was

peering

between the waters above and the waters below.

There's like no distance between them!

a mere three fingers breadth!

As it is written, (Genesis 1:2) And the Spirit of God hovers over the face of the waters.

Like Like Like a dove fluttering over her offspring without touching."

R. Joshua announced to his students, "Ben Zoma is still outside."

The Talmud then goes on to elaborate,

"This is the space between the first Day of creation
(the Light)
And the Second day
(the splitting of the waters)

Don't tell me it's too much to think about, Ben Zoma says, everyone who ascends to Pardes says.

P.s. The Dove fluttering above is what brings The Light from Above to Below, this IS the Ruach Elokim Mirapecket al Pnei Ha Tehom. See earlier posts re: The Dove bringing Light.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But this is the problem with dosing people. If I enter Pardes, I did so willingly, and I'm the only one to blame for whatever happens to me. Someone else, if it's "too much", and they didn't ask for it, didn't want it, and aren't ready for it, then whatever they lose is on your head.

One of the great Wrongs of my life was giving a friend of mine Acid when he wasn't yet ready for it. He insisted that he wanted it! And one of the most important lessons I still need to learn is: Just because someone is trying to consent doesn't mean they are ready, and this is the secret of Statuatory Rape: Just because they're trying to consent doesn't mean they're ready.

I'm tired of quoting Talmud, leave it to say, there's a fair amount of qualifying who's ready to unveil the mysteries before: Basically, it has to be something you just can't hold back anymore, like sex, death, sin, conversion, or coming out from under the mikva water.

But yes, Dosing people without their consent doesn't tend to do so much good for them if they are unwilling or unable to face what they are about to face.

I WOULD ARGUE that neither Ben Zoma, Ben Azzai, or R Elisha Ben Abuyah count as exactly unprepared as much as having actually found that which they sought. The example of my friend goes something like this:

Me and his brother were all Chavrusas, learning partners all together in Jerusalem and elsewhere. And me and his brother had had a phenomenally successful acid trip a week earlier, one that changed us both for the gently freer and clearer on our own truths, wills, and senses of being guided or at least indulged, or at most, rooted for by myriads of spiritual forces.

And so, He was a bit jealous. Afraid to trip, exactly because he was afraid of what it would be like, he did not want to come along with us... but when he saw what tripping together did for us and our friendship, he wanted to come along. So he begged me for a while to dose him.

I refused at first, but, tickled by the idea of opening up my friend to truths about himself and his situation that none but himself could share with himself, I gave him some.

See what I've done already wrong? I HAD SPECIFIC GROWTH IN MIND FOR HIM. This is something someone cannot do for a friend, have a sense of who He is supposed to be, what he is supposed to understand. One can share his own perspective with a friend, but to assume that someone is supposed to grow a certain way? Ascend to a certain level? That's the beginning ofall the abusive relationship, that assumption that You are not who you are supposed to be yet, but with my help, you could be.

OK, maybe sometimes people do want this, to be guided and such. It's still evil to try to control too much and that's why animal breeding and forced plant cultivation can be so creepy. Ok, fine, introduce factors, try to share perspective... But assuming that others have to become certain things? This is what every teacher, every missionary does for evil.

And sure enough, his trip started well enough. But I didn't want to be around him at a certain point, disgusted with what I perceived as the shallowness of his experience ("the light! the colors! Jerusalem is so holy!") I kept trying to ditch him. To avail, he insisted on keeping near me, so did he trust me.

So fine, I started guiding him on visualizations, or should I say, unvisualizations. Quiet the mind, and let all images pass. Sit there in the darkness, and let what comes come.

I don't want to, he insisted! Can't we do something funner?

At which point I got quietly huffy, and he tried to show me that he could do what I was encouraging. And it freaked him out, quickly, how could it not? Darkness amongst darkness, someone who really did have alot of disturbing information that they were too immature to process!

He's fine now, really, but he was really flipped out for a while, stopped smoking weed, and was really angry with me for quite sometime. He forgave me eventually, but hasn't tripped since, and all his growth since then has been in very incremental stages. G-d help us all, grow safely, whatever that means.

But yes, too much water, too fast, that's alot of what the G-d we're so afraid of is and does. Psalm 29 is all about this, G-d's voice pentrating in the strong water, a flood shattering very tree in it's path. This psalm is attributed to being a description of the experience at Sinai, where a flood appeared to be coming into the world, and everyone was terrified as The Word of The Lord was about to be unveiled in it's purity--

And then he stopped, before it all poured out. In Tantra, one forstalls orgasm partially by holding the tongue to the roof of the mouth, and one can hold back words in much the same way.

Holding back words is very sad, much like holding back and orgasm, if it's something that's mutually wanted. But if something better can be sustained for everyone by holding it back just a little bit, then the party can continue a little bit longer, and no one has to get up and walk away quite so fast.

ONE OF THE MOST marvelous Mushroom trips I've ever had was also one of the most terrfying for two friends, and this one, i'm not sorry about. They got mushrooms, and I happened to be around so they dosed me too-- little did they know, i'm a fucking madman!

Ah, but if only if it were that simple. A fucking madman is easy to ignore, lock out, run away from. But a fucking madman who grounds himself in familiar, accessible fun and charm, is much more of a mindfuck.

They were eating and talking stam Shtuyios at the beginning of the trip, and then complaining abouthow it hurt. I warned them, gently, sweetly, but clearly, that they might just want to not eat for a minute, the the trip be it's own thing--- but no. People want to do what they think they want to do, and you can't tell me what's good for me, mom!

Ok, fine-- but I stay close enough to still be around, interacting psychedelically the whole time. Backing off just as soon as whatever i'm saying gets too threatening, balancing it with something fun, comforting... God dammit, if we're going to trip it shouldn't just be wuh, i'm tripping so hard, colors, ooh--- it really should be meaningful, holy, somehow. Not in any particualr way nessesarily, not because anyone else thinks so, but hey, g-d put me in the room, hahaha!

So, I played back and forth with them, balancing truth with comfot, until they locked me out of the room, which was also part of my instant plan, peak my annoyanceness enough, just enough, that she, a cute girl who I had very limited romantic chemistry with, would wind up seeking refuge in his arms, a dorky but funny guy who probably didn't get enough affection anyway. Let me be terrifying and real so that the experience of me is life changing, until it's JUST A LITTLE TOO MUCH, and then yay, you still have each other to run away to and with, while I go drink my green tea and mushroom saturated Piss, and laugh at how cool I am.

Which my ego never lets me do very often when I'm sober. My ego sounds alot like my concience, keeping me reined in, and constantly reminding me that i'm nothing. It's in the ego free monets of psychedelic clarity that I stop worrying about Who I think I am and why I think I have a right to XYZ, and just let the voice come, and quiet when it's right, and speak when it's right. It's rare for me to have situations where this really feels ok sometimes, and one of the reasons I appreciate Jerusalem and shabbos so much is that a context is made where the word can come out, and who is speaking is understood as peripheral to The Message.

R Nachman of Breslov hated being revealed to the world. He was at a wedding or something, and someone gave him some wine, and he started talking, and suddenly people were listening and saying Gevalt! it's a new Rebbe for the word, and he said, Oh y Vay . Now I'm done. Now i'll never be free again.

Dancing can be the only way of relieving this messianic tension, put it into the the body, and let the confusion and terror come out, rather than letting the paranoia sink deeper and constirct you further. If you know that the word is not just about you, and your bris is strong and maintained, you can express all the truth in the world, and the fear can be shooken off on the dance floor. And furthermore, all those that see you shining then will see that you can know such a truth and still be free, and they will feel safe knowing as much and more.

Dancing is very important, yes, for tripping or not, and that's why drums and music can be so crucial. Terrence Mckenna encourages silence, stillness, sitting and holding the visonary space, but maybe that's why it all feremented into a brain tumor for him (what the fuck do I know? maybe nothing.) As far as mushrooms and acid anyway, which I experience as more full body motion things, danceable situations are very important, and if there is no music, I have to start making SOME KIND of it.

Although, if your'e doing a visionary thing, asking questions of G-d or spirit, then sitting is crucial. My earliest trips were just that: trips, walking meditations, open for human interaction-- it's easier in Jerusalem, Oregon and probably India, where people are relatively unthreaned by those walking around in sacre-trances, it happens all the time.

Maayanot
Azai Yezuvun
Ofdei adonai Yishuvun

OOh mey yesha
Yishavoon

Vi hatzara
Nishcacha.

This is the messianic fantasy of Jerusalem in the end of days. You know what makes Jerusalem special? The water.

There's all these underground wells all over the fucking place, right there by the temple mount, and down by every exit from the city mountain. These are the places where the initiations of all the masters happend, from John the Baptist to all the Judean Kings. Baptized with secrets becoming clear both under the water, and more once they come out.

And one day, the prophesy goes, the water will pour out of Jerusalem like never before, and a certain grass will grow, nourished from that water, which will go on to nourish the four corners of the world,
and the grass that grows by that water?
It's leaves will be for healing. All the troubles, forgotten...

Yeah, yeah! The mikva is just such a great resource. For before, after or during a trip---

Well, really more before and after, unless you have the space in a given mikva to do your thing without keeping people waiting or terrifying them... but it's such a nice meditation. You guys know the mikva, right?

Pure living water, sometimes warmed,

dipped and submerged into, you can let go

close your eyes, and give up on breathing

see how long you can stay in the Holy

before you have to come up for air

gasping and desperate to breathe, and then desperate to get back in.

Different water situations provide different purifications. Lukewarm water during the day is a totally different zach than say, heated pools ever shabbos, or the much beloved and feared freezing cold water at midnight, the delight of tzaddikim.

Holy master and teacher Josh Lauffer (don't ever call him that to his face!) gave over the secret once of overcoming the fear of death.

Once, when i was nineteen, I decided, I'm just going to go do it. Once at like two in the morning, in the dead of winter, I said to myself, fine, I'm just going to get it over with. I'm going
to Lifta.

(Lifta is the closest, biggest fresh water maayan (spring) to Jerusalem's center of town. Jerusalem is Fucking Cold in the winter, especially at night, especially near bodies of water, coming out of stone caves)

I go, and decide, i'm just going to get it done with now.

Because, i'm so afraid of dying.
So why not just jump right in and face it now, and stop worrying about it?

(and that's part of the psychedelic secret of how to use water. Tip of the melting Iceberg, but about all I can handle. did I leave anything important out? besides the mystery of Shirat ha yam, and how Miriam fits into it all? )

(next: the pre-epilogue:

Manna-mushrooms touched on, poor Miriam chose it all?, and then:

that's it

For the weblog once known as Cannabischassidis.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
p.s.
Supplementary readings:

Sepher Bahir:

62. They asked him: What is the meaning of the verse [with regard to Balak and Balaam] (Numbers 23:14), "And he took him to the field of the seers."? What is the "field of the seers"? As it is written (Song of Songs 7:12), "Come my beloved, let us go out to the field." Do not read Sadeh (the field), but Sidah (carriage). What is this carriage? He said, "The Heart of the Blessed Holy One." His heart said to the Blesssed Holy One, "Come my beloved, let us go out to the carriage to stroll. It will not constantly sit in one place."

63. What is his heart? He said: If so, Ben Zoma is out side, and you are with him.

An attempt to figure it out once and for all

And, just to consider, a Snag Torah Remix

RISING TO THE OCCASION

"The servant [Eliezer] ran towards her [Ribkah]" (Beresheet 24:17)

Rashi explains that

the servant ran to her because he witnessed a miracle:
the water in the well rose to her.

The Ramban explains that Rashi derives this from the later phrase, "she drew water for all his camels" (24:20). Obviously, in the previous pasuk she did not have to draw the water.

Why didn't the water also rise the second time?

At first, when Ribkah came to the well, her intention was to draw water for herself.
Hashem didn't want a sadeket to inconvenience herself and therefore caused the well water to rise so that she could fill her jug easily.

However, the second time, when she went to the well, it was for a misvah - to feed thirsty animals,

and Hashem did not want to take away part of the misvah
by making it easier for her.

Therefore, the water did not rise
and it was necessary for her to draw water for the camels. (Vedibarta Bam)

Just sit with that.

How to trip properly: next-to-last-continued

BalSem/Doktor's warning: This piece is a long one, you may want to print it out and read it on the bus or something. It starts with a request, re: Cannabis Chassidis:

OK NICE, TOO BAD I QUIT THAT 10 YRS AGO LETS TALK... OK NICE, TOO BAD I
QUIT THAT 10 YRS AGO LETS TALK PILLS !

LEAH KLEIM

Marijuana is easy and safe to defend, advise on use of. Nothing bad will happen for years and years, and the worst things that happen aren't worse than the side effects of being sad, overworked, eating or talking too much.

Other drugs, especially the newer refined ones, are a bit sketchier, and demand a bit more mesiras nefesh, possibly.

I'm not a big fan of pills, personally, I resent the industrial forcing of our bodies to deal with situations that they really don't want to be in. The zombie pills that make it easier to sit still and accept, the uppers that make it easier to stay awake when you're really not interested enough to anymore... ich vaist, who needs it? But then, I am talking out of my ignorance, I know alot of people who really have been enjoying the chance to take control of their own mental states with chemistry... What do I know about the medicine someone else needs? Medicine is the responsibility and right of the self to determine really What Is Needed.

There's liver/kidney issues with all of these pills... The Life essence suffers and is depleted every time you force yourself one way or the other, and everything from Red Bull to Aderol and everything in a related Extreme UP aspect is bound to be ultimately draining. Is it worth it?

This is the aspect of "hard drugs" that is, drugs that make you Hard. Ego Boosters, Gayva ("pride/arrogance") is dependant on a certain blindness, and some SaMim(drugs) specialize in this kind of SooMaoot (blindness.)
All drugs blind, each according to What's Desired.

If you really want something, you might want to be blind to the possibility that it's not yours, or not to be yours, or be blind to caring about what is wanted by it. It's true about girlfriends/boyfriends and it's true about children.

Psychedelics can be used to clarify what's really there, to blind only from social illusions and assumptions about What's possible or Supposed to be.

To the degree that there's psychic and physical danger in psychedelics like Mushrooms or LSD like there is in all the speeds and Awake remedies that Science has yet taught Man how to extract, I personally am happier taking those risks, just as I'd rather the long term damage from a life of Marijuana Smoking to that of a life of Cigarette. What tobacco does doesn't seem worthwhile to me enough. What speed does doesn't seem worth the crash, nor the risk of corruption of self---

But Psychedelics, to me, often do. Mesiras nefesh for the sake of more light, more insight, more clarity and deeper understanding of allahwho-knows-what does seem worth it.

And let's be honest, we all want something in our lives that feels worth giving up everything else for. Don't do it! It's always stupid! But wouldn't it be nice to have a G-d, a lover, a party, a place I can put everything into?

Shir Hashirim laments,

"He that gives all wealth of his home up in love,
what a waste, what a shame!
(boz yabuzu bo)"

But the nice thing about Torah, Sofia, Truth, is that it feels worth giving everything for.

One of the comforting thing about religions is that they give a real sense of priority over, what's most important? The family! The Temple! The Poor! Surrender! You know, it's easy to look up and see what I "should" serve most, and serve last, if at all.

And this is why it's so important to boo Haman, and not let your GodKing serve him, nor to bow to him yourself: To defend and care about your Princess and your Peoples, it's satisfying maybe to have a sense of who/what from. It's ok if The King is fucking you, I guess, but that Other selfish jerk? The one that doesn't mind killing disobedient wives? Not if I-and-I can help it!

Don't be afraid to die in the experience of shocking new and potentially hard to grasp ideas: They're all true, and so is everything you knew yesterday.

R'Nachman's Law is crucial for tripping: Thou shalt not be Afraid. It won't help, lehefech, it's the only way to get hurt.

Well, that's not quite true. One tripping very hard can, theoretically get hurt, by denying reality's limitations, and jumping into traffic or something. But Going Out does not demand that level of foolishness from anyone, only ego-madness, the insistance that I Must Be bulletproof, that the New Truth utterly destroys the old. This is not what happens to the self when one trips, not at all, and the popularization of the myth that it is is an insult to the billions of psychonauts throughout history, including very probably all of our distant ancestors before a certain point.

It still should be easier to justify and guide the use of natural ethneogens like Philocybin Mushrooms or Peyote than it is to for LSD, but it's really not too different, only a little stronger and, let's say, easier to accept.

What do I mean by that? Holy Brother and Comrade Allahuechad once compared Mushrooms to Kabbalah and LSD to Chassidus: Mushrooms demand personal preparation, a clearing of the stomach, ideally at least five hours without food, and certainly an avoidance of anything with Niacin (vitamin B2) for a little while before in order to maximize potency. This entails avoiding all sorts of healthy, wonderful things, like salads and algaes, with Ayahuasceros in Peru traditionally going on three day Fish-and-plantain fasts in order to build seratonin for the Journey, because the psychedelic experience runs on seratonin, or something.

Either way, the mushroom trip is delicate, and hard to really expect huge, crazy results without taking what T. Mckenna calls "heroic" doses. Not to disparage Mushrooms or Kabbalah in any way, but both demand certain purification of body and mind to be received. Kabbalah, for example, demands alot of attention and meditation, pondering and repeated study and focus to be understood at all, let alone experienced.

LSD, and chassidus, on the other hand, demand very little except the slightest bit of attention, and a willingness to see what is being revealed through, which really, anyone with a desire to serve and take responsibility for the world at all, along with appreciate the wonder of creation is capable of, and benifited in their efforts too.

A pure heart comes in many forms, and a dedication to service is the essence of them all.
And service of the heart is none other than Prayer: The secret heart service only-purpose of the universe. The healing of nations. There's a reason the Indians and the Irish all pray over their poisons/medicines, smokes and drinks. Drugs help the I open up, be real, focus and yearn clearly.

Psychedelics can also be heart openers; I have experienced them very physically. Compelled to dance, or to run, to just get outside, or inside. I heard a one wise man advise playing a game of constricting the mind into focus while tripping, then letting it spiral off into different universes, like a tautly pulled bunjee cord rubber band snapped, hurling some rock of insight/outtasite out from the void. Prayer is very good at a time like this, exctatic praise followed by Weird Meaningful sacred invocations of angels and clarification of Certain Divine truths wrapped up in songs of profound universal request (a new light on zion shine/Thank you lord, who chooses love), A testament to the main patterns, a unifying expereince with a long EchAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad and blessing over the leaving of egypt and then boom eyes are closed and there's bowing, and as much light as is wanted is drawn down, and Seen! as if as if, that's what it really was for and about.

But for those without a mass prayer tradition, and even those with, a simple invocation at the beginning; a declaration of intent, like, along with a wayfarer's prayer

(keep me safe oh lord,
to do what I
am needed to do,
and to get home real safe.

Thanks lord for listening to prayer)

Once again, I like the idea of maybe having a question to scrier through. A specific prayer went in of What Is Wanted To Happen.

What Healing,
What power?
What Change.

Like, once, I wanted to speak to one voice, and then another time to another.
And always to be free
to hear no voice at all
and to remember that all voices heard
are my own

And there's no reason to be afraid.

It's nice to have a curandero friend nearby, or maybe within telephone reach, someone you feel safe with and trust just to talk to afterwards, or if it gets too weird. Someone you trust though, that's important. But some people are tough or smart enough to be able to feel safe anywhere That's something mushrooms have been for before: hunting.
Helping the Eye (thee I) see better, just a little better, and see faster, accept more immediately, they say it helped us become better hunters maybe.

But maybe hunting prey is a little bit obsolete in that form, but there's all kind of frontiers in terms of thought and interaction still available for would-be Transcenders. Go and Find Them. There's all kinds of loves waiting to be freed into having, and it could be that those are more appreciable prey, once there's enough regular material food in the village, and all the dishes are clean.

I like cleaning up at the end of a trip, once i'm Danced Open and I only want to help. I blame Rainbow Gathering for this, but sometimes at the end of a String Cheese Show, I like to help the janitors clean up garbage. Why should they have all the fun?

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Mikvas are nice near the ends of trips, or even during peaks if you're gonna be able to hang out for a while without fear of being suspected of untowards behavior just for being in the mikva for a long time (fucking Ammeratzim!) It's a safe place to let go, ideally, to be able sing and breathe, and subsume. But forests and parks are great too, just for walking and Seeing.

Different people on different levels of familiarity with the psychedelic experience have different needs. It's good to go to where what you needs is, and it's ideal to need as little as possible, to be able to adjust and give to everyone around you while the Life Drug is in you, and the Body/Voice is able to speak. but many of us aren't on the level, and really benefit from a guide.

What's a guide? A Rebbe you trust. This does NOT refer to an official Rebbe, but a person you know and trust. One of my best guided trips was with nine year old twins and their sixteen year old sister, running around with me to a park looking for a party. Mind you, these were/are particularly Rebbishe twins. And no, they WEREN'T tripping, nor did they know that I was (until later.) They were just very Rebbishe people, who accept and even appreciate my trips sometimes, as long as it's good.

But yeah, Timothy Leary once translated the Dao te Ching with R Zalman, and called the book "Psychedelic Prayers." He translated it with creating an "ideal" setting for a psychedelic experience in mind, and one of the Psukim goes like this:

The best of guides
you don't even realize he's a guide

I was wondering about this: do guides need guides? not in the same way, ah? Some people, it feels so much easier to really be, really come out as a divine person around them, through them, because of them. Those are good people to be around when tripping.

When all is said and done, there's really no better advice than, Take it easy, as easy as you want to. Breathe deep, accept G-d, and trust what's coming, even as you dance around it. There's so much more to say about all this.

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One of the issues some Kabbalists have expressed about psychedelics is that they are "Gezeilas Ohr" Stealing Light, like getting access to some information that you're not deserving of, or ready for. But Light is the one thing you're allowed to, nay, have to steal, by any means necessary, like Moshe Rabbeinu running away from the angels with The Torah under his shirt. It's a big inyan in alter Chassidis, stealing the Rebbe's writings. I have to know.

(next: How to trip properly: conclusion. Mayim, Mayim, don't dose people against their will

AND THEN, the epilogue, what we have learned from all this.)

What's the proof that marijuana is holy? It never sinned.

How do we know it never sinned? Because every part of it tastes and smells like it's fruit?

next to last: halacha l' ma'asei

Hey. I'm back in Jerusalem for a little bit, the place my holy brother and comrade Allahuechad calls "The Land of Broken Dreams."

As if that wasn't the sweetest, greatest thing you could call a place!

My dreams, having been relatively flexible, seem relatively unscathed so far, lehefech, I'm really touched and inspired by some of the holy nonsense and half-sense alot of the kids out here are into and doing. It's been awesome playing with the local chevra, dancing with our minds and bodies, wriggling and writhing extatically at the strange comfort/discomfort of the boundaries we're working with around some of these parts.

And during this spectacular reinforcement of the dance-joy-torah I so value, some criticism and concerns about my conduct and explorations has come up.

Some friends (because who listens to enemies?) have expressed concern over two issues in my writing and living the last little while, namely concern that I am legitamizing-by-engaging "anti-semites" and treading dangerous water with my exploration of creative romantic boundaries. Both friends have expressed concerns that I am endangering my legitamacy through this.

Which I think is effing hysterical, because it implies that the Marijuan and psychedelic advocacy that i've been doing is perfectly respectable.

Which, apparently, it totally is in the religious Jewish Community now, at least as far as De' Youf' is concerned. Isn't that awesome?

This feels to me like a newish thing-- the respect and approval for marijuana that pretty much everyone I know of a certain age, whether they choose to smoke/trip or not, has. I engage a range of different communities, and i'll tell ya: it's pretty much across the board. From Monsey to Crown Heights, Detroit to Baltimore, Montreal to Williamsburg, Jerusalem and all of Israel, and lets not even TALK about California, everyone seems to be holding that Cannabis is at the least, not as bad as tobacco, and seems more effective than prozac or tylenol at making the world just a little bit easier to handle, without crippling any more than say, eating too much food.

Which totally gives me hope for the future of our people. I don't think the Jewish money organizations are in danger because of this, nor any of the thuggish militias and militaries under our communal hand. Lehefech, it might well save our lives and our souls, and create a context for the healing the wound of exile, that once compelled us to take some aspects of our lives waaay to seriously.

And by this I mean, money and control. It might well be good to take life seriously, if that's going to help children get fed. It's REALLY BAD to take life seriously if it means you have to beat your kids to make sure they keep shabbos. Agmas Nefesh, Moirah Shcoirah, they're all traditional terms in Jewish for feeling shitty, and as much as the drugs won't do ANYTHING to solve the root causes of our depressions and funks, JUST HAVING A PERSPECTIVE with which to look at the best and RELEASE the internal bonds whipping us and leading us to whip our spouses, children, animals, and slaves can't but help, right?

Sure, marijuana will not solve all our problems, only Brown Rice and Flax seed oil can do that. But what it does do very well is shift priorities.

Because drugs, like shabbos, can and will change you. Terrence Mckenna Z"L talks about his invenerete stonerness, and why he would smoke as much as he did (every day or so, which can be considered alot. That is to say, more than I like, for sure)

"It's just that... when I would stop smoking grass for a log period of time, i'd notice my priorities start to change... I'd start worrying about "how am I going to pay this bill" and "maybe I need a new house on the hill" or some such nonesense... and whe i'd smoke, my thoughts would be more like "I wonder what ever happened to the Lost Etruscan civilization?" or some new innovative way of programming a design."

Everyone one knows, harmony depends on offsetting extremes once they've gone too far.
What we need as people is not the advice to just stop doing drugs, it won't work any better than the "don't have sex" rule worked on the catholic clergies. We need guidance on how to make drug use holy. Here's some:

Marijuana. There's a principle in the talmud that anything that gives pleasure has to have a blessing on it, and so, there is one over fragrant herbs in the tradition, at least two or three, actually.

Most people I know say Borei Aisvei bsamim, thanks G-d, who creates fragrant grasses, because cannabis is more like a grass than anything else, growing and dying seasonally. Borei Minei Bsamim works too, i's more general, thans G-d who creates different kinds of fragrance.

Now, an issue is when to say the blessing. Before the hit make sthe most sense to me. The rule in the talmud re: incense is AFTER the first cloud of smoke starts lifting, but that doesn't really make sense with modern pipe, blunt or joint smoking, because you're using your mouth to hold the hit it, and there's also a prohibition on making a blessing with your mouth full. It takes the focus away, which is the oppoite of what blessings are for.

So, I like to make the blessing upon smelling the unburnt Ganja, either from the bag, or even from in the pipe, taking a sniff of the un-lit herb, and blessing beofre proceeding.

The blessing is less important that the dedication, which sets the focus of the hit and the high.

I don't kno how far back the "l'chaim" tradition goes, if it's a chassidic innovation, or not... but how could it be, when the irish do it also?
Before taking a strong drink, make ing it safe by dedicating it to some wish for a good world some how, for peace or passion, strength or style-- whatever you want the strong drink to do for you-- so too with ganja.

(UPDATE: I wrote R Yaakov Fogelman to ask: "where does the L'chaim" tradition come from? Surely it's pre chassidic! And he quickly responded:

"As I recall, Birnbaum claims that there was danger, in ancient times, that snakes,and scorpians were found in wine- so he who is about to bless God for the wine, first asks the assembled company, "sovrei," think, gentlemen- is this wine safe? If they think so, they respond with "l'chayim", to life, it's ok!"

psh! it's very deep. There ARE scorpions in drugs if you take 'em down too fast, without intention.)

While you're holding the un-lit pipe, all attention is paid to you, so it can a nice chance to do something holy if you want to-- talking for too long can annoy the weed hungry people in the circle, but a little dedication prayer can be nice. What DO you want to happen in the world? What do you want for yourself? For the sake of that, l'chaim, and then immediately light the pipe.

It's important not to expose the weed to too much fire too fast, because then, the grass will just burn away, and you won't actually be smoking that all much. Holding the fire JUST far away enough from the bowl that when you're not inhaling, it's not lighting, and getting the littlest bit of fire to kiss the top of the Green with the inhale is really the best. Because then you can actually taste the weed, and you don't overwhelm yourself with more smoke than you can handle, which will prevent coughing and accidental cough-blowing of the weed out of the bowl.

There's different traditions from here on out; I like to past the pipe/joint/blunt/bong as soon as possible, so the next person doesn't have to wait. The tradition of Luminaries like Sticky Green and Moshe L. is to simply take your time with your own bong hit, and just pack the next person a fresh one, to enjoy, wholely and peaceably. Both ways are holy.

it's good to respect silence when high, speaking only really important insights or real physical priorities (like: "take this exit off the highway, over here!" ) Words don't nessesarily work quite as well when stoned, although ideas and feelings can still be communicated... it's not a good time for abstract detail.

Night-time in general isn't, and marijuana is in the aspect of the moonligh: hazy and romantic. Don't talk too much, but feel welcome to open up and express the passion, as it comes. Again, don't get caught up in details within stories, feelings will move easier, especially warmth.

From there on, trust the body and it's needs, but not it's desires. Don't eat so fast, because you will not get satisfied-- it's better to fast for some hours after smoking, maybe do something physical like running around, singing, pouring your heart out before your G-d. sometimes just massaging your stomach, couphing and burping can be great.

Marijuana, Chrissie Hynde teaches us, is really good for helping to be able to focus on a task, but not for switching focuses. Try to have the focus set before you start smoking,and slip right into it after the high starts to set in. My cousin Andrew, when we first started smoking, told me that weed smoking is a supplementary activity-- it's usually not something you do by itself, but a way of highlighting another activity, ranging from washing dishes to playing guitar.

Mushrooms, LSD and psychdelics, on the other hand, are a whole other Zach.
(continued soon.)