Meditation, Spirituality, and Drugs

If you feel conflict about it, then that right there is your answer. This doesn't stop cold turkey, but definitely start cutting it back a little.

Whether or not weed expands or clouds a persons mind depends on where they're mind is to begin with, it's all relative. For you, I suspect that deep down you know it's time to move on, but you're scared to lose an old friend who makes you feel good.

Remember, the goal isn't to make everything positive, it's to make everything neutral so you're completely unswayed by it. If you attach a negative to weed, it's still going to drag you down.

As far as drugs go, they certainly have and have had their purpose, especially in India. Soma was almost surely mushrooms, and cannabis has been said to have been smoked by Shiva. However, it was three puffs in the scriptures. Not 8 giant bong rips.
Drugs can act as a sort of "kick" in the pants to alert a person that there is more out there that originally believed. They are a catalyst to the spiritual path, and can help for a little bit once on the path, but there comes a point when you realize they're holding you back, and so you put them aside and continue. As Alan Watts said, "Once you get the message, hang up the phone."

The following in bold are preposterous and ignorant.

-stillness of the mind. Which is a required state for meditation as I understand it. There are two ways of achieving this stillness. Rising above though is the first way. It's a hightened sense of alertness that allows you to simply transcend beyond your mind and your ego.

Stillness of mind is an ancillary benefit of mediation, not a required state of it. If people had perfectly still minds before they meditated, they would already see things as they are, and thus be enlightened.
You don't "rise above" anything, you simply come to a point where you realize, "wait a sec, I'm not my body, this thought, or this voice, who am I?" It all unfolds organically, and without any effort of trying to "kill the ego." It's the ego after all that is trying to kill itself- absurd. Let go of the idea that there are ideas such as the ego.
Through intense focus the mind distills itself into a state of absorption in a single thought. That thought it so all encompassing that there is no longer anything but that thought, and pure consciousness behind it. Once the thought is completely renounced, only the real You remains.Meditation is a tool, not an end.

The idea of a spiritual path is to leave things behind you that you once thought important. This includes belief.
There will come a day where you will be indifferent to drugs or meditation. If you have walked the path correctly.
You are aware of them, but they have no assigned value.

The "idea" of the spiritual path is to realize Oneness with God- something that is beyond ideas. Nothing less, nothing more, nothing else. "Walked the path correctly"? There is no correct or incorrect path. Enough hoity-toity pretentious commentary which is of no value to the OP.

Meditation is supposed to be a state of alertness, but it's all too easy to slip into a semi-soporific state my teacher calls "holy dozing" where it feels good, really, really good but you're not really meditating because you are not being present or keeping that single point of focus. It's actually really easy to get hung up in this state and think you're meditating, when all you're doing is getting caught in a trap.

Samadhi feels good. If the direct perception of God didn't feel good beyond all else, then it would be better to live in delusion. Your teacher is teaching you delusional ideas. You're allowing yourself to fall into a trap of thinking that you are "the doer," and that God is something to be acheived. God is uncovered by slowly removing thoughts until you realize that you weren't doing anything at all, and in fact were never there. Your teacher has mis-interpreted (or you have) the idea to always go back to whatever your focal point is. Probably a Zen teacher I'm guessing? You don't leave a space of no thought to go back to thoughts just to say you're meditating- that's ridiculous. Why leave the goal for the means?
Intermitently in advanced stages/levels/planes/whatever you want to call it, when the mind is stilled, there is Oneness, and it feels good beyond all else. Slowly it becomes deeper and deeper. To realize that "you" are experiencing it, rather than just being, is of course the end of the experience because you've constricted back to an individual. But slowly it becomes deeper, and the mind becomes purer, and as the mind becomes purer it becomes deeper, etc.

If you think you're meditating, well you're not meditating. Meditation is single-minded focus on one thing without anticipation, without expectation, and eventually without any "fogs" between thought and perception of the thought, that's it. Just the thought. When something else comes up, go back to the thought. Thought could be anything from breath to mantra, it's all thoughts. Choose one, focus, and that's meditation, that's it.

There seems to be a lot of confusion with the term "mind." Mind is the reason you perceive anything, and it is the objects of perception themselves. It is everything you experience including ego. A helpful way to understand it is that everything is a thought of God. Mind is that which differentiates God into seperate "things" to be perceived. It also differentiates into a perceiver to see that which is perceivable, giving rise to the ego, because the ego is perceived to be the perceiver, though it's not. Then it assigns values to things, which is the intellect. It continues onward, blah blah blah.
Basically, to say "still the mind and transcend your ego, then meditate" is delusional.

 

The Many Wines

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,
drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power
to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

God has made sleep so
that it erases every thought.

God made Majnun love Layla so much that
just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies
are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley.

Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars.

Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur
and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about "what's needed."

Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it's been untied,
and is just ambling about.

-Rumi

 

I agree with the above comment, drugs do cloud your mind. I've been free of drugs for a few years now. It took awhile to regain my creativity, and even longer to be able to fully relax without a million thought roaming through my mind.

 

haha..

Chill man.

Try to slowly reduce your dependencies. Never
forced yourself out of it lest you get the withdrawal
sindrom.

When I try to stop smoking 20 years ago, I stumbled
upon Silva teaching. They have this one audio called
"Golden Image" technique which help us to get rid
from ourselves things that we don't want.

I stop smoking in 3 months and subsequently lose
20kgs in 1 year

Here you are the direct link to the audio, see if it
helps you:

http://silvalifesystem.s3.amazonaws.com/bonus/golden_image.mp3

Best Regards

Jenny