Cloudscape

There has long been controversy about whether or not marihuana causes psychosis. The correlation that has been found between marihuana and psychosis is indisputable, but it is unclear whether marihuana causes psychosis or vice versa.

It is probably a bit of both: marihuana use can be out of a need to flee from reality, meaning that beside marihuana, the person will also seek other ways of fleeing from reality, which is basically synonymous to psychotic diathesis. It can also be because of isolation, or to find distraction from stress. Stress, isolation and a tendency to flee from reality happen to be the three most important factors of psychosis. At the same time, however, marihuana may also cause a person to flee even further from reality, become even more isolated, and because of this, eventually go through even more stress.

As a result of this, the increased risk of psychosis caused by heavy marihuana use is probably not as high as anti-drug activists are inclined to believe, but also not as low as marihuana users are inclined to believe. Studies indicate that the risk of psychosis in marihuana users is 2 to 8%, compared to 1% in the general population — an increase of 100 to 800 percent. If the correlation is bidirectional, the risk of psychosis would increase with heavy marihuana use, but not by 800 percent.

It may seem hard to find out by how much the risk of psychosis is really increased by marihuana, since there is no way one can subject a random sample of the population to heavy marihuana use and see what happens, but there can be another way:

The researchers should ask not for subjects who are already using marihuana, but for subjects who claim to be interested in using marihuana but have never used it. The subjects would then be split in two groups, both of which would be subject to regular drug tests. In one group, the control group, subjects that are found to have used marihuana are eliminated from the study. In the other group, subjects that have found not to have used marihuana will be eliminated from the study, though not before the end of the follow-up. To prevent the study from manipulating the subjects' behavior, all subjects would be paid the same amount of money at the end of the study, even if they were eliminated at an early stage. At the study's conclusion, it is important that the user group (that is, the group where all non-users have been eliminated) is subdivided into separate groups according to how heavily they used marihuana, and the percentage of psychosis be mentioned for each subdivision. This study would last for at least years and at most decades.

If one goes too fast, it is much more likely for balance to be lost. On the other hand, if one goes too slow, this is in itself an imbalance. In the end, one still goes fastest if one goes so fast that one meets difficulties, but only if one can deal with those difficulties. Even if you cannot go faster, you can still work to enable yourself to go faster. When you cannot advance further, you can still make preparations to advance further, so that you do not truly need to slow down, for advance may happen in subtle ways. You will go fastest when interchanging slow and fast in balance. To find this balance, know yourself. Do not overestimate or underestimate yourself.

If you have become too so absorbed in your thoughts that you can no longer feel, the only way you can feel again is by letting go off control. Ironically, you have to let go off control to regain control over your thoughts.

With letting go off control, I do not mean that you become passive to everything that happens, but that you accept it. You might still change those things, but it will no longer be because you think you have to. Change things because you feel you want to, not merely because you think you must. Thought is a medium through which change is organized, but the motivation for change originates from our feelings.

The irony is that through acceptance, you may become much better in changing things than through rejecting them, since it allows you to build from the things that are already there, rather than seeking to undo them before starting over. Everything can be used to build something else, even if it is its opposite.

In order to be in control, you must control your need for control. Do not be attached to control, for this is in itself loss of control.

Whatever you do, do not be stopped by suffering. If the only thing you can feel is suffering, then love your suffering, and it will no longer be suffering.

There is no general rule for where to find beauty, as in all things there is potentially an equal, infinite amount of beauty. If you truly search for beauty, then wherever you wish to find beauty is therefore the right choice, as you then make this choice out of love for beauty; and beauty itself is nothing else than the love of beauty, which is its perception.

Whatever you perceive as beautiful is beautiful to you; thus, seek beauty there were you perceive it the most, wherever that may be. However, remember not to confuse comfort with beauty, and that beauty may hold pain yet not be reduced by that pain. Perceive also that beauty is in perception itself, and so seek beauty in the increased perception of beauty, not only seeking for it around you but also within. Seek beauty in balanced measures inside and outside. Remember, however, that balanced does not have to mean equal, as each of us has their own center which may differ according to our personality.

In seeking beauty, seek it wherever you see it, but do not lose sight of it because of pain. Thought can guide you in finding beauty, but it cannot lead you to it: only your feeling can do that, thus you can but seek for beauty there were you feel it to be.

If you cannot feel where to find beauty, it is because you do not know what you wish. In that case, you need to decide first what you wish, even if your decision is but that you wish to try things until you happen to find something you feel is beautiful. Whenever you do find something that is even slightly beautiful to you, remember it, so that you might enkindle the wish to search for more of it. It's already a start to wish to find out what you wish.

If it seems like you want nothing at all, or even that in fact everything is something you don't want, then it might be that what you actually want is emptiness, as emptiness is itself also something. Let the emptiness purify you of attachment.

This might also mean that you are depressed, but depression has its purpose: it allows you to let go. Let go, especially, of control. The best thing you might do when there is nothing you want to do is to meditate on letting go of control. In fact, many people who are clinically depressed do this spontaneously: they might find that they suddenly become highly aware, yet nearly empty of thought. Their increased awareness might be of their sensations, of their feelings, or of their thoughts. Depression is also correlated with increased daydreaming, during which you might find out what it is you want.

Depression is a defense mechanism meant to empty your mind after or during a period of excessive stress. Depression itself is not the problem: stress is. Nonetheless, depression might be a clearer sign of the problem than stress itself is.

If there is nothing you wish, then you will become depressed, but in this state you might discover what you wish. If there is too much you wish, you will become anxious, which might cause you to become depressed, so that you find out what you really wish.

If we knew no greed, we would be in ecstasy. To be freed of greed is not so much about not compromising others, but not compromising ourselves. If we weren't greedy ourselves, even the greed of others could not compromise us.

If you want to be content, compare what you have with zero. If you want to achieve something, compare what you have with infinity. This cannot be done without infinite imagination, and if you could fully realize what it would be like to have everything, and fully realize what it would be like to have nothing, you would be enlightened.

You will learn the most not through suffering, but through the enjoyment of as many experiences as possible, but only if that enjoyment is in the form of love rather than a need for distraction from suffering. Suffering merely occurs when we resist experiences when we are still to learn to love them. Being confronted with those experiences can help us to learn to love them, and it is so that to some, suffering sometimes seems the best way to learn. But this suffering is merely the resistance to the learning process.

Bliss in beauty is the triumph of love; suffering in beauty is its failure, but so too its triumph in bringing itself so far as to try.

It is true that we must confront this resistance in order to overcome it, but suffering in itself is just that which keeps us from beauty. Only once we have learned to love an experience have we truly found its beauty. Pain too must be loved, but just therefore it should not be suffered.

If you try to learn as much as possible, it may be that you will suffer the most, but nonetheless, do not seek suffering in itself, for when you suffer, your love becomes exhausted, and so too the will to love. But if you seek love rather than suffering, then your love may grow through its love for itself, until finally it spreads to things that you would otherwise have suffered and not loved.

A careful balance is needed between seeking more of what which you already love and seeking other things that you have not yet learned to love. Stay too much with the things you already love, and your love will turn to boredom. Explore too much, and your love will become harmed. Either way leads to apathy.

Too much adventure into the unknown, and we hurt ourselves through the suffering of too much pain; too little, and we hurt ourselves through the suffering of too much emptiness.

The greater your consciousness, which leads to sensitivity, the more you will have of either, unless it is paired with an equally great self-consciousness, which leads you to balance. People often suffer the most when their consciousness is greater than their self-consciousness. Consciousness helps us to be receptive, self-consciousness helps us to be in control.

Either how, things will always change, even if it is but through the duration that things remain the same. But even so, things always remain the same, even if it is but change that remains the same. You cannot be free from suffering nor find love unless you find balance between change and sameness.

Change too little, and the things you have will change by becoming monotonous, so that they become harder to enjoy; unless you either learn to enjoy the monotony, which is in itself also a change, or unless you change, so that your enjoyment may remain the same. Change too much, and the change will also become monotonous, so that it becomes harder to enjoy change, unless you learn to live with the monotony or stop changing, so that your enjoyment of change may remain the same.

Love may be lost either if it is not renewed through enjoyment or if it is harmed through suffering, and both will happen if there is too much sameness or too much change. In sameness, love the things you already love; in change, love things you have not loved before.

We must transcend our abilities to love but also preserve the ability to love we already have, so that its growth is not stalled, and this can be done if transcendence and preservation there are both enough, if there is balance between emptiness and fullness, light and dark.

See also:

Love and Suffering

That our society inclines towards yang might be because of our primal ancestry, for the African jungles in which they lived are a very yang environment: basking in sunlight, broiling with heat, brimming with life, whirling with activity and abundant in food. Vivacity, hedonism, sociability, industriousness and materialism are all values characteristic of our species, and they are also all very yang. Scientists have already found that war is something we inherited in common with primates from our evolutionary ancestry, and so are language and community; why then, not materialism? That so much of the earth's surface is covered with our factories might be a direct consequence of the fact that we share our original homes with the primates.

Yin and yang can be hard to reconcile. The only reason that nature has managed to combine them is that this was necessary for it to exist at all, since neither yin nor yang can exist by themselves in any form at all. It was needed for nature to achieve this balance between yin and yang in order for it to be able to evolve at all. We must be cautious to retain this balance.

Yin and yang cause one another; yet at the same time, they also avoid one another, as night shuns day and day shuns night. Try at all times to be mindful to be balanced between the two. Do not fear sadness when you are in joy, and do not fear joy when you are in sadness, but try to accept that one flows into the other as day and night. There can be joy in sadness and sadness in joy, and neither is above the other.

As our species are more yang than yin, we tend to fear sadness rather than joy, even though, when our joy remains too long, it will turn into anxiety. Some who are in sadness, on the other hand, fear joy when it comes to them. Try to accept both. Do not deny your sadness, but neither deny your joy. We must accept it when one has to succeed the other. The same counts for all things yin and yang, such as work and rest, or society and solitude.