TEN

Mutual Awakening

What can I say . . . a leaf floating fluttering to the ground and then settling satisfied.

For it has been a day of timeless time floating weightless through the universe of my mind.

And now nowhere to go nothing to do all things possible.

This seventh and usually final dimension of a couple’s high experience is often forgotten entirely, and it might seem quite different from everything we’ve discussed before, but this final phase may also be the most important of all. As you gently begin to come down from the early rush of your mutual marijuana high, you’ll both probably find that there often comes a moment when time seems to stand still, and it seems that there’s nothing left to do or say or feel or explore.

Right at this moment, when you’re with your partner but not necessarily relating in any overt way, a host of new shared experiences can suddenly and softly emerge.

Why? Because finally both of you have finished doing everything you wanted to; you have no active intent or energy charge pushing you to do anything at all. Finally, you’re just being together, in the deeper sense of the word.

THC and CBD stay in your bloodstream not just for minutes or even hours, but for days after you partake.¹ So there’s a long denouement, or aftermath phase, that you’ll feel for at least a few hours after you partake. If you smoke or vape or drop, the first hour after ingesting is the “rush time,” and then the second hour is usually the kickback post-rush phase. It’s mellow and subtle, but it’s also often the most rewarding for couples because you share what’s often felt as a spiritually imbued state of pure being.

TRIPPING TOGETHER

Ever since the 1960s, people have talked about “tripping” while using marijuana or a psychedelic. A major difference between weed and classic psychedelics such as LSD is that with weed you have some choice in how deeply you’re going to take off into the wild blue yonder, whereas with psychedelics, you’re catapulted into tripping zones whether you like it or not. With marijuana, often you’ll start to feel as if you’re floating, as though you’ve transcended space and time – and this is certainly a quality of tripping. But as we mentioned earlier, usually you won’t hallucinate with cannabis unless you take a really big dose.²

Tripping on weed is determined primarily by whether you ask for such an experience by relaxing on an easy chair, sofa, or bed and sur rendering for a period of time to utterly letting go and looking inward for new experience. You could instead focus outward to your five senses and trip out on that stimulation, but this seventh dimension of a shared cannabis trip usually involves closing your eyes and focusing on whatever naturally springs to heart and mind deep within you.

Many people love to trip out with music. Music is truly magical; it’s been used for tripping in religious ceremonial practices all over the world for thousands of years. And cannabis has a definite effect on how we hear music. One study of THC showed “a constant EEG correlate of temporarily intensified attention while high, resulting in an altered music perception, hyperfocusing on acoustic space and broadened insight into the ‘space between the notes.’ In sum, THC has a measurable influence on cerebral music processing, and seems to temporarily enhance acoustic perception.”³

Music often includes reflective lyrics that can stimulate deep intuitive thought and realization. Before getting high, you’ll probably want to develop your own playlist of music that suits you and your partner best. Be quite choosy; you’ll want music that augments your experience, rather than disturbing it. There are various playlists for tripping that you can find online; most are designed for use with psychedelics, but they are also quite good for cannabis journeys.⁴

One of the best ways to go deeply into a weed trip is to combine very good relaxing music with an ongoing awareness of your breathing. You’ll quickly entrain your breathing rhythm with the rhythm of the music, and this will bring you into a whole-body experience that taps into your inner sense of embodiment. And as you do this, you’ll often experience a f loating sensation that will carry you off into your own unique realms of interior exploration. If you want further instruction on cannabis and embodiment meditations, a friend of mine from way back in college, Will Johnson, has written a great book on the subject, Cannabis in Spiritual Practice: The Ecstasy of Shiva, the Calm of Buddha.

When you and your partner listen together to music while you are both high, often there emerges a shared sense of oneness and resonant union; it can’t as yet be proven scientifically but is certainly experienced intimately.

When you listen to music, your ears and also your skin are touched directly by the sound vibrations coming to you through the air – and as we saw earlier, the skin is a remarkable sense organ. The tiny hairs that cover your skin vibrate with the music, the pulse of the music itself seems to penetrate the skin, and cannabis, with its expansion of our sensory abilities, accentuates the entire experience. People who are high often experience goosebumps or chills – a frisson – while listening to moving music; it can feel like a “skin orgasm” of deep intensity.⁵ Feeling this whole-body skin orgasm together with your partner is quite a remarkable experience.

When you listen to music, sometimes your breathing syncs up with the beat. Sometimes you find yourself mouthing the words or responding to music with your own subtle harmonies; sometimes you surrender to the “sing-along” reflex. Muscles throughout your body will pulse to the music. Sharing this pleasure with your partner – feeling your bodies pulse in time to the music together – is an intimate experience and readily available!

Tripping in silence is equally valuable. Music naturally evokes and shapes an emotional response in listeners. When you turn off the music and enjoy silence together, your trip can deepen because it’s not being limited by the emotional conditioning or lyrics of the music.

Many couples like to go back and forth, maybe every ten minutes or so, between listening to a few mutually enjoyable tunes and then turning off the music and sharing silence.

In this silence, meditation becomes a natural quality of shared con sciousness. Suddenly there’s peace and quiet. There is nothing you have to pay attention to; there’s just you and your partner breathing within the space you share. Cannabis helps you tune in to the reality that the very air has substance, and that substance (as quantum scientists insist) connects you quite intimately, even across a room. The air your friend breathed a moment ago is now flowing into your own lungs – that’s intimate!

Breathing into shared space also involves taking in the exact same elements that have been flowing around in the Earth’s atmosphere literally since the beginnings of life on this Earth.

I remember a long time ago, during a high session, when I suddenly put two and two together and remembered a science course where I was taught that the very same oxygen-forming atoms that Jesus and Buddha and Lao-tzu breathed are still around – and being breathed by us right now. Wow.

That’s the level of realization that can come while we are tripping. We have loads of information in our brains, and with cannabis we will suddenly see the connection between two disparate things, making a new association and realization. Many people who’re devoted to marijuana consider this to be the prime positive effect of the herb. Each of us has collected a lifetime’s worth of memories, experiences, imaginations, ideas, and so forth, and the muse of cannabis loves to explore this vast inner storehouse to discover unique associative flashes.

SUCCESSFUL DISTANCING

We talked earlier about the necessity of regularly retreating from inter acting with your partner while you are high. This freedom to temporarily retreat back into your own separate presence is especially important during the final phase of a shared high. I wrote a book a while ago for the German market called Successful Distancing, that examines how sustainable relationships pulsate from a state of being very close to then being quite apart . . . and then naturally coming back close together again, throughout the day, the week, the month, and so on.

This ongoing “close-distant-close” pulsation is key because otherwise, with no alone time, even if you love each other deeply, you’ll tend to emotionally suffocate each other.

It’s great to come very close together when you first get high, but it’s also liberating to learn to give your partner complete freedom, at every stage of the high experience, to retreat from engagement and focus entirely within. As mentioned earlier, it’s important that you and your partner openly discuss and nurture this spontaneous dyad pulsation pattern that will occur while you are high so that you don’t feel rejected when the other temporarily lets go of relating – which naturally happens often in the denouement phase.

This idea of temporary “distancing” might seem a bit strange at first, but you’ll soon discover that the more time you spend in a solitary phase of the couples pulsation, the more you’ll have to share when you come together again. Balance is all. It’s a bit like hitting the “refresh” button when a web page has become sluggish; you retreat into an interior meditation for a few minutes . . . and then enjoy a recharged engagement when you tune in to your partner again.

HIGH MEDITATION

Coming down gently from a shared high – easing up and enjoying the feeling of being satisfied, complete, and content – is an optimum time to explore meditating together. This inner focus can be a purely secular meditation or any traditional meditation/prayer format. On the Mindfully High website, you’ll find several different types of guided audio meditations to explore, depending on your religious or philosophical preferences. What’s key is consciously creating free time where you can just relax, tune in to inner realms of discovery, and see what happens.

Meditation, in essence, is simple: it involves being still and quiet, gently calming your breathing and your mind, and focusing your full attention toward feeling and accepting the wholeness of your presentmoment inner experience.

Usually meditation is seen as an internal solitary process, but if you wish, you can easily include the presence of your partner in your meditation bubble.

It seems that whatever we do in life, there’s one overriding factor that determines our experience: whether we’re staying aware of our own inner center of being, or we’re lost in the sensations, thoughts, and activities of the outside world. If you want to experience a meditative sense of union with your partner while meditating, first you’ll need to focus toward and merge with your own inner center; only then can you expand your awareness bubble from the center of your personal being outward to merge with your partner’s bubble.

When both of you agree on this dynamic, you can choose to explore it deeply together in the denouement phase of your shared highs. It takes a bit of practice to master the process, so here’s some simple guidance (turn to the High Together app if you prefer the audio guide):

Get comfortable . . . stretch a bit if you want to . . . tune in to your breathing, feeling the air flowing effortlessly in and out.

Now expand your awareness from your effortless breaths coming and going to include your whole-body presence . . . be aware of your own presence from the inside out . . . now open your awareness to the feelings you find in your heart . . . breathe into these feelings without judging or trying to change them.

Let every new breath continue to expand your bubble of awareness effortlessly all around your physical body . . . enjoy your full human presence and practice just “ being.” . . .

Now begin to imagine that your loved one is beside you in the room, breathing the same air that you are breathing right now . . . and experience your partner’s bubble and your bubble merging and resonating in harmony together . . . effortlessly and joyfully, experience your two personal bubbles expanding to become one shared bubble!

Enjoy this shared experience . . . let it take you where it will right now . . . and end this meditation whenever you feel ready. . . .

You can also do formal traditional Buddhist Vipassana meditation. Here’s the basic flow:

Sit quietly for twenty minutes or so each day. Stay aware of the air flowing in and out of your nose and observe the habitual functioning of your mind, your thoughts, imaginations, and all the rest, without getting attached or involved in that habitual mental and emotional activity.

Give yourself permission to let go of your ego-based awareness, and instead be the silent witness to what’s happening in your mind and body. Feel your deeper awareness gently disengage from all your senses, thoughts, and bodily reactions let yourself experience a few moments of perfect inner calm and balance just breathe into the eternal present moment flowing through you. . . .

The benefits of doing this type of meditation regularly are wonderful, especially if you stick with it for a month or two. And you can always choose to share this sort of meditation with your partner while you’re high together. In fact, the muse of marijuana will often lead you spontaneously in this direction. All you need to do is open up and go along with the natural flow into inner peace, oneness, and mutual joy.

LUCID DREAMING

I want to include here at least a short mention of what’s often called lucid dreaming, which refers to our natural ability to enter into a dream state while also staying aware that we’re dreaming, and to sometimes consciously guide the dream experience.⁶ Along with being a great way to end a high experience, lucid dreaming is quite an effective therapeutic tool, and it has recently become almost a national fad – but it actually has its roots way back in ancient history.

In Tibetan yogic practice, many spiritual masters practiced “dream yoga”⁷ to help awaken various meditative states.⁸ In Buddhist tradition, all of existence was seen as a dream state, and dream yoga was an effective way to explore the nature of existence. Similar to current quantum physics insights showing that all matter is in reality energetic and not physical, the Hindu and Buddhist yogic view considered lucid dream experiences to be equally real to everyday waking experiences. Likewise, in early Greek writings, both Aristotle and Galen of Pergamon discussed the value of lucid dreaming. And a few hundred years later, Saint Augustine wrote about the process and value of lucid dreaming related to the Christian tradition.

Numerous philosophers during the Age of Enlightenment talked about conscious guided dreaming, and of course Sigmund Freud dealt in depth with the therapeutic power of dream states, as did Carl Jung in a more spiritual bent. But it wasn’t until 1913 that a Dutch psychiatrist named Frederik van Eeden coined the term “lucid dreaming.” Because we all dream, all cultures seem to have their own version of lucid dreaming, dream interpretation, and guided visionary experience.

Even before written history, it seems that shamanic masters regularly mixed dreaming and the ceremonial use of psychotropic substances. Carlos Castaneda explored in depth the Yaqui Indian use of lucid dreaming and peyote for inducing deep mystic states in his seminal 1970s books about shamanism.⁹ All psychedelic drugs are known to induce states of lucid dreaming, and while psychologists are still arguing about whether regular marijuana use boosts or inhibits dreaming, I find general agreement among people using cannabis that it does increase their natural ability to experience lucid dream states. In his book Dreaming Wide Awake: Lucid Dreaming, Shamanic Healing, and Psychedelics, David Jay Brown states that “being high on cannabis is actually dreamlike in some ways, and as such may serve a similar psychological function.”¹⁰

For our focus on couples using cannabis together, I want to point out that in the last stage of a shared cannabis high, along with meditation, you can also indulge in focusing on whatever dream flows come to you. As you close your eyes and watch the show that so often comes effortlessly to the fore at this phase of the cannabis high, you don’t need to do anything at all – except instead of falling asleep, choose to remain aware that you’re dreaming while you dream.

You might also value a short guided introduction to this lucid dreaming experience. One of my early teachers in this regard, Rebecca Oriard, was the first to guide me through this process, so I’ll give her credit and pass on her technique to you. The aim is to get you “aloft” and weightlessly sailing over a beautiful landscape (similar to the ancient Tibetan Buddhist preparation) . . . and then let you spontaneously land on your feet if and when you want to, anywhere that you might spontaneously choose, and set you free to lucidly dream whatever experience or adventure might come to you.

You are free to surrender to whatever your deeper realms of consciousness might bring to you, or you can also actively guide your own dream wherever you want. This is a learned ability, so experiment often and develop your own personal approach; you can also search online for a technique that suits you.¹¹

You and your partner might choose to take turns guiding each other with this process. Remember that a dream is just a dream; you won’t get hurt no matter what you dream is happening, and you can wake up and end the lucid dream anytime you want. Afterward, you’ll perhaps want to take time to reflect on your experience and see whether any lucid realizations pop to the fore – this is an insight trip! And of course, share your experience with your partner.

Here’s a basic guide into a high lucid dream state:

When you’re ready, get comfortable in a recliner chair, bed, sofa, or whatever . . . and tune in to your breathing as usual . . . expand your awareness to include your head . . . your torso . . . your legs . . . your feet . . . and the earth under you.

Now begin to feel your body becoming lighter and lighter . . . and feel yourself becoming weightless . . . and you are beginning to float off the ground . . . and you are conscious that you are dreaming. . . .

Now imagine that you’re outside on a warm springtime afternoon . . . floating . . . and as you feel the desire to rise up, let yourself actually feel your body like a great bird flapping its wings, taking you up high over the trees . . . and now you are soaring high on gentle breezes. . . .

Down below you are green trees and grassland . . . you see a stream running with clear, cool water down a valley, and you follow the stream from high above . . . you are free and happy . . . nowhere to go, nothing to do . . . and if you want to, you can begin looking for somewhere below that you’ d really like to explore . . . and without any effort or forethought, if you want to, you can land on your own feet in that spot . . . and continue with your experience . . . staying aware that you’re dreaming, even as your dream now unfolds as it wants to . . . you’re in charge . . . see what comes to you now. . . .