If we don't change our minds, we'll never change the world.

Graham Hancock is a best-selling author and world-renowned researcher.  In the following TED talk, he discusses ayahuasca, a sacred plant used by Shamans.

An interesting note....Heroine and cocaine addicts have had tremendous success in leaving their addictions behind by spending time with a Shaman, skilled in the use of ayahuasca.

Before you run off to find some, it's illegal here, of course.  Besides that, it's disgusting to smell and taste.  It's for use only by those who seriously want to get out of their hellish mental prison.  Now, that may be most of us, from what I can tell, but junkies are just more motivated.

That said, Graham talks about our society's heavy-handed approach to making sure people don't stray from the level of consciousness he calls the alert/problem solving state...the state of consciousness which resonates and perpetuates our current commercial society, warfare, greed, materialism, suspicion, and political shenannigans favorable to the massive mess of inequality and injustice based on the supremacy of a tiny, rich and brutal elite whose armed minions can break into your home and lock you up for experimenting with psychodelic drugs, and soon I expect, for speaking out against them.  

I had seen Graham's TED talk before, but was moved to bring it to you today, as someone has posted a poll on whether or not Illinois should allow medical marijuana.

Please...the fact that any kind of marijuana is illegal and we allow people to go to jail for possessing it is something for which we should all collectively hang our heads in shame.  The CIA's drug-runnning operations are common knowledge, as is the fact that marijuana and hemp (a wonderfully earth friendly crop) would allow ordinary citizens to have a cut of the tremendous profit the thugs in charge enjoy.

However, Graham talks about something even more insidious than threatening the profits of our thugs in chief.  He talks about a society that has no problem going around the world and, through brutal violence, imposing our form of "democracy" on people who never asked us, while its own adult citizens are not allowed to exercise their sovereignty over their own consciousness while doing no harm to others.

This includes the decision to use ancient sacred visionary plants, like ayahuasca.  And anyone who has every smoked marijuana knows that this plant, too, when used in moderation, can open one's mind to altered states which nurture a connectedness to life, to nature, to one's own soul and spirit.  But as Graham says, it too can work against our spiritual growth if we become heavy, habitual users.  

There's the rub...some people love the taste, or the feeling of being high.  Same with alcohol...but that's alot more destructive, as we all know.  But's it's legal, hey?  Why not jail people for drinking?  Because, as Graham points out, it doesn't really shift you out of alert/probelm solving consciousness...just slows you down.  Not too threatening to the "state" of our increasingly nightmarish fear-based world.

Jesus too, far from encouraging people to "worship" him, used parables to connect with a part of the human mind that is capable of growing beyond these perceptual walls of materialism and fear.  Well, he had to go, but proved too damn difficult to deal with, even in death, so they had to work it to give his message to priests and such so the power structure could remain and the lowly everyday human wouldn't get any big ideas about their own true and spiritually powerful nature.  

...but I say...we will soldier on, and we will not be stopped from exploring our own consciousness, drugs or not.  It's in us.  Even if you think it's not.  Sorry, if you're human...you're divine, or as Sting said..."We are spirits in a material world."   But as Einstein's theory of relativity hints at, even the material world may not be so material.  It's all a matter of mind...or mind over matter.  The mind, the spirit...will win in the end.

Now, sit back, and enjoy Graham Hancock's impassioned speech about you, your mind, and your potential to awaken to a higher reality.