PLANT MIND


Michael Pollan (2021). This is Your Mind on Plants.


Journalist Pollan describes three molecules in plants that CHANGE HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. Morphine in the opium poppy is a sedative, caffeine in coffee and tea is a stimulant, and mescaline in the peyote and San Pedro cacti is a hallucinogen. The first and the last of these are illegal in the United States as of this writing in 2022 even though both have been shown in clincial studies to be of benefit for a number of health related issues. Ironically, caffeine is the most addictive of the three according to Pollan, and his reasoning why it remains legal: it supports our business/economic model of productivity and efficiency by stimulating us to stay awaken and engage in work.


Overall, Pollan is long on fascinating stories and short on the pragmatics of how to grow, process, and use these plants in our gardens probably because of the legal ramifications. It behooves us to find alternative plant medicines that can produce similar changes in human consciousness that are legal:

    plant sedatives that address a specific pain without depressing the entire body system, 

    mildly stimulating and less addictive plants for energy, and 

    hallucinogenic plants for accessing the visionary realms.



 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS Wayne Dyer (2003). There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem. Dyer earned a Doctorate of Education in Guidance and Counseling, and is a prolific author. His first book that i read in the 1970's, Your Erroneous Zones, profoundly influenced my thinking as a teen.  The theme of this book is that there is a spiritual solution to every problem, that problems are illusions created in the mind by incorrect thinking, and that the solution to these mental problems is to change our thinking in light of the spirit (defined as an energy/intelligence that is the source of all life, i.e., God). Some might call this "spiritual bypassing," ignoring the body in favor of the mind and spirit. The first half of the book is lessons from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Dyer suggests that low frequency is associated with the "negative" and faster frequency with the "positive" [for me, at least musically, lower frequencies don't imply negative emo...
Read more
Image
TURN ON Timothy Leary (1965, 1999). Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out Leary was a University Professor at Harvard who is best know for his experiments with LSD. The book is part lectures, part interviews, and part essays. Given all the media hype about Leary, i was surprised at how much common sense i encountered, and how much he speaks to learning, hope, and love.  He begins with a chapter on how to start your own religion (to invoke the rights of the first amendment in US law) with family and friends, a tribe of people living together in community with their own laws...a place where sacrament is consumed (it need not be LSD, but anything that is spiritually meaningful to the community, something that binds the community together in ceremony)...a place preferably in nature where one feels protected and nurtured.  The BIG ADVICE is to drop out of society's robot world/mind, and turn on to God/Goddess (the Spirit), nature, and the body and mind, and tune in (dropping back into socie...
Read more
Image
BODY WISDOM  Therese Bertherat (1989).  The body has its reasons: Self-awareness                                                           through conscious movement.  Berherat takes us on a personal journey in learning body wisdom /awareness using Ehrenfred's method which is radically different than the medical model/method she learned at University. The story unfolds as "sessions" of practices, and the end of the book reveals several "preliminaries" on how to cultivate body wisdom. Among the many practical lessons are:      pause after exhaling to let the body use oxygen before inhaling again--this allows the              body to rest/relax with every breath.      because all parts of the body are integrated, working with one par...
Read more