By Charles Benner

I discovered cannabis (marijuana) in 1967 when, as a naïve nineteen-year-old white country boy from Pennsylvania, I became a combat medic shortly after the government drafted me into the US Army. They sent me to Korea. Two years later, after I served my time, I belonged to another culture.

My best friends in Korea were black boys from the ghettos of Chicago and LA. After duty each evening, we met behind our Quonset hut, a place we called “the hooch.” We rolled and passed joints around while listening to Jimmy Hendrix playing such psychedelic music as, “Are You Experienced?”; the Doors singing “Break on Through to the Other Side,” and Bob Dylan half-talking, half-singing, “I would not feel so all alone….everybody must get stoned.” 

All that year I became experienced. I broke on through to the other side. I didn’t let my hero, Bob Dylan, feel so all alone.

Since I was the medic, my buddies all called me “Doc.” You became a “head” if you joined our little gang of pot smokers. Chambers, one of the guys I remember best, was a veteran of the LA Watts riots. When he asked, “Are you a head?” he wanted to know if you could “keep it together” while you were high. He meant, could you keep your mind together—not panic or get paranoid. Could you stay cool.

Chambers taught me my first lessons in mindset, in the power of believing in yourself: Control your own mind—you don’t let it or your thoughts control you. He also taught me that with marijuana, as with psychedelics, choosing your purpose, and then expecting success, is what creates your experience.

In my practice of using marijuana with a purpose, I followed important guidelines. I adopted protocols that therapists used for psychedelics in use with cannabis—as it’s also a mild psychedelic. This was a reasoned choice on my part, since I knew there were plenty of people experimenting with various drugs in a somewhat random way, occasionally with devastating consequences. 

For my part, I had faith in my expectations and was clear about my intentions. I was an artist—a photographer, and I consciously chose to live in the Now, the sacred Present Moment. I opened my heart, and I took my photographs in a state of wonder at the beauty around me.   

I believed then (as I still believe now) that the quality of your experience is determined by your awareness. Physicians, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists who had been working for many years with psychedelic medicines developed these principles or guidelines, and they included two important aspects: Set and Setting. 

Set is your mindset—your beliefs, your expectations, your intentions. Setting is the environment in which you choose to experience the effects. They are mutually inclusive.

Set

Exploring life is not based on seeing is believing; it’s more like believing is seeing. I believed that marijuana opened up my creative channels, awakened my innate inner artist—and so it did. I believed it awakened my optimism, faith, and self-confidence—and so it did. I believed it would make me more aware of enthusiasm, receptivity, and acceptance, and so it did. 

I chose Zen-like mind states of presence and inner peace called “mindfulness.” I adopted a positive relationship with pot, and I used it with purpose. My clear intention involved a spiritual component and to have a respectful relationship with my Mother Mary. I would be responsible, and I would be reverent. I found, if I did this, Mother would be my friendly muse.

Setting

This refers to the environment you choose—when and where to get high; alone, or with friends? Do you work on your art or celebrate life with others? Do you stay in the stillness of nature alone, or at home in your sacred space? Do you listen to music, dance, or make love? I chose my environment carefully. By having chosen one that aligned with my intents and purposes, I guaranteed a positive experience. 

One of my favorite ways to use cannabis is to be alone, and to walk around while looking at the world around me. When the sun is at the right angle, and the world is radiant and glows with extraordinary beauty, I take my photographs. I practice reverence and awe, thus keeping an open channel to the Divine.

The Phenomenology

My photography led me to Mexico to capture the beauty of the country and the soul of its people. It led to living in Mexico City, where I had exhibits of my black-and-white photography in popular art galleries. This led to getting high on Sunday mornings in the park next to the Palace of Fine Arts, and then walking inside to my front-row seat where I was the official photographer of the Ballet Folklorico De Mexico.

In the 1980s I read Andrew Weil, MD’s The Natural Mind: An investigation of drugs and the higher consciousness. In it he gives the keys to a positive relationship with marijuana. It inspired me like no other book had done.

He said that using psychoactive drugs just for the feelings they give, to relieve depression or anxiety, is not using them as they were intended. “Just liking the feelings drugs provide without using those feelings for positive purpose, is the beginning of most bad relationships to drugs.”

He wrote that we must use such drugs for positive reasons. “Use drugs ritually. Choose the time and place and define the purpose.”

In Peter Stafford’s Psychedelics Encyclopedia, in the section on cannabis, he writes about Charles Tart, PhD, who did a study on what he called the “phenomenology of marijuana.” He wrote that when marijuana is relatively familiar to the user, and when it is used with a purpose, there are definite effects, and he lists them in a chart he calls “Characteristic Experiences.”

Cannabis Characteristic Experiences

• Visual imagery is more vivid
• Greater spatial separation between sound sources
• Hearing more subtle changes in sound
• New qualities to taste
• Enjoyment of eating
• More living in the here-and-now
• Time passes more slowly
• Sexual orgasm has new, pleasurable qualities
• New qualities to touch
• Movements exceptionally smooth
• Get physically relaxed, don’t want to move
• Touch more exciting
• Forgetting start of conversations
• Insights into others
• Ordinary social games hard to play
• Forgetting to finish some task
• Easily sidetracked
• Spontaneous insights into self
• Appreciating more subtle humor
• Accepting contradictions more readily
• Almost invariably feeling good
• Less need to feel in control of things
• More childlike, open to experience, filled with wonder

Over fifty years of living with cannabis I have experienced all of those qualities—and I believe they are available to all of us. We each need to learn how to find them in ourselves—even without a drug.

I’m happy to say marijuana is a gateway. A spiritual gateway out of suffering. A healing gateway to return to the here and now. Many of these characteristics are also states of mind that can lead us back to our own Nature. Simple, childlike acceptance and love.

Who would not like to enjoy every minute of life, living it to its beautiful fullness? If cannabis can reveal your true nature, then invite her in. Treat her like a guest. Like a guide. Like the wise master who will advise you on your hero’s journey. The more she enhances the feeling of being alive, the more she is on your side. 

It’s well-known that laughter heals. That sleep heals. We all know it is healing to listen to music, do art, and play. Having fun is good for you. Recreational marijuana is medicinal. The skillful user of cannabis must see how many of these positive benefits he or she can enjoy.

How does one prepare to use marijuana with a sacred purpose? How do you develop the mindset to have a positive relation to cannabis? You go to your Sacred Space, alone. You ingest or smoke marijuana. You could play soft, earthy, spiritual music in the background and contemplate this poem from Rumi:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.

Realize the fullness of your world here and now, in this Present Moment. And then listen to these words from Rumi.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel 
and kiss the ground.

—

Charles Benner is currently writing a book of narrative nonfiction on the California pot farmers’ struggle to become legal, entitled: You Can’t Ban the Sun: The Marijuana Wars in Grass Valley. Contact: charliebenner@gmail.com