The Temple of Advanced Enlightenment: using marijuana for spiritual enrichment – News
The Temple of Advanced Enlightenment is a group advocating for responsible spiritual use of marijuana. The group was founded by the Rev. Kevin Loring in 2005. The highly organized group, with beliefs and practices that include a written creation story, is striving to be recognized as a religion.The temple is in the planning stages of petitioning the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency for a religious use exemption for their use of marijuana. They also aim to provide public education programs on spiritual use, religious freedom and civil rights.
Religious use of pot is restricted to temple members who are at least 18 years old and have completed basic religious studies of the Temple. They then may engage in practices such as the Sacred Smoking Circle, Vision Quest, Blessing of Meals, Blessing of Home, Holy Anointing and Honoring the Deceased.
They do not advocate for the outright legalization of marijuana because they believe use requires spiritual guidance.
In the Sacred Smoking Circle, the clergy leads prayers as a peace pipe is passed clockwise to symbolize the passage of time. Usually each member consumes one gram of marijuana at each ritual.
Prior to the Vision Quest, a member fasts for a week. Then he or she is led to a remote location and partakes in sacrament – where water and music are used in order to reach an enlightened state of mind. Loring heard his calling on a Vision Quest in his late teens when he spent more than a week alone in the woods.
Loring, Jillian Dunton and Garrett Wozneak make up the temple’s high council. In order to be ordained, one must be a member for three years, complete 500 hours of community service, be tested by the council, sign an affidavit of spiritual cannabis use and take a vow of poverty, compassion and morality.
“We try to get people to not focus on the sacrament,” Loring said. “It’s like focusing on the little cracker at Catholic Church.”
You know my feelings on the issue – I don’t think I need to have a doctor’s permission nor a preacher’s blessing to partake of the herb. I don’t need a medical excuse nor a written creation story to enjoy the ganja.
However, I completely support the people who are taking the spiritual path with cannabis and helping others to find their way. I like that Loring seems to take his religion seriously and is creating ritual and communal boundaries regarding cannabis use. I especially like that his adherents follow a vow of poverty and commit to community service.
The only critique I had of Loring was his prayer meetings scheduled at his home on Tuesdays at 4:20pm. Doesn’t the adoption of the secular stoner code for getting blazed undermine a bit of your religious sincerity?
I was diagnosed wit psychosis a few years ago so when i was unwell it seamed like a uncontrolled enlightenment i was just wondering any ones thoughts on this subject ps. i was a smoker at the time
Well Andrei, thats a good question. I stop using marijuana for about 2 months after smoking for about a year straight everyday. The break did me very well, and the first time I smoked again, it felt as if I got a flawed taste of “enlightenment”. It felt that no matter how spontaneous the universe around me became, i was completely open to it because I felt and knew that the universe was me. Very hard to explain but think of it like this:
Usually you are sober and perceiving the universe through a singular mind. While on weed, you feel expansion that not only lets you realize all life is made of the same love and matter of the universe, you feel a general compliance with everything else as well.
Anyway, why I’m kind of sitting on the fence is because it does not lead to eternal bliss, which is what I feel enlightenment would be. And god knows, I can’t just be high all the time I want to be enlightened. To want it, makes it a desire, and at the root of all of my desires is the basis of me suffering without it. The point of living an enlightened life is to live without suffering and to live an ordinary life in a superior realm, not to live a superior life in an ordinary realm. I don’t think marijuana is enlightenment, not saying its bad, especially if you want a taste of it. But the destination is the journey and the journey is one you are already following whether you know it or not. It seems like any euphoric feeling that has a dependance of a substance to happen is not very real to me, because when I’m not high I am just me again. That is shortlived and I’m looking for something greater.
Almost forgot, i missplaced a “to” earlier, on the last row. Lets say its our choice :)
Hi all, for those who may find interesting a short from my experience(s) with(in) the domain, i could advance that: thc i s a adug that interfere with and modulates “Attention Flight Scheduller”, in the prefrontal cortex, kind of a lesse for the inner eye :)via serotonin activity, at some levels. Anyhow, question would be: how can one, who cannot perceive his inner life in an objective manner, with guided attention, to attain a good and reliable and joyfull perception of life???
any group of people that consumes a herb together can (and should?) also be viewed as a participants in a ritual of celebration of spirit of the herb, weather they are aware of this or not. (?)