The Seven Deadly Sins of Spirituality

The Messiah Complex [Pride]: Everyone knows about the messiah complex, where someone unfortunately takes a wrong mental turn in spirituality and the ego takes over completely, and the person believes that they are so special and above all others that they become a god in their own minds. What is lesser-known is that there are varying degrees of this complex: an overly-strong desire to teach others is also still a spiritual problem, because it is an imbalance of egoistic hierarchy. One must be introspective and save themselves first in order to be able to help anyone else. Also, believing oneself to actually be enlightened when one is not is perhaps the greatest spiritual trap possible.

Endlessly searching [Greed]: It may be tough to understand at this point or even believe, but in spirituality, all you can ever find is ultimately yourself and what you already are. The search for enlightenment is a good thing of course and sometimes that might take a great tenacious effort, but people must understand that the search will only ever lead to what's been right in front of our faces all along. It is in fact in the direction of mind, but what is often confusing to most is that the mind is endless and universal; if you go off continually looking for something else other than mind, it will always be somewhere else other than where you look.

Spiritual depression [Wrath]: Depression is anger turned inward. We've all seen it here in this forum nearly every day: posts about a 'dark night of the soul' or 'awakening ruined my life'. In matters of real spirituality, we are in fact looking towards our own minds and thus unlocking secrets about ourselves and revealing what we really are deep down inside, and this is not to be taken lightly. Spiritual depression is a trap that one must move on quickly from if at all possible; lighter forms of non-clinical depression can be alleviated in some manner by realizing that this stage is still heavily mired in ego, and therefore not real understanding. Awakening is only the first step: one must keep being introspective and keep 'seeing through' to get beyond it, and must 'get out of their own heads' by moving forth with real study and practice instead of stagnating here.

Faith in spiritual gurus [Envy]: Spiritual teachers, especially popular ones, create a sort of paradox in matters of spirituality: they get so popular that people often look outwardly to them and their wisdom as opposed to looking inwards towards their own minds. That's spiritually backwards. The best teachers, take the historic teachers in original Zen history for example, will only point you back in the direction of your own mind over and over again without adding anything extra. Use your intuition: one should be especially wary of teachers who aren't enlightened themselves and try teach based on their own egos for selfish gain.

Clinging to oneness [Lust]: This rarely-understood point is probably going to cause some controversy, but please bear with me. If you want clarity and real understanding in matters of spirituality, it's a good idea to come to the understanding of not one, not two. Nearly everyone who is awakened understands the obvious fallacies and problems of separation, but what isn't as apparent is that concepts of 'oneness' are the other lesser-known side of dualism and are a more subtle problem. Everything is not separate due to the underlying principle of all things of course, but everything is not 'one' either because there are obvious distinctions between this and that and right and wrong. If everything were truly only one, then theft and killing would be one as well therefore perfectly fine to indulge in, and if we aren't absolutely deluded we know that this is far from the case.

Intellectual understanding and over-practice [Gluttony]: The paradox of spirituality or even searching for enlightenment and awakening is that usually an intellectual framework or a sort of practice must be enacted and built upon, but this very same understanding or practice can become a sort of hindrance at a certain point. As before, all you can ever really find in matters of spirituality is only your own mind, so to over-study or over-practice without seeing through both is to create more divisions from true understanding. An intellectual understanding without practical application and integration in one's life is worthless no matter how many books you read on spiritual subjects.

Not helping others [Sloth]: "The meaning of life is helping others" ~ The Dalai Lama. The nature of the ego is such that it is usually the real problem when it comes to matters of spirituality. We're all in this together, and to separate oneself from others and not go back in some way to help is ultimately self-oriented and limiting. Even in the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures of Zen, the final stage notably isn't enlightenment, but "entering the marketplace with helping hands." It's very important to note that this doesn't mean to try to awaken people who are sleeping or to set up shop and start trying to teach; helping others is often best done by simply listening to people and hearing what they have to say, or being openly accepting and tolerant of differences in understandings.

 Joe Rogan And Neil Young Spotify Funny Memes

 Covid Memes 

 Joe Rogan And Neil Young Spotify Funny Memes 

 

Scientists: Cannabis Can Prevent COVID-19 Infection

Acids extracted from cannabis plants blocked COVID-19 infection in human cells in lab tests, a new peer-reviewed study shows.

That one friend who insists weed has health benefits for everything under the sun could actually be on to something when it comes to one very important disease: COVID-19. 

A new study has identified cannabis compounds as a therapeutic agent to prevent coronavirus infections by blocking the virus from entering human cells. According to the study’s authors, widespread use of these compounds from pot plants and a vaccination regime could help to fight the virus’s spread and the disease it causes in people who get infected. 

“With widespread use of cannabinoids, resistant variants could still arise, but the combination of vaccination and CBDA/CBGA treatment should create a more challenging environment with which SARS-CoV-2 must contend, reducing the likelihood of escape,” the study’s authors write. The authors helpfully include a very clear diagram of this process:

As detailed in a new study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Natural Products by researchers from Oregon State University and Oregon Health & Sciences University, the scientists were looking for a biological compound that could bind with the spike protein of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. Using a technique called affinity-selection mass spectrometry (used to quickly assess a large volume of compounds) on cannabis, the researchers honed in on three compounds: cannabigerolic acid, or CBG-A; tetrahydrocannabinolic acid, or THC-A; and cannabidiolic acid, or CBD-A. Sadly, since THC-A is a controlled substance, they couldn’t get enough of the stuff to assess its effects and focused on the others. 

So, what does that mean? Most of us are familiar with THC, which gets you stoned, and also CBD, which does not get you stoned but which you can buy in a can of infused soda and appears to have other health benefits. What you might not know is that those glorious substances come from precursors, which are acids. CBG-A is only found during the live, growing phase of the cannabis plant, and converts into everything else we love about it. CBD-A turns into CBD through “decarboxylation,” which can be the application of heat through smoking, vaping, or baking. 

What that means is that you can’t really get CBG-A and CBD-A via any process of ingesting cannabis that gets you high. Rather, you’d have to extract it from a hemp plant that probably wouldn’t have made it to the bowl of your resin-stained bong to begin with. 

The team incubated the live virus with cannabis compounds as well as a control and, after 24 hours, injected them into human epithelial cells; they found that cells that had been treated with CBD-A and CBG-A lacked SARS-COV-2 RNA. They performed the same procedure on live alpha and beta variants, first detected in the UK and South Africa, respectively, and found that the compounds had the same effect in both cases. They express optimism that these compounds can be effective against other variants, too. 

“Our data show minimal impact of the variant lineages on the effectiveness of CBDA and CBGA, a trend that will hopefully extends to other existing and future variants,” the authors write. 

Their findings point to the cannabis compounds as “virus neutralizing,” capable of blocking the entry of coronavirus in high concentrations that the researchers note are “high but might be clinically achievable.” They recommend oral administration of the compounds—meaning adequate use of cannabis for COVID-19 prevention would likely come in the form of a pill or liquid.

“These compounds can be taken orally and have a long history of safe use in humans,” said Richard Van Breemen, first author on the study and Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University in a press release.

While we don’t want to get overexcited, we think it’s clear what the Biden administration should do next: legalize pot so that this research can look into all avenues including THC-A, fill America’s breadbasket with cannabis plants, and send every person in America all the pot extracts they need to finally end this thing.