It will be interesting to see what this particular post does to this website, traffic-wise — will an article about legalizing weed turn up the ‘traffic knob’ for this website, or will it do the opposite and shrink my traffic beyond belief? Only time will tell, but I predict it will be the former and that traffic will go up after I post this article.

I make that prediction because I know how many people love the healing herb, commonly known as marijuana. I know that out of the people that I’ve met in my life over 50% occasionally enjoy it in one way or another, and probably 70-80% of the people I’ve met would be happy to see it legalized and put into a more controlled environment where it could be regulated and quality could be monitored. I also know there are some very vocal (and uneducated) folks out there who think legalization would be nothing short of the end of the world, so it wouldn’t be completely surprising to me if the traffic to this site drops after putting up this post — but I don’t care. I’m going to post it anyway.

This article is a big one, coming in at just under 6000 words, so get yourself into a comfy seat, grab a drink, and if you’re cool, smoke a doobie and get ready for a good long read about many of the reasons weed should be legal.

Health

I think the first and most important place to start this article is the health issues surrounding marijuana. Most people have been taught that marijuana is bad and it causes health problems like cancer, schizophrenia, amotivational syndrome (laziness), and general stupidity, among others. Of course none of these things are true, and are quite laughable considering all of the medicinal uses for cannabis, but these myths are still being perpetuated by the mainstream media and the people who stand to lose their jobs if weed is ever legalized. Many people involved in the justice system (police, jails, courts), pharmaceutical industry, big oil & fossil fuels industry, pulp and paper, plastics, and others all want to keep you believing that marijuana is bad, wrong, and evil, because if it’s ever legalized it will bring all of the above listed industries to their knees, and many of their jobs will be lost. I guess most of them aren’t looking for a career change any time soon.

By the end of this article I will have destroyed all of those myths and many more, but let’s start first with cancer. The easiest of the myths to debunk, thanks to recent research into the effects of cannabis and THC (the active ingredient in cannabis) on cancer.

To put it simply, cannabis does not cause cancer. It never has and hopefully never will. Smoking cannabis actually lowers your risk of getting cancer and shrinks certain kinds of tumors! If you’re new to the truth about cannabis this might sound unbelievable, but it’s true. There are also many people who say that cannabis has cured cancer completely, and I mean really sick people who were told they didn’t have long to live returning to full health in a few weeks by ingesting Rick Simpson’s hemp oil cure for cancer.

Don’t believe it? Check out the documentary titled “Run From The Cure: The Rick Simpson Story”. You can watch the entire documentary for free by heading to the movies section of this website, it’s listed there twice, you can’t miss it.

Here’s just a few studies about marijuana (THC) and cancer:

Federal researchers implanted several types of cancer, including leukemia and lung cancers, in mice, then treated them with cannabinoids (unique, active components found in marijuana). THC and other cannabinoids shrank tumors and increased the mice’s lifespans. Munson, AE et al. Antineoplastic Activity of Cannabinoids. Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Sept. 1975. p. 597-602

Researchers at the Kaiser-Permanente HMO, funded by NIDA, followed 65,000 patients for nearly a decade, comparing cancer rates among non-smokers, tobacco smokers, and marijuana smokers. Tobacco smokers had massively higher rates of lung cancer and other cancers. Marijuana smokers who didn’t also use tobacco had no increase in risk of tobacco-related cancers or of cancer risk overall. In fact their rates of lung and most other cancers were slightly lower than non-smokers, though the difference did not reach statistical significance. Sidney, S. et al. Marijuana Use and Cancer Incidence (California, United States). Cancer Causes and Control. Vol. 8. Sept. 1997, p. 722-728

In a 1994 study the government tried to suppress, federal researchers gave mice and rats massive doses of THC, looking for cancers or other signs of toxicity. The rodents given THC lived longer and had fewer cancers, “in a dose-dependent manner” (i.e. the more THC they got, the fewer tumors). NTP Technical Report On The Toxicology And Carcinogenesis Studies Of 1-Trans- Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol, CAS No. 1972-08-3, In F344/N Rats And B6C3F Mice, Gavage Studies. See also, “Medical Marijuana: Unpublished Federal Study Found THC-Treated Rats Lived Longer, Had Less Cancer,” AIDS Treatment News no. 263, Jan. 17, 1997

Donald Tashkin, a UCLA researcher whose work is funded by NIDA, did a case-control study comparing 1,200 patients with lung, head and neck cancers to a matched group with no cancer. Even the heaviest marijuana smokers had no increased risk of cancer, and had somewhat lower cancer risk than non-smokers (tobacco smokers had a 20-fold increased lung cancer risk). Tashkin D. Marijuana Use and Lung Cancer: Results of a Case-Control Study. American Thoracic Society International Conference. May 23, 2006

And here’s a link to a list of studies about cannabis and cancer.

This is not surprising, considering that up until the 1890′s the most used medicines in America for both humans and animals were made with strong extracts of marijuana and hashish. Even Queen Victoria used cannabis resins for menstrual cramps and PMS and her time as queen (1837-1901) saw a dramatic increase in the use of Indian cannabis medicines.

Medicinal Marijuana Throughout History

For at least 3000 years prior to this cannabis had been used in one form or another (buds, leaves, roots, stalk, etc.) in nearly all of the most commonly used and most accepted medicines. It was used for everything from fatigue and fits of coughing, to asthma, headaches, and depression.

Archaeologists and anthropologists cite physical evidence showing cannabis is one of the oldest crops to be cultivated on the planet. It is known that hemp has been used widely for at least 10,000 years when it was common to use baskets woven with hemp fibers. We now know that cannabis was being used medicinally in China since the 27th century B.C. That’s a long, long history of medicinal use!

Medical Marijuana Today

Today we see marijuana being used for a wide variety of health concerns. I’ll go over a few of the more common medicinal uses in this article, but there are really just too many uses to list them all in this article, so don’t be surprised if you hear of it being used for other reasons than those listed here.

Alzheimer’s disease – Research conducted by the Scripps Research Institute in California shows that THC prevents the deposits in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease from forming. THC also prevents an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase from speeding up the formation of “Alzheimer plaques” in the brain more effectively than pharmaceutical drugs. THC is also more effective at blocking clumps of protein that can inhibit memory and cognition in Alzheimer’s patients, as reported in Molecular Pharmaceutics.

HIV/AIDS – The Columbia University published clinical trial data in 2007 showing that HIV/AIDS patients who got stoned four times a day would eat far more and experienced little discomfort or cognitive impairment. They concluded that smoked marijuana has a clear medical benefit in HIV patients. Another study in 2008 conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine found that marijuana significantly reduces HIV-related neuropathic pain when added to a patient’s already-prescribed pain management regimen and said that it “may be an effective option for pain relief” in those whose pain is not controlled with current medications. Mood disturbance, physical disability, and quality of life all improved significantly for those being tested during the study. Despite management with opioids and other pain modifying therapies, neuropathic pain continues to reduce the quality of life and daily functioning in HIV patients. Cannabinoid receptors in the nervous system have been shown to modulate pain perception. No serious adverse effects were reported, according to the study published by the American Academy of Neurology.

Brain cancer - A study by Complutense University of Madrid found the chemicals in marijuana destroy brain cancer cells by making them to feed upon themselves in a process called autophagy. The research team discovered that cannabinoids like THC had anticancer effects in mice with human brain cancer cells and in people with brain tumors. When mice with the human brain cancer cells received the THC, the tumor shrank. Using electron microscopes to analyze brain tissue taken both before and after a 26- to 30-day THC treatment regimen, the researchers found that THC eliminated cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact. The patients did not have any toxic effects from the treatment; previous studies of THC for the treatment of cancer have also found the therapy to be well tolerated.

Breast cancer – According to a 2007 study at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, cannabidiol (CBD) may stop breast cancer from spreading throughout the body. These researchers believe their discovery may provide a non-toxic alternative to chemotherapy while achieving the same results minus the painful and unpleasant side effects. The research team says that CBD works by blocking the activity of a gene called Id-1, which is believed to be responsible for a process called metastasis, which is the aggressive spread of cancer cells away from the original tumor site.

Lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - One of the more surprising research results from the last decade has been the finding that smoking cannabis does not increase the risk of developing lung cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) among people who do not smoke tobacco, and may indeed confer a mildly protective effect. Beginning in 2001, multiple research teams began to report results showing that smoking cannabis does not, by itself, increase the risk of lung cancer, and this result is now well-established. Many studies did report a strongly synergistic effect, however, between tobacco use and smoking cannabis such that tobacco smokers who also smoked cannabis dramatically increased their already very high risk of developing lung cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by as much as 300%. Some of these research results follow below:

• In 2006, Hashibe, Morgenstern, Cui, and Tashkin, et al. presented the results from a study involving 2,240 subjects that showed non-tobacco users who smoked marijuana did not exhibit an increased incidence of lung cancer or head-and-neck malignancies. These results were supported even among very long-term, very heavy users of marijuana.

Tashkin, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years, said, “It’s possible that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in marijuana smoke may encourage apoptosis, or programmed cell death, causing cells to die off before they have a chance to undergo malignant transformation”. He further commented that “We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use. What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

• Researchers from the University of British Columbia presented a study at the American Thoracic Society 2007 International Conference showing that smoking marijuana and tobacco together more than tripled the risk of developing COPD over just smoking tobacco alone.
  

• Similar findings were released in April 2009 by the Vancouver Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease Research Group. The study reported that smoking both tobacco and marijuana synergistically increased the risk of respiratory symptoms and COPD. Smoking only marijuana, however, was not associated with an increased risk of respiratory symptoms of COPD. In a related commentary, pulmonary researcher Donald Tashkin wrote, “…we can be close to concluding that marijuana smoking by itself does not lead to COPD”.

• One of the principal constituents of cannabis, THC, has been found to reduce tumor growth in common lung cancer by 50 percent and to significantly reduce the ability of the cancer to spread, say researchers at Harvard University, who tested the chemical in both in vitro lab studies and in mouse studies. The researchers suggest that THC might be used in a targeted fashion to treat lung cancer.

Opioid Dependence – Injections of THC eliminate dependence on opiates in stressed rats, according to a research team at the Laboratory for Physiopathology of Diseases of the Central Nervous System (France) in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. Deprived of their mothers at birth, rats become hypersensitive to the rewarding effect of morphine and heroin (substances belonging to the opiate family), and rapidly become dependent. When these rats were administered THC, they no longer developed typical morphine-dependent behavior. In the striatum, a region of the brain involved in drug dependence, the production of endogenous enkephalins was restored under THC, whereas it diminished in rats stressed from birth which had not received THC. Researchers believe the findings could lead to therapeutic alternatives to existing substitution treatments.

In humans, drug treatment subjects who use cannabis intermittently are found to be more likely to adhere to treatment for opioid dependence. Historically, similar findings were reported by Clendinning, who in 1843 utilized cannabis substitution for the treatment of alcoholism and opium addiction and Birch, in 1889, who reported success in treating opiate and chloral addiction with cannabis.

Multiple Sclerosis – A review of six randomized controlled trials of a combination of THC and CBD extracts for the treatment of MS related muscle spasticity reported, “Although there was variation in the outcome measures reported in these studies, a trend of reduced spasticity in treated patients was noted.” The authors postulated that “cannabinoids may provide neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory benefits in MS.”

Glaucoma – Initial studies in the 1970s reported that smoked marijuana resulted in lower intraocular pressure hours after administration. The studies demonstrated that some derivatives of marijuana did result in lowering of IOP when administered orally, intravenously, or by smoking, but not when topically applied to the eye. The duration of the pressure-lowering effect is reported to be in the range of 3 to 4 hours. Benefits also include euphoria as an acute effect.

Cannabis as a Personal Development Tool

It’s not a coincidence that so many different cultures and religious groups throughout history have used cannabis as a holy sacrament (see below) and as a way to gain a stronger connection to God — this is because it allows you to communicate with higher levels of yourself and can be an aid in meditation or relaxation practices. It can help you discover different parts of yourself and deal with emotional stress more easily. It’s ‘chill-out’ quality is what many people love about it.

It can help you come to terms with issues you’re not comfortable dealing with most of the time, and it can give you a new perspective from which to work through your own personal issues. Cannabis can also offer a sort of ‘release’ and a wonderful feeling that ‘everything is alright’. Cannabis can be an amazing stress reliever whether smoked, vaporized, or eaten.

Does Cannabis Cause Schizophrenia or Psychosis?

Using marijuana does not directly cause psychosis or schizophrenia. That much should be plainly obvious — many many many people that I know have smoked cannabis for nearly their entire lives (we’re talking people in their 60′s or even into their 70′s) and have not had any trouble with psychosis or schizophrenia. So many people smoke large amounts of cannabis regularly that it would be obvious if it were a cause of any sort of mental illness. With over 50% of the population smoking cannabis at least occasionally it would be easy to tell if it was causing any sort of illness at all, especially something like schizophrenia.

Of course there are plenty of bias or junk studies to show indirect links between cannabis and psychosis, but like I said, they are mostly ambiguous or conducted in such a way to make cannabis look bad. Most of those studies were funded by the pharmaceutical industry in a smear campaign and an attempt to keep it outlawed.

Here is a recent study from Denmark that suggests that people who react badly to cannabis with psychotic symptoms are probably likely to develop the illness anyway. Here’s what they say:

“The results agree with those of other studies that show that cannabis predominantly causes psychotic symptoms in those persons who are predisposed to develop psychosis or show signs of psychosis in the absence of cannabis use“.

and

“Psychotic symptoms after cannabis use should be taken extremely seriously. It is recommended that individuals with a cannabis-induced psychosis … be treated as though the condition is a first sign of schizophrenia, regardless of predisposition to a psychiatric disorder“

So it looks like when someone has a psychotic reaction to cannabis it is an early detection sign that the person might already have the disorder.

Legal Weed Could Revolutionize World Industries

In the past it was against the law to have a farm and not grow hemp. This sounds funny but that’s because it was widely known that hemp was the most abundant and useful plant known to man. It has been throughout all of history and only recently has it been outlawed and all of it’s uses forgotten.

The earliest papers were written on hemp papers, and hemp was used in almost everything: rope, clothing, baskets, papers, plastics, building supplies, paints, glue, and so much more. All schoolbooks were made from hemp or flax paper until the 1880s.

Hemp is eight times stronger than cotton and more air-permeable. Hemp can grow up to 16 feet in 100 days without the use of dangerous pesticides or herbicides.

Famous folks used hemp for all sorts of things. Rembrandt (1606- 1669), Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) and Thomas Gainsborough (1727- 1788) all painted primarily on hemp canvas with hemp-oil based paints. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers GREW HEMP. Jefferson smuggled hemp seeds from China to France then to America. Benjamin Franklin owned one of the first paper mills in America and it processed hemp. Also, the War of 1812 was fought over hemp — Napoleon wanted to cut off Moscow’s export to England.

The Pharmaceutical Industry

As you can probably tell by the information above, cannabis could give the pharmaceutical industry a serious run for it’s money, but the funny thing is that there would really not be much money in cannabis medicine if it were to be made legal. Growing cannabis plants is cheap, the only reason it’s so expensive right now is because it’s illegal and sold as a street drug for profit.

Imagine living in a world where most common medicines were extremely cheap and completely safe to use. Imagine being able to grow your own medicine in your back yard or in your safely constructed indoor garden… What a different world it would be! A much better one, I think, compared to what we see today with millions of people struggling each day to pay for dangerous medications that they’ve become addicted to thanks to big pharma and their Joe Shmo doctors who often write prescriptions just to make a few extra bucks.

Big Oil and Fossil Fuels

The first diesel engine was designed to run on hemp oil. In the 1930s Henry Ford produced an automobile that was 70 percent hemp plastic and ran on hemp based fuel and oils. Numerous other engines have been built to run on hemp products, including the “Hempcar” which circled the North American continent in 2001, completely powered by hemp oil.

The billionaires behind the oil industry are scared to death of this information getting out and becoming common knowledge. They know that if most people knew this they would demand to have hemp fueled vehicles! The cost of running a hemp fueled car would be extremely cheap and far more environmentally friendly in comparison to the petroleum fueled vehicles that we drive today. If the auto industry or any other big industry began to fully back hemp products the effects on the oil industry would be fantastically good for the betterment of all but those with their fingers in the pie.

Pulp, Paper, Plastics, & Rope

One acre of hemp can produce as much raw fibre as 4.1 acres of trees. Pulping hemp for paper produces a stronger paper that lasts far longer than paper made from trees, and it doesn’t yellow with age – bonus. Using hemp as a raw source for paper would eliminate the need to cut down our shrinking old-growth forests which contribute to climate control and clean the air we breathe.

Hemp cultivation and production does not harm the environment. The USDA Bulletin #404 concluded that hemp produces 4 times as much pulp with at least 4 to 7 times less pollution. In 1916, the U.S. Government predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees need to be cut down. Government studies report that 1 acre of hemp equals 4.1 acres of trees.

William Randolph Hearst (Citizen Kane) and the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division of Kimberly Clark owned vast acreage of timberlands. The Hearst Company supplied most paper products. Patty Hearst’s grandfather, a destroyer of nature for his own personal profit, stood to lose billions because of hemp, so he used his political weight to sway the industry away from hemp based products.

Hemp is a Super Food

Hemp seed is the most abundant source of easily digestible amino and fatty acids. Hemp seed contains all of the essential amino and fatty acids in one easy to digest seed that tastes similar to a sunflower seed. Hemp is so nutritious that it’s actually considered to be a superfood, it contains everything necessary to maintain human life. That’s an amazing seed if you ask me!

The seeds can be eaten raw, ground into a meal, sprouted, made into hemp milk, prepared as tea, and used in baking. The fresh leaves can also be eaten in salads. Products range from cereals to frozen waffles, hemp tofu to nut butters. A few companies produce value added hemp seed items that include the seed oils, whole hemp grain (sterilized because of legal restrictions), hulled hemp seed (the whole seed without the mineral rich outer shell), hemp flour, hemp cake (a by-product of pressing the seed for oil) and hemp protein powder. Hemp is also used in some organic cereals.

Because of it’s incredible speed of growth and awesome nutritional content, hemp seed could be used to fight starvation in countries facing food crises and problems with malnutrition and starvation, but because of it’s legal status in almost every country, hemp is not being used to feed the hungry.

The Effect of Legalization on Crime Rates

For a long time the people behind the prohibition of cannabis have tried to link crime rates with cannabis, saying that if they were to legalize weed there would be a massive increase in crime. This is an outright lie, and one has to look no further than this recent report coming from the Netherlands where their lax cannabis laws were often said to have caused the country to be over-run with crime — too bad they’re closing their jails because they don’t have enough prisoners!

The simple fact is that with cannabis prohibition we leave control of a multi-billion dollar industry in the hands of an ‘underground’ black market. While it’s true that most street gangs and organized crime get their funding through the sales of drugs, including marijuana, it is certainly not a reason to keep it illegal. It’s actually a great reason to legalize it and take the control of cannabis out of the hands of the black market criminals and put it in the hands of qualified professionals. Doing this would cut funding to organized crime by an enormous amount and could return billions of dollars back into the economy.

What About The Gateway Theory?

The reason they call it a theory is because it’s never been proven. Recent studies have been utterly destroying the gateway theory and they’ve even been reporting these findings in the mainstream media. A study that just broke the news yesterday is this one from New Hampshire that says “Scientists call the gateway theory ‘half-baked.”

People don’t do other drugs because they smoke weed. IF there were such a connection it would probably be due to the fact that right now everyone has to get their weed from street dealers who sometimes have a variety of other drugs for sale too. The gateway theory could be remedied by putting weed up for sale in stores legally instead of forcing everyone to get such a common product from unlicensed drug dealers.

If Global Warming Was Real, Hemp Could Fix It

Even though the idea of man made climate change (global warming) has been smashed to pieces by actual science, the idea is still pretty popular. Let’s just pretend for a moment that temperatures are rising because of man made CO2. It’s commonly known that many marijuana growers add CO2 to their grow rooms because their plants suck up more than is naturally in the air around them. Hemp plants love CO2, and if there were even a few industries (auto, pulp & paper, etc) backing hemp there would be massive fields of it growing EVERYWHERE. This would be the most sensible and fast acting solution to our apparent CO2 problem, all of those hemp plants growing in such huge numbers would suck up so much of that ‘extra’ CO2 that Global Warming would finally be a thing of the past.

The Religious use of Cannabis

Religious groups throughout history have used cannabis as a sacrament, a healing herb, medicine, a visionary aid, and a ritual link to the gods. Some examples of religious uses of cannabis can be found in:

Shintoism (Japan) – Cannabis was used by married couples to drive away evil spirits and was believed to bring laughter and happiness to any marriage.

Hinduism (India) – The god Shiva is said “to have brought cannabis from the Himalayas for human enjoyment and enlightenment.” Sadhu priests travel throughout India and the world sharing “chillum” pipes stuffed with fresh cannabis, occasionally mixed with other substances. In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna states that he is the “healing herb” and the Bhagarat-purana Fifth Canto describes hashish in sexual terms.

Buddhism (Tibet, India, and China) – Buddhists have used cannabis ritually since the 5th century B.C. in initiation rights and other mystical experiences that are common in many sects. Some Tibetan Buddhists consider cannabis their most holy plant. It’s fabled that the Buddha himself used and ate only hemp and hemp seeds for the six years before discovering his truths and becoming the Buddha.

Zoroastrians (Persia) – It is believed by many Christian scholars that the Three Wise Men or “Magi” were Zoroastrians. The Zoroastrian religion is based entirely on the cannabis plant which they used as a religious sacrament and their most important medicine. The also used it as incense, and anointing oils.

Essenes (ancient Israeli sect of Hebrewites) – Medicinal users of marijuana.

Theraputea (Egypt) – Also medicinal users of hemp and marijuana extracts.

Early Jews - In the Temple of Solomon on Friday nights, 60-80,000 men would pass around and inhale 20,000 incense burners filled with cannabis, which they called ‘kanabosom’ before heading home for the biggest meal of the week.

Sufi’s of Islam (Middle East) – Muslim priests have used cannabis for divine revelation and oneness with Allah for the last 1000 years or more.

Coptic Christians (Egypt/Ethiopia) – Some sects are of the belief that the “green herb of the field”, the secret incenses, sweet incenses, and anointing oils were all made of cannabis and cannabis extracts.

Bantus (Africa) – The secret Dagga Cults restricted cannabis use to only the ruling men. Pygmies, Zulus, and Hottentots used it for cramps, epilepsy, and gout, as well as a religious sacrament. These tribes believed cannabis was brought to earth by ‘the gods’ from “Two Dog Star”, what we call Sirius A and B. The word Dagga actually means cannabis.

Rastafarians (Jamaica and abroad) – And of course everyone knows that the Rastafarians love their herb. Known to the Rastafarians as ‘Ganja’, they believe the herb allows them to communicate with God (Jah).

Freedom Demands Legal Weed

The most important reason that weed should be legalized is because it’s a personal lifestyle choice and any freedom loving individual should respect the life choices of his fellow man/woman so long as they don’t hurt anyone else or their property and they don’t try to force their lifestyle choices upon anyone else. Why should anyone be allowed to tell someone else that they can’t ingest their favorite herb or grow their own all natural medicines? They can’t! Outlawing a plant like they have done to cannabis is basically genocide against a species of plant and it should not be tolerated!

Cannabis has the potential to solve a lot of the problems we’re currently faced with, and it could help so many people who are sick and dying without safe natural medicines that could be easily produced for low cost. It’s criminal to deprive so many sick people of the medicine they need, simply because there’s no profit in that medicine. In fact, it’s downright sick.

It’s also sick to hide from the world such an abundant and easy to produce alternative to oil and fossil fuels that are polluting our planet beyond belief. Hemp could quickly replace the dependency on poisonous fossil fuels with a safe and natural alternative. The only ones who stand to lose from such a positive shift are those who have billions of dollars invested in big-oil and have no sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.

So let’s use our common sense and get cannabis legal as soon as possible, alright?

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Whenever I get interested in some new skill or ‘practice’ I almost always end up using the methods outlined in this post to get a good grasp of whatever it is I am trying to learn. An example that I’ll keep coming back to is when I used this technique to learn Remote Viewing. For more about my experiences with RV you can check out that link but it’s not necessary for you to know anything about remote viewing to appreciate this post, it’s just a good example of one of the ways that I applied this burst learning strategy in my own life. Regardless of what you think about remote viewing, this method will work for any skill you want to learn.

The next thing I’m going to be using this method for is to learn Qigong, (chi kung, chi gong). I’ve recently been using it to learn all about back pain, and I feel like I’ve been using it to learn to be a better blogger but I just blog so regularly that I don’t think I could really say I’m using burst learning for that. I’ve used burst learning to study many different topics and I find it so much more effective than simply trying to ‘self teach’ yourself something in your spare time.

Fully Immerse Yourself

To sum up my burst learning strategy you could say you basically just fully immerse yourself in whatever you are studying. For however long you deem necessary you allow yourself to become completely obsessed with whatever it is you want to learn. Using my remote viewing example from above, when I began learning about RV I became completely and fully immersed in the subject.

I read pretty much every single book on remote viewing that had been published, I signed up on the best forums and websites, and I went to live workshops. I contacted several other remote viewers, some much more advanced than I was, and others who were just starting out. I looked up people on facebook, I scoured youtube for videos, and I bought several learn-at-home kits. For nearly an entire year I was completely immersed in the world of Remote Viewing. I was even invited to join in on multiple team viewing projects and was able to make many great RV contacts.

You could almost say that I was a remote viewer for a period of time. I am no longer a remote viewer, I haven’t practiced in months, but for a period of time I basically lived as a remote viewer would. As much as I could without actually being ‘a professional’ of some sort or another. I never made any money doing RV but the potential was certainly there. Whether by teaching others and holding workshops or doing individual remote viewings for money, I could have worked hard and made a living doing remote viewings, but I didn’t.

Why didn’t I do it? I didn’t do it because I realized that it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Sure it was really exciting at first, but it just didn’t seem like the right thing for me. This was only apparent to me once I had actually gone out and done the things a remote viewer would do. I never knew that it wasn’t for me until I fully immersed myself in it and gave it a real try. At first it seemed like a great idea, but after doing it for a while I realized that it wasn’t.

Do this with anything

I used remote viewing as an example, but you can use this method of completely immersing yourself in any subject you want. You can get really good at chess, start a band, or even learn to sell insurance with this method. It doesn’t matter what you want to do, if you fully immerse yourself in the subject and are just ready to absorb as much of it as you possibly can, your skills will naturally begin to improve at an insane speed.

Burst learning is more efficient than studying something ‘part time’. An hour or two a day is simply not enough practice to get good at something in any reasonable amount of time. To develop a new skill quickly your best bet is to just dive right in and allow yourself to ‘become obsessed’ with it. I don’t mean that you should let it run your life, but focus as much of the time and energy that you can spare on learning this new skill. Dedicate at least 20-30 hours a week to your new skill. This might sound like a lot, but it’s only a few hours a day if you learn something every day.

Every day!

You should spend time working on your new skill every single day. It’s an important way to keep it fresh in your mind and keep your attention focused on improving. You don’t have to practice the skill itself if you can’t manage or it’s not beneficial to do so, but you should at least be studying it or be somehow involved with it each day. If you’re trying to learn kung fu you don’t need to spar every day, but you should be reading kung fu information, speaking with kung fu teachers, or watching kung fu videos at the very least. With remote viewing I tried to do at least one session every day, plus spend time reading the latest book or online in the forums. I couldn’t always get a session in every day but I could always sneak in at least a few pages of a book, a quick video, or a few posts on the forums on even my most busy days.

Join the community

One of the best tools we have access to in modern times is the internet. I love the internet, you can get information on anything you want and communicate with anyone pretty much instantly. This means that we can learn things and get direct help from people who know much more than we do, instantly. And for free.

Don’t cheat yourself out of so much more free information by not joining the community. Hop on google and do a search for forums and communities about your particular skill. Join them, and get active on them. It doesn’t take long to build a good network of like minded internet friends who are more than happy to help each other out. This helps the learning process immensely and should not be ignored. Internet communities are some of the best places to learn once you figure out how to distinguish between good posts and troll excrement.

As long as it takes

Keep yourself immersed in your new skill for as long as you want. You might realize that you don’t want to do it anymore and it’s perfectly fine to quit if you don’t want to do it anymore. At least you gave it a real good try and learned a bunch along the way.

Maybe you’ll keep this new skill and you’ll realize it’s your calling. Perhaps you’ll be the next UFC Heavyweight Champion, or maybe insurance salesman of the year? Whatever skill you apply this to, if you really enjoy it you’ll know and you’ll want to keep up with it. If this happens to you, go for it! It could be your calling! If it’s not your calling, then at least you’re having fun, right?

If you burst learn a new skill and realize after a month or two that it’s not what you hoped for, then so be it. Move on to something else and try something new. I was fully immersed in remote viewing for a little over a year, I made really great progress in that time. More importantly, I built a ton of strong connections with other people through things like online forums and live workshops and seminars. The connections you make during a period of burst learning are often the best part of the whole ordeal, you’ll be surprised by the people you meet during time spent fully immersed in a new subject. Often you can meet some of the biggest names in the industry if you only put a little effort in.

I hope you find this strategy useful and that it helps you learn a new skill.

Do you think it’s a load of new-age bullish and just another money making gimmick for people who are already super-rich?

Maybe you’ve been playing with the LoA and you’ve seen some results here and there but you feel that there’s something you’re not quite ‘getting’ — like there’s more to it than what you’ve been told by all of the best known gurus on the subject.

If this sounds like you, then you probably have also heard that the Law of Attraction means ‘you get whatever you think about’ — If so, that’s your problem. That’s the reason the Law of Attraction isn’t working for you — it doesn’t work that way.

It’s actually a lot simpler than that.

The Law of Attraction is about how you feel

The Law of Attraction is about how you feel, not what you think about. I’m sure it’s the lack of this realization that’s sabotaging your best intention manifestation efforts, just like it was mine.

Almost everyone who talks about the Law of Attraction makes it seem like ‘you get whatever you think about’, but this is simply not true. The people who make those claims are wrong. If you’ve been told that the LoA is about what you think then you’re probably not getting the results you’re hoping for. The Law of Attraction does not give you what you think about, it gives you what you feel like. Let me explain by answering one of the most common questions regarding the Law of Attraction…

A lot of people get confused when first learning about the Law of Attraction and intention manifestation (that’s what I prefer to call it), they ask

“Well what about all the bad things? Why is there murder and rape and all this bad stuff that happens? People don’t think about murder and rape all the time so if the Law of Attraction is true then why does it happen?”

The answer is because the Law of Attraction is not only attracting what you think about, it also attracts things that make you feel a similar way. It’s true that the LoA brings you what you think about, but more often it brings you things based on how you feel. So when you start thinking about the things you really want you will usually start to feel really good. And when you feel really good you attract more things that make you feel really good, so it’s likely that you’ll end up manifesting whatever it is that you’re thinking about that makes you feel so good — as long as you think and feel that way most of the time.

When somebody gets hurt at work or gets into a car accident or some other ‘bad’ thing happens to them it’s important to think about how that event made them feel. When you get hurt at work, what do you feel like? Maybe it’s angry, or annoyed, or frustrated, or maybe it’s just pain. How much of your time in the previous month or two had you spent feeling angry, annoyed, frustrated, or in pain?

Now you’re starting to realize where you’ve been going wrong, aren’t you?

If you spend all day thinking about things that make you feel really grateful then you’re going to bring in more things to be grateful for. Being grateful is a great way to feel, there’s not really anything that makes you feel grateful that is ‘bad’. The same goes for if you feel wealthy, healthy, or even stylish. If you feel like you have really great style you’ll start attracting more things that make you feel like you’re really stylish. Perhaps your dreams of becoming a professional model or actor will come to fruition, wouldn’t that make you feel like you had style? Of course it would!

The same goes for feeling thankful. If you feel really thankful for the things you appreciate in your life you will automatically start attracting more things to be thankful for — this is a really great position to be in. When you’re constantly receiving things that you’re really thankful for it’s going to be a lot harder for you to get down and be unhappy. Life will soon be overflowing with abundance and you’ll start really enjoying your experience more than ever before.

The Law of Attraction can defeat itself… be careful

When you first start out with the Law of Attraction and Intention Manifestation most people have doubts. This is natural. Our entire lives we’ve been conditioned to believe that this sort of thing is all a big hoax, we’re programmed to be skeptical of things like the Law of Attraction. It hasn’t always been like this, and one day it will change, but for now it’s best to start small with your intentions.

You must start with intentions that you know are achievable and work your way up. Any doubts you have will stop your progress dead. If you’re feeling doubt, what are you going to attract? Of course you will attract things that make you feel more doubtful about the Law of Attraction — your intentions won’t manifest because you are intending one thing but feeling another!

Start using the LoA to manifest things you know you can manifest and work your way up from there. This will help you build confidence in your ability to manifest anything you want. Start with a dollar or a free lunch or something like that. Something that you could easily explain away as a mere coincidence (there is no such thing). From there you can work up to bigger and better things. It won’t take long before you’re manifesting your wildest dreams, but you can’t just jump into manifesting millions of dollars, nice cars, and huge houses. If you start trying to manifest a million dollars you’re probably going to start wondering how it could even be possible, ‘where will I get a million dollars from?’ . What is worrying? Worrying leads to doubt, and doubt attracts experiences to reinforce your doubtfulness. You’ll doubt the ability to manifest a million dollars and you won’t be able to make it happen, the Law of Attraction will have defeated itself… Sort of.

Feelings are stronger than thoughts when it comes to the LoA — that’s the secret behind the secret. Most of the best known Law of Attraction gurus keep that information to themselves, they don’t tell you that feelings are stronger magnets than thoughts. Many of them may not even know, they might truly believe that ‘you get what you think about’ because when they think about what they want to attract it makes them feel really great and they attract things into their lives that make them feel the same way… Usually what they manifest will be what they were thinking about that made them feel that way — that’s why so many people think that you ‘get what you think about’ when you really attract more of the same feelings.

Feel Good Now!

If you want to reap the fruits of the Law of Attraction seeds you’ve sown, you must always focus on feeling good. Do you feel good right now? If not, you’re doing something wrong. You’re asking the universe to give you more people, events, and circumstances that make you feel the way you feel right now.

Are you tired, stressed, frustrated, or downright depressed? If you are, then you’ve got to change the way you feel right now, or you will keep feeling that way forever. The present moment is all that exists, the future and the past are just collections of thoughts that don’t actually exist anywhere but inside your own mind. You can only change the way you feel right now, not tomorrow, not in some distant point in the future when you are rich and have your dream career and the greatest relationship — you have to start feeling good now before any of that is possible.

A quick way to feel better

There are plenty of ways to start feeling better in this very moment, let me offer a few quick suggestions that will help clear your mind and focus on things that make you feel good.

First I want you to do the following procedure and repeat it at least 8 times. It will only take a few minutes and it will help take you to a much more peaceful state of mind.

1. Inhale through your nose for 8 seconds
2. Hold for 8 seconds
3. Exhale through your mouth for 8 seconds
4. Hold pause for 8 seconds
5. Repeat steps one through four 8 times

This quick exercise will leave you feeling refreshed and much better than when you started. Allow your mind to go completely blank when you’re doing this and simply focus on your breath. Aim for long steady breaths and breathe as deeply as you can. Try to fill your body with air from the bottom up, start filling the bottom of your stomach first and end with the top of your lungs. Do the same except reversed on the exhale. This is a simple meditation and breathing exercise that rejuvenates the whole body in just a few quick minutes.

Once you have repeated the process 8 times you should continue to breathe in a controlled manner and begin to think about things that make you happy. Think about when you feel the best. What are you doing when you feel this way? Where would you be? What would it feel like? What sounds would you hear and what sights would you see? Who’s there with you? Hold on to that feeling and really try to be there in that moment. Forget about everything else and just focus on whatever makes you feel good. This is a sure fire way to rejuvenate both your body and mind and to focus your attention on something that will help you to feel good right now in this very moment.

After you’ve focused on what makes you feel good and you actually begin to truly feel that way, then start visualizing your intentions in the same way you were visualizing what makes you feel good. Actually feel your intention as if it’s already real. Feel what it would be like, smell the smells, hear the sounds, and taste the flavors of your desires. Focus on the feelings that you get from your intentions and not the intentions themselves.

It’s not the fancy car, big bank account, nice house, and perfect spouse that makes you happy, it’s being happy that brings all of those things to you.

You’re now on your way to living your dreams, whatever they may be.

Happy manifesting!

Today I want to just post a quick little bit here about ‘tapping’, also known as meridian tapping, emotional freedom technique, the Callahan technique, and more. This is a method of applying pressure or repeated tapping to specific places on the surface of the skin to encourage your body to react in a certain way. Usually to promote healing or emotional well being.

I came across a post on the Steve Pavlina forums today with links to these same youtube videos. I thought I should share them here, just because.

I’ve been reading about ‘tapping’ quite a bit lately, and I recently ordered a copy of this Meridian Tapping Technique Book & DVD set. I haven’t received it yet though so I can’t say much about it just yet. Anyway, here’s how you can ‘tap your way to a better day.‘

Step 1: Wake up in the morning and watch this video — follow along:

Tapping into Gratitude

Step 2: Write down all of the things you are grateful for on a piece of paper.

Step 3: Watch this video & follow along:

Have an Amazing day!

Easy as that! An amazing day every time!

Well.. Maybe not. But it’s a start!

For example, if you feel like your freedom and your power is being taken away from you by the things that are happening in the news and the media, if that’s how you feel then what you need to ask yourself is “what else makes me feel that way” and “am I spending most of my time feeling that way”. You might find that you feel that way nearly all of the time. Maybe it’s because of an addiction, a bad relationship, hating your job, or having too much debt, but it’s likely that something else is making you feel that way too.

It’s likely you will find that you feel that way not only when you watch the news or get too excited over the latest Alex Jones news-bomb but you also feel that way when your alcoholism gets you down or your nagging terrible wife that you absolutely hate gets home and starts yelling at you. I’m just using these things as examples, I sure hope that you guys don’t let yourselves stay in those types of situations… But some people do.

It’s the constant focus on the feeling of having no power or having it taken away from you that brings that reality to manifestation in ‘the physical’.

Anyway, the rest of that is for a different post. That’s just the start of what got me thinking about how to encourage humanity to evolve into something better. Dick Rivers is still in the stage of wanting activism and yelling and posters and fliers and propaganda. I know where he’s coming from, but I now believe that the best way to fight the corruption and apparent fascism is to start working on ourselves.

That might sound selfish, but I assure you that it is not selfish in the least. Let me explain…

People learn from other people

One thing I’ve noticed in life is that no matter what, you are always effecting your surroundings, including the people around you. People learn from the people around them whether they are aware of it or not, this is something that cannot be stopped. People will always learn from other people. And they don’t just learn from certain people who are qualified to teach, no no, all people learn from all other people. This is a strange concept when you really think about it. Everyone learns from everyone else.

Because this is true, it’s important to remember that you are a teacher whether you like it or not. People learn from you and the more of an impression you leave on them the more they start to act like you. You attract things that make you feel the same as the vibration you’re putting out. You change the reality around you in this way, so it’s important to put off good vibes and teach others to behave as you’d like them to. You can teach people how to act by simply acting that way yourself.

If you are a really great person, people will aspire to be like you. That would be a good thing — if you’re truly a really great person then having people be inspired by your greatness will only bring about more great people. An example from my own life is when I did the 30 day Raw Food Diet. I inspired several people to make dietary improvements and even inspired a few to attempt to do a 30 day raw food cleanse themselves. I know of several examples of people around me who were effected by my dietary choices for that month, just because they were around me. And who even knows how many more have been inspired to improve their health because they found the articles here on this website! It could be hundreds or even thousands!

It is automatic

You automatically effect everything around you, so making improvements to yourself will tend to improve your surroundings as well. This is completely natural and automatic. What I mean by ‘automatic’ is that it happens whether you are aware of it or not. That’s part of the reason you see groups of depressed people who all hang out together, and groups of wealthy people who all know each other and hang out together and so on. You attract similar people, events, and circumstances to what you spend the most time thinking about and feeling. There’s no stopping it as far as I can tell, so learning to work with it is probably your best option.

If you lead by example you will start to see results, I promise. If we all try to make good decisions and be the best we can be, if we all try to focus on positive solutions instead of problems, and if we all try to love everything a bit more each day, we will automatically create a better reality — that’s just how it works!

If we can become more conscious — that is, if we can become more aware of the effect we are having on the experience then we can start to improve our actions and therefore also improve the effects of our actions, even if it’s just one small improvement at a time. By always trying to improve we can begin to form a better place for ourselves and for everyone else. Understanding how our own thoughts, feelings, and actions effect the rest of the universe is absolutely critical. There’s never been a more crucial time for personal development than now — that’s why it’s becoming so popular as of late.

How to encourage humanity in a positive way

Smile more

It’s true that smiling is contagious, and smiling also makes you happy. Even if you aren’t happy, forcing a smile will improve your mood. It’s an action that’s linked to feeling good in the brain, so when you smile you start to feel better. Plus you make other people smile too, so then they start feeling better too. There you go changing your reality again..

Have more fun, worry less

People these days have a worry problem. Worry is stress that you don’t need. Be confident in the universe and it’s power, and be confident in yourself and your power. Don’t spend your time worrying about things. It is almost never worth it, so don’t do it.

Spend more time having fun and fooling around doing whatever you like doing. This is so important, but most people ‘don’t have enough time for that’. HAH. . Make time. For real, the benefits of having ‘you time’ are greater than the payout for that shift of overtime at work, or that TV show you don’t want to miss. Set aside several hours per week where you will dedicate to just having fun and schedule it like it was a shift at work or an important meeting.

Try doing creative things in your ‘you time’, unleashing your creative potential is also a great thing to do. The more creative we can be the more interesting the future will be.

Read Personal Development books and websites

There’s no denying it, Personal Development information is getting ‘hella’ popular as of late. But with good reason!

Sure some of the Personal Development information out there is kind of cheesy, new-agey, snake salesman type stuff, but you’ve got to find the good stuff just like information in any other field. Here’s a few good places to start:

• Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development For Smart People
• Plugin ID
• Personal Development Coach
• The Law of Success
• The Work (of Byron Katie)
• Zen Habits
• Life Hacker
• The Change Blog
• Your Wish Is Your Command

You could also listen to audio seminars like MindShift — the one you get with a subscription to my Newsletter. (you can subscribe at the top right hand side of the page) MindShift is a fantastic audio program, and so is Your Wish Is Your Command. You’ll have to buy Your Wish Is Your Command but it’s worth it. I have to say it’s one of the best audio programs about the law of attraction that I’ve found to date. Apply what you learn from the audios, don’t just listen but also apply what feels right to you.

Live a healthier life

Living healthier isn’t all that hard. Just like everything else in your life you can make positive changes in small steps if you must. Work on changing one thing that will improve your health at a time, or a few things if you can still follow through with making the change when you make multiple changes simultaneously.

Start by incorporating more raw organic fruits and vegetables into your diet, and eating more whole foods. Ween yourself off of processed foods and start avoiding toxins that have been intentionally placed into the average western diet. Things like fluoride, aspartame (artificial sweeteners in almost everything), MSG, are just a few to start with. There are a lot of toxins in our environment so just try to always be more aware about these types of things. Don’t get vaccines.

Doing all of these things will help humanity move in the right direction a lot quicker than you may think at first, but it works. If more and more people keep getting interested in becoming better people and improving themselves then we’re going to have a lot more good people around in the near future.