What's Sacred?

What is sacred? Love? Friendship? Honor? Truth? Honesty? Freedom? Justice? Nature? Life itself?

Is there some magical quality or dimension of soul and spirit that conveys the powers inherent to the distinction of sanctity? Where does the sacred begin? Where does it live? Do we hold the sacred in our hearts, in our minds? Is it in the air we breathe? Can we drink the sacred? Eat it? Grow it? Is the sacred invited in or does it penetrate throughout our being as we live regardless of what we do or think or say?

Can our actions translate and transform into having sacred properties? Can we work, and sing and dance and farm in sacred ways? Do our spiritual intentions count, or are we simply indulging ourselves by choosing to believe we have the ability to imbue our lives with sacred qualities?

Does personal sacrifice for the greater good demonstrate a sacred individual character? Do groups of people singing their hearts to the sky create a sacred atmosphere that carries beyond the sound and lasts beyond the moment? Can we grow the sacred in ourselves and in others by how we move through life? 

Can the sacred be planted with a seed? Watered, nourished, cared for, loved? Can food be sanctified through conscious intention? Through "Thanksgiving?" 

What exactly is the meaning of the word sacred? Connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose, and so deserving veneration? Is a religious path somehow more potently sacred than individual secular spirituality or atheism?

Does writing of the sacred require embodying the vernacular and laws and doctrines dictated by traditions of religion? Is ritual necessary? Or do actions speak louder than dogma? 

By what measure is the sacred estimated? Does playing beautiful music to the spheres convey respect and reverence more than the heartfelt expressions of a novice or the pure and joyful noises produced by a child? Does being imprisoned for sincere beliefs demonstrate a deeper level of commitment to the sacred? 

What is sacrosanct to mankind in the 21st Century? Does altruism count for anything? Or is it just bad business in a world that grows more vicious, less idealistic under the hand of ruthless, competitive industry?

Is there an opposite of sacred? Is war sacred? Has the meaning of the word been corrupted by self-interest and avarice? Is our society content to trade the sacred for monetary gain, momentary pleasure, physical comfort or illusions of security?

Can it be that we are lost in desperation and fear to the point that there is no room for the sacred? If so, then how can the sacred be recovered? How can the influence of sacred be reincorporated into the evolution of our species? Where do we begin? 

Is there a functional justification for including the sacred in our social evolution? In our government? Is "freedom of religion" sacred, or merely a necessary component of peaceful coexistence? 

Is there accountability for the lack of sacred integration in governance? Is there an implied moral imperative that embodies the deeds and misdeeds of people entrusted with the health and welfare of the people? Of the country? Of the planet?

Does the act of seeking sacred meaning convey sacredness? Do we define the sacred for ourselves or is it a consensus manifestation determined by the common, conscious agreement? 

When the sacred is disrespected, are there consequences? If so, are they inevitable and immediate; or does it require active institutional involvement, public supervision to have an effect?

Can we actually feel the sacred in our lives? Can we observe the sacred in another's life? If my dear friend is having the sacred dimensions of his life wronged by being imprisoned without trial, without bail, and denied visitors because of his historically substantiated knowledge and scholarship; that has infused him with sincere beliefs and selfless dedication to what sees as sacred in his life, does that impact the sacred integrity of my life? Are my freedoms eroded by his loss of liberty? 

Are the immeasurable sacrifices made for freedom by those who have come before us being denigrated by his unjust imprisonment? Are we accountable for the death of Liberty if we do less than everything we can to help him? 

Is there such a thing as a sacred obligation? To the Earth? To universal ideal of freedom? To our country? To our family & friends? To our pets, and to the other innocent creatures with whom we share this planet?

What about the Natural Order itself? Are the systems that have thus far allowed for humankind's sustainable existence, and are determining the quality of life for future generations to follow, a sacred trust? Have we betrayed that trust? Is our legacy corroded through denial, inattention, greed and self-interest?

I do not pretend to know any of the answers to any of the questions. I seek to understand why, in a world so ripe with potential; with so much beauty and goodness in the people I have known, and many whom I have read of, humankind seems to be headed for a gruesome extinction that many refuse to acknowledge.

I trust that simple reflection on where we are in the trajectory we're co-creating, will serve to preclude what now seems sadly inevitable. Is our species adaptable enough to make a conscious shift to a "Gaiatherapeutic," earth-healing presence; rather than continuing to race toward an unthinkable future? 

I wonder.

#

Statement proving malfeasance by federal attorneys

"In a motion filed last month in U.S. District Court in Honolulu, federal attorneys argued the benefits of extending the trial date to July outweighed Christie’s and other defendants’ right to a speedy trial for several reasons, including that the case is “so complex” because of “the existence of novel questions of fact or law (specifically, those dealing with RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) that it is unreasonable to expect adequate preparation for pretrial proceedings or for the trial itself within the time limits established by the Speedy Trial Act.”"

Using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as an excuse to nullify the Speedy Trial Act certainly amounts to malfeasance by federal attorneys, effectively disintegrating the credibility of a court that condones such blatant illogic.  Applying the same logic used by prosecutors, to the complexity that Reverend Roger faces in having to defend the First Amendment, his wife and himself against an unobjective federal policy that is so politically prejudiced, unreasoned and corrupt demands his immediate release.

By contrast with the disingenuity of the court, Reverend and Mrs. Christie have demonstrated their religious integrity and sincerity by enduring two years and nine months of imprisonment-without-trial-or-bail, without caving under threats, plea deals and denial of visits. The credibility of The Hawaii'i Cannabis Ministry has been forged and hardened in the fire of indefinite, coercive imprisonment, in the historical tradition of spiritual strength and patriotism reminiscent of William Penn.

In Hawai'i, where marijuana law enforcement is directly and knowingly responsible for causing a meth epidemic, [1,2] Reverend Christie is as critically essential in defending his community against the rabid "drug war" as the healing plant he stands for. Cannabis is too valuable to be within the rightful jurisdiction of any court and Reverend Christie must be returned to his ohana immediately. Anything less means the dysfunction of our species will consume us sooner than later.

1. http://www.thc-ministry.org/NIDA_Report.jpg
2. http://christie-et-al.s3.amazonaws.com/necessity/Ice-Methamphetamine-Exploratory-Study.pdf
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDYk52lIIEA

Paul von Hartmann
Cannabis scholar
California Cannabis Ministry
6 April 2013

Earth-healing Economic Evolution

As long as our economic system elevates the value of Gaiacidal chemicals over organic Cannabis agriculture, we are doomed. At the moment we are poisoning ourselves with mercury and arsenic, whose solubility is increasing as the result of increasing UV-B radiation.

There’s only one crop that can replace the aerosols lost as a result of the death of the boreal forests, logged for paper (instead of using hemp). As long as the world’s most valuable plant is prohibited, humans will exist in a state of self-inflicted natural resource poverty. Essential resource scarcity imposed by Cannabis prohibition has led to our chemical economic addiction, just as the scarcity of ‘marijuana’ in Hawaii has led to a methamphetamine epidemic consuming the peace of those sacred islands.

Suffering an insufficiency of abundant, globally distributed, Gaiatherapeutic resources, there is no hope of producing complete nutrition and sustainable biofuels from the same harvest, as there is with hemp. Cannabis is a critical pioneer crop for regenerating the soil and expanding the arable base, which is necessary to increase the carrying capacity of this planet. 

Protein production limits carrying capacity. Cannabis hemp seed is the best available source of globally distributed proteins, essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, anti-oxidents, anti-viral, anti-carcinogenic … How obvious does the solution have to be before it is given due consideration? Cannabis is essential, much too valuable to be truly illegal.

The question is, does our species have the adaptive capacity to achieve a polar shift in values in time to avert systemic collapse? In other words, how hot does Earth have to get before all solutions are considered?

                                  The REAL Question

de·spair

de·spair  intr.v. de·spaired, de·spair·ing, de·spairs 1. To lose all hope: despaired of reaching shore safely. 2. To be overcome by a sense of futility or defeat. n. 1. Complete loss of hope. 2. One despaired of or causing despair:   Unevolved species are the despair of their evolutionary masters. Humpback whales off Maui, vertical in the water column, touching the tips of their pectoral fins.  "I love you." was the message I got from it.

Climate Change Task Force

Dear President Obama,

Please allow me to congratulate you on the leadership you have shown in recognizing "hemp" as a "strategic resource" available by "essential civilian demand." In signing Executive Order 13603 you have made it possible to simultaneously address global climate change, food security and sustainable biofuels production, through organic agriculture.

In April 2012, I sent an email to Rep. Gus Bilirakis
(House Committee on Homeland Security
Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications
Committee on Homeland Security), to which I have not received a response of any kind. I encourage you to recognize the urgency of planting Cannabis hemp this spring planting season.

In December 2012 and January 2013, I spoke with Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack and his chief advisor Mr. Robert Bonnie about the three reasons Cannabis is both unique and essential to national security. I also pointed out that there presently exists no emergency preparedness protocol for exercising essential civilian demand.

I am concerned that increasing UV-B radiation is not being adequately responded to as the immediate threat that it surely is. Increasing UV-B causes mercury, arsenic, selenium compounds and other deadly toxins to become more available to plants and animals. Genetic mutation, immune suppression, abnormal cell growth, reduced harvests, increased insect pest infestation, water shortages, severe weather, and many other symptoms of fundamental imbalance are related to UV-B radiation.

Cannabis is the only crop that produces sufficient quantities of atmospheric aerosols needed to replace those lost with the death of the boreal forests that used to produce the "monoterpenes" that shield our planet from the Sun. We have no choice - we must grow hemp out of urgent necessity, or be "UV-Broiled" to extinction.

The greenhouse gas reduction target approved by the House of Representatives and embraced by you as the U.S. goal is woefully inadequate. Please factor in Cannabis hemp as capable of sequestering nine tons of carbon per acre per growing season. To demonstrate substantive U.S. leadership in meeting America’ moral responsibilities as the nation responsible for nearly 30 percent of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, as well as much of the carbon emissions occurring now, we must reintroduce hemp.

The emissions cap approved by the House amounts to a reduction of only about 4 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. That is only a tenth of the cuts that leading climate scientists believe is necessary from industrialized economies if we are avoid the most serious consequences of climate change.

I believe We the People have the authority to leverage more ambitious and effective climate legislation from Congress, through essential civilian demand for hemp; and encourage your Administration to design a regulatory structure that will achieve U.S. greenhouse gas reductions in cooperation with Europe and other areas of the world, by initiating a truly free organic agricultural market for the first time in our lives.

I further encourage you to start an international “race to the stratosphere” by carrying out your campaign promise to make America the most energy-efficient economy in the world at the same time we produce the monoterpenes needed to produce fuel, food, herbal therapeutics, build materials, as the basis for "Gaiatherapeutic Industries" to heal the planet.

I encourage you rally the United States, and the world community, to deal with climate change objectively, proactively, aggressively and immediately.  How hot does Earth have to get before all solutions are considered?

No other leader in the world today is as well positioned and well equipped to mobilize around this profoundly important issue. America has extraordinary intellectual resources, technical capabilities and capacity for innovation, as well as our proud tradition of helping the world navigate difficult passages.

I urge you to show the bold and progressive leadership that this urgent issue requires. An enlightened America can mobilize the world to address these challenges. Please contact me to understand more about "Cannabis vs. Climate Change" which is the title of my book on the subject.

"The least restrictive means..."

"The least restrictive means of preventing the sale and distribution of marijuana is" to end Cannabis prohibition..

It is well known, through undeniable historical precedent and contemporary empirical knowledge, that prohibition creates a violent, scarcity-dependent black market (to artificially elevate prices), where there is otherwise an organic, self-regulating, agricultural free market; institutionalizes a "forbidden fruit" that is more attractive to young people; imposes scarcity of an essential, "strategic resource"; induces radical economic disparity; corrupts law enforcement and the justice system; and systemically undermines the economic integrity of society by eliminating a critical agricultural resource.

The most certain way of establishing a hard drugs epidemic is to persist in the counter-productive prohibition of a therapeutic herb, through historically inaccurate, scientifically unfounded, contrary assessment of Cannabis as a "dangerous drug"; rather than a tenable science-based evaluation of Cannabis as an herb that is both unique and essential.

Drugs don't make seeds. Herbs do. You can make a drug from an herb, but you can't make an herb from a drug. You can grow an herb from a seed, but you cannot grow a drug from a seed. "Drugs" and "herbs" are are not the same thing.

Herbs can never be "controlled" because they grow from the soil, where one seed produces tens-of-thousands more seeds. It is folly beyond reason, to think that in a free society Cannabis can ever be "controlled" even if that was desirable, which it isn't.  The legal distinction (yet to be established) is significant, as the inaccurate, obsolete definition of Cannabis as a "drug" has engendered institutional malfeasance in over-extending the rightful jurisdiction of an economically-corrupted court.

"the government's compelling interest in preventing diversion of sacramental marijuana to nonreligious users" is based in the erroneous valuation of what is, in fact, an historically revered, ecologically, nutritionally and industrially essential, federally recognized  "strategic resource." The  true value of Cannabis encompasses the origins of human spiritual development, the evolution of our civilization, world exploration, and the founding of the United States. Because of climate imbalances resulting from prolonged Cannabis prohibition, Cannabis agriculture must now be revalued, recognized as fundamentally integral to interfacing global ecology with the human social order.

Cannabis is so far beyond the rightful jurisdiction of any legitimate court, that only through through the dismissal of science, disregard for the will of the people, and armed assault by economically-motivated federal enforcement, can the incumbent, outlaw fossil fuels regime get away with such an egregious violation of a fundamental human right: Our freedom to farm "every herb bearing seed" is the first test of religious freedom.

Strict scrutiny will show that the court has nothing to say about the distribution of Cannabis, because it's cultivation, consumption, manufacture and trade are essential to our continued existence on this planet. I have individually, formally challenged the rightful jurisdiction of any court over any "herb bearing seed" without a reply from three State Attorneys General Warren Price, Dan Lungren, and Jerry Brown. I have also written to the Department of Homeland Security, through the office of my Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey.

There has been no shred of accountability for the truth regarding the value of Cannabis. The government must be forced to account for it's antiquated, "compelling interest" in prohibiting Cannabis, compared with the People's compelling interest in growing it. Cannabis agriculture is, potentially, the organic agricultural basis for a sustainable human economic system, within the primarily significant Natural Order.

Since the courts are bankrupt, fiscally and morally, without pretense to objectivity, the judges themselves have rendered their own opinions as meaningless, reeking with bald-faced illogic, contradiction and prejudice.

Since July 8th, 2010 (two years, three months, two weeks and one day), Hawai'i Cannabis Ministry founder Reverend Roger Christie has been in legal limbo; suffering indefinite, coercive imprisonment, without trial, refused bail eight times, and denied visitors for openly practicing his sincere, scholarly, State-licensed, religious belief that people have a God-given right to grow and use "every herb bearing seed." Anti-Constitutional violations of due process and the First Amendment are obvious and undeniable proof of the court's unobjective politicized corruption.

Illegal courts may eventually convict us all for reclaiming our inherent, natural right as specified in Genesis 1:29-31, but as the environment, economics and social order degenerate into systemic collapse, the true value of Cannabis eventually will rise to human awareness, purging the shallow lies of the chemical military industrial complex as the planet broils under increasing UV-B radiation, cooking the planet to extinction.

The REAL question is,

"How hot does Earth have to get before all solutions are considered?"
http://youtu.be/edZw3hXkGJo

Blest rushes,

PvH

Drugs don't make seeds.

Regardless the decades of time & energy WASTED on inadequate State initiatives, public protests and endless court battles...

The world's oldest global culture does not need (and will never get) permission to exist from an extinctionistic, dysfunctional, hyper-violent, morally & fiscally bankrupt, physiologically and mentally degenerate, evolutionarily disintegrated, transient and hypocritical, corporately corrupted political regime. The insidious prohibitionist construct can only result in the inevitable counter-productive result we are willingly participating in.  

ANY tolerance for ideas about controlling, taxing and regulating any "herb"  -- as if it really was a "drug" -- is fundamentally misguided from the outset.  "Drugs" don't make seeds. "Herbs" make seeds. You can make a drug from an herb but you can't make an herb from a drug! They are not the same thing! Where is the legal distinction that reflects the reality of the many differences between drugs and herbs?

Why does the contemporary Cannabis culture simply continue to accept that herbs are, somehow, rightfully regulated by a "drug" agency? Since when is farming any "herb bearing seed...and every green herb" no longer a fundamental human right, and forced through manipulation, propaganda and illogic under the jurisdiction of the corporately controlled courts.

The contemporary Cannabis culture has yet to recognize and fully acknowledge itself, in solidarity, as the world's most ancient global culture. To reclaim our legitimacy,  We the People of the Cannabis culture need to identify Cannabis as both unique and essential.  In doing so Cannabis will be elevated to its rightful stature, which is in fact valuable beyond the rightful jurisdiction of any court.

The evolution of revolution is revaluation. Viva la revaluacion!

Fragmentation of the Cannabis "movement" into distinct "medical", "industrial","nutritional", "recreational" and "spiritual" compartments has divided and bureaucratized the grassroots. We have been misled by "pro-Cannabis" bureaucrats, who have a vested interest in conceding rightful jurisdiction over "every herb bearing seed." Every "voter initiative" that begs permission (that will never come), has been sold to us as a way to "legalize" or "decriminalize" marijuana,  while our freedom to farm "every herbbearing seed" has been undermined and disempowered by the "drug policy reform establishment" including DPA, NORML, MPP, ASA and the rest of the oxymorons who have failed to end prohibition.  

In spite of the obscene amount of money and time spent in "fighting" lobbying and voting to regain what is our god-given right to grow, use, smoke, plant, harvest, sell, and worship the Cannabis plant, in ALL of its many forms and uses; criminal disregard for the public will continues to be demonstrated by the blatantly misanthropic, anti-Constitutional, federal ("feral") government's increasing harassment of California dispensaries.

It is amazing and enormously sad to observe that regardless of mankind's imminent, predictable, foreseeable extinction as the result of compounding systemic imbalances being imposed on environment, economics, and social order, we are STILL allowing ourselves to be herded into hoping for relief through an impotent and disingenuous vote.

Our children will grow up justifiably angry at us for our collective cowardice. "Essential civilian demand" is the surest, quickest way to reclaim our (federally and internationally) un-restricted access to the one and ONLY plant that can reverse climate change, before we run out of growing seasons.

Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications Committee on Homeland Security: "Essential Civilian Demand"
http://californiacannabisministry.blogspot.com/2012/04/emergency-preparedness-response-and.html

Unless we recognize 'time' as the limiting factor in the equation of survival, and every growing season wasted  in argument as an opportunity lost,  then one day very soon we will wake up to realize that there is nothing that can be done to prevent our own, self-inflicted extinction, following a period of unthinkable suffering, illness and death.