This article originally appeared on Cannabis.net and has been reposted with permission.
Do you live in a looped existence? Getting tired of the mundane cyclical events happening in your life? Want to spice things up and discover your full potential? Then perhaps it’s time you escape your curated existence.
But what exactly is a “curated existence?” Some call it a “cookie-cutter reality”, or in other words, a pre-conditioned set of rules and behaviors that dictate your choices.
Everybody is given a “core belief system” which includes their values, aspirations, and their do’s and don’ts. Many people operate within the parameters of their core programming without too much difficulty. This is especially true if they exist within an environment that nurtures their core programming.
For example, if you are an orthodox Christian living in a town where that religion is the predominant one, you’ll run into less conflictive situations than if you were to live in the “hardcore atheist part of town”. There would be a misalignment of values which would continually interrupt your core programming.
Your curated existence is the reality you engage with without questioning. It’s the assumptions you make about life that makes you feel “safe” but have never truly questioned. For the religious person this would come in the form a line of question relating to the existence of good and the afterlife. For the atheist it would be a similar struggle but from the opposite side. Considering that this world is quickly becoming a melting pot of all cultures globally, our internal value systems are clashing against each other at higher frequency.
The invention of the internet, and more specifically social media sites – also play a role in your curated existence. Telling you what to hate and what to like, all wrapped up in the illusion of choice. But if we’re truly honest with ourselves we know that our choice is limited and algorithms influence those choices — choosing for us what we like or not before giving us the option to decide.
This curation is a closed loop designed to keep you locked into place – to take possession of your most valuable resource.
They Are After My Time?
People think that time is their most valuable asset, but this is not true. The truth is that time only acts as a means of measuring your most valuable resource – your attention! This is where the money is at — it’s where advertisers are going to spend $836.9 billion dollars in 2022 to captivate your awareness.
This is essentially what every one and everything wants from you — your attention. Your energy, your mind, your actions… they want to keep you glued because if they have your attention, they can continue to exist.
For some, this kind of life is okay. They aren’t in too much conflict, bending to the rules of a previously configured game. However, more and more we’re seeing people rise up and individualize their reality.
The cookie-cutter approach no longer acceptable or satisfactory for their internal growth. It’s partly why esoteric practices have gained in popularity over the past few years — a deep need for individual expression.
Perhaps you are one of these people, who no longer wish to adhere to the rules of the norm and would like to take a more “manual” approach to living. If this is you – you’re in luck! We’re going to be talking about a few techniques to break the automation, and step out of your curated existence.
We’ll start with a little bit of “cerebral disruption”.
Mindfulness Toking
I wrote about this a while back and this is precisely the first step. Of course, you could do this without cannabis – but you could also use cannabis as a vehicle for consciousness exploration. The choice is entirely up to you.
Irrespective of how you approach this initial step, becoming mindful is key. You need to begin to train your awareness to become “objective” within its participation. You have to be looking at self as much as you are looking externally.
RELATED: Why You Should Be Practicing Mindfulness When Toking
This is why mindfulness toking is a good thing. It’s something you can do at the end of the day, before going to bed and incorporate as a meditation. All you have to do is spark up, turn off all devices – and sit quietly simply observing the action of smoking weed. Pay attention to what’s happening to your body, how your state changes, the concentrated areas of “highness” and so forth.
This will begin to help you become aware of your awareness. You’ll begin to notice that your awareness “rests” at certain places, but if you try to observe it, it shifts and moves to seemingly random spots.
Once you become familiar with this type of self-examination, you’ll begin applying it in other parts of your life.
Extending To The World Beyond The Toke
Ideally, to break the curation you’ll want to avoid things like social media. However, it’s also understandable that some people need social media for communications, work, and so forth. In this case, delete all the social media apps from your phone and only access the social media via your computer or the internet browser of your phone.
RELATED: Social Media Vs. Cannabis: Which One Is More Dangerous?
By just surfing through the internet browser, a lot of the “appeal” of using the platforms is lost. It’s clunkier, less flashy — the user experience is diminished significantly.
With mindfulness practice in full swing, you’ll begin noticing how you feel when you access social media. You’ll notice when you get excited or angry, when you decide to engage and how long the rantings of strangers affect your happiness.
It’s when you begin to realize these things that you begin to escape the curation. You get to decide how you engage with the external stimuli, or simply turn off the artificially generated ones such as social media.
We’re already seeing a massive devaluation of Facebook, and the same will happen to Twitter, but this is still a part of the curation. Only when YOU unplug from it, and take a more active role in what you consume mentally will you be able to escape “a curated existence”. Of course, we can’t completely escape it if we choose to live in society, but at the very minimal we get to choose the curation ourselves.
This article originally appeared on Cannabis.net and has been reposted with permission.
