We are writing our reflections while we are on a flight back to Atlanta from Vancouver BC. We just spent 5 days there, 2 sightseeing and 2 at a wonderful conference humbly called “Cannabis Hemp Conference.” No frills promised – just the science, love, respect and promotion of a plant that has been a healing part of mankind for millennia.
We were invited there to speak. We were treated like royalty – not your pretentious uppity royalty – but like elders in this tribe I am about to try to explain.
Charlie and I keep trying to compare BC to our experience of Findhorn, Scotland. The humorous part is that the two places couldn’t be further apart, or “unlike,” visually opposite. But what Findhorn is to Scotland – Vancouver and perhaps all of BC is to Canada. It took us a while to figure it out but we did.
What they both do is Mirror the Soul of their land, it’s people and visitors.
We had a life changing event when we spent 12 days in Northern Scotland. We came to teach – but we also learned. We learned of a culture that didn’t spend their lives focusing on TV. They spent their lives communing with nature – all of it including an incredible relationship with the trees, flowers, weeds, veggies and yes, the grass! I was grateful for them letting me into their hearts. Some of them had terminal diseases and were trying to learn more about dying. My sharing was about how death is not the grim reaper. It’s a trip into the Light.
Toward the end one of the organizers asked me to change my workshop into a session about how to use medicinal marijuana. There are no words – the information Charlie and I gave was accepted and “celebrated.” Although I was a little shocked at the positivity that flowed out of me – I felt like a cheerleader for the medicine. I know first hand for myself and our patient care experience that cannabis is a much better and safer medicine for too many diseases to mention here.
Soul to Soul – we experienced Findhorn and North East Scotland – and it is a “WOW! Factor.
The Vancouver and Cannabis Hemp Conference
Two days of sightseeing and some of the places we stopped were directly in front of our spectacular view from our hotel room –evergreen forests and national park, mountains behind them, and the flow of the Vancouver Bay right in front of us.
Then there was the empty convention hall that we had peeked into upon our arrival – large and empty. Empty like the void–empty with unlimited possibility.
On Friday evening the hall started to fill. We all walked under an arch titled “Cannabis Hemp Conference” and entered into a magnification of what we had felt from Stanley Park and even the city. And whatever that was – it was totally organic, including several strangers going out of their way to help us find our hotel. We experienced several synchronicities or meaningful coincidences between the two of us, that led us to share comments about “being in the flow!”
And that “being in the flow” was a major part of the conference. It continues to be the conference, and “the frosting on the cake” because the conference is going to be put on line—I hear as a Youtube.
We are in our late 70s. We are among the elders of the world wide cannabis tribe. We bravely write this because in our earlier days, and up to recently, as you all know, we could become criminals if we were caught. Even some of us health care providers (with honest worry) told our patients with Cancer and other terminal diagnoses about using cannabis. We instructed them and some of them even stopped taking their toxic drugs (that usually don’t work or stopped working.) They had a better quality of life and communicated better with their loved ones because they were lifted out of their drama and more, with the medicine.
The first day of the conference we addressed the medical, historical, sacred and ceremonial. The Soul or Morphogenetic field of the cannabis plant is bigger than I had ever thought. This first day came through the hearts of several experts as they collectively revealed several aspects of this wonderful plant. And they also revealed their own personal passion.
The second day continued about the farming and offerings of the plant in different models. I realized several times that this group was promoting models for giving back to humanity in oneway or another. These weren’t just business people – They were Humanitarians. And the last thing that struck me in a heartfelt way was how the growers were doing everything possible to keep everything earth friendly – or green. They care about the Earth. They love the Earth. And from what we heard – they love the earth worm – it seems the earth worm does much of the work and our growers claim that they watch!
So here is the Soul of BC. The soul is real, green – organic, conscious and in communion with the whole cannabis plant that we invite into our being to be part of this communion with self, others and God.
What we share is not simply ideological.
It is an organic experience and movement. We hope that these will help other organic experience/movements to model a healthy lifestyle. These will continue to help us heal our traumatized world population that (when used in a healthy way) are in need of the plant’s soothing and wise guidance.
We close with these words from Salimeh Tabrizi, the creator of this conference. She found her inspiration from her work in assisting in ceremonies with Ayahuasca and supporting individuals in integrating their peak experiences with sacred plant medicines into their day to day lives. The guidance from Ayahusca and now the guidance from Cannabis led her to create the sacred space for experts from all over Canada and the U.S. to come and share their knowledge.
When asked about her intention for the conference she said, “Reverence for the magnificent Cannabis plant because She (the plant) has been so stigmatized in the past.”
The conference, as Tabrizi had hoped, cultivated a unified community and gave all who attended a sense of responsibility and stewardship for our planet.
Barbara Harris (Whitfield)
Author of The Secrets of Medicinal Marijuana and 9 other books on natural spirituality and the emotional needs of critically ill people.
Charles L Whitfield, MD author of Healing the Child Within and 14 other psycho-spiritually oriented books on trauma and healing.
Barbara Harris with Dr. Lumír Ondřej Hanuš