The first time I smoked marijuana was in the city jail in Roswell, New Mexico. Really! I was in the jail for drunk and disorderly conduct. I had been trying to hit on these two women in a restaurant, and I had been so drunk that I couldn’t take no for an answer. While I was in the jail, one of the other prisoners gave me a couple hits off his joint. It sure made it interesting, being there in jail

I’ve smoked off and on ever since then. Without it, I have found that I have a lot of trouble slowing down. I can’t even slow myself down with meditation. Once, when I had quit for a while and was getting speedy again, I had a dream in which the two dogs I was out walking ran away from me. I couldn’t keep up with their energy. I understood from the dream that when I wasn’t smoking, my physical energy would get out of control and run away from me.

Of course, during the sixties and early seventies, before it got uptight again, almost everybody smoked, even a president. I’d go to a UCLA party and everybody there would be stoned, professors and lawyers and doctors and students and all. And when I lived in Venice and later in Berkeley, smoking was almost a political statement, one that went like this – “if only everyone would smoke marijuana instead of drinking alcohol, the world would be a better place, certainly more peaceful and caring.”

The Rainbow Gathering was another place where almost everybody smoked. And, at least in its early days, it was a safe place to sit outside in nature, smoking the peace pipe, so to speak, with your friends. I made a lot of friends there, sitting around a circle and remembering that what goes around, comes around.
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These days, I have a medical marijuana card. I’ve had it for several years now. In addition to using smoke to slow down and to raise my consciousness, as I always have, I also use it these days to deal with my chronic pain, especially the pain in my shoulders. Sometimes I use it for headaches too. It helps.

I’ve heard it said that coffee makes you smarter than you really are. I know that smoke makes me wiser than I really am – which is really good for my writing.

If I smoke in the daytime, it’s mostly while I’m writing. But I usually smoke at night, after the boys are finally asleep and I’m done with all my household chores. I want to be off duty when I smoke.

Interestingly enough, I’m smoking less and less these days. Over the many years that I’ve smoked, I’ve found, paradoxically, that the less I smoke, the higher I get.

As the next bend in the trail of my life draws near, I’m beginning to see what I have to do in order to bring in more money for my family. I know that I have to support them on a higher level than we’re living at now, one where we’ll be more comfortable, certainly not wealthy, but no longer living so close to the edge.
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In order to understand what I have to do now, I need to first go back in time, back to an earlier bend in the trial of my life, back to when I was younger, in my late twenties and early thirties. In those days, a lot of folks thought I was teetering on the edge of insanity The Jungians in particular were worried and thought I needed more ego if I was ever going to be an analyst.

I disagreed. I thought I needed a less complicated and less frightened ego. So I began to do a lot of acid. In those days, instead of the edge of insanity thing, I preferred to see myself as a wandering acid holy man, With the help of acid, I came to realize that my mind was naturally simple. It was who I was. I saw then that my spiritual task was to fit my life to my simple mind. My life had to become simple too.

In those days, as I have said in my note, “Traveling Light,” I learned to keep my life simple. Even today, I still buy one pair of pants a year and wear them till they wear out. I still borrow books from the public library. I still grow food and eat simply. I haven’t changed.
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But now, raising my three boys, I do need more money. I don’t need more for myself. I still live as simply as always; but I do need more for the boys – and for Aspen too. I definitely need to bring in more money. My family’s real needs motivate me to do so. They really energize my father energy. But I still have my simple mind, and it still requires a simple life. I can’t change that. So I’m seeing that I have to earn more money with this simple mind while I continue to live my simple life. It’s who I am.

My simple mind and my simple way of life are worthy. I know this. I also know that I’m not at all like those holy men in India. I’m not holy in that way. I’m a family man who’s up early every morning and busy raising his boys until 8 or 9 at night, every night. I’m a family man who’s trying to be holy.

But I’m not even always nice. I lose it sometimes when the three boys are all arguing and fighting and screaming, often all at once. When all this is happening, I can get caught up by their negative energy and lose it too. But I always do deal with my lapses of good sense and consciousness, those times when I lose my connection with the love and wisdom in my heart.
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I know I’m high enough now to go wandering again. I’ve been a stay-at-home mommy-daddy for way too long, for the last eleven years, in fact. I’m tired of it. And the boys need a productive dad more than a mommy-daddy now anyway.

I’m thinking too, these days wandering doesn’t require traveling in a VW van or backpacking into the high mountains. These days, I can just go walking around this town called Boulder. There ought to be a few folks out there who would catch my high.

This is the path to more money for my family. I can feel it. I’ll go out into the world and let the world decide who I am and what’s my worth.

I sure have to work hard to keep myself strong and healthy. I have to do yoga every morning and then, three days a week, lift weights at the gym. I have to walk or else hike in the woods somewhere around here nearly every day. I have to ride my bike as much as I can. I have to meditate every afternoon. I have to watch what I eat, how much pot I smoke, how often I get off, things like that. I have to take conscious care of myself as body.

I get really tired of having to do all this all the time – especially the yoga every morning while the rest of the family is breaking their fast. But the truth is, I am much more supple than most folks in their late seventies.

Aspen and I lift weights at the gym three days a week, I am really tired of working out. I’ve been working out with weights for almost sixty years now, ever since I was 19 years old. However, once we’re there, actually doing our leg presses and pulldowns and bench presses and curls and all that, I almost enjoy it. Although I sure am glad when I’m finished for the day.

I have come to see that I will have to meditate, do yoga, lift weights and keep on walking or hiking for as long as I live. However, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the walking part. And I do love my daily meditations.
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It’s worth it all though. It’s like when I’m hiking along a trail in the woods; there’s always something new I want to see just around the next bend in the trail. And when I get there, there’s always something new I want see just around the next bend, the one up ahead. Sometimes I feel I could hike on forever. There’s always something new to see.

It’s the same with my life. There’s always something new I want to see just around the next bend of my life. So I keep on meditating and doing yoga and lifting weights and walking. I know that whatever is coming up around the next bend will always be worth the hard work.

Actually, I can see from here that there’s a new bend ahead in the trail of my life, and it’s coming up soon. And, being almost up to this coming bend, I can already see more money coming, some good acid too. I can also see from here more high and conscious friends coming into my life.

As I approach this next bend in my life, I’m looking forward to seeing how I’m going to support this wonderful family of ours on a higher level. I definitely have my preferences.

Looking ahead to this next bend in my life, I want to see that I’ll have more loving time with Aspen, lots of it. I’m hoping for another 25 years or so. I also want to see my boys become men. I think they will be splendid, definitely worth all the time and effort that Aspen and I have and will have put into raising them.

Looking ahead to this next bend in my life, I want to see how long I can stay strong and healthy. I want to see how long I’ll be able to rassle and hike with my boys, how long I’ll be able to play with Aspen too. Mostly, I want to see if I can live to be 111. When I was a young boy, a voice told me that I would live that long.

Looking ahead to this next bend in my life, I guess I’m sort of interested in what will go down on the collective level too. I don’t have much confidence in the human race, but I do continue to work for our collective rescue, hopefully moving us all away from the brink of disaster where we have placed ourselves.