Today I had my favourite drink, a hot chocolate after a long time.

It brought to the surface a big mixed bag of interesting stuff – sweet memories, deep gratitude for them, grey sadness, fluffy lightness of moving forward, slight heady elation, steeliness of the spirit, solidness of love and more inexplicable textures, threads and filaments of some new and some old shreds of fabric from here and there.

Of late I have been trying to be aware that every time I say – ‘I’, ‘Me’ or ‘Mine’, it’s really my ego speaking and not the real me. My story, my family, my friends …….. Who is the real me? I am not my body, my mind, my various roles, my peculiarities or anything that anyone else might describe me as. It’s the ego that feels the pain as it identifies with all these things and tries to fool me into doing the same. I am nothing but the deep silence within with no name, form or identity.

“Normally we do not like to think about death. We would rather think about life. Why reflect on death? When you start preparing for death you soon realize that you must look into your life now… and come to face the truth of your self. Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected”.   ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

A long scenic taxi ride along a meandering coastal route, a flight from summer to winter, a complete change of scenery, air and food and another day gone. As I go through days like these, life seems more and more like a dream, my belief in everything being multidimensional beyond my imagination gets reaffirmed and my ability to only experience life in limited dimensions starts to bother me. It seems that this whole creation is like one big jigsaw puzzle all the odd shaped 3-D pieces of which have spheres, pyramids, cubes and stars jutting out and cut out of their sides. They all belong to different sets randomly thrown together and we are made to believe they fit. No matter how much I try I cannot make them fit because I can only see them in a narrow paradigm and a through a very small bandwidth. In it’s entirety, the concept is baffling and way beyond my understanding.

I feel like a 1920s medium wave transistor in a world of satellite probes, robotic assistants and supersonic waves. I cannot comprehend the hows, whys, ins, outs, how comes and whereabouts of anything happening around me. It must be real at some level and yet, it is a dream.

Spirit is the real and eternal, matter is the unreal and temporal.

This morning after the yoga lesson and a brief meditation, the instructor said to everyone with utmost sincerity and a sweet smile, “Have a peaceful day”. The way she said it really made me want to honor her wish for me. Something inside me completely resonated with her – I want to have a peaceful day because this person wants me to and I did. I have only known her a few days and yet I felt that way about her. It made me think about all my near and dear ones. They wish the same for me and they say it in their own special ways – by sending me thoughtful messages or funny stories, by reading my blog, by calling me just to say hello or just by being there for me. I want to honor their wish for me too and I will. Also, when I wish someone a good day, I will really mean it, making sure the universe gets it like it did this morning.

Today I thought about how much he had enjoyed the holiday he had in Greece with his best friend and his mother a few years ago. I was hoping to go for a similar holiday with him and his best friend sometime this year. We could have gone last year but somehow it got postponed. There is always next year, next summer, next month, next week or even next day. But this time there isn’t. What there is, is a lesson not to take things or people or time too much for granted. Sometimes it’s all gone in a flash. Am I now postponing being peaceful? I have the choice to be it every moment of everyday. It’s up to me, now, now, now……

‘Save the planet! Eat a vegetarian.’ read his t-shirt.  He loved to laugh and make others laugh. His laughter was infectious. Lots of his family and friends remember him for that. I miss him terribly for that. When I see people making funny faces while their picture is being taken or pronounce a word in a peculiar manner or have a funny mannerism about them, I can see his amused smile. We were once in Switzerland where we managed to locate a little Indian eatery. The proprietor would welcome us in and lead us to our table. “Are you cumberfatale?” he would ask with a big smile on his face. We relived that scenario through his mimicry many a time, each time as vividly as ever.

As a long haired 16 year old he would douse his head in coconut oil so that Cleo, our family dog could lick it all off as she loved the taste of it. It was a treat to watch the two of them cuddling and playing on the floor. He loved animals. He named his little kitten ‘Milkshake’. He took good care of him, spent lots of time playing with him, let him sleep in his bed, bought him toys, took lots of pictures of him, watered and fed him and made sure he was safe. He was a good Mum.

For the evening of Day 0, I had tickets for us to go out for a play in the west end of London together and he knew that. I thought keeping him entertained might help him keep going. In reality, may be even the idea of going out exhausted him.

During a casual conversation last evening I was asked, ”How many children do you have?” Not sure what to say to that. Do I have one or two? Both of them live in my heart forever.

AK-47, Knock Out and Destroyer – these are the names of the newer brands of cannabis in common use amongst adolescents today. Very appropriate terms. THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) is the active ingredient of Cannabis. For the past 15 years, what is sold commonly in the UK is ‘skunk’ and other varieties which have THC concentrations 2-3 times higher than the older traditional cannabis. 5.3 million 16-24 year olds have used it in 2013 according to this very informative leaflet published last year by the Royal College of Psychiatry:

:http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinformation/mentalhealthproblems/alcoholanddrugs/cannabisandmentalhealth.aspx

A study following 1600 Australian school kids, aged 14 to 15 for seven years, found that children who use cannabis regularly have a significantly higher risk of depression. Daily use increases the risk of depression and anxiety to as much as 5 times higher in later life. The opposite was not the case – children who already suffered from depression were not more likely than anyone else to use cannabis. There is sufficient evidence to show that those who use cannabis particularly at a younger age, such as around the age of 15, have a higher than average risk of developing a psychotic illness, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

Why are teenagers more vulnerable to the use of cannabis? Apparently the brain is still developing in the teenage years – up to the age of around 25. A massive process of ‘neural pruning’ goes on, streamlining a tangled jumble of circuits so they can work more effectively. Any experience, or substance, that affects this process has the potential to produce long-term psychological effects.

Of course not everyone who uses cannabis, even at a young age, develops a psychotic illness. Research shows that those who have a family history of a psychotic illness, schizotypal personality or possibly have certain types of genes may be at increased risk of developing a psychotic illness following the regular use of strong cannabis.

Well, what can we do about this? In America, in some parts of which cannabis use is legal, they have marijuana-anonymous.org. Has criminalization of cannabis helped at all? Millions of people are still using it. Is it possible that there would be no need to create stronger and more damaging variants of cannabis if it was legal? If the users did not have to hide the fact from parents and doctors, wouldn’t it be better for them? What effect does criminalisation have on our ability to treat mentally ill people who also smoke cannabis? Does it not push their problems into the shadows?