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5.6.11

The Art of Balance-BODY

This rather wonderful book came into my life when reading the impossibly productive Neil Gaiman's blog. Basically the message is: You exercise 6 days a week, at least two of the days are strength based training, you also need to cycle, ski, swim, run, hike, row etc. Do the time and you can live well into your 70's and 80's. You cut crap out of your diet and eat well. You watch your alcohol intake and you do not smoke. You need a heart rate monitor and you need to exercise in the three heart zones. You make a commitment to your relationships including with yourself. You have a disciplined spiritual and intellectual practice. You have a creative life. I'm also really enjoying Stephen Covey's '8th Habit' on audio at the moment and he spends a lot of time confirming how this physical training works for him. A lot of this is common sense but rarely applied to the training of ontological tantra wizards, spiral poets, necromancers, dragon riders or surfers on the breaking waves of extreme Cabalistic theory. Imagine if Magickal Lodges were run like supercharged companies on the very best principles of integral theory! Imagine if our families followed these principles! And our schools! And our lousy, shit-brained governments! And our dentists! Wow!

4.6.11

Aleister Crowley for President!

[From: Frater Abraxas] Getting high is a basic human right

Frater Abraxas spotted this on the guardian.co.uk site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/04/getting-high-is-a-human-right

Getting high is a basic human right

Saturday June 4 2011
The Guardian


http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/04/getting-high-is-a-human-right


Peter Wilby well expresses the arguments for why the "war on drugs" has not only failed but actually makes the problems created by drug use worse (Many agree, none act: to ease untold misery, legalise drugs [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/01/ease-human-misery-legalise-drugs" title="], 2 June). What he doesn't consider is that the "war" is not only wrong in practice, it is wrong in principle.

The right to intoxicate is a fundamental human right, as basic as the rights to worship or to engage in dangerous sports. It's not the state's business to tell us what to do with our leisure as long as we are not hurting others.

Virtually every society throughout history has used intoxicants; there is something truly grotesque about our leaders who on the one hand enjoy their own drinking and smoking, and on the other use the vast revenues they take from taxing these two drugs in order to pursue and imprison those whose taste is for an intoxication different to theirs.

Joe Morison

London

? While agreeing wholeheartedly with Peter Wilby's piece on the benefits of legalising personal drug use, I must protest against his slur on blind bluesmen. Blind Lemon Jefferson, born blind; Blind Willie Johnson, blinded as a child; Blind Blake, blind at birth; Blind Boy Fuller, blinded as a teenager by accident or disease; Sonny Terry blinded as a teenager; Blind Willie McTell blinded during childhood. No evidence of meths consumption there.

Ed Marshall

Scrooby, Nottinghamshire

? The Home Office's predictable reply to calls for legalisation of the possession of drugs (The drug laws don't work, they just make it worse: campaign calls for reform again [http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/02/drugs-drugspolicy" title="], 2 June) was: "Drugs are illegal because they are harmful ? they destroy lives and cause untold misery to families and communities."

So does alcohol, gambling, and unemployment caused by spending cuts. Drugs are not illegal because they are harmful, they are illegal because no one in the government or opposition has the courage to assess this issue rationally and not from the perspective of the shrieking tabloid press.

Laurence Mann

London

? The law has failed to stamp out drug abuse: this is given as a reason to legalise it. Should we also decriminalise murder, burglary and rape, all of which persist despite the best efforts of the law?

Various things have been decriminalised since the 1950s. Almost all of them have become more common and more extreme with the removal of both criminal sanctions and social disapproval. In the case of the acceptance of homosexuality, divorce and the general sexual revolution, I'd say that this made us a better society. But would we be a better society if people consumed more drugs?

Most drug users know they are unwanted and have few prospects. Or else they are successful but under enormous pressure to stay at the same impossibly high level. Surely these are the social evils we need to fix.

Gwydion Williams

Peterborough

? Dope is the feedstock and pension fund of the judicial system, which is as dependent on drugs retaining their illicit status as the narco-gangs are for maintaining their business model. Try a reverse prohibition ? a 10-year window without criminal sanction for possession and licensed and taxed production ? to assess the relative merits of crime- or health-led policies.

Gavin Greenwood

Brighton

? I have multiple sclerosis and have asked my consultant for Sativex on several occasions, only to be denied, or should I say deprived of it (GPs criticise NHS decision to deny MS patients cannabis-based drug [http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/30/ms-patients-denied-licensed-cannabis-drug" title="], 31 May)? Doctors have even told to me to keep it quiet that cannabis has helped to relieve my symptoms. I have found that a pattern of attacks two years apart has stopped when I commenced using the drug.

The postcode lottery is so frustrating. I have been told of another patient in the same county as me who has the drug on prescription, but I have been denied.

Name and address supplied


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