I bet that subject title got your attention, didn't it? A recent series of events occurred that's given me an extraordinary amount of contentment and inner peace. I’m going to try and relate what happened to me but just like relating dreams to someone else, it’s probably not going to make a lot of sense or be as profound for you as the experience was for me.
Here’s the tl;dr version:
I’ve always been a spiritual but not religious person. I’ve done large doses of LSD and had an extraordinary experience with sound but nothing religious or divine. My wife and I, along with one of our kids, had to euthanize our very old dogs because of cancer. So death and if there is anything after death had been on my mind. Couldn’t get to sleep, internally debating the existence of heaven, can pets go there, then started thinking about the nature of hell, does God exist, etc. In bed with my eyes closed, I experienced a complete and abject darkness that was suddenly pierced by a staggeringly, momentary and yet indescribably intense light that I have no doubt whatsoever was inspired by God. I suddenly _understood_ and had answers to all my questions about heaven, hell, devil and God.
Yeah, if I would read this statement before experiencing it, I would without a _doubt_ close out this web page immediately. Since college, I’ve _always_ believed God doesn’t talk or communicate to any one person or make and/or control anyone to do anything. But it happened to me. I now know, without a solitary doubt, that heaven is not real, hell is not real, the devil is not real but God most assuredly is.
For the complete story and astonishing conclusion, you have to read the long version.
A knowledge of my religious background will help to understand the foundation of my beliefs, that were initially formed in what would now be an absolute impossibility, a liberal Southern Baptist church. Our Pastor would pray for the killing to stop and for the end of the Viet Nam war, marched with Dr. King in the 60s (he was a white man), did missionary work, etc. But he was still all hell, fire and brimstone if you weren’t a Christian. It was either heaven or hell but if you “accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior”, your ticket to heaven was punched Express… no matter what sins you committed. Sunday school teachers pounded it even harder, “…even Hitler could go to heaven if he was a Christian.”
But if you weren’t a Christian, you went to hell.
Even as a 10-12 year old child, that just didn’t seem right to me. I used to get into arguments with Sunday school teachers about how a “just and loving God” could exclude all the Jews, Muslims and Hindus in the world from heaven and condemn them to hell. When I turned 13, I was rather persistent and vociferous with the parental units that I wasn’t going to church anymore and after much screaming, I was no longer required to attend church.
Didn’t really give religion much thought after that until a couple of years later in high school when I go to a Seals and Crofts concert. After the last encore, they said they were going to hang around and talk about what inspired their music, the Baha’i faith. My girlfriend wanted to see what they had to say so we stayed and learned how they think God sent various messengers down to earth, including Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha. They believed in the unity of all people and were against racism and sexism. Sounded really intriguing and in college I took several religion classes (Dante’s Inferno was quite the trip) so I learned the basics of all the major faiths. I was particularly intrigued by the Jefferson Bible, which is an unpublished book by Thomas Jefferson where he removed all the magical and supernatural facets of Jesus in the New Testament.
I had major philosophical differences with all of the religions I studied and won’t waste time now reciting chapter and verse of the various issues. I eventually decided I wasn’t going to follow any organized religion but I firmly believed in God, heaven and hell. I kinda settled on a Universal Mind concept of God, a spiritual entity that was responsible for but did not control human life here on earth.
After I became a Registered Respiratory Therapist, I began to see just how brutal human beings can be to other human beings. Between all of the innocent victims of gunshot wounds, rapes, stabbings and other assorted trauma, I began to question whether God really answered the prayers of those who had just been murdered.
I don’t remember all the specifics of this particular incident, blocked it out from memory no doubt, but it convinced me that God just doesn’t intervene in human lives. A young child, victim of horrible abuse from Mom’s boyfriend, essentially beat to death because he peed his pants. Mom praying and wailing to God to please save her child, saying she will do _anything_ God asks her to do, go to church, repent her sins, _anything_. The child flat lined and died, as she was praying to God with all her might.
If God didn’t answer that prayer, God ain’t answering _any_ fucking prayer.
I always used to tell people I worked with in a hospital that when I died and if I made it to heaven, God was going to have some explaining to do on the whys and hows of innocent kids getting cancer, suffering horribly and then dying from it. I needed some help to understand how a just and loving God could allow that to happen to innocent children.
Eventually settled on believing in a non-interventional God who was good and responsible for all that was good, a devil who was evil and responsible for everything that was evil. Heaven was where good people were rewarded for living a good life and hell was where bad people were punished for living a bad life. I know, grossly simplistic but it worked for me seeing disease, trauma and death on a daily basis.
I was quite content with that interpretation for almost all my life but a series of totally random and insignificant events blended together to give me what I’m characterizing as an Inspirational Clarity. One of our dogs, who had been with us over 13 years, was rapidly approaching her end of life from cancer. We had the vet come up here on the mountain and euthanize her. One of our kids was dealing with the exact same situation and their dog was almost 16. I had read the Rainbow Bridge poem many years ago, so I sent it to them to provide support and love. Feeling pretty low, decide to watch some comedy to lighten things up, cue up George Carlin and this kinda stuck out:
It was a little too heavy on subject matter, so I did a channel scan and a rerun of Modern Family we’ve seen 10-15 times was on. This caught my attention:
Damn, that was heavy for a sitcom.
Fuck this, time to go to bed, get some rest and sleep but haven’t been to an online forum in a while, so after I go to my usual Indoor Grow and Grow Room Construction subs, the Inspirational sub kinda catches my eye, for the first time ever. I read a thread from urhighness, from KY (where I was born and raised) describing the horror of her child being murdered. Jesus God Almighty, no Mom should have to suffer that fucking horror. Do an indepth search on what exactly happened, they are from Owensboro, a town I’d been to many times as my grandfather was a conductor for the L&N railroad. Read the whole, tragic story of a 15 y/o, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, who was murdered.
The absolute horror of this sentence stays with me: “When life gets broke down so far from a pain so desperate to be done, food has no taste, the sun has no warmth, and you realize there will never be a better time in your life than what has already been had... there is nothing left worth having.”
So the stage was set for what happens when I try to get to sleep.
Former dead pets are swirling around my memory… Niki, Dogma, Karma, Chaos… in addition to parental and grand parental units, the nature of heaven and hell, God, etc. Then hospital situations come to the forefront… never seen a dead person scared or frown… how many people have died and I was the last human they saw on earth… why does God _not_ answer prayers?
This internal dialog goes on for a long time and takes numerous variations, tangents and differing points of view. I have a unique ability to view differing and conflicting situations objectively and through dual points of view, that’s the nature of who I am. What happens to our soul after we die, are pets part of heaven, all this occurs before I can even begin to get to sleep. I’m having all these doubts about life, death, God and how I fit into all of this life here on earth stuff. How can a just and loving God be so very fucking brutal and vindictive to condemn the majority of human life on the planet to eternal damnation just because they don’t believe in Jesus Christ? This is most assuredly _not_ what I believe, so I really _need_ some answers.
That’s when I felt what was the most brilliant, pure, complete love, knowledge and power ever created in the universe. It was immediately communicated to me that it was… a _nano_ fucking second experience of what really, actually _is_ God. I cannot explain or communicate it in any other way, I just can’t. I cannot actually explain this in a way that will make sense, as they used to say back in the day about psychedelics, “Words tend to be inadequate”.
All I know is that I suddenly had all the answers to my rather profound questions about the nature of life, death, God, heaven, hell, Hitler going to heaven, innocent kids dying from cancer, and all the other questions that had intrigued me almost all of my life. All of my questions finally had an answers.
I was totally and almost completely straight, at least as much as I can be given my Endo Cannabinoid System situation. I’d forgotten my 8:00 PM capsule during Modern Family.
Every time I thought about conflicting situations where humans could be judged; a soldier killing in combat; a cop on the beat shooting a robbery suspect; a profoundly mentally ill human who murders, a terminally ill human taking their own life because they can’t take it any more… do these souls make it to heaven?
I’m beginning to understand
The situation a human is put in is frequently beyond their control but how they react in that situation is totally and completely under their control, not God’s. That’s what determines who becomes part of God and who doesn’t. Those whose motives and intentions are pure will be rewarded, the humans who exclusively choose their own, selfish needs over others will not be punished, they just won’t experience “The Light”. There is no eternal fire and brimstone… a just and loving God fucking doesn’t do that.
There is no Devil controlling humans and what they do, it’s who we are and unfortunately, humans can be Devils. Hell, purgatory and all the rest of that is just our human way of trying to justify and explain why we can be so very fucking evil… killing, raping, torture, etc. Blaming the Devil is just an excuse to justify and absolve human behavior and blame our evil on an external force.
We are both good and evil, because we are human, not God
Hitler gets a glimpse of becoming God…and then there’s nothing, complete emptiness. Could there be a more horrible end of existence? Having experienced it, I cannot imagine a more horrible feeling than to experience total and complete love, absolute control of everything that has ever been created, infinite wisdom and the ultimate and complete power to create anything and everything that has ever been created, and then having it taken away?
I now understood.
This analogy is going to be so lame when I try to explain it but I’m gonna type it anyway, because it made sense to me: Life is like a big, long car ride where you have to interact will all different types of people. Some drivers are just outright assholes, yelling and screaming at other people all the time. Others don’t give a shit about anyone other than themselves, so they either drive too fast or too slow, endangering the lives of everyone else. Some get drunk or don’t pay attention because they are texting and kill other_ totally_ innocent human beings. Random tragedy for innocent victims who have done absolutely nothing wrong.
But almost all people get where they need to go because they obey the rules of the road, pay attention to what they’re doing, and treat others with tolerance and respect. As humans, we don’t know whether our journey in the car is going to be a short ride or a very, very long haul. Some of us, unfortunately, have very short rides that end through no fault of our own. Others enjoy a long, eventful experience.
That’s the adventure… and the responsibility.
There’s no one controlling how you drive, no cop who knows where you are going, and the car is not driving itself. _You_ are the one in control, the one responsible for driving correctly and doing what’s right. Guess which type of driver gets to become part of God? You don’t have to be Mother Theresa but you can’t be Hitler either.
Here’s the important part:
If you live your life correctly, do what is right and are tolerant of others, you actually _become_ a part of God. You become part of what created and creates anything and everything in the universe that has ever been or will ever be created. Recreating the love from dead family members and pets is absolutely nothing compared to creating everything that’s ever been created or will ever be created. If you live a good life, you will experience all that God has to offer when your life is finished. That’s what heaven is, it’s not a place, it is when you become a part of God.
After I exhaled and wiped the tears off, I just laid there for a little while thinking how glad I was to have forgotten my evening capsule, so I could communicate what happened and to be able to absolutely guarantee it wasn’t because I was under the influence of any alcohol, hallucinogen, or other mind altering substance. As usual for old farts like me, I had to get up to pee.
When I looked at the clock, this is no shit, it was 4:20 AM.
This is my reality, not yours, as we all bring differing and various points of view in life with regard to God and religion. Urhighness, your son is with you now and it is my belief that he is now a part of God and has recreated all of the love and happiness you both shared. Live a good life, don’t give up on it, as it is most assuredly worth living. You will be rewarded for carrying on with your life without your son by becoming part of God with him, when your life is over.
It’s my hope that if you’ve somehow managed to plow through this long ass story, you will find some degree of comfort and tranquility in what I have experienced and be able to relate what I’ve experienced into your own life.
For me, it has truly been an Inspirational Clarity.
Indicas Sprouted and Transplanted
Here are the Type II/Indica seedlings that are the result the pairing of a fairly stable Type II pistillate plant with a staminate plant that was just a classic Type II/Indica shaped beauty. These seedlings were not as vigorous and aggressive rooting like SouthEast Lights are but once rooted, all of ‘em did pretty well.
I do not custom tailor a fertilization and watering routine for my cannabis plants. Over many generations, the plants have learned to adapt and evolve to the methods I use to care for them, not the other way around. I don’t evaluate and treat each plant as an individual, I treat all of them collectively in the exact same way. No extra water or fertilizer just because one plant doesn’t look as good as the others, if it’s not doing as good as the others, there are reasons why.
One of my priorities has always been to use the least amount of fertilizer required to have healthy and vigorous plants. Peter’s, now Jack’s, 10-10-10 has been the fertilizer I’ve used since I started growing inside in the 80’s. Each spring, I buy whatever potting soil is on sale, flush the shit out of it with a couple hundred gallons of spring water, throw in a bit of dolomitic lime, mix it up and let it sit for a month or two.
After the seedlings sprout, I titrate how much Peter’s I use based on the overall color and health of all the plants. With the first use of a new soil, there is usually very little additional supplementation required because of the time release fertilizer manufacturers usually add.
It can be easy to miss at first in the photographs but you should notice there is one plant that is shorter, stouter, larger leafed and much darker green, compared to the others. That’s one of the things I look for when deciding which plants to develop into the next generation, how much fertilizer is required and used by the plant compared to its siblings. This plant receives the same amount of fertilizer as the others, yet it is much more efficient at processing and utilizing the N, K, and P than the other plants.
This vigorous and efficient selection process is one of the reasons SouthEast Lights is a very different type of cannabis.
Experimental Tent With Clones and Seedlings
Since we've got enough cannabis in vacuum sealed bags and BHO to last a while, I can really experiment in the 8X4 tent. I've got four Type I/Sativa plants in the 4X4 to judge the quality/quantity of the clones and have kept a couple of clones from the Type II/Indica mother that's one of my favorite plants.
Unlike most people who clone, I'm quite brutal when I create clones. When I first started out cloning, I did everything you've read about... sterilized the razor, scraped the stalk, cut at an angle, dipped in Clonex, placed in foam inserts (always felt rock wool was un-natural) and put in a humidity dome. Then I got to thinking (always a dangerous thing for me) but I want SouthEast Lights to be a Survivor/Terminator variety of cannabis, so why baby and coddle clones when I don't do that to seedlings and growing plants?
So now all I do is cut the growing shoots off of a donor plant with umbi scissors (used by M.D.'s to transect an umbilical cord in neonates in order to place a catheter in the umbilical artery to monitor O2 levels) and stick them into jumbo foam inserts from a Park Seed clone tray. No scraping, no Clonex, no babying or coddling, no treating like it like it was a sterile procedure. I _know_ what a sterile environment is because of my medical background and cannabis doesn't need that environment, in fact it's harmful to the development of disease resistance.
If the clones make it, they do. If they don't, they don't. I've done this for many generations now and the clones are almost as persistent as seedlings, they do what they have to survive. That is just one of many things that make SouthEast Light quite a bit different from almost all cannabis varieties.
Clones and Seedlings
Catepillar
Notice how the Type I/Sativa leaves are not only thinner and longer, look at the leaf edges and notice the different serrations on the leaf margins... kinda a double saw-tooth edge? That is said to indicate the area of origin, Northern Afghanistan, and it only started showing up after I isolated the Type I/Sativa and Type II/ Indica phenotypes of Northern Lights. I've seen it a lot with the Type II/Indica, as indicated by the measurement pic. I went back over all the four year old pics when I started the website and can't really notice the double saw tooth margins.
The first video illustrates the tropical force air movement needed when the basement tent temp is 85 degrees and the relative humidity is even higher, even with seedlings and clones. The second video shows a caterpillar that was hanging out on the staghorn sumac that surround the perimeter of our yard when I went to shitcan a bunch of fan leaves.
The Terminator Is Pistallate
The survivor, that I call the SouthEast Lights Terminator version, is pistallate! _Fuck_. I was so hoping it was staminate. No doubt others have had a different experience, but I would _much_ rather have a dominate, staminate parental unit than the best pistillate plant I've ever had. Mostly for logistical reasons. Because of my background, back in the 80's and 90's I used to use a microscope to view staminate plants for resin production to decide the parental unit to use. After I obtained Sensi's NL, a microscope wasn't necessary. :o Anyway, here is the Terminator parental unit I'll use for all future versions of SouthEast Lights. Notice in one pic the roots are trying to find their way to the soil. If this doesnt' illustrate the Terminator trait of SouthEast Lights, I don't know what does. It's _earned_ that designation:
Followup On The Terminator In The Wild
Time for an update on what I’m gonna call The Terminator parental unit (don’t’ know the sex of it yet) of all future SouthEast Lights. After I dug it up and transplanted it into my standard, once a year, whatever’s on sale soil (Scott’s Moisture Control this year, last year I think it was Sta-Green) it underwent a bit of environmental shock. From a couple of hours of indirect, natural sunlight into a controlled environment with a bit more light (damn, those emoticons would fucking come in handy here).
I expected some leaf damage from the massive increase of photons, but I started noticing missing pieces of leaf. WTF? This isn’t like anything I’ve seen before. Upon further examination, I discovered the reason, a fucking caterpillar. Now I know outdoor growers must deal with this all the time but this was a new experience for me. Did I kill the fuck that was eating my leaves? Nah, it was just doing what caterpillars do, eat. I carried it out and put it on the fucking staghorn sumac we got around here, no harm if they eat the shit out of those.
The last two pics are the most recent, one outside for the first time since I transplanted it and one inside in its current environment. Notice how non-uniform all the other plants in the tent are? Exceedingly uncharacteristic of not only Northern Lights but SouthEast Lights as well.
That’s because I’ve fucking isolated the Type I/Sativa and Type II/Indica plants that were the foundation of Northern Lights and I’m trying/going to standardize them back to their original state, especially the Type II/Indica.
