Oooo, email goodies

From my SD Burning Man list: Chocolate.

Chocolate is very interesting. And also very powerful. It's chemistry is very complex and it addresses itself to the same neuroreceivers that cannabanoids bond to. It would take probably 25 lbs. to produce effects similiar to smoking cannabis, but it does release anandamide, the so-called "Bliss Molecule," (from Sanskrit "ananda" for "bliss") which has the effect of making the other effects more intense and long-lasting. Chocolate is also a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), meaning it blocks the activity of the MAO enzymes in your gut. Those are the enzymes that break down natural DMT from the environment and keep it from being orally active. At the same time, the gatekeeping functions of the blood-brain barrier, which keep most everything from passing out of the bloodstream into the brain, are constantly monitoring your blood stream for DMT to bring into the brain. Chocolate is not as powerful of an MAOI as caapi, the vine used to make DMT orally active in ayahuasca, but it does help catalyze orally swallowed tryptamines like mushrooms. And, from another branch of the chocolate conversation, cocoa is a spirit all its own and revered by traditions conversant with plants. In this case, I mean "converse" literally. Approaching any of these traditional medicines "as if" they were giving spirits changes the experience of them and makes you wonder if you need to take the quotation marks away.

http://www.erowid.org/plants/cacao/cacao_article1.shtml
http://www.kakawachocolates.com/index.php


And from my Shambala Buddha list:

Love.
What is love?
What is love.
Love is a fading memory.
Love is piercingly present.
Love is full of charm.
Love is hideously in the way.
Explosion of love makes you feel ecstatic.
Explosion of love makes you feel suicidal.
Love brings goodliness and godliness.
Love brings celestial vision.
Love creates the unity of heaven and earth.
Love tears apart heaven and earth.
Is love sympathy.
Is love gentleness.
Is love possessiveness.
Is love sexuality.
Is love friendship.
Who knows?
Maybe the rock knows,
Sitting diligently on earth,
Not flinching from cold snowstorms or baking heat.
O rock,
How much I love you:
You are the only loveable one.
Would you let me grow a little flower of love on you?
If you don't mind,
Maybe I could grow a pine tree on you.
If you are so generous,
Maybe I could build a house on you.
If you are fantastically generous,
Maybe I could eat you up,
Or move you to my landscape garden.
It is nice to be friends with a rock!

From Timely Rain: Selected Poetry of Chögyam Trungpa. Written July 1975. First published in FIRST THOUGHT BEST THOUGHT.