Thread by @Aella_Girl

1/We operate based on this incredibly complicated 'tree' of beliefs. High-level (twigs) beliefs is performative identity stuff like "that politician is bad" or "vegetarian diets are healthy". Underneath this we get to small branches like "freedom is important" and-

2/"I have good intentions". Then there's sturdier branches, subconscious stuff we don't always know about: "i am unloveable" or "crying makes people nice to me".
And then the trunk, the deepest stuff, is micro scale processing - stuff like "i have a body" and "pain is bad".

3/ There's also the sense of "taking a belief as object." Have you ever believed something was true, and then suddenly had a switch to realizing that you were believing it as a *tool*? An easy example is the way some people relate to tarot readings - you can either believe it-

4/actually indicates something about reality, or you can 'step outside' of it and treat it as a tool to construct meaning in places you might otherwise have trouble looking. To take a belief as object is to 'let go' of it as a source of knowing/control about the world.
WELL.

5/Psychedelics tend to cause you to step outside, let go of, take as objects, your beliefs, and they tend to work from the twigs of the tree downwards. You might have a trip and come out of it realizing "that politician is bad" is no longer an indication of reality-

6/That belief got 'lopped off' of your tree, cut down. (You still have access to the belief, but for my metaphor, the tree is built only out of beliefs that give you a sense of control).
So now you have a slightly trimmed tree. Pretty nice, yes?
Well, if you take more-

7/psychedelics more often, you might start losing branches.
Now, a common... issue? I see is the reaction to the loss of branches. Someone might lose a branch, be self-aware about losing a branch, and then *grow an entirely new branch to deal with the concept of what they lost*.

8/This is how you get people who take psychedelics, have some genuine and powerful insight where they step outside of their beliefs, and then in the integration they end up forming a whole new way to relate to this loss. For example, you might step outside your belief in

9/the scientific method, and then come back *with a new belief* in telepathy or multidimensional beings or something.
This is the process of a tree being slowly whittled away and growing back in new and strange patterns. This is why psychedelics result in such strange ideas.

10/This is *also* why people who do psychedelics tend to be so un-self-aware of what's going on. They reacted to the loss of belief as a lesson about belief (we just need to find the right ones), not as a lesson about loss (we can let go of any belief that grows).
I find the-

11/healthiest relationship to psychedelics as one that has realized that the journey is about loss of your branches, not about reacting to the loss of your branches. If you can figure out how to be whittled away without growing back, then you're on the path of gentle cessation.