Psychological Detoxes
Our detoxes fall under three categories; Physiological, Emotional/Motivational and Psychological.
Here we'll explain what a psychological detox is and how it differs from an emotional detox.
It’s primarily our current equilibrium of motivations - some innate, some acquired - that keep us orientated towards the rewards that we believe, and experience, to be on the particular path we’re currently on. There's obviously motivations behind what we do and don't do.
Incentives explain behaviour
But the other major factor involved is our beliefs regarding reality - our model of reality - as that is the map we’re referring to when navigating reality. We have objectives that percolate up from our motivations but how, or if, we can satisfy those objectives depends on our understandings of causes and effects - our understandings of this reality thing we're in. Clearly, the more accurate those beliefs - the more detailed and accurate our model of reality - the more potent are our decisions, thus actions. If what manifests from our actions tends to be as we expected we’re able to competently navigate/manipulate reality to achieve our objectives/ satisfy our motivations.
“For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.” Vincent Van Gogh
We act to satisfy our motivations/ to achieve our objectives, but what specific actions we take - our strategy - depends on what we believe will be effective from the options we believe are available to us. We're limited both by the range of options we believe exist and by our beliefs regarding the probabilities for success each options offers. There's always known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. We can only take into account variables we know exist and what weighting we give each variable depends on the role it plays in the model of reality we have in our head. We, necessarily, superimpose our model of reality onto the actual reality. When we're confused about something, or in two minds, we'll often seek more relevant information to gain the extra clarity that will hopefully promote one of the options into clear 'pole position'. The newly gained information is adding to our model of reality, we're adding a few more details to our map. If we don't respect our brain, if we feed it trash, we not providing it what it needs to do it's job competently anymore than our bodies can function properly on a diet of Mc Donalds.
Education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think. Einstein
As many of our beliefs form the structure our ego is perched upon, and will therefore protect, the first step is always an emotional/motivational detox. Once we’re generating ample emotional pleasure/satisfaction we simply don’t need the insipid ego pleasure and therefore don’t need to hold on to those beliefs. They then don't need to be pried away, they vanish automatically. As our ego necessarily solidifies what is fluid - turns what is subjective into something ‘objectively true’ thereby making ones status real and true - this need vanishes once we no longer care about our silly ego. What has solidified in our cup is hard to remove, but if it returns to a fluid state it flows out very easily.
We also have many beliefs that we’re not invested in maintaining - don’t feel pain if they’re challenged - but are within our Model of Reality simply because we’ve never examined them. If we examine them ourselves we’d throw many of them out, but we typically simply never bother to detox in this way. They’re there influencing us, but how they got there, who put them there and whether they’re accurate, or at least useful, is rarely questioned. We’re then like drones on autopilot never taking over the controls ourselves.
If we believe we're a bird, when we're actually an ape, we're going to have misplaced expectations of ourselves and others. We likely to be confused, upset and probably malnourished. Perhaps, we'll also have a few broken bones from falling when we expected to fly. Is the fault with reality, or with our expectations/beliefs? It can be hard to be happy in reality if we can't accept reality as we'll find ourselves bumping into what we didn't know was there and avoiding what isn't actually there. If someone was holding onto evidence us homo sapiens - wise apes - are actually birds then they be famous overnight if they release that evidence. No one does this because, well, it's screamingly obvious we are apes and not birds. What's relevant here is how we cling to beliefs that make us feel better - bit of a dis to our ego to see ourselves as apes - but then we often pay a much higher price from the resulting inaccurate model of reality we've constructed. Additionally, we avoid revisiting our beliefs to calibrate them better as that's now a painful exercise.
When we shake our fist at reality we're inviting in ugly flavours; anger, frustration even hate. When we accept reality there's no such reaction. Just as relatively intelligent dogs are still dogs, relatively intelligent Apes are still Apes. Apes be Apes. What do we expect?
Just as motivations 'blow in' and accumulate over time suppressing, and disorientating, us from our innate motivations all manner of beliefs also 'blow into' our model of reality similarly reducing it to a tangled mess. We can be orientated towards our actual interests, but if we're not able to navigate reality competently, we can't get to our oasis that is out there somewhere.
If we’re referring to a wildly inaccurate map we’re going to get lost.
We’re going to be doing something, going to be taking steps, and those steps add up taking us here or there.
A psychological detox is about sorting through our relevant beliefs. Sorting the wheat from the chaff. Why do we believe what we believe ?
It’s about returning to solid ground. It’s not about exchanging one set of rigid beliefs for another. It’s about seeing them as the tools, as the recipes, they are and shifting focus from high-fiving them to high-fiving the reality/taste they produce. Our species doesn’t have the ability to know the truth, so we put that illusion aside and instead acquire useful beliefs. We can now upgrade our tools, can change our recipe, and so quickly generate the reality/taste desired.
'Over intellectualisation creates a gap, or lack of rapport, between you and your life. You may think about things so much that you get into the state where you're eating the menu instead of the dinner. Watts
Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz
Between what's flesh and what's fantasy
And the poets down here don't write nothing at all
They just stand back and let it all be
Springsteen. Jungleland.
It's not that we don't want to utilise our brain, that we don't want to be thinking. It's about whether our thoughts are actually relevant and not confusing what happens to be whirling inside our skull with being the actual reality. About not solely consuming - thus experiencing - the sauces/meanings we're putting on top because, eventually, that's all we've got as that's all we're orientated towards.
Instead of being stuck with the one recipe, the one ‘right’ template, which we then desperately try and squeeze ourselves into, we can throw that out and select one that fits better. Taken far enough there’s no templates, there’s just recipes that we can adjust to taste. We’re not this or that, we’re not making solid what is actually fluid, or at least potentially fluid.
We feel no lack/dissatisfaction not having what we don’t want. If we feel we lack nothing we have everything we want. If we have everything we want we, by definition, are on a very high level of happiness.
Less is more. However, there’s obviously some motivations that need to be satisfied. We have to survive, for example. But, the fewer they are, and the more aligned they are, the easier it is to satisfy the bulk of them and thus be very happy. But we still have to walk the walk, still have to take ourselves from A to B, and that requires a reasonably accurate map. Therefore, it’s often worth running a comb through our assorted beliefs to delete the obviously inaccurate ones - why would we want them to remain?
Again though, the real benefit is not so much the improved map but the ability to press refresh on it. It’s the flexibility itself that’s most valuable. That our recipe is just a recipe, not set in stone, allows us to adjust it, and when we can do that it’s simple to generate the taste/s desired.
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