Psychedelic Shiitake Mushrooms: The Power Of Belief

Insight 60 | While today's title may seem very concerning, I promise the contents and today's story are wholesome, incredibly funny, and full of application to your own life. Stay with me.

A lot of times, it is we who are our own worst enemies, and we’re the ones who fool ourselves into believing lies that hold us hostage in a variety of scenarios.

Sometimes, those beliefs keep us in our comfort zones, soothing our worries with a temporary salve. Other times, they keep us in chains, bound to notions and ideas we should have let go of years ago and have no business clinging to today.

The face that greets us in the mirror has a mind behind it, and that mind is the puppeteer responsible for our actions. But who has a say in how the puppeteer behaves? We do.

If you don’t get anything else from today's article, remember this: The worst lie is the one you tell yourself and believe.

My circle is a good and innocent bunch. It’s also a bit quirky with its set of unique factors that make it all the more fun, and I can’t help but laugh while recounting this story to you, but in the moment, my friend was terrified this was their end.

They had bought a bag of fried Shiitake mushroom chips at Costco that day and devoured the entire bag in almost one sitting. The chips themselves were addictive and a novelty of sorts. Therefore, they didn't think twice when they downed the bag; it wasn’t until later that night, when their stomach churned with indigestion, that they came to regret this decision, breaking into a cold sweat, twisting and turning in their sheets as their memory flashed with different events from the day.

“What was going on!?” they thought to themselves. It had been quite an ordinary set of twenty-four hours. What had they done differently? Why were they seeing things and sweating so much? … THE MUSHROOMS!

It was in this moment that the power of belief kicked in, and they sold themselves and an Oscar-winning script on how they were seeing mirages and experiencing withdrawals from those hallucinogenic mushrooms they'd eaten. That night, they barely slept, and the next morning, when we were talking and they were recounting the story, I couldn’t hold back my laughter. 

If you're familiar with shiitake mushrooms, it's those brown ones they sell at stores, which are entirely legal and non-hallucinogenic. No one could experience these types of effects from supermarket packaged and approved chips, but to my friend, who is of the extremely innocent kind, that didn't matter. Mushrooms are mushrooms, right?

Again, for clarification, these fungi are entirely edible and not intoxicating in any way, but it highlights the lengths one might go to when their mind believes something.

Now, you might be laughing, too, but let’s be real, you and I have both believed crazier things and suffered even worse consequences than one bad night of indigestion as a result. Pessimistic thinking is a quick sort of venom, and who are we to judge when we so often believe simpler and more false things that we swear are true or doing us good? 

That said, I was recently introduced to a new tool for navigating our mental minefields that I immediately knew I had to share with you. It's a set of tools designed to combat the hold that darker thoughts sometimes take and an easily memorizable framework to check yourself when you realize that perhaps you, too, are falling into a false belief, leaning towards a pessimistic interpretation of events, or being entirely unrealistic.

I'd like you to meet the Three P’s of Negativity: Personalization, Persistence, and Pervasiveness. These three “amigos” are what we naturally do when we spiral ourselves into dark thoughts that serve us no good, and we should be aware of them to keep them in check and shift our mindset for long-term benefits. This is not an argument for radical or toxic positivity, as we should always be sincere with our emotions, but remembering these phenomena will assist you in never letting them become your end.

Personalization: No offense, but it's not all about you, so don’t take things personally as if they were. When something occurs, we tend to try to find a way to explain it through our actions or our being. “Oh, it's because they don’t like me” or “Because I'm not good enough”. Regardless of the verbiage, we often try to find an excuse for someone's action as a result of our existing circumstances. While we should always take personal accountability for our lives, we shouldn't try to explain it all away by our perception of it. There’s always more that meets the eye.

Persistence: We value consistency and dislike being disappointed. As a result, it feels easier for us to say something will always turn out poorly or consistently set the bar low to protect our feelings. We think “I’ll never change”, “It will always be this way”, “I'll never get over this”, or “I can’t be wrong”. We conjure up a myriad of thoughts tied in absolutes, so certain of their outcome.

But the truth is, change doesn't discriminate, and it will always come around knocking when its time is due. If we’re going to persist on something, it serves us better to persistently hope and work for the better, but all the while remembering that separation is natural, shifts occur often, and change is life's only constant.

Pervasiveness: This factor is perhaps the most dangerous of the three, as it causes an isolated event to spread and entangle itself in other moments, staining them with its wretched color, like Sadness touching a joyful memory in the film Inside Out. This is what happens when we allow a smaller defeat to infect the rest of our day. It makes us feel like we just can’t take a win, and all we’re being served are losses. But remember, no task is too big or too hard to be processed when given the proper time and space. In the moment, big things can and do feel like the end, and that's ok, you shouldn’t worry. A losing streak can be broken, but it takes you deciding to shift your perspective in order to do so.

---

Ladies and gentlemen, what we believe not only affects how life happens to us, and how we happen to life. If you’d like to continue living passively, then ok, go on, but remember that's poisoning your potential for true contentment.

This isn’t a “just be optimistic message” or “chant self-affirmation mantras reach success”. No, being aware of our natural tendencies to make matters personal, permanent, and pervasive is practical knowledge you will find handy in shifting your current situation into a much more favorable position.

Time and time again, we should remind ourselves that we do have control over our thoughts and how we choose to live our lives. We only sabotage ourselves when we tell ourselves otherwise because the worst lie is the one you tell yourself and then believe.

This life is lovely, darling, but remember, sometimes there are bees where you find honey.

Action Step: Treat every heavy thought like a shiitake chip hallucination—don’t fall for it without checking the label.

- Making The Most Of Being Curious

Daniel J. Cuesta

P.S. My mushroom-loving friend is doing well and now following the recommended daily serving size. No more entire bags in one sitting, lol 😂.

Sources:

We So Easiy Deceive Ourselves: If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. -Galatians 6:3

Difficulties May Come, But They Will Not Be Your End:

• We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed... struck down, but not destroyed. -2 Corinthians 4:8–9 

• All things work together for good for those who love God… - Romans 8:28

• Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. - Psalm 30:5 

You Have Control Over Your Thoughts: We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. - 2 Corinthians 10:5 

Psychology Today, 3 P’s Of Pessimism: Link