Each one of our minds has a mental architecture — the personality we have constructed in order to survivor the world. Written into the neurological pattern of our default mode network, we can cling to these psychic knots in our brains, reinforcing them with self-critical ruminations or patterns of interactions with others. We’re trapped in these old ways of being, out of fear of being humiliated, embarrassed or hurt.
Psychedelics has been known to deconstruct these self-sabotaging mental structures, but it is in the itentional work we do following the medicine that allows the new etching to become a well-traveled path. There is integration to do right after a psychedelic sessions and and in the weeks and months that follow.
Through psychedelics, people often obtain a piece of insight but fail to knit this piece of insight into larger patterns in their lives. Rachel Harris, author of Listening to Ayahuasca, writes that people often go for a few sessions of therapy but not enough folks pursue long-term psychotherapy to sustain changes in their mental architecture. In our modern day culture of consumerism, hierarchy, bureaucracy, injustices and other traumas, it's easy to forget what we have learned.
The psyche is particularly malleable to in the initial weeks following a psychedelic experience. It is considered a window of fruitful opportunity for working with a therapist. Once old patterns are interrupted, new connections are rapidly being made, new ways of seeing the world and new ways of being all need to be spoken into the reality of your consciousness.
Your therapist could walk you though a drawing of a vision you had seen/experienced while traversing through the altered state of consciousness.
You could dialogue with the figures or entities you had met within the psychedelic state.
You can dialogue with the people which came to your mind's eye.
We can tie the visions, emotions and symbols you saw or experienced into your life narrative and receive guidance on identifying the patterns.
The more aspects of the experience we integrate, the richer the process. The more you continue to make your teachings a salient and accessible in your mind, the richer your life.