False Narratives: The Dandelions of Consciousness

Think of a behavior or habit you aren’t particularly happy with. You may assign some sort of negative feeling to that behavior like shame or judging. Yet you keep doing the behavior. Is this is some sort of character flaw? Maybe. But it’s way more likely it’s a false narrative manifesting in behavior. Or as Jesus said “Forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Our mind contains thousands of false narrative — all of which come from external factors such as experiences and social conditioning. They shape our worldview about the important things in life (God, relationships, sex, money, health) and the unimportant things (hobbies, activities, which sports team to be a fan of). They lay embedded in our psyche — looping over and over every time they’re triggered. And more get added with every experience. No wonder we have so much noise in our heads!

False narratives unto themselves are neither bad nor good. But they are false — in the sense that they are illusory. And they have much more influence over us than we realize. Here’s how deep they go: a false narrative informs our mindset which produces a feeling which produces a behavior.

False narratives are the dandelions of consciousness: if you find one, there’s always more. Which is both good news and bad news. The good news is that you have awareness…