Changing our world without knowing it

“Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.” — Ben Okri

Ben Okri, who won the 1991 Booker Prize for this novel The Famished Road, is quoted often and in many places when it comes to words of wisdom about storytelling.

When we think of storytelling, whether from oral traditions of centuries past or the novels we peruse on Amazon, we tend to think of stories as tales intended to be read or otherwise passed along to others. What we overlook, out of habit, are the stories we tell ourselves.

Even things said over and over in jest/sarcasm such as “My feet our killing me.”  I suggest that if you say that or think that often enough, your feet will ultimately kill you because the idea has become part of our world view about yourself.

Those who teach meditation often ask us to get rid of the on-going interior monologue that runs like an endless podcast inside our heads. First, it’s uncensored and often negative in some way. Second, it fills our thoughts with dribble, shutting down our ability to hear the stories we need to hear. Third, that monlogue is a barrier to the songs of the universe, knowledge we might get through intuition or other communication with higher powers and totem animals.

And then I guess we might say that if the only person we’re listening to is that podcast from ourselves, we won’t hear much else. What a pity, in a world built on stories, thousands of voices are trying to get our attention.

–Malcolm