Often we can see some­one else — a friend, per­haps — liv­ing out their untrue sto­ry, and we want to help. The oth­er per­son says some­thing like…

“I’m an out­sider — that’s just my nature!” — a sto­ry of feel­ing separate
“What­ev­er room I’m in, I’m the smartest one there!” — also a sto­ry of feel­ing separate
“I nev­er learned to stand up for myself!” — a sto­ry of emo­tion­al weakness
“I’m an extro­vert, and I like to joke around. So what?” — also a sto­ry of emo­tion­al weakness.
“I don’t real­ly have a choice!” — a sto­ry of victimhood.
“Nobody is that gen­er­ous to me!” — also a sto­ry of victimhood.
“I don’t have enough self-dis­ci­pline!” — a sto­ry of moral failing
“Most peo­ple I know don’t have a work eth­ic” — also a sto­ry of moral failing
“I’ve had to fight for every­thing I’ve ever received” — a sto­ry of scarcity
“There are win­ners and there are losers” — also a sto­ry of scarcity

If we are close to the per­son and have often expe­ri­enced some aspect of their truer, nobler nature we might want to shout:

“BUT THAT’S NOT REALLY TRUE!”

It can be like shout­ing “Wake up!” to some­one total­ly asleep. The per­son may seem deaf to us, maybe even in a kind of coma as they live out their air­tight untruth. It’s their sto­ry, told to them­selves again and again, rewiring the neur­al path­ways of the brain with the same old “facts,” that aren’t facts so much as nar­row, con­trol­ling rules of iden­ti­ty, embed­ded beliefs, fairy tales.

It’s often so much eas­i­er to see these things in oth­ers rather than in our­selves. It’s not near­ly so easy to hack into our own belief sys­tem, espe­cial­ly the aspects that formed as lit­tle chil­dren, maybe before we were even con­scious of ourselves.

As a con­se­quence, we don’t hear the shouts from out­side either. Our untrue sto­ries keep us fast asleep, too. 

You have to imag­ine that you and I are neigh­bors devot­ed to help­ing each oth­er. But I shout and you sleep. And you shout while I sleep. Nei­ther of us is wak­ing up.

What hap­pens? One day, I vis­it you in your dream and I say, “You know that thing I’ve been say­ing about myself — I’m think­ing it’s not real­ly true.” In your dream you hear me say these words and you say to me in return, “Yes, you know that thing I’ve been say­ing to myself — I’m think­ing it’s not real­ly true either.” 

“I get it now,” I say to you in the dream. “Yes,” you say, “I get it, too.” We agree not to fight about it any­more and to stop telling each oth­er and our­selves those same old untrue sto­ries. We agree to help each oth­er with that.

We wake up at the same time, you in your house, me in mine, each expe­ri­enc­ing a strange sen­sa­tion from such a lucid dream. Lat­er, we greet each oth­er across the back fence and some­how it feels like we have known each oth­er forever.

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