Stories We Tell Ourselves: From Illness and Death to Oneness and Choice

Recently I’ve had a persistent cough and flu-like symptoms.

Nothing dramatic, but enough to flatten me for a day. Twelve hours in bed, no energy, body heavy.

What interested me most wasn’t the cough itself. It was the stories I noticed myself telling about it.

One story sounded like this:

“Something is wrong. I’m unwell. This is bad.”

Another, equally available, sounded like this:

“This is part of an integration and cleansing process. My body is doing important work.”

Same physical sensations. Two completely different experiences.

And then there was my mother’s story:

“You probably have Corona. Be careful. This is dangerous.”

None of these are “facts” in the strict sense.
They are interpretations. Stories.

Once you start seeing how much of your life is governed by these stories, it becomes very difficult to stop there.

The problem isn’t the story. It’s being stuck in only one.

We live in a sea of narratives:

• Collective stories:
  • Illness is bad.
  • Success looks like X.
  • You must be productive.
• Personal stories:
  • “I’m not successful.”
  • “Nobody loves me.”
  • “My body is failing me.”

Often, the issue is not whether a story is right or wrong. The deeper issue is:

We don’t see that we are choosing a story at all.

We unconsciously lock onto a single interpretation and treat it as reality.

The cost isn’t just emotional. It’s a massive loss of optionality. The entire “portfolio of potential perspectives” is there, but we don’t look.

We think:

“This is how it is.”

Instead of:

“This is one of many ways I could see this.”

Like-mindedness as shared story

We tend to call people “like-minded” when:

• Their stories about the world match ours.
• Their judgements line up with our own.

If I say something and you nod, we both feel:

“Ah, you understand me.”

Third parties might look at both of us and think:

“They’re weird.”

They live inside a different story of reality.

This doesn’t mean anyone is wrong. It just means we each inhabit a different narrative universe.

The path: from one story, to many, to none

There’s a kind of progression available to us:

1. Only one story exists.

   • “This is how things are.”
   • No awareness of alternatives.

2. Other stories exist.

   • “I see my view, and I see yours, even if I disagree.”

3. Active perspective-shifting.

   • “Let me try on different angles: A, B, C, D...”
   • This is when genuine holistic seeing begins.

4. Rapid switching.

   • Perspectives change so quickly it becomes like a 360° scan.
   • You no longer live inside one fixed narrative.

5. Seeing all stories as stories.

   • Recognising that every interpretation is provisional.
   • Discovering a strange peace in not needing a story at all.

It’s not that thinking becomes useless. It’s that you no longer confuse:

“The story I’m telling”
With
“The nature of reality itself.”

The three enemies of wisdom

There’s an old saying about the three enemies of wisdom:

1. Ignorance – you don’t look.
2. Superficial knowledge – you look, but not deeply. You think you know.
3. Forgetfulness – you have seen, but you forget.

You could rephrase it as:

• Not seeing.
• Thinking you see more than you do.
• Forgetting what you once saw.

All three keep us trapped in narrow stories about ourselves, others, health, success, and reality.

Mindfulness, in this context, is simply the opposite:

Seeing clearly, deeply, and remembering.

Duality, monism, and why non-judgement is a byproduct

Most of us live from an unexamined assumption of duality:

• Me vs you
• Good vs bad
• Success vs failure
• Life vs death

From that stance, exclusion and judgement feel natural:

• “This is in, that is out.”
• “This is good, that is bad.”

Now imagine you truly adopt a different foundational assumption:

All is one.

If everything is one:

• Whom exactly are you excluding?
• Whom exactly are you judging?
• Whom exactly are you fighting?

This doesn’t magically change behaviour overnight. But it does something important:

It makes exclusion and judgement logically incoherent.

From a monistic perspective (oneness):

• Hurting you is hurting myself.
• Excluding you is excluding part of myself.
• War becomes the One fighting the One.

You don’t need extra moral rules to stop you.
The deeper understanding itself provides the intrinsic motivation.

Non-judgement, then, is not a technique.
It’s a byproduct of shifting from:

• “We are fundamentally separate”
• To:
• “We are fundamentally expressions of one reality.”

Duality as the best tool to explore oneness

Here’s the paradox: duality is not the enemy of oneness.

It’s the most powerful tool oneness has to explore itself.

You can’t perceive white without black.
Can’t know warmth without cold.
Can’t appreciate peace without ever having felt conflict.

In the same way:

• The One cannot know itself as One without ever experiencing separation.

So:

• Duality and separateness are not mistakes.
• They are the laboratory conditions for awakening.

Our problem is not that duality exists.
Our problem is that we:

• Forget that it’s a tool.
• Get stuck in one side of the polarity.
• Chase only “good” and resist “bad”.

Happiness vs Ananda

This shows up clearly in the way we chase happiness.

You can think of two levels:

1. Happiness

   • Conditional: “I get what I want, therefore I’m happy.”
   • Example:
     • “When I get the red Porsche, I’ll be happy.”
     • “When I recover from this illness, I’ll be happy.”
   • But:
     • The joy fades.
     • We then want the yellow Porsche, the helicopter, the next achievement.

2. Ananda

   • A Sanskrit term often translated as “bliss,” but meaning something deeper.
   • Not dependent on getting what you want.
   • Arises from seeing all that is:
     • Health and illness
     • Gain and loss
     • Life and death
   • And feeling a profound “Yes” to the whole.

From Ananda’s perspective:

“Wow, I am healthy.”
“Wow, I am ill.”
“Wow, I live.”
“Wow, I will die.”

Not as indifference, but as a kind of deep appreciation of the magnificence of reality itself, not just the pleasant parts.

Happiness chases individual phenomena.
Ananda recognises and rests in the One that contains all phenomena.

Health, illness, and the stories that heal or harm

Back to the cough.

If I tell myself:

“This is terrible, I’m really bad, my body is fighting me.”

Given that our thoughts and emotions influence our physiology, that story can:

• Amplify stress
• Reinforce suffering
• Potentially even hinder healing

If instead I tell myself:

“My body is strong. It has recovered from many things.
This is a cleansing. It knows what it’s doing.”

I’m not denying the symptom.
I’m choosing a story that supports healing.

This doesn’t mean we should never see a doctor.
It means:

• Use medicine consciously.
• Notice when your narrative is making things worse.

A particularly heavy story is:

“My body is attacking me” (for example in cancer).

Alternative:

• The body as an intelligent messenger:
  • Showing where something is radically out of balance.
  • Asking for deep change, not just suppression.

The key is not to replace one dogma with another.
It’s to become conscious of the stories and their effects.

Death, identity, and the scale of “me”

Our stories about death are also stories.

• If my identity is solely this body:
  • Body decays → I cease to exist.
• If my identity shifts to something larger:
  • Species, planet, solar system, consciousness itself
  • The “end” of the body or even the planet becomes just one part of a bigger cycle.

Everything we observe follows cycles:

• Leaves fall from trees.
• Animals die.
• Planets and stars are born and eventually vanish.
• Even the universe may expand and contract.

We are deeply serious about the death of our body, understandably.
But from a larger identity, it’s another phase change in a much bigger process.

Again, it’s about where we place our “I”:

• In the form, or in the source of forms.

Is the brain producing consciousness, or receiving it?

Here’s a story most of our culture has quietly accepted:

“The brain produces consciousness.”

If that’s true:

• Brain dies → consciousness disappears.
• There is nothing after bodily death.

But what if that story is wrong, or at least incomplete?

Alternative story:

“The brain is a receiver or limiter of consciousness.”

Like a radio:

• Destroy the radio, the signal doesn’t cease to exist.
• It just can’t be received in that form.

Shifting this story:

• Decouples consciousness from the brain.
• Opens the possibility that awareness continues beyond bodily death.
• Makes room for concepts like:
  • Soul
  • Reincarnation
  • Non-local consciousness

You don’t have to “believe” this to see its implications.
You just need to notice that:

Our story about the brain quietly determines our story about life and death.

Soul, fingers, and the hand

One step further:

• Story 1: We are bodies only.
• Story 2: We are souls moving from one body to another.
• Story 3: Our souls are like fingers on one hand.

In story 2:

• “Your soul” and “my soul” are still separate.
• We’ve transcended materialism, but still live in duality.

In story 3:

• Underneath your soul and mine, there is one hand:
  • One underlying consciousness.
  • Many expressions (fingers).

From there, the full arc looks like this:

1. I am this body.
2. I am a soul temporarily wearing this body.
3. I am an aspect of the One that appears as many souls and bodies.

Each step changes how we relate to:

• Illness
• Death
• Other people
• Our own fears

So what does a leader do with this?

As a business leader, you don’t need to adopt any single metaphysical story.

What matters is this:

• You are always operating from some story:
  • About yourself
  • About others
  • About reality
• Those stories quietly shape:
  • Your decisions
  • Your ethics
  • Your capacity for empathy
  • Your response to uncertainty and loss

Three practical invitations:

1. Notice the story.
   When something happens (illness, conflict, loss), ask:

   • “What story am I telling myself about this?”
   • “Who taught me this story?”

2. Explore alternatives.

   • “What other stories could I tell about the same situation?”
   • “What happens in my body if I try on a different story for a moment?”

3. Experiment with identification.

   • “Where am I placing my ‘I’? Only in this body? In this role? In something larger?”
   • “How would I act if I identified a little more with the ‘hand’ and a little less with just one ‘finger’?”

You don’t have to force anything.

But every time you remember that you have a choice of story, you reclaim a piece of your freedom.

And every time you expand your identity, even slightly, beyond the narrowest story of who you are, you make it a little easier to navigate:

• Illness
• Change
• Loss
• And the enormous mystery of being here at all.

(This article was inspired by a Conscious Conversation with a dear friend & professional colleague on 13th June 2024.)