34. Clearing Cobwebs, Changing Filters
November 7, 2025
Every three months, you get a reminder that you need to change the filter on your furnace. Every 12,000 miles, you are due to change the air filter on your car. Every six months, the change indicator on your Brita tells you a new filter is needed. Clearing and changing filters is a normal part of our lives these days. Filters are needed to capture things we want less of – literally filtering things out. And they need to be replaced every so often. I’d like to use this week’s essay as a reminder about the filters you have in your consciousness and to invite you to consider building in a regular practice to review them, clear them, change them.
What do I mean by filters in our consciousness? Let me explain. I’ve written before about some of the “shoulds” that we learn from our culture. We are born without such framings. We as a society teach these expectations to our children through our actions, our words, and the experiences they have with us. We spend time on X so they know that X is important. We praise them for Y so they know Y is important. When they are very young, they may live in a world of their own making, with imaginary friends and conversation with their stuffies. Then they go to school, they go out in the world in many ways, and they learn more about what is expected of them. And this is not all bad; I don’t want to give that impression. It’s not a problem that the filters are there, it’s more of a problem that we don’t know they are there. They are unexamined. How can we start to be aware of them?
Whenever you hear a voice in your head, stop and listen, and then ask yourself, is that me or is that something I have learned? And if it is something that I learned, is it serving me right now? Is it helping me or is it causing harm? We have filters laid into our consciousness over our entire lives, by parents, teachers, coaches, other children who have them from their parents, bosses, co-workers, etc. The impact of these filters is to give meaning to some things and to downplay other things. We use filters to make sense of the world. They can be helpful or they can be detrimental. One hint about whether they are detrimental is the emotion that comes with the voice in your head. Feelings of shame, embarrassment, guilt are not moving you toward yourself. Another hint is if they are keeping you from doing what you want to be doing, or if they are having you continue doing something you want to stop. These patterns are aided by filters we have outgrown, and we can change them.
These filters are choices. They may not feel like choices, but they are. Like all the spiritual girlies are saying these days, let go of that which does not serve you. To do that, you become aware of those filters, decide to let them go, and practice stepping around them.
Keep the filters that serve you and clear out the rest. Think of the ones that are no longer relevant as cobwebs – they served a purpose at one time, but now they are no longer needed. They could be holding you back, and they need to be cleared away.
