BELIEF GRID: Tyranny and Freedom

Between you and the world hovers your Belief Grid. It's the veil of concepts through which you locate and define people, places and events. Your Belief Grid is the framework your mind uses to shape the elusive forces of life into the recognizable patterns of home, school, work and play. It maps your coordinates for getting from here to there and back again. It outlines your politics, economics, spirituality, diet, movies preferences and every other thing you like or dislike.

We also use Belief Grids to guard against the Primal Wound inflicted by the duality of living. We employ it to control the raw power surging from the wellsprings of creation. These attempts fail, but we try anyway.

Each of us has a Belief Grid. Our minds are Belief Grid-making machines. Encounters with each other are mostly encounters between our Belief Grids. My framework of concepts I hold to be true crosses paths with your framework of concepts you hold to be true. Instead of connecting human to human, one framework tries to press the other framework into agreeing with it. You can see this everywhere. The stalemates in congress are standoffs between Belief Grids. Clashes between people, organizations and countries are battles between Belief Grids.

In these conflicts, our Belief Grids become solid. They obscure the lives they are trying to serve and protect. When we make our Belief Grids more important than people and the earth, we tyrannize each other and the world. We attempt to suppress life's revitalizing energy and wisdom and make it rigidly conform to self-centered interests. The result is isolation, depression, struggle and worse. If, on the other hand, we see our Beliefs Grids for what they are—devices our minds create to navigate the world—we can use them as tools for exploring life and fostering communication and understanding.

As you go about your day, notice the Belief Grid hovering in the space between you and the world. See if you are making it solid and trying to control people and events. Or, spot the openings where your Belief Grid opens to deeper connection, freedom and delight.

Learn more about the Belief Grid and other shapes of knowledge in my new book 24 PATTERNS OF WISDOM, click here to take a look inside.