CLOSED CONTEXT: OPEN CONTEXT

There are "frameworks" and "contexts" which are the opposite of what interests me.  Many contexts grow out of rigid ideas - the orthodoxies of organized religion, political ideologies, conspiracy theories.  These are closed systems and their main characteristic - and failing - is that they don't allow for new information and ideas.  Everything that might be "new" is made to fit a locked world view, interpreted as further evidence of the rightness of the particular set of beliefs.  These systems constrict rather than expand, limit rather than increase.

All beliefs - those that constrict and those that expand - are just that, beliefs. For a long time, I believed every negative thought the voices in my head shouted at me, believed that I wasn't good enough and was doomed to frustration and unhappiness.  I thought there must be something fundamentally wrong with me, some flaw I couldn't see.  And because it's hard to act against that tidal wave of fear and doubt, the facts of my life lived out those thoughts.  I was frustrated and unhappy, felt alien and isolated; I censored myself over and over again because, since I was doomed to failure, what was the point of even trying to achieve and connect?  These self-loathing, self-lacerating beliefs ruled me and turned me into an emotional anorexic; I was starving for connection and purpose but I couldn't feed myself. I was living in a closed system of negative beliefs and everything that happened was proof of the rightness of those beliefs.  How could it be otherwise when I myself was the main witness for the prosecution?

Then something inside me began to shift, and the closed narrow ideology of my self-loathing and fear slowly, very slowly showed enough cracks so that the light of hope, at first a despairing kind of hope, could come in.  A flicker of possibility, the merest shadow and I grabbed on to it.  I didn't know it then, but I had come a great distance in order to begin, to climb out of the bushes and step on to the path.

Questions worth asking:

If belief, meaning and value are conferred by us through our interpreting consciousness, how do we know what's True with a capital T?  Does Truth even exist?

How can we create a new context through which to judge our experience, transform a context that constricts into one that expands?

How do we move toward freedom?