In the previous article I discussed the idea of assumptions. I mentioned that when we assume something we are essentially taking it for granted that a certain thing is this way or that; we are essentially assuming that a belief is true.

While it might seem quite natural, and it is for all of us, to engage in the act of believing in something; blind belief without question is always a perceptive funnel. The moment that you believe something without question is the moment that you limit your perceptive abilities. It is true that believing something without question can have some favorable aspects; as I mentioned in the last article it is sometimes good to believe something that is positive for you and in this way engender more of it. But a belief has the great ability to focus perception and once that perception is narrowed you are essentially walking around with blinders on.

Believing everything without question is easy, you don’t really need to try, all you need to do is just experienced something often enough. Questioning beliefs and challenging assumptions is hard and requires you to consciously determine what you are going to believe. When you do this you begin to control your personal awareness and therefore your personal experience. Manifestation and ‘The Law of Attraction’ are based on these principals and you can indeed become healthier and wealthier by controlling what you believe.

But by questioning all our assumptions we can also begin a great adventure; the exploration of the inner realms. This inner exploration has an abstract quality; this is so because while the exploration of the inner realms can be pleasurable, this exploration involves more than just pleasing the self. Within these inner realms you will find that the outer self that you find so comforting is but the tip of a gigantic iceberg and that there’s far more to you and to life than mere personal satisfaction.

In order to begin such an exploration, you will need to let go of assumptions. If you have read my book, you will know that there are certain things that some can do in order to expand their perceptive abilities. Think of this as one of those little exercises and see if you can go for an entire month questioning all those assumptions that you hold so dear.

In order to do this, you will need to begin by first identifying your personal assumptions. It is a very difficult task actually to be able to identify personal assumptions because they tend to hide and are easily overlooked. When you believe something without question, when you assume, you tend to take it for granted that the things are so and so and therefore you do not think, you just act like a mindless robot. Identifying and overcoming assumptions therefore is the act of breaking a very nasty routine, one that has held you in sway and has limited your inner growth and perceptions.

The next time that you have a little time to yourself, I want you to just sit down and relax in a comfortable quiet place. In a relaxed and playful way I want you to lightly contemplate the assumptions that you hold. Take something that is quite simple so that you understand how these assumptive beliefs work and in this way learn how to apply what you are about to do to more personally important beliefs later.

Perhaps you find yourself in your living room; if this is the case then contemplate a piece of furniture in this room. Do you take it for granted that that piece of furniture is hard and quite solid? Perhaps you think you believe what your senses have told you so since the moment of your birth, but it is also quite possible that you believe what you believe, and experience this belief, because people have been telling you that this furniture is hard since the moment of your birth. I know that this sounds silly and I know that this seems like a waste of time but it is only so because this is a belief that you have taken so for granted that to question it seems utterly insane.

But please try and questions this assumption; that this piece of furniture is hard. Do not assume that this is fact, do not assume that there is no other way, do not assume that you are infallibly right. Remember there are no facts, in fundamental logic there are only possibilities and probabilities; all else is an assumption and an assumption is not fundamentally logical or right.

Try out my crazy logic for a little while; follow this line of ‘assumption’ and see if it leads you into a different kind of perception. Experiment and see if this assumption provides some benefits, some profit that you might find useful in some way. You might even wish to question this assumption, as I have told you that should with any assumption, but in order to do this you will have to experiment and in order to experiment you will have to try.

So question the assumption that this piece of furniture is solid and hard. Think of the fact that this piece of furniture being hard is only one possibility in an infinite amount of possibilities for perception. If it is not hard then what else could it be? You could logically say that it is hard sometimes but there is also the possibility that at other times it is something else. If it is possible for this furniture to sometimes be something other than hard then what is it at those other times? And can you perceive that furniture when it is something else?

If you touched this piece of hard furniture now, can you imaginatively experience it as something else? Use your imagination to try and think of different possibilities, different states for this one piece of furniture. For example think of this piece of furniture as just being information or perhaps direct energy. Experiment with these ideas. Play with these new possibilities and allow your intellect to expand naturally.

Doing this little exercise doesn’t mean that you have to give up on your present reality. You don’t need to stop believing that things are hard per se; I certainly do not want to put you into the loony bin. But perhaps you can begin to conceptualize a new type of mental construction, one where furniture can be hard generally but also has the possibility of being something else. Mathematics and advanced particle physics tell us that we are constantly surrounded by probabilities and while it is difficult to run tangent to any one line of probable action, there’s always the possibility for change. These sciences also tell us that what we think is out there isn’t really out there at all.

On a different day, during another quiet moment, try and question another assumption that you might have. Try to questioning an assumption that is more important to you personally. Do this for a month and notice if there have been any changes to you personally. Sometimes these changes are difficult to judge at first because they can seem subtle but you might end up discovering that you are now a little more imaginative or perhaps a little more penetrating when it comes to certain perceptions and experiences.