Basic Assumptions

It is very important to see and understand how our entire world of experience is running on top of the sum total of all of our perceptions. We run our life on top of these basic internal programs which we assume to be true. Basic assumptions are like the nuclear kernel or most basic operation system of our biological computers.

We make basic assumptions that what we perceive is true and then we make more basic assumptions on top of these basic assumptions. Like building a house of cards. If we have misperceived something early on in our perceptual construction of reality we are vulnerable to a melt down; to an internal crash of our internal reality maps.

Many people have trouble with assumptions. For instance we can assume that a person loves us. And then they go about doing something that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that in fact they do not and yet we will cling to our basic assumption. Sometimes it’s the reverse. Our mate loves us very much but we begin to assume the opposite because of something they did or did not do. “You did not come to see me this weekend so that means you really don’t love me.” We assume things all the time but until we check out the truth we simply just don’t know what is true and what is not.

The fact is that we can have strong feelings based on assumptions that hold little or no truth at all. So this ego block operates strongly and usually unconsciously until we begin to learn to look at our basic assumptions and start the humility forming habit of checking out if our assumptions are in fact true or not. When we assume that a person is thinking or feeling a certain way it is a matter of humility to go an check out the reality of that person’s world. But we usually don’t ask, we just assume our perceptions are true and are too lazy to go and check out the reality of our perceptions.

We need to understand how something as ordinary as a basic assumption can block our ability to communicate on a being level and how this can mess up our relationships. We let such mental antics destroy our life, our relationships, and our happiness mostly because we don’t want to see how our egos work and how they have the vested interest in maintaining our sense of separation.

The fact is we want our assumptions to be true. We need them to be true for we have built our mental life on not checking out our basic assumptions. Most people fear taking a trip into the basement of their mind to take a reality check on what was originally programmed in there. Christopher Hills says. “We even want our assumptions to be true to rationalize our feelings of hurt, and yet we are relieved when we find out our assumptions where wrong. People make such assumptions because they cannot see how their egos are operating. They cannot see the real possessiveness or expectations that might be at the root of such assumptions. This blocks them from being able to get inside the world of the other person to find out what the real reason is. The antidote for basic assumptions is to check out your feelings and thoughts with humility, which means not assuming they are true.”

So this is the first step in learning how to be a good communicator and loving being. It is to learn the humility to understand and see that everything that we think and feel about ourselves, life, and others is not necessarily true. Few people have the humility to reference check their own perceptual structures of reality. This is in essence the work of what Einstein referred to when he said, “I believe the main task of the spirit is to free man from his ego.”