You are reviewing how you came to be watching this movie of thoughts and perceptions. You instantly cause to appear before you the moments in sequence that preceded your arrival -- the smile on the ticket taker's face, the chill of the night air; the thick warm tang of the movie theater's insides and the pokey smell of buttered popcorn. You see again the moment as you passed the water fountain when your thoughts had turned to thinking about him and whether he would enjoy the movie with you or be "bored" by it, plus a quick review of your opinions about that attitude of his that made such pleasant things so boring.
Another instant -- you see the faces of the people you had to squeeze by and your own seat, close to center, and recall the feel of your coat as it slides off your shoulders. Your mind's eye recalls the dimming of the lights and the raising of the curtain that brings you back to the moment -- a movie of thoughts and pictures, concepts, decisions, and memories of memories.
You notice the edges of the frame, through which these images seem to be viewed -- a segment of space somewhere around the area of your head. The edges themselves are grey areas where thought seems to condense in to materiality, the space that brings mind into body.
Pry at the fuzzy areas, notice the edges and expand your attention to just beyond those limits. Step over those bordering lines. You notice a thinner kind of perceptions going on, as if thoughts were vision, and touch. There is a faint sense of violation, as if you were going into a pantry that had been forbidden, or leaving your cot during nap time.
You find the space occupiable, seeming to be a surround of quieter domain around the control center of your head. It too, however, seems to have limits. Expand your attention outward to just beyond those limits...
These firm, un seen but known parts of our "see, know, feel and think" equipment define our focus, like the nature of molecules, light and electricity defines the projector's projection.
They are the steel of shutter, the glass of our lens; they are the parameters of who we are, insofar as existence is measured in thought and perception of any kind. They make up the filters and sensors of beings engaged in looking and sensing. They are the "facts" of being which precede seeing.
You could call these elements elemental assumptions or "sciotronic fields", morphemic fields, reality cores, or -- a dynamic description -- postulated knowledge structures. In plain language we call them beliefs.
Beliefs have one wonderful quality: they project. Within the sphere of influence of a belief, the reality called up by the belief IS. Just as Kansas can receive the AM advertising from Iowa on a clear night, the limits of the sphere of knowledge generated by an active belief can extend considerably further than it's 'home town'. The structure of knowing is composed of beliefs and their broadcast zones. These are PKSes (Postulated Knowledge Structures). When you are within one, the knowledge of it is very apparent. But to consider endlessly that one is obliged to adhere to these structures just because they are there before one is to take up residence in an encyclopedia. Step out and explore. There is nothing in all the world of beliefs (which may be lal the world itself!) that can harm you -- the source of all knowledge.
Only when you adhere to one of these structures and become it can you be hung with harm. This may not be a comfort when the noose is flying over your head, but that is not the time for mere philosophy, eh, Watson?