Questions are great because they get us thinking. Questions encourage thinking, rules encourage compliance. In this Episode of “Living outside the Matrix” I present you with 12 fundamental questions for life, questions to ask yourself. Your answers will provide insight into some of your most fundamental assumptions and a key to understanding your motivations.

Some of the questions have a right answer, some do not. Most of them seek an either/or answer, but not all. What you will notice is that there is often an answer that you will be able to pluck out of your surrounding mainstream culture. The answer that everyone knows, the one that most people subscribe to because they hear everyone else say it. But the question remains, what is your answer? What is your position on these fundamental and hugely significant questions?

Ask yourself this…

1. Am I a sovereign consciousness.

Am I a separate entity in the drivers seat of my life? Can I (potentially) exert at least some control over my experience, or must I obey some external authority? Am I the author of my life, or is something or someone else?

Am I the author of my life, or must I conform to the script dictated by another or the group, or a supreme being?

Examine this question in relation to its opposite. Are you part of a collective or group? Do you consider yourself a cog in the machine, or a part of something bigger than you? Are you a worker bee? Or are you a sovereign being?

Where does the buck stop? Does it stop with you, or do you pass it on to something or someone else?

2. Do I have the right to live for my own sake?

This is a question that asks if you are free to live as you choose independent of the needs or requirements of others. It asks do I really own my own life? Do I own my body and my productive effort, or am I bound by duty to provide for the needs of others. Can I leave the group and do my own thing? Or am I under some kind of obligation to the tribe/society/the collective?

This question is at the root of all politics, yet never gets asked. It essentially asks can I opt out and not be coerced into your group? Can I be left alone? Can I avoid being governed? Can I be free?

Our current culture does not grant us this right, but it should. In Episode 64 I covered this idea in detail.

3. Am I a being of volitional consciousness?

This means do I have free will? Do I possess the power to choose? Am I able to take own path in preference to another? Am I an independent entity with the capability of taking responsibility or am I not?

Is my life experience somehow predetermined for me? Is it mapped out? Are all my apparent choices simply the result of all the prior causal factors in my upbringing, or genetic inheritance, or in my social conditioning? Am I a product of multiple causal factors outside my control, or I am free to choose?

4. Is reality an objective absolute?

This means does the external world exist independent of me and my conscious, and of any other consciousness, human or divine? Is reality what it is, or is it somehow shaped by consciousness? Was it here before I got here, or am I creating it? Is it fixed, stable and consistent, or is it subject to consciousness? Is it an unchangeable given, or a malleable field of pure potential?

You can examine this question more in Episode 151.

5. Can I know reality?

Is reality knowable to my mind, or, by its nature and by the nature of my mind, is it impossible to really know anything? Am I at the mercy of unknowable spirits and demons, or am I competent to understand and take appropriate action? Am I a potentially powerful creative force that can exercise my ability to rearrange matter to suit my ...