ASSUME - Makes a ass of you and me.

[sakoz]

This maxim appears as a warning or at least a caution about indiscriminate assumptions and assuming. Example; "I thought the gun was empty' ; more correctly stated; " I assumed the gun was empty." The assumption was false to facts. with varying consequences of acting from/on the false thought, depending on context.
I have been writing about a form of unrecognized assuming. How do you safegard against unrecognized assuming (invariably most are false)?
The form of unrecognized assuming I'm most interested in is called "believing". Did it ever occur to you that "believing'  is the non-verbal version of 'assuming'? ( As far as I know, no one has ever  even hinted that 'believing' was 'non-verbal assuming'). Believing as assuming is virtually undetectable.
We all mistakenly  (at times) "believe/assume" some of our thought-images are real. Isn't it time to address this "problem" head-on instead of obliquely by correcting the symptons rather than the cause? The most pernicious example of not recognizing 'believing' as the non-verbal version of assuming is when we believe/assume some of our thought-images are real.
This recognition is also the "Key to Compassion". We see and hear 'outlandish' behavior and statements(sometimes our own), but when we recognize they are the result of believing/assuming some thought images are real, we recognize it's done as innocently as Pavlovs dogs reacting to the sound of a bell as if it were food.
Some of our involuntary reactions are analogous to Pavlovs dogs, only we use and react to "believed thought-images" in lieu of a bell.