A Gateway Back to Truth
I read my first self-help book when I was 26. There was a simple question in it that I have asked ever since. It quietly dissolves confusion by locating projection and correcting it.
Answering the question does not demand effort.
It does not require belief.
It does not come from the senses.
The answer comes from Knowing.
The question is:
“If I did know, what would the answer be?”
This question—often referred to as The Marshall Sylver Question because he was the author of the first self-help book I read—is not used in Spiritualized Reality Therapy as a motivational tool or mindset technique. It is used as a return mechanism.
Why the Question Works
When one says “I don’t know,” the reference is usually to the senses. One is scanning sense-based memory, circumstance, emotion, and appearance, and either finding no satisfying answer there, or overlooking a construct one has erected that is “compartmentalizing” the answer in the subconsciousness.
But Mind does know.
The difficulty is not a lack of knowing—it is that knowing has been overlaid by sense-based observations and the ego that organizes those overlays.
The question gently bypasses the senses and invites the mind back to its natural function. It does not ask one to figure something out. It asks to suspend the belief that one does not know.
In doing so, it reopens access to Knowing.
From Sensing to Knowing
Within SRT and RPR, this question serves a precise function:
It reveals where thinking has separated from the qualities of Mind at rest.
When the question is asked honestly, it allows hidden divisions to surface naturally. These divisions often appear as:
- unequal giving and receiving
- attachment or aversion disguised as love
- partial truth protected by fear
- imbalance sustained by effort
The answer does not arrive as analysis. It arises as recognition of separative thinking.
A Question of Rest, Not Effort
The power of this question does not lie in repetition or force. It lies in rest.
One asks it from stillness.
The answer is allowed to arise without interference. Often, the first response is subtle: a quiet clarity, a felt recognition, or an obvious truth that had been overlooked because it was too simple.
That simplicity is the signature of Knowing.
Application in Rest Point Recovery
In Rest Point Recovery, the question is used when life feels strained, divided, or repetitive. It may be applied to relationships, health, work, or inner conflict.
Rather than asking, “What should I do?”
One asks:
“If I did know where my thinking has separated from Balance, Love, or Truth, and is now, by Law, regiving that separation back to me—what would I see?”
The moment that separation is honestly recognized, correction begins automatically. The Law does not require effort to restore balance—only recognition and surrender of the undesired thought process the Law is repeating.
An Invitation
The question is not a solution imposed from outside. It is an invitation inward.
It reminds one that Knowing is never lost—only overlooked.
When one asks the question sincerely, the answer emerges from the same place as Balance, Love, Truth, and the Law that regives those qualities: the stillness of Mind at rest.
And from that rest, the desire to realign with those qualities is natural.
Spiritualized Reality Therapy & Rest Point Recovery 