Volume 9, Issue 4, page 10

consciously identified with any past goal or
any past ideal, his perception in present time
will be hampered. He will tend to carry thru
or keep the limitations which the other identity had or which he believes it had, depending on how much actual information he had on
the individual.

People are most often identified with father,
mother, best friends, or close contacts who
were killed or died when they were young; and
so your drill should if possible include all
such identities, identifying with them and disidentifying.

Anyone whom the subject has trouble being
should be examined rather closely, because
what you're shooting at here is an imaginary
structure, the ability to imagine (and later
to be) anybody, and to do it well without your
own personality intruding into the other.

At some time during this training, you
should go out and look at people and try to be
them, to the extent of being behind their faces
and feeling how the lines feel. You should play
this game occasionally when you're riding on a
bus or in a car, or in any public place. Look
at somebody 's back and wonder how that person
feels, how his face would feel, what you would
feel like if you were that person, how your
face would feel.

Once in awhile, check up on yourself and
see how good you're getting. At first you may
be pretty poor, but with practice, you should
become quite good.

Remember, tho, that you are very unlikely
to be any more aware of someone else than you
are of yourself. This is the reason for the
drills on emotion and effort, and for some
other drills later on -- to increase your selfawareness and thereby enable you to be more
aware of other people. As has been pointed out,
if you have a poor memory, you will have poor
access to someone else's memories when you're
identifying with him. If you have poor control
over emotion, you will have trouble picking up
his emotion. If you have poor control over
effort, you will not readily sense his effort.
Also, you will get the things you are sufficiently developed to handle, and the things you
are curious about, and the things you agree
with. These will come easiest.

The drill under this lesson should cover
all aspects of life. As you get better, you
should try to be two or three people at once,
or try to be a couple of dogs, or a dog and
cat fighting -- both of them at the same time.

Under regular therapy the usual practice is
simply to find something or someone the subject
can be, then to find something else, and again
something else, for a session lasting three or
four hours. But somewhat better results for our
purpose are obtained, once a number of things
are found, if the individual is drilled on being one of them, then being himself, being
that one, being himself, being that, being
himself, at a fairly high speed.

As the subject gets better, he should also
take a look at himself from the other identity.
For example, tell him, "Be a fly up there in
the corner of the room looking at your body...
Now be your body... Be the fly looking at your
body ... Be your body."
This drill may do some very odd things to
awareness. Watch your subject closely.

Another suggestion: Have him be some things
which are definitely not real, such as: "Be
your father...All right, now be your father if
he was bright green inside...Now be your father if he was bright red inside all over."
The drill should be first for speed, with no
concern for accuracy. Later on a few questions
10 The ABERREE
to check the accuracy may be put, very casually, and with no emphasis on the fact if the
answers seem to be wrong. Maybe they aren't.
One thing you should always watch for in this
stuff is that the individual trying to be something may come up with what that something
will be next week or what it was last week.
Trying to be a chair, for instance, he may
wind up being the chair six years from now
when it' s some place else, or he may be the
chair before it was put together. This sort of
thing happens very frequently. So, if you say
to your subject, "Be a room full of furniture ,'
meaning to both of you the room next door, and
ask him gently, "How does it look? What shape
is this chair in?", don't get upset If he
doesn't describe the thing the way it looks to
you when you step into that room. His time may
be whacky, or his space may be out of line, and
he may have two other rooms somewhere else.

Of course, as practice goes on, as the drill
goes on, these things should clear up. When
the subject becomes somebody, he should not
continue to miss consistently. Sooner or later
the ability should straighten out and clarify.

How much time should be spent on this drill
depends somewhat on what you as the subject
are after as a total pattern. For someone who
wants to do healing, who is interested in
therapy for others, quite a good bit of it
will help. The ability to be someone else and
examine his memories and personal structure is
quite useful. But if you're going to put in a
long session at this drill, you should choose
night-time or some similar time when you can
have peace and quiet and do it leisurely.

No matter how or when you play this game,
you must always remember to end up with, "Be
yourself': Be sure that the subject gets back
to where he started, back to the personal individual. Don't let him, or as the subject,
don't let yourself, get lost in another identity, because in the long run, sooner or later,
your own self, properly taken care of, properly fed and maintained, should be the most comfortable place for you to be. Some people may
wonder at this; it may seem unlikely to some
of the folk who have quite a few chronic aches
and pains or other handicaps, but that still
is the way it should be.

There are two ways to get information about
something. One is to BE the thing itself, whatever it is, and the other is to feel it as an
overlay upon yourself and simply to compare it
with your own feelings.

I might add that if you do this drill for
two to five weeks and get good accuracy on it,
you'll also develop some reality about what a
soul, or spirit, or psyche, is. You may develop the peculiar idea that the psyche, soul ,
spirit, and the body are not quite the same
thing. If your exercise is successful, you may
develop this concept quite thoroly. Actually ,
in a person who is fully aware of himself,
fully competent, and fully trained, the soul
should be quite real to him, real enough to
bang on the doorway walking thru, in a manner
of speaking.

Always on this, be sure you end on a high
note. No matter how long you drill, how much
you drill, be sure that you end up on the good
things, on the healthy things, on the successful things; being the person who is successful
and feeling the way he feels; being the person
who is happy, being a happy animal or a happy
bird -- and then being yourself.

And you want to make sure eventually that
the self you come back to is a happy, healthy,
successful self. (Continued in the next issue)
JULY-AUGUST, 1962