Volume 9, Issue 1, page 11
Playing "Kid Games" for Added Awareness
THEY'RE NOT AS CRAZY AS THEY LOOK
Copyright 1961 by Marcap Council, Inc.
THAT THE WORD might be made flesh as quickly
as its true meaning could be adduced, Dr. Blanche Pritchett, Dr. Richard Pritchett,
and their associates in the management and
operation of the Center of Awareness devoted to opening, in careful and commonsense fashion, all the centers of awareness of
soiritual man, began the development of drills
and procedures intended to guide spiritual man
in his efforts to express himself fully via the
media of those elements of his trinity called
mind and body.
Since the drills and procedures of Marcap
Council, Inc., of Lakemont, Ga., are directed
at the spiritual side of man -- that side to
which the whole man looks for guidance -- every
approach to awareness in the individual student is religious. The approach is prayerful
without mummery, practical without being sanctimonious. It is as various as the individuals
who participate. The formal religious persuasion of the student-collaborator -- if he has one
-- is of no concern to the monitors. It is required of the collaborators
only that he live, breathe,
and have mechanism capable of
mention. No monitor, drill, or
procedure is designed to change
the participant; none acts as
God or intercessor. Every phase
of the training is directed
toward showing the participant
how to waken himself, groom
his body, mind, and spirit, and
approach the task of the day
with awareness sufficient unto
every facet of the task's or
the day's requirements.
Founders and developers of
the standards and administration of the various systems by
which I. Q.'s are determined
have been prone to the stand
that once experts have established this I.Q. for the individual, he is irrevocably circumscribed by that establishment, as if it were something
akin to the caste system of
India. The "dull normal", at
90, would always be dull normal. The normal would be 110,
"superior" would be 120 or
above. Descent into the slow,
the retarded, the imbecile,
the moronic, the mongoloid
(with categories in - built),
the space-occupying vegetable
with no discernible at
all, was fearfully abrupt and
unalterable. These children of God were lost in their descending spirals of witlessness. The "low grades" were born to
burden themselves, their families, and the rest of us.
Regarding them thru the eyes
of spirit as spiritual beings,
Dr. Blanche and her associates
would have none of this. In
each individual there must be
a string hanging by which that
individual could be pulled into more awareness, more ability to help himself.
Dr. Blanche Pritchett has
developed and proved 133 drills
for awareness in the workaday
world's activity. She has developed 10 "outside" drills, called "esthetic"
drills, for what may be called the artistically
gifted. In this latter category, by the way,
she has indicated talents in and to individuals
unsuspected by their families, and to the utter
amazement of themselves.
The drills begin with the selection of
teams, at least two partners in each group.
Instantly the games of childhood are brought
to the mind of the observer and, possibly, some
inner conviction of superiority assumed by
such observer, caught, as the drills begin,
somewhere between amusement and ridicule. He
thinks that if someone who knew nothing of
what went on here were to look thru a window,
the least he could believe from what he saw was
that adults were playing kids' games, or that
an unlicensed insane asylum were in increasing
turmoil. But as the drills proceed, he becomes
aware, and properly repentant, that he couldn't possibly sit down with any of the partners
-- the nine-year-old child or the octogenarian --
and demonstrate his own awareness at anywhere
near a comparable level. He
becomes engrossed in the drills
and their implications, happy
that he has had sense enough
not to offer himself as a partner without the necessary preparation, the demonstrated common high level of monitoredinto-expression awareness.
The first drill seats participants, however many there
may be of them, by pairs facing
each other. All are barefoot
for a reason Dr. Blanche explains. She also explains the
drill to follow, with deceptive
simplicity, fixing the attention of all participants as if
they were doing it for the
first time.
Two partners, seated, face
each other, their feet in such
contact as they agree upon. Dr.
Blanche's instructions follow:
"Place elbows on knees.
Bend them so that the forearms
are perpendicular to the knees.
Palms toward your partners.
When I give the signal to
start, the row on my left as I
look down the aisles between
opposite partners will initiate
the drill. This is communication without sound. Youwave
at each other by opening and
closing the hands. After the
initiator opens his right, for
Dr. Blanche Pritchett
in her specially-designed
ceremonial robe