View source for Confronting (HCOB 710602)

The first requisite of any subject is the ability to confront the various components (things) (parts) (divisions) of the subject itself.

All misunderstoods, confusions, omissions, alterations of a subject ''begin'' with failures or unwillingness to confront.

The difference between a good pilot and a bad pilot depends of course on consistent study and practice but underlying this, determining whether the person ''will'' study and practice, is the ability to confront the components of study and airplanes.

A "quick study," by which is meant a student who learns rapidly or a person who grasps a subject quickly, has a high ability to confront that subject.

In a dramatic profession, the wild animal trainer who could confront wild animals remained alive. The one who couldn't confront was too slow of perception to live long.

In a more common line of work, the ''fast'' typist could confront study and typing in the first place and the slow typist couldn't and can't.

The confusions about "talent" and "native ability" and such are resolved to no small extent when one recognizes the role played by the ability to confront.

Basically, if one can just be there with it, he can ''then'' achieve the skill of communicating with whatever "it" is and handling it.

Thus, before communicating with the components of a subject can properly begin, one must be able to be there comfortably with the components of the subject.

All power depends upon the ability to hold a location. To communicate one must be able to hold to a location.

This is even true in the physical universe. You can't move a chair unless you can hold a position yourself near the chair. If you don't believe it, try it.

Thus the ability to communicate with ''precedes'' the ability to handle. But before one can communicate with something one must be able to be in a location near it.

The age old puzzle of how some scholars can get "A" on a subject they have studied and then not be able to ''apply'' even a scrap of the data is resolved by this fact of confronting. They can confront the book, the class and the thought. But they haven't attained the ability to confront the ''physical'' ''objects'' of the subject.

At least such "glib" students can confront the book, the paper, the thought. They are part way there.

Now all they need to do is confront as well the physical things to which the subject is applied and they would be able to apply what they know.

Some people are not so lucky as to be "glib" students. They have to work up to "being there" with the book, paper, classroom and teacher.

Thus "confronting" is actually the ability to be there comfortably and perceive.

Amazing reactions occur when conscious effort is made to do this. Dullness, perception trouble, fogginess, sleep and even pains, emotions and convulsions can occur when one knowingly sets out to BE THERE AND COMFORTABLY PERCEIVE with the various parts of a subject.

These reactions discharge and vanish as one perseveres (continues) and at last, sometimes soon, sometimes after a long while, one ''can'' be there and perceive the component.

As one is able to confront one part he then finds it easier to confront other components.

People have mental tricks they use to get around actual confronting - to be disinterested, to realize it's not important, to be sort of half dead, etc - but these discharge (run out) as well eventually and at last they can just be there and comfortably perceive.

Eye blinks, swallows, twitches, aches, pains, are all systems of interrupting confronting and are the symptoms of discomfort. There are many of these. If they are present then one is not just being there and perceiving.

Confronting on a via (using a relay point) is another method of ducking out of it.

The worst off cannot even tolerate the idea of being there and perceiving anything. They run away, even go into emotional fits rather than be there and perceive. Such people's lives are a system of interruptions and vias, all substitutes for confronting. They are not very successful. For success in life depends not on running away from it but by being there and perceiving it and then being able to communicate with it and handle it.

== Terms ==

"A gradient scale" means a gradual increasing condition of, or a little more of little by little.

A "skipped gradient" means taking on a higher degree or amount before a lesser degree of it has been handled. One has to go back and handle the missed degree or thing or else one will have just losses on a subject thereafter.

"Flattening" something means to do it until it no longer produces a reaction.

"Overrunning" something means accumulating protests and upsets about it until it is just a mass of stops. Anyone can do anything forever unless he begins to stop it.

"Invalidation" means a refuting or degrading or discrediting or denying something someone else considers to be a fact.

== Gradients ==

Some of the things one would have to be able to be there and perceive in order to study, placed on a graduated scale of increasing difficulty are:

Beginning at all
The classroom or work space
Paper
Books
Writing materials
Sounds
A Student
The Supervisor
The area of the study subject's physical components
The motionless equipment of the subject
The moving equipment of the subject
''Masses'' connected with the subject
The subject as a whole.

The next stages would have to be confronting while moving. This requires a consecutive being there and perceiving even though one is occupying different locations.

The next stages would be confronting selectively while moving despite other things seeking to distract.

______

This Bulletin is not an effort to set out the numerous confronting drills. It is intended to set out the various axioms or laws necessary to an understanding of the subject of confronting itself.

From these brief notes all the axioms can be derived.

The fundamental and basic simplicities of confronting itself is the first thing that must be grasped. All complexity surrounding any subject or action is derived (comes from) a greater or lesser inability to confront.

== Document information ==

'''Document type:''' HCO Bulletin

'''Date:''' 2 June 1971

'''Issue:''' I

'''Author:''' L. Ron Hubbard

'''Place:''' Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

'''Distribution:''' Remimeo

'''Series:''' Study Series No. 2

'''Comments:''' Reissued 30 December 1972 to correct typos on pages 1 and 3 (corrections in scripts).

[[Category:HCOB 1971]]