Q: And so Dick, when someone comes to see you, either in a group or individually, and they want to do self acceptance work, or maybe they don't even know the name Self Acceptance Training, they only know the name Dick Olney, how is it that you begin with them?
Dick: I usually ask a question that often seems very irrelevant to them. I ask them what they are feeling.
Q: And often, of course, they take that as a thought.
Dick: Often they take it as a thought. Often they look puzzled and say, "I don't know? Nothing!" And, of course, then I ask questions like, "Well, how do you know you are alive?"
Q: That must put a lot of people into a very confused state.
Dick: It puts them into a confused state which actually is a state of advantage for them because as soon as they become confused, they lose track of the old orientation which is an orientation of limitation. An orientation of limitation. They lose track of all the answers that they had that had limited them.
Q: And asking them this question and their experience of the question, is their first beginning of learning self acceptance?
Dick: Yes, because the first and also the final question is, "What are you experiencing right now?"
Q: And of course, as time goes by, they discover that in experiencing themselves right now, they actually achieve some of the things that they think they want.
Dick: They may achieve them. They may at least feel that they are working in the direction of achieving them. One of the factors that limits people, I think, is that they are not sufficiently concerned with progress, they are too much concerned with ultimate cure.