Instructions on How to Be With Anyone

Craig Havens 

This exercise requires active visualization and a determination to lucidly project your consciousness into a realistic mental simulation despite any previously held personal prejudices. Except otherwise stated in the steps, you must be willing to accept the person in question as they exist in your experience. This especially applies to people whom you feel you dislike. 

Your goal is to be able to vividly access each of the proposed scenarios with people of all types. Allow for your concentration to be focused for an extended period of time and move through the entire process in an unhurried fashion. Please refer to the list at the end of these instructions for suggested locations and scenarios which lend themselves especially well to this ritual.

Step 1
Consider the closest person in your immediate physical vicinity.

Do not approach them or communicate with them in any way.
Simply observe your own first impressions.
This can be done while utilizing peripheral vision if necessary but a direct perspective gaze works best if possible.

Step 2
Imagine inhabiting their body and leading their life at their age and in their condition.

Consider what scenarios a life led in their position would entail.
Create a vivid and clear mental image of being the other and seeing life through their eyes.
Explore this projection for a period of time.
Come back to yourself.

Step 3
Observe the person again and imagine them as your mother or father.

Adjust their age if necessary (this may require projecting them or yourself into the future or past)

Imagine what it would be like to love them or hate them like you do your real mother or father.
Create a clear mental image of this and explore it for a period of time.
Come back to the present and a neutral reading of the person.

Step 4
Observe and imagine the person as your sister or brother.

Do not adjust their age.

Consider if you would like to have them as a sister or brother.
Imagine the interactions you might have with one another.
Create a clear mental image of this and explore it for a period of time.
Return to a neutral opinion of the person

Step 5
Observe the person and imagine them as your lover.

Do not adjust their age or sex.

Consider what it would be like to be intimate and in love regardless of wether you find them attractive in your normal state.
Imagine having children and raising a family together. Imagine caring for them in old age.
Create a clear mental image of this and explore it for a period of time.
Return to a neutral opinion of the person.

Step 6
Observe the person and imagine them as your murderer.

Do not adjust their age or sex.

Consider how it might feel to be threatened by them and in what manner they might go about killing you.
Create a clear mental image of this occurrence and explore it for a period of time.
Return to a neutral opinion of the person.

Step 7
Observe the person and imagine them as your close friend.

Do not adjust their age or sex.

Consider what interests you would share and what activities you would pursue together.
Create a clear mental image of this and explore it for a period of time.
Return to a neutral opinion of the person.

Step 8
Finally consider the person as yourself.

Adjust their age if necessary (this may require projecting them or yourself into the future or past)

Exchange bodies and experiences.
Create a clear mental image of this and explore it for a period of time.
Return to yourself.

Step 9
Note how your initial opinions of the person may have changed over the course of this interaction.

*Recommended Scenarios for Implementation
Public Concerts or Performances
Riding on Public Transit / Waiting for Public Transit
Standing in the Que at the Post Office/Grocery/Bank
Walking in the Park / Sitting on a Park Bench
Art Exhibitions