Never subtract anything from a Confessional.

The best method is to write out a predetermined series of questions, as an additional thing, which is for that person particularly. You figure out about what their relationship to life has been, and then you write a little special series of questions.

Withholds don’t add up to withholds. They add up to overts, they add up to secrecies, they add up to individuations, they add up to games conditions, they add up to a lot more things than O/W.

It’s always possible to write up an additional list. Don’t make that the only Confessional form. Give that along with a standard Confessional.

Although we carelessly call them withholds, we’re asking a person to straighten out their interpersonal relationships with another terminal.

You get the idea of what kind of life your preclear has been leading, what his professional and domestic zones are, and you adapt Confessional questions to that and you add it to standard forms.

Our normal Confessional is addressed to the individual versus the society or his family.

Compiled from LRH Taped Lecture”Teaching the Field Sec Checks,” SHSBC 6109C26 SH Spec 58

It’s what people would consider reprehensible that makes a withhold.

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In a Catholic society, not having kept Mass would be a reprehensible action. In a non-Catholic society, nobody would think twice about it. So, most of our Confessionals are aimed at transgressions against the mores of the group. That is the basic center line of the Confessional.

You can have a special mores between the son and the mother, a special mores between the husband and the wife, just as you have a special mores, of course, between the auditor and the preclear.

It’s a moral code that you are processing in one way or the other.

You are straightening out somebody on a moral code, the “Now I’m supposed to’s.” They’ve transgressed on a series of “Now I’m supposed to’s.” Having so transgressed, they are now individuated. If their individuation is too obsessive, they snap in and become the terminal. All of these cycles exist around the idea of the transgression against the “Now I’m supposed to’s.” That is what a Confessional clears up and that is all it clears up. It’s a great deal more than a withhold.

You would go straight to a person’s handling of masses and changes of space. On lacking a clue in that direction, you would go into his most confused motional areas (not e-motional).

This fellow has been a recluse ever since he was twenty. He has not done anything since he was twenty. He has never been anyplace since he was twenty. His hidden standard is he would “get about more.” Could he find himself getting about more, he would know that Scientology was working. You find what area he was in before he was twenty. Staying in the house is a cure for something. So you put him on an E-Meter. You can’t find areas of moving heavy masses or changes in spaces before he was twenty because he wasn’t working. It probably lies in the zone of, maybe, he was in the service? Maybe he was in a boarding school? So all of a sudden you hit the jackpot and you find an area of considerable activity. You’re looking for the area of considerable activity which lies prior to the difficulty. Then you run a Confessional on that area of activity.

You trace it back to boarding school. There’s one boarding school that he absolutely detests, he suddenly remembers. That’s what you do the Confessional on.

Every question you ask has to do with this boarding school. Just add up the factors. How many things can go on in a boarding school? How many people are present? What is there in a boarding school? There are students, boys, instructors, coaches, headmasters, buildings, athletic equipment, and probably transport from there to home, etc.

Find out all the types of crimes that he might have been able to commit against these items. You can dream up a whole form.

One of the ways of doing it is taking an existing Confessional form and just moving it over to the zone of the school. That is not as satisfactory as just putting down all the things he really did in this school that he is never going to tell anybody.

It inevitably is going to be an area of tight mores. He has cut up against those mores, so has individuated himself against the school, so he cannot as-is any part of the track. He’s trapped in that particular zone and activity.

Any set of cut sensory perception will operate as overt bait. Forget is a version of not know. So that any sensory perceptive cut off is an effort not to know and you have a target.

Take everything that you’ve worked up to right there and now do a Confessional on it. Eventually you’ll get a “What do you know!” He’s too in the thing to see it. You can see it because you’re outside of it.

You write up every noun you could possibly think of on the subject of the zone or dynamic that he is having difficulty with and which he fails to cognite on in any way shape or form. You can immediately assume that if he doesn’t cognite on that zone or area, that he’s really pinned down and that he has withholds from you and from the area on the subject of the area that not even he knows.

A cognition is totally dependent upon the freedom to know. Overts and withholds are dedicated to another thing, these are dedicated to not knowingness. So if the person doesn’t cognite, you can immediately assume that he has a large area of not knowingness on the subject that he doesn’t even suspect. You as an outsider to his case can suspect where this fellow is having trouble. You dream up a Confessional to match it. The formula for making up a Confessional is just make up a list of all the items you can think of which have anything to do with that target.

Let’s say his family; he’s always had family trouble. You can get this from a pc’s PTPs. If you look at the type of PTP that the pc has, you’ll know that it is a present time problem of long duration. If it adds up to three or four times in a row of PTPs with his family, it must be a problem of long duration. The hottest way to get rid of that particular zone is to do a Confessional on it. Again, the way to do a Confessional, is to make a list of all the nouns and all the doingnesses which you can think of and just ask the person if he has overts against any of them; has he done anything to, has he interfered with anything about, e.g. “Have you ever interfered with schooling,” “Have you ever done anything to schooling,” “Have you ever prevented schooling.”

It’s little by little that this cognition will take place. It’s not all going to take place in one bang.

In the long run it will be a bang, but the bang only took place because you took the pebbles off the top. When you’ve finally got the thing uncovered – he can look at it and blow it.

This is the rule: Any zone or activity with which a person is having difficulty in life or has had difficulty with in life is a fruitful area for a confessional.

You will find out every time, he’s got withholds in that zone or area.

One of the indicators of that is a present time problem. Therefore you know it’s a problem of long duration. Three problems of short duration equals one problem of long duration. It’s a good detector mechanism.

The rule in confessionals is break the problem down to its most fundamental expression.

Then write down those nouns associated with it and those basic doingnesses associated with the fundamental expression and then just phrase your Confessional questions on the basis “Have you ever…?” and any other verb you want to put in. “Have you ever done anything to…?” “Have you ever prevented…?”

You don’t have to be fancy as the needle’s going to fall every time you come close to it.

Any area where a person is having difficulty in, he is stupid in. Stupidity is not knowingness. This is through overts. But the overt has to be hidden, so it must be an overt that is withheld.

So, these withholds then add up to stupidity and he of course, has trouble.

There isn’t anything complicated in it at all.