6108C18 SHSpec-42 Control of Attention

You might think of auditing as having hundreds of rules. As long as you
think of it that way, you aren't auditing. These rules are only guideposts.
Back of them, your good heart will carry the day. You are trying to help the
person out. All right. There are certain things his mind will and won't do.
If that is what your rules are, you're fine. Rituals, as developed by
religions, represent their failure to communicate the basic truths. Here is
what a PC will not do: he will not go into session with his attention fixated
on something else, nor will you have his interest in what you are doing. All
the rudiments can be covered with, "Is your attention fixated on something?
Is there any reason you won't talk to me?" Since these questions are a little
too broad, you have the rudiments. He can have a fixation on a PTP of short
duration, where his attention is fixed on the immediate environment. In the
PTP LD, the PC also has his attention fixed on something in PT, but he also
has something subjective holding his attention, something very real to him.
When you don't parallel what the mind is doing with auditing, you fail in
auditing.

The rate of change of attention defines relative pain, and the common
features of every stuck point on the track is a sudden shift of attention.
This has been known since 1950 at least. The processes being used are
sufficiently strong that no matter what the PC's attention is fixed on, you
can yank it away, but doing so will result in an ARC break. Furthermore, his
attention won't totally come off what it was on, so you will create a new
identification of what he was looking at and what you pull his attention to.

You can, of course, go too far in paralleling the mind and wind up in a Q
and A. LRH has never seen a case progress when the PC's attention on PTP's of
short or long duration isn't handled. If you don't handle attention fixation,
you eventually get an unexpected attention shift that produces an ARC break.
It isn't the minor flub you make that really causes the ARC break, though it
triggers it. The ARC break is really caused by yanking the PC's attention off
his PTP, and you won't find it by running O/W on the auditor. "Willing to
talk to the auditor" is the other requirement for the PC to be in session. If
the PC has an ARC break or a withhold, his willingness is out. With a
withhold, there's another factor. The PC is sitting with a known where he is and an unknown where the auditor is, so the auditing session is a ridge. In view of the fact that the PC's attention is fixed on the withhold, even if only at a sub-awareness level, if you audit over it, you're guilty of an attention
shift. The attention fix in a withhold is complicated by being an outward fix
with an inward pull to keep it from getting out.

These mechanisms take priority over all of the PC's considerations and
postulates, so no matter what he says, you can't go ahead and audit over it.
I order to audit him, you've got to be able to put his attention where you
want it. If there's a distracting noise outside, it's a waste of time to ask
if it bothered him. You can assume it shifted his attention, so ask, "What
were you thinking of when the noise occurred?" until there's no read and the
PC feels OK about it.

Anything that happens in the auditing session is the auditor's fault. If
anything goes wrong in session, it's never the PC's fault. If the auditor
doesn't tell him how to get his attention off something by some acceptable
gradient, it's not the PC's fault if he can't put it where you want it.
Because you didn't put his attention on the things it's on when he comes into
session, you're slow to take responsibility for taking it off. But if the PC
doesn't make gains, it's the auditor's fault.

Just as the PC must be gotten to the point where he is at cause over his
life because you can get him to erase all the aberrated points in an auditing
session, there is another cause -- the auditor. This is in violation of the
idea that the PC is cause of all effects. So you've got to be slippy, because
you are being cause over a section of the PC's track. The only way it can
happen is for him to have some willingness to do what you want him to do. So
his cause must still be there, and your direction of his cause must be
acceptable to him. Otherwise, he won't be cause over that section of track
called an auditing session, and if he isn't cause over it, he'll make no
gain. So, to keep him at cause, you audit him with all his attention on the
auditing, not splintered elsewhere. He must willingly follow your direction
and have a clear view of what he's doing. You assume, incorrectly, that the
PC is delicate. But in fact the only thing you can really do to a PC that's
bad is not to give him a win, which can only be done by violating his
attention factors. Auditing in the absence of the PC's attention is
no-auditing. How do you keep his attention? Keep the ruds in.

The earliest method of clearing was highly permissive and very delicate.
It amounts to this repetitive question, "What picture would it be safe to look
at?" The reason it was no longer being done by 1950 was this attention
factor. It hadn't been isolated, so it couldn't be articulated. Also,
everybody kept dictating what picture the PC should look at. But you could
clear someone with that process, and it would not be a long route. You can
speed it up by getting him to use other perceptics, e.g. "What sound would it
be safe for you to hear?" etc. People who don't get any pictures are just
stuck in PT to avoid looking at the disaster just earlier. But you can work
him around until he can confront the bank. This approach didn't run into the
attention problem because it's so permissive it lets the PC put his attention
where it already is. It does take gentle, smooth auditing, and it takes quite
awhile. The "engram necessary to resolve the case" is actually just the
picture the PC is stuck in. So you are essentially running "What picture
would it be safe to look at?"

Now it goes faster. You handle his attention, gently unstick it from
PTP's and ARC breaks, give him wins and confidence, don't get into games
conditions with him on goals or terminals. If the session goes awry, it's
because you missed an attention factor. Try to get subjective reality on
this. If the PC says, "Yow! Yow! Yow! ARC break!!", you say, "What was
your PTP?"