Chapter Two: Getting Started STEP ONE: THE INTERVIEW Now supposing you had a client and wanted to get him started, what would you do? Or rather: what would I do? (Because, remember, this book is about my way of working.) First thing I'd do is an interview. E­meter, cans, pre­session checklist, pen, worksheets. The whole sacred ritual. And a good long thorough interview it should be, until I understand what the person wants to get handled, until I know his timetrack with all periods when things went well for him and when they went off the rails. With all reads and TA­motions noted. May take an hour or two. Or three. It is centered around the following: what does the person want handled? How is he doing physically? Sexually? Does he have a goal in life? And lastly: his life with all its ups and downs. (For specific interview questions see LK2/p. 177.) And all along I speak to the auditee in plain language. I don't use technical terms. I explain everything I do with reasons why. I make this whole thing look like born out of functional necessity, not dogma or ideology. I tell the auditee that his TA is high when it's high, and what that means. Although he may be totally green I make him wear his hat as a solo­auditor from the first moment he holds the cans. How else is he going to become a reliable team partner in session, particularly when the going gets rough? We are doing what we are doing because there are practical reasons for it. This is what I'm getting across to the auditee. I gain his trust. He may not even know that I'm using Hubbard's methods. As long as he doesn't ask there is no need to tell him. No need to run an advertisement campaign for scientology. After all you wouldn't expect a doctor or psychologist or architect or tax consultant to explain to you the complete key terminology of their trade including who they had studied with and what leading figurehead they favoured, before they start on the job. All you'd want as their client is to sit down, explain what you need, and see it getting done. It's the same with auditing. As a general rule, I challenge the auditee's answers (whether in session or in an interview). I never invalidate what he says, I never evaluate it in terms of his case, but I do ask: how can this be? How does this fit in? Does it add up to what we know already or does it contradict it? What does this really mean? Make sure to get it from the auditee's viewpoint, from the reality of his universe. Don't go into social agreements with him when you only think you understand. You must fully understand. Don't agree, don't commiserate, but get to the bottom of it. "My wife has beaten me up!" he says. "What's wrong with that?" you ask. "She might've killed me!" ­ "Ok ­ what's wrong with that?" ­ "Well, I'd be dead!" ­ "And what's wrong with that?" ­ "Well, look, I'd stop existing!!" Blowdown on the meter. Now you've got an item! Lockscan "times you thought you'd stop existing". It's likely to take him down to a major whole track implant. A Rule Of Thumb Here is a rule of thumb for interviews as well as 2WCs: 1. Find out what exactly the auditee is upset about, what exactly he wants to see changed. Get a real "itsa", i.e. BD on the meter and certainty in the auditee. 2. Find out what he did to resolve his difficulty and how come he failed. This will give you the "can't do" consideration, the SerFac. And that's your entry point into the case. In brief: have you auditee define the situation (1) and trace the underlying GPM (2). That's all. Easy as pie. STEP TWO: THE PROGRAM Now that you have done the interview you study and analyse it and write a two­ or three­page thesis on it, leading up to a sequence of steps regarding the handling of this case. In a word: you make a program. You consider the totality of the person in front of you (as reflected in the interview), you consider what his attention is on the most, and on the background of your conceptual understanding of the tech and the mechanism of the mind and work out a program. Normally you would put the biggest reading area on top of the list, because that's where the auditee's attention is fixated the most (LK2/p. 185). Now here is a major addition to or deviation from, this procedure: when the auditee mentions a postulate in the course of the interview, you take up that. With preference. Example: biggest area of charge is pets in general and cats in particular. Second in line a compulsion to clean things and keep them supertidy. Third: attics, cellars and other dark places ("fear of the dark"). Then, last item, an occasional asthmatic fit. And amidst all that the reading statement: "I'm so busy, I can hardly catch a breath!" "I can hardly catch a breath!" is a postulate. It's a SerFac. It's used by the auditee as a reason for his failures. And although it may not have had more than a sF (which is a lot less than the added­up reads of the other areas), this is what you pick up with preference. Postulates First! A postulate is a phrase referring to an intention to be, do or have, or avoid being, doing or having. It's worded in present tense. ("This kills me!" ­ Not: "I'm afraid that this might kill me one day.") The best ones refer back to the person speaking (i.e. they contain the word "I" or "me"). Some postulates may look like mere descriptions of situations. "I can hardly catch a breath" would be an example of that. It's the emotion and the read on the meter which tell the tale. Not all situational descriptions are postulates. "I sit on a chair" is not a postulate. Neither is "I'm overweight". So how does one tell? By looking at the accompanying emotions and reads, as I said above. By looking at the type of statement it is: it could be a fairly neutral description, a general conclusion or a dramatic new comprehension ("itsa"). And lastly you can tell by looking at the auditee's life. Because a true postulate will determine the run of the auditee's life, and in his life it will show if what he said was a postulate. So a postulate you take up with preference. You invite the auditee to briefly talk about it (2WC). You ask him to give you some examples of how and when this sort of thing shows up in his life (repetitive recall). You get him to find the earliest time when this happened and have him come up to present time (lock scanning). And after this, you have him repeat that postulate (repeater technique). You'll find that each incident that's washed up by repeating the postulate has either to do with cats, a cleaning compulsion, fear of the dark, or asthmatic fits. The whole case may be hinged on that one postulate! Had you handled the various areas of attention by means of ruds, prepchecks or engram chains you might have gotten there eventually as well, but it would have taken longer. Working through the postulate is more elegant. The direct route to the core of the case. More exciting for the auditee, too. Keeps him in session like you wouldn't believe. Plus you don't need to explain to him the complexity of rudiments or other high tech approaches beforehand. The Positive Postulate We are used to looking at charged postulates as negative, because usually they come in form of second postulates (negative) which lead off the path defined by the first postulate (positive) or even stop an activity entirely. Yet occasionally the auditee mentions a positive first postulate, and more often than not it will be charged! How come? Because statements like "Alertness always pays!" or "There is nothing I couldn't fix!" immediately bring to mind times when that person failed to be alert or failed to fix something! Such postulates are highly charged because they are connected with losses. They are often used as an "affirmation", a remedy for a half­recognised situation, and most likely will be a generalisation, and not worded precisely. So don't ignore them just because they sound positive. As long as they aren't pronounced with an F/N, there is something behind them (see LK2/ch. 4.4). STEP THREE: POSTULATE AUDITING The procedure outlined above is described in LK2 as "Postulate Auditing". Why Postulate Auditing as the first and major part of the program? Well, you don't have to start this way. You may start with TRs. If coached well, by an experienced auditor, TRs may be as intense an experience as an auditing session! A very important step indeed. You may as well start with CCHs or other objective processes. If done sensibly, with proper attention to gradients and by staying well in communication with the auditee, they work wonders. You may start with rudiments or the Grades. You may start with anything as long it is what the auditee in front of you needs. There is no other rule. Why then do I suggest Postulate Auditing as the first part of the program? For various reasons. First, because it satisfies the client's wish for therapy. That's what he came for, after all! He has undesirable AESPs and wants you to help him getting rid of them. That's therapy, at least in the client's understanding of the word. (Therapy, by the way, is taken from the Greek and means "service", in the sense of "something done by a servant".) Second, because it allows the auditee to explore his mind in depth. It sends him on a usually unprecedented mental adventure tour. After that he'll understand that he's in for much more than a mere psychic repair job. He's in for exploring the terra incognita of his mind! When he has understood that, you have found a partner who it is fun to work with: someone with a purpose, with self­determinism and the intention to get to the other end of the tunnel. Third reason: now that you have turned the auditee into a partner, into someone who understands the route and accepts you as a guide, it will be a lot easier to explain to him that he should do some TRs or objective processing, that he should put order into his life (ethics program), that he should stop smoking and drinking, take a break off work, sleep, look after his nutrition, and so on. He will accept this as a necessary part of the way. He won't feel that some weird ritual is enforced on him by the overpowering authority of a therapist or some expert in esoterics. He'll see that what's done is based on functional reasons, not dogma. So after a dozen hours of Postulate Auditing I might branch off into a nutritional handling, suggest that the auditee put order in his life, or put him on TRs or Objectives. In my experience Postulate Auditing really is the simplest and yet most exciting tool for both auditor and auditee. This is because it combines the basic yet powerful techniques mentioned above: 2WC, repetitive recall, lock scanning, narrative, repeater technique. It traces and cracks GPMs with full control of the procedure and always on the right gradient. I'm using it more than anything else. At the time LK2 was written, Postulate Auditing had already been researched by me for a good three years. And now, four years later, I'm still in favour of it. Teaching the method to auditors made me realize that some points need further clarification. Which is why I'm going to go into this for a moment. "Item" Defined An item is more than what it says in LK2. It is more than an AESP (attitude, emotion, sensation, pain). It could also be a terminal (person, animal, plant, place, thing). It could be an activity ("my job"). Or it could be a state of being, doing or having. Lastly and most senior to all, it could be a postulate. A Gradient Approach Whatever item you choose to audit, have the auditee look at it on the gradient suggested above: 1. 2WC to find an item or to get the auditee warmed up to an item found earlier. 2. Then have him give you examples by repetitive recall procedure: "Recall a time when such and such happened to you". Answer. "Thank you. ­ Recall another time when ... " Answer. "Thank you." And so on. 3. When the repetitive recall flattens off, or when the auditee starts wandering down the track all by himself, change over to lockscanning: "Earliest time that comes to mind just now, when this happened?" Answer. Acknowledgement. Then from there to PT. Then back to the beginning: "Earliest time that's available now?" This takes the auditee down to a basic incident on a really smooth ride. 4. When the basic incident has been contacted: run it through repeatedly to erasure (narrative). Make sure you get the actual beginning. Keep asking: "Is there an earlier beginning to this incident?" Also get the games context. How on Earth could this have happened to him? How did he manage to get involved in that sort of situation? Sooner or later a games postulate (positive) or a counter­postulate (negative) is going to show up. Either is part of the GPM you are going for. You want a postulate, either as the decision to play a role in a game or as the decision to change that role. The latter is the lie he told himself (and keeps telling himself) to justify failing. Perhaps the basic incident found wasn't the incident when this particular counter­postulate (or altering postulate) was made originally. The auditee might only have found an incident when that postulate keyed in. That's a "relative basic"; it's as much as the auditee can see at this time. He can't look any deeper. That's fine, don't worry. The next gradient will get him there: repeater technique. 5. Use repeater technique. It will pull the auditee towards the absolute basic like an elevator going down with its cables cut. More than one incident will come up on the way to the absolute basic. Some will be his own, others those of others. The auditee will drop valences like a snake shedding old skin. Each incident is taken to F/N by narrative style auditing. Then once again repeater technique on the postulate. Next incident coming up. Narrative to erasure and F/N. Again: repeater technique on the postulate. Next incident. And so on, till the postulate itself F/Ns whilst the auditee repeats it. That F/N means: a GPM postulate has been looked at with full awareness, has nothing left associated with it, and can now be put in proper perspective or be cancelled. That's a major case change. The beauty of it: you get no stuck TAs like in running engram chains earlier similar, earlier similar, earlier similar. Because you are always dealing with one incident only. Keeps it simple. There is no need to take each of the various actions of this gradient approach to F/N separately, such as 2WC, repetitive recall, lockscanning. You do erase incidents to F/N, yes. And you take the item to F/N, certainly, the item the auditee originated, the item that started this search for incidents ­ but there is no need to get a formal F/N on each of the methods involved! Narrative Style Explained Let's look at the narrative style a little closer. How often do you have to go through an incident before it can be considered erased? Three times, five times, thirty times, fifty times. As long as new data come up or old data are being corrected, as long as the TA moves, you are in business. The auditee will move up the tonescale as he narrates the incident, he will go through the boredom band and dramatize boredom, but you don't pay attention to that, you keep right at it and have him run the incident a few more times. It may F/N in between or at the end. Keep going. Until it's erased and the postulate has popped up. How can one tell that it's over? Easy. When he started out it took him five hours to confront the incident ­ with full dramatization of misemotions and physical sensations and somatics. Now, twelve hours later and after fifty times through the incident, he can go through it in two minutes and giggle about it. What a difference! How do you get him there? Here's a trick: when the auditee gets bored telling you the incident, ask him to speak to you eye­to­eye, to tell you his incident straight into your face. "Tell me the whole thing again, but keep looking at me!" When his attention is still locked up inside the incident, his eyes will wander off and he'll get drawn right to the points that need looking at further. This breaks the old beginning­to­end tedium. And it adds a sportive note to the session: "Well, try again. Perhaps this time you'll manage to get through the incident without any distraction." When he is through eventually, you'll know it. And so will he. How To Turn On A Picture Now supposing the auditee contacts something awful and unspeakable deep down the track and hasn't a clue of what it might be, with the TA rising menacingly ­ how does one get him to run it? Four steps will take him there: 1. Have him describe anything he sees or feels. No censoring of pornographic details, no screening off "unimportances". Any sensation or somatic should be taken into account. When the somatic strip gets going, the auditee will get answers via body and GE long before he has any pictures. Just take the viewpoint that anything he sees or feels from the moment he first contacts the incident, is part of the dramatization of this incident. Follow that trail! That's what you have a meter for. 2. Have him get oriented inside the incident. Does the scene take place indoors or outdoors? Day or night? Summer or winter? How many people there? Where is the camera posted? From what angle is the film taken? Who is the camera? Is it the auditee from the viewpoint of his eyes? From an exterior viewpoint with him seeing his own body? Is it filmed from the viewpoint of another? 3. Now that you found out about time, place, circumstances and the identity of the observer of the incident, you'll find the picture starts moving. What seemed a still picture turns into a movie. Now the sequence of events starts showing up all by itself. 4. Have the auditee run the incident from wherever he began, to the end. Then only have him find the beginning. And through to the end. And then: earlier beginning? And run it through to the end. And so on. Easy as pie at this stage. Now what about the postulate? In many cases it will be voiced as unexpectedly as a fish jumping out of water. Often the auditee will have voiced it without knowing he did. This is where the auditor has to be extremely alert and quick with his pen! So that he may indicate the postulate to the auditee after the F/N has occurred (if needed) and verify its correctness with him. This is crucial for the rest of the procedure which after all depends on repeating the postulate. How To Get The Postulate F/Ning A typical situation: no further incidents are being washed up whilst you are using repeater technique on the postulate, and the auditee starts wondering why he should repeat the postulate any further. But no F/N in sight yet. What to do? In order to get the postulate F/Ning you may apply the same trick as on narrative procedure: ask the auditee to give you the postulate repeatedly with good TR­1 and to keep eye contact with you all the while. Supposing the postulate was "It's useless!", you get the auditee to make that statement straight into your face with full conviction! He has to say it as if he believed it! That's very important. That's vital. Only this way will he as­is it in the sense of fully ending cycle on it. He as­ised it when he made it originally, at the beginning of the cycle (creation). Now to end the cycle he has to as­is it again (un­creation). Asking the auditee to keep eye contact with you will produce three effects in sequence. First effect: the auditee will find some further incidents, usually minor ones, and blow them by mere inspection. Second: he will start giggling and line charging. Third: he will say cheerfully, with mock conviction and a grin on his face: "It's useless!", and he will be F/Ning. He will be saying it with a sense of present­time identity and disconnected from his past. He will be saying it as himself, in his own valence, which makes it obvious how he permitted himself to shift into a different valence at the time. No further resistance. Not further associations. No karma. F/N. To start with, when the auditee discovered this postulate, he considered it enigmatic or sinister and ruinous. He took it seriously. At the end he knows it's just something he created, and he can laugh about it. It's like saying to a child: "I'm Santa Claus". Although you know that you aren't, you still say it with full conviction in order to be impressive. In a way it's like the famous process "Tell me a lie!" Once you see the joke of it you get an F/N. Likewise, in repeating a postulate there is a point when the auditee knows that this second postulate is an untruth. (Whereas the first postulate is the truth. At least his own.) So he knows he's telling a lie. And since he knows that, he can fully feel in harmony with it, whatever he might say. And that's expressed as an F/N. GPMs are the static play­acting with himself. In order to have a game, he mocks himself up as a thetan and has himself experience traps, losses, and misemotions. He makes counter­postulates and identifies with them with full conviction in order to be impressive, if only to himself. When he comes to realize this in session or otherwise, he can't but laugh. Because he has contacted himself again: himself as source, not as that little play­thing down there. Original And Derived Postulates Repeating postulates lead to incidents, as we saw. Yet those incidents may yet again contain postulates! They may be re­phrasings of the original postulate. Or they may be new and different postulates in their own right. And they may have even bigger reads than the original postulate you are using as the auditing item! What to do? Easy: put them on a postulate list for later use. Work with them (starting with the biggest reading one) as soon as your original postulate has F/Ned. Not before! Because that's your major cycle of action, that's what you want to complete before you do anything else. So here's the rule: First the original postulate to F/N. Then the derived ones, in sequence of read size, each one to its own F/N. You must of course ensure that the auditee is interested. This usually shows as soon as he has repeated that particular postulate a few times. It will either bite or F/N on"no interest". TA Trouble Usually each incident washed up by repeating the postulate, will F/N. You should work towards that EP by all means. However, occasionally a second incident (B) will slide in as soon as you have reduced the first incident (A) sufficiently. Once A has lost power the door is open for B, although A isn't properly erased yet. Consider that they are "all around" the auditee, waiting to slip into the next slot that opens and enter the auditee's awareness. Incident A was reduced, B has slipped in and taken A's place. So you go off A and handle B. No matter if it's the auditee's own incident, that of an entity, a valence or the GE: you handle what the auditee's attention is on. (Applies just the same for solo, of course.) The consideration of "them hanging about the auditee waiting to catch his attention" describes the actual relationship between thetan and case a lot more aptly than the time track model which makes it look as if the auditee had to "go down the track", or as if incidents were "lined up along a track". This is alright as a metaphor but strictly speaking it isn't true. Case exists to the extent that it is mocked up. And it isn't mocked up down the track somewhere, but right in present time and in the vicinity of the auditee's body. For which reason he looks grey and massy and has a high TA. The auditee, as a thetan, doesn't move. He just watches his mental screen and its many programs, each showing a time track of its own. He may zap from one channel to the next and back, sure, but it's still happening on the screen. He himself doesn't move. So when B shows up and A dives off, you handle B. And then C may show up, submerging B! Fine. Handle C to F/N. And then go back to B, taking it to F/N, and then to A, taking it also to F/N. Just finish cycles of action. It starts with a read, it ends with an F/N. What happens in between may be very straightforward or very longwinded, but never mind. As long as you don't lose track of what you are doing, it will all come out well. Conflicting postulates create masses. They work like a magnet pulling the auditee's attention units towards them. All you have to do is follow the auditee's interest and all will be well. So always audit with the bank, never against it. Just make sure you complete cycles of action. Two Levels Of EP An auditing EP must be in accordance with both aspects of Axiom 38. The auditor must get the exact time, place, form and event as well as the exact consideration (the postulate). An erasure of charge from a situation of the past (a "blown picture" as the jargon has it) accompanied with full recall of that situation and an F/N on the meter is a 7th dynamic EP. It means mental mest has been as­ised. A postulate found and rendered unworkable by stripping all associated pictures and energies from it (by means of repeater technique), is an EP on the 8th dynamic. Here a thought, a concept, a consideration has been as­ised.