Auditor ability and distance auditing

This was posted by David St Lawrence on 11 March as a comment to his earlier post, Distance auditing and open source.

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fnx3 [in comment #3] brings up a very real downside of distance auditing. It requires the auditor to “be there” for the PC in spite of distance, distractions and lack of physical presence.

Not all auditors can be there for the PC when they are in the same room, so it is unreasonable to think that any auditor can be successful at distance auditing without the following abilities:

• Able to grant beingness to an extraordinary degree

• Great certainty on what they are doing

• Terrific interest in the PC and what he is doing and saying

• A flawless comm cycle and the ability to perceive what the PC is doing during the comm cycle.

• Ability to focus on the Preclear and the session to the exclusion of everything else.

If the auditor has anything going on in his universe in addition to being there with the PC, the PC will pick up on it and will be out of session to that extent.

The bottom line is that distance auditing is possible and can handle situations where physical presence is not possible, but it requires an excellent auditor who can keep the PC in session, no matter what else is going on.

I have successfully audited in a moving car when I was driving, in a classroom where roll was being called, and at a table in a busy restaurant. If the PC is truly “in session” and trusts the auditor to take responsibility for the session, the PC gets results in spite of external activities that might normally act as distractions.

In successful auditing, the auditor asks the PC to look at something and the PC looks inward to see what can be found. While he is looking, the auditor remains silent and lets him look. In order to do this successfully, the auditor has to be able to perceive what the PC is doing. His attention is on what the PC is doing and nothing else.

Many auditors cannot do this and fail to realize that the PC is aware when the auditor is not there for him. Remember the statement: Auditor plus PC is greater than the bank? It is absolutely true and I verified this once to my complete embarrassment. PC was way down the track running a long incident and I diverted my attention from what he was doing to a piece of paper behind my meter shield. Almost immediately the PC opened his eyes and stared at me in annoyance. He had detected my shift of attention…

That drove home the necessity of being there for the PC at all times. I never made that mistake again.

I have had many informal distance auditing sessions with other OTs where one of us would help the other spot and handle something by inspection. This never required commands or questions or anything but looking at the exact area of distress until everything blew. Once there was sufficient attention focused on the area, masses and ridges just blew. Here again, one had to actually be there and perceive what was going on in order to be of assistance.

I also have the feeling that creative processes may impose a higher requirement on the auditor than negative gain processes like Dianetics which suck the PC in once the process is going.

I say this because I experienced a telephone session recently that was less than satisfactory because the auditor did not have all of the abilities I listed above. My attention was, unfortunately, somewhat on the auditor and I felt that I was not being duplicated. Even though the auditor obviously wanted to help, the session did not produce the results we both wanted because of the factors I mentioned earlier.

For distance auditing to become more widely used and reliable, we need those who can do this successfully to offer coaching to those who wish to improve their skills in this area. It is no more difficult than coaching an ashtray drill successfully. It rehabilitates an OT ability when done to EP.

In summation, distance auditing is not impossible, it just requires a more highly trained auditor.

David