This chapter is from The Road to Clear, Level Zero

ARC and Training Routines

An important part of becoming a professional auditor is mastering the Training Routines (TR's), which are the drills for the communication formula. It is however necessary to see how the drills fit into the whole picture. Here we will first cover ARC and TR's. Then we will cover the main Axiom the TR's are based on: Axiom 28, the Communication Formula.

Without a good understanding of the inter-relation between Communication and Reality, Communication and Affinity and Communication and Understanding the whole subject of TR's can take a completely wrong direction. The TR's purpose is to improve the student's live communication.

We had in Axiom 51: Postulates and live communication not being MEST and being senior to MEST can accomplish change in MEST without bringing about a persistence of MEST. Thus, auditing can occur.

In other words: for auditing to occur we need live communication.

We know from the earlier chapter that when communication is improved, affinity and reality improves as well. 'Communication' without the A and R being present isn't real communication.

'Improved communication' without the A and R being improved is just not live communication and has no place in TR's.

Let us quickly repeat what A, R and C are:

By Affinity we mean emotional response. It is affection or the lack of it. It's the whole tone scale of emotion and misemotion.

By Reality we mean solid things and objects. It is what is real. But there is also a definite relationship between Reality and agreement. Things are real to the degree we agree they are real. Those things are not real which we agree are not real. On those things upon which we disagree we have very little reality.

By Communication we mean interchange of ideas between two people or terminals. The simple formula for communication is: Cause - Distance - Effect.

How these three points of A, R and C interrelate can be seen in some examples.

An angry man rejects   other views in a  destructive manner.

Example: Let us say you try to talk to a real angry man. An angry man's communication is at a level of 'affinity' - or rather misemotion - which rejects all people and terminals from him. His actual communication factor is very low. He may be loud, but he is not communicating very well. In anger the person is trying to destroy something or somebody. That accounts for that his reality is very poor. He doesn't care about things. He doesn't see things clearly and is not truthful. What really made him angry is not what he is attacking, but something else. He can be hard to follow, as the reality he is expressing, is poor.

There must be good affinity, some affection, between two people before they are very real to each other. Reality between people, as we talk about it here, must be seen as a gradient - a scale, where some things are more real than others. There must be a good affinity between two people before they can talk to each other with confidence and any truth. They start with a little affinity and build it up, gradiently

Before two people can be real to each other there must be an interchange or communication between them. They must at least be able to see each other or hear each other to have a live communication. Just seeing each other, perception, is a form of communication by the way.
Before two people can feel any affinity for each other they must to some degree be real.

So there is an interdependence, a close relationship, between these three factors of A, R and C. When one drops the two other ones drop as well. But also, when one rises the two other factors rise with it.

That means if you work to improve one corner of this triangle, the two other corners will improve with it. If you work on two corners the third corner will automatically follow.

You can use    the ARC triangle   directly in social  situations.

Example: Let's say you want to make contact with a stranger. You start talking (communication). You compliment him (that expresses affinity). You pick a subject you can agree upon (reality). Some mutual respect and affinity will come about automatically.

These three points also hang together when it goes the other way. If one of them drops, the two others will also drop.

Example: You are talking to your stranger above. While you are talking a man with a dog comes by. You say you hate dogs (you express low affinity for something). Little do you know your stranger is a dog breeder. He gets upset with you since dogs are his professional life. He drops in affinity (from being friendly to becoming reserved and maybe upset). His reality has been damaged (dogs are his livelihood) and the conversation is over (the communication drops completely out).

"Good Roads Fair Weather"
(See also 'Manners').
Example: Lets look at another example of how this triangle is at work all times in human relationships.

This is a true story. A young girl had run away from home as the relationship with her parents had become so bad so the parents wouldn't talk to her. The girl had taken a job in an office. She seemed quite unhappy and depressed and she wasn't doing well at her job.

An auditor was asked by the office manager to see if he could help the situation. The auditor gave the young girl an interview and found out, that the parents were very angry with her and refused any communication with her.

They were upset with her because she had refused to follow the career as a concert pianist that they had envisioned for her. In fact, such a career was beyond her ability.

They had spent a lot of money on her studies, that had come to nothing. So they "washed their hands" of her and this unhappy situation had forced her to run away from home to live in another city.

Since the break they hadn't communicated with her at all, but from people in her home neighborhood she knew they were disappointed and felt bitter about her. Since she had been closely attached to her parents the break and separation had a deep effect upon her. She couldn't do her work properly. Her failure at work was jamming the communication lines of the office and the office manager was concerned. She liked the girl, but her poor performance had to change or she (the office manager) had to fire her.

Usually the girl would simply have been fired, but help was hard to find and the office manager had a better idea. She asked the auditor to help.

The auditor knew his A-R-C Triangle well and he knew exactly what to do. It seems very simple, but it had a magical effect.

He simply told her she had to write her parents - whether she would get a reply or not. And so she did.

Naturally she didn't get a reply. Why didn't the parents reply? It is simple. The girl had disobeyed them and had refused their advice and control and they had cut off all contact. To the parents she wasn't very real at this point. They more or less denied her existence as far as they were concerned. They had actually tried to 'forget her' and erase her from their lives due to their big disappointment. Therefore their emotions had come to a point of apathy towards her. They had been unable to control her and this failure made them apathetic in regards to her. It had also made her unreal to them.

Actually, as they had started her on a career she didn't have the talent for, she couldn't have been that real to them to begin with.

The auditor had her write a letter. This letter was "good roads and fair weather". Just simple, good news about herself. She said she was working in another city, that the weather was fine there and she was doing all right; she hoped they were both well and sent them her love.

The auditor had instructed her carefully not to mention any of the events before leaving home or anything else that could open old wounds.

The affinity, the A, of the letter was quite high. The C was of course there.

What the auditor really wanted to accomplish at this point was to establish the R, the reality. He wanted them to get used to the idea that she actually existed; that she lived in another city and took care of her own life.

She wrote several letters like that without getting an answer. The auditor instructed her to just stay with the "good roads and fair weather" subjects and tone.

He was simply trying to establish the R. Since she in her earlier life had depended so much on her parents the present situation had caused her to see her whole existence as unreal and flimsy.

After about four letters along these lines, each letter carefully written in an optimistic and positive tone with little attention to not getting any reply, there suddenly was a letter back from her mother. The mother expressed anger, not against her daughter but against one of the girl's old friends. The auditor instructed her carefully not to express anger in her reply, but instead write in pleasant surprise how happy she was to hear from her mother.

After her letter two replies came; one from her father and one from her mother. This time they were both affectionate and they hoped the daughter was doing well.

The girl naturally wanted to reply to these positive letters. The auditor of course let her do so. Without his intervention her replies would however have been very propitiative. He instructed her to send two happy letters, one to each of her parents, and just be lighthearted and positive.

In this way the auditor kept repairing the break between the daughter and her parents. He was using communication and the ARC triangle.

When this relationship was well repaired the girl felt a lot better about herself and doing her job. The parents had now understood that she had chosen a job she could manage; and having their blessing (reality) meant that she could take pride in doing it (affinity). As a result her willingness to communicate with her colleagues  and her tasks rose markedly and she started to become a real asset to the office.

So we see the ARC triangle and the tone scale in action in these examples and in just about any situation in life.

What we saw the auditor do, in the example with the young girl, was to control her communication to her parents, knowing well that he had to pay close attention to the two other points of the ARC triangle to make it successful.

The Tone scale and Communication
In a previous chapter we covered the tone scale. That the tone scale covers affinity and emotions is obvious. But there is also a communication factor for each level on the scale.

In the sub-apathy band (0 to -40 of the expanded tone scale) the individual is not really communicating at all. It's some social response or training pattern or mental 'circuit and machinery' that is communicating. From the scale it is obvious the affinity is at its lowest. But so are the two other factors of the ARC triangle, including the communication.

In TR's there is a phenomenon known as 'Robotic TR's'. That is a dreadful condition where the student by lack of understanding of the basic theory of ARC and TR's and through bad coaching has developed 'TR's' that sound like a voice mail recording.

"Press one, if you want the auditing command repeated", "Press two, if you want an acknowledgement", "Press three if you want your origination handled".

What make auditing  work   is Live Communication.  Robots won't do.

The person himself does not really seem to be there and he isn't really talking. Therefore his communication is strange to say the least. What's missing is live communication. There is no ARC.

When a person is stuck in any one band of the tone scale he voices communications in that emotional tone.

A person who always finds something sad to talk about is stuck in grief.
A person who always talks about something scary is stuck in fear.
A person who always can find something to get angry about is stuck in anger.

They are better off than somebody in sub-apathy, but they can still be unpleasant to be around.

From a more causative viewpoint, how would you talk to people? It is clear if you were stuck in the sub-apathy band you wouldn't be able to talk to anybody. You would have to have more affinity than that to discuss things with anyone.

Your ability to talk to any specific person would have a lot to do with your emotional response to that person. It is clear if somebody didn't care about a person (low affinity) it would be very difficult to talk to them. The way to talk to somebody is then to find something you like about him or her and to discuss something you can agree on. Things you agree on are more real. Reality and agreement in terms of ARC are closely connected. In a group of three, the one that didn't agree with what was being said would soon become unreal to the other two and his affinity would be seen to drop.

There is one thing you have to realize about ARC and communication. If the person starts out in apathy about you, he will have to come through fear (being afraid of you) and anger (being angry at you) to make progress. Especially the expression of anger can be puzzling to the untrained person. You just have to realize, that you have done tremendous progress towards establishing a better relationship. It will still have to go through antagonism and boredom as well before you can expect real interest to surface.

To be a good communicator one also have to really listen to what people have to say and acknowledge what they say. The acknowledgment helps establish the reality. An acknowledgment is not necessarily an expression of agreement. But a person that realizes he has been heard and understood does feel he has made his point and his reality has been received. So the acknowledgment does have to express affinity and understanding.

We have a particle or impulse. It can be a letter, an e-mail, a gift, or even a blow or a bullet, or simply spoken words. When an understanding is transferred from one being to another  by the means of a particle we have a successful communication.

In case of a hostile communication (such as shooting a bullet) you may not get understanding, but you do get some kind of duplication (or effect) taking place. Therefore the delivery of the particle, the bullet, can be called a 'communication'.

© Clearbird Publishing 2003, 2004