Once a week, twenty minutes, three lists, one verdict per line. That is the entire weekly audit routine — the maintenance cycle that keeps the Parasite Audit from becoming a philosophy and turns it back into a chore with an edge. You already know the material it reviews: the evening that vanished into a feed, the meeting that re-runs itself on the drive home, the person who calls only when something is burning. The Parasite Audit guide holds the full doctrine; this page is the routine itself — how to run it, what belongs on each list, and how to sentence each item in one line. It is written to be followed, not admired, and it ends while you still have an evening left.
Key takeaways
- Twenty minutes, written, same chair, every week — the audit is time-boxed or it becomes leakage.
- Three lists: rooms, feeds, people. Expensive, not evil.
- Exactly one verdict per item: time-box, mute, or exit.
- The lists shrink on their own once the Flame holds; reread the old pages monthly.
- The audit reviews the week; the daily practices carry the other six days.
The weekly audit routine: twenty minutes, three lists
The governing sentence is short enough to memorize:
“Weekly, written, and time-boxed to twenty minutes or it becomes the very leakage it hunts.”
Every word is load-bearing. Weekly, because leaks reopen. Written, because a mental audit is a mood, and moods renegotiate. Time-boxed, because the man who audits his leaks for two hours has found a fascinating new way to leak. So: set a timer for twenty minutes, take one sheet of paper or the ledger, and sit in the same chair at the same hour each week — the fixed address tells the Receiver the appointment is real. A one-page card for the whole format sits in the toolkit, if you would rather have it on the desk than in memory.
Before you sit: the defining test
The lists need a criterion, or they turn into a diary of grudges. The doctrine’s test is unforgiving and exact:
“a parasite is anything that takes your attention and returns none of it.”
Returns none of it — not returns comfort, not returns amusement, not returns the pleasant sting of being right. The test also cuts both ways, which is what keeps the audit honest: sitting with your mother in a hospital is not leakage; that is allocation, attention sent where you chose to send it, at a price you agreed to pay. The audit never sentences chosen costs. It sentences unchosen ones. If you are unsure which kind a cost is, allocation, not isolation sorts the two out.
List one: rooms
Write the places that reliably bill you. The meeting you leave wrung out. The dinner that re-runs itself on the drive home. The car pool, the corner of the house where you always end up scrolling, the group chat that sprints your pulse. Name rooms plainly, with a rough number of hours a week beside each. Measurement is not morality; the paper is a map, not a verdict. The room itself is rarely the problem — the residue the room hands you is, and that is what the number records.
List two: feeds
Apps, accounts, and channels that leave you scattered, sped up, or slightly poisoned. The one rule here is specificity, because the doctrine is scathing about vagueness: my phone is not an answer, it is a shrug. Name the app, name the account, name the hour it usually takes. One line each is enough, and the honest count of minutes beside it does half the work by itself. Outrage deserves its own line wherever it hides, because it is the costliest leak per minute on the whole page.
List three: people
Who leaves you smaller, guilty, or going faster than your own pulse. The doctrine sets two guardrails on this list. First: not who is bad — who is expensive. Most parasites are feeding patterns with faces, and naming a pattern is measurement, not cruelty. Second: a person can be loved and still cost more than you can afford to give this season. The list records the price, not a verdict on the soul, and the sentence that follows is about your attention, never about their worth.
Three verdicts, one per item
Every item on every list receives exactly one of three sentences. No circles of deliberation, no third options, no maybe. The verdict is written beside the item, in one word, before the timer closes.
Time-box. For the unavoidable — family, workplace, obligation — assign a fixed, bounded slot and exit it cleanly. Sunday afternoons, wholehearted, instead of the unclaimed margins of the week:
“Bounded presence is presence; unbounded presence is hosting.”
Mute. For feeds and loud mouths alike. Silence without drama, without announcement, without the confrontation that is just leakage wearing a speech. The doctrine’s phrase for it is short: muting is a spiritual act. The parasite never learns it has been muted; it only loses the venue.
Exit. For the rooms, feeds, and people that bill you past all proportion. Some doors simply close:
“Not every loss is a wound; some are a fee cancelling itself.”
If the same items have survived three weeks of verdicts without a verdict, the selection step needs redoing rather than the sentence: choosing the three largest leaks shows how the first cut is made, and the seven-day sealing on three holes is the intensive program the weekly routine exists to maintain.
Keep the pages, reread monthly
The routine ends with the timer, but the pages keep working. Reread last month’s audit before you write this month’s, and notice the trend rather than any single line. Practitioners report the same quiet result:
“the lists shrink on their own once the Flame holds — parasites reroute from an expensive target”
The shrinking of the lists — not the drama of any one exit — is the quietest proof the work is real. An audit that still fills three full pages after two months is not vigilance; it is a sign the verdicts are not being executed between sessions. For the in-between weeks, who owns your evenings is the self-check that tells you whether the sentences are holding while nobody is watching.
Frequently asked questions
Is twenty minutes really enough
Yes, and the limit is a feature. Twenty minutes fits three lists and a column of verdicts with room to spare once you stop writing essays about each item. The time-box also protects the audit from becoming its own parasite: a two-hour session of self-examination is leakage wearing virtue. If the lists genuinely overflow, the fix is sharper handwriting and faster verdicts, not a longer timer. Depth comes from weekly repetition, not from one heroic session.
What if the same item returns every week
Two readings, and they point in opposite directions. A time-boxed obligation that keeps its slot is a working sentence, not a failure — maintenance items stay on the list by design. But an item you keep circling without ever sentencing is the leak wearing your voice, negotiating for another week. Give it one verdict this session, in writing. If it truly cannot be sentenced, the hesitation itself is the finding, and the smallest honest sentence is usually the time-box.
Can two people in one house audit together
Each person audits alone. The lists are confessions of attention, and attention is personal; a joint audit turns quickly into an inventory of each other, which is a different document with a worse outcome. What works instead: same hour, same table, two sheets of paper, silence between you. The shared ritual builds the habit, and the privacy keeps the verdicts honest — especially the ones whose execution will show up in the household.
Morning or evening for the audit
Evening, usually. The week’s residue is freshest at the end of it, and the verdicts — a mute, a calendar block, a closed door — are easiest to execute into the quiet that follows. Morning works if your evenings are contested; the only requirement is the same slot every week, because the fixed hour is what separates a routine from an occasional mood. Attach it to something that already stands, like the weekly ledger review, and it keeps itself.
Is muting someone an unkind act
The doctrine does not treat it as one. Muting is silence without announcement — no speech, no trial, no verdict delivered to the other person at all. What it ends is the venue, not the relationship; many time-boxed people coexist happily with muted notifications. The cruelty in this territory usually runs the other direction: unbounded presence, given out of guilt, curdles into resentment that everyone in the room can feel. One quiet verdict beats a year of theatrical patience.
This guide is educational and spiritual in nature. It is not medical, legal, or financial advice. If a practice brings up distress, speak with a qualified professional.
Twenty minutes, three lists, one verdict per line — the smallest honest maintenance the doctrine offers. The chapter that names the parasites, and the book they come from, is The Obsidian Key.
