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Boo! Another Scary Story

Enthetan

Master of Disaster
After the meeting, the regs smoked with me down stairs out in front of LA Org -- still smug -- saying that they weren't going to be demoted or anything and they still wouldn't apologize for calling me an SP. The conversation was fake friendly. Really gross.

You see this personality type in a lot of places in Scn. They will do whatever they need to do to "get the product" and if you get upset with them it's because YOU are "out ethics". They are serving a "higher purpose". Or it's just that they really really enjoy being in a position where they can screw people and be immune from retaliation.

In the outside world, they are called "psychopaths". There can be no arguing with a psychopath. The psychopath will never feel remorse. The only thing that will stop a psychopath is the psychopath realizing that you can and will impose consequences. That's why they like working for Scn -- the umbrella of immunity they get from the people they screw. :angry::angry:
 

EZ Linus

Cleared Tomato
Well, it only took a couple months to come back and finish this story. I've mentioned before that I have been working on a book. I may be repeating myself too because I didn't go back and read everything I've written here in my story, but my book isn't a full-on anti-cult book or anything, but perhaps half of the book talks about it since half of my life I was in and I lived as a Scientologist and worked in cult-run companies, etc. So, I've been gone these last couple of months getting the book in tip top shape for a copy editor and I'll be getting it back in September for the final changes. That's when I'll be shopping it to agencies. But I digress.

I reread my last entry and I left off at 31-32 or so, divorced, right? I actually lost the property we had together because, well, that's another long story, but I got pretty friendly with someone else and while I didn't cheat, I really liked this other person and I was up front and honest about it the whole way through and so my spouse and I did a chaplain cycle throughout our separation. I had to write up all my overts and withholds, but because my 2D was still on the same service from before, there was the rule that they didn't have to. So, I looked like a big criminal for liking someone else and this was used as leverage to push me out of getting any bit of ownership of the property and I was kicked out.

I then had to find an apartment and pay almost twice the rent on my own, when I was not the main breadwinner in that situation. I was also disabled. It took nine months for my disability claim to go through so I could get state insurance. And it took even longer for me to swallow a pill because I still didn't believe in western medicine.

About a year or so after all this blew over, I was on the Internet looking up the followers of David Koresh that survived Waco and/or that had left his group. I was doing this because I just moved in with that person I liked and I now had something I never had before: television.

This was many years after the massacre at Waco happened. As a Scientologist, I had only heard about it, but did not know the details because Scientologists live underneath rocks when it comes to the news. Now that I had a TV, I just watched a documentary about the whole thing and I was just blown away. I wanted to know all about David Koresh and how he managed to get all those people to follow him to their deaths. I was beyond fascinated and the more I read about him, the more I couldn't help but to correlate his situation and intentions with Hubbards'. He still had "seals" he hadn't yet released, kind of like the OT levels above VIII.

After three days straight of reading psychological backgrounds on Koresh and Jim Jones, I decide to look up ex-Scientologists and find out what made them leave.

At this point, I knew I was treading on thin ice. I knew I wasn't supposed to look, but I also knew in my heart of hearts I wasn't going to be doing services at the church anymore. However, I still considered myself a Scientologist then. I believed in the tech.

I started to read the online books like Piece of Blue Sky, etc. And I purchased Messiah or Madman. I read tons of stories. And exactly while all this was going down, Magoo was leaving Scientology and everyone is still wondering if it's for real. Plus, the Lisa McPherson Trust is forming. It's crazy. Lots going on. ...I keep reading.

Eleven days I am glued to my computer like a crackhead, until I get to Margery Wakefield's book and come to a passage where she describes what she reads when she first sits down and opens the OTIII materials for the first time. This is years before people knew, years before South Park. "75 million years ago....Xenu, blah blah blah..."

I was like, "Wha??"

Well, I just plum lost my fucking mind! That's OTIII? That's what I've been working toward? That's the Truth?

Hubbard reiterates over and over thoughout your time in Scientology that if you see those materials before you're actually on the level, you will go insane, catch pneumonia and die.

In the years following, I went insane. I was hospitalized for pneumonia. I nearly died. And I never even looked at the actual materials.

I started debunking everything I could about L. Ron Hubbard and found out what a fraud he really was, because he was. He actually did not know very much at all. He knew how to hypnotize people, and he new a bit about manipulating others with a fair amount of mind control tactics, but he knew nothing of the subjects he claimed to, such as engineering or physics. He was the definition of a con man and I was fully and completely duped. And it was VERY hard to come to terms with this.

I then had to figure out HOW I was victimized by this seduction, i.e.: my own background, my upbringing, the abuse, my age, the fact that a very important celebrity got me and my brother into it. It was STILL hard to forgive myself.

Finding my real authentic self has also been an ongoing challenge. But it's better than thinking I know everything -- all the answers to all the universe's problems. I shudder now at my audacity and conceit to think I had those answers and immortality. So, I discovered I was a human being. It's better this way. It isn't a trap or a lie. And "certainty" and "truth/knowingness" are not interchangeable.

I'm going to post this now, but I'll edit my typos as I read it back.
 

Victoria

Patron Meritorious
This is so great! Thank you for taking the time to write it.
Im patiently awaiting your book, it's been a really long time since we've had a memoir book from an ex.
Very exciting, any publisher who doesn't snatch it up will be missing out.
 

Wilbur

Patron Meritorious
Well, it only took a couple months to come back and finish this story. I've mentioned before that I have been working on a book. I may be repeating myself too because I didn't go back and read everything I've written here in my story, but my book isn't a full-on anti-cult book or anything, but perhaps half of the book talks about it since half of my life I was in and I lived as a Scientologist and worked in cult-run companies, etc. So, I've been gone these last couple of months getting the book in tip top shape for a copy editor and I'll be getting it back in September for the final changes. That's when I'll be shopping it to agencies. But I digress.

I reread my last entry and I left off at 31-32 or so, divorced, right? I actually lost the property we had together because, well, that's another long story, but I got pretty friendly with someone else and while I didn't cheat, I really liked this other person and I was up front and honest about it the whole way through and so my spouse and I did a chaplain cycle throughout our separation. I had to write up all my overts and withholds, but because my 2D was still on the same service from before, there was the rule that they didn't have to. So, I looked like a big criminal for liking someone else and this was used as leverage to push me out of getting any bit of ownership of the property and I was kicked out.

I then had to find an apartment and pay almost twice the rent on my own, when I was not the main breadwinner in that situation. I was also disabled. It took nine months for my disability claim to go through so I could get state insurance. And it took even longer for me to swallow a pill because I still didn't believe in western medicine.

About a year or so after all this blew over, I was on the Internet looking up the followers of David Koresh that survived Waco and/or that had left his group. I was doing this because I just moved in with that person I liked and I now had something I never had before: television.

This was many years after the massacre at Waco happened. As a Scientologist, I had only heard about it, but did not know the details because Scientologists live underneath rocks when it comes to the news. Now that I had a TV, I just watched a documentary about the whole thing and I was just blown away. I wanted to know all about David Koresh and how he managed to get all those people to follow him to their deaths. I was beyond fascinated and the more I read about him, the more I couldn't help but to correlate his situation and intentions with Hubbards'. He still had "seals" he hadn't yet released, kind of like the OT levels above VIII.

After three days straight of reading psychological backgrounds on Koresh and Jim Jones, I decide to look up ex-Scientologists and find out what made them leave.

At this point, I knew I was treading on thin ice. I knew I wasn't supposed to look, but I also knew in my heart of hearts I wasn't going to be doing services at the church anymore. However, I still considered myself a Scientologist then. I believed in the tech.

I started to read the online books like Piece of Blue Sky, etc. And I purchased Messiah or Madman. I read tons of stories. And exactly while all this was going down, Magoo was leaving Scientology and everyone is still wondering if it's for real. Plus, the Lisa McPherson Trust is forming. It's crazy. Lots going on. ...I keep reading.

Eleven days I am glued to my computer like a crackhead, until I get to Margery Wakefield's book and come to a passage where she describes what she reads when she first sits down and opens the OTIII materials for the first time. This is years before people knew, years before South Park. "75 million years ago....Xenu, blah blah blah..."

I was like, "Wha??"

Well, I just plum lost my fucking mind! That's OTIII? That's what I've been working toward? That's the Truth?

Hubbard reiterates over and over thoughout your time in Scientology that if you see those materials before you're actually on the level, you will go insane, catch pneumonia and die.

In the years following, I went insane. I was hospitalized for pneumonia. I nearly died. And I never even looked at the actual materials.

I started debunking everything I could about L. Ron Hubbard and found out what a fraud he really was, because he was. He actually did not know very much at all. He knew how to hypnotize people, and he new a bit about manipulating others with a fair amount of mind control tactics, but he knew nothing of the subjects he claimed to, such as engineering or physics. He was the definition of a con man and I was fully and completely duped. And it was VERY hard to come to terms with this.

I then had to figure out HOW I was victimized by this seduction, i.e.: my own background, my upbringing, the abuse, my age, the fact that a very important celebrity got me and my brother into it. It was STILL hard to forgive myself.

Finding my real authentic self has also been an ongoing challenge. But it's better than thinking I know everything -- all the answers to all the universe's problems. I shudder now at my audacity and conceit to think I had those answers and immortality. So, I discovered I was a human being. It's better this way. It isn't a trap or a lie. And "certainty" and "truth/knowingness" are not interchangeable.

I'm going to post this now, but I'll edit my typos as I read it back.

Linus, you're the first person I have read about who actually GOT pneumonia after reading (a summary of) OTIII. Did you attribute it to reading Margery Wakefield's book at the time? Or was it completely unrelated?

I also felt ill and had strange things happen to me after I read OTIII. I couldn't sleep properly for about a year, because I felt that the 'R6 pictures' were about to cause a freewheel, every time I went to sleep. I couldn't go to sleep on an empty stomach. Later, I found that if I had a protein shake before I went to bed, I was OK. This was all reinforced by a friend of mine, who was still connected to the church, going to St. Hill and telling a C/S there about my situation (without my permission). The reply he got was "yes, this is what happens when you read the OTIII materials online, and he'll probably die." And they had no interest in helping me. Not that I wanted their help. I eventually cured my fear of OTIII by auditing it, and ended up doing all the things that Hubbard said would kill you (auditing bombing incidents, the 36 days of pictures, asking for drug incidents, etc). By doing this, I ended up in a position where I no longer feared the OTIII stuff, and the sleeplessness went away. I'm not trying to suggest here that OTIII 'works' - I'm merely telling you how I got rid of my abject fear of dying because of it. When I realised I could do all the things that Hubbard said would kill you (including running OTII platens out of order) my fear of the stuff disappeared, and I was completely free of the church.

If anyone reading this board is out of the church, but "knows" they have to go back in to get their OT levels, even though they hate the way the church treats you, then auditing them on yourself is (in my opinion) one way to escape the psychological prison you have built for yourself. You don't need to do much - after my FIRST session of OTIII, still alive, not caving in, I knew I was free of the church. Suddenly, I knew that the one thing that keeps people in - the fact that the OT levels are the monopoly of the church - no longer had a hold on me. I had wins on OTIII, but they were mostly in the form of relief - relief from the realisation that I didn't need the church after all.

[EDIT TO ADD: sorry if I briefly hijacked your thread, Linus - this post is quite long. I look forward to the publication of your book]

W.
 

EZ Linus

Cleared Tomato
First of all, THANK YOU for these great responses. I very much appreciate this sort of support. I have worked literally seven years on the book and have been in an emotional roller coaster about it -- being in and out of fear (for lack of a better word) about revealing many different private things, and also writing things down that were very traumatic and having to relive them again and again during the countless edits. I crave the support, so I accept it with open arms. Thank you.

Wilbur, I do not consider you to be hijacking the thread because this is a dialog that is part of my story. When I found out there was a Xenu and BTs and all that, that would have been awaiting me on OTIII, it affected me in a profound way. I mean, I was so screwed up for so long, I didn't think I would ever feel normal again. I didn't know what "normal" was. Yet, I never lived as a Scientologist with a belief in the Xenu story. I wondered if I would have bought it after saving and paying for it. I wondered if I would have finally walked out the door. All I know was that it felt like the floor fell out from under me and it felt like my spirit/mind/person was pushing forcefully out of the top of my head and I was about to have a seizure. I even called the ER because I didn't know what was happening. It was obviously an incredible panic attack.

No, I do not think I got pneumonia because I read about Xenu. I have had pneumonia a few times in my life, but the time I had it after I left Scientology (about five years later), of course it reeled in my mind that it was punishment for reading about OTIII and maybe Hubbard was right. In my right mind though, I knew it was just residual brainwash.

I think that's fine that auditing OTIII helped you to conquer your fears and got you to move on from Scientology. I don't want to knock it. But I would never advocate others to do this in any way shape or form. I would only urge people to get, what in my opinion, is proper help in breaking down the power that Hubbard's suggestions have had on them in the first place, as his theories hold no weight and are false. He never "discovered" anything, even the things that made sense. I learned this after at least a decade of hard study on my own, so I suppose that is really the continuation to my story -- the constant reading and study I did on who he was as a researcher, what is scientifically possible, and what his resources were.

I became a realist and I never thought I would think differently -- not in a million lifetimes (ha ha ha) -- than how I used to think as a Scientologist. It doesn't mean I'm not even a tad spiritual though. I wasn't for a long time, but I know its place and know the difference between truth and belief. Belief has a lot of hope attached to it, which makes us feel better and that's just fine. I like that. It feels nice. But I also know there is no scientific truth to most of the stuff I try to believe in, and it also rubs me the wrong way that my original traditions/religion that I entered Scientology with were lifted by Hubbard in the first place (which was why I was drawn to the cult from the get go). So even my current beliefs feel suspicious to me! I can't trust. I can't settle. I question everything. But better that then being completely stripped of my critical thinking skills, allowing Hubbard's theories to be my own without questioning. I never questioned:

Are there really past lives? How do I know? How do I know I'm not imagining these incidents of earlier similars in my sessions? The auditor is always swaying me to run even the vaguest of "memories." Why haven't I ever thought about that before? How do I know that all of us are spiritual beings and have lived for trillions of years and have the potential of gods? Because "it is written?" If it's not written it isn't true. That's a pretty convenient way of making something seem true, isn't it? And what about word clearing? Having complete understanding of the materials we read doesn't make the concepts true, but it sure feels like it... and on and on. I thought about this stuff very little at ages 12, 13, and by the time I was up to my 20s.
 

Victoria

Patron Meritorious
I read OTIII when it was published in the L.A. Weekly.
Got pneumonia and almost died.

Although, I've only found the perfect word to describe what happened in the last few years.
When I read III, other things were going on of course that caused my flu to worsen and complicate.
Namely, the sheer struggle involved in trying to recover my life after the huge cult derail.

So, I was in college, taking a massive overload of courses and overworking myself in general.
Because you guys know how it is, after being on staff, two jobs and school is like easy street really, lol.


The nocebo effect is when a negative expectation of a phenomenon causes it to have a more negative effect than it otherwise would. A nocebo effect causes the perception that the phenomenon will have a negative outcome to actively influence the result.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP] Mental states such as beliefs, expectations and anticipation can strongly influence the outcome of: disease; experience of pain; and even success of surgery.[SUP][2][/SUP][SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][3][/SUP] Positive expectations regarding a treatment can result in more positive outcomes and this effect is known as the placebo effect.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP] Both placebo and nocebo effects are presumably psychogenic but also produce measurable physiological changes as well as changes in the brain, the body and behavior.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP]For example, when a patient anticipates a side effect of a treatment, he/she can suffer them even if the medication provided is an inert substance.[SUP][1][/SUP] One article that reviewed 31 studies on nocebo effects reported a wide range of symptoms that could manifest as nocebo effects including nausea, stomach pains, itching, bloating, depression, sleep problems, loss of appetite, sexual dysfunction and severe hypotension.[SUP][1]


[/SUP]
 

EZ Linus

Cleared Tomato
I read OTIII when it was published in the L.A. Weekly.
Got pneumonia and almost died.

Although, I've only found the perfect word to describe what happened in the last few years.
When I read III, other things were going on of course that caused my flu to worsen and complicate.
Namely, the sheer struggle involved in trying to recover my life after the huge cult derail.

So, I was in college, taking a massive overload of courses and overworking myself in general.
Because you guys know how it is, after being on staff, two jobs and school is like easy street really, lol.


The nocebo effect is when a negative expectation of a phenomenon causes it to have a more negative effect than it otherwise would. A nocebo effect causes the perception that the phenomenon will have a negative outcome to actively influence the result.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP] Mental states such as beliefs, expectations and anticipation can strongly influence the outcome of: disease; experience of pain; and even success of surgery.[SUP][2][/SUP][SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][3][/SUP] Positive expectations regarding a treatment can result in more positive outcomes and this effect is known as the placebo effect.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP] Both placebo and nocebo effects are presumably psychogenic but also produce measurable physiological changes as well as changes in the brain, the body and behavior.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP]For example, when a patient anticipates a side effect of a treatment, he/she can suffer them even if the medication provided is an inert substance.[SUP][1][/SUP] One article that reviewed 31 studies on nocebo effects reported a wide range of symptoms that could manifest as nocebo effects including nausea, stomach pains, itching, bloating, depression, sleep problems, loss of appetite, sexual dysfunction and severe hypotension.[SUP][1][/SUP]


YES! The power of suggestion is extremely strong and if the placebo/nocebo effect wasn't true, we wouldn't run clinical trials to get approval from the FDA for medications that cure major illnesses.

That being said, stress can run a person down both physically and mentally, you'd be surprised at the list of illnesses you can contract. I fully agree with you in the fact that the workaholic factor drove you, and I, into a dangerous pneumonia that was hard to get out of and took us to the brink of death because we weren't taking care of ourselves. After being on staff or being a Scientologist, even working half as hard is still way too much! My flu was left untreated too long and I just kept working and I didn't stop until I passed out. Bingo! There it was. I learned a valuable lesson, but even still, I have a problem with overworking. Overworking is also a great distraction.
 

Boson Wog Stark

Patron Meritorious
One of the nights I was there, I came back from dinner and saw that TIME magazine on the coffee table and kind of freaked out, but he said he didn't let the church dictate or censor what he wanted to look at. His opinion was that the article was bullshit anyway. I thought he had a point about censorship, so I read the article.

Well, I couldn't read it in full. It began to make me a little dizzy, the more I dug into it. It gave the EP of a lot of the points on the Bridge and I skimmed up at the highest OT levels. It said something about discovering that LRH was God. That was it, I couldn't look at it another second. The guy I was staying with caught me slamming the mag shut and throwing it back on the table, noticing that my reaction was not good and laughed a little. He tried to ease my worries. He kept telling me it was a rouse and complete bullshit. Then he suggested I maybe go down to Flag and get it all cleared up. He knew it was one of my ideas/options anyway.

There's nothing in Behar's 1991 TIME article about points on the Bridge and the EP of each. You probably just got it confused with another article where that is mentioned, and there is certainly a lot of exposure of that on the Internet.

What the Behar TIME article did so well was open with the devastating story of a college student, Noah Lottick, who jumped to his death clutching the only money he had left, having been squeezed of what he had by the Church. It was not only good at drawing the reader in, it showed how a young person's involvement with Scientology can have devastating consequences, including for family and friends of that person. Further down, it mentions that when Noah's father went to investigate what was going on after his son's death, he found Noah had left money on account at the org for courses he hadn't taken yet:

True to form, the cult even haggled with the Lotticks over $3,000 their son had paid for services he never used, insisting that Noah had intended it as a "donation."

Isn't that just like Scientology, to have the balls to do something like that?The article also mentions the story of Harriet Baker, a 73 year old widow Scientology screwed out of tens of thousands of dollars, with the promise of Scientology helping her to overcome the grief of losing her husband. She ended up losing her house because she spent so much on Scientology.

My point is that with either of these stories, many Scientologists should be able to relate to that, how they were regged of money at a certain time, or how someone they knew in Scientology was regged this way, maybe with a gang visit to the home, and therefore perhaps they might think other things in the article are true also.

I am not an ex-member so the money squeeze never happened to me. I was just lucky. I read where one member explained once how her parents made her read Miller's Barefaced Messiah, as a condition of them funding further Scientology courses. She couldn't read it. A voracious reader, and someone who really ate up Dianutty when she first stumbled into that in her teen years, she was so full of fear of the entheta, that while her eyes scanned the words on the pages, she was at the same time blocking it all out as untrue. It wasn't even reaching her mind.

With the TIME article, the few active Scientologists who read it, probably focus on a few phrases they don't like or agree with and then just blank on the rest. Scientology is good at making people do that, until they come to a point where they are totally fed up with something. Then they are ready to actually read about both sides.

Anyway, I really liked your anecdote about first seeing the TIME article on the stand though, about how you thought it was pro-Scientology and got excited seeing the volcano.

One barrier to getting your book published may be that publishers get nervous when they read stories which involve celebrities. It's okay for Leah Remini to tell anecdotes about TC because she was a celebrity herself, and as a publisher they saw enough money in her book that it makes doing all the legal clearing of material worth it for them.

I don't think they balk at the stories of people like Amy Scobee or Scientologists who were in contact with celebrities through their work.

I can sympathize with how difficult it is to write about personal things, and feel that exposure. Leah's book is so personal and self-critical, that it ends up being a major strength. She mentions why she made it that way, so it would leave no dirt for Scientology to attempt to uncover or use against her.

It's easier to write a book when you're in your 60s or more and your parents are dead, and a lot of people who knew you are dead.

One thing I thought of in your account here was how for some Scientologists, like if you are friends with celebrities or a minor celebrity yourself, it's so different when you are young, at least, being welcomed into people's houses, and sometimes they even help pay for courses.

A friend of mine came from pretty difficult circumstances financially, and she wanted to become an actress in Hollywood. After she graduated from college, she headed to Hollywood to give acting her best try. She was smart, hard working (she worked every year she was in college as a full-time student), young and beautiful. Her main job in Hollywood for years was as a waitress.

She shared a tiny house in Hollywood with an older industry (non-acting side) person who became her best friend and mentor, and after years of classes, hundreds of auditions, working as an extra, and getting minor parts here and there but never breaking in, she became a Production Assistant, which is a low paying job which involves scraping tape off the stage, picking people up from the airport or whatever.

It gave her experience though, and she worked on a hit series, took the exam to get in the Director's Training Program and was one of the few chosen. From there, she became a successful Assistant Director. She met a man in the technical side of the industry, they married, and are now happily retired.

Anyway, during that whole time living and working in Hollywood, she never once got sucked into Scientology. A friend of hers had a play produced at the Scientology CC and she went to that, but that's about it. She knew the courses got expensive the higher you got, and that it was a trap, and I think because her roommate knew so many people in the industry, and she knew some stars, she didn't feel she needed it for connections.
 

PirateAndBum

Gold Meritorious Patron
Thanks for telling your story EZ. I can relate to your experiences. Hope you find a publisher for your book.
 

Wilbur

Patron Meritorious
First of all, THANK YOU for these great responses. I very much appreciate this sort of support. I have worked literally seven years on the book and have been in an emotional roller coaster about it -- being in and out of fear (for lack of a better word) about revealing many different private things, and also writing things down that were very traumatic and having to relive them again and again during the countless edits. I crave the support, so I accept it with open arms. Thank you.

Wilbur, I do not consider you to be hijacking the thread because this is a dialog that is part of my story. When I found out there was a Xenu and BTs and all that, that would have been awaiting me on OTIII, it affected me in a profound way. I mean, I was so screwed up for so long, I didn't think I would ever feel normal again. I didn't know what "normal" was. Yet, I never lived as a Scientologist with a belief in the Xenu story. I wondered if I would have bought it after saving and paying for it. I wondered if I would have finally walked out the door. All I know was that it felt like the floor fell out from under me and it felt like my spirit/mind/person was pushing forcefully out of the top of my head and I was about to have a seizure. I even called the ER because I didn't know what was happening. It was obviously an incredible panic attack.

No, I do not think I got pneumonia because I read about Xenu. I have had pneumonia a few times in my life, but the time I had it after I left Scientology (about five years later), of course it reeled in my mind that it was punishment for reading about OTIII and maybe Hubbard was right. In my right mind though, I knew it was just residual brainwash.

I think that's fine that auditing OTIII helped you to conquer your fears and got you to move on from Scientology. I don't want to knock it. But I would never advocate others to do this in any way shape or form. I would only urge people to get, what in my opinion, is proper help in breaking down the power that Hubbard's suggestions have had on them in the first place, as his theories hold no weight and are false. He never "discovered" anything, even the things that made sense. I learned this after at least a decade of hard study on my own, so I suppose that is really the continuation to my story -- the constant reading and study I did on who he was as a researcher, what is scientifically possible, and what his resources were.

I became a realist and I never thought I would think differently -- not in a million lifetimes (ha ha ha) -- than how I used to think as a Scientologist. It doesn't mean I'm not even a tad spiritual though. I wasn't for a long time, but I know its place and know the difference between truth and belief. Belief has a lot of hope attached to it, which makes us feel better and that's just fine. I like that. It feels nice. But I also know there is no scientific truth to most of the stuff I try to believe in, and it also rubs me the wrong way that my original traditions/religion that I entered Scientology with were lifted by Hubbard in the first place (which was why I was drawn to the cult from the get go). So even my current beliefs feel suspicious to me! I can't trust. I can't settle. I question everything. But better that then being completely stripped of my critical thinking skills, allowing Hubbard's theories to be my own without questioning. I never questioned:

Are there really past lives? How do I know? How do I know I'm not imagining these incidents of earlier similars in my sessions? The auditor is always swaying me to run even the vaguest of "memories." Why haven't I ever thought about that before? How do I know that all of us are spiritual beings and have lived for trillions of years and have the potential of gods? Because "it is written?" If it's not written it isn't true. That's a pretty convenient way of making something seem true, isn't it? And what about word clearing? Having complete understanding of the materials we read doesn't make the concepts true, but it sure feels like it... and on and on. I thought about this stuff very little at ages 12, 13, and by the time I was up to my 20s.

Yes, I really get what you are saying. I also took a lot of Hubbard's stuff on trust, not really knowing whether it was true. I HOPED it was true. But at the same time, I felt robbed by Hubbard, because I thought of myself as a spiritual adventurer, and was somewhat disappointed that ALL the answers had been discovered by him already. It somehow didn't seem right just taking his word for it (which is what you are asked to do, despite the claim that 'if it isn't true for you, it isn't true'). The idea of just continually taking my next spoonful of Bridge from someone else somehow didn't sit right with me from early on. And yet I was grateful that someone had mapped out the road to total freedom. I think the uneasy feeling I had was actually a realisation that he COULDN'T have all the answers. Now, I think that what Hubbard did with the tech was similar to what Miscavige does with his events. Overwhelm you with so much stuff, repeated and re-repeated, in the hope that you don't notice the strings from behind the curtain. In Hubbard's case, he regaled us with how great a researcher he was, and all the tests and research which had (NOT) been done behind the results. In Miscavige's case, it's how many square feet of new buildings have been renovated, and how many billions of earthlings have been reached by Tom Cruise's dissemination. It was very effective on me in Hubbard's case: it's only in the last few years that I have completely stopped thinking like a Scientologist. The Miscavige approach, however, was a different story: I saw through that from the beginning. I remember during the IRS event thinking "wtf has this got to do with spiritual freedom?" I think that the razzle-dazzle of the events helped to wake me up.

Real research is time-consuming, so I couldn't see how Hubbard could have done all that in one lifetime. So you invent excuses for him (he must have been working on this for several lifetimes, and stored the results in his theta 'head'). Now I think that what he did was simply backward engineer a coherent-looking 'science' from the problems that were going around in his own life. The reason it looks so coherent when you are in, is because, like any good novel, it was written that way. I've often thought that this would be an interesting experiment to perform myself. See whether I could develop a 'science' of mind, or life, or whatever, by simply writing it as a novel. What problems do I, and people around me, have? Can I invent an explanation of where they come from? And how to solve them. Could I make it all cohere? Turn it into a religion cut from whole cloth.

There were lots of signs in the beginning that the whole thing was a con. I used to do meditation before Scientology, and one of the first things they did was persuade me to stop doing that. At the time, I couldn't understand why they would do that. I felt that an eclectic approach to spirituality was surely a good thing. But now I understand. If you want to convince someone that Scientology is the whole and only truth, then you can't have them reading books on eastern philosophy, or anything else.

I think books that narrate personal experiences with groups like Scientology are very valuable indeed. They might stop someone wasting three decades of their lives. But also, they are very therapeutic for others, like me, who got sucked into groups like Scientology. I really applaud your work on putting the book together.

W.
 

Wilbur

Patron Meritorious
There's nothing in Behar's 1991 TIME article about points on the Bridge and the EP of each. You probably just got it confused with another article where that is mentioned, and there is certainly a lot of exposure of that on the Internet.

What the Behar TIME article did so well was open with the devastating story of a college student, Noah Lottick, who jumped to his death clutching the only money he had left, having been squeezed of what he had by the Church. It was not only good at drawing the reader in, it showed how a young person's involvement with Scientology can have devastating consequences, including for family and friends of that person. Further down, it mentions that when Noah's father went to investigate what was going on after his son's death, he found Noah had left money on account at the org for courses he hadn't taken yet:

True to form, the cult even haggled with the Lotticks over $3,000 their son had paid for services he never used, insisting that Noah had intended it as a "donation."

Isn't that just like Scientology, to have the balls to do something like that?The article also mentions the story of Harriet Baker, a 73 year old widow Scientology screwed out of tens of thousands of dollars, with the promise of Scientology helping her to overcome the grief of losing her husband. She ended up losing her house because she spent so much on Scientology.

My point is that with either of these stories, many Scientologists should be able to relate to that, how they were regged of money at a certain time, or how someone they knew in Scientology was regged this way, maybe with a gang visit to the home, and therefore perhaps they might think other things in the article are true also.

I am not an ex-member so the money squeeze never happened to me. I was just lucky. I read where one member explained once how her parents made her read Miller's Barefaced Messiah, as a condition of them funding further Scientology courses. She couldn't read it. A voracious reader, and someone who really ate up Dianutty when she first stumbled into that in her teen years, she was so full of fear of the entheta, that while her eyes scanned the words on the pages, she was at the same time blocking it all out as untrue. It wasn't even reaching her mind.

With the TIME article, the few active Scientologists who read it, probably focus on a few phrases they don't like or agree with and then just blank on the rest. Scientology is good at making people do that, until they come to a point where they are totally fed up with something. Then they are ready to actually read about both sides.

Anyway, I really liked your anecdote about first seeing the TIME article on the stand though, about how you thought it was pro-Scientology and got excited seeing the volcano.

One barrier to getting your book published may be that publishers get nervous when they read stories which involve celebrities. It's okay for Leah Remini to tell anecdotes about TC because she was a celebrity herself, and as a publisher they saw enough money in her book that it makes doing all the legal clearing of material worth it for them.

I don't think they balk at the stories of people like Amy Scobee or Scientologists who were in contact with celebrities through their work.

I can sympathize with how difficult it is to write about personal things, and feel that exposure. Leah's book is so personal and self-critical, that it ends up being a major strength. She mentions why she made it that way, so it would leave no dirt for Scientology to attempt to uncover or use against her.

It's easier to write a book when you're in your 60s or more and your parents are dead, and a lot of people who knew you are dead.

One thing I thought of in your account here was how for some Scientologists, like if you are friends with celebrities or a minor celebrity yourself, it's so different when you are young, at least, being welcomed into people's houses, and sometimes they even help pay for courses.

A friend of mine came from pretty difficult circumstances financially, and she wanted to become an actress in Hollywood. After she graduated from college, she headed to Hollywood to give acting her best try. She was smart, hard working (she worked every year she was in college as a full-time student), young and beautiful. Her main job in Hollywood for years was as a waitress.

She shared a tiny house in Hollywood with an older industry (non-acting side) person who became her best friend and mentor, and after years of classes, hundreds of auditions, working as an extra, and getting minor parts here and there but never breaking in, she became a Production Assistant, which is a low paying job which involves scraping tape off the stage, picking people up from the airport or whatever.

It gave her experience though, and she worked on a hit series, took the exam to get in the Director's Training Program and was one of the few chosen. From there, she became a successful Assistant Director. She met a man in the technical side of the industry, they married, and are now happily retired.

Anyway, during that whole time living and working in Hollywood, she never once got sucked into Scientology. A friend of hers had a play produced at the Scientology CC and she went to that, but that's about it. She knew the courses got expensive the higher you got, and that it was a trap, and I think because her roommate knew so many people in the industry, and she knew some stars, she didn't feel she needed it for connections.

I totally agree with your comments about blanking stuff out. After my first brief stint in Scientology (I left after doing a comm course, and then went back a year later), I read Robert Kaufman's How I Joined Scientology and Became Superhuman. In it was a description of OTIII. I must have read it. And being super-curious about the OT levels, I must have REALLY been interested in that. And yet, I went back into Scientology, and had no recollection at all of having read anything about the contents of the OT levels. It must have just gone in one eye, and out the other. When I read Kaufman's book again after leaving Scientology for the last time, I couldn't believe that I had missed the OT III description. Suddenly I had a vague recollection of having read it before, and yet it hadn't registered. Bizarre.

W.
 

EZ Linus

Cleared Tomato
There's nothing in Behar's 1991 TIME article about points on the Bridge and the EP of each. You probably just got it confused with another article where that is mentioned, and there is certainly a lot of exposure of that on the Internet.

What the Behar TIME article did so well was open with the devastating story of a college student, Noah Lottick, who jumped to his death clutching the only money he had left, having been squeezed of what he had by the Church. It was not only good at drawing the reader in, it showed how a young person's involvement with Scientology can have devastating consequences, including for family and friends of that person. Further down, it mentions that when Noah's father went to investigate what was going on after his son's death, he found Noah had left money on account at the org for courses he hadn't taken yet:

True to form, the cult even haggled with the Lotticks over $3,000 their son had paid for services he never used, insisting that Noah had intended it as a "donation."

Isn't that just like Scientology, to have the balls to do something like that?The article also mentions the story of Harriet Baker, a 73 year old widow Scientology screwed out of tens of thousands of dollars, with the promise of Scientology helping her to overcome the grief of losing her husband. She ended up losing her house because she spent so much on Scientology.

My point is that with either of these stories, many Scientologists should be able to relate to that, how they were regged of money at a certain time, or how someone they knew in Scientology was regged this way, maybe with a gang visit to the home, and therefore perhaps they might think other things in the article are true also.

I am not an ex-member so the money squeeze never happened to me. I was just lucky. I read where one member explained once how her parents made her read Miller's Barefaced Messiah, as a condition of them funding further Scientology courses. She couldn't read it. A voracious reader, and someone who really ate up Dianutty when she first stumbled into that in her teen years, she was so full of fear of the entheta, that while her eyes scanned the words on the pages, she was at the same time blocking it all out as untrue. It wasn't even reaching her mind.

With the TIME article, the few active Scientologists who read it, probably focus on a few phrases they don't like or agree with and then just blank on the rest. Scientology is good at making people do that, until they come to a point where they are totally fed up with something. Then they are ready to actually read about both sides.

Anyway, I really liked your anecdote about first seeing the TIME article on the stand though, about how you thought it was pro-Scientology and got excited seeing the volcano.

One barrier to getting your book published may be that publishers get nervous when they read stories which involve celebrities. It's okay for Leah Remini to tell anecdotes about TC because she was a celebrity herself, and as a publisher they saw enough money in her book that it makes doing all the legal clearing of material worth it for them.

I don't think they balk at the stories of people like Amy Scobee or Scientologists who were in contact with celebrities through their work.

I can sympathize with how difficult it is to write about personal things, and feel that exposure. Leah's book is so personal and self-critical, that it ends up being a major strength. She mentions why she made it that way, so it would leave no dirt for Scientology to attempt to uncover or use against her.

It's easier to write a book when you're in your 60s or more and your parents are dead, and a lot of people who knew you are dead.

One thing I thought of in your account here was how for some Scientologists, like if you are friends with celebrities or a minor celebrity yourself, it's so different when you are young, at least, being welcomed into people's houses, and sometimes they even help pay for courses.

A friend of mine came from pretty difficult circumstances financially, and she wanted to become an actress in Hollywood. After she graduated from college, she headed to Hollywood to give acting her best try. She was smart, hard working (she worked every year she was in college as a full-time student), young and beautiful. Her main job in Hollywood for years was as a waitress.

She shared a tiny house in Hollywood with an older industry (non-acting side) person who became her best friend and mentor, and after years of classes, hundreds of auditions, working as an extra, and getting minor parts here and there but never breaking in, she became a Production Assistant, which is a low paying job which involves scraping tape off the stage, picking people up from the airport or whatever.

It gave her experience though, and she worked on a hit series, took the exam to get in the Director's Training Program and was one of the few chosen. From there, she became a successful Assistant Director. She met a man in the technical side of the industry, they married, and are now happily retired.

Anyway, during that whole time living and working in Hollywood, she never once got sucked into Scientology. A friend of hers had a play produced at the Scientology CC and she went to that, but that's about it. She knew the courses got expensive the higher you got, and that it was a trap, and I think because her roommate knew so many people in the industry, and she knew some stars, she didn't feel she needed it for connections.

You're probably right about me getting some things confused because there is a lot of confusion and amnesia that goes on, especially when you point out that we read what we want to read/see what we want to see. I remember the stories in that article; I remember the photos of each person affected and their story accompanying each, but I thought these were all lies (in the moment I read it) and I regretfully dismissed it all. Later, at some point on the bus ride from New York to Clearwater, parts of the article began creeping into my tiny brain, and by the time I got to Flag, I was getting a "handling" in regards to reading it. I don't even remember if it came up originating from me or because of a simple intro interview from arriving there, or a sec check, or what. I do seem to remember I was afraid that at the end of the bridge I would find out this horrible news that Hubbard was supposed to be God.

In any case, I appreciate your input about the slimmer chances of my book being published, and the comparisons to Leah's book. Of course, I am not at all revealing everything that's in my book here on the forum, nor is my book all "about Scientology." It's nothing like Leah's book and does not try to be either. We've had completely different lives. I've survived different things: childhood sexual and mental abuses, etc., and I've been working on this book for seven years. It's about only a 40-year span of my life, half of which I spent as a Scientologist. I find it interesting that you'd think that it's more difficult to write because of my age (not yet being 60+). And both of my parents are dead by the way. I haven't chatted endlessly about what else the book is about because it's not exactly relevant to the forum or Scientology, except that it was really no wonder I needed structure and survival skills at the time it was introduced to me. I was highly neglected and was being abused at home.

I purposely do not name the celebrities I knew (I only humorously infer). Two that I was particularly close to are not celebrities. They are just VIPs in the cult. And never do I use a last name. My book has also been rewritten several times and the first version already piqued interest at three different agencies. Also, there isn't anyone more self-debasing than I am. I don't think it's possible. Maybe Leah is funnier than I am, but she also had a professional ghost writer that was able to capture her voice, whereas I am writing this thing myself. If I don't get a major publisher, I am publishing it myself, hence the reason behind all the professional editors.

Anyhow, thanks for your feedback, I really relate to the way many of us pulled the wool over our own eyes. It really tells the story of how firm of a grip the cult had on our minds and how willing we were to see only what we wanted. The whole money thing was always so way beyond my mind. Any large amount of money was, so it didn't make a difference to me if it was $1000 or $100,000. I came from nothing and I didn't think I'd be able to come up with any of it for OT levels. I also had weird views on money that I was constantly being sent to Ethics for, otherwise, I was a very "good" Scientologist. The Ethics Officers at AOLA were just getting sick of my goals/purposes and priority issues. And now I've said too much again.
 
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