yessss
I agree
I was on the key to life course for like two years..
when i began there were some ttc'ers in red long sleeved button up shirts like those that the staff on Asho day wore but instead of light blue were red and a couple of people from 'the ranch' whatever that was.
I was really shy...
eventually everyone cleared out or stopped coming ... maybe they just finished quicker than I did..
I liked it ...
I have the books still ... in Los Angeles
I think if i have kids someday I would read from the ktl books to them.
the way I did the ktl was :
take a walk picture book, a book that illustrates two people taking a walk .. labeled 1A and 1b... then write a success story about having taken the walk.
Then it was important to know that if we ever felt groggy or confused we could and should take a walk which we rarely did... thanks to stats... or amnesia.
the checklist was something like 1a 1b 2a 2b 3a 3b 4a 5a 6a 6b 6c up until 12 a or b or c
2a was claytable processing part one
2b claytable processing part 2 or the second claytable process... the end phenomenon of the first one was something like "I am" or something similar the course supervisor or CS would accept any variation of that kind of cognition.
6c was the 60 small common words... which were read back and forth...between us...
7a was another smalll book i think ... or maybe an excercise
9a was the grammar book and it would have been great if it weren't for the fking method 9 style word clearing more on that later
by the time i was done with the grammar part i was scared to death because of the oustanding sum of money and invoices that i accumulated from review sessions.
as you can see i don't use capitalization or periods much hehe ... this is just a habit which i formed in 2nd grade
10a 10b 10c 11a 11b were those small books that were posted earlier and they were incredibly confusing .. the whole conceptual idea or concepts which are devoid of words or meanings or symbols or something was like regressing to a preenlightened state... like we had just spent years associating words to thoughts and here at the end which was supposed to be the cherry on top it was like disassociation , i had to method nine this but i was so slow , i was getting slower by the day. my twins had surpassed me. We then method 9d the factors .. my mind had been grinding down to a halt.. it was kinda strange..
the last booklet was like a page long and said , congratulations you finished.
in the end I got like a 95-100 percent score on the final exam which after the course I was supposed to take but didn't know about it.
Some one there wouldn't believe that I had gotten a perfect score... and said that very few people had gotten that in the past decade or so...
i just realized my twin and I method nine'd the entire grammar tome. all the while I was mostly just worried about the all the money that my parents would have to pay from the review sessions. Method 9 is terrifying ... I guess that's why it's the last method. I haven't done method one but I assume it is equally scary.
I h8 method 9
here is my version of it as explained to non scientologists, because I said I had been scammed and they demanded a story.
Yes , and oh it's a long story... so basically there are a variety of study courses in Scn and there was a course called the 'key to life course' in which I had expressed interest , my parents being avid Scientologists enrolled me. I recieved the KTL as a Christmas present from my stepfather.
The initial price was about two thousand dollars (not sure about this because my stepfather had purchased it with staff hours or something like that, he had been staff and instead of pay they had given him credit to buy courses or whatever) and there is no time limit for the amount of time you could spend on the course , so it's like buying a soda and having free refills ... so to speak. I mean the supervisor has quotas and whatever.
Anyway the course is comprised of a course room, a course supervisor and the students (also a Case Supervisor who is in charge of checking peoples folders , but the CS never visits the classroom/courseroom ; a folder is like a file made when a person receives auditing and auditing is like an awkward conversation involving an E-meter which is kind of like a lie detector machine but supposedly it is more nuanced and advanced ).
Included were a couple of tomes one of which is like a dictionary for the 60 small common english words (to, the , of , and, be, by, at, and so on) and their derivations or etymologies each of these words have like thirty definitions and the theory was that if you knew the definitions of all the most common words in English , studying and reading would be a lot easier. The other tome was a book about grammar (parts of speech , parts of a sentence, clauses, prepositions, articles, conjugations and other things) mind you the font was big so although the books weighed a lot it wasn't fine print, otherwise I might have spent many more years on it.
Anyway on the course I was assigned a twin, which is like a study partner as most people are because the courses are designed that way, unlike college which is mostly lecture. Scientology is different from some other religions if it can be called that, in that it is an everyday ordeal or all day or whenever you can make it whilst christianity is a once a week sort of thing...
So everyday we sat across from each other and took turns reading paragraphs. If while reading, someone 'stumbled' or made a mistake / skipped a word or yawned then the other person would ask if there were some word that wasn't fully understood. This particular method of study was called "method 9" which is similar to method 7 but more strict, in method nine if a word was 'cleared' all the definitions of it would be read aloud (one at a time) and after each one the person clearing the word would also make sentences up with the word in question being used with that particular definition in mind until they 'felt more confident' about it' or something like that.
If there were a word within the definitions which was new to the student or didn't make sense to him or her, the student would pause and bookmark the dictionary and begin a word chain, as you can imagine these word chains could be very long , and many words are homonyms or homographs.
A lot of times I might stumble or stutter or whatever and my twin would stop me and ask if I there were a word of symbol I didn't fully understand and I would say no .. and she would ask me to keep looking and there wasn't one ... so eventually I would choose a word cause she was arrogant... these fanatics man... I swear...... just so it would move along but it was unnecessary
The problem with m9 is that a word chain had to be done by the end of the day or before going to the examiner in order to avoid being red tagged or whatever. And with method9, all definitions of all wordchains had to be cleared, so... often we couldn't take our time with it and just relax, leave it for another day ... because in the end it was just superstition ... the whole fleeting floating needle thing .. like if your needle didn't float it wouldn't make much of a difference... like it may have floated whilst walking out of the course room , up the stairs, down the hall on the way to the examiner, like floating needles supposedly indicate charge blowing or blown which in theory can be attained by taking a walk (one of the 'better' scn processes ----lrh)
I am certain that these things happen all by themselves (floating needles, theta bops, rockslams etc) naturally and when they need to it's likely a result of some normal bodily functions, changes in the endocrine system, thought patterns or whatever. I doubt anyone can truly whittle down the vast complexities of the mind or the brain of a multi-cellular organism to the 2 dimentional movements of a black stick on an axis.
But yeah they were all acting like it was the end of the world or something ... just like recruiters acting like not joining the sea org was certainly the demise of our planet and would contribute to the approaching nuclear holocaust. but it was just another day and nothing was going to happen ..
being in scn at times was kind of like being in a hurry going nowhere.
So this part of the course was good and interesting and it was beneficial because there was someone sitting across from you to talk to and who would help you and vise versa.
This was a good experience but could have done away with the rigid strictness of the 'method 9' method of study. Many more walks outdoors would have been satisfactory.
Anyway at the end of each course session which was about two and a half or five or more hours , depending on how many course periods you chose to stay for the day, one was required to visit 'the examiner' who was usually some lady who sat behind a desk with an emeter on it. The student was told to hold onto two electrodes attached to the meter which would let a small electrical current pass through their body , and the 'needle' would register on the dial depending on god knows what.
Anyway if the needle didn't 'float' (a certain movement called a floating needle); the student would be 'red tagged' which is to say a red tag would be paper clipped to their 'folder or file. (it's bad ,kind of like in soccer) Being red tagged meant they would have to go into review session (auditing) right away which was rather expensive like three hundred and fifty dollars an hour or so... until the problem (? ) was found ... it was a scam. Anyway , I didn't usually have a 'floating needle' at the end of each day there. Supposedly a floating needle was an indicator of joy or something like that. So I went into review a lot and it was heartbreaking because auditing is like an interview gone very wrong , repetitive questions and the 'auditor' is trained to understand or interpret the movements of the e'meters needle and write notes all the while but it just wasn't very natural, sort of awkward ... and costly. A lot of times it seems like they trust the machine more than the person in front of them. So I accrued like 14,000 u.s. dollars in debt. They, after some time figured that I would never end up paying for it and so they offered to lower it to 8k. Like I could have just left the debt with them as a 'freeloader debt' perhaps with the consequence of not being able to take further courses or auditing until the debt was paid.
So all in all , Yes the small common words were brilliant... the grammar book was good... M9 could be chucked into the nearest infernal abyss and destroyed. I didn't like the stuff near the end , the religious nonsense..
Taking walks is very healthy for both heart and mind and soul (hippocrates) and was it hemmingway , or some author who said that for every hour of wrtiting, four hours of walking..
If anything, the most value I got from this was being able to have a twin sit across from me. Just because .... Studying alone can be very good but it can be beneficial to have a someone to chat with about things ... like a soul link ...
Because studying alone can be kinda boring..
My parents have been scientologists for decades and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (not too sure of the details) but I know that they got a second mortgage on their house in order to buy courses and auditing... my story is just one of many of those who were a part of this. If you want to know more you can find information here
http://www.forum.exscn.net
oh yeah and if anyone would like to explain the different methods , that would be cool
i know m1 is metered word clearing
m2 .. ?
m3.. ?
m4 .. also metered wc?
m5...?
m6 ... i almost remember this
m7 casual word clearing for fun, super chill no rush, lots of slack, let things slide, only read and the appropriate definition.. minimal amount of sentences or examples.
m8..?
m9... read without stumbling, if not ,clear all definitions of words , if you can't find a word you don't understand just pick one randomly, clear all definitions of misunderstood words within definitions , derivations, 'what does it mean to you in your own words' make examples , keep worksheets, like being in session... visit examiner afterwards.