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Benefiting from the Scn. experience

jerryf25

Patron
Scn. helped me get over my naïve attitude toward the US federal government. I partly justified joining Scn. in the 1970s by thinking the government would not allow a con game to operate in broad daylight.

Scn. helped me to face the question of why we have evil on earth (however you want to define evil).

Scientology cured me of being a naïve joiner of religious groups or social movements.

Scientology helped me to have a more discerning viewpoint toward leaders.

I made a list of the Scn concepts that I still considered useful to me outside the cult. The list came to one full page: ARC, some of the ethics formulas, some word clearing, etc.

There is a temptation to stay cynical and bitter. Not just from the Scn. experience, but from other events being publicized. We are given many reasons not to feel love or gratitude.

Two ideas that helped me get past the cynicism and bitterness:

The concept of the dark side as a stimulus or catalyst for learning and personal growth.

Finding things to be grateful for every day.
 

tarbaby

Patron with Honors
A very useful post, jerry

Scn. helped me get over my naïve attitude toward the US federal government. I partly justified joining Scn. in the 1970s by thinking the government would not allow a con game to operate in broad daylight.

The government is part con-game, too.

Scn. helped me to face the question of why we have evil on earth (however you want to define evil).

In the Taoist sense, without dark there can be no light.

Scientology cured me of being a naïve joiner of religious groups or social movements.

I used to pride myself on being alienated, so I joined a group that felt similarly aberrant, and fit right in.

Scientology helped me to have a more discerning viewpoint toward leaders.

The less charisma the better.

I made a list of the Scn concepts that I still considered useful to me outside the cult. The list came to one full page: ARC, some of the ethics formulas, some word clearing, etc.

The stopped clock.

There is a temptation to stay cynical and bitter. Not just from the Scn. experience, but from other events being publicized. We are given many reasons not to feel love or gratitude.

Right.

Two ideas that helped me get past the cynicism and bitterness:

The concept of the dark side as a stimulus or catalyst for learning and personal growth.

The Ouch Factor.

Finding things to be grateful for every day.

This one for sure.

Dennis
 

programmer_guy

True Ex-Scientologist
jerryf25 said:
Scientology helped me to have a more discerning viewpoint toward leaders.

I applied my turning away from Scientology to other things in life also. This was a lesson learned.

jerryf25 said:
I made a list of the Scn concepts that I still considered useful to me outside the cult.

I never made a list of these items. There are only a few for me - wouldn't fill a page.

jerryf25 said:
There is a temptation to stay cynical and bitter.

I am not bitter. It was a lesson I needed to learn at that time in my life.

jerryf25 said:
The concept of the dark side as a stimulus or catalyst for learning and personal growth.

I would rather say that I just learn from my mistakes. :)
 
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jerryf25

Patron
Beliefs to replace or supplement faith in Scn

Arnie Lerma once made a statement about Scn to me by e-mail:

“I feel strongly that everything that appeared good in scientology is available elsewhere, in an unadulterated form.”

Some of the people posting on this message board have embraced Christianity after leaving Scn. Christianity is a religion that believes in the power of love. I don’t know of any actions by Hubbard that were motivated by love or compassion.

A guiding philosophy that I adopted after leaving the CofS was to selectively choose and use concepts from many different sources, including philosophies, religions, self-improvement books, and business management books; trying out whatever appealed to me; modifying whenever appropriate, feeling free to ignore whatever doesn’t resonate with me - learning to access and listen to personal intuition.

To a limited extent, I was doing that before becoming involved with Scn. For some reason I abandoned that direction, accepting Scn. with barely any questioning or selectivity. Hubbard had the ability to suspend people’s rationality.

Some of the post-CofS sources of information and guidance that I have benefited from have been books containing channeled messages:

Seth books by Jane Roberts
Bringers of the Dawn by Barbara Marciniak
Law of One, channeled by Don Elkins, Carla Rueckert and Jim McCarty and Carla’s follow-up book, Wanderer’s Handbook

Books by and about Robert Monroe (out of body traveler) made a strong impression on me.

There is a lot of info in the Independent Field category of this message board for me to study and learn from. Thanks, Alan, and everyone who has shared their insights and experiences, and thanks, Emma, for setting up the message board.

Truth – Love – Simplicity – Service
(attributed to Babaji, a teacher of Leonard Orr and Sondra Ray)
 
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Alan

Gold Meritorious Patron
Arnie Lerma once made a statement about Scn to me by e-mail:

?I feel strongly that everything that appeared good in scientology is available elsewhere, in an unadulterated form.?

Some of the people posting on this message board have embraced Christianity after leaving Scn. Christianity is a religion that believes in the power of love. I don?t know of any actions by Hubbard that were motivated by love or compassion.

A guiding philosophy that I adopted after leaving the CofS was to selectively choose and use concepts from many different sources, including philosophies, religions, self-improvement books, and business management books; trying out whatever appealed to me; modifying whenever appropriate, feeling free to ignore whatever doesn?t resonate with me - learning to access and listen to personal intuition.

To a limited extent, I was doing that before becoming involved with Scn. For some reason I abandoned that direction, accepting Scn. with barely any questioning or selectivity. Hubbard had the ability to suspend people?s rationality.

Some of the post-CofS sources of information and guidance that I have benefited from have been books containing channeled messages:

Seth books by Jane Roberts
Bringers of the Dawn by Barbara Marciniak
Law of One, channeled by Don Elkins, Carla Rueckert and Jim McCarty and Carla?s follow-up book, Wanderer?s Handbook

There is a lot of info in the Independent Field category of this message board for me to study and learn from. Thanks, Alan, and everyone who has shared their insights and experiences, and thanks, Emma, for setting up the message board.


Truth ? Love ? Simplicity ? Service
(attributed to Babaji, a teacher of Leonard Orr and Sondra Ray)

Mick Wenlock also gave a great quote:

It took me a long time to come to some sort of conclusion about Scientology and I paraphrase some famous writer in order to do it.

"Scientology is both good and original. Unfortunately the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good."

Once I could get past any dependency on Hubbard I could separate what worked and what did not.

I always remember when Keeping Scientology Working came out and he stated: "We have the correct Technology." I thought "my god" you got to be kidding!

Nothing was further from the truth.

After the "schism" in 1982, there was a concerted effort to trace where much of the Tech had truly originated from, or earlier discoverers of the same or similar concepts.

It was eye opening.

For me it allowed me to include more and more belief systems and sources.

Today there are very few religions or philosophies I cannot include. So much so that I have as my personal clients, 2 Bishops (both very close to the top of their Christian Orders), 1 Monk (Head of one of the largest Buddhist monastries in the world), 3 NYT best selling authors.

Quite an eclectic group, I learn much from each of them - as they do from me.

The fact is the basics work for almost all sections of life if they are not applied with a secret agenda.

Each of the above clients routinely get the 17 manifestations of F/N.

Alan
 
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barky

Patron with Honors
I know one thing I've "gained" from Scn is a better understanding of poverty and financial responsibility.

I know so many people who were impoverished by the org, giving up well paid jobs to join staff, and thereafter reduced to living in near squalor. I know people who will undoubtedly spend their ending years on the public dole in various "60 Minutes"-type nursing homes or something.

Scn sent me into my own spider-hole of debt. I spent at least $30K on Scn in some shape or form, digging myself out of that debt was a tremendous challenge. That whole experience taught me (the hard way) that wasting money on farfle is a terrible life-choice. I've been back on my financial feet for some time now and like it that way, and am careful about my spending. Most of consumerism-driven America isn't like that at all ...

I can also sniff out a scam from a mile away, and know bad leadership when I see it. I also don't take horsesh*t from anyone, regardless of how far up the food chain they are. No one has the right to treat people like trash.

I also mistrust religion in all forms. I consider that a good thing.
 

jerryf25

Patron
Listing process re LRH

In the 1980s I thought up and ran a listing process on myself regarding LRH. Then today I read about a process at Alan’s website that is very similar.

What I did was this. I made a list of as many of Hubbard’s out-ethics actions as I could think of. Then I asked myself, “Have you ever done anything like that?” for each item. It lightened up my mood quite a bit. :)

A very similar process is in the Jan. 2005 newsletter at the Knowledgism website: http://www.knowledgism.com/main.asp

from Adam’s Wins and Realizations (p. 7):

We wrote a list of all the people who annoy us and why. My list was a mile long. Then we asked the question “when have I done this?”
 

The Oracle

Gold Meritorious Patron
I guess I was really needy and not in a good condition when I was introduced to Scientology (at 16).

I made lots of great friends who were very supporatative.

I was actually quite antagonistic to Scientology before I went in, but I agreed to do the HQS in exchange for something I needed from someone (another story).

I thought they were all a bunch of kooks and I could wing my way thrugh the course in two weeks and get the hell out of Dodge. Furthermore I hated hippies and they all looked like hippies to me.

This was the early 70's, in New York, and no one there was using anything connected to "justice" by the way.

I pretended to read the stuff on the checksheet and checked it off, I didn't even read it.

Then I got sat down to do tr's.

Then I went exterior on ottro.

Really, way out, three feet in back of my head.

I jumped up out my chair like a rocket ship going off.

I got sent to the examiner.

My first origination was, "I feel like I just shot a great bag of dope".

My motives for continueing changed at that point, although perhaps still a little murkey.

I figuered if I could feel that great all the time I wouldn't need money for heroin anymore. And that in itself could delete a lot of madness in my life.

And that was my reason for continuing.

Auditing was very reasonable then, I got through clear over the next five years, by the time I was 21, for about 6400.00. And that was a lot of hours including the drug rundown.

The clear experience put me into a whole other galaxy, and I still hadn't read the Dianetics book.

I can't very well explain the rest of my time while I was officially on lines.

All of my auditing was great, I didn't know why some people weren't having a good time.

I stayed very uninvolved with the Org for the most part, had all my usual friends that were not into Scientology and just went into the Orgs for service except for a few contracts I signed, worked for while, a few months, and said I was bored and wanted to leave or had something else I had to go do.

It was never a problem, even in the Sea Org.

I don't know why I never had a problem, except I was never anyone very important.

I really liked the PEOPLE in the Orgs and missions, and later, at the base.

I liked the company of Scientologists, and they liked me too and I had many friends all the while.

Things were really easy going in New York City and after all, they all knew me from when I was kid and they were all proud I'd made something of myself.

People like me were the reason people like them were on staff, because they really saw the Scientology make a difference in my life.

Then things got a bit more serious when I became Flag public.

I didn't like going to Flag at all and I felt so sorry for the staff I couldn't enjoy my service.

Funny, I wasn't able to move up the bridge there either, just round and round in the case cracking unit year after year.

(seven hours of ot preps in the FZ and I was onto ot1).

Also the big purge had come before I started at Flag and my place had become the place escaped staff landed because I didn't care about what "justice" actions might occurr to me from Sea Org staff, I was WAY too woggy for them to deal with.

For some wierd reason they always looked at me like an outsider, someone who wasn't with the program or someone who wouldn't understand.

Even when I was on staff there later!

A guy yelled at me once and I slapped him, he just walked away.

A lady grilled me once with my PC folders on her desk after a sec check.

I just thought, "She is kind of fucked up".

When I saw people doing bad things to other people I said, "This is kind of fucked up".

So I left.

I walked out the front door.

Paid off my debt.

I didn't get any benefits from the Sea Org like auditing or training or any Scientology service.

In fact, i used seven years of my life, did a LOT for them, and got handed a debt.

But I had other benefits.

I figured when I went in they would be able isolate my 3d insanity and my face would get rubbed into it and I would be able to confront it and handle it.

It did a hell of a lot for my morale to find out I wasn't the crazy one.

In fact, I had NO idea how sane, competent, stable and aware I was until I spent six years in that place.

It was the best process I ever ran in Scientology.

I went in suspecting I was a DB and left feeling like a God.

The red carpet rolled right out in front of me.

The illusions and worship was over.

I had to deal with some recovery missionaires, and some survivors guilt, but that wasn't a big deal.

Over the years I had to shed some of my allegience to the ideas of not granting others beingness or rightness if they differed from me, but I got over that too.

I only made one enemy in the Sea Org.

All the other people were very good friends.

I loved them.

I won all the way on that cycle.

I consider myself very lucky to have spent company with those people, that was a huge benefit.

I met some amazing people there, and that really bought up my ARC for the world.

I decided to forget about it then and went off for ten years to do other things.

And I did things I never thought I could do before the Sea Org.

I might have never looked back on what I saw a sinking ship, if 9/11 hadn't occurred.

I would have gone back into thje Org for my ot levels, but there wasn't an org near me.

That's how I got in the FZ.

Getting through ot3 in the FZ can have it's ups and downs.

I managed to do it all right, get the ot preps, have highly trained people in front of me for as long as they could wear a hat and get me through something.

I woke up one day after auditing on ot3 for some time, and I was driving somewhere, and it hit me out of the blue that for the first time in my life I had full certainty that I was sane.

So, I consider my benefits to be priceless.

And I want to thank all of you here who worked and sacrificed in whatever way you did to make that possible for me.

:pixiedust:


T.I.
 

RolandRB

Rest in Peace
Scn. helped me get over my naïve attitude toward the US federal government. I partly justified joining Scn. in the 1970s by thinking the government would not allow a con game to operate in broad daylight.

Scn. helped me to face the question of why we have evil on earth (however you want to define evil).

Scientology cured me of being a naïve joiner of religious groups or social movements.

Scientology helped me to have a more discerning viewpoint toward leaders.

I made a list of the Scn concepts that I still considered useful to me outside the cult. The list came to one full page: ARC, some of the ethics formulas, some word clearing, etc.

There is a temptation to stay cynical and bitter. Not just from the Scn. experience, but from other events being publicized. We are given many reasons not to feel love or gratitude.

Two ideas that helped me get past the cynicism and bitterness:

The concept of the dark side as a stimulus or catalyst for learning and personal growth.

Finding things to be grateful for every day.

It makes me laugh the way people say they have benefitted from being fucked over by Scientology. Just what a Success Story would they had written if they had been raped as well (which they were in effect)?

They are just trying to rationalize their own stupidity.
 

The Oracle

Gold Meritorious Patron
Every man has a right, the right of self preservation, to fulfill himself to the utmost.

Men of "criminal nature" are simply at issue with their true Wills. The murderer has the Will to Live; and his will to murder is a false will at variance with his true Will, since he risks death at the hands of Society by obeying his criminal impulse.

(Illustration: A function imperfectly performed injures, not only itself, but everything associated with it. If the heart is afraid to beat for fear of disturbing the liver, the liver is starved for blood and avenges itself on the heart by upsetting digestion, which disorders respiration, on which cardiac welfare depends.)
 

The Oracle

Gold Meritorious Patron
One aspect of the entire Scientology Arena, that frightens me, is the people who attack the people still exercising their rights to practice the philosophy.

When people to swing to this suspicion and fear about it all and begin to attack it.

This smacks of witch burnings and Spanish Inquisition type of madness.

The world is a shopping mall, what is important, in this country, is that people have the right to shop.

And people have the right of choice.

It's interesting that Solomon thought of magic as high art whereas one of the chief reasons given for requiring the Romans to crucify Christ was that he was a magician!

Rights are concepts. Like the Tibetans (and Christ and countless others) found out, if you can't back them up they might not exist.

And as soon as one embarks on a mission to take away other peoples rights, there is on the landscape, a sense of all "the past" leading to nowhere through time.
 

Alanzo

Bardo Tulpa
What I gained from Scientology:

I gained the ability to eat cheese & crackers from the gas station across the street and call it lunch.

I gained an understanding of the importance of following someone else's goals in life.

I gained the ability to retain my TOTAL CERTAINTY in the face of overwhelming evidence against it.

I gained the ability to hold my position in space while cow-towing to a screaming senior, without ever getting angry, or crying, or even letting it bother me.

I gained the ability to doubt my own thoughts and feelings as coming from my reactive mind.

I gained the ability to ignore financial ruin, and believe that I was an OT.

I gained the ability to jump to conclusions, based on fixed and pre-set ideas that I already believed.

I gained the ability to take a walk in a park on a beautiful day, and see a degraded prison planet all around me.

I gained the ability to work for free.

Scientology is truly making the Able more Able.
 
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