That's a good post, Sheila. Thank you for it. I recognize your arguments and their validity.
Thank you.
Sad but true, the term "standard tech", which originally meant something like "that which work and produces good results", progressively got changed into "a robotic sameness applied by all". And yes, this does to a great extent negate the validity of the individual. It's why I would never join the Sea Org, why I would not be a particle for them to shunt around, and why I got booted out in the end.
Bold is mine. This is where we disagree - will discuss at a later time.
That you recognized this early on and didn't join the SO and eventually became a thorn to COS for your individuality is very cool, though. Thanks.
I recall a preclear I took on who was totally bogged and on whom no one could get any results. I took her on on the agreement with the C/S that I would get no cramming orders until I had gotten her flying and doing well. I threw the correction lists out and audited her on actual processes and audited her purely by observation of the indicators on her face. It took me two sessions and she was laughing and enjoying life again.
many of the so-called "remedies" that were introduced into the tech were just plain lousy substitutes for the auditor paying attention to what the preclear was saying, or was being prevented from saying. Hundreds of cases were buggered up by this. I don't think I have used a single correction list in the past twenty years or more of auditing. I refuse to. That would never go down in the Orgs.
So I share your feelings in many regards.
Be well.
I really like this part, where you went on your own and just listened and paid attention. That the C/S allowed this at the time and that you personally mention her 'enjoying life again,' which is not a stated EP for any scn process I know, is even better, because it sounds like it was her personal goal.
Years ago when I was in college and saw the college psychologist to discuss my experiences in scn, he began the counseling by asking me what my personal reasons were for being there and what were my goals. It took me by surprise and put quite a grin on my face.
'I'm getting real counseling,' I thought, 'finally, someone cares about
my goals.' In nine years in scn, I'm sure I wasn't ever asked that. Not once. The C/Ses had a goal of patching me for post, or to get me up 'the Bridge' or to complete a sec check or rundown required by all staff. It was about becoming a better tool for the group, lots of auditing on trivial stupid things that didn't bother me in the least (like the COS' perverted obsession with the details of everyone's intimate sexual experiences that Strati mentioned.)
When you were going off on minute details of the clearing course, I found it annoying. Down, down down the rabbit hole of trivial details of Hubbard's personal ideas that are just another distraction and another meaningless mental masturbation. Of course you take it seriously or you wouldn't have written that, but scn is full of those rabbit holes and distractions. It's like the more detail you add, the more important it all sounds, but it's just another meaningless loop of meaningless jargon from a sci-fi writer, since Scientology has never produced a single clear or OT.
Training others into Hubbard's concept of the mind paradigm is molding. This is the essence of the paradox of scientology - the molding itself limits or prevents any genuine individual gains by suppressing the individuality of the person in front of you and forcing them to think through and with those concepts rather than addressing things purely with and through their own hearts, minds and concepts to fully regain their sense of true self.
Besides all the organizational and technical controls, this molding affects every individual session. As Lotus mentioned, it is why scientologists have to continually remind themselves and rehab their 'wins' to and with each other, because those wins cannot last while filtered and limited through another's concepts, vision and expectations. Perceived with all these limitations and definitions, those wins are like water evaporating in the heat of the day, rather than a rainshower of a person's own making that becomes self-sustaining, self-healing because a person becomes aligned and balanced with his personal goals, life and concepts of the spiritual.
You and others speak of spiritual gains. Spirits don't think in language, do they? Spirits don't have predefined, standard 'EP's, do they? Spirits don't all voice one, single, cookie-cutter phrase to determine their particular individual win, do they? Individuals don't all state the same thing other individuals state, not if you are truly auditing or counseling a person as an individual instead of a cog in a machine. So any process with instructions that a pc or preOT is done when they voice a certain thing may not be a process designed to help an individual at all, but rather one to get him or her to obtain one more controlling chain to become just another cookie cutter KSW following, brainwashed loyal scientologist, i.e., the clear cog: 'I no longer have a reactive mind.' Shit, never had one to begin with, never heard of one before, either. All Hubbard's sci-fi imaginings.
The really huge, monstrous wins one might imagine in scn were defeated before they could ever got off the ground.
That this affected every individual session I ever got in scn was a new, recent revelation for me.
Scientology draws its power from individuals by redirecting the energy away from their personal goals and away from individuality while at the same time appearing to (and sometimes actually) addressing these. It's a box, a mental trap, limiting individuality during every single session.
I have a newly developed love and respect for those who have squirreled it so well that they've actually managed to help me and others 'run out the scientology implant' and once again acknowledge and celebrate our individuality. My use of the word implant is not the same as yours, obviously. Implant to me is believing you are doing something good for yourself and making gains toward full individuality and personal goals when all around you is a box that would never allow those full gains to be obtained. Scientology is about being a piece of a group, a cluster. Breaking away from that as a full individual is not allowed, the group and scientologists rage against it. It is, in short, an implant. One that Hubbard himself said we would all need to run out some day.
