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Must Read - Paul Haggis: the Scientology experience

AnonyMary

Formerly Fooled - Finally Free
Wow! Just Wow! A must read Bunker article for all, IMHO

‘Going Clear': Paul Haggis pens a description of the Scientology experience you won’t forget
March 24, 2015
We asked Haggis to take part in our countdown this week to the movie’s airing, and he really surprised us by sending the following, one of the best expressions of the Scientology experience we’ve ever read. If this doesn’t get you warmed up for Sunday night’s documentary, we don’t know what will.

At the outset, Paul refers to the smears that Scientology has been spreading about him since he was first profiled by Wright, but more so in the last few weeks. Scientology calls Paul the “Hypocrite of Hollywood” and accuses him of never really being a Scientologist at all. Well, here’s what Haggis himself has to say about that, and a lot more. [..]
Read on: http://tonyortega.org/2015/03/24/go...f-the-scientology-experience-you-wont-forget/

My opinion on it:

I am forever grateful for the few exes who manage to express the whole of Scientology and it's complicated and damaging effects in such succinct and powerful statements. Paul is one of the rare, humble and wise birds able to convey the truth in it's simplicity. He's right up there with Jeff Hawkins, Jon Atack, Chris Shelton and Margery Wakefield - all of whom have helped so many with understanding the bigger picture. In explaining his own experiences, Haggis' encapsulates the core issues a scientologist contends with and provides a clear picture of why the prison of belief is what it is. Much appreciated.

What's yours?
 

bromo

Patron with Honors
Mary, I did my normal morning routine, wake up, go to the bunker, but right there my routine was stopped. Normally I glance at the headline and go start the coffee pot. This morning I read it all and when finished, I realized I was emotionally touched by what Paul Haggis had written. He definitely has a gift, and this morning's read at the Bunker was positive proof. You know what else I thought of as I read it? Blanky. He/she immediately came to mind and I thought if only a crack of light can get in for his/her spouse. I genuinely think it is one of the most thoughtful and meaningful written pieces I have ever read on being a scion.
 

Leland

Crusader
WoW......not "deferential enough." Boy that says it. That captures the head trip these execs and celeb Cult of Hubbard jack asses are living and try to run on others....
 

Intentionally Blank

Scientology Widow
Mary, I did my normal morning routine, wake up, go to the bunker, but right there my routine was stopped. Normally I glance at the headline and go start the coffee pot. This morning I read it all and when finished, I realized I was emotionally touched by what Paul Haggis had written. He definitely has a gift, and this morning's read at the Bunker was positive proof. You know what else I thought of as I read it? Blanky. He/she immediately came to mind and I thought if only a crack of light can get in for his/her spouse. I genuinely think it is one of the most thoughtful and meaningful written pieces I have ever read on being a scion.


Wow. I am humbled and grateful for your thoughts. Thank you. I agree - it is one of the ..... calmest.... and most compassionate pieces I've read. This particularly expresses what I've believed in my heart of hearts for a very long time:

I believe this is because somewhere in the back of their heads they know, as I did, that the very act of questioning could bring down their entire belief system. They have been slowly but surely trained to believe that if you don’t agree with something that LRH wrote, you just don’t understand it. Questioning anything means questioning everything. Even the slightest crack in that belief system could spread into a fissure. They cannot afford or allow the smallest doubt, because if it took root, their perfect world — a world where there is an answer to every one of life’s questions — could fall apart around them, and they would be left, like the rest of us, searching in the dark for their own answers in an uncertain world. Which brings to mind something a true genius wrote: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” For the sake of my former friends, many of whom I loved, I hope that Going Clear is the first crack, that they will watch it, and the light will slip in.

Blanky
 

Hatshepsut

Crusader
They cannot afford or allow the smallest doubt, because if it took root, their perfect world — a world where there is an answer to every one of life’s questions — could fall apart around them, and they would be left, like the rest of us, searching in the dark for their own answers in an uncertain world. Which brings to mind something a true genius wrote: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” For the sake of my former friends, many of whom I loved, I hope that Going Clear is the first crack, that they will watch it, and the light will slip in.

— Paul Haggis

I liked the above part from one of my fav artists ...Leonard Cohen

L.Cohen - Anthem (ring the bells that still can ring): https://youtu.be/XELw3dKK_Ig
Leonard Cohen - Anthem: https://youtu.be/5ma5tF6TJpA
THIS version is particularly beautiful....I get chills

Celebrity Center

Inside the Scientology Celebrity Centre: An Ex-Parishoner Reveals All: https://youtu.be/LfKqOUMrCw8
 
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I told you I was trouble

Suspended animation


Apparently Paul Haggis wasn't [STRIKE]low toned/[/STRIKE][STRIKE]didn't propitiate[/STRIKE] "deferential" enough for the dwarf?

Too funny.

What a beautifully written piece.

:yes:
 

Udarnik

Gold Meritorious Patron
Wow. I am humbled and grateful for your thoughts. Thank you. I agree - it is one of the ..... calmest.... and most compassionate pieces I've read. This particularly expresses what I've believed in my heart of hearts for a very long time:

I believe this is because somewhere in the back of their heads they know, as I did, that the very act of questioning could bring down their entire belief system. They have been slowly but surely trained to believe that if you don’t agree with something that LRH wrote, you just don’t understand it. Questioning anything means questioning everything. Even the slightest crack in that belief system could spread into a fissure. They cannot afford or allow the smallest doubt, because if it took root, their perfect world — a world where there is an answer to every one of life’s questions — could fall apart around them, and they would be left, like the rest of us, searching in the dark for their own answers in an uncertain world. Which brings to mind something a true genius wrote: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” For the sake of my former friends, many of whom I loved, I hope that Going Clear is the first crack, that they will watch it, and the light will slip in.

Blanky

This is precisely why fundamentalists and fanatics splinter, and why they fight each other harder than they fight outsiders. Think Salmon Rushdie and the "apostate" doctrine in fundamentalist Islam. Think Westboro Baptist Church, and well, every other flavor of Christianity. Think the $cilon's vehemence against a Squirrel. Think Milestone 2 versus all the other Indies.

Fanatics base their concept of self on knowing the Truth. That Truth is contained in their scriptures, and they can allow no other interpretation of it. The people who believe in something nearly identical, but with some minor variation, are more of a threat to their little mental worlds than the complete non-believers, or the believers in other systems. Those latter can be explained away as delusional or evil. But the ones close to home? They, if accepted, would force the fundamentalist to acknowledge that there is more than one way to look at their holy texts, more than one interpretation, and suddenly that comfortable sand castle of certainty meets the ocean of doubt. They will do anything to keep the tide at bay.

I've posted this before, but I just love this passage. It's from a book by a guy who grew up in North Carolina's Hill Country, in the middle of a group of fundamentalist Baptists. His father's friend is likely an agnostic, and runs a grocery store. He gets up a baseball team to challenge the Baptists, and loses to them badly. They rub the loss in to the grocer every chance they get, but they squabble with each other even more:

They weren’t about to hang back. If it wasn’t a scrawny jackleg preacher leaning on the greasy chopblock to sermonalize the hapless pudgy man, then it was some long-jawed deacon. If it wasn’t a deacon then it was a fierce-talking sister of the church, her gray hair pinned back, gray light glinting on her rimless spectacles. Not even the children gave him peace. Their parents had taught them to say, after paying for their Kool-Aid or peppermints, “Thank you kindly, Mr. Bound-for-Hell.”

He had a sense of irony and told my father that he’d come goddam near changing the name of his establishment to the Bound for Hell Grocery & Dry Goods and only backed off when he found out what it would cost to have his sign repainted.

And then Johnson Gibbs lost that baseball game Mr. Campbell got up against the True Light Rainbow Baptist Church. “That was a trial” he said. “There wasn’t one car on the road didn’t stop here for somebody to run in and tell me how I backed the wrong team because I ain’t sitting on the righthand side of Jesus.”

“I’d be more inclined to fault Johnson’s pitching” my father said.

“Suppose I’d been sitting on the sunny side of the Lord and we won that game. Where would that put them?” Mr Campbell said.

“Might have started a theological ruckus.”

“They can’t stand much more ruckus,” he said “There where the road starts up Turkey Cove is your Rainbow Baptist Church, and it’s a nice white wood church. You go on up the cove a piece and there’s a little old concrete block house which is your New Rainbow Baptist Church. A big chunk of them busted away in an argument over predestination. Another two miles is the True Light Rainbow Baptist Church, which starts off with a few concrete blocks and finishes up tar paper siding.”

“And if we’d won that baseball game?”

“They’d of had them another fight. You’d go up on the mountain and find a pup tent by the road. The One True Light Rainbow Reformed Holiness Baptist Church of the Curveball Jesus.”

“Too bad we didn’t win,” my father said. “I’d be curious to read the articles of faith of that one.”
 

Intentionally Blank

Scientology Widow
This is precisely why fundamentalists and fanatics splinter, and why they fight each other harder than they fight outsiders. Think Salmon Rushdie and the "apostate" doctrine in fundamentalist Islam. Think Westboro Baptist Church, and well, every other flavor of Christianity. Think the $cilon's vehemence against a Squirrel. Think Milestone 2 versus all the other Indies.

Fanatics base their concept of self on knowing the Truth. That Truth is contained in their scriptures, and they can allow no other interpretation of it. The people who believe in something nearly identical, but with some minor variation, are more of a threat to their little mental worlds than the complete non-believers, or the believers in other systems. Those latter can be explained away as delusional or evil. But the ones close to home? They, if accepted, would force the fundamentalist to acknowledge that there is more than one way to look at their holy texts, more than one interpretation, and suddenly that comfortable sand castle of certainty meets the ocean of doubt. They will do anything to keep the tide at bay.

I've posted this before, but I just love this passage. It's from a book by a guy who grew up in North Carolina's Hill Country, in the middle of a group of fundamentalist Baptists. His father's friend is likely an agnostic, and runs a grocery store. He gets up a baseball team to challenge the Baptists, and loses to them badly. They rub the loss in to the grocer every chance they get, but they squabble with each other even more:

This is really valuable. It's a dynamic I'm more familiar with in other settings. In family and interpersonal relationships we know that those who anchor their sense of value as a human to being "right" or even being "liked" have a low resistance to frustration, a low anger threshold, and are easily knocked off center and lose their ability to act ethically. We see it especially in folks with addiction or abuse issues and, for that matter, their partners as well. They need to be right/admired/liked/acknowledged/in power because that is their only sense of value. When those things lessen, even momentarily, the faulty belief of being not-good-enough kicks in and they lash out. It never occurred to me to extrapolate that same dynamic to abusive/controlling groups and organizations - but it only makes sense.

One of the things we explore in family relationships (including working with gifted and talented kids who seem particularly prone to it) is the unhealthy tendency toward or belief in the need for perfectionism. Perfection is an impossible goal. It also implies having reached a level where nothing need change - and of course we know change is not only inevitable but utterly and completely necessary. The opposite of change is not death, as many of my students would say, it's stagnation. Everything changes. To imply any thing is complete, whole, and unchanging is to deny the natural cycle. Even if one created the perfect thingamajig or concept -- the fact of the ever changing landscape of the rest of the world necessitates the need for change in the perfect thingamajig if for no other reason than how it relates to everything else.

Thank you for that wonderful food for thought post. It's really helped me tie together and expand some things in my own head. So many religions, and other schools of thought, lay claim to the One Right True Unchanging Way - a concept I've argued against most of my life. This really helps me clarify why I've felt so strongly there is no such thing.

Blanky
 

MrNobody

Who needs merits?
This is precisely why fundamentalists and fanatics splinter, and why they fight each other harder than they fight outsiders. Think Salmon Rushdie and the "apostate" doctrine in fundamentalist Islam. Think Westboro Baptist Church, and well, every other flavor of Christianity. Think the $cilon's vehemence against a Squirrel. Think Milestone 2 versus all the other Indies.

Fanatics base their concept of self on knowing the Truth. That Truth is contained in their scriptures, and they can allow no other interpretation of it. The people who believe in something nearly identical, but with some minor variation, are more of a threat to their little mental worlds than the complete non-believers, or the believers in other systems. Those latter can be explained away as delusional or evil. But the ones close to home? They, if accepted, would force the fundamentalist to acknowledge that there is more than one way to look at their holy texts, more than one interpretation, and suddenly that comfortable sand castle of certainty meets the ocean of doubt. They will do anything to keep the tide at bay.

I've posted this before, but I just love this passage. It's from a book by a guy who grew up in North Carolina's Hill Country, in the middle of a group of fundamentalist Baptists. His father's friend is likely an agnostic, and runs a grocery store. He gets up a baseball team to challenge the Baptists, and loses to them badly. They rub the loss in to the grocer every chance they get, but they squabble with each other even more:

I believe it's simpler than that: The thing that fuels fundamentalists and fanatics: Disagreement.

Semi-hypothetical situation in a rehearsal room: "What? You really want to play that song in Eb just like the original scripture says? Newsflash for you, kid, WE play that song in Bb! So you either accept that or Vade Retro, Satanas!"

Basically, that's all there is to it, I'd say.


(And I still think that song shouldn't be played at all, because it interferes with the rest of that bands repertoire. :biggrin: )
 

SPsince83

Gold Meritorious Patron
I believe it's simpler than that: The thing that fuels fundamentalists and fanatics: Disagreement.

Semi-hypothetical situation in a rehearsal room: "What? You really want to play that song in Eb just like the original scripture says? Newsflash for you, kid, WE play that song in Bb! So you either accept that or Vade Retro, Satanas!"

Basically, that's all there is to it, I'd say.


(And I still think that song shouldn't be played at all, because it interferes with the rest of that bands repertoire. :biggrin: )

E flat is the ONE TRUE KEY. To deny E flat is to deny the existence of A flat and that is sheer blasphemy. You are sentenced to an eternity of constant Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber muzak reels.
 

MrNobody

Who needs merits?
E flat is the ONE TRUE KEY. To deny E flat is to deny the existence of A flat and that is sheer blasphemy. You are sentenced to an eternity of constant Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber muzak reels.

Cyrus and Bieber are musicians? :wow: Can I see any evidence for that?
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
Fundamentalism often goes hand in hand with greed and control, where the head guy or senior clergy etc are putting themselves above the members while using religious observance as a rationale.
 

Churchill

Gold Meritorious Patron
Wow! Just Wow! A must read Bunker article for all, IMHO

‘Going Clear': Paul Haggis pens a description of the Scientology experience you won’t forget
March 24, 2015

Read on: http://tonyortega.org/2015/03/24/go...f-the-scientology-experience-you-wont-forget/

My opinion on it:

I am forever grateful for the few exes who manage to express the whole of Scientology and it's complicated and damaging effects in such succinct and powerful statements. Paul is one of the rare, humble and wise birds able to convey the truth in it's simplicity. He's right up there with Jeff Hawkins, Jon Atack, Chris Shelton and Margery Wakefield - all of whom have helped so many with understanding the bigger picture. In explaining his own experiences, Haggis' encapsulates the core issues a scientologist contends with and provides a clear picture of why the prison of belief is what it is. Much appreciated.

What's yours?


It is an honest account of his experience. Very compelling, because he doesn't have an ax to grind; he was a true believer, who, like many of us, began his exit when he began to question.
Those who remain in Scientology dare not question - dare not look - dare not act like free men and women. It is the essence of the prison of belief

Paul Haggis and the others could have left quietly, and in speaking out they certainly knew the vicious retaliation of the ersatz Church would fall heavily upon them.

Their courage...their honesty...places us all in their debt.
 
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