My experience inside the Church was very different than many people have said here. I understand that the pressures brought to bear would eventually push you into silence, I guess. That was one of the things that I saw as an "outpoint" (otherwise known as an issue): that people didn't talk about what they thought, and didn't seem to ask questions when something didn't seem right, etc. My experience was that people were very surprised that I held different opinions, and enjoyed talking to me, BECAUSE I would talk about stuff.
I remember walking home from a shift at the org with an older friend. He was ranting about "psychs" for some reason or another, and I asked him why he had such a problem with psychiatrists. He looked at me like I had several more heads than normally allotted to humans, and asked me if I knew about electro-shock therapy. I said, "yes, but what's the big deal?" and he was quite simply flabberghasted. He went on to tell me how ECT was destroying the body and didn't solve whatever problem the person had. I agreed, thinking it was pretty barbaric, and acknowledging that if the person was nuts, passing a few hundred amps through them probably wouldn't be good for them, but I didn't agree with him that psychiatrists were monsters. Instead, we went back to our apartment, and studied some communication drills, and did them in the apartment for a while.
This was characteristic of my experiences in the Church, as I refused to put down what I knew to be true and replace it with biases and group-think. I never got that far with auditing, and was subsequently declared. I never felt like my will was being compromised, except towards the end, when I was being "reged" for Sec Checks, knowing that I didn't want to pay for them, and that they were grinding away at me for crimes I had no interest in, and essentially, that had nothing to do with the reasons I wanted to leave the Church.
I can see how it could have gone differently, though, if I weren't so reluctant to give up my decision-making power.
I remember when I was on-staff thinking that working there was like preaching to the choir. I used to comment all the time that it would be better for people "like us" (who were "in the know", I confess to that bit of elitism) to be out "in the mix", working "wog jobs", and turning people on to handling charge, cycles of action, and other scientology concepts (or what I thought were scientology concepts). The other staffers seemed to think I had "very high confront", but that I should stay on staff, where I was needed. I thought being a field auditor was the way to go.
Now, back out in the "real world", I realize that not many people are actually interested in "handling charge" or "completing cycles of action".
It's funny, I'm a very high performer at my job, get the "employee of the month" awards and other perks, and promote quickly within my corporation. People are always asking me how I move so fast, how my statistics are so high (yes, we have performance measuring statistics, and it's not a WISE company). When I answer them, though, that I just follow up on whatever I'm asked to start until it's done, that I listen to my customers closely and solve whatever problems they are coming to me with, and that I'm constantly trying to learn more about the products I sell and support... they STILL don't want to hear it! They want some other answer, like I know somebody who does it all for me, or I have some secret way to cheat the system, or whatever.
I'm actually living out my own postulates, but I find it amazing how few people are actually willing to reach for the solutions they are asking for when they find them.
