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My Ups and Downs

Ted

Gold Meritorious Patron
[snippage...]

One interesting experience I had while living there was.....I was in the middle of doing laundry one day. I lived on the 3rd floor and the laundry was in the basement. I had run out of change for the next washer load. My coin purse was empty. It was laying on my bed. Next door was a gas station where I usually went to get change if I ran out. I was standing in the middle of the room, looking out the window. I thought, I don't want to have to go there to get change. I picked up my coin purse and opened it up and there was the exact change to do the rest of my wash. :ohmy: Hmmm....maybe I just thought my purse was empty and it really wasn't....hmmm. I went down and put the wash in and used up the change in my coin purse and went back upstairs. I waited the time for the wash to complete. Again my coin purse was on my bed where I had tossed it when I came back to the apartment. I was standing in the same spot as before, looking out the window at the gas station. I was still wondering about this money that seemed to just show up. I had the same thought - I didn't want to have to go to the gas station to get change. I looked at the coin purse, picked it up, opened it up and there was the change for the dryer. :omg: I got so excited, I ran down the hall and knocked on the Reg's door....(quite a few staff members lived on the same floor I did)...When he opened the door, I excitedly told him what had happened. I thought he would be excited too - maybe I could get more money to pay for services. Instead, he got furious with me and blasted me with "You're out ethics!!!" :omg: :shock: I suddenly felt guilty, caved in and went back to my room. That was painful. I never did understand why he attacked me like that. I never had any more fun experiences like that with money appearing out of nowhere, unfortunately.

[snippage...]

:seeya: More later. :wave:


Helluva story.

About that reg, he was too low-toned to appreciate your excitement. Simple as that. Quite often staff are not, themselves, winning in life. They are under constant duress. In that condition they drive away the very people, the winning, excited ones, that they should be helping.
 

Boojuum

Silver Meritorious Patron
OMG another victim

Wow FoTi

I just finished reading much of your story and you've really been taken through the wringer! Your story highlights the weakest, sadest and meanest parts of Scientology.

I'm delighted your story is available for other people to read.

I hope that you can put your scio experience behind you and move forward to have a full and successful life. It can be done and I'm grateful for every day that I'm out.

The glaring disaster that should be in rubbed in the face of any long term scio is that your story shows that you were sincere for over 30 years and the church took advantage of you again and again and again. Their bad behavior is systemic.

The cos/so staff have been coerced into doing whatever is necessary to get the stats up. They did it for over thirty years and are still doing it. The public get pulled into a similar mentality where instant results are required and long term ethical conduct is squashed. (Why can't they have a Chaplain who is really a chaplain? Why can't they simply be nice??????????)

You don't have to be declared to be lied to. And let's face it, we were all lied to about ability gains, speed of service, quality of service and the value of services. Again and again and again. Well, it stops pretty quickly if you don't give them money or won't give them time or won't give them credence.
:thumbsup:

Enjoy your new life!
 

dianaclass8

Silver Meritorious Patron
Okay, here we go again.


I had a friend from Mexico who would come and spend the weekends at my apartment while she was on course at the Org. My parents took us out to dinner while they were visiting. It was a nice evening.

:seeya: :wave: More later.

Hi FoTi:

I have been reading your bedtime stories with pleasure...I remember spending the weekends with you in SanDiego :happydance: those were fun days...you were/are an awesome cook and you always looked so beautiful. As far as I am concerned you were one of the prettiest girls in the Org :)

I still have those pictures we took when we went to visit your parents in LA and they lived in a beautiful house by the lake and took us all boating in a fancy little boat.

I have nothing but good memories about the people from the San Diego Org, I used to come from Tijuana to San Diego to do courses...it was a long trip because I did not have a car and I had to take a bus from my house to downtown, from downtown to the border, then cross the border, take another bus from San Ysidro to downtown San Diego and then to the Org...LOL!

A lot of us students would get together and after course we all go disco dancing on saturday nights, remember? we also had the most memorable Halloween parties. It was all knew to me being from Mexico :happydance:

I am sorry about what happened to you, but your stories brought sweet memories to me...those were the best times of my life..:happydance:
 

FoTi

Crusader
Hi FoTi:

I have been reading your bedtime stories with pleasure...I remember spending the weekends with you in SanDiego :happydance: those were fun days...you were/are an awesome cook and you always looked so beautiful. As far as I am concerned you were one of the prettiest girls in the Org :)

I still have those pictures we took when we went to visit your parents in LA and they lived in a beautiful house by the lake and took us all boating in a fancy little boat.

I have nothing but good memories about the people from the San Diego Org, I used to come from Tijuana to San Diego to do courses...it was a long trip because I did not have a car and I had to take a bus from my house to downtown, from downtown to the border, then cross the border, take another bus from San Ysidro to downtown San Diego and then to the Org...LOL!

A lot of us students would get together and after course we all go disco dancing on saturday nights, remember? we also had the most memorable Halloween parties. It was all knew to me being from Mexico :happydance:

I am sorry about what happened to you, but your stories brought sweet memories to me...those were the best times of my life..:happydance:

Yeh, I enjoyed that time too....I think those were better days in Scientology.

I don't remember cooking...:confused2: but I do remember that we went out to dinner once with my parents. I loved that restaurant. They had a terrific salmon dish that had very unusual seasonings. I wish I could remember what was in it. It was such a treat to go there because I never had any money to go anywhere while I was on lines at the org. Every extra penny I had was going to pay for auditing or training and I didn't make much money to begin with.

Thanks for the compliments. I wish I still looked like that. :p
You were pretty cute yourself. I showed those pictures to Lakey and he said you were "Hot"!!

I didn't realize that you had such an involved trip to get to San Diego. I'm glad it paid off for you in the long run.

I don't remember the disco dancing or the halloween parties. I remember going out to dinner with my parents, going ice skating, playing hair and makeup and dress up - making ourselves be-e-e-u-tiful - (girl fun) - and going to the park and taking pictures of ourselves. LOL It was fun. I wish I'd had you for a sister when I was growing up.
 

FoTi

Crusader
I don't recall if I mentioned it in an earlier post or not, but I had a friend in Clearwater who was also a Scientologist. We worked together and she used to ride with me to work. After some of my experiences with ethics at Flag and before I heard from Greg, on the way to work one morning, I said....you know, I think there is something wrong at Flag. That's all I said. She immediately disconnected from me. Told me she'd find some other way to get to work and didn't talk to me for two years. Eventually she had to talk to me at work and that sort of broke the ice but she told me to never say anything negative to her about Scientology. :no:

After the SP parties with Greg and Debra, I was talking to an old Class 8 who was still in and I said that I thought something was wrong at Flag because of my own experiences and what I'd heard from some others. I also told him that someone had told me that OT III was a farce :gossip: (actually several people told me that). He refuted all of what I said :naughty: and tried to convince me otherwise. His wife wasn't there for the conversation, but she turned antagonistic toward me after that, so I assume he told her and so I probably got written up.

I got a laptop (my first and only computer) and Greg and Debra told me how to get online and look up OCMB (xenu.net). :surf: The first person I read about was Tory. She talked about what it was like auditing on Solo NOTS and how she thought it was bogus. That was my introduction to the critics online. Wow! Somebody was telling it like it is which was a whole lot different than the rah rah that the church put out. :ohmy:

I lived in a complex of townhouses and condos. There were quite a few Scientologists that either owned or rented there. I had never told any of the non-Scientologists in the complex that I was a Scientologist. The lady who lived next door to me was a renter. She had a tree in her backyard that was an illegal type of tree in Florida and it was growing very rapidly, knocking over the fence and tearing up my patio with it's roots. I told the homeowners association about this and they told the owner of the house she was renting from to take the tree out. The owner ignored them and so the homeowners association had someone come and take the tree out and they fixed the fence. The lady next door went berzerk and started telling everyone that I was a Scientologist and what a horrible person I was and how evil I was. I never told her I was a Scientologist, so somebody else must have done that. The gal who lived across the way from her was on the BC at Flag. She told me to handle the lady next door so that she wouldn't be saying bad things in relation to Scientology. I didn't know how to handle her because she was mad at me and refused to speak to me. So the gal across the way wrote me up for putting the Church of Scientology in danger because of what my neighbor was doing. This was just too crazy. :wacko: I didn't even bother to refute it. It just seemed insane to try to defend myself against this BS.

With this last act from the gal on the BC, along with a lot of other things I'd experienced from Scientologists, I decided I'd had it with Scientologists. They were too f - ing crazy.

This same gal on the BC at Flag, had been married a while back. One day her husband, who was also on lines at Flag, was having trouble with a tooth so he went to the dentist and they ended up pulling the tooth. Then a tumor very quickly grew out of the hole where the tooth had been...it was cancer. It grew very rapidly over a few weeks and filled his mouth. I tried to tell her of some things that might have helped - maybe not, but they had helped others. Her attitude was nah -:no: we don't do any of that natural stuff. We just do the medical doctors. Okay. He was from Sweden originally so she shipped him off on a plane where he could get free medical treatment. The tumor grew so rapidly that it filled his throat. 3 weeks later he was dead. She went on as if nothing had ever happened. Her attitude was like....well he was just a downstat.....he pulled it in. I got the impression this woman had no heart...no feelings about the person she was married to...she didn't care a whit as long as she could continue on the BC. If she was an example of where Scientology would lead one, I thought it was pretty bad.


Another gal bought a townhouse in the complex where I lived. She seemed really nice. She was a jeweler from the mountains of Colorado. She'd had a very successful business and she was married to a native American Indian. Somebody got her interested in Scientology and regged her for her whole Bridge at Flag. She bought the whole Bridge, auditing and training, bought the townhouse, gave up her jewelry business and moved to Florida to go full time on the Bridge. Her husband didn't want to live in Florida. Someone convinced him to go on staff at an org out west. She started getting auditing at Flag. The more they tried to audit her, the more she got spun in. Her husband hated being on staff and kept blowing and she kept talking him into going back so that he wouldn't get in trouble. The more they tried to handle her at Flag, the more enturbulated she got, so they finally told her she couldn't do services at Flag and they sent her to Tampa Org. She willingly went. She wanted to get trained. Last I talked to her before I moved away from Clearwater, she was trying to figure out how to make a living again. It made me feel bad that she had sacrified her marriage, her husband and her business and had given so much money to Scientology and then to be treated like there was something wrong with her. I felt sorry for her. It felt like such a loss to me to know she had given up everything to just be jacked around.

Over the years I saw and heard of so many people that had things go wrong in their lives and were having so much trouble and the excuse was always....it's the bank. These things would make me feel bad, but I sort of ignored how I felt figuring it's just difficult to get up the Bridge because the bank will fight you all the way. LRH gave us that reason why. I so much ignored my feelings in Scientology. I made myself wrong so much of the time in order to agree with Scientology. I so regret it now. :sad:

If the people in this world ever knew how much trouble most Scientologists have in their life because of Scientology, they would never walk in the door of a Church of Scientology. :no:


Several months after the last ethics cycle where I walked out, I got something in the mail :mail:from Flag. :unsure: It was a Type D Declare :ohmy: along with a letter telling me that they were giving me my money back. :omg:This struck me as rather strange since I hadn't asked for a refund or a repay and I'd never heard of them just voluntarily giving people back their money. :no: Then I get a call from OSA wanting me to meet them at a local coffee shop to pick up the check and sign the waivers. I went to the coffee shop. The guy from OSA shows me the checks and asks me to sign the waivers. I look at the checks. What I saw really pissed me off. I had the OT Levels at AOLA paid for. They unmocked my OT Levels at AOLA and gave them back to me. I had paid a package discount when I bought them They redid my account, charging me full price for the services I had already received there and gave me back the difference, which wasn't much. They did the same for the services I had paid for at Flag and so I didn't get much back there either. I was angry :angry: but I didn't see any way that I could fight them. I was also very much afraid of them, like one would be afraid of not cooperating with a big bully who was a whole lot bigger than you ever would be. I couldn't afford to go after them legally. I figured something was better than nothing, so I meekly signed their papers :write: and he gave me the checks. Then the guy tells me that I could still go do services at the Tampa Org if I wanted to. Yeh, sure, no way. :no: Well, that was it for me. I didn't ever want to do any more services in Scientology. :no: The only reason I could ever think of as to why they just voluntarily did this was because they knew I had been talking with Greg and Debra Barnes.

I ran an ad in the Who What Where to sell my green vols and red vols and my emeter and sold them. Most of the rest of my books I either sold to a used bookstore or gave them away. I only kept a few of the older books.

I also no longer wanted to work or live in Clearwater. I wanted to get away from the creeps. :runaway:

So, I quit my job and worked on fixing up my house, sold it and moved out of Florida. As I drove away from Clearwater on my way to another state it was such a feeling of relief - I felt a kind of freedom that I hadn't felt in a long time.

For several years I followed what was happening in Scientology with OCMB but I never signed up to post there. Then ESMB opened up and I've been here daily ever since. I'm so glad Emma decided to do this board. Thank you Emma. :thankyou:

It's been really helpful to me to learn about other people's experiences with Scientology. - It has given me a clearer overall view of what has been going on with LRH in relation to the CoS since before Dianetics and Scientology ever began.

I'm really sad that Scientology didn't turn out to be what I thought it was supposed to be. It's really hard to even look at what a disappointment this is after dedicating 30 years of my life to being a Scientologist and thinking it was the only way to go. It's really upsetting. :bigcry:

My father said I was brainwashed. I couldn't see it. It just made me mad that he said that. Boy, did I make him wrong for that, but it turned out in the long run he was right. He could see it, I couldn't. All I could see were some of the wins I'd had in Scientology and I was overlooking and ignoring all the shit.
 

gfyork

Patron
Thank you!

Thank you for telling your story.

"Scientology works!"

Well yeah. For some people, some of the time. Clearly enough worked for you to keep you hangin' in there long past the expiration date. :(

Sadly, Scientology organizations seem to work less well and they seem to get worse over time rather than better.

If you'd been at CC a year or two earlier, we might have met.

I knew and worked with and for Yvonne (before she married Heber); would have been kinda cool to see if the woman you met remembered me. I wonder what might have happened with her.

Thanks again, FoTi; your story makes me glad I slipped away before things got intense.

Best,

G.
 

FoTi

Crusader
Thank you for telling your story.

"Scientology works!"

Well yeah. For some people, some of the time. Clearly enough worked for you to keep you hangin' in there long past the expiration date. :(

Sadly, Scientology organizations seem to work less well and they seem to get worse over time rather than better.

If you'd been at CC a year or two earlier, we might have met.

I knew and worked with and for Yvonne (before she married Heber); would have been kinda cool to see if the woman you met remembered me. I wonder what might have happened with her.

Thanks again, FoTi; your story makes me glad I slipped away before things got intense.

Best,

G.

Thanks for the comments. Glad you liked it.

Yep, you left just in time.

You said...."would have been kinda cool to see if the woman you met remembered me. I wonder what might have happened with her." Could you please explain what woman you are talking about?
 

gfyork

Patron
Answer

Sorry I wasn't clear: the 'woman' I referred to was the 'current lifetime' Yvonne you mentioned speaking with.

Perhaps I should also make clear that I really, really like to hear stories re. Scientologists (or others, really) recovering their memory of a previous life-time in Scientology.

Also, given the general shared belief in previous lives among scientologists, particularly staff, it pisses me off to hear of those who should know better immediately being dismissive of her claim. (Flunk!)

Best,

G.
 

Ogsonofgroo

Crusader
Thank you so much FoTi for telling us some of your story, this lowly SP Wog has really enjoyed reading it (you have great style, don't stop writing eh!), and I am so glad that you have escaped the CoS treadmill, and seem to be well on the road to a fullfilling life, again, thanks. Reading people's stories over the last few years has given me a much greater insight into many aspects of the workings of of CoS and its adherents, and I find a deep, sad sort of empathy within me for those who have endured such outrageous fuckery at the hands of what I deem a souless corporation, created by a souless psychic vampire.
Several times I have seen it mentioned that merely reading about what has gone on/goes on, cannot be properly understood by those of us who have never been 'in', I do not agree with this as I have been there vicariously through the eyes of those who have, and it has been a powerful and enlightening experience and I will always carry it.
Sorry if I got carried away there.
Cheers and :hug: and :rose:
 

FoTi

Crusader
Sorry I wasn't clear: the 'woman' I referred to was the 'current lifetime' Yvonne you mentioned speaking with.

Perhaps I should also make clear that I really, really like to hear stories re. Scientologists (or others, really) recovering their memory of a previous life-time in Scientology.

Also, given the general shared belief in previous lives among scientologists, particularly staff, it pisses me off to hear of those who should know better immediately being dismissive of her claim. (Flunk!)

Best,

G.

What really bugged me was when I mentioned her name, the course sup kind of rolled her eyes and had the attitude that she was a nut case - she was making fun of her. I immediately thought. This place (AOLA) is unsafe if the course sup - who was OT III, is willing to do something like that. I got the idea the staff was gossiping about her and were just tolerating her while invalidating the crap out of her behind her back.
 

FoTi

Crusader
Thank you so much FoTi for telling us some of your story, this lowly SP Wog has really enjoyed reading it (you have great style, don't stop writing eh!), and I am so glad that you have escaped the CoS treadmill, and seem to be well on the road to a fullfilling life, again, thanks. Reading people's stories over the last few years has given me a much greater insight into many aspects of the workings of of CoS and its adherents, and I find a deep, sad sort of empathy within me for those who have endured such outrageous fuckery at the hands of what I deem a souless corporation, created by a souless psychic vampire.
Several times I have seen it mentioned that merely reading about what has gone on/goes on, cannot be properly understood by those of us who have never been 'in', I do not agree with this as I have been there vicariously through the eyes of those who have, and it has been a powerful and enlightening experience and I will always carry it.
Sorry if I got carried away there.
Cheers and :hug: and :rose:

Thanks for the comments and compliment, Og. I'm glad you liked reading it.
 

gfyork

Patron
Invalidation

What really bugged me was when I mentioned her name, the course sup kind of rolled her eyes and had the attitude that she was a nut case - she was making fun of her. I immediately thought. This place (AOLA) is unsafe if the course sup - who was OT III, is willing to do something like that. I got the idea the staff was gossiping about her and were just tolerating her while invalidating the crap out of her behind her back.

You have around ten times the actual active experience with Scientology orgs as do I. Your thirty years to my three or four. I was in the Sea Org for two and a half to three years, and 'public' before and some after. My active years began in 1969 though 1972 (or thereabout) and 1980-81. In between and after I was largely 'inactive.' I (mostly) had fun. And wins. And I've considered myself a Scientologist (or scientologist) ever since.

I read all the books, listened to a lot of tapes, and read nearly every bulletin, pl, ed, and such that crossed my desk. Loved having that access.

One of the many useful things I took away with me when I left all that, was an appreciation for how rarely 'invalidation' serves a useful purpose -- particularly the invalidation of a being.

The invalidation of a being is particularly inappropriate in an organization that purportedly exists to buff up beings and help them become bright and shiny. Sad.

It is particularly sad that Scientology, whatever it's origins, did have a very great deal to offer. You obviously knew that and certainly I did. The actual practice of Scientology organizations clearly resulted in many broken lives when it could have created such splendor.

What a waste of opportunity.

Best,

G.
 
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