Where?
In that the Affirmations are relevant to understanding Hubbard's mental state as it existed during his entire adult life.
Basically, Hubbard knew what he was doing. He had a fundamental goal, and it was a self-serving goal. That fundamental goal was shrouded by secondary goals which included many things, some of them positive.
However, the "positive" was always, ultimately, subordinate, to the "real goal," and, the advertized "positives," by misleading others as to Hubbard's "real goal," served to empower Hubbard and his "real goal."
It's a pattern that echoes throughout Scientology, from its inception onward.
Scientologists, who believe that their guru - while he may have made a few mistakes and, perhaps, overreacted, slightly, to the vicious and incessant attempts to destroy (the basically humanitarian) Scientology by a group of international psychiatric&banker conspirators (a.k.a. "the cold war establishment") - fundamentally had humanitarian motives, and, primarily, wanted to help others.
Not unusually, Scientologists display "acceptable truths" to establish "ARC" with non Scientologists, so the non Scientologist can be further influenced and, at least, brought to a point of ambivalence: a kind of happy dumb, agreeable, "I dunno" with regard their guru.
And when not displaying "acceptable truths" and "handling," Scientologists are "attacking," or "disconnecting."
Inevitably, Scientologists are in denial about the sea of information that surrounds them, that challenges their "stable data," even though they may have to deal with it at times with "ARC" handling, or attacking, or simply by (mentally) disconnecting. And they don't just handle others with these things, they also handle themselves with the same: rationalizing to self-'VGIs," introverting and being haunted with the weight of being "out ethics" or "off Source," or just shutting down their thought processes entirely.
As you've explained, your husband is a Scientologist, and you are caught between two worlds. Frankly, you'd be better off simply avoiding the topic of the 'Affirmations', rather than likening them to a school kid's diary scribblings - as you've done elsewhere.
Hubbard was an adult - a 35 year old man - when he wrote the Affirmations, in the late 1940s. He wasn't a school kid, and his "philosophy" is consistent, from 1938, to 1946/1947, to the 1950s, the 1960s, and onward.
It may be confusing at first glance, as it's based on the "overt/covert" model, in other words it's devious and manipulative, but it's consistent, at its foundation.
Veda,
I'm going to explain a few things to you.
Firstly, it's extremely problematic and foolish to assess the marital and conversational interaction of two people you've neither met nor observed; have never seen in the same room together.
Of course you don't know my husband. But you're assessing his influence on me from the depths of this lack of information and acquaintanceship. Let me show you just how and why your assumptions are off base.
John (that's my husband) is like this: When we were in the cult, and everyone would stand and go hip hip hooray, John would quietly and definitely sit down. People, seeing this, would (I'd say maybe a third or so of them) also quietly sit down. When John was a course supv in DC, he had a student who thought every single solitary thing Hubbard did was just so awesome and perfect and Scn and Dn were just wonderful, wonderful wonderful. John was troubled by this because he saw no thought processes in this student. The guy didn't seem to know why he liked it, didn't seem to have any idea of what struck him as cool, and why. John sat down and tried to get this guy to THINK. He asked the student a number of questions.
When we were both involved in it, the cult implied rather broadly in a rather nasty handling that, hey, if I continued to be on ars, well, you know, I'd be expelled and if I were expelled then John as a member in good standing...(meaningful glances all round) and John just looked at them as if they were a bunch of rather strange new insects he found in his herb garden.
John often talks about how fucked Hubbard was.
Your saying that I'm shaped by my husband's ideology shows a great ignorance of what my husband is like as a person and what his ideology even is. You seem to only think in stereotypes. What's more, that's a rather insulting thing to say to someone that they can't think and analyze on their own because of who/what their spouse is. That's the same line I got from Polliwog (said I post as I do because John is still "slurping the juice") and Gottabrain who informed me that I cannot truly speak freely with my husband.
Now, when you guys do that about people whom you've not met, never witnessed any exchanges or interaction between those people- it kind of looks, well, I really don't know a polite way to describe it.
But rather than just say how wrong you are, I've posted some anecdotes to attempt to give you some insight into this guy I married and what it's like over at Chez Swazey. For instance, I'm pretty deep into reading Buddhism and Shamanism and doing yoga these days. That's pretty non Scientological. A real stereotypical Scn'ist of the sort you seemed to be implying that John is, well, you know, with a guy like that, I'd have heard chapter and verse about how dumb that is or whatever.
I have tried to explain this to a number of people who speak to me as you've done about this stuff- that really, I do make plenty of mistakes and I have no trouble coming up with wrong conclusions at times. But they're my own. I've said that many times. And it's true every time.
I obviously have nothing invested in Scn being good or Hubbard being a god type d00d. My criticisms of them are pretty scathing.
I just don't happen to be impressed with the affirmations. I realize that many of my pals in the critical community place great weight upon them- think that they are probably fundamental to Hub's mindset. I don't happen to agree. I just don't. They remind me of this dorky notebook I had when I was 14 and I'd write all this stuff in it- it was uber dorky. People's affirmations (it's a rather common method some occultists use so I've read about some other people's, too.) always remind me of that. They just do.
But if it makes you feel any better (and maybe helps disabuse you of the godawful stereotypical thinking and the assumption that you know what's going on in my house), I gotta tell ya. When I read Science of Survival, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Hubbard was very sexist, even for that time period. Appallingly so. And I never thought of him the same way again.
Oh, hey, and the Sex and Pain HCOB.
JustMe and I have a pretty similar take on Hubbard's views re women. I just tend not to include the affirmations in the basis of my assessment. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, but one thing for sure, it isn't because somebody told me to think something. You've been seeing my posts for years. You should have known mo' bettah.