Okay, here's my story about meditation; probably my biggest "win" as the cult would call it.
Last fall, my partner and I took a road trip out near Flagstaff, AZ for an Herbal Medicine conference. 'Conference' is a loose term, because it was really a bunch of hippies out at this awesome campground taking and giving small hour-2hour classes on a lot of different aspects of herbal medicine. It was our first foray into herbs as medicine, and we found out about it from a "wilderness first aid" course my partner had taken earlier that year.
I loved my time there. The Ponderosa Pine trees smell of butterscotch when you hug them and bury your nose in their bark. The campground was situated on the banks of a mostly dried up lake, the largest natural lake in Arizona. The land there was full to bursting with history, legend, and the general explosion of life that usually happens in early fall. It's the last hurrah before winter comes, so all those old summer plants are busy 'gettin their flower on' so they can spread their seeds for next spring.
The other students were pretty cool too. I dont spend a lot of time with the hippy crowd...I'm more of a stay-at-home-farmer...and it was probably the first time I ever saw so many women with hairy legs.
Everyone there was so nice, and there was a lot more actual science involved than I expected. Many of the teachers/instructors were biologists, chemists, actual professors at actual universities...not all crackpot like I'm sure some people expect.
Anyways, we were there for 4 days or so, with 4 or 5 classes available every hour. I noticed something rather interesting about this group. Most (though not all) the instructors began their class with a little bit of meditation. They would ask us to close our eyes, and fully arrive in this moment. (As an ex-Scientologist, I translated this into getting us all into 'Present Time") Some of the meditations were maybe 30 seconds long, enough for us to take a few unison breaths as a group, and to take in the beauty of the outdoor environment we were in.
I began to realize that this practice of meditating is like a form of prayer. Christians like to pray before eating, before playing a game, and for all I know, they pray before their Christian classes. But in this case, there was no heavenly being we were asking to shine down glory upon us, it was simply taking a moment to realize where we were and what we were doing.
On the second to last day, my partner and I decided to split up to cover more ground, so to speak. He took a class on plant identification, and I took a class on heart medicine and hawthorne. There were two instructors for this hawthorne class, and we met under the shade of this massive tree out near the old banks of the lake. The two instructors were super cool. You know when you meet someone for the first time, and your energies just sort of mesh the right way? My Scientology friends and I used to think it was because we were meeting thetans we used to know, but now that I'm out, I think of it more as a wavelength kind of thing. All of us are sending out emotions, energies, worries, personalities out into the world, and sometimes you meet someone who just melds with yours.
Yeah, so here I am, slightly anxious because my partner isn't with me and I'm at this class by myself (I'm co-dependent as fuck
) and the class begins and one of the instructors asks us to do a little bit of grounding meditation so we can all arrive. (I think he said arrive, I'm not sure.)
So I close my eyes, and start listening to his voice (which has taken on this really peaceful quality) and he's having us focus on our breathing. (been there, done that, this is easy and calming)
Then he has us move our breath's energy through our body (this meditation is going a little more in depth than the usual start-of-class meditations I've done before, but I'll roll with it. ) and we're instructed to feel the energy move down from our torsos and into our groins, our thighs, down through the knees, into our calves, ankles, feet and toes. I've done similar exercises in yoga class, but this time, it's more real to me. I can actually FEEL the energy, as opposed to just imagining that part of my body.
So then he has us take our breath's energy further down, through the soles of our feet and into the ground, through the grass, then the soil, and the layers of earth, right down to the very heart of the earth, the molten core of metal. And he instructs us to bring some of that heat and life from the center of the earth up through this tether we have created and back into our bodies.
Then he has us breathe up, into our chests, around our hearts, up into our shoulders and down our arms and fingers, up the neck to the head, the scalp, and then up! Up into the sky, past the clouds, past our sun, and just to revel in the massive beautiful expanse of the universe, until we found a far off distant star that we could connect to.
(By this point, I have left behind the meditations I am used to doing, and I'm REALLY digging this. There's a lot of emotions churning in my chest and gut, and I feel like I'm about to cry or burst into song, or both.)
So then he has us feel these two points, our tether to the earth and the firey hot core, and this far off distant star, and he starts talking about how stars are full of elements that explode out into the universe when they die. And how those elements fall to earth and compose every living thing here. So the carbon and iron and stuff in our bodies is part of the same carbon and iron in the depths of the earth's core, and is the same as the carbon and iron and stuff that floats in space.
That the universe was all connected, that we are all the same in that aspect.
At this point I'm actually leaking tears out my eyes. they're dropping onto my cheeks, and I'm carefully trying to dab them off so nobody will see.
Now he had us take all the joy and wonder and love that surrounds the universe and use that to envelope our hearts, these beautiful organs that nourish and pump our blood, and he said something rather awesome. "Our hearts will actually start to sync up with those that we love when we embrace them and hold them close. When they are gone, your heart still remembers that love and will keep it with you always."
And now I am actually crying. I'm not actually sad, just full of EMOTIONS. I've had to take my glasses off and discretely blow my nose, because I've just realized something. I wasn't sure WHAT it was that I realized, just that something inside me was literally stirring.
After the class, I took some time to myself in the forest and processed what had happened. After leaving this cult of scientology, I tried so hard to take everything I learned and experienced and throw it all away. (the baby AND the bathwater, yanno?) In the years since leaving the cult, I've had to wrestle with concepts of the soul, is it a real thing? and I decided that yes; there is SOMETHING about sentient creatures that MAKES them sentient. But there was something more.
In throwing away the concept of "thetan" I'd rejected any concept of supernatural beings that dont take up any part of MEST, but also the concept of life after life.
Sitting there on my boulder in the forest as the sun sparkled through the trees, I realized that the universe is far more connected than I suspected. We all have a little bit of the infinite cosmos in us, and even if the thing that is ME dies and doesnt exist after this life (more on that later, I have a whole lot to talk about on the subject of the whole track and past lives) Even if I die, the things that make up my body and ME will go on to feed the rest of the cosmos.
For the first time since leaving the cult and all its [STRIKE]teachings[/STRIKE] lies behind, I felt that there was actually some meaning in life. even if i couldn't and still cant elucidate that meaning, I know it's there. I felt it.
When the class, which was very informational on its own, the instructors passed around some hawthorne tincture, and stayed for any one-on-one discussions that we wanted to have. Apparently these two guys were pretty popular...I found out later that they have quite a bit of online presence...and I waited for about 20 minutes for the lingering crowd to thin out.
I approached the man who led the meditation. I felt obligated to stay and thank him, and more than a little anxious, because I felt I was so obviously out of place. The rest of the class was full of people who study and use herbs on a regular basis, and this was really my first foray into the subject. He was obviously popular and other people were still trying to talk to him and the other teacher; and I knew that I was still feeling the churning of emotions...I didnt want everyone to know.
"Hi," I said, with a lopsided smile, "I uh, dont really know what to say."
He gave me a smile, and in that one look fully communicated that he understood.
"I uh, really liked the meditation today. I cant explain, but I feel like I really needed that, yanno?"
And then he hugged me. I cried a little more; here I was embracing a stranger who had shown me something about myself that I didnt even know I had forgotten... I certainly wasnt able to explain myself, but yet I felt completely understood.
I dont remember what he said to me, something wise and hippyish I'm sure.
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It's interesting, telling this story to you, because I don't meditate regularly now. I havent carved out time in my days for it- I know it's good for me but somehow I never really get around to it.
I think part of the reason is I'm scared. I'm scared to believe too much in anything. I have doubts as to whether I really had a moment back there in the woods, or if I was just trying to justify my mis-emotion. I'm scared that if I devote time to meditation and have cognitions and realizations that I might become a fanatic for THAT, and then I'll just be stuck in another type of cult.
I worry that ANY kind of mental work is bad for me, because Scientology said it was good for me, I THINK i got wins from it... but I dont know anymore.
And part of me is too scared to look and SEE if I got any real wins from the cult.
I used to believe to my very core that past lives were real. In my Dianetics co auditing at CCint I loved auditing whole-track...everything felt so very real-the incidents I ran FELT like real memories.
In the rest of my training as an auditor and supervisor and word clearer at Flag, I didnt' do much dianetics- just the Quads, Method 1, and part of the HRD. While I was on the HRD, I was going down the stairs by the parking garage and I suddenly felt light headed and dizzy-I blacked out and the next thing I knew I was slumped on the floor at the base of the stairs. I don't know if I fell or if I just stumbled to the bottom and sunk along the wall...nothing was broken or bleeding. A fellow OOT and friend of mine from EUS cont found me like that and I told him what had happened.
He walked me right on over to the examiner to originate what had happened. Next thing I knew, I was being put in session with an intern on the Out-Int rundown. The Int rundown is kind of a double edged sword. I was forbidden from doing any word clearing on the meter, so I couldn't start my next step, the grade IV internship. But I couldnt start my internship, and that was a GOOD thing in my mind because NOBODY ever actually finished an internship. They'd leave the coachman building to go the the FH internship and then they'd become auditors for the busy HGC, but it seemed like they were never allowed to finish, (because then the HGC would loose auditors).
anyways, I'm on the Int rundown, being audited in the BC co audit space, and I get to run NED for the first time. (exciting!)
I have forgotten the process for running NED, but I think you have to date incidents and point to them and stuff. This is where my bank started to fall apart. when prompted, I could never come up with a date, and the incidents were never real enough for me to point to where it happened, thus throwing me "out of session". Or I'd try to run an earlier/similar and initially "see" an incident, but then it would get hazy and vanish, thus throwing me "out of session". Once I was running an incident on the whole track, and (I am not shitting you here) A giant T-Rex stomped through the picture and ate up what looked like film strips of my past lives. THAT REALLY THREW ME OUT OF SESSION.
My auditor, a kind but feeble older gentleman, (I say feeble, because at this point in my life I had fully entered the valence of a good little flag-trained monster, and this guy just struck me as namby pamby.) asked me what had just occurred. (What kind of robot says "What just occured?" haha) Though embarrassed, I told him.
I opened my eyes, something I dont think you're sposed to do, and said, "Well, this is weird, but a giant T-rex just ate up the incident." My auditor was uncomfortable, and put his hand behind his back. That's the signal a student auditor gives the supervisor when they need help. I rolled my eyes at him. I was just a grade IV auditor and I felt like I could SURELY do better than this grade six BC graduate-to-be.
I red-tagged that day, and almost every day after that for a week. My folder was practically swimming in pink paper. My auditor r-factored me that my folder was with the senior c/s and it would take some time to return.
That was the beginning of the end of my time at Flag. Again, I don't want to get into specifics due to the nature of my leaving (as they'll probably be identifiable.) But it's sufficient to say that I was offloaded for a reason that didnt have to do with my out-int rundown.
They offloaded me in the middle of a bugged Int Rundown and in the middle of a bugged HRD (hence the out int) and left me to rot in my own crazy head.
I did get a little bit of auditing after I came home. A local staff auditor, a person I still have a lot of love for even today, was doing a correction list with me, and I stopped him in the middle of it. "Uh, hey George*, have you ever had a giant dinosaur come in and eat up your incident when you were running it?"
*not the real name, obvs.
He was a great auditor, and had this knack for making session feel like just a conversation. His ack's were never weird or bulky, he never officially invalidated or evaluated, but his tone was always so conversational that I felt I was actually talking with a real person, as opposed to running a process. He said, no, that had never happened to him, but that every PC is different.
"Well," I said, "It happened to me. Does that mean my bank isnt real? or that I was just imagining the incident and that's why the dinosaur came out?"
"I couldn't say." He said, in a non-judgy way. He wasn't even writing furiously behind the shield. "Sometimes shit just happens, it doesn't make you a bad pc."
"Well, what if I had a rock slam when that happened? Could you look into it for me? I know you can't TELL me if it happened, but... it might make me feel better if I knew what the meter was doing when I was running the incident. I cant even remember what incident it was anymore."
He got this thoughtful look, where his eyebrows kind of scrunched together. I shifted in the comfy oversized armchair and adjusted my blanket.
"I'll look into it for you." He smiled. "Why are you worried about rock slamming?"
I literally burst into tears the moment he asked. "I don't want to be evil!" I sobbed. "And Rock slams mean you're a bad person!"
He handed me a tissue and pulled out the meter reads reference. He had me read the rock slam definition.
"So a rock slam is just an indication of an evil INTENTION. It doesn't make you a bad or evil person. And I'll let you in on a secret." He leaned in in mock conspiracy. "Everybody rock slams. At some point in their auditing, it'll happen. Everyone has had an evil intention or four, and there's an entire set of processes to help with that."
I smiled at him, and he casually looked down at the meter, as if he had momentarily forgotten that I was attached to it. "Also, your needle is floating."
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whoo! That's enough for now. I'm starving and need to make some lunch!
Past lives and we come back...where is the proof of that?
I got sucked right into another CULT (not as bad as Scientology - but it was still a cult where the leader made people feel bad about themselves and needed his cult to have spiritual righteousness with God). 
They have made nothing of real substance since they first join...but the believe and work tirelessly to be right....
So glad you are here with all of Us. 
