Chris Shelton: Leaving Scientology

[TheOriginalBigBlue]

http://tonyortega.org/2015/05/01/le...-ill-be-doing-the-rest-of-my-life/#more-22222

Blanky

Thank you for posting Chris Shelton's link. His videos are excellent and I'm impressed with everyone's comments. I just have a few points:

I hope we don't blow people out of the water here if they start in using the evil vernacular. As our Wise Moderator has pointed out, people come here with a wide range of experience and varying viewpoints. If it becomes evident that they are not quite ready can we just respectfully say something like, "Excuse me, this is the "EX"-Scientology Message Board - you may be looking for the "Quasi"-Scientology Forum. They are down the hall on the right".

If the Church is going to experience a well deserved SRA this message board may find itself handling a lot more traffic. We do want to assist these people, yes?

Next, as an aside and in addition to all the other valid reasons given, on the ships and in the days of mimeo machines the Church used telex a lot and paid by the word, so there was a strong emphasis placed on the use of acronyms, abbreviations, etc. which could be kind of a historical precedent. It would not surprise me to also find that LRH deliberately wanted to use Scientology expressions as a subtle means of confusing his many real or perceived enemies who might intercept messages.

(Any subliminal usage of Scientology nomenclature in this message is intended), TOBB

 

[Gib]

Thank you for posting Chris Shelton's link. His videos are excellent and I'm impressed with everyone's comments. I just have a few points:

I hope we don't blow people out of the water here if they start in using the evil vernacular. As our Wise Moderator has pointed out, people come here with a wide range of experience and varying viewpoints. If it becomes evident that they are not quite ready can we just respectfully say something like, "Excuse me, this is the "EX"-Scientology Message Board - you may be looking for the "Quasi"-Scientology Forum. They are down the hall on the right".

If the Church is going to experience a well deserved SRA this message board may find itself handling a lot more traffic. We do want to assist these people, yes?

Next, as an aside and in addition to all the other valid reasons given, on the ships and in the days of mimeo machines the Church used telex a lot and paid by the word, so there was a strong emphasis placed on the use of acronyms, abbreviations, etc. which could be kind of a historical precedent. It would not surprise me to also find that LRH deliberately wanted to use Scientology expressions as a subtle means of confusing his many real or perceived enemies who might intercept messages.

(Any subliminal usage of Scientology nomenclature in this message is intended), TOBB

which also goes to show one he believed in his own stuff. He was right, and nobody was going to stop him.

and hubbard said he used inductive logic.

Inductive reasoning is inherently uncertain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning

but, Hubbard used Rhetoric to create Certainty. LOL

 

[AnonyMary]

Must see for everyone!

 

[MrNobody]

Nobody knows.

Yeah, I know - and Nobody cares!

 

[mockingbird]

There is a lot going on at this thread .I expressed my thoughts on Chris's video and a wide variety of other issues at The Underground Bunker .

Here I am going to comment on the issues of Hubbard believing his own lies . Robert Jay Lifton has explained how cult leaders ( he uses the term guru) can both know they are running a con AND believe their own lies while simultaneously acting to hide the fraud and work to conceal it knowingly .

Lifton describes this here :https://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=8yDoPD5GeCE

This is also explored by Dr Daniel Shaw in his book Traumatic Narcissism.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aG-Jk1kDrrk


And by Sam Vaknin an author with a very extensive group of YouTube videos on narcissists .

I believe Hubbard fits what Vaknin calls a malignant narcissist and Shaw calls a subgroup of malignant narcissist he calls traumatic narcissist.

Sam Vaknin explains the hypothesis that the most severe narcissist has a fractured mind and a true identity that is hidden behind a facade . The facade ( strikingly similar to Hubbard's social veneer) is a fake perfect all knowing all powerful persona . It pretends perfection and pathologically lies to confuse and control others . It subjugates others with trauma - often covertly via mental manipulation .
It desperately seeks adulation and attention .


It has the emotional maturity of a petulant belligerent three year old . It feels entitled to everything and respects no one else's rights .It feels it should get whatever it wants regardless of anyone else or laws or limits set by life or anything . It uses magical thinking to support its deluded fantasies .

Under the facade the true self is atrophied - it is traumatized and has collapsed utterly .The true self is insecure , alone , lacks compassion and humility and has severe narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies . It operates by demanding constant attention and validation to bolster its weak ego .

It knows it is impotent and powerless in life and constantly seeks to overcome this by controlling others .

It has no love or loyalty and uses cold empathy - an ability to calculate the behavior and emotions of others without any compassion .Terms like cold blooded , calculating, reptilian , heartless and vampiric describe this totally alien method of thinking .

It seems unpredictable to others but is truly predictable if you understand it well enough .

Due to the facade appearing one way the hidden inner dynamics of the true self are expertly concealed but are still quite predictable if you know malignant narcissism well.

https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=Oe3PZv0MS7o

 

[mockingbird]

Sam Vaknin has a large collection of videos and in my opinion they explain Hubbard and Scientology quite well. As Hubbard based all Scientology doctrine on plagiarized works from others that he warped and twisted to fulfill his dark desires covertly the entire doctrine and cult reflect the personality of a malignant narcissist.

In totalistic identity theory the ideas from Lifton's eight criteria for thought reform and the concept of a totalist group altering members in a process of thought reform that results in mental cloning come together.

https://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=eD8qURdAN-E

Rod Dubrow-Marshall has done research on this and presented at several ICSA conferences on cults .

http://griess.st1.at/gsk/fecris/pisa/Dubrow_EN.htm

If you combine the ideas of Lifton , Vaknin and Dubrow-Marshall you can see a new concept .

The cult leader both pretends the false promises they make very strongly and knows they are false.

The cult members are via loaded language and double think altered to hold contradictory ideas and behaviors and not know it via denial and dissociation-a mental splitting off.

The cult members are mental clones of the leader-down to the fractured mind AND contradictory ideas and behaviors.


This is the answer to how Scientologists are so blind to the contradictions in their doctrine and the contradictions between Scientology and Hubbard's promises and reality.

He was deluded and reproduces that in his slaves.

Deeply understanding traumatic abuse and subjugation is vitally important to me. As well as understanding narcissism and pathological lying and the extremes of malignant narcissism.


By studying several descriptions of severe narcissism and abusive relationships the intentions of Hubbard and the methods of his cult unravel and become both understandable and predictable .

 

[MrNobody]

There are mathematicians and other geniuses who went quite insane in their mental worlds. The language of maths and physics facilitated that. IMHO, the less people with which we can relay ideas and concepts, the more we are at risk of losing our own sanity.

But it is also self-reflection that facilitates personal change and it is man's deepest thoughts that enabled the greatest scientific, philosophical and other discoveries.

When I studied learning and memory, the brain's capacity for funnelling thought into tiny, focused streams became very clear. It's important to retain the ability to come completely out of that focus and do it regularly to retain generalised concepts and other avenues of thought. Udarnik does this. As Glenda brought up, learning different languages broadened her learning scope. Most children learn languages easily, but our focused attention and use of one language afterwards makes this increasingly difficult as adults.

The brain builds these thought avenues on basic concepts. The ability to create new basic concepts decreases with age and with continual focused attention in one direction, on one thing. We must shift gears for mental balance and to retain perspective and the ability to learn other things or we just forget - or even lose the ability to explore these other thought avenues altogether.

That is the essence of how people become addicts. Narrowed attention, narrowed focus, narrowed field of thought or philosophy without coming out of it eventually makes us stupid in other areas where we have not exercised our brains.




LIKE! The Dobby the elf thing is so funny!

Yeah, that's why I never dive more/deeper than absolutely necessary into any given topic. :wink2:

Up to a certain level, I can get almost anything done - above and beyond that, specialists are needed.

And yeah, quite a few geniuses went insane. I've met more than one person who was able to analyze a certain, highly complicated problem in their individual field in almost no time and come up with the perfect solution - but when it was about tying their own shoelaces, they were more or less helpless. And yeah, I've seen a few highly skilled people go insane.

I still remember a conversation with a Biologist: He was only inches away from his doctor's hat, but seriously considered giving up biology. Why? He wanted to study Informatics. My question: Why that?

He told me he wanted to learn informatics to that he could teach computers the secrets of Ying and Yang so that computers could then solve all the ailments of this world.

I gave him a short, scarily sobering computer lecture and he decided to stay in Biology and to re-think his weird IT-ideas. One fucked-up weirdo lost, one Top-Biologist won! Yay!

Specialists, allrounders and "meddlers" - the world needs all of us. Well, except conmen like Hubbard.

Oh, and an interesting, seemingly unrelated video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2vN2QXZGnc

 

[AnonyMary]

mockingbird, the only thing going on now with this thread is that you are derailing it from the topic and discussion of Chris Shelton's video.

Please go start another thread if you can't contribute to this thread and it's topic, like everyone else here is.

 

[JustSheila]

yes, I understand. But in the end, Hubbard did believe his own stuff, ask Sarge.

Well, yeh, but he was completely bonkers out of his mind those last few years, too (not that he wasn't before that... ) Jesse Prince gives all the details in his upcoming book. Much juicier details than what Wright knew. Watch for it.

The thing is, people with untreated mental conditions like schizophrenia or dementia just get worse over time, but it's still a cyclical thing. They have periods of seeming normality, but those periods become shorter, less frequent and less sane, while the crazy times get longer and more extreme. So Hub believing it in the end when he was a complete screaming lunatic doesn't necessarily mean he believed it all along.

He knew what he was doing alright, that is saving mankind, and he thoroughly believed he was. And I think he thoroughly wanted to smash his name into history, and make men slaves. He wanted to be Xenu, but a good guy version, in his mind.

One has to admit to themselves that he did build an empire.

something to consider:

http://mfa.english.txstate.edu/tech/rhetoric/archive/docs/timeline.pdf

If you were willing to set aside all concepts of decency and compassion, honesty and integrity, in order to have personal fame and fortune, even being willing to enslave others through sneaky hypnotic techniques to get them to think they were freely doing what they wanted to do while giving you all their youth, time and money to do what YOU wanted, would that make you a good person or an evil one?

You and I may always disagree on this, Gib, but Hubs made hundreds of admissions over the years about the limits of clear, problems with Dianetics, bullshitting people, etc. He wanted fame and fortune, no matter the cost to others. He didn't care about conscience and worked hard to be rid of his own. He was a conartist before Dn or Scn and he didn't change that part at all.

That he eventually believed his own con and died alone battling imaginary BTs while his best friends and even his doctor partied in Vegas because they couldn't stand to be around him is about the most karmically perfect ending I could imagine. His fat, bloated body naked and hanging as he fell climbing the crow's nest of an SO ship to catch a BT might have been completely perfect, but I'm not complaining, either. The nasty, evil old man is dead. Good riddance.

 

[SPsince83]

Well, yeh, but he was completely bonkers out of his mind those last few years, too (not that he wasn't before that... ) Jesse Prince gives all the details in his upcoming book. Much juicier details than what Wright knew. Watch for it.

The thing is, people with untreated mental conditions like schizophrenia or dementia just get worse over time, but it's still a cyclical thing. They have periods of seeming normality, but those periods become shorter, less frequent and less sane, while the crazy times get longer and more extreme. So Hub believing it in the end when he was a complete screaming lunatic doesn't necessarily mean he believed it all along.



If you were willing to set aside all concepts of decency and compassion, honesty and integrity, in order to have personal fame and fortune, even being willing to enslave others through sneaky hypnotic techniques to get them to think they were freely doing what they wanted to do while giving you all their youth, time and money to do what YOU wanted, would that make you a good person or an evil one?

You and I may always disagree on this, Gib, but Hubs made hundreds of admissions over the years about the limits of clear, problems with Dianetics, bullshitting people, etc. He wanted fame and fortune, no matter the cost to others. He didn't care about conscience and worked hard to be rid of his own. He was a conartist before Dn or Scn and he didn't change that part at all.

That he eventually believed his own con and died alone battling imaginary BTs while his best friends and even his doctor partied in Vegas because they couldn't stand to be around him is about the most karmically perfect ending I could imagine. His fat, bloated body naked and hanging as he fell climbing the crow's nest of an SO ship to catch a BT might have been completely perfect, but I'm not complaining, either. The nasty, evil old man is dead. Good riddance.

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"

Aleister Crowley
The Beast 666

 

[JustSheila]

Yeah, that's why I never dive more/deeper than absolutely necessary into any given topic. :wink2:

Up to a certain level, I can get almost anything done - above and beyond that, specialists are needed.

And yeah, quite a few geniuses went insane. I've met more than one person who was able to analyze a certain, highly complicated problem in their individual field in almost no time and come up with the perfect solution - but when it was about tying their own shoelaces, they were more or less helpless. And yeah, I've seen a few highly skilled people go insane.

I still remember a conversation with a Biologist: He was only inches away from his doctor's hat, but seriously considered giving up biology. Why? He wanted to study Informatics. My question: Why that?

He told me he wanted to learn informatics to that he could teach computers the secrets of Ying and Yang so that computers could then solve all the ailments of this world.

I gave him a short, scarily sobering computer lecture and he decided to stay in Biology and to re-think his weird IT-ideas. One fucked-up weirdo lost, one Top-Biologist won! Yay!

Specialists, allrounders and "meddlers" - the world needs all of us. Well, except conmen like Hubbard.

Oh, and an interesting, seemingly unrelated video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2vN2QXZGnc

What a great vid! Yah, I had to get 8 min in it to the really good stuff. I can see why you didn't try to explain it, though.

Think of love and you think broad and abstract. Think of sex and attention becomes focused. Cool! (and I did got more out of the vid than that, btw. )

I like what she was saying about the limits of taming our brains and comparing it to the limits of a rat, as they cannot count very far, but only approximate. Fascinating!

Then there are those silly company owners who package jobs together like, "reception, telephones and bookkeeping" and wonder why they can't keep anyone who doesn't make mistakes with the books.

So tying this all back to topic - we have our limits. Language is one of those things that gives us boundaries and limits in our thinking.

 

[guRl]

I remember posting something about the use of Scio Lingo and loaded language way in the past. This subject matter had always fascinated me, and the comments here are (as always) insightful and helping
At this point what I'm curious the most about (regarding this), is how those who born into Scientology and left at some stage of their life, deal with the lingo issue. I mean, IMHO people who joined Scientology but were not born into it, joined it with their mother tongue, only to have it "loaded" by the Church doctrines.
But people who were born into it-- well, Scio Lingo is their mother tongue, is it not? I guess it depends of course on many things, i.e how deep in were the parents, or was it just one parent, did the child attend a public school etc. The most problematic case would obviously be the child that was born into hard-core Scientology family, the Org is practically his/hers second house, attended some kind of Delphi or other, maybe joined staff or the Sea Org at some point or what have you. I always thought it would be interesting to hear about the experiences and process the exScio kid would go through to, well, being reborn into the real world via inquiry of the actual mother tongue.

 

[MrNobody]

Ugh, Gib, to me it's painful to reply to this stuff...

yes, I understand. But in the end, Hubbard did believe his own stuff, ask Sarge.

Why should I ask Sarge? I don't know much about Sarge, but that doesn't matter - he certainly couldn't know what Hubbard really believed. Or could he (Sarge) prove without a doubt that he could read other people's minds with 100% accuracy? And that he could prove to anyone without a doubt that his readings were 100% accurate?

He knew what he was doing alright, that is saving mankind, and he thoroughly believed he was. And I think he thoroughly wanted to smash his name into history, and make men slaves. He wanted to be Xenu, but a good guy version, in his mind.

One has to admit to themselves that he did build an empire.

something to consider:

http://mfa.english.txstate.edu/tech/rhetoric/archive/docs/timeline.pdf

Hubbard certainly wanted to smash his name into history, make men his slaves and get filthy rich on the way, but that's all that's provable. The rest is just some manipulative babblings and pooping around some luke-warm air about some ridiculous pseudo-"spirituality".

Otherwise, at least one Clear or OT could have been presented.

Honestly, as painful as it might feel for you: Hubbard and his cronies were just a bunch of scammers who managed to lure you in and rip you off. Deal with it. It's about time, I'd say.

 

[BunnySkull]

I think Hubbard believed his own bullshit in the end because his mental illness kept getting worse, along with his physical health and mental faculties failing as he aged. The problem was he created this entire bubble world where he was surrounded by true believers. I think after he lost all contact with his wife and family there was nothing left to keep him from going deeper and deeper into his own insanity and unlike most mentally ill people he had unlimited funds, a worldwide organization and thousands of true believers. Personally he was surrounded by a hardcore cadre of SO kids who treated him as a god, obeyed his every command and met his every whim. Living in a self-contained world like that would probably make even a mentally sound person go crazy, but since we were dealing with Hubbard it just led deep down the rabbit hole he had created to trap others. His trap to enslave others eventually enslaved him as well.

 

[SPsince83]

I remember posting something about the use of Scio Lingo and loaded language way in the past. This subject matter had always fascinated me, and the comments here are (as always) insightful and helping
At this point what I'm curious the most about (regarding this), is how those who born into Scientology and left at some stage of their life, deal with the lingo issue. I mean, IMHO people who joined Scientology but were not born into it, joined it with their mother tongue, only to have it "loaded" by the Church doctrines.
But people who were born into it-- well, Scio Lingo is their mother tongue, is it not? I guess it depends of course on many things, i.e how deep in were the parents, or was it just one parent, did the child attend a public school etc. The most problematic case would obviously be the child that was born into hard-core Scientology family, the Org is practically his/hers second house, attended some kind of Delphi or other, maybe joined staff or the Sea Org at some point or what have you. I always thought it would be interesting to hear about the experiences and process the exScio kid would go through to, well, being reborn into the real world via inquiry of the actual mother tongue.

Good point

 

[guanoloco]

The suggestion about jettisoning the language/nomenclature ASAP was very helpful for me when I got out. I forced myself to get rid of it on Jesse Prince's recommendation and it made a huge difference. I think that's bigger than people may realize. There are language centers in the brain, etc......yada, yada.....it's a binding point that's a hardwired thing.

I know, not very technical but you know what I mean, right?

Yeah, sort of like a circuit that holds in place a synthetic valence with tractor beams that solidifies the R6 bank with some real heavy alter-is mass that squashes the thetan and sets up a super synthetic automaticity that is then used as a viewpoint...like a dramatization of whole track implants!

I know exactly what you mean, I really duplicate that isness!

HIP! HIP!

 

[guanoloco]

I find the conversation about specialized language fascinating. As you probably know I rant about scientologese and the words I refuse to use, regularly. At the same time - all communities, specialties, and organizations have their own language shortcuts and jargon. So what makes one type of group mind/language part of an abusive and controlling relationship and while another is not? What makes one thought stopping and another not? Or is it impossible to avoid the thought stopping altogether?

One difference I see between, say, jargon in a medical application and jargon in scientology is the universal use of scientology for all life applications and experiences. Whereas medical jargon would be confined to a specific profession. I'm trying, for comparison, to think of other places in my life where I've learned and used a language subset.

I think the real problem was mentioned earlier in the thread and that's Hu666ard's derisive commentary on everything "wog" while slyly stroking the Scientology ego on how wise and ethical is the top 1% of the top 1%.

I once started a thread called the Anatomy of an LRH Lecture or something like that that shows the usual pattern of Hu666ard's diatribes and scathing derogatory denigrations of virtually EVERYTHING - not jus psychs. These things are wholesale critical natter-fests - the guy hated everything and held everything including cultural and societal institutions (parenting, marriage, manners) in contempt.

As far as the jargon it's just like sexual harassment - it's less the words and more the inflected intent.

One could say "you look nice today" as a comment or as a lascivious overture. That gets lost usually and the focus becomes the words instead.

A lot of Scientology jargon I find useful - like dev-t, he&r and r-factor. They're merely quick and easy ways to say "waste of time", "over reacting" and "reality adjustment".

Some Scientology jargon like "1.1" communicate better than anything else, being a more precise definition.

Ofcourse, outside of the "in" crowd it might as well be pig Latin and probably sounds just as silly.

 

[Moosejewels]

Tony features an excellent video with Chris Shelton on his blog today. In it he talks about steps to recovering and healing from Scientology or any other abusive cult. All the points are very good and can each be taken as jumping off points for deeper exploration of healing and recovery strategies.

http://tonyortega.org/2015/05/01/le...-ill-be-doing-the-rest-of-my-life/#more-22222

Chris makes a really superb point about reading the accounts of ex members that I think bears emphasis. I'll quote it here. You can find it at about 5:40



Also on Chris' blog - http://mncriticalthinking.com/author/skepticalseeker/

Blanky

Chris, you are spot-on. I still, after all these many many years out, have epiphanies wherein it will suddenly dawn on me that a current opinion or prejudice I harbor is the result of scieno-programming all those many years ago. And I agree with you that Scientology is, and actually always has been (despite programming to the opposite effect), a "tiny and insignificant" cult. A dust mote on the face of the universe(s).

 

[TheOriginalBigBlue]

which also goes to show one he believed in his own stuff. He was right, and nobody was going to stop him.

and hubbard said he used inductive logic.

Inductive reasoning is inherently uncertain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning

but, Hubbard used Rhetoric to create Certainty. LOL

Thank you Gib, for another informative reference. But it looks more like Deductive Reasoning to me:

Premise: LRH created Scientology.
Hypothesis: LRH used Deductive Reasoning, (a system of logic designed to validate pre-conceived ideas).
Conclusion: Scientology is actually "Hubbard-ology" = Knowing how to know L. Ron Hubbard

I also appreciate your earlier reference to Rhetoric. You will find the following format hauntingly familiar, (CSW/Completed Staff Work: Situation, Data, Solution. One more thing LRH didn't "create".

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2011/...-101-the-five-canons-of-rhetoric-arrangement/

Arrangement is simply the organization of a speech or text to ensure maximum persuasion. Classical rhetoricians divided a speech into six different parts. They are:
1. Introduction (exordium)
2. Statement of Facts (narratio)
3. Division (partitio)
4. Proof (confirmatio)
5. Refutation (refutatio)
6. Conclusion (peroratio)
If you’ve taken debate or philosophy classes, you’ve probably seen this format for organizing a speech or paper.

 

[Gib]

Ugh, Gib, to me it's painful to reply to this stuff...



Why should I ask Sarge? I don't know much about Sarge, but that doesn't matter - he certainly couldn't know what Hubbard really believed. Or could he (Sarge) prove without a doubt that he could read other people's minds with 100% accuracy? And that he could prove to anyone without a doubt that his readings were 100% accurate?



Hubbard certainly wanted to smash his name into history, make men his slaves and get filthy rich on the way, but that's all that's provable. The rest is just some manipulative babblings and pooping around some luke-warm air about some ridiculous pseudo-"spirituality".

Otherwise, at least one Clear or OT could have been presented.

Honestly, as painful as it might feel for you: Hubbard and his cronies were just a bunch of scammers who managed to lure you in and rip you off. Deal with it. It's about time, I'd say.

Thanks for saving me, Mr. Nobody, I do appreciate that, but you are a little late. I already had my aha moment just prior to my first post here on ESMB in July, 2012.

Just because I state something like I think Hubbard believed his own shit, doesn't me I do. LOL

There is just something I can't put my finger on, when I listened to the Chuck Beatty interview posted in the comments section on Tony O blog's that has Chris Shelton OP video, the Chuck video bought up thoughts since Chuck states there are thousands of Hubbards advices people haven't read. I dunno, for Hubbard to write and lecture so much, one has to think he believed his own shit, even if delusional. :confused2:

I know this question has been discussed b/4 as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTzO6aHWXUg#t=104