Escape from Flagcatraz

[Cat's Squirrel]

The simple answer is that the chains are the chains of the mind.

The 'handlers' yank the chains.

I don't doubt that in *some* cases, more brutal force is and has been used, but, for the most part, it's the Cult indoctrination that holds people.

Zinj

Yeah, and as was said to me once by an ex-Scientologist, the belief that the CofS has the "only way" to spiritual freedom is the trap.

 

[Lee_from_phx]

I guess it also explains how some women will stay with a man who abuses them, instead of bashing his skull in with a tire iron.

 

[Wisened One]

That was kind of what I figured.

"If you leave you'll DIE of EBOLA within 6 weeks!!!"

"You'll be DECLARED and lose your ETERNITY!!!"

And other assorted absurdities.

Ugh, don't bring back the memories.....

I'm still waiting to have DIED, FAILED, Become HOMELESS, LOST, DESTITUTE, etc.etc.etc....LOL!

 

[Colleen K. Peltomaa]

I'm still laughing about the SO member who told me "You will not get your Bridge this lifetime." Turns out she was right, and what a blessing for me.

 

[Sharone Stainforth]

Who the hell needs a bridge - Swin.

 

[GreyLensman]

When I was on staff it was the freeloader debt. In order to become qualified for staff and then for your various posts, you absolutely had to do courses that could cost a fortune if you left. Probably a minimum of $5000.00, many routed off staff with far more debt than that. Debt that you felt honor-bound to pay.

You also have to grant that most staff aren't there for power or for money - most don't get any real pay at all. We are/were there because we care deeply for the goals professed to us as the goals of Scientology, we in many cases care deeply about the technology and for heloing people, we believed that the Church was the best way to accomplish that, both for others, our public, and for ourselves. When I started staff in the 1970's it was also a hell of a lot of fun. There was a shared purpose and a sense of adventure and of creating a better future for all of mankind. I did get auditing and training. i did get case gain from succeeding, and I did make it go right.

Only after quite a bit of time did I find I was justifying too many times, finding excuses as to why things were this way, when intention and policy and golas said they should be that other way...

From inside you are looking at first a freeloader debt, second to losing friends and comrades you care for, third to admitting you are not or no longer one of those elite, you go back to being mere public, or beyond that to being torn from friends and family and left adrift for eternity with no future (declared). You have no money, in many cases you have derailed any education you should have gotten, you have no professional skills. You have the feeling you would be bereft and lost. You have often probably ARC-broken your family (mother, father, siblings) and while it is likely not true, you do not feel you can ask for help, it betrays that you are not a more able being...

And that's just class IV org staff. The Sea Org is infinitely more difficult.

 

[sandygirl]

Quote from Wisened Ones:

I'm still waiting to have DIED, FAILED, Become HOMELESS, LOST, DESTITUTE, etc.etc.etc....LOL!

Exactly!!! I was in such fear of doing wrong in the church! Remember the bulletin on how Scientology "ethics" are so powerful that if you even start to use them, beings just "cave in" because they "KNOW" that Scn. is their total future!!!

A weird thing is happening to me lately. When I left, I just wanted myself and my family to be left alone. I have lots of family still in and active and I didn't have a problem with that as long as they respected my decision to quit.

NOW-after the endless amount of harrassement after TWO YEARS, all of the stuff I finally let myself read on the internet, and the feeling like I was really stupid to let myself be pushed around so much-I'm really starting to wish the church harm. Something I never would have believed about myself.

 

[Wisened One]

Sandy: I hear ya!

You know, I think many of us go through various 'stages' when each of us really 'leave' (in heart, mind, body and soul, cuz many blow/route-out and stay scn's even if they're not active at all. We did for an extra 9 or 10 yrs after blowing/then routing out).

I STILL go thru various stages...sometimes I feel ANGRY at Co$ for treatment of us as Staff, their treatment of the Public, Kids, etc, etc.
Then sometimes I feel forgiving towards them, then I'll go back and forth...

No matter what tho, I never feel I want to go back (even as a Public). Especially the way it is and has been. If it were truly 'reformed' and the prices were cheaper and there really WAS an 'OT' Then, who knows, we COULD consider it, but I seriously doubt it.

(Anyone know any OT 15's within Co$? Come ON, someone's gotta to have done it, wouldn't ya think?)...

At any rate: It took a LONG time to get over the loss of nothing to 'reach' (as far as The OT Levels, I mean). But We are sooooo GLAD we 'got out' before we gave too much of our lives and money, ya know?

 

[sandygirl]

quote from Wisened Ones:

At any rate: It took a LONG time to get over the loss of nothing to 'reach' (as far as The OT Levels, I mean). But We are sooooo GLAD we 'got out' before we gave too much of our lives and money, ya know?

At this point are you pretty convinced that there is nothing to the OT levels? Do you worry about dying or next lives?

These are some of the things I think about.

I can't ever see myself going back either. It just got too weird, and no matter how much we can point the finger at COB I saw a lot of people, staff, public, and SO missionaires who were more than willing to really rip others lives apart for $$$$ and stats.

I don't think I could really trust that place again and more importantly I don't want them to get their hands on my kids.

 

[Wisened One]

Sandy: Well, regarding if there really IS any 'OT' in the truest sense of the word (and attained supposely ONLY thru $cn)...Yeah, we're at this time, convinced. But don't think we don't vascillate sometimes (only slightly tho).
We HAVE met some impressive L's completions...yet not very many impressive OT VIII's
(yeah, yeah, I know, it's only the first 'REAL'level, blabla).

What they radiate, while clean, expansive spaces,etc.. is NOT worth the more than 300 grand/ millions of hours working as Staff/SO for it, giving up time with your family/children, etc. ya know?

And it HURT to realize that...because well, we WANTED there to be something there and that we are just 'blown' from it, you know what I mean? Anyone else felt like this?

But we would now never give our blood, sweat, tears, souls to the degree that we did as Staff (and we were only Class V Staff for three years, (me, four) most of you are 20+ years!).

It's taken YEARS for us to slowly straighten out our thinking, to first 'tolerating' 'wogs' (as it were, we honestly don't call them that nor feel 'holier than thou' as much...)...to actually being close friends and 'listening' to them FOR REAL sometimes..that they CAN actually 'be right' on issues, advice here and there, ya know?

I'm rambling, sorry.

I'm also sooooooo happy that my kids never got involved very much YAY!

We're all out, happily barbequing, enjoying bonfires, going to movies,LOAFING! SHOPPING! , LAUGHING! etc!

(All work and no play attitude FINALLY wearing thin!!)

 

[sandygirl]

Dear WO

Look at what I just found!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07m-IvvpK2E

 

[Wisened One]

Sandy: Great find! This should be moved over to Videos, tho

 

[GreyLensman]

I talked with my FSM once a long time ago (he was OT VIII, shortly after it was released...). Somewhere in the conversation he was trying to push my buttons on hurrying up the rest of the Bridge because of DEATH LURKING AROUND THE CORNER!!! In talking about he said something along the lines of he was OT VIII and death wasn't handled for him...

I was bloody shocked to my core. I had just finished OT III, I went clear in 1952, dying no longer held any fear for me at all, I was and am reasonably sure that I am a spirit and that I don't ever die and that I had blown enough case to do much better at determining what my future would hold.

And this OT VIII was telling me of his personal uncertainty.

I am still sorting out for myself what was valuable to me ("true for me") and what was crap (e.g., the Sunshine Rundown... like that needed to be a separate action). I have no doubt that some of it is quite valuable. A quick evaluation seems to be that perhaps 3/4 of Admin tech is unworkable, and that ethics only works similar to the Code of Honour, as a personal choice - and becomes gawd-awful when you move it into "justice". Thursday at 2 PM skews everything into being short-sighted and self-destructive, disallowing a long term survival viewpoint.

Just my view of this.

 

[crm1978]

Your posts remind me of the bad old USSR If life was so good why were so many walls and guards needed to keep people in and not out.It seems CofS has reached that same point Would anyone join staff if they knew that they would live like people in a state prison?

 

[Voltaire's Child]

NotNuts hasn't posted here in a very long time. Hope he's ok.

 

[Jachs]

Well, hello everyone!

I've been lurking on this and many other boards for a few months now.

With a lot of support from my ex-SO friends, and the work that Anonymous and so many others are now doing, I feel confident enough to start to tell my story.

It's a story that begins with 10 years at the Int Base and ends with 5 years at the FSO.

It's not pretty, but I am hoping to help both myself and others by doing this.

I've seen a lot of my friends posting on these boards -- I've reconnected with many of them -- and I'm so grateful that this board is in existence, because it's how I've come so far so fast.

I can tell you that what you read on these boards from those of us who worked alongside the Tiny Terror is just a fraction of the abuses he perpetrated on everyone who came near him -- particularly the most creative and capable ones. Hmmmm.... didn't someone once mention something about the type of person who leeches on to creative types in order to suck the life out of them?

But I digress.

I titled this thread, "Escape from Flagcatraz" because I wanted to start with my reasons for leaving the FSO.

There are a lot of postings on these threads about life at Int over the past few years, but not so many about life at Flag, and believe me, there is a lot to tell.

Life at Flag for a Sea Org member was not bad for the first couple of years I was there. In comparison to life at the Int Base, it was a full-time vacation: Actual liberties -- for many (those who managed to manipulate their stats very well) once every two weeks. Going out to the movies as a group, and with your friends on the weekend -- and not just to see Battlefield Earth or MI3 three times. Decent meals -- not gourmet, but not rice and beans. Parties on the holidays, Sea Org Day, 4th of July, etc.

When I got to Flag, the only thing I knew about Lisa McPherson was that this was the reason DM spent so much time in Clearwater in the early 2000s.

It was only when I got out and started reading that I realized what had actually gone on. My god.

So, arriving at Flag, I thought I had come out of a nightmare into a dream, as I had been on the Int Base for 10 years and had experienced the pain -- both physical and emotional -- that went along with it.

But then four words changed my dream back into the nightmare:

GOLDEN AGE OF KNOWLEDGE.

The release of the Congresses -- was it in 2005? It's all a blur to me now -- started the downward plunge of that base. And then, with the basic books, all hell broke loose.

Every day, I saw the FLB becoming more and more like the Int Base I knew and loathed.

The late nights became routine, nobody leaving until their "sales quota" was met.

The verbal abuse by executives was at an all-time high. As for physical abuse -- that's happening there, too. I've seen a high executive literally throw the Exec Esto to the ground because she told him to go to study. Was he reprimanded for this? Guess.

Security was just insane -- you can't walk anywhere on that base right now without a Security Guard watching you.

And as far as security at berthing is concerned, that's locked up tight. The only way you can escape from that base is to stay on post all night and sneak out in the middle of the night with your rented car, pretending that you're "securing" and then just drive, drive, drive.

That's how I did it.

I knew they would be coming after me within hours -- as soon as they got in and realized I wasn't there.

So I knew I had to get as far away as possible, and also not to use any form of payment anywhere that they could trace.

After a few weeks of trying, they gave up -- probably because they were all too busy handling "internal security" problems.

Anyway, I'm starting my life over now -- picking up where I left off 20 years ago -- and every day gets better.

I have so much to tell -- but all in due time. Here's a taste:

Question: What is the easiest way to be INSTANTLY offloaded from the FLB, without having to go through a month of lockdown and sec checks?

Question: Why, if there are over 1,600 staff and outer org trainees on that base right now, do you hardly see them on the streets any more?

Question: What happens to you when you physically attack your much older and female senior, and more than once? Hint: it's not punishment.

Oh, yes, there is a lot to tell. Not just about the FLB, but also my experiences at Int for 10 years, during the time LBV, BFG and BTstoFree were all there, plus many others.

I'll tell more soon.

I'm just so glad to have someplace safe to tell it. Thanks everyone.

I hope he's ok too, he knows two well known posters BFG and BTstoFree.

 

[SchwimmelPuckel]

I hope he's ok too, he knows two well known posters BFG and BTstoFree.

Three! - LBV, Little Bear Victor, is most certainly well known too. (Albeit he has chosen to stay anonymous.. As I recall.. I might be wrong?)