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My Ups and Downs

FoTi

Crusader
pique |pēk|
noun
a feeling of irritation or resentment resulting from a slight, esp. to one's pride : he left in a fit of pique.
verb ( piques |pēks|, piqued |pēkt|, piquing |ˈpēki ng |)
1 [ trans. ] stimulate (interest or curiosity) : you have piqued my curiosity about the man.
2 ( be piqued) feel irritated or resentful : she was piqued by his curtness.
3 ( pique oneself) archaic pride oneself.
ORIGIN mid 16th cent.(denoting animosity between two or more people): from French piquer ‘prick, irritate.’

I guess I need a new dictionary. My American Heritage doesn't have that definition #1 at all. Maybe I should have looked it up online.
 

thetanic

Gold Meritorious Patron
Good idea - but I think the only thing we might have been reflecting back, that was ours/from us, was perhaps fear/trepidation. I think the guy was a sociopath, drunk - and on the prowl. He wanted to hurt some woman, and he picked my friend. He was probably attracted to the fear and trepidation, like a snake to the mouse . . . Only sometimes that mouse turns out to be Mighty Mouse, heh heh. Or has a Mighty Mouse friend at her back.

Some people are indeed like that, sadly.

Ya know, come to think of it, my friend was into witch magic . . . Maybe that is where she got the idea - - ???

Quite likely. No doubt why LRH forbade spells, lest they be used against him.
 

crm1978

Patron with Honors
Loving your story thanks to you I did'nt get a damn thing done yesterday! A few problems I had were dealing with LRH saying one thing in one HCOB then saying the opposite in the next one then looking for m'u's because if there is any confusion it must be my fault so off I went on the word chains.I never considered that LRH did'nt make an effort to make anything consistant and he seemed to forget what he wrote before.Of course at the time I was in awe of his every word and just thought must be mu's . After I left and regained my critical reasoning ability it was clear that Hubbard was the confused one.All through your story I was struck by how utterly incompetent Scientology orgs even the "Mecca of perfection" Flag were at basic service delivery hell even my local pizza place gives better service then those morons. I also would like to say what a good job you did of keeping your personal integrity through all of the crap they put you through. It would have been nice if they would have said we screwed up with your auditing we will credit you the last intensive we wasted instead of just sucking more money from you now that would be integrity! I just can'nt believe how heartless and unethical the "church" and most of it's members treat each other
 

FoTi

Crusader
Loving your story thanks to you I did'nt get a damn thing done yesterday! A few problems I had were dealing with LRH saying one thing in one HCOB then saying the opposite in the next one then looking for m'u's because if there is any confusion it must be my fault so off I went on the word chains.I never considered that LRH did'nt make an effort to make anything consistant and he seemed to forget what he wrote before.Of course at the time I was in awe of his every word and just thought must be mu's . After I left and regained my critical reasoning ability it was clear that Hubbard was the confused one.All through your story I was struck by how utterly incompetent Scientology orgs even the "Mecca of perfection" Flag were at basic service delivery hell even my local pizza place gives better service then those morons. I also would like to say what a good job you did of keeping your personal integrity through all of the crap they put you through. It would have been nice if they would have said we screwed up with your auditing we will credit you the last intensive we wasted instead of just sucking more money from you now that would be integrity! I just can'nt believe how heartless and unethical the "church" and most of it's members treat each other

Yeh...it's kind of a long read.....took me a long time to write it.

That thing about - if you don't understand it, you disagree with it, or you are confused you must have an MU.....it was sometimes true, but not always. But then LRH could never be wrong, could he? :eyeroll: Would he ever accept that what he wrote wasn't correct or conflicting? :no: Maybe he was the one with the MU. :coolwink:

I think everyone in Scientology is confused. I don't think they would put up with the stuff that they do if they weren't confused. They are all following a confused leader and a confused path.

It's very hard to keep one's integrity when others are trying to knock it out all the time. It's a continuous challenge.
 

Sharone Stainforth

Silver Meritorious Patron
Riveting read, Foti.

So sorry and sad you went through all of that. Would it help you to know I always saw Flag and St. hill like that and I was only there a very short time compared to you, in the 60s and 1970.

So very glad you finally found your way out.

Bless you!

Sharone
 

FoTi

Crusader
Riveting read, Foti.

So sorry and sad you went through all of that. Would it help you to know I always saw Flag and St. hill like that and I was only there a very short time compared to you, in the 60s and 1970.

So very glad you finally found your way out.

Bless you!

Sharone

Thanks Sharone...

I'm glad I found my way out too. I'd hate to be still stuck in that mess like some of my friends, who of course won't talk to me now.

Bless you too!
 

Svetka

Patron with Honors
Hi FoTi! Thank you for your story, I started to read and find very interesting and enlightening. You mentioned in one of your posts David Mayo, and I was hopping to read about him in your story, but did not come to it so far.

I am curious because I make a website about David and collect there not only his writings, vide and audio lecture, but the witnesses testimonials about him. I tought you might be interested to participate and contribute in a form of article or comments?
http://community.freezone-tech.info/david-mayo

I think that by not admitting his mistakes Hubbard was trying to protect and do not shake the stable data, but turned the whole "science" into the dogma by that.
 
... I think that by not admitting his mistakes Hubbard was trying to protect and do not shake the stable data, but turned the whole "science" into the dogma by that.

I happen to believe, given the very clear evidence of such within his writings, lecture materials, and actions of hubbard's preoccupation with self & narcissistic tendencies that he simply could not abide the thought of admitting to others any significant error, unethical, immoral, or illegal actions, either committed by himself or by others acting directly under his orders.

Moreover, that is a view completely consonant with many of those who had the most actual direct experience of hubbard. [Not that I claim to be such, I most certainly am not.]

Most frequently those who serve as apologists for hubbard had little or no direct contact with the man and frequently express an unwillingness to accept the unfavorable testimony of those who had direct knowledge of, or experience with, the man.

Rathbun is an excellent case in point, as are several prominent individuals within the freezone who routinely style themselves as defenders of ron and object to the discussion of facts which are critical of there personal hero.

And in doing so they go well beyond reason. Even Ken Urquhart does not deny hubbard's darker aspects, preferring instead to maintain a discrete silence about those disturbing aspects of a man whom he prefers to remember as a personal friend.


Mark A. Baker
 

FoTi

Crusader
Hi FoTi! Thank you for your story, I started to read and find very interesting and enlightening. You mentioned in one of your posts David Mayo, and I was hopping to read about him in your story, but did not come to it so far.

I am curious because I make a website about David and collect there not only his writings, vide and audio lecture, but the witnesses testimonials about him. I tought you might be interested to participate and contribute in a form of article or comments?
http://community.freezone-tech.info/david-mayo

I think that by not admitting his mistakes Hubbard was trying to protect and do not shake the stable data, but turned the whole "science" into the dogma by that.

Nope.....I don't have any more comments.:no:

Nice website.
 

Gib

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.

:heartflower:

Thank you so much for your story. I have just read it all over the last few days.

What can I say that others have not done so already. :confused2: But I give them :thumbsup:

As you state above in bold and on an earlier post, you and your dad were both trying to save each other. He you from the bridge and scientology, you him not getting freedom.

The answer is thus not :violent: or :catfight: or disconnection.

I do not know the answer. Your write-up is certaintly a part of the answer as it has helped me with :questions:
 

Ted

Gold Meritorious Patron
Re: Here's more

[...] that was the sacrifice of going up the Bridge to Total Freedom. I took unnecessary risks that I would not have otherwise taken in order to reach that unachievable goal in Scientology.

:seeya: More later. :wave:


Very true for many of us. That in of itself would make an interesting thread. I appreciate your candor. :yes::yes::yes:
 
My intro to Scn starts back in the early 70's. I received a flyer in the mail which peaked my curiosity so I bit and went to an office building in West LA to check it out. When I got there, there was a small reception area and I was ushered into a small office where a guy sat behind the desk and told me that they could solve my problems if I would give him $2,000.00. :omg: I told him....I don't think so and got up to leave. When I came out into the reception area, there were about 4 people standing around and a table of books on one wall. They were all intending me to buy a book. Me alone with 4 other people plus the guy who interviewed me got me scared because they had me surrounded and weren't about to let me go until I bought something. I looked at the table and picked up a small book and paid for it and got out of there....whew! While I was there nobody mentioned the word Dianetics or Scientology. The name of the book I bought to get out of there was Problems of Work and I took it home and never read it. That was my first experience with Scientologists, but I had no idea that they were Scientologists until later.

Many months later I ran into an old boyfriend - someone that I was very uncomfortable around who also had a bad case of asthma. We had lunch together and he told me he was getting this auditing and it had helped him. He wanted me to have some of this wonderful stuff and said he would even pay for it. I was working full time and going to college full time and had no time for anything else, so I declined. But I did notice changes in him....he no longer gave me that uncomfortable feeling and he wasn't having trouble breathing. He said that it got rid of his asthma and it looked like that was true. I was impressed.

A few weeks later he invited me to an event at the Paladium on a Saturday. My boyfriend said that he was working on Saturday, so I said okay to going to the event with my old boyfriend, only to find out that my current boyfriend was going to be there also. Turns out my boyfriend didn't tell me he was a Scientologist because he had to disconnect from his former wife and two kids because she didn't like Scn and he was afraid that I wouldn't like it either.

This event started in the morning and lasted until about 2am the next morning. My old boyfriend told me that if anyone came up to me at the event I could just say no to them and they would accept a no from me. While I was at this event, at one of the breaks, someone did come up to me and said "Come with me". I remembered what he had said and I said "no". She repeated "Come with me" and I said "no". She repeated it a third time and I said no a third time and she just looked at me and said..."okay" and turned around and walked away. So it seemed like I wasn't going to be forced into anything and I felt comfortable with that.

I really enjoyed the event. Quintin was there and gave a demo of auditing, which I didn't understand and I was very impressed with Diana's stage presence and she looked like an angel with her long white dress and long red hair. I also was quite impressed with the way children were treated there. Most places where there were crowds of people usually meant kids crying and parents scolding, but at this event, the kids were happy and parents seemed to treat their children with more respect - more like they were responsible adults and the environment was more peaceful than other places I'd been where there were crowds of families. Normally I couldn't stand crowds of people for more than 15 or 20 minutes and I would get antsy and have to leave, but I was at this event from about 11am one morning until about 2am the following morning (it was a long event) and I was perfectly comfortable the whole time. The whole space felt different to me. I liked being around this bunch. I also found an Advance Mag on the seat next to mine during the event and read one of the OT Success Stories and suddenly felt like I'd found home. I was sold and I didn't know anything about auditing or training. I just wanted to regain my OT abilities.

After I went home, I asked my current boyfriend - how do I get started with this? The following Saturday he took me to Celebrity Center. I walked in the door and asked reception...."How do I get started with this?" I was escorted to the Reg. I asked the Reg..."How do I get started with this?". He started laughing.....said he couldn't believe it...because he didn't have to handle me on anything. I paid for the Comm Course and started that day and came back Sunday for more. Then Monday I went back to my usual routine of school and work and had no time to do more Comm Course.

I got a call from one of the Course Sups one night when I got home asking me why I wasn't on course. I told her I had work and school and couldn't come in during the week. She gave me a bad time and told me I had to come in on course. Nobody had ever made a schedule with me and I thought I would just go in when I had time and do this course. She put a lot of pressure on me and ordered me around and really made me mad. The next time I went in on course, I told them that I didn't ever want her around me ever again and if she was going to bother me, I wasn't coming in. They made sure that she didn't come near me again. They also set a schedule for me to follow to be on course, which I followed. Step one in getting me to conform to the group.

Shortly into the Comm Course, I saw a notice on the board that they were giving intro auditing sessions for $5.00. I went and paid for an intro session. I kept going on course, but I couldn't keep my attention on the course very well because I was more interested in this auditing session. It seemed like I had to wait forever...it was probably two weeks before I got in session. When I finally did get in session, it lasted about 4 hours and I went whole track. Wow! This was fascinating and I had a nice result from the session. I went from thinking about 6 thoughts at once to being able to just think one thought at a time...so much more comfortable....this was so wonderful that I went to the reg and told him that I wanted to do the HQS course and to train thru Class IV and to get 100 hrs of auditing as well. We made a postulate together and I think he had me make out a phoney check just to write it down in the physical universe (nothing he was going to cash)...kind of a wish check. After this one session I was so blown out, I wanted everyone to learn about Scientology and experience what I had just experienced.

I went home that night and when I laid down on my bed I noticed a pain in my body so I did what we had done in session and ran it back and spotted the incident and it blew. Wow, this was great stuff. I was so pleased with this ability to do this. The next time I went to the org, I mentioned that I did this and got in trouble for self auditing.

(I'll continue with more later. It's late and I'm too tired to continue now.)

way cool phootie...

yeah...

thank you for so well expressing the very real and substantial virtues of auditing

these must be be preserved and must endure
 
I hear ya there. I've seen a lot of people come in just blown away by DMSMH and have the same experience in the Org or Mission.

right...

dmsmh is hot air baloon

the substance is good but it's pumped so full of hyperbole and overblown promise

SOS which especially impresses me isn't a hot air baloon

and when published it's sales were "sluggish"

why is there so much bullshit?

because it fukkin' works...
 

CurBed

New Member
ToFi and all. Finding this message board has helped me tremendously. I am not a scientologist or ex-scientologist nor am I a troll. I grew up in a situation that overlaps a lot of what I am reading here. I will find the proper forum to tell the entire story.

I like documentaries and have found myself drawn to cult documentaries for reasons I could not understand. That then led to youtube videos with people telling personal stories and then this message board. I now realize I was searching for ME. I needed/need a way to understand many of the things I experienced.

My mother was a very ill and angry person who kinda made up her own religion. Growing up we were somewhat isolated and did not know any better. Two siblings have died because they refused medical treatment for serious but treatable conditions. My mother died for similar reasons (another long story for another forum). What saved me and remaining siblings (I am from a large family) was that my parents stressed education and my mother feared what would happen to us if we did not get one. So we are all highly educated but f***d when it comes to relationships and "normal" functioning. But at least at least I had my mind, some healthier ways of understanding the world, and a means to support myself.

My mother was a wonderful and loving person on one hand, but totally damaging on the other. This has been confusing and makes relationships confusing. Thoughts and opinions were often invalidated because they did not fit with her very skewed worldview (which was dark and scary as hell by the way). Anyway, I am thankful for the fact that I am even somewhat normal.

Reading your stories has helped me. You guys are helping many people in ways that you do not even know or intended.
Thanks for being so open and honest. I wish you all the best. C
By the way, my mother read Dianetics in the 80's among other things. So we were raised on some of that thinking.
 
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EZ Linus

Cleared Tomato
Hi CurBed,

I am so sorry to hear about your situation. I really recommend that you get the book called, "Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: : Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships" by Madeleine Landau Tobias and Janja Lalich. There is a lot of information in there about how there is such thing as a cult of ONE. You might find it useful and healing. It was one of the best books I ever read.
 

CurBed

New Member
Hi CurBed,

I am so sorry to hear about your situation. I really recommend that you get the book called, "Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: : Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships" by Madeleine Landau Tobias and Janja Lalich. There is a lot of information in there about how there is such thing as a cult of ONE. You might find it useful and healing. It was one of the best books I ever read.

Thanks for the response. I will check out the book.
Much Love, C
 
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