There are others who have left CoS and followed Gerbode......several post on this board regularly.
You rang? I don't actually "follow" Gerbode, but I really appreciate the work he did cleaning up the parts of the subject worthy of retention and incorporating them into a model that properly referenced them and made them useful to people who spoke the language of psychology. Gerbode doesn't want any followers. In fact, he's retired, and has been for a while. Mostly, he plays medieval music and minds his own business. I don't think he takes clients anymore, and he only speaks at the request of the foundation he set up to promote metapsychology, during their Symposiums. Metapsychology is multi-authored, though Gerbode is rightly credited for the common terminology and approach shared by metapsychologists.
I took the basic TIR course, myself, which was recommended to me by a highly classed auditor who posts on this board. To me, it was a kind of slightly altered version of Book I along with a little Self Analysis and a bit of Prep Checking and a minor (much less effective in my opinion) form of ruds handling...no meters involved at that level of TIR.
The "ruds handling" techniques are de-emphasized, I would agree. There is less formality in a metapsychology session. Procedures are taken to their end points, and whatever is in the way is addressed flexibly. If a person cannot focus because of something that recently disturbed them, this would be taken up. I don't think there is any need for extremely formal "ruds". My standard question before a session is "is there anything currently holding your attention that we should address before we start?" That tends to do the trick.
The woman who taught the course was a Class VI, but she did not let that be known to anyone else in the class because none of them had any contact with Scientology and the subject was never mentioned.
I think I know her.
Tell her I said hi if you see her. Many advanced Scientology auditors left Scientology and were looking for ways to continue to help people without being involved with the Church, and some see the wisdom in abandoning Hubbard's terminology and fixed thinking, as well. It would introduce too much complexity to explain how metapsychology differs from Scientology to someone who was unfamiliar with Scientology, and would likely only cause a negative reaction. I think any ex-scientologist would recognize the parallels to the lower grades in Metapsychology's curriculum, or the TIR similarities to Dianetics, but the difference in background theory and environment is so striking that they really are very different animals.
It sometimes behooves an auditor to get certified in TIR so that they can advertise and work and make themselves known under a different modality that is more acceptable to the general public and doesn't have the bad reputation that Dianetics and Scientology has made for themselves and isn't connected to the name of LRH, other than the fact that if one reads Gerbode's book, he mentions that he did study Scientology, as part of his research.
Bingo. Furthermore, there are many therapists who have never had anything to do with Scientology who study metapsychology and use it in their practice as their primary mode of delivery. When I took my TIR workshop, I did so with three other students. One was a social worker, one was a psychologist, and the third was a practicing hypnotist. That workshop sprung me into motion, and I started facilitating sessions immediately afterwards and have not stopped, since.
Having had some very good auditing from students on the BC at ASHO back in the 70's and having audited others on Book I with some dynamite results, I was not impressed with TIR....for me, it turned out to be kind of waste of money to take the course.
Sorry to hear that. What I got out of the Workshop was primarily an understanding of their nomenclature and experience running a session according to their protocols. It cut through my uncertainty about what to do when, and got me working. I've also stopped keeping session notes, other than what items were handled and what remains to be worked on, according to the viewer. Better for the viewer's privacy, and means less paperwork for me, as well as more capability of keeping my full attention on the session. I got more out of later workshops, because I was less familiar with those tools. I can see how a BC grad might not get that much out of the initial workshop. For advanced auditors, it might be like learning a new vocabulary. I think there can be a mistake in that, because the vocabulary represents changes in the fundamental model and approach.
But.... I have heard some rave results sort of second hand from others who have spoken to those who had received TIR from someone who had more advanced training in TIR who thought it was the cat's meow.....just no personal experience of my own.
I have some personal experience of my own, but I'm not all the way to the place you describe all the time, yet. It's much closer than it was when I started, though. My friends who have done more work (specifically on identities and influences and postulates) than I have don't rave at all, unless pressed for what they got out of it. They describe what sounds like serenity, to me. Quiet competence and receptive to others. No special powers.
I was very impressed with Scientology in my intro session at CCLA back in '73.....I experienced that peaceful calm at the end of the session....and I was sold....hooked from then on....I wanted more....and I got it. Later, after more auditing I experienced greater degrees of peaceful calm and quieting of mental stuff...or whatever it was that was bothering me, until finally one day I found myself in a heavenly sort of state of nothingness and not in contact with the physical universe. I really liked this....the only problem is that one can't live life on the physical plane if one is not in contact with it. I guess it would be more ideal if one could be either in or out of, or in contact or out of contact with the physical universe at will, and be able to experience that heavenly peaceful state whenever one desired to do so.
Gerbode describes this as a sort of polarity. At one pole he describes subjective experience, while the other pole is what is perceived by the individual (their "world"): his article about this on
TIR website is
"The Mind as the First Environment". Quieting down the subjective end of this doesn't mean you no longer have a world to interact with, or that you cannot be drawn into that world (probably why you keep it). Retaining that subjective clarity and lack of tension is not an easy thing, but is a skill to be mastered. Even masters sometimes lose it.
I don't claim such mastery, but I am significantly more skilled at recognizing when I am triggered than I used to be, and MUCH better at destimulating whatever was triggered than prior to my training.
For me, it's been very, very positive: what I was looking for in Scientology but found only in connection with the constant disturbance from the Church and from people who were concerned about my involvement with the Church (and rightly so). Since I did most of my training and work, my "downward spiral" completely stopped and has reversed direction. I have no special powers, but I've stopped sabotaging myself, started empowering myself, ceased looking for damaging relationships and accepting honest, real love, reconnected with my children and started my own practice. I am rarely seriously disturbed by much, anymore. Part of this is my acceptance of my sphere of influence, part of it has been adoption of patience (learned in a coma).
Please don't read what I'm saying, here, as an endorsement of Scientology. I was looking for metapsychology when I was studying Scientology, I just didn't know it existed.