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trepidatious

Tomorrow will be my last day here, for a while. A couple of people here do know who I am and can get a hold of me to let me know when I should revisit the site, which I shall do occasionally. I guess if enough of you shouted then I'd get the word.

I do want to clear up something someone mentioned. I said the tech doesn't work. But I said I got wins. Both are true.

I learned how to communicate better in Scn. I learned how to study well. I frequently came out of session feeling better, after having talked about whatever might be bothering me. I had realizations that made me feel good.

However, each of the levels have abilities you're supposed to gain, as well everybody knows. Other than the lowest levels, I didn't see anyone ever, even temporarily, reach those points.

I have been to church with friends. In various churches, I've had some realizations listening to pastors. I've smiled and felt good.

I've been to Asia many times and talked to Budhist monks. They have helped me cognite on certain things.

So, asking whether Scn works is not the same as asking has it ever produced wins. The fundamental tech basics, although logical, when accepted and then acted on.... releasing engrams, BTs, etc, simply doesn't achieve the promoted end results. Not on Hubbard or anyone else I ever met.

But it would be wrong of me to say that no one has ever had a win, or felt good (although usually temporarily) from Scn. It would not be wrong of me to say that I've never seen or heard of an actual Power release, OT, Clear etc.

I could likewise make certain analogues to the admin tech. Though there are good ideas, it is largely contrived hogwash. Again, that's not to say there aren't equivalents even in the outside world to precepts of admin tech, that can be effective. But all of it? Errrr. Baloney.

Just cause you say something and people believe it doesn't make it real.

mmmm...

yes...

you see i only have CLIV org experience. grades life repair to GrIII seem to bite pretty good on people who are (1) basically OK and (2) interested

it's GrIV that tended to be observably less effective. makewrongs are forever...
 
Who?

Me thinketh you're being a wee bit too sensitive.





Now, buck up, stiff upper lip, and all that, go to the Scientology technology or Freezone section and start a thread.

What could happen?:nervous::unsure::ohmy::angry::no::nervous::confused2::grouch::melodramatic::biggrin::bigcry::cheerleader::hattip::buzzin::party::woohoo::batseyelashes::love11::biglove::cheers2::pullhair::banghead::punch::hissyfit::catfight::furious::sorry::argue::blah::stickpoke::drool::boxing::stir::neener::clapping::tease::questions::sleepy::violin::hide::bowdown::notworthy::tiptoe::dizzy::headspin::bong::wife::flasher::nazi::spacecraft::depressed::hamster::flamewar::overanalyser::coffee::floor::fencing::scnsucks::bullshit::witch2::ball::smoking::blonde::arrow::aliengreeting::vacuum::gathering:

...the camera pans to the audience in the front rows of the hushed auditorium packed with silent souls keenly awaiting cowboy's parting words...
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
Holy fuck. It's a crapton of work to put in all those bazillion emoticons in one post.

Gotta admire that dedication, now don't we.
 

TG1

Angelic Poster
Cowboy,

Your posts this last visit have meant a lot to me. Yes, it's been of interest to hear what you observed back in the day as you attended Hubbard and Scientology organization you were a part of.

But more useful to me are your lifelong distillations of what those days and your experiences have come to mean to you.

I don't know who you are. And I don't care. The insights you've shared about what Scientology was and wasn't to you are worth their own weight, apart from your name, rank and resume.

Thank you so much for caring about our collective experience to turn back and view it from today -- and to share your view with us.

Happy trails.

TG1
 

cowboy

Patron with Honors
I have one question.
It has been reported in the book Bare-Faced Messiah that L. Ron Hubbard was furious at the news of Quentin's death:
The Hubbards moved in at the beginning of October 1976 and began to enjoy a new life of tranquillity on their ranch in the desert. The messengers noticed a change in the Commodore; he was much more relaxed than formerly and usually in good spirits. But on the morning of Wednesday, 17 November, as Doreen Smith was running across the Rifle to begin her watch, she could hear him shouting at the top of his voice: 'That stupid fucking kid! That stupid fucking kid! Look what he's done to me! Stupid fucking . . .' As she got closer, she could hear another unearthly, chilling noise. It was Mary Sue keening, barely drawing breath, but emitting a terrible endless scream.

When she entered the house, the messenger she was relieving was in tears. She sobbed out the awful news: 'Quentin's killed himself.'


...
Mary Sue screamed for ten minutes when she heard the news. 'It was horrendous,' said Kima Douglas. 'It kept on going. I couldn't believe she could get that much air in her lungs. The only time I had ever really seen her cry before was when Vixie, her Corgi, died and I had to give it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to try and revive it. The old man didn't cry or get emotional. He was furious - really angry that Quentin had done it.'

You confirmed that LRH didn't cry or get emotional. Did you also notice that LRH was angry with Quentin because his action damaged his image?

Yes. The emotions from him were not of sorrow over the death of his son. In fact, I would be hard pressed to say there were many emotions at all over the death of Quentin, relating to sorrow.
 

cowboy

Patron with Honors
Cowboy,

Your posts this last visit have meant a lot to me. Yes, it's been of interest to hear what you observed back in the day as you attended Hubbard and Scientology organization you were a part of.

But more useful to me are your lifelong distillations of what those days and your experiences have come to mean to you.

I don't know who you are. And I don't care. The insights you've shared about what Scientology was and wasn't to you are worth their own weight, apart from your name, rank and resume.

Thank you so much for caring about our collective experience to turn back and view it from today -- and to share your view with us.

Happy trails.

TG1

Your kind words are appreciated.
 

cowboy

Patron with Honors
Thank you for all you have shared!

Before you go can you give us one last story about little Dave? It was this cliffhanger that got me so excited :happydance:
Little Misc, hmmm. In La Quinta, DM lived in a side building with Marc Yaeger called the library, because that's what it had once been. DM used to tweak Yaeger, tease him. The two had differing personalities. Their schedules weren't the same. Early one morning Misc took it upon himself to slip into the room, quietly place shaving cream on Yaeger's hand, then start blaring David Bowies' "Changes".

THe results were predictable, and made the rounds through the ranks of the messengers.

It was a source of frustration to Hubbard and Misc that no Scn could cure his asthma. When he got excited the wheezing of his asthma would be the background to his words.

There were qualities attributed to the messengers, such as dedicated, selfless, patient, etc. The words used to describe Misc were not the same. Tyrannical, dominant, overbearing. Those who worked on the sets under him received regular tongue-lashings.

He would turn beet red whenever the old man yelled at him, wheezing, hardly able to talk, the pressure aggravating his asthma.

He was the bulldog of the WDC (watch dog committee). His ideas of discipline in certain situations were frequently the most creative.

Misc's personality patterns continued through his growing up and taking power. I believe he is probably a very lonely man right now, with secrets he dare tell no one.
 

cowboy

Patron with Honors
this is where the cowboy rides away. Love that George Strait song.

Guys and gals, it has been a pleasure chatting with you. To have shared some experiences was cathartic.

I have never been prouder than when the old man placed his hand on my shoulder and validated me for a complicated project which I took care of for him. I've also never been more devastated than when I was berated for some real or imagined transgression, my hand shaking as I struck a lighter and reached across to light the old man's cigarette. The other messengers would visibly pull back from me, knowing that being associated with me would perhaps make them also the subject or his ire.


I've never been more emotional than when I would witness people's lives ripped asunder. I've been ordered to mete out punishments which I knew the receiving party didn't deserve. I've seen well intentioned staff members, pale with lack of sleep, waiting for words of approval, only to be chastised, or, in some cases, even worse.

So many images flash through my mind as I consider again what i went through in Scn. The sight of the ship at dock as I flew overhead in a commercial plane, arriving for the first time. The reality of my bunk, the smell of stale sweat in the humid air, people off duty scouring the under-decks looking for cockroach nests, in order to earn the few extra dollars the extermination of the cockroach nests would bring in bounty.

The first time I saw Hubbard, the emperor, surrounded by his entourage.... and I realized that.... he looked like a person. His face was pitted and craggy, his hair not the golden mane I'd expected but thinning and shot with gray and vestiges of the famous red from his photos, his corpulence, was not what I'd expected.

And the first time I saw him scream at a messenger, this physically intimidating (to a child) adult shouting so loud at a cringing messenger that spittle was flying, the messenger whiter than her clothing, shaking under the intensity of his wrath.

Was this the God-like entity who had opened the door to my spiritual salvation?

Then, a moment watching Hubbard walking the decks beside HRH, seeing him as, of all things, a son, wanting approval from his father. What must Harry Ross have thought of his boy with his own ship, dressed as a Commodore and surrounded by scantily clad young girls?

Long lines of crew in the airport as we left Curacao, Quentin smiling and being Quentin as we waited, only to arrive a few hours later in a land of milk and honey; endless hot water and the beautiful beaches of Daytona... the relief and the smiles obvious on everyone's faces at the change in lifestyle.

Mindless orders to RPF those I thought Hubbard considered his friends, meter readings convincing him that his estimate of them was incorrect, and that they harbored some ill will, to see the RS/RPF craze strike like a plague, decimating the ranks of those around him, the circle growing closer and closer....only to eventually find out that these people's servitude, months or years in the RPF, were pointless, the people had been judged and convicted without a jury to a life in many ways worse than a prison... for only imagined infractions.

My deepest secret, that I once didn't report an RS, because I knew what it would have meant to the person....

The coldness I saw in Hubbard toward others, including his family, the distance he kept... the absence of the qualities I would have envisioned most in a spiritual leader.... qualities one might have imagined in Christ, or Ghandi, but Hubbard was bereft of such qualities. I was ordered to barge into someone's room at three in the morning and threaten to assign the man to the RPF if he didn't get his ass up and work more on a project, despite the fact that he'd been up for 24 hours, to find him in his wife's arms, stunned as I delivered the message... then his asking me how he could possibly satisfy Hubbard.... He wanted desperately to please the old man, but couldn't imagine how. I think he would have taken his own life if Hubbard wanted him to. The agony of trying his best but his best (which was good) not coming close to satisfying Hubbard. The vile and derisive names Hubbard called him by, the snide remarks to the messengers about this man...

Steve Irwin's acknowledgement that he must be damned to the darkest of all Hells because he'd been slapped by Hubbard... Irwin had always been a corker, light hearted, jokingly calling Quentin, before his death, by his nick name, "Son of Source".

Sleepless days spent vetting secrets from documents in fear that the FBI would raid any moment, afraid I'd fall asleep and miss blacking out, or cutting out some secret which the FBI would find and destroy Scn with, and it would be my fault because after two days with no sleep I fell asleep....

Phil Valinsky dying in session at SU and the contortions to hide the truth... and then seeing a copy of his official granting of 21 years of leave, with orders to report back to duty in his new body... I remember thinking how come he got 21 years to live childhood in his new body before reporting back to duty, yet I started working at about 12. He get's a childhood and I don't? BTW, did Phil ever report back in his new body?

Bribes, threats, manipulations, reaching out across the country to bend people to Hubbard's will.

A man steadily losing more and more of his mind... Finally enfeebled, his hands shaking, gaunt, lucid only part of the time, confined to bed for most of the day for weeks on end... Human. Undivine. Unmiraculous.

The bonding of my friends, my fellow messengers, our gazes at one another voicing what we could not speak of.... I don't mean to speak demeaningly of any military sacrifices made by our armed forces, but we messengers, in many ways, became a Band of Brothers. To be in your teens and living on a few hours sleep a night for weeks or months, the pressures placed upon us, the yelling... but, at the same time, craving approval... the feeling of being on top of the world when some deed one had performed was acknowledged with a "Well Done".

Even as I left, my heart ached for Hubbard, for the conversations neither I nor anyone could ever have with him, remembering the lives he'd ruined... that I had sometimes ruined in his name, but still feeling a bond with him, though my candid assessment of the truth of Scn was forcing me to depart. Stockholm Syndrome? Maybe.

In the decades since I left, when I've occasionally met up with a former comrade and heard of the tragedies befalling those who stayed behind, my heart ached for them. Of the legal manipulation to avoid the truth. Can the world not understand the pressures that a dedicated staff member would answer to that would make them give false testimony in a heart beat, gladly, to impeach detractors of the church, or to protect leaders of the church from prosecution?

Shelly Miscavige, a girl I called my friend, what sort of life are you suffering through now?

I'm deluged still with thoughts and sorrows and regrets, acceptance of the harm I directly caused others through following orders. Hitler's orders to his staff were not enough to free them from consequences for their War Crimes. I can make excuses, but, in many ways I caused harm. I remember convincing someone to join the SO, to bring her family and young children in, to see her a year later in the RPF, her kids being worked like adults, being haunted by the unspoken accusation in her glance, "Why did you take me and my family away from the world we knew, for this?" her gaze said to me. Whatever happened to her, I wonder. Did she and her children leave, or did I rob them of their childhood like mine was robbed from me?

Yes, the cowboy rides away. I'll be back, perhaps. Thanks for your words of encouragement. The gratitude that many of you have expressed has been touching. I hope that for some, my musings have helped put things in perspective, and maybe, somewhere, some time, I will find that my words helped someone to make their life their own again. To perhaps look a little deeper at Scn, to question, to use their mind, to perhaps value their children and family a little bit more, and reflect on my experiences and realize that the time has come to use the stark light of reason to make decisions.

If anything, I hoped I've shown that Hubbard, and the experiences of those around him, can not be summarily explained. Now, as I reflect, I pity him, what he must have internalized at the end, as his body wilted away....
 
Last edited:

Uncult

Patron
this is where the cowboy rides away. Love that George Strait song.

Guys and gals, it has been a pleasure chatting with you. To have shared some experiences was cathartic.

I have never been prouder than when the old man placed his hand on my shoulder and validated me for a complicated project which I took care of for him. I've also never been more devastated than when I was berated for some real or imagined transgression, my hand shaking as I struck a lighter and reached across to light the old man's cigarette. The other messengers would visibly pull back from me, knowing that being associated with me would perhaps make them also the subject or his ire.


I've never been more emotional than when I would witness people's lives ripped asunder. I've been ordered to mete out punishments which I knew the receiving party didn't deserve. I've seen well intentioned staff members, pale with lack of sleep, waiting for words of approval, only to be chastised, or, in some cases, even worse.

So many images flash through my mind as I consider again what i went through in Scn. The sight of the ship at dock as I flew overhead in a commercial plane, arriving for the first time. The reality of my bunk, the smell of stale sweat in the humid air, people off duty scouring the under-decks looking for cockroach nests, in order to earn the few extra dollars the extermination of the cockroach nests would bring in bounty.

The first time I saw Hubbard, the emperor, surrounded by his entourage.... and I realized that.... he looked like a person. His face was pitted and craggy, his hair not the golden mane I'd expected but thinning and shot with gray and vestiges of the famous red from his photos, his corpulence, was not what I'd expected.

And the first time I saw him scream at a messenger, this physically intimidating (to a child) adult shouting so loud at a cringing messenger that spittle was flying, the messenger whiter than her clothing, shaking under the intensity of his wrath.

Was this the God-like entity who had opened the door to my spiritual salvation?

Then, a moment watching Hubbard walking the decks beside HRH, seeing him as, of all things, a son, wanting approval from his father. What must Harry Ross have thought of his boy with his own ship, dressed as a Commodore and surrounded by scantily clad young girls?

Long lines of crew in the airport as we left Curacao, Quentin smiling and being Quentin as we waited, only to arrive a few hours later in a land of milk and honey; endless hot water and the beautiful beaches of Daytona... the relief and the smiles obvious on everyone's faces at the change in lifestyle.

Mindless orders to RPF those I thought Hubbard considered his friends, meter readings convincing him that his estimate of them was incorrect, and that they harbored some ill will, to see the RS/RPF craze strike like a plague, decimating the ranks of those around him, the circle growing closer and closer....only to eventually find out that these people's servitude, months or years in the RPF, were pointless, the people had been judged and convicted without a jury to a life in many ways worse than a prison... for only imagined infractions.

My deepest secret, that I once didn't report an RS, because I knew what it would have meant to the person....

The coldness I saw in Hubbard toward others, including his family, the distance he kept... the absence of the qualities I would have envisioned most in a spiritual leader.... qualities one might have imagined in Christ, or Ghandi, but Hubbard was bereft of such qualities. I was ordered to barge into someone's room at three in the morning and threaten to assign the man to the RPF if he didn't get his ass up and work more on a project, despite the fact that he'd been up for 24 hours, to find him in his wife's arms, stunned as I delivered the message... then his asking me how he could possibly satisfy Hubbard.... He wanted desperately to please the old man, but couldn't imagine how. I think he would have taken his own life if Hubbard wanted him to. The agony of trying his best but his best (which was good) not coming close to satisfying Hubbard. The vile and derisive names Hubbard called him by, the snide remarks to the messengers about this man...

Steve Irwin's acknowledgement that he must be damned to the darkest of all Hells because he'd been slapped by Hubbard... Irwin had always been a corker, light hearted, jokingly calling Quentin, before his death, by his nick name, "Son of Source".

Sleepless days spent vetting secrets from documents in fear that the FBI would raid any moment, afraid I'd fall asleep and miss blacking out, or cutting out some secret which the FBI would find and destroy Scn with, and it would be my fault because after two days with no sleep I fell asleep....

Phil Valinsky dying in session at SU and the contortions to hide the truth... and then seeing a copy of his official granting of 21 years of leave, with orders to report back to duty in his new body... I remember thinking how come he got 21 years to live childhood in his new body before reporting back to duty, yet I started working at about 12. He get's a childhood and I don't? BTW, did Phil ever report back in his new body?

Bribes, threats, manipulations, reaching out across the country to bend people to Hubbard's will.

A man steadily losing more and more of his mind... Finally enfeebled, his hands shaking, gaunt, lucid only part of the time, confined to bed for most of the day for weeks on end... Human. Undivine. Unmiraculous.

The bonding of my friends, my fellow messengers, our gazes at one another voicing what we could not speak of.... I don't mean to speak demeaningly of any military sacrifices made by our armed forces, but we messengers, in many ways, became a Band of Brothers. To be in your teens and living on a few hours sleep a night for weeks or months, the pressures placed upon us, the yelling... but, at the same time, craving approval... the feeling of being on top of the world when some deed one had performed was acknowledged with a "Well Done".

Even as I left, my heart ached for Hubbard, for the conversations neither I nor anyone could ever have with him, remembering the lives he'd ruined... that I had sometimes ruined in his name, but still feeling a bond with him, though my candid assessment of the truth of Scn was forcing me to depart. Stockholm Syndrome? Maybe.

In the decades since I left, when I've occasionally met up with a former comrade and heard of the tragedies befalling those who stayed behind, my heart ached for them. Of the legal manipulation to avoid the truth. Can the world not understand the pressures that a dedicated staff member would answer to that would make them give false testimony in a heart beat, gladly, to impeach detractors of the church, or to protect leaders of the church from prosecution?

Shelly Miscavige, a girl I called my friend, what sort of life are you suffering through now?

I'm deluged still with thoughts and sorrows and regrets, acceptance of the harm I directly caused others through following orders. Hitler's orders to his staff were not enough to free them from consequences for their War Crimes. I can make excuses, but, in many ways I caused harm. I remember convincing someone to join the SO, to bring her family and young children in, to see her a year later in the RPF, her kids being worked like adults, being haunted by the unspoken accusation in her glance, "Why did you take me and my family away from the world we knew, for this?" her gaze said to me. Whatever happened to her, I wonder. Did she and her children leave, or did I rob them of their childhood like mine was robbed from me?

Yes, the cowboy rides away. I'll be back, perhaps. Thanks for your words of encouragement. The gratitude that many of you have expressed has been touching. I hope that for some, my musings have helped put things in perspective, and maybe, somewhere, some time, I will find that my words helped someone to make their life their own again. To perhaps look a little deeper at Scn, to question, to use their mind, to perhaps value their children and family a little bit more, and reflect on my experiences and realize that the time has come to use the stark light of reason to make decisions.

If anything, I hoped I've shown that Hubbard, and the experiences of those around him, can not be summarily explained. Now, as I reflect, I pity him, what he must have internalized at the end, as his body wilted away....

I feel blessed you shared your story here, cowboy. I never met LRH. Your story gives a precise perspective being at ground zero. An experience that reminds me of Marlon Brando's line in Apocalypse Now, "the horror, the horror." Ride on cowboy, there's always a cup of hot coffee waiting for you here if you pass this way again after a days long satisfying ride.
 

Veda

Sponsor
To FreeZone Opinion Leader Ralph:

Did it bother you that Hubbard used children as servants in a personality cult in which he was both Source and Commodore?

No. They appeared to enjoy the status and in some cases revel in it. I still consider it a priviledge to have known and worked with LRH.

Do you know of a single messenger who knew and worked for LRH who says that he abused them?


Here ya' go, Ralph. Put down the cans and read this. 'Cowboy' was a Commodore's Messenger starting at the age of 12:


this is where the cowboy rides away. Love that George Strait song.

Guys and gals, it has been a pleasure chatting with you. To have shared some experiences was cathartic.

I have never been prouder than when the old man placed his hand on my shoulder and validated me for a complicated project which I took care of for him. I've also never been more devastated than when I was berated for some real or imagined transgression, my hand shaking as I struck a lighter and reached across to light the old man's cigarette. The other messengers would visibly pull back from me, knowing that being associated with me would perhaps make them also the subject or his ire.


I've never been more emotional than when I would witness people's lives ripped asunder. I've been ordered to mete out punishments which I knew the receiving party didn't deserve. I've seen well intentioned staff members, pale with lack of sleep, waiting for words of approval, only to be chastised, or, in some cases, even worse.

So many images flash through my mind as I consider again what i went through in Scn. The sight of the ship at dock as I flew overhead in a commercial plane, arriving for the first time. The reality of my bunk, the smell of stale sweat in the humid air, people off duty scouring the under-decks looking for cockroach nests, in order to earn the few extra dollars the extermination of the cockroach nests would bring in bounty.

The first time I saw Hubbard, the emperor, surrounded by his entourage.... and I realized that.... he looked like a person. His face was pitted and craggy, his hair not the golden mane I'd expected but thinning and shot with gray and vestiges of the famous red from his photos, his corpulence, was not what I'd expected.

And the first time I saw him scream at a messenger, this physically intimidating (to a child) adult shouting so loud at a cringing messenger that spittle was flying, the messenger whiter than her clothing, shaking under the intensity of his wrath.

Was this the God-like entity who had opened the door to my spiritual salvation?

Then, a moment watching Hubbard walking the decks beside HRH, seeing him as, of all things, a son, wanting approval from his father. What must Harry Ross have thought of his boy with his own ship, dressed as a Commodore and surrounded by scantily clad young girls?

Long lines of crew in the airport as we left Curacao, Quentin smiling and being Quentin as we waited, only to arrive a few hours later in a land of milk and honey; endless hot water and the beautiful beaches of Daytona... the relief and the smiles obvious on everyone's faces at the change in lifestyle.

Mindless orders to RPF those I thought Hubbard considered his friends, meter readings convincing him that his estimate of them was incorrect, and that they harbored some ill will, to see the RS/RPF craze strike like a plague, decimating the ranks of those around him, the circle growing closer and closer....only to eventually find out that these people's servitude, months or years in the RPF, were pointless, the people had been judged and convicted without a jury to a life in many ways worse than a prison... for only imagined infractions.

My deepest secret, that I once didn't report an RS, because I knew what it would have meant to the person....

The coldness I saw in Hubbard toward others, including his family, the distance he kept... the absence of the qualities I would have envisioned most in a spiritual leader.... qualities one might have imagined in Christ, or Ghandi, but Hubbard was bereft of such qualities. I was ordered to barge into someone's room at three in the morning and threaten to assign the man to the RPF if he didn't get his ass up and work more on a project, despite the fact that he'd been up for 24 hours, to find him in his wife's arms, stunned as I delivered the message... then his asking me how he could possibly satisfy Hubbard.... He wanted desperately to please the old man, but couldn't imagine how. I think he would have taken his own life if Hubbard wanted him to. The agony of trying his best but his best (which was good) not coming close to satisfying Hubbard. The vile and derisive names Hubbard called him by, the snide remarks to the messengers about this man...

Steve Irwin's acknowledgement that he must be damned to the darkest of all Hells because he'd been slapped by Hubbard... Irwin had always been a corker, light hearted, jokingly calling Quentin, before his death, by his nick name, "Son of Source".

Sleepless days spent vetting secrets from documents in fear that the FBI would raid any moment, afraid I'd fall asleep and miss blacking out, or cutting out some secret which the FBI would find and destroy Scn with, and it would be my fault because after two days with no sleep I fell asleep....

Phil Valinsky dying in session at SU and the contortions to hide the truth... and then seeing a copy of his official granting of 21 years of leave, with orders to report back to duty in his new body... I remember thinking how come he got 21 years to live childhood in his new body before reporting back to duty, yet I started working at about 12. He get's a childhood and I don't? BTW, did Phil ever report back in his new body?

Bribes, threats, manipulations, reaching out across the country to bend people to Hubbard's will.

A man steadily losing more and more of his mind... Finally enfeebled, his hands shaking, gaunt, lucid only part of the time, confined to bed for most of the day for weeks on end... Human. Undivine. Unmiraculous.

The bonding of my friends, my fellow messengers, our gazes at one another voicing what we could not speak of.... I don't mean to speak demeaningly of any military sacrifices made by our armed forces, but we messengers, in many ways, became a Band of Brothers. To be in your teens and living on a few hours sleep a night for weeks or months, the pressures placed upon us, the yelling... but, at the same time, craving approval... the feeling of being on top of the world when some deed one had performed was acknowledged with a "Well Done".

Even as I left, my heart ached for Hubbard, for the conversations neither I nor anyone could ever have with him, remembering the lives he'd ruined... that I had sometimes ruined in his name, but still feeling a bond with him, though my candid assessment of the truth of Scn was forcing me to depart. Stockholm Syndrome? Maybe.

In the decades since I left, when I've occasionally met up with a former comrade and heard of the tragedies befalling those who stayed behind, my heart ached for them. Of the legal manipulation to avoid the truth. Can the world not understand the pressures that a dedicated staff member would answer to that would make them give false testimony in a heart beat, gladly, to impeach detractors of the church, or to protect leaders of the church from prosecution?

Shelly Miscavige, a girl I called my friend, what sort of life are you suffering through now?

I'm deluged still with thoughts and sorrows and regrets, acceptance of the harm I directly caused others through following orders. Hitler's orders to his staff were not enough to free them from consequences for their War Crimes. I can make excuses, but, in many ways I caused harm. I remember convincing someone to join the SO, to bring her family and young children in, to see her a year later in the RPF, her kids being worked like adults, being haunted by the unspoken accusation in her glance, "Why did you take me and my family away from the world we knew, for this?" her gaze said to me. Whatever happened to her, I wonder. Did she and her children leave, or did I rob them of their childhood like mine was robbed from me?

Yes, the cowboy rides away. I'll be back, perhaps. Thanks for your words of encouragement. The gratitude that many of you have expressed has been touching. I hope that for some, my musings have helped put things in perspective, and maybe, somewhere, some time, I will find that my words helped someone to make their life their own again. To perhaps look a little deeper at Scn, to question, to use their mind, to perhaps value their children and family a little bit more, and reflect on my experiences and realize that the time has come to use the stark light of reason to make decisions.

If anything, I hoped I've shown that Hubbard, and the experiences of those around him, can not be summarily explained. Now, as I reflect, I pity him, what he must have internalized at the end, as his body wilted away....


Thanks Cowboy. :)
 

Free to shine

Shiny & Free
Cowboy, your last post made me cry, again.

You have a wonderful, precise way of writing - as TG1 says, "your lifelong distillations of what those days and your experiences have come to mean to you". There are not many around who can convey such wonderful word pictures of almost inexplicable events.

I was sitting here thinking about why I cried ... I guess there are not that many who talk of what it was really, really like growing up in scientology. I know there are very few who understand what I went through as a teen, and even though I wasn't a Messenger I could so easily have been. I missed the Hubbard experience by a few months, though others in my family had it. It helps me understand them a bit better, and I will forward your post so that they can know they are not alone.

Your words are a gift.

Thankyou so much.
 
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