Isene - Great actually hearing from you after reading your Doubt Formula only yesterday. Your formula is a "tour de force". It is extremely well researched, well thought out and logical - also quite inspirational.
Just a question or two. When I got out, I thought along lines very similar to yours that Scientology and LRH were terrific and it was current management who was entirely the culprit for C of S sinking to its current state. After 4 years of reading the internet, and especially since joining ESMB in February, I have changed my opinion somewhat. I had large gains in Scientology, or at least I perceive that I did, and I am greatfull for being helped through LRH tech and I have seen many others feel this way, but I came to see that the policies which have led church management to sink to its current low state were written and put in place by LRH himself, and he practiced many of DM's practices himself but on a smaller scale. Maybe not as much violent force was used against staff when LRH ran things and maybe there was more sanity and a bigger chance of getting a wrong redressed or getting fair ethics applied but there were still a lot terrible things going on.
You say you have been researching for two years and a significant portion of your research was reading the posts on this board. My question is, do you believe your current views are your final views on this subject or are your final views still evolving.
Summary - We have several types of people on ESMB from people who despise LRH and all his tech 100%, to people who still like the tech but have distanced themselves from LRH for one reason or another to people who want to continue using pure LRH tech and who only despise current top C of S management. I started off in the last bracket of the 3 I mentioned and have moved to the second bracket. I am no longer impressed by most people who remain in bracket 3 such as most Freezoners and people who post on Ifachat and I don't read that stuff any longer but then you come out as a bracket 3 person and I am VERY impressed with what you have written. Your doubt formula tends to exert a pull back to bracket 3 but as impressed as I am with your formula, with what I know now, I don't think I could ever go back to believing as Freezoner does.
lkwdblds
I agree 100%. I am more of the group 2 fella now.
But, one of these days I MAY just do the L's in the FZ for the hell of it!
I used to love getting catapulted out of my head. I may give it a go and see if she (Auditing Tech) still has some of that
good ole' magic super-duper key-out punch!
I am very curious what would happen, because I am pretty keyed-out most of the time now.
You know it is funny. I can choose to immerse myself in either viewpoint at will. I can see it all just as you describe, seeing much of what Hubbard wrote as looney-tunes, but then I can temporarily say, "GO, assume beingess", and
think within the framework of a FZ type person, as long as it is understood that for me I have already discarded all the agreement with OSA tech, the Scientology KSW fanatical identity, nearly all things organizational, most of the abusive aspects of the ethics & justice tech (SPs, declares, KRs), many aspects of staff policy, the idea that there is any validity or worth to INT management, PR tech (understanding the PR Series to be about indoctrination, control, and not "truth"), and so forth. Also, I can comfortably live with the idea that "LRH was a nutjob in many ways, and quite a buffoon"", and then someway also think, "somehow, despite being such an ego-maniac and control freak, he managed to come with some pretty cool stuff". He did have a hefty case of anal-retentive, over-masculinized, alpha,
attentiveness to details. Some of that seems to have "paid off"
here and there. I see no reason not to fiddle with, and even benefit from some of that.
I often start the day with 15 minutes of a Spacation Drill (from PAB Book 1):
"Spacation is Step III of SOP 8. This is a specialized version of nothingness. It is very murderous to aberration. Its first phase is to have the preclear, with his eyes closed "reach" up and find the two corners of the room behiond him and get interested in them and NOT THINK. No matter how bad you feel, or from what, you can always improve with this one. This puts the preclear in present time. And as circuits are never in present time, they key out."
Step I is pretty cool too actually.
"Take Ten Minutes of Nothing". This technique means Oh so literally what it says. It isn't ten minutes of "relaxation" or "relief" or "rest". It isn't ten minutes of you, a body. It means ten minutes of no body, no engrams, no walls, no Mest Universe, no sound, no thought, really nothing. All ones life he is trying to get, to work, to be, to perceive SOMETHING. Now for Ten Minutes ket us have utterly NOTHING. The presclear discovers sooner or latrer he CAN be nothing, that he doesn't have to strive to be. What a relief! LAO TZE was so right about striving".
And, when I start the day THAT way, I am just so much THERE. The above two drills don't require that you WAIT for auditing to "get there". Just do the drills and learn how to control
being there. These are actually versions of Tibetan Buddhist meditation technqiues. But, Hubbard came up with them in terms a westerner can understand. Forget about all the mumbo-jumbo about "circuits", "preclears", "engrams", and just do the drills.
But, I enjoy and still get a kick out of a great deal of Hubbard's auditing and mental stuff. I never have agreed with any of the people who have tried to "logically" pooh-pooh the auditing tech, because in the end - it always gave me the big bang! I don't care if Xenu was created from a comic book character. I don't even care if it as entirely fabricated (what isn't?). It delivered the goods!
Now, understand that I am working off of memory here. The last time I had actual auditing was in the mid-1990s. I am especially curious, with all that I know and how much I have shifted viewpoints, WHAT would HAPPEN now? It is like what happened many years ago, a few years after I had finished the Drug Rundown, DN Case Completion, and all expanded grades (setup and ready for advanced org auditing). I was curious - what would happen if I got royally stoned right now (weed, pot)? I was really curious. Would I NOT get high? So, I found somebody on a corner selling, scored a few joints, and was off to the races! I got blasted! It was actually REALLY good. I was surf-boarding for light years in my mind. I don't mind mentioning it now - that was MANY years ago.:confused2: In the same sort of curious way, I wonder about what would happen if I did the L's NOW?
Yo, lkwdblds, you said,
"I am no longer impressed by most people who remain in bracket 3 such as most Freezoners and people who post on Ifachat". Everybody sees and experiences their world from where he or she sees it. It can be no other way. I am a Number 2 guy too, for the most part, BUT I have absolutely NO PROBLEM with people doing whatever they want with Hubbard's Tech. And, if people are willing to pay for it, because it has value for THEM, then that is fine too. For me, although I am a number 2 guy, I have absolutely NO PROBELM at all with anything about a FZ viewpoint. "Judge not lest ye be judged!" (valid point no matter WHO said it) Now, I see all number 1 people as simpletons of some sort, because they refuse to or are incapable of noticing or acknowledging subtleties and differences within the immense subject known as Scientology, and with the real people who get real benefits from some version of Scientology (whether in the Church or FZ).
The application of LRH
auditing tech gets really good subjective results for some people. You can't argue with THAT. It just is. That will be true no many how many arguments are created, and no matter what concatenations of logic are employed to "prove it otherwise". I love the taste of well-cooked shrimp. I have my whole life. You will NEVER be able to "logically" make me think otherwise. You can never "beat me in a debate" about that. And, it isn't even a "belief" that I hold about shrimp. It is
raw experience. I love how it tastes, and no thought about it, before or after, had any part in that perception and experience. It is my subjective reality, and there is NOTHING YOU CAN SAY TO MAKE ME SEE IT ANY OTHER WAY. The same is true about MANY things, including people's experiences with all things "religious".
In the end I have to simply let everybody just do what they want to do - as
long as they don't hurt anybody.
People choose to get involved in Scientology, and sometimes shit happens. But, it was YOUR choice, unless you were a kid in SCN, and then it was probably was not your choice. But, I think there is something to the concept of "Karma". If there is, then even the kids ending up in Scn may have had no other option - if there is an actual mechanism that functions in some way like "Karma",
over many lives (that is the KEY of course).
Anyway, all life is a crap shoot. I have a friend who graduated college, got married, had kids, worked 8-10 hours every day his whole life, and then his wife pops him with the divorce after 29 years of (largely mediocre) marriage. Who knew? He had devoted his entire LIFE to what was largely an illusion. It has taken him almost 2 years (with me as constant therapy) to come to terms with it.
So, while the RTC-led Church of Scientology, operating on Hubbard's many organizational policies, is a tremendous nightmare, people who
choose to enter it and stick with it in a very real sense "brought it on themselves". If you look the devil in the eyes, well the devil often looks back, and you do NOT stay the same in the process. The analogy is not unwarranted here.
Anyone who was in, as a staff or public, and "suffered" as a result, CHOSE to look. Stop being a victim. Take off THAT coat of identity. THAT is part of divorcing oneself from the Scientology paradigm. You did it to yourself. In the end you do EVERYTHING to yourself. Confront THAT, understand how THAT happened, and move on.